Chapter Fourteen #2
“Are you okay?” I wheeze out, my already-lacking cardio ability made worse by sprinting in a heavy rubber suit.
She twists until her back is pressed up against the tree now, her head tilted as she eyes me up and down in my Apollo suit. Her lips part in a loose, lopsided grin, so different from the tight smile she wore as she sat down on our first date.
“Oh, I’m having a blast.”
The funny thing is, I believe her. There’s a satisfaction in her stance as the last licks of laughter escape her in little sighs. She lifts a finger up to scratch Chicken behind her left ear, and Chicken mews dramatically until I lean down so she can curl up in Maisie’s arms instead.
“My hero,” Maisie coos as she kisses Chicken between the ears, but her eyes are locked on to mine, as if those words are for me, too.
My hero. And I find that I want that, so much.
I want to touch Maisie again, to kiss her and hold her close, but I want to be her hero in this godforsaken hellscape even more.
Not because she needs it; she clearly doesn’t.
But because she deserves to be saved, too. She deserves to feel safe.
And I want her to feel that way when she’s with me.
I know this urge to be her protector is cliché, but how could I feel otherwise when all the TV and movies I’ve happily consumed my whole life have trained me to glorify the brave male hero?
And how could I help but feel less-than when I failed my hand-to-hand-combat courses in military school, when I shirked the army path my parents set for me in favor of popcorn buckets and scary movies?
I could’ve been a true hero like Mom and Dad, but I chose to watch fictional ones instead from the safety of a velvet seat and a big screen.
I chose to be an observer, a civilian, the protected instead of protector, a burden.
But I want to be an asset. For her.
From Maisie’s arms, Chicken has squeezed her eyes into their happiest diagonal slits, and she mews again, as if to say, Fuck around with my humans and find out, zombies!
“Up for one more stop?” Maisie asks, and I find that I’d agree with just about anything she wants right now. We pad across the lawn, meander through the empty National Gallery of Art, content and quiet by each other’s side. When we emerge again, the sun’s lazy tilt tells us it’s after three p.m.
“We need to find a place for the night, and soon.”
Maisie tucks her chin over Chicken’s head, nuzzling her in simple pleasure, and smiles. “I know just the place.”
“The White House?!” I screech as Maisie’s SUV bounds over the lowered steel gates into the abandoned West Wing employee parking lot.
She squeals when she sees a high-powered electric-vehicle charging station and backs into the spot nonchalantly, like we didn’t just breach the security perimeter of the nation’s most closely guarded property.
“What?” She arches an eyebrow innocently. “Where better to hole up for the night? We’ll be right here for the helipad pickup tomorrow, and look around, Everett—your parents were right. The place is clearly deserted.”
She has a point. The empty guard stations, the lowered gate, the carless parking lot…hell, there aren’t even any zombified remains of the former staff manning the West Wing’s entrance. It’s as if the entire place were evacuated all at once, before GI-27 could take anyone by surprise.
I frown up at it, but Maisie’s already gleefully charging her Tasers, her pack slung across her shoulders, with Chicken leading the way. She pauses at the doorway beneath the ugly white awning, her smirk visible all the way from the car. “Something wrong, Professor?”
“Yeah,” I grumble, pulling my own duffel over my shoulder. “I hated The West Wing.” Somehow, I don’t think the zombie version will be an improvement.
But like my own very cunning, very strange Secret Service, Maisie and Chicken methodically sweep through the ground floor while I bring up the rear.
We don’t find a single zombie. We don’t even find any gore—no blood splatters on the stately wood-paneled walls, no severed limbs, and the restrooms are all silent, blissfully unoccupied.
“Where did everyone go?” I muse as we enter the Executive Residence itself, just as empty.
“Probably into the secret tunnels,” Maisie says matter-of-factly as she examines an ornamental china plate from the 1700s. “From there, who knows? Their homes, maybe, or the nuclear fallout shelters. Perhaps some underground bunker in the middle of nowhere.”
I stop short. “There are secret tunnels?”
“This is the president’s house. Of course there are secret tunnels.”
“How do you know all this?”
Maisie shrugs. “Reddit.”
After ensuring that we’re definitely alone, Maisie and I set about keeping it that way as nightfall looms closer.
Locking the doors, enabling metal shields that descend over ground-floor windows, reactivating the alarm systems—first the fence, then all the entrances, corridors, and sensors.
Maisie sits behind the guard station’s control panel flipping switches with satisfaction while I watch the wall of video screens for any movement and, incredulously, find none.
What I do find, however, makes me exclaim with joy.
“There’s a movie theater!” I jab a finger at one of the screens, then squint to read the small label scrolling across the bottom. “In the East Wing.” I turn a big, broad smile to Maisie, who’s already looking up at me with a soft affection that momentarily makes my heart stutter in my chest.
“Movie night,” she says simply, reading my mind. She holds up a finger. “After we raid the kitchens for produce. I’m starving.”
I suck a deep breath in through my nose, which resolves into a small, satisfied sound in the back of my throat.
The urge to pick her up, wrap her legs around my waist, and fuck her against the wall is second only to the desire to fall to my knees, pull her leg over my shoulder, and wash my face with her slick pussy.
Boundaries, Everett. It’s not class time.
We chop vegetables companionably side by side, like we’ve been doing this for years instead of only a few days. After a beautiful dinner in the State Dining Room on priceless china, because why the hell not, we find the small theater, lined in plush red velvets and rows of comfy seats.
“What’s on the syllabus for tonight, Professor?
” Maisie asks as she takes a seat in the exact middle-middle of the theater, which is my favorite spot, too.
Though she’s clearly talking about the movie, my dick twinges against my trunks anyway, like that overly friendly neighbor who waves frantically every time they see you just so you remember that a) they exist and b) they desperately want to be your best friend.
I clear my throat as I stand in the front of the theater, just as I do during my Friday screenings for Film Studies 101.
Or did, rather.
“In light of my deep disappointment in our government today, which allowed the country to be consumed by literal zombies while our nation’s leaders ran from any accountability, I am reminded of the selfish, incompetent, money-driven mayor Larry Vaughn of Amity Island, who, spoiler alert, allows his own citizens to be eaten by a giant killer shark instead of closing the beaches.
Therefore, tonight we’ll be watching the searing critique of American capitalism, cinematic masterpiece, and first summer blockbuster ever, Jaws. ”
Maisie claps while Chicken bats at her hands.
I take the seat next to them, the faded blues and muted yellows of a New England town fighting its own deadly monster washing over me as the warm press of Maisie’s leg against mine makes me temporarily forget everything else.
Gemma’s empty house. The apocalypse. The fact that we’re sitting in the White House with it all to ourselves.
Just Maisie, my cat, and me, watching the dueling vengeance of three men out to sea against nature’s angel of death itself.
My god, this movie’s so good. Pretty sure Maisie’s enjoying it, too, her eyes wide and tracking the screen attentively, cursing and yelping at all the right parts.
When the end credits roll, she lifts her arms over her head in a luxurious, feline stretch.
“I want to go to the beach,” she says wistfully, images of waves crashing reflected across her face in the dark theater.
“An interesting reaction after watching Jaws; let’s discuss.”
“On average, there’s less than one death per year due to shark attacks in the United States, compared to six per year from going to the gym. I do not fear the gym. Why should I fear sharks?”
I raise my eyebrows, impressed. “This might be my favorite statistic you’ve shared yet.”
“Plus, I’ve never seen the ocean,” she says, more to the screen than me.
I’ve noticed Maisie does this whenever some hole in her experience comes up that she doesn’t want to own but isn’t willing to hide, either.
Proffers it neutrally, but averts her eyes, as though giving me permission to judge her as long as she doesn’t have to see it.
“There’s one not too far from here, you know,” I offer just as neutrally, but when her eyes meet mine, a smile curves my lips. “You should go.” A dare.
“Maybe I will.” Her gaze lingers on me, sweeping lightly over my hair, down the line of my cheekbone, until it lands on my mouth, resting there.
Her own lips part, but it’s a long second before she speaks.
“Do you still want to”—she averts her eyes again—“ah, give me lessons? It’s totally okay if you don’t. ”
I hate the anxiety that’s crept into this strong, powerful, brave woman’s voice, and hate that it was my actions today that put it there even more.
I vow to banish it.
“Very, very badly.” I throw a seat cushion onto the floor in front of her. “In fact, you could say I want to more than anything in the world.”
Maisie huffs. “That’s because the world sucks.”