Chapter Fifteen #2
“I don’t,” I whisper, confessing it to myself as much as him.
“I love Gramps. He’s all that I have. But what makes this feel like the end of the world is the idea that my time in it is over again.
I had ten years of life on the outside, and it took almost all of them for me to start living.
It feels like going backward. It feels like my mom, all over again.
” A tear rolls down, crossing the bridge of my nose to land on the pillow.
“Then why are you doing it?”
“What choice do I have? I have nowhere else. And Gramps is very important to me. I have to make sure he’s okay. If I didn’t have him…”
I can’t finish the statement. Can’t even finish the thought.
Everett pulls me to his chest, wrapping his arms around me and stroking my hair.
It is the loveliest thing I’ve ever felt.
I tilt my head up and find him looking down at me already, his hazel eyes full of starlight. “Is it…always like this?” I ask the question I’ve been wondering all night as he strokes my jaw gently. “Does it always feel like…like this?”
As vague as my words are, he knows what I mean.
He shakes his head slowly before murmuring, “No.”
And I just—I kiss him.
Maisie
In the light of the early morning, standing here in the White House kitchens and rooting through their fruits and vegetables, I feel more confused than ever.
I kissed him. I thought the lesson was over, but after that, it seemed to…
I don’t know. Relapse? I kissed him, and he kissed me back.
Ten minutes later, his hand was inside me, and I was moaning his name.
It didn’t feel like a lesson, but I did learn that the more he touches me, the more I want to be touched.
The weirdest part was, we never had penetrative sex.
We could have, but we didn’t. He was waiting for me to initiate it, I think, to state that I was ready, but I couldn’t.
Not because I didn’t want to. I’ve never wanted something or someone so desperately in all my life.
I was afraid to.
I already feel so much. Stray tears followed each of my orgasms last night, all on their own.
My heart felt so big and swollen from so many unnameable emotions, one more step forward with him and it might have burst. That’s when my survival instincts took over.
Even though it meant missing my goal to have that kind of sex, even though I’ll always wonder what it would’ve felt like to welcome his body into mine, my innate sense of self-preservation commanded me to halt, to stop right there. So, I did. It just felt too risky.
Where I messed up was letting him spend the night in my bed.
I woke up this morning wrapped around his back, leg thrown over his, clutching him like a stuffed animal I was half convinced would run away in the night.
For a whole minute before I remembered our reality, I felt happy.
Content. Warm and safe with Chicken nestled in a puddle of blankets at our feet.
I screw up my eyes, wincing at the memory.
This arrangement is temporary and always has been.
His parents are picking him up in two hours, and then I’ll be alone, again, and, if I’m not careful, stuck holding a bag of unrequited feelings I promised both of us I wouldn’t get.
No matter what it feels like in his arms, Everett Greer is not my boyfriend. I need to remember that.
I release a heavy sigh, jumping when footsteps sound behind me.
Everett arches an eyebrow at the cucumber I’ve raised over my head instead of the machete I’d meant to grab. “Good morning. Please don’t bludgeon me to death with that impressive gourd.” His lips twitch at the corner.
I exhale a small, relieved laugh. “You’re lucky. This thing weighs at least three pounds.” I turn my back to him as I start pulling sacks of dry beans and rice from the pantry shelves, then glance at his significantly lumpier duffel by the door. “Did you pack your Apollo suit?”
He flushes beneath the smattering of freckles on his cheekbones, then smiles sheepishly. “Maybe.”
Ugh, Maisie, quit being so charmed!
I clear my throat, trying to forcibly flatten the mounting urge to flirt with him right now. “I grabbed one of the other ones, too, as well as Gagarin’s flight suit. Pretty sure they’re bite-proof, so. Good gear to have.” I do not smile back, and it almost kills me.
Everett’s own smile relaxes as he regards me carefully, and I get the distinct impression that I’m being understood right now.
“Great point, survival partner.” He starts arranging the dry goods in the crate I found as I pull more from the pantry, until we have everything neatly arranged on the counter.
“Okay. Ready to pack up the rig?” I ask, brushing my hands down my pants.
“I have one little stop I’d like to make before we go.”
And that’s how five minutes later, I’m sitting behind the president’s desk in a room that looks like the inside of a Republican Easter egg, paging through paper files.
Everett’s looking for where the government’s gone or something useful about the virus.
As for me, I’m more interested in extraterrestrials.
We can blame that on Reddit, too.
Of all the places in the White House we’ve explored, the Oval Office is the only one that’s disordered.
Papers strewn everywhere, an armchair turned on its side.
It’s so strange. It’s like the staff up and disappeared everywhere else, leaving zero signs of apocalyptic mayhem, but not in here.
In here, someone was desperate. In here, something happened.
“They knew.” Everett’s voice cracks like a gavel against the room’s silence. I spring to my feet.
“About aliens?”
“About the virus,” Everett says slowly, though his eyes fly across the briefing he’s reading.
He flips the page and frowns harder, adjusting his little glasses farther up his nose.
“It says here the virus was created by a government lab overseen by the Department of Defense as part of a larger biowarfare initiative.”
“But that’s so stupid! How on earth is unleashing a zombie virus an effective war tactic?”
“It wasn’t a zombie virus. Not intentionally, anyway.
” He flips another page and begins to read.
“ ‘With its extreme virulence and quick and debilitating onset, GI-27 was designed to temporarily incapacitate enemy forces with no combat necessary. After three to five days of illness, those exposed to the viral pathogen begin to improve, though residual weakness lingers. While GI-27 may disproportionately impact those with weakened immune systems, the elderly, and the very young, the virus as designed is not fatal.’ ”
My eyebrows scrunch together. “So, they were going to attack enemies with…diarrhea?”
“Apparently, but work on the virus was incomplete, and surprise, surprise, out in the wild, it didn’t behave as they’d planned.” Everett snorts. “It never does. Have they never seen a zombie movie before? Return of the Living Dead? The Killing Strain? Freaking Resident Evil?”
“How’d it get out?”
“A group of lab techs was inadvertently exposed ten days ago. Jesus.” Everett rears back from a series of gruesome pictures within the briefing. “They turned first.”
I chew my lip. “Flip to the end. What was the government going to do about it?”
Everett turns to the last page. “The final recommendation here is to go underground and wait it out.” He looks up. “You know. Just wait out the anticipated death of ninety percent of the country’s population.” He throws the briefing down. “It’s dated five days ago.”
My mouth falls open. The day before the country shut down, our government had already given up? Fled underground to god knows where to let us all die on the surface? “They should’ve closed the beaches,” I say quietly.
Everett’s eyes are hard, even as he smiles ruefully. “They never close the beaches.”
Brrrriiiiiiing. Brrrriiiiiiiiing.
Everett nearly jumps out of his own skin. “What the hell is that?”
Brrrriiiiiiing. Brrrriiiiiiiiing.
I blink. “It sounds like…” I look down and open a drawer. Inside is a small orange telephone. Simple, unlike the fancy gray secured beasts on the desk. We both flinch when it rings again.
“Oh my god,” Everett rasps. “What should we do?”
“Answer it!” I grab the receiver and shove it at him. He nearly drops it, as though I’ve thrown a lit match at him.
“Um, hello?” he says far too loudly. He’s quiet for a beat. “He’s, ah…not here. Can I take a message?”
What is he thinking?! I flail my arms wildly. Ask them for information! I mouth.
“Right! Um, who is this? Are the other countries okay? Tell me—”
He lets the receiver in his hand drop to his side.
“What did they want?”
“They asked for the president,” he says, his eyes bewildered. “They didn’t want to leave a message.”
“Who did?” I breathe out. “Who was it?”
“I…think it was Canada?” He frowns at me, incredulous. “But they hung up on me, so maybe not? That’d be kind of rude for a Canadian.”
We both stare at the strange orange phone, but it does not ring again.