“Oh, I just guided them down the river and promptly lost them through the woods on the other side," responded Karina, shrugging off Reece's query about the horde of zombies they had just escaped. "They should be halfway to Atlanta by now, I should think.”

“Okay, good,” replied Reece as he decided to change the subject and let go of his anger. “So, what was that thing anyway? You said you’ve never seen one before.”

“Oh, right. As best as I can tell, that was an infected...were-rat, I guess. Unlike most of the other were-creature tribes, this one seems to be new. There are no myths or stories that I am aware of that deal with these rat creatures. It is believed they originated in the United States and they don’t hold the same values concerning nature as the rest of the tribes. I don’t know what their purpose is or even if there is one. Maybe they are merely the result of experiments gone awry. Regardless, this one was infected and didn’t turn out like zombies made from humans. I heard him talking to you. He was surprisingly well-spoken, especially when he tried to trick you into lowering your guard. That indicates a level of cunning and intelligence that most zombies don’t possess.”

“Do you think he was still alive?” asked Reece.

“Maybe, but unlikely considering the level of rot on his body. Living creatures typically don’t rot, but there are certain diseases and poisons that can cause it,” replied Karina casually as she just shrugged her shoulders before giving Reece a sly look. “Now, why don’t we go upstairs and find a bed.”

“Really?” asked Reece in irritation. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

“What...oh, I see...,” she teased, feigning innocence as she let him fall into her mental trap. “You are such a dirty boy. I see where your mind is. Now listen. You should remember from before...I mentioned that you need some sleep. Now, go get some... you lecherous beast of a man.”

Reece gave her the most unamused look that he could before heading up the stairs to the master bedroom. He shut and locked the door before undressing. Finding some coat hangers from the closet, he hung them from the curtain rod above the bathtub. Placing his still damp clothing on the hangers, he left them there to drip dry into the tub. Once finished with his wet clothes, Reece found a towel and patted himself down. Dry but naked, he decided to search through the dresser drawers for some fresh clothes. Most of the garments were too large, but there was an unopened three-pack of boxers still in the Tech-Mart bag.

Luckily, they fit. After throwing on a pair of black boxers, it was time to check out the bed. It seemed sturdy enough, well-made, and clean except for the thin layer of dust covering it. Reece peeled back the comforter and sheet and lay down in the large pillow-top king-sized canopy bed. He hadn’t laid down on anything so comfortable in years. Reece passed out smiling the moment his head hit the pillow, his cares forgotten.

The dreams came again, but these were a little different. It always started with zombies closing in on him, but this time...instead of being surrounded and devoured by them, they were thrown back and torn apart by the ghosts of Naeva and Aika working in tandem to protect him from their bloody onslaught. Through the misty red haze of blood that Naeva and Aika were creating by slicing and cutting through the undead horde, walked a platinum blonde girl in a pure white gossamer nightgown.

He couldn’t quite make out her face, yet he stood stock still as she approached him. The mist parted between them as she slowly and gracefully approached. When she finally reached him, the girl put her hand on his arm and gave him a genuine loving smile. Her hand lingered a moment, one finger tracing a path up his arm as she seductively sauntered around to his back. He felt her arms wrap around him as she pressed the front of her warm and soft body up against his. As her forehead pressed gently into his back, it all swiftly faded...

He awoke abruptly, the dream quickly retreating from his consciousness. Yet he felt her warmth still, even as the dream ended. A calming warmth on his face made him open his eyes to bright rays of sunshine streaming through the curtained windows and dancing across his face and body. Squinting at the light in his eyes, he went to roll over and face away from the intruding brightness when he discovered that he wasn’t sleeping alone.

Somehow, Karina had gotten inside the locked room. She was now resting with her warm body pressed up against him, reminding him of the last vestiges of the once vivid dream. The realization that he could feel a lot of her skin made him snake his hand under the covers to satisfy his curiosity. He found her bare leg and out of a need to know, worked his hand up her smooth outer thigh and over her hip. It was quickly apparent that she wasn’t wearing a thing.

His pulse pounding madly, Reece carefully moved his body away from hers. Once he was free of her touch, Reece slipped out of the bed. Karina shifted slightly, mumbling something but didn’t wake up. Unconsciously holding his breath, Reece went to check on his clothes in the bathroom and calm down. As he exercised his deep breathing to catch his breath, he noticed that Karina had left their baggage near the bathroom door.

He fished out a water bottle, tooth scrubber, and laser stubble-remover. With the grooming tools in hand, he entered the bathroom and took a sip of water before inserting the tooth scrubber into his mouth. The small device was self-lubricating with a minty flavor and the water pic action was particularly powerful as it worked its way over and around his teeth. Having not cleaned his teeth in almost a week, it felt great to finally have teeth free of filth. He used more water to wet down his scruffy chin, examining his face in the bathroom’s mirror. Taking the laser, he passed it over his face and watched as the weeks’ worth of stubble disappeared.

Once finished with his grooming, Reece saw that his clothes had dried overnight. He put them on, stored his toiletries in their baggage, and went back into the bedroom. Karina was still in bed, but was awake and had propped herself up on one elbow. She had let the comforter and sheet pool down at her waist, allowing the sun to dance across her naked body. Reece had to turn around as his cheeks grew hot and his blood pressure began to rise once more.

“Mmmm, breakfast,” she purred, eyes flashing a wicked red.

Reece’s own eyes flew wide open as he registered what she meant. Before he could react, there was a sharp stab in his neck as she seemingly appeared behind him, drinking his blood once again. Her grip was like iron as she pressed her naked body into his while she fed. Her head was nestled in the crook of his neck as she gently sucked, taking her time to savor him, much like a lover. Reece started to feel light-headed just as she finished. It had only been a couple of minutes but felt much longer. Karina released her hold on him and backed away a step, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he was a little disappointed when the touch of her warm flesh vanished as quickly as it had begun. As he began to ruminate over his conundrum, his attention was drawn to her voice.

“Turn around,” she commanded.

Without thinking, Reece did as he was told. The man was highly impressionable from blood loss and lust, both caused by the girl before him. His hazy brain whirled in confusion and tiredness. For her part, Karina just stood before him smiling sweetly and unabashedly naked. Reece expected her to do something sexual, but surprisingly she did not. Instead, Karina brought her finger up to her mouth and bit into it. A drop of blood welled up and pooled on the tip where one of her fangs had punctured it. She brought the bloody digit up to Reece’s neck and rubbed her blood into the two small puncture wounds she had made in Reece’s skin.

The moment she pressed her finger to his damaged skin, he instantly felt better. Energy coursed through his body and his senses finally returned to him fully. The first thing that came into his view as his eyes refocused was the girl's small upturned breasts and their light pink and pointy nipples. Pure bliss quickly turned to uninvited embarrassment. He blanched and instantly turned around. He was feeling a mixture of guilt, awkwardness, and irritation. He recalled how she had just used her blood to heal his wound.

It occurred to him that this probably wasn’t the first time that she had done this for him after feeding. He just hadn’t seen her do it before on account of him always passing out in the moment. He found it took a level of intimacy to do what they just did, sharing blood. Despite that, he still didn’t understand why seeing her naked was such a big deal to him. He had seen plenty of girls in the nude without so much as a blush.

“Why am I having such a hard time with this girl?” Reece pondered to himself. “Maybe it’s how young she looks or maybe how old she really is. Or maybe it’s part of this bond we’ve formed from sharing my blood with her. Who knows?”

“So, how does your blood heal my wounds?” asked Reece as he tried to focus his mind on anything but the girl’s body and his reaction to seeing it in all its glory.

“Oh, that?” she replied, sounding bored. “I can share my healing ability with my companion. In fact, if you drank my blood, you would share my healing ability for several days. Now, if you died during this time, you would become a male lilitu, a lilitun. Then we’d be two liliti with no source of food. So, let’s try to avoid that, okay? I’ve had centuries to control the blood lust, but you would be driven mad by it. Eventually, you would attack anything that moves. I shouldn’t need to tell you that that would be bad, especially if you got ahold of a zombie. It would be a fate far worse than death, trust me.”

“Good to know,” replied Reece as the thought brought on an involuntary shudder.

He mulled her words over in his head, trying to make sense of the horrific idea. The thought of starvation so intense that he would feed on a rotting corpse didn’t make him feel any better. He swiftly put the unpleasant idea aside and focused on their current situation.

“I think we need to get our bearings again,” he said. “If you can figure out exactly where we are, I’ll look around this place for supplies. Maybe we’ll get lucky and I’ll find a map that’ll help get us to the Cape. Oh, and for the love of all the gods, old and new, please put some clothes on. Sound good?”

When he finished speaking with her, he turned away from her to hammer his point home. Somehow, she listened to him for once. He heard a few quick swishing sounds from behind him and when he turned around, the lilitu girl had dressed in her schoolgirl outfit again.

“Better?” she asked, almost sighing.

“Barely,” he chuckled as he took in her sub-five-foot frame dressed in a borderline slutty schoolgirl outfit. This time, she had tied the front of it into a knot. The action brought the bottom of the shirt up, exposing her smooth, toned midriff. The dark colors of the uniform accentuated the light-creme color of her skin to maximum effect. Reece yanked his eyes away to seek out a map for their journey. “Okay, see you.”

He could practically feel her pouting as he made his way downstairs. He went to the study where he started his search. It didn’t take long, and he found a seven-year-old road atlas. That’d be as good as he could hope for. As he studied the map, the girl snaked her body between his arms, partially blocking his view of the atlas. She pressed her back up against him as she pointed to a spot on the bottom half of the map. When he brought it higher to see what she was pointing at, he saw she was indicating a spot near highway 27. The highway led south towards Cuthbert, Georgia from Columbus. It was due east of Omaha and made sense that it was the highway Reece had found, though he had been in such a hurry that he never checked.

“This is where we are,” she said, verifying his assumption.

“Alright, I’m going to check the rest of the grounds for anything useful,” he said as he marked the spot with a pencil he had found in the study. “We still have a long way to go. Hopefully, they have a decent bicycle around here somewhere.”

He checked the outside through a window. Once he determined the yard was clear, he opened the front door and stepped out. Karina appeared right beside him.

“I got this,” he told her.

“I know you do, but it’s a dangerous world now and I need you to stay safe. Besides, don’t you enjoy my company?”

“Okay, suit yourself. And sure, despite myself...I do enjoy your company. Just don’t get any ideas.”

She smiled widely as they began canvassing the area for anything useful for faster travel. They started with the garage since that was their best bet. It was a large barn-style garage. A pair of dirt roads connected it to the main driveway of the farm. The garage held a hydrogen-powered monster truck, two hover-sleds, a 6-wheeled electric ATV, and a couple of cutting-edge solar sails hanging from one of the side walls. In addition, there was riding gear, helmets, gloves, and such either hanging from the wall or stuffed into bins in the back of the building. Reece checked the truck first since it had a two-ton towing capacity. He also checked the hover sleds, ATV, and solar sails to see if they could be used. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much luck.

“Looks like these folks were very well-to-do,” said Reece. “These toys are very expensive. Sadly, they are useless to us. The truck’s hydrogen engine’s been drained, the sleds and ATV all require an electrical grid and the solar sails are functional but don’t attach to anything in here. We need to keep looking. These sails must be for something. With a little luck, we may still hit the jackpot.”

“If you say so,” replied Karina, obviously unconvinced.

The pair headed for the even larger full-sized barn, but only found a pair of bio-tractors inside. Ironically, they were both fully functional as they were plugged into a dedicated wind turbine attached to the top of a grain storage building. Their top speed was about ten kilometers per hour, so they wouldn’t do Reece and Karina much good. The tool shed was filled with gardening implements, but nothing was currently useful. The various outbuildings were all that was left so they started checking those too. The first was filled with welding equipment and the start of a homemade sun buggy.

Reece figured that the people once living here must have been independently wealthy hobbyists. He hoped they were survivalists too and would have left something useful behind. Another of the outbuildings had dozens of spare tractor parts and smaller attachments for harvesting. Reece had noticed that the bigger tractor attachments were lying in the tall grass nearby the outbuilding. Still, they weren’t much use either. Continuing, Reece and Karina passed a couple of self-propelled hay wagons before coming to the last outbuilding. It was small with only an overgrown dirt path leading over to the main driveway.

Reece threw open its doors and spotted a couple of bicycle shapes inside, covered with tarps.

“Please be something we can use,” Reece said to no one in particular.

Reece threw the tarp off the first shape and a big smile spread across his face.

“Yes!” Reece exclaimed under his breath.

It was a solar cycle. Reece nearly danced in excitement and nervousness. He removed the other tarp which held its sister. He went over to check the bike out. Not only did it have a quarter charge remaining, but it also had the correct port for the solar sails from the garage. He could recharge it, provided the bike was still functional. He got on it and pushed a large button between his legs which was meant to energize the bike. Reece smiled as it purred to life. Needing to try it, he rode it out of the shed and down the dirt path and to the main driveway. It handled perfectly and most importantly, ran very quietly.

“What have you got there?” asked Karina as she nodded approvingly.

“This, my dear,” replied Reece still smiling, “is an X-Class Helios. I didn’t even know these had come out yet. They were supposed to be ridiculously expensive. I did motocross for a couple of years and one of these was on my wish list for competitions. The solar sails in the garage are for these babies. This means we can recharge them while the sun is up and shining. These beauties have a twelve hundred-kilometer range between charges. We just plug the sail into the cycle’s port and unroll it on a flat area for a couple of hours to charge. We can cut our travel time down many times over.

“Okay, now that sounds like a plan,” agreed Karina. “So, when do we leave?”

“Well, it’s sunny right now, so let’s get this girl charged up. We can use a day to search for anything else useful. These people have nice toys. Maybe they’ve left a few other useful items behind. Once we’re ready, we should leave first thing tomorrow morning. If we can put some kilometers between us and the bastards chasing us, I think we should hole up somewhere for a bit. You know, rest and figure out a plan. We’ve been running ragged for days now.”

“Alright, babe. That works for me,” agreed Karina. “Since we’ve checked the property and things appear safe for now, we should split up to prepare as best we can.”

“Sounds good,” replied Reece.