Reece jumped with a start, waking him from a dead sleep. His body was still sitting in the chair he had been using for guard duty. Shaking off the bad dream, he did a quick check outside. The sun had come up and the wet ground was beginning to dry here and there. He glanced over to where Karina was sleeping. She was there, still lying in the bed where he had left her. The only differences were that her eyes were open, and she was smiling at him.

“How’re you feeling?” he asked.

“Good, thanks to you,” she replied, her eyes shining brightly with emotion.

“Yeah...well...I’m pretty sure I owed you a few,” replied Reece, not sure how to react to the deepening feelings he sensed from the girl. “I’m just glad you’re feeling better now. You gave me a bit of a scare last night.”

“Yeah, apologies. I think I pushed myself a little too hard yesterday. Say, could I bother you for a little breakfast? I really need a pick-me-up.”

“Of course,” answered Reece as he rose from his chair.

The cup he had given her last night would be woefully inadequate to fully reinvigorate her. The amounts she had drained from him previously were a testament to that. Still, the fact that he was willing to allow her to drink from him with no hesitation seemed to startle them both. He chuckled as he leaned the katana against the wall before walking over to the wide-eyed girl.

Sitting on the bed near her, he took a deep breath and bared his neck for her. He was beginning to realize just how intimate this ritual had become between them, even after only a few such exchanges. She sat up while holding the blanket in place to cover herself. Reece took notice of the act. Something had changed in her.

She leaned her body into his and gently bit into his neck. Her eyes studied his face, making sure he wasn’t in any real pain. Once satisfied, she began to carefully suck, watching his face the entire time. Reece found the act strangely erotic, finding some joy in it.

When she had finished, she noticed the bandage on his hand from where he had cut himself. She removed it and then bite her thumb. A drop of blood oozed out and she rubbed the liquid into the wounds her bite had made on his neck. Once she was satisfied that his neck was whole again, she rubbed another drop into the cut on his thumb. Reece could feel his injuries heal almost instantly and watched as the gash closed by itself, leaving an un-marred section of skin on his thumb.

“Wow...uh, thank you,” he said in wonderment.

She looked up at him and smiled, the irises of her red-hued eyes glimmering brightly. Reece found her eyes exquisitely beautiful, especially framed by her light blonde hair. Though still scraggly from getting drenched the night before, the look only enhanced her appeal to him. Once he got over her smolderingly gorgeous face, he noticed something else. Her perfect eyes had a guilt-ridden look to them that he hadn’t seen before.

“No Reece... thank you,” she replied after a moment. “I’ve been teasing you terribly, and I’m so very sorry. I thought you were like all the other men that have come and gone, but I may have misjudged you. I’ll try and be more considerate of your feelings from now on.”

“Well now,” he smiled. “I think this morning is turning out pretty good so far. Let me see if your clothes are dry.”

Karina nodded almost imperceptibly. Reece checked on her outfit. Since Reece had hung them up properly, the pieces had dried overnight. He brought the garments out to Karina and she was true to her word. She dressed under the covers before getting out of the bed to put her boots back on. Unfortunately, those were still a little damp. Reece’s faux riding leathers had saved him from much of the rain, so his clothes were already mostly dry.

He took a swig of water and opened a can of mixed fruit for breakfast. Popping a large chunk of peach into his mouth and savoring it, Reece pulled the bike out of the room and into the parking lot. He continued to take bites of fruit as he set the solar sail up for charging, making sure to keep everything hidden from the highway. Once he had finished, Reece noticed Karina watching him intently.

“You need more sleep,” Karina stated flatly. “Why don’t you get a couple more hours while the bike recharges. I’ll keep an eye on it for you.”

Reece knew she was right. He was exhausted. He’d only gotten two to three hours of sleep at most. Stifling a yawn, he surrendered to her suggestion.

“Thank you, I think I’ll take you up on that,” he responded before going back inside. He felt doubly grateful to the girl for her thoughtfulness. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled off his shirt and boots before laying down and stretching out on the still-warm bed. Pulling the comforter over himself, he was asleep in moments.

Again, the dreams came. A strange new dreamscape opened before him. He stood on a path of glowing pebbles that snaked through a dark void. He didn’t have control of his body and he kept stepping off the path, onto smaller, less brilliant paths that each led to doors set into nothing. They simply stood in the void. Some were opaque glass, others were metal, wood, or stone. He tried one after another, but none of them would open. After a hundred doors, nothing. Then a thousand, still nothing.

The futility of the dream began to turn it into a true nightmare. By that time, he had completely given up and just wanted out. Then a golden door lit up like the sun, stood before him. He watched as his hand reached out for well over the thousandth time to just be rejected again. Only this time, the door actually opened. Inside, all he could see was bright yellow light. Then the light came flooding out and lit up the main path he had been following, quadrupling its brilliance. He had an overwhelming feeling of freedom flow through his body and he could feel himself smiling widely.

He awoke feeling refreshed as the dream quickly faded. Briefly looking out the window, he could tell that more than a couple of hours had passed. He got out of the bed and scooped up his shirt, quickly pulling it over his head. Once he found the armholes, he exited the room and waved to Karina, letting her know he was up.

Noticing his morning breath, Reece decided to use the motel room’s facilities to clean up, washing his face and brushing his teeth. Karina continued keeping watch. Once he was done, Reece felt like a new man. Slipping his boots on, he left the motel room all suited up and ready to go.

“Thanks again for letting me catch up on my beauty sleep. Not sure why exactly, but I feel great!” Reece told the lilitu.

“Your welcome. You needed it and I’ve got another present for you,” she replied noticing the suspicious look he gave her. “Don’t worry, I’m not coming on to you. Just look.”

She had one arm behind her back that she brought around to the front. She was holding a bandoleer with a half-dozen incendiary grenades hanging from it.

“Well then...where did you find that?” asked Reece curiously.

“There was a couple of abandoned Tac-Vees just on the other side of the highway. They were parked in a Freddy’s Diner parking lot. No one else was using them, so why not us? If we have another run-in with the dread wolves, these will come in handy.”

“Dread wolves. Is that what they’re called?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged, handing the bandoleer over to Reece. “Sounds as good as anything else, and we need to call them something, don’t we?”

“Sure, that’ll work. You ready to check out a new place to stay for a while?” asked Reece as he put his faux leather jacket on and grabbed his helmet.

“I am. Hopefully, it’ll have a bed as nice as that farmhouse.”

Reece nodded in agreement as he unhooked the solar sail’s power cord from the bike. Reece took a minute to fold up the sail and store it on the bike. Looping the cord, he stuffed it into the sail’s compartment and shut the lid. Hearing it latch, he got back onto the bike and checked its display readings.

Everything seemed nominal, so he energized the bike and re-checked his navigation. Apparently, in their mad dash to escape the giant monster wolves, they had made it to Waycross, Florida. Once his system check of the bike was complete, he reset the GPS for the Cape, donned his helmet, and gave the Helios some juice.

Reece drove the bike back onto the highway and they were off again. The two traveled at a much more leisurely pace than the previous day, only encountering a handful of zombies here and there. The clumsy shambling brutes weren’t much of a threat due to Reece and Karina’s speed and maneuverability, so they simply ignored them.

They came upon a full barricade consisting of Tac-Vees and a couple of Turtles---large tanks with thick shells, made to resist anti-tank weaponry. Unfortunately for the soldiers, these vehicles weren’t designed to combat a zombie horde and there was no sign of anyone making it out alive. Dried blood was just about everywhere. Dozens of rotten corpses, heads filled with holes or missing completely, lay just about everywhere. These people didn’t go down without a fight, but they did go down.

Guns, ammo cases, and even a few rocket launchers lay near the line of military vehicles. Empty shell casings were everywhere, many where the piles of dead zombies lie. These soldiers must have fought toe to toe with the infected for some time before they were overrun. Reece pulled over to walk his bike through one of the barricade’s narrow gaps and decided on a lark to procure one of the rocket launchers---a state-of-the-art Hel-Shrieker, plus a couple of spare missiles. He lodged the launcher opposite the solar sail.

Strapping it down, Reece stuffed the two extra missiles into the right saddlebag. Nodding to Karina, he energized the bike. Taking off again, he continued towards the Cape with her running playfully along beside him. As he rode, Reece began to seriously ponder what they would find once they got to their destination. The two traveled rapidly for over an hour, dodging stranded cars, trucks, and every other vehicle imaginable before finally arriving in the city of Jacksonville. Needing a well-earned break, they stopped at the top of an overpass to survey the landscape.

The city loomed eerily before them, spread out in all its glory. But it was a dead city. They could make out masses of zombies milling about, twitching as they attempted to detect the living. With no danger immediately obvious, Reece took a moment to study them. They were poorly made marionettes that shambled about in circles, futilely searching for a purpose.

It made Reece sad to think that these ‘things’ were once vibrant people with desires, hobbies, and careers. What once had friends, lovers, family, and even enemies were now merely unthinking automatons. Even at several hundred yards, Reece could still make out some of the basic features of each undead.

He wasn’t sure he agreed with the word ‘undead’. It indicated that there was some semblance of life left in these zombies. If there was, Reece couldn’t see it. They were simply dead, yet they moved for no other purpose than to add to their numbers or to feed. If they were alive, they seemed more like a virus than an animal. Perhaps it would be better to think of them as animated corpses, figured Reece, as that was exactly what they were.

Nearby, there was a woman or rather what used to be a woman in a flowery red dress. Her skin was grey, her eyes yellow, and red gore dripped from her mouth and down the front of her once beautiful sundress. She had long scraggly brown hair and looked like she was in her twenties and had been beautiful once. That would have been before she was bitten, died, and rose as the monster that Reece now saw before him.

Reece looked beyond her and spotted a boy who looked to be around twelve years old. He still had a t-shirt with a picture of a holo-game character that all the kids had been into when Reece had first headed to space. His short-cropped hair was matted with blood against his ashen face and he just stumbled in circles, slack-jawed waiting for something to activate his acquired bloodlust.

Across the street from them stood a dead man in a police uniform. He didn’t move except for the slight twitching and swaying he was constantly doing. His skin and blue uniform were covered with blood and wounds and the right half of his face looked to have been eaten.

And there were countless more, each with their own story of a life cut short by this awful plague that some evil pricks had unleashed into the world due to callousness, laziness or greed, or some other selfishly evil reason.

It had been just over two weeks since he had lost Aika and the tragic loss bubbled to the surface of his mind and cut him deeply at that moment. He barely had time to think about her in his fight for survival since landing. They had had each other’s friendship, each other’s love, and each other’s backs. What more could one ask for in a world such as this?

He missed her voice, her smile, and her touch. And all because of some careless assholes who obviously thought that they knew better. The feeling of loss that was drowning him turned to white-hot anger at the thought of all the horror that had been brought down upon himself and the world for no good reason.

“I’m going to make them pay dearly,” he vowed as he looked Karina in the eye. “or die trying. For all the evil and suffering that has been brought upon the world, whoever did this deserves everything they’re going to get and then some more.”

We are of one mind on this then,” replied Karina, uncharacteristically serious. “Wherever you go, I’ll be there gutting these motherfuckers right alongside you.”

Reece watched the emotions play out across her ancient youthful face, mirroring the feelings he was sure his face was betraying to any who cared to look. The two continued on their way across the city without saying another word, taking the interstate to avoid the crowds. There were significantly more cars and trucks on the roads as they traveled ever southward, but Reece managed to ride around them all until they left the dead city behind.

They continued traveling for about half an hour and had left the city far behind when Reece saw a gate overgrown with weeds. He motioned to Karina and she sped off in front of him and smashed the gate open, letting him ride the bike inside. As he crossed through the opening, she stepped inside and shut the gate behind her. Now broken, the gate wouldn’t shut by itself.

Karina used her strength to bend a part of the gate to overlap the opposite side, keeping it shut. Just up the driveway was a large reddish brick house on a hill. A large steel flagpole stood outside, and the remains of an American Flag still flew at half-staff. The stripes were almost completely stripped away, but the fifty-seven stars still showed on the field of blue.

Ignoring the flagpole, Karina and Reece checked the outside but found no sign of current inhabitants. Karina broke the bronze handle on the overly ornate wooden front door and the garish thing slowly creaked open, swinging inward.

Within were marble floors and a spiral stairway leading to the second floor. Past the stairway was the kitchen and to the right was a large living room filled with plush chairs and a matching couch. A door on the wall to the left led to a study full of books, most about law and building codes.

Reece and Karina made their way upstairs and found a hallway with four bedrooms, one master, and two bathrooms. Everything indicated trendy expensive tastes, but nothing looked like it had been touched in years.

“This should work,” announced Reece.

“I agree,” replied the girl. “Let’s quickly reinforce its meager defenses and make ourselves at home. We deserve a break.”

Reece nodded and he and the lilitu girl inspected everything. He checked their escape routes and stashed the bike in the garage upfront while she searched for anything that may prove useful to them. The home was empty of personal touches, so he figured it may have been a winter retreat for some rich lawyer-type. It had a coldness to it and just didn’t seem lived in. The high-end kitchen had a few canned goods, but little else. Still, it was enough for Reece.

Once they had finished, Reece cracked a can of ravioli and waited a few seconds for the can to heat the contents before digging in. He walked to the dining room off the kitchen and took a seat. Karina grabbed a different chair and threw her feet up on yet another. Reece smiled at her and continued eating. It wasn’t long before they were making small talk, needing to decompress a bit and just relax. They had been worrying about their next move constantly for several days and were simply ready for a little normalcy.

“Reece?” Karina clearly had something on her mind that had been bothering her.

“Yeah?”

“What would you do if you found out that Aika was still alive? I’m just asking because I know you were in love with her.”

“I don’t know, try to find her I suppose. Why are you asking me this? Is there a chance she’s still alive somehow?”

Karina swallowed visibly before answering. “Maybe, but the chances are so slim that it’s barely worth mentioning. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Death had all but claimed her when I found her.”

“What did you do?” asked Reece suspiciously.