“I hope you’re not thinking of a hostile takeover.”
She let out a laughing breath. “No chance. I don’t trust men anymore and stay far away from them.”
“And yet here I am in your lounge room.”
“That's true, but… you’re different.” She spent a long minute scanning my features, and I found myself liking it more and more when her eyes were on me. “I don’t know how to explain it in a way that makes any sense, but I could feel your decency from a distance. I knew you wouldn't hurt me, and I knew I needed to meet you.”
Even before the world fell apart, humans used the same methods for recognizing danger. Body language, eye contact, the vibrations in the air. When you stripped it all back, how did that person make you feel? Did they create more questions than answers? Could you let your guard down around them?
"As far as endorsements go," I said, "that's about as good as it gets."
“Why did you want to meet me?” she asked, turning the tables. "There are plenty of others out there living on their own. I've seen them around. You could have picked anyone."
This was where honesty could get me in trouble. Yes, I’d been drawn to her on a purely physical level, but it was more than that. I appreciated her confidence, her mind, her direct way of communicating, and I couldn't deny getting a kick out of watching her take down corpses. She intrigued me for reasons I couldn't list now that she’d put me on the spot. “You were a mystery I wanted to solve.”
Her eyes smiled at me. “And now that we’ve met?”
I let out an amused breath through my nose. “I’m not even close to solving it.”
~ * ~
I fell asleep without being fully aware of it, and when I woke it took me a minute to acclimatise. Comfortable couch. Warm blanket. Feet resting on an ottoman. My eyes were open, but it still felt like part of a dream, a scene from the old days when furniture wasn’t dusty or dirty or smelling of death, and the air itself didn’t feel so stifling.
With a few test blinks, I looked around the room and came back to earth with a relieved thud. Funny that in the aftermath of an apocalypse, I could feel happier to be awake than asleep.
Liv lay across from me, curled on her side in the recliner with her hands tucked under her chin. Her eyes were still closed, her mouth soft. Her dark hair had fallen across her brow and partially obscured one eye. I listened to her slow, even breaths, thankful she felt safe enough around me to sleep in the same room. She looked so peaceful I didn’t want to do anything to wake her. After the ordeal with Haruto, she needed some rest, and neither of us had anywhere to be today.
So, I stayed where I was and watched her. Not in a sleazy kind of way. Just a man appreciating female company for the first time in too long.
She stirred in her sleep and repositioned herself, half-turning so her blanket fell to her waist. Her back arched as she rolled over, and her breasts strained against her t-shirt. The image hit me full force, and I closed my eyes to block it out so I wouldn’t look like a creep if she woke and found me watching her. My focus should have been on running through game plans for our trip east, not imagining what she looked like underneath that thin layer of cotton.
Liv moved again, restless, and I opened my eyes to see her reaching her arms above her head in a stretch. She let out a sound somewhere between a moan and a sigh then looked my way. “How long have you been awake?” she asked, her voice still slurred from sleep.
“Not long.” I checked my watch as I lifted my feet from the ottoman and sat upright, surprised we'd both been out for a few hours. "Thanks for tucking me in."
She smiled. “It gets pretty cold in here without heating, even at this time of year." Liv used her heels to jam the footrest back into place and rose from the recliner. "Are you hungry? It's already lunchtime. We could eat while we talk some more.”
I bunched up the blanket beside me and ran my hand through my too-long hair. "I never turn down food.”
We went into the kitchen, and between the two of us, we mixed pouches of carbonara noodles with boiling water and made a couple of glasses of powdered milk. When the water first hit the noodles, the smell of the manufactured bacon flavour had me desperate to start shovelling in spoonfuls. Once we were sitting at the dining table and I'd taken my first bite, the taste didn’t quite live up to the hype. It was food though, hot food, and I was grateful she'd given me some of her dwindling rations.
Liv spooned some noodles into her mouth and swallowed, apparently used to the strange flavour and texture. “How old are you?” she asked with a curious frown. "You have the kind of look where you could be five years either side of thirty, and I wouldn't be surprised by your answer."
“Thirty-two.” I took a sip of milk to wash down the pasta, wondering if she'd just insulted me or complimented me. “You?”
“Twenty-eight.”
She had the smarts and maturity of someone a decade older than her, but it would come off as patronizing if I mentioned it so I kept my mouth shut. Picturing her preparing for the inevitable while she was living alone and still in her mid-twenties had my respect for her climbing to new levels. But I reminded myself those skills didn’t automatically convert to being able to handle the real world. Up until now, her day-to-day had been based on structure and routine. Nothing about living on the run was comfortable, and it sure as shit wasn’t safe. When we left here, she'd be outside of her self-created comfort zone for the first time. “Do you drive?” I asked.
She drank some milk and used the tip of her tongue to catch a drop from the corner of her mouth. “Icandrive. My dad insisted it was a life skill everyone should learn, but I've never needed a car, so I'm nowhere near your level when it comes to skill.”
"I'm just gathering facts, it's not important." I spooned in some more carbonara. "Do you know if anyone else is living in the building?” I asked, shifting focus again. Apparently, I couldn't ditch the habit of trying to keep someone on their toes so they were more likely to give me honest answers.
“Not that I’ve seen or heard. There was a mass exit from the city when the power went off for good. Everyone switched to panic mode, and I stayed behind watching it all from my balcony. Haruto used to talk about how easy it was to control people with fear, and how they’d run without even having a destination in mind because it made them feel like they were doing something.”
The news had been flooded with the rapidly rising death toll, riots, and fights in supermarkets. Helicopters had hovered over bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highways, the images influencing people to join the exodus rather than staying safe at home. The hysteria built to a level we’d never experienced with Covid, only it took a hell of a lot longer to get there. Months and months went by while people kept their heads in the sand, and it was only after the first footage of an animated corpse went live that the panic kicked in for real.
I remembered the first time I came across one in person. By that point, I was no longer solely investigating homicides, and I'd been sent with a team to disperse a mob gathered outside the state premier’s house. They'd had her trapped in there for hours while they yelled, threw rocks, and tried to climb the fence. Others were doubled over, coughing, convulsing, and spattering blood on people around them. Everyone had been desperate for help in one way or another and needed someone,anyone, to listen.
