Patient Z (18 page)

“It wasn’t him anymore,” Cal said. “You just put down the thing wearing his body like a coat. It was the final loving act you could do for him.”

Mitch gave a sound halfway between a snort and a sob. His voice fell to almost nothing. “But I
didn’t
love him. I had, when we got together, when we moved in. But it faded. I cared about him and didn’t want to do anything to hurt him. But when this all happened, I’d already spent months trying to figure out a way to end it with him.”

“So? You feel guilty for not loving him? You took him home and nursed him in his final days. You did right by him, whatever you felt. That’s… I guess that’s love too.” Cal didn’t think he had that kind of love in him. He hadn’t stuck around to nurse anyone, or protect anyone. He’d gone into hiding with only his own skin to protect.

“Cal,” Mitch said, rolling to face him, pulling him closer. “I know you have bad dreams too. Everyone does now. If you want to tell me about them, you can.”

Cal shook his head. “Just general mayhem and bad shit going down. I mostly kept away from people once it was anarchy.”

“Cal, you can—” A tap at the door interrupted him. It opened, and Jennifer’s voice came from outside.

“You guys awake? It’s time for your watch.”

“Come in,” Mitch said, rolling away from Cal and onto his feet. “We’re decent.”

More’s the pity
. Cal got up too and retrieved his gun.

Chapter Eighteen

“What did you do after Dex died?” Cal asked as he and Mitch patrolled the corridor, checking all the secured doors. Mitch was surprised by the question. He’d hoped now that he’d shared his darkest nightmare, Cal might open up a bit about his own past, not give Mitch follow-up questions. Maybe he needed more encouragement. The next part wasn’t quite so painful to talk about, but Mitch still needed to take a deep breath before he spoke.

“I left the city,” he said. “All the TV and radio was off the air by then. No power. No phone. No Internet. I realized there was nobody left in charge, not on the street, not in the city or the state or the country. I wasn’t sure states or countries technically existed anymore. I decided to go home to find my family. No planes, of course, so I had to drive across the country.” Hell of a journey. He’d tell Cal the rest of it one day.

“You mean you’re not from San Francisco?” Cal asked. “Your family, I mean.”

“No, I’m from a small town in Ohio. I think I managed to eliminate most of the accent.”

“What?”

Mitch glanced at him, at the frown on his face. He seemed taken aback. “I moved to San Francisco after I finished college and went to the police academy.”

“I guess a small town in Ohio is too small for a gay guy.”

“Especially when his father is the sheriff,” Mitch said.

Cal stared. “You are kidding me.”

“My whole family are cops.” Why should Cal think he was kidding? “Including my mom. I never wanted to be anything else. But I couldn’t be a cop there. Not unless I wanted to stay so deep in the closet I’d be in Narnia. So I moved to San Francisco. It might as well have been Oz to me at the time.”

Dex used to complain about it sometimes, always waking up to blue Californian sky, and grumbling that it never rained in this damn desert of a place. He was from Washington and knew a thing or two about rain and snow, and he said California had no weather. But he’d gone there, as so many of them had. ’Frisco. The dreamland over the rainbow.
Dammit. Don’t think about it. It’s gone, and so is he. It’s no good wishing for either to come back. I am here, and it is now. I have a job to do. There is nothing else.

Except for the man beside him.

“Oz. Yeah, I’ll bet.” Cal wasn’t being wry or amused with that remark. It sounded world-weary and cynical. “So did you find your family? Did any of them make it?”

“Even the town didn’t make it. When I arrived, it had burned to the ground. I guess once a fire started, there was nobody left to put it out. An entire town burned to ashes.”

“Shit. That’s bad.”

It had been
bad
, yes. If “bad” meant the elimination of the last scraps of hope. “I just drove for a while. I didn’t know what the hell to do or where to go. Then I found a store and knew what I should do.”

“What?” Cal asked in a hushed voice.

“Kill myself.”

“Shit,” Cal muttered, maybe remembering having to fight Mitch for his gun to stop him from shooting himself in a dream.

“I didn’t have any ammo left,” Mitch went on. “And I wanted it to be quick and clean. I went into the store, went to the ammo, and—”

“And a girl called Bren put a gun to your head.”

“She told you the story? She doesn’t know I was there for bullets to use on myself. Yeah, it’s where I met Bren. We teamed up, and somehow she gave me back a reason to go on living.”

“Because of the other women?”

“Yes. Once we had even a few of them we had to protect…it was like I’d been given a fresh start. I still had a job. When I tell Bren she saved my life, I don’t mean from the zombies. She has saved me many times that way. But I mean I walked into that shop feeling utterly alone and ready to die, and I walked out with a new friend and a reason to stay alive.”

They walked in silence for a while. Again Mitch hoped for a little quid pro quo. But Cal said, “So this small town…”

“Was a small town,” Mitch said. “And was all you’d expect from them. Everyone knew everyone else—or thought they did. But even before I left for college I’d figured out who else in the town was gay. None of them were out. I knew if I stayed, I’d be closeted too. Or I wouldn’t be a cop. And I couldn’t
not
be a cop. I decided in college that I couldn’t live in the dark either.” If he’d tried, he didn’t think he would have made it until he hit thirty before he put his gun in his mouth. “I hate that kind of secrecy,” he said. “Denying who you really are.”

“Right.” Cal’s voice was odd. Kind of tight, like he was choking something back. Was he from a small town too and not New York as he claimed? Maybe some small place upstate, not the city. He sensed Cal had something in his past he was reluctant to tell Mitch about. Why did it matter now? The old world was over. Everyone got to be someone new and leave their old life behind, if they wanted to.

But Cal didn’t say any more.

* * * *

Cal stripped off to just his pants as he walked across the room to the bed. Mitch was behind him, and when Cal flopped down on the bed, he saw that Mitch hadn’t taken anything off yet. Their shift on watch was done. They had a couple of hours until dawn. They could sleep, or…

Cal lounged on one elbow, stretched his legs out. He stroked a hand down his chest and belly, holding Mitch’s gaze as he watched.

“We don’t have much time,” he said.

“To sleep?” Mitch asked in a soft voice.

“I have no intention of getting any more sleep tonight.” He undid his belt and fly and slid his hand on down under his shorts and stroked his cock. It quickly began to harden.

Mitch made a small noise in his throat. He carefully put down his weapons and then, less carefully, hauled his shirt off over his head, forgetting to undo the placket of buttons at the neck and muttering in frustration as the shirt caught on his ears. Cal grinned. By the time Mitch emerged he was flushed and his hair mussed. He undid his belt, unzipped his pants, and was about to strip them off, but Cal shook his head and held out his hand.

“Keep them on. The boots too. I like it when you’re half-dressed.” He’d had half-dressed sex more often than naked sex during the two years before he arrived at the rig and took up with Mitch and the harem. The half-dressed sex was always in a hurry. A snatched chance at satisfaction in a place or moment that seemed safe. But always on the alert for danger. Never focused totally on the sex. That had changed too on the rig. He was safe there. Safe to be naked, in a bed, with Mitch.

Mitch shrugged, knowing nothing of Cal’s distinctions, and climbed onto the bed, tucking himself in behind Cal and rubbing against his ass. He was hard already. Good. He reached around with one hand and unzipped Cal’s fly the rest of the way, freed his cock from the shorts, and stroked up and down the length until Cal ground back against him, moaning.

“Fuck me, Mitch. Fuck me.” He kept his voice soft. The current watch could be passing the door right that moment. He didn’t care much if they heard what he and Mitch were getting up to. But Mitch was shier that way. If Cal made too much noise, Mitch would get all tense, and Cal really didn’t want him tense. He’d never seen Mitch utterly uninhibited. Even in their room on the rig he was conscious of the other residents and that he might be called to duty any moment.

Maybe one day. One day it would be just them. Nobody for miles around. No harem members. No zombies. No bandits. That crazy old guy at the art museum had said the zombies were thinning out. One day there’d be a new world out there, and maybe he’d finally have Mitch all to himself. The thought startled him. He twisted around to kiss Mitch, while Mitch continued stroking him. The world wouldn’t be that way for a long time. Did Cal really see himself still with Mitch by the time it was?

It didn’t matter. Thoughts about the future couldn’t compete with the sensations of the present. Heat building in his groin, Mitch’s lips on his, beard scrub coming through and rasping against Cal’s own. Cal had been a twice-a-day shaver in the old world. With no chance to shave on this mission, he’d be very scruffy by the time they got back to the rig.

Mitch tugged down Cal’s jeans, Cal lifting his hips to let them slide down as far as his knees. For a moment, the rough cloth and the fly zip of Mitch’s cargo pants rubbed against Cal’s ass and legs, and then Mitch pulled them down, and his cock pressed against Cal. Cal ground back against it. Needed it inside, God, so bad.

“Shit,” Mitch muttered. “Condoms are in my pack. Don’t move.”

“No.” Cal grabbed him, stopping him from getting up. “Lube’s in my pocket. That’s all you need.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m very sure of you, Mitch. If you need to use a condom, you’ll use one.” Mitch would never take advantage of the invitation to bareback if he’d be putting Cal in danger. Mitch reached down and rummaged in Cal’s pocket, bringing out the tube of KY.

“Always prepared.” He popped the top and squeezed some on his fingers. “Thought I was the Boy Scout around here.”

“This is not a good time to talk about Boy Scouts.” He’d seen a whole troop of zombie ones once, just west of Atlanta. That had freaked him out six ways from Sunday. Not the right time to think about that either. Mitch distracted him, slipping his lubed fingers into Cal to prepare him. That wiped all other thoughts from his mind. He arched his spine and pressed farther back on Mitch’s fingers.

“Enough,” he gasped, fearing it would be too much, that Mitch would find his prostate and Cal would explode like a firework before Mitch got his cock in. He didn’t want that. He wanted Mitch to fuck him until they were a pair of sweaty, writhing animals.

It wasn’t that way. Mitch didn’t flip him onto his back or front. He stayed lying on his side and withdrew his fingers, and then the blunt head of his lubed cock pressed against Cal’s ass. “Are you ready?”

“More than ready,” Cal assured him, relaxing, welcoming it. Mitch pushed into him slowly, Cal loving every inch of it as Mitch went deeper and deeper. Mitch reached over and stroked Cal’s cock, his lubed-up fingers sliding easily and smoothly. He didn’t pump it, not yet. It was a lazy “I can keep this up for hours” kind of rhythm. He thrust into Cal’s ass in the same rhythm. Shallow, slow, teasing.

It felt different. It felt like the kind of sex you had when you woke up with someone on a Sunday morning but had no reason to get out of bed yet. Gentle. Slow. Sure of each other and in no hurry to leave your cozy bed and the man by your side.

It scared the crap out of Cal. How had he got to lazy Sunday-morning sex with Mitch? No, that was stupid. It wasn’t even Sunday, was it? It could be. Days of the week had ceased to have any meaning long ago. Now he felt a ridiculous urge to know what day of the week it was. As if any day but Sunday would reassure him this wasn’t what it looked and felt like. He twisted around to kiss Mitch, pulled his head down. The lingering kiss Mitch gave him didn’t reassure Cal that this was still just fuck-buddy sex.

He gripped Mitch’s hair and ground out words. “Stop teasing and fuck me properly, you bastard. You’re driving me crazy on purpose. I’d like to come sometime
today
, not next week.”

“What’s your hurry?” Mitch did pull on Cal’s cock a bit faster, but his thrusts were still slow and lazy. “We’ve got some time before we have to get up.”

“Maybe I should get some sleep.” That was BS, of course. He’d always trade sleep for sex. Mitch made a dubious sound, like he wasn’t buying it. But maybe he thought the idea of getting some sleep afterward was a good one. He withdrew his cock, and Cal almost howled with frustration at the loss, but he didn’t have to endure it for long. Mitch pulled him up onto hands and knees and knelt behind him. He shoved back in with a roughness Cal appreciated. No more slow and lazy.

“Fuck me,” Cal said. “Hard. Fuck me hard.” Many of the men he’d gone with in the old days loved to hear him beg for their cocks that way. All their dreams come true—at a price.

Mitch reached around again, wrapped his hand around Cal’s cock, and pumped it, his rhythm faster and harder this time and matched by his thrusts. Cal had to restrain himself from yelling out with pleasure. Perfect, this was perfect. Sweaty, grunty, fuck-buddy sex. Still half-dressed. Mitch’s pants rubbed against Cal’s legs. Cal’s pants around his knees kept him from spreading his legs too far.

Fast, messy, snatched-moment sex. Come-and-go sex. Cal would not let it be anything else. He was coming, moaning, trying not to yell, filling Mitch’s hand, spilling onto the blanket below them.

Mitch let him go, instead gripping Cal’s hips, the right slipping on his skin with the mix of cum and lube, the left gripping more tightly, anchoring himself as he thrust. Cal wanted bruises from those hands. Wanted Mitch to be a little careless about being too rough with Cal. Like he was just a casual fuck.