Commodity (19 page)

I’m stunned just long enough to feel his blade at my throat.  I twist my neck away from the cold metal and punch at his existing wound.  He grunts, and the grip he has on the knife loosens.  Wrapping my legs around his, I flip us both over and pin him to the ground.

His eyes widen as he feels my blade slip deep between his ribs.  He grabs my shoulders with both hands, but his grip is weak.  I twist the blade, feel the gush of blood from the artery I’ve severed, and he sags to the ground.

I stand, panting, with my heart still in my throat and blood trailing from my knife to my arm.  I move my gaze from the last body on the ground to the face of the woman behind him.  She’s breathing quickly through her mouth as she grips the leaves on the ground with her shaking fingers.

She lean, but has color in her cheeks underneath smears of dirt.  Her legs are long and clearly muscular.  Her eyes are bright and intense though I can’t tell what color they are from this distance.

I should ask her if she’s hurt.  I should tell her that it’s all okay now and that I’m not going to hurt her.  I should offer her some kind of comfort, but I don’t.

I swallow hard past the lump in my throat.

I take a few steps closer to her, and she pushes with her heels against the dusty soil to move backward, but there’s nowhere for her to go.  I crouch and grab hold of her arm.  Her eyes draw me in.  They’re dark blue and surrounded by thick lashes.  Her lips are full and look soft.  I look over the rest of her, taking in the roundness of her breasts under her thin T-shirt and the curve of her hips encased in tight denim.  Her knees are still bent and her legs slightly spread.

My head swims.  I barely see the actual person in front of me.  Instead, I see another woman—beautiful and strong.  She had soft lips and gorgeous curves.  She challenged me, infuriated me, made me laugh, and made me care.  She brought out every primitive, protective instinct inside of me, and I had failed her.

I inhale slowly, trying to slow my racing heart.  I want the scent in my nostrils to match the memory.  I want to smell her skin, but all I can sense is the thick scent of blood in the air.  It brings me back to the present and the real, physical woman in front of me.

Barely a woman.

She’s young.  I’m not sure she’s even twenty years old.

Glancing back to her face, I reach out and run my thumb over her cheek, rubbing at the dirt there.  I only manage to smudge it, not rub it off.  She’s got that look in her eyes that I’ve seen way too often.  It’s the kind of look that reveals she’s been through too much.  She’s on the edge.  She could break at any time.

She could be mine.

The voice in my head has become louder and louder lately.  It keeps telling me that my cause is futile—I’ll never see her again.  I would be better off joining one of the camps so I’m not constantly providing for myself and having to watch my own back.  More importantly, so I wouldn’t be alone.

Being alone has never worked out well for me.

This woman could change that.

I could take her back to the bunker.  I could protect her from anyone else who might come along and find us.  I could hold her at night and fuck her slowly.  I could give into all those wants and desires like everyone else has.  I wouldn’t be alone anymore.

“Let go of me!”

Her voice startles me out of my thoughts.

She doesn’t actually pull away as she makes her demand, but I release her arm anyway.  My palm cools as I let her go, and I swallow again.  I look around though I’m sure there is no one else in the area.  That doesn’t mean someone else won’t come.  If I’m found with a woman at my side, there will be no negotiating.

I have to get her out of sight.

“Get up.”  I stand and look around again, listening carefully to the sounds in the trees.

“I’m not going anywhere with you!”

I shift my gaze back to the woman on the ground, almost expecting to see the vision from my mind there instead.  Her tone sounds similar.

I don’t have time to argue with her.  Her voice is already too loud.  If someone hears her, they will be on us in a heartbeat.  I’m tired and my head is pounding.  I might even have a concussion.  There is no room for debate.

I crouch again and grab her wrist.  I speak slowly and quietly.

“You are going to stand, and you are going to come with me.  No talking.”

“Why?”

“Because those men have friends,” I tell her.  “Because those friends may be closer than you think.  We need to get out of here before more of them come back.”

She stares at me for a moment before she comes to her senses and listens.  I watch her rub her wrists after she gets herself off the ground, but she doesn’t appear to be hurt in any other way.

“Follow.”  I start climbing up the ravine where I first saw her.  I need to get my pack, which I left at the base of the tree where I had slept last night.

I don’t stand behind her or otherwise put myself in a position of protection, but I do listen to her footsteps to make sure she’s keeping up.

I’m annoyed with myself.

I’ve spent the last seven months with one purpose and one purpose only.  Find her.  I haven’t aligned myself with anyone unless doing so furthered my cause.  Now I’ve picked up a hitchhiker, and I have no idea what to do with her.

I grab my pack and sling it over my shoulder and then start heading back south.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“I’ve got a place,” I tell her.  “It’s safe there.”

She mumbles something I can’t hear, but I don’t bother asking.  I’ve never been good with people in general, and I’m not used to talking at all anymore.  I’ve never had a taste for idle chitchat, and I’m definitely out of practice now.

Very little else is said until we get to the entrance of my abode.

“What the hell is that?”

“A bomb shelter.”  I open up the hatch in the side of a small hill and pull it back.  “Watch your step—the first part is steep.”

I watch the woman grab the edge of the opening and carefully navigate her way down the steep stairs to the bottom, then follow her, closing the hatch behind me.  When I get to the bottom, she’s staring with wide eyes and an open mouth.

“Did you build this?”

“No, I found it.”

The inside is small and probably intended for only one person.  There’s only one room, but whoever built it was smart enough to leave themselves two entrances.  Apparently, they weren’t smart enough to be here during the attack.  The benefits of being underground include temperature control.  Though it’s late into the fall, it is still damn hot outside.

“It looks like something from the fifties.”

“It’s a lot newer than that.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s got fiber optic cable running into it,” I say.  “It doesn’t work, but it’s there.”

“You mean to get on the internet?”

“Yeah.”

“
Is
there any internet anymore?”

“Not as far as I know.”

I go to the locker just below the small food prep center and grab two bottles of water.  I hand one to her.

“Thanks.”

I pop the lid off of mine and sit down on the twin-sized bed.  There isn’t any other furniture in the shelter—just the bed and storage.

“My name’s Katrina,” the woman tells me.

I don’t respond.

“Are you going to tell me your name, or do I have to guess?”

“Falk.”

“Falk?”

“Yes.”

“That’s unusual.”

“It’s German.”

“Oh!  Were your parents from Germany or something?”  Katrina leans against the food prep area and sips from the water bottle.

“Grandparents,” I say.  I don’t know why I’m telling her any of this.  It’s been weeks since I’ve talked to anyone.  Even the sound of my own voice is strange.  “It’s a family name.”

“How did you end up here on your own?” she asks.

“It’s been a long year.”

“I’ll say!”  She snorts out a laugh.

The food prep counter must not be very comfortable because she decides to sit on the floor.  She places the bottle of water next to her and twists her fingers around in her lap.

“How did you survive?” she asks.

“I was underground.”

“Oh yeah?  I’ve heard others say that, too.”  She nods her head as if we magically understand each other completely now.  “We were fishing up at Lake Lanier.  Me, my dad, and my brothers—Seth and John.”

She keeps glancing up at me.  I should be friendly—engage her in conversation, ask her questions.  That’s what she wants.  It’s been too long though.  I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want to hash through all the same shit again.

I was a bodyguard.  I was protecting a woman.  I failed at it.

“We were in a cove,” she says when I don’t respond.  “There isn’t much of anything around there, but we heard all the noise.  A bunch of boats out in the middle of the lake were capsized.  When we got back to shore, everyone was dead or gone.”

I finish my water and toss the bottle in a nearby container.  It’s getting full.  I’ll have to haul the trash out soon.

“When the truck wouldn’t start, we took the boat up the Chattahoochee River as far as we could go, all the way past where the ferries are.  Walked into town from there.”

I’m barely listening to her, but she goes on anyway.

“It was days before we found anyone.  When we did, we wished we hadn’t.”

I glance over at her, but she’s not looking at me.  I wonder how old she is.  If she was out with her father, she could be even younger than I thought.

“It started out all right,” she says, “but when they kept finding more men, and I was the only girl around…well, Dad figured out what they wanted from me pretty quickly.  He decided to get us out of there in the middle of the night.  They came after us though.  Dad stayed behind so we could get away.  I never saw him again.”

A sense of relief washes over me.  I’m not sure if it’s because she wasn’t violated like I thought she probably was or if it’s because I don’t have to hear about it.  She’s chatty.  She may very well have given me all the details, and I don’t need to hear that.

“We’ve been in this area ever since then—me and my brothers.”

“Where are your brothers?”  Some part of her story is still missing.  If she had family to return to, she wouldn’t have followed me here so blindly.

“Seth got sick,” she says.  Her voice gets soft.  “John went out to find some antibiotics or something, but he never came back.  That was three weeks ago.  Seth…well, he died in his sleep four days ago.  I had to dig a hole big enough to bury Seth, and I waited around for John to come back.  When the food ran out, I left.  That was this morning.”

“You haven’t been on your own long.”

“Just the past few days, really.  Seth wasn’t much of a talker at the end.”

If they have been living out here, they probably got bad water.  Her brother wouldn’t be the first to die from it.

I kick off my boots and shove my feet under the blanket.  I scoot back to the wall so there’s enough room for her to lie down as well.

“Are you going to sleep?”

I close my eyes for a moment, sigh, and look back at her.

“It’s late.  I got a little beaten up saving your ass today.  Yeah, I’m going to sleep.”

She bites her lip and cringes at my sharp words.  I should feel bad about it, but the lip biting reminds me of
her
, and my mood worsens.

“Where should I sleep?”

“There’s only one spot big enough.”  I’m being a dick.  I know I am, but I can’t seem to stop myself.

I don’t open my eyes as I hear her approach and then lie down beside me.  I can feel her shuffling around to get comfortable on her side, facing away from me.

It’s all too familiar.

Every muscle in my body is suddenly tense.  Memories of
her
warm, soft body pressed against my chest and my arm wrapped around her, pulling her close against me and telling her she’d always be safe flood my brain.  I try to swallow, but I can’t.  There’s pressure behind my eyes, and I have to fight back the tears as my temples throb.

“Aren’t you going to fuck me?”

The sudden bluntness of Katrina’s question snaps me out of my own head.  I can’t even answer her—my throat is still too dry.

“You are, aren’t you?”  There’s resignation in her voice.

“No.”  My tone is flat.  I’m still too shaken from the memory.

“Why not?”

“Are you saying you aren’t like the other guys?  You don’t want to fuck me?”

Her voice is far too clear in my mind.  Fear and desire all wrapped up in one package.  I wanted her more than anyone I’d ever wanted before.  I just wanted her to feel safe with me, to
be
safe with me.

I fucked it up so bad.

“That’s not why I brought you here.”  I finally spit out the words, but my head is still spinning.