If Only to Forget (3 page)

The sun is just coming up, filling the hallway with a soft orange glow. The start of another glorious day. Right. At least yesterday I was numb and in denial, now my body and mind feel alive. Every sound that echoes through the hall as I head back to the cafeteria makes my heart beat faster. Hurt just a little more.

The moan of something dead pierces the silence as I approach the door, and against my will I find myself stopping. Staring out the window at the body just on the other side. Only five feet away with nothing more than a couple inches of wood and glass separating us. Her back is to me, but she turns, almost as if she knows I’m here.

I recognize her right away.

Ms. Wilson. She’s worked in the school library since the eighties. One of those perpetual old maids who always dressed five years behind the styles, she treated the books like they were her children. Even as time went on and the dusty pages in that room became more and more inconsequential, she acted like they were more holy than the Grail. And I’m pretty sure she hated kids, which made it ridiculous that she worked at a school.

Of course, now she looks worse than ever. Her clothes are filthy and torn and her skin is an unnatural shade of gray. The right lens in her glasses is missing and the one still remaining is cracked. A handful of hair has been torn out at the roots and what’s left is matted in dried blood, and the huge bite mark on her neck tells me exactly how she died.

A wave of sorrow sweeps over me as she claws at the window, her mouth chopping in response to the primal need inside her that tells her to feed. I raise my hand and rest it against the window, the glass cold against my palm, but that only seems to drive her wilder. She snarls, slamming her body against the door and the whole thing shakes. Tears fill my eyes and I force myself to turn away.

Damn Riley.

My feet are heavy as I make my way back toward the cafeteria, but when footsteps echo down the hall behind me, I pick up the pace. Riley isn’t too far behind and I don’t want to see him. Not after what he said to me in the locker room. Not after I degraded myself that way. Not after crying over a librarian I never really liked to begin with.

“Kyra!” His voices echoes, sending a shudder through me. I hate how everything echoes now. It’s just a reminder that the world has disappeared.

I walk faster.

“Hey!” His steps move faster. “Wait up!”

He’s gaining on me, so I wipe my hand across my face to get rid of the tears. I feel like a stupid girl crying because some guy slept with her and never called her back. That’s never been me.

Riley grabs my arm and forces me to turn. “Why’d you run away?”

I laugh before I can stop myself, and with the laughter more tears are forced from my eyes. I wipe them away. “Shit. I feel ridiculous.”

Riley’s brown eyes search my face. “Did I say something to hurt your feelings?”

“Yes, but it was stupid. I’m just being overly sensitive.”

He nods and lets out a deep breath. “I guess that’s to be expected with everything going on.”

He has a point. This isn’t like me at all. I’m not the kind of girl who plays games. If I want something, I go for it. I don’t flirt or giggle or try to ensnare guys with my charms. I’m forthcoming and honest and I say what’s on my mind.

This should be no different.

“I’m an idiot. I liked it and it was a great distraction, but it hurt like hell when you told me you fucked me so you didn’t have to talk about your feelings. It’s dumb and not usually how I react. Like you said, there’s just too much going on.”

Riley swipes his hand through his wet hair. “Damn. Sorry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I just mean I wanted to fuck you so I could forget all this shit going on inside me. It didn’t really help, which was why I fucked you again.”

“Still didn’t work?”

He snorts. “Not really. When we were going at it, yeah. But the second we were done everything came back and reality sucked all over again. ”

“Yeah,” I say, the word coming out of me almost like a sigh.

We stand in the hallway for a few seconds staring at each other like neither one of us has a clue what to say. He’s right. I felt good while we were having sex.

“Well, anytime you need to forget you just let me know,” I say turning to continue my trek to the cafeteria. “For now, I’m going to see if they’ve started breakfast.”

Riley walks by my side, his arm brushing mine. “Sounds like a plan.”

Riley and I walk into the cafeteria, almost everyone stops what they’re doing so they can stare. A few people narrow their eyes on us and it dawns on me that we’re both still wet from the shower. It has to be glaringly obvious to everyone present that we were there together, and even though I’ve never been one to really feel ashamed of the decisions I’ve made, my face gets hot.

Riley doesn’t even blink. He heads to the kitchen without checking to see if I’m following, and the casual way he acts makes me feel a little easier. Maybe if we act like nothing’s going on no one will be suspicious.

Right.

Tori stops me before I have a chance to get all the way to the kitchen.

“Where have you been?” she asks, raising her pierced eyebrows suggestively.

I roll my eyes even though my neck is so hot it feels like it’s going to explode. “Taking a shower before the water turns off.”

She snorts and shoves a few strands of dark hair out of her face. Her eyes dart toward the kitchen, to where Riley just disappeared. When she looks back, her gray eyes are sparkling behind her thick, black frames.

“Right. Not that a shower doesn’t sound good, but a piece of that sounds even better.”

She’s the closest person to our age if you don’t count the teens—which I don’t because sixteen is way too young for me to have a normal conversation with—and I’d guess Tori’s around forty-one. There are a few streaks of gray in her dark hair, but the pixie cut is cute enough to take about seven years off. She has hoops in both eyebrows and a stud in her left nostril, then there’s the Monroe piercing. I caught sight of a few tattoos once when we were in the locker room together, too. I heard her tell someone she was an art teacher or something. I haven’t paid a lot of attention.

I twist the bat between my hands nervously. I don’t know what to do or say in front of this woman now. Before I did everything possible to ignore the other survivors, but now things feel different. I’m not sure why sex with Riley opened me up, but it has.

“Yeah, well, we were just trying to pass the time,” I say, focusing on my feet. My leopard print ballerina flats are looking a bit worn, and totally out-of-place during a zombie apocalypse.

“I hear you.” Tori rolls her eye so far back all I can see are the whites. “Do it as much as you can. We’re all fucked, so you might as well find something you can enjoy until the inevitable end.” She blinks a few times, then turns away. “A shower sounds like a good idea.”

Shit.

I watch her walk away feeling a little bit like I’ve been slapped. I guess it’s not just Riley and me who have accepted the fact that we’re living on borrowed time.

Double shit.

I head to the kitchen only to find Riley heading my way. He has a plate in each hand, loaded down with steaming food. Eggs and bacon. Toast. Some fruit. All the food that will go bad if we don’t use it soon.

“That for me?” I ask, not able to hide my surprise.

“Of course. I need you to keep your energy up.”

I laugh, which earns me a glare from another woman. She’s probably fifty, although she dresses like she’s seventy and this is 1992. The floral dress she wears was probably sold by K-Mart at one point, although I bet she bought it at a yard sale. She’s tall and thin with severe brown eyes that snap my way, full of the judgment of a person who has spent her life looking down on others. Her thin brown hair is pulled back into a braid that hangs down to her waist. She’s plain and as dull as her life probably was before this. I can picture her going to prayer meetings with other women who are just as eager as she is to rip her neighbors to shreds.

I’ve encountered her type before and have no desire to be anywhere near her now that the world has come to an end, so I tilt my head to the other side of the room. “Let’s go over there.”

Riley nods and smiles at the woman who is still giving us the evil eye. I don’t know him well, but I can already tell he’s a nicer person than I am.

“What’s her deal?” I ask, laying my bat on the table as I slide into a chair. We’re far enough away now that she can’t hear me.

Riley shrugs and takes a big bite of eggs. “Same as us.”

“Right,” I say with a snort.

“She’s lost her family, Kyra.”

“That may be true, but she’s not like us. She still thinks the world is the same. Just wait. She saw us walk in, and she’s gearing up for a lecture about how we need to repent or we’ll go straight to hell.” I crunch into my bacon as I trade glares with miss holier-than-thou across the room.

“Just ignore her and she’ll leave you alone.” He shrugs as he digs in, acting like I’m the ridiculous one.

Just like I thought, Riley is the nice guy who’s used to being friends with everyone. He was probably on the football team in high school, but was also friends with the smart kids and the party guys. When there was a social event, he was the center of attention. I can almost picture him standing in the middle of a crowd chugging a beer as everyone around him chants his name. Probably wearing the crown he got when he won Prom King. Yeah. That’s Riley. Mr. Popularity.

“So you were what, the class president in high school?”

He stops mid chew and his eyebrows pull together, and I instantly regret the question. We’re trying to forget. I shouldn’t have asked.

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“No, it’s okay. I was actually, but only my junior year. Why do you ask?”

“You just seem like the type, that’s all.”

I scoop another forkful of eggs into my mouth, doing my best to savor them. Who knows when I’ll have them again?

“What about you?” he asks. “Cheerleader? Homecoming queen?”

I snort again and cover my mouth to stop eggs from spraying everywhere. “Not exactly.” Riley raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything, giving me time to chew so I can answer. Once I’ve swallowed I say, “I was the bitch.”

“The bitch?”

“Yeah. I have this habit of saying whatever’s on my mind, which didn’t make me very popular in school. I mean, I’m hot, so the guys still wanted to fuck me, they just didn’t want to date me.” I shrug like it’s no big deal, which it isn’t. It wasn’t then and it’s even less so now. “I’ve always been who I was and my real friends loved me for it. I figured everyone else could just go screw themselves.”

Riley busts out laughing, which makes that scary woman across the way shoot us a look so evil I start to wonder if she’s possessed. If she is, she’s out of screwed. We didn’t get lucky enough to get stranded with a priest.

“That’s what I liked about you that night at the bar, you know,” Riley said, grinning at me over his piece of toast. “You said what was on your mind. I mean, I could tell you were drunk, but you didn’t give me any bullshit lines. Even the drunk girls came up batting their eyes and trying to hint around that I should buy them a drink. But not you.”

“Oh Lord, I can’t even imagine what I said.”

Riley chuckles around a mouthful of toast. Once his food has been properly chewed and swallowed, he says, “You came waltzing up to me in a dress so tight I could see the outline of your belly ring, swaying your hips like you knew you were the shit, and said, ‘You’re going to buy me a drink because it’s my birthday.’”

“That sounds about right,” I say, shaking my head. “What did you do?”

“The only logical thing. I told you I wouldn’t buy you a drink, but if you came back to my place I’d give you the best birthday present you’ve ever had.”

I cough when bacon goes down the wrong pipe and my eyes nearly bug out of my head. “You did not say that!”

“Not only did I say that, but you agreed without even a moment’s hesitation.”

My eyes are watering from almost choking, but I can’t stop laughing. People on the other side of the room have started to stare, joining miss high-and-mighty in her judgment. I don’t care, though. Sure I’ve lost everyone I love, and yes thinking about it makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry until we all drown in the tears, but right now I’m having a nice conversation with a hot guy—possibly the last one of my life—and I’m going to enjoy it. 

Riley leans closer until our faces are only inches apart. “We’re making a scene.”

“Whatever,” I say, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “You made me laugh which is something I never thought I’d do again.”

“Don’t forget the orgasm I gave you. More than one if I remember correctly.”

I roll my eyes even though heat squeezes my insides. “Fine. You made me laugh and gave me several phenomenal orgasms. I’ve had a nice morning when there’s no earthly reason anyone should ever have a nice morning again. Everyone who thinks we’re being inappropriate or whatever is going through their minds can just go fuck themselves.”

Riley snorts, then pops the last bit of bacon on his plate into his mouth, chewing slowly. “Don’t piss them off too much. We have a good group of people here. Resourceful.”

I shrug grudgingly. “Yeah, yeah.”

“It’s true. Jim took a few empty cans, some toilet paper rolls and rubbing alcohol and made those can heaters. We’ve been able to use them to cook and light the place, and they give off a hell of a lot of heat considering how small they are. And they burn for a really long time. It’s impressive.”

“Okay, you’re right.” I roll my eyes again even though he has a point. It’s not like I would have been able to figure out the fire-in-a-can thing.

Riley scrapes the last few crumbs on his plate into a neat little pile, then shoves them onto his fork.

I grin when he carefully raises it to his mouth. “It would be easier to just lick the plate.”

“You make fun, but it won’t be long before you’ll be wishing for a few crumbs to lick up.”

Just like that, the happy atmosphere is gone, sucked from the room so suddenly that I can’t help wondering if it was ever here to begin with. I inhale deeply, squeezing my eyes shut to ward off all the emotions just fighting to get out. It isn’t any easy task.

“Shit,” Riley says, taking my hand. “I’m sorry.”

I open my eyes, meeting his intense gaze, and force myself to laugh it off. The sound hurts coming out of my throat. “Any chance you’re ready to fuck me again?”

He gives me a half-hearted smile. “I think I need a couple hours to rehydrate.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Without saying anything else, Riley picks up both our plates and heads to the kitchen. But I stay where I am, watching him. He pauses to talk to almost everyone he passes, slowing his progress. They all smile when he says hi, acting like he’s an old friend even though we’ve only been here for a few days. An older woman whose name I don’t know pats him on the arm as he goes by and a sixteen year old boy whose face is covered in acne follows Riley like a puppy. Even during the apocalypse he’s Mr. Popularity.

I shove my chair away from the table and head out, throwing the bat over my shoulder as I walk. I need a cigarette and the second floor is the only place I can go. I wouldn’t dare open a window down here, and I wouldn’t risk the wrath of the others by smoking without proper ventilation. I can only imagine the lecture I’d get on second-hand smoke if I tried. These people are living in a dream world.

Tori is heading back from the locker room when I step into the hall. Her dark hair is wet and her t-shirt clings to her breasts. She isn’t wearing a bra.

She shrugs when she catches me eyeing her shirt. “I thought you had a good idea. Jim isn’t bad-looking and he’s smart. A distraction would be nice.”