Chapter 10: Chapter 10
@CDC: We urge you not to panic. Hydra-1 outbreaks have been reported only in India and China. Until we learn more about its ability to infect humans, there is no need to fear. The White House is working closely with foreign governments to install measures to control the spread of the virus. There will be checkpoints on roads and warnings issued to travelers in affected areas. Aid workers will be present to help diagnose people who believe they may be infected with Hydra-1. If you show any of the symptoms listed on our and are currently in India or China near the affected areas, please visit the camps set up by the WHO and the CDC.
Damn, he tastes good.
Caroline wanted to hate Lincoln, but she couldn't. The second she grabbed him and pulled his head down to hers, she was lost. He'd been right about the chemistryit had been there from the moment she'd gotten her first real look at him the morning after he'd taken her from the grocery store. He was the kind of guy she had fantasized about her entire life, and now it seemed the universe had dropped him right in her path to make of it what she would. She wanted to kiss him, felt insane for suggesting it, but she did truly want to taste him, to feel something, anything, after so much cold and darkness.
The haze of his kiss, the way their mouths moved together, the way his beard tickled her skin made her feel alive in a way she'd never been, even before the world had crumbled to dust around her. His large hands gripped her by the waist, lifted her up and carried her to the wall, pressing her against it, making her feel wonderfully small trapped in his arms. These last few months she'd felt so dead inside, and now all she felt was himand her own body coming alive beneath his kiss and his touch.
She was on fire. Her skin burned with desire, and she wrapped her legs around his narrow hips and clung to his shoulders, feeling his muscles move beneath his sweater like shifting tectonic plates. He was hard everywhere, except for his mouth. He knew how to kiss, conquering her lips in a sensual, playful way. She couldn't catch her breath, and she didn't want to.
The world spun wildly around her as she parted her lips to his exploring tongue. He thrust inside her, playful and dominating, showing her an all too tempting glimpse of what it would be like for him to take her. She arched her back as a lusty warmth stole through her, muddying her thoughts. But she didn't care, not while he was kissing her like this.
How long had it been since she had been kissed? Forever, it seemed. She had broken up with Jackson, her boyfriend, a month before Hydra-1 struck. Monthsmonths since she had felt any intimacy with another person. But Jackson had never kissed her like this. She and Lincoln were strangers, two animals desperate to survive. Now she understood what he had meant, damn him. She did want him because her instincts told her she needed him, needed him to survive. She was drawn to him because he was a survivor. The thought horrified and fascinated her. What if this dark, intense man was one of the last men on earth? What did that mean?
He threaded a hand through her hair at the nape of her neck, tugging lightly so she tilted her head back. He trailed kisses on the exposed column of her throat until she whimpered beneath him. She could feel the hard press of his arousal against her, and he rocked into her, faintly, as though restraining his desire to fuck her right there against the wall. The image made her burn even hotter, but she struggled for control.
"Lincoln" She gasped his name, and suddenly he was moving, setting her back down on shaky legs.
She touched her bruised lips and panted hard as he turned away from her, drawing in a slow breath. She couldn't deny the warring emotions within her. Relief that he'd let her go, that she had a minute to think over what she'd just foolishly promised, and how disappointed she was that he'd stopped. Caroline couldn't tie herself to a man. Not now, not like this. She needed to focus on her family, not her hormones.
His jaw clenched as he gazed out the tall windows, his hands on his hips in a pose of restraint and power.
"I'll help you find your family, but you're not a commodity to offer in trade. I told you, you'll want me in time, of your own free will. Just basic biology. Till then" He walked toward the door to the basement and left her alone, confused and trembling with interrupted desire.
When the afterglow of that kiss finally receded, she was able to focus on his promise to help her. They were going home.
Mom, Dad, her sister, her niece, and her sister's husband. Joy surged through her, chasing away the lingering shadows that the previous night had left behind. They wouldn't stay here, where men burned things just to feel better. They would move south, they would find her family, and she would feel safe again, wouldn't she? She had to. She wasn't going to think about anything else except the plan. Find her family, and then she'd figure out the next step from there.
The muffled flutter of wings and an excited clucking from the basement told her Lincoln was checking on the chickens. She walked over to the open basement door, peering down into the darkened stairwell and listening to him speak to the birds. He was sweet-talking them, telling them what lovely ladies they were to lay such big eggs for him. Caroline's lips twitched in a smile. She hadn't expected that from him. Lincoln was a fascinating blend of intensity and serenity. She had never met anyone like him before. She likely never would again, come to think of it.
She gazed out through the wide windows in the nook, studying the winding streets in the distance and the hundreds of homes. What had this place been like before the virus? Had people sat out on their decks, grilling steaks and sipping beers while they talked about the future of the University of Nebraska's Husker football team? What would become of this neighborhood now?
What happened to a world where people vanished almost overnight? She remembered seeing an article once about places in certain cities that suffered from urban decay, and she'd clicked through a slideshow of photos showing abandoned train stations, empty shopping malls, crumbling opera halls. Each picture had held a quiet, melancholy majesty.
Beauty within decay and emptiness. Beauty within sorrow of an ended age. Perhaps someday a new species would take over, and it would marvel a thousand years from now at the crumbling superdomes and national monuments the way humans had done when they'd set foot in the ruins of castles in Scotland or the skeletal remains of the Roman Colosseum.
With a shake, she pulled her focus away from the windows and tried to busy herself with other tasks. It was so easy now to lose a sense of time and drift away in dark thoughts.
She put away their dishes after washing them, then sat down at the table and rolled her ankle around. It still hurt a little and was stiff, so she'd been massaging it a little every few hours. If they left tomorrow, she would be able to travel, just so long as she didn't have to sprint.
Lincoln stayed down in the basement for a long time. It was eerie being alone upstairs, so she carefully came down the winding carpeted basement steps. To her surprise, the walk-out basement which opened up to the backyard was homey. A small bar was at one end and a family room with a TV, and a gas fireplace was opposite the bar. Next to the back door were two dog kennels stuffed with hay. Two red-and-brown chickens clucked contentedly as they sat in the kennels.
"Dog kennels?" she asked Lincoln.
He shrugged. "It's the only thing I could find."
Lincoln leaned against the pool table, his back to her as he watched the wintry landscape of the backyard and the creek beyond. She couldn't help but admire his strong body, the way he seemed to fill the room with this quiet, brooding presence. He had a predatory and animal intensity, yet she'd seen flickers of compassion in him. He wanted her to think he was a solid wall, impenetrable, impassive, unyielding, but he wasn't made of stone.
There was something about him, a melancholy perfection, a tortured beauty to him that warned her he had seen and caused pain to others in this world and that those actions still haunted him. He wanted her to think he didn't believe that there was still good in the world, but deep down, he had to have hope or else he never would have helped her. He would have taken her, used her and left her to die. Instead, he'd helped her, and he hadn't taken advantage even when she'd offered.
He remembers what it was like, how good people can be when we work together. I won't ever give up, and I won't let him either. She made the silent vow to herself.
Caroline joined him by the pool table and watched the clouds slowly circle in cold patterns above the leafless trees. Without the buzz of cell phones and the constant noise and bustle of her old life, time had slowed to a trickle. It had only been a few months since this nightmare began, but it felt like she had been on the run for decades. Those first panicked and frightening moments in the airport seemed like a lifetime ago. The woman she had been then was gone. Dead. A ghost. Now she was the woman who had spent a week helping others in her apartment complex find food, shelter, and medical supplies. She was the woman who'd lifted people over the Chicago barricades to help them escape. She was hardened but not broken. She was steel but not unbending.
"What do you miss most about the way things were?" she asked as she slid closer to him. Their shoulders touched, and she could feel the heat of his body from that single point of contact. He didn't pull away, and her heart gave a hopeful, stuttering staccato of beats.
"I miss knowing where I belong," he replied, his voice a little gruff. She studied his bearded face, wishing she could hear his thoughts.
"Where you belong?"
"Before the contagion, I knew what my job was, what my purpose in life was. I knew where to go and what to do. I had my unit. Horowitz, Phillips, Holt, Finch, Norton. They were my men, my friends. My family." His voice roughened as he spoke.
"What happened to them?" She reached over and covered his hand closest to her with her own, but he still didn't look at her. The brown of his eyes was lit by the overcast winter sky, and the color was softer, darker, like the wood of trees in an ancient forest.
"Horowitz and Finch were with me here in Omaha. We stayed in a bunker. Philips, Holt, and Norton were sent to assist in escorting key government personnel to safe locations."
"Safe locations? Like the bunker you were in?" She'd heard rumors over the years that there was a bunker in Omaha for the president if the United States was ever invaded.
"Yeah."
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone