Chapter 4 - I Will Protect You

It had been three days since they kissed each other. And both were sitting, stewing in their own sexual desire for each other. They hadn't mentioned it, because really, they couldn't. They were surviving off of mere drops of water and crumbs of old granola bars. They couldn't find game to hunt, and they were becoming more lethargic within each passing day. Lexa had never felt so unhealthy before.

Clarke knew all about being unfit. She spent her evenings usually drinking her live to a shrunken apple core whilst at parties with her friends, or staying up at night watching Gilmore Girls and sleeping well into the afternoon. She would rather be ripped apart by the infected than run. But that wasn't true. She had been running for months. And the most mysterious and gorgeous girl she'd known since she was just a little girl was running beside her. And though sometimes her vision would go gray and fuzzy, Lexa always seemed to be in focus.

No, they hadn't spoken about the kiss, but they had both felt it on their lips since it happened. Tingling, and heavy on chapped, smooth skin. Lexa thought Clarke's breath had actually smelt good which was a shock considering the lack of hygiene the apocalypse offered. She smelled of vanilla peaches pickles in bloody jars. Just a dash of blood, just the smallest hint of copper. Then juicy, fruitful vanilla sighs and lips, lips lips.

Lexa had tripped over a twig whilst they walked along one of the many clear ground of the woods, and Clarke lifted an eyebrow at her. Lexa shrugged sheepishly and shook the blush from her cheeks and the thoughts from her mind. She was sure Clarke had to be thinking about it too. As always, Lexa was correct.

Clarke couldn't get the physical touch out of her mind. It sat in her frontal lobe taunting her to forget about the grumble of her stomach and desert on her tongue begging to be rained on with fresh water. Lexa's lips were soft even though they were chapped. They were like pebbles with soft snow and pizza dough laid over them with a warm honey drizzle. Such an odd and lovely mix. Clarke can recall kissing Finn Collins freshman year and his lips were chapped and dry like a muddy gravel road with food litter and roadkill liquids. It was unpleasant, but not entirely so. His tongue had been too rough and it reminded her of the porn she had watched with Raven and Octavia in her bedroom- the man going at the woman like a jackhammer. Only then, she had completely been disgusted and pulled away. No, Lexa's kiss was pure heaven to the one she had experienced with Finn. He was nice enough, and accepted her not ever speaking about it again.

But Clarke didn't want to not speak about her and Lexa's kiss ever again. She wanted to talk about in a sultry voice to show Lexa she wanted more. God, did she want more. She wanted to relive the kiss over and over again, deepen it, roam it farther. She wanted to roam her hands over Lexa's grimy yet smooth skin and feel her hips knock against hers and-

"Did you hear that?" Lexa asked and reached an arm out to stop Clarke from walking further. Clarke willed her hormones a rest and opened her mind to her ears.

"No?"

Lexa stared into the distance intensely, her arm still against Clarke's tummy.

"I heard a man's voice," Lexa whispered.

"Are you sure?"

Lexa waited a couple of minutes to listen before dropping her arm back to her side and continued to walk.

"I don't know, but we should be extra careful now. Be on the lookout and more alert," Lexa's tone wasn't barked in an order, but rather a comprehensive instruction. Clarke nodded.

They walked into an abandoned road thirty minutes later and Clarke felt uneasy. Lexa began to walk along it and stopped a little ways ahead once she realized Clarke hadn't been following her.

"What's wrong?" Lexa asked.

Clarke rubbed nervously at her arm. "I feel too exposed on the road."

"We need to get to the nearest town to see if we can find a trace of food. Look," Lexa pointed at a yellow sign with bullet holes decorating it. "Look, we're almost to Cedar City. We need to be careful, but we can do it. Come on."

"Christ, we've seriously come all the way from Richfield to Cedar City? How did we travel this far?" Clarke said and began to trek towards Lexa.

"It's been quite awhile," Lexa shrugged. "If we keep going past Cedar City after we check for food, we might end up in Nevada."

They began to walk side by side on the road past the sign and the trees.

"Maybe we can go to the beach once we hit California. We can avoid the large cities. There are some private beaches my older sister had been to before." Lexa mentioned.

Clarke smiled and breathed in the contaminated, yet fresh air. "I would love that. I'm getting sick of these damn mountains."

Lexa laughed. "Me too, believe me."

Town was overrun with the dead. The two young women had been in the sift change of the world for only months and they were used to it. They knew where to hide, where to avoid and what to go to. They passed a large Holiday Inn, and a small restaurant and a small diner called Hermies. That part had stradlers along the road, but herds were not present. The herds were reserved to downtown Cedar City where places like Dollar Tree and Great Clips stood scathed by death.

They hit some wonderful jackpot when they ran across a small untouched market on the side of the road by an old gas station. A man stood behind the desk, and Clarke nearly felt the shockwaves hit her body when she thought it was a real live person. She hadn't seen another person aside from Lexa in ages and it startled her. But upon the doorbell jingling when they entered the front door, the man had turned around and revealed yellowed, dead eyes and a dropped jaw, and Clarke felt herself relax.

Lexa's blade was in his skull before Clarke could blink, and she watched the body drop dead to the floor, hitting its head on the cash register with a sharp 'ping' on the way down. The black tray shot out and piles of money and change sat in their respective compartments. Lexa eyed it and sighed.

"No need for it now." And then the brunette was walking down an isle, examining the various types of junk food and sweets.

Clarke walked around the cubby of the desk and walked through the small gate trapping the now dead man behind the counter. Clarke knelt down beside the body and lifted the name tag off of the green apron. It read in simple handwriting, "Sam." Clarke let go of it and searched through the man's pockets. She found a lighter and slipped it into her bag. Then a set of nail clippers, a small joke book the size of a sticky note, and an old, worn leather wallet with fraying edges. Clarke flipped it open and stared at the photograph of the man with two children, a girl and boy with blonde hair, and a woman with kind eyes and a red flowy summer dress, and himself smiling at the camera. Clarke looked back down at the dead man's lifeless face, and her heart ached. To have died at work, and not have made it back to his family. She wondered if they were still alive. She wondered if her own mother and Marcus were still alive.

Clarke slipped the wallet back into his jeans pocket and bagged everything else with a harsh wheeze of breath, then stood up on shaky legs. She glanced back at the body before leaving the area.

"Rest easy, Sam," she murmured and walked away.

She met Lexa in the back where tall glass doors lined the walls. Lexa stood in front of the once refrigerated alcohol, and began to loot as many bottles as she could carry of hard liquor including some beers and ciders.

Clarke lifted an eyebrow at her, as she usually did, and Lexa rolled her eyes.

"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it."

"Oh, I have," the blonde folded her arms. "Just didn't think we'd need that many."

Lexa glanced from her bag, to Clarke, then back to her bag again and nodded sadly. She began to put all of the bottles back and stopped at Jim Beam whiskey and a large bottle of Grey Goose. Lexa looked up at Clarke, holding up the bottles, and Clarke nodded in approval. Lexa bagged them along with some Angry Orchard green apples, and left the rest of the alcohol for some other lucky bastards.

They had taken it easy on the sweets and had tried to focus more on the healthy stuff they could cook like the boxed mac and cheese and rice. Clarke bagged some roasted peanuts, pistachios, dark chocolate that was nearly melted, and every flavor and brand of granola bars the convenience store stocked. Lexa bagged some fruits that were still in baskets under the magazines and crosswords puzzles. Lexa grabbed a mini crossword puzzle too and threw it in with the apples. Lexa also found some old ragged blankets in the backroom. It was just their lucky day.

Clarke lifted a package of Twinkies up and grinned at the brunette. Lexa snorted and shook her head as she searched the isle for some ware and tare equipment.

"Remember that movie Zombieland?" Clarke asked and threw a few Twinkies into her heavy bag. "How Woody Allen just wanted to find his damn Twinkies? I think we beat him to it."

The blonde giggled and Lexa joined her. The mood was light after they had found the place and they were relieved their stomachs would be full, and they could hydrate themselves with oversized water bottles and dehydrate themselves later on in a secure place with some alcohol and sweets. They were happy for the first time, and maybe they both thought about kissing each other once again.

When they left the store, more dead had staggered onto the road, but it wasn't anything they couldn't handle or avoid. They took out some of them whilst taking more back roads, and heading to the red velvet mountains where they figured they would camp for the night.

The sun began to wade its way through the milky, purple sky towards the mountains and the moon was beginning to rise in its happy hello. The air was muggy but it began to grow colder as they continued on until the town disappeared and the gurgles and groans from the infected had long since vanished.

Lexa and Clarke set up their camp on the dusty desert ground, and took out their flashlights to shine upon the food loot nestled into their bags. They feasted on Twinkies and packaged out of date apple pies that night, and drank their water in small, grateful sips. The moon bathed them in unashamed spotlight as they lay on their backs side by side on the old blankets, backpacks beneath their heads and full tummies.

Clarke glanced over at Lexa, and basked in her beauty. Her sharp jaw line that could cause much more damage than her machete, her fine, round cheekbones just beneath her sparkling green eyes, her pouty, kissable lips that had felt so good against her own. Clarke bit her lip to stifle an involuntary moan. She opted to talking about things she had wondered about Lexa instead.

"So you lived with your uncle, Gus," Clarke spoke in a gravelly voice.

Lexa nodded.

"When you came into my house that first day, you said you were alone too. Why? Where was he?"

Lexa visibly swallowed a thick wad of spit and words, and Clarke watched her throat bob.

"He was away at some girlfriend's. This one being the fifth one this year. But I usually stay out of his business. He would tell me he was going to so and so's for awhile and that he would be back. And sometimes he would stay away for months at a time. Whenever he was home, we sort of just… Co-existed."

"How long had he been gone before the sirens blared?" Clarke twisted a strand of Lexa's chestnut hair around her index finger.

"Two weeks or so. I figured he wouldn't come back. He knew I could survive. He was the one who taught me."

"So that's what you would be doing on the weekends? I thought it was just regular camping," Clarke said, confused.

Lexa turned her head away from the stars to instead look at the ones in Clarke's shadowed blue eyes. She was surprised Clarke had known they would go every week when she was little. Maybe little Clarke really had just wanted Lexa be to her friend. The thought made Lexa's heart hurt.

"He had a ton of apocalypse survival books in his study at home. He would let me read them, and they really truly were interesting and helpful. It wasn't just about zombies. It was about nuclear war, and disease that didn't just lead to dead walking. They were interesting. But yes, he would teach me how to survive in case something like this happened."

"It was a good call then," Clarke smirked.

"I suppose so," Lexa shrugged, not breaking eye contact with the beautiful blonde beside her.

Clarke's relaxed face then contorted into a serious one.

"Do you think he's still alive?"

Lexa exhaled and turned her head back up to the sky. "Probably. He wasn't a quitter. He made sure I wasn't, either."

"I'm glad I got stuck with you, Lexa," Clarke whispered.

When Lexa looked back at the blonde, she had her eyes closed without the tell tale signs of flutter or unease. She had fallen asleep just like that, cuddles into Lexa's side. Lexa gripped Clarke's hand in her own.

"Me too."

There were a lot of things Lexa least expected. One being Clarke showing up half naked in her dreams begging her to kiss her. Calling… her name. Calling her name. Calling her… name.

"Lexa… Lexa… Lexa!... Lexa!"

And she was awake, and tense and shocked and her body was violently shaking with adrenaline. Men. There were men. Two of them that she could count. One of them had Clarke. One was skinny and rustic. The other was bulky with only muscles could be mistaken for fat. One was holding her hands behind her back, pressing a gun into the back of her hand. One had Clarke. One. Had. Clarke.

Lexa thrashed against the person behind her holding her in place, despite the cool metal of the gun sticking to the sticky skin of her lower back from her shirt riding up. A light, cigarette stained voice chuckled from behind her and gripped her wrists painfully harder. Clarke had tears streaking down her cheeks, carrying remnants of dirt with them. Lexa's chest was rising and falling equivalent to the speed of a shooting star shooting through space, in heaps. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down. Beat beat. Beat beat. Beat beat. Her heart was hammering and she could feel it too sensitively.

The muscled man holding Clarke, tilted the blonde's chin up while gazing into Lexa's emerald forest fire eyes. He stuck his blackened tongue along the column of Clarke's neck and the blonde whimpered uncomfortably. Lexa thrashed once more, but the man holding her only pressed the fun harder into her back. How had she slept through the panic? Had she really been that tired? It wasn't impossible.

"You're fine pieces of meat," Muscle Man muttered against Clarke's skin. "Me and Roody here like meat. Some fine ass meat like the both of ya's."

Lexa inwardly cringed at the man's words. Meat. Women were always meat. Not this time.

Lexa knew she would be injured. There was no way of escaping this without it. Injured, or dead, she had to make sure Clarke got out of it alive. Lexa stood there and watched until the right time came along. Clarke's eyes begged her, and Lexa's eyes reassured her the best they could that she was going to do something. She wouldn't let Clarke get hurt.

When Muscle Man pushed Clarke harshly onto the ground onto her knees, he made her spread out on all fours, while ripping the threads of her clothes. When he exposed her bum, Lexa was nearly foaming at the mouth with anger. Control. She always had control. That's the one thing she would always have.

She felt the gun soften against her back, and pull away a little, as the skinny man behind her had taken one hand away from his grip on Lexa's wrists and started to undo his belt. Lexa felt something hard hit her hip and she willed herself not to vomit. Not when Clarke was about to be molested. It was time.

Without warning, Lexa thrust her head back as hard as she could and bashed the back of her skull hard against the man's nose, and was welcomed with a sickening crack. The gun went off, but Lexa didn't pay mind to it as she grabbed it from the ground where the man behind her had dropped it in favor of cupping his bleeding nose. Lexa blasted a shot through the forehead of the skinny man, and then turned to Muscle Man, pointed the gun, and grazed her finger over the trigger, only to halt at the fact he was using Clarke as a human shield, pressing a small blade to her neck.

Clarke's eyes were bloodshot and fatigued as she scraped at the man's stubby fingers gripping onto her collarbone.

"Either you take our lives, or you let me get off and all of us live. Your choice, smokin'," The man said and gripped Clarke tighter.

Lexa chuckled at his blank knowledge of her. Her uncle Gus had told her she was the best shot he'd ever seen. She was better than him at eight years old.

With moving the gun only a mere inch, Lexa said harshly, "That woman you got there is my life. I will not let you taint her, you blasted, bloody chode mother fucker."

Another shot had blasted and a bullet grazed just the side of his temple. He fell backward, and onto the ground, still conscious howling in pain. The knife he had against Clarke's neck only served to leave a small scratch in its fall.

Lexa picked up her machete from the blanket on the ground and pushed past Clarke, standing above the man who stared up at her and begged for mercy. She smiled happily, before swinging the machete down onto the man's face and splitting it open. She pulled it out and smashed into it again. Then again, and again, and again.

Clarke watched as Lexa drained her adrenaline on the man who nearly raped her, and her own blood was beginning to settle down. Lexa's arms flexed and glistened in sweat against the moon beams as she sliced the man's skull into a bloody, brainy sludge. Clarke walked over to Lexa slowly and reached out to touch her shoulder tentatively, causing Lexa's ministrations to slower and soften.

"That's enough, Lex. It's all over now," Clarke whispered in the brunette's ear. "Come on, honey. It's over. It's okay."

Clarke's soothing words and touches lowered her down from her adrenaline induced high, and she dropped the blood stained machete to the ground. She turned in Clarke's arms and swallowed her up into a tight hug that said everything she couldn't manage to say with her own words. Her tongue was fat in her mouth, and her throat was dry as she began to sob against the blonde.

The blonde stroked her hair and let out tears of her own. They drenched the fabric of Lexa's shirt, and Lexa's own hot salty tears ran down Clarke's goosebump covered shoulder blades. Her clothes were ripped and ravaged, and Lexa's worried tears were showering her in drops of warmth. The raw affection perspiring between them was a summer no season had ever seen.

The night was still and quiet after that. Not even the dead could utter a sound. A sticky, hot liquid stuck to Lexa's thigh and she glanced down to a pool of blood spreading over the fabric of her jeans. That was when the pain finally came.