I woke up as the light in the Bago started to get brighter, squinting against the sunbeam that had somehow made its way through a pile of clothes and right onto my face. I was pressed against Edward's chest, his arms around my body and his leg thrown over mine. His face was nestled against my neck, his breath hot against my skin. His body positioning was protective, but his face pressed against me like that was reminiscent of a child looking for comfort.

I waited for a moment, waiting for the panic to well up in my chest like I'd heard most rape victims felt when in similar situations, but nothing happened. Something about this strange man was comforting, even as he snuffled softly against my collarbone, his face screwed up in what looked like fear or anger. I hesitantly moved my hand and started to stroke his hair. It was greasy and gross and desperately in need of a wash, but it was a soothing gesture, the only thing I could offer him at the moment.

The creases on his face relaxed and his skin was smooth again, apart from the heavy beard growth he was sporting. The snuffling ceased and he was silent, breathing hotly on my skin.

That was something else zombie movies got wrong and it had bugged me even then: shaving. In zombie movies, even ones that supposedly take place ages after the infestation or whatever, everyone has perfectly flawless smooth skin. As in they shave. The women have hairless armpits and legs and the men have little facial hair. In reality, I could probably pass for a Wookie and Edward definitely had a beard. Nearly every guy did so I didn't really notice them anymore. His was neater than most, so he likely shaved or trimmed it occasionally. Damn movies, setting up unreasonable expectations. It was a lot less likely you'd have sex with a stranger or someone you'd just met, regardless of chemistry, if you hadn't shaved in a couple years. Of course, he or she hadn't either, so they couldn't judge, but we still all had that ideal of smooth legs and jaws from before.

I was trying to remember the last time I shaved when Edward rolled over, releasing his grip on me, and sat up. He sat for a moment, bleary eyed, scrubbing his face with his hands before running them through his hair.

"You sleep ok?" he finally rasped.

I nodded and sat up beside him. "As well as can be expected."

He nodded and stared towards the front of Bago. "I need to pee."

I grinned. "Me too. Do you use the bathroom here?"

He shook his head. "Only for shit. Peeing is fast so I typically just pee on the side of the road."

I nodded and scooted off the edge of the bed. "Then let's get to it so we can check the pumps for fuel."

He followed behind me, both of us gripping weapons tightly. We looked out all of the windows, scanning the horizon for any sign of zeds or rednecks.

"I don't see anything," I said finally, my voice low.

"Me either." He hefted his bat in his hand, clearly thinking.

"Why don't we take turns," I offered. "I'll keep watch while you pee, then vice versa."

That seemed to relax him some and he nodded. "Ladies first."

I grabbed a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom and cautiously stepped out of the Bago. It was already hot and I started to sweat almost immediately. I leapt off the last step, getting some distance between me and the Bago before I bent down to look underneath. I didn't see anything and nodded to Edward. He climbed down and we locked the door again before setting off in opposite directions to circle the Bago and minivan to check for other zeds.

We met on the other side and sighed in relief, before I noticed the dried gore on the minivan. "Maybe up top?"

He grimaced and nodded. We could easily see there was nothing on top of the minivan so he climbed carefully onto it and peered at the top of the Bago.

"I can't tell from this angle," he muttered in frustration, dropping to the ground beside me. He squeezed between the two vehicles and started climbing the ladder on the back of the Bago. My heart was hammering in my chest as I scanned the horizon again, looking for any sign of anything.

"Clear."

I nodded, my heart returning somewhat to normal as he dropped down beside me again. He looked around a moment before coughing awkwardly. "Um, if you want to squat behind the van, I promise not to look."

"Right." I nodded, blushing slightly. The guys had always given me privacy but when you're with someone for so long, it just happens that you occasionally see each other's fun bits. I moved behind the minivan, setting the toilet paper on the little ledge the bumper created and carefully undoing my pants and pushing them down to my knees. I braced my arms against the bumper and held myself in a semi-sitting position while I peed. It was inevitable that I'd get some on myself but it was really damn hard for a girl to pee outdoors and not. I rested my butt on the edge of the bumper and wiped myself, tossing the toilet paper onto the ground and pulling my pants back up.

I came around the side of the minivan and smiled. "Much better."

He chuckled and nodded, trotting off to the back of the minivan. I crawled up onto the hood of the minivan, giving myself a bit better vantage point.

"So how long have you had the Bago?" I asked.

"A couple months," he called back. "I think someone else had the same idea because when I found it, it was abandoned and had a bunch of shit in it. Like, stockpile shit."

I nodded. "Where'd you find it?"

"Nevada somewhere. Reno maybe? It's hard to tell these days."

I laughed dryly. "No kidding."

"Where are you from?"

"Texas. You?"

"Washington state."

"Wow. Really?"

"Yep." I jumped; he was standing right next to me. He chuckled. "Some lookout you are."

I stuck my tongue out at him and jumped down. "I was being aware of the horizon since we already established the immediate surrounding area was clear."

He grinned and we headed back to the door of the Bago. "So, Texas huh." He studied me as we climbed inside. "You don't look more than 18 or 19."

"Yep."

"Your family?"

"Dead."

"Mine too."

I nodded. There was no need for explanations or apologies. As of two days ago, everyone I'd known before was dead.

"How old are you?"

He handed me a can of peaches and a can opener. "Twenty-nine."

"Old."

He laughed and perched on the steps, leaving the door open to bring in a bit of a breeze. "I feel old anyway."

We passed the can back and forth until it was empty, then took turns sipping the syrup.

"You know what I would love right now?" I sighed as he tossed the can on the pavement outside the door.

"Steak."

I grinned. "That too, but even something as simple as like, eggs and bacon would really be epic."

"God, I haven't had eggs and bacon in ages."

I nodded and settled beside him on the steps, looking around. "With a glass of milk or orange juice and some toast. That'd be so great right about now."

He laughed. "Simple things in life. Wish I'd appreciated them before."

I nodded. We sat in silence for a bit before he sighed and stood up. "We need to refill the tank then see if there's anything in the ground here."

"Refill it with what?" I asked curiously.

"Gas," he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "What do you think I haul in the minivan?"

I followed him back towards the minivan and my eyes goggled when I saw that it was filled to the brim with gas cans. The back two seats had been removed and there were gas cans in neat rows with sheets of plywood creating makeshift shelves for the next layer. He opened the door and pulled a can out, carrying it to the gas tank on the Bago and started to pour it in.

"Wow."

He nodded, a grin on his face. "It's hard keeping Winnie full."

"Winnie?"

"Winnie the Winnebago."

I laughed and nodded. "Nice."

"Not terribly original, but it works."

Once that can was empty, he got another one until the tank on Winnie was full. He then walked over to the gas pumps and kicked them, trying to get them to work.

"You know, unless your foot is electrified that's not going to work."

He shot me a dirty look and I smiled innocently at him. He circled the pumps thoughtfully. "These aren't electronic. These probably use a suction pump to get the gas up and out."

I stared at him blankly and he grinned.

"It's kind of complicated but basically, we can siphon any gas left in the tanks out into our cans."

I nodded. Siphoning I understood. The guys and I were old hat at that. There were thousands of deserted cars along the highways all over the country and a lot of them still had gas in the tanks. That's how we'd kept going for the most part.

Siphoning of a sort was what we ended up doing, carefully refilling the cans we'd emptied already and replacing them in the minivan. Edward carefully picked his way over broken glass into the gas station and raided the map display, spreading the one for the Southwest over the counter and taking a sip of a hot soda as he studied it.

"I think we probably just need to keep heading northeast," he muttered, running his finger along a line in the map. "We'll run into less people if we take back roads, but there's a stronger likelihood to find stores and gas stations on the main highways."

"Do you have a destination in mind?" I asked with surprise.

He nodded and finished the soda, tossing the can over his shoulder. "My family has a cabin up in Maine. It's on an island off the coast."

"And you think it'll be safe there or what?" I asked curiously as we grabbed the maps and a few sodas and headed back to Winnie.

"I know it is. The only way out there is a boat. My family owns the island and no one goes there but us."

"Oh." I was quiet, thinking. What if his family had had the same thoughts and had gone to the island, unknowingly infected? How would he feel going to his safe place and finding it peopled with zombies resembling his loved ones?

"It's basically our bomb shelter," he said quietly. "As soon as word started to spread about the infection, my parents and brothers went out there. Last I heard from them, they were all safe, they'd been there for a week, and had a lot of provisions. It's a big enough island that there's some natural wildlife but not so big that it would attract attention and far enough out the zeds couldn't get to it but not so far we can't."

I nodded, still not really sure about this. But, as I had nothing better to suggest, I didn't say anything. We strapped ourselves in and set out.

"How come you're not there yet?" I asked curiously. "Two years to get there seems like a really long time."

He smiled dryly. "Stuff kept getting in the way."

"Like?"

He sighed, running his fingers through his long hair. "People needed help. My wife wanted to get her family in Southern California so we headed there first. They were dead and she insisted on burying them. We did that but it took too long and we ended up having to hole up there for a couple weeks, trying to find a way out."

"You're married?"

"I was."

"I'm sorry."

He didn't say anything and I turned in my seat. "It's taken a long time to travel from Texas to Phoenix," I murmured. "Same kind of shit. Helping people, taking care of ourselves."

"You were with a group."

I nodded. "We…parted ways a couple days ago."

"Are they dead?"

"Yeah, but not by zeds. Rednecks."

He grimaced. "Maybe that's better. No offense against rednecks, but they seem to have no qualms about sex with anything that moves."

I nodded, my lips tightening. "I know. Believe me."

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, neither of us turning our heads. He was quiet for a long moment.

"I'm sorry, B. If I'd known, I wouldn't have insisted on last night."

I shrugged. "No use trying to fix it now. It is what it is."

We drove the next few hours in silence, stopping at another Wal-Mart and checking it out. It had been thoroughly raided, nothing left inside but the shelves and some carts.

"We should get some fishing equipment next place we hit," he commented that evening over our second meal, a can of corn.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Good fishing up in Maine."

I nodded my agreement and handed him the corn back. I was sick of it. I didn't like corn that much to begin with, but it seemed like everyone had so damn much of it when the worst happened that it was the majority of what we had now.

We spent months driving in a zigzag pattern across the country, looking for Wal-Marts and other places to raid. We finally found a Wal-Mart in a tiny backwoods town in West Virginia that hadn't hardly been touched. It looked like it had been forgotten by the world, the produce practically petrified in the bins, the perishables long since gone. We pretty much cleaned out the hunting and sporting section, taking guns, ammunition, fishing poles, lures, line, things I didn't even know what they were but seemed to excite Edward. We decided to camp out there for the night…or the day, as we were starting to travel at night when it was cooler. August was awful anywhere, I was discovering.

I wandered through the deserted store, looking at the clothes on the racks. I would have once turned my nose up at them, called them cheap. Now, they were the best looking things I'd seen in a while. I ran my fingers over some of the stuff, liking the way the material felt against my fingers.

"B!"

I turned, startled, lifting my bat and ready to swing.

"I found something! Come here!"

I followed the sound of Edward's voice to the back of the store warily. He had a stupid grin on his face as he pulled me through a door marked Employees Only.

"I was doing another scan, making sure we didn't miss a zed, you know? And look what I found." He stood to the side and swept his arm in front of himself proudly. I stared in awe at his discovery. A room full of showers.

"Do they work?"

"Yeah, I tried one. Look." He ran over to the first stall and reached inside, twisting the knob until water gurgled out of the shower head. It was brownish but it was running water. If we didn't drink it, we'd be ok.

I chewed my lip for a moment. It had been ages since we'd seen any zeds, but I had this irrational feeling that the moment I took a shower, they'd show up and sniff me out. But…as long as it had been since we'd seen zeds, it had been even longer since I'd had a real shower.

"You wanna go first?"

He grinned. "You can. I'm going to shave, too. This damn rug on my face is driving me crazy."

I laughed and nodded. "I'm for shaving, too."

We headed back into the store, our spirits lifted significantly. We made our way through the pharmacy section, pulling out shampoos and conditioners and soaps, razors and shaving cream, lotion, face wash, scissors and brushes and combs. Anything and everything that met our fancy. Then we headed to the clothing department and grabbed clean underwear and clean clothes. I found a pair of white cargo pants to replace my now stiff and decidedly nasty pants and a long sleeved blue t-shirt. My leather jacket and boots weren't going anywhere, but I'd relish the feeling of clean clothes for the first time in longer than I cared to admit.

The water was freezing, but I didn't care. I scrubbed at my scalp until the water ran as clear as it had before I got in and my skin until it was pink and clean. I dragged a plastic chair into the shower and used it to prop my legs up on while I shaved. It took a while to get all the dirt and unwanted hair off of my body, but once I did, I felt like…me. It was nice.

I stepped out and grabbed one of the fluffy towels we'd brought in and wrapped it around myself and another one to wrap around my hair. Edward was standing at the sink, shirtless, as he shaved. The sink bowl was black with all the hair he'd trimmed with the scissors. I laughed and walked over to him, a grin on my face.

"Need some help?"

He looked at me in the mirror and grinned. "No, I got it, thanks. How was the shower?"

"Probably the most wonderful thing I've experienced in a while."

He laughed and turned his attention back to his face. I grabbed my new clothes and settled in the little sink area near him with a bottle of lotion. I sat on a bench, my back to him, and started to rub the lotion into my skin. If I was going to wash away the stink that hid me from the zeds, I was going to do it all the way. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure Edward's attention was fully on himself before I dropped the towel some and rubbed the lotion onto my stomach and breasts, then moved to my back. I was limber enough I could reach pretty much all of it myself.

Edward and I had some kind of serious sexual tension between us. It was basically inevitable when two people spent enough time together and were healthy, reasonably attractive people. Especially people like us who'd had reasonably healthy sex lives at some point in our lives. Most nights I woke up with something poking me in the back that was most definitely not his bat or a gun. At first, I'd been mortified, and he had too. I'd scrambled out of the bed quickly, recklessly almost jumping out of Winnie before we did our checks. Every morning, I knew he "tended" to things before he peed and it irritated me somewhat, to be honest. I didn't exactly get the opportunity to tend to myself and I had some built up tension going on. After a couple weeks of that, it was all I could do not to roll over and mount him, riding him for all I was worth until we all felt a hell of a lot better. I actually couldn't stop my hips from wiggling against his in the night, as much as I tried to. He always thought I was asleep, and I did feel some guilty over that, but then I would remember the low moans he'd make and the way he'd move back and how tightly he'd grip the blankets on the other side of me and would grin to myself. Of course, we never talked about it.

Over the weeks, we'd talked a lot, feeling a strange sense of ease with each other almost immediately. I learned that he and his wife, Tanya, had been married for six years when the shit hit the fan and that the last year of it had been rough. She'd nearly walked out a couple times, in spite of his insisting they stick it out. She'd died somewhere in Utah, bitten by a zed after they'd had a screaming fight and she'd walked away from him. In the fight, she told him the baby she was carrying wasn't his, that she wasn't even sure whose it was because she'd had more than one lover. He said in that instant he stopped loving her. He'd watched in horror, though, as the zeds overtook her and ripped the baby from her belly. She'd been too far away and there were too many zeds for him to help her anyway. He made sure she was dead dead before leaving her corpse and heading south.

I learned that while he was desperate to get to Maine, he was also determined to help as many people as he could along the way, go to the home cities of as many friends and family as he could. We never found anything more than zeds and corpses. The few times we ran into other survivors, we merely traded goods for safe passage across what they claimed as their turf. We had enough of everything that nothing was really off limits. I figured he probably looked at it as his way of making up for letting Tanya walk away from him in the desert.

I learned he was the youngest of three boys and that the older two were married with kids. The cabin would be full with the whole family there but it was better to be uncomfortable with family than comfortable with zeds. I agreed with him whole-heartedly.

I learned that he had been a newspaper reporter back in Seattle and he'd been among the first to realize what was going on, so his family had gotten to the island before many others knew what was going on. They'd gone back into town a few times for provisions, filling up the basement and the shed and attic and as many rooms as they could with stuff. He'd originally planned to fly to Maine, but then the airlines all shut down.

I told him about me, about high school and the guys, the group we started out with, how we figured out about the scent thing and how zombie movies were totally shit. I told him about finding my parents and my little brother dead in our house and about watching as the girls in the group got picked off one by one since they refused to stop using scented body sprays until it was too late. I even told him about being traded for gas.

His jaw tightened at that story. "B, I want you to know, I would never do that."

I was quiet. "You might have to. You have people to get to, Edward, I don't. If it comes down to it, you'd trade me, a stranger, a girl you don't know and don't have any attachments to, for a chance to get to your family. And I wouldn't blame you."

He refused to talk to me anymore after that. We'd driven the rest of the night in silence. That was three days ago and he was now pretending like nothing had been said.

I was rubbing lotion into my arms and studying my feet. I could do with a pedicure. Not like anyone would ever see it, but it'd be nice to know that my toes were painted. I was studying them when I heard a low cough behind me. I looked up and flushed when I realized Edward was looking at me, his face pink.

"Your towel," he muttered.

I nodded and pulled it up. "I was putting on lotion."

He nodded and turned away. I noticed then that his face was clean shaven. "Looks good."

He grinned, still faced away from me. "Thanks."

I stood up and pulled on the clean panties and bra, dropping the towel and pulling on the pants and t-shirt next. "You go get clean. I'll keep watch now."

He nodded and grabbed his basket of shower goodies and walked around the corner. I groaned softly and headed back into the store, the tile floor strange against my bare feet. I wandered around the cosmetics aisle until I found a color of nail polish I liked. I grabbed it and a clear coat and some pedicure supplies and headed back to the bathroom to sit near Edward.

His shower took a while, just like mine had, and my half-assed pedicure didn't take that long. I sat back and studied it for a moment before lying back on the bench and staring up at the ceiling. It was dim in here since the room didn't have any windows, but we'd brought in all the lanterns we'd found and they cast an eerie sort of glow around the room. We'd need to turn them off soon so we could save the batteries for later. They, of course, were going with us.

I wiggled my toes in the warm air and closed my eyes, content. Cleanliness was really a pretty awesome thing.

I must have drifted off to sleep because I woke up to a soothing voice.

"You smell very nice, very pretty."

I froze. I could still hear the shower running, signaling that Edward was still in there. I slid my hand across the bench and looked around carefully, trying to locate the voice.

"I'll bet you taste as good as you smell."

My fingers wrapped around the handle of my bat, the wood solid and comforting in my hand.

"Just a little bite, I promise it'll only hurt for a little while," the voice continued. I could see it now, the white unseeing eyes, the hands scrabbling along the wall and groping out in front of it looking for me. My heart was pounding in my chest. This one didn't look like it had been dead for that long, just a few days. It had been a woman, the long red hair stringy with blood and gore, the front of her shirt covered in it. Most of her fingernails were gone, but the ones that were still there were long red acrylics.

I carefully stood up, making sure not to make a sound as I gripped the bat just like Dad had taught me years and a lifetime ago. She was getting closer, moving slowly, her feet shuffling on the floor, bumping into the lanterns set up. She was getting closer and my heart was in my throat.

"You smell divine, I must say," she kept on, that West Virginia twang in her voice like nails on a chalkboard. It almost seemed faked.

I slowly took a deep breath, making as little sound as I could, but she still heard me. Her face twisted into a horrible caricature of a smile and she turned towards me fully now, her pace picking up. I backed up and bumped into the sink, wincing slightly.

"Oh, don't worry, you'll still taste the same bruised. Just fresher."

She knocked over a lamp, shattering the glass in it and darkening the room a little.

"B?"

Edward's voice distracted her and she turned in his direction. I took my opportunity and swung with all my strength, getting her solidly in the back of the head. It imploded like a rotten cantaloupe and my stomach lurched as the gore splattered over me. She went down immediately but I stifled a scream when I saw now that there were two others in the doorway.

"B?" Edward's voice sounded panicked and I looked up then.

"There's zeds here," I managed, my voice shaking slightly. "I just killed one but two more are in here."

"Two of us, two of you," one said silkily. "Perfect."

I jumped when a banshee scream ripped through the air and Edward appeared from the showers, his aluminum bat in hand, swinging wildly. I quickly regained myself and stepped forward, my foot slipping slightly in the gore from the woman, and swung at the first man while Edward took on the second. My swing went wide and I fell from the momentum and the water now on the floor, landing flat on my back. The air was knocked out of me and my bat went skittering off into the darkness. I heard another body hit the floor and I prayed to whatever god might be left in such a fucked up existence that it wasn't Edward, that at least he would get away.

I could hear the low chuckling of the zed that I'd been fighting with as he crouched over me. His hands were groping along my legs and feet, touching my hips and stomach and latching onto my breasts.

"I always loved a good breast," he moaned softly, squeezing them and pulling on them.

I cried out in pain as he pulled harder, trying to rip my breasts off of my body. The room had gone nearly black as most of the lanterns were kicked over in the scuffle between Edward and the other zed and in my attempts to get away.

Suddenly, his body slumped against mine and I pushed at him when I felt the blood and pus oozing onto me.

"B, are you ok?" Edward sounded panicked.

I was crying in earnest now and he groped in the darkness for me, finding me and pulling me up off the floor and crushing me against his chest. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pressed my face against him, sobbing.

"We'll get out of here soon, ok?"

I nodded.

"Come on, we need to check out the store, see what's going on."

I nodded again and let him pull me towards the door. I struggled to suppress my sobs as we looked around the store, my hand clasped tightly in his. We didn't see any sign of anything else and by the bloody footprints on the floor and handprints on the door, it looked like they'd come in through the door and just walked right back to the showers.

"They smelled us," I hiccupped.

He nodded, his jaw tense again. He turned then to study me. "Are you ok? Any injuries?"

I nodded. "I'm fine. No injuries."

He nodded, his eyes scanning my body and pulling up my sleeves to check my arms. "Come on, you need to rinse off."

I nodded and followed him back to the showers again, my face red as I realized that he was still naked. He pushed me into the shower stall first, his fingers working in my long hair to get the gore out. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back as he squirted some shampoo into his hand and rubbed it in. My hands were resting lightly at his waist, my thumbs moving lightly of their own free will.

"Clothes," he said softly.

I nodded and peeled off the ruined t-shirt and pants, leaving them in a sodden heap on the floor of the shower and stood, shivering, in my underwear. His eyes scanned my body again, looking for overlooked bites or scratches, but found nothing. He gently undid the bra and dropped it with the clothes before lathering up a loofa and cleaning my body with it gently, taking special care with my now bruised breasts.

When he was finished, he dropped the loofa to the floor and pulled me against him, hugging me tightly.

"B, you've got to be careful."

"I know," I mumbled, my voice muffled by his chest.

"No, I don't think you do," he said, pained. He pulled back and studied me for a long moment before leaning down and kissing me.

I didn't hesitate in kissing him back, standing on my toes and slipping my arms around his neck. He grinned against my mouth and pulled me closer, lifting me off the shower before pulling his mouth from mine and pressing his face into the crook of my neck.

"You have to be careful," he repeated "because you're important to me. You've become my family and I can't lose you."

I nodded, not trusting my voice. He set me down and kissed my forehead, smoothing my hair back. "We've got to get dressed and get the hell out of here. Ok?"

I nodded again and moved past him back into the store. I wrapped a towel around my hair and hastily dried my body off before heading back into the store. I grabbed a clean set of clothes and pulled them on in the middle of the store, not caring anymore. Edward said he cared about me. That was all that mattered now.