Chapter Five
A Prize Earned
Delaney stood breathless. The thick of night drenched the camp in a terrifying haze.
Only the moon showed the truth of what laid there.
Death. Heaps of death.
Her hands glinted in the pouring smooth light of the celestial spotlight, highlighting their hidden paleness of flesh to the blackened rot of walker blood. It dripped down her fingers. Slippery chill, rather than warmth, covered her hands and forearms. The hilt of her knife still sunken through the sloughed flesh of a walker's neck.
She shivered. It's disgusting bulged eyes were bloodshot, as wide as they could be, effective for a predator.
That's what it was: predator. She, their prey.
It never felt real. The killing and eating of one another, until she felt its hungry snarl crawl through her ear. Surges of adrenaline released at once. She found the only weapon she ever had – a hunting knife – and used it against the beast before she had a thought cross her mind. It was pure reaction. The animalistic instinct that humans were thought to have evolved from.
Her legs trembled as she rose from the dead body. The wrestle to the ground had gotten bits of grass and gravel and everything else in her hair. Bits of it cascaded the length of her spine.
The last of the gunshots fired. The lasting echo surrounded the camp, spread through the wilderness, echoed into eternity, with their pulsating booms.
It was when things fell silent that someone grabbed her arm.
"Are you bit?" Their voice asked.
Her mind did not recognize the voice. Or their face. It was all cloud. Thick dense clouds of color and water painted over her eyes.
She shook her head. "No." Her lips moved lifelessly.
"Are you alright? Hey. You good?" The hand shook her gently.
Her eyes fixed on the blood-stained hands at the end of her arms. "I-I killed that thing," she muttered.
"Uh, Shane?"
All at once, there were familiar touches across her cheeks. They held her face. "Baby? Hey." It was a soft but urgent tone. "Are you hurt, sweetheart? Did you get bit?"
She shook her head. A few tears fell down her cheeks. They were wiped away with a pair of powerful thumbs.
"I tried to find you. There were too many. I couldn't -." He wrapped her in a tight embrace. Hot breath touched her forehead. A pair of lips kissed her there. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Shane led her closer to the RV where the rest of the group was. Voices became clearer. Her mind pulled away from the dripping at her fingers as its flow lessened. He held her close, lending his strength to hers, igniting awareness of herself as the dark shock lifted.
"Is she okay?" Carol asked.
"Is she all who's left?" Lori asked urgently.
"All that I've found," Glenn replied with a hollow sound.
Camp was devastated. It was run through with gnarled claws and hungry mouths.
The screams of the slain were permanently etched in her mind. Their harrowing cries for help in a helpless void left a heavy weight on her shoulders.
"Shouldn't we keep looking?" Lori demanded.
Laini leaned into Shane's body without a care of whatever ridiculous thing Lori wanted. It didn't matter. There was nothing going to save her from the memories of killing a thing with total focus like some psychopath driven to do so. Blood on her hands told the truth.
It'd been after supper. The camp was quiet when she walked back to her tent with the belief that Shane would follow. They'd not addressed what happened that morning when Rick left and she accused Shane of being like Ed. It was a huge space left in the air. She started to guess that everyone felt it. Andrea especially kept giving her side glances in irritation. Carol and Jacqui tread carefully near the subject. The blonde exhaled out her nostrils the more tension built with the wall of silence between Shane and Delaney built.
But. They came. Laini was caught unexpectedly outside her tent. There were multiple shuffling bodies of half-life spread throughout the back half of camp. A startled yelp left her throat as her feet ran back to the campfire, but it wasn't fast enough. Screams rent the air. Dead rode in on silent wings, sudden and violent like the stab of fear.
The blast of Shane's shotgun exploded one after another. She thought he called out her name, but there was no way to be sure in the midst of it all.
One hand was lifted and wiped clean. She remained limply pressed into him as he grabbed each of her hands and wiped away the filth.
She gave a ragged sigh in thanks. It was all she could muster. The energy to breathe was minimal. It faded by the minute. Her knees and legs ached. The power to hold her head up even rivaled the downward pull of gravity.
He pressed his lips against her forehead once more, silent and stoic. For once, his mouth did not ruin it.
There was a point where he lowered her to the ground. He placed a hand on her shoulder and muttered something about being right back. It blended in with the shadows. Weak watery shadows of the dying fire, the hushed horrified whispers, soft whimpers, and the collected sigh of what light was to show come sun rise.
It was a sad slow rise. Yellow warmth spread through the air. Small sparkles of dew shined and glistened in the early morning as the tense dark lifted, shadows erased in favor of color.
Only, warmth did not touch their flesh. Eyes still tense at the sight of the massacre of their beloved home, the one place of safety they'd carved for themselves, watery with the blood of their slain friends and disturbed comforts. The heaviness of their heart beats fell harder at the pit of their stomachs to see it exposed. It was no dream. Last night was not a nightmare of the worst kind; it was reality.
Laini was so lost to the shock of what she'd done to protect herself that it took until morning to realize a fallen body near them, with a woman clung to her side, hovered overhead, lost in silent stare at the body. As her eyes adjusted, she saw the blonde braid splayed in the gravel.
Blood stained the angel white hairs.
Her lips betrayed a heartbroken gasp. Amy.
A big palm slid down her bicep, tightening at the elbow. A canteen pushed nearer. Laini obliged the request without a word. The cool water slid down her ragged throat, quenching thirst's burn though it didn't settle her insides.
"The bodies," she heard Rick's raspy voice state. "Burn them."
Daryl swung the crossbow over his shoulder and stomped off to the woodpile she'd added to the day before. He set to starting a large fire.
"What about the rest of us?" Lori asked. "What are we to do – the camp is – well, it's gone."
Rick looked around the destroyed camp. His eyes fell sadly on the mess that he'd missed. They'd returned in the dark of the night as people were being eaten, without Merle, and without their van.
The screams of their friends being eaten echoed in the night. It still rippled through her mind.
"Shane?" The sheriff looked to his friend in need. The question. Nothing ever happened without discussion of the pair.
Laini felt the body near her stir. He shifted back and forth with indecision before he gave a nod and returned to his friend's side.
A bitter sliver went through her heart. It went through her like a sudden shard aimed at Rick to be so bold to ask Shane to leave her side without consideration of her.
She shuddered a breath, realizing the mistake, and whisked away the emotion.
"He is not yours," she muttered beneath her breath.
The thought was the forefront of her mind. It was repeated over and over.
Not yours, not yours, not yours.
It was in her mind as they cleaned up the camp. Bodies dragged. Faces she recognized, once spoke to, cared for, now tainted with holes in their heads. Blood dried near wounds torn through flesh or drilled. Pyres were built for the ones they didn't know.
But the others…
"It was the strangest thing," Jim murmured on, slowly and soft on his small tone. The pair were in the hollow clearing that he'd only dug in the day before. His mood calmed since. He was mostly silent. She made no point in pressing him as she did not feel much up for it. "My dream. It came to me last night. When it all…" his voice trailed as he looked out over the speckled expanse. "Went to hell."
Laini bowed her head. The addition to their graveyard set a solemn pace in her chest.
"I didn't mean to scare you," the man said. "If I did -."
"You didn't," she answered.
She wanted it left at that. The day was horrid, all around. The memory of it was sour and awful, the taste of bile on her tongue. Less said on it, the better.
Better to forget their loss, and leave it as what it was to them all.
Jim, though, kept at it. Some force gave life to his mouth that was unfounded. It had no right in saying what it did. "I wasn't trying to hurt your fella there, when I swung. I- I wasn't thinking."
A clench came to the back of her throat.
What would she have thought if Shane had come back with a shovel to the head and a head injury?
Her tongue dryly rolled in her mouth. "I'm just glad he didn't hurt you too bad." She paused, debating whether it should be said or not.
"Aw, no. He could've been a lot worse. Swung back at me, even, since I swung first. But he didn't."
She marched back up to camp. There were more bodies of their friends that deserved a resting place that wasn't a firepit. Her feet crunched in the gravel upward. At the top of the hill was Daryl Dixon, pickax in his hand. He dropped it as he dragged another body to be dispatched for a final time.
It took her a minute to recognize it. The bloated face was swollen, dark with bruises. Flesh of the neck was splayed open, slashed with claws like an animal tore through the hanging vocal cords and thyroid with hunger.
Laini stopped in her tracks.
"What?" Daryl stood with the wooden handle of the pickax in the base of his palm. His narrowed eyes watched her carefully as she stared at the face of the dead man.
She shook her head. "That's Ed."
"So?" The man spat. "He ain't nothin' now."
"Why's he look like that? All bruised and his eyes swollen."
Walkers didn't throw punches. They didn't damage flesh without puncture.
"Hell if I know." The man turned back. He finally took in the whole sight of Ed's face. "Sure looks like he got the piss beat out of him. I'll say that much."
Just then, a small woman entered the air. A thick tension came through in the sound of her swallowed sobs and tear-stained cheeks. Daryl was stricken as the woman requested to put the final blow to her husband.
The rest of the day descended much in the same way.
Jim was bit. A fresh, throbbing bite to his torso with no hope to survive.
Andrea held onto Amy's body until it reanimated as a corpse to which she put a bullet inside her head. Laini opened her mouth with a brief statement of sorrow at the fallen friend when she bit the words back very carefully.
"Save it," Andrea murmured.
She nodded her head. The words would do nothing. No comfort, nor resurrection. They were just emptiness. All of it, empty.
Was that the world they were in? Barren terror.
The Morales family decided to split their own way. They went in search of their own family.
By the time she sank into the passenger seat of Shane's vehicle, she could have cried to the point of dehydration. The camp was a point of survival and hope. There was little negativity that lived within it. Like an oasis away from the pandemic. They were untouched by the horrors of what laid out there on the land.
Now, there was so much loss that she'd look back on it with sadness. So much despair.
Shane slipped into the driver's seat after he loaded the last of their supplies into the back. His hand slid against the top of her thigh as they drove back down the quarry road to the main roads. They'd said very little to one another. She felt at a loss to what to say. There was no right answer, and she didn't like being wrong.
They drove along the road for a few miles with the sun shining into the windows in blaring strength. The lids of her eyes began to feel heavy. They took more and more effort to open again.
It wasn't until the car door slammed closed that she realized she fell asleep.
She hopped high in the seat. Shane was absent. The car sat on the open highway with nothing blocking its way except the RV.
Laini moved slow. She felt tense. Like something happened. She didn't know what.
There was a group off the side of the road. Rick was at the center. Shane was on the other side, supporting a man between the pair. Jim. She recognized the hat. They turned him around and placed him against a tree. The flesh of the man's skin was bright red from fever. He was twitching and trembling. Shane used his hands to place Jim's head gently against the tree trunk.
A wave of tears welled in her eyes. She held tight to her strength even after the rest of them abandoned the man beneath the trees with nothing. Shane stepped back onto the highway first. He caught sight of her against the car, cradling herself in her own arms, lips fallen downward.
He approached with quick feet. There was no pause to wait for her to uncurl from herself. His body crashed into hers and wrapped her tight against himself. He pressed a kiss within her hair.
The survivors loaded into the remaining vehicles. The last one to board was Rick. He'd remained crouched at Jim's side for a long time after he was set down.
"He was bit," Shane said softly. "There's nothing we could do."
"I know," she replied. "Doesn't mean I have to like it."
It was left at that.
They were the few of the few survivors that made camp outside Atlanta. Now they traversed deep into the city on the fool's hope that a cure would be there.
It was late in the day when the towering building came into view. The CDC. The marvelous architecture, though, was lost on them, as the surrounding concrete was coated with dead bodies of soldiers and the infected. Flies buzzed thick in the air. Their numbers so populous that it filled the air with vibrating sound.
Shane grabbed his bag from the backseat. She did the same.
There were military blockades with bare skeletons hung from the sides. Their bodies picked clean by the elements…among other things.
He held onto her tight as they approached the building. She was on one arm, a shotgun on the other.
Their frightened breaths refracted off the empty buildings high above their heads. It echoed into the beyond. City streets and sidewalks and empty plots of land. The eerie silence was misleading. It was all too soon that the dead descended upon them. The cries of the group added to the growing panic, as did the loud banging of Rick against the door.
He was convinced there was someone behind it, still. "You're killing us!" He screamed.
"Let's go! There's nothing here." Shane's voice echoed. The arm that held around Rick's shoulder was dropped. He grabbed hold of Laini's hand. "We will die here, Rick. Die!"
The noise of their voices started its echo away from the building deeper into unknown, probably infected parts that held the dead of the infected. Some answered back. Their long hollow moans. It hit their ears as a blackening darkness lowered through the city. Soon they would be defenseless. With no light. In a city full of the walking dead.
"On our left," Daryl called out. The shadows were just visible through the darkness. "Walkers!"
Shane turned the barrel of his shotgun in the direction. Rick, still oblivious to what chaos descended upon them rapped at the wall of the vacant building with the bleeding hope that someone was there to save them.
It was a fool's choice to bring them. They'd all been fools to allow it, too.
Her hands held onto Shane for all he was worth. The flex of his bulky bicep between her palms as the only anchor to the world – sure to be cut short soon enough.
The whimpering cries of Carl and Sophia broke her heart. They probably clung to their mothers. Their mothers, frightened but ready to try and fend off zombies for their little ones. How could they want a child alive to see this end? Misery loved company, but this fate was no misery. It was damnation. She knew what she deserved to live in a mass ending of humans, but what had the children done? Why were they awarded a tainted fate of life after death?
"Rick! Rick, let's go!" Shane called out. He kept his shotgun aimed as Daryl used his bolts to drop the couple that had found them.
More would hear them. More would come.
"There's no one here, sweetheart." Lori was trying to talk sense into her husband. The stupid man. "We have to go. It's not safe."
Daryl released more bolts. She heard them release from the crossbow.
A fluttering breath left her lips. "Shane?"
"More," he said to Daryl.
Daryl glanced over his shoulder. "Behind."
Shane turned suddenly. Her body flew after his, never leaving grasp of his body.
Four walkers moved toward them. Their haggard posture obvious, even in the faded light. Ankles and feet dragged behind, hunched shoulders, or thrown back heads. Every step was pain. A pain they were blessed to not feel.
Laini blinked back tears. "Shane," she said again.
"It's alright, baby."
It was far from alright. It was all wrong.
"Please. Rick!" Lori slapped the man's face.
He was desperate at the door, banging hard and screaming at the top of his lungs. Laini thought it was the reserved man breaking. They all did it. The world broke them. It crushed their dreams so ardently that it fractured their minds.
The pain, the desperation in his voice was thick through the air.
She sniffled a little. He'd put all their lives into his hope. He knew he'd killed them. The grief in his tone turned sharp as he shouted.
One walker got close enough. It swiped at them. Shane pushed her out of reach and swung out a knife. It landed in the thing's neck. One sharp twist through and its body went limp. Teeth finally stopped breaking against the others as it bit at them.
Her body trembled with that thing in view. It reminded her of camp. Of the blood. Of her kill…
He pulled them deeper in the group. His hold released her by Andrea and Dale. Her and Andrea shared a silent moment of eye contact. Neither looked too frightened. It was the resignation to death they'd accepted. Andrea, already dead inside. Laini, ready to be.
"Rick." Shane curled his arm around Rick's neck so their faces were close. Close enough that there was no space to look away. "We need to leave. There is nothing here. We have to go to Fort Benning."
"But there's -."
"Rick! The CDC is dead."
There was more commotion. Daryl was using more bolts. More growls were closer. Daryl dropped the crossbow to its strap on his shoulder as he was forced to fight face to face.
T-Dog stepped out to use the weight of his bag to knock the walker off its feet. It gave Daryl a moment to strike it through the skull.
The group was fraught with panic. Shadows caught the edge of their eyes, more and more they were convinced there was death out in the darkness. It surrounded them. They were but little mice caught in a dead end of a maze, waiting for the cat to come brutalize them.
Shane's ears perked when they heard the noises. Time was up. Their blood was on the menu.
He moved through the group of survivors to the front. His voice called Daryl and T-Dog back. They formed a formation around, weapons brandished. They, the soldiers of protection. The battle laid at their feet as the city brought more toward them. More death, more poison, more teeth.
The shotgun in his arms was only good for two shots. Then he'd resorted to a knife. T-Dog's machete was all he had to take out a city's worth of infected dead. And there was no telling what Daryl was capable of without his crossbow, but his bolts weren't forever. Neither was he.
It was the breath before the descent to chaos, probably their deaths, when the enemy was still out of range, when a giant grinding sound started behind their backs.
A large metal door shrieked open. The foyer of the CDC building just beyond the open mouth. Their faces turned to shock. Rick recovered quickly. He pushed Lori, Carol and the children inside. One after another, he pushed the group inside. Laini was one of the last to enter. She didn't want to turn her back to Shane in fear of what might happen with no one watching.
The light magnified the reality around them. Lots more were out there than she thought. Her heart pumped to the point of pain when Shane and Daryl finally turned tail to run inside. The doors were already closing when the men neared. The walkers were faster, quicker to the sound and lights and fresh prey.
Daryl and Shane enter just before the opening of the door clicked closed and locked.
It fell to silence. Their ragged breaths of exertion the only thing breaking the air in the empty building.
Rick stood at the head of the group. He looked around. The pistol was out of his holster as he waited.
A man entered. The gun in his hands was military issue, and frightening. He said his name was Dr. Jenner. He was pale and shifty, like an awkward thing in a lab coat. His eyes were strange. A dark hollowness inside them as he stared out over the people he'd given sanctuary to.
"A blood test is the price of admission."
"We're all clean," Rick assured the doctor. "None of us are infected."
"You have to take the blood test to stay."
The doctor was adamant about the test.
Rick gathered them all together to discuss the stipulation. He seemed uneasy of it.
"What's it matter?" Lori snapped. "If it gives us a place to stay."
"Shouldn't we atleast ask what it's for?" Carol said.
Laini looked to Andrea, surprised she hadn't offered her advice since the woman was a former lawyer and never hesitated to give an opinion. Her eyes pushed at the woman's deaden stare. It elicited nothing.
She looked to Shane. His brows were knit in question.
Her shoulders shrugged.
"Let's just take the damned test and get it over with," he finally drawled.
Rick dipped his head in agreement. The sheriff rolled his sleeve up. He met with the doctor and was the first one to give his blood. One by one they did the same. Eerily silent.
When it came to her turn, the doctor was ready, palm up, for her arm. She placed it and gasped at the chill of his fingers.
"A startling discomfort, I know."
She nodded.
"Any conditions I should know about?" His eyes looked into hers for the first time. Their piercing examination straight through her skin.
Her weight shifted. "Like what?"
"Do you faint when you see blood? Are you lightheaded? Am I going to have to stick you five times to get blood?"
She shook her head. "None of those."
Thankfully, the strangeness went away as the tension subsided. The doctor became a host that welcomed them into his 'home' – an underground facility for scientists for a situation exactly like this. It was stocked with water, air, rooms and food.
Glenn was giddy with a chuckle. "Whoa. Food. You have real food here?"
"Quite," Dr. Jenner confirmed. "It was meant to support many scientists. There is plenty of food remaining." His eyes ghosted across their faces. Their worn out clothes, bodies not too far behind in wear. Lori and Carol had clothes that hung off their bodies like sacks. Poor Jacqui was a rail with sunken cheeks. "You're more than welcome to it."
There was a howl of excitement that went through them. Carol and Lori and Jacqui set to examining the kitchens to prepare a meal for the group as Glenn, Shane and T-Dog pushed some tables together while Rick and Daryl and Dale found chairs.
Laini stood off to the side. Her arms crossed at her waist. She felt a presence sidle behind her shoulder. It said nothing. She remained silent, too.
Instead they watched the children chase each other across the open expanse of the room. Their soft laughter was replenishing the mind. A peace of mind, the dropping of the tension in the jaw.
"You embraced it," Andrea said. Her voice was still the makings of anguish.
Amy was a dear. She deserved a fate better than the one she got.
"Hm?" Laini asked.
"Shane. You embraced him."
Really, she hadn't thought about that. There was so much going on to really think about it. Shane was safety. That was easy.
It was the other stuff that made it confusing. "I guess so."
"You're not pissed anymore," Andrea observed. "And neither is he."
"It's not like that. I –." She sighed. "I just didn't expect him to be serious. I wasn't prepared for that. Like, I barely know him. It's scary. He could be a murderer for all I know."
Andrea's eyes followed Carl and Sophia's paths around the room. She seemed to feel something deep inside as she watched. Memories of her sister must have been in her mind.
Delaney thought Carl and Sophia behaved a lot like siblings. She and her sisters chased each other around all day long. Mostly, fighting.
There was clear change in the woman. Her humor, as dry as it was, was absent. Laini and she enjoyed private jokes that felt like old life, reminded them of something from before. It helped release the frustration over what they lost.
That Andrea was gone now.
"But," Laini said as she thought on it longer. "I trust him to keep me safe."
"That's saying something."
"I know I shouldn't," she retorted.
"No. You think you shouldn't."
"They're the same thing."
Andrea's thin lips pursed together then fell at the corners. Her arms laced tight against her chest. "No. You said it yourself. You trust him. Just when you don't think about it. What's that tell you." Her pale brow lifted in question. Knowing her, it wasn't really a question. A playful pondering meant to illicit some thought process. She was good at that.
Shane started looking around the room once the table was made up. It stopped when he caught notice of her off to the side.
He approached. Andrea made no effort to give them privacy.
"What you think of this place?"
"It's something," Andrea answered.
His intense eyes turned to Laini. She felt them brush across her cheeks.
"Something aint right with that man." He said as he observed the scientist.
"He's a scientist," Andrea retorted. "They're all weird, but he might have the answer to all of this."
Shane took Laini by the bicep, leaned forward and whispered in her ear. "I don't trust him. Rick's blinded by this place. Can't seem to notice it. But the man's off. I'm telling you."
Laini looked at the pale, sallow man with sad eyes and felt nothing but pity. "Imagine what he's survived. Braving this alone. Abandoned by everyone." Her voice started to shake.
An arm wrapped her shoulders. "Yeah but we ain't. We've got people. And we've got to get somewhere safe."
At the sound of their murmurings, Andrea must have drifted away because she was nowhere near when Laini looked around. The cafeteria was empty. Sounds of their voices echoed back at them with a twinge of hollow sadness.
It was cold and sterile. There was a lack of warmth, personality, comfort. Like a doctor's office.
"You don't think it's safe?" She asked.
They were locked in an underground bunker of the government's dollar. It was surrounded by thick walls with blast-proof doors and dense, unbreakable windows. There was no place for a walker to get through. Any intruder would be in for a fight to swarm the place, dead brained or not.
If they were not safe in a place like that, there was no place safe enough for them.
"Don't be fooled. This place. It's lying to us. I'll just bet he's lying to us, too." He did not need point. She knew who he meant. "It wants us to believe it is freedom, not a prison. But it still is."
A warm meal was produced only a short while later. Steam rolled off dishes. The length of the table is spread with food they all thought they'd never taste again. Warm! The scent of garlic and onions and mushrooms filled the room. Balsamic roasted vegetables, courtesy of Carol, made Laini delirious.
The stress of the epidemic had her tense. Her stomach remained tight, unwilling to accept more than a few swallows at a time.
Her appetite ramped fully at the mouth watering smells all in her head.
Shane's arm dangled off the back of her chair as they ate. His mood lifted when a bottle of wine was produced. It was a sweet red. The label was something she knew he recognized.
He poured a few swallows of the liquid into her glass with a side smirk.
"You drink wine, Delaney?"
Rick had a few glasses. It had his lips a little looser than usual.
"Yes," she hummed. "I like wine."
"I didn't take you for much of a drinker."
Laini stuck her tongue in her cheek. "Shane must not have told you how we met." Her eyes went to the man at her side as his eyes swam with that night they first fell into their gravitational pull.
Rick looked at his partner with an appraisal, questioning what he'd just fallen into.
Shane's thumb touched the back of her arms. It toyed with her skin out of sight of the others.
"No," Rick finally revealed. "He did not share that one."
"We just assumed it was at a gas station. College girls liked to hang in there to catch the guys before work," Lori stated. The bitter undercurrent of her tone was interesting. It only fueled Laini's suspicions of Shane and Lori. More so, it stung at Laini's pride that she was assumed to be a husband hunter. "It's like a dating service for the ones with daddy issues."
Daddy issues. Ha.
Lori wouldn't be such a jealous woman if she had the father that Laini had. He built enough confidence in Laini that she never needed it from a man.
"Ah. They were just looking for a bit of fun." Shane joked. "The second the blue collar job gets in the way, they don't like it anymore."
"An officer's wife," Lori said. "It's not for the weak."
The wine glass stem rested between Laini's fingers. She swirled the crimson liquid in its clear glass. Splashes against the sides reminded her of blood, blood of the camp, of the dead, of Amy.
Rick looked to his wife with a curious glance before he turned back to the table and cleared his throat. "So tell us. How did Shane ever persuade you to give him the time of day?"
It made her chuckle.
"I met him in a bar in Lexington. He was using some charming lines to hit on women." She grinned widely as she remembered that night. "He made a pass at one of my friends a couple times and to get him off our back, I countered with something he couldn't resist."
Glenn let a boyish giggle escape his lips. He was already feeling the alcohol in his system. There was a youthful shine that came to his presence as it loosened him further. "What couldn't he resist?"
Rick lifted a brow at his partner. Shane gave a sly smirk as he looked back to her. She enjoyed the way he wasn't bothered by the story. Clearly, it'd worked out for him.
"A challenge. I said we'd keep him around for the night to try his luck, if he won. He accepted."
That night there were four girls at the table, including her. Shane figured there was a good chance someone would take a shine to him.
Laini liked the way it startled him to be propositioned like that. She thought it'd shut that big mouth of his.
It only encouraged him.
"What kind of challenge?" Rick asked.
The rest of the table now listened. There was interest in the end of the story. She felt their eyes looking on in wait for a conclusion. All except Dr. Jenner, who stared at his plate in silence only half-listening to their rambling conversations, and Andrea, who slowly sipped from the rim of her wine glass.
Carol flashed her a small supportive smile before she bit into a bit of green beans.
Rick brushed his hand against the stubble of his chin. "A hand of poker, I bet. Shane's a hell of a card player."
She shook her head. "I challenged him to drink more shots than me."
"Shots?" Carl repeated, confused.
"Can take the girl out of college…" Lori muttered beneath her breath as she leaned back in her seat, resigned to the story all together.
"Shots?" Glenn leaned forward. "Really?"
"What are shots?" Carl asked in a desperate way. He was so eager to be grown.
Rick looked at his son with a calm demeanor. "They're little glasses, like this big," he held his fingers up about four inches, "and filled with very strong liquor." The sheriff shifted in his seat.
His wife shot dirty glances at the woman across the table with a deepening fury that only fed Laini's higher.
They had met once before. Before the virus, the end of civilization, before Atlanta. At the two-month mark, Laini had met Rick on her way out of Shane's house one morning. The man had taken off his cowboy hat (what he used as a sheriffs hat) and nodded her in direction. He bid her a good morning.
The formal way he addressed her made her instantly uncomfortable. Hooking up with Shane was a shame to her only because of his profession. NOT because sex was wrong. However, being reminded of traditional values in a blaring light had made her self-conscious at the thought of being judged by someone who didn't even know her.
Rick was polite and introduced himself. She did the same, shaking the hand he offered out between them.
It was a minute before Shane was out the door behind her. She tried to excuse herself away. Shane ducked below her college ball cap to snag a kiss on the cheek when a flush heated up on Rick's face.
"Seeing as it's Memorial Day coming up soon," he said in that stalled way that became part of Rick's drawl. "We have a big ole cook out at my place. My wife and boy would like to meet you. They're tired of this guy showing up every year alone."
She'd been so surprised to be invited and was more flabbergasted that it had not bothered Shane that she was invited.
Of course, her senses kicked in as she got back to college. Her friends, startled by the adventure she'd been taking with a cop. A COP. They convinced her to cancel on Shane, ghost him, and leave it all in the past. That was what she meant to do. Really. But…Shane's wicked little mouth got her back to his place for an entire weekend that happened to coincide with that party. She was all dressed in a fluttery sun dress that was meant for a trip to the beach once she got home to North Carolina. It was ivory with gentle ruffles down to her ankles. She'd worn a cute little summer straw hat with a giant tied bow in the back.
When she met the wife of Shane's best friend, there was no perceived animosity. The woman was polite, welcomed Laini into their home, and made small talk in a small attempt to get to know her. It was a normal evening. Shane had helped grill. To see him sweat over a burning hot charcoal grill had her sweating beneath the breathy layers of her dress.
The sun had glinted off that silver necklace just below the line of his shirt. It'd cleared her mind of inhibitions. The second he flashed that devious smirk with a beckoning stare – she was in his trance.
The CDC showed no such memory of happy times amongst them. It shattered the sun to coldness, and the enjoyment of one another to seething rage from sources too dark to acknowledge.
Rick offered a slow smile. "Don't feel too bad, Delaney. You know. Shane had years of practice. Not many could go toe-to-toe with the man."
Shane cleared his throat with a small chuckle. His eyes burned bright as he admired her face. The heat of his presence, the touch of his fingers touching her playfully, the shared memories in a dense fog that shouldn't be entered around other people.
"So he got to pick his prize." Lori raised her brow as she leaned back close to the table.