THE WALLS OF my room close in on me.
I use every breathing technique I have—counting by threes, fours, and sevens and nothing seems to help. Five minutes after entering my claustrophobic room and working on my breathing, a hysterical burst of laughter leaves my throat.
I’ve literally survived the zombie apocalypse.
The laughter turns to tears. Our government did this. Scientists said the earth was heating at an unnatural rate. They also said GMOs were safe. They got it half right. The group of protesters I hung with in college had a hard-on for Monsanto, but we were equal opportunity marchers and went after DuPont, Bayer, Dow, and BASF who practiced the same hidden techniques to keep the population ignorant of what they were doing. All we wanted was transparency. You would think we were asking them to stop their business completely. Labeling food was our objective. Allow the people to decide was our motto.
The honey bee colony collapse was directly tied to Bayer and Syngenta and their use of neonicotinoid. These are the reasons we protested. Money was always a motivator when it came to corporate corruption. And all of our protesting was for nothing because something not used to feed us was genetically engineered to create monsters that almost wiped out humanity. I have no idea which company decided formaldehyde should be messed with. But at this point does it really matter?
Before the first attack, scientists were modifying the genetic code of babies. It was only a matter of time before something went horribly wrong. There are too many people to blame, and I no longer have the energy to even think about the scope of what happened.
The bottom line is we’ve been fighting our own dead. In a way they are not dead, which I think is even more terrifying. They fight together to destroy us. The eyes on that creature held more than basic understanding. It held strategic intelligence.
I rub my arms and start pacing. How could our government know about this and keep it from the public? If what King suspects is true, they knew at the first wave of the invasion. Whereas nuclear fallout did not affect the hellhounds—I should start calling them hellhumans—it killed so many humans and those who survived then faced the hounds. I need a drink.
I walk to my door and open it. Both guards turn their heads and one arches his brow. I direct my question to him. “I need a bottle of tequila. Do you know if there’s any available?” I rush to continue before he answers. “Truthfully, I’m not picky. If you have anything, including a bottle of beer, I’ll take it.”
He nods and I duck back into the room when he walks away, leaving me with the one guard. Boot told me there are two, so I’m never left alone if I need one of them to run an errand. I really need a drink, so I’m taking advantage of my imprisonment for a change.
I put on a nightshirt and shorty shorts and continue pacing, which solves nothing in my cluttered brain. About ten minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s my guard. He hands me a bottle of Havana Club rum. I take it with a smile and close the door in his face. I have a glass of water on my nightstand. The contents go in the sink and I fill the now-empty glass with amazing amber liquid. The first swallow burns. The second not so much and so it goes. It’s been years since I got drunk. Too many years.
I sink onto the bed and lay back against the pillow, the glass in my hand resting on my sternum and the bottle on the nightstand. My newly muddled thoughts take over. I can’t believe I’m sleeping in a place that holds hellhounds one floor below me. They could easily kill everyone in this building. The first glass goes down and I don’t care so much. I drink for another hour, though now that the effect of the alcohol has taken hold and I’m sipping. The bottle is mostly empty and the room spins. Tomorrow morning will not be pretty.
A heavy knock on the door attracts my attention away from the thoughts of hellhounds ripping me to pieces. “Come in,” I slur and stay in bed because I’m too drunk to stand. The man himself enters or I should say the king. Maybe he’s going to kill me now. “Go ahead, do your worst.”
I’m ill prepared for his smile. It’s soft and inviting, taking away the hard lines and making him appear somewhat human. “If you’re responsible for that almost empty bottle, all I need to do is wait you out. Have you ever heard of alcohol poisoning?”
I lift my glass to him and take another sip. It’s good. “You have no…” I hiccup, “idea how much liquor I consumed in college. If that didn’t kill me, this one bottle won’t either. If you drink spirits, join me,” I invite and wave my glass at him.
He sits toward the bottom of the bed at my knee and swings his full gaze to mine. I find his eyes attractive. Not the rest of him so much, he’s just too big. I giggle. Back in the day all I wanted was a man taller than me. Now I have one sitting on my big lonely bed and I’m judging his height as a bad thing. It is. Along with his muscles, which turn me off completely. They do, really. He’s just too much.
“Why can you look into my eyes and I can’t look into yours?” Surprise, surprise the entire sentence came out the way I meant it to... I think.
“Your eyes are jumping from the alcohol and they aren’t giving Beast trouble.” He lifts the mostly empty bottle and I think he’s going to take a drink, but he pours the remaining liquid into my glass and tops it off. “Liquor does nothing for us, so please enjoy without me.”
“Ha,” I say after taking another sip. The fingers of my other hand slide over the bedspread enjoying the smooth texture. “My eyes aren’t jumping.”
“It’s called nystagmus and your law enforcement used it as a way to prove impairment for many years.”
“Your law enforcement too.” My head is spinning and for some reason it makes King prettier. I giggle again.
“What do you find so entertaining?”
“You’re pretty.” My hand flies to my mouth and covers it. I can’t believe I said that.
It’s his turn to laugh. “Pretty has never been used when talking about this ugly mug,” he says and moves his hand to his jaw and scratches his five o’clock shadow. Some day I’ll ask him about the scar.
I just want to remember his answer and tonight could be a problem. “Okay, not pretty, just interest… interesting.”
“I find you interesting too.”
Oh boy are we going to have sex? Did I say that out loud? I must not have because he isn’t running from the room. “You give good compliments,” I say with a wide grin.
His hand travels to my leg and he runs his fingers up the side of my calf. His concentration is single-minded as he follows the movement with his eyes. “Soft.”
“Do you have a girlfriend or wife?” I ask because he’s just touched me and that could lead to other things. Having a girlfriend or wife is something I should know about.
He removes his hand and his expression changes to the arrogant one I’m so familiar with. “I’m King and have no time for women.”
I can’t help laughing at his egotistical holiness. When it no longer seems funny other senses stir. “Is King your title or your name?” My newly found sexual awareness is far from forgotten.
His tone is gruff. “It’s both.”
“Why aren’t you naked?”
“Come again?” he asks, clearly confused.
“I was told Shadow Warriors prefer no clothing and run naked through the night. Problem is I haven’t seen a single one of you naked. Is your naked body something you want kept from the Federation?”
He shakes his head, a smile tugging at his lips once more. “I believe that’s an old wives’ tale. We were raised as human just like you were. My mother would have whipped my butt if I ran around naked.”
Even to my foggy brain that makes perfect sense. I wonder if their large penises were made up too. I tip back the glass and down the remaining rum while heat builds between my thighs. My eyelids feel heavy along with my arms and they begin to take precedent over warm, tingly thighs. “If you plan on hanky-panky, get started. I don’t know how long I’ll be conscious.” This time his hand slides up a bit farther and I like where this is going.
“Go to sleep. I do not have hanky-panky with inebriated women.” I can tell he’s laughing at me, though he’s making no sound.
“Your loss,” I say and close my eyes. Monsters are the least of my worries right now. Sleep is a priority and even sex can wait. I don’t feel the bed move, so maybe the king is still here. My problem is it takes too much energy to open my eyes, so I fall asleep instead.