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BEN
When he pads into his room a little after midnight, Ben has the shock of his life.
He flicks on his light and finds Kate curled up on his bottom dorm bunk, her head on his pillow. On the bed beside her is the collected works of Henry James. Her eyes flutter open at the rush of light.
He stands frozen. He’d be a lying sack of shit if he denied daydreaming about this very scene. Except he’s pretty sure her reason for being in his bed doesn’t match up with his fantasy. If that was the case, she wouldn’t be wearing a thick jacket and blue jeans.
She looks like complete shit, though Ben is wise enough to keep this observation to himself. She’s barely slept since Lila and Jesus died. She’s working herself to the bone and popping coffee beans like they’re candy.
He gets it. Sometimes, it’s easier to be exhausted than alone with your own thoughts.
Kate sits up, awakened by the light. If Ben had known she was sleeping in here, he wouldn’t have gone near the light switch.
“I think I fell asleep.” Kate rubs at her eyes. “I was waiting to talk to you.”
He waits in silence, not trusting himself to speak. The last thing he wants to do is to provoke her into moving. He could stare at her in his bed for hours, even if she is dressed like she’s ready to go outside.
That thought brings a frown. Why is she dressed like she’s going outside? It’s the middle of the night.
“I have an idea,” Kate says.
Fuck. He should have known. “And you thought midnight was a good time to work out the details?”
“I don’t want the others to know.” She has the grace to look guilty, though not for long. “I need your help, Ben. I want to capture an alpha.”
He closes the bedroom door so as not to wake anyone. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.” He narrows his eyes at her. “Did you just say you want to catch an alpha?”
She looks him straight in the eye. “Yes.”
There is no response that properly conveys the lunacy of this conversation. Also, he’s pretty sure he’ll wake the entire fucking floor if he opens his mouth.
He does the only sensible thing he can think of. He turns his back on her, shrugs out of his coat, and tosses it across the back of a chair. Then he sits down in the same chair and begins unlacing his boots.
“Ben.” Kate frowns at him. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I’m trying to unhear it, Kate.”
She slips off the bed and comes to stand before him. “Hear me out.”
“No.” His belt comes off and he drapes it over the jacket on the chair back. His Sig and the holster go on top of the desk. The boots go under the desk.
Everything in its place. This brings some semblance of stability to the current situation.
He shoulders past Kate, grabbing the ladder to the top bunk. “I’m going to bed. You can keep the bottom bunk if you want.”
Kate’s arm snakes out, blocking him. “Will you listen to me?”
Two things happen. Her words fan a wildfire within him, heating his carefully tamped anger to an all-time high. Her proximity, coupled with the fact that she’s in his bedroom with the door closed, sends a white-hot spear of arousal through him.
Both emotions are so intense he can’t see straight. He wants to shout at Kate and kiss her at the same. Only his indecision on the matter keeps his feet welded to the floor and his mouth clenched shut.
She must see or sense something, because she drops her arm and steps back.
“I’m sorry, I need to explain. I’ve been thinking about the alpha zoms. They’re a puzzle we need to solve. There are so many things we don’t know about them, but the most important fact is their language. They communicate, Ben. They speak and they organize. We need to learn their language.”
“And how, exactly, do you plan to learn their language?” he demands. “How is capturing one those fucking things going to help with that?”
“I don’t know!” Kate throws up her hands. “I don’t know, okay?”
“Because it’s impossible,” he snarls. “If we bring a dog to Creekside, we’re not going to miraculously learn how to boss it around by barking.”
“But people across time have learned how to communicate with animals. Why should this be any different?”
He’s going to blow a gasket. It’s that simple. He can’t hold it back any longer. The mental image of Kate risking her life to catch an alpha, then subsequently putting herself at risk every fucking day by trying to figure out how to communicate with it, makes him want to break something.
He opens his mouth, anger-fueled words gathering in his throat.
Kate, seeing his face, presses a hand over his mouth. The contact is enough to distract him, giving Kate her opening.
“Before you go ape shit, hear me out. We have to adapt. Three months ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of letting any of you snipe zombies. Now, it has to be done anytime there’s an alpha sighting. We need to learn everything we can about the alphas if Creekside if going to survive.” Her mouth tightens.
God dammit, he knows that look. It’s her the-devil-and-all-the-armies-of-hell-can’t-stop-me look.
The worst part of all this is that she isn’t wrong. They do need to adapt.
He’s known it for a while. But he was thinking more along the lines of extending the perimeter of the dorms to include other parts of campus. Not capturing an alpha and bringing it home like a rabid pet.
“I know it’s a crazy plan,” Kate says. “A lot of my plans are crazy. But I need your help. I trust you to have my back. If I have to do something stupid, I want you by my side.”
Her words take his breath away. His anger is snuffed out in a millisecond, replaced with something else. Unable to digest the sudden onslaught of feelings, he turns away.
“You couldn’t have said all that before I took my boots off?” he grumbles.
“Does that mean you’ll come?”
“Yes.” He grabs his belt, Sig, and jacket, settling them back into place. “No way in hell I’d let you go out there alone. You know that.”
“Thank you, Ben.” The smile she gives him is so bright he has to look away.
“To be honest, I was hoping you’d give up and take the bottom bunk.” He shoves his feet back into his boots.
“You didn’t really think I would, did you?”
“No.” He frowns down at her. “That’s not your style.” He pushes past her, grabbing his headlamp on the way out. The moon is almost full, but having extra light won’t hurt.
The ache in his crotch doesn’t subside until he’s all the way downstairs and has some fresh air in his face. The woman is going to be the death of him in more ways than one.
She, too, dons a headlamp and flicks it on as they head outside. They’re halfway across the compound, heading toward the gate, when a voice stops them.
“Where are you guys going?”
Kate and Ben freeze like two teenagers caught sneaking out of the house at—Ben glances at his watch—12:16 at night.
Eric comes out from the front door of Laurel dorm, a roll of packing tape in one hand.
“What are you doing?” Kate asks.
“Inventorying food in Laurel. I did another sweep and found a bunch more edibles.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Eric shrugs. Apparently insomnia is rampant in this compound.
“So what are you guys doing?” Eric asks again.
Ben doesn’t even bother trying to answer. This is all Kate’s idea. She can decide what she wants to tell Eric.
“We’re running an errand,” she replies. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”
“An errand?” Eric raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“We’ll be back soon.” Kate attempts to march past him.
Eric isn’t so easily brushed off. “You’re leaving the compound?” he asks, incredulous. “You’re going outside in the middle of the night?”
Ben grunts. This is going about how he’d expected. And Eric isn’t about to be deterred.
“I’m coming with you. Whatever you’re planning, I’ll help.”
“You don’t even know what we’re doing,” Kate replies.
Eric eyes them. “As long as you’re helping Creekside, I’m in. Unless ...” he frowns at them. “You guys aren’t, you know, going out for a romantic stroll of something?”
Once again, Ben decides to let Kate field the question. There’s nothing he can say that won’t make him look like an idiot. Not the least of which is the fact he’d actually consider a stroll outside these walls in the middle of the night if it were with Kate.
“No,” Kate says quickly. “We’re going to catch an alpha zom. We’re going to bring it back and study it.” She delivers these two sentences like a threat, as though they’ll kick some common sense into Eric.
Common sense that Kate herself doesn’t have. Unfortunately, these kids are almost as crazy as their surrogate mother. Eric actually perks up at the idea.
“Good idea,” he says. “I have some extra rope in Laurel. Be right back.”
“Grab the dolly, too,” Kate calls after him. To Ben, she says, “Might as well make use of him if he insists on coming.”
“Dolly? For the alpha transport?” Ben asks.
“Yeah.”
It’s a good idea. Better than him carrying an undead fucker over his shoulder, which is what he assumed he’d be doing until now.
Three minutes later, he, Kate, and Eric exit the compound together with the dolly.
“Where are we going?” Eric asks as they close and lock the gate.
Kate doesn’t answer right away. This puts Ben’s hackles up.
“You know where one is, don’t you?” he asks.
She looks at him. “Yes. I found it a few days ago when I was digging up fencing.”
“Where is it?” From the look on Kate’s face, he isn’t going to like the answer
“It’s down on the freeway. Sandwiched between a few cars and a whole lot of zombies.”
“How do you know it’s an alpha?” Eric asks.
“The way the others react to it. It’s trying to give orders to make the horde move, but they’re in a logjam with all the abandoned cars and bodies.”
“And your plan to get the alpha?” Ben has no doubt Kate has something up her sleeve. Her large backpack has not escaped his notice.
“I have some rope,” Kate says. “I think we can drop the rope around its neck and pull it up.”