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lips.
    He yanked me close, nuzzling his face against my neck. "You drive me mad, Josie. How can I convince you to trust me?"
    My hands ceased their downward exploration as his words gave me a chill. "Goddamn it, let me go!" It came out as more of a wail than I'd intended. Sunny reached her climax, her wails and pants in concert with a Preacher's own unmistakable growls.
    "I can't," Adam said, "I can't."
    We were both trapped. He clung to me like a lifeline and I wanted to cling back, and I wanted to recoil. I felt sympathy for him, then. He suffered just as I did, right and wrong aside. He was human too, and he hurt. It's the fever talking. The fever!
    I shook with sobs, though my tears were unshed. "Let me go, let me go." He shook, too, but he held me tight. We had conflicting needs. And his were stronger. What could I do?
    Finally, in the warmth of his arms and my fever finally breaking, I slept.
     
    +++++
     
    We split up from his friends in the morning. “We’ve got more ladies to pick up,” Van explained as they wheeled their bikes out from their hiding places. No matter how much Sunny smiled about it, I wasn’t convinced that they didn’t have sinister intentions. Their end goal was to pick up a bunch of girls and start making babies - but did the girls have a say? Not at the end of the world, they don’t.
    “I’m not convinced Satan’s Assholes haven’t stopped chasing us yet, so we’re gonna get back to town as fast as we can. But be on the lookout, who knows if they’ll change their minds when they pick up your trail.” That raised a lot of questions, but I bit my tongue. His problems. Not mine. I just want to go home.
    “Josie.” Van hadn’t spoken to me once, yet, and I couldn’t imagine he had anything nice to stay. I kept my expression blank. “If anything happens to him, I’m looking to you.”
    I held up my roped hands. “Maybe you all would have less problems if you didn’t kidnap people who just wanted to stay home!” Van only shrugged and mounted his motorcycle. Preacher was on his, and Sunny climbed on behind him.
    “Good luck,” Preacher said to Adam, and they revved their bikes and took off. Sunny waved back at us as they pulled away.

CHAPTER 5
     
    We rode down dirt roads and across dry and silent fields. I only spoke up to ask about my knives, and he showed me that they were safe in one of his bags alongside his gun. We only saw the dead once, wandering aimlessly along the treeline of a forest far from us. If they turned in our direction, we were traveling too fast for it to matter.
    I loathed admitting it, but his continuous attention helped me heal much faster than I would have on my own. He knew how to keep the wound and stitches clean. He made me drink and eat, even when I felt ill and didn't want to. He made sure I slept, even when he could have ridden on for hours more. He hunted; he scavenged for more canned goods and clean clothes when we came across houses and sheds.
    I found myself watching him. Trying to figure him out. His leather jacket had that huge patch on the back - “club colors,” he said it was, but it looked black and white to me. It had what appeared to be a devil with angel wings, and above it read, “Devil’s Ashes.” Sometimes I still thought of him as the starving man I’d found and fucked in the street, rather than the man who aimed a gun at me and bound my wrists. It was dangerous thinking that way; I had to make a real effort to banish the memory of that time together. But I couldn’t forget how he’d made me feel, how we’d been so reluctant to let each other go as we walked. That last kiss that I’d had to turn away from.
    Was he doing this because he was decent? Or was it because he was delivering me to more members of that club of his, and didn't want to come home with damaged goods? Was I simply worth more in good health?
    We stopped in a barn one night just as it was beginning to rain. Without my jacket I'd be freezing cold in no