Read The Escape for Free Online

landing.”
    “Okay.” She stepped slowly, tentatively, praying her toes didn’t encounter anything in her path. Like dead rats, or worse, people.
    When they felt their way to the first landing, she clung to him, feeling his muscular body beneath his uniform. And feeling the edge of his rifle as it swung against his body on its strap.
    With a grunt, he opened the fire door and pulled her into the corridor. Still completely black.
    “Where are we going if we can’t see?” she asked.
    “To the left. Most people will go to the right, so we’ll go to the left, okay? And I’ll feel along the wall for a door.”
    She had her arm around his waist, terrified of being separated from him. This building is full of ghosts .
    “Here we go.” He pushed open a door, and it swung open, since it had already been broken into at some point.
    Finally, blessed light! Thin moonlight shone in through the open windows. Sprayed on the door, she could see now a white circle with an X through it, and numbers: 1 dead, 0 alive.
    “Someone died here,” she whispered. “Look.”
    Jenna pointed first to the spray paint that the soldiers had put on all the doors when they searched the buildings for survivors, then to the bloated, disfigured foot sticking out from under a thick layer of blankets huddled on the couch. Vermin had gotten to it, tearing chunks of flesh from the bone.
    “I’ll move the body. Stay here.”
    “No, don’t move it, don’t touch it, Barker!” Jenna looked at him in fright. “Please, don’t touch it. There’s only one body, so let’s just go into the bedroom and sleep in the bed, okay? Please? Leave the body.”
    “Yeah, okay. You don’t have to twist my arm on that one.”
    “He must have died last winter, without heat, or food,” Jenna whispered.
    “That’s what would happen to you, too, if I hadn’t found you.”
    “Well, at least I won’t be cold or hungry right before I’m executed,” Jenna said dryly.
    “Enough.”
    Barker pulled her quickly past the corpse, and into the bedroom. The moonlight lit it dimly, and she could see a queen-sized bed with only a sheet on it.
    “Damn it. The dead guy took all the blankets to keep warm.”
    This is it. Time to shine, Jenna.
    She smiled and slowly pulled her shirt off. “I heard the best way to stay warm is to have body heat. Let’s strip and cuddle up. I’ll keep you warm, soldier.”
----
    Barker couldn’t tear his eyes away from her full breasts, naked and so beautiful. It had been too long.
    God, how he wanted to wrap her in his arms and forget everything, for just one night.
    No. Don’t do it. You can’t do it.
    “Put your shirt on, Jenna.” He turned his back to her, confident she wouldn’t escape in the pitch-blackness outside the room, not with the way she’d clung to him earlier.
    He waited for her to tease him about being gay again, but she didn’t. He heard the sounds of her putting her shirt on. The bed creaked when she sat on it.
    “I must really disgust you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
    “No,” he said, swallowing hard. “You do not disgust me. Not at all.” He knelt down on the carpet and looked up at her pretty face. “You’re incredibly beautiful, Jenna. I want you, I do. But I refuse to take advantage of you.”
    “I’m offering myself to you.”
    “Would you have done that back in the day? Before the Pulse?”
    “Everything’s different now.”
    Barker got up and sat beside her on the bed. “Everything’s different, but I’m not. At least, I’m trying not to be.”
    “See?” Jenna wrapped her arms around him, surprising him with the ferocity of her embrace. “You’re a good guy, Barker. You don’t want me to die. Don’t take me back there.”
    Her body felt so good pressed against his, so right. Here, unlike the Tracks, they’d have real privacy. A bed. They could lose themselves in each other’s arms and pretend everything was normal, if only for a few hours.
    “Are you hungry?” he asked.