The Only

CH 18

The music in the Jeep turned out not to be a radio station, but a CD instead. Sex and Love was the only album I listened to before the attack, and now it had followed me into the hard times.

I turned the radio up as loud as it would go, remembering how easy life was. I'm a Freak started playing and Jesse's eyes grew wide.

"Yes, I can dig this!" He said, laughing. "It's so sexual! I love it!"

"You never saw the video," I winked.

The Jeep broke down in a small town just north of Jacksonville. I ejected the CD and stuck it in the case, staring at Enrique Iglesias's gorgeous face for a second before shoving the case into my back pocket.

We jumped out of the Jeep and walked through the broken door of Jack's Burger and Bait Shop. Jesse grabbed a bag of jalapeño pork skins and threw it to me.

"I know you're hungry," he said. "but you're paying."

I chuckled and looked over at the cash register. It had been broken into and the only being behind the counter was a cat.

I stooped down to pet the cat. "Do you take credit?" I asked.

"Hey, Jesse?" I said, looking around the store. "This is pretty good loot. Are you sure you want to keep going north or do you want to find somewhere to stay here for a while? There's bottled water, candy, chips, canned food, weapons, so much stuff we can use. I just don't think we can take it all with us."

"We can stay here for a few days if you want, Stasey. We don't have to keep going. If you want to stop, just say so."

I nodded. "It's just, there's so much good stuff here, and we could relax and come up with a plan. I mean, we have to have a plan, right?"

"Like, a defeat the aliens plan, or a find a place to hide plan?" Jesse asked, sifting through the flat cold drinks in what used to be the cold section.

"I was thinking more of a 'unite the survivors and avenge our home planet' kind of plan." I said honestly.

"Sounds good to me. So we'll find a place to camp out here for a week, then we'll pack up as much of this stuff as we can and hit the road of vengeance okay?"

I smiled. "Okay," I answered.

I munched on my pork skins and meandered down the street, looking for an empty house that wasn't in too bad of shape. Just when I thought I had found one, I heard a rattling and saw a feaster with its back to me, sorting through a trash can.

I turned on my heel and quickly walked back to the store, where Jesse had piled up everything he deemed useful.

"I found a good house," I said, "but there's a pack of feasters outside it."

"Got it covered," he said, picking up a handgun with a silencer and a full magazine from behind the counter. "Joe must have gotten a lot of hold-ups. Where are they?"

I sat my pork skins down on the counter and stepped back through the broken glass door, pulling my army knife from my boot.

We turned the corner and came face to face with two feasters. Jesse fired off two shots, dropping them both.

He held the gun in front of his mouth and blew away the smoke like he was John Wayne. "Easy peasy," he said, shoving the gun into his belt and rubbing his bare stomach. "I'm getting hungry. Back to the store, m'lady?" He held out his elbow like a knight.

I laughed, but my laugh turned to a scream of horror as I watched a feaster jump out of the shadows with a speed of pure determination and sink his teeth into Jesse's flesh, just above the collar bone.

I stood there paralyzed, until Jesse's cry of pain set my heart racing. I ripped open my knife and threw myself at the little bastard, gouging out its right eye. I wrapped my legs around the monster, and shook my knife so the eyeball went flying across the street.

The creature cried out and flung itself around, but I hung on, stabbing it repeatedly. My knife wasn't doing enough to kill it.

Jesse punched it in the side of the face, making contact with its skull with a sickening crack! The feaster collapsed, falling on top of me.

I pushed the body aside and stood up, bending over to pull my knife out of its chest. I looked down at my blood-covered shirt.

"Damn, I just got this shirt!" I fussed, wiping the blood from my knife on the hem of my shirt. "Are you okay? It got you good there," I shoved the knife back in my boot and moved forward to inspect Jesse's wound.

He was bleeding steadily, slowly though. "I'm alright," he said. "It burns like hell."

I pulled the shirt from his shoulders and wadded it up, pressing it to his wound. "Try to stop the bleeding," I instructed.

"Thanks for avenging me back there. I'm sorry, I got so dizzy I couldn't fight it."

"Jesse, you killed the damn thing! Don't be sorry!"

"Yeah...." He spaced out for a second. "How come you never ride me like you rode that feaster?"

"Let's just go back to the store and get our food." I said, leading him around the corner back down the street toward the store. "And for your information, it wasn't riding, it was feminine tackling."

"Uh huh. Well when all this is cleaned up, you owe me some serious feminine tackling."

"How about I -" my thought was cut short as a beam of light came down in the street in front of us.

Soon Timmy was standing there, with his face stitched up, holding a book, with a pistol pointed right at Jesse.