Last Kiss

The desert will always be home.

The smell of dirt and grit, mountains, brush and cacti pervade his senses, even though they still lay under the even more recent scent of blood and decay. Over head the sun burns across the open desert lands with little remorse, only bring the smell of degraded flesh to new levels of discomfort for any person so willing to cross the open expanses of the American Southwest.
As the pungent odor wafts through the air, he’s forced to once more tighten his black checkered khafi around his face in a failed attempt to cleanse the air some degree. As his hands fall back to his carbine, he once more checks the load before shifting the brim of his cap to keep the sun from already sensitive eyes as if it would be safer than his plans to cross the road. “Hey, you guy’s here the one about the chicken that crossed the road?” He pushes the thought from his head.
Alex pulls his body from the side of the culvert, debris and dead grass tumbling away from the heavy weave of his overcoat towards the earth, their forms slowly rocking through the air. Sun bleached and hastily bound as his clothing and gear may be, it’s only proof that he’s no stranger to survival or the desert wastes that he currently inhabits. As he comes to his feet, the stock of his carbine finds its grove at his shoulder and he levels it at the low and ready, his eyes scanning the immediate horizon.
It lays there before him, an inky black stretching reminder of days that have certainly past, now cluttered in the hulks of once maniacly running beasts having crumbled together in one mass slaughter of New World Cattle. The New World is over though, he needs to remind himself that Second World has come and will be staying around for a while, as for how long, he isn’t sure, but for the time being it runs the clocks and the stars.
His eyes play across the immediate horizon, jumping over the cluttered and battered forms of the metal chariots that blocked the highway, tailgate to tailgate. In his mind all he can do is hope for some obvious sign of threat, some inkling of sound that will cue him to steer clear of one path or another, but for the time being nothing comes, nothing stirs under the sun. He wonders if he might make it past the maroon marred interstate alive.
He pushes the thought back to let it perish.
Alex hesitates no longer, for if he does he’ll over think his plan, and planning always slowed immediate progress. He mounts the interstate in slow careful strides, his feet moving toe-heel, toe-heel muffling his soles first in the brush, and even more so on the asphalt of the interstates shoulder. Even for as quiet as his steps may be, he wonders if it’s quiet enough in the still desert air.
He steps.
The first blockade lays mere inches away, the bumpers of a cargo van and a station wagon locked together in a low speed stop and go collision. The windows of the station wagon are caked in blood, cracks spider webbing across the surface from inside. A battered and peeling ‘Baby On Board’ sticker is barely hanging onto the gas cover. He pushes his imagination from the thought before it over takes him and sends him fleeing from the wreckage. Instead, he climbs onto the roof of the station wagon.
Even in his caution the shocks of the station wagon let out a long winded howl amongst the still desert air. He fights back the urge to run once more, instead surging forward with cautious abandon. He knows if he turns back now he will not go any further and he will not find others. The thought of dying alone in this second world holds no appeal. He pushes forward, letting the shocks continue their hollowed death scream. The sound of scratching in the distance. He hopes a breeze has picked up.
As he leans over the roof the car, he sees the windows broken out, a door slightly ajar. His eyes see the remnants of a decaying body in a child safety seat, one arm missing, a good portion of the body devoured. There lays tattered yellow shards of clothe stuck in a seatbelt and a corpse in the driver seat. His own imagination would have made the scene worse than it was. If anything, he only had the smell to contend with. He steps away from the wagon. Two more lanes to go, and the scratching sound is closer. There is something else, something organic and wet.
Strong breeze today, that’s all.
Just ahead of him, just a gap big enough for a man to slide through between a truck and a minivan. There was more blood on the windows, more reason to pass by without to much study. His steps carry him heel-toe, heel-toe, inches closer to the third lane as the sound of scratching gets louder, and the sound of something wet more definitive. He needs to make it through, there’s no option besides forward. He slips through the gap and past the bumpers. Blood and scratching.
The air is dead, and there is no breeze.
The blood on her lips is foamed from where its passed through her lungs, the rings on her fingers scratch against the sheet metal bed of the truck. Her hazel eyes are slightly glazed over from the shock and he’s left wondering how she’s still alive as he tries to hold back the vomit at the back of his throat. He looks at the image before him and he wants to cry as the organic sound is given form.
The three dead are huddled over her stomach, dirty and blood covered fists cramming mouthfuls of her bowels into their maws as she lays there suffering with no sound. She wasn’t alone though, there had to be at least six other bodies, and nearly twenty of the walking dead. Six bodies, twenty zombies, the odds were far from his favor.
He tries to get a count on the bodies as he wonders how they got caught for lunch. He wants to know where they went wrong and how he can avoid the same mistake himself. Seventeen zombies, seventeen threats. He doesn’t worry about it, the bodies are buffets and he’s still alive, and for now so is she.
She sees him, glazed over in shock or not she sees him now and she reaches out to him with pale hazel eyes and chipped nail polished fingers covered in grime. Her hair is dirty from weeks on end without a shower and her lips are covered in foamy blood. His carbine drops from his hands as her fingers stretch out to grab him from where he stands.
He knows that he should not be entranced, that she is a dead woman but for some reason her beauty holds true, even more so in her suffering, a form caught in the brutal cacophonic clouds of carnage. He takes a step towards her without thought, his hands reaching for the axe handle that lays secure to his rucksack.
Her thin dirty fingers reach out to him, trembling lips trying to form words as she as she tries to push full breathes through her body. He can hear the snaps of the axe’s sheath break loose over the sound of blood and flesh and gnashing teeth. Seventeen to one, his odds have seen better days. He hefts the weight of the axe in both hands, drawing it over his shoulder.
The blade’s edge catches the sun, sending a flowing glittering arc through the air . He can feel the weight pickup velocity through his swing and holds nothing back as the axe head sweeps cleanly across the first dead’s neck. There is no hesitation in the cut, his blade does not get mired in the bone and flesh. There is no wicked gush of arterial blood from the wound, instead the attack is almost unnoticeable until the body finally slumps over. It is a perfect near surgical strike that separates vertebrae and nerves.
Finally blood wells up from the open neck as the zombies body relaxes in more permanent death. His odds are getting better.
She watches him, there is no longer any thought about that. She is watching him, confused as to what he’s doing, her mind slow from the blood loss, her vision hazy due to shock. She wonders why she can’t feel anything, why she can’t say what she needs to say. She wonders why the wet thwack of metal meeting flesh is so dull, even for as close as she sits next to the carnage. She needs to call to him, to warn him that there is worse out in the desert yet. Threats that even zombies are not creative enough to become. She needs to tell him to run away before the real monsters find him. She can’t.
The three that were eating her are done with. He pushes them aside with the axe and the heel of his boot. She watches him through glassy eyes as he kneels down before her, his body centered over her lap as he settles on his knees, his hands laying the axe quietly on the asphalt. His dirty fingers pull the khafi from his face and he glances at the other dead, to engrossed in their own meals to see him as a threat. He looks back at her, a tired, haggard face, right now he is beautiful yet frightening, a monster in his own right, a beast behind man’s eyes. She sees this, she knows this all in an instant, but she wonders why she can’t feel her legs.
He lifts her face with one hand, the other cupping the back of her head gently, a lover’s touch and she can feel her face flush. She hopes its just the blood loss. He leans in close, a lover’s distance and she can feel the warmth of his breathe, smell the days of murk and survival on his clothes. It brings a sense of comfort across her that she welcomes, a reminder of intimate relations in her past.
He speaks, or at least makes an attempt as a croak issues from his throat. She wants to giggle, but she can’t, so instead she sits there, her hands dropped to her sides as he opens his mouth to speak once more. As he does, he leans his forehead against hers, and she looks into those deep brown, monster hiding eyes.
Comfort. Love.
“Never so simple a word did become ‘beauty’ til the gods in the heavens shown a light upon your glory.” Soft, quiet whispers under a burning desert sun, and it takes her breathe away. Even dying she welcomes the kiss with flourish, and lets the passion take her away from the horror that is her own death.
When he pulls his lips away she looks at him, not as a handsome monster, or just some man. And yet that is all that is before her, not a beast, not an angel, he is not handsome, nor is he ugly, he is a plain man with forever deep brown eyes. She wonders why he kissed her, why he said what he said. He leans into her again, whispers into his ear, in that slow melodic tone, “May the heavens care for your star shine glory in aeternum.” She has forgotten about all else as he sits before her. There is no blood, there are no walking corpses, there are no wicked men in that city she just ran from. There is him. There is her.
A jerk of his arms, the snap of bones in an arid landscape.
His hands fall back to the axe laying on the asphalt as her head falls to her chest. He gets to his feet without hesitation and turns back to the scene at hand. Seventeen have become fourteen, with one more right behind him. There can be no hesitation in his actions, he cannot stand by and let these things take him. There will be no signs of mercy nor indecision. He lets his mind drift as the Engine takes control.
The axe is the Engines current companion, the carbine left to the side for time being in an effort to hold onto supplies, an axe only need be sharpened. Fourteen become thirteen, thirteen become twelve as the Engine makes its way through the dead. The husks raised by Campion have no defense from the blade, their flesh no shield from its edge. The fall as wheat before the scythe, for the Engine has no qualms.
It does not exhaust. It does not fear. It does not waiver. The Engine has survived time at war. It survived the early American Riots of the Campion Flu scare, it will survive this second world. It also knows when certain times have come to an end.

She cannot lift her head, but she senses him close by.