Page 63 of Doomsdate

Banks of tropical flowers bloom from the low beds, with hundreds of butterflies floating above them or perched on their leaves, the iridescent blues and blacks and yellow-golds of their wings blinking open and closed like eyes. Winking at us. It steals my breath, watching them boldly dance across the air of this little secret paradise made just for them.

“They don’t know anything,” Everett murmurs as a large monarch flits around our heads. And it’s simultaneously the most comforting and the saddest truth I’ve considered today. Here in this enclave, there is no world-destroying virus, no zombie apocalypse, no horrors come nightfall. Just butterflies, creatures that nature made beautiful in the hope that it would protect them somehow. They don’t know, and they don’t have to, and I’m seized with bittersweet jealousy that Everett and I don’t have that luxury.

A slow hiss surrounds us as the misters come on, spritzing purple orchids and bell-shaped bulbs of flowers I’ve never seen before, filling the air with a gossamer cloud of water. Everett leans his face up to the delicate mist settling on us before turning to face me. His eyes grow wider as his smile blooms, and he reaches his free hand gently, gently upward. At first, I think he’s going to caress my cheek, and suddenly my heart aches for him to touch me like that, gentle and lovely and as unconcerned with what’s outside as these butterflies are. But his hand reaches past my cheek up to my hair. The lightest touch, then he pulls away, a vibrant blue butterfly perched on his finger.

“They think you belong here.” His face is dreamlike through the mist between us. Framed by tiny rainbows and clouds of butterflies. “The most beautiful of all their flowers.”

The grand blue butterfly flits away, unconcerned, and Everett tugs me closer by our still-joined hands. I lift my chin, willing him to forget everything I ever said about boundaries and survival, willing him to claim this moment for us and these carefree butterflies instead. His eyes sparkle with pure mischief.

“Come on. Let’s go play astronauts.”

Chapter Fourteen

Everett

I never thought my life would come to this, but here I am, standing in the National Air and Space Museum, staring at Maisie’s tight ass wriggling beneath the bright, shiny orange of Yuri Gagarin’s space suit.

“I can’t believe we’re the same height!” Maisie exclaims as she pulls the shoulders of the space suit over her own. “Five foot two. Who’d have thought an astronaut would be so short?”

“Fits you like a glove.” I swallow, willing my voice not to crack like a teenager’s. Would Maisie fit me like a glove?

Oh, god. She would.

“Help zip me up?” Maisie asks. The cognitive dissonance of zipping a woman I’m intensely attracted to into a historic space suit while zombie tourists idly watch clangs around my head, and yet does nothing to stop the warm, pulling sensation in my cock beneath the white Apollo suit she helped me squeeze into first. I’m about two inches too tall for it, resulting in a knifelike wedgie parting my ass with literal space gear, which, somehow, my sad, horny body is misinterpreting as foreplay.

It’s been a confusing day. I’ve seemingly felt every emotion there is, from the keys incident to making up to finding Gemma’s townhouse empty to Maisie squeezing my hand and asking me to show her around, trying her best to cheer me up. Sadness is such a solitary burden that you notice when anyone cares enough to lift even a finger’s weight of it off your heart.

And Maisie saw mine, saw me trapped beneath the wreckage of my hope, and lifted it off me like it was nothing more than a butterfly.

Is it any wonder that now I’m overcome with an increasingly insistent need to serve her, to run my palms down the perfect curves of her breasts and bury my chin in her trembling pussy as I make her shriek my name? That when I look at her scampering among our nation’s most prized artifacts in those shiny orange pants, grabbing up useful tools and things for her loot bag, I’m relieved that none of my initial plans will force us to part?

I take a deep breath, then count to six. After how last night ended, there’s no guarantee Maisie will want another lesson, so I really need to keep my head on straight about whatever’s in store for us tonight.

And stop staring at her ass.

“Everett! Come check this out.” Maisie’s halfway up a steel ladder, the bright golden foil of the LM-2 lunar module surrounding her like she’s an Our Lady of the Apocalypse prayer candle. My eyes widen with a schoolboy’s alarm, and she just laughs. “Don’t get all bent out of shape, Professor. It’s not the one that went to space.”

She tosses her full loot bag in first, then disappears inside, her voice oohing somewhere beyond the forward hatch. I glance around the sun-bright exhibit, grateful for the massive windows that line this entire side of the museum and the natural light keeping the local zombies dull and senseless. Unlike the other museums we’ve traipsed through, here there are a couple dozen undead tourists scattered around the exhibits—a testament to the fact that even in an apocalypse, the National Air and Space Museum will always be mobbed. There are dozens lurking in the dark restrooms, more awake but also more locked up, trapped within the stalls where they died with locks they’re too stupid to unlatch. Here, though, all is calm and quiet except for the soft tings and exclamations coming from within the lunar module. That, and the vague unease I feel as a dull-eyed granny still clasping her silver cane stares at me blankly, the dried blood of others spattering her white turtleneck in a very upsetting Fair Isle pattern.

At first, Maisie and I were downing every feeder zombie we saw, but it was draining too much of our battery power, so we decided to conserve it for real threats. I watch the predatory elder as I climb up the steel ladder after Maisie. Got my eye on you, lady.

Inside, Maisie is gleefully flipping switches, picking up hoses, investigating them, then moving on to the next thing. “I’ve gotta give it to the conspiracy theorists—this contraption doesn’t look like it could handle spaceflight.” She squints at one of the countless gauges in front of her and shakes her head. “This just says helium. Very suspect.”

I snort as I squeeze my way in, ducking beneath the docking hatch to join her at the controls. Putting the Fun & Stun down, I grasp the two maneuvering joysticks instead, one in each hand, and shamelessly make flying noises as though the black night of stars visible through the port window isn’t just a backdrop. My grip around the controllers goes lax, and I sigh.

“I wish I could fly us to the moon for real.”

“You’d take a boring old rock in the sky over your parents? Must be worse than I thought.” Maisie’s pulled down one of the sleeping hammocks and is swinging idly on it. I sit down next to her, the redistribution of weight on the starchy old fabric making her body slide toward mine.

“If you were there with me, it wouldn’t be boring.” I nudge her with my shoulder, and she blushes. “Besides, then maybe my parents would finally be proud of me. Astronautics was one of the only endeavors worthy of the son of the Colonels Greer.” My tone is rueful as I remember. “Dad was so angry the day the school called and told him I needed glasses, ruining any hopes for a piloting career. ‘It’s all that television you watch! Your mother and I have perfect vision.’ ”

Maisie frowns. “They blamed you for needing glasses?”

My eyebrows rise as I take a deep breath in. “They blamed me for everything.”

Her frown deepens. I can tell she wants to ask more, and I almost, almost want to tell her the hundred and one ways I was never good enough for my parents—but Chicken takes that minute to leap down from my shoulder, hissing at the open hatch. Our eyes lock, and wordlessly we reach for our Tasers. Then I hear it—a low, throaty rumble building in volume from deeper within the museum.

We poke our heads out of the hatch. The great hall is still dead, though the bloody elder’s eyes seem brighter, and her head is cocked upward at an unnatural angle, looking directly at us. All the zombie tourists are, in fact. Still unmoving, still dull-eyed, but watching. Maisie glances between them and the sunny windows.