Chapter 3

I found my voice again in pieces, standing there in my ruined shirt.

"Do you understand me?" I asked, and he gave a small nod that still knocked the air out of me.

I had called him a good boy.

I had said, out loud, that he was no different from a toy.

He had heard all of it.

I wanted the floor to open.

"Have you understood me this whole time?"

He nodded again.

Shame sat in my throat so thick I could barely swallow.

He had been conscious when I climbed into his lap and used him.

"Why didn't you say something?"

He was quiet for a long time.

"Hard."

Talking was hard for him.

He could follow everything, but the words he could push out were few.

I should have been terrified.

Instead my brain started sorting data, because data was safer than the heat still in my face.

If the virus had left this much of him intact, the things walking outside might still be worth saving.

I grabbed the communicator and tried Dr. Mercer on every channel.

There was still no signal. I sighed.

Then I suddenly remembered the Zombie King he had mentioned before. Ash was different from ordinary zombies in too many ways, but—

But a Zombie King would not let a woman my size drag him home and tie him down.

He had sat in those ropes for days, unable to break free from even a few simple restraints.

Perhaps he had only mutated.

I went back in because the shirt was stiffening against my skin, and I could not take notes like this.

I stripped, washed the clothes in rationed water, and hung them near the heater.

That left me in a bra and underwear in a lab not built for this.

Cold air touched my bare stomach and the tops of my thighs.

Ash looked at me once.

His gray eyes dropped from my face to my throat, then to the thin fabric over my chest, then lower.

He went still.

I felt every place his eyes stopped.

Heat crawled up my neck.

I crossed my arms, then dropped them.

Covering myself in my own lab felt like admitting something I was not ready to name.

The ropes creaked.

He turned his face away so fast I heard the muzzle tap his shoulder.

A flush sat under the cold skin of his throat.

His hands fisted against the chair.

Lower down he was starting to thicken again.

His body had not gotten the message that he was trying not to look.

I was almost naked.

He was still tied down.

The space between us felt too small.

I remembered those two hours and felt my face go hot.

If he stayed like that, I would have to touch him again.

This time we both knew he could hear me.

That thought made my knees feel weak.

I was still standing there when he spoke, each word costing him.

"Down. Box. Clothes."

I stared at him, then went to the basement because I had no better idea.

The supply box was sitting against the far wall, Inside were clothes in my size, bottled water, and enough dry food to last.

I put a shirt on fast.

That was strange. I was sure those shelves had been empty last week.

But the only other presence in this district was zombies.

It wasn’t as if some zombie had deliberately put them there.

I laughed at myself. Maybe I simply hadn’t noticed them last time, and Ash had some kind of sense that allowed him to find them.

I went back upstairs and started teaching him words.

Out of caution, I still did not untie him.

He was still a zombie.

Then one night the lab door burst inward.

A rotting body came through, jaws open, heading straight for me.

I could almost smell the rot on it, and for a moment I thought I was going to die there.

Ash roared.

The ropes snapped like thread.

He hit the thing so hard its skull caved, then stood over the wreck looking at me like he did not know what to do with his empty hands.

Still shaken, I looked at the ropes it had snapped.

"You could break those the whole time," I said. "Why didn't you?"

He was quiet.

Then the words came out low.

"Didn't want you scared."