Authors Note: The first real chapter of this story and some sex at last! If you've missed it please read the prologue for some plot background:) As always comments are greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading.
Chapter 1
Zoey slipped out of her small house and stole across the street quiet as a mouse, the darkness shielding her as she made her way to the small pub just down the road. She darted from shadow to shadow, uncomfortable with how bright the moon shone tonight.
She was scared but also slightly excited. For close to three months she'd scarcely seen a soul, there had been three cars or four cars traveling on the highway a kilometer away but nothing passing through the village.
But that had all changed tonight; tonight the hotel which had once been the highpoint of the nightlife in this small town she called home once again had light shining through its windows. She moved up the street until she was crouched behind a dumpster peering in through the large windows at the front of the Prince Alfred Hotel.
Inside she spied a strange sight, a young man decisively moving through the large array of alcohol still stocked behind the bar. She'd never been a drinker and her town was evacuated before a run on the local stores could occur. She'd hidden out in her cellar, refusing to leave her sick parents, whilst the army went from house to house, forcibly removing all those who wouldn't come willingly.
She watched as the strange man rejected bottle after bottle, moving down the shelf, until he finally reached a dusty bottle that had sitten undisturbed on the top shelf for a fair while. Zoey watched as the stranger uncorked the bottle and poured a large dose into a glass. She had to admit with his short brown hair, tall frame and athletic body he was pretty cute, from this distance at least.
"What do I do?" She whispered to herself, having become accustomed to voicing aloud her internal monologue. She was scared at what would happen if she approached the stranger. It wasn't the fact that he might turn violent that scared her, well obviously that did scare her but she felt the risk was mitigated by the revolver wedged in the back of her jeans. It was her grandfathers from the war; he'd brought it back from Germany back when the government was less stringent on those type of things. She had a half dozen shots in the barrel and another three dozen in a box in the house. The gun had been kept clean through the years and she'd practiced with it enough during the first stages of the apocalypse to know how to use it. If Zoey had to admit to herself what she really scared of, it was probably the fear of rejection.
"Well fuck it," she whispered, standing up, one hand on the handle of the revolver in her back as she slowly walked across the street to the hotel. She knocked loudly on the door and watched as the stranger got the veritable shock of his life, clean dropping the bottle still clenched in hand.
***
I was standing in a pokey old hotel called the Prince Alfred, a name which gave me a good chuckle when I first spied, it, sipping a fairly decent single malt when the last thing in the world that I'd expected to happen occurred. A knock sounded on the old door. The bottle of Highland Park slid straight out of my hand and I spun around to see who was knocking, hoping against hope it wasn't a zombie banging into something.
"Shit," what I saw was a much bigger shock than seeing a zombie and also a far better sight. A young women, I'd estimate about twenty or twenty-one, stood in the threshold. Her blonde hair ran in ringlets down the side of her face, accentuating her large almond eyes and full red lips.
"Hello," She greeted, her voice was soft and calm, a surprise since mine was the furthest thing from calm imaginable.
"Hey," I croaked, my hand shaking so much I spilled most of my whiskey on to the bench top.
"I'm Zoey," She moved a step closer, her right hand stretched out in front of her, her left behind her back.
"I'm Charles," I placed my nearly empty glass on the bench top and extended my own hand towards her. Her shake was delicate yet firm and her hands were soft without a hint of a callous.
"Pleasure to meet you," I couldn't help it, I laughed at this, "What?"
"Well this is just so absurd," I explained, trying to suppress my laughter.
"How so?" She was smiling now and god was it a smile! Her pearly white teeth were perfectly straight and she had two cute little dimples in her cheeks.
"Well, I mean we're two of god knows how few survivors in the world and I don't know about you but your first alive person I've seen since this thing happened; yet we're acting as if the social etiquette rules still apply!"
"I guess it is kinda surreal," She admitted, shrugging her shoulders.
"Kinda? Damn this is hella-surreal!" I smiled and leant against the bar, "So tell me... Zoey, tell me all about you?"