Nothing Lasts Forever

The kids had taken to the mall when the infection had spread. It was now their graffiti-covered paradise. The glass windows and doors to the entrance had suffered minimal damage so far. The oldest person in the mall was twenty-five, and had spent two years there. It always seemed to be hardest on the oldest people. The elderly and middle aged had killed each other, killed their children, their grandchildren, their pets, their neighbors, whoever they could in a fit of frenzy. Their own government had done this to them for some reason, but had not planned well enough. There wasn't a government anymore. Just chaos.

There were no leaders here, but there were those that demanded fear and respect. The girl they called Eve had come to them not-so-early on, and they were at times unforgiving to newcomers. The day that Bugfuck broke out, she and her mother visited her father at his construction site. They were joking about what was for dinner one minute and the next there was another construction worker on top of her father, throwing him against the side of a van. She and her mother had watched in shock as her father tried to shield himself from the blows. Her father was a tough man. He'd been stabbed before, eight times precisely, but he was getting older. Looking back on it, she'd realize that he put an admirable amount of moxie into his fighting and had died like a warrior.

Her mother on the other hand hadn't even had the chance. She was struck from behind with a shovel. The force of the blow made her eyes bug unnaturally, and teeth flew from her mouth the next time it happened. For some reason Eve stooped to pick the teeth up and salvage them, cradling them in her hands -- at least until she'd seen the man drop his trousers and push her dazed mother into the dirt. She put the teeth into her pocket as the man started freeing himself of his boxers and picked up his abandoned shovel, starting to pummel him relentlessly with it.

The first crack had landed atop of his head, but it wasn't hard enough. He asked her if she was next when she brought the shovel down again, still hesitating for some reason. But hearing her mother choking on her own blood soon made the resistance slim to nil. The man's skull was ruined by the time Eve was done with him. Her father was dead and she could tell her mother was dying, but didn't have the heart to even mercy kill her. The puddle of blood from her mother's head was growing greater and greater, but so was the number of men that were beginning to leer at Eve when they'd finished killing one another off. She turned to look at her father and saw that the man who'd attacked him was cutting him open with a switchblade and pulling his intestines out. His eyes were already gone.

It was then that Eve started to run. She'd never told anyone about what would happen in the days after that and was unlikely to. By the time she reached the mall, she was covered in blood, some of it hers, some of it not, and wounded too. It had told most of them everything they needed to know about her -- it was how most of them had arrived to. They let her sleep her hardship off for a few days before they let her know how things would be. When they asked for her name, she told them Eve -- short for Evil. It made some of them laugh, but the others looked at her with dire seriousness, as though they were expecting her to live up to such a claim.

A girl named Trixie had been hellbent on making things difficult from her to begin with. Trixie was tall with long brown hair that several streaks of dye in it; orange, purple, and green. There wasn't something on her face that wasn't pierced and when she talked, she sounded like a snake from her tongue piercing. She wore clothes two sizes too small for her and acted like every boy was her personal fuck slave. Eve had not cowered in front of her and wasn't impressed with her need to reassert whatever status she thought she'd had. Naturally, it pissed the other girl off. Eve kept a cool head every time Trixie would get drunk and try to start something, but finally it took it's toll.

Eve was doing a bit of community laundry in the main strip with a washing board and wooden tub they'd found while doing a bit of scavenging once. She didn't mind and it was good to keep busy around there. It wasn't that she didn't like her fair share of getting into trouble, but she wasn't lazy either -- and a few of the boys were starting to smell a mite ripe. They all were. Trixie staggered over to her, bottle in hand, and kicked the basin full of sudsy water over, splashing Eve's clothes. Eve didn't even bother to look up at Trixie, just shaking her head.

"That was the last of the detergent. You're going to have to find more."

"Shut the fuck up, bitch! You think you're so fucking special, don't you? I know you're just trying to make look bad! You're just a stupid whore who wants Brad! I know you fucked him! I know you did!" Trixie's voice was shrill and her slurred words were carrying on throughout the mall. It was peaceful and quiet, but now everyone was slowly coming out. A few of the bigger boys sped outside to intervene if they had need.

"I never touched him. I would never want to since you've touched him. And I don't need to make you look bad. You do that all by yourself." Eve still wasn't looking at Trixie. She just stared at the wasted water and what had been the last of the laundry soap with some irritation. This meant another scavenging trip.

But suddenly Trixie's hand was in her hair, pulling her to her feet. Then Trixie was cracking her bottle over what had been a stand for a potted plant, but was now used as a communal ashtray. "Fuck off! I won't kill you, I'm just gonna shove this broken bottle right into your cunt so you never forget me! Look at me when I talk to you!"

Eve just started to laugh then. It was so absurd that she had to. Eve knew what fear was, knew what it was to be scared. Trixie just amused her. Before the others could reach them, Trixie was slicing the bottle across Eve's neck and pushing her down face first into the spilled water. Sure enough, she felt her cutoff shorts being pulled down and a piece of glass being mistakenly jabbed into her ass cheek -- but the sensation thankfully stopped abruptly. The world got a little hazy after that and for a while, all Eve saw was the mixture of her blood in the soapy water before she passed out.

When she'd woken up, she touched her neck to make sure that it was no longer gaping wide open. There were stitches over a small patch of her neck. It hadn't been as bad as she'd thought, but she knew she'd have a scar for however long she was going to live. Her eyes were unfocused yet, but finally familiar face came into view.

Chess had taken up residence as their doctor before she'd come along and had transformed the small first aid station into his own little office. He was an egghead and in his former life, had been pre-med at a nearby university. Now he reached down to gently pet her hair. It was probably the most the tender touch she'd received since she'd been there and if she hadn't been high out of her gourd, one she might not have allowed. "You're awake," he finally said, in his crisp voice. For a dork, he wasn't so bad looking. Blue eyes behind thin wired glasses, black hair, and surprisingly tanned skin.

"I'm thirsty." Eve finally said as she tried to pull herself into a sitting position, instead finding her limbs like putty against the cot. She realized too that she had an IV in her arm.

"I'll have someone get an orange julius for you then. I think that would be okay. You didn't lose much blood, which is wonderful, else we'd have been shit out of luck. How's your ass feel?" Chess asked with a joking tone. "You had a few stitches there too. They couldn't pull her off in time before she cut that too. It kind of looks like your ass cheek is smiling now."

"If I could feel my ass, I'd let you know. I'm not going to bother with calling you a pervert since you had to look, but that's the last free one you get." He only chuckled at her before reaching over to rouse the little sleeping Chinese-Anglo girl who he'd been training as his nurse. "Emily, go get her an OJ."

Eve made sure to wait until the pre-teen was out of the room before she hazarded her next question. "Trixie?"

There was a long pause from Chess before followed by a resigning sigh. "Dead. She was executed... it wasn't fast or painless, either. But she attempted murder. Even we have to have some rules and you didn't deserve what she tried to do to you." He paused again. "I'd recommend not looking outside for a while. They've made an example out of her. Her head's on a pike."

She considered it for a moment before finally managing to sit up, the drugs making her limbs feel like they were being weighed down by sand. "They didn't do to her what she said...?" She trailed off.

"The bottle? Oh yeah. That, and more." Chess cut himself short as Emily returned with an orange julius. "Thanks, Emily. You can go now if you want."

The little girl ducked out once more as the two sat in silence for a while longer.

The next day Chess formally released Eve and a party was thrown; any excuse for a party was a good one. It seemed even a little screwed up to Eve, who figured that they hadn't held a funeral of any sort for Trixie either. She was right in that. The only person who didn't celebrate was Brad. Eve had a hard time at first enjoying herself since everyone kept discouraging her from looking outside. She wanted to see what they'd done to Trixie. It was part morbid fascination, part closure.

Several of the boys plied her with liquor and she let them, but made it obvious that she wasn't looking to have any celebratory sex with them just yet. They were better natured about it than they could have been and finally left her to her own devices. The night moved past in a blur until she finally found her way upstairs to her favorite clothing shop where sometimes the owner let her sleep. She found Morgana behind the counter with Grey, where the two of them were browsing the old inventory notes over a bottle half-empty bottle of whiskey.

Eve hadn't had a problem finding things to trade since she'd came to them. Things like doing the laundry was a volunteer service, but people were good about giving her bottle caps, candy, and sometimes spare change. She started to look around in the small basket of odds and ends jewelry that Morgana kept on the counter. The willowy black haired girl nodded to her in lieu of smiling, as did Grey. They had never been happy-looking kids, but most of them weren't with things what they were.

"How much for this?" Eve asked, holding up a bracelet of black twine that held shining blue beads between the rope.

"Nothing. Just take it. Get a new outfit while you're here too. You've made me happier than you could ever know." Coming from Morgana, it was almost laughable. She never sounded happy or looked it. But tonight she carried a scary edge of giddiness to her voice as she spoke.

"Happy because they killed Trixie? That was their doing, not mine. It was her own stupidity that got her killed anyway." And it was something that Eve felt increasingly less good about on the inside though unwilling to admit it. Yet she wasn't going to turn down the offer of free merchandise.

"Please. You know she had it coming. What a hosebeast." Morgana snickered to herself as Eve fastened the bracelet around her wrist and then headed off toward the clothing. She wasn't above picking out something expensive, but not the most expensive thing she could find. Eventually she settled on a black tank top with golden metallic straps and a black skirt that left little in the way of modesty but looked good to run in when her next scavenging trip came. There was little in the way of modest anymore and so Eve wasn't shy about her dropping her clothes in a corner of the store.

"Thanks, Morg."

"Think nothing of it. Hey, I've gotta go check something in the back." Eve simply nodded as she changed into her new outfit, turning to admire herself in one of the full-length mirrors. The party down below raged on. It sounded like Bub was doing some of his famous fire breathing that for some inexplicable reason hadn't yet killed him or landed him at least in Chess's care. The effects of the alcohol were starting to wear off. Eve had never been able to sustain a significant drunk for a prolonged period of time. It made her wonder what kind of painkillers Chess had given her. She'd opted not to take them anymore after he'd released her, but she must not have been reacting to them in an adverse manner -- she was still standing after all.

Eve finally turned to start to head up to the counter and filch something from the bottle if she could, but ran nearly directly into Grey. She'd assumed that he'd followed Morgana into the back. He was just standing there, staring at her, not saying anything. That wasn't unusual for him. Eve hadn't heard him speak more than a few words the whole time she'd been at the mall.

"Hey... Grey. It's nice to see you..." Eve was at a loss for words herself now. His bright grey eyes were boring a hole in her and suddenly she felt as though she should have been carrying a knife with her perhaps. She was more skittish than she would have liked to have admitted after Trixie had nearly slit her throat and crammed a bottle into her nether regions.

Grey fit in just right with the dark decor of the store. He always wore a black leather jacket that was now tattered, as were his tight black jeans. He carried an air of perpetual intensity about him that had made him untouchable. The guys were scared of him and the girls wanted to fuck him, but to the best of Eve's knowledge, none of them ever had. It shocked Eve when Grey reached out to touch a tendril of her purple hair and wrap it around his finger, advancing on her a little more closely.

"What about Morgana?" She asked him. The two were always together. It was feasible that they were an item and the last thing she needed was some other rabid bitch trying to jam glass into her.

"What about her? She's my cousin. And how do you know I'm not just admiring your hair?" Grey asked, his tone laced with the subtle humor of a dyed in the wool smart ass.

"I didn't know that. I thought..." Eve trailed off, suddenly feeling drunker than she had all evening. "If you were just admiring my hair, I doubt you'd have a boner." Eve reached out to daringly cup his erection through his jeans. He let out a gasp and then laughed. His olive skin was suddenly much nicer than Eve had remembered and his cheekbones much more appealing. She was still drunk. She had to be. It was her only logical explanation. She hadn't fucked anyone since she got here, hadn't even turned her head in any man's direction. There was too much else going on to be concerning herself with getting her rocks off. But right now, it felt like a damned good option since  she'd been so close to having her throat slit.

"I've liked you a long time, Eve. When I saw what Trixie did to you... I was pissed off. I thought you were gonna die and I wouldn't have the chance to tell you how I felt. If you don't want me, it's okay. I just needed to tell you..." He was doing his best not to press himself into her hand or make her anymore uncomfortable than she probably already was. He hadn't come onto many girls before.

"Come on, Grey. Who put you up to this? Someone pay you to give me the night of my life or something?" Eve asked, as if it were scarcely believable that anyone should want her. "We've barely even ever spoken. This is the most I've ever gotten out of you." She still hadn't move her hand though and instead of pulling away when she should have, found herself stroking him.

"I know..." He simply said, pinning her against the mirror she'd been looking in before he started to kiss her, his intense gaze disappearing as he closed his lids over his eyes. She didn't pull away, finding instead that one of her arms was wrapped around his neck and she was being lifted up, his arms supporting her. He pushed her skirt up around her waist as she began to struggle against him, pushing him away with enough force that he stopped.

"Not here, Grey."

He didn't bother to her let her down, instead carrying her out of the store and to the sporting goods store where he usually slept. No one else was there. He tugged her down to his mattress and stripped her new clothes off carefully, putting them aside before covering her body with kisses and running his fingers over every inch of her in an exploratory manner. Eve had a hard time relaxing at first, watching the entrance in case anyone could see them. Finally she let him have her undivided attention, seeming to sink into the old mattress with his every touch and kiss.

Their lovemaking started out gentle but soon devolved into something raw and primal. He was every bit the hot blooded young man he was supposed to, seeming not to tire until finally he collapsed beside her and buried his face in her hair. They were silent together and held one another. Evil didn't know whether or not anyone had seen them until the next morning.

Everyone knew by then. It wasn't a secret, not that they made it one; they held hands walking down the strip and until Eve saw Trixie's head on the pike, she remembered what it felt like to be a teenager again.

But nothing lasts forever.