it was community specific. I nearly suggested the couples just swap for fun and not worry about it."
I choked on my roasted beet, coughing through the laugh. We ate mainly out of the garden and from the chickens we raised. Looting had grown thin after the first year and we'd been quick to try and establish our own independent food source. We weren't the only ones left alive. We were just one of the few groups trying to hold a little humanity together, rather than matching the enemy for violence and cruelty.
"You think demonic?" Kais asked, frowning.
"I dunno about you, but my dreams weren't holy," I muttered, staring at my plate as Kais shifted uncomfortably across from me.
"Fair enough," he said, nodding. "It's a new tactic."
"But to what purpose?" I asked. "I mean…what is this doing to us really, aside from the, um, obvious?"
Making me come in my sheets like a teenager every night.
"Have you felt groggy in the morning?" Kais asked.
I blinked and shrugged. "I'm not a morning person."
"I am. Zach is and he's been sleeping late too."
"I'm not really in a hurry to wake up lately," I said, and Kais fought his smile, shaking his head and rolling his eyes.
Over his shoulder a few women entered the diner. Women were outnumbered in our community, and most of the ones we'd picked up came with husbands. I tried not to think about what happened to all the other women of the world, the ones we didn't find. But the few single women of the community had a habit of letting their eyes slide in our direction. Especially Kais'.
He had dark, tight curls that he let run a little wild on his head. He didn't admit to it, and I didn't ever catch him at it, but I suspected he had some hair product stashed away because that wasn't a natural carelessness. And while Zach and I, and the men brave enough to join us as we left the gates, all did a decent amount of manual labor around the community and a fair share of working out, it was difficult to get Kais to sit down for more than a few minutes at a time. He either had endless energy, or he needed a constant distraction from whatever was running through his head.
But in spite of the attention he received, as far as I could tell, Kais kept to his vows.
I wonder what it's like to have restraint.
"You almost done?" he asked, sure enough starting to shift anxiously in his seat.
I nodded, focusing on my food for the moment, ignoring the invitation in Emma Keene's tipped head. Kais got first glances, I got second—an unrefined and less beautiful option, but I knew how some women saw priests. We were a challenge. Could they make us break? Were they more tempting than our devotion to God? What they didn't know, and I opted not to tell them, was that some of us just weren't very good priests.
Kais waited for me to take the last bite before jumping out of his seat. "Come on. It looks like a storm's brewing."
I glanced out the window and up to the gray clouds starting to gather. "What do you think they'll give us this time?" I asked, rising and taking my dishes to the bucket at the counter. "It's been a while since we had some kind of plague of carrion."
Kais pushed the diner door open and the whiff of sulfur, bitter and damp, hit quick.
"Hellfire," we both said.
I pulled the helmet of the fire suit off my head as I stepped into the old local station, sucking in a deep gasp of air. It was hot inside the building, hellfire turning the world into an oven. Most of the community was down in cellars and basements of the select few buildings we could man and keep cool enough for safety.
Old wooden structures had burned down years ago, before we even arrived.
Part of moving out of the city and up the coast was keeping up our access to a reliable water source. Move too far inland and the water supply started breaking down. Too close along the coast and you had to deal with the new residents of the bays and harbors.
"My turn," Zach said cheerfully, meeting me at the open floor of the fire station's garage. "Kais still out there?"
I nodded and rolled my shoulders, pulling the heavy, hot jacket off my shoulders. "It's moving north now. Should be done in another hour