Gaby was brushing her teeth with a battery-powered electric toothbrush in the basement bathroom when Lara found her. They had cleaned as much of the bathroom as they could — or as much as humanly possible. Even if they left the church tomorrow, at least they could enjoy the bathroom now. Lara and Carly had learned to carve out as much of the old world as they could, even if it was just for a few days — or in some cases, a few hours. You had to make do with the simple pleasures, or else the long days and nights wouldn’t be worth it.
“Are you and Josh having sex?” Lara asked Gaby.
The teenager almost choked on the toothbrush, eliciting a smile from Lara.
Gaby quickly washed and rinsed out the toothpaste into the sink with bottled water. Lara thought her cheeks were flushed red. “God, no.”
“Oh, I thought… Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.” Something else occurred to her, and she asked, hesitantly, “You’re not…?”
Gaby giggled. “No, I’m not that, either.”
“Josh?”
“I don’t know. You think?”
“Well, if you’re not having sex with him, then I’m guessing probably.”
Gaby leaned against the sink and seemed to think about it. “We never talked about it. It never occurred to me to even think of him in that way. I always just thought of him as more of a little brother.”
“He’s not that little, Gaby.”
“I know.” She smiled. “I know he likes me. That’s obvious. I just don’t know how I feel about him, you know, in that way.”
“You wanna know what he thinks?”
She laughed. “He’s a guy, Lara. I know what he thinks.”
Lara smiled, too. She could imagine how popular Gaby had been back in high school. The tall and athletic frame, the better-than-average breasts, and the long blonde hair. She must have driven the boys crazy and made the girls nuts.
“Just in case,” Lara said. She took out a small white-and-blue box from her back pocket and handed it to Gaby.
“The patch?” Gaby said, taking the box.
“Just in case. It’s easier to use than the Pill, and stopping everything to pull out a condom might not be very romantic.”
The Ortho Evra Patch, otherwise known to women everywhere as “the patch,” was a contraceptive device placed on the body that released estrogen and progestin. It did one thing and did it well — it prevented unwanted pregnancies. Lara and Carly had been using it for a while now, because the patch was more efficient than the Pill, which required daily dosage and didn’t last quite as long. One patch was good for an entire week, and you didn’t need it for the fourth week during your period. They usually found them by the packs in drug stores, probably because, Lara guessed, contraceptives weren’t in high demand at the end of the world.
“Were you sexually active before?” she asked the teenager.
“A few guys,” Gaby said. “I wasn’t a slut or anything.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. God, I hope you didn’t think I meant it that way.”
“It’s cool,” Gaby said. She opened the box and pulled out the two-inch, peach-pink squares. “My mom got me the Pill when I was sixteen.”
“So, you haven’t had sex since…?”
“Just once. With Matt, and it was only the one time when I was on my period.”
Lara knew about Matt, a young man who had traveled with Gaby and Josh after The Purge. He was gone — turned, according to Josh, when one of the ghouls bit him.
“That was smart,” Lara said. “Waiting for your period.”
“I’m not as airheaded as people think.”
“You never struck me as being an airhead, Gaby.”
“No?”
“You’ve survived eight months in…this. I think you’re anything but an airhead.”
“Thanks.” She shrugged. “Sometimes it’s easier to let people think that about me. When people think you’re not very bright, they don’t expect a lot from you.” She grinned. “And I can get away with more.”
“Smart girl.”
“Shhh,” Gaby said, putting a finger to her lips. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“Scout’s honor.”
Gaby tucked the box into her back pocket. “You think I should? With Josh?”
“I don’t know the two of you well enough to say either way. What do you think? Do you like him?”
“I do. I just never thought of him in that way. How did it work out for you and Will?”
“It took a while.”
“How long?”
“About three months. Things were a little hazy back then.”
“Josh and I have been hiding together for eight months. He’s a really good guy.” She smiled, and Lara could tell she genuinely liked Josh. “And he hasn’t tried anything. Ever. Which is really cool of him.”
“He does look like a good guy.”
“He is.”
“Besides, it’s slim pickings out there.”
“Yeah, getting slimmer every day.” Gaby made a face. “Then again, it’s easy for you and Carly to say. Your men are hot.”
Lara laughed. “They are, aren’t they?”
“What about Will?” Gaby said, grinning mischievously. “Wanna share him?”
“I bet I know what his answer would be if I asked him.”
“Men.”
“Yeah, men,” Lara smiled back.
Gaby was about to respond when they both heard a loud bang from above them — from the church.
“Stay here!” Lara shouted.
Gaby stared back at her, frozen in place.
Lara was already running. She snatched up the Remington leaning against the bottom of the stairs without ever breaking stride. She climbed the stairs, taking the steps two — then somehow, three — at a time, when she heard screaming (Elise!) and what sounded like male voices, shouting. She couldn’t make out the words, but as she took the last step and burst out onto the chancel, she braced herself for the worst case scenario.
She saw, in the blink of an eye, the girls and Carly, hiding behind one of the pews in the center of the nave. The girls were stricken with terror, an image that seared itself into Lara’s soul. Carly didn’t have her shotgun, her Remington leaning against a pew well beyond her reach. Hearing Lara coming up from the basement, Carly looked up, and the other woman pointed desperately to her left, at the hallway that led to the side door and connected to the parking lot.
Lara turned just as a man emerged out of the connecting hallway, his head appearing from behind a post with a round knob at the top. He was tall and thin, with a large shock of white hair, and he was aiming an AK-47 assault rifle in Carly’s direction.
The man with white hair shouted, “Stay down! Don’t do anything stupid!”
Lara racked the shotgun, the loud sound drawing the man’s attention. He turned and saw her and dived back into the hallway just as Lara fired, obliterating the post and cratering the wall in the spot where the man had stood just a second ago.
She heard but didn’t see the man shout, “Fuck!”
Lara quickly grabbed the doors to the basement and looked down and saw Gaby at the bottom of the steps. “Stay inside!” Lara shouted, and slammed both doors shut. Without the extra lumber Will and Danny had put on the doors last night, the doors were easy to swing.
She looked up as a second man — tall, with a thick neck and bald head — ran out of the hallway. He also had an AK-47, and he spun and saw her and opened fire, and Lara leaped to the floor as the podium in front of her splintered into a thousand pieces. She scrambled up and ran for cover, thin slivers of wood whipping around her like bullets.
I’ll never make it. I’ll never make it!
She threw herself forward, diving headfirst into the choir section, landing on the back of her neck. Lara swore she had snapped her spine, but when she could still scramble back up to a sitting position behind the thick wooded wall that separated the choir from the chancel, she realized she was still in one piece. Barely.