Chapter 432: Don’t Wear Anything Nice
By the next afternoon, I could walk without looking like something had gone wrong with my legs.
That was good because Chenghai had refused to explain what he meant by getting dirty, and I wasn’t letting him carry me into another date before I knew where we were going.
I stood in front of my closet wearing an old pair of denim shorts and a black tank top while I looked down at my shoes. Sandals were easier. Sneakers were safer. Boots suggested I expected mud, bodies, or both.
Chenghai had only told me not to wear anything I cared about.
That covered most of my clothes.
I pulled on a pair of old sneakers and left the room before I could start thinking about it again.
Lingyun was sitting on the bed with his shirt lifted while Yuche changed the bandages around his ribs. The bruising had spread across his side, dark enough to look painful, but there was no fresh blood.
That was progress.
Lingyun looked me over as I passed. His eyes stopped at my shoes, then moved toward the window.
"Where is he taking you?"
"If I knew, I wouldn’t have spent ten minutes arguing with my closet."
Yuche secured the clean bandage and lowered Lingyun’s shirt before he could twist around to keep watching me. "Chenghai left after breakfast."
That caught my attention. "Why?"
"He was preparing."
Lingyun leaned carefully against the headboard. "He wouldn’t tell us either."
Good.
At least I wasn’t the only person being tortured.
Zhenlan appeared in the bathroom doorway with wet hair and a towel around his neck. His eyes moved over me, then dropped to the old sneakers.
"You’ll be fine in those," he said.
That gave me more information than Chenghai had.
"Is there mud?"
Zhenlan walked toward me and put one hand on my waist. "Probably."
"Water?"
"Maybe."
"Zombies?"
"No."
His mouth touched mine before I could ask anything else. The kiss was slow and warm, with none of the distance he used to put between us whenever another man entered the room.
Lingyun watched openly from the bed.
Yuche pushed him back against the pillows without looking away from the fresh bandages.
Zhenlan’s thumb brushed the bare skin above my shorts before he stepped back. "He’s waiting downstairs."
I left before Lingyun found enough air to say something stupid.
Chenghai stood near the front doors with a canvas bag over one shoulder. He wore dark cargo pants, an old T-shirt, and boots that already had dried mud around the soles.
I looked down at my sneakers.
Then I looked at him.
"You could’ve said boots."
Chenghai’s gaze dropped to my feet. "Those are fine."
"That’s what Zhenlan said."
"He asked me."
Traitors. Every one of them.
Chenghai held out his hand. I took it, and he led me through the front hall without telling me anything else.
The black SUV waited outside the barrier. It wasn’t the one we normally used for fighting, collecting supplies, or dragging injured people home. This one had no reinforced spikes, no metal plates over the windows, and no dried blood on the doors.
It almost looked normal.
Almost.
I stopped beside it. "Where did this come from?"
"It was in one of the outer garages."
"And no one has destroyed it yet?"
"Lingyun wasn’t allowed near it."
Ah. That explained everything.
Chenghai opened the passenger door and placed the bag behind the seat. I started to climb in, but his hands settled around my waist before I got one foot onto the step.
He lifted me into the seat.
"I can get into a car."
"I know."
His hands stayed on my hips while he made sure both legs were inside. Then he leaned across me and pulled the seat belt into place.
He could have handed it to me.
He knew that too.
Chenghai’s face passed close to mine as he locked the belt. I thought he might kiss me, but his eyes only moved to my mouth before he stepped back and shut the door.
Apparently, I had to wait.
The air conditioning was already running when he got behind the wheel. Two cold bottles of water sat in the cup holders, and someone had placed a container of sliced peaches between them.
I took one before Chenghai finished fastening his seat belt.
The gates opened as we approached. The plants moved aside, and the metal barrier separated long enough for the SUV to pass through.
No workers came over.
No one tried to stop Chenghai or ask where we were going. A few people looked up from the outer buildings, but they went back to what they were doing before we reached the road.
Chenghai drove away from the property without reaching for a radio.
There wasn’t one inside the SUV.
I noticed after we had travelled several blocks. The space where the receiver would normally sit was empty. There were no maps, reports, weapons, or bags of supplies packed between the seats either.
Only food, water, and the canvas bag behind us.
I settled deeper into the seat.
The city looked different in daylight when we weren’t rushing toward something dangerous. Plants had broken through the cracks in the road, and abandoned cars sat beneath dust, leaves, and bird shit. A few zombies wandered between distant buildings, but none moved toward us until the SUV passed close enough for them to feel me.
Chenghai drove around them.
He didn’t stop so I could collect their cores, and I didn’t ask him to.
We left the main roads after twenty minutes and turned onto an older service route near the edge of the city. Trees grew close on both sides, their branches scratching lightly across the windows as the pavement became broken gravel.
Then the gravel ended.
Mud covered the road ahead.
I looked at Chenghai. "You knew."
"Yes."
"My shoes are going to be ruined."
"I brought another pair."
I turned toward the canvas bag behind us.
Of course he had.
The SUV entered the mud before I could complain properly. The tires slid sideways, caught again, and threw brown water across the windows.
Chenghai didn’t slow down.
I grabbed the handle above the door as we dropped into a hole deep enough to throw me against the seat belt.
He glanced over.
His mouth moved slightly.
"You’re enjoying this," I accused.
He turned the wheel and sent another sheet of mud over my window. "A little."
The road became worse farther in. Fallen branches covered parts of it, and one abandoned truck had rolled onto its side near a narrow bridge.
Chenghai stopped the SUV.
I waited for him to back up.
Instead, he got out.
He walked to the truck, bent beside the crushed frame, and pushed.
Metal scraped across the pavement as the entire vehicle slid away from the bridge. Chenghai moved it far enough to clear the road, wiped his hands on his pants, then returned to the SUV.
I handed him a slice of peach when he sat down.
He ate it from my fingers before putting the vehicle back into drive.
That was all the reward he needed.
The trees opened several minutes later.
A wide field stretched beyond them, hidden from the road by the forest. Tall grass moved beneath the afternoon wind, and an old stone farmhouse stood near the far edge with half its roof missing.
That wasn’t what Chenghai had brought me to see.
Three vehicles waited in the middle of the field.
One was a battered red pickup. Another looked like a military transport that had lost both rear doors. The last was a small off-road vehicle with a roll cage, wide tires, and enough mud across the sides to prove someone had already tested it.
A track had been cut through the grass.
It curved around piles of tires, crossed a shallow ditch, climbed over a mound of dirt, then disappeared behind the farmhouse.
I stared through the windshield.
Chenghai turned off the engine and took the keys from the ignition.
"You said I’d get dirty."
He reached behind the seat and pulled out a second pair of shoes, a towel, and an old helmet.
Then he looked at the track.
"I didn’t say you’d be sitting still."