Be Careful What You Wish For: A Zombie Apocalypse

"Probably," I huffed. "I need to grant wishes, but I don't want to grant yours," I continued, not at all happy with how things were going.

"May I ask why not?" mused Dimitri with a bit of a chuckle. "Does that mean you don't like me?"

He seemed to be flirting with me, but that was impossible. I had a vague idea of what I looked like, and this walking God was definitely out of my league.

"The last guy who made a wish lost his left nut in order to get the dumb zombies. I didn't want you to lose your nuts," I explained. However, like most things in my life, it sounded a lot less insane in my head than it did when I spoke out loud.

What I was not expecting was for Dimitri to tilt back his head and burst out laughing like he had just heard the best joke in the world.

"No, I agree with you," he assured me once he was able to calm down. "I'd like to keep both my balls, if at all possible, for as long as possible. I don't think my girl would like me without them."

"You have a girl?" I snarled, my eyes narrowing on his face as I gripped his throat, dropping Teddy in the process.

Without even thinking, Dimitri grabbed Teddy in mid-air and continued walking forward, ignoring the fact that I was trying to wrap my hand around his throat.

Letting out a snarl, I tightened my fingertips, feeling his pulse beating under them.

"Not yet," he smiled, looking at me from the corner of his eye. "But there is someone I am keeping my eye on for now. Hopefully, she'll agree with a little convincing."

"I won't give up the voices; they are mine, too," I stated, my chin lifting up as I continued to hold onto his neck.

"That's fine. I'll even help you with the wishes if you want," shrugged Dimitri, lifting me up and down with the motion.

"And in exchange?" I asked, my eyes never leaving his.

"Ah, we're almost at the mall. I'll answer that question later," purred Dimitri, handing me back Teddy before pointing to the massive parking lot in front of us.

-----

It took everything inside of Dimitri to hold back. Merde, he didn't even know how old the girl in his arms was. He could be hitting on a child for all that he knew, but for the life of him, he couldn't stop.

Biting his tongue at the feeling of her hand around his neck, his eyes practically rolled back in his head when her skin touched his.

'She is ours,' hissed the voice in his head. 'Fuck everything, kill everyone, protect what is ours.'

His little Kitten looked so unsure and scared when she talked about the voices in her head, but he understood.

He had them, too.

It started when he was 14. Little things that the adults said were no more than intrusive thoughts, but he knew better. The voice wasn't telling him to hurt himself, and for the most part, it was silent, having a pure disdain for everyone and everything.

Sure, every so often, it called for the death of someone, but with the horrors he had seen growing up before going into the police force, that was only normal.

Some people didn't deserve to live.

Luckily for him, his team seemed to agree with him on a lot of his calls. Otherwise, there might have been issues.

But he passed every psych eval given, so technically, he was as sane as the next person.

He would have given her the world at her feet without even knowing her name, and he didn't need the voice to tell him that. The second he saw her sitting against the tree, talking to herself, he was done for. Finding people to make wishes wasn't that big of a deal.

But he did want something in exchange; he wouldn't do it out of the goodness of his heart.

He wanted to be hers, to be her gun when she needed someone killed. He wanted to own every one of her breaths, feel each heartbeat, to know that she was alive and well.

However, he understood that if he came on too fast, she would probably go running off in the other direction as fast as she could.

Unfortunately for her, there was no place in this world that he wouldn't track her down to.

-----

I contemplated for a few seconds about releasing my grasp on his throat, but he didn't seem to be too upset about it, and I was liking it.

"I guess we know where the dumb zombies came from," I muttered, no longer feeling as murderous over my competition. I wouldn't fight over a guy, but killing someone quickly wasn't exactly fighting, right?

I mean, the two were mutually exclusive. One was long and drawn out with an uncertain outcome, while the other was fast with a guaranteed outcome.

Dimitri hummed in agreement as he continued to carry me through the abandoned cars and trucks. I was expecting him to put me down at some point in time, but he didn't seem to be in that much of a hurry, and I wasn't really complaining.

His boots crunched down on the shattered glass as he strolled toward the closed doors in front of us. They might not have been opened, but even I could see where the glass was missing from it. "Shhh," Dimitri soothed as he stroked my hair. "Everything will be fine," he continued. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you."

Nodding my head, I let him lead.

Stepping through the frame, I watched as an almost visible change overtook him. Gone was the smiling man that I had first seen, and in his place was a force of nature.

Everything about him screamed 'run away and hide' as his face took on a blank mask. Looking around the entrance of the mall, I could see why he seemed on guard.

There was absolutely nothing around us that was not destroyed.

Limbs, clearly torn off, lay on the ground as the blood pooling around it started to turn black. Shopping bags were thrown all over the place, their contents ripped or trampled on until you couldn't tell what it once was.

There were no lights, not even the flickering of the emergency lights, but that didn't stop me from seeing the decapitated head, its eyes staring toward us as if to condemn us for not coming sooner.

Too bad I didn't give a fuck.