by Kate L. Mary
“You never know, Lucy. Don’t give up.”
She nodded again but she didn’t look hopeful and I couldn’t really blame her. In this world, people who went missing were rarely found. At least not alive.
Chapter 10
LUCY
Our stomachs were full of stew—we’d eaten the last of it for dinner—and we were sitting in front of the fire enjoying the quiet as more snow fell on the cabin. It was peaceful, reminding me of all the evenings before this one when my uncle and I had sat together, reading in companionable silence that was comforting rather than lonely.
Outside the wind was loud and violent, shaking the windows and making me shiver even though the fire was big and warm. Briefly I considered leaving my overstuffed chair so I could curl up next to Sawyer, but decided against it. I’d kissed him, which I now knew had been a mistake. A childish desire that had come from years of loneliness rather than any real attraction. I’d taken the romance novels to heart and misread the situation, and I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Plus, I now started to wonder if I really needed a man to save me after all. Sawyer seemed so impressed with the things I could do. Maybe I was okay. Maybe I would be able to make it on my own.
“Are those your parents?” Sawyer asked, breaking the quiet that had settled around us.
I followed his gaze to the picture on the mantel and found myself smiling. “Yes. Seamus was nice enough to pack it the night my mom died. He says we’re at Disney World, but I hardly remember it. I was five, maybe. I’m not sure and neither is he. It’s the only picture I have of them.”
I swallowed, studying the picture. In it we’re all smiling and standing in front of a castle. My mom’s dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and my dad was holding me, smiling. His hair had been the same color as mine, although with as faded as the picture was, you couldn’t tell by looking at it. I hated thinking that one day I won’t even be able to see their faces anymore, but I knew it was inevitable. Pictures, just like memories, faded over time until they became nothing more than a shadow of what they once were.
“My dad was the first to get sick,” I said quietly, still focused on the picture. “It started with a low fever, then turned into the aches. By the time the virus hit him full-force he was screaming from the pain in his joints. He died in less than thirty-six hours. By the time my mom got sick only a few days later, it already felt like my world was going to implode.”
By that point civilization was slowly starting to disappear. There was no more TV and the only radio stations still working were the ones that had been taken over by conspiracy theorists. They screamed through the speakers so loud you could practically hear the spittle as it slammed against the microphone in front of them. They yelled about biological weapons and terrorist attacks. They blamed the government for anything and everything.
Not much of what they’d said had made sense to me.
Unlike Daddy, Mama didn’t scream or cry or beg for death. She did her best to take care of me. Even when her legs shook and she had a hard time standing up. She burned with fever, but she was there to tuck me in every night for a whole week. I had started to believe that she’d pull through. That she was stronger than the virus.
I didn’t know she was only hanging on for me.
“It’s nice that you have something to remember them by,” Sawyer said, breaking through my thoughts. “I don’t have a picture of my family, which sucks. I should have packed one. At the time, I was shell-shocked, and then all I could think about was food and gas and trying to find a safe place. All hell had broken loose and the few people still alive would kill you on the spot if they thought they could get a granola bar from you. Then there was the dead, which felt more like a nightmare than anything real. It was horrible.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” I tore my eyes off the picture and turned to face Sawyer. He was staring at the wall like he was lost in the memories.
After a few seconds, he shook his head and turned his gaze on me. “Didn’t you see stuff like that?”
“I saw riots from far away as Seamus and I fled my house. We saw the city burning and the dead stumbling through the streets. I knew there was looting.” The grief over losing so much so fast had driven people to do things they never would have done normally, and once they realized there was no one to make them pay, it only got worse. But I hadn’t seen anything up close, not the way Sawyer had. “Seamus brought me here right away. We were lucky. We only had one close call when Seamus stopped to check on a prepper friend of his. The man was half-crazy and he started firing the second we drove up, but they had some signal worked out and Seamus managed to get him to stop.”
“Damn,” Sawyer muttered.
“Yeah. The guy was already sick and he knew he was on his way out, so he made Seamus take all the supplies he had stockpiled. It gave us an extra five years of food.”
“Five years.” Sawyer’s mouth dropped open, but it only took him a second to recover. “I knew you said your uncle was a prepper, but that’s unbelievable. How much did Seamus have before you got that guys stuff?”
I shrugged even though I already knew. “For himself, he had enough for seven years. Maybe more. But he added me, so that cut his supply in half. That other man had even more, mostly MREs, which we still have a lot of in the basement. He made it possible for us to keep going as long as we have.”
Sawyer gave a little grunt that sounded like approval and I couldn’t help smiling. Seamus would like this man, I was sure of it. Even though I knew there would be a few tense moments if my uncle did walk through the door one day and found Sawyer here, he would ultimately accept him. He was our kind of people.
A particularly violent burst of wind slammed against the house and I found myself looking out the big front window. It was really coming down now, and I knew we were in for a bad winter. Hopefully, it would ease up just enough that Sawyer and I could go hunting tomorrow.
“We should go hunting in the morning if this storm eases. It could be our last chance for a while.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sawyer nod in agreement. “Yeah. I can do that. I should be able to get a deer.”
“I?” I turned to face him, frowning. “You mean we.”
“No. Lucy, you should stay here. It isn’t—”
“Forget it, Sawyer. I’m not staying in the cabin like your little woman or whatever. I can hunt just as well, if not better, than you. With two of us we have a better chance of getting something big.” I sat up straighter so he’d know I was serious. “It’s safer with two people, too. You could run into trouble out there and I’d never find you.”
Sawyer exhaled like he wasn’t thrilled about the idea, but he smiled too. “As long as you’re sure.”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
The morning came bright and clear, the snow drifts sparkling under the sunshine until they were blindingly bright. Sawyer and I ate the last two biscuits in the house and drank watered down tea as we stared out the front window. We had a couple feet of snow already and it was still early in the year. It was going to be a bad winter.
“When did you come up the mountain?” I asked between sips.
“Five years,” he said, his words quiet and sad.
Even though I doubted he wanted to answer me, I couldn’t stop the next question from coming out. “What did you do before?”
I tore my gaze off the snow and focused on the man at my side. His blue eyes were almost the same shade as the sky, but his hair was so long that it constantly fell over them. I wanted to push it back so I could get a better look at his face—it was such a pretty face—but after the kiss yesterday I had decided that keeping space between us was the best idea.
“The first two years flew by. There was never enough of anything. Food, sleep, water, time. It was like living in an hour glass.”
“Were you alone?”
He blinked twice before shaking his head. “No.”
I waited for him to elaborate but he
didn’t, and after a few seconds I started to feel bad for asking to begin with. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s just that I’ve never talked to anyone about it.” He let out a deep breath and said, “I was with my wife’s best friend. Everyone else we knew had died, so Lisa and I stuck together. She had been married to an Air Force buddy of mine, and even though we’d never really liked each other, it seemed natural. And it was better than being alone.”
Lisa. When he said her name his face scrunched up, but it was a different kind of pain than when he’d talked about his wife. With Mollie he’d been sad, but this was actual, physical pain manifesting itself on his face.
“How long were you together?” I asked hesitantly.
He was opening up to me for the first time, and even though I didn’t want to push him, I was curious to know more about this man and where he’d been for the last eleven years.
“Two years on the run, then nearly four years in the settlement.”
His eyes were still down, but his words made me sit up straighter. When he’d told me about the settlement, I’d thought all his experience there had been from trading. But he’d lived there.
“You lived in the unsanctioned town?”
He only nodded.
“What was it like?” I’d thought about it a lot, despite my uncle’s assertion that it wasn’t safe. At least the people there had friends and the chance at having a real life.
“Bad.” Sawyer’s word was hard and final, and a second later he was on his feet and heading for the kitchen. “We should get a move on.”
The disappointment at not learning more was overshadowed by the fact that Sawyer was clearly in pain. He didn’t look at me the whole time we got bundled up, and even when we headed out he kept his gaze down.
It was so bright outside that I had to squint, but it was deceptively cold. The air was frigid and within seconds my nose felt like it was an icicle. Sawyer, who carried my uncle’s bow, walked a foot in front of me as we crossed the yard.
We stopped at the gate, and once it was open I pushed past him so I could take the lead. He didn’t want to chat, which was fine, but it was stupid for him to be in front when he wasn’t familiar with the area.
“Follow me,” I said as he shut the gate behind us.
Our footsteps crunched through the snow, but otherwise the forest was silent. I keep my steps even and as quiet as possible, and my eyes open.
When we reached a point that overlooked a little ravine, I stopped and hunched down. “Deer like to come through here.”
Sawyer said nothing and I started to wonder if he was angry with me, but when I turned to face him, I found him watching me with something like wonder in his expression.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just—”
The sound of footsteps cut him off and we both crouched low. I notched an arrow, waiting for whatever it was to make an appearance. A branch snapped and I held my breath. A second later a buck strutted into view.
He was right in my line of sight.
“Let me—”
Sawyer’s words were cut off yet again when I released my arrow. It flew through the air and pierced the animal exactly where I’d wanted it to. The buck jumped, then turned and ran, darting through the brush to its left.
“Good shot,” Sawyer said, his voice full of awe. “You got him.”
I stood. “I know.”
He turned his gaze on me again and the expression on his face was like he was seeing me for the first time. His mouth moved but no words came out, and when he blinked there was a light in his eyes that I’d never seen before.
“What? Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Nothing,” he whispered, then turned the way the deer had just run off in. “Let me track him. You’re still recovering and it could be a long hike.”
“You won’t get lost?” I asked, slightly relieved that Sawyer was going after the deer. My shoulder throbbed, but I’d toughed it out over the last few days so we would be prepared for winter.
“I’ll follow my trail back.”
“Okay,” I said with a sigh.
“Stay here.” Sawyer gave me one last grin before heading into the woods. The trail of blood the deer had left behind was bright against the white snow. Finding him wouldn’t be hard.
I found a rock that was just barely sticking out of the snow and settled onto it, knowing that if I stayed quiet another animal might come along, giving us more meat for the winter. The wind blew, gentle but cold, and within seconds I felt like my body had fused to the rock. Wherever Sawyer was, he’d moved beyond the point where I could hear his footsteps, and the vastness of the forest felt suddenly alien and unwelcoming. Why, I wasn’t sure. I’d grown up here. I was used to the seclusion and silence.
But something just felt wrong.
A branch crunched nearby and my back stiffened. I lifted my bow, notching an arrow as I waited for an animal to come into view. More footsteps broke through the silence, seeming to come from both in front of and behind me at the same time. My heart pounded as I slowly got to my feet, scanning the surrounding area in uncertainty. It couldn’t be one of the dead—the snow would definitely have frozen them by now—but for some reason I was sure it wasn’t an animal either.
Less than a second after that thought went through my head, a man stepped into view only ten feet away from me. He was holding his hands in the air and smiling, no doubt trying to seem as unthreatening as possible. Only it didn’t work. There was a glint in his eye when he looked me over that was distinctly menacing.
“Am I glad to see you,” he called, taking another step toward me with his arms still raised. “Been lost out here for a couple days. Thought I was the only soul on this whole mountain.”
A couple days? No way. With the snow coming down he would have frozen to death in one night, plus he only looked mildly chilled. His nose was red, but not caked in frozen snot the way it would have been if he’d been out here for a whole day. He was lying, and apparently he thought I was too stupid to know it.
I didn’t lower my bow. “I need you to turn around and head back the way you came.” My voice echoed through the woods, seeming to bounce off the mountain before coming back to us.
The man flinched and his smile melted away, but he didn’t leave. “Hey, now. How’s that for hospitality? I’m just looking for a little help.”
“Leave,” I bellowed, pulling the string on my bow back and taking aim. “I will kill you.”
The man’s eyes flashed and I knew instantly that he had no intention of turning around.
I took a deep breath, then blew it out, preparing myself to release my arrow. Before I could do anything, footsteps charged out of the woods at my back. I spun around, my arrow still ready, but before I’d made it halfway another man tackled me from behind. My arrow let loose and went flying into the woods, and a second later I hit the ground. Snow puffed up around me and I kicked at the man who was now on top of me. He grunted, but didn’t get off. My bow was ripped out of my hand and tossed aside, and then the second man was heading my way.
The man on top of me grinned, revealing gaps where teeth had once been. “Told you we’d find her!” he bellowed, looking up at his partner.
“Damn, you were right. And I’d thought it would be tough.”
“Nope.” The man on top of me looked back down, his gray eyes looking me over. “She’s pretty too. That old bastard thought we’d be too stupid to find his place. Shit. It was a straight shot up the mountain.”
Old bastard? Was he talking about Seamus?
I struggled and kicked, but the man on top of me grabbed my arms and held them against the ground, then he leaned back, putting the majority of his weight on my legs and making it so I could barely move.
The man standing at my side looked around, frowning. “Don’t see a cabin, though. I think we got lucky.”
“I know we’re gonna,” the man on top of me s
aid, his gaze move down like he could see right through my coat.
My blood went cold when the two men cackled in delight. I shifted and tried to kick, but the man on top of me was too heavy. My bow was gone, but I had two knives on me. I just needed to get to them.
“Look.” The man on top of me released my arms so he could point into the woods and I started struggling again. “We’ll just follow her tracks back. No problem.”
“Alright, then,” his partner said. “Get her up.”
The man on top of me stood, grabbing my left arm and jerking me to my feet in the process. His eyes were gleaming when he looked me over, but he wasn’t smart enough to pat me down, and he didn’t notice when I slipped my free hand under my sweater to the knife I had attached to my hip. Neither man did, and they didn’t see it when I whipped it out either.
Chapter 11
SAWYER
“Leave.”
I dropped the deer I’d been dragging through the snow when the sound of Lucy’s voice echoed off the mountains and slammed into me. I took off running, my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I could hardly catch my breath. I had my knife out before I’d taken two steps, and I strained my ears over the sound of my own footsteps, hoping to hear something else, but I was met with silence. It was the most terrifying sound I’d ever heard.
She was in trouble. I had left her alone and she was in trouble. It felt like Lisa all over again, and as I ran I knew without a shadow of a doubt that when I found Lucy, she would be dead. Or worse, I’d never find her.
I was so certain of that fact that when I turned the corner I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at for a few seconds. My feet stopped, nearly tripping over branches covered by the snow, and I took a deep breath. Nothing made sense.
Lucy was standing over two bodies and in her right hand she held a knife. Blood covered the blade, dripping onto the snow at her feet and melting through it like acid. The bodies turned out to be two men. One had a pool of blood under his head and lifeless gray eyes that stared at the sky above him, while the other was holding his stomach and gasping. His breaths were wet and sporadic, and it was obvious that he would be joining his friend very soon.