He pushed up onto an elbow, and rubbed at the sharp stubble along his face. “It’s late, tomorrow we can talk.”
“Or, we can talk right now.” Her silhouette danced from the backlighting of the low fire behind her, but he could still see the determination in her blue eyes.
“Fine,” he murmured. “Ask your questions.”
She shifted her weight on the ladder, and glanced down at Cole, who had passed out with one arm under his head as a pillow, and a blanket pulled up to his chin.
“Why did you take him out this morning?” she pressed.
Jin shrugged, considering how much to tell her. The edge of his blanket was suddenly scratchy, and he picked at it with his fingers. “He said he had maps, I thought they would be useful to us.”
She shook her head, seeing through him. “You have your own map. I’ve seen you study it.” When he didn’t reply, she sighed, placed her upper arms on the floor of the loft, then rested her chin on her forearm. “This isn’t the most comfortable I’ve been all day, but I can wait.”
Jin tossed the blanket free and crossed his legs, staring at her. “I wanted to see his camper.”
She lifted her head off her arm. “Why?”
“To see if he spoke the truth.”
“And if he hadn’t?”
He held her gaze, and set his jaw but it still twitched on its own.
“I see.” She pivoted, staring down at the floor. The boy still snored softly, not having moved once since they began their conversation. His boots were neatly propped at the foot of his bed, waiting for morning. “You were going to kill him,” she whispered, after turning back to face him.
“I didn’t want you to do it,” he admitted.
He watched her consider his words carefully before giving him a sharp nod. “And why not? It wouldn’t be my first time.”
“That’s exactly why,” he answered sadly.
A gust of wind rustled the branches against the outside of the cabin, and both Jin and Riley jumped. Her laugh was soft, but lacked any of the warmth that made it friendly. She tapped her fist on the wooden loft floor and then climbed back down the ladder. From the bottom, she looked up at him and pinched the bridge of her nose. She was tired, physically, and mentally.
She fell back into the papasan chair, and began covering herself with blankets. “So,” she said, not bothering to be quiet. “You figured you’d do the dirty work for a while and what, save my soul?”
He leaned over his legs and peered down at her. “You won’t find peace on this path you’re taking.”
“I don’t need you to fix me, Jin,” she warned. “Stop trying.”
After she rolled over and covered her head, ending their discussion, he did the same, except sleep didn’t come to him. He tossed and turned, listening to the sounds of the cabin creaking, of an owl screeching as it flew over the trees, and the dwindling pop of the fire as it died down. He replayed in his mind more times than he could count, the last thing she had said, and whether she truly meant it. He also wondered why he cared so much about this woman who had fallen into his life, so close to death, and so eager for it.
Riley broke every rule Jin lived by, as if it were her purpose to tempt fate every chance she got. He found her fascinating. But, as he rolled around in his bed trying to find a position his body would rest in, he didn’t think that was why he cared for her. Perhaps it was because she was his only friend.
He finally kicked his boots free and tucked the blankets around his feet, swaddling himself into a cocoon. Yes, Riley was his friend. And Jin wasn’t a quitter. She was close to losing herself, and as sleep finally began to force his eyelids closed, he vowed to do what it took to save her. If Jin was there, maybe she wouldn’t have to kill again.
The bottom half of his jeans were heavy from dust and dirt, leftovers from his walk through three towns and countless miles of highway. It had been weeks on the road with little water and even less food, and yet, as Jin kept pace with the wind, he didn’t complain. While he kicked his boots against the rusted side of a bulldozer, and watched the loose dirt as it set itself free in little clouds, he stared up the concrete line that cut through the trees.
Little moved on either side of the road, except for the wind and the clouds. The wildlife had retreated into the safety of the nearby woods, sensing a coming storm. The first snowfall was sure to land just as Jin intended on crossing the mountains, which was why he kicked off the dust and kept walking. Along the way, he’d become indifferent to the decay, and ignored the death he witnessed: bodies in buildings, bodies in cars, bodies in pieces out on the streets. He thought only of the journey and the peace it could bring him. He could outrun the voices and the shadows, but only if he kept moving.
In his dreams, he walked too, never sleeping, always watching the horizon, even if he couldn’t see it. His nightmares consisted of more running than walking. Of being chased through the pines, or down dead end streets by the ghosts of his family. He was never still long enough to listen to the land around him, or find other people, he didn’t want to. People were dangerous, deadly. People killed.
And so he kept on, stopping when his feet could no longer tell the difference between gravel and dirt. On one night, when the moon hung low in the sky, he listened to the nightlife crawl, scuttle, fly, and hoot around him. In the abandoned house he had everything he needed to stay dry and warm, and the lulling effect of the sounds outside quickly put him to sleep. But the house had secrets in its walls, and after Jin’s eyes closed, those secrets escaped. He woke to find a dozen hands on his body, pinning down his arms and holding his legs. They grabbed at his face, and squeezed his throat till he couldn’t breathe. In a panic, he kicked, tried to punch, and screamed, but the struggle didn’t save him.
A woman, who had at one time been beautiful, crawled across his lower body and knelt on his chest. She leaned over him, and Jin cried out when chunks of hair fell from her wet scalp and landed in a slippery mess on his face. As he spit the gore from his mouth, she smiled, and when she did this, the teeth of her lower jaw became visible through a tear in her cheek. Jin’s shirt had turned a viscous red. It stuck to his skin every time the woman moved, and when she brought her rotting mouth close to his, he began to black out. But before his consciousness released him from the ghouls and into an even darker nightmare, she spoke to him.
“Burn them,” she whispered against his cheek, leaving it tacky with slime. “Burn them all…”
Jin woke so suddenly that at first he didn’t know where, or when, he was. He cried out, or tried to, but his voice caught in his throat and remained there, closing off access to his lungs. He rolled from the bed onto the hard floor of the loft and arched like a cat, struggling for air. When it came, and it did, he gasped like a dying man, lost in the open water of the sea, then choked out a laugh from the irony. He was lost in his own ocean of sorts.
His back faced the open rail that looked down over the cabin’s main floor, but he heard the rustle of movement as Riley shifted in the papasan chair. The squeak of wood against wood was louder than Cole’s breathing and intentional in nature. When he turned around, she was sitting up in her bed, a blanket clutched tightly in her hands, watching him struggle to come back to life.
“I’m fine,” he croaked.
She said nothing, but didn’t move either. She waited. Like an outside extension of his subconscious, silently pressing him to divulge a secret. The floor, cold from night, chilled through his jeans, so he climbed back on the mattress that had no frame, and stared at the soft and warm glow coming from the fireplace. Riley followed his gaze, then leaned out of the chair to grab a piece of wood. She dropped it onto the pile of ash and embers, and then stared back up at Jin, anxious for him.
“Just a nightmare,” he confided.
“I’ve had my fair share of those,” she stated.
“Haven’t we all?”
She looked away, back at the fire that was turning the side of her face a sickly yellow color, and then
nodded. “Yes, we have.”
“I’m fine,” he repeated, breaking his gaze with her and flopping onto his sweat-drenched pillow. “Go back to sleep,” he mumbled.
The chair squeaked again, and he listened to her toss and turn in her makeshift bed for half an hour before her body stilled and the cabin finally went silent. He licked his lips, trying to get the memory of that night on the road out of his mouth, but one could not simply forget the taste of death. He’d never told Riley about the ghosts that had followed him down the highways and stalked him through the towns. They had gathered in numbers the farther he walked, as if Jin was a magnet and they were drawn to him. Not until he settled in the cabin to hide from the first snow, did he find some peace. He didn’t know why at the time, or for how long the reprieve from his unwanted visitors would last, but the nightmares from that night, from the young and very dead woman, from her words, haunted him. Since Riley had arrived, he realized, they had come less often.
He went up on a shaky elbow to look down at her sleeping form, flickering from the fire, and thought he may have been wrong. Perhaps it wasn’t Jin who was attempting to save Riley from a dark future, but she who was saving him from a dark past. His head hit the pillow again, and when his eyes closed, he didn’t remember his dreams.
RILEY
I woke from something soft and uncomfortable poking my chest. When my eyes opened, Cole’s face hovered not far above mine, and my hand swung out from under the blanket, connecting loudly with his cheek.
“What the hell!” he cried, pushing away from me.
My blanket became a trap, and no matter how hard I struggled, it would not release my legs. I rolled out of the papasan chair, away from Cole, and landed hard on my left side. Pain exploded through my healing ribs and hips, but I pushed onto my knees and grabbed for the fire poker, ready to stab the kid through the eye if he came closer.
“What were you doing?” I screamed at him, using my free hand to push the twisted blanket off my midsection and to the floor. With my knees, I climbed free of it and struggled to my feet.
“I was just trying to wake you up!” he cried back.
“Why were you touching me? Never touch me!” I screamed louder, grabbing the buttons along the top of my shirt, checking to see that my clothing was all where it should be.
“I-I’m sorry,” he stammered, backing up to the door, which stood open. Wide open.
I aimed the poker at the door and glared at Cole. “Why’s that open?”
“That’s why I was trying to wake you,” he said, dodging around the furniture when I circled the papasan chair. The air coming in from outside was pleasantly fresh. And unexpectedly warm.
With my arm still outstretched for protection, I approached the doorway and called out for Jin to come down from the loft, but he didn’t answer.
“He’s outside,” Cole said, shrinking back from me when I looked over my shoulder at him.
As I stepped outside, Jin came barreling around the front corner of the cabin walkway, gripping the damp railing for balance. He slid to a stop by the door, then allowed his features to soften when he saw me.
“What’s wrong?” he panted. “You screamed.”
“I woke up to him prodding me with a finger.”
He frowned at Cole, then the fire poker in my hand, and the boy let out a strangled sound that was meant to be a laugh, but quickly turned into more of a nervous rumble. “I was only trying to wake her up, just jabbed her shoulder with a finger is all. I swear!”
Jin moved into the room and slid his hand around mine, transferring the poker from my grip to his. When he aimed it at Cole’s head, the boy turned a chalky pale color. “Never touch,” Jin warned him.
“But,” Cole began, and Jin lifted the poker in the air.
“Never.”
Cole nodded.
“Now,” Jin said, turning his full attention to me. “Come look at something.”
I pulled my arms into my coat, and stepped out into the air. For the first time in weeks, it didn’t hurt to breathe it in. I followed Jin around the overlook, and we circled our way around the tree until we reached the bottom. The snow had melted enough that the first step off the ground was visible again. Water-logged, but there.
“Soon,” he said, leaning against the railing and looking out over the drifts. The trees had shaken off most of the snow from their branches as well, at least from the top of the canopy. There was still plenty to wade through in the underbrush. Up to the knee near the trail, it looked.
“Yeah,” I said with a smile. “We’ll be able to leave soon.”
After we climbed back up to the cabin, Jin shut the door and ignored Cole, who sat in his chair, his hands draped over the arms, staring at the ceiling as if he was bored. In the kitchen, Jin flipped the faucet on. It groaned and sputtered, then a trickle of water became a steady flow.
He beamed at me from across the room. “Running water again, finally.”
“How long before we can make it out to the highway?” I sat down on the edge of an end table and watched Jin as he considered my question.
“If it doesn’t snow again, by the end of the week, if we’re lucky,” he answered.
“You’re leaving?” Cole asked.
I studied the bruises on his face, the greens and blues that oddly complimented the color of his eyes and his fair skin. His nose, though not as swollen as it had been the day before, hadn’t lost one shade of its rosy countenance, and matched the inflamed state of his lips. He’d been through the ringer, and I was responsible for that. It was the first time that I felt sorry for the boy. Despite all, in a way he was a victim of the Ark as well. It didn’t make me like him, but it did make me hate him less. If only slightly.
“That’s been the plan from the start,” I quipped.
He leaned forward in the chair. “What about Kris and the others?”
With a nod, I rubbed at the seam of my jeans on the inside curve of my knee. “I’ll be looking for them.”
“That’s it, no plan?”
“If I had one, I wouldn’t share it with you.”
He seemed genuinely hurt, and shifted in the seat so that he could look out the window near the chair. His only view was of the trees, but he stared forward as if watching a movie, engrossed and preoccupied. And based on the occasional twitch of his jaw, he was also trying to keep from crying.
“You’ll take us to your camper first,” Jin said, after a long pause had thickened the room with tension.
“And what if I don’t?” Cole mumbled.
“You don’t have a choice. If you want us to trust you enough to keep you alive, you’ll have to prove that at least some of what you’ve said is true,” I warned.
“You’ll kill me anyway,” the boy stated, with little emotion and no eye contact. He watched the trees, looking at each as if he’d never seen them before.
“Well, then don’t rush the process,” I joked. I half-meant it, but he didn’t look my way to see the smile on my face.
“If I can’t find Kris, I’ll do it myself.”
The conversation ended on that dour note, with Jin and I retreating to separate parts of the cabin, him with a book and a cup of tea, me sitting in front of my own window, watching the valley below as it slowly melted away from the trees. Soon, I promised myself. Soon, I’ll be able to sneak down this mountain and see who we’ve been sharing the land with for almost a month, assuming the weather stays as is. Don’t let me down, Mother Nature, you owe me.
“One week,” I said to the glass, fogging it up with my breath. Neither Jin nor Cole answered, but I knew they could hear me. “We leave in one week.”
Chapter Eleven
DRAKE
His fingers tapped against the windowsill with a feverish sort of anticipation. Four days had passed since the last snow. It rained the night before, which helped in a way, because some of the snow drifts that were too large to clamber over became smaller slush piles, messy, but manageable. It would still be a bitch to w
alk in. The bonus was that Kris had found two sets of old snowshoes in the storage room, shoved behind several pallets, buried under a healthy layer of dust. They clipped onto most standard boots, and added an extra foot, at least, of coverage space. It would keep them from sinking into the drifts as they walked up the mountain. Drake hadn’t told anyone else about them, nor had Kris, so even though he argued about it, he agreed to let her accompany him on the hike. She didn’t want to stay cooped up in the lodge forever, and the others were far less eager to set out in the weather.
The real issue wasn’t if Drake could make it far in the snowshoes, it would be if Drake could make the physical journey at all. His head, which ached and throbbed, went fuzzy when he moved too quickly. The rest of him was healing well, but bending slowed him down. He wasn’t one hundred percent, but he couldn’t remember a time when he had been.
He left the window and went down on the floor to do his third set of push-ups. Halfway through, he realized someone was standing in the doorway, watching. After lowering his torso to the ground, he stretched and sat up slowly.
His unwelcome spectator was Ashlyn, wearing a silk robe that cut off just above her knees, and not much more. She smelled freshly showered, even though her hair was dry and twisted loosely on top of her head. For the second time in as many days, she’d come to his room uninvited to talk about nothing important, and she always brought something with her. She entered and set something down on his bed, then she pivoted, looking around his room as if she’d never been in it before. He said nothing, just watched and waited.
When she turned to look at him again, her fingers played absentmindedly along the inside collar of her robe, but Drake knew it was intentional. He’d not been born the day before. Ashlyn wanted something from him, and was sending clear signals that she’d do whatever it took to get it. What she didn’t understand was that Drake wasn’t interested. Nor was he tempted, not even a little bit. He continued to watch her hand though, as it played with the fold of her robe. He was still a man.
Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost Page 10