by D. Brumbley
“They’re both young still. Cory and his mysterious girl across the world.” Anna on the other hand wasn’t as young as she used to be, and she still wanted to make a difference. It was the reason why she had applied to the Initiative in the first place. Even if that acceptance had seemed like an illusion at the time. “Anyway. I better get a move on if I’m gonna head to the Bickford farm.”
“What do you think he’ll say?” Ben asked as he paused with her. Together they stood watching Liam at a distance fighting with the harness he’d used to secure the water tanks. “Logan, I mean. About Larissa and Cory.”
Anna knew Logan wouldn’t want to even entertain the idea about Larissa with Ben, but she figured he would probably agree that Larissa and Cory would make a good match. It just hadn’t been an obvious one, apparently. “I think he’ll leave it up to Larissa. If Larissa approves, I think he would agree it would be a good match. Logan’s a softie when it comes to his baby sister. He just wants her to be happy and to be with a good man.”
“Well, Cory’s that. Or he will be, once he gets a little taller.” He shrugged it off and turned back toward Liam. “Keep me posted. I’ll talk to Dad once he gets back with the girls, let him know what you’re working on. I’m sure he won’t have a problem with it.”
She nodded and started moving away from Ben. “I’ll have my communicator with me. Call me if you need anything, or if anything happens.” Anna didn’t have to say the rest, ‘if anything happens with dad’. They knew it was coming. They didn’t know when he would take a turn for the worst, or how quickly things would change and the end would come, but they were as prepared for it as they could be. The end could be weeks. Months. Maybe a year or two more. It was never easy to tell. “I’ll be home in a couple of days when the Bickford harvest is done.”
“I’m sure they’ll be uneventful. Unless Danny decides to leave the door unlocked on the chicken yard again.” Ben rolled his eyes and waved, then moved quickly to help Liam unload the water tanks. Ben wasn’t a particularly large man, and certainly not a match for Liam, but between them they managed the work. Liam’s inability to take anything in life seriously had Ben actually smiling before Anna even walked away, which was a rare accomplishment in her perpetually-angry brother’s life.
The walk to her truck allowed her to be alone with her thoughts again and solitude was turning into a dangerous thing. Not only was she feeling even more conflicted about her acceptance, but she was headed to see Logan, and that always gave her a twisted feeling in the pit of her stomach. Seeing him had never been easy, but not seeing him had always been worse.
Anna ran back to the house to pack a quick overnight bag (and a few more of Susan’s muffins for the road), before she climbed into her truck and checked its charge levels before she put it in gear. She needed to stop thinking about what her feelings had been. She needed to stop thinking about her own problems finding and holding onto a relationship. She needed to think about Jannah, and her acceptance to the Initiative. She needed to decide if she was really going to leave her family and set off for a new world.
2
It was over an hour drive from the Prince farm to the Bickford farm, and Anna didn’t see a single car on the road the entire way. It was as empty as it was ordinary, and that fact alone was testament to the desolation of the world around her. She drove past long-abandoned houses that had crumpled in on themselves in the centuries since they had last been reliably occupied. Fallen telephone poles and tangled stretches of wire along the side of the road were a relic of a utility grid as defunct as the communities that had once used them.
There was a small cluster of homes between her family’s farm and the Bickford estate that had once been a much larger town. Half a dozen houses, two shops, and one tiny hotel were still occupied. The rest had been bulldozed into piles of rubble long since and allowed to go to seed, though the bones of long-empty streets still remained.
Anna tried to keep herself occupied by looking for radio stations worth her attention, but she didn’t find much by the time she actually arrived at the Bickford farm. The quiet and the empty road didn’t usually bother her, but when she had so much weighing on her mind and nothing to distract her from it, it left her a bundle of nerves. The attempted optimism of news radio shows from one coast of North America to the other didn’t help.
Once Anna arrived at the Bickford farm, she jumped out of her truck so fast it almost seemed like something was chasing after her. It was still early in the morning, and even though the sun was up, there was still plenty of day to fill with work, and yet never enough to get things done.
“Logan!” She yelled out as she approached the house. There was no way of knowing where he was, but yelling had always been a good go-to for her, especially when she was nervous.
Using the word ‘house’ to talk about the Bickford home was like calling Hong Kong a town or the Pacific Ocean a large puddle. Even Logan and his siblings didn’t have a clear and confirmed answer as to who had built the monstrosity in the first place. The most popular rumor was that someone in the area had gotten obscenely rich in the years after the Crisis and had built a massive palace for themselves. They then left no family behind to inherit it, leaving Logan’s many-many-great-grandparents to snatch it up. There were wings and underground bunkers and entire courtyards that couldn’t even be seen from the outside, and that didn’t even include the massive hangar a hundred meters away that housed all the farm equipment for the estate.
It rose in no fewer than five stories for two dozen windows in either direction, and wrapped around itself in twisting, layered branches, always more to discover the moment the eye thought it had taken it all in. The mansion was beautiful, if more than a little on the ostentatious side. It was clear, however, that it wasn’t kept up to the level at which it had been designed to be maintained. The paint on the exterior was dull and cracked in many places. The flower beds leading up to the front door were half-full, and far from thriving. All that remained was the sheer size of the place to speak of its intended grandeur.
There was, however, a man and woman who turned around at Anna’s shout, both of them hanging from the roof by a cable and harness in order to get to the exterior of the windows on the upper stories. Lenny and his wife tended to do odd jobs for everyone within a few hundred kilometers of the Bickford estate, and it was hardly a surprise to see them washing windows even in the early morning. “Morning, Ms. Prince!” Lenny called down from his harness. “Mr. Bickford’s in the hangar, been there since last night.”
Anna approached Lenny and Karen so she didn’t have to yell, but she obviously didn’t intend to have a long conversation. “He’s been in the hangar? He slept there?”
“He set himself up a cot out there when he started working on the equipment a few days ago. Been going at it non-stop since.” Lenny looked every bit as worried as he sounded, throwing concerned looks at the hangar as he dangled along the wall. “He’s usually got music going, but maybe he’s not in the mood today, I don’t know. We heard the machines starting up and stopping a while ago, though, so he’s awake, whatever he’s doing.”
“Thanks, Lenny.” She was worried, but she gave a reassuring smile before she headed over to the hangar. Anna hesitated before she yanked open one of the giant doors, mostly because she had to prepare herself to see Logan. All she saw inside were the hulking machines waiting to be used for harvesting, and no sign of their owner. “Logan? You in here?”
More silence answered her at first, but then in the stillness of the hangar, she could hear heavy booted footsteps moving across the smooth concrete floor. “You got here fast.”
She could hear Logan’s voice before she saw him, but he came around the side of a massive harvester a moment afterward, looking every bit the mess Lenny had given her cause to worry about. He wore a pair of jeans that would either need to be washed half a dozen times or just condemned on account of the oil and grease that covered them. The rest of him was no better, but there was no way
Anna would ever think it needed condemning. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and most of his skin was either singed or covered in the oil and dust from the hangar. He was a mess, but that had very rarely made him less attractive as a specimen of mankind.
He was a good deal taller than she was, and built large, with the kind of imposing physicality that never made it to a movie screen. He had never showcased chiseled abs or rippling muscles, but the sheer strength the man possessed was evident in everything he did. His dark brown hair was a mess that didn’t quite reach his ears, and was pushed out of his way just enough to let him work without being bothered by it. His beard had clearly caught its share of sparks in the course of his work, but defined the hard lines of his jaw. His sharp grey eyes were the only part of him unaffected by the occupational hazard of his environment and his work, looking back at her with a hint of a smile on his face. “I didn’t expect you until this afternoon, if then. I’m glad you were free.”
The fact that Logan was shirtless made her heart beat faster, but she was glad he wouldn’t be able to tell. Probably. Even filthy from work, she had to go back to practicing the same self-control she’d been building up all her life where he was concerned. Look, don’t touch. She was there to work. “It was either hightail it out here or attempt to survive helping Liam and Ben with the water tanks. I will always pick spending time with you over that.” She smiled at him and looked him up and down, though she was making a show of it and hoping that he wouldn’t suspect the thoughts in her head. “No offense, Logan, but you need a really, really long shower.”
Once, he would have laughed. Once, things would have been easy and simple between them and they could both expect the kind of comfort that came from making fun of each other freely. Instead, Logan just smiled and looked himself over. “Once I’m done out here, believe me, I will.” He was working a rag between his hands to scrape off as much of the grease and oil that coated them as possible, but it looked like a losing battle. He nodded toward the machine he’d clearly been working on before she came in, and started walking back toward it with her. “I came out here at the beginning of the week and found out almost none of the cooling ducts got drained the right way at the end of last year. Seeing as the summer was hot as hell, every damn one of them ruptured, so I’ve had to replace every single one of them and re-tune the engines. This is the last one, though. It’s been a long week.”
“You could have called me sooner, you know.” She said as she moved just a little bit closer to him, but she wasn’t about to hug him or even touch him when he was so filthy. Anna had to wonder if that had been his intention, to make himself repellant to anyone who might want to get close to him. “You don’t have to do this kind of stuff alone. You know I’d come out and help you anytime you need me.”
“Liam’s been out here with me most of the time, but he was the poor bastard who had to make the run to St. Louis to get parts. Plus, I knew things over at your house have been busy with your irrigation going crazy and whatnot.” Even the way he stood with both hands braced on one of the machines had him framed in ways that did bad things in the back of Anna’s imagination. “I knew you’d be here. You always are.” He sighed as they got back to the opened engine of the massive harvester he’d been working on, obviously not looking forward to getting back into the belly of the beast immediately, but there was nothing else for it. “How’s everything going for you guys out there? Liam said it looked like things were starting to get locked down, at least.”
At least he knew she was dependable, that was something. Dependable until she made a decision about Jannah, and then…Anna felt physical pain at the thought of never seeing Logan again. Maybe it would be a good thing to never see him again. The attraction, the attachment to him was only getting worse.
For the first time in their lives, they were single at the same time, even if it wasn’t by choice for either of them. Anna had men she hooked up with occasionally, but it wasn’t anything serious. As she looked at him in his current state, though, she wondered if he would ever move on from Melanie, or if he would be…broken, for the rest of their short lives. “Oh, um, things are going good. Thanks for asking.”
“Glad to hear it.” He nodded and started climbing up into the engine, since it was large enough that he had to get his entire body inside to get to where he needed to go. “How about your dad? I haven’t seen him in a while.”
Anna wasn’t sure how he wanted her to help him, so she moved closer to the machine as he climbed up into it. “He’s…well, he’s not getting better, obviously. But he’s not getting worse too quickly. Not yet, anyway.” She sighed and tried not to pay too much attention to his ass. “Do you need me in there too?”
“Just grab the end of this hose to make sure it doesn’t pop off.” He said as he struggled with the other end that was further up in the engine. The way he was contorted inside made it obvious just how crazy the last week had been for him, trying to do the same thing on dozens of similar-sized machines. A few patches she could see on his back (when she wasn’t staring at his ass) looked almost like skin, but were shaded just a little differently to show a patch of medicinal spray he’d put on himself to help speed healing along. They were big machines with a lot of violent moving parts. ‘Safe’ wasn’t a word that could be applied to many things Logan did. But that was life.
She immediately did as he asked, eager to help, though she felt pathetic just watching a hose. “I’m smaller than you are, you know. It would be easier if I climbed in there instead.” It killed her to see how unaffected he was by her, but even when they were younger, she had always felt as though she had been busier looking at him than he had been looking at her. “But I’ll stay put if you say so.”
He fought with the hoses through a round of grunting and swearing until he finally popped it free, making even more of a mess than had been there before. He fell back against another part of the engine in the process, which just brought about more swearing, since he’d clearly done the same thing more than once in the past week, but he pulled himself back up again quickly. “Yeah, actually, can you see if you can untangle that mess? It always gets hooked and shredded behind the alternator.” There wasn’t much room left inside the engine frame where he was, but there was a tiny gap between him and the part of the hose that had gotten caught just barely out of his reach.
“Yeah, of course.” Anna climbed in quickly and deftly shimmied into the gap. It put her flush against Logan, but she refused to let her brain freak out over it. There was work to do, and it was Logan. Her best friend. Nothing more. No matter what her body was trying to say about it.
He had been panicking at the moment that he asked her for help, but he managed to stabilize himself slightly better once she got into place. That cleared up his thoughts to take more notice of the situation he had gotten himself into. Her brown hair was up in a bun, but the scent of her shampoo was a powerful contrast to the oil and burnt rubber of the rest of the hangar, as was the softness of her t-shirt and jeans sliding into place between him and the rest of the machine. He groaned at the sensation, and immediately hoped she would mistake it as him trying to keep his balance inside the machinery. “You, um, you got the tangle?”
It was so hard to focus, but Anna was doing her best as she wiggled and struggled, since even though she was smaller, it also meant that her arms were shorter. She wanted to die by the time she actually got it untangled, since she had been rubbing against Logan the whole time. “Yeah, I got it. This one goes over…here…there, that should straighten them back out.” The dirt on her clothes was starting to compete with his, but she didn’t really care. All she could think about was feeling Logan’s body pressed back against her.
“Great, thanks.” He let her wiggle out first, which didn’t make his situation any easier, then took another moment pretending to work away at another part of the machine before he dropped down next to her and tossed the shredded tubing aside. “Right, well, that takes care of the last of them. Let’s do status check
s and see about getting this party started.”
“I forgot how complicated these machines are. You’re too smart for your own good sometimes.” She teased as they headed to the control room, since Logan had designed the beasts and built them piece by piece and then controlled them from a separate place. They were all remotely operated, huge machines that they were. Anna was decent at fixing things, especially when someone gave her instruction, but she was better at manning the controls. “My dad keeps telling Ben we should just pay you to make one for us too.”
“No chance. I won’t sell.” His half-smile returned as he brushed off his hands and headed with her up to the control room that sat above and to the side of the hangar. “Besides, Liam and I picked up a flatbed a couple months ago. Junker that he had to rebuild the engine on. Now I don’t have to drive the harvesters down to your place one by one, we can just load them up and tell everybody to get the hell off the road.” He pointed to the back of the hangar where a much-abused tractor trailer was parked with a broad flat bed attached to the back of it. “Means we can take half a dozen of these things down to your place once we’re done with them here and get your farm swept and cleared in just a couple days. Save you guys having to hire anybody.”
“Wow. That would be so great, I, um…thanks, Logan.” She stared at the truck and avoided looking at him long enough to eventually convince herself to turn around and move closer to him. The control room was cozy enough for her to easily reach out and give him a side-hug, even though he was too distracted to notice her make the initial approach.