Carl stopped, ready to tear her apart with a few choice words but then realized there was more to it than that. It wasn’t just her being upset that she couldn’t go to the movies with her friends, there was something specific, something that really had to be bothering her. Carl knew Tanya well enough to appreciate and respect her, even if he had just acted like an asshole to her.
He turned around and was not surprised to see her take a step back onto the porch. A brief flash of fear crossed her eyes and he realized that his face was still tight with locked, angry muscles. He climbed up the steps and stepped past her to the porch swing, where he sat down. “Come here,” he told her.
She stared at him for a moment then took a step closer. She stopped suddenly, her eyes widening as she stared at him. “You’re not going to, um, spank me or anything, are you?”
“Spank you?” Carl repeated, shocked by the notion. It was such a shocking thing that he actually laughed and felt a little tension leave his shoulders. Tanya looked to relax a little as well. “No, I want you to sit down.”
She sat down next to him and fell silent, afraid to talk for fear that she had already said too much.
“So what’s your story?” he asked her. “Dustin’s jealous because of Jessie, Jessie’s jealous because of me, I’m jealous because of these people-“
“What? Why?” Tanya asked, interrupting him.
“They’ve got things easy,” Carl said. “Aside from worrying about having enough food for their next meal and fighting off flesh-eating neighbors, they’ve got a nice little setup here.”
“Oh my god!” Tanya said, surprised at his logic and laughing because of it. “You think our problems are worse than that?”
Carl nodded. “Your brother’s got some hard lessons to learn and they ain’t coming any way except by living them. Meantime, we’re going to have to deal with him. Jessie, well, she’s got enough issues to have her own subscription.”
“You’re not so uncomplicated yourself,” Tanya said, poking him in the thigh with her finger for emphasis.
“It’s a package deal darlin’,” he told her. “I make it easy for people to deal with me, so easy that most don’t. Now, what’s eating at you? Where do you fit into this?”
Tanya sighed as she turned her thoughts to herself. “Aggie has a homemade calendar,” she said, staring up at the clubhouse. “I had forgotten all about it, so caught up in living like a gypsy. Next week’s my 18th birthday, Carl. I turn 18!”
Carl nodded. “Don’t worry, legal or not, I ain’t messing around with you,” he said. “Although that does make you old enough to enjoy a spanking.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “You really are bad at this,” she said, bursting into a laugh at the very uncharacteristic thing he had said.
Carl chuckled, pleased to see he had at least distracted her from being upset. She shook her head at him and went on, “Didn’t figure I’d spend it like this, you know? None of my friends or family, just a bunch of strangers in a dusty little campground in the middle of nowhere.”
“No friends, no family?” Carl asked her, surprised. He felt a twinge of hurt at her words, but managed to ignore it.
“Well, you guys, sure, but it’s not like we’ve got a lot of history or anything. Sure, Dusty is family but…well.”
“You missing your mom?”
She nodded, a tear sliding down her cheek. In a move that surprised him, Carl somehow knew to raise his arm and slip it around her shoulders comfortingly. Tanya snuggled into his side and smiled even as she sniffed away the tears.
“She’d have hated you,” she said with a small laugh. “So strong and opinionated – she had a thing for sensitive and metro guys. I don’t know how she ever hooked up with my dad, except he gave her whatever she wanted. I thought it was because he loved her, but lately I think I’ve realized he just did it to shut her up.”
Carl fought the urge to nod. He could understand that easily enough, even though it had been years since he had even considered having a relationship.
She turned to look at him, her eyes red from fighting tears. “I don’t want to go back Carl… ever.”
“Whoa! Never?” Carl asked, surprised. “What are you going to do? I’m helping you guys get safe, I ain’t… never?”
Tanya nodded, moisture threatening to spill again. She laughed and wiped at her eyes, sniffing self-consciously. “This is pathetic,” she mumbled.
Carl stared at her for a moment then looked away. Finally he looked back at her. “Giving up a lot, ain’t you?”
She shrugged. “I guess,” she said. “Carl, I’ve been more alive in the last few days than ever before. Ever! Even when I qualified for the Olympics it was nothing like this.”
“This ain’t living, this is surviving, remember?” Carl said to her, throwing her own words back at her.
She shook her head. “You’ve been surviving. There’s no reason not to live while you’re at it too.”
Carl sighed. “So is that it, you just want to turn your back on your dad and your old life? What do you think there is for you out here?”
She smiled softly at him and then glanced inside, to where the sniper rifle he had given her was resting against a wall.
“You’re good,” he admitted. “Most potential I ever seen, but it’s not an easy life living by the gun. You had trouble killing that deer, remember?”
“Yeah, but the deer was cute. I didn’t have any trouble back at Edland,” she said defensively.
“What didn’t you have any trouble doing?” Carl pressed.
“Oh… um… shooting people,” she said a little hesitantly.
“More than that,” he insisted.
“Killing?” She asked, her expression seeming to find the phrase distasteful. She took a breath and nodded. “Yeah, killing people.”
“It ain’t a video game,” Carl said. “The deer was fuzzy and cute and you saw it up close when we went and got it. Those people, they were a quarter mile away. You didn’t see them up close. You couldn’t hear them and smell them and touch them. It’s different, once you know what that’s like.”
Tanya’s lower lip was white where she was biting it as she listened to him. “Maybe they were assholes and losers, maybe they kicked puppies and slapped their women around. And maybe they had a kid at home that’s going to wonder why their daddy never came home to play with them,” he said, driving his point home.
Tanya’s lips parted, shocked at the new thoughts Carl had given her.
“Hey,” Carl said, realizing he might have hit her too hard with the image. “You did what I told you to do. You did what you had to do if you wanted to see your brother and Jessie alive again. You done the right thing, but you need to know your targets, they ain’t just nameless faces. Out here people fight and kill. Sometimes the reasons don’t make sense, but that don’t make you any less dead if you hesitate or feel sorry for somebody.”
Tanya nodded, her jaw now clenched again.
“Ready to go back yet?” he asked, smiling.
She shook her head. “I can do it,” she said softly, then she repeated herself more insistently.
“All right, we’ll see what happens and take it from there,” Carl said, honestly having no idea what to do with her. The immediate future he had figured out, now though he was beginning to wonder. Maybe slipping away some night would be his best bet. Safest for him, anyhow.
He smiled reassuringly to her, even though he didn’t feel it himself. Tanya threw her arm around him and gave him a hug, then a surprising peck on the cheek before she leaned back in the swing. A soft sound drew their attention towards the clubhouse. Jessie was standing there, looking like somebody had just kicked her in the gut.
“Jessie!” Tanya said, hopping to her feet even as the woman turned and took off again.
“Now what?” Carl growled, wondering if anything that woman did would ever make sense to him.
“Now go after her!” Tanya said, turning and pulling on his arm to
get him to stand up. “She’s a mess right now Carl, there’s no telling what she’s going to do. You have to let her know you weren’t trying to put the moves on me!”
“For the love of…”
“Carl! Go,” she insisted.
Carl just stared at her and shook his head. He picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, then walked off the porch after Jessie, still shaking his head and trying to figure out just how bad his behavior must have been to deserve this.
Carl stalked after her, not certain where she had gone. A quick glance inside the clubhouse showed that she was not in there. Harold was talking to a few men, but Carl ducked out before he drew his attention. He tried the bathroom next, and was similarly disappointed. A search through the grounds, including pausing to ask a few people if they had seen her, finally gave the increasingly frustrated man the lead he needed.
Shelby was closing a storage door on the outside of a trailer that she and her boyfriend shared. From her Carl learned that Jessie had stormed off to the north after she had come outside and saw her staring at her from across the road. He thanked her, then headed north, acting on instinct. A few minutes later he saw her, standing at the new barb wire fence that he had put up earlier that day. She was staring to the north, towards the direction they had come in on.
“Ain’t much out there, remember?” he said once he had closed to a dozen feet or so. He had been sure to walk loudly, scuffing his boots against the dirt to make certain he was heard as he approached.
Jessie turned to face him. Her eyes were red and her face slightly puffy. “This is hard,” she mumbled, then turned and looked back to the north, hugging her across her chest. “It was easier out there.”
Carl stared to north as well, looking at the same thing Jessie was, which was nothing but an excuse to not look at each other. “Look, I ain’t interested in Shelby or nothing… and I sure as hell ain’t going after Tanya!”
Jessie smiled a little at his words. Carl had a hunch she was amused at his discomfort more than at what he said.
“I… aw, hell,” Carl muttered. “The kid’s right, I ain’t any good at this.”
“Carl, shut up,” Jessie said softly. She turned to face him and sighed. “I’m not worried about Tanya. I’m not even worried about Shelby. I got no right to be worried about anybody. I’ve acted like a kid with a crush on you, I don’t own you and you don’t owe me anything.”
“Right... Um, I mean,” Carl let out a breath of frustration. “What’s hard?” he asked, changing tracks.
Jessie smiled again, softly but sadly. “Being clean,” she whispered. “It was easy out there, we were so busy, so tired… now I’ve got time on my hands, time to think. Time to feel. Time to remember. It hurts and I don’t want it to. I never wanted it to. I wanted to forget it all. I couldn’t, so I found a way to make it hurt less.”
Carl nodded a few times then realized she might not shut up if he didn’t do something.
“Booze, drugs, whatever. It all helped,” she continued without breaking a stride. “Even sex was a drug that helped me forget. The more I could do to hide from my past…. Oh Carl, the things I’ve done. I don’t know how I can ever look at myself! I keep remembering more and more. Every time I had to do something to forget, whatever new thing I did was a new moment of shame. I-“
“Your turn,” Carl said, stepping up to her and grabbing her shoulders to spin her around to face him. “You shut up.”
Jessie did, shocked to find herself suddenly in his arms. She stood there, trembling, and then broke down and sobbed yet again in his protective embrace. After several minutes of catharsis, she looked up at him and, sniffing back the latest tears, she said, “You were right, I couldn’t stop talking about my past.”
“You just can’t stop talking,” Carl muttered back to her, his tone low but with a good natured tint to it. “You ran out of current events, so you had to fall back on that.”
Jessie smiled and laughed. She reached up to him and grabbed his head to tilt it down. She kissed him on the lips. If Carl was surprised, he hid it well, even as Jessie deepened the kiss and communicated her emptiness and need through it to him. Finally she pulled back and Carl looked down at her, his own pulse racing faster than he would have wanted it to.
“You’re not a bad kisser, Captain Buzzkill,” Jessie said to him.
Carl scowled at her. “Had to find some way to shut you up.”
Jessie laughed again and put her head against his shoulder for a minute, drawing strength from him. She backed away and turned to look at the wastes of northern Needles again. “Oh Carl, what’s going to happen to us?”
Carl shrugged, unseen by her. “I ain’t staying much longer,” he said after a minute. “Too many people, I don’t like it.”
“You really are a hermit,” Jessie said, turning to look at him again.
“These people ain’t fighters, not real ones anyway,” he said. “You think they want to take on what they took on, sheltering us like this? Those mercs’ll come back after Tanya and Dusty again. Sooner or later, they’ll find out we’re here. Safest thing for them is for us to be gone.”
Jessie tilted her head as he talked, one corner of her mouth twitching upwards into a smile. “Why Carl, are you turning into a softy on me?”
Carl’s first response he managed to avoid using. It involved suggesting something hard she might like, but he realized the consequences of that discussion were not something he wanted to deal with. Instead he said, “These seem to be decent folk, no reason to drag them into our problems.”
“What makes them your problems too? What made you change your mind?”
“Tanya and I had this talk a while back,” he said. “I done my share of things I ain’t proud of, no way to make up for that, but maybe this makes me sleep a little better anyhow.”
Jessie stared at him for a long moment, then blinked away some fresh tears. She nodded and said softly, “I understand… it’s like… well…” Jessie sighed, frustrated at how she had trouble putting her thoughts and emotions into words. “I get you Carl,” she finally said with a shrug and a weak smile.
“So what you doing out here?” he asked, happy to change the subject again. His life was his life, sharing it was just not his style.
“Waiting for you,” Jessie said with a smile that twinkled in her eyes in a way that Carl knew she had meant to tease him.
“You’d of had a long wait if Tanya hadn’t been so stubborn about me coming out here.”
Jessie winked at him. “Us girls know when to stick together.”
Carl’s grunt was hardly approving, but it still caused Jessie’s mood to improve.
“How come you’ve never asked me about my past… don’t you care? Aren’t you at least a little curious?” Jessie asked. “I’ve made such a big deal out of it, but you never ask. You’re not exactly Mr. Sensitive, so what gives?”
Carl smirked in spite of himself. He considered his answer carefully before responding, and ended up beginning it with a shrug. “I don’t care,” he finally said. “None of my business and none of my concern. You got your own shit to deal with and I got mine. We all got our mistakes, that’s what makes us who we are. I got no right changing you based on what my life learned me, and vice versa.”
Jessie considered his answer carefully, then nodded. “I like that, that’s respectful and fair. But don’t you ever wonder? I mean, I want to know what gives you nightmares. What stupid things have you done?”
“Trying to blackmail me?” Carl asked with a chuckle.
Jessie shook her head emphatically. “No! I just… Carl, you fascinate me. You’re so…so… well, you’re just so interesting. I don’t know anybody like you. Somebody who doesn’t negotiate. You don’t compromise. It’s your way and only your way. I don’t know how you can do that – how anybody can do that.”
Carl shrugged. “Why you think I live by myself?”
She laughed. “Okay, so it’s a lonely life, but at least it’s all your
s. Nobody to screw things up for you.”
“Yeah, at least not until somebody shows up on my doorstep with a couple of stray kids she pulled out of a plane wreck.”
Jessie grinned in spite of the red flush coloring her cheeks. “Yeah, well, I’m not sorry about that. Otherwise the three of us would be dead by now.”
“Yeah, well, at least I’d still have a home,” he countered.
“Carl, that wasn’t a home, that was a hideout,” Jessie said. “We get these guys safe and I’ll show you how to make a home.”
Carl raised an eyebrow, too afraid of what she might answer if he asked her what she was talking about. Instead he dodged the issue by raising another topic. “Tanya don’t want to go back.”
“Oh?” Jessie asked, surprised. “Dusty hardly talks about anything else but getting back. He hates it out here.”
Carl laughed, “Yeah, I noticed. We all noticed. Come on, it’s getting late and I’m tired.”
“You have to work extra hard to keep up with Shelby today?” she asked.
Carl barked out a quick laugh, “She did work me pretty hard,” he admitted. “But no, dealing with you and Tanya was worse.”
Jessie stuck her tongue out at him then promised, “You think that was hard? You just wait…”
Carl watched her walk past him and head back towards their cabin. He admired her figure for a moment in the fading sunlight, then shook his head and sighed. Every step of the way he knew what he should do, how he should distance himself and get away as soon as he could. Yet in spite of that, he just got himself mired in deeper and deeper every time.
Chapter 19
Carl woke up, instantly alert. Something was wrong, something he could not put a finger on. A moment later, he heard a scuffle of stones shifting under a boot outside. He rolled smoothly out of bed, grabbing his rifle as he did so. He moved to the door and waited a moment, listening. He heard two more footsteps on the hard packed ground then the sound of a boot on wood. Whoever it was, they were climbing onto the porch of the cabin.
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