“The woman I love, loves someone else, Jess. She does. And that's probably not going to change... Or at the very least I'm not the man that can change it...” He fell off.
“You don't know that, Brad. Time changes everything. You...”
“I love you, Jess. It's you I want... It's you I want the same way you want Conner. You're the one that holds my heart, Jess,” Brad told her quietly.
“Oh, Jesus, Brad. I'm so obtuse sometimes... It thought it was... I thought it was attraction, something like that, I didn't know you were serious... You must think I'm an insensitive bitch... I wouldn't blame you.” She fell silent, turned away, watching the water rush under the bridge.
They both watched the water in silence for a few moments.
“I've been thinking of leaving,” Jessie said after a few moments.
“I figured,” Brad said. “I've thought about it too, but I have my little sister to think about, and leaving isn't going to change how I feel.”
“Therefore it also wouldn't change how I feel, but I can't stay. I think it would drive me crazy to see him every day. At least if I were gone I wouldn't have to see him day after day and know that he could never be mine... It really would drive me crazy, Brad,” Jessie told him. She faced him and her dark eyes locked on his own.
Brad cleared his throat. “Have you thought that, well, maybe it's just the circumstances? He shows up, saves you, literally does save your life... From a horrible death too,” Brad said.
“Relationships form very fast under adverse conditions when everybody has to pull together. Did you know that sometimes hostages fall into love with their captors? Their eventual killers? Rapists? They do. It's in the medical histories I've read. I know it, and it doesn't change a thing about how I feel about him,” she said. “And, the same could be said of your attraction to me too. These are rough times. Stress filled. Emotions are raw, right there on the surface. You don't really know what your tomorrow will bring any more than I do, so you grasp at what is there. What is real, and you hold on. But is it real? Is it real for either of us? And does it matter at all?” She asked.
Brad shook his head. “I only know how I feel. I saw you for the first time and I knew it right then, before Conner... I just didn't think I had any kind of chance. You're a doctor, I'm a... I was in college majoring in screwing off, I guess. Then I realized, none of that counts at all anymore. What I was, what you were, it's only what we are now... What we can be.”
“This place is alive, Jess. Out there? Dead... And more death coming too. I think a lot more before it's over. A lot more... We saw how dead. How sick, maybe that's a better way to put it... Sick. The world is sick and dying, and the dead... I don't know what the dead are doing. Taking over, I guess. We saw it. We lived it to get this far, Jess. None of that is here. I can live here. I can die here too... I can die here and know that is the end of it. Someone will make sure.” He fell silent, once again watching the water flow.
“I hope that's a long way off, Jess, but it is a comfort to know I won't close my eyes only to open them a few moments later as … I don't even know, as something else. So... I knew... I know I want to try this life right here. To try anyway, because this is real. This is life. There isn't anything else.” He turned to look at her but her eyes were shiny and a tear slid down one cheek. He turned his eyes back down to the water.
“I'm tempted to say yes just because you made me believe in you. You made me see it. But how could you be with me knowing that I was in love with another man? Knowing Conner was on my mind?” Jessie asked.
How do you know he would be?” Brad asked. “Do you think this is like the movies, or a book where we both walk away, heartbroken, and we stay that way forever. Never love again? … Never feel? … No, Jess. Somebody, the right somebody, will come along and make you forget... Make me forget... That's why divorce lawyers have so much work..., Did have... were so goddamned rich... We forget, Jess. It happens to everyone. I could be that right one. I know you'll still be thinking of him, but I think it will die... Fade... Like a tree without water, Jess,” he said softly.
“What if I don't forget him, Brad? What if it doesn't fade? Then what?”
“He doesn't love you, Jessie. I do,” Brad said.
“He doesn't love me and you do,” Jessie repeated softly.
“And I do,” he whispered to the water flowing past under his feet.
“And how do you see our lives... Here... How do you see them?” She asked.
“Don't tease, Jess. Don't.”
“I'm not,” she spoke slowly, sincerely, making his eyes rise to her own. “I'm asking: If I said yes... How does it work... How?”
He looked at her, his eyes silver orbs in the moonlight. “Okay... We talk to Josh. Get part of that second cave with all the room, or build a home in that valley over there. It's not away from here, but it's not here every day. That's Josh's deal over there. If we go, others will go. It becomes a satellite... Like they talked about the campgrounds. A satellite, outpost.” He waved one hand at the mountains. “Not out there in the world where it can kill us. Here. Protected, but not right here where your heart breaks every day... A home... Maybe more than that.” He finished and looked into her eyes, holding them with his own.
“You thought of all of this?” Her voice caught and broke.
“Jess, I wish I could hold you,” he told her.
“Then hold me,” She sobbed.
He reached over and pulled her close, careful of her leg. “I love you... That's why I thought of it. I don't like seeing you hurt,” he whispered.
“I'm a fool,” she cried.
“So am I,” he told her. “So am I.”
“I don't want to use you,” She whispered.
“My eyes are open, Jess.”
She leaned into his chest and circled his arm with one of her own. “Make love to me,” She whispered, her eyes overflowing liquid pools of silver.
“Your leg... I.”
“It'll be okay. Just make love to me,” she whispered through her tears.
He was shaking as he laid her body back onto the bridge decking. He leaned over her, drew a faltering breath and then kissed her. Her hands came up and clasped his forearms.
“You're shaking,” she said.
“You too... Scared a little,“ he said.
She kissed him back and pulled him down to her.
~
Roberta Teals made her way down the candle lit tunnel. She had never really been afraid of the dark, she had a lantern to help, and there were candles mounted at intervals on the walls that someone had put up. Still, it was a little spooky, and maybe she was about to make a fool out of herself too. Maybe she had misunderstood entirely. Maybe it had only been a joke.
She stopped. Had it been a joke? She thought about it. No. It may have been something else, but it had not been a joke. She started to move again. Anyway, she told herself, she'd be there in a just a few minutes and then she'd know for sure.
Stop worrying, Bobby, she told herself. But it did no good. Her heart was like a jackhammer, trip-tripping in her chest. Her mouth was dry. In the old days this would never have happened. She had never once let herself slip back then, never once. She had looked, but she had never touched. She had never given anyone any kind of reason to talk about her morals. She was a good christian girl. A woman who loved God.
What she felt and what the church dictated were not the same things at all. They did not fit together, and the church didn't bend. This was not some religion that forgave its priests for their sexual assaults on children, this was a church that threw you to the dogs if you even looked askance at anything sinful at all. Hadn't they thrown the pastors own sister under the bus because she had dated a man who was not yet divorced? They had, and even the pastor could not save her. He had not even raised a finger. They had driven her out. She had killed herself a few months later. Respected church woman. Woman of God one day, then a slut the next. No in between and no redemption. Their God was a ha
rd God, the Bible was right about that. And they had not, to her knowledge, done more than kissed goodnight after a date. A single date. There was no sex involved. No improper touching, nothing like that at all.
Bobby herself had never had sex. She had thought about it, but sex was right out of the picture completely. No marriage, no sex. So she was a nineteen year old virgin. A nineteen year old lesbian virgin, she told herself.
All that strict religious upbringing. All the prayers that seemed to go unanswered. All the attractions in the world. All the boys she had dated, pawing her because that was what she was supposed to allow. Somehow that was different from the other stuff. She still didn't have that figured out. Some sort of double standard, she guessed.
All the times she had wished for a woman of her own. College and roommate after roommate who would walk around semi nude, or completely nude as if it didn't matter to anyone. And now this.
Now she was maybe going to find out what love was all about... Or at least sex.
She had wondered about her back a hundred years ago, or so it seemed like a hundred years since she had decided to follow the others into the mountains. She had met her then. And hadn't there been something right then? Hadn't there been something in the way she had brushed off all the guys advances? Wasn't there?
Maybe, she told herself. And Bonnie was beautiful. She could have had any of those men at all. Any one she chose. Craige had been interested and had made no bones about it. But she had shut him down. Not harsh, just an easy no. She liked him, but it was still no. And then she had looked at Bobby and the look had said, Well? Hadn't it?
But she was so goddamned afraid to change. So afraid to say what she really felt. Speak what was really on her mind. Afraid her parents would turn over in their graves if they knew. Afraid that God would cast thunderbolts from his heaven. Afraid of being afraid, she told herself now.
She reached the entrance and hesitated. She took a deep breath, stepped around the wall and into the chamber past a hanging tarp that someone had closed off the entrance with.
Bonnie was in the water holding onto the rocky ledge. She looked sad, lost in thought, but her face brightened as Bobby stepped into the room and broke into her thoughts with a soft hello.
“I thought you changed your mind, “ Bonnie told her with a smile.
“Just scared... A little. I thought maybe it was a joke,” Bobby told her as she reached the pools edge and looked down into her eyes.
Bonnie pushed her hands down onto the ledge and lifted herself out of the water. She stood on the stone floor, water running across her naked body and dripping to the floor. She twisted the water out her honey blonde hair, as Bobby tried hard to look like she wasn't just looking at her nudity. She walked over to Bobby, took the towel and the clothes out of her hands and set them with her own things.
“I've been trying to tell you for weeks, Bobby. It's not a joke. I wouldn't do that to you,” she said.
Bobby let her breath out slowly. Trying to slow her heartbeat. She took a deep breath. Leaned forward and kissed Bonnie's lips. Her hands lit upon her breasts and then quickly flew away as if startled. A second later as the kiss deepened they came back and stayed, tracing circles around Bonnie's nipples.
Bonnie's hands found the buttons on Bobby's shirt and began to work at them.
~
Sandy's Journal.
It's late. I spent the night, early evening, going over herbal remedies. Old folklore, time tested stuff. It's surprising how much we've come to depend on chemicals to do the job that we already have remedies from nature for.
The book gave me a headache, Susan took that away. I love her so much. I really do.
Things are going good here. We're going to have lights soon. They talked about it at the meeting tonight. Steve Choi is amazing, and he knows his stuff too. A real doctor, and he is teaching us. We also have hot water. Real hot water and it is practically free. Mother nature made, spirit given. It seems like such a small thing but it is a big deal to us.
We also have more space. Al because we finally got around to exploring the rest of this cave that we were led to. Amy, Lilly, Cindy, Craig and Bonnie spent most of the day exploring and they discovered the hot pool and two new caves with openings to the outside. One opens to the opposite side of this mountain in fact. Katie was there with them too, I suppose. We all had hot baths tonight. It was great. Unbelievable in fact.
Tomorrow we'll start arranging our space. James will sort out the volunteers with the farm work, and Jake, Aaron and that crew will start with building houses. Setting up the saw mill, building homes. I can tell you, I have never been this happy in my life.
~
“I'm tired, baby. It's been a long, long day,” Katie said as she and Conner walked through the darkness of the valley toward home. The meeting in the barn had not lasted all that long, but writing it all down had been a bear. Amy had been right about that. It would be great once Dustin got some to the computers up and working so they could just record it and turn it into text. Lilly had pointed out that it would be easier, but that all the stuff they were writing now would have to be written all over again as it was typed in. Amy had promised to talk to Dustin and get him to hurry so there wouldn't be a mountain of stuff waiting to be typed in.
“It has been a long day,” Conner agreed.
“Good. Then you agree it is time to put your woman to bed,” Katie told him. She giggled. “Just be glad I'm not making you carry me the last bit,” she said as the house came into view.
“Oh, is that so,” Conner asked as he stopped. He bent, and picked her up in his arms before she could say another word.
“If you make one crack about it being a heavy load or something...”
“Wouldn't think of it, honey. Wouldn't think of it,” he told her as they mounted the steps and he toed the door open.
She giggled as they made their way inside.
Roux
New York
The fires smoldered but no longer burned.
Roux walked down Eighth Avenue towards Columbus Circle. Behind him a silent army followed, numbering in the thousands. From the circle they would take the park.
There were thousands of the living camped out in the park. He could smell them on the air that flowed past his face as He walked. They had believed they were safe in their numbers. They had believed that nothing could touch them with their barricades. And for a time that had been true, but that time was passed now.
He had begun his walk with only a few thousand, but that number had grown as he had traveled across the land to this place. The small towns, and the dead cities along the way, added their contributions from those that had gathered in those places. Many waiting for him. There were dozens of cities they controlled now. Dotted along the route he had walked. Some he had called and set in a place of power with the ability to call more of their own to them. Some had been there waiting for him. All had known who he was, and all had bowed to his power.
In the crowds there were other leaders. He knew them, they traveled with their own. To the south there would be another, to the west yet one more, across the oceans others he could sense and almost feel with the senses that death bought to him. He understood those concepts: Other places, other leaders, but not the places or the dead themselves. The places meant no more to him than this place, or the name he used to know so well as his own. Meaningless. The dead only followed, as he himself followed. What mattered to the dead were things that could not be conceived of by the breathers, and as time passed they grew further apart. It became harder to see that there had once been a connection of any kind.
From Northeast Philadelphia to what had been Woodbridge Township the land was an open sore. The cities largely leveled, the roads gone. Trees, shrubs and grasses working quickly to wipe the scar of the breathers from the land. He and those that followed had continued through these desolate areas and began to find more of their own in Elisabeth, and then in Newark. They had crossed to Jersey City and from t
here he had led them through the Holland Tunnel, still powered and intact, after everything, and into Manhattan. They had walked up Eighth Avenue as if they owned it. The living were there. There and watching, well protected in their hiding places, but they offered no fight. Did not try to stop them. There remained only Columbus circle and then they would take Central Park.
There were thousands here, and they believed in their safety, but then the diseases had begun to kill them off. And the bodies began to pile up faster than they could remove them. From there it had gone down hill fast. They had begun to banish those who were sick, but that failed too because there were too many that were sick, and the dead were turning faster. There was no way to get them all, and so they began to hide from the others.
That had been the beginning of the end, they had begun to fall apart from the inside out, and they were ready to be taken now. There would be losses, but they would be nothing at all compared to the gains, and Roux was willing to suffer them.
He reached the circle and the army behind him came to a halt. Silent in the gloom of early evening. Looking from side to side, other leaders stood in front of their own, waiting. An occasional scrape of a foot across the cracked pavement, the soft rustle of moldering clothing the only sounds from the vast crowd. Roux stood and stared off into the park entrance across the other side of the circle.
A scatter of wrecked and long burned out vehicles partially blocked the entrance. A line of buses blocked the roads and pathways into the park. Sheet steel was welded over the windows. Holes burned through with Acetylene torches every few feet as gun ports. A long line of concrete barricades crossed in front of the buses about a hundred yards out, wrapped around the park entrances, and shot away up Central Park West and West 59th on the other side. The barriers extended out into the streets as far as he could see, but he saw no one patrolling or watching from the trees. Nothing. No rifle tips poked from the gun ports cut into the sheet steel either. Even so, he could smell them and their fear. They had seen this army from a long way off coming down Eighth Avenue. They knew what it meant for them, and many, he could tell, had accepted it. Suicide seemed to be their answer. Done right, even he could not bring them back. And some had opted for that out. Even now as he stood and listened, he heard the occasional gunshot. Some far off, some closer by.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 116