“Things we sent you to school for,” my mother had chimed in. Indeed, I’d gone to very prestigious boarding schools, I’d been Debbed, presented to formal society. I’d learned to dance, to know the right forks and spoons to use. I’d known the art of conversation from a very young age. And still, something in me rebelled. But when I’d come home to find Charlie waiting for me, looking more handsome than I’d remembered, and more welcoming too, something changed. I wanted to please him. Maybe because the world had gone so insane and this was something I could control.
And now...look where I was. Why was another story, one I’d hold on to for as long as I could. If I didn’t keep that leverage, where would I end up? I didn’t want to keep it from Mathias, but his loyalty was to Defiance as much as it was to me. I could only hope that when I told him, he’d understand.
“I know it sounds crazy, but where we were, there were still formal dinners happening. It didn’t matter that most of the world was in complete turmoil. The government had to get back to functioning as normally as possible. People counted on that. Looked up to us,” I said, like I was repeating some kind of campaign memo.
If Charlie doesn’t go back, what will happen?
I stared at Mathias’s mouth, wanting to ignore the question. “His father’s sick. Charlie was due to take office from my father in less than two years, if everything went according to plan, and then my father would take over the presidency.”
He didn’t push to ask about the plan and that was good, because I wouldn’t tell him. “Do you regret anything you’ve done since the Chaos?” I asked instead.
Both men watched me calmly. Finally, Mathias signed and Bishop looked at him before translating. There’s no time for regrets now. Only a time for living as much and as hard as you can.
“I saw how it was through military channels, although I’m sure I was shielded from the worst of it.” D.C. had also known that the meteors were preparing to strike the earth. I was already in the underground bunker, and had been for a week, once the Chaos hit.
So the government knew this was about to happen? Mathias asked through Bishop, and I nodded.
“I guess they figured why scare everyone. Nothing we could’ve done,” I said.
Never had to battle with no bulletproof vest
Mathias
Except die with our family.
Bish didn’t translate that last part.
“I hated knowing,” she told us, her voice desperate like she knew she’d be judged for what her family and the people around her did. “Waiting was the worst, I thought, until the storms started. What did you do, right after the storms?”
I didn’t want to talk about it. I’d survived it. Sometimes I dreamed about it, or what happened next, once I was in the military. But Bish answered her.
“Ran wild,” he said. “There were riots. It was fucking nuts.”
“Were you scared?”
Bish translated my signs. Wasn’t time to be.
She drew her knees up to her chest. “Did people try to hurt you?”
All the time. We killed a lot of people along the way.
“When you were in the military?”
Bish flicked a glance my way before answering, “No.”
My fingers had moved although I hadn’t wanted them to. I watched her face, waiting to see any kind of disgust or fear but there was none. Just more questions, the most inevitable one being, “Why?”
There were too many ways to answer that, too many reasons. Fear. Survival. Because we didn’t know the delicate balance between fear and survival.
I wasn’t sure we knew that still, so I just said, Because we had to.
That, I knew for sure.
There was a lot of blood on our consciences, some on our souls, and none of it would wash off. As Bish would always say, We didn’t want it to anyway.
“Do you like it?”
No.
“Yes.”
She looked between us, maybe realizing that our true answer lay somewhere in between. “Have you changed?”
Some would say we’ve gotten worse.
“What would you say?”
I stared at her and shook my head.
“I didn’t think so. We all do things when we’re unsure or scared or threatened. I don’t think you can judge right or wrong emotions. That’s what they taught me at the hospital—feelings are never right or wrong, they simply are.” She paused. “My father used to say I was born in the wrong era, that I would’ve been the kid who ran to the Haight for peace and love.” She smiled, like that discussion between her and her father had good memories and then she quickly sobered. “Things were better when I was young. There was time for me to grow out of things. When I didn’t...”
She looked sad and lost and yeah, I knew how that felt post-Chaos. But not with my parents, so I felt even worse for her.
“Our mom was an artist,” Bish said, and I looked down at the tattoos that covered my arms and hands and thought about her and Dad teaching me what they jokingly referred to as the old ways. They might’ve had a light tone talking about it, but I knew that they took it as seriously as I still did.
“Just like you,” she said to me and pointed to my tattoos and yeah, that felt nice. But I knew she’d ask next where my parents were and I didn’t want to talk about that.
Bish knew too, which is why he changed the subject. “Do you know how the rest of the world did? Because we were privy to some things when we were in the military, but it was nearly impossible to get a clear picture.”
Not like we could turn on the TV, I added. Our news was spotty, mainly passed along between law enforcement and distilled locally, or culled from CBs and ham radios. Add to that lots of rumor and speculation and that was how most news traveled these days
“We don’t know much, but parts of Europe are okay—better than the Midwest or here, even. Everyone got hit with storms. It just depended on how well you were prepared. And it looks like this place was a doomsday prepper’s best friend for life.”
Caspar’s grandfather and his friend based the tubes on the subs they spent time on in their Navy days. Disaster preppers before it was cool. They were built for shit like this. This is how they’ve survived massive storms for years unscathed. Now, we’ve got a good start on this fucking apocalypse.
“At least there are no zombies,” she said, and then smiled. “I can already tell that this place is as good as the D.C. bunkers. And the Camp David ones.”
Is that where you were?
“For the past year, yes. I only went with Charlie on a goodwill trip—my first one. That’s where those men took me.” She swallowed hard and tried to get me to believe her. Whatever the real story, I did believe that the LoV had dragged her on a hell of a trip from D.C. to here. Made it so she and Charlie couldn’t’ve been found easily.
But the LoV and Keller would be headed this way soon. It’d be the first place I’d look.
“What are you going to do if they come here?” she asked me.
Tell them they can’t have you.
She blinked at me like I was a fucking lunatic. “You’ll tell them I’m here?”
I held up my hands, shrugged and smiled.
“He plays dumb well. But he’s right—lying’s worse,” Bish told her. “We can’t hide you forever.”
“I’ll stay underground forever if that’s what it takes,” she whispered.
That’s no way to live. Bish translated for me. Defiance has taken you in. You want to go back to your family, you can do that and let them protect you.
“I don’t want that.” She hugged her arms around herself tight and I forced myself not to tell her that I didn’t want it either.
Chapter Fifteen
No one’s gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong
Jessa
The next morning, Bishop and I sat cross-legged on the bed, our knees touching. Intimate for sure, but if I wanted intimacy with Mathias, I’d have the same with Bishop.
Mathias was training some of the Defiance members. There seemed to be a major shift on the compound over the past twenty-four hours, with drills happening left and right.
“This is all because of me, isn’t it?” I’d asked Bishop when he’d first come in to give me a sign language lesson.
“It’s because of Keller,” Bishop had told me. On one of my first nights in the guesthouse, he’d slipped me an America Sign Language cheat sheet, and although I’d been trying to memorize, I knew it would be better if I could actually use the signs. And I didn’t want to screw up in front of Mathias—it was too important to mess up his language.
For an hour, I mirrored Bishop’s signs, trying to get the same speed and accuracy he had. That was, of course, impossible, but I made some good headway with simple words that required only a single sign. And I used the cheat sheet. A lot.
“I feel like I’m running out of time,” I told Bishop, and he shook his head and made me sign it before he’d acknowledge anything I’d said. And that took forever, a painfully slow process.
Then he made me translate his signing. “A lot of people think we should turn you over to Keller and save ourselves. And a lot of people don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”
“Caspar?”
“Caspar needs to make all the hard decisions.”
“And you’re both getting a lot of shit because you brought me here,” I said, and Bishop let that go without signing. “You saved my life.”
“It was his idea,” Bishop said, and then he gave that sly smile and signed something. It took me many long minutes and a lot of his repeating the signs to decipher that he’d said, Mathias is good at saving lives.
“Does he do that a lot? Save people?” I asked. Bishop wouldn’t answer me until I’d signed all of that, which I did.
Bishop nodded, encouraged me to move along, my signing painfully slow. He showed me some shortcuts, more military signs than anything, he’d added, and I watched how fast his hands moved.
Mathias follows signs, he signed.
Saved. Yours. Too, I finally managed to shorthand, my hands starting to feel slightly less clumsy.
I know he told you, he signed back.
Will he be mad if he finds out you’re helping me?
He knows.
I took that for what it was. Because whether or not Mathias was angry about it didn’t bother me. I was kicking down his doors. I didn’t come this far, risk this much, only to let Mathias slip away from me. “Who are you saving?” I asked.
He shifted, an almost imperceptible movement that told me there most definitely was someone. “I plead the Fifth”.
“Then tell me this...whoever she is, does she need saving”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
* * *
A couple of hours later, I was lying under the heat lamps in one of the cabins on the compound, in between Mathias and Bishop. I’d mentioned that I missed the sun last week, and since it wouldn’t make an appearance for at least another week, Mathias escorted me to the lamps.
They were as close to the real thing as you could get these days, and with my eyes closed, I could pretend that the heat on my skin was from the real thing and not an artificial light.
A shadow fell across me and I blinked and opened my eyes to see Caspar standing above me.
“Charlie’s asking for you,” Caspar told me. I sat up and tugged at the bottom of my tank top—it was all I wore, along with my underwear, and I’d pulled the tank up under my breasts. I’d lost some inhibitions, but still.
Mathias was signing and I’m pretty sure, judging by his expression and the few signs I caught, he wasn’t happy about Charlie’s request. Bishop propped on his elbows and watched the scene without comment.
Caspar wouldn’t make me talk to Charlie, but I’d put this off too long. “I’ll go see him. It’s probably best if I went in there alone.”
I turned to Mathias and gave him a nod that I hope said, I’ll be all right. He glanced at Caspar then back at me and signed something. Caspar said, “I’ll meet you there.”
“You’ll need pants. And maybe a chastity belt”, Bishop drawled as Mathias shot him the finger and I stifled a laugh as we got up and walked through the compound back to the guesthouse.
“Thanks for that—I hated missing the sun last week,” I said. I hadn’t realized we’d been lying there for almost two hours.
I pulled on pants and a sweatshirt and came back outside to walk between Mathias and Bishop until we met up with Caspar. At that point, Bishop fell back to let Caspar walk beside me. It was a military precision kind of move and suddenly I felt captured.
Maybe Mathias felt my tension, because he took my hand in his, and that was definitely not a military move. He gave my hand a squeeze as we headed into the warehouse.
It was quiet on the compound—most of the bikes were gone—as the MC members had taken advantage of the sunlight earlier and went on long rides. My skin was pleasantly tight from the sun. I’d been using sun lamps at my parents’ compound almost daily and I knew Defiance had some, but I hadn’t thought to ask for them. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed the sunlight until the heat hit my skin.
I shivered now as we approached the door to where Charlie was being held. I was burned, because the lamps were stronger than what I was used to, but that wasn’t the only reason for my sudden chill. I’d never realized how cold Charlie left me, because neither of our families ever showed much emotion. Stiff upper lip and all that. I thought that’s the way it was, the way it had to be.
But the man walking beside me made me hot as fire, and I knew how wrong I’d been about everything from my old life. And that’s exactly how I partitioned it—old life, new life. And I wasn’t willing to give up anything from this new life, no matter how much Charlie threatened me.
“I’ll be okay,” I told Mathias and slid my hand from his. But I didn’t know if anything from this point on would be, and part of that was my own fault.
I’d wanted to tell Mathias about the marriage a million times. But in my mind, my heart, I’d renounced it, and Charlie, the second he’d betrayed me.
I’d divorced him in my mind, cut him out.
I hadn’t thought about how not telling Mathias or Defiance might be perceived. Or maybe I was lying. I knew I’d be looked at with suspicion and I didn’t want that. Not when, for the first time, I’d actually been accepted for who I was.
I forced myself to walk inside the inner room and found Charlie sitting on the floor, his back against the cement wall. He glanced up when he heard the door open and immediately shot to his feet. The chain around his ankle allowed him to reach halfway across the room and I’d remained close to the door.
“Where have you been?” he asked, his voice holding the right amount of concern, since the door was still halfway open. I knew if I shut it, I’d get the real Charlie again, the one who’d been hiding, even from me until he’d had a choice to save himself or save me.
“You were worried?”
“Of course, Jessa. I didn’t know what happened to you.”
“But you knew what was about to happen to me—until I was saved by men who don’t believe in selling women.”
“You’ve been playing biker slut,” he sneered and just like that, his mask was off. I was surprised by the information and must’ve looked surprised because he muttered, “Stupid woman, don’t you think I have my sources everywhere? Don’t you know who I am?”
“My husband,” I said sarcastically, but my insides were cold. Who was telling him things? Was there some kind of insider spy Charlie had here, and what did that mean
for Defiance? Had Charlie’s father—or my parents—been contacted?
“Right, your husband,” he echoed back, just as sarcastically and I remembered that the door was open. “Did you tell your biker that? For better or for worse, right, darling?”
“I only had the worse with you,” I managed with a whisper, the words nearly stuck in my throat as I thought about how fooled I’d been. How my parents had convinced me that Charlie had always loved me, and that I’d always loved him. Really, there had never been love between us, just convenience.
“You were good eye candy, but since the Chaos, it’s not like anyone can just turn on the TV and see us anymore. I’d do just as well on my own.”
“So will I.” I reached behind me for the knob, needing to leave. Charlie’s body was lurching forward against the weight of his chain and I feared he’d rip it out of the wall if I stayed much longer.
“You think I’m not going to tell them, Jessa?” He spit the words out in a violent whisper.
I didn’t say anything right away. Instead, I took that moment to really concentrate on what he looked like. Besides wearing different clothing—Defiance must’ve given him clean stuff—he still looked the same. I don’t know why I’d expected otherwise. His cheek was bruised but other than that, they hadn’t treated him badly. Sure, he was shackled, but he was fed, he had a place to sleep, a toilet and he was better off than many people were post-Chaos.
He didn’t have his freedom, but I wasn’t sure any of us did anymore. Maybe we never had. “I don’t know why you haven’t told them everything,” I said finally.
His dark blue eyes settled on mine. I’d once thought them beautiful, like the sky on a warm summer day, but now I thought they looked like cheap denim as he told me, “Because I thought we could still get out of this together.”
“You can’t be serious. You think I’m actually going to help you?”
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