Eternal Refuge

by Annabelle McInnes

  It was Nick who answered. ‘Enough.’

  Euan nodded, took one final breath, inhaled more of Kira into his lungs as she pulled from his grip. Fingertips slid down his forearms until her hands were in his. She squeezed and he clutched back. The power in them had diminished, but his determination had not. She tugged him forward, pulled him towards the doorway, to exit the room, the house. To breathe in the fresh, unfiltered air.

  To lay his eyes on the sky he hadn’t seen in over six weeks. A sky he never thought he’d see again.

  But most important of all was to finally talk to the man that had orchestrated his rescue while not delirious with fever and pain. A man that had protected his home and those he loved while he was unable to. The man that he had thought of as his enemy, who was now the reason he lived.

  Nick stepped forward and Euan caught his scent. His palms itched to touch the waves of his hair, the dusting of stubble on his chin. But Nick avoided Euan when he bent, cupped Kira’s skull and gently placed a kiss on her forehead. Her eyes fluttered closed at the tenderness.

  Then he turned his back and was gone.

  Euan hung his head.

  He had destroyed it. As effectively as Rodgers had destroyed his face, Euan had shattered the bond between himself and Nick. The pieces of their love lay about their feet, and Euan had no idea where to even begin in order to place the jagged shards back together.

  The squeeze in his hand brought his focus back to the present. Kira pressed her lips together when their eyes met. No more words were said, no more words were needed. The cavern between them echoed with enough resentment and antagonism to fuel generators for eternity. Placates were of no use here, only action would see a victory.

  But he would fight, he would battle and he would win. Distance was simply the path before the journey. Kira’s hand in his, he took his first steps towards freedom and the first steps on the journey towards closing the gap between them. He would walk, he would run. He would crawl if he damn well had to. He would do anything to seek forgiveness and atone for his mistakes.

  Anything. Everything. Nothing would stand in his way. Even the end of the human race.

  Chapter 2

  Euan

  Every story had its villain, unless that villain had been the hero all along. Euan sat on the veranda in a white plastic chair that didn’t bend with his weight. It was an odd sensation, to not be nervous about the fragility of furniture that he chose to sit on. He ran his palm over the arm, the plastic was stained yellow with time and the weather. His feet were stretched out before him, the morning sun warmed his dark fatigues. It felt so good just to allow the light to touch his skin, the air to caress his face, the scent of lavender, grass and woodland to tease his nose.

  It was moments like this he had thought he would never enjoy again. He had courted death inside that log cabin. He had fought against a tide of his own making. The rip made by a whirlpool that had already stolen from him his faculties, had torn the life from a boy he had sworn to protect. In that wooden structure, Euan had broken every promise he ever made. In that wooden structure he’d lost his honour, his integrity, and almost his life.

  If that had happened, it would have meant the ruin and demise of those he loved the most. Nick and Kira.

  He opened his eye and forced himself to watch the men prepare them for their departure.

  Annoyance, frustration, displeasure. These emotions he could manage.

  During his infirmity, Euan had been forced to relinquish leadership. He’d been saved by men that were under his enemy’s command. The rat-a-tat of gunfire that haunted his dreams were the outcomes of a single man’s orders.

  Euan had repaid his enemy a debt. For the safety of his daughter, Mickey-O, founder and leader of Nirvana, ruler of minion and man, cohort to the devil had ordered his men to see Euan freed.

  Mickey-O, a man Euan still had trouble believing was there, was a man who had saved him, who, apparently, had been saving him since they first met, now walked up to him. His boots crunched on the gravel, and Euan’s eye narrowed.

  His rival had filled out since he’d seen him in a fever-induced haze. Where Euan had atrophied from his injuries, Mickey-O had strengthened. His daughter by his side, his men around him, food in his belly, sleeping safe, he had improved, until he was the man Euan had first met in Nirvana.

  But his black eyes were now haunted. He’d lost children to the monsters that reigned this earth. His family had survived the terrors of a plague only to be taken from this earth by man.

  ‘I hear this morning went well,’ Mickey-O said without a smile as he found the twin to Euan’s chair and pulled it until it sat next to him. He eased himself slowly down, hands on knees, his dark eyes never leaving his soldiers.

  Euan grunted in reply. His hand had instinctually gripped the arm of the chair. There was a small measure of comfort when the plastic buckled under his grip.

  ‘I also hear that boy of yours is still pissed,’ he added casually.

  This time, the plastic groaned as his grip increased. Euan let go reluctantly, rolled his shoulders, and tongued the hole where he missed his molars.

  Mickey-O continued despite that anger and irritation that lingered in the air. ‘You’re going to have to face it sooner or later. That wound has festered while you’ve been out, let it chafe for much longer and it will burst.’

  ‘Don’t need your advice,’ Euan returned. ‘And I don’t need you to tell me something I already know.’

  Mickey-O’s focus never left that landscape before him. The soldiers were disassembling the rabbit hutch, the animals caged and stored in the back of one of the vehicles. The sounds of hammers and splitting wood filled the air.

  ‘I haven’t said thank you.’

  Euan jerked involuntarily in his seat. His eyes cut to the man at his side. At first glance, Mickey-O had improved, but upon closer inspection, he realised it was only the physical. Smudges the colour of soot were under hollow eyes. A face that had aged, creases that had deepened, a mouth tight with sadness, a body rigid with anger.

  Euan shook his head, looked towards the sky. A cloudless, blue expanse, endless. When he looked at that sky, the impossibility of it after assuming he would never see such beauty again. The anger that Euan held in his heart for the man at his side morphed, shifted, changed. Maybe he could be a forgiving man. ‘Neither have I.’

  There was silence between them then. A long drawn out stillness that sat comfortably, waited as they both gathered their thoughts. It was Euan who spoke first. ‘But I still don’t know why.’

  Mickey-O sighed, stepped up out of his chair and moved out of the shadows created by the veranda’s overhang and further into the sunlight. He placed his palm on the post, leaned into it. Euan didn’t put too much thought into the fact that he placed his hand in the exact spot he had when he’d sworn vengeance on the man who now was their protector, his saviour.

  Mickey-O cleared his throat before he spoke. ‘We knew of the house long before the Howard boy came to Nirvana. He might have been smart when it came to preparing for what was to happen, but he was an idiot at keeping his existence concealed. You would have seen it, known it, when you first approached. The house, the grounds, pristine. When every other building along that highway was ransacked and falling apart?’ He shook his head, dark hair brushed his shoulders. ‘That kid was better off destroying the house and living in the bunker.’

  Euan nodded. He remembered the intact windows, the clean gutters. The trimmed lawn and hedging. His fear of a trap had been profound then. It had seemed impossible that someone could be that naïve.

  Mickey-O continued. ‘I knew that there was something special here though. One of the boys I had on detail caught a glimpse of her. Nirvana was established then, I had so many under me. But I didn’t know what kind of firepower the kid held.’ His gaze turned to the truck that was already loaded with their hoard of weapons. ‘I wasn’t in a position to sacrifice so many to get her. So, I told the boys to watch and wait.
’

  Euan’s body protested as he stood. Pain, bright and uncomfortable bloomed in his feet. His lips twisted but he ignored it to move with a slight limp to stand by Mickey-O’s side. The direction of his gaze followed the men loading their supplies. ‘And then he took a trip to Nirvana?’ Euan guessed.

  Mickey-O’s features grew hard. ‘And then he took a trip to Nirvana,’ he echoed, his fist tightening on the pole. ‘He was fucking crazy by that point. A rambling lunatic. He was a danger to himself, and to what he hid. It was obvious that he had somewhere nice to sleep. He turned up to Nirvana wearing what you’re wearing, by himself, a man the size of a peanut and expected me and the boys to support him and listen to his demands. He was dead before he even stepped foot in my town.’

  Euan blinked. ‘You had him killed?’

  Mickey-O huffed, an insincere curl to his lips. ‘Never. I didn’t need to. They would have slit his throat for the boots alone.’

  ‘Then you watched her?’

  ‘I thought maybe she might have died, and that’s why he’d left. We didn’t see her for months. Then one day, this tiny little blonde thing just opens the front door and goes out to feed her chickens. Like nothing had happened, like there was no plague, like there were a million women wandering the earth. Like she wasn’t one of the last left.’

  Euan’s gut tightened, he could picture it. His beautiful little sun-sprite, leaving the safety of her bunker without a weapon, without a fucking clue. His voice was soft when he spoke, acknowledging the truth was difficult. ‘She didn’t know she was.’

  Mickey-O grunted.

  Euan’s thoughts spiralled, an idea slotted into place. He kept his eyes forward, but his focus was on the man at his side. ‘You sent us here, you gave me that girl, and you pushed us in this direction.’

  Mickey-O’s smile grew. The gold tooth that had haunted Euan’s nightmares glinted. ‘It was a long shot, I agree. But you came, just as things were shifting. You have to remember that I was fighting a war, a war I was losing. We’d found that girl you took with you only days before, locked in a trunk, used by too many to count. The first man you killed in the pit was the one that put her there.’

  Euan jerked. The surprise evident. ‘And the second?’

  ‘I promised Stephanie shelter, sanctuary. Fucking safety. The big mountain of a man you destroyed, took it upon himself to break that promise.’

  Christ. Euan held Mickey-O’s stare for longer than he needed, but he couldn’t look away. ‘Ben said to me that it was complicated. Lily told Nick it was to enact justice. I didn’t …’

  Mickey-O’s brow furrowed. ‘Ben?’

  ‘Smith.’ Euan’s gaze lost its focus. ‘He told me his name was Benjamin David Wright. He said he loved his mother.’

  Mickey-O cleared his throat and said nothing. Thoughts as hot as the sun expanded between them. They’d both felt the acute pain from the preciousness they’d lost that day.

  Silence reigned. A thousand thoughts churned inside Euan’s mind. He shifted his stance, leaned on an opposing foot, flexed his toes within his boot. Nothing could eclipse the truth of everything that Mickey-O had done for him, for Kira.

  Until finally, ‘Why’d you cut the wire?’

  Mickey-O snorted. ‘I had so many men on you by that stage. It was the only way to keep them from you, her. The driveway was one of the few places where our footprints couldn’t be seen. I needed to take your eyes off the location.’

  Euan shook his head, nodded. ‘And now?’

  ‘And now we leave to where we’ve been preparing. All this time, I knew Nirvana couldn’t protect us, you, for long.’ He lifted his chin as another man approached.

  The enormous powerhouse moved like a panther. Grace, agility, strength was encased in every lithe limb, every bunched muscle. The scar that bisected his lip was almost as gruesome as Euan’s. His eyes were flinting coals, his hair a short hint of black against his skull. His enormous hands held three rifles over his broad shoulder. He’d had to take clothes from Euan’s small stock to dress himself in black fatigues.

  Euan nodded to Matthew Knight. The man that had orchestrated the rescue mission to save him, the man that Nick had found hidden in the mountains, who Mickey-O had tasked with building the fortified shelter that would keep them safe for eternity. The man that had stood at the edge of a pit in the ground and watched as Euan had fought men that had tortured an innocent.

  ‘You’re looking good, McKay. Nice to see you standing. I was not looking forward to having to dig a grave big enough to bury you.’

  Euan’s face was deadpan. ‘I’m accommodating like that.’

  Knight laughed, his white teeth flashed in the sunlight. ‘I bet you are.’

  ‘How are the preparations going?’ Mickey-O’s request cut through.

  Knight’s smile didn’t fade. ‘Good, we should be able to head out in the next few days. A week at most.’ He turned to Euan, his black eyes alight with humour. ‘There are sixteen cartons of toothpaste. Sixteen.’

  Euan nodded, his face expressionless. ‘And twenty-eight boxes of lubricant. I want them all.’

  Knight cocked his head back and hooted towards a bright blue sky. ‘I’ll fight you for them. Winner takes all.’

  Euan shook his head. Winner takes all. A motto to take to heart, to allow to brand him. The winds were changing, another monumental shift of the tectonic plates of his mind and thoughts. Mickey-O was not a rival; he was an ally. One they needed. He was healing, but he was not yet healed. The severed connection between himself and Nick needed to be reconnected. Kira was an equal member now, a concept he was to embrace, lest he lose her too. He would get his shit together. He would help them in this endeavour.

  Because the winner, took all.

  Chapter 3

  Euan

  Euan understood torment. He knew what it was to be tortured. To have your cognitive thought eradicated by pain and despair. That keen sense of isolation, to call and cry and know that no one he loved would hear. To beg for mercy, to beg forgiveness, to go beyond the need for tears, because the body could not spare the effort to make them. He had endured living nightmares, yet, the horrors hidden behind whisky-coloured eyes, told him that Lily had suffered through more.

  ‘You’re going to have to learn to feed yourself again,’ she rasped. ‘Your depth perception is gone. You must concentrate, otherwise you’ll stab yourself in the eye.’

  Lily’s words were a whisper on the wind, impersonal, a wall to safeguard the broken pieces of her soul so high that even her voice struggled to overcome it. Pallid skin, a heart that was shattered behind red-rimmed eyes, shoulders that only moved out of a hunch to stretch. She was broken, so broken, and Euan couldn’t fix her.

  He brought the fork to his lips with care. Laden with roasted vegetables from their greenhouse, made by Nick’s hand, it looked as though it was going to easily go into his mouth. It was the first meal he was to consume that was in solid form. Broth and soup had sustained him until now. This ascension back to manhood was going to be a triumph—until the sharp tines stabbed him in the nose. ‘Motherfu—’

  ‘Told you.’ Devoid of emotion, Lily emanated no ire or condemnation. Euan was tempted to stab himself again to see if he could tempt a response. But he knew that it would be an effort lost.

  Instead he said, ‘I didn’t get my eye.’

  A tiny twitch in the right side of her lips. ‘Close enough.’

  Euan took that tilt as a win. He turned his focus once again to the vegetables. Would they still eat with such variety in the place that Mickey-O intended to keep them? Would Nick be able to indulge in one of the few joys he had and prepare meals that were both flavourful and nutritionally adequate? Euan’s gaze flicked towards the kitchen. Most of the underutilised utensils had been stored for transport. Only the essentials to cook their last meals still laden the shelves. His eyes traversed the rest of the bunker. Kira’s toss pillows were packed, along with the photographs and even his hand-drawn landscapes. The b
uffet, where her rudimentary artwork had lived was gone. The shelves empty, circles of dustless space the only remnant of the beauty that had been showcased there. The teacups, their coffee, everything was packed for travel. To leave.

  The lump in his throat was manageable. He ran his palm over his shortly cropped hair and found comfort in the rasp. He tongued the hole in his teeth and reassessed the meal in front of him.

  Lily was a silent mouse beside him, her unobtrusive manner allowed Euan to relax. He had the urge to reach out to her, touch the chapped hand that rested on the table in comfort, solidarity, thanks. He just looked at it instead.

  Her focus was also on her hand, as if she understood Euan’s thoughts and lamented the loss of physical touch as much as he did.

  They both flinched when they heard loud, booted feet begin to descend the ladder. A single eye of molasses and two of whisky-gold snapped towards the destroyed hatch opening and watched a pair of black combat boots and dark fatigues emerge through the portal.

  Euan’s heart thumped. Could Nick be entering a room that he resided in on purpose?

  But it wasn’t Nick who took the rungs of the ladder two at a time. It was Knight.

  As Euan returned to his meal, the tension in the room morphed, expanded. It grew with every step Knight took down into the room, with every step he took closer to Lily.

  His dark eyes were alight. His arm was outstretched as he walked. But when he touched Lily in gentle affection, her cringe and associated flinch had them all curling inwards. Knight removed his hand instantly, but his eyes dulled as he did so with obvious reluctance.

  A forced grin was on his face. ‘Hey, pretty girl.’

  Lily blinked before she turned and didn’t even attempt to match his fake smile with one of her own. She nodded in greeting.

  They stared at each other. Each saying everything and nothing. Too many unspoken words, too many destroyed dreams, open wounds and broken promises.