Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  He had no doubt the squadron would offer to save Gabe and the other hostages the way they had Rhys, by infecting them with the Alpha strain, but how long was too long, before it wouldn’t do any good to try?

  Darius sighed, the muscles in his jaw flexing as he looked at the sky. It wasn’t dark yet, but the shadows seeping out from the base of the trees were beginning to lengthen into inky tendrils, stretching across the landscape.

  “Not much more we can do today. We’ll make camp here, port the boats upriver in the morning. We’ll give it until we reach the fork where the Colombia and the Snake River merge. If there’s no sign of ’em by then, we turn back, try west.”

  Everyone nodded and turned their attention to eating before setting up camp. They had tents now; in the manner of the Pacific Northwest, summer had given way to fall seemingly overnight. The days were still warm, but the nights were considerably cooler. Without the safety of a being barricaded inside a building, however, tents meant extra men and women on the watch shifts to raise the alarm and give everyone else more time to react if a pack of revenants should attack.

  Rhys wouldn’t be taking a watch shift, naturally. He simply wouldn’t be as capable at it as they were. So to make himself useful, he set up the tent he’d share with Darius. Beside him, Kaleo worked on his own tent. He’d been strangely quiet all day, his usual nonstop stream of good-natured joking absent. It had made the already grim attitude in the boats even tenser.

  “What do you think, Kaleo?” Rhys tossed over his shoulder. “Are we heading in the right direction?”

  Kaleo shrugged, his tent springing up into shape with a muffled whuff. “What the hell do I know? I go where I’m told and shoot what they aim me at.”

  Rhys looked up from spreading his and Darius’s bedrolls to blink at Kaleo. He continued working with jerky movements, practically hurling his own gear into his tent, the corners of his mouth tight and white.

  “I even fuck who they tell me to fuck, and hasn’t that worked out well for everyone involved?” Kaleo sneered at his tent, as if it had somehow offended him, and stalked away, leaving Rhys frowning after him.

  With an unhappy shrug, Rhys crawled out of the tent, heading for a stand of trees just beyond the campsite. This area had already been thoroughly scanned with the infrared detectors, and the Jugs assigned first watch weren’t stationed far away. He couldn’t go too far from camp, but he wanted privacy for a while.

  Safely sheltered by the trees, he looked around to make sure no one was watching, then pulled a knife out of the sheath clipped to his belt.

  Despite his reservations over Rhys’s comparative frailty, Darius had to admit he was grateful that the boy had insisted on coming along. Unobtrusively, he’d brought over dinner rations as Darius organized watches and oversaw the camp setup. Then he’d erected their tent himself so Darius could sit with Xolani and Titus and strategize their manhunt. In all his years as a Jug, and the numerous relationships with other Jugs he’d test-driven during that time, Darius had never had someone so seamlessly integrate himself into Darius’s way of working so that he could more efficiently go about what he needed to do.

  Ignoring his constantly increasing appeal in bed—which was a damn near impossible task—Rhys made a damn fine assistant.

  It wasn’t that the Jugs Darius had been with were inept, of course. They wouldn’t have been in Project Juggernaut to begin with if they weren’t highly competent. But they all had their own roles within Delta Company, their own duties. Never before had Darius had someone whose only purpose—at least for the moment—was to help however he could, filling in whatever random gaps he found. Perhaps that would change once Rhys became infected with Bane Alpha, and as Delta Company as a whole—and Darius’s squadron in particular—figured out just where Rhys fit into their operations. For now, Rhys was one of theirs even if he wasn’t one of them, which left his role within Delta Company something of a question mark.

  When the watches were settled, Darius frowned to realize Rhys wasn’t anywhere to be seen within the ring of tents erected around the campfire.

  “Toby, you seen the boy?” Darius strode through camp to where Toby stood at his post on the perimeter with one of the infrared scanners.

  “Don’t you mean your boy?” Toby grinned, and Darius grinned back, though he didn’t answer. Toby gestured to the scanner and showed its screen to Darius, where a single speck of warmth moved in the cooling evening. “Two o’clock, maybe fifty yards into the trees over there.”

  “Thanks.” Darius clapped a hand on Toby’s shoulder, driving an exaggerated oof out of him, and took off at a jog for the trees.

  What did Rhys think he was doing, wandering so far from camp?

  Rationally, Darius knew it was a ridiculous concern. Toby would see anything approaching Rhys’s location in plenty of time to raise the alarm, and Rhys had almost certainly been deliberate in his choice to position himself well within range of the scanners. Still, Darius hadn’t had time to get over his conviction that Rhys’s as-yet-uninfected status meant he was helpless. He might not be a Jug, but he was intelligent and resourceful.

  He was maybe ten yards out from Rhys’s location and about to call for him when he heard the first wooden thunk.

  Darius stopped jogging and began to creep forward, concern giving way to curiosity. As he drew closer, he heard a sequence of sounds. Grunt. Thunk. Twang.

  Another few yards and Darius realized what he was hearing. He heard that sequence all the time when Xolani practiced throwing knives.

  Grunt. Thunk. Twang.

  This one was followed by a scorching curse, a word Darius didn’t even know Rhys knew. He smiled. In just a few short weeks, the scrawny, half-starved, terrified, and traumatized kid they’d found had managed to wriggle his way out from under the old preacher’s repressive boot. Rhys might not yet be a Jug, but he’d begun to blossom nonetheless.

  When the clearing Rhys had chosen came into sight, Darius stopped his silent approach and stood in the shadow of a tree, watching.

  Rhys wriggled a knife loose from a tree trunk, rocking it up and down to work the blade out, and backed up ten feet or so. He caught his tongue between his teeth, scowling in concentration, the knife held aloft by the blade near his ear.

  Grunt. He used his whole body to give the knife force on its release, and it spun end over end through the air.

  Thunk. It embedded itself in the tree, mere inches from where Rhys had pulled it out.

  Twang. The hilt vibrated as the knife’s momentum bled away.

  Rhys stared at his results for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction, returning to the tree to rock the knife loose again. This time, it went back into the sheath at his hip, then Rhys knelt down on the ground, where he stretched out and began a set of push-ups. Fascinated, Darius forgot about making his presence known. He watched as Rhys’s arms started to quiver after only a few presses and then collapsed beneath him, leaving him panting on the mossy earth. But the boy wasn’t through. Once he’d caught his breath, he scanned the ground around the clearing, finally setting his sights on a decent-sized rock. It wasn’t huge, but it was large enough that Rhys had to use both hands to lift it. Straightening his back, he began to do curls with the rock, bringing it to his chest and then slowly lowering it back to waist level.

  Darius blinked in astonishment. Rhys wore that mulish look Darius had become far too familiar with, and despite his obvious weariness, the boy kept working.

  After only a few reps, Rhys began to pant and gasp. His tongue poked out between his teeth, and his thin arms started to tremble visibly with the strain as his muscles approached failure. He was still so painfully thin. The only definition to his chest, back, and abdomen were the ridges of his bones underlying the skin beneath his sweat-dampened T-shirt.

  And still he was trying.

  On the last attempt, he failed to lift the rock to his chest. The quiver in his arms had become a powerful tremor, and Rhys let the rock fall to the ground with a thud. He s
lumped against a tree, panting and shaking, with beads of sweat rolling down his temples.

  “You don’t have to do that, boy.” Darius stepped out from the trees.

  Rhys startled to see him, then relaxed. “Yeah, I do.” His voice was still raspy, and Darius grimaced again at the blackened bruises around his throat.

  It troubled Darius that he could no longer see the open innocence in Rhys that had captivated him from the start. All he could see was bitter determination. He should be thankful for that. The post-plague world devoured innocents whole and spat out their bones. But he’d miss Rhys’s softness if it went away. Maybe it was just living two decades among hardened soldiers that made that vulnerable sweetness so appealing.

  Darius gave him a sober look. “No one expects you to be like us, Rhys.”

  Scorn twisted the boy’s lips. “Well, that’ll be a real comfort next time I stand by uselessly while Jacob tries to tear my head off my shoulders.”

  Darius’s mouth twitched. He might miss Rhys’s innocence, but he was developing a healthy appreciation for the kid’s quiet sass.

  “Useless, huh?” Darius leaned a shoulder against a tree trunk, folding his arms over his chest. “Guess it wasn’t you who broke Houtman’s nose trying to stop him from endangering the civvies?” He arched an eyebrow, giving Rhys a sardonic perusal. “Must’ve been someone less useless.”

  To Darius’s delight, Rhys began to blush, embarrassed by his own heroism. Darius had a hard time finding the situation as amusing. Houtman had already come too damn close to killing Rhys, but by the state of Houtman’s nose and Rhys’s bruised knuckles, it wasn’t hard to deduce that the boy had gotten a few licks in before Houtman got the upper hand.

  Civvies who got into punching contests with Jugs usually wound up dead.

  After a moment, Rhys’s blush faded, and he lifted earnest hazel eyes to Darius. “The only reason I got away with that was because he wasn’t expecting it. He won’t let me pull a sneak attack on him again. I won’t stand a chance if he gets close in. I need to be able to shoot, to use a knife, to—” Rhys’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, wincing as he did so. His bruised larynx apparently didn’t approve of speechmaking. He opened his mouth again, but his voice broke on the first syllable, and Rhys’s face tightened, his eyes burning with frustration.

  “Hush, boy.” Darius pushed himself away from the tree and stepped close, but he hesitated at opening his arms to Rhys even now. He held Rhys when they had sex or when they awoke from their respective nightmares. They didn’t hug. But Rhys’s bravado seemed to melt away with the loss of his voice, and all that was left were those soft, vulnerable eyes sending out a signal only Darius could receive, pleading wordlessly for reassurance.

  Darius’s hand closed on his shoulder, squeezing. And then his awkward indecision was overruled as Rhys stepped forward and pressed against him.

  Fuck, he was an idiot for letting the boy get under his skin. But that didn’t stop him from enfolding Rhys in his arms.

  “You’ll get there.” Darius pressed his lips against sandy blond hair as Rhys slid his arms around Darius’s waist. Rhys felt frail, still so damn scrawny. How did the boy expect to build up muscles when he hardly had any body mass to begin with?

  Darius spared a moment to damn Houtman and his father to the hottest of hells. Did they know just how close they’d come to starving the boy to death?

  “You need to give yourself more time. You could set yourself back, trying to take on too much. You’re making progress. Your ribs ain’t showing quite as bad as they used to, but Xolani says there’s a chance that now you’ve got better nutrition, you might sprout up a bit more, if you got another growth spurt in you.” Darius smiled, chuffing a soft laugh into Rhys’s hair. “You might still end up taller’n me, boy.”

  Rhys laughed silently, his shoulders jerking. It wasn’t an exaggeration, though. He had all the earmarks of a tall kid who hadn’t reached his final height yet. His bony hands and feet seemed too long and big for the rest of his body. He was only an inch or two shorter than Darius, and a good growth spurt with proper nutrition could put him over the top.

  “I’m nearly twenty.” Rhys kept his voice to a breathy whisper, obviously trying not to engage his vocal cords. “Actually, if it’s getting to be fall, I might be twenty already. You really think that’s gonna happen?”

  Darius shrugged. “Hell if I know. Xolani says it might, and I’ve never had reason to doubt her medical knowledge. Now stop talking. The sooner that throat of yours heals up, the better.”

  “Wh—” Rhys stopped at Darius’s stern look, tilting his head in inquiry.

  Darius stared into Rhys’s eyes for a moment, then lifting his hand, brushed his thumb over wide, full, beautifully curved lips. He hadn’t realized until he’d shaved him just how gorgeous Rhys’s mouth was. He had lips just made to be wrapped around a dick.

  He nudged, and Rhys resisted only a moment before letting Darius insinuate his thumb in the wet heat of his mouth. He let it rest on Rhys’s tongue for a moment before beginning to move it in and out suggestively.

  Darius let a bit of growl creep into his tone. “When the day comes that I don’t have to fuck you every time to try to infect you, it might be good for you to know a bit more about sucking cock.”

  Somewhere deep inside he reminded himself that, assuming Rhys survived, he wouldn’t need Darius anymore, much less want him. But that was a worry for another time. For now it was enough that Rhys was his.

  Those wide eyes turned liquid in the twilight of the clearing, dark in the shade beneath the leaves. In sunlight, they had flecks of gold in all that earthy hazel, but now they were muted, like the bark of a moss-covered tree, gray and brown and green laid over one another. There was hunger in them, too, a hunger he’d never have guessed Rhys was capable of just a few weeks ago.

  He’d done his job of seducing Rhys a little too well, and now he was the one who’d been seduced.

  Rhys pursed his lips and began to suck on Darius’s thumb until Darius’s dick stiffened in sympathy with the lucky digit.

  “Not until Xolani says your throat is healed.” Regretfully, Darius drew his thumb out. He cupped Rhys’s jaw, trailing saliva across his cheek. “You go too deep, you could hurt yourself.”

  A hint of mutiny sparked in Rhys’s eyes for a moment, then quickly guttered. He nodded, not looking particularly happy about it. Darius stared at his lips again until he finally made himself break the spell. He wished he could think about the day when he could fuck Rhys not just for necessity’s sake but because they both wanted it. But for now, they had a job to do, and they were out in the open in unswept territory so they’d better get it done and get back to camp.

  He pushed Rhys against a tree and turned him around, bending him forward until Rhys grabbed the trunk for support.

  “Same rules as last night, boy.” He made short work of Rhys’s belt. “Take care of your throat. No yelling.”

  “Well, at least we know we’re still heading in the right direction.” Xolani surveyed the punctured inflatable on the banks of the Columbia just before the McNary Dam.

  “We’d be turning around now if your friend hadn’t managed to leave us a bread-crumb trail again.” Titus gave Rhys an approving clout on the shoulder, but Rhys’s return smile was perfunctory at best. He’d been thrilled when he’d caught the little clues someone—Rhys suspected Gabe because it was the same sort of thing he’d done the day they’d found him down in Salem—had been leaving, pointing them in the right direction. But now his fear, which had been numbed by shock and disbelief when he’d first learned what Jacob had done, was escalating the longer the hunt went on. Was Jacob infecting Gabe with Alpha after exposing him to the Beta strain? Or would he withhold that, just to watch Gabe die?

  Would Gabe even allow it, assuming Jacob didn’t just force him?

  Darius picked up a folding knife. It appeared to have been used to slice the side of the boat in a deliberate act of sabotage, pos
sibly an attempt by one of the hostages to slow Jacob down so they could be rescued. “Whose work is this?”

  “I don’t recognize the knife.” It was small consolation, but Rhys was pleased his voice didn’t crack, even if the bruises on his throat were still a hideous, mottled yellow-purple. “If it’s Gabe’s, he got it after he left the monastery.”

  Xolani shrugged. “Could be one of the women’s.”

  “Whoever it was, they’re on foot now. Next question is, which direction?”

  Toby looked up from consulting a map. “Little bit east of here is where the river splits. North is the Colombia into Washington and Canada, east and eventually south is the Snake River into Idaho.”

  Titus frowned. “Is he crazy enough to head north into unswept territory with winter coming on?”

  “Could be, if he really thinks he’s untouchable,” Xolani mused. “If he doesn’t, he’ll head south, knowing we’ve already done a sweep of Idaho and Utah. He might even be trying to get to the far southwest before winter hits so that temperatures aren’t as big an issue. Arizona or New Mexico, maybe?”

  “I know him. He wants me to find him. He’s going to go wherever that’s most likely.” Rhys looked between them all, his expression glum. He wasn’t sure just what Jacob planned to do when he did catch up with him. Kill him? Kill Gabe and make him watch? All he knew was that Jacob wouldn’t find his newfound power nearly as satisfying if he couldn’t use it to prove his superiority over Rhys.

  Darius pushed himself up from inspecting the boat and brushed his hands on his fatigues. “Then he’ll head south, where there’s few—if any—revs, milder weather, and more supplies and shelter. Jamie, think you can find us a trail?”

  He shrugged. “If the wind hasn’t swept away the dirt on the roads, sure. Assuming he’s kept to the roads in the first place.”

  “He will.” Rhys grimaced, looking at the smudges of blood on the shredded side of the boat. Jacob had taken his fury out on someone for the sabotage. “He doesn’t like to work any harder than he has to.”