Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  “And Joe and I spent all damn morning looking for a working generator and siphoning fuel for it to charge the power cell we found.” Titus wiped his mouth with a grimace, as if he could still taste gasoline or whatever they’d used. “But as long as it doesn’t die, we got a way to make up some lost time moving at speed without worrying whether Cooper can keep up.”

  Darius glanced at Xolani, who had joined him in the doorway. “Think the boy will be strong enough tomorrow to ride on that thing?”

  She grinned broadly. “I’ll see to it.”

  “Well, four and a half days of heavy use is more than I expected to get out of her.” Jamie patted the cracked and faded vinyl seat of the smoking ATV fondly. “Especially considering her age. These things really weren’t meant for long-distance journeys.”

  Rhys couldn’t mourn the loss of the four-wheeler as much as Jamie did. Of course, he wasn’t the one who’d spent so much time babying every possible mile out of the venerable thing. But after four days of jostling around behind Titus, Jamie, or Joe, his entire body ached and his butt was numb. The only good portion of riding the ATV was when, since the third day, they’d let him take turns driving, once Xolani declared him recovered enough that she was sure he wouldn’t pass out and crash. It had been the first time in his life he’d driven anything, and the freedom had been exhilarating.

  He’d also gained a new appreciation for the Jugs’ physical stamina. They’d jogged alongside the ATV for hours on end and barely broke a sweat, making up the miles they’d lost during Rhys’s illness. He felt self-conscious now that they’d have to slow their pace again for him to keep up, though Bailey and Toby were joking about how a nice stroll would be perfectly welcome after so many days of double-timing it.

  “We’ve got another problem.” Jamie dusted his hands on his pants after pushing the ATV off the road. “I’m pretty sure we’ve lost the trail.”

  Darius frowned. “Where do you think we lost it?”

  “Possibly as far back as two towns ago. We haven’t seen any signs of anyone having passed through these areas all day. No footprints, no refuse, no campfires.”

  Rhys shrugged on his rucksack, stretching to test just how sore his wound still was. He gnawed his lip as Darius pulled out the worn map.

  “You think he doubled back?”

  Jamie nodded. “Yeah. We’ve only assumed he was heading to Boise because that’s where he would have wound up if he’d continued on the most likely course by river. Now that he’s going overland, he’s got a lot more options.”

  “Fuck!” Everyone started as Kaleo dropped his rucksack and kicked it across the ground, glaring as if this latest irritating development were Jamie’s doing.

  “Come on, Kaleo, pipe down.” Toby clapped a hand on his shoulder, and Kaleo shrugged him off.

  “This is bullshit! Why don’t we just chase our tails in fucking circles while that asshole laughs at us? Seems to me we’d get further.”

  Xolani glared at him. “Shut the fuck up, Kaleo. Unless you have any helpful suggestions, you can bitch and moan on your own time.”

  Rhys looked at Kaleo in alarm, glancing between him and Darius, whose jaw flexed with the fraying of his temper.

  After a tactful pause, Jamie resumed his explanation. “I think he went southwest instead of southeast. After all, Nevada’s been swept, too. Plenty of supplies and shelter in Reno. Maybe even Lake Tahoe or beyond if he wanted to risk the mountains.”

  Xolani peered around Darius’s arm at the map, tracing the route from Reno into California with her finger, and shook her head. “Just him and the Donner party.”

  Darius shuddered. “Let’s hope for his hostages’ sakes they don’t hit an early snowfall and come to the same end. All right, back the way we came, people. Keep an eye out for signs of passage.”

  Rhys sat on his bedroll during first watch, looking between Darius and Kaleo. Kaleo sat apart from the other Jugs, meticulously cleaning an array of weapons that seemed far more extensive than what he had carried before the squad had returned to Fort Vancouver. He hadn’t become any less withdrawn since that first day of futile searching up the Columbia River, and he’d only gotten worse since Darius had dressed him down for failing to scan the rear and allowing Rhys to be attacked. Now Xolani had snapped at him as well, and it didn’t take particularly keen powers of observation to notice the way the whole squad was giving him a wide berth.

  What happened to Jugs who went off the rails? Titus had intimated that Delta Company had ways of policing their own. If Kaleo didn’t manage to pull it together, what would the others do?

  Glancing at where Darius stood watch by the door, Rhys sighed and pushed himself off his bedroll, wending his way through the maze of sleeping Jugs to drop down and sit on the floor beside Kaleo.

  “Shouldn’t you be resting?” Kaleo asked without looking up from reassembling his assault rifle. “You’re still healing.”

  Rhys snorted, tipping his head back to stare up at the cobweb-draped ceiling. “You’d be a lot more convincing impersonating my mother if you hadn’t once threatened to fuck me while your girlfriend watched.”

  Kaleo barked a short, startled laugh. “Great. So now I’ve got to listen to sass from you as well as getting my ass handed to me by everyone else.”

  “It should be easier to take from me. After all, I’m cuter.”

  “Jesus.” Kaleo stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief. “What happened to the sulking kid we dragged out of that monastery?”

  Rhys shrugged. “I think he traded places with the guy who used to crack bad jokes.” Kaleo scowled as Rhys picked up the freshly honed hunting knife lying out on the blanket, turning it in his hands. “It’s not your fault, you know.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “That Jacob became a Jug. You might have been the first to try to infect him, but you weren’t the last.” Rhys tested the knife’s edge against his thumb. “Hell, you might as well blame Xolani. It was her crazy idea to try to infect us in the first place.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Cooper. Xolani blames herself plenty already for the clusterfuck this whole situation has become.”

  “Huh. Must be harder to tell because she’s not throwing tantrums about it.”

  Kaleo snatched the knife out of Rhys’s hand and set it down on the blanket again. “Yeah, fuck you, kid.”

  “Sorry, that window’s closed.” Rhys grinned. “Guess you’re just going to have to save it for Schuyler. She seemed nice, by the way—not that I got much chance to talk with her. How long have you two been together?”

  Kaleo rolled his eyes and set down his rifle. “What the fuck are you doing, Cooper?”

  “I don’t know.” Rhys plucked at the blanket of Kaleo’s bedroll. “You were pretty nice to me back there at the start, even when I didn’t give you much reason to be. Seems like now maybe you could use someone being nice to you. Darius and Xolani don’t really have time for it, but if you ignore the fact that I’m probably going to die soon, I’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t need some kid patting me on the head, telling me it’s going to be all right and I didn’t do anything wrong.” Kaleo looked away, grimacing. “Maybe there’s plenty of blame to go around for making Houtman a monster, but the fact is, we did it when we should have known better. When I should have known better. I could tell the guy was slimy before I ever fucked him, but he was fresh meat and none of us really stopped to consider whether or not we should try to make him a Jug. That was fucking stupid. Especially after what we had to do with Charlie Company.”

  “You’re starting to sound like Darius did that first night. There wasn’t time for you to figure out if he was an okay guy.” Rhys drew his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on them. “It had to be done right then, as soon as possible. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been Bailey or Toby or whoever Xolani managed to convince.”

  “Yeah, well, Darius had a good point. You gotta understand about Charlie Company,
Cooper. Those people were our brothers and sisters. I went through Basic with some of them. Took their money playing poker, went to titty bars with them, got stoned with them, learned how to function with the new abilities of a Jug with them.” Kaleo shook his head. “It would have been one thing if none of the people I knew had been perpetrators. I mean, not everyone in Charlie Company was okay with what was going on, though in the end they all fought us when we attacked because their loyalty was still to their own unit first and foremost. But when it was all over, and we’d broken through their fortifications, and dozens of men and women were dead, we started interviewing the slaves they’d taken, and some of the people we thought we knew best, people we would have sworn would never be a party to such a thing, had been some of the worst offenders. Some of the things they did . . . God. If it could happen with people we thought we knew, why would we agree to give that power to strangers we couldn’t vouch for?”

  “Would you rather have let me die on the off chance I might have turned out to be crazy?”

  “Yes? No? Fuck, I don’t know.” Kaleo groaned and began stashing his weapons so he could stretch out on his bedroll, nudging Rhys aside with his feet. “All I know is some civvies who had nothing to do with any of this shit—including your friend, Cooper—will probably die before this is all over, and I had a big part in making that possible.”

  “Yeah, I still say you’re making too big a deal out of your part in it.” Rhys gave him a flat look. “Come on. Everything that’s going on, and you’re having angst because you fucked him? Please.”

  Another reluctant smile parted Kaleo’s lips. “Wow. Schuyler’s gonna adore you when she gets to know you. There aren’t many women in the Jugs, but the ones we’ve got are a special breed. They tell it straight, and they don’t put up with much bullshit. I mean, look at Xolani and Gina.”

  “It’ll be good to get to know her, too.” Rhys refrained from pointing out how unlikely such a prospect seemed to be. He was trying to pull Kaleo out of his funk, after all. “Why doesn’t she patrol with you, like Titus and Xolani?”

  “Because she leads a squad of her own. Which she threw me out of.” Kaleo grinned, looking a bit more like his old self. “I’m too insubordinate for her. She can’t help but think it’s because we’re together, even though I’m the same with everyone. So I was lucky to catch her while her squad was back at base resupplying between patrols. We don’t see much of each other while we’re sweeping an area.”

  Rhys turned his head, laying his cheek on his knees to look at Kaleo. “So, back to my earlier question: how long have you been together?”

  “Since we were quarantined at the CDC.”

  “God, that long?”

  “Not quite as long as Titus and Xolani, but we do fairly well.” A wince tightened Kaleo’s face for a moment. “Being a Jug’s a lot harder on some of the women than it is on the men. Maybe that’s why they’re so amazing. If one of ’em’s kind enough to stick by you, you count your blessings.”

  The naked honesty in Kaleo’s eyes was enough to make Rhys’s throat ache. Strange. After watching Titus and Xolani, or Toby and Joe, it shouldn’t take him by surprise to see love amongst the Jugs. It always seemed like they were too hard as a whole for anything that gentle. But then, he’d never seen Titus or Joe get that particularly sappy look before.

  Rhys blinked in astonishment. God, how had he not realized it before? Kaleo wasn’t like the rest. He had never developed the armor the others had, or at least not as thick as they had. That was why Jacob’s betrayal had hit him so hard. In some ways, Kaleo was as fragile as Rhys himself.

  Like it had when he’d witnessed moments of tenderness between Toby and Joe, seeing the way Kaleo loved Schuyler made something hurt inside Rhys. He wasn’t sure why, but it did.

  Maybe because it was utterly futile to hope he’d ever experience such a thing for himself. Even if Darius were capable of it, Rhys would be dead before it could ever happen.

  “You okay?” Kaleo reached up, his hand falling on Rhys’s arm.

  “Yeah.” Rhys mustered a game smile. “You’re right; I should get some rest. I don’t have a Jug’s energy even when I’m not healing up. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

  Rhys rose and brushed the dust from the floor off his pants. “About what?”

  “That you were nearly rev kibble on my watch. Darius was right to call me out on that. I should have been paying more attention.”

  Rhys shrugged, quelling the bitterness that came with thoughts of his own impending death with the same ruthless ferocity he’d used to squash the pang of longing he’d felt just a moment before. “Don’t worry about it. Not your fault I can’t keep up.”

  He stretched out on the bedroll he’d laid out beside Darius’s when they’d made camp that night. Since Rhys had healed enough to allow them to resume their pursuit of Jacob, Darius hadn’t touched him. The first three nights, he’d had been too exhausted and sore from his injury and illness to mind, but now a strange restlessness set in, goaded by that envy he’d felt witnessing Kaleo’s devotion to Schuyler.

  Was Darius simply being considerate? Had he given up on Rhys? Did he just not want Rhys anymore, now that they were no longer trying to infect him with the Alpha strain? It hadn’t seemed that way, when they’d talked that day in the clinic, but maybe Darius had changed his mind. Maybe he didn’t want a scrawny weakling who slowed him down and caused more trouble than he was worth.

  Rhys tried to stay awake until the first watch was over, but eventually sleep overtook him. He woke with a start when he felt a body move beside him and opened his eyes to see Darius lying on his side, facing him. His dark eyes glittered in the silvery moonlight. Hours seemed to pass as they stared at each other silently. Rhys’s heart drummed anxiously in his chest, afraid of what Darius’s unusual reticence might mean. Just as he began to resign himself to the inevitable rejection, though, Darius stretched his hand out, brushing Rhys’s cheek.

  Rhys closed his eyes, turning his face into the caress. His breath picked up, quick and shallow, as he brushed a kiss on Darius’s palm with no forethought whatsoever. When his eyes fluttered open again, Darius was still staring at him.

  “When this is all over, I’ll have to shave you again, boy.”

  Rhys swallowed and wouldn’t let himself think about how it would never happen. “I’d like that. Please.”

  The hand on Rhys’s jaw slipped around the back of his neck, drawing him forward to stretch out above Darius’s powerful body.

  His head came up at the same moment Rhys’s descended, sliding their lips together with more gentleness than Rhys had ever suspected Darius capable of. It was Rhys who made a greedy, eager sound, trying to deepen the kiss, his tongue slipping between Darius’s lips.

  “Shh. Easy now.” Darius nuzzled at Rhys’s ear. He caught the lobe lightly between his teeth, flicking it with his tongue, and Rhys went limp with a soft moan. It felt like his bones had turned to gelatin, and all he could do was slump above Darius, gripping his biceps as Darius’s tongue traced the shell of his ear, his breath brushing the wet lobe.

  Darius moved on from his ear down to his neck, and his hands slipped under the tail of Rhys’s shirt to grip his ass, kneading. The pressure rubbed the bulges of their cocks together and without thinking, Rhys shifted his thighs apart to straddle Darius’s hips, seeking more friction.

  “That’s it, boy. Ride me.” Darius tugged on Rhys’s hips, encouraging him to find a rhythm.

  “Darius.” Rhys gasped, seeking the right angle, the right speed. He felt strangely overwhelmed, his body more alive, more aware of each touch and brush, than it had ever been in all the ferocious couplings that had passed between them before. It was as though he had too many nerves, too much blood flushing and prickling beneath his skin, too many sensitive places alight all at once. He turned his face in wordless entreaty, seeking another kiss, and Darius obliged, this one harder, urgent. One of Darius’s hands delv
ed under Rhys’s shirt to find a nipple, and Rhys cried out at just the stroke of one rough thumb followed by a gentle pinch.

  He ground his cock down against Darius in mindless need, driven by instinct and wanting. His fly was an intolerable constriction, and Rhys pushed up from Darius, working his jeans and underwear down with impatient wriggles. Darius freed his own thick cock and spat into his palm, gripping them both in one hand.

  “Move.” He pushed up so his cock slid along Rhys’s, groaning. “Move, boy.”

  Catching his tongue between his teeth, Rhys obeyed, a moan rising in his throat as he fucked into the firm grasp of Darius’s hand. He surged alongside Darius’s cock, noises escaping him with heedless disregard of the people surrounding them. It built slowly, so damn slow, the tension spooling inside him a little bit more with each thrust. It wasn’t a thunderous onslaught like all the rough fucks they’d had, crashing over him all at once. No, it tugged at him, trying to tow him up and over in gradual fits and starts, until he was shaking, sweating, certain he’d burst out of his skin if he couldn’t come soon. And then it was there, flashing through him in wave after wave, sending pale runners of milky fluid sliding across the dark skin of Darius’s belly.

  Darius gripped him tight, milking him with each stroke until Rhys cried out, oversensitized. But before he could move away, Darius seized, shaking, hot, silky spurts crossing the lines Rhys had spent.

  Still panting, Darius shoved gently at him. “Taste us.”

  Rhys obeyed without hesitation, without shame, shimmying down Darius’s thighs to slide his tongue through the salty mess on the hard ridges of Darius’s abdomen. It was as bitter as he remembered from that first night in the chapel, but he didn’t care. His tongue stroked until Darius drew him up for a slow, deep kiss, sharing the taste from Rhys’s mouth.

  Darius rolled, toppling them over onto their sides without breaking the kiss. His thigh slipped between Rhys’s to press them closer together, and Rhys hooked his upper leg around the back of it to win just a few millimeters more. He couldn’t say how long they lay like that. It felt like half the night might have passed, with one searching, exploratory kiss merging into another until his body was almost too limp and weary to even pull up his pants. He might have slept with them still pushed down his thighs if Darius hadn’t finally broken the sticky embrace to help him right their clothing.