by AJ Rose
“First of all, nothing guarantees anyone’s safety anymore,” Brian countered. “Second, I don’t know how well you know him, but Elliot’s brilliant. What special considerations he might need in the way of getting his meds and keeping him calm, he’d definitely make up for in strategy for whatever you’re planning.” His tone changed to nearly pleading. “Don’t dismiss him so easily.”
I’m not. I’m just not equipped for this. “You barely know me. Why are you so adamant to shove him off on me? And where are you planning to go?”
“With you, of course,” Brian answered as if it were a foregone conclusion.
“Another mouth to feed? I don’t think so.”
“Who says I won’t be the one feeding you and your family?” Brian challenged.
Ash was skeptical. “How’s that?”
“Avid fisherman in almost any conditions, and I’ll make sure Elliot gets what he needs so you don’t have to worry about him directly. I may be another body to worry about, but I’m an able body, and I just might be useful to you.”
Ash considered him with pursed lips. “Okay, first test is you go with me on a supply hunt. I want nothing but helpful suggestions, and the minute you balk at my preparations, you get left behind, and you can personally take Elliot to the nearest army base. I think there’s one north of Syracuse. Fort Drum. Or just wait a couple days. I’m pretty sure some big-ass military trucks will be rocking through here, what with the prison nearby.”
He didn’t give Brian a chance to react, striding past him to the living room to speak to his sister and Russ. Charlotte had covered Elliot with the afghan from the back of the couch and was checking his pulse. She’d gotten in a semester of nursing school before Ash had managed to fuck it all up for her by landing his full ride to NYU, and he was kicking himself for putting his school above hers, no matter how economically sound the decision was at the time.
“He doing all right?” Ash lifted the iPod from Elliot’s slack hand and turned it off to preserve the battery. If music soothed him, then letting this piece of electronics die was as bad an idea as not having batteries for the GPS. He added a car charger to his mental shopping list.
“Seems to be,” she whispered. “His heart rate is good. Ash, you can’t leave with him like this.”
“He should be fine by morning,” Brian said, having followed Ash from the kitchen. “This seizure was short, so he’s just going to be headachy and exhausted. But moving from the couch to a car shouldn’t be too taxing.”
“What about the next one?” Ash asked testily.
“It’s not like he has them all that regularly,” Brian said. “He can sometimes go months with no sign of seizure activity. How long is the trip you’re talking about? A few days? Once we get across the dividing line between power and no power, it’s a lot safer for him.”
“You’re not encouraging this stupid road trip,” Charlotte said incredulously. “I’m sorry… Brian, right? I just met you, so I wouldn’t normally be this blunt, but a three-thousand-mile car ride is not what someone in Elliot’s condition needs, not to mention, Ash—” she turned her attention to him “—I haven’t agreed to go anywhere.”
“I’m not leaving you behind,” Ash said stubbornly. “And I’m not staying here. So you don’t really have a choice, Charlotte. I’m hearing your concerns, but you’re not hearing mine.”
She sighed, clearly tired of the argument. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. I’m exhausted and going to bed. Russ, you coming?”
Russ had sat in the oversized chair beside the couch, keeping silent and simply watching all the activity. He’d been quieter than Ash had ever seen him, which was a blessing. Finally, one thing going right. Christ.
“Brian and I are going to the man mall, and we’re taking your van,” Ash said, opening the hall closet and pulling a black zip-up hoodie from a hanger.
“What?” Charlotte asked. “Bass Pro is closed.”
“I know. That’s the problem, or I’d have taken care of it today.”
“Ugh. I’m too tired to decipher your puzzles. Don’t get arrested.” With that, she turned and all but dragged Russ behind her, only refraining from slamming her door, Ash surmised, to keep those sleeping from being startled awake. He waited until she was out of the room, then extracted the lockbox he’d stashed in the end table the night before. Quickly, in case Charlotte emerged to use the bathroom or get a drink, he liberated the Colt and tucked it in his waistband once more, hiding the empty box and standing up.
“Let’s go,” he said to Brian, whose wide eyes were glued to the now-concealed weapon.
Ash spent a couple minutes moving Elliot’s car to the curb, then folding down the backseats in Charlotte’s 2005 Grand Caravan before beckoning Brian to get in.
The streets were spooky in the dark unmarred by porch lights or streetlamps. He wasn’t inclined to conversation, mentally reviewing the things he absolutely had to pick up on this excursion. Brian, however, had other ideas.
“How is it you knew to get out of the city so quickly?”
Ash eyed him sideways in the dim glow of the dash. The van wasn’t as smooth a ride or as electronically equipped as Elliot’s Audi, and he found himself missing the buttery whisper of tires on pavement and the responsive handling. Charlotte’s van pulled to the left, in need of alignment. He should have checked the tire treads before the sun set.
“Just a hunch.” Without knowing this guy, Ash wasn’t about to tell him he’d had any warning, and he certainly wasn’t going to mention Uncle Marvin as more than a relative living in the safety of the West who would be willing to take them in for the duration of the crisis. “I’ve sort of made a hobby of survival. My dad was a marine, and he taught my sister and me a lot growing up.”
“A hunch,” Brian intoned in disbelief.
“Yep,” Ash replied as neutrally as he was able. “When the generator didn’t kick on in chemistry lab, and half the class couldn’t get their cellphones to power up, it didn’t strike me as the typical power outage. They should have at least been able to access their screens, whether they had service or not. So I hoofed it. Elliot followed me, and we struck a deal. In exchange for taking him with me, he’d let me use his car. Win-win.”
“What would you have done if he hadn’t been there to offer a ride?”
Brian was shrewd, Ash was beginning to realize, and he tightened his lips, though given their current errand, he didn’t suppose it made a difference if the man knew to what lengths he would have resorted.
“I’d have found something.”
“Is your sister a survivalist, too?”
“She’s not a slouch about it, but she’s not quite as into it as I am.”
“Huh. So it’s safe to assume the gear on the table was yours?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m a curious guy,” Brian said.
“Does it matter?”
Brian answered the question with a question. “Do you always carry foil-wrapped electronics in a prepper tin with you to class?”
Busted. Ash sighed. “Guess I just got lucky yesterday.”
Brian studied him intently. “Uh-huh.” His cynicism rang loud and clear, but he must have sensed Ash’s limit on the topic and let it go. “Your sister sure doesn’t like your plan to go west,” he said conversationally, and the tension in the cab eased. Not that Ash trusted him enough to spill his entire history with Charlotte and their sibling squabbles.
“Nope.”
“What do you think it would take to convince her to put as much distance between us and this mess as possible?”
“Why?”
Brian shrugged and looked away. “Didn’t you say she has a kid?”
Ash stayed quiet, shooting him a suspicious glance while trying to keep the van on the dark lane. They were nearing the mall, and he wanted to find a spot to scope out the exterior, make sure there weren’t patrols that might catch them trying to break in.
“I just think it’s saf
er to go west,” Brian continued, ignoring Ash’s reticence. “Elliot is obviously better off close to a hospital in case he needs one, and he’s my number one priority.”
“Even if it goes against your boss’s orders?”
Brian stayed quiet for a bit, apparently choosing his words as if Ash would relay them to Davenport Sr. and get him canned. “Steven isn’t here for all this. He didn’t drive through New York in a panic looking for Elliot, seeing how people are beginning to get restless. And he’s also a little on the… optimistic side of what Elliot can handle.”
“But you know? Elliot says you’re the company’s IT veep. You have sort of an unusual affinity for the kid since he’s not really part of your job description.” Ash pulled over on a residential street that fed into the mall parking lot from one of the lesser entrances.
Brian stiffened as Ash threw the van in park, eyes intent on the wide building in front of them, dark and silent with only the moon to light the edges.
“Steven travels a lot, and when Elliot was younger, it wasn’t always wise for him to go. Elliot had a nanny to look after him, but I was around a lot, too. The Davenports are family to me. I don’t have one of my own, and they treat me like more than an employee, so it shouldn’t be surprising I’ve gotten close to Elliot over the years. I watched him grow up, so excuse me if I worry about him.”
Ash registered Brian’s defensiveness and backed off. The guy was as freaked out about the situation as they were. Probably more so, considering he hadn’t known where Elliot was for a full day, and given Elliot’s medical needs, someone who loved him like family would have been worried. Of course it made sense. Elliot’s reaction to Brian’s presence—seizure aside—had been one of immense relief, too. Ash could understand the need to get to family quickly. Hadn’t he done the exact same thing?
“It’s good he’s got you, then. If I hadn’t badgered him into letting me take his car, it’s good to know he’d have had somewhere to go while his parents were cruising the high seas.” Was that a patrol car? He squinted through the windshield at the pair of headlights rounding the corner of the building. “Dammit. I was hoping the place would be deserted.” He pointed, and Brian followed his finger.
“That’s not a cop, I don’t think,” Brian put in, leaning forward. “It looks like a—”
“Golf cart,” Ash finished for him. “So only mall security. But that means they have keys to the building. If they see movement inside, they’ll be able to get in much faster than the cops.”
“Hold on a second,” Brian said, putting a hand up as Ash moved to shift the van into gear and figure out another location to stock up. “I don’t think that’s security.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because security would patrol in pairs. If they patrol alone, they’d communicate by radio. Three is an odd number.” He sat back, almost huffing in amusement and pointing. “Crowbars aren’t standard security weapons.”
Ash tracked the movement of the golf cart as it stopped on the wide sidewalk in front of the Bass Pro Shop entrance and the three occupants rushed the doors, one of them indeed wielding a crowbar, visible when they passed in front of the golf cart’s headlights. The figures crowded together at the doors, but they were too far away to see what they were doing.
“Amateurs,” Ash snorted. “Turn your lights off.”
“Are they going to break the glass or pry the doors open?” Brian wondered, seemingly to himself.
“I doubt they’d be able to pry, with the locks I saw on those doors when we were here earlier. But if they break the glass, and there are patrols, a gaping hole in the front of the store would be much more obvious.”
The trio managed to get the doors open—how, Ash hadn’t a clue—and two of them disappeared inside.
“Shit.” He sat back, grudging admiration for these yahoos’ success evident in his voice.
“What?” Brian asked. “They did the hard part for us, right?”
“Yeah, but I’m not about to go in there until they’re gone.” Despite the stupidity of them leaving the golf cart running with the lights on while they worked the doors open, they weren’t entirely idiotic. As soon as the doors gaped wide, one of them returned to the cart and drove it inside the store, then killed the lights. In the shadow of the overhanging entrance canopy, it was difficult at best to see the store was open for nefarious business.
“Hot damn.” Brian looked at Ash and laughed. “So we just wait them out?”
Ash sighed. “Yeah, might as well.”
The intruders weren’t but fifteen minutes before they exited the store, this time with the golf cart’s lights off, and when they left, they didn’t bother to close up behind themselves. They simply drove their laden excursion vehicle off into the night.
“Well, that was so much easier than I expected,” Ash murmured as he threw the van into gear and drove into the parking lot. A quick survey of the area showed no patrols, so Ash took a page from the previous interlopers’ book and drove the van straight through the open front of the store.
The entrance was a grand affair, with a showroom to display boats. Ash maneuvered around them carefully, parking at the base of one of two sets of stairs, which bracketed the showroom and led up to the camping gear. Killing the engine, he looked at Brian.
“Let’s be quick. I have a lot of shit I want to get, and I don’t want to be here any longer than they were.”
Brian reached for the door handle, offering no argument whatsoever as they prowled the merchandise. Grateful for the help, Ash wouldn’t let himself consider too deeply why he had no qualms allowing Brian to descend into grand larceny with him, but if it had been Elliot, he’d have made him wait in the van.
4
CAPTER FOUR
Day 3
Auburn, New York
* * *
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
—Terry Pratchett
* * *
THE LIVING ROOM LOOKED like a sporting goods store had regurgitated on every surface but the couch, on which Elliot still slept. Ash surveyed his inventory, doing his best to plan how to pack the five hiker’s backpacks—one of them youth size—leaning against the TV stand and along the wall beside the window, through which the dawn light slowly banished the shadows.
“Good god,” Charlotte said, stopping at the mouth of the hallway in her pajamas, her hair a halo of flyaways around her face as she took in just how much crap Ash and Brian had come home with the night before. “Asher Caine, what did you do?” Her gaze darted from his face to the medical kit, the pile of freeze-dried meal pouches, three two-person tents, a pot and pan, fishing line and snare wire, hunting knives, and more. When her eyes landed on the two bolt action hunting rifles in the corner by the door, they flashed. “You did not bring weapons into my house!”
“Keep your voice down,” he hissed, gesturing to Elliot’s sleeping form.
Brian had tried to curl up on the overstuffed chair—not the recliner—when they’d gotten home the previous night, saying he’d take a chair over the floor any day, but his head lolled in an uncomfortable-looking manner. It didn’t take much for their words to wake him.
He blinked and rubbed his face, getting his bearings. “Morning.”
“Where exactly are you going to put all this shit?” Charlotte said angrily, ignoring Brian. She did lower her volume.
“In these packs, which will go in the back of your van. Everyone gets two changes of clothes, and we’ll just have to wash them on the road. If it doesn’t fit in the backpacks, we can’t take it.”
“Un-fucking-believable,” she muttered, stepping around the flares, small sewing kit, duct tape, more medical supplies, LifeStraws for filtering water in almost any environment, flashlights, bandanas, sunblock, and a plethora of fire-starting methods.
Ash also had his cookie tin to gather, once he transferred
the written coordinates as waypoints into the handheld GPS unit. There was a lot of shit to remember, and he hoped he’d gotten everything.
“We have to go to a pharmacy at some point today or tomorrow,” he said, following her into the kitchen. They heard shuffling feet in the living room, and then the discreet closing of the bathroom door as Brian either fled the brewing argument or opted to wake up by taking a cold shower in lieu of a hot cup of coffee. Charlotte’s water heater was electric, a fact Ash had remembered when he’d awakened an hour before to take his own shower.
“What for?” she asked wearily, grabbing the camping coffee carafe from the box and running the faucet over it to get the dust and cobwebs off.
“Condoms, tampons, lube, and Elliot’s medicine,” he answered.
Setting the coffeepot down with far more care than was required to stay silent, Charlotte braced her hands on the counter. “What in the blazing Hades do you need with tampons, condoms, and lube? First, I thought you and Elliot were just friends, and second, this is hardly the time to be worried about getting your rocks off.”
He ticked off points on his fingers. “Unlubricated condoms, we can use to collect rain water. Tampons are absorbent to a degree some bandages are not, and can be unrolled, which saves space, and lube, well.” He grinned. “There are plenty of uses for lube and not all of them involve dick.” He hoped she wouldn’t notice he’d left off classifying his relationship with Elliot.
She sighed, clearly fighting a smile, and he went to her and drew her into his arms. “I’m just trying to be prepared.”
“By bringing guns into my house, Ash? I’m not okay with that.”
“For someone who grew up knowing how to handle a weapon, you’re remarkably against them.”
“I don’t need them. I have door locks. And Riley’s old baseball bat under my bed. Statistically, in a home invasion, more people are shot with their own weapons by the invaders.”