by AJ Rose
Will he stand by you if he knows you have some schoolgirl crush on him?
The thought was like a rock to the heart of the little bit of relief he’d taken from Donnie’s words, sinking it beneath muddy waters. What would happen if he told Donnie the truth? Would he lose his best friend?
You heard him when that guy told us how Slink’s family kicked him out. Donnie’s not an asshole.
The devil on his shoulder, however, had to drive the pitchfork deeper. Will he be so supportive knowing it’s him you want in your bed? Lots of guys aren’t homophobic, but putting themselves in those shoes is still uncomfortable.
He scowled and shrugged off Donnie’s hand. “I need to shower,” he muttered, leaving Donnie staring after him while guilt and confusion ate at his insides like ants in a swarm.
* * *
* * *
Chris walked off, his head lowered dejectedly and his expression miserable enough to see even in the dim light of the moon. Confusion and irritation fought in Donnie’s chest like indignant, hissing cats.
Very briefly, he considered finding Sarge and telling her he was concerned about Chris, whom he had never seen behave so strangely before. Ultimately, he decided against it. He wasn’t one to go behind anyone’s back, and he wasn’t going to start now, especially not with his best friend. Chris had never shut Donnie out before, however, and he was at a loss as to how to make him talk, but the only way he would ever go behind his back was if he believed Chris needed him to. It had to get a lot worse for that to happen.
He knew the blackout wasn’t all that weighed heavily on the man’s mind. They’d been several days into the disaster before Chris’s attitude set off Donnie’s alarm bells, and if it truly was the crisis getting the man down, he’d have been upset from day one. Trouble was, if Chris wasn’t talking to him, he wasn’t talking to anyone. The rest of the team thought they butted heads too often, but the truth of the matter was, Chris needed to let off steam sometimes, and he needed a target. Not only that, but he needed to be pushed to hit that target. Donnie could spot the signs of an imminent meltdown a mile away, so instead of worrying, he put his head down and walked to their racks, intent on finding a way to push Chris’s buttons.
If he blew up at Donnie, Donnie could contain the explosion. If it happened to a civilian, or worse, another soldier, the fallout would be far worse. As he gathered his t-shirt, underwear, and flip-flops for the showers, he pondered the best trigger he could pull to get Chris to unleash.
Too bad I can’t just pin him down and fuck him, he mused. It would be so much easier and a lot less painful. He’d take a screaming orgasm over any of the bruised knuckles, black eyes, and sore ribs their previous fights had resulted in. Even if they had been good fights. But Chris wasn’t the least bit bi, so Donnie would have to be smarter. Still, for Chris, he’d do it. They’d met in basic when they were both so green, they might as well have been babies. Donnie had seen a lot of himself in Chris. Bratty to the point of self-destruction, shitty home lives, and the army had been their ticket out. Like alley cats recognizing their own, they should have fought until one clearly established superiority, but Donnie decided he’d be a formidable ally after seeing Chris outsmart everyone in basic, including their drill instructors, who thought he was too small or weak to complete the training. Donnie saw in Chris what few did—a fierce friend with a heart of gold, and a loyal streak as big as the state of California. He’d just had to get past the prickly outer shell.
“You’re not off the hook, buddy,” he mumbled to himself, stepping into the showers. “I’ll get you, my pretty.”
One way or the other.
12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Day 18
Between Bloomington-Normal and Peoria, Illinois
* * *
He who busies himself with things other than improvement of his own self becomes perplexed in darkness and entangled in ruin. His evil spirits immerse him deep in vices and make his bad actions seem handsome.
—Ali ibn Abi Talib
* * *
“WHAT WAS THAT NOISE?” Elliot asked, peering into the deepening twilight of Comlara County Park, just north of Bloomington, Illinois, nestled on the banks of Evergreen Lake. He’d heard a twig snap, quickly followed by a shushing noise. No animal large enough to snap twigs shushed their companions.
Ash doused the fire with the remains of their boiled dinner water, and the sudden plunge into darkness left Elliot blinking away the afterimage of the flames. He shivered at the suddenly absent warmth, and reached for the Colt in his waistband.
Over the last week, Charlotte had been teaching him to shoot when they had the seclusion to be assured the echo wouldn’t draw attention to them. He was pleased to find he had quite the aptitude, but then the physics of velocity and gravity did fascinate him. He could almost fool himself into thinking it was an experiment for a class and not a survival skill.
Riley scurried behind his mother, who held one of the rifles, the butt against her shoulder but the barrel pointed down, ready in a heartbeat if there came a threat.
“Mom,” Riley whispered, the word shaking with his fear. They’d encountered few people since deciding to stay well away from towns, and the ones they did encounter were just as well armed and wary as they were. Most had given a respectful if cautious nod and moved along as quickly as possible.
“Riley, go to Brian,” Charlotte murmured in return.
Brian had a handgun he’d picked up when they’d stumbled on the carnage from an obvious gunfight in Indiana. The dead had been there long enough, they hadn’t worried about their killers returning, and even though it had disgusted Elliot to do it, they’d scoured the scene for useful supplies. The site had been picked pretty clean, but Brian had discovered a pistol in the bushes far enough away it had been missed. Elliot guessed when its owner went down, the gun had gone flying. The next chance they’d had, they raided a store for more ammo. Now that their packs were considerably lighter from having used up all their bottled water, they carried a veritable arsenal with them.
It didn’t make Elliot feel safer. Only more dangerous.
Riley scuttled behind Brian, who scanned the trees of the campground for movement. Elliot hadn’t liked how spread out the trees of the Comlara campgrounds were, but he’d reasoned that if they had company, they’d be better able to see anyone approaching. Clearly, that was not the case.
“Hello!” a voice rang out somewhere to Elliot’s left. The group shifted their focus and aimed in that direction. A man stepped out from behind a wide oak tree, hands raised, and behind him, a scared looking woman followed. Elliot surmised she could be armed and using the man’s body as a shield to take them by surprise. Charlotte raised the muzzle of her gun, so Elliot followed suit.
“Hello,” Ash returned cautiously. “Need something?”
The man took a guarded step forward, his girl on his heels. “Somewhere to sleep,” he answered in a genial tone. “Maybe a place to heat up some deer meat and replenish our water. We saw your fire and didn’t want to surprise you if you were thinking you were the only campers.”
As he neared their tents, they saw the shadows of packs strapped to both his and the woman’s backs. They seemed well equipped. Maybe just people passing the same way and being friendly.
Friendly went out with the lights, you idiot, Elliot admonished himself. They’d seen enough evidence of that in the last few days, when it was clear the fuel for generators had run out.
The man continued. “There are four of us. I’m Aaron, and this is my fiancée, Jennifer. We also have Jason and Tim.” He pointed and two more man-shaped shadows emerged from behind a couple trees. Even Elliot knew if they had intended them harm, they’d have surrounded their camp and flanked their weak sides.
Ash lowered his gun but was still suspicious. “Where are you from?”
“Jennifer and I are from Washington, D.C., and we picked up Jason and Tim just north of Louisville, Kentucky.”
Elli
ot felt Brian stiffen at his side and wondered if the man was thinking the same thing he was—how redneck were the two from Kentucky? Elliot knew he shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but he’d heard enough stories of the South and how gay people were received there to be wary.
Ash inched closer to and slightly in front of Elliot, standing between him and the newcomers.
Jason and Tim stopped beside Aaron and Jennifer, who’d come out from behind her fiancé. They all seemed friendly enough, but Elliot kept his grip on his gun, just in case.
“Hi,” either Jason or Tim said with a small wave. “Quite the camp you have here.”
Elliot’s hackles rose. What did that mean?
“Plenty of space in the campground,” Ash replied guardedly. “You have shelter?”
“Oh yeah,” Aaron answered, his hands still visible. “We just wanted to say hello so no one was surprised in the middle of the night. We had enough of that from an army caravan, so call it a little extra caution, or call it an assurance we won’t cause you any trouble. Either way, we’re all aware of each other now.” He turned to walk away. “We’ll leave you to rebuild your fire.”
The four newcomers began to melt back into the darkness, but Ash stepped forward. “Wait.”
Elliot blinked at him. Just let them go! he wanted to argue, but he clamped his mouth shut.
“Yeah?” Aaron asked, pausing.
“You’ve run across the army? How bad is it?”
Aaron stopped his retreat. “Not great. The transport trucks were full of new ‘recruits,’” he said, using air quotes on the last word. “Looks like they’re making people go with them, but we honestly didn’t stick around long enough to find out. We could be wrong.”
Ash and Elliot shared a glance. So Ash had been right. They’d have been collected and separated, and he’d have become responsible for Charlotte and Riley while Brian and Ash would have been pressed into service.
“How aggressive are they?” Ash asked.
Aaron frowned. “Not overly so. If they spotted us, I don’t know what would have happened, but they didn’t seem to be looking too hard. Like I said. We didn’t wait to see what would happen.”
Charlotte cleared her throat in some sort of attempted communication with Ash, but he didn’t seem to get the message.
“Why don’t you make camp in our circle tonight, and we can share information. More numbers means we’d probably be safer if someone else showed up and didn’t feel the need to introduce themselves to the neighbors.”
Aaron’s smile was immediate and openly friendly. “Good idea.”
“Ash,” Charlotte hissed. “Are you nuts?”
Clearly, Jason and Tim thought the same thing, because they also whispered at Aaron’s back rather vehemently. But Aaron ignored them, just as Ash ignored his sister, and stepped forward to shake Ash’s hand. Elliot eyed the others uneasily, but lowered his gun. Now, if something happened, Ash would be in the line of fire, and Elliot didn’t want to accidentally shoot him; it was dark enough not to be able to see exactly who was who.
“Charlotte, get the fire going again. Elliot, will you help get them set up for the night?”
Charlotte grumbled, but to Elliot’s surprise, she did as she was told, grabbing pieces from their meager pile of wood. Luckily, the mess in their fire ring wasn’t so soupy as to make it difficult to scrape away the wet ashes. She quickly stacked the logs for maximum air flow. Gritty steam rose from the pile, and beneath the top layer, viable embers glowed.
“What can I help with?” Elliot asked as he approached Aaron and Jennifer. They seemed like the more personable of the two, and he was watchful of the boys from Kentucky.
“Oh, we got it. Maybe if you have a flashlight we can use until the fire is burning again?” Aaron suggested.
So Elliot stood there illuminating the area as the newcomers made a full semi-circle from their two tents plus the three already erected. In short order, the flames were built up and their little dwelling had become a village of sorts. They sat around the fire on a log Brian had dragged over from the lake, the picnic table which had been similarly moved, and on a large rock already there when they arrived. Jennifer huddled into Aaron’s side as though she was cold, and Jason and Tim hunkered down beside them.
“What’s it like where you came from?” Ash asked, starting the conversation he was clearly itching to discuss.
In the firelight, Elliot saw more of the group’s features, and while Aaron was fair-skinned with freckles and blond hair highlighted red by the flickering flames, Jennifer was his opposite, willowy with long dark hair and a couple visible tattoos on her ankle and calf below her three-quarter length yoga pants. Jason had straight brown hair that hung down to his cheekbones with a part down the middle and a goatee that had grown a little scraggly, and Tim was tall and skinny, dark-haired and scowling, with fine, almost delicate features.
Aaron shook his head. “We were on a camping trip in Virginia when it happened. Thank god, or we wouldn’t have had all our gear. When we tried to get back into D.C., it was a mess. Police had blocked off all roads, and from what we gathered, there were several downed planes, and the highways were awful. We learned there was a power outage, but whatever caused it took out transportation. It was chaos. The farther away we’ve come, the less destruction there is, aside from there being no power.”
“It was an EMP,” Ash said. Elliot swiveled his head around, surprised he was telling these people anything of what they knew. “An EMP blast works like a cone.” He demonstrated with his hands. “If it’s high altitude pointed down, it’ll damage the electronics in an ever widening area and can wipe out thousands of miles if the initial blast is high enough. If it’s low altitude, the impact at ground level is only a few miles radius with a greater impact in the atmosphere, because the surface of the earth pushes the energy up and out. If you’re saying there were several downed planes, it was probably low-altitude EMP. New York City had intermittent electronic failures that got better the farther north we went. That could even be from a power surge when the grid went down. If it was that bad in D.C., maybe that was the target. News reports from the West say we don’t know who or why, but we know it was deliberate.”
Jennifer gaped at him. “How do you know?”
Ash pointed to Brian, who shifted on his perch on the picnic table. “He’s got a satellite phone, and we know people with power on the west coast. The news is… not good. There’s a media gag order on anything happening in the blackout region, and the US news stations aren’t saying much. Worldwide, people are having kittens. The stock market after 9/11 was reconfigured to keep going in any emergency that rendered Wall Street useless, so trading is still going on, but our economy is in the toilet and dragging everybody down. The UN is helping with humanitarian aid, and England is sending over boats and planes full of supplies, but no one knows how much will be needed. There’s just not enough food and water and medicine to go around to this many people affected.
“Then, there are the rumors about who is responsible. The Chinese and Russians are so defensive about being first on the list, everyone’s on a hair trigger with the nukes. All our borders are shut down, except for the UN peacekeepers coming in, and we’re more isolated than ever. Whatever country did this, they’re not making a move, but if they do, we’re crippled to the point we’d barely put up a fight in an invasion.”
Silence descended over them, until one of the newcomers cleared his throat. “Kentucky wasn’t that bad,” Jason supplied, his southern accent almost lyrical. “We didn’t want to stay in Louisville, but there wasn’t a lot of damage from the outage. Just people going a little crazy. But they’re crazy on a normal day, and we didn’t want to see if it’d get worse. Plus, Tim’n me like ourselves an adventure. Don’t we, buddy?” Jason clapped Tim on the shoulder and shook him good-naturedly. Tim grinned.
With that, the mood lifted, the pending doom of Ash’s news slipping away like shadows chased off by the sun. Elliot was glad. It scared h
im to think a second attack by the terrorists was possible. Each update they received, either from Steven or Marvin, painted a very bleak picture. In a way, no access to the Internet was a blessing, not a curse.
“Road trippin’ isn’t new,” Tim said, his lack of accent in contrast to his friend’s. Maybe he was a transplant to Kentucky, Elliot surmised. “We’ve been all over the country, but never on foot. Figured this would be our chance to see stuff we haven’t normally seen. Not to mention, the stakes are higher.”
They fist-bumped while Aaron and Jennifer smirked in amusement. Aaron hooked a thumb at them. “Adrenaline junkies. We met up with them last week in Indiana, and like you said, strength in numbers.”
“What else do you know?” Jennifer asked, leaning forward.
Ash shrugged, his usual caution slipping over him like a cloak. “The government has been moved to wherever they take the president in these situations, and everything west of the Rockies has power. We’ve got family out there, so we’re going to Seattle. Should get there by August,” he grumbled, causing the newcomers to laugh. “No, really,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It’ll take us that long to walk there.”
The chuckles died as the group realized that yeah, Ash was serious. Jennifer pointed in Charlotte’s general direction.
“How’s he been handling all this?” She meant Riley, who was tucked into Charlotte’s side, watching curiously but content not to be involved.
“Okay, I guess,” Charlotte answered, smiling at the woman. “Not an ideal situation for anyone, but we’re trying to make it fun. Riley here has become quite the little fisherman, thanks to Brian,” she said proudly, pointing at the stoic bald man.