by Angela White
She pulled it close, smiling her thanks. She noticed the smell of whiskey before he retreated. Luke had been a complete gentleman the entire time they’d been together. Weak most of the time, Kendle felt guilty and wanted to help with the chores, but the doctor had told him to make sure she took it easy, and he did. Luke cooked and cleaned, did the laundry, and sometimes let her dry dishes or set the table.
As a result, she was regaining the weight she’d lost and was feeling better every day. Even the tears at night were coming less frequently. It had been almost a week now since her last nightmare, and she was grateful to him for everything.
Enough to give your body? When a man’s been alone as long as he has, that’s a powerful thing to be used.
No. Her virginity was worth more to her than the payment of a debt, or a bond to keep from being alone.
The storm outside their den grew stronger, and Luke flipped on the CD player. He surprised her with Aerosmith’s greatest hits, and then left her alone, knowing she needed time to heal. She reminded him of how bad off he’d been when he first came here. He, too, had been on the edge of death, on the verge of putting his gun in his mouth. But this simple life had healed him enough to go on, and it would her as well, in time. He’d had Frank, and Kendle would have him. It would be enough to keep either of them from ending it when the nightmares got bad.
2
Hours later, Kendle jerked awake in the warm darkness, eyes flying to the shadow of the man standing over her. Her eyes locked with his, recognizing the terror that would never be spoken of. Being here, around the mementoes of his past, was hurting him.
Responding to his desperate need, Kendle slowly pulled back the blanket, inviting him in. They’d passed many nights in each other’s arms, usually when he couldn’t stand the sound of her sobs anymore.
Luke curled away from her, embarrassed, and Kendle molded herself to his body. Feeling his rapid heartbeat, his quick rasps for air, she held him tighter, lending her comfort. Laying there, listening to his struggle, she thought that maybe together they might teach each other to live with all that had happened and go on, despite the scars they would always carry.
Earlier, she’d been sure she wasn’t ready to handle any type of a relationship right now, but the feel of his pain made her accept that she was already in one. She cared for Luke, wanted him to find a measure of peace with whatever demons were tormenting him…and he wanted the same for her. It wasn’t a traditional relationship, but it was comforting.
Luke’s body shuddered as his control gave a little, and Kendle comforted him as best as she could, not quite daring to tug him into her full embrace. Physical contact she definitely wasn’t ready for yet, but being alone, being away from Luke… Well, that just wasn’t an option anymore.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Coasting
1
Bad-weather sensors and alarms on buoys in the Atlantic Ocean were storing data on a system of unparalleled size, but the warnings went unheeded.
Those operating the stations were long gone, dark halls abandoned. Most coastal areas had emptied out right after the war. Storm surges, tidal waves, and horrible flooding forced the tourists and vacationers to leave, but there were still people surviving here. They were the longtime residents who had stayed for Hurricane Camille in ‘69 and again for Andrew in ‘92. These die-hard survivors abandoned their homes for nothing. And now, they were leaving.
The ocean was telling them there was a monster on the way, though it was over two months before the season officially started. Some of these residents held hopes of returning, but most suspected there would be little to come back to. They had seen the signs.
Before, they might have had three or four days of warning. Now, they had one day if they were alert, and only a few hours if they weren’t. The times of city pumps and mandatory evacuations were gone, but the natural warnings were abundant. Flocks of brightly colored birds that normally spent a few days in the area kept going, their cries upset. The surf was growing steadily rougher, pushing further onto the debris-littered beaches despite no visible storm clouds. The wind threw out sudden downdrafts and heavy rain bands that caused sensors to reach seventy before settling back down to thirty-five. The barometers were dropping sharply, the tides almost impossible to distinguish as the rough surf rolled further inland, and animals began to beach themselves. It was enough to convince even the most foolhardy. Sharks, whales, and dolphins, all panic-stricken, were willing to suffocate themselves on the beaches rather than to face whatever was coming. This was no tropical depression, and alert coastal survivors raced to get out of its path.
However, some people had no idea danger was once again approaching. Large parts of Georgia, made oceanfront property during the war, were underwater, and Valdosta, where the crack had split the land, was full of people who had been on the road for the holiday. Stuck with no way to go forward and no way to go back, they had little understanding of the ocean’s dangerous fury and the cost of the lesson was high. The group of survivors in Valdosta only numbered a hundred, but they were unrelated families who could have repopulated the entire country without any fears of inbreeding. Their laws might have been drastically different, their future waiting for them…
Out in the toxic waters of the Gulf, a monster had honed in on American soil. Hurricane Amanda, as it might have been called if anyone had been left to name it, was bigger than any storm on record. It surged due north, powered by a hot ocean current and violent winds full of radiation. It had churned for weeks, drawing smaller storm systems in, and at its peak, the outlying winds were sustained at three hundred miles per hour, with gusts upwards of three hundred seventy-five. The storm surge was twenty-five feet high in places as it pushed into southern Georgia, and ten inches of rain fell from the angry sky in the first hour. If satellite pictures could have been accessed, they would have shown a storm that, at its height, covered over half the United States, with rain bands touching both Mexico and Canada.
Amanda rolled northwest as she came ashore, submerging whole towns and leaving an immense path of destruction in her wake. The parts of the Bahamas, the Florida Keys, and Cuba that survived the war were destroyed–flooded with high water that receded slowly, reluctantly giving back only half of what it had taken. The war had raised ocean levels as much as ten feet globally, and those lands already at or below sea level were wiped off the map by Hurricane Amanda, becoming a part of the vast, angry ocean.
Nearly no one survived in these isolated havens of “fun in the sun,” yet not all the victims came from the land. Boat after boat was flooded, rolled and sank, including battleships and Coast Guard vessels, which, having survived the bombs, could only drift on the tides without their engines and compasses. These people joined the millions of others already under the salty waves.
The eye of Hurricane Amanda hit Valdosta, Georgia head-on and came inland like a wall of liquid destruction, leaving not a single structure or tree for ten miles. Had anyone survived, they would have been shocked to discover a seven-hundred-foot-cargo ship sitting evenly atop a school building half its size. Upon closer inspection, they would have discovered that it was not a container ship, but a former battleship that had been designated as a floating hospital and the debris littering it were crushed cars and homes that it had picked up while gouging through the land. The USNS Comfort had crossed the oceans on thousands of missions of mercy, but its days were over now, gone like the police, 911, lotteries, and elections. Gone like Hollywood, American Idol, and the entire west coast. The survivors, the war’s desperate refugees, now have only the simplest of goals. They want to live, to continue, and if enough of the right people can find each other, they might stand a chance.
Hurricane Amanda did give the remaining survivors one benefit. It brought in warmer air from the south, where there was less grit in the sky to block out the sun’s rays, and for the first time since the war, it began to feel like the season it was.
The downside was that with these fres
h winds came violent storms. Mother Nature was still furiously venting her rage, and America’s losses continued.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hard Days and Warm Nights
March 18th
Somewhere in Missouri
1
They were lost.
The storm battered their vehicles, lashing out at them violently. The rain came in sporadic bursts, with cold droplets that set their skin on fire as thick, orange clouds rolled menacingly through the sky.
Marc and Angela had been making good time until they’d gotten to Kirksville, Missouri, but getting past the tangled piles of wreckage was impossible. Damage stretching as far as they could see, it was clear that a massive flood had destroyed this town.
Boats were on front porches, heavy river barges piled against a Don Pablo’s restaurant like firewood. Homes and businesses were collapsed and scattered, ambulances and fire trucks crushed together. For the first time, Marc wished for a navigation system, forgetting for an instant that it wouldn’t work without access to the satellites.
Their way blocked, they doubled back, but the new route was closer to the North Fork Salt River, and when the storm broke over them, the water began to rise, blocking their way. As Marc relocated them to higher ground, he jumped from one unknown street to another in order to escape the churning water, and now, they were lost.
Marc surveyed the area unhappily. He didn’t want to stop now, despite all the debris flying through the storm. He hated how low this area was.
“Let’s try that parking garage,” Angela suggested.
“It’s kinda low,” Marc pointed out.
“Sturdy though,” she answered.
Angela pulled around him to take the lead, trying not to react to the Santa hat that blew by her windshield as she searched for a name. The signs that they could see, they couldn’t read because the paint was too faded.
The four-story garage sloped gently upward in circles, and they were surprised to discover only half a dozen cars in the whole place as they did a drive-through check first. The vehicles were dusty, a couple with notes still taped to the inside of the windows, and there was a lot of garbage cluttering the lanes, including broken neon bulbs and a shredded exit sign on the first level.
Marc didn’t like it that they couldn’t see out once they were inside, but although there were bodies all over this town, there was none in here. The smell of them however, was under the salty, smoky rain.
“Up here should be okay for tonight, right?” Angela backed in, worried when he didn’t answer. “Marc?”
Silence.
She discovered him gesturing at his mike and then the ceiling and understood they had no radio in here.
Angela put her vehicle in park, but didn’t switch it off as Marc backed in next to her. She’d put them in a far corner, like he would have, but the rain was still dusting the hood and front windows and the wind was strong, rocking both Blazers.
Marc exited and disappeared, going to secure the perimeter with Dog.
Angela watched the darkness around them, gun in her tense hand. She knew the open area wasn’t to Marc’s liking as he came toward her, and she waited to discover if he would override her decision. If so, she would go along with his choice. He’d been surviving out in the world a lot longer than she had.
Whammmm!
They both ducked as something heavy slammed against an outside wall. When he opened her door, he was relaxing. “Probably the best place we can be, as long as nothing collapses. We can go up two more floors if we have to.”
Angela nodded, reaching in for her duffle bag.
The wind gusted against her door, and only Marc’s quick reflexes kept it from hitting her leg.
“Damn. We need to get out of this wind. We’ll make camp over by the elevators, in that hallway.”
Marc grabbed each item as she took it from the Blazer.
When she shut the door, empty-handed, he gestured toward the dark hallway he had already checked. “Light and gun. Let’s go.”
Angela started to tell him this wasn’t a good time for a lesson and then stopped, realizing this was the perfect time. “Okay.”
Dog now alertly at her side, Angela tried to concentrate as Marc had shown her, tuning out the distractions. She slipped quietly through the loud darkness.
Marc watched their rear. And hers.
A short time later, Angela was unpacking what they needed, preparing to hunker down and wait out the storm while he went for his things, thinking she wasn’t as nervous as she had been nine days ago. Killing had definitely changed things, changed her. She was suddenly a much harder person than she’d ever been before.
Angela set the heater against the wall and made up one large sleeping area between it and the cooler, creating a wall to block the wind. She started getting settled as he returned with his arms full, Dog at his heels.
“Great idea.”
Angela took off her sweater, listening to the wind howl as he added his own items to the barricade.
“Hungry?”
She was setting up the stove. “Not really. You?”
Marc dropped his trench coat on top of a box and pretended not to notice how her gaze went to his chest, lingering there. “No, but we should eat.”
She agreed, but only put on water.
“I’m gonna mark the water levels. Be right back.”
Angela pushed off her shoes and sat down against her pillows–journal, pen, and cup on one side, gun and ashtray on the other. She was calm. She had already seen them, safe and sound, in this very spot as dawn broke. They had seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to leave, but she hadn’t sensed any real danger. Trusting the witch inside was easier since Versailles.
Marc wasn’t as confident. He used a can of waterproof chalk to mark where the water was and then marked every ten feet, all the way to their Blazers. A quick glance would now tell him how fast it was raising.
Angela was lighting a joint when he returned, and he noted his own side of the big bed had been set up identical to hers. Even Dog’s quilt was lined with a bowl of food and water. Neat, organized.
I like that, he admitted to himself. I like her.
Marc put his gun next to the ashtray on his side of the makeshift bed. When she casually held the joint out, not looking up from her writing, their fingers brushed, sparked.
Angela dropped her hand without looking up, but Marc witnessed her nostrils flaring. That didn’t feel like fear to him, and if she wasn’t scared anymore, then it was proof he had made some progress by holding in all the things he still longed to say.
They were traveling well together. They started their days with a quiet meal and then a workout, where he taught her things, like how to breathe and read the ground. Afterward, they did a training session. First was hand-to-hand, and then weapons, which put them on the road around ten each morning. They traveled until it was too dark to keep going, and then he picked a place, if she told him it was okay. Her magic was something they had been avoiding. Marc had almost no experience with the subject, but her gifts were now being used when they made camp. He wasn’t taking any more chances with her life.
“So, tell me about him.”
Angela’s flinched before she realized who he meant. “Oh. Charlie’s a great kid, warm, funny.” Sadness was in her face. “Probably looks different now, older.”
Knowing he wanted more, Angela let her worried mother’s heart answer, “He’s smart. So much that it makes me ashamed that I’m so dumb, and I’m a doctor. He’s loyal, hardworking, and cares about things, like saving the whales. It’s agony for me to be away from him. Sometimes a boy needs his mom, and sometimes, a mom just needs her boy.”
Not wanting to let emotions get the best of her, Angela dug through her bag and tossed a yellow packet onto the blanket by Marc’s leg. “Those are from his first birthday. I still love the clown outfit.”
“He was born on Halloween?”
“Yes, on ten thirty-one, at ten thirty-one in
the morning.”
Her voice was rough, sexy. Marc let his gaze roam her while she wrote in her journal. “Is he special?”
She tensed before giving a quick nod. She could trust Marc. “Yes. He’ll be stronger than me.”
“Is it because of being born on Halloween?”
“I assume because he’s male. Fate controls, not the moon and stars.” She inhaled deeply again, closing her eyes against a sharp curl of smoke.
Marc thought about how erotic it would be to give her a shotgun. “You still believe in destiny and the great plan?”
Angela hesitated, not wanting to stir up that old argument, and still not sure who would survive the encounter with her Marine. Marc was good, she had seen that, but so was Kenny.
“Yes and no. It’s not a set plan. People miss their purpose in life and have to spend eternity repeating it, searching for that one moment they missed.”
“And do they find it? Does fate give second chances?”
The implication was clear, and while she didn’t want to encourage him, she couldn’t lie. “Yes, almost always. Fate wants the world to be perfect, and each correct or corrected life is a step on that road.”
He took the joint. “You know that for sure?”
“No, but I examine the world around me and get my answer there. Everything on this planet dies, ends, and usually violently. If not war, maybe it would have been the plague again or another asteroid. For some reason, it was all fated to die.”
“But why everyone? Why not just the bad?”
Angela shrugged again, tone resigned. “That is a question I can’t answer.”
Marc held up the pictures as she eased down. “You want these back?”
“No. I’ve got the memories.” She rolled over and covered herself up to her neck. “Goodnight, Brady. See you in the morning.”
“Yes, you will. Sweet dreams, honey.”
Not likely, she thought, the nightmares a lot of the reason she smoked just before bed. Her heart whispered again about his arms. Angela couldn’t help thinking about it, but there was no way she could accept that comfort this time. She already had a fear that Kenny would sense it if she even touched the line, let alone crossed it, and try to kill her. In her dreams, he succeeded.