Eric looked at the CD player with skepticism. “He said it would be great for skating.” He shook his head.
“It totally is!” I insisted. I rolled away, demonstrating that the song’s beat was perfect to move with.
“I have something else for you, too,” Eric said after I’d thanked him for the fourth or fifth time. “Save some of that for later.”
I kissed him, feeling freed by the frivolousness of the way we were spending our time. I loved every second of being with Eric.
“So what do you have for me?” I asked after an hour or so of skating.
“Nope. You’ll have to wait.”
“Seriously?”
“Totally seriously. It’s almost ready, I promise. Soon!” He moved close to me again as we heard the opening notes of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” “Last song,” Eric warned. We skated pressed together, and by the end of the song, Eric’s distraction had taken over again. He was still careful not to push me too far, though. I finally accepted he’d been waiting for me to ask for more. I worked on figuring out how to.
Eventually I had to relent and allow Jeff the talk he wanted. I’d put it off for a while, but the time had come to get this over with.
We set out, him guiding us away from the encampment. Away from prying eyes and ears. And loose tongues.
“About Off―Officer Bissett…” he stammered.
“We’re not discussing him,” I cut in.
“Yeah. No. I mean, I wanted to say I’m sorry.” He fumbled for the words.
I had nothing to say. It couldn’t be undone.
“I, ah…” He was trying desperately to get something out. Eventually Jeff managed, “He attended the police academy with me. We were friends. He was always really encouraging to me, even after I… well, I washed out of the program.”
I mulled this over. Jeff had attended the police academy? I wondered how long that had lasted. Clearly not long enough to pick up any real leadership skills, but enough to get a taste for authority, I guessed. Then I remembered what the conversation was supposed to be about and commented, “He was a good man.”
“He was. We kept in touch until…” Jeff stayed quiet for a bit. “You’ve been really great helping at camp.”
“But…?” I expected some sort of admonishment. But I could be doing more. But I could socialize more. But I could’ve not fought with Sarah.
He shook his head. “No but. I know some have been harsh on you. They have no idea how lucky we are that you’re here.”
I felt embarrassed by his praise. I wondered whether there would be a point to the conversation. I tried to pat him on the back with words. “They’re lucky to have you looking out for them.”
It worked. He beamed.
“Matthew’s a lot calmer. Since you got here.” Jeff stopped for a minute and leaned against a tree. “And Eric’s changed. He’s much more levelheaded.”
I think he meant Eric was more patient, but I’m not sure. “Nah,” I said. “It was always in him to be like… how he is.”
“Not without you. I’m glad you’re with him.” He kicked a rock. “Real glad of it. You’ve got him focused.”
Jeff didn’t see Eric’s value, even after all this time. Whatever adjustment issues Eric had on arrival were gone, but Jeff wasn’t seeing that.
“Eric saved me back in the city,” I offered up, neglecting to mention he’d saved me from myself more than anything else.
Jeff looked at me, surprised. “I guess I’m even more grateful he’s around, then.”
This remark irritated me, but I swallowed my response. Eric didn’t need me to defend him to Jeff.
A small pack of rotters crowded into the trail up ahead, and we put them down so they wouldn’t straggle along behind us when we went back to camp.
“You handled Buck well,” he said. “Sure scared me for a minute, though.”
“I had no intention of causing permanent damage,” I said defensively.
“I know that now, but in the moment… I didn’t know what to expect. And then with Sarah…”
I expected at least a reprimand, but that’s not what he was thinking.
“It sounds like you showed a lot of restraint, and I think she learned her lesson. She kinda needed one.”
I decided to try to be more patient with Jeff.
He commented, “She’s not the only one who needs a lesson. We’ve had a growing problem at camp. More than one, I know, but this is one that needs to be addressed soon.”
I could feel us arriving at The Point.
“So I was hoping you’d… maybe… consider retraining our Post Watch volunteers and taking up a slot yourself?” he finished.
I laughed out loud. That’s what this was about? Post Watch. “Post Watch” means just standing on the cliff and looking out for threats. Post Watch is one of the easiest jobs in camp—one can even sit on the cliff, if not inclined to stand.
Jeff looked at me sideways. “What’s funny?”
“I wondered what you were after. You could’ve just asked me back at camp.”
“Well, that’s the thing. Some of the original volunteers aren’t going to like this much. But it’s in the camp’s best interests. They haven’t all been vigilant lately.”
He wasn’t kidding. Ten rotters had breached our boundaries in the last three days. We were lucky no one had been bitten.
I would take my turns at Post Watch. “I can do that,” I said amiably. Post Watch was only a few hours every other day. And I loved being up on the cliff.
We turned for home, and Jeff stepped out of “leader mode,” and we simply talked about normal stuff people talk about. I found myself not minding his company so much, and realized we could have a reasonably friendly relationship. He was doing the best he could for the camp—and he was trying to learn how to be a leader along the way.
I was sitting by the lake, and Sarah walked up, carrying yarn and knitting needles. I wondered if she planned to stab me with the needles, and prepared for the possibility. She sat and started knitting. I wasn’t sure if her arrival was supposed to constitute a greeting. At the very least, it seemed to announce her desire for some sort of détente in our relationship.
I’d always liked the idea of knitting or crocheting, but never learned how. I don’t think my hands would function well after that kind of activity. Little things, like braiding or playing the guitar, could lock my fingers up, but once in a while I’d do those things anyway. I decided I didn’t need to learn a hobby that would actively make them worse, though.
“I’m in love with him,” Sarah’s voice broke into my thoughts.
“Who?”
She sighed. “Thom.” She made it sound like a long, longing sentence.
I bit my lip. I wasn’t sure what this had to do with me or why she was telling me, so I waited and watched her add a couple of rows to the scarf she was making.
“He was so nice when I got here with my group. He helped out a lot. I came on a bit strong and that pushed him away. I wanna be with him and I dunno how to make it happen.”
I still didn’t know what she expected from me. I wasn’t certain it was something she could make happen, but surely she must know that.
“Will you talk to him?” she asked. “Put in a good word for me?”
I bit my lip harder to keep from laughing. Was she serious?
“Tell him—tell him I’m sorry, and maybe we could start over?” she pleaded.
“I’ll talk to him,” I answered ambiguously.
Sarah walked off, seeming satisfied.
Someone needs to work on her people skills, I thought.
In time, Thom joined me. He inclined his head toward the float, and I hopped up to accompany him there.
I stretched out on the float’s sun-warmed boards and picked at the wood. I looked back to shore. Sarah had returned and was pretending to focus on her knitting, but she kept pausing to stare out our way.
“Sarah stopped by to see me,” I told him.
Thom rolled his eyes. “Do you want me to try to talk to her?” he inquired.
“About what?” I asked, confused.
“Leaving you alone,” he answered.
“Nah, it’s okay. She says she loves you. She wanted me to put in a good word for her. It’s… so high school!” I laughed a little, and Thom did too.
“She thinks she loves me,” he commented.
“Thinks she loves you?”
“Yeah.” He leaned back onto the float’s boards as well, to soak up a bit of the sun’s warmth. “She thinks she does, but she doesn’t even know me.”
“She said you were really helpful and nice when she arrived, but I figure that’s kind of your standard setting with people.”
“Yeah. Well, I try. She’s just infatuated. It’ll pass. What she thinks—that’s not what love is about at all,” he concluded.
“I didn’t think so.”
Eric was leading me somewhere in the forest, trying to distract me from it with conversation. He made the mistake of being quiet for a moment too long, and I couldn’t help but ask what he was up to.
“Where are you taking us?” I touched a small but significant carving low on the funky bark of a moose maple tree, indicating I’d taken notice of Eric’s subtle route markers.
Eric opened his mouth to speak, but Matthew called for him in the distance. “Yo! Trouble! I need a hand!”
“Wow, his voice carries,” I snickered.
“Go on. I’ll catch up.” Eric kissed me, then ran back down the trail, shouting to Matthew.
I followed the marked moose maples. They led over a small hill and around a corner. Eric had strung a zip line! It allowed space to get a running start, and stretched up to a huge tree, ending about twenty feet off the ground. One could then ride the line back down, or climb onto the tree and descend through its branches.
I gripped the hand bar tightly and ran the short downhill dash for takeoff. I soared up into the tree’s branches, then drifted backward down the line again. On my third trip, I decided to hang out up there. I stayed in the tree, allowing the handlebar to return to its starting position unencumbered.
In time, Eric arrived, still shaking his head over something Matthew had done or said. He joined me in the tree, grabbing a branch and standing on another while continuing to grasp the bar. “It’ll hold us both,” he asserted.
I climbed onto his back and we coasted down. I returned my feet to the ground, releasing him temporarily. His entire body showed disappointment at my moving away.
“Where’s your patience?” I teased as I pushed his hands back onto the bar and circled around to face him. “This is amazing,” I told him. “Thank you.” I pulled him down to kiss me, then wrapped my arms around his neck and hopped onto his front side.
He made sure I was firmly attached, and ran to soar up into the tree again. We stayed in the branches, making out, until we had to leave to attend to our duties for the day.
Up on the cliff, I stood watch. The sky rolled out above me, a vast ocean, out of focus. Fuzzy blue. No clouds. Below, the camp teemed with life. Matthew and Eric were setting out to scout, children were playing, people were fishing down on the lake. Past our camp’s boundaries, all was quiet. No, wait. Way out, on the far edge of a clearing, there was movement. Lilting staggers. A small group of rotters.
I blew the whistle. Tweet! Tweedeet! Tweet!
All eyes turned to look up at me. I indicated Matthew and Eric were closest to the rotters, and I pointed in the rotters’ direction. Matthew and Eric altered course. I watched the brothers hike the rough terrain, end the rotters, and look back to me before continuing away from camp.
“Any more?” their body language asked.
I’d been scanning continuously while they put down the rotters, but I squinted and looked around once again. No more. I held one arm up, thumb to the sky. All clear.
Eric stood there a moment longer than Matthew. Just a beat, a second more of the sweet, longing look he had. That Look. Somehow, his body showed it even from this distance. It was like he was trying to tell me something and didn’t have the words. Did I look at him with the same look?
I watched thin tendrils of cirrus clouds forming along the horizon. A good day so far.
We’d been lingering in the shack, Eric and I. I attached Thom’s capo high up on the neck of his guitar as a hello to him, and I put the guitar away.
“Do you want…?” I didn’t know how to finish. I wanted to reciprocate what he’d done for me in that house when we were scouting. After he’d been my Eric Chair. After he’d learned what my palm scars were about. When he’d gone down on me and…
I didn’t know how to do that.
I stood there and sighed, at a loss for how to ask. I pressed my body against his, kissing him and letting my hand wander where it hadn’t before. He got the point pretty quickly.
“I don’t think… I mean, I’d like it,” he said. “I don’t want to rush you into things you aren’t ready for, though. I don’t want to screw this up.”
“You won’t,” I said, certain of it. “Sit.”
“I’d better not,” he murmured, lowering himself into his chair.
I hopped on him for a minute, to kiss him. I secured my hair out of the way, then I slid off him onto my knees, to the floor in front of him.
“Access,” I requested, pulling off my gloves one finger-hole at a time, in what I hoped was a sexy, confident fashion.
He complied, unfastening and adjusting his pants and leaning back against the blue velvet.
I’d seen this done, but had never done it myself. My stepfather’s Programs had featured an array of bodies in varying states of undress (both in the Programs and in the Programs’ audiences). None of them had been men with bodies like Eric’s, though. And I hadn’t ever wanted to make someone feel the way I wanted to make Eric feel. I explored him, touching lightly and enjoying observing how his body reacted to the ways I touched him. His skin was warm and soft and slightly salty. It became taut and his hard-on throbbed with his pulse.
“Teach me.” I wrapped my fingers around his cock, lightly stroking the scar there where extra skin had been cut away. I didn’t know what fantastic difference that was supposed to make, except it seemed to make it easier to keep bodies cleaner. I like my things clean. Eric does too. It’s another thing I appreciate about him. I kissed gently along the inside of his thigh, resting my head against his leg. I tilted my head back to watch his face, feeling lucky he was choosing to spend his time with me.
Eric closed his eyes at my soft touch. “KitKatabatic,” he exhaled.
Katabatic. Greek for “to go down,” though not in this sense. I remembered the word from the QI Book of General Ignorance we’d passed back and forth. I had a response ready for him.
“Climacterical,” I called him, knowing he’d have to find its definition later. Adj. Crucial, critical, urgently important.
“Which part of that…” he started to ask.
“You’ll have to look it up.” We had a dictionary back in the lean-to, in our stack of books. I’d underlined the meaning I was referring to.
“That’s not even a word!” he protested.
“Totally is. Adjective. Teach me.”
“I can’t look it up by…” He murmured unintelligibly as my mouth slid onto his cock.
hile I was working on communal dinner prep, Sam approached me. “SammyJo,” I greeted her. (Her actual name was Samantha Josephine.) “How are you?”
“Hi,” she said shyly. She picked up a carrot and a vegetable peeler. “Doing okay here. How’s it going?” Her voice had a tremor in it.
“Not bad,” I said, looking over at her. She had a black eye. A large bruise showed on her cheek, and her bottom lip was swollen, split on one side. This wasn’t anything new.
“I left him,” she said simply.
I set down the carrot I’d been working on. “Anything I can do?” I asked, figuring she’d come to me for a reason. Sam didn’t socialize muc
h. She’d never been allowed to.
“Can you help me?” Her voice was barely audible.
“I’d sure like to try. Anything specific?” I queried.
She did this weird thing with her head, shaking no and nodding yes at the same time. I returned to peeling the carrot, letting her sort her thoughts.
“I don’t have anything now,” she said. “And I don’t know how to do anything but… play house, you know?”
She looked down at her cutting board. I understood. Independence can be scary initially.
“Tomorrow,” I said, and she looked up, “training begins.”
SammyJo smiled brightly.
“In the meantime,” I added, “there’s a tent out at the lean-to. And I’ve got a sleeping bag and some other things you might be able to use. We’ll get them after the supper stuff is done, okay?”
“That sounds nice,” she murmured. Then, pensively, “I don’t really know how to be alone.”
“It’ll get easier. And it’s good to have that freedom to make decisions for yourself.”
“Once I learn how to.” She squared her shoulders, bracing herself for the future.
After completing supper prep, during which Sam stuck by my side like glue, we walked to the lean-to together to fetch the tent.
“Where do you want to set up your new home?” I asked. “How about the big pine?” It was out of the main tent area, away from where she’d resided with Buck and Chet. It would give her privacy, yet keep her protected between the other campers and our lean-to.
“Sounds good to me!” she declared, and we trekked over to the big pine.
I showed her how to put the tent together.
“You make it look so easy,” she told me.
Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse Page 15