by Joshua Guess
It only took three hours for word to come down. The punishment sought was two days confinement, a week hard labor, and an apology. He was relieved but surprised, expecting worse.
Life fell into a predictable rhythm in the weeks and months following his altercation with Brad. Kell spent three to five days out on runs and two days home with Laura and Kate. Johnson and the other guards invited him to join their training sessions with Kate, assuring him Brad the guard was aware of how people viewed his comments. Kell declined, opting instead for the more brutal private lessons with Kate.
There was no question he needed to keep a low profile; too many people knew his name and a few of them had reason to hate him. Phillip was the worst of those, a sword dangling over his head that could drop at any time. Rumor was Brad held no hard feelings, but Kell had a hard time buying it, as did Kate and Laura. A man doesn't take the kind of beating Kell dished out without anger and resentment at the least.
He stayed gone as much as possible. October turned to November, then January, and the routine solidified into reflex. Kell spent time out in the world, sometimes practicing the things Kate taught him, and then he came home. Every week was a little celebration.
Just past the middle of January, Laura approached Kell about an assignment. He was lounging in the expansion he'd spent his free time working on, an eight-by-eight tunnel of wood fifteen feet long situated behind the bus. It was his space, though of course the ladies were welcome at any time. Kate had suggested it after the thousandth time Kell complained about his legs hanging off the couch. It was the only place in their home big enough for him, though he slept on the floor.
She knocked on the edge of the hole that connected the bus and his bachelor pad—which was a nicer way of thinking of it than 'giant wooden box'—and waited for him to invite her in before twitching the curtain aside.
The pallet beneath him was a thick mat of blankets, more heaped on top, but Kell sat shirtless, wearing only a pair of cargo shorts as he tinkered with a small iron puzzle box he'd brought in on his last run.
“Good god, it's two thirds the way through January, dude. How can you stand to sit there without a shirt on?”
Intent on his puzzle, Kell grunted. “I spend most of my time outside nowadays. There's a fire going. I'm plenty warm.” He tossed the puzzle box on the pallet and gestured at the large wicker chair across from his bed. “Want to sit and tell me what's up?”
“I've got a job for you, if you want it,” she said.
“Well, yeah. You're my boss. You always have jobs for me. Is there something different about this one?”
Laura nodded. “Yeah. Two things, actually. The first is it's a long-range mission. You'll be gone at least two weeks.”
Kell frowned. “Longer than I'm used to, and I'll miss you guys, but not all that strange.”
“The other part is Phillip asked me to give you this one personally,” she said with a sigh. “I told him I'd offer, and you would have the same choice as anyone else. He didn't like that very much.”
“Hmm. That's kind of suspicious. What's the job?”
“Well, the thing is the assignment itself isn't suspicious. The scout teams have reached a point where they can't travel more without fuel. Right on the edge of the area they've been searching, they've located a huge cache of supplies. They need someone to haul a bunch of fuel up there. You'd be helping them out in general, but they've already done most of the work. The reason it's going to take so long is because you'd be driving a bunch of back roads crowded with obstacles. There are a lot of marauders out that way.”
“Ah,” Kell said. “I begin to see. I'm known for being able to take care of myself. Phillip knows I've taken more than my fair share of risks. He wants to send me on a dangerous but necessary and profitable trip. If I make it, he doesn't lose because we'll have the supplies. If I don't, well, he just gets to send someone else and throw a little party over my corpse.”
Laura recoiled. “That makes sense. I assume you're refusing?”
Kell laughed. “Hell, no. I'm going. If for no other reason than to see the look on that motherfucker's face when I come cruising back in here.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kell returned from the trip on the sixteenth day. Early February was harsh and thick with snow, but the assignment itself had gone off without a hitch. The inclement weather, far from hindering him, actually served to hide him from marauders.
The entire convoy was being waved through the gate when Kell noticed a familiar banner of bright red hair. Laura waiting for runners outside wasn't odd, but Kate had never done so. Yet there she was, standing in the snow and wind as if neither existed.
They hustled him home without a word. It was only when the three of them were safely behind closed doors that Laura sat in her customary place in the middle, between Kate and Kell. As always, Laura's back was to Kate as she faced him. Months of cohabitation built insight, and he could see the strain in them.
“What's going on?” he asked. “You guys wouldn't even let me talk on the way here.”
Laura took a deep breath. “Jack is dead.”
Kell blinked. “...okay. What happened?”
“A big group of people from that place in Kentucky came by here. They're out doing long-range scouting, too. While they were here Jack started feeling sick, went to see Doug, and before anyone knew it, he'd died. They think it was an aneurysm in his gut.”
“Still not seeing why you had to bum rush me back home.”
“Because Phillip died less than a day later,” Laura said.
Confused, Kell tried to work out the sentence. “You guys might have to spell this out for me. I'm not going to cry about Phillip kicking it, but what does it have to do with me?”
Laura took a deep breath, calming herself. “Phillip fell down the stairs leading up to his office. He'd been working late, or rather he was trying to convince everyone up the chain of command that he should be our new leader.”
Kell blanched. “Ugh, that would have been a nightmare,” he said.
Laura nodded. “The problem was Phillip apparently left a sealed envelope in his desk with a message on it, to be opened in the event of his death. The letter was a nice work of fiction, but basically the whole thing was an explanation that you'd threatened his life on several occasions, and he expected you to try to kill him at some point.”
Kell was struck speechless. “But I wasn't even in the state!”
Laura put her hands over his. “I know. And so does everyone else. The fact that you were so far away, with so many witnesses, is the only reason you're not in a cell right now. The other thing that helps is that Phillip's death was clearly an accident.”
Behind Laura, Kate snapped into focus. Kell glanced at her, and in that moment he saw an intensity to her gaze, eyes burrowing into him. A small, knowing smile played across her lips. She was trying to tell him something, but his mind recoiled from the implication. Surely Laura saying the death of a man who tried to kill him was an accident and that smile were only coincidence. Kate was a hard enough person to take some joy in the removal of a threat, but Kell couldn't see her as a murderer.
Then she winked at him, giving a little nod.
A fist of nausea punched him in the gut. “I need some air,” Kell said as he shot to his feet, running out onto the smooth concrete floor and sucking in cooling breaths. Hands splayed on an empty section of wall a hundred feet from their home, he tried to calm himself.
Soft footfalls made him glance up, seeing Kate approach. There was nothing in her manner implying guilt or regret, but neither did she seem a darker person. She wasn't smiling, but then she rarely did.
“Sorry to drop that on you,” she said.
Kell studied her, looking for any clue that would help him understand. “Why? Why'd you do this?” A thought struck him. “Laura doesn't know, does she?”
She leaned against the wall, hands folded across her breasts. “No, she doesn't. Laura talks tough, but she wouldn't have d
one anything so proactive.”
“But you would?”
Kate hesitated, frowning slightly. “Normally, no. I wouldn't. But when Jack died and Phillip was trying to gather support to get elected leader, I went to talk to him. At first because I was worried that once he was in charge there wouldn't be anything stopping him from coming at you.”
She frowned. “It didn't go well. I confronted him about trying to stab you, and he just lost it. Guy didn't even deny it, just got the fear of God in his eyes and started ranting about how no one would believe me, that he'd make sure all of us were put in a cell or worse.
“The weird thing was he wasn't yelling like you'd think a crazy person would. He made sure to be quiet enough so no one could overhear. It was creepy, K. Really unnerving. The whole time he's telling me how we'll never prove anything, how he's going to do this or that, and at some point I just realized this man could not be allowed to stay in power any longer, much less gain even more.”
“You killed him in cold blood,” Kell said.
Kate didn't flinch. “I did. I made the conscious decision to save me, you, and Laura the headache and potential danger Phillip posed. I also think I saved North Jackson from a leader who would have been a disaster at best.”
Curiously, Kell asked, “North Jackson?”
Kate slapped herself gently on the forehead. “Of course, you've been gone. Yeah, they finally gave the place a name. It's in honor of Jack and all he did to found and run the community.”
He was quiet for a long time. So long that he half expected Kate to leave, but she surprised him. She sat with her back against the wall as he mulled it all over.
“I'm going to have to leave,” Kell said. “Going out on runs isn't enough. I need to get out of here.”
Kate gave him a wry grin. “You're so predictable. Laura said you'd say that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. And she agrees. So do I, as a matter of fact. You want to keep a low profile, and North Jackson isn't the place to do that anymore. Too many people know you, see you, and now associate you with Phillip dying. It's a lot of scrutiny.”
Kell stood and helped Kate up. “I don't want to,” he said as they walked home. “Which is kind of surprising to me. After I lost Karen and Jennifer, my parents, my friends, I shut it all off. Until I met you and Laura.”
Kate grabbed his arm and pulled him in for an awkward, walking half-hug. “Against all odds, you've grown on us, too.”
They entered the bus to find Laura going over paperwork. Kate gave her a slap on the shoulder as she walked by.
“He says he wants to leave,” Kate said.
“Pay up,” Laura replied with a crooked smile.
“Whatever, I said no bet.”
Kell took a calming breath. “I'm right here, you know.”
That earned him an eerily similar disdainful look from both of them. “We know,” Kate said.
“I know you guys are just trying to deal with this by joking, but I'm serious about leaving.”
Kate and Laura rarely shared the dreaded woman-glance, but they did then. A simple connection between two people originating and finishing within a second, limited to the eyes. You would think such a fast interaction would by necessity be thin on information, but you would be wrong.
Much went into that look. There was amusement, and consternation, and even a little love. It was all over their faces, and Kell knew them both well enough to know when they were hiding pain.
They weren't. He wondered if they would even miss him, but dismissed the thought as idiotic.
Kate smiled at him patiently, as any teacher trying to get through to a particularly dense student would. “We know that, too. Laura and I had planned to go with you, is all. Really, since we outnumber you, it's more like you'll be going with us.”
He tried to stammer a response to that, but the concept left him utterly without a compass.
Kate smiled a beatific smile. “See what I mean?”
“But you can't just leave everything because of me,” Kell said.
Laura barked a laugh. “There's that ego,” she said. “You seem to forget we're associated with you, K. You're our friend, people know that. It could get pretty uncomfortable for us around here, so leaving isn't a bad idea.”
Kate jumped in. “She's right. And it isn't like we have much keeping us here.” Her smile faded. “Since we've been back our old friends have barely spoken to us. Maybe because they didn't know how to deal with what we went through, I don't know. But what it boils down to is the three of us pretty much only each other.”
“Well, if you're both sure...” Kell said.
Laura walked around the table and leaned down to give him a hug. “We are. We've talked about it, and we're ready to get out of here. This place reminds me too much of what I've lost. I'd rather move forward with what I've gained.”
Then Kate was there, joining in and hugging him and Laura with far more intensity than a person her size had any right to manage.
“Besides,” Kate said, “if you stay around here there's just no way you're going to be able to cure this damn plague, Doctor McDonald.”
Part Five: Impact
The present has nothing to do with time. If you are just here in this moment,
there is no time. There is immense silence, stillness, no movement; nothing is passing, everything
has come to a sudden stop.
From The Transmission of the Lamp by Osho
Chapter Eighteen
They had, of course, removed his weapons that day at the marauder camp. During the search Kate and Laura came across his notebook. From it they were able to piece together enough of the truth to understand both his reluctance to share anything about himself and the potential importance he had to the entire world.
During the frantic week of packing and preparation he asked them questions, the most perplexing to him was why they hadn't confronted him with the truth.
“Because even though you didn't realize it at the time,” Laura had told him, “you were fragile. We saw that from the start. You'd wrapped this armor around yourself because you couldn't handle being who you were. Because then you'd have to confront what you lost.”
Not a day had passed since that Kell didn't think back on the revelation. Sometimes with dry humor, sometimes amazement, and always with love for the women who had saved him. The memory was always welcome, and just then provided much needed warmth.
Finding a new home wasn't a problem as Kell spent much of his time out in the world. The place was sturdy, and remote enough to afford them privacy. During the spring and summer they worked, planting gardens and setting up rain catchers, excavating a pit and a dozen other small tasks. From there it was only a matter of making the place a home. Kell saw to that in his frequent journeys, bringing small luxuries home on a regular basis. Autumn rolled in, and with it a harvest and preserving food. As they fell into a routine, life began to resemble something in the neighborhood of normal.
Kell thought about it as he sat in a tree waiting for something edible to walk by. More than nine months had passed, bringing them to another December together.
Their homestead wasn't far from North Jackson; five miles away from the massively expanded complex of buildings, they were close enough to make it there in a dead run if they had to. Not that help was so far away as that any longer, of course. As more and more groups of people filtered into the north to join up, including a huge group of soldiers forming a dedicated defense force, the space between filled at a rapid pace.
The nearest neighbors were three hundred yards away. Nice people, and they respected the fact that the people down the road wanted privacy.
Kell flexed his muscles, wondering if three hours in the branches was enough time. It was cold enough to make his lungs hurt, and no game had come within earshot of him all morning, much less in range of his bow.
He decided to give it another ten minutes.
The decision saved his life.
T
he crunch of distant footsteps was faint yet steady. Much in the way you know a person by the way they breathe or the sound of their laugh, Kell knew the sounds came from a human being. It wouldn't be Laura or Kate; neither would come out to his stand except for an emergency, and then they certainly wouldn't be trying to move silently.
Almost invisible in the gloomy morning light, crouched in the blind halfway up an evergreen, he watched. For a while the footsteps halted, and a cold sweat broke out on his face. Had he been seen? A hundred scenarios, each less pleasant than the last, played out in his mind. Moving would risk attracting attention, but sitting still could be suicide if the person below was hostile. The image of a piece of lead moving faster than the speed of sound slamming into his head wasn't in the top three awful things he considered, but it was close.
Just as he knew the person nearby wasn't one of his roommates, so did he know it was a person and not a zombie. This far from North Jackson the undead were a daily fact of life, but Kell had never heard of one clever enough—or with enough bodily control—to walk softly when it smelled a tasty human being.
Several tense minutes of careful, quiet breaths later, the footsteps began again. As they grew closer Kell realized they were coming from the direction of the house he shared with Kate and Laura. Heart hammering with sudden panic, he told himself both women were capable of protecting themselves. More so than he was, truth be told. The mantra did help him become calmer, but the fear remained. No amount of toughness or skill stopped a bullet from a distance.
Kell was certain the person below was tracking him. There was only snow on the ground in patches, and he was always careful not to walk in snow if it could be avoided. He hadn't made any other efforts to hide his tracks.
Through the thick green foliage a flash of darkness appeared. Someone in black or navy clothing was stalking through. Kell bent his neck at a snail's pace to get a better angle, fingers aching in ready position on the bowstring, muscles burning at the effort of remaining motionless for so long.