Blink of an Eye: Beginnings Series Book 8

by Jacqueline Druga

  “I think I have,” Cole said cautiously. “Is that what you guys are doing? You’re searching this place out?”

  Danny nodded. “What the hell else do we have to do? No, scratch that. We could be sitting in our own city, but they ...” He pointed to the dead SUTs. “They are making it impossible to settle anywhere nowadays. Wait a second.” Danny stepped forward to Cole. “I should have known.” He touched Cole’s arm. “Bentley, feel his skin. He’s much too clean to be living out here. Feel his skin.”

  Cole smacked away the reaching hands. “Hey.”

  Danny ignored him. “Most of the men we have come across smell and don’t clean up regularly.” Danny sniffed. “You don’t smell, well, not of being unkempt and your skin isn’t gritty. He doesn’t have that sandy feel. I personally have avoided it. Bentley too. With the world at your hands, it’s hard to believe people let themselves get like animals. Don’t you agree? So are you from this place? You are aren’t you?”

  “Oh boy.” Cole widened his eyes.

  “You are,” Danny said with excitement. “Bent, he is! Hey can we go there?”

  “Oh Boy.” Cole stepped back.

  “Where you going?” Danny asked.

  “I need a drink.” Cole walked to the jeep.

  Danny snickered and nudged Bentley. “He needs a ... he needs a drink? Tell me he’s not from a civilized world saying something like that?”

  Bentley agreed, “He wouldn’t say it if he hasn’t been saying it.”

  “True.” Danny turned to Cole and yelled to him, “Hey, so can we go?” He watched Cole hold up his hand then bring a flask to his mouth. “Can we?”

  Again, Cole held up his hand to him and took another drink, a long one.

  Danny shrugged. “I guess that’s a yes. Feels good, don’t it. All those nights we were hanging out talking about getting back into civilization and wondering if it was just a pipe dream finding this place. Now we know it’s not. Look at the guy, drinking booze from a flask. You have to love that concept. Hey, Bent. You don’t think I came off too strong do you?”

  “Nah. You have to be personable, Danny, and you’re a personable guy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. You don’t want to be too quiet. People tend to not trust quiet people and you know a lot of the people in this world are quiet.” Bentley raised a thinking finger. “You came off Danny-like. We did decide if we found this place we were going to be ourselves so they would know we were civilized.”

  “Shit,” Danny spoke in shock.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look at us. We weren’t supposed to find them looking like this.”

  “We’re prepared.”

  “We’re prepared,” Danny said. “Should we get moving on it now?”

  “Yeah, we don’t want them to leave without us.”

  Danny looked back at Cole. “Hey James Bond, we’re uh ... we’re gonna go get our stuff and get ready. Don’t leave without us.”

  Cole gave an acknowledging wave—a half-ass acknowledging wave—and lifted his flask closer to his mouth again. “You want healthy men, Joe. I bring you healthy Survivor men. Oh boy.” He watched Danny and Bentley dart off into a building. “Oh boy.” What Cole wanted to do was pass the new pair off as crazy, giving him the perfect excuse to leave them behind. But they did save his life and the lives of his men. The more Cole thought about it and remembered listening to them ramble, it only made him realize how much they were already like the people of Beginnings. With that, Cole took another drink.

  <><><><>

  If George were a young man, he would have used the word ‘cool’ to describe himself. He grinned as he walked around his George-world, leaving his home with the best news ever, the news that he was right. The news that confirmed that not only did George know Beginnings and their way of thinking so well, that he pegged exactly what they would do. Robbie Slagel was en route to meet Cole. In flight. It was only a matter of time.

  <><><><>

  He was eating a sunflower seed as he sat on the steps to the mobile. Ellen paused in the open door, watching Frank. His long legs bent as he sat on that too-small-for-Frank step. His elbows on his thighs, eating each sunflower seed with precision.

  A single click of her hard sole on the wooden step and the close of the mobile door let Frank know Ellen had come back out. He was in his own world and she knew it. Deep in thought she supposed. “Frank?” She sat down next to him. “Sorry.”

  “No, that’s all right.” He spit out the seed. “How is he? Does he need you back in there?”

  “No. He’s fine.” She reached into the cloth sack and pulled out a seed. “I’m glad you came up.”

  “Me too.” Frank turned his head to face her and he smiled at her. “Sorry about being the bearer of bad news.”

  “Someone had to do it.” She got rid of the seed in her mouth and grabbed another. “What exactly did Cole say?”

  “About finding Survivors?”

  “Yes. I hate when Cole brings back Survivors. You know they’re always trouble and there is always something wrong with them. It’s like he’s the animal magnet or something.”

  Frank snickered. “I know, but he was rambling on and on.” Frank shrugged as he placed another sunflower seed in his mouth. “He sounded upset, saying something or other about you, about you and these Survivors. Then he went off talking about rambling. I don’t know. I shut him off and told him to tell Robbie to radio me.”

  “Cole knows,” Ellen said with certainty. “He knows I’m gonna hate these two, doesn’t he? Trouble.”

  “They could be. I’ll radio you when they get here.”

  “Swell. You know what two new Survivors means don’t you? It means I’m not getting out of Containment at seven tonight. Well, Frank, I’m telling your dad, sore butt or no sore butt, he’s staying with them.”

  Frank chuckled. “You tell him, El.”

  “So was the whole purpose for the visit to tell me about Cole?”

  “No.” Frank shook his head and peered out toward the sun with squinted eyes “I want to talk about today.”

  “What about it?”

  “El, you confuse me. You really confuse me.” He looked at her. “What happened? Why were you so emotional about me not going? Let me tell you, you’ve asked me not to go before. You’ve gotten upset before, but never have you been like that.”

  “I know.” Seeing Frank eat a seed, she grabbed one. “So much has happened, Frank. I think you know that I’m having a hard time. More than I want is happening in my life or has happened.”

  “Can I help?”

  “You did.” Ellen held her hair back as it blew forward. “You didn’t go. You stayed behind and let me have a piece of mind, at least about something. There’s so much on my mind, Frank. I just didn’t want to worry about you. I worry about you even when you walk your perimeters. Sending you out there, even for something routine, was just too much for me to handle. I wanted you here and safe. I just needed you here.”

  “See, that’s what confuses me. You act one way toward me but yet you’re with Dean.”

  “Frank,” Ellen said his name softly. “Dean is very special to me. When he’s hurt, I’m hurt. He needs me. Right now, Dean needs all the help he can get, more than you realize. I think you will realize once you work with him that Dean is not having an easy time with his loss of sight. He tries, he tries to do all that we worked on previously, but I see the look on his face. He’s not letting instinct take over and it shows. It’s all because he’s scared. He’s scared because he has to learn to do things over again and scared because he’s afraid he won’t do things right, or that he will fail. He’s also reaching, Frank. He’s reaching, reaching for something, anything to help him. I have to be within his reach whenever he needs me.”

  “I understand.” Frank let out a breath. “I understand why you are with him now. Now, El, not before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know this whole Dean t
ogetherness is new. Contrary to what you might think, if you and I had been together when he lost his sight, you could have come to me about it. You could have told me that you had to be there for him. I really, really believe that I would have let you. I’m not—uh—real sure about the sleeping with him part. I would have let you be there for him.”

  “You know, Frank. I believe you would have.”

  “Thank you for that.”

  “You’re welcome for that.”

  Frank returned the gentle smile that Ellen gave him. “But getting back to what I was saying.” He cleared his throat. “I’m going out on a limb here. Before this Dean thing came to a head, I thought ... I thought you and I were getting somewhere. We were getting so close I could actually feel it in here.” Frank brought his hand to his chest. “You know, when we were together, like a tension. Now I know you’ll always love me, that’s not cockiness, mind you. We’ve known each other for so long we’ll always love each other. But I thought you loved me again, really loved me again. Today, even though I know you’re with Dean, when I looked at you ...” Frank shook his head slowly. “When you were asking me not to go, I looked at you and I swore I wasn’t looking at just my friend. I swore I was looking at a woman who was in love with me.” Frank watched Ellen slowly close her eyes and bring her folded hands to her face. “What’s wrong?”

  Ellen shook her head.

  “El?” Frank saw her head drop. “Oh God I’m sorry. I was wrong. I was really wrong, wasn’t I? I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”

  “Frank.”

  “I didn’t, El. I swear. I was just ... just confused. You confused me.”

  “Frank,” her voice was low.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. I was confused, only I confused myself.”

  “Frank, stop it.” She lowered her hands in frustration to his rambling and snapped, “Stop. You weren’t wrong, OK?”

  “What?”

  Ellen’s eyes widened and she lifted her head in panic. “I mean ...”

  “El? What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. I mean, you uh ... you were wrong, but ... you uh.”

  “El, too late. You said it.”

  “Said what?”

  “That I wasn’t wrong.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Yes it was.” Frank nudged his shoulder into her.

  “No.”

  “Yes it was.” Frank drew a smirk upon his face as he stared forward. He was silent for a second and then he turned his head to her with a smile. “El? You still love me, don’t you?”

  “Frank.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No.”

  “Come on tell me.”

  “No.”

  “I still love you.”

  “Frank.”

  “All right.” He chuckled and picked up his cloth sack. “Sunflower seed?”

  “Yes.” She let out a silent breath and grabbed a few. “Frank, can I tell you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I am sorry I aimed at you last night. I was thinking about it and I’m sorry.”

  “I was thinking about it too.” Frank ate a seed. “And don’t apologize. You had every right to aim at me. Not to shoot the gun, but to aim and try to scare me. Which ... which you did.”

  “You didn’t show it.”

  “You think I would?” Frank took a breath. “I should not have gone after my friend like that. I shouldn’t have. I was wrong, really wrong.” Frank tossed out the seeds and his head dropped as he folded his hands. “I still feel really bad about it. In fact, more than you realize, I feel guilt over it.”

  Ellen slid her hand, first down his forearm then to his joined hands, slipping her fingers in between them. “You’ll get through this.” She leaned to him then rested her head against his arm. “If you need to talk ...”

  “I know.” He released her fingers and brought his hand to her face, holding her against him for a second, then tilted his head in to her and kissed Ellen on the forehead. He smiled after. He saw, through the corner of his eyes, Ellen looking up at him and he lowered his head. As he did, Ellen raised hers and he just stared at her. Opening his mouth to say something, anything at that moment, Frank’s entire view shifted from Ellen when Dean’s call for her came from the lab. “You uh ... you’d better get back to him.”

  “You wanna come in?”

  “No. That shit is boring. I’ll see you at Receiving when the new Survivors get here.” Frank chuckled when he heard her whine. He squeezed her hand. “I gotta go.” He stood up, holding Ellen’s hand. “Thanks for the talk.”

  Ellen looked up as she still sat on the step. “Thank you too.”

  “Anytime.” Frank gave that cool appearance then stepped back, ready to release her hand. Before he did, he stepped into her, raised her fingers to his mouth and kissed them. “Friend.”

  Ellen smiled at him. “Friend.” She stood up clutching his hand once more and feeling every bit of his skin as he slipped his hand slowly from hers. “Bye, Frank.”

  Frank watched her start to go into the lab. “Hey, El?”

  “Yeah?” She turned to look back, opening the door.

  “If you run into Andrea in town, can you tell her I’m really busy?”

  “Sure. I know Dean’s vision is a secret. I won’t tell her you’re helping him.”

  “No, that’s not it. She wants to measure me.”

  “Measure you? For the wedding?”

  “No. Get this. For a sweater.” He heard Ellen laugh. “Yeah. She says I’m in need of a good sweater for the winter. Me, a sweater. What is up with her lately? She is all fuckin loopy and shit.” Frank dramatically shuddered. “Anyhow, cover for me.”

  “I will, only because I can’t envision you in a sweater.”

  Raising his eyebrows high, Frank waved. “See you at Receiving.”

  She watched him briefly while holding the door open, then Ellen went into the mobile lab and chuckled as she did. “A sweater.” She pulled the door closed and stopped cold. “What is up with Andrea lately?”

  <><><><>

  The moment Robbie stepped off the helicopter, he could see the distress across Cole’s face. Not that Robbie cared whether Cole was upset or not, but he could see it. Unloading the extra ammunition, Robbie instructed Johnny to power down the chopper and hang out for a few minutes while Gene got everything together. There was no reason, if there was going to be trouble, to pull a seventy-year-old man with tuxedos into it. It didn’t take long for Gene to be ready. He was more than willing to take the short route home. Loaded down with his tuxes, shoes, and shirts in plastic bags, Gene anxiously awaited Johnny to take him home. Johnny’s reputation for causing airsickness wasn’t even on Gene’s mind.

  Johnny slid the side door closed. “So, Uncle Robbie, you want me to hang out a few minutes more.”

  “Nah, go on. But make a sweep around and keep in radio contact with me. Got it?”

  “Yep.” Johnny put on his sunglasses. “Be careful.”

  “Got it.” Backing away, Robbie gave a thumbs-up as he watched his nephew get into the helicopter, then he himself walked over to Cole as the noisy bird lifted. “Cole.”

  “Robbie.”

  “How’s the metal run going?”

  “Good. Another hour and we’ll be ready to head out.”

  “So I see our dead SUTs. Where are our hero Survivors?”

  “Get this.” Cole raised his eyebrows. “Getting ready.”

  “Getting ready? Getting ready for what?”

  “To go to Beginnings. They want to make a good impression. They heard we’re picky.”

  “We are.”

  “They’re weird.”

  “No kidding?” Robbie grinned. “When aren’t Survivors weird? Pretty whacked-out then?”

  “Did you ever sit in a room with Ellen and Henry for about, say ... two minutes?” Cole asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  �
�They are worse. Ten times worse. Only one problem though, Robbie. They’re civilized, completely civilized. You can tell by looking at them they had lived in a civilization for a while, among people. They just don’t have that look.”

  “And now they’re getting ready.”

  Cole nodded, looking so annoyed. “I think the one is getting a haircut.”

  This shocked Robbie. “A haircut?”

  “Oh sure. One of them was a barber.”

  A grin, a wide grin. “You do know, Cole, we don’t have a barber in Beginnings.”

  “It never fazed me, Robbie. I just shave my head when my hair gets to me.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not attractive.” Robbie playfully elbowed him.

  “Ha, ha, ha. According to Danny, the new guy, I don’t smell very nice either.”

  Robbie leaned to him and sniffed. “Come to think about it you ...” Across the street, the figure of the thin man backing up caught Robbie’s attention. Robbie squinted, focusing against the bright sun. “That looks an awful lot like ...” He watched Danny, no shirt, wearing only his jeans, back up and look to the sky, watching the helicopter. As his head tilted back, his black hair looked even longer. “It looks like Henry.”

  “That’s because he has that long-ass hair,” Cole snipped. “Wait until he turns around.”

  When Danny did, Robbie agreed. “I see. Hey!” Robbie called to him, then motioned his hand for Danny to come over. “What’s he doing?” Robbie asked Cole, when he saw Danny go back into the building and come out with Bentley. “Look at these two.”

  Danny was bright and upbeat when he walked over to Robbie. “Hey.” He held out his hand. “Danny Hoi. Nice to meet you.”

  “Robbie. Robbie Slagel.” Robbie shook his hand then shook Bentley’s. “You’re coming with us?”

  Danny nodded with a raise of his hand. “If you’ll have us.”