True Refuge

by Annabelle McInnes

  Euan was unable to respond quickly enough when, without warning, Nick threw the precious frame against the wall. It shattered the glass and destroyed the timber border, sending the paper photo fluttering to the decaying floor.

  Nick raised his fists into his hair. ‘You were fucking lucky!’ he screamed at the corpses. ‘You didn’t have to see this. Feel this. Fucking endure this.’

  Fuck! Nick! He was hurting, bleeding, crumbling before Euan’s eyes and he was powerless to intervene. He took a cautious step forward.

  ‘Do not move!’ Nick shouted, pointing a finger in his direction without looking at him. ‘Don’t come near me. We’re over! Us, this, is over. It’s all fucking over!’

  ‘Christ, Nick—’ Euan tried once again to take another step forward.

  Nick’s hand shook violently. ‘I said don’t move!’

  ‘All right.’ Euan held up his hands in supplication. ‘All right. I won’t move. But you need to talk to me. Tell me what happened.’

  Nick’s humourless laugh was so tortured, so anguished, so fucking tormented it destroyed Euan’s heart, tore through him with poisonous claws rendering him motionless. His own eyes burned, his throat grew thick.

  His voice was gravel when he was finally able to speak past the lump. ‘Christ Nick, you’re killing me over here.’

  Nick finally turned to him. His jade-green eyes were laced with so much pain Euan inhaled sharply. ‘You only came back to me out of guilt.’

  Euan shook his head, his eyes remaining riveted to man before him. ‘No, I came back because—’

  Nick’s anger was too volatile for sane arguments. ‘Liar. I don’t want to hear your excuses.’

  Euan scanned the room, trying to find something, anything to fix what was happening in front of him. Their relationship was disintegrating. He was disintegrating. How could he rectify this? He held Nick’s tortured gaze even though it ripped him apart. Slowly, Euan began to see what Nick was really trying to say. His eyes weren’t conveying the horrors that had happened to his body. No, Nick was pre-empting what he thought Euan was inevitably going to do to him, to them.

  Nick was mourning the loss of their bond. He wrongly assumed Euan didn’t want him after what had happened.

  That was the fucking lie.

  Euan’s racing heart slowed. He inhaled deeply. All the suppressed rage and remorse over their current predicament bled out his muscles, as if his wrists had been slit. He slowly began to march forward.

  ‘I said—’ Nick started.

  ‘I heard what you said,’ Euan rumbled as he methodically stalked Nick’s retreating form through the chaos of the room. ‘I just no longer give a fuck.’

  Nick dodged his advances. ‘I don’t want you! I don’t want this!’

  Euan laughed without humour. ‘You don’t want me? Don’t want us? That’s the fucking lie.’

  Nick jerked in his retreat. ‘It’s not a lie.’

  ‘It is, and you know it. Your heart knows it. Your body knows it. Your eyes fucking show it. It’s just your damn head that’s telling you otherwise.’

  Nick’s sneer was malevolent. ‘It’s my damn head that’s in charge!’

  ‘No,’ Euan growled as he finally cornered Nick against the wall, the glass from the smashed picture frame crunching under their boots. ‘It’s me that’s in charge.’

  Euan moved in until his body firmly pressed Nick up against the wall. He felt the heat of the man against him. The hard, delineated muscles, the quiver of trepidation. He wanted to take Nick’s jaw in his hands and press his lips to his own. Trail his tongue down the man’s throat to taste his flesh. He wanted to inhale the intoxicating scent that spoke directly to his soul. He yearned to wrap his arms around the disintegrating man and draw all the pieces back together, using his own sweat, blood and tears as adhesive.

  But he knew he could do none of it. And it wrecked him inside.

  So instead, he placed his palms on either side of Nick’s head, the plasterboard sagging with his weight, and leaned in. ‘You finished?’

  Nick answered his comment with a flash of green eyes.

  His breath was warm against his lips as Euan bent down to meet his gaze. ‘Not gonna leave you,’ he promised. ‘Sure as fuck not heading west without you. It will be just you and me. For as long as I can manage it. I came back not because of some ill-gotten sense of guilt. I came back because I want you, every part of you. Even that damn stubborn head.’

  ‘Because you want me?’ Nick asked incredulously.

  ‘Yeah,’ Euan answered without hesitation.

  Nick studied Euan’s features. He knew what he would see. A scruffy black beard. Patchy, shortly cropped dark hair. A crooked nose from multiple breaks. Cauliflower ears from his stints in the ring and dark-brown, intense eyes. When Nick’s gaze finally rested on Euan’s mouth, his voice was just a whisper as he asked, ‘You just want me?’

  Euan’s brows drew in, and even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t what Nick needed to hear. ‘What else is there?’

  Euan saw the flinch, the dulling of Nick’s eyes. He should have told Nick the truth. That he loved him, adored him, worshipped him in every way a man could. But the words had become ice on his tongue, freezing his speech.

  Nick’s jade eyes glistened. ‘You won’t let me go, will you?’

  Euan shook his head. ‘No.’

  Nick nodded, resigned, and turned his head away.

  ‘I won’t,’ Nick’s voice broke. ‘I … can’t … the sex.’

  ‘Don’t care,’ Euan whispered, honest in his sincerity.

  Nick’s response was anguished. ‘Why then?’

  ‘Because you’re perfect for me, Nick. You’re worth more to me than just an ass to fuck.’

  He knew he’d said the wrong thing when the guarded look behind Nick’s eyes finally shut closed with a resounding bang. He went from heart-achingly vulnerable to closed off in a heartbeat. The shift was astounding, distressing. Euan tried to backtrack. ‘Nicky—’

  ‘No, you’re right,’ Nick uttered, stoic, as he moved out from under Euan’s arms that had caged him. ‘Let’s give this place a once-over and see if there’s anything left.’

  Euan held his ground a moment, watching Nick retreat further from him with every physical and metaphorical step.

  ‘Nicky,’ Euan called, glad when Nick turned his head to meet his eyes. ‘I care for you, a lot. You understand?’

  Nick’s gaze searched Euan’s face before he answered, a sad smile playing around the corners of his lips. ‘Yeah, I understand.’

  Euan watched Nick retreat from the bedroom. He’d fucked up. He knew it as well as he knew the muscles that quivered under Nick’s borrowed shirt.

  He swallowed against the burn, against the ache that was building inside his chest like an inevitable tide, and turned to begin to search for supplies they likely wouldn’t find.

  Before he left the room, he moved to the broken picture frame lying on the floor. Dusting the glass and grime from the photo’s shiny surface, he picked it up from the floor and placed it respectfully between the two bodies.

  He knew it was the end. The end of them, of what they had been. Of what they could have been. The spark that had bloomed inside his chest extinguished. Bar the impossible happening, Nick was so far out of Euan’s reach, he would need a fucking trapeze to maneuver over the filth that tarnished them and catch him again.

  Without each other to sustain them, give them hope in a world gone mad, the only difference between them and the bodies on the bed was that they were still breathing.

  Chapter 6

  Euan awoke to pain exploding through his cheekbone and radiating through his jaw and eye socket. He tasted blood as he whipped the sleeping-bag coverings back and found Nick’s writhing and thrashing body next to his in the dark.

  Nick was gasping for air as if he were being strangled. His spine was arched at a severe, almost inhuman angle, every muscle in his body trembling violently and every joint locked. His hands were d
rawn into fists, one of which had been the catalyst for pulling Euan from his sleep. He could hardly see Nick’s features in the dark of the derelict spare bedroom of the house they’d raided, but what little he could distinguish indicated Nick’s lips were pulled back in a tortured grimace, his blonde eyelashes wet with tears.

  ‘Nick,’ Euan called in an attempt to pull Nick from his nightmare. He positioned his larger body over him until it covered his flailing limbs, in the hope of counteracting any further pummels to his stinging face.

  Nick didn’t reply, still trapped by whatever horrific memories his mind had on replay. He moaned, and what had been gasping cries turned into desperate lungsful of torment, ripping through the veil of hope Euan held around his heart that he could help Nick overcome his internal suffering.

  ‘Nicky,’ Euan tried again. ‘Nicky. It’s me. You’re safe. I’ve got you. Wake up. Everything is going to be okay. I’m here.’

  In answer, Nick screamed, every muscle in his body pulling tight under Euan’s larger frame. The cry resonated inside his heart, planting shards of glass, nails and razor wire in once fertile soil, in a field that was now as barren and desolate as Nick’s anguished screams.

  ‘Christ, Nick. Please, please wake up.’

  Nick didn’t hear Euan’s pleas. Trapped in his own horrific nightmare, he didn’t register Euan holding him tightly against his chest, or the fingers tunneling through his sweat-dampened hair. He didn’t notice the two lonely tears that squeezed involuntarily out of Euan’s eyes while he thrashed, writhed and wailed.

  And he never witnessed Euan’s heart breaking into a thousand tiny, irreparable pieces.

  ***

  ‘I thought you said it was just going to be us for a while?’ Nick muttered.

  Euan held his hand up to shield his bloodshot eyes from the bright midday sun, the muscles between his shoulder blades twitching with uneasiness. Though the morning had been kissed with the cool promise of autumn, the temperature had steadily increased as the day progressed, reminding him there was still time to find that elusive refuge before winter settled in, but it was quickly running out.

  His hawk-like gaze followed the crumbling asphalt as it snaked its way through a valley of dry, seeding grass and disappeared forebodingly into what had once been a truck stop, a roadside harbor for those looking to fill their stomachs or quench their thirst after many hours behind the wheel.

  They’d passed numerous similar abandoned clusters of buildings as they’d travelled, but what had his attention this time was that this one was populated, with numerous large men who wandered around the periphery of the various buildings. He made the obvious assumption that they were the men assigned to guarding whatever was kept within those walls.

  ‘We need supplies,’ Euan stated absentmindedly as he turned and looked back down the road they’d come down. He missed his binoculars. He missed his compass, his map, his camping gear and his damn fingernail clippers. They’d lost almost everything to the bastards who had attacked Nick. They’d found nothing but scraps of old clothing in the houses they’d raided, and now the likely reason for their ransacked state was in front of them.

  Euan’s chest tightened. They needed those fundamental items if they were going to leave what was left of civilisation behind.

  Also, as much as he pleaded with his consciousness to forget, he couldn’t move past the concept of revenge. This township was likely the closest outpost of civilisation for miles. The remaining two men who had hurt Nick could possibly be here.

  ‘That place doesn’t give me a good feeling,’ Nick commented as he moved beside Euan.

  It didn’t give him a good feeling either. The skin on the back of his neck prickled with warning. He knew entering that small settlement was a risk, but so was turning his back on humanity while they were ill equipped.

  ‘How are we gonna get the stuff anyway? We’ve got nothing to trade,’ Nick said in answer to Euan’s silence, his tone tired and laced with defeat.

  Euan tilted his head to study the man beside him and his gut soured at the sight.

  Euan would argue with Michelangelo himself that Nick was Adonis reincarnated. His body was made up entirely of delineated and ropy muscles that rippled and curled with every movement of his athletic physique. Nick had the grace of a cheetah, all power and lithe strength, energy and flexibility bound together by a glimmering bronze skin. But since the attack, his resemblance was now closer to that of a wraith. His once-vibrant eyes were lost in a green sea of dark shadows and misery. The beautiful body that had shimmered with vitality was gaunt and dull. Those muscles that were almost always visible due to his preference for shirtless wandering were lost under the layers of cloth they’d scavenged. Even his hair, in defiance of the innumerable times he’d bathed, washing himself with cruel vigour under the waves of whatever water they came across, hung lank about his shoulders.

  Though Euan had been able to catch enough game to keep their calorie intake high, Nick was still wasting away before his eyes. If something didn’t change soon, he’d lose Nick to the torments that devoured his body as viciously and as effectively as a rabid animal, despite every damn attempt Euan made to beat off the beast.

  It was a risk, but Nick’s wasted state heightened Euan’s determination to do whatever was needed to see him well again. See them well again.

  ‘Stay close,’ Euan ordered as he took the first step and advanced down the hill towards the settlement.

  The rusted hood of a car that had been pivoted skyward and lodged into the ground gave Euan the first inkling that he’d made another wrong decision. The crudely written name of the town was slashed in red paint on the inside of the hood. The sharp angular script, the rusted metal, the reckless impediment of the hood’s position in the road foreshadowed mayhem and anarchy.

  Nirvana.

  When the buildings came slowly into view, their state of disrepair and deterioration gave Euan the terrible feeling that Nirvana was not going to be a place of freedom, where the fears of the mortal world were inconsequential, but a sewer of degradation where the depraved and villainous came to roost.

  Euan slowed his pace, but a shout heralded their arrival. Men of all ages, shapes and level of cleanliness began to pour out of the cluster of buildings with enthusiasm, eager to see the innocent lambs in the wolf’s den.

  Murmurs and whispers surrounded them. Euan raised himself to his full towering height and held the stares of any who dared look up to meet his gaze. He was used to their astonishment. He had been a man of hulking stature while there were still billions of people on the planet. Now that the number of humans left had dwindled beyond comprehension, and with the subsequent fight for food that was paramount for survival, his gargantuan status was a phenomenon.

  He was a spectacle, a man to be behold, and his presence obviously meant something sinister to these men.

  He sensed rather than felt Nick stiffen at his side. Within minutes, they were surrounded, their exit cut off by men who tightly clasped the handles of baseball bats or the bases of crowbars. Guns weren’t rare, but their ammunition was, so Euan forced himself to ignore the threat of handguns, rifles and semi-automatics.

  As his eyes scanned the growing crowd, not only did he not see the men he was searching for, he realised that though they needed to trade, in the face of so many lice-ridden, malnourished bodies, this grave mistake could cost them their lives.

  ‘Nick?’ Euan muttered urgently under his breath.

  Nick grunted in acknowledgement at his side, his own body tense, eyes scanning the unprecedented numbers that massed around them.

  They came to a halt in the middle of the road, the faded white centre marking cutting between them. They were surrounded by scores of men, their mutters creating a chorus of rumbles to reverberate against the graffitied concrete walls around them.

  Euan lifted his chin in defiance of their predicament. ‘We’re looking at trading for some supplies.’

  There was an ominous vibration of laugh
ter that resounded through the group. The low rumble that steadily grew had Euan’s anxiety spiking and his heightened senses balancing on the edge of a blade, quivering with apprehension. Beside him, Nick took a deep breath and closed the space between them.

  ‘Welcome, gentlemen!’ came a bellow from the back of the mob. The sea of unwashed parted, and between the two halves walked a man who defied looked nothing like those who surrounded him. He was big, broad and barrel-chested, wearing a uniform of black with matching silver pins embedded into the lapel of his leather cut. The man’s goateed face showed the trials of his lifetime. Deep creases fanned out from the corners of his eyes, and furrows were rooted into his brow. His visible forearms were heavy with inky tattoos that rivaled Euan’s, but this man’s had faded to green since their artistic birth. When he smiled, the glint of wealth could be seen.

  ‘Welcome to Nirvana.’ The biker spread his arms wide, his palms open and his manner without artifice, but Euan wasn’t fooled.

  When neither Nick nor Euan responded to his greeting, the man continued on as if they had, his dark eyes lost under deep-set brows that studied them carefully. ‘What can we do for you?’

  Euan scanned the crowd. Every man stood tense, silent, waiting, their threadbare clothes faded and filthy, their matted hair slick with grease that shone in the sunlight. Their predatory gazes could not be dismissed. He would be a fool to disrespect the man before him; it was obvious the biker was the shepherd to the sheep.

  ‘We’re here to trade. Nothing more,’ Euan stated with deliberate care, his muscles tense, poised to fight and save his Nick if needed.

  That ripple of laughter again. Euan clenched his fists and sensed Nick shuffle at his side.

  The warden’s answering smile was fake, his peppered goatee stretching under his thin lips. ‘We’re always interested in diversifying our wares. Aren’t we, boys?’

  The chuckles started low, but as they gained courage in the presence of their leader, their merriment grew until it thundered all around. Euan curled his lip in distaste while he held the stare of the biker. He was surrounded by animals, so he would play to the law of nature. He towered over the man before him by a good foot, but he did not underestimate the pull this man had over his flock. Euan had one bullet, two knives and Nick’s quick reflexes at his disposal, but that was whimsy in the face of so many threats.