by Ryan Schow
“No,” she all but shouts, pulling the quilt to her eyes. “I stink.”
“You do,” I say. “Like really, really bad.”
“And my breath is sour.”
“You could set the world on fire with that dragon breath.”
“And my hair’s a mess.”
“A rat’s nest of tangles to be sure,” I quip. “But I’m certain he’ll love you because of your winning personality.”
“I do have a winning personality,” she says with a start.
“That’s what I said dummy,” I joke and suddenly we’re both laughing. “I love you baby.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
More solemn, savoring this moment together, I’m compelled to confess to her this thing that’s been festering inside me for a while now, this absolute truth.
“I almost died back there thinking of you being hurt and not recovering,” I admit, my eyes misting over at the admission.
“Don’t start crying again,” she says, softly. “Otherwise I’m going to start crying again and you said I need to keep my fluid levels up…”
I cup her soft, warm cheek and say, “When you don’t smell so bad, I’ll introduce you to Hagan. In fact, if you want, I’ll comb your hair later today and you can wash up in the tub.”
“With cold water.”
“With really cold water,” I joke, wiping my eyes and laughing at the same time.
“Where’s Uncle Rex?”
I heave out an exhausted sigh, remind myself not to say anything I’ll regret. “Busy being in love with Indigo.”
“No kidding,” she says deadpan. “Saw that coming a mile away.”
“We all did,” I tell her.
“Is she reciprocating?”
“Don’t they all, to a point?”
Frowning, Macy says, “Is Uncle Rex a he-slut?”
Smiling enough to conceal my concern over the situation, I say, “He’d say no, but everyone else might say yes. He’s just looking for love.”
“In all the wrong places?”
With a sad chortle, I say, “So it would seem. Want me to make you some breakfast?”
“An orange or an apple?”
“An orange.”
“Sure. Just don’t overcook it this time.”
They say sarcasm is the sign of a healthy mind, but I’m not sure that’s true. Still, if Macy is well enough to talk about things like cute boys, he-sluts and cooked oranges, I’m thinking the world might just be alright again.
When I head downstairs, Rider is sitting at the table with a half bottle of water. I can’t stop thinking about how he looks. He’s lean and GQ handsome, an alpha male through and through. I look away from him, refuse to present a false impression. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not falling for an older guy or a former soldier—this is me recognizing in him something I’m only now starting to see in Stanton: a steadfastness, a durability.
Where my husband has to learn and adapt to this world, Rider has home field advantage to this kind of a nightmare. Stanton was never afraid of anything in his world because he mastered it. Now my white collar husband is but a wet calf in the apocalypse, a babe just trying to get his legs under him. Just when I think he’s doing alright, I see a guy like Rider and realize there’s something cold and unbreakable inside of him, something you can see but can’t quite define. Maybe Stanton is going to be okay, but maybe he’s way out of his depths, too.
“Is this what you do?” I ask him. “You just show up and wait for people in their living rooms and kitchens?”
“It’s easier than knocking,” Rider says, sipping his water. “Plus I didn’t think you’d be doing anything terribly inappropriate with it being this early and colder than a witch’s tit.”
“You men are lucky,” I say. “You can keep your hair short, you don’t need makeup and if you don’t shower in a few days, you don’t really smell that bad. And somehow through all of it you still manage to look amazing.”
“Yeah,” he says. Then without an ounce of emotion he adds: “I’m thrilled out of my boots about the fringe benefits of my gender right now.” A smile creeps onto my face and he smiles in return, but it’s an anxious smile. A tempered smile. “If you’re worried about your looks around me, don’t. I’m not that guy.”
“Did you come to tell me you’ve got someone waiting for you at the college and you’re eager to return?”
The outer shell of him cracks. Not wide open, but enough for me to see inside, to see a man no longer indifferent about life. This is a man who is thinking about the woman he loves.
“Wow,” I say, seeing him change. “You must really like her.”
“She caught me off guard.”
For a second I’m seeing the joy of love brightening the faces of my brother, my daughter and now this guy. It makes me think of when Stanton and I first got together. The first time he met my parents he looked so handsome, but he was nervous inside and I missed it. Thankfully. He was wearing grey Boss trousers, a pressed white shirt with cufflinks and a four hundred dollar tie. He had on a black pea coat and a patterned scarf and he’d just purchased his first Maserati. The very look of him stilled my young, clamoring heart, yet it pumped me so full of love and adoration my emotions bordered on obsession.
Later in life I’d come to realize that for all the money he was making, for all his posh attire and sports cars and his plush downtown apartment, it was obvious he was overcompensating for something deep down—an insecurity I never really understood.
Money was once his castle, the walls he hid behind when it came to the pecking order of men, especially über successful men in their early thirties. With all that money gone and his best skills worth almost nothing in this hellish new world, I’m starting to see signs of that man creeping back out again. I’m seeing his insecurities flare when he’s next to Rex or Rider.
Now I think I just might understand why.
His mother once told me he’d been bullied as a boy. She’d used the words “horribly bullied” though and it made me sad. I’m sad for him now, and maybe this makes me love him more, but it also makes me afraid because I know he’s going to spend day after day trying to prove himself to people like Rider. To people like Rex. Will that get him killed? Will I lose him because some asshole kids picked on him as a boy? I pray not. I pray every night. But I only do this because I’m once again falling in love with this man.
“What do you want, Rider?” I ask, my mood changing. “Other than to get back home.”
After thinking the things I’m thinking, all I want is go back to bed, curl up next to my husband and tell him to stay with me always. To never do something so stupid that he would leave me and Macy alone in this world.
“That’s mostly what I want,” Rider answered. Studying me, he says, “But we need to be safe, too, and I feel an obligation to protect you, even though I don’t really know you. I know you’re good people, and if we have a community of strong, capable people, then maybe we can survive this situation, maybe even rebuild one day.”
“I don’t want to stay in this city,” I say, sitting down, fashioning my blonde hair into a ponytail.
He slides his water bottle across the table. I take a sip, not caring about where his mouth has been or if he’s a backwasher. These days, it doesn’t matter. Or maybe it does and I just don’t care this second.
“Thanks,” I say, sliding it back.
“We need to get out of this city, but first we need to thin the herd a bit.”
“Thin the herd?”
“In case you hadn’t figured it out,” he says, “there’s a play for the city that might make getting out of here tougher than you think. We’re surrounded by the fallout of the inner city’s gangs.”
“Are you talking about The Ophidian Horde?”
“Yes and no. The Ophidian Horde happened just before this. They’re an offshoot of the gangs in this city, just another pack of scumbags that found a way to grow and thrive in this God awful situation. Indigo has th
is thing going on inside her that’s a bit scary. It’s like me, but full of emotion. Hatred. A well of rage I’m not sure she can control.”
“And that is?”
“She wants to kill them all.”
“Why?”
“Did you see that pile of ash outside?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Did she tell you how those bones came to be there?”
“Why would she?”
“So you didn’t even bother to ask,” he says, not a question but a statement.
“It’s not my business,” I reply, wondering where he’s going with this. I look at his water, raise an eyebrow and he slides the bottle back over. I take a sip, then another, then move it back and say, “Is that why she doesn’t want us going into that house?”
“I went into the house.”
“And?”
“Dead girl with her head blasted open.”
My stomach drops.
“Isn’t that the house that Atlanta lived in?”
“You tell me,” he says.
If he knows something, he’s not letting on. Is he wanting me to ask about it more? To try to figure it out? God, I’m too tired for the games.
“Is that…was that her sister?” I find myself asking.
Atlanta’s face appears in my mind, specifically the sad look she’s always wearing. Does that explain why she’s so quiet? Why she’s so withdrawn?
“I just got here, Cincinnati. Which is to say I don’t know. I’m just trying to put the pieces together without all the facts. Same as you. But the truth is I really don’t care. I’m not planning on staying, so the sooner we get the hell out of here and onto fortified ground the better.”
“Is that why you’re here this morning?”
He smiles me an answer, then takes a drink of his water and says, “Look at you, being the smartest kid in the room and all.”
I hear Stanton coming down the stairs. He pops out into the kitchen and sees me and Rider talking. He gives nothing away in his eyes, but I know him well enough to know what he’s thinking.
Inside I instantly feel crushed because all I want to do is crawl back into bed with him, pull him tight, pretend for a moment that none of this is happening.
He sees Rider though, which means all the small talk about Atlanta and the college is about to turn to discussions of moving again. Did I tell you I’m sick of moving already? I am. I really, really am!
“What’s up?” he says to Rider.
“Time to go,” Rider replies. “If you want to go, that is.”
“What are you thinking?” Stanton asks, focused on opening a can of mandarins. “The college, right?”
“This is how we survive. We’re stronger together than we are apart. Plus there’s plenty of room there, and plenty of firepower to protect us all.”
“What about Indigo?”
“She can come if she wants.”
“Did you see her house, Rider? She’s got her own little fortress and it’s stocked to the roof with food and supplies. And now it seems she’s taken up with my brother-in-law.”
“I’m going to talk to her when she’s awake,” he says.
“What if she says no?” I ask. “Because that’s a very real possibility.”
“Then she’s putting her and her mother in jeopardy for some guns, some food and a bunch of blankets.”
“It’s more than that,” I admit. “She’s waiting for her father to come home.”
“She’ll have to wait until the end of time if I’m right.”
“If she stays,” Stanton says, “then we all stay.”
Rider gives a slow, conciliatory nod. Clearly he isn’t impressed with the nature of the conversation, or where it’s headed.
“This world is still free, so long as you have a gun and plenty of bullets. That means you’re free to stay or go, so long as you know you have the invite.”
“If only it were that easy,” Stanton muses.
He’s eating mandarin orange slices and unwrapping a granola bar that looks hard as a rock and dangerous enough to throw through a plate glass window. He pulls the foil wrapper back, bites down on it and makes a face like he might have cracked a tooth.
“You need a hammer?” Rider asks.
“More like a sledgehammer,” he jokes. “You want one?”
“As a weapon or for the nutritional joy of it?”
“You pick.”
“Hell no,” he says.
The way guys bond is so strange. It’s like they need a few minutes to sniff each other’s butts and decide how to conduct business in a manner that doesn’t involve ego or posturing, even though with men, there will always be both ego and posturing.
Standing up, Rider says, “We’re leaving in the morning. Lenna and the boys are coming, and I’d like to take you guys and Macy, just to have Sarah check her out.”
“I’m a nurse,” I say.
“Yes, but I’ve got a real pharmacy,” he replies, and I can’t argue that logic.
“We can always go and come back if we want,” Stanton tells me.
“He’s right,” Rider adds.
“You ex-military?” Stanton asks.
“CIA.”
“Black ops or pencil pusher?”
There’s a glint of humor in his eyes and a smirk on his face, a combination I like because too much testosterone is a buzzkill for normal girls like me.
“Pencil pusher,” Rider says.
“Yeah me, too,” Stanton replies. Then, more serious: “It’s good to be in the company of capable men.”
“Indeed it is.”
“Are you guys bonding or measuring your dicks right now?” I ask.
“Bonding,” they both say at the same time.
“We’ll be ready to go at first light,” I say, looking first at Rider, then at Stanton. Stanton isn’t looking at me, though. He’s looking at Rider and there isn’t an ounce of no in his expression. Staying together is the right thing to do.
Strength in numbers.
Chapter Fifteen
Before he’d fallen asleep, before unconsciousness gripped him, Jagger had scooted next to Camila and pulled her into his arms. Her lifeless body sunk against his as darkness swallowed him whole. The nightmares were relentless. He shifted and shook; he cried out and jolted. In his trauma-induced sleep, he relived the crash over and over and over again.
The ground raced up on them with both speed and force. He drew a panicked breath, heard Camila call out his name, and then they hit. The second they slammed into the valley floor, he knew he’d botched the landing.
Jagger thought he could lay the flat belly of the helo on the tilled soil and skid it out, but the ground wasn’t flat and he came in at too hard an angle. The forward facing prop was the problem, which he knew it would be. The second they hit, the blades dug into the soil, ripping the propeller wings off completely and shoving the nose forward.
The tail end drove up at a sideways angle, twisting the fuselage into a spin that ripped the tail section off and threw them into a nasty barrel roll. The jarring, jerking, downright hellish sounds of the hull being torn apart had his teeth snapping and his eyeballs shaking so bad the world was reduced to a shuddering, lurid blur.
Time slowed and sped up at concurrently. For whatever reason he remembered everything. The gun-shot sounds of bolts snapping and welds breaking, the whine and whinny of sheet metal ripping apart, the screech of the helo’s frame bending against too much strain and abuse.
Strapped in tight, Jagger’s body thrashed and wrenched about with such force he wondered if his popping, striving bones could withstand the beating. He couldn’t even think, except for that half second where he might have prayed for it all to end, his death or otherwise.
The last thought he had before the roaring wreck became too much for his brain to handle was that if the helo broke apart, he would never see Lenna or the boys again. He’d be crushed, pitched free, or simply battered to death by the time this thing stopped.
And then it all went black.
More jarring about (his dragging legs); his already battered body bumping off hard objects, pointed objects (rocks?); the slow, canvas-like sounds of his flight suit scraping over a hard pack (dirt?—am I alive?); pain sparking up every last nerve; the faraway sounds of voices to let him know death sounded a lot like the chaos of life.
Delirium tickled the once stable synapses of his mind, leaving him weary but agitated, unable to open his eyes, speak or even move.
Is this hell?
If so, he’d be the least surprised person down there. It wasn’t death, though. Someone was dragging him backwards by his flight suit. His butt and his heels dragged along the dirt, and just as he started to wonder who was pulling him, they dropped him without care or concern, causing his head to thunk! off the ground.
“They’re all dead,” he heard a woman say. She was either a million miles away or standing over the top of him.
“Mother of Christ,” another replied from an even farther distance. “This guy looks like he got shot to death after everything was over.”
“Are we the first people out here?” Jagger heard a female voice ask.
He fought with all his might to crack an eyelid open. Then he worked on the other. Sunlight shot through his cornea, slammed into his brain like a battering ram. He snapped his eyes closed while wincing and turning his head away from the light. He drew a labored breath but held it the second he heard a girl’s yelping.
“This one’s alive!” she shouted.
Pretty soon the sunlight that threatened to blind him, the sunlight that made the once dark sides of his eyelids a soft glowing pink, was blotted out by a gathering of bodies above him. Thank God, he thought, about to open his eyes. He’d been saved.
“Who’s going to kill him?” he heard one of them ask.
Wait, what?
“I’ll do it,” the girl said.
“No,” a stern voice replied.
Jagger opened his eyes, saw the people standing all around him. The people safeguarding his eyes from the direct shine of the sun.
“You’re the pilot, right?” someone asked, kicking him in the side with a boot like they were checking for a response, or trying to force one. He’d been kicked the same way you’d kick a dog you thought was dead or unresponsive. Jagger managed a grunt in the affirmative.