A surge of adrenaline shot through him, but even that was only enough to raise an arm. He gripped the sleeve of her jacket, holding her gaze with his.
“We can’t,” he said. “I can’t. You’ve got to keep going. Keep riding … this road. It goes all the way up. Up to the cabins. It turns off. You’ll remember where. Been there before.” Each word felt like it took everything he had. Stars were swimming at the edge of his vision, and they were beginning to crowd around Piper’s face. There was a high whine at the edge of his hearing.
“I’m not going on without you. I’m not.”
Alex gasped with pain, and clenched his teeth to keep it from turning into a scream. “You are. Everything … everything this whole way, was to get you home. Me, Denny. Even Max. Just to get you there. If you stop now, it all failed.”
“You have to get home, too,” said Piper. Tears still poured from her eyes, but she was hardly crying. She was angry. She wanted to fight.
So much like her mother, thought Alex. And with that came a crashing wave of grief, rocking him where he lay on the ground. He wouldn’t see her again. Wouldn’t see Cameron.
It was getting harder to see. Sun going down? Or the very last bit of his life leaching away?
“Go,” he whispered. “Please. Or it was all for nothing.”
The world went black.
* * *
In the middle of the night, a thundering crash shook Cameron’s cabin.
She was out of her bed like a shot. She jerked on her clothes, but before she was even done she heard shouting outside. Others in the cabin community, all of them running. Tugging on her boots, she snatched up her rifle from beside the bed. Even after Wade, she slept with the weapon close.
This was it. Cameron didn’t know what “it” was, but it had come. Bandits attacking the cabins? A final storm to end them all? She didn’t know, but it was the culmination. She could feel it in her skin, could hear it in the panicked voices outside.
She threw the front door open and pounded out into the snow. There was Scott, and Russell, and even Debbie, and they were all running. Not from a threat, but towards the sound of the crash, the explosion, whatever it had been. Something had come, and they were going to face it together. Even if it was the end, the last, final gasp.
It was the middle of the night, but there were lights on in the club house near the front of the community. By those dim lights, Cameron could see the front gate through the swirling snow storm. But the gate wasn’t standing there anymore. It had been thrown to the ground beneath the tires of a huge truck. A tow truck?
God. Bandits, then. Someone coming to attack this little pocket of community and steal whatever resources they could. Cameron lifted the rifle, holding it ready to fire at the first sign of life.
But no one emerged from the tow truck. Whoever was inside, they were waiting for a target.
Chad reached the truck first. He pressed his pistol up against the driver’s side window. “Hands up!” he screamed. “Hands up, god damn it! Put your hands where—”
He froze, his words falling to silence. Cameron was still struggling through the snow, and she couldn’t see his face. What was it? Did they have a gun trained on him? What were they waiting for?
Chad turned away from the truck, looking towards the others who were running towards him at full tilt.
“Help!” he cried.
Cameron almost stopped in her tracks, but she kept her feet moving. But she lowered her rifle. No longer looking to shoot, but only to understand.
A white face appeared in the windshield. Small, and so low it was almost covered by the steering wheel. Wide, terrified eyes, looking out into the light of Russell’s flashlight, which he’d just trained on the tow truck.
This time, Cameron did stop in her tracks.
“Piper?” she whispered.
Then Piper recognized her.
“Mom!”
“Piper!”
Cameron threw the rifle aside and ran for the tow truck. She shoved Chad aside and yanked open the driver’s side door. Then Piper fell out of the cab and into her arms, and Cameron dropped to her knees, holding her daughter close, burying her face in the girl’s hair.
“Piper, Jesus, Piper, baby, I’m here, it’s okay, you’re—”
“Mom, stop, Mom,” said Piper, trying to push her away. “Mom, listen—”
“Piper, for God’s sakes, I thought I’d lost you!” said Cameron, not easing up on her grip in the slightest. “Just let me have—”
“No, Mom!” cried Piper, finally pushing her away. “It’s Dad.”
Cameron’s heart nearly stopped. In the shock at seeing Piper, all thought of Alex had fled. “Piper, where is he?”
“The back seat,” said Piper, tears spilling from her eyes. “He’s—it’s bad.”
Cameron leaped to her feet and threw open the back door. There was Alex, wrapped in blankets. Blood had soaked the ones laid over his midsection.
“Alex!” cried Cameron. No response. She threw herself into the cab and felt for his pulse. She froze, her fingers on his neck. She felt nothing. God, no. Please, not this. Not like—
There. There it was. Faint. God, so faint.
She turned. “Scott. Russell. Get a table from the clubhouse and break off the legs, then bring it out here. We’re taking him to my place.”
They didn’t answer, didn’t even nod, but just ran off to do as she said. Cameron climbed back out of the truck, and Piper grabbed her arm.
“Can you … is he going to …?”
Cameron had heard the question a thousand times from a thousand mouths. Hospital policy—and human decency—always dictated that she not answer. You could never guarantee someone would pull through. Hope was a wonderful thing—but take that away, and the world became a little darker, and it stayed that way forever. Better to tell them the truth, that all things were uncertain, that you could only do your best.
She looked down into her daughter’s eyes. Her mouth set in a firm line.
“He’s going to live,” she said. “I promise.”
CHAPTER 36
Blinding white light pierced his eyelids.
For a long while, the pain of it was all he could focus on. Then the pain of the rest of his body came flooding in, and the pain in his eyes became a mere pinprick. Alex groaned—or he tried to. He managed only a thin whimper, dribbling out between cracked lips.
Holy cow, I’m alive, was his first thought. He had a momentary thought that he didn’t know he was alive. But the pain seemed a pretty good hint. He’d never had any strong opinion about what happened after death, but he was decently sure that pain wasn’t part of it.
He opened his eyes.
Wood panel ceiling. Familiar grain. Where had he seen that before?
The realization crashed in on him like a thunderstorm. The cabin. His cabin. His and Cameron’s.
He tried to sit up, and his whole body made him immediately regret it. He fell back on the pillow, gritting his teeth with a hiss. It took a moment for the pain to subside, a longer moment than he thought it should. Without moving too much, he turned his head.
Cameron.
Just seeing her was like Christmas and a birthday all in one. She was in an armchair by the bed. The armchair didn’t belong here, in their bedroom. She must have brought it in, to be with him while he rested. While he rested from …
The knife wound. He remembered now. Remembered Piper, too, kneeling over him and crying in the snow. Through the bedroom window, the outside world was a wall of white. Gingerly, he moved a hand and probed at his stomach. Bandages, again. They were new, though. Applied by Cameron, no doubt, after she’d done whatever she’d done to him. Fixed him, it seemed like.
It seemed unbelievable, but he’d actually made it. He was home. Or the closest thing to home that still existed any more.
“Cameron,” he croaked.
Her head jerked, and she shot straight up in the armchair. “Alex!”
Alex gave her his
best smile. “Hey, babe.”
She sat on the bed beside him, then leaned over to give him a kiss. Not too deep, and it didn’t last too long. She must know how ginger he was, because she barely touched him with her hands. But he could feel the passion in it, a driving urgency that spoke to all the long days and weeks they’d been apart.
When it was over, she sat up straight, and suddenly she was all business. She pulled back the blanket, looking down at the bandages that wrapped his middle. Alex tried to lift his head to see. He couldn’t get a very good look, but it didn’t look like there was any visible blood. That was a good thing, he hoped.
“What’s the prognosis, doc?” he said.
“Now? A lot better than when you got here,” said Cameron. “That punk could hardly have picked a worse place to stab you.”
That brought back memories of the attack, and then Piper again. “Oh my god—where’s Piper? Is she—”
“She’s fine,” said Cameron. “In fact, I’ll bet she’s up. Hold on.”
She leaned over and kissed him again, on the forehead this time, and then left the room. But Alex had barely settled further into his pillows before the door opened again, and Piper came bouncing in followed by Max.
“Dad!” she said. She froze by the bed, her fingers twisting around each other, clearly holding herself back.
“Hey, sweetie,” said Alex. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” said Cameron, stepping into the room behind Piper. “But I gave her very, very strict orders not to jump on you when she came in. She actually listened. I’m shocked.”
Piper shot her a glare, but it was half-hearted. “Are you feeling okay? Do you need anything? I just made some soup, I could make another can.”
“No solid food,” said Cameron. “But here.”
Beside the bed was a cup of water with a straw. She handed it to Piper, and Piper put the straw in Alex’s mouth. He gulped deeply at it. Part of him was a little embarrassed to be served like this by his own daughter, but most of him just thought the water was the best thing he’d ever tasted.
He nodded when he was done, and Piper returned the cup to the side table. He looked up at her with a smile for a moment, but then his mood dampened. “Cam, how’d you find me? I never thought you’d come that far east of the cabins, even if you were scouting out food sources or something.”
Cameron arched an eyebrow. “We didn’t find you. Piper found us.”
Alex frowned and looked at her. Piper blushed and looked down at her hands, which had begun to fidget again. “When you fainted, I didn’t keep on the road like you told me to. I went back to Leavenworth with Max. I couldn’t find anybody there—either they’d all gone, or they kept their doors closed and ignored me. So I started checking cars. Most of them were locked shut. Finally I found a tow truck, and there were keys in the visor above the steering wheel. So I … I drove back to you. You got up and got into the car. Don’t you remember?”
Alex frowned. “I ... don’t. I must have been out of it.”
Piper ducked her head. “Well, anyway. You fell into the back seat. And then I drove you here.”
“You what?” said Alex. “Piper, you can’t drive!”
“Damn right she can’t,” said Cameron, barely hiding a smile. “You should see the tow truck. It’s totaled—and that’s before she crashed it through the cabin community’s front gate.”
“But the mountain road … the snow …” said Alex.
“I just went slow,” said Piper. “I … I stopped all the time, any time I felt like I was slipping. It was hard, and for a while I thought I’d missed the cabins. But then I saw the turnoff. And then when I saw the gate, I … I got excited, and I stepped on the gas, and then I forgot where the brake was, and …” Her words gradually trailed off. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Alex shook his head, though even that little movement brought pain. “Piper, that’s … that’s amazing. I’m sure I would have told you to stop if I was awake to see it, just like I told you to leave me. But that was wrong. You were right. You were brilliant.”
He smiled at her again, but she didn’t return it. Instead she burst into tears and fell forward, forgetting Cameron’s orders and hugging him tight.
“I was scared,” she said. “I ... I thought you died in the car while I was driving. Don’t ever do that again. When you told me to leave, I thought—”
“I know,” said Alex quietly. “I did, too. But it’s okay. I’m here. We’re all here.” Fingers gripped his own, and he looked up to see Cameron looking down at them. Tears shone in her eyes, though she kept them from falling.
“We’re all here,” he repeated. “We’re all okay.”
Piper sniffed and lifted her head. “Well, sort of. There’s, like, twenty people here, and all but one of them is a grown-up. You’ve only been out for a few days, but I’m getting bored.”
Alex snorted, and Cameron rolled her eyes. It was such a perfect—such a normal moment, that Alex could almost feel the last four weeks of tension and fear melting away, to be replaced by an immense sense of gratitude that he was alive to enjoy it.
“Come on, kiddo,” said Cameron. “Get out of here so your dad can get some rest.”
“I hate when you call me kiddo,” said Piper. But after giving Alex’s hand one final squeeze, she rose and left the room, following Cameron. Alex smiled after them—and then his eyelids began to droop. Before Cameron came back to check on him, he’d drifted off again.
* * *
It was more than a week before Cameron finally let him get out of bed, and even then, he had to hold on to her to move around. During that time, he met everyone else in the cabin community. Some of them he’d seen before, while others were refugees, and brand new. They all seemed inordinately happy to see him—he guessed they’d heard about him and Piper. No doubt most of them had thought they’d never actually make it to the cabins. The fact that they had seemed like a small victory, even when weighed against the chaos of everything else.
Sometimes as they talked to him, or when Cameron told him some stories of how the community had fared, he caught a dark look in their eyes. Occasionally someone would stop speaking, giving Cameron a furtive look before changing the subject. Cameron, too, was clearly hiding something, though she was better at it than most of them. Alex let it ride for two days before late one night, he finally had her sit down and tell him everything. She told him everything from the very beginning—about Bill, and then Hernando, Bettie, and finally Wade.
The whole story came out in a dead monotone—even the ending. In her eyes was the same look she’d worn when she came back from deployment, the look that it had taken him so long to coax her out of in the first place. When the story was done, she looked down at him, her face an impassive mask.
He reached up and took her hand. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I should have been here for you. But I’m here now.”
The look in her eyes passed like a storm. She leaned down and kissed his forehead.
“Damn right,” Cameron whispered.
Now, some days later, he was finally out of bed. One arm over Cameron’s shoulders and one over Piper’s, he hobbled out to the living room and sat on the couch there. The pain in his stomach was now a dull, lingering ache, greatly eased by wine or Scotch—both of which they had in plentiful supply. He sat looking out the wide rear windows, into a world that was all white and silent as death. For a moment that’s all he did—sit there staring.
“The windows lose a lot of heat,” he finally said. “We should try to insulate them somehow.”
“None of that,” said Cameron. “You’re still recovering. You can worry about solving the world’s problems when you’re finally back to normal.”
Alex chuckled.
A knock came at the front door. Cameron’s head snapped up at once. “Come in,” she called.
The door opened just enough for Russell to poke his head in. “Gina’s finished the western fence, boss,” he said
. “I’ve got her on the front gate already, but I thought you’d want to come check the work.”
“Thanks,” said Cameron. “I’ll be out soon.”
Russell nodded and vanished, closing the door behind him.
Alex looked up at Cameron and arched an eyebrow. “Boss?”
Cameron’s mouth twisted. “That’s another story.”
“I bet. But it makes sense. Suits you.”
“Is it always going to be like this?” said Piper. “Is the world ever going to go back to normal?”
Cameron turned to look at Alex, and he pulled his gaze away from the window to look at her. In unison, they sighed and turned to Piper.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” said Alex. “It might not. But then again, it might. All we can do is whatever we can: taking care of each other, and of everyone else in the cabins. If the weather goes back to normal, we’ll be ready. If it doesn’t … well, we’ll figure it out.”
Piper shivered. “It’s all different. Everything seems … dangerous.”
“It is,” said Cameron, matter-of-factly. “But we’ll take care of you.”
“We will,” promised Alex. “And so will others. There are dangers out there—the weather, and the people, too. But you and I saw the same things, Pipes. There’s always people who are willing to help. And if you think about it, there were more of them than people who wanted to hurt us.”
She looked thoughtful for a moment. Alex wondered if her thoughts, like his, had turned to the many people they’d met on the road. Pete, who’d inadvertently given them Max, and Denny, and Graham and Willow. Even the nameless woman, who’d thrown out a package of pads from the darkness of a supermarket; and Lamont, the convict who wouldn’t travel by their side, but also wouldn’t let a pack of criminals kill them and steal everything they owned.
“I guess you’re right,” said Piper slowly.
“Of course I am,” said Alex. “And no matter what, you’ve got me and Mom. I got you all the way across the country all by myself. Now there’s two of us. We’ll be fine.”
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