Kevin was already standing when I shifted my gaze away from Vera’s empty shell, and I took his hand and stood. “I can go get the food if you want to—”
“No way, Nina. We go together.”
Seeing the sincerity and concern in his eyes, I nodded. I followed him outside first, where we gathered up the water supplies we’d left on the deck and brought them inside. He led the way to the kitchen, and we put everything on the table, but he proceeded to remove the bottles of water from his backpack. Then, after he grabbed the flashlight off the end table in the living room, we headed downstairs to the pantry.
Even in the darkness, I could sense Kevin’s tension. This had bothered him as much as it had me. I knew it wasn’t the sight of blood, because there had been so much more the time we’d met the Bransons in the forest and had to defend ourselves against them. Instead, I believed it was at the sight of seeing the brutality that someone who purported to love his spouse could do. It had been psychically scarring to me, but I hadn’t thought of Kevin and how it would make him feel.
I could sense his strength beside me, but he held his tire iron at the ready. His hand was down but poised in front of his torso, ready to raise and strike at a moment’s notice. I had the axe as well, but I didn’t know how effective it would be in that tight stairwell. I’d likely injure Kevin or myself as easily as any assailant who came after us.
But we reached the bottom unscathed, and Kevin paused there, turning all the way around once quickly, scanning for anything unusual. Then he did it once more, slowly this time, ensuring that we were alone. Once he felt sure that we were safe, we walked to the pantry area. We wasted no time, grabbing a few canned and boxed goods that would take care of two or three meals if needed as well as a couple of apples. We put them in his backpack and, once he had it back on, we exited the pantry. He scanned the room again before we crossed it and headed back up the stairs.
He paused at the top, once more looking around the room before stepping inside, but then we walked over to the table. “You okay with carrying all that water in your backpack back down the hill?”
“No problem.”
“Actually…where we’re going, we don’t need water, so let’s not take all that.” I smiled in spite of the situation. He was right. The whole point of “our place” was that many of the comforts of the modern-day life we’d been missing were available in that little cottage, running water being but one. But just in case I was right and someone had returned home, I wanted to take some water with us so we didn’t have to return to the house. I emptied the bag, leaving just a few bottles.
“Want me to put some of that stuff in mine?” I asked, indicating his backpack. The canned goods had to be heavy.
“Nah. But why don’t you put the flashlight in there?” I furrowed my brow. “We have no idea what we’re gonna need. Better to be safe than sorry.” I nodded and set the flashlight on top of the water bottles before zipping it. Once I had it on my back, I picked the axe back up off the table and looked over at him. “There’s one thing I want to check before we go…something Vera said.”
I know I looked confused but I followed him into the garage. He was poised to strike when we entered there, too, not knowing what to expect. Nothing was amiss, though, and he walked around to the driver’s side of the car. He opened the door and sat on the seat, looking around. It was a few seconds before he found the release for the hood, but he popped it when he did.
I turned around just to look back through the house. I was feeling paranoid and unsafe, and I didn’t know when I’d feel relaxed again. Maybe never.
Kevin peeked and poked under the hood and then said, “Motherfucker.”
“What?”
“That son of a bitch…he took all the wires off the spark plugs.” I kept quiet. I thought I knew what he was saying but it didn’t seem possible. Larry had plotted and maneuvered so that we would be stuck here? Larry had caused it? Kevin looked up at me and I could see the anger in his eyes. “But it doesn’t matter now, because he spilled all the gas everywhere, making sure if one of us figured that shit out, we still couldn’t get out of here.”
“Larry did this? Are you sure?”
“Who else, Nina?” His eyes looked dark. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
If I hadn’t been so tense, I might have laughed. “No. I don’t even know how to do that.”
“What a sick fuck.” Kevin slammed the hood down, I hoped letting go of some of his frustration, and let out a long sigh. “Ready?”
I nodded in response and we left the garage, walking through the kitchen and then heading toward the door. I looked back one last time at Vera before her body disappeared behind the couch and I said a mental goodbye. Kevin and I walked out the door, closing it behind us, both of us gripping our chosen weapons before walking back down the mountain.
When I’d dreamed of going back home, I hadn’t thought we’d be leaving this way.
Chapter Fifteen
Kevin and I walked back down the mountain, the same thing we’d done for months, only this time, we had a completely different goal—to get the hell out of there. Once we were halfway down, we spied Larry’s truck in the road where it had been sitting since we’d arrived.
Kevin looked at me and said, “Hold on.” He tried to open the door but then he realized that Larry had locked the doors. “Just wondering if he really ran out of gas.”
I stood beside him looking at the window. “I think so. I mean…we were going to gas up before he nearly ran over you.”
“So the survivor bullshit came to him after we’d settled in.”
“Sounds about right.”
He walked alongside the truck. “You mind waiting a minute?”
“That’s fine.”
Kevin lowered the tailgate and removed his backpack, setting it in the bed of the truck. Then he set his tire iron down and hoisted himself up and stood over his bike, examining it. I was growing bored and still felt tense, so I began looking around. I thought I heard something in some nearby scrub oak, but Kevin was making all manner of noise. I turned back to the truck to see what he was doing, and he was rolling the bike off the truck. “Do you need my help?”
“No. I got it.”
Once he had it down (and it was questionable as to if he was going to seriously injure himself doing it), he was messing around with the handlebars, scrutinizing them from multiple angles. It was in the middle of his examination that I heard the swift sloshing in the mud and slushy snow behind me.
I turned just in time to see an infected woman with stringy blonde hair charging after Kevin. She was running like her ass was on fire and he was a lake, and I felt my hackles rise. There was no hesitation, either, as I moved forward to place myself between her and him, and I raised the axe, bringing it down at an angle so that, just as she moved into my range, it punctured her shoulder right at the neck. The axe must have been sharp because it sliced her like a chef’s knife through a carrot—quick and clean with just a little effort. Her eyes appeared to bulge, although I think, in retrospect, that my imagination had a little to do with it, and then she dropped to the ground, blood spraying and dripping and mixing with the mud at our feet.
Kevin had stood by the time I faced him, and he smiled. “Damn fine job, Davis.”
I grinned back. Still using my maiden name. “That’s Wilder to you, mister.”
His smile didn’t completely fade, but it lost some of its luster. “Oh, yeah.”
Dumb move on my part. I let out a sigh. I felt adrenaline coursing through my veins, and my hands were shaking, but I’d done it, and I was proud that I’d done it without thought, without hesitation. I saved the man I loved decisively. “So what have you been doing over here, Savage? I mean…while I’ve been saving the world and all.” I realized I was feeling a little giddy; after all, I’d just killed something—again—and it was starting to feel commonplace, something I’d never wanted to feel in connection with destroying a life, no matter how much that other life had
wanted to kill me. It made the act cheap and removed all reverence for life and the soul, and I hated that I’d done that…so, instead of hanging on to my earlier fear and caution, I was playing around a little too much.
Fortunately, Kevin seemed to sense that and went easy on me. He simply answered my question. “We never really checked out my bike. My thought was that it was fucked up and I’d need some heavy-duty tools to repair it. But I’m looking at it now and I think I can have it drivable in no time.” I nodded as I felt my friend’s hope flood my core. “Maybe we can leave tomorrow.”
“Wow. That would be great.”
“The question is where can I find what I need to fix it, and do I want to walk it to wherever that is?”
“What about Aunt Lou’s outbuildings?”
He frowned. “I guess that’s a possibility, but I really don’t want to stay up there. We’re inviting trouble, Nina.” He searched my eyes. “For starters, we’d have to do something with Vera’s body…and clean up the living room carpet.” Oh…yeah, I didn’t think I could handle it. Fortunately, Kevin already knew that. “Here’s what we do. We hunker down in our place.” I thought that was cute, that he continued referring to it that way. “Eat dinner and sleep, and then get up in the morning and take my bike up to your aunt’s. Not even go in the house; just go straight to the barn. It’s big and there’s some kind of shop in there. Hopefully, I can get it done early and we can be home before this time tomorrow.”
So we headed down the mountain, leaving his bike on the side of the road propped up on its kickstand, a tiny ray of hope in a bleak landscape.
* * *
Kevin had been right. Ordinarily, I disliked being wrong, but I was fine with it in this case. We walked through the back door of the little white house behind the trees. The door was still unlocked, but what made the prognosis official was that my note was still on the kitchen counter, untouched, unmoved.
Unread.
We made dinner early, while it was still light out, and I enjoyed the hell out of using a stove to cook. We’d considered testing out the television and DVD player after washing the dishes, but we wanted the house to continue to appear dark and unused. If Larry were on the prowl, a glowing light inside would be an invitation. So we closed the drapes to the master bedroom and went to bed, but not after enjoying the shower first.
This time felt even better than the last.
And I slept well, better than I had in months. I felt warm all night long and I’d forgotten what it felt like to awaken without a cold nose.
We made love in the early morning light, and I could tell by the glow in his eyes that he too had grabbed onto hope hard. Today was the day, after months and months of isolation and desolation, that we were going home.
We ate the apples on our trek back up the mountain, and even though they’d been showing signs of age—tasting mellower, feeling softer, beginning to pucker—they were probably the sweetest fruit we’d ever eaten. The sun warmed our backs, and I noticed an eagerness in our steps.
As we approached the bike, I noticed the body of the infected woman I’d slain the day before. I hadn’t paid much attention then, because I’d merely focused on making sure it was her instead of us, but I said, “I’m not much for fashion, but her clothes and shoes look expensive.”
Kevin shrugged, his eyes all about the Harley. “Maybe she’s the one who put the tracks all over that gated place. She finally found a way out.”
My mind slid back to that time when we’d seen all those tracks around the high fence, signaling someone searching in vain for a place to escape. I wondered if that indicated some sort of rudimentary intelligence, that maybe she’d found a tool or figured out how to climb.
It wasn’t impossible. After all, these beings had once been human—not just people loved by others, but members contributing to society, learning things, building things, growing things, doing things, some of them probably doing things lots of other people couldn’t.
The idea spoke to a loss I couldn’t fathom.
Kevin uprighted the bike and rolled it over to where I stood in the road. Spots were still muddy, but they were now a hard, drier mud as opposed to sloppy and watery, and he was able to push his bike on it. “Ready?” I nodded, still lost in thought. “Keep your eyes peeled.”
We hiked that familiar road, now reverent, expectant, feeling the imminence of freedom.
It was a longer walk and, even though Kevin never complained, I was sure it was tough pushing the bike. I did offer to help twice but he declined, and we never even stopped for rest.
I felt apprehension as we turned the last bend in the road before the clearing where my aunt’s house stood proudly. I don’t know why I’d been expecting something ominous or overtly evil, but the house looked just like it always had—dignified yet modest, plain but homey. There was no dark cloud hovering over it, no blood splattered over the front of it, and it wasn’t surrounded by infected people. But, most of all, Larry…he was nowhere in sight.
I think Kevin must have felt relieved too, but he didn’t say a word. We didn’t stop at the front door. I followed him as he continued pushing his bike up and behind the house, moving toward the barn. Once he’d opened the big side door, he wheeled it inside. “Before we do anything, we need to search the whole place, make sure it’s secure.” I agreed, and we slowly walked through the barn, checking every possible place a big guy like Larry might fit.
It was funny, but it was a moment like this that reminded me how much Kevin had become my partner. We didn’t even think about or discuss how we were going to go about searching the barn—we just did it and the way we did it was complementary. He would investigate the left while I’d scan the right, and I noticed that both of us also would glance the other way, checking what the other one had, without either of us taking it as an insult just because the other was double checking. I didn’t know that I’d ever felt this compatible with anyone else in my life—not my brother, not old friends, not work companions, not even my husband. I wondered if Kevin felt the same way, but I imagined he didn’t even think about it. Maybe he was just one of those guys who meshed well with everyone. In our youth, that hadn’t been true, but maybe he’d changed. I know I had, even though, deep down inside, I was still that young girl brimming with hope. She’d just been twisted by disappointment.
The rafters weren’t such that anyone could hide up there without being seen. Still, we made sure to look from every angle just to be certain. When we felt sure we were alone in there, Kevin started looking around for different tools he could use. Once he was ready to get started, I asked, “Should I stand outside and keep watch for anything unusual?”
He considered it. “If you want to.” I nodded. It seemed like a good idea. “Just be careful and holler if you need me.”
I found a stool in the barn, one Kevin said he didn’t need, and took it outside. Soon after that sitting session began, I recalled my life before, when I’d sit on my porch and ruminate. I found myself slipping easily into that mindset again, reflecting on the past several months but also looking forward to what was ahead. It was truly unknown, as we had no idea what we would be going back to…but I was overflowing with hope and good wishes, because all I wanted now was to hold my kids, to know they were all right.
The sun felt so good, like it hadn’t in months. It warmed me so much that I had to take the coat off, and I even felt a little drowsy, so I got up and moved around, flexing my hand around the axe. I heard Kevin muttering once in a while, but there was a lot of banging going on, and I knew he was making progress.
After a while, I walked inside and found my backpack, grabbing a bottle of water out and taking a swig. Then I stood beside Kevin and waited until he paused and looked up at me. “Want some?”
“Yeah, thanks.”
I handed him the bottle and he guzzled it down. “How’s it coming?”
“Almost done, I think. What’s it like outside?”
“Gorgeous.”
“
That explains why your coat’s off.” I grinned and he stood, handing the bottle back to me. “That smile looks good on you.” He took my face in his hands and kissed me, and I wrapped my arms around him, even with one hand holding the bottle and the other the axe. What a strange world this had become.
But kissing was still as beautiful as it had ever been. “I think I better stop distracting you.”
He smiled but didn’t say anything else, instead turning back to the bike. I resumed my position outside, halfway expecting that things might have changed, but they hadn’t. If I had to guess, it was probably before noon when he stepped outside, announcing that the bike was ready. I stood and placed the stool back inside, picking up my backpack and his, and he started rolling the bike back outside. “Just one possible problem.”
“What’s that?” I asked, as he propped the bike up with the kickstand and grabbed his tire iron before closing up the barn.
“I’ve never let my bike sit that long. The gas is several months old, so I have no idea if it will even run.” He straddled the bike, eyebrows raised. “Only one way to find out.” So, when the bike sputtered on his first try, I allowed myself to drown in supreme disappointment. Of course, I thought. Why should anything we try be easy? But the second try, it sounded different, and the sputtering became more insistent. The third time was the charm, and Kevin revved the engine a few times, and it seemed to make the shakiness of the engine, the part that wanted to just give up and die, pull through, and then it seemed to run on its own.
That noise likely made its way through every hill, every valley, every nook and cranny in those mountains. I was sure that each living creature there had to know—we were back…and we were leaving this place.
Wilder (Savage #2) Page 11