Desert sunrises were one of the most heavenly things he thought he’d ever seen. And it felt like it had been years since he’d had the time—and the patience, and the safety—to really watch one.
“I always thought of them as the sign of another shot,” he said. “A blank canvas, just waiting to be written on. If you’re brave enough to make the new day your own.”
“A noble thought,” she observed. “Idealistic. Maybe naive, but I like it.” She hesitated. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”
He waited for her to finish, but she seemed to be waiting for a response to that, so eventually he said, “And? I assume you’re going to share your thoughts with me, or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
He saw the corner of her mouth crease with a bit of a smile. “Smart-ass. Yes, I’m going to share my thoughts with you, and it might actually go with your vision of what a sunrise is.”
Turning to him, she took both his hands—to his surprise—and squeezed. “I’ve always thought that when you have things, it sort of… well, it holds you in place, really. You make a life, you make a home, and you put down roots with all of your things. And then you get… stuck.”
He frowned, not really understanding where she was going with this. Was she talking about all the things he’d shown her last night? Because those didn’t mean he was stuck here—if that was what she meant at all.
“That’s called life, I believe,” he said slowly. “Are you saying it’s a bad thing?”
“No,” she answered quickly. “I am saying that it’s not the only way to be, though. When you lose all that stuff—when the house is gone and the things are destroyed and even the people who had kept you in one place have disappeared, when they’re dead…” Her voice hitched before continuing, “…or gone, or just… missing—it changes your life. Everything is gone, and that means you have everything to gain, as long as you’re open to gaining new things. There’s a big, wide world out there, and we’ve got nothing holding us back. Not anymore. There must be somewhere that we can go. Somewhere that we can make a life again. We just have to reach out and grab it.”
Garrett stared at her for several moments, his brain reconfiguring the person he had always thought Alice was. He’d had several characteristics written under the heading of Alice, and they’d been pretty straightforward. Complex, yes. Efficient. No-nonsense. Brutally effective, when it was necessary. Responsible. And absolutely organized.
Never in a million years would he have thought she’d had a romantic hidden underneath all that bluster. But right now, she sounded like she should be writing romance books.
And she was talking about going out there, into the world, with him.
Something in him bloomed into a million different colors, and fire rushed through his veins at the thought. Into the world. To find someplace safe—to find someplace where they could truly make a life again. With her. This woman he’d never seen coming, and now couldn’t imagine living without.
That didn’t mean there weren’t problems with her plan.
She saw the doubt creep into his eyes and nodded. “I know what you’re thinking. The others. How can we leave them behind? How can we be sure that they’ll find their way to safety? How can we just… go?”
He nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m thinking. We don’t know whether they made it to any town, not really. And then there are Bart and Riley. How can we just run away and leave them to their own devices?”
Her face fell. “I was hoping you’d have some brilliant plan for that,” she admitted.
He turned and faced the sunrise, keeping one of her hands in his, and thought about it for a long, hard moment. Yes, his heart was telling him that they should go back again and look for their people—fight for them if they needed to. Find Bart and Riley if they could. Make sure everyone was settled in a new town, make sure they were taken care of.
That was what his heart was saying.
But his head was telling him something entirely different.
“We have to trust them,” he said simply. “Most of those people had been in that town before we ever arrived. They know how to survive in this environment, better than we might. They may have lost Greyson and Ben, but they have Manny, and he’ll take care of them. They knew the plan. They know to look for other towns. They have enough food and water to get them to any place within walking distance.”
Alice nodded and looked expectantly at him.
“And Riley and Bart,” Garrett continued, “if the bikers had captured them or killed them, you know Kraken would have rubbed it in our faces. He would have bragged about it. Or even used the kids for leverage against us to take over Trinity Ranch. So I have to believe Riley and Bart got away. And Bart had learned enough to know he couldn’t come back to Trinity Ranch, because the bikers would have been watching that path.”
Pausing, he followed his thoughts through to their natural conclusion, and then turned to her.
“And we know we can’t go back. If any of the bikers are still alive, they might be looking for us. It would be the same as walking into a trap. We might never locate our people to start with, and we certainly won’t do any good if we’re dead, having been killed by bikers we should have avoided.”
She was nodding eagerly, seeing the sense in his words, and he nodded as well, excitement flooding through his body.
“I have to believe that we taught our friends everything we knew when we were together. And now they can take that knowledge and those skills and use them to start fresh in a new town.” Garrett paused, feeling more confident in the decision they were making.
“Yes, I’ll go with you, Alice. I don’t know where we’ll go and I don’t know what we’ll find there, but as long as we’re together I don’t think it’ll matter. We’ve escaped from a prison. We’ve come through a battle in the desert. Let’s go find someplace where we can actually make a life.”
She gave him a brilliant grin, nodded once, and then leaned forward to take his face in her hands. “Let’s find somewhere where we can start fresh,” she breathed. “A new sunrise.”
Then she leaned in further and pressed her lips to his, and he melted into the kiss, allowing all the fear and rage and frustration and confusion of the last three months to melt away as he took a step forward and wrapped his arms around her.
An hour later, they had managed to pack all the things they thought might be useful from the bunker onto the back of the bike. It was going to be a tight fit to get them both onto the machine along with all that stuff, but they’d done it before.
And Garrett didn’t think either one of them would mind being so close, now.
They stood in the shade of the bunker’s hallway, both drinking from bottles of water and chewing on potato chips as they considered what they were about to do. Garrett had been trying to get out of the U.S. and to a place where they might find civilization again ever since he left this bunker months ago. Now it looked as if he was finally going to do it—something that he found both daunting and exhilarating. He didn’t know if they were going to find what they were looking for. They were chasing little more than a myth, after all. But he knew that if anyone could help him find home, it was Alice.
And he didn’t think he’d ever wanted anything more in his entire life.
“So, Mexico?” she asked suddenly, as if she’d been reading his mind.
“Seems like the smart place to start,” he said. “We know the rumors. We know there might be a community down there willing to take in strays. And if any of our friends have survived, they might already be on their way there. What better option do we have?”
She gave him a sunny grin. “I’ve always wanted to learn the language.”
“Well then.” He reached down, took her hand, and led her out into the driveway toward the motorcycle. “Let’s go find it.”
They climbed onto the motorcycle, Garrett driving this time, and he revved the engine, then tore off down the driveway and turned south at the main road, Alice hold
ing tightly to his middle. If that settlement in Mexico existed, they were going to find it.
And if it didn’t, they’d make their home somewhere else.
THE END
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