"That's right, some of the clans don't use the Roman calendar. What clan are you from again?"
That question… It had followed me almost as long as my oldest memory. I had never been part of a clan. My path started somewhere else, and "my people" were just a network that allowed me to move freely where I wouldn't otherwise be allowed to go.
Shifting the subject, I begrudgingly offered, "I know years and seasons." The need to prove my knowledge inflated as I added, "In two months, it will be Frost."
"Frost… Winter?"
Exhaling one long breath out of habit when I felt bested by someone, I replied, "Yes," falling quiet.
Holding the hilt of my knife loosely, the edge of my hand brushing his skin, I couldn't help but jostle the blade every time the Rover hit a bump. If I hadn't known better, I would have accused my hostage of hitting the rougher areas purposely.
That would be insanity.
Smiling coyly, he mused through a tight jaw, "You know, I've spent most of my life in some type of pain. You grow accustomed to it, like the voice of a friend. This," he tilted his head toward the knife, "is like a new friend. Did you wake up this fine Monday and decide you needed a friend? Or maybe a boyfriend?"
He was hoping to shock me into submission.
Or confession.
"Sure," I countered flatly, hand tightening on the hilt of the blade at his shoulder, now slick with blood. "I have a harem of men and thought what's one more? As you can see, that backfired. I've learned my lesson."
"Don't discount me yet. It's only Monday. By Wednesday -that's two days from now- you'll wonder how you ever lived without me."
"I'll manage on my own. I always do."
The amusement retreated as he warned more than joked, "I can read people pretty well. Pride myself on the attention to detail, actually. A loner with a cause doesn't quite ring true to the ear."
Actually, he did seem like a certified bullshitter, which was a sure way to garner a response from anyone. I vowed to be more careful. Too much chatter might expose more than I could afford.
"Mm-hmm," I responded, leaving the wind in the cracked window to fill the void of silence for quite some time until I was forced to speak real words. "Pull over. Put this blindfold on. I'll drive from here."
"You know the best travel games."
"Mm-hmm," I responded again.
"What do you plan to do with me once I'm blindfolded? Will you be merciful?" He was being insolent. I picked up on the tone, the lilt telling me that he rarely took serious things too seriously. Great.
"Mm-hmm."
He sighed. "I feel like I'm riding with a mummy."
"A what?"
Damn!
"That," he pondered, pulling the vehicle slowly off the road, "is a curious thing." Turning in his seat as much as my grip would allow, he continued, "What's a mummy? What's Monday? Anyone from a village or a clan even remotely close to a village knows the answers. You aren't one of us."
"You knew that already. Slide over."
Without removing my hand from the blade handle resting against his angry flesh, I crossed a leg over his lap as he scooted to the middle, effectively straddling him. My cargo pants constricted my thighs like snakes in the thrall of a good meal. When I glanced down, our eyes met briefly. Mine were filled with indifference, his with…interest? Before he reached the passenger seat, I lifted my left leg, rolling effortlessly into the driver's seat.
The shadow of a lost expression crossed his face as I turned away. Something inside his brain seemed broken. He found danger and pain thrilling. Maybe he always had. Maybe he welcomed it, sought it. Then I stormed his world, possibly more dangerous than anything he's ever known, because I embraced danger, too. Only, I had to. For him, it was a choice.
I had been trying to slide a blindfold over his head one-handed. It proved to be more difficult than I anticipated, especially as he had been listless during the process. Also, I was using my right hand. My nerves had never healed properly from an accident I cared not to remember, leaving that hand weaker. Some days, I couldn't even make a fist. Other days, it was almost normal. The pain never left, though.
"Put it on!" I ordered for the third time, my temper waning. "If you try anything, know that you will die out here. We're heavy in drifter territory, only going deeper. Don't pull the knife out or you'll regret it."
"Mm-hmm," he mirrored.
I took a deep, annoyed breath. Damn it, why hadn't I dragged the little guy out by his toes? I could have left this mess of a man for my nightmares.
Shifting the dark blindfold across his eyes until I was absolutely satisfied with its placement, I switched hands, holding the blade with my bad hand so I could drive properly. He didn't know it was bad. A little extra applied pressure felt like full strength to someone not paying much attention.
I waited until we pulled back onto the road to ask, "What's your place in your village?"
There were only a handful of villages on the East Coast. Within their gates, food, shelter, and safety from the sick were a given right. You could open a cubby or pack and find it brimming with food and supplies, day or night, any time of year. There was enough to eat even when you weren't hungry. There was always enough to share. There was no rationing water, either. Drink it, bathe in it, pour it on the ground if you wished. There was always more. And they had real doors with locks. No one could enter without permission because they had rules.
So many rules.
There were too many rules to follow, in fact. A lot of people to please. Too many opportunities to fail, to get kicked out of Eden, into the ailing world. Why not see it through on your own terms? My world was broken, but it was still beautiful and worth fighting for.
"I'd be more inclined to answer questions if you would remove the knife." He motioned to his shoulder. When I didn't respond, he grabbed the hilt, his hand draped over mine, and began to pull. Gasping, he released it instantly.
I spared a sideways glance and the barest of a smile. Neither seen by him.
"I told you not to or you'd make it worse."
"No," he said, voice strained, "You said I'd regret it."
"I was right, either way. It only responds well to my touch."
He turned, resting his cloaked gaze in my direction. "I don't blame it."
"Stop."
"Stop what?"
"Whatever you think you're doing."
Leaning against the seatback, he released some of the tension buzzing through his body. "I'm taking a nap. Stop me if it gets too intense." His head lulled towards the window.
"I need answers. You can sleep later."
Without moving, he calmly revealed, "I worked late into the night yesterday and I've barely slept, so my patience will only go so far. You haven't made your mission very clear. How, exactly, can I help you?"
I watched him in my peripheral vision. He was unnerving. He should have been angry or upset. Instead, he was borderline relaxed and, dare I say, mildly peeved. It pinged every inner alarm, goading me to drop him off on the side of the road and forget the entire plan.
That wouldn't save anyone. The world was dying and we needed help.
Resolving to follow the plan, my foot pressed the gas a little harder as I nodded over and over silently to myself rather than answer him.
A lot of time passed and the sun was lazy by the time we coasted around a bend in the dirt road we had been traveling on for miles. I pulled an adequate distance off the road into a tight space between two large trees. The vehicle could easily be camouflaged there.
Turning to address this man who was now an immediate fixture in my life, at least temporarily, I kept my voice low and steady. "I need to ask you not to pull any dangerous stunts. I know I don't have a right to ask that, but I promise not to hurt you if you remain calm, like you have been."
For a moment, I thought he was asleep until he cleared his throat.
"Are you going to take the blindfold off or pull this knife out of my shoulder before you expect me
to grant you favors?"
Sensibly, I answered, "Absolutely not."
He scoffed. "You've got some nerve, woman."
Was he annoyed or impressed?
Before I had time to respond, his right hand snaked out, wrapping around my left wrist. He almost pulled my body onto his lap. Able to stop short, I was merely hovering above him. He smelled of sweat and ginger. A thin layer of perspiration laced his forehead. At such close proximity, it was easy to see how much the knife wound was taking its toll.
I remained collected, knee queued on the seat between us, ready if he tried anything violent.
"Are you done with your little stunt?" I inquired coolly.
A bold laugh boomed through the vehicle. It was one thousand times more shocking to my senses than being grabbed. When I flinched, his smile died. He released my wrist immediately.
Laughter was a commodity. It didn't happen very often outside the villages. He had been bragging how he spotted me as an outsider by my lack of education. Well, I could spot a Privileged by their boisterous behavior. Their inability to blend into a new environment. There wasn't much to laugh at outside of the villages. I was always one step away from screwing up. Two steps away from death. Starvation. Drifters. The sick. Exposure to the elements.
The world had spiraled when the sick multiplied. During the first years of the New Beginning, we braced ourselves for mass losses from illness, medication shortages, and a near-complete lack of medical attention. No one expected the waves of the sickness that came after. A merciless plague traveling unfettered.
That kept coming.
Not zombies in the sense of the science fiction books I had collected over the years. No, not like that. It moved like a pandemic, sweeping up modern remains and throwing them in the garbage. It was people forgetting how to function, failing their natural survival instincts, becoming erratic and homicidal.
The sick didn't seek out healthy humans for "brains." They were just a relentless reminder that anyone could wake up tomorrow just like them. Living in small clans from the beginning was supposed to keep our numbers healthier. It was supposed to ward off as many unnecessary illnesses and deaths as possible. But now, the wildly contagious plague was breaking barriers of every kind. Only the villages fared well in these times.
I had been crouching over my hostage for a handful of minutes, frozen in thought, which was probably a bit unnerving for him.
"Are you okay?" he hesitated to ask, humorlessly.
"Always."
I leaned back in my seat, clearing the stench of fear and death from my mind, thankful for the blindfold. He shouldn't see my insecurities. It could be hazardous.
"What's your name?" he asked. "Mine's Ren. Short for Loren."
"Loren is a girl's name."
"So is Ren." He smiled, pleased to render my point moot.
I nodded, agreeing silently.
"What's your name? he asked again.
"That's not important."
"It's not important right now or anytime?"
He was perceptive.
Sitting behind the wheel, mute, I searched for something to say. Truth be told, I wasn't sure what my name was. I didn't have a clan. There was no need for someone to incessantly call my name. Or to write my name on something to distinguish it from someone else's something. Everything was mine, and my name was the feel of a kind wind on nature's breath. A name rolling off of someone's tongue would sound loathsome.
"How old are you?" he asked when I failed to answer his first question.
"Twenty-four-I-think." I said it as one assured phrase.
"You think or you know?"
"That's not important."
He shook his head, trying to contain his frustration. "Not much is."
"Not much," I mocked, secretly pleased to be aggravating him for a change. It would prove to be a good distraction from scrutinizing my every word.
"I'm twenty-nine-I-know." When his information gained no response, he continued. "What do you want from me? I'm just a collector. I don't have anything you can't already find on your own, I'm sure."
I watched him. The cupid's bow of his top lip was pronounced, his bottom lip full. They didn't move much as he spoke. Inspecting the rest of his face, a few tiny scars broke the smooth contours of his eyebrow and cheekbone, though the rest of his skin was unblemished. There were noticeable stress lines around his forehead, and probably the edges of his eyes under the blindfold. A tan glow told me he spent a lot of time outdoors. Behind his walls, I reminded myself.
So he was a collector. They collected remnants of humanity during and after the apocalypse, hoping to protect it for future generations. Books, art, horticulture. Each village had a number of collectors. Though I loved books and art, they weren't on my radar today.
"You act like a guard, not a collector."
A one-sided grin passed over his lips. "I'm multi-talented."
He didn't ask permission before pulling the blindfold off and throwing it on the floorboard of the Rover, leaving us face to face.
"Your eyes are the color of the perfect cup of coffee," he noticed.
"There's no such thing as perfect," I noted. Hopping out, I rounded the vehicle and opened his door. Maintaining eye contact, I warned, "If you run, you die. If you attack me, no one will come to save me."
"That's a hell of a pep talk. What's to keep me from attacking you?" He slid out of the vehicle, standing directly in front of me.
"Look around."
He did. Nothing but thick forest surrounded us.
"You won't get out of here alive without me." I wasn't threatening him, I was warning him.
"I guess you better stay close, then." He winked.
He had a way of twisting innocent words. Nothing I couldn't handle. I simply wasn't used to being around someone like him. Someone candid.
I muttered, "Mm-hmm." Lips pursed, I snapped the blindfold from the floorboard and reached up, trying to slide it over his eyes again.
He fidgeted, dodging the material. "We're in the middle of nowhere."
"If this is the middle of nowhere, we're about to be hell and gone from tomorrow."
"Is that copyrighted or can I get it inked right here?" He ran his fingers across his broad chest.
"Copyrights are dead history."
"You do know something from the chronicled world."
"I know that if you start walking, I'll take that knife out."
"What knife?" He wrenched it out in one wet twist. The sickening squish assaulted my auditory senses and immediately brought me back to that day with the guns, staring at so much meat that didn't make sense to my brain.
Chapter Two
Blood poured from the small wound.
"Whoa! What are you doing?"
I shoved him against the open doorway of the Rover, hastily pressing my hands against the ragged wound. It took all of my focus to mentally block out the feel of hot blood rolling over my knuckles. It sickened me, but it also felt good as a buffer between the chill of the evening and my skin.
If he had given me the chance to remove it the way I drove it in, the blade would have slid out with little complication. His way made extra bile rise in the back of my throat. I swallowed it down, begrudgingly.
Completely lost in concentration, I searched the glove box one-handed for an emergency kit. Most guards carried a kit. Hell, most people carried a kit nowadays, even to the toilet. You never knew what could happen in ten steps.
He closed his eyes. Maybe he was focusing on the pressure of my hand touching his bare flesh, or my thighs intertwined with his as I leaned into him. He definitely heard the panic in my hitched breathing.
"Why did you do that?" I practically screamed. Grabbing a white box, I slammed it open against the floorboard and rifled through it until a roll of tape and gauze appeared in my hand. "This will have to do for now."
Turning his head toward mine, less than a hand away, he watched me intently. Barely a whisper, he pondered, "What kind of kidnapper f
lips out when the kidnapped gets injured? You beat the shit out of me, stabbed me, but you get upset when I hurt myself?" Searching deeper, he guessed, "You don't want me to suffer."
"You're probably used to the opposite response." Under my breath, I added, "I don't blame them." I was trying to distract myself from the bloody mess he had made of himself. It wasn't working. Images kept flashing into my mind. The heat of spilled guts eating away at the snow underneath. Hollowed cylinders where flesh should have been. Empty eyes.
He sat on the lip of the open doorway, leaning against the edge of the seat, watching my hands work as fast as they could move. I sopped up as much blood as possible before taping the edges of the wounds together temporarily before applying a thick pad of bandages. It would have to do until we reached one of my dwellings.
Avoiding his watchful eyes, I couldn't help but think about how this senseless man was right about one thing. Pain was a form of interaction with the world. It was a language some of us spoke fluently. But watching me rush to end his, to want to stop his pain, seemed almost hypnotic to him.
Had anyone cared before, besides me, an outsider? Did I care? I definitely sympathized.
Opening the alcohol, I walked a few feet away from the vehicle and poured it over my hands, watching a red river flow into the ground as I scrubbed every bit of my flesh up to my elbows. When the flow of the alcohol turned clear again, I was satisfied and recapped the container.
I walked back to the vehicle and rested against the interior side of the open door, trying to ease my mind. We were too close for my liking, but my knees felt weak. In that moment, I didn't trust myself upright without the sturdy door at my back.
"That was crazy," I admitted between breaths, willing myself not to cringe. Straightening my back, hands on hips, I demanded to know, "Why didn't you let me remove it?"
He shrugged. Flinching from the small action, he laid the forgotten knife into the palm of my hand. "I've wrestled with impatience my entire life."
"I…don't know how to respond to that. We still have over a mile to travel. Can you handle that?"
"Yeah," he assured me.
Upon Us Page 2
