by Kate L. Mary
“Who, Sawyer?” I suddenly felt like he was hiding something—no, someone—and the sudden jealousy that clenched my heart made no sense. It had a little to do with him, but was more about me. He’d had someone at one point, but I’d spent my life alone with my uncle. Yes, it had been safe and I loved Seamus as much as I’d once loved my own parents, but it had been lonely.
Sawyer shook his head, and he wouldn’t look at me. “No one.”
He wasn’t ready to talk about it, and as much as I wanted to know, I wouldn’t push him.
Chapter 9
SAWYER
Lucy had kissed me and it had taken every ounce of self-control in my body to pull away. But I had, proving both to her and to myself that I wasn’t a piece of shit. Learning that her uncle had disappeared and she was here all alone brought every ounce of protective instinct out of me, but it also scared me to death. Especially when I’d almost let Lisa’s name slip out.
It had been five years, but I still couldn’t talk about it. Could barely think about it without wanting to blow my brains out. I’d dragged my ass up this mountain after she died with the intention of never going back down, and had come across my little piece of shit cabin purely by accident. When I’d stumbled inside I hadn’t had a plan, and I sure as hell never thought I’d survive that first winter. But I had, and before I knew it I had created an existence for myself.
I was surviving, but being with Lucy right now reminded me of what it had felt like to live.
Lisa and I had never had a real life, but I’d been so desperate that I was able to fool myself into believing we could have a future. It hadn’t lasted though. When it all came crashing down in one horrible afternoon, I couldn’t bear the thought of trying to start over. Still couldn’t. The pain of that time was too stark, and I knew I couldn’t repeat the mistakes I’d made with her. I wouldn’t survive it.
No. Lucy and I couldn’t happen. No matter how attracted to her I was, it would just end up hurting us both. I needed to keep her at arm’s length. Not give in to the need inside me. I’d do what I’d promised, I’d stay with her until her uncle came back or the snow began to melt, but that was it. I couldn’t let myself fall for her. For both of our sakes.
Lucy warmed up some stew and served it to me with a smile on her face that went straight through me. Her lips were pink, and despite the little lecture I’d just given myself, I couldn’t help wondering if the extra color was from our kiss. It had been a good fifteen minutes ago, but it had been good. So good that I knew it would keep me up tonight.
We settled in around the little table in the kitchen, the small room warm from the wood burning in the stove, and before I’d had a chance to take a bite she asked, “So what did you do before the virus hit?”
“Wow. It’s been a long time since I thought about that. Let’s see…” I gently tapped my spoon on the side of the bowl, pretending to think it through so she didn’t know I was actually trying to push the memories away. “I was in the Air Force. I’d joined straight out of high school and was on my second assignment. That’s why I didn’t get to say goodbye to my family. I was stationed in North Dakota.” The words were quiet, no more than a whisper. It was true, I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to my parents or sister, but I had gotten to say goodbye to Mollie. That one had been harsh and painful and had left a scar on my heart that still hadn’t healed completely. It probably never would.
“Where were you from before?” Lucy’s eyes were big and full of curiosity. “I’ve always lived in Minnesota.”
“Ohio.” I was able to smile for real that time. “Born and raised.”
“Is it very different from here?”
“Not really. It’s green in the summer, full of cornfields and farms. It was flatter, and we got snow in the winter, but not like up here.”
“Sounds nice.” Her tone was wistful and the expression in her eyes far away. “Sometimes I think it would be easier if we packed up and went south. Someplace that has longer summers. It’s constant work living here.”
“It is, but the long winter helps control the dead. Down there you’d have to constantly watch your back. If they eventually decayed enough to die that would be one thing, but they don’t. Eleven years has gone by, and they’re still just as fast. Even worse in some parts, I hear.”
“What do you mean?” she had set her spoon down and frowned at me like she’d never heard it before.
“The virus has mutated.” I thought everyone knew about the mutations, people in the settlements were always talking about it, but Lucy still didn’t seem to grasp it. She was still frowning. “Apparently, some of the new strains create zombies that are more vicious.”
This time she shook her head, almost as if she didn’t believe it. “I’ve never heard that. Who told you?”
She’d never heard this? The mutations had started years ago, less than two years after the initial outbreak. I knew she was way up in the mountains, but her uncle went down. He had to have heard some of this stuff.
“I read it in the National Newspaper,” I said slowly. “Even the unsanctioned towns can get it, although all the way up here we’re a few months behind on the news.”
“Newspaper?” Lucy’s eyebrows pulled together. “I had no idea there was a newspaper. Seamus never told me.”
Her uncle had never even told her about the paper?
Either he was more overprotective than I had originally thought, or he was one of those hard-core prepper types who didn’t trust the government. We got a lot of that out this way—even before the virus. Lucy had mentioned that her uncle was prepared for this whole thing even before it started, so it wouldn’t surprise me one bit, and if he followed that line of thinking, there was a good chance that he’d never even read the newspaper to begin with. If you distrusted the government before, this shit show we had in charge now would really make your head spin.
“Well, you aren’t missing a whole lot,” I said, trying to smooth things over for her uncle—even if I did think he should have kept her a little better informed. “Just a lot of promises that never come to fruition. Probably why your uncle never brought it up.”
Lucy nodded, but the frown on her face said she wasn’t happy to find out her uncle had been keeping things from her.
“So you were twenty when the virus broke out?” she asked after a couple bites and a few minutes of silence.
“I was.”
Her eyebrows lifted as she looked me over. “That makes you thirty-one now?”
“It does,” I answered a little bit hesitantly, not sure where she was going with this, but squirming at the expression in her eyes.
She nodded to herself as she stirred her stew around, digging in it like she was searching for something, although I had a suspicion she just didn’t want to look me in the eye. The next words out of her mouth confirmed it.
“You must have had a girlfriend or two…” She drew the statement out, letting it hang in the air as she focused on her bowl.
“I did,” I whispered, thinking about Mollie and how it had all gone down. “In fact, I was married.”
Lisa was too painful to talk about, but not Mollie. Yes, she had left a hole in my life, but I didn’t have the same regrets. My only regret when it came to my wife was not having more time with her.
Lucy tore her gaze away from my bowl and looked me in the eye when she said, “You were married? But you were my age.” It was almost as if it had suddenly hit her exactly how much she was missing out on.
“I was young, but I was still married.”
I was married to my high school sweetheart for less than six months. Mollie and I were young, both barely twenty, but we’d been crazy in love. The marriage had been a spur of the moment decision while we were in Vegas. We’d met there after not seeing each other for months, her flying in from Ohio and me from North Dakota. The long distance relationship was driving us both nuts, so after two days of barely leaving the hotel room we’d gone to a little chapel and tied the knot. Both ou
r families had called us idiots, but the six months that followed that were good. No, great. The future was bright and sparkling and full of promise, and we hadn’t yet come to regret the decision even though everyone we knew told us we would.
They were wrong, but of course they couldn’t have foreseen the virus. Still, even if the virus hadn’t come I doubt I would have ever woken up and stared at the woman sharing my bed with anything other than love. Even now, eleven years later, my heart still ached whenever I thought of her. If only we’d gotten married earlier. It wouldn’t have really mattered, I guess. We would have had more time together, but our lives, like the lives of almost everyone else we knew, still would have come to an end when the virus killed off most of the population.
“Her name was Mollie,” I said, almost without realizing I had spoken. “She died in my arms, so delirious with fever that she didn’t even know who I was. Two days later I was lying in bed wondering how I would go on without her when she walked into the room. I thought I was losing my mind, and when she tried to bite me I was sure I was. She died for the second time that day, only this time it was because I put a bullet through her head.”
“Sawyer,” Lucy put her hand over mine and the heat was comforting. Like slipping into a warm bed at the end of the day—although I wasn’t sure how the hell I remembered what that felt like. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.”
I got to my feet, pulling my hand out from under hers because the ache was starting to spread and I knew where that would lead me. That’s what had happened with Lisa. We’d turned to one another simply because we wanted to try and ease the pain inside. Only, it hadn’t worked. It had just created more pain. A different kind of pain, but one that still hadn’t gone away.
“I should chop some wood while it’s not snowing,” I said, not looking back at Lucy as I pulled my coat on.
I spent the next couple hours chopping wood. Halfway through I’d had to remove my jacket despite the snow, and by the time Lucy came out to join me I was down to a t-shirt that clung to my sweaty skin. She carried the logs inside, working through the pain in her shoulder with a toughness that surprised me. Of course, I knew she had to be tough—it was a requirement when you lived out here—but I still couldn’t help comparing the way she worked to the years Lisa and I had spent together. She had pitched in little, leaving most of the burden for me. We’d spent weeks hiding from the dead and praying that we’d find a safe place, and more often than not Lisa had cowered behind me when we were faced with danger. When the snow came and the dead froze, we were finally able to settle down for a bit. People started forming a town, thinking that the cold had taken the dead out for good, and Lisa and I were able to settle into a somewhat normal routine.
It didn’t last, of course. Spring came and the dead thawed out, and they were just as vicious as ever. The town that had sprung up during winter seemed to disappear overnight, either when people were killed or when they fled to safer areas. Lisa and I hunkered down and did our best, but it was constant work and worry, and through it all I felt like I was not only doing all the heavy lifting, but like I was responsible for Lisa’s emotional well-being on top of everything else.
If things had continued like that maybe Lisa and I wouldn’t have happened. She was weak. Easily scared and she always relied on me to save her. Only life didn’t go on like that and after walls were built and a town was established, we found a home and were able to breathe for the first time in years.
It only took two weeks of living inside the walls for us to turn to each other. When she’d crawled into bed at my side it had been a relief, but not because I’d spent the last two years wanting her. Because it felt normal again and it helped mask the pain Mollie’s death had left behind. Holding someone in my arms—even if it was Lisa—and having a roof over my head gave me hope.
She seemed to become less needy, less annoying, and before long I found myself forgetting that she’d ever been that way to begin with. I stopped watching her back so much, stopped thinking that I was the only thing standing between her and death.
It all ended when she was stolen from our apartment in the middle of the night. By the time I tracked her down she was as good as dead. The men had had her in every way imaginable, and when her eyes met mine they were full of accusations. I was the one who was supposed to look out for her, but I’d let her down.
It didn’t matter that I killed those men. After that Lisa was never the same, and neither were we. She slept in a ball on the couch and screamed if I came near her. It stayed that way for months, getting worse and worse with each passing day until I finally came home to find her lying in a pool of her own blood. Dead.
I’d blamed myself and felt like the whole world would be better off if I followed Lisa’s example, only I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That’s when I’d gone into the mountains. Whether I’d planned to die or had just wanted to wallow in my self-loathing, I didn’t know. Not then and not now. I just knew that five years had gone by and I still felt responsible for Lisa.
Lucy, though, was different.
She didn’t try to make excuses to avoid work and she was capable of making her own food and soap. She’d even told me she went hunting, something that hadn’t really sunk in at first, but now I found myself marveling at it. This woman was nothing like Lisa.
Lucy came out of the cabin behind me, the door slamming shut with a bang that echoed through the quiet forest around us. I paused in my chopping and watched as she pushed her way through the snow. Her auburn hair fell over her face in waves that she constantly had to push out of the way, and her cheeks were pink and rosy from the cold. She looked young, younger than twenty if I was being honest, but she carried herself with an assurance that a lot of women twice her age didn’t have.
Mollie had been that way. We’d eloped and she’d packed her bags, moving away from everything she had ever known without a second thought even though she hated winter. She loved me more than she hated being cold, or that’s what she’d said anyway.
“So you hunt?” I called, causing Lucy to pull her gaze away from the snowy ground in front of her.
“Yeah.” She gave me a hesitant smile as she unsuccessfully shoved her auburn waves out of her face. “I went right before the weather got bad and managed to get that rabbit. We’ll probably have to go again soon though, assuming the weather holds out.” She paused and tilted her head back so she could look up at the sky. “Looks promising. If you’re with me, I could go for bigger game. A dear, maybe. It would get us farther than one little rabbit.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t help it. She blew my mind with the things she said and did. “You went by yourself?” She nodded. “With a bow?” She nodded again, and I smiled. “And you shot a rabbit?” When she nodded for the third time my smile grew so big that it hurt my cheeks.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, but she was smiling too.
“Nothing. You’re just different than the other women I’ve known since this whole thing happened. You’d be surprised by how many of them just rely on men to take care of them. Even after all these years.”
“I don’t have anyone to rely on, so if I don’t do it myself I’ll be in trouble.” Pain distorted her features and I felt like kicking myself.
“I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I meant that you had an uncle who could have done all this before, but you learned and you’re better for it now.”
“Seamus likes to hunt, but he wanted to teach me so I would be okay if I ever found myself on my own. He showed me how to do everything.”
“He sounds like a very smart man.”
“He is,” she says seriously. “I’m lucky he was so prepared, but more than that I’m happy he cared about me enough to share all this knowledge. He’s worked really hard to prepare me for this world.”
“I guess it’s probably pretty difficult being a single dad to a girl,” I said, nodding thoughtfully. “But he did right by you.”
Lucy let out a laugh
that was full of affection, like she was remembering something in particular, and I found myself leaning forward. Wanting to hear what it was so I could be in on the joke. Instead, she shook her head and said, “For an average man it would be difficult, for Seamus it was pretty much his worst nightmare.”
“Worse than the world being wiped out?” I asked, only half-joking.
“Are you serious? Seamus was a prepper. I’m pretty sure he’s been having a blast for the most part. I think his only regret is my mom’s death. If it wasn’t for that, he’d be in heaven.”
Wind whipped across the yard and Lucy hugged herself, shivering. My sweater and jacket were still off, but I was stuck in that odd place where I felt both overheated and freezing at the same time.
“So Seamus was your mom’s brother?” I asked when Lucy didn’t say anything else. I found myself desperately wanting to drag out this conversation so I could get to know her better. We’d fallen into an easy friendship over the last day, but we hadn’t talked a lot and I wanted to change that.
Lucy nodded. “Older by two years. They were really close growing up, which was good because they had pretty crappy parents. Always out partying from what Seamus told me. Druggies. I think that’s why Seamus ended up the way he did. He grew up expecting the worst and knowing he couldn’t trust anyone other than my mom. It was natural for him to gather supplies and be ready for anything.”
It was too bad her uncle had disappeared, but a part of me was grateful for it. If he had come back Lucy wouldn’t have been out looking for firewood that day, and she never would have gotten hurt. If I hadn’t heard her scream, I probably never would have found this cabin—I was heading in the opposite direction at the time—and there was a good chance I would have died out there.
Not that I was going to tell her any of that.
“I’m sorry I won’t get to meet him,” I said.
“Me too.” Lucy let out a deep sigh. “I keep hoping he’ll find his way home, but after four weeks, I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
