by L. B. Carter
Reed released a hearty exhale. No. He wouldn't wallow. That was the problem, how he was failing Nor. He would listen to Val's ghost, who resided in his heart, and be strong. He wouldn't let Jen fade like the house and its inhabitants.
He wrapped the towel as if readying it to use it as a whip on his old friends in the locker room after a training session. Placed on the floor in a semi-circular dam, he began to guide it toward the bed, collecting the gelatinous substance into a smaller pond. As it seeped into the towel, the fabric turned dark red.
"Shit." Reed froze and traced the trail with his eyes up the many Grandma-made quilts, standing to track it across to Tio's face-down head. Based on the disarray of the sheets and his angle on the bed, with arm outstretched, draping into the blood trail, Tio had clearly tried to reach out in his last moments. But instead of projecting his need for help, he'd projected his innards and blood all over the room. Too much blood.
"Shit." Reed stepped right into the puddle, uncaring, and gently rolled the man over. A curtain of red slathered his chin, already crusted dry, and his mouth was dark with it. More leaked in streams from his nose. But not actively, not readily. Because there wasn't enough left. The flood had abated.
"Shit," Reed whispered, eyes collapsing shut as he hovered his hand over the man's mouth. He felt no breath hit its surface.
His lids lifted, and he stared at the deceased man, his helplessness washing over him like the deadly shower Mrs. Juarez's Tio had coughed up. Had he been flirting with Jen in the kitchen while Tio had been expelling his very life?
"Reed?" The floor moaned, announcing Jen's progress toward the stairs. Now, Reed understood her shock. She hadn't misinterpreted the dark stain like he had.
"No! Stay down there." Shit. Reed, as gingerly as possible, shifted the body back into place, then walked around to the window where Jen had crouched to help the old man pee only about an hour ago. His boot clunked into metal. The bell rolled with a jingle under the bed. It had been uselessly too far away. Reed rearranged Tio and pulled the quilts all the way over him, concealing his gruesome state.
"Reed?" Jen appeared in the doorway, re-clothed. Things dried fast out here. Her grim expression took in the abandoned towel, Reed's hanging head, and the lump in the bed. A hand went over her mouth, and her eyes filled with rare moisture. A squeak escaped her though she tried to stoically withhold her reaction.
Reed's jaw clenched hard.
"I told you I didn't want to hear it," Mrs. Juarez's frail, lilting voice wafted up the stairs with amusement.
Shit.
They stood there in silence, staring at each other for a moment. Jen collected herself first.
Swishing her hair back, chin raising, she used the heels of her hands to wipe tears from her cheeks and sniffed. "I'll tell her. It's my turn." She gave a watery smile that failed to convey the composure she was faking.
Reed shook his head. "No, I can—"
"No." She cleared her throat and pulled her shoulders back. "This one is on me."
Reed pulled back. He knew about guilt. It could crush you. "No, this isn't your fault. It's not like it was BSTU's doing—a result of us leading them here. This—" He waved a hand over the body. "—is the fault of everyone. Humans. Anthropogenic destruction." He used her term with a quirk of his lips that did nothing to dispel the drowning feeling. "He's a civilian." Not their responsibility, he tried to convince himself as well.
Her head shook, and she flipped around to leave. "Precisely. Civilians are mine to save. And I didn't."
One scientist couldn't solve all of the Earth's problems. Sure, she was offering a chance for survival of their race with Sirena. But this was an opposite problem: lack of water. She couldn't solve both rising sea level and drought at the same time. That was putting too much pressure on herself. Mother had been part of a massive consortium of scientists.
Jen was gone before he could protest aloud.
And Reed, caught in the haunting of his past as he stared at the prone form on the bed, cowardly stayed behind and listened as Jen took care of Mrs. Juarez when she most needed protecting from their harsh reality.
Chapter Three
Valerie was pissed. At herself. She'd let Tio down, and it wasn't because she was reluctant to help him pee in a pot. She let that old man down because she ditched her post as Director of Natural Disaster Management in the United States Geological and Climatic Survey. She let that old man down because she prioritized a crazy futuristic whim over dealing with situations in the here and now. The future of the human race was important but only if the species survived the present. She swore an oath when she took her position to put the American people first. Citizens. Any and all of them, equally.
People had been skeptical when she came into such an authoritative role at such a young age though she was older than her new looks conveyed. She lacked any qualifying degree like her brother had—although she'd pulled him from Boston Science and Technology University before he could actually walk away with the paper acknowledging the achievement. Nevertheless, they'd trusted her. Because her mother asked them to when she decided to retire to look after Val's dad. Because Val was another strong female Acton in the position. Because she acted like the leader they needed.
At least when she'd first started.
And then she'd vanished on a secret mission, throwing her mom back into the ring without warning or choice, leaving Val's dad abandoned home alone, and yanking her brother into her not-technically-illegal dealings. To top that all, she let him believe she was dead.
She'd involved Reed and Nor, too. She hadn't expected such... unwavering follow-through on that contract. Lynn, their colleague, was enough collateral. Honestly, they didn't make her feel guilty. Sometimes, a few have to be sacrificed for the greater cause, for humanity.
The tension that wound inside her, twisting like that towel soaked in blood that was probably still laying discarded on the ground upstairs, was larger than one man. The man who Reed was outside burying was representative. Val hadn't really known him though she was intimate with his... uhh, nether regions, to her dismay. He was simply a citizen who had escaped the rising gulf waters in Mexico and sought safety further North. He hadn't found it. He had found even more treacherous living conditions, like so many others.
Tio represented humanity to her. A nameless family fleeing nature's wrath in the country she was bound to preserve. He, like the territory in which he'd lived, the land in which he was now being buried, was dead. And without that source of agriculture in the Midwest, so was everyone else.
She was losing her battle, the earth sifting metaphorically through her desperate hands in cracked, dry flakes.
Mrs. Juarez sobbed without tears, too dehydrated to cry, until she fell asleep in Valerie's lap. Valerie continued to stroke her thin, brittle hair, appreciating the feel of breath skating over her narrow thighs. It was proof of life that hadn't yet been ruined by Valerie's substandard authority.
"Hey." Valerie looked up at the whisper to see concern on Reed's face as he wiped sweat and dirt from his hands on his jeans. They sagged a little, and he hiked them back up. He nodded at Valerie's lap, for once sans quirked brow or devilish grin, and asked, "She okay?"
Valerie shrugged. When Reed lifted his shirt to wipe his brow, exposing the fact that losing body mass had just lowered his body fat and made his muscles pop, she glanced back down at her hand resting on the small head. She knew he got up early most mornings to run down the drive and back and then do push-ups and crunches and all that cross-fit stuff. She knew because she got up even earlier.
His route was a shadow tracing hers to the mailbox where the long, winding driveway met the road. While she wasn't quite as vain, she did want to keep up her health as much as she could in their situation.
That wasn't the reason she wasted her energy on a daily run that would mean nothing if they died here with Tio. And she knew Reed had the same primary intention.
They both made the trek to the road in secret w
orry to look for signs of Lindy, Ace, Nor... anyone. Distressingly, the road was as dead as the rest of this area.
Val tipped into Reed as he sat next to her. His skin radiated heat against hers after his exertion, digging six feet into dried soil. She couldn't shift away from the proximity without jostling the sleeping woman.
"There's nothing that can be done."
Val turned to him in confusion. There was lots to be done. She just needed to get back to her seat of power with the full force and financial backing of the government at her fingertips.
Of course, Reed didn't know that, wasn't referring to that. His green eyes were fixated on Mrs. Juarez.
"For grief," he explained. His cracked lips thinned. "Time." He shook his head, eyes closing. "Time fixes nothing. In fact, it makes it worse. The more time that passes, the more moments you have stacked up that they weren't there to experience with you. The more moments you have alone, ruminating over everything you could've done differently. Should've done differently."
Valerie knew to whom he was referring, of course. That was her fault, too. He blamed himself, but he didn't know the truth. She looked away from the sharpness of his eyes, such a lush, vivacious green like the Midwest had once been. It unnerved her, this side of him. The fact that he had emotions was damageable. Her verbal punches would shatter through that. She needed someone more solid to hold her up. "Unless you move on." She spoke equally softly, out over worry of waking the woman who needed to rest rather than emotion. She was in politics. She could hide her emotions better than a poker player.
Mrs. Juarez was better off in sleep. In dreams, reality was cloaked. Reed should try sleeping more instead of getting up early to exercise.
"Are you offering?" he asked with that trademark smirk that told Valerie he was covering the pain the thought of replacing his Valerie caused.
Nevertheless, she rolled her eyes.
They sat in silence for a while, each lost in their thoughts as the sun began to set behind them, shadows stretching across the house. Valerie watched the dark rectangle the house itself cast on the front drive slowly elongate toward the fried corn fields like a grim reaper's creeping tendril-like fingers.
Reed let out a slow breath like he was deflating, startling Val in the dim lighting. "I'll take her upstairs." They were at the mercy of daylight without electricity, and at this time of year, the day ended early. It was just as well. Their bodies fatigued easily without the whole food pyramid.
"Should you be left alone with an unconscious woman?" Val joked, shoving them back into the way they were, seeking a sense of normalcy, of resolute strength.
Reed snorted, the mood lifting like a treasure chest under a heavy weight. "After losing her uncle? I'm hurt you think so low of me."
Val let out an airy laugh, keeping her tone hushed. "You're right. You're just excited to put her in Lindy's room so we’d have to share the guest room."
"I was going to offer to take the couch, but... if you insist." Reed moved quickly, a man with a reward waiting for him, scooped up the woman who stirred but didn't rouse and headed toward the archway to the stairs.
Val waited until he was almost gone. "I never said I wouldn't take the couch."
Reed paused and turned his head over his shoulder, eyes glinting in the fading light that angled down the length of the hallway from the back door, skimming its touch over where he stood near the front door. "Then it's going to be a cozy squeeze with the two of us on one couch. You can have the top."
Mrs. Juarez's shawl had fallen over his arm. Val popped up to lift it off the floor so he wouldn't trip on it and moved in front of him to gently drape it over the woman. "Nice try. You get half the bed, no more, no less. Equality, remember." She grinned and turned to pad down the hallway toward the bathroom, calling over her shoulder. "And if I feel your hand on my breast again, even by accident, I'll remove it and bury it with Tio."
She didn't really have to pee. It simply gave her something to do. She and Reed had been too distracted by the death to take care of themselves that day. On the plus side, that meant more provisions left for another day. It was largely brine water left in their stock anyway—more detrimental to their system than beneficial. They'd have to evaporate the last of it tomorrow when the sun rose if Lindy hadn't yet returned.
Reed hadn't yet moved to the stairs, his mouth opening to spew some smart-ass wisecrack.
"And that goes for any other body part, too."
Reed held his tongue.
Pausing at the bathroom door, she peered back around the edge, watching him start up the stairs, treading lightly and avoiding the usual weak steps by memory since he couldn't see his feet. "And Reed?"
He stopped and ducked to see below the ceiling.
"Just so there are no surprises: I sleep naked." Val grinned, the rejuvenated banter like a night-light in the dusk, allowing the ache searing through her brain to ease just a bit, and slammed the door.
◆◆◆
Val woke feeling a lot less stressed and a lot more heated. She was sweating, yet she didn't want to move. She was still fairly tired, but mostly she was comfy. That's when she realized she was little spoon and the big spoon's hand was imitating a cup...
She plucked the bold arm from her bra and flung it behind her, shifting further away from Reed's torso. Neither of them were naked. Like that made a difference. There was a lot of bare skin, and their underwear were so worn and damp without a change of clothes that they failed miserably at being any kind of robust barrier.
Which meant Val also knew Reed had risen with the sun that was streaming in the window of the guest room.
"I warned you. Now you lose them both," she grumbled, nearly toppling off the edge of the bed in her haste to put distance between their bodies.
There was an incoherent mumble behind her, and Reed's hand snaked around her waist, hiking her back against his chest. "Help me hide it then," he said into her ear, and parts of her also woke, perking right up, goosebumps raising on skin that was far too hot for that.
"Cover it yourself," she snapped, trying to pry his arm from around her. His morning exercises definitely kept his strength up. "Would you get off me? I want to get up."
"No, you don't." He didn't move.
"Yes, I do," she insisted to him and her treacherous body. "I need to check on Mrs. Juarez. What if she'd died in her sleep like Tio?"
Finally, his arm uncurled, and he rolled onto his back. "You really know how to kill a mood."
Val scrambled from the bed and dressed with angry wrenching movements, glaring at him as he settled both hands behind his head, comfortable in the middle of the mattress. He'd definitely crossed over the invisible line designating his half. "There was no mood. We were sleeping."
"Oh, there was a mood." He grinned smugly, not bothering to pull the sheet up over his bare chest.
"In your dreams," Val hissed and headed for the door, pulling her shirt over her head as she went, too impatient to finish dressing before escaping. "My nightmares."
"If that were true, then I wouldn't have any parts being threatened in real life."
Val slammed into the edge of the door before she could get her head through the neck hole. Reed chortled. She freed herself and swung on him, blowing hair out of her face. An index finger pinned him to his throne. In her mind. She didn't dare get close enough to actually touch him. Her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. Damnit.
His grin widened, sharp creases slicing through his cheeks. Glee brightened his stare. "I know. I tend to make most women speechless. Don't feel bad."
Val scrounged for a scathing remark, refusing to let him have the last word or beat her in this verbal challenge. "That's because they're too busy throwing up in their mouths." She stalked out the door, her feet smacking hard onto the wood even though it protested the intensity because that was a lame comeback and she knew it. And she knew that he knew it. And she knew that he knew that she knew there had been a mood.
Screw him.
; No wait... Not that. She growled aloud. Her own brain wasn't helping the situation. It was just because they were cooped up together. Tensions high. That whole only-if-he-were-the-last-man-on-Earth hypothetical scenario was scarily close to reality for Val. And they were both adults. With stupid hormones that didn't differentiate.
Stomping to Lindy's room where she had previously been sleeping, Val figured it was probably better Mrs. Juarez was in there. If Lindy returned and found one of her visitors—'intruders' as she'd considered them—in her own bed, she wouldn't be very pleased. Especially after finding out her Tio didn't make it. Boy, was that conversation being dumped on Reed. He could buck up since Val had relayed the bad news to Mrs. Juarez. He was the one who always brought up equality.
Peering her head around the door, Val started and then laughed nervously to herself. Just like Henley when she'd first trespassed into the farmhouse, Val had been put off for a moment by the woman's open, staring, milky eyes. The rise and fall of the chest under the blankets reassured Val that they hadn't lost both of Lindy's family members while she was gone. Thank Jesus.
"Mrs. Juarez?" Val whispered just to check the woman was actually asleep and not just lying there, gazing unseeingly into the distance in distress over her Tio.
There was no answer, so Val left her to her innocent dreams and turned to tiptoe down the stairs.
"Still alive?"
"Jesus." Val jumped again and slapped Reed instinctively, swiping the immediate self-contented expression off his face. "Next time, my reflexes might go for your junk again," she gritted out and fumed—quietly—down the stairs, vaulting over the last few and jogging out the front door.
She picked up her pace, breaking into a run as soon as she hit the gravel. Normally, she jogged each morning so as not to wear herself out. There wasn't enough fuel to replenish the calories lost doing vigorous exercise. Today, she sprinted. She had a lot of wrath and... other feelings to sweat out of her system. If she didn't make it, well, so be it. Caving to their living conditions was more honorable than caving to her arrogant, cocky, brash roommate.
