John thought about this for a minute with his tactical mind working overtime. “I like the thought of growing our food right here and not out in a flat area, where anyone would be able to see it from miles away. We don’t have enough people to defend fields with crops, so we’ll hide them in the hills.”
All of a sudden, Jared felt like he was part of planning an illegal marijuana grow. It had to be hidden, it had to be protected, and their entire tribe could be killed over it. In the old world, being prepared meant being successful; in the new world, being prepared could spark envy in others and get you killed.
Barry nodded his head. “Yeah, exactly. I mean, they’d have to be in the open spots where the sun can get to them. Maybe we trim trees, I don’t know. We can deal with that when we start planting.”
John shook his head, turned and started back toward the ranch house. Jared glanced at Barry and then followed John. Barry stood for a moment before falling in and assuming his position in the patrol. He had tail-end Charlie, which was the position that kept watch over their rear as they threaded their way down the hillside, ending back at the ranch house.
Everyone relaxed as they arrived back home and dropped their weapons just inside the front door, as had become the custom and practice. Shannon was sitting with Essie, going over simple addition math, when the three came through the door. She got to her feet and brought John a glass of water, which he gulped down and thanked her for. After John drank, Shannon turned and raised the glass to Jared and Barry. Both shook their heads and took chairs around the table.
“Are you hungry?” Shannon asked, staring at John.
Barry and Jared exchanged quick and knowing glances as John answered, “No, I’m good, thanks.” John wished Barry and Jared hadn’t been so quick to recognize the extra attention Shannon was giving him.
John turned back to Jared and Barry, catching the tail end of their silent communication, and gave Jared a glare, causing both men to stare down at their hands, Barry picking at a nail while Jared just drummed his fingers lightly on the tabletop. Shannon went back to helping Essie with her studies as the men sat in an uncommunicative stalemate for several agonizing minutes. John was the first to break the silence.
“So, the way I see it is we find your friend…what’s his name?”
“Dwight Ellsworth,” Barry answered while looking John directly in the eye.
“Okay, so we go convince Dwight to come back here and start rebuilding in the form of our little community, and then what?”
“We have to see what Dwight has to say about the batteries,” Barry reminded him.
John pantomimed his doubt at this approach, wanting a more long-term plan if they were going down into the belly of the beast. “If we’re going to come off the relative safety of this mountain and go down into a possible hornet’s nest to get your friend, we should have a list of things we can accomplish before we come home. I don’t want to fight my way in, then out, only to find myself back at this table in a month, chatting about what we should have brought back. We need a fucking shopping list before we go and a plan on how to get everything back up here.”
Jared flashed John a look, then flipped his chin towards Essie, by way of telling the other man to watch the profanity.
“Sorry,” John muttered under his breath.
“I guess we could plan on collecting the solar panels along with whatever components are needed to operate them. We do that on our way back, and Dwight can give us some insight.” Barry paused for a moment. “Wait, who is in charge here?” he asked, glancing back and forth between John and Jared.
Shannon looked up from her teaching at the three men at the table. No one spoke for a full ten seconds.
“Well, you can’t be,” Barry said, nodding toward John. “You haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on when it comes to getting power going out here.”
John’s mouth twitched, but he remained mute as he stared at what he considered a twerp of a human sitting across from him. Barry hadn’t meant to be disrespectful; he was simply stating facts and lacked the social and survival skills needed to understand there might have been a safer manner in which he could have worded his proclamation.
“No one is in charge; we work together here for a common goal, which is our survival,” Jared soothed, sensing John’s disdain for the socially inept buffoon sitting across from them.
John got up, walked over to a drawer in the kitchen, and pulled out a small pad of paper and a pen. He stepped back to the table and dropped it in front of Barry. “Write what you think we should pick up while we’re out there, and we—as a group—will collectively decide what we’re going to do,” John finished, stepped to the door, grabbed his rifle, and walked out of the house into the front yard.
Shannon hesitated a moment before getting to her feet. “Jared, can you help her?”
Jared nodded, and Shannon followed John out of the house.
Essie watched Shannon go, then turned to Jared. “She has a crush on him,” Essie said as innocently as only a child can say something like that.
Jared’s mouth dropped slightly open at first before he got to his feet and plopped down on the couch next to the insightful little waif. “What makes you say that, Essie?”
“I just know.”
Jared looked up at Barry, who was watching the two with a blank look painted on his face. “Well, let’s not talk about it when they’re around, okay? Might embarrass them,” Jared cajoled.
Essie looked up at Jared. “Okay.”
Jared was about to pick up Essie’s math and direct her back to her studies when she piped up again. “You’re going back down to where I used to live?”
“Not exactly, but yes, we are planning on going back to the city.”
“Can you go to my old house and get my lovey and my pony box?”
Jared was taken aback by Essie’s request. After what she’d been through, he never wanted to say no to her even though Bart had assured him Essie still needed discipline in her life. Jared felt trapped; this was one of those things he had to give a straight answer on. If he lied and said yes, she would know when he returned empty-handed, and if he said no, well, he was sure she would demand an explanation. After what he’d done to the villains who murdered her family, Jared felt confident Essie viewed him as invincible, which he felt far from. Before answering, Jared forced himself not to make eye contact with Barry.
“I’m not sure we’re going by your old house, Essie. With no cars—”
She cut him off. “We have a car,” Essie announced as if Jared hadn’t been aware of the VW’s existence.
“Well, we can’t use it to go into town right now because it’s loud, and the bad people will hear it and come make trouble for us.”
The girl pressed him further. “Will you try if you go that way?”
Jared smiled and used his voice inflections in an effort to convince Barry and the girl of two very different answers. “Of course I’ll try. We’ll all try,” Jared finished, smiling at the little human seated next to him. His true intentions were to play it by ear. If they seemed to be doing okay, he would find a reason to deviate in order to stop and fetch the things Essie had requested.
Jared looked down at Essie and had no qualms about attempting what she was asking. Everyone had lost someone or something, but Essie had lost it all. Now all she wanted was her lovey and what she’d called a pony box.
“Uh, what does your lovey look like?”
“It’s a bear and he’s brown. He’s probably on my bed. That’s where he stays.”
Jared nodded, making a mental note. “And what’s a pony box?”
“It’s a box for my hair ponies. It’s on my dresser.”
Jared nodded again, thinking if he could bring back these seemingly insignificant items, it would mean the world to Essie. He also knew if he brought it up to either Barry or John, they would collectively shoot down any possibility of moving off course to procure Essie’s valuables. The more Jared thought about it
, the more convinced he became he would make a concerted effort to stop at Essie’s house and get the lovey and pony box. Sooner or later she was going to start talking about what happened, and then she would want some connection to her past.
Jared thought about this for a moment and decided if he could find a family photo album, he would bring that back as well. Jared wanted to be able to show the girl where she’d come from and that, yes, she had once lived in what used to be a normal world with two people who certainly loved her tremendously. Jared hoped it would help with Essie’s healing process. Jared knew he was ill prepared to play Dr. Phil with the little girl and would need all the help he could get. Shannon had been a Godsend by keeping Essie busy with schoolwork, but he thought there would come a time when the gravity of what had happened would knock the waif off her feet.
Jared wanted to be able to say he’d done everything in his power to guide and protect Essie when that day came. He knew it would not be easy and dreaded the time when that day would arrive.
“What?” she asked. He’d been staring at the pages of the math workbook with a blank look on his face.
He shook his head. “Nothing, I was just thinking about how much you’ve learned in so short a period of time working with Shannon.”
“She’s a teacher,” Essie stated flatly as if that would clear up any question in Jared’s mind about why she had been able to quickly learn all of this math.
Jared nodded and tried peering out the window without Barry noticing. It bothered him that Shannon had taken such a fancy to John, but he didn’t know why. When they’d met for the first time, he thought she was good looking, but had not been so moved as to make any sort of advance. Jared wondered if it was because he was terrible with women and, for the most part, chose to admire them from afar rather than risk rejection and the ultimate humiliation that inevitably accompanied it.
He couldn’t see John and Shannon from his position on the couch and briefly entertained the idea of casually walking outside as if to get some fresh air, but decided against it. Peeking through the curtains was pathetic enough; getting caught in an obvious move to interject himself would have been worse. Jared glanced at Barry, who was hunched over the tablet of paper, writing feverishly. He turned and shifted, trying for a better view of the outside yard, and still he could not see either John or Shannon.
He slumped back onto the couch, directing his attention to helping Essie with her math. The front door opened, and a tired-looking Calvin stepped in, dropped his rifle, and walked past the three without a word. He disappeared into the back room, where, Jared assumed, he would fall asleep in one of the beds. The fact that the man hadn’t spoken to either adult didn’t bother Jared. He had spent so much time with Bart, he was used to the communication style of those in an older age bracket.
They were old men in their seventies. Sometimes they talked, and other times they had other things to do. Jared had learned not to take it personally. Six months ago, he would have thought Calvin was a grumpy old man and probably would have made a Gran Torino joke if anyone was within earshot. Today he watched him disappear down the short hall, thought nothing of it, then went back to guiding Essie through the tumultuous waters of second-grade math.
Chapter 7
John stepped outside and realized Shannon was following him. He looked over his shoulder, saw Shannon stepping off the porch, and slowed his gait slightly to allow her to catch up. John was aware of Shannon’s tendency to fawn over him, and although internally he liked it, he knew he should tread carefully. This little growing community had a wealth of men, but was short on females. He shook his head at the thought of holding back when a good-looking woman showed interest.
He would never have displayed such control just a few months prior. He and his mates would routinely meet women at bars, sleep with them, and never see the women again. Their unit was so secretive, and they rarely admitted to being in the military; they only gave anyone their actual names. Now when there was a shortage of women, he’d somehow transformed into the perfect gentleman. Who would have thought?
Shannon caught up. “Mind if I walk out to the OP with you?”
“Not at all,” John replied.
The two walked up the road without speaking a word. John gave a low whistle, letting Calvin know he had friendlies inbound. The older man stood and let John know he had nothing to report, then walked stiffly back towards the house without giving Shannon so much as a nod.
After Calvin was gone, John turned to Shannon. “It’s wearing on all of us. He’s too old to be sitting out here for hours on end in the cold. It’ll kill him eventually.”
Shannon pursed her lips and bobbed her head in agreement.
“What we need,” John said, “is a dog so the rest of us can get some sleep at night.”
The wind had kicked up, bringing with it the beginnings of a biting cold. Shannon had her arms wrapped across her chest and moved a little closer to John. He noticed, but continued scanning the countryside as if scoping some threat that, at the present time, wasn’t there. Shannon was standing with her left hip nearly touching John’s right thigh when she pivoted to his front, wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers grabbing John’s hair, and drew his face down to meet hers.
For a split second, John thought to pull back, but in the wake of everything he’d been through over the last couple of months, he was unable to muster a single gentlemanly objection. He had not been with a woman since the solar flare. All this survival, animalistic living had added testosterone to his body, he was sure of that. So, as Shannon stood on her tiptoes and dragged their lips closer, he surrendered. Before their lips met, John could smell her scent, and it smelled good. He was surprised since there was no fragrance from soap, lotion or perfume. It was Shannon’s pure smell as a woman, raw and unadulterated.
Then their lips came together, and it was all wrong. John had kissed women he never saw again, and always he had made it work. This was different. He felt Shannon pull at him hard, then slow as their mouths came together in an awkward coupling of two things not meant for each other. The kiss was a failed romantic interlude. A disaster recognized immediately by both parties involved. This thankfully alleviated any sort of clumsy overstep by one or the other.
Shannon pulled away sharply. “I’m sorry—I thought maybe—”
John cut her off with a shake of his head. “Not your fault, and now we know,” he breathed softly, stepping back while keeping his hands on her shoulders. He stared at her for a long moment, then dropped his hands as she wiped her mouth, not making eye contact.
Things are different now, John thought. Relationships would not be as transient as they’d been in the old days. Things would mean much more now, and John had to adjust his approach with women. Sure, he would have liked to be intimate with Shannon. She was good looking, kind, and pretty much the only female around town at this point, but he knew it would turn nasty or at the very least uncomfortable. He was thankful they hadn’t taken it any further. There was enough discomfort in the world without skulking around having to avoid a spurned woman.
“I should get back to the house. Essie needs to finish her studies,” Shannon said, taking a step back.
John smiled. “Listen, no one needs to know about this, for both our sakes,” he suggested.
“Thank you, John,” Shannon said, her voice conveying her agreement.
“You know something?” John observed.
Shannon cocked her head in question.
“That felt like I was kissing my sister.”
Shannon’s shoulders slumped as if John had intended to insult her.
“No, no, that’s not a bad thing. It’s just we weren’t meant to be…well, hooked up like that, but I like you, and I think you like me, so I guess we have more of a brother-sister relationship now. All this doesn’t have to turn into something weird is all I’m saying.”
A look of relief spread across Shannon’s face that quickly transformed into a warm smile. John smiled
as well until the woman launched herself back at him. She grabbed his face and planted a closed-mouth kiss directly on his mouth before letting go and stepping back. This time it didn’t feel weird.
“You’re a good man, John. I’m glad you’re part of this little thing we have going on out here in the hills.”
With that, she turned and walked back toward the ranch house.
“What the fuck?” John murmured under his breath. He knew the world had changed, but had he changed so much that a woman he would have considered beautiful even before the event came on to him and he didn’t close the deal? Not only that, but now they had a brother-sister relationship. He slowly lowered his chin and shook his head as he chuckled softly to himself.
The following morning, Shannon sat at the OP while the four men sat at the kitchen table with Essie. They’d eaten, and Essie was attempting to drag a small brush through a half-naked Barbie doll’s hair.
“We need to round up a couple of horses for this trip, but only John and you”—Barry nodded to Calvin—“know how to handle those things.”
Calvin dipped his chin in acknowledgment and looked at John for confirmation.
“I can get by if the horse has been trained. I ain’t breaking no wild mustang, if you know what I mean.”
Calvin thought about the situation for a moment before speaking. “There are horses out here, should be plenty. Some were probably left in pens and have starved to death by now, but there were a lot of horses pastured, and those will be the ones that survived as long as they have water. John and I can go and bring back at least four, and with any luck, we’ll find some tack for you fellas.”
Jared hesitated before asking the question, but had long since learned nowadays were not the days to not ask a question. Before the event, Jared could have just figured out what tack meant as he went about his day. Now he might very well get killed not knowing what someone was talking about.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 5
