by Fitch, E. M.
She scowled at him as she shrugged out of his hold, Jack ducking into the firehouse beside her.“I went out for a walk.”
He stared incredulously for a moment and Kaylee could practically see the thoughts flying through his brain. Emotions flit rapidly across his expression and Kaylee knew him well enough to identify them: shock, anger, fear, betrayal. But he finally settled on one. Rage. And it was not directed at her.
“You!”he growled, rounding on Jack.“You have been nothing but trouble. She’s never been injured before, not until you came around. And now you’ve got her running all around the city! It’s not safe out there, you know that!”
“Andrew,”Kaylee pacified, rolling her eyes as she stepped between them.“It’s dark, there’s nothing to worry—”
“The dogs?”he shouted, still staring Jack down.“What about them?”Kaylee looked from Andrew to Jack in confusion.
What dogs?
In response, Jack lifted the corner of his shirt. Tucked into the waistband of jeans, held tight by a leather belt, gleamed the handle of a gun.
“Oh perfect!”Andrew snarled, pushing past Kaylee and into Jack’s face.“Now you listen to me,”he warned through grit teeth,“you’re to stay away from her. I’m not going to stand by and let you—”
“Wait, what dogs?”Kaylee interrupted, this time her voice was loud and forceful.
“The wild dogs,”Andrew answered, turning back to look at her.“They run in packs throughout the city.”
“Towards the edge of the city,”Jack corrected, leaning casually back into the wall.“You were in no danger.”Andrew’s eyes flashed and Kaylee thought he looked ready to explode. Kaylee’s mind was reeling.
Packs of wild dogs? Where did they come from? And how dangerous was it really? If he had to carry a gun…
“Get out of here,”Andrew growled in Jack’s direction. Jack stared at him, not moving, his jaw set, until Kaylee spoke.
“It’s okay, Jack,”she said, unsure that was true.“Maybe you should go upstairs.”Jack’s eye flit towards her and it took a moment, but eventually, he nodded.
Andrew turned away from Kaylee as soon as Jack disappeared up the rope ladder that was now hanging by the fire pole. His shoulders were tense, rigid, from the stress and worry he was exuding. He leant heavily unto outstretched arms that reached for a shaky, wooden workbench.
“Please don’t go anywhere without one of us knowing,”he whispered, his back still to her.
“Quinton knew—”she started in a small voice but he cut through her.
“One of us,”he insisted through grit teeth. His grip on the wooden work surface tightened and the screwdrivers resting there trembled, clanking into each other.
“Okay,”she agreed, watching him in concern. She had never seen Andrew loose control like that. He rolled his shoulders and rotated his neck. His fists remained clenched.“Andrew, why are there wild dogs?”
His frame relaxed by degrees and he offered a rough laugh.“They weren’t always wild,”he said, turning to face her. He wasn’t smiling but he looked more at ease answering her benign question.“Some still have collars on. They’re the dogs, the pets, of the city. Their owners obviously can’t take care of them anymore.”
“But you said they were wild?”
“They are now. There’s not exactly any Kibble‘n Bits set out in bowls for them. Dogs have to eat and they’ll eat whatever they find: smaller dogs, cats, us, whatever.”Andrew shrugged and leant back into the tool bench, the old wood creaked as his back pushed it into the wall.“They’ve been hunting in packs for a while now.”
Kaylee drew a breath. She hadn’t expected that. Anna had a dog; she knew that she did. His name was Pavlov and he was a fluffy, old thing. Kaylee never stopped to think what Pavlov had done when Anna escaped the building. He wasn’t with her, that’s all Kaylee knew.
“I didn’t know,”she whispered, feeling foolish and then a bit irritated.
Just how much has everyone been keeping from me?
“Your Dad didn’t want—”
“Of course not,”she spat, her feeling of foolishness coming to her aid in the form of anger.“Why would anyone tell stupid, fragile, little me anything? Do you think I can’t handle it? That I’ll fall apart, breakdown?”
“You know I don’t!”Andrew retorted, kicking away from the old bench and coming to stand in front of her. He grabbed her by the arms and held her still, shaking her a bit in an attempt to get her to look at him. She stubbornly kept her eyes past his left shoulder.“But you don’t go out there, or you didn’t,”he corrected with a grunt,“and it wasn’t necessary information—”
“Not necessary?”Kaylee interrupted, staring incredulously at him as she backed out of his hold.“It’s dangerous for you, you could get seriously hurt!”
“I’m careful. I know what I’m doing.”Kaylee frowned at him. His tone was defensive, as though Kaylee had insulted him. An awkward silence fell and Kaylee huffed in frustration, crossing her arms. She was so sick of how awkward things had become with Andrew. She didn’t understand where was the nice easy friendship she had once so enjoyed had gone.
“Did you have a nice time?”he asked. He was staring over her head now, his jaw muscles jumping.
“It was fine,”Kaylee shrugged, watching him. He nodded but wouldn’t look at her. She sighed.“Andrew, it’s going to be okay. He’s leaving.”The last part was said in a low whisper, the words catching in her throat as a pang of regret beat through her chest.
“I know he is,”Andrew said, stepping closer.“I don’t think you should forget that. He’s leaving you. I’m not.”
“It’s not like that,”Kaylee protested, shaking her head. Andrew reached out and grabbed her chin. He held her face still, tilting her head back slightly so he could look her right in the eye.
“It’s exactly like that,”he whispered, searching her face. She knew her features were arranged in an expression of confusion, confusion and terror perhaps. She didn’t want this to happen now. She hadn’t the time to process how she felt. Jack and Quinton’s appearance had shaken her. And Andrew was asking her for a commitment that she didn’t know she could offer.
“Andrew please,”she whispered, closing her eyes against his penetrating stare.
“Why Kaylee?”he asked, his face now so close his breath passed over her, it was clean and warm and comfortable and so very Andrew.“Why not try? You love me; I know you do. Maybe you could love me like that, love me the way I—”
“Andrew don’t,”she said in a rush. Her eyes blinked open and she inhaled sharply. He was very, very close. She could count every freckle across the bridge of his nose, see each eyelash individually.“You can’t take it back if you say that.”
“I wouldn’t want—”
“Don’t,”she pleaded. Her eyes lowered to watch her hands finally move from her side and land on his chest. She didn’t push him away, but he couldn’t get closer either. His chest rose and fell under her touch as he sighed in frustration. But he released her chin and turned away. His back muscles were taut again, tension rolling off him.
“I’d be good for you, you know,”he said. It came out strangled. Kaylee knew he was fighting to keep the anger and disappointment from his tone.
“I know,”she whispered in agreement. Because it was true, Andrew would be very, very good for her and there were moments when she felt like an idiot for not just falling in love with him, as she knew she should. But she couldn’t lie either. She didn’t love him that way, not now. Maybe she never would. And though she accepted that she would have to be with him someday, that human survival may depend on it, she didn’t fool herself into thinking that she needed to be madly in love with him for that to happen.
Andrew exhaled slowly.“Can you get up the ladder on your own?”he asked in a hollow voice. Kaylee hummed an affirmation. He turned towards the ladder and left her.
It was disconcerting how inviting the cold metal of the fire truck bumper was. She sat slowly, her eyes traci
ng the grooves in the pavement, her fingers tracing the diamond pattern on the step to the truck cab. She sat for a long time, emotions flitting though her so rapidly and in such perplexing patterns that she couldn’t process them. The cold seeped through her jeans and distracted her, but it didn’t motivate her to move. Andrew was up there, and so was Jack. And she didn’t want to face either.
“Anyone down there?”
The familiar voice broke through Kaylee’s thoughts, pulling her from the mess in her head.“I’m here,”she called out to Anna. Her head popped through the hole in the ceiling, looking disconnected from her body as she grinned.
“What are you doing?”she laughed, moving her curly, dark hair from her face before giving the limp ladder a shake.“I was going to pull this up, thought Andrew left it out.”
“Just thinking,”Kaylee mumbled before jumping up from her perch on the truck. Pins and needles shot through her legs and she stamped her feet trying to break it up. Anna’s face flashed from confused to complete understanding as Kaylee grabbed the ladder. She wished Anna wouldn’t look at her like that.
“Changed your mind about Jack then?”she asked in a quiet voice as Kaylee climbed through. Kaylee shook her head and pulled the ladder up, folding it carefully as she did.“Ah, then you haven’t changed your mind about Andrew, and he’s asking you to.”
She spoke without question, because, of course, it wasn’t one. Anna had the uncanny ability to read people and Kaylee had never been an exception.“I know you don’t want to talk about it. Remember though, it’s not set in stone yet. We might not be staying here.”
“He’s leaving regardless,”Kaylee whispered, intensely aware that Andrew’s room, the one he shared with his father, was only a few feet down.
“Give it some time,”Anna urged, taking the folded ladder from Kaylee’s hand and placing it on the shelf to her left.“There’s no rush.”
“Andrew thinks there is,”Kaylee said, allowing Anna to steer her towards the stairs by her elbow. She nodded.“And there isn’t much time. They’re leaving in a few days.”
“Andrew’s threatened and Jack is unsure. Don’t block yourself in to spare Andrew’s feelings and don’t count Jack out yet,”she continued, following Kaylee to the second floor and their perspective rooms. Kaylee opened her mouth to argue but Anna shushed her.“Give it some time,”she insisted before she shut her own bedroom door leaving a frustrated and worried Kaylee alone in the hallway.
~
The days passed with a painful drudgery. Andrew and Jack were both avoiding Kaylee. The rooms seem to literally clear of people when she entered. Her father was withdrawing steadily, Anna and Bill were busy trying to come up with ways to convince him to leave the city, and Emma remained clueless to Kaylee’s situation because she was so immersed in target practice on the roof.
And though Kaylee understood Andrew’s aversion to her, she thought she had hurt him pretty badly with her latest rejection, she couldn’t understand Jack’s. Even with the confrontation in the garage and the tense morality discussion at the beginning of their walk, she had thought they had had a good time.
“Think Dad will let me get an AR-15?”Emma asked, bursting through Kaylee’s thoughts.
“No.”
“Quinton says they’re the best fully automatic gun to have, good accuracy, you know?”Emma continued regardless of Kaylee answer. She paused to blow her hair from her eyes, resting her soapy arms on the edge of the sink as she pulled the drain plug. The two extra mouths to feed had equaled more dishes for the girls to get done and Kaylee was finding herself elbow deep in cold, soapy water more and more often.“Or maybe I could smuggle in a Gloc. Quinton says they’re really reliable and he’s already shown me how to take one apart, it just two pieces really, easy to hide. Hey!”
Emma shouted as Kaylee forcefully dumped a bucket of fresh water in the sink to rinse the soap from the plates; a wave of dirty water slopped up onto her shirt.“Why would you do that?”she asked in angry bewilderment.“You do know we have to wash these clothes ourselves?”
“You are not getting a gun to hide away from Dad!”Kaylee growled. Emma rolled her eyes, pulling an old rag closer to blot her sopping shirt.“I’m serious, Emma, you can’t.”
“Who says?”Emma shot back, turning to face her sister. She was fuming, her jaw set in determination, as she threw the rag on the counter.“Dad isn’t even going to notice anyway! All he ever does is stay hidden in his room, he doesn’t care—”
“He cares about you, about us both,”Kaylee said. She tried to make her voice soft and reassuring, but the words caught in a strangled whisper.
“Whatever,”Emma mumbled before she turned her back to Kaylee, picking dishes out of the sink with hard, angry movements. But Kaylee knew she wasn’t really upset with her, it was their father. He was hurting Emma by staying so locked up and isolated. Growing up, if Kaylee had been the little princess, then Emma would have been considered Dad’s little buddy. It was she who enjoyed going to baseball games with their Dad. She had fished, hiked, and watched football. When they had first holed up in the fire station, it was she who had braved going into his room when they had first heard his unbearable sobbing.
“Oh,”someone exclaimed as they entered the kitchen. Kaylee turned quickly and saw Jack teetering on the threshold, as though he had walked straight in and then attempted to backtrack.“Sorry, didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“Hey Jack!”Emma spun around and flashed a smile, wiping her hands dry on the discarded rag.“What’s up?”
Jack relaxed by degrees, grinning as he walked further into the kitchen.“Not much,”he responded easily, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaning back unto the corner of the table,“just looking for a snack.”
Emma reached for an apple and threw it to him without hesitation. He caught it with one hand.“We’re almost done here,”Emma continued, gesturing to Kaylee and the dishes,“want to get a game of cards going?”
“Umm, can’t,”Jack mumbled in response, catching Kaylee’s eye briefly before looking back to his apple.“I’m needed on the roof. Quinton.”
Emma frowned at his back as he left, reaching the stairs in record time and practically running up them.
“What’d I say?”she asked, Kaylee thought mostly to herself.
“It’s not you,”she answered, pulling the last of the dishes towards her and beginning to dry them.“It’s me. Jack and Andrew are both avoiding me.”
“You? Why?”
“Jack I’m not sure about but Andrew’s really upset.”Kaylee bit her lip and let the statement hang in the air. The dishes clattered against each other as Kaylee filled the drying rack. The pieces were remnants from the old fire fighters. Kaylee had thought maybe they each had to bring in a few discarded dishes from home because the only matching features were the chips and cracks that adorned each piece. The silverware was even worse. There were only five spoons to begin with, so most mornings at least one person was eating oatmeal with a bent fork.
“Yeah right,”Emma snorted, jumping up to sit on the counter next to Kaylee.“You’re probably just being sensitive. Andrew’s never angry with you. Remember that time you lost his doll?”
Kaylee felt a weak smile overtake her features. She did remember that, though she hadn’t really lost it and it wasn’t actually a doll.
“You mean that action figure he got for Christmas,”Kaylee corrected, her eyes trained on a green and brown stripe plate she was wiping dry.“Yeah, I remember. We were seven.”
And that’s just it, Kaylee thought. We were seven. And this is more serious than his asking for a stupid piece of plastic back.
“Well, he wasn’t pissed at you then,”Emma continued, shrugging her shoulders carelessly and oblivious to the shift in Kaylee’s mood.“And I remember him looking like he might cry—”
“It’s not the same Em,”Kaylee interrupted, hanging the used dishrag on a hook over the sink and stacking the dry service set. The plates landed clumsily
over one another, some settling into mismatched grooves, others tilting as though they were trying to shun the less deserving pieces. Emma sat watching Kaylee, frowning.
“So, why’s he angry then?”Emma asked, the same tone of obvious dismissal in her voice.
“He wants me to be with him,”Kaylee said tentatively, keeping her eyes to the teetering stack of chipped plates she was putting away.
“Be with him? How could you not? We’re pretty much stuck here, I mean, where the hell else are you going to go?”
“No, Em. Bewith him. As in: us, together. A couple,”Kaylee continued, waving her hand in a circle as she rambled on.
How many ways are there to say it?
She kept her eyes in the cabinet, past the plates and to the splits in the wood sides, tracing their grain and noting the dust that was gathering in the crevices. She refused to look back at Emma and see her smirking grin, refused to let her make light of the situation. But Emma surprised her.
