Break Free The Night (Book 1)

by Fitch, E. M.

  “Oh,”she said in a small voice. Kaylee turned and watched her blank features, noticing her working to swallow.“I thought there was time. I thought we we’re talking eventually. What’s the hurry?”

  Kaylee sighed, grateful to her sister for sharing her hesitation.“I don’t know.”

  “I mean, there’s not much you could do about it here anyway,”Emma continued in a rush, her eyes cast to her interlocked hands.“I mean, where would you stay? Our room? Would I get kicked out? What if you got pregnant?”

  Kaylee felt her breath leave in a whoosh. Pregnant?

  “No, Em, I don’t think he means all that,”she hurried to correct, feeling her face heat in protest of her sister’s assumptions.“Not, not that.”

  “Oh.”Her voice was small again, her eyes now darting from her hands to the floor but refusing to meet Kaylee’s.“Sorry, I just thought…”

  “It’s okay,”Kaylee answered as she trailed off. An awkward silence followed. Kaylee swallowed heavily and lift an unsteady stack of drying bowls, moving further from Emma to put them away.

  “So you told him no?”Emma asked, her voice still hesitant and quiet.

  “Not exactly,”Kaylee answered, shoving the bowls in their place and gesturing at Emma start handing her the clean mugs.“He keeps trying to erm,”Kaylee paused to clear her throat,“kiss me and I—”

  “He does?”Emma asked in a flash, her head whipping up to watch Kaylee. The small stack of cups in her hand shook and Kaylee rushed to grab them before the floor could.“When?”

  “Only a couple of times,”Kaylee answered carefully. She knew a blush was spreading rapidly over her cheeks and she turned from Emma to hide it. The mugs clanked noisily together as Kaylee separated them to place them on the shelf.

  “I didn’t know,”Emma said, sounding almost as lost as Kaylee felt. Kaylee bit her lip and nodded, turning back to Emma and leaning against the counter. She folded her arms across her chest and let her head fall just a bit forward, counting the individual nicks in the wood of the floor as she waited for Emma to say something.

  But Emma didn’t get the chance to say anything more because heavy footfalls were heard echoing in the garage just moments later. The sound of Anna’s ringing laughter drifted up from below and Kaylee dodged past the threadbare sofa in the living room to lower the rope ladder for them. Anna was the first to climb up, her backpack bulging, a hatchet slung from one of the straps. She let out a breath as she reached the top.

  “Someday,”she breathed,“I really am going to get too old for this.”

  “Good run?”Emma asked, leaning against the doorframe that separated the living room from the kitchen. Kaylee noticed her voice wasn’t nearly as bright as it normally was.

  “Yeah, not bad,”Anna nodded, pulling her hatchet free and tossing it on the low shelf in the corner. She moved out of Kaylee’s way, throwing herself on the sofa.“I brought you back a few things,”she said over her shoulder to Emma, winking.

  “Girls? Throw down the rope!”Bill shouted. Kaylee hurried around the opening to lower the thick rope with a hook fastened on the end. Excitement surged when a series of thuds sounded followed by a muffled curse. There was only one thing on earth that could reverberate with that dull, resonating clank as it connected with concrete floor. Cans.

  “No way!”Emma exclaimed, rushing over and knocking into Kaylee as she heard the echoing clatter the tin cans made as they fell from Bill’s arms and scattered over the garage floor. She braved even her hatred of the living room to catch a glimpse of the raid. Some had lost their labels, the light reflecting off their rippled exterior. Others had labels that were smudged with dust and grime, the dirt nearly obscuring the names, some with rips and rotting holes eating away at the advertisements. But the color gave those away: red and white of Campbell’s soups, green for Delmonte, yellow rings of healthy pineapple on backgrounds of light blue for Dole. Kaylee’s mouth watered.

  Canned food had been some of the first supplies to dry out. Which was ironic because really, canned food would have been the easiest to keep–designed to last for years and years. But scavengers had, the only instance in Kaylee’s opinion, used their brains when raiding for food. It still shocked Kaylee what people had broken into stores to steal: plasma TVs, radios, computers, MP3 players. What good were they? Did people not realize that electricity would fail? But this level if idiocy had not applied to food. Canned food, freeze dried meals, nuts, trail mix, jerky, all the food that would have kept had been taken. It had been a real challenge for Kaylee and Emma to diversify the meals they made.

  “Is that soda?”Emma asked, leaning so far out the opening in her excitement that Kaylee grabbed her belt just to be safe. Jack grinned up at them, a large flat of aluminum cans in his hands. There weren’t any labels to fall off these, just shiny symbols printed right on the sides: Pepsi, Coke, Sprite. Kaylee could already feel the fizz and burn of the carbonation as it slid down her throat. A smile fell into place.

  “You have to check the landing docks,”Jack said, setting the case by Bill’s feet.“And the trucks, not everything was left on the shelves.”Andrew was swinging up the rope ladder now, his lips twisting in irritation as Jack spoke. Kaylee offered him a weak smile. He rolled his eyes and smiled back.

  That’s new.

  Andrew had been so very careful to ignore Kaylee these past few days, brushing past her in the halls, keeping his eyes on his food in the kitchen. She hadn’t even noticed him when she went to the cornfield with Emma. She felt odd and hollow not feeling his eyes follow her through the chain-link fence.

  “I have something for you,”he whispered as he landed on the floor next to her. Her eyebrows quirked in curiosity and he grinned.“Meet me here after we get this stuff into storage?”

  Kaylee nodded, watching him as he got to the feet and tugged at the rope. His muscles strained as he hauled a good months’worth of food up from the garage. His vision was in danger of being obscured completely by his fringe and from where she sat perched, Kaylee could clearly see the tracks sweat had made down his neck as he scavenged for food that night. His jaw set as he heaved one last time before the net filled with dented cans swung into view and Kaylee started as she realized that he really was very good looking.

  “Get up lazy,”Emma growled, a well placed kick to Kaylee’s side making her grunt.“Let’s get this all put away.”

  Chapter Eight

  Several hours later, which included twelve trips back and forth from the fireman’s pole to the storage room, three burst cans of soda, one very large can of beans landing on Kaylee’s foot courtesy of Emma, and an impromptu feast, she stumbled her way back to the nearly empty and very shadowy living room.

  From the doorway she could see a dark figure sunk unto the couch. A jar candle flickered lightly on the table next to him, the glass sides that encased it blackened. Kaylee recognized the scent: apples. She smiled softly. Andrew knew she loved the smell of apples. It reminded her of home and the crumble her mother used to bake, of life before the infection. He chose this candle for her.

  “Hey,”she murmured. He turned. Even backlit by the faint dimmer of the candle, Kaylee knew he was smiling.

  “You came,”he said, sounding too relieved for Kaylee’s liking.

  “Of course I did,”she said, walking past the end of the couch and sitting just out of arms distance from him. The flickering light sent odd shadows flying across the walls. They were the kinds of shadows that normally frightened Kaylee; they recalled fleeting glimpses of running infected, hands and feet and arms all pounding closer, chasing. But tonight Andrew was here. And if Andrew was here, she was safe.

  “Enjoy the Coke?”he asked, smiling softly in her direction.

  “Mhmm,”she hummed in affirmation, the artificial buzz of caffeine still swimming through her veins.“Haven’t had one in a while.”

  “Pineapples too.”

  “I know!”Kaylee agreed, smiling. She loved pineapples, always had.“How did you not check the load
ing docks before, anyway?”she teased, knocking his shoulder. He scowled.

  “Jack,”he muttered the name as though it were a curse word.“The doors to the loading areas were locked. It’s not our fault we can’t pick them open in the pitch dark. He’s some kind of thief or something.”

  “Sure.”Kaylee rolled her eyes. He shrugged and kept his eyes on his hands. The quiet of the room enveloped them. The flickering candle, the dark corners, the warm feel of worn sofa underneath her nervous fingers, it was all so familiar and yet still felt new. It wasn’t so very long ago that Andrew and she would pass the time watching T.V. or playing video games. They shared music and chatted online, even though they were only a couple apartments away from each other and could have easily met in the halls. Now, just a year past, and some days it felt like no time at all, here they were: Andrew and Kaylee, the future of mankind. In that living room, they may as well have been the last man and the last woman on earth. And quite suddenly, as Kaylee shifted closer to him, she felt the urge to apologize. She wasn’t in love with him, not nearly that. And Jack still haunted her, particularly in those twilight hours of the mind, when sleep edged around her thoughts and mixed confusingly with dreams; but Jack was leaving. And Kaylee felt she owed Andrew this, at least this, for how wonderful he was to her, how kind and understanding.

  “Drew, I—”

  He cut her off before she could continue her apology, smiling ruefully.“I got you something. Not as good as what you were hoping for maybe, but I thought it’d be something for us to do.”From the folds of his jacket he pulled out a rectangular object.

  “A book?”

  “Here,”he murmured, thrusting it into her hands. He turned his face away from her as she studied the cover. The worn brown surface was faded in places, ink that was once shiny standing out only dimly, but the title was clear.

  “The Princess Bride?”Kaylee questioned, her voice strangled around the lump in her throat. He knew her so well, treated her with such respect and caring. Why couldn’t she love him?

  “I thought we could read it together,”he continued, his voice colored only slightly with embarrassment.“I mean, I thought I could read it to you.”

  “You want—”

  “I know, I know. Shut up,”he muttered defensively, offering a small, self-conscious smile as he pulled the book from her fingers. He opened to the first page, cleared his throat, and read.

  Under Andrew’s gentle attention, the story unfurled, the words rolling in a tender cadence to fill the quiet space around them. The corners of the room stayed dark and the candle emanated a small bubble of light that enclosed Kaylee and Andrew. She sunk back into the armrest of the couch, turning to face her friend as he read, her feet pulled up under her. The aches and pains of the long night of hauling food into storage were ebbing, all except the dull ache in her foot.

  Stupid Emma.

  Kaylee would have sworn Emma could have caught that can before it fell. She frowned as her fingers found her foot. Rubbing seemed to help.

  “Your foot bothering you?”Andrew paused to ask, his voice soft and concerned.

  “A bit,”Kaylee conceded with a nod.“It’s not bad, just sore.”

  “C’mere,”Andrew said, one hand pulling Kaylee’s feet from under her and gathering them up in his lap. His fingers found her hurt foot and squeezed softly, propping the open book on her extended legs.“Just lay back and close your eyes. I needed a book rest anyway.”

  Kaylee smiled in the darkness, doing as Andrew told her and laying back, eyes closed. His fingers traced the contours of her foot, ghosting over her skin in intricate patterns. She sighed as he picked up reading where he had left off.

  She could picture them all in her head, actors and actresses whose names she could no longer remember, names she would now probably never know for the rest of her life. She remembered the guy who played Columbo was in the movie, her father and mother used to watch that show after she and her sister went to sleep, but she couldn’t remember any other role he had played. Regardless, his character wasn’t really in the book. But as Andrew spoke, she could envision Wesley lifting a jug from overhead, see Buttercup riding across green meadows, the wind racing through her hair. Kaylee couldn’t remember the last time she felt the wind rushing through her hair. Sure, the roof got windy sometimes, some nights even with enough force that Kaylee tied her hair back so it wouldn’t blow into her eyes. But not like Buttercup’s was blowing, not whipping back from her face, flying straight from behind her as she raced through a meadow. Kaylee brought her hands to her hair, running her fingers through the strands. She missed that.

  Andrew’s fingers kept up a nice rhythm, pressing and easing with just the right amount of pressure, stuttering only briefly when a darker shadow flickered on the wall. Kaylee felt her eyes drift open lazily.

  “’S just me,”Emma muttered, hovering in the doorway. Andrew paused and nodded to the empty seat beside him. Emma teetered on the threshold, her lip bit between her teeth. Kaylee was about to suggest moving to their bedroom, very much aware of just how intensely Emma hated the living room, how she avoided it whenever she could. But Emma surprised her, taking a slow step forward. Kaylee watched her but Emma refused to meet her gaze, her eyes were on the sofa, on Andrew and the book. So, Kaylee let her head fall back again, allowing Emma this privacy. And Andrew’s fingers pressed again, drift slowly over her pulse point, his thumb pressing firmly into her heel.

  The worn couch dipped as Emma sat and Andrew continued reading as if there had been no pause. There was no need to catch Emma up; she knew the movie just as well as Kaylee and the book wasn’t so very different.

  The world Andrew was slowly re-creating with his low, dulcet tone felt real, permeated Kaylee’s consciousness, and so it startled her when Emma laughed.

  "Ha!" Emma burst through the calm silence of the room, her laugh bouncing eagerly off the nearby walls to echo back at Kaylee and Andrew. "I like this author, he's good. This book is better than the movie."

  "You always think that," Kaylee said, rousing from her story-induced stupor to roll her eyes.

  "That's because it's always the case."

  "Not true," Kaylee argued, shifting up on the couch and rising to her elbows. "What about something like The Cat in the Hat?"

  "Kid's books don't count, Kaylee! You try and use that every time!"

  "So The Wizard of Oz is a book for adults? I'm sure that one counts, right?"

  "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had social commentary, so yeah, it does count. Clifford the Big Red Dog isn't making any political statements!"

  "I never said Clifford!" Kaylee fumed. Emma snorted. "Fine, what about The Birds?"

  "Short story!"

  “Bridges of Madison County!”

  “Girls?”Andrew shook his head and pat Kaylee’s foot, pining her with a look she knew well. He looked at her like that every time Emma had wanted to play with them when they were little and Kaylee had wanted to kick her out of the room. It was indulgent and just a tad impatient and a little expectant; it was a look that said: let your little sister win this one. She rolled her eyes at him.

  “Fine, Dad,”she teased, scowling to hide her smile. Andrew laughed. Emma huffed.

  “You’re a sore loser,”Kaylee hissed at her sister. Emma stuck her tongue and Andrew ignored them both, continuing where he left off.

  “‘Yes,’Buttercup replied. There was a very long pause.‘But I must never love again.’”Andrew paused to flip the page.“‘Chapter two. The Groom.’”

  ~

  Andrew was just describing Prince Humperdink’s proposal, a proposal so weak it was comical, a conversation that entailed his not loving Buttercup and Buttercup not loving him and the decision that therefore they would be the perfect married couple when Kaylee’s attention was drawn towards the dark kitchen. He was so still that Kaylee almost missed him. His presence didn’t scatter the light into diffuse and darker shadows as Emma’s had done. He stood, quiet and still, sentry-like, at the doorwa
y, watching the three teenagers laugh quietly over the absurd characters. Emma was tucked into Andrew’s side and Kaylee’s legs were still draped over his lap. They were comfortable, close and happy, a family. Kaylee saw him there only fleetingly, a quick glance, her gaze drawn inexplicably over the back of the couch. His expression was unreadable, poised as he was on the threshold of the living room, and he melted back into the darkness of the kitchen before she could do much more than blink.

  “That’s as much as I can do,”Andrew croaked moments later, folding the corner of the page he had been reading and tossing the book unto the table. Emma stretched her arms above her head and then sunk back into the cushions, her feet once more pulled up under her, her side flush with Andrew’s. Kaylee fought through a yawn, the unnatural buzz of caffeine that she was so unused to wearing off. She felt a crash coming.