by C. Gockel
He nodded, then went on, “Hey, I have a peace offering.”
“What?” Saying my tone was guarded would have been an understatement.
“I’m going to get something out of my backpack,” he said, laying the knife down in the dirt in front of him. “Okay?”
“Depends what it is,” I told him.
A grin, one that showed off a dazzling set of white teeth. I had a feeling he’d used that smile to good effect a number of times in the past, but I had to make it seem as if it wasn’t affecting me, even though I could feel a not-unpleasant shiver go through me at the way the smile lit up his dark eyes.
“I think you’ll like this.”
He unslung the backpack, setting it on the ground before unzipping it and spending a few seconds going through its contents. His back was to me, so I couldn’t see exactly what he was doing. Almost at once, though, he turned around. In each hand he held a wine bottle.
“Very nice, but I’ve got a pretty stocked cellar up there,” I said, jerking my chin back toward the house.
“Ah, but this is La Chiripada cabernet sauvignon. New Mexico wine. You have any of that?”
I really didn’t have any idea. Besides the wine refrigerator in the kitchen, I’d discovered another trove in the basement, cases and cases of wine, most of it from California and France, from what I could tell, and some odd bits from South America and Arizona. I hadn’t noticed anything from New Mexico, but then again, I hadn’t exactly been looking for it, either.
As I hesitated, not sure how to respond, I heard the voice in my head.
He is safe.
“What?” I murmured under my breath, hoping the stranger wouldn’t notice me muttering to myself.
He is safe. There is no reason to keep him out.
“Wait…you actually want me to let him in?”
Yes.
To say I was flummoxed would be an understatement. Here it seemed the voice had done everything to keep me safe, to have me avoid other survivors because of the dangers involved, and now he wanted me to allow a strange man to simply walk into my sanctuary here?
“What happens if he isn’t safe?”
He is safe. I promise you.
Even with the voice stating his opinion so flatly, I couldn’t help hesitating. True, he had always protected me, argued with me when I wanted to do things he found too dangerous. So I supposed I should be trusting his judgment here.
I sent a sidelong glance in the stranger’s direction. He was still standing there, a bottle in each hand, a half hopeful, half anxious expression on his face. There was something so goofy about the combination, so oddly adorable, that I found myself relenting.
“All right,” I muttered to the voice. “You’d just better not be playing supernatural matchmaker here or something, or we’ll be discussing this further.”
No answer to that. I hadn’t really expected one.
Not quite allowing myself to sigh, I transferred the shotgun to my left hand and began walking to the gate. There was a manual release there, since obviously I hadn’t brought the remote with me.
“Okay,” I told Jason. “I’ve never had La Chiripada.”
The look of relief that passed over his face was also adorable, and erased some of the strain I’d seen in his features. “Great. Thanks. I appreciate this. Really.” He began stuffing the wine bottles into his backpack, then hefted it onto his shoulders. After that, he shot me a questioning look. “And your name is?”
“Jessica,” I told him as I pushed the button to open the gate. “Jessica Monroe.”
Another one of those blazing smiles, “Well, Jessica, I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Chapter 11
We headed up to the house after that, Dutchie dancing around Jason, tail wagging and tongue lolling as if her long-lost best friend had just come home.
“I hope you’re a dog person,” I told him as we went in the front door.
“I am, actually. There were always a lot of dogs on the pueblo. I didn’t have one of my own, since I was living in an apartment about half the time, but — ” He broke off, pausing a few paces inside the entryway. His expression was so awestruck that at first I thought he was impressed by the house, which didn’t surprise me too much. It was pretty impressive. But then he said, “Is that bread?”
“It is,” I said, adding, “and I hope I haven’t just burned it.”
I jogged into the kitchen, Dutchie tagging along at my heels, since of course the kitchen was her favorite room in the house. Jason followed at a more sedate pace, probably because of the backpack he carried.
But when I peered into the oven, the bread looked perfect, golden brown and with just the right amount of loft. The timer said I had exactly thirty seconds to go. So I grabbed some potholders and pulled out the pan, setting it on the stove top to cool.
By then Jason had shrugged off his backpack and leaned it up against one of the cupboards. “That’s amazing.”
“What is?” I asked, turning to face him.
“The bread. This.” He waved a hand, as if indicating the kitchen and the house beyond. “It’s like — it’s like it never happened.”
Again, I didn’t have to ask what he meant by “it.” “Someone definitely put a lot of work into this house. I was lucky to find it.”
A pause, during which I wondered if he was going to ask again how I had found it…and what the hell I should say in response to such a question. Instead, though, he inquired, “Your family didn’t build it?”
“Oh, no. We could never have afforded something like this.”
My reply appeared to make him relax slightly. Maybe he’d been thinking I was some rich girl from the city or something. There was a joke. But I could see how that might have made things even more awkward between us; I knew most of my state’s Native American residents weren’t exactly rolling in cash.
Well, neither was my family, so I added, “I found some paperwork when I was going through the house. The guy who built it was a real estate developer from Phoenix. I doubt he’s going to be showing up any time soon.”
A nod, although I could see the way Jason was surveying the kitchen, from the gleaming stainless-steel appliances to the custom cupboards and granite countertops. I had no idea what he might be thinking. In that moment, I was only strangely glad that I’d been so careful about keeping the place clean. In the past, I hadn’t been what you might call the world’s greatest housekeeper, but now I found cleaning the house helped to distract me, and used up some of the empty hours.
His next question surprised me. “You came from Albuquerque. We were pretty cut off in Taos. Did you ever hear anything more about the disease…where it started, mortality rates, anything like that?”
That was the last thing I wanted to talk about, but Jace clearly wanted more information than he’d gotten back home. Not that I had a lot to give him. Even so, I thought it best to stall a little while I figured out how much I should say.
“Water?” I asked, and he blinked, clearly startled by the non sequitur, then replied,
“Yes, thanks.”
So I got a glass from the cupboard and filled it up with water from the refrigerator door. When I went to hand it to him, I realized how tall he was, how there were definitely some impressive muscles under the loose-fitting flannel shirt he wore. And even though he had to have been living rough for the past few weeks, I could tell he was clean. In fact, I caught the faintest scent of wood smoke coming from his clothes, and something about the aroma made a little thrill go through me.
I definitely needed to get it together.
Stepping away from him, pretending that I needed to go check on the bread, I said, “Things fell apart pretty quickly in Albuquerque, too. We never got a straight story about where it started or anything like that. Afterward….” I let the words trail off as I flashed back to that dark Walgreens, and the man I had confronted there. “I did meet someone who said he’d worked for emergency management downtown. He said th
e mortality rate was 99.8 percent.”
“Shit.” With his brown skin, Jace couldn’t exactly go pale, but I still saw the blood appear to drain from his face. Then his dark eyes seemed to go sharp as he focused on what I’d just said. “Wait — you met another survivor? Where is he?”
Shit was right. I’d just met Jace. Was I supposed to tell him that I’d murdered a man?
I didn’t see much of a way around it. If we were really going to be sharing this house, I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep that big a secret from him. He needed to know, so he could decide if it was worth the risk to stay.
“He’s dead,” I said, my voice flat, harsh. “He tried to take my vehicle away from me, all the supplies I’d put together. He pulled a gun on me. So I shot him.”
Silence. Jace stared at me, obviously trying to process what I’d just said. When he spoke, his tone was a lot gentler than I’d expected. “Because he was trying to steal from you, and you would’ve been dead without that vehicle and those supplies.”
The question was, would I have been? I could have gone foraging all over again if necessary, could’ve found one of the abandoned vehicles and hot-wired it, another skill my father had taught me. I wasn’t sure what happened to car keys if they were actually on a victim of the Heat, in a pocket or something, when they went to dust. All their clothes and jewelry seemed to disappear, so obviously the heat in their bodies was so extreme that it could destroy everything around them. Or was the explanation that simple? I hadn’t actually stopped to puzzle it out, mostly because I knew in the end it didn’t really matter. Those people were gone, and so were the belongings they had on them.
“I thought so at the time,” I said slowly. As Jason kept looking at me with that concerned expression on his face, I felt something give way inside, the words flowing out, even though I hadn’t meant to mention anything else of what had happened. “And he had this look on his face, and the night before that, crazy Chris Bowman had broken into my house and attacked me, and — ”
I couldn’t go on, because out of nowhere tears were streaming down my face, and, to my dismay, I’d begun to sob, the horror of it all coming back to me, something dark and terrible that had only been lurking in the murky sediment at the bottom of my mind, just waiting to return and overwhelm me.
Jason crossed the kitchen and pulled me against him, his hand smoothing my hair, his warm voice murmuring my name as I wept into his shirt, the flannel soft against my cheek. He smelled of wood smoke and pine needles, and underneath that, clean male sweat, and I breathed him in, reassured beyond measure at the feel of someone so solid, so real.
And then I realized what I was doing, that I was sobbing in the arms of a man I had just met, and I pushed myself away, shaking my head. “I — I’m sorry,” I gasped. “That was just — that came out of nowhere. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. His dark eyes seemed alight with compassion, with understanding. “I can’t imagine how rough this must have been for you. And I’m sorry that you…did what you had to do. But I don’t think you can blame yourself for that.”
I went to the paper towel dispenser and tore off a partial sheet, then blotted my eyes. Good thing I hadn’t bothered with makeup since I’d gotten here, except for some gloss to keep my lips from cracking in the dry, cold weather. “Thank you,” I said simply. “But I do blame myself. There had to be something else I could have done — ”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “Sounds like you were kind of up against a wall.” Again I was struck by the warmth in his expression…but it wasn’t that kind of warmth, more that he was sorry I’d had to go through anything so terrible. “But I’m glad you told me the truth.”
So was I, oddly enough. I’d just told him the worst thing about me, and he hadn’t even blinked. That had to be a good sign.
“I’m glad, too,” I told him, wanting to put the whole thing behind me. Somehow I knew Jace wouldn’t press the issue any further. “Now, how about some of this bread?”
And like that, Jason Little River came to live at the compound. He took over the larger of the secondary bedrooms, putting his meager belongings in the closet there. I noticed that he hadn’t brought any personal items with him, no photographs of family or anything like that, unlike the wedding photo of my parents that now lived on the mantel in the living room, or the shot of all of us at one of Devin’s football games, which was now sitting on the dresser in the master bedroom.
When I asked him about his family, his expression grew shuttered. “All gone now,” he said, and didn’t seem to want to talk about it anymore. Since I understood all too well what it felt like to lose everyone around you, I didn’t press the issue. Although I didn’t know a whole lot about life on the pueblo, I knew it had to be a fairly close-knit community, a sort of huge extended family very unlike what I’d grown up with. His loss was probably even more painful than mine. If he wanted to open up about it later, after he’d had time to work through it in his own way, then I would be there to listen to him.
He was impressed by the compound, by all the lengths its builder had gone to so it would be self-sustaining. Even so, after one morning of walking around and inspecting everything, just a day or two after he moved in, he told me, “We should really be thinking about getting some livestock. This place isn’t big enough for cattle, but maybe some goats?”
“Goats?” I repeated, not bothering to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “You’re not suggesting we eat a goat, are you?”
His teeth flashed in the morning sun as he grinned at me. It was a bright, brisk day, the sky dappled with clouds, but the sunlight still fiercely bright. Despite the glaring sun, I could feel the bite in the wind, the unmistakable signs that winter was coming…and that it was going to be a lot colder than anything I’d experienced down in Albuquerque.
“The original barbacoa was made with goat,” he pointed out. I only raised an eyebrow, and he laughed and went on, “I was thinking more in terms of milk and cheese. The cheese you have now isn’t going to last forever.”
Well, that was true. We had plenty of other staples, but some of the perishables like the cheese and the butter were about on their last legs. “Do you know how to milk a goat?” I asked.
“No, but I’ve milked cows. The technique can’t be all that different.”
The way he said it, halfway arch, halfway teasing, just made me shake my head. “Okay, I’ll let you do it. Assuming we can even find any goats. They weren’t exactly thick on the ground, the last time I checked.”
“Maybe not, but there were probably people on the outskirts of town who kept livestock, and I know I saw animal pens up in Nambe as I came down into town.”
“Oh?” I asked. It was the first time he’d made any mention of his journey here. I hadn’t pressed, because I knew better than anyone else that there were some things people just didn’t want to talk about. Even so, I’d wondered about the long walk from Taos, and what he’d encountered on it.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t looking at me, was instead staring to the north and east, presumably in the direction from which he’d come. “Part of the reason it took me so long to get here was that I took the High Road down from Taos. I figured it might be safer to stay off the main roads.”
“And you walked that whole way?” I asked, staring at him with some incredulity. I’d heard of the High Road, but I’d never been on it. The scenic side trip was one that my family had discussed taking a few times, but those plans had never materialized. My father had always been a Point A to Point B kind of guy and was more intent on the destination than on the road that led to it.
Jace gave me a rueful smile. “Not at first. I had a motorcycle, and I’d ridden it before with my backpack, although I know that’s not really recommended. But I thought I could do it if I kept my speed down. Besides, a motorcycle is a lot easier to maneuver around abandoned vehicles.”
I couldn’t argue with that. But a motorcycle wouldn’t have worked for me. I had too much s
tuff to bring, and besides, there was Dutchie. Well, maybe a sidecar….
Turning away from me, Jason surveyed the horizon again. The wind picked up, pulling strands of heavy dark hair out of the piece of thin leather he had wrapped around his ponytail. His hair hung a few inches below his shoulders, and so far I hadn’t seen it in anything but that heavy tail down his back. That hadn’t stopped me from wondering what it would look like, sleek and loose over those broad shoulders.
Which was exactly the wrong thing to be thinking. After I’d lost it the day we’d met, and he’d held me and comforted me, we’d maintained a careful distance between us. I hadn’t noted even a flicker of interest from him. Maybe I wasn’t his type, or maybe it was the far more stark fact that he’d lost not just his family, but his people, his entire way of life. He seemed to be bouncing back fairly well, but it was probably a little self-absorbed of me to think he’d be interested in any sort of romantic entanglements so soon after suffering that kind of shock.
Besides, I wasn’t even sure whether I was interested in anything like that. Yes, Jace was extremely good-looking, and he had an easygoing way about him that I appreciated, after some of the high-strung guys I’d dated in the past, but our focus should be on survival first and foremost. Those other sorts of complications were pretty far down my list of priorities.
And anyway, break-ups were bad enough when you had a decent chance of never seeing the other person again. I didn’t exactly have that luxury at the moment.
Jace didn’t seem to have noticed my preoccupation, since he appeared to be absorbed in studying the far-off outlines of the Jemez mountain range. I noticed that he held something in his hand, a leather thong knotted through a hole in a smooth-polished black stone. His thumb moved over it, the motion reminding me of the worry beads sometimes used by Greek men.
Then he said, “But I picked up something in my tire in Placita. I had a patch kit in my backpack, but it wasn’t just a nail that had blown the tire, but a sharp rock. I lost two nights there, trying to fix it, scavenging around to see if I could find anything to replace it with, but that was a no-go.”
