by Cari Hunter
Together they padded out the tiny floor space, filling the shelter with the scent of fresh pine.
“Smells like Christmas,” Alex said, arranging one of their blankets on top of the vegetation.
“Oh, you had to bloody well say it, didn’t you?” Sarah muttered without malice. “Now I’m craving turkey with all the trimmings and Christmas pudding with custard.” Her stomach rumbled loudly. “God, I’m hungry.”
“Me too.” Alex’s mouth was watering at memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, and she wondered vaguely at how easy it had been to take such luxury for granted. Never again, she resolved, as she dragged their bags inside the shelter and then pulled into place the two large, leafy branches she had set aside to use as a door. For a few seconds, the only sound was the quiet movement of air as they breathed. Then Sarah giggled.
“Can’t see a bloody thing now.” She reached her hands out and patted Alex on the face, feeling Alex’s lips curl upward as she smiled. Alex dropped away from her and there was a rustling noise before a yellow glow dimly illuminated the shelter.
“Probably be okay to use this if we keep it covered,” Alex said, and Sarah realized she had wrapped the polka dot boxer shorts over the beam of the flashlight.
Sarah folded her arms tightly as the warmth generated by their recent exertion was leeched away by her wet clothing. She looked at Alex, who seemed to be considering exactly the same thing, and she shrugged as if to answer Alex’s unspoken question. They moved without speaking, kicking off wet boots and socks and then beginning to strip off their pants. Alex sat down first and pulled the blanket aside for Sarah to huddle beneath once she had finally managed to unpeel her soggy combat pants. Their spare socks were still dry despite the trek through the river. Sarah squinted at them in an attempt to distinguish one pair from the other, before distributing them at random. She pressed her bare legs against Alex’s, not caring about propriety, and felt Alex try to shuffle even closer to her.
“Summer berries or chocolate chip?” Alex asked, holding two granola bars close to the light to read their packaging.
“Surprise me,” Sarah said, and was pleasantly surprised to be handed half of each. She ate each piece slowly, savoring every mouthful and hoping that drinking plenty of water would persuade her aching stomach that it was satisfied.
“We’re a bit low on water.” Alex tilted the bottle as she took it back from her. “Should have filled up at that last stream we passed.”
The stream was fifteen minutes or so from the clearing. Sarah remembered it vividly, having stumbled into that as well.
“There’s enough to last us the night,” she said. The last thing she wanted to do was leave the shelter, now that she was finally starting to feel warmer. Alex was apparently thinking along the same lines, because she nodded in agreement. “Do we need to keep a lookout?” Sarah whispered.
“I don’t think so, not while it’s this dark anyway. Maybe from dawn onward.”
Sarah felt Alex tug at her arm, encouraging her to lie down. She was bone-weary and made absolutely no attempt to resist. She turned her back toward Alex, suddenly feeling uncertain and terribly shy, but Alex wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer until they were spooning cozily.
“This okay?” Alex murmured, her breath heated against Sarah’s cheek.
Sarah nodded, but her throat clamped down tightly on any sound she tried to make, and a warm flush crept across her skin. “Fine,” she eventually managed. “Warm.” She squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to say something of more than one syllable. “Nice.” Behind her closed eyelids, she rolled her eyes in despair.
“We’re already sharing a damn toothbrush,” Alex drawled lazily in her ear. “Hell, Sarah, we’re as good as married.”
The natural mattress beneath them creaked and rustled as they began to laugh. Any feelings of awkwardness completely banished, Sarah pressed herself back into Alex’s embrace and drifted to sleep, trying to imagine what Alex would look like on Christmas morning.
*
At first it was only a twitch, something easily mistaken for the natural movement of someone who was dreaming. It brought Sarah to that halfway point of being not quite awake but not entirely asleep. She was aware that her toes were cold and that something hard and gnarled was pressing uncomfortably against her ribs, but above all, she was aware of Alex sleeping alongside her, which was why she did not try to alter her position. Another more violent jolt from Alex prompted her to open her eyes. Pitch-black surrounded her. Through cracks in the shelter’s walls she could see lines of silver, but Alex had done a good job, and there weren’t enough gaps for the light to make a real difference. She could hear Alex’s rapid breathing, the rate becoming even more elevated as she attempted to twist free of the blanket. Wide-awake now, Sarah put her hand on Alex’s shoulder and felt the muscles tense as if readying for a fight.
“Alex?”
In response, Alex kicked out with a shrill yelp. Her feet caught one of the loose branches of the door and knocked it askew.
“Shit.” Sarah scrambled to repair the gap, not wanting to lose precious heat from the shelter and terrified that Merrick would be close enough to hear the commotion. She flicked the flashlight on. “Alex,” she whispered with more urgency.
Alex’s face was wet with tears. The wall closest to her shook when her fist crashed into it. Acting instinctively, Sarah used both hands to restrain her, and when that failed, she leaned over her bodily in an attempt to stop her thrashing about.
Even in the midst of a nightmare, the sensation of being pinned down had a terrible effect on Alex. Sarah watched horrified as she immediately froze for an instant, and then whimpered and curled herself into a fetal position.
“Jesus.” Sarah quickly let go and moved away, but she couldn’t bear to sit aside and do nothing as Alex began to cry hopelessly. Unsure how else to help, Sarah shifted herself carefully until she could rest Alex’s head in her lap. She rearranged the blanket to cover them both and began to run her fingers through Alex’s hair.
Sitting so still, barely daring to breathe, Sarah didn’t know how much time passed. It seemed like hours and then no time at all before Alex stopped crying and gradually responded to Sarah’s touch, allowing her body to relax. Her fists unclenched, and although her eyes remained closed, she wiped her face with her hand.
“Wh—” Alex heard the croak of her own voice and licked her dry lips. For a disorientating moment, she had no idea where she was, why everything smelled so strongly of pine, or why she seemed to be lying on a cushion that felt distinctly like bare skin. “Fuck.” She stopped trying to dry her face and instead buried it in her hands. Bile hit the back of her throat, but she clamped her mouth shut, determined not to compound her humiliation by throwing up. Her entire body ached as if she had spent hours bracing herself for a punch. When she groaned, cool fingers touched her cheek, as if trying to soothe away whatever it was that hurt. That touch felt so good that she kept her eyes closed, waiting for the nausea to pass and the terror that clung to her like a spider’s web to melt slowly away.
“Sorry,” she whispered, once she was sure that she could speak. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I know. It’s okay,” Sarah said, her fingers stroking through Alex’s hair again. Without comment, she took her cue from Alex, moving when she moved, until they were sitting side-by-side, close but no longer touching.
Alex unconsciously adopted the position she always did after a nightmare, drawing her knees up to wrap her arms around them. Setting her feet flat on the floor stopped the shaking in her legs, but she could feel the fine tremors that continued to course through her body. “What time is it?” she asked, for want of anything else to say.
There was a flash of luminous green as Sarah briefly lit the dial on her watch. “Three forty-two.”
Alex made a non-committal noise. “Three’s about my witching hour.”
“Yeah?” Sarah said, the strain in her voice obvious as s
he tried to keep her tone light. “Mine’s a little earlier. Two or so, usually.”
“Been doing okay since I came out here.” Alex reached out to run her fingers along the rough wall. “I guess all this is stirring stuff up.”
“Probably.”
Alex heard her inhale shakily, but she didn’t say anything else. Alex picked at the wood beneath her hand, hating herself for not having been strong enough or brave enough just to tell Sarah what was going on. Despite the flashlight, it was dark in the shelter, sufficiently dark to hide Alex’s face, and as if from a great distance, she finally heard herself say, “I got hurt. That’s why I left the force, because I got hurt.”
“The scars on your back,” Sarah said. It sounded like more of a realization than a question, and the words seemed to come out tinged with sadness.
Alex turned slowly toward her, torn between relief at having part of her story already told and sorrow that Sarah hadn’t felt able to ask her about it.
“In the hut, I saw…I didn’t know what to say,” Sarah whispered. “So I didn’t say anything.” Her sleeve smeared wet dirt across her face when she wiped tears away. “I’m so sorry, Alex.”
Alex used her own sleeve to clean Sarah’s cheeks properly. “I don’t really tell anyone.” She touched her knuckles to Sarah’s chin, letting her know she was finished, and then took a grateful sip of the water that Sarah held out to her. “But I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It was different with you. I wanted so much to tell you everything.” She looked around at where they were and gave a small smile. “It was kinda hard to find the right moment, though.”
“Is this the right moment?” Sarah asked evenly.
Alex nodded, but tears dripped off the end of her nose and splattered on the water bottle she was still gripping.
“There were two of them,” she managed to say before she lost her nerve completely. “Twin brothers. They’d attacked a young girl, raped her and cut her, then left her for dead. We were almost at the end of our shift when we saw them. They ran, and I ended up following them into an alley. Jack—he was my partner—he was too far away to help me.” She put her hand to her mouth, almost gagging at the remembered stench of garbage rotting in the stagnant heat. “They hit me, knocked me down, and dragged me into a building.” Cold sweat made her shirt cling to her back, and she shuddered. Sarah didn’t say anything, but just reached up to take Alex’s hand from her mouth and held on to it tightly.
“I managed to kick out at one of them,” Alex said, willing Sarah to understand how hard she had tried to get away, “but I was so scared. We’d all seen the photos of the kid they’d hurt. I felt―” She gulped convulsively for air. “They forced me to lie facedown and one of them lifted my shirt. I felt the knife and then he started to cut me. I screamed, but no one came. I didn’t think anyone would find me in time.”
“But they did,” Sarah said. “Someone found you.”
“They found me.” Alex nodded and her breathing became less labored. “What happened between then and when I woke up in the hospital is pretty hazy, but I remember asking Jack what they’d done and the look on his face when he told me. I could feel the pain across my back, but mostly I just felt relief because…”
“Because that was all they’d done,” Sarah finished.
“Yeah.” Alex’s throat closed on the word, but she forced herself to continue. “Because that was all they’d done.”
Outside, somewhere above the shelter, an owl hooted twice. Grateful for the interruption, they both looked up, even though there was no way they would be able to see it. Alex took another sip of water and then carefully screwed the top back onto the bottle. She offered it to Sarah, who set it aside without drinking. She was studying Alex as if she knew there was worse to come.
“He didn’t just cut me,” Alex said, into the expectant stillness. “He carved the word bitch into my back. I spent a month in and out of the hospital. It took three skin grafts to cover the damage, but you can’t really see what he did now.” She saw Sarah’s eyes open wide with horror and felt a slight pang of regret. There had been no real need to give so much detail, but somehow she felt compelled to tell her every last one of her secrets. “I went back to work, but everything was different. People looked at me with this weird tilt to their heads.”
“Oh, this one?” Sarah gave her the exact faux-sympathetic, dewy-eyed look that Alex had grown so utterly weary of.
Despite herself, Alex laughed. “Fuck me, that’s perfect,” she said.
Sarah smiled with her. “It’s the look that says ‘you poor dear, it must be so awful, now please tell me all the gruesome shit so I can gossip about you on Facebook.’” Her tone held an edge so familiar that Alex was reminded, not for the first time, how much they had in common in terms of shitty experiences.
“Everyone tiptoed around me, waiting for me to break, and I guess I did,” Alex admitted. “When I got the job out here, Jack told me I was running away.” She averted her gaze, ashamed all over again, but Sarah cupped her chin and turned her face into the light.
“Sometimes you need to run away,” Sarah said, tracing her finger across Alex’s bottom lip.
Alex swallowed, her stomach suddenly flip-flopping with nervous anticipation. “Never know what you’ll find when you do,” she managed.
“No, you don’t.”
They met halfway, their lips brushing together in the barest of caresses. It sent a shock of sensation through Alex, and she tangled her fingers in Sarah’s hair to pull her closer and kiss her properly. Sarah’s lips parted, chapped skin giving way to warmth and softness, and Alex could taste the salt of tears and something earthier that was probably dirt. She smiled, slightly bewildered by everything that was happening to them. She felt Sarah smile with her, and when she pulled back, the green in Sarah’s eyes seemed bright even in the dull light.
“Muck and chocolate granola,” Sarah said with a grin. “How’s that for romance?”
“At least it’s original,” Alex countered easily. “Hearts and flowers are such a cliché.” She traced the contours of Sarah’s face with her fingertips and sighed. “I hate to say this, but we should probably get some sleep.”
She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want dawn to break and the reality of where they were and the danger they were in to come crashing back upon them. She wanted to stay in that warm, safe little shelter, cut off from the outside, spending hours learning every part of Sarah. She kissed her again, only pulling away when they both ran out of breath. This time, as they lay down there was no awkwardness between them, and Sarah slipped her arms beneath Alex’s shirt to clasp her bare midriff.
“Just because it’s warmer,” she said innocently.
There was no way Alex was going to believe that, but then she certainly wasn’t going to complain, either. She covered Sarah’s hands with her own and, despite the longing that felt like a physical ache, she allowed her eyes to close.
*
A rustle of cloth and a groan of revulsion were the first things to greet Sarah when she awoke. The shelter was still dark, with no sign of light peeking through the walls. She squinted at the green glow as she lit up her watch: 5:46 a.m. Although she knew they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere until dawn at the earliest, there was no chance now of her going back to sleep. Alex also seemed to be wide-awake. She had moved closer to the entrance, and the beam from the flashlight was casting her shadow against the wall. Sarah rubbed her eyes and rolled over in time to see Alex screw her face up as she pulled her pants on.
“Ugh, that feels so gross,” Alex muttered.
Sarah watched her stretch her legs and then rub at the material in an attempt to warm it. It was only when she bent low to reach her calves that Sarah reluctantly cleared her throat.
“Oh, hey,” Alex said, not sounding the slightest bit self-conscious.
With an easy smile, she dropped to her knees and kissed Sarah. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, and it surprised Sarah that there was no a
wkwardness between them, none of the stiffness that sometimes plagues the morning after those first tentative moves that prospective couples make toward each other. When they finally broke apart, she kept Alex’s face cupped in her hands.
“That feel better than your trousers?” she asked, teasing the soft skin at the corners of Alex’s mouth with her thumbs. In lieu of an answer, Alex turned her head slightly and captured one of the thumbs between her lips. Sarah took a ragged breath; there was a promise in Alex’s eyes that was doing very strange things to her knees. “Forgot about the spare pairs we pinched, didn’t you?” she said.
“Shit.” Alex looked toward their bags. “Yes, I did.”
Back at the hut, not knowing how long it would be before they found help or help found them, Alex had decided to take all of Merrick’s clothing. Now she pulled the pants out of the backpack and held them against herself.
“Bit long on me, so we might have to hack a couple of inches off for you,” she said, and then her eyes closed with pleasure as she pulled on a clean, dry pair in place of the muddied ones she had been wearing. “Oh God, I think I’m in heaven.”
Sarah fastened the zipper on her own pair and Alex opened her eyes to see what she was laughing at.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh,” Sarah said mournfully. “I think these might constitute a trip hazard.” Her feet were nowhere to be seen, the material of each leg bunching on the floor of the shelter. Fastening her belt as tightly as it would go just about kept the pants on her hips.
Alex turned Sarah’s wrist and lit up the dial on her watch to calculate how much time they had before they could leave. Her shoulders dropped as she relaxed slightly. “Right then. Let’s see what we can do here.” She held her pocketknife between her teeth as she adjusted the material and then used the blade to slice cleanly through the cloth. “Reckon you’ll be a trendsetter soon as we get back. The distressed look is very now,” she said, once she had cut both pants legs to a satisfactory length.
