by Alisha Rai
“No.”
“That’s not good.”
He grunted.
She tried to relax into her seat and will herself to get stronger.
Erik didn’t seem to have any bodily needs that Jules could see. They drove for another solid three hours in complete silence, Jules giving in to her body’s demands and occasionally dozing. She snuck frequent glances at the quiet lump in the back, if only to make sure Carrie still breathed. Her own body temperature was rising, she could feel it.
She opened her eyes to the sound of a quiet “Thank God” next to her. Red and gold streaked the canvas of the sky. Thank God, indeed. She loved the sun, loved watching it creep up and spread its fingers, signaling the end of the dreary night.
The sun meant that, for the next ten to twelve hours, James was safer. They were safer.
Unless their van coughed and came to a jerking halt. Which was what it did. Right along with her heart.
She and Erik looked at each other. Frowning, Erik cranked the engine. Nothing. He cranked it again. Absolutely nothing.
He leaned back in the seat slowly, his long fingers tapping against the steering wheel. “What is the meaning of this?”
“The van’s dead.”
“I’m well aware of that. Do you mind telling me why it’s dead?”
“If I knew, I would love to tell you.”
The scowl he shot her was black. He reached down, popped the hood and got out from the van. Since it was her vehicle, damn it, Jules heaved herself from her seat as well, using the body of the van to support her weight as she rounded the front. They both stared down at the intimidating inner machinery. Her fingers bit into the frame, the steam from inside warming her fingertips.
“What do you know about the operations of this kind of vehicle?”
“It goes vroom on an air-powered battery.” Which meant she had to do very little to keep it running and running fast.
“Air-powered—” His lips curled. “My. Sanctuary sure has moved up in the world since it formed its merger.”
“No kidding. I remember the rust bucket you used to drive.”
“It wasn’t a rust bucket,” he said absently, and peered in closer.
She snorted. “I forgot how much you loved that car. Remember how mad you were when I jacked that BMW for you?”
He ducked his head, hiding his face from her. “I was irritated because you stole it, not because it was a rust-free BMW.”
Jules smiled. Erik’s moralizing had been exactly what she’d needed. Before him, no one had set any kind of boundaries for her. Life was oddly easier to live when there was a clearly delineated right and wrong. “I was trying to give you something befitting your status as the head of our ragtag group.”
“Instead, Tim drove it.”
Her smile faded. How had she forgotten that? Tim had taken the BMW happily. And Erik had continued to drive the same rust-marked Honda he’d had since he’d been a civilian, pre-Illness. “Yeah.”
He turned to look at her. The sun burnished his silver eyes. “It was a nice car.”
She nodded, troubled. “Yeah.”
When she didn’t speak, he exhaled roughly and slammed the hood down. She withdrew her fingers just in time and then leaned against the warm hood to steady herself.
“I don’t know jack shit about cars,” he admitted. “No surprise, if you remember how mine was always breaking down.”
“Neither do I.” She shrugged. “Beyond some basic know-how of hotwiring the luxury models, that is.”
He pursed his lips, hopefully because he was hiding a smile and not because he was considering dumping her and Carrie here.
The van was, after all, a no-go. He was stronger after munching on the doctor and could easily make it to shelter faster on his own. Hell, he could carry fragile Carrie and make it to shelter faster without her. She was the dead weight.
But if he left her, she was plain dead. Sure, she’d be safe enough from the Shadows while the sun was up, but what would she do during the night? How would she protect herself from other humans?
What if she fell into unconsciousness like Carrie?
“I’ll keep up,” she said, careful to keep the pleading out of her voice. It was there, though, and she was ashamed.
His head tilted, the sun making his dark skin glow. “You thought I would leave you?”
“The old you wouldn’t have.” She shook her head. “I don’t know who you are any longer. You’re so much harder, more bitter.” Meaner, even, at times. Like everything that had made him good and kind had been burned.
He turned away from her, staring at the horizon. It must hurt his sensitive eyes to look at the sun like that, but he didn’t flinch. “God’s truth, Jules,” he said, so softly she could barely hear him. “I don’t know who I am any longer.” And then, louder, “Come on. We need to move quickly.”
He moved to the driver’s side. “I’ll see if there is any nearby town on the GPS. Take whatever supplies we can carry.”
Adrenaline fueling her, she walked to the rear doors and opened them.
“Why have you stopped?”
The mutter in her ear made her freeze. Oh God. James.
James was tracking the van. And they were leaving the van here and going off on foot.
Thoughts racing, she called out to Erik. “Maybe we should just stay here. We can barricade ourselves in the van at night.”
He didn’t even bother to look up from the GPS. “That would be great, if this miraculously advanced car of yours also has an optional titanium steel covering.”
“If only,” she muttered. The utility van was large enough to keep her safe while it was moving, but it wasn’t a tank.
“Your stops don’t normally last longer than four minutes,” James said. “You’re on eight minutes now.”
He was timing their stops? Of course he was. He didn’t miss details. And the van was going to be here for far longer than eight minutes.
If only she knew how far away he was. She could probably stall Erik a little, but not enough if James was still a solid day away. They’d be picked off by Shadows before he could get to them.
And she certainly couldn’t tell Erik why they needed to wait. Who knew, but he might really leave her if he was aware they had a tail. And as much as she hated it, she needed him right now.
Her gaze fell on the book of poetry she’d stolen from the library. God, had that only been a few days ago? It felt like weeks had passed.
A glimmer of an idea had her picking up the book. She’d be damned if she’d passively lie down and wait for fate to guide James to her. He could die wandering, trying to find her. Weak, sickly, faint and exhausted she may be, but she still had her wits about her.
She glanced up to the driver’s seat, where Erik seemed absorbed by the GPS. She rounded the van’s passenger side so she was outside of his direct line of sight. Opening the book, she grasped over half of the pages and tugged slowly, trying to be quiet.
R.I.P., book. James would probably have a heart attack at this wanton destruction. She tore the paper again horizontally, so she would have more of the proverbial breadcrumbs, and even she winced. Her pain was linked more to the noise, which sounded amplified, than the desecration of the book.
It wasn’t noisy enough to alert Erik, however. She peered back inside the van to find him still engrossed in the maps.
She grabbed her thankfully large and baggy hoodie. Though her internal body temperature was high enough that she couldn’t feel the nip in the air, she drew the garment on. Most of the ripped pieces of paper got stuffed into the waistband of her pants, under her shirt and sweatshirt. She crumbled a few of the sheets into balls and stuck a handful of them into the pocket of the hoodie, so they’d be ready to toss. The addition made her belly puffier than normal. Hopefully, Erik wouldn’t look too closely at her.
He stepped out of the seat and opened the side door, crouching inside to wrap Carrie in the blankets and fleece.
The paper secur
ed, she returned to packing their supplies, trying to accommodate the necessities as best she could in her two knapsacks. Food and water and medical supplies were what they really needed. She bundled them with a spare change of clothes for her and Carrie. She hoisted the bags out of the rear, her rubbery arms making it difficult to hold. They had barely touched the ground when Erik rounded the back of the van. The fragile teen was held against his chest. Before Jules could try to struggle into the larger knapsack, he picked it up and slung it over his massive arm as if it were a lunchbox. Her thanks was swallowed when he turned around and began marching away.
“This way,” he said over his shoulder.
She made a face at his high-handed behavior but grabbed the smaller bag, putting it gingerly over one shoulder to avoid her wound. Even the slightest pressure sent a wave of pain through her body. She gritted her teeth and followed behind him, not even bothering to try to prove herself by keeping to his pace. It wasn’t worth exhausting herself now, not when this fever showed every sign of getting worse. Plus, she didn’t mind going a little on the slow side on the off chance James was right behind them.
She glanced back when she was about two hundred yards away from the van, and released her first breadcrumb. She would be sparing with them. She had no clue, after all, how long they’d be walking.
To her surprise, Erik realized that she wasn’t at his side about ten minutes into their march. He dropped back to allow her to close the gap between them. She appreciated that he didn’t completely slow to a crawl. Knowing he was within shouting distance made her feel safe enough. “Do you know where we’re going?”
He pulled his—her—sunglasses from his pocket and drew them on. “There was a town on the GPS in this direction. I am hoping there is shelter there.”
She studied the landscape in front of them. She’d never been in Canada, but she hadn’t expected this. It was as flat as some areas of the Midwest, and there were overgrown crops and farmland as far as the eye could see. “Hopefully we’ll find it soon.”
James’s heart pounded, and he wasn’t certain if it was because he was worried over Jules or because he hadn’t slept more than three hours in the past full day. No, two days, since he hadn’t slept during his preparations for his journey either.
Having learned his lesson, he didn’t take his gaze from the road when he reached over to the passenger seat and pulled open another caffeine-laced energy drink. These were so strong that they’d been declared illegal by the FDA back in the days when the country actually had an FDA. He’d been on a steady diet of them.
He glanced at the GPS again as he chugged the drink. Her van had flat-out stopped in Canada a couple of hours ago and hadn’t budged since.
Because of that, he hadn’t bothered to backtrack to the place where he’d gone off road to look for his satellite phone, which was missing from his pocket. He figured it must have fallen when he’d gotten out to dislodge his car. Gabriel would be pissed and worried, but James had no time.
He had to actively remind himself not to think of the fact that, as of now, he was officially on his own.
It was possible that, unlike him, Jules had stopped to sleep. Or maybe she’d found shelter. He hoped for the latter. He really hoped for the latter.
“Sit tight and I’ll be with you by evening, sweetheart,” he murmured. “If you’re someplace safe, I’ll be grateful if you could make sure there’s a shower and a fireplace there. I could use both.”
He pressed his foot harder against the gas pedal, accelerating the car.
Jules almost laughed at James’s words. A shower and a fireplace would be a beautiful thing, but those amenities were farther away than the moon right now.
They’d found a town. A tiny town named Bounty, according to the sign posted on the side of the road.
The “town” consisted of a series of four buildings on a very short Main Street. Jules figured someone with a strong sense of irony had named both the town and the street.
Erik studied the three buildings. “These do not appear to be structurally sound.”
She eyed a dilapidated shack with a weathered sign that said Bounty Theatre in faded letters. “That one doesn’t look bad. Meaning it doesn’t look like it’ll crumble if we breathe on it.”
Erik didn’t appear convinced. “Give it a try.”
She preceded him onto the landing and touched the door. It collapsed backwards.
An unholy urge to giggle came over her, particularly when she realized the entire back wall was missing. She glanced over her shoulder. “Something tells me this won’t be the best shelter for the night.”
If she hadn’t been watching him, she would have missed the slight droop of his shoulders. Nonetheless, he nodded. “Go inside. We must rest for a bit.”
She wasn’t about to argue with that. She entered and collapsed on the ground, uncaring that the wood floor was layered with animal droppings and dirt.
Erik placed the bundled-up, still-comatose Carrie carefully next to Jules, adjusting the teen so her head was on the knapsack. “Stay here. I’ll check the other buildings quickly.”
She nodded and leaned back against the wall, watching as he left through the yawning mouth of the open door.
Her hand stole inside her sweatshirt pocket, taking advantage of his absence to roll up some more of her dwindling stash of breadcrumbs. The crumpling paper sounded so loud to her, she’d been trying to drop back and do it surreptitiously, but it was tough. Luckily, Erik walked far enough ahead of her she didn’t think he’d noticed.
Jules pulled out a handful, the elegant lettering and jagged edges chastising her for her rough treatment. She glanced at the writing, and then went back and read it, the beauty of the words tugging her in. Melancholy settled upon her when she realized this was the bottom half of the page, and she’d probably never learn how the first part of the poem went.
Not important. She crumpled it into a ball, doing the same with a few more, and stuffed them into her pocket, patting them down so they didn’t create such an obvious lump.
She was trying to coax water past Carrie’s lips when Erik came back in. “Any luck?”
He grunted and sat on her other side, removing his sunglasses. The whites around his silver pupils were bloodshot, and she noticed for the first time that tears streamed down his face.
“Are you okay?”
He swiped at his eyes with the back of his dirty arm. “Yes.”
It probably burned like hell, the macho guy. She put the water bottle on the ground and leaned forward to pull open her knapsack, drawing out her first-aid kit. She took aspirin and a bottle of water for herself and handed him a packet of wipes and another bottle of water. “It’ll be cleaner if you wipe your eyes with these.”
He shook his head and returned the packet to her. “We may need these later. Keep them.” He accepted the bottle and motioned for her to keep feeding Carrie.
Carrie’s eyes fluttered open, but she appeared completely unaware of her surroundings, her gaze unfocused and staring. With some coaxing, Jules was able to get more water down Carrie’s throat.
Only after she had drunk what Jules judged to be a sufficient quantity did she take a few gulps of the precious water.
“Finish it,” Erik said, when she tried to recap it with shaking hands. “There is a water well behind one of the buildings, and it does not appear to be dry.”
In that case…she drained the bottle, heaven to her parched throat. Foil crinkled, and she glanced over without interest at the energy bar he held out to her. “Eat. You need energy.”
The granola tasted like cardboard, but the taste didn’t make her want to throw up, which she took as a good sign. Another small sign you won’t turn into a slavering blood-hungry beast! Hooray. “When did your eyes lose color?”
“Within a few hours after becoming ill.” He mirrored her pose, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. “Once, they were darker than yours.”
“I remember.” Ther
e was a trace of sadness and loss in his words, but pure self-interest wouldn’t let her change her line of questioning. “Mine haven’t, have they? I’m not noticing any greater sensitivity to the light.”
“No. As I said, you are also not as sick as I was immediately after. There was no way I could have walked for hours the way you did this morning, even taking into account your tremendous strength of will.”
“You think I have a tremendous strength of will?”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. If she was being wild and crazy, she might call it a smile. “Don’t fish for compliments.”
“I’m not. I’m serious.”
“I knew you had a tremendous strength of will when I first met you.”
“You remember that?”
“Vividly.”
“God, I musta looked like a dirty street rat.”
“You were rather…malodorous.”
“That translated to a strength of will?”
“Well, you got very angry when I refused to let you die.” He stopped.
She glanced at him knowingly. “Because sometimes it’s easier to die than it is to live with everything you’ve gone through. With everything you’ve seen.”
“I assure you, I wish to live, or I never would have come this far.”
“A life on the run? Forever?” She shook her head. “Please.”
“What would you have me do? Take you back to your precious Compound people on either coast? I thought we agreed that they wouldn’t welcome you home.”
“I’ve rethought that,” she shot back. “Besides, you mostly decided, and I was scared and traumatized and ill. You yourself said I’m not as sick as you were. I could get through this fine.”
“Regardless, we can’t trek back right now. Have you forgotten our lack of transport?”
She sighed. “No. I’m just saying, after a few days, when we determine how Carrie and I are doing, and we secure other transport—keep your mind open is all.” Especially keep your mind open to the possibility of my James tracking us down. Please don’t punch him before I can get in between you two.
