by Alex Mersey
Chris opened his mouth to protest, but Williams saw it coming and got in first. “I’ve made an effort to respect your wishes, and to give you space. Perhaps you could return the favor.”
And there it was, the psychological manipulation. The truth, too.
“Chris,” Williams sighed, “you can’t expect me to bring you along to a Silvers compound. Do you even want me to?”
To Chris’ surprise, he actually had to think about that. For about two seconds. “No, I guess not.”
If he never saw a Silver up close in real life, that would be just fine with him. And he wasn’t a total idiot. He knew he’d be a liability if they ran into trouble. “Just don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“I’m not in the habit of—”
“—being stupid,” Chris finished for him. “Yeah, I know, but still.”
“My mission hasn’t changed,” Williams said solemnly, “and I won’t do anything to compromise it.”
That, Chris did believe.
He left them to it, whatever it was, and made his way to the gas station. There was still a half hour to go before Rachel was supposed to meet him, but that was okay. Stuff on his mind and all that.
The Silvers are on the ground.
His nerves jittered just thinking about it. Somehow, it made the alien invasion seem more real, more permanent. Which was almost as ridiculous as it sounded in his head. It didn’t get more permanent than obliterating half the planet within the first day or two. It didn’t get more real than what the news casts had shown before the lights went out, but maybe that was part of the problem. He hadn’t really seen any live action, no one in Little Falls had. Except for Sean and his group—they’d been at Ground Zero, been there when New York City had been churned to dust and rubble around them. But for the rest of them here, the invasion was all very second-hand and putting up with the shitty symptoms.
Chris straddled the low wall by the gas station, his gaze sweeping down the main road of the town. Here and there, a dull glow flickered from behind closed curtains. The streets were quiet, empty, lonely.
A whispering breeze cooled the night air, brushed the treetops across the intersection from him. His gaze pricked the press of pines, looking for shadows, looking for— He cut that thought, shook off the paranoia. The Silvers hadn’t been coy about razing entire cities, why the hell would they be sneaking up on him through the woods?
He spotted the lone figures turn onto the main road two blocks down from Doc Nate’s place. Rachel had brought a friend. Even from this distance, he could tell it was Raven from the willowy shadow and curtain of snow white hair. She was both striking and beautiful, but as always, Chris only had eyes for Rachel. The usual flutter she whipped inside him, however, was somewhat dampened by the cloud raining shit down on his head.
The Silvers battlecruiser.
The president’s casual dismissal of his own flesh and blood.
Williams’ mission to deliver the package to some secured hideout in the Colorado mountains.
Not fair.
Chris knew he was more than just a package to Williams. But the result was the same. He would be delivered, and he’d never see Rachel ever again, so he had no right to feel flutters or anything when it came to her.
The girls approached quickly, Rachel with that long-legged sway bringing her closer and closer until her moonlit silhouette sharpened into the detail. Ripped jeans. Long-sleeved tee falling off one shoulder. Dark hair brushing down her cheek to the curve of her throat.
He wasn’t staring, not really, but his gaze tended to linger, to get stuck, when she was in the vicinity. And his brain was sharing space with so much other shit it took a while, with her standing before him, mouth hitched into an amused smile, to become aware that he was staring like a star-crossed fool.
She framed her fingers to take a photo. “Have you ever considered becoming a poet?”
“I don’t think that’s something one can consider becoming.” He swung a leg over the wall to stand. “You either are or you aren’t.”
“And there’s your profound statement for the day,” Raven said in a droll voice. She hooked an arm into Rachel’s, dragging her along.
“Pity.” Rachel made a sad face at him over her shoulder. “You have the perfect look for it.”
“Slow down with that judgment,” he said as he fell into step with them. “You haven’t heard my poetry yet.”
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
“Yeah, I don’t have any.”
“Gee, what a total surprise,” Raven exclaimed in fake astonishment.
Chris grinned. “I love you, too, Raven Witch.”
“That’s Raving Bitch to you.”
“Shhh,” Rachel whispered and spun out left onto the field of tents.
“Hey.” Chris ran to catch up. “I thought we’re going to the cave.”
“We are.”
“After we swing by the medic tent,” Raven called from behind.
Rachel sent her a look. “What part of shhh don’t you understand?”
“This isn’t a Black Ops mission,” Raven scoffed.
“What exactly is this?” asked Chris. “What’s in the medic tent?”
“Not what,” said Raven.
“Who,” Rachel said.
There was only one ‘who’ in the medic tent, and especially only one Rachel would care about. He’d been recuperating under the army doctor’s watch since the Sunrise Farm shootout, since his gut had literally been shot out. Well, not shot out. According to the doctor, he was lucky the bullet had missed his actual stomach.
“Bran.” Chris tugged on Rachel’s arm to slow her down. “You said he’d been discharged.”
She slanted a high-brow look on him. “I don’t think so.”
“Trust me on this,” Chris said. “You said that’s what tonight’s party is for, because he’s being discharged.”
“Now that I did say.” Rachel grinned at him. “And he will be. That’s where we come in.”
“We’re breaking him out?”
Raven laughed. “You do realize he’s not a prisoner, right?”
“You do realize there’s a reason the doctor decides when to discharge a patient, right?” Chris shot back.
“Oh, Chris…” Rachel turned to walk backward so she could look at him. “Your world is always so linear.” She threw her arms out wide. “When will you learn that life goes round and round in circles?”
This was what drew him to Rachel, besides her general hotness. She was so damn different and quirky. It was also what totally messed with his head. Half the time, he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. The other half, he seriously wished he didn’t.
Chris sighed. “This is a bad idea.”
“I doubt it.”
“And that’s based on your years of medical expertise?”
“It’s based on the fact that I never have bad ideas.” She turned forward again, tramping over the lumpy grassy and wildflowers, finally slowing as they came up behind the medic tent. She grabbed his arm and whispered, “Follow my lead and let me do all the talking.”
“Thank God.” Chris breathed easier. Talking! She’s only going to talk the doctor into releasing Bran. “I thought we were going to cut a hole in the canvas and steal him out from under them.”
Raven slunk into the spot beside him and tut-tutted. “Do you know how much trouble we’d get into for damaging government property?”
“This is exactly why you’re not in charge of good ideas,” Rachel informed him. “Come on.”
Both girls strutted out into the open with a confident, brazen stride.
Chris was more cautious, stalking the moon-shade of the tent. There was a different kind of quiet here than in the town. Shadows moved. Muffled, human noises layered beneath the gusting breeze. Across the clearing, the captain’s tent was dark, the black-out canvas doing its job.
No sign of Williams or Sean. They’d already left, probably to take care of serious business while Chr
is snuck off into the woods to party with a girl. It felt all wrong, although Chris wasn’t sure why. He was just a kid. The world was under attack from above and sideways, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, wasn’t much Williams would let him do about it.
“Chris!” Rachel flapped a hand impatiently to wave him on.
He hurried, following her through the canvas flap. Inside, the lantern was turned way down, depicting a gloomy picture of sterile trolleys and a row of cots, all empty except for the one at the end.
“It’s me,” Rachel sang out.
A man popped out from a blackened corner, nearly crashing Chris’ heart. “Rachel?”
“Hi, Erick, how’s our patient tonight?”
“Sleeping like a baby,” the man said. “The doc wanted to keep him on sedatives one more night to make sure he got decent rest.”
“Then it’s just as well I brought my own company.” Rachel tugged Chris forward and waved Raven over as she introduced them. “Erick is the night nurse.”
“I’m a soldier,” Erick grunted, “not a damn nurse.”
“Then go soldier,” Rachel said with a lilt of laughter. “I’ve got this for a couple of hours.”
“Three hours okay?” he said. “Then I can do a patrol on the ridge.”
“Take four. I’m wide awake and we’ve got a deck of cards to keep us busy. Chris promised to teach us Texas Hold’em Poker.”
“Have fun, kids.” He tipped a salute at them, threw over his shoulder on the way out, “Doc’s in his tent if there’s any trouble.”
“Just like that?” Chris said suspiciously, watching the flap fall back into place behind the man.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve relieved him of a shift.” Rachel explained. “I was spending most nights here anyway, and he did clear it with the doc.”
A familiar twinge of jealousy tightened in Chris’ stomach. He released it with a slow breath. Of course she spent most nights here. She and Bran were best friends: their story. Chris was more inclined to believe it was a whole lot more…or could be. Should be? Whatever, it was the main reason he hadn’t made a move on Rachel this week, despite the many opportunities she enjoyed presenting, not all of them a flirtatious joke—he didn’t think. But Chris hadn’t put that to the test, not with Bran laid up in bed and out of the game.
“When you two are done jabbering,” came Bran’s voice, “I could use some light here.”
“I don’t jabber,” Raven declared.
Rachel went to bring the lantern closer while Chris walked over to his bed. “You’re supposed to be sedated.”
“And miss my own party?” Bran reached under the covers and came up with a fist. He opened his palm to show Chris the two pills nestled there.
Highly skeptical, Chris clamped his jaw as Rachel untucked the blanket and tugged Bran into a sitting position. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and winced, clutching his side.
“You okay?” asked Rachel.
Bran grinned. “Ready to do this.”
“Not quite yet,” Raven said, pointing out the putrid-green hospital gown he wore.
“I stashed clothes under the mattress earlier,” Rachel said. “Grab them?”
Chris stood back to watch the girls fuss over their friend, but when they had to help him tug his jeans up, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut any longer. “Am I the only one worried we could end up killing him?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Bran drawled, flexing a huge bicep. He was built like a linebacker, serious ink rambling from his shoulder up to his throat. “Your scrawny ass is no match for this.”
“I mean the bullet hole in your gut, idiot.”
“You were also shot,” Bran said. “Maybe we should stick you in this bed for a fuckin’ week.”
“In the shoulder,” Chris said. “That’s different and I’m fully recovered.”
“Recovered?” Bran laughed. “Okay, so why don’t you wind up that arm for us.”
Chris glared at Rachel.
She returned the glare. “Wind it up, tough guy.”
Seriously? They both knew he had some residual stiffness in the shoulder, was still doing daily exercises to loosen movement in his arm. What was the matter with him, anyway? Acting like a grumpy old man. Worse, acting like Williams.
He gave Bran his good shoulder to lean on and went back to shutting up. They didn’t encounter anyone on the slow trip across the field, the short distance up the road, and by the time they turned back into the woods, onto the trail that would take them to the waterfall cave, Bran was walking mostly on his own. Chris stopped worrying about him dropping dead.
He tried to let go of the rest, too, but a sense of wrongness scratched beneath his skin. He swatted aside branches more vigorously than necessary, slapped at an overgrown bush as if it had offended him, his irritability hounded by Bran and Rachel chatting, laughing, funning around. As if this were just another harmless prank, as if this were just another night, as if tomorrow would just be another ordinary day, as if—
A pair of fingers snapped in his face. “Chris!”
“What?”
“Did you even hear what I said?” demanded Rachel.
“You said something?”
“Oh, man, worst comeback ever,” Bran groaned painfully. “Don’t you know anything about girls?”
Rachel ignored that. “I said, I’ll return Bran in good condition when we’re done, so you can stop sulking.”
“I’m not sulking about Bran.” Chris heard himself and specified, “I’m not sulking.”
“Then what’s eating you?”
“Nothing,” he muttered. Not the whole truth. Not even close. “Something.”
They pressed forward a couple of steps before Rachel punched his arm. “Well?”
He hesitated, considering the ramifications. Screw it. This wasn’t his secret to keep.
The path squeezed them into single file and Chris took up the rear, raising his voice to reach Raven in the front. “I heard something today about a Silvers battlecruiser. They found one landed and suspect the Silvers are setting up bases on the ground.”
“No shit,” Bran exhaled on a breath.
The single file march came to an abrupt halt as Raven whirled about. “Where?”
Chris tried to remember. “I don’t think he said. Somewhere north of here?” That sounded right. “Yeah, he said north of here.”
“How far north of here?” said Rachel.
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t ask?”
“It wasn’t that type of conversation,” Chris said defensively. “It was more of a ‘shut up and listen’ and ‘don’t tell a soul’ conversation.”
Bran whistled. “Where the fuck do you hang out and am I invited?”
“Times two,” said Rachel.
“Times three,” added Raven.
They looked at him, waiting for more. His cue to come clean, but how would that go exactly? Um, so I’ve known you guys for a week but I forgot to say, I’m actually Christian Merrick, as in President Merrick’s son. Yeah, not lame at all.
“I just overheard someone talking,” Chris said, a cowardly retreat he regretted less than an hour later. They were seated around the fire by the cave and the speculation over the Silvers battlecruiser was running dry. Bran had spread the news and, thankfully, everyone was too busy expressing their own opinions to care where the source came from. The last thing Chris wanted was to field questions from people who assumed he knew more. He didn’t.
But those opinions were soon exhausted.
Jackson strummed his guitar, picking out one tune after the other. The river rushed over rapids nearby, the mountain and forest surrounded them. It was easy, real easy, to pretend life as they knew it wasn’t coming to an irreversible end.
Chris blamed it on the stars and the beer and the girl, always the girl. He hadn’t intentionally gotten Rachel alone…well, he hadn’t planned it. He’d gone to pluck a beer from the fisherman net submerged at
the river’s edge, she’d joined him, and by unspoken agreement, they’d drifted further and further from the sounds of the party.
He rested back against a smooth slab of mountain rock, lifted the bottle to take a swig but lowered his arm again when Rachel stepped in front of him. The way she looked at him, there was no mistaking what was on her mind.
She leant in, pressed her lips to his. A light, playful kiss that didn’t last longer than a breath.
That’s all it took.
His heart thundered with how much he wanted this, wanted her. His free hand wrapped around her, dragging her body close. Her mouth tilted up for a deeper kiss that sent a hot thrill through him. He slid his hand lower, over the curve of her backside, and he got lost there in the taste and feel of her. He wouldn’t have stopped, couldn’t have done it on his own.
But then she looped her arms around his hips and leant back to look into his eyes. “This is definitely something.”
He grinned, feeling somewhat cocky. “Just something?”
“Don’t mock something,” she said, rocking against him in a manner that suggested he was about to get everything.
Shit. He shifted slightly to give his brain a chance. “Rachel, wait, we should talk…first.”
“It’s okay,” she said, her gaze softening into him. “I’m eighteen.”
“Not that, but good to know.” He rubbed a hand over his brow, wondering if he was overstressing this. He didn’t think so. In fact, he was pretty sure Rachel would consider it a minimum requirement before he let her carry out that suggestion.
“I haven’t been completely open about who I am,” he said. “My name is Christian Merrick.”
Her lower lip caught between her teeth and a smile. “Pleased to meet you, Christian Merrick.”
“President Merrick?” Chris pressed when she didn’t make the connection on her own. “He’s my dad.”
She stilled, her face creasing into a quizzical frown, then she burst out laughing.
“I’m serious,” Chris sighed.
The laughter fizzled, dried up. “Yeah, you really are.”
“Rachel, I’m so sorry.”
“No… Oh, my God, I’m such an idiot.” Her arms fell away from around him as she stepped back. “If you didn’t want this, you could just have said. You didn’t need to make up some bullshit about the president.”
