Anna swallowed. “Goddamn it. I could have gone.”
“Just make sure he’s okay when he gets back.”
“I can try, but…it’s not like Kael is talking to me much these days.” She couldn’t meet Elin’s gaze, embarrassed by the admission. “Or looking for me to comfort him. I’ll wake you up, though, if you’re sleeping when he gets back. You can talk to him.”
“Sweetheart, what do you mean Kael isn’t talking to you?”
Anna leaned her head against the cushion, sighing when Elin rolled closer to drop a gentle kiss on her hair.
“He’s just…distant. He’s upset. He…I don’t know.”
“Upset about me?” At Anna’s nod, she said, “He’s scared.”
Anna didn’t even have to think before agreeing. “Yes.” Terrified. I can see it in his eyes every time he can bring himself to look at me.
“He’s scared of caring about something that could be taken away from him.”
“I know. But everyone’s scared of that, right?” Anna packed some cannabis into the bowl of their pipe. It was about time to top up Elin’s pain relief.
“Yeah. Different people just have different ways of dealing with it, I suppose.”
“Well, Kael’s way sucks. You really need to work on him with that.”
“We’ll work on him together, sweetheart.” Elin took the pipe gratefully. “I’ll just give him a kick in the right direction to start.”
“I want to unwrap your hand, put more aloe on it, and let it breathe for a while.”
“I hate seeing it. It’s ugly.” Elin lay back against the pillows and offered her injured hand to Anna. “I just hurt and feel disgusting and horrifying—”
“You’re beautiful.” Anna carefully unwrapped the bandage. “You’re always beautiful, Elin.”
“Just a little banged up right now.” Elin’s eyes were foggy again, though the tight grimace of pain that she had worn after waking was gone. “And cold.”
“You’ve got a bit of a fever. We’re hoping that Kael can find something to help bring that down. Are you hungry?”
Elin blinked and watched Anna uncover her hand. She stuck out her tongue in disgust as the raw flesh was revealed. “I was until I saw that.”
Snickering, Anna gathered some aloe on her fingertips, then began the painstaking process of spreading it over Elin’s sensitive skin. “Then don’t look. I’m going to try to get some food in you once I finish with this.”
In the end, Anna managed to feed Elin half an apple and some dried meat before she succumbed to exhaustion. Listening to her lover breathe, Anna lay back and soon slipped off into sleep with her. She had no idea how much time had passed when she jerked awake later. She hissed at the stiffness of her neck as she looked out the office window with bleary eyes and studied the overcast sky. Elin was still sleeping.
Her mouth hung open and she snored softly.
Anna got to her feet with a low groan. Not the most comfortable nap I’ve ever had, but I’ll take it. She placed her hands on her lower back and stretched. On the large wooden desk, a silver picture frame caught her attention. She picked it up and smiled at the sight of a young man who had his arms wrapped around two sandy-haired children. After a moment of silent scrutiny, she put the picture down and looked out the window again.
Kael, where the fuck are you? You expect me to just sit here and get worried sick about you?
It took only five minutes of internal debate before Anna decided to venture outside of the office, if only down the hallway, in an attempt to divine when the hell Kael would return. Hiding out was going to drive her crazy. As soon as she opened the door, she spotted Kael only fifteen feet down the hallway, facing the wall, forehead pressed against the cool surface. An overstuffed plastic bag sat at her feet, and her backpack lay behind her.
“Kael?” Anna could see the controlled rise and fall of Kael’s chest, and the way her fists were clenched tight at her sides.
“Get back inside, Anna. I’ll be there in a minute.” She turned to stare at Anna with hard eyes. “Where were you going, anyway? You weren’t going to leave Elin alone, were you?”
“She’s sleeping. I wasn’t going to leave the building or anything.” Biting her lip in indecision, she approached Kael and touched her shoulder. “I was just worried about you.”
Kael shrugged and pulled away with a quiet snort.
“You’re barely talking to me. You’re exhausted. You’re…you’re scared of hospitals, and you didn’t even fucking tell me.” Anna’s voice rose as she spoke, all of the anger and frustration of the past few days finally crashing over her. “I thought you were my lover, too, Kael. I thought you were my friend.”
With an uncomfortable look, Kael shifted, then shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “I am your friend. Please, just get back in the office. I’ll be right in, I swear.”
Releasing an exasperated sigh, Anna wrapped her arms around Kael’s tense shoulders. “Stop it, please.”
Kael pressed both hands against Anna’s shoulders in a half-hearted shove. “I’m fine.”
Anna tightened her embrace. “Stop it. Kael, I know about the nightmares. I know what going into that hospital must have done to you. And I promised Elin that I would make sure you were okay when you got back. Just let me be your friend, okay?”
Kael released a defeated sigh. “I threw up…at the hospital. But I got everything we need.”
Anna brought her hand up to cradle the back of Kael’s head. “Thank you for going.” And for telling me, and for letting me hold you for even just a minute.
“I’ve got about twenty-five bottles of water, and the Ohio River is just a few blocks away. I figured maybe we could try washing her at some point soon. I’m sure she’s craving a bath.”
“Yeah, she’ll enjoy that.”
Kael leaned into Anna, accepting more comfort than she had in days. “I forgot how nice this feels.”
“That’s why I’m reminding you,” Anna said. “Just remember that no matter what, I’m here. And so is Elin.
And we both need you right now, okay?”
“Okay.” Kael leaned forward to take Anna’s mouth in a brief kiss then picked up the bags and left, saying, “I understand.”
Anna sighed. I hope so.
The city was deathly still.
Anna trailed her fingertips along the back bumper of a car as she reached it, then tossed a nervous look back at the office building where her lovers slept. I really shouldn’t go more than a block or two away. If she got lucky, Kael and Elin wouldn’t completely flip out when they woke up and found the note she left. If she were even luckier, she would make it back before they missed her at all.
Two weeks trapped inside, and she felt like a prisoner. She needed to breathe fresh air and see the sky above her head. Kael insisted on running all their errands in the city, but it was time she learned that Anna could take care of herself. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life stuck in the role of defenseless girl who takes orders without protest.
Anna looked up and down the deserted street. An orange leaf skittered down the sidewalk on a cool breeze that also blew her hair into her face. After a moment of hesitation, she turned right, toward a blue truck that was parked at the end of the block. She swung the baseball bat casually at her side, attuned to the streets and buildings around her, ready to strike any threat that appeared.
Listening in the city was different from listening in the forest, but she was confident that nobody was within the immediate area. Her fingers relaxed on her weapon, and she started to pay attention to the vacant businesses she passed.
There was a bakery that had the meager remnants of old, desiccated cakes and cookies on display. Anna wrinkled her nose at the twenty-plus-year-old delicacies and looked across the street at a shop that advertised various electronics. Television sets sat in the front window, a dozen blank screens staring out at Anna as she passed by and headed for a sporting goods store at the corner of the block.
A slingshot!
She grabbed it with a satisfied grin. The body was black, with a tan rubber sling, and it had a decent heft to it. Kael would love it. She was surprised he didn’t have one already. Garrett had sure loved his. She was opening a box of steel pellets when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up in sudden awareness. Her head snapped up, eyes immediately drawn to the front door. The flesh of her upper arms pebbled and her stomach flipped in uneasy anticipation. Shivering, certain she was being watched, she scanned the street outside. Everything was as quiet as it had been when she walked in, and then she hadn’t felt anything more than her typical guardedness.
I’m just feeling guilty about sneaking out. After all, Kael has gone out almost once a day for the past week and a half and he hasn’t seen a damn thing. If he had, we would’ve been out of here days ago.
Anna gave the front window one last suspicious glance before finding a large paper bag with cord handles behind the counter. She stuffed the slingshot and pellets into it, then set off to look for a bookstore. Elin was tired of reading the same few books she carried with her, and Anna could imagine how thrilled she’d be with some new ones.
She looked both ways when she exited the sporting goods store, taking in the length of the city block. The long-abandoned buildings stared back at her; the traffic signals and parked cars bore silent witness to her disquiet. Anna continued down the street the way she had been going, scowling at the storefronts as she passed from one block to the next. The fresh air was nice, but she was feeling more creeped out than she’d expected.
By the time she found what she was looking for, she was more than two blocks away from the office building. The sign said Barnes and Noble, and inside the smashed front windows, faded posters advertising books from twenty years earlier fluttered from overturned display stands. Books littered every surface. From the size of the store, there could be thousands of them.
Shaking off her lingering nervousness, Anna tiptoed her way through broken shards, wincing at the crunching noises beneath her feet. Inside the massive store, nothing stirred. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Row after row of books, categorized by subject, surrounded her. To her left was a long wooden counter lined with computer monitors. Old racks of candy and bookmarks sat at each station of the checkout.
For a moment Anna imagined what it must have been like in the days when a store like this would have been filled with people. She smiled at small tables that sat in front of a section of the store that sold coffee and baked goods. Elin would have loved a place like this. Anna could almost visualize her sitting at one of the tables with a hot drink and a stack of books by her side. Maybe I’ll ask Kael if we can stop in before we leave the city. I’d love to watch Elin exploring in here.
She made a slow circuit of the store, reading section names. She lingered at the gay and lesbian literature section, reading the backs of various paperbacks and wondering if Elin had ever read a lesbian novel.
Hoping to find one she’d like, Anna rested her bat against her leg and flipped through the pages of several stories, pausing when a few sexual words caught her attention. She read the entire page of a rather graphic sex scene, then, with rosy cheeks, tucked the book into her bag with Kael’s slingshot.
This one is a definite keeper.
Pleased to have found the ideal gift, she ambled through the general fiction and picked out a couple more novels, one by Virginia Woolf and another by Stephen King, then she hurried toward the front door. Enough time had passed. She didn’t want Kael and Elin worried sick as well as angry.
She turned a corner and looked up at the front door, then stopped dead, paralyzed by the sight of a gray-haired man standing just inside. Oh, fuck. She tightened her fingers on her baseball bat and kept a firm grip on the bag she carried. She trained her face to remain calm even as her heart started thumping in her chest. Of course I had to run into trouble. As if Kael wasn’t going to be mad enough. His body was wiry-thin, but the bare arms exposed by a sleeveless T-shirt were defined and lined with corded muscle. He wore a trimmed mustache, and his stringy hair came to his shoulders. His baggy cargo pants were tattered and stained with age.
“Hello,” Anna said, to break the silence. “How are you?”
He studied her with a wild gaze, looking her up and down. “You sick?” His voice rasped as if he hadn’t spoken in years. “I don’t want no sick people ‘round here.”
Anna shifted under his scrutiny, forcing herself to affect a casual air she didn’t feel. He might be friendly, you never know. “No, sir. I’m not sick.”
“So you say.” He took a step closer, shoes crunching in the broken glass just inside the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
Anna held her ground, raising her bat so that the end rested on her shoulder. “Shopping.”
“You lie,” the old man growled, and his volume rose until he was nearly shouting. “You’re all sick, and I don’t want you ‘round here.”
Anna flinched and glanced over his shoulder to the empty street behind him in pure nervous reflex. Well, he’s not worried about anyone hearing us. His face twitched with his agitation, and he dripped sweat. Then again, I’m willing to bet that he’s a few arrows short of a full quiver.
Anna gave him a respectful nod. “Well, I’ll just be getting out of here, then, and I’ll leave you to your…bookstore.”
“You think so? You think I’m just going to let you waltz out of here to spread your sickness around?”
Anna lowered her bat from her shoulder, holding it out in front of her in a protective stance. “Listen, friend, step aside and let me leave.”
“Oh, I’m not your friend, you diseased little whore,” the man ranted. “You wouldn’t believe the death I’ve seen, and all because of your sickness.” He reached into the back pocket of his pants and withdrew a black object.
Raising it into the air, he pointed it directly at Anna’s face. After only a moment, it registered.
Gun. That’s a gun.
Anna’s mouth dropped open, and she stumbled backwards, still holding the bat that now felt so ineffectual.
She hadn’t seen a gun since the soldiers raided their house only days after her father died, seizing the weapons he kept locked in a closet. The government had sent the military to confiscate all civilian firearms during the sickness and the ensuing riots, and while they surely hadn’t found them all, enough had been hidden away or destroyed so that she had spent the past fifteen years without ever seeing one. The sight of the pistol clutched in this man’s hand turned her knees to water. Where did he get it? Does it work?
Does he even have bullets?
“Are you alone?”
“Listen, guy…just calm down.” Anna held up her hands, bat in one and paper bag in the other. “If you let me go right now, I promise to walk right out of this city and never come back. You can have it.”
The old man waved the gun back and forth in the air, apparently lost in his own paranoia. “You lie. They all lie.”
Fuck this. If I get shot, Kael will never let me live it down…if I live through it.
Not allowing herself the luxury of a second thought, Anna struck out at the man’s gun arm. The blow from her bat landed with a solid thwack, and her would-be assailant screamed in pain as his weapon tumbled to the floor. Anna kicked out at the gun, sending it skittering beneath the front counter nearly twenty feet away. As the man tried to scramble after it, she
threw a hard punch to the side of his head with the hand that still held the paper bag. Then she took off running, out the front door and straight into the solid chest of a lean man.
She gasped, then cried out in relief when she realized that it wasn’t a man at all. It was Kael.
“Anna, what the fuck—”
“Quick, let’s go!” Anna looked frantically over her shoulder, half-expecting to see the gray-haired man with crazed eyes stumble out of the bookstore waving his pistol. “He’s got a gun. A man in there.”
Kael blinked at that, then shoved Anna aside with an impatient hand. Drawing her sword, she rushed into the bookstore. “To your left,” Anna shouted. “I kicked it under the counter.”
She gulped a breath as she heard a quiet groan followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor. The absence of a gunshot meant that Kael was the victor in their confrontation, but Anna could only draw comfort from that for a few seconds. Now he’s going to stroll back out here and finish the job that lunatic started. She contemplated making a run for it back to the office. Elin wouldn’t let him kill me.
When Kael emerged from the bookstore, it was with steely eyes and a grim face. The blade of her sword dripped red blood; her entire body trembled with quiet tension. “He’s dead.”
“I could have gotten away,” Anna said. “He wasn’t going to catch me.”
“He wouldn’t have had to catch you, not with a gun.”
“If he even had bullets,” Anna whispered, and lowered her eyes to the bag she held, a glimpse of the cover of the Virginia Woolf novel inside.
“That’s irrelevant,” Kael snapped. “He had a gun, Anna. What the fuck is wrong with you? Can’t you follow simple instructions? I told you not to go out.”
Kael’s condescending tone raised her hackles, and Anna demanded, “Did he have bullets?” I had that asshole beaten. I took care of myself, but Kael will never admit that. “I know you must have checked the gun.”
“The gun wasn’t loaded. That’s not the point. You aren’t supposed to be out here alone, and you know it. I don’t understand. Are you stupid or just suicidal?”
The Three Page 17
