by Angela White
Kendle used thick knots to tie the net to the remaining guardrail on the faded orange and white speedboat, finishing as a wave broke over the side and soaked her from shoulders to toes in cold saltwater.
Her vision faded a bit, blurring, and she was thrown backward in time to the storm that had taken her sister just days after they’d snuck off the doomed cruise ship.
“Hold on!”
“Help me!” the terrified girl screamed again, nails drawing blood from Kendle’s wrist. The weight of the rail that had ripped away from the boat was pulling her down toward the angry sea, where the rest of their group, also still anchored to the heavy metal, was fighting for every breath.
“Dawn!”
Their wet fingers slipped, and the screaming teenager was yanked off the boat as Kendle jerked frantically on the rope around her other wrist, unable to get free to follow.
“Dawn!”
Bam!
Kendle screamed as the speedboat was hit hard from underneath, rising out of the water. It tossed her against the steering wheel and stars burst across her vision. Her hands found the wide, wooden spokes as the craft plunged down.
It slapped up sprays of water and she barely kept herself from flying out, arm wrenching painfully.
Bump, splash. Bump!
The boat rocked violently from the hits, and she held on to the wheel, heart thudding at every creak of waterlogged wood.
Thud. Splash!
Her shark was back. She saw the fin, watched it roll over, and realized her net was wrapped around the shark’s streamlined body.
It was trapped. If it dove, she would go under too.
Do something! her mind screamed, and she approached the wildly thrashing animal, fingers going for the net.
No time! the panic denied, water sloshing into the shallow boat as the shark tried to roll itself free. Kill it!
How?
The claw hammer was still buried in the shark’s eye, the long handle being pried loose by the ropes of her net, and she grabbed the biggest can she had.
Kendle hefted it up, trying to wait for the right moment.
The Great White suddenly plunged downward, pulling the boat with it, and as water poured, she swung, slamming the heavy can down on top of the hammer to drive it in deeper.
A sound of agony was ripped from the shark. More a vibration than a noise, the cry was one of a fatal wound, and Kendle shoved herself back against the side of the boat to rebalance, shivering.
She had killed a shark.
That was something she hadn’t done before, when she couldn’t wait to face nature’s challenges.
After a minute, the shark stopped moving, blood leaking out into the softly lapping waves, and Kendle forced herself toward the corpse, spine and shoulder on fire. She ripped the hammer out of the animal, the tearing sound making her gag, but she didn’t stop, swinging the slimy weapon right back into the shark’s meaty area.
She ripped out a big chunk, coughing and retching. When her thumbnail tore off, she didn’t notice her blood mixing with that of the shark.
Kendle wrapped the meat in a towel, and then untied the carcass, not sure if she had taken it to eat or to simply know the shark was dead. She felt the tears rise again and didn’t stop them this time.
The boat and the sisters had barely survived the rollover–being right by the stairs had saved them–but after three days of looters, fights, illnesses spreading, and drunken pounding on the door, Kendle had chosen to get off the crippled ship before they were dragged from their staterooms. Others had been–they’d listened in horror–and on the fourth morning after the tidal wave, she and Dawn had crept out to one of the three remaining lifeboats.
There had been five men already there and the girls had gone with them willingly. It had to be better than the rapes and murders on the boat that had started when the captain admitted he had no idea how to fix the ship and get them home. He’d said he didn’t even know for sure where they were, and then barricaded himself in the wheelhouse.
One day after the seven of them jumped ship; they found the speedboat, its owner appearing much like the bodies they’d left on the doomed cruise liner. When the engine fired up, they’d all been crying, hugging. It hadn’t lasted long. The boat’s radio, compasses, and lights were out, the fuel used up before daylight, and the speed runner had come to a heartbreakingly slow stop with no land in sight.
“Lost two in the first week,” she croaked, hating the sound of her rough voice, but needing to hear it just the same. “Didn’t even know their names.”
The third to go had either fallen in or jumped, and was hit by something Dawn had sworn was the roof of a house. He hadn’t come up, and the loss hadn’t registered.
There had been little conversation after that. Talking required awareness and no one wanted that until there was hope to go with it. They had survived by fishing garbage out of the ocean, slowly adjusting to life on a world that was never still.
Kendle had been marking the boat each morning since the storm that had taken the rest of her companions. It wasn’t the longest stretch she’d done–that would be her eighty-eight days spent hiking from one end of the Colorado to the other–but it was the first time she was totally without backup. She had no phone, no camera crew with access to the outside world.
“On my own for real this time.” Kendle’s skin felt hot as she turned to stare at the chunk of shark meat. “‘Cept for you.”
She laughed again and when it became sobs, she rocked herself gently for comfort. She would get through this the same way she had all the other trials. One day at a time.
The sun vanished slowly, leaving eerie, beautiful trails of green and orange that threw strange shadows over the deep, dark waves, and Kendle huddled in the middle of the boat while she dozed. She was miserable and heartbroken as the fading sun left her with only her sense of hearing and smell, both of which checked in and recorded lapping water but nothing more.
Maybe the land was gone. Maybe that was why she was finding so much of the world in the water. A war? Hell, maybe an asteroid had hit and flooded the earth. If so, she hoped the waters receded soon and set her ark on a mountain before she went mad. Out here, she was defenseless.
Chapter Nineteen
Cabin Fever
February 23rd
Illinois
1
“No, please. No more bodies. There’s no more room for them!”
Angela’s words brought Marc instantly awake, and he rose up on one elbow to peer at her tear-stained cheeks in the dim lantern light. Dog was also observing her as she cried in her sleep.
“Angie?”
There was no answer. She was having another nightmare. It wasn’t the first time she had woken him this way, and though he hadn’t said anything, it bothered Marc that he couldn’t protect her in her dreams. Any small part of him that had been wondering if she was exaggerating so she could play two ends against the middle was gone. Their first week together had revealed what she hadn’t told him, and he was furious.
How could anyone treat her badly? She’d been affectionate, passionate, and he loathed her man for changing that. He’d never felt hate so strongly.
“It’s how he was raised. He didn’t know any other way to deal with someone like me,” Angela answered his thoughts.
Marc jumped and gave her an awkward smile, having to pry his gaze from the long dark curls messed sexily over her shoulder. “You would have made a good Marine,” he stated, not wanting to hear her defend someone who had obviously hurt her so much.
Angela sat up, pulling the thick quilt tighter. She scanned pictures of foreign, seductive landscapes and the dark, dirty windows instead of looking at him. “Not me. I don’t kill. I won’t.”
He grimaced at her argumentative tone, wondering if it was the dream or something she had picked up from him.
“You okay?” he asked carefully. Her face was pale in the orange glow of the propane heater.
“I will be. Rough night.�
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Marc grunted. Five or six this week. “Wanna talk about it?”
Angela tried to imagine telling him about her life of rape and assault, and total, unforgiving control. She shut her eyes against the shame and betrayal she thought she had come to terms with long ago.
“No. How about you tell me something from your life I don’t know. Shouldn’t be hard.”
He ignored the tone. “Like what? After the war? Before?”
“Tell me something from our past, the answer to one of the questions we used to ask each other.”
“Why?” Marc asked. His mind was again screaming ambush from the almost resentfully spoken words. He could almost hear her telling herself to let it go, to preserve the careful peace they’d been sharing, and couldn’t allow it. “The truth is all that’s left now. Tell me why.”
She opened her eyes, and he was only a little surprised by the coldness of her gaze.
“Because I need to know what was more important than the way we felt. I need to understand why. What was worth more than the love you left behind and forgot about?”
Marc pulled in a wounded breath, reeling from the blow. “I’ve never said it was worth it, and I never forgot you!”
“Clearly it was, or you would have at least had the decency to tell me where we stood!” Her words fell like chips of frosted glass. “You weighed the old life against the new one and if you ever looked back, I never knew. Last thing I heard was ‘I’ll find you.’ And don’t give me that ‘it was for the best’ crap, because it wasn’t.”
“I wouldn’t. I did a lot, helped a lot of people, but I’ve never considered it a fair trade. For the most part, it’s been lonely…cold. I’ve spent the last decade aware that I made a mistake.”
She shrugged, not interested in his apologies and too angry and hurt to be afraid of arguing with him. Their breakup and her life with Kenny was all she could think about at night, and the pain in his voice was finally a balm to the old Angela.
“Tell me something I don’t know about your life,” she repeated tonelessly.
“I don’t... Okay. You remember how we wanted matching tattoos? I have four now. Three can be shown in public.”
That caught her off guard, and he spied a flash of the old Angie, his Angie, in her response.
“I’m public. Let’s see ‘em.”
Not expecting that, he reluctantly pushed up his camouflage sleeve to reveal a simple, thin green band around his thick arm, its edges artfully spiked. The other sleeve hid a neat Marine emblem, an eagle on top of the earth. She lingered on his muscles as she wondered against her will where the politically incorrect one was. Ass?
“And the third?”
Amused at the hesitation, she threw a rare grin. “Come on. You said three were politically correct.”
Marc stared at her. It had been so long! He was immediately sorry her already swinging mood was about to take a hit. He uncovered slowly, hating the fear on her face when his hands went to the buckle of his dusty jeans. He only slid the waistband over his hip a couple of inches as he rolled toward her.
“I know those. Those are Recon wings. Kenny has the same–” she stopped, heart clenching as she read it. Kenny had the traditional “Mother” in the center of his. Marc had “Angie Forever.”
Their eyes met, locked, and memories swirled between them, old and powerful.
“You’ll love me forever?” the girl asked softly, terrified to trust.
The boy kissed her tenderly as his hips pushed between her long legs. “Just that long. Not a second more.”
She smiled, leaning into his thrust.
Marc turned away with a heavy heart. That moment had been a very long time ago, but right now, it felt like yesterday. He had to fight with himself not to go to her, not to tell her how he felt or that he had come for her. It had been too late then, and it was too late now.
The big timber wolf stretched, yawning widely before following his master, and Angela examined Marc’s big shoulders as he lit the stove. Her name on his tanned hip flashed through her mind, and she slammed her eyes shut. She was sure it had been done when he was fresh into the Corps and still pissed at his mother for putting him there. If their love had meant so much, he would have come for her, right? He hadn’t, and in the years that had passed, he’d changed.
The boy she’d loved had been her willing slave on most things, her ally and best friend. This new man was closed off, adept at keeping to himself, and she missed their intimacy, hated the circumstances preventing them from having it again. It’s for the best, her fear whispered. What if friendship wasn’t enough?
Angie gave the old dream only a brief glance before shoving it behind the doors. Kenny would never let her go. The question didn’t matter.
Relieved when her even breathing told him she’d fallen back to sleep, Marc was certain any of the things he might have said would only have caused more tension. They were mostly avoiding the old wounds, concentrating on sorting out an efficient travel routine. In that way, he knew he’d pleased her.
They’d made one hundred twenty-seven miles in the week since leaving the wounded brothers behind, compared to the one hundred twenty Angie had made in nine days alone, and they rotated the cooking and cleanup chores. She had expected to do all the work despite the agreement, and it bothered Marc to see her staring, wondering if she could still trust him or if he was up to something. She was jumpy, always staring over her shoulder or reaching for the comfort of her gun. She never asked if they were safe, wouldn’t have believed him anyway, he guessed, and he’d begun doing things to make her feel better, like walking the perimeter often and always using the motion alarms. Marc was determined to show her that he could keep her alive, that she could count on him.
He also kept his distance and kept his mouth shut, sure that when she relaxed a little more, she would realize he was still the same man who had taken her virginity with sweetness and care. Feeling himself stir at that hot, shadowy memory, Marc motioned the wolf to stay, pulled on his coat, and stepped out into the cold Illinois air.
They were camped in a large, one-room log cabin deep in the Eagle Creek Recreation area, this particular building chosen for its complete lack of Christmas decorations. The area he had chosen was on the farthest edge of the resort complex, away from the main clubhouse and lavish apartments. He’d shunned the golfing side, choosing instead to hole up deep in the campground. It was almost serene here, no damage visible thanks to the thick forest around them, and he was glad they had finally cleared the St. Louis quake zone.
The cabin had no yard to speak of, just dense willow and oak trees that hung thickly over the rustic rails. Marc hefted himself into the canopy, wanting to see what (who) was around them, but even with his scope, the leaves were too thick to pick out the shapes of the wealthier resort area. Only the shadows of blackened foliage told him that Angie’s words of a huge fire were true. Not that he’d doubted her.
Frowning, Marc stayed in the tree. Their first week together had been smooth. Even crossing the ugly, swollen Mississippi River had been easy, by using an out-of-the-way dam. He tried to do things for her, but she was stubborn, always insisting on the hardest path. The tone of her voice begged for another mile each time he asked if she was ready to stop for the night, and he always gave in. As a result, she was exhausted, and he was tired, so much that they weren’t unpacking anything but their bedrolls and the heater most nights. Marc sighed again. She needed a break. Soon, they both would.
2
Angela awoke abruptly, instantly sure that other than the wolf, she was alone in the chilly room. She concentrated, worried Brady had tired of babysitting her and left, but she found him outside and tried to relax. Between the fear of Kenny’s reaction hanging over her like a noose and her dreams of the twins, she was freaking out a little. She knew Marc was noticing it and was grateful for the things he did to make her feel better, but there would be hell to pay once Kenny–
Something’s coming.
A door appeared in her mind, pulling, and she immediately twisted the knob. The twins?
An icy wind blew her hair around as she stopped in the doorway, knowing not to go further, and she shivered as she peered into another world.
This landscape was blanketed by a thick blizzard and dotted with the shadowy forms of people, but only one of them–a dirty blonde with a nasty limp–actually appeared alive as she plowed determinedly through the knee-high drifts. She came toward where Angela stood on the threshold, the edges of her dirty trench coat dragging over the deep snow to leave a clear trail.
This world was solid white except for the people; even the trees were bent, covered in ice. Angela thought she saw a pack of dogs in the far distance, but she wasn’t sure. The other people paid no attention to the open door, but the blonde limped straight toward her, frozen eyelashes glistening like jewels.
It’s coming. Get ready.
There was a radar map in the woman’s eyes, like a reflection of an old weather broadcast. Angela’s heart raced as she realized that she and Marc weren’t the only ones in the path of the massive winter storm moving in from the south. Her son was in danger, along with all the people he had joined at Safe Haven.
A strong wind pushed against her as the door slammed shut, echoing, and Angela jerked upright, eyes flying open. She would wait until the snow was falling before she sent the warning–Kenny would never believe her otherwise–but it was coming, and they would all have to get ready.
Fear raced through Angela. She had to call Kenny. He was about to find out the first rule she had broken. He would know for sure that she was on her way.
