“We need to get moving.” He hands me my jacket, which is splattered red. “If you see anything you need and can carry on the way out, grab it.”
“But…”
He’s already moving toward the storefront, eyes dead ahead.
I ball up my fists. “We just killed someone! Can’t we take a minute?”
“I’d rather we didn’t.”
“How can you be so callous? I mean, these guys were the scum of the earth—abducting innocent folks and selling them into God knows what—but they were people. Sons, brothers, fath—”
“Stop humanizing them!” he shouts, turning around, red-faced. “They were bad guys, and they were going to kill us. That’s all you need to know.”
My jaw tightens as I recoil. “But couldn’t we have… I don’t know.”
“What? Called the police? Filed a report? No one’s coming to save us, Elena. Not for a very long time.”
“I get that,” I whisper, blowing out a deep breath. He’s right, of course. We both acted in various degrees of defense. It’s just harder to deal with than I thought it’d be. “I figured you would’ve relished the thought of someone doing you in.”
“Yeah, turns out I don’t want to go out by someone bashing my skull in with a pipe.” Vincent comes back and slings his arm over my shoulders, walking us forward. “Plus, I had someone I needed to protect this time around.”
“Gertie?” I look up at him, brows raised.
He bumps me with his hip, giving the slightest hint of a grin. “How’d you know?”
CHAPTER 16
“I don’t know where you think I’m going to store that,” Vincent tells me, hefting his recovered backpack. “One roll, yes. Four rolls… we’d have to take them off and rewrap them around a flat piece of cardboard or something.”
“They’re precious,” I say, clutching them to my chest. “I killed for these.”
As soon as the words leave my lips, I regret them. Even trying to lighten the mood, I’m not ready to joke about that.
“I can paracord ‘em around your waist—make an ever-present TP dispenser.”
“Don’t think I’m not considering that.”
“Or,” he says, cramming a single roll inside his pack, “we can leave the extras here for the good people of Oregon migrating inland. It could be your public service to the masses.”
My eyes narrow as he passes my ring back. “That was a low, tricky blow, mister…”
I want to use his full name, but it occurs to me I don’t know it. It’s like a Carrie Underwood song gone ary. How is it I’ve slept with this man and I don’t even know that about him?
“Why is your face doing that weird thing?” He takes advantage of my distraction, robbing me of the three extra rolls and spearing them onto branches by the road.
“What’s your last name?”
“You know my last name.”
“No, I don’t! I just realized it.”
“You’ve been saying it this entire time.”
I blink. “Vincent? Your name is Vincent Vincent?”
“Vincent is my last name,” he stresses, putting his arms through the straps. “It’s Malcolm Vincent.”
The world rotates backwards on its axis. Everything I know is wrong. “Wait, then…”
“Everyone calls me Vincent. Only family ever uses Mal.”
“Huh.” Malcolm Vincent. Mal, like malo—malo, like bad. “So, if I shout Vincent when we get to Portland, your brother will look, too?”
He shifts his pack, thrusting the weight up higher on his shoulders as we head east. “He might look, but he doesn’t go by it. Dominic Vincent. Dom.”
“Ah.”
“What about you? You have siblings?”
“No, I’m an only child.”
“Well, that explains a few things…”
“What?”
He shakes his head with a baiting grin. Tormenting me must be how he decompresses.
We walk for hours after that, passing a logging museum, keeping a steady beat of conversation to fill the silence. Neither of us is ready to rehash the horrific could-have-been-nightmare we escaped, so we settle for lighter fare.
“You thought to grab mini muffins but bypassed the Twinkies?” Vincent scoffs at the packet I toss him. “Those things will outlast humanity. They would’ve been perfect.”
“Like you’d eat them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know. You’re all muscley.”
He eyes me sideways. “Are you body shaming me?”
“How do you even know that phrase?”
“Now you’re mind shaming me?”
“That’s not a thing.”
“I could sue you right now.”
I heave a deep breath. “Vincent…”
“This woman is harassing a homeless man!” he shouts, cupping his hands around his mouth. “And she’s from Washington!”
A squirrel startles and jumps off a nearby tree, but that’s the only reaction he gets.
“You have lost your mind.”
Vincent tears the muffin packet open with his teeth, like there isn’t an easy tear strip at the corner. “Maybe.”
By nightfall, I’m beyond tired. My lungs are wheezing, my bandages are falling off, and my blisters have formed blisters of their own. Vincent’s busy working his fire magic now, while I try to reconcile the fact that twenty-four hours has passed since… the hammock was last up.
Time is going a lot more quickly than I expected.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be thrilled and grateful if we make it home in one piece, but what then? He can’t go back to the watery ruins of Seaside. Would he consider staying wherever I end up? It’s not as if I’m looking for a rebound roommate or anything. Given his mood swings, there’s a distinct possibility we’d kill each other. But he can’t just become some drifter…
“Take off your clothes.”
I nearly jump out of my skin. “What?”
“Have you not watched me for the past forty minutes?” He holds up a trash bag filled a third of the way up with water, like I’m supposed to know what it means. Sure, I’d seen him going back and forth to the creek, tending to his precious pot, but I just figured he was thirsty. Over the past couple of days, I’ve learned not to ask about these things unless I want a smartass answer.
“This is soapy water,” he informs me in a slow, patronizing tone. “We put our stinky-ass clothes inside.”
“And what?” I cross a protective arm over my chest. “You’ll put it on the spin cycle?”
“It’s a bag. I’m gonna shake it.”
I pause to consider the notion. “So, you’re going to strip down and dance for me?”
His expression cements in place. A second ticks by, then another. Finally, he puts the bag down over the stick basket he’s assembled, stands up, and drops his drawers. “Clearly, I’ve corrupted you.”
“Maybe I’ve corrupted you.” I lean back on my hands. “Just so you know, I’m expecting something along the lines of Magic Mike meets Naked and Afraid.”
“I don’t know what either of those things is.”
“That’s probably for the bes—”
“Sounds like a cartoon and a horror movie.”
“Not quite.” I take off my shirt and toss it at him. “But close.”
We get undressed without ceremony this time. After a long, traumatic day, the last thing on my mind is firelit cellulite—or at least, it was until now. I surrender the rest of my clothes to the bag and make a hasty retreat to the hammock. “I take it you do this often?”
“Not too often.” Vincent hefts the bag and cinches it up. “Sometimes I piggyback at the Laundromat; other times, I swap shirts from my stash in Ecola. I had an extra pair of shorts with my toiletries at the bar, too.”
“Resourceful.”
He shrugs, and all of the bulges gracing his back and shoulders react, tightening and falling back to rest. Once he starts shaking the bag aroun
d, going on about the merits of his precious camp soap, his arms join the show. The muscles go to work, flexing and moving, their contours half hidden in dramatic shadow. It’s like a study in anatomy or art or—
“If you’re going to stare like that, you should at least have a fistful of dollar bills ready.”
“I’m learning!” I tell him, throwing back my now-typical excuse.
“You’ll find,” he goes on, “that busying yourself keeps your mind from sticking to the bad stuff.”
Like a flash, his words trigger a series of horrific images—getting trapped, almost drowning, walking around the bodies, shooting that man, watching Vincent shoot that man…
He meanders over to the hammock, bag still in tow, and eyes the darkening tree line. “Why don’t you take the knife, hack us off a couple of small pine branches, and cut back the outer bark? We’ll make toothbrushes, pretend things are normal for a while. Actually, grab some oak bark, too. I’ll boil it after I scrub this pot up.”
“Great.” Now I get to wander through the forest in my birthday suit. I want to tell him to turn around while I wrestle my way out of the hammock, but there’s no point now. I maneuver around him to his knife lying on a log. “Off I go…”
He nods, back to playing the Maytag Man.
Right. I can do this. I snatch the knife, leave the sheath, and tiptoe across the dense bed of pine needles coating the ground. Rough branches smack me in places I find less than desirable, but I keep going, determined to make myself an equal in our shaky partnership. As long as a bug doesn’t breach my no-fly zone, I’ll be okay.
I saw off the first skinny branches I see, figuring they’re all pine of some kind with these needles underfoot. I can strip them back at the fire, where there’s more than moonlight to keep me from hacking off a finger. Now for the real challenge—oak.
Those are the ones that look like legit, stereotypical trees, I think. Rounded leaves, sturdy branches, and a trunk you won’t find anyone hugging in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I should look for acorns, too. Is it close enough to fall for that to happen?
I feel my way through the scratchy brush, doing my best to ignore the scampering sounds in the darker areas. C’mon, oak… here, oaky, oaky…
It didn’t occur to me until this moment, but what if there are other evacuees camped out in this branch of the forest tonight? I could go around a corner and have a dozen flashlights and God knows what pointed at my bare chest. Surely they’d have a fire, though, some kind of indication of where they are… unless they ran out of food and are luring in unsuspecting innocents. Maybe our cannibalism joke wasn’t that far from the truth. We are, after all, cut off out here.
Help isn’t coming from outside any time soon. We’re all just shuffling from one town to the next, hoping for a less damaged place to wait out our own personal apocalypse. Vincent was right. Things are going to get very desperate, very soon. We saw that much at the store, and it hasn’t even been three days since the quake.
I grip the knife even tighter, eyes raking the horizon. My heart drops a horror track as I feel around, trying to keep from tripping over roots and fallen branches. Something hard and round rolls my heel, and I catch my balance on the nearest tree. What the hell? A rock? I peer down into the shadows, only to be blinded by a beam of light illuminating the ground.
Before I can panic, my brain fixates on my showcased stumbling block. An acorn. An early, singular acorn! I found the oak by myself!
“You know, when I said grab the knife, I thought taking the flashlight was a given,” Vincent says, flicking the light up to my face.
I squint and jerk my head back. “Apparently not.”
“Oh, you found an oak. Nice work.”
“Nice work?” I bend down to snatch up the symbol of my victory. “Do you realize the magnitude of my finding this tree alone and in the dark? It’s a forest miracle.”
He looks at the acorn with a slow-spreading smile before nodding his head. “You’re absolutely right. This deserves a celebration.”
I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not, but I’m onboard.
We collect the bark, return to camp, and go about our respective tasks. He finishes the laundry, while I whittle away on our toothbranches—talk about classic role reversal. After he gives OCD-driven attention to his pot, he boils the bark into what he calls a clean-all. Apparently, it’s good for mouthwash, body wash, whatnot, and what have you. Something about tannic acid.
“Swish it around,” he orders, offering up the cooled pot. “It’s a great astringent.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I raise an eyebrow, but I really don’t care at this point.
“Yeah, I’m telling you to try this, because I’m busting my ass to make sure you have the comforts of home.”
I blink. Is that why he… ? Oh.
“Thanks,” I mutter, tipping the pot back just enough so the bark stays put. Dark, weird-tasting water fills my mouth, but it’s not altogether unpleasant. I work it around and spit behind me like a construction worker. Then I follow up with my toothbranch while he takes his swig of the concoction. The strange thing is, it’s all starting to feel natural.
Except the stump under my bare behind. That’s not natural.
Next, he fishes out his microfiber cloth and dips it in the pot. “Sponge bath, Ms. Cordova?”
I crinkle my nose.
“I know. Not sexy. As soon as it came out, I wished I would’ve passed on that one.”
“What if we’re, like, at a sexy car wash?” I yank the towel from his grasp and rub circles over his arm. “You know, like a slow-motion music video.”
Vincent’s brows pull together. “So, I’m… the car?”
“I don’t know! We don’t have much to work with out here.”
‘What if…” He takes the towel back, dunks it, and wrings it out over my head. “We’re travelers trying to wash off in the forest?”
I laugh. “That, I think we can manage.”
We do scrub each other down after that, but the pressure to be romantic—or even civilized—is gone. I scrub his back, he scrubs mine. He dumps water over my head, I crack him with the towel. In the end, we’re relatively clean and borderline slaphappy.
I know he has no intention of sleeping until his alcoholic lullaby, so we hang out in the hammock while our clothes dry over his paracord line. Actually, I’m absentmindedly changing my bandages, and he’s trying to angle his dog-eared book toward the light.
“Who’s Sandi Doughton?” I ask.
“A genius.”
“Should I be jealous?” It’s a playful question, but oh how I wish I could take it back. We’re not dating, there’s no commitment here, so why am I acting like we’re an old married couple settling in to watch Jeopardy? A sweat breaks out across my hairline, and I contemplate faking sleep. Maybe I can pretend I’m having some weird reaction to the oak mouthwash.
A low chuckle rents the silence. “Only if you plan on writing a book about earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.”
I laugh, too, but in a stilted, under duress kind of way. “Maybe in my memoir.”
Unfortunately, this passes for interest, unleashing Vincent’s inner geology geek for the next twenty minutes.
“So, where are we?” I finally ask, changing the subject.
“Middle of 26 somewhere. I figure we’ll hit Manning by tomorrow night.”
“How far is Portland after that?”
He scratches his chin. “Another day to reach the outskirts of Beaverton. Then maybe three or four hours, depending on conditions.”
Conditions being… what? Riots? More landslides? I don’t even want to ask.
“We’ll have to cross the Willamette,” he goes on, gesturing out with his hand. “Most of the bridges will be out, but I’m counting on Sellwood.”
That means nothing to me, but I nod anyway. “Then your brother?”
“Yeah.” Vincent blows out a heavy sigh. “Then my brother…”
❇
❇ ❇
We rub on charcoal in the morning, because Vincent’s convinced me it works as a deodorant. It’s not as if I’m in any position to argue. Our clothes did come out smelling fresher after throwing them in the bag with soapy water. A quick rinse and an overnight air-out did them a world of good. I almost feel human again.
Almost.
After packing up camp, we go back to stalking the highway along the tree line. It’s getting harder to keep our footing as the incline gets steeper along the road. Thankfully, I duct-taped my ankle Band-Aids this time. Those suckers are staying in place come hell or high water.
Oh, and speaking of which—hell, that is—we’ve already had to take another detour thanks to a landslide. Aside from the general irritation the delays present, those things are really starting to creep me out. The earth takes on this serpentine appearance, skittering down the hillside in search of prey to devour. Trees, cars, anything. I don’t care if it’s moving fast or slow, something about it seems so alive, so… monstrous and intentional.
Then again, exhaustion does funny things to your brain.
Vincent tosses the last of our convenience store treats in my direction, a packet of chocolate mini doughnuts. After this, we’ll be back to foraging mode—which I am not looking forward to—but, like Vincent said, we’ve only got two or three days’ worth of walking until Portland. After that, we should be able to rest up before finding a way to Bend to see Naveen and Gizmo.
I smile to myself at the thought of those two, probably snuggled up and eating hospital Jell-O.
“Enthoying thoself?” His mouth is full of cupcake, but he’s grinning.
“Am I enjoying our daily scenic hike? You know it.” Maybe it’s a good time to broach the Seattle conversation. “So, after we get up north, what are your plans?”
He swallows. “What, you want to meet for a drink or something?”
“You’re telling me you have two hoses attached to that thing?” I nod at his backpack, and we both laugh. “Nah, I meant, where’ll you go? What’ll you do?”
As We Know It Page 14
