After the Ending

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  Uncertain of what to expect over the next few weeks, we preserved our nonperishables by living off the land as much as possible. Jake and Cooper continued their hunting efforts as needed, and I fished for trout in the creek’s brisk waters.

  Most nights, the six of us sat around the campfire, feasting on a freshly caught dinner with beans or boiled vegetables. We’d found an untended winter garden behind an old farmhouse outside of Cañon City, providing us with an assortment of roots—carrots, potatoes, and turnips—to cook with.

  I had an inkling of what the average day for a settler on the Frontier might have been like—hunting, gathering berries and firewood, washing clothes in frigid water, and roasting game over a fire. The Zoe who’d worked at the gallery wouldn’t have recognized me at all.

  As the days went on, we settled into a daily routine of hunting, training, scavenging when needed, and practicing our Abilities. And, we watched Sarah’s belly grow at an unnatural pace—after two weeks it was noticeably larger, after three weeks she could no longer wear her jeans, and after five weeks her belly was as big as a basketball. Biggs acted like she might burst at any moment, insisting Harper examine her every time she yawned, burped or frowned.

  Although Harper didn’t know what to make of the unprecedented progress of her pregnancy, he’d had enough nieces and nephews to know her symptoms were more or less normal. When Biggs wasn’t coddling her, she spent her time eating obscene amounts of food, napping, and watching from the sidelines as I got my butt kicked during training.

  I was learning to embrace my Ability—it felt more natural and fluid every day. I no longer struggled to tune out people’s feelings and memories, and if I wanted information about someone, it was there. Anything and everything about that person was scattered in my mind like a broken stained glass window, only I couldn’t figure out how to piece it together to get the answers I was seeking.

  Early one morning, I was sitting by the fire with Harper, half asleep and trying to focus.

  “There’s just too much to sort through,” I explained.

  “Try to control what you’re seeking, Baby Girl,” Harper said. “Are you thinking of something in particular, or are you just jumping in to see what you can find? Maybe it’s overwhelming because you’re not searching for something specific. For instance, you think about the ocean and hundreds of memories and feelings will pop up, but if you think of the East Coast, there will be fewer to wade through because it’s a smaller part of your life. Try it.”

  “Yeah, but that’s me, my memories. If I don’t know someone, how will I know what to look for?” I whined, tired of practicing so early every morning. I could feel Harper’s patience growing thin, and I flashed him a “please forgive me” smile.

  “Really, Zoe? I know you’re not a morning person, but you’re not even trying. I thought you were sleeping better…doesn’t that help?”

  “Meh,” I said. I was still having the recurring nightmare about my mom and her car accident.

  Harper shook his head. “Deciding what to look for in a stranger is probably the easiest part. Think about it. You’re walking out by the river and you come across someone. What’s the first thing you want to know?”

  “If they’re a Crazy,” I muttered.

  “Exactly. If you ask Sanchez what she really thinks of your chili and she brushes you off again, what do you look for?”

  Sanchez passed at that moment, eyeing us with a wry smile on her face.

  “The truth.” The answer seemed like a no-brainer.

  “Precisely. So…be specific when you’re searching someone’s mind. Now try it on me,” he prompted, looking out at the woods encircling the ranch.

  It was easy to think of something I wanted to know about Harper. Ever since I’d seen Sanchez’s memory of the two of them in bed together, I’d wanted to learn more about their relationship. So, as Harper and I sat by the fire, I decided to find out for myself.

  I couldn’t help but smile at what I saw. His mind held tons of memories of them—working together and sleeping together. Sometimes his arm was around her, and she’d fling it away. Other times, she was nipping at him and batting her eyelashes, trying to get his attention. They laughed and argued like friends always do. I also saw them having enough sex to fully awaken my body from its morning stupor.

  “How long have you and Sanchez been sleeping together?” I asked Harper.

  His eyes widened, and he burst out laughing. “I knew you stumbled onto something good with that giant-ass grin on your face.” Whistling and slapping his thigh, he said, “A while.”

  “As in…years?”

  “Yeah. We’ve known each other for a long time, but don’t tell her I told you…or I’ll say you were snooping.”

  “But what about your very public proposition to me at the cabin?” I asked, recalling the constant, severe expression Sanchez had worn the first few weeks I’d known her.

  Harper waved away my question. “It’s nothing serious.”

  I just snickered and buried the knowledge with all the other information I was never meant to know.

  Like the days, most nights passed rather routinely, with all of us playing cards or telling stories. I spent most of my free time sketching and documenting what we saw and experienced. I mapped out the paths we took and the landmarks around the valley. I hoped that if I was able to contact Dani at any point, I’d have enough information to make sure she could find us.

  I also documented the different types of Crazies we ran into: the slow movers we deemed the “AW’s” or the “Aimless Wanderers”, and the violent “Grunts” who mostly dwelled in more populated areas, among others. Everything I was learning about myself and my surroundings went into my sketchbook, and when I ran out of pages, I started a new one.

  “How many of those things did you bring?” Jake asked me one night, cleaning his rifle while I was sketching the campfire’s jumping flames.

  “Enough.” I smiled and leaned back against his chest. “I’ve been gathering them up wherever I can.” I flipped through the pages of the sketchpad, showing him my own personal post-apocalypse field guide.

  Curiosity piqued, Jake read through my entries. I immediately felt his mood change when he saw Clara’s name:

  Classification: Manipulator (Clara, probably Cece)

  Species: Homo Sapien

  Region: All

  Origin: Infected by Virus; Survived

  Symptoms: Easily agitated; Conceals aggressive intentions and behaviors; Uses victim’s psychological vulnerabilities to determine effective tactics; Willing to use sufficient level of ruthlessness and cause harm to the victim; Generally covert and sneaky.

  Dwelling : Groups of survivors (more targets to choose from)

  Weakness: Entitlement—greedy and moody leading to irrationality and unexpected outbursts that expose them for who they really are, oftentimes giving them away and turning their followers against them.

  I tried to ignore the negative emotions that cycled through him as he read, still blaming himself for what Clara had done to all of us.

  “Who’s Cece?” he asked quietly.

  “A psychotic bitch who harassed Dani on more than one occasion. You know, the usual.” I smiled briefly. “I hope she’s dead.”

  “Tell me how you really feel,” he jested. Thankful that his thoughts were no longer on Clara, I smiled. His arms wrapped around me, and I happily abandoned my sketchbook and snuggled closer to him. Being in Jake’s arms was as surreal as everything else we were going through.

  “I want you to have something,” he said. He held his knife out in front of me.

  “I can’t take that, Jake.” Although I didn’t know the story behind it, I knew it was probably the most meaningful thing he owned.

  “I want you to have it. You’ve been training hard, and I think it’s time you had a weapon of your own—something small enough to hide, but sharp enough that you can do a lot of damage.” He gave me a wry, crooked smile. “I’m sure you’ll need it.
”

  “But what will you use?” I asked, eyeing it carefully.

  “I have others; this one’s just the best.”

  I looked back at him, not sure what to say because “thank you” seemed inadequate. “That means a lot to me,” I told him. “I promise I’ll take care of it.”

  He nodded.

  “Will you tell me the story behind it sometime?”

  He nodded again and returned his eyes to my sketchbook, to Clara’s name.

  Feeling him retreat back into his dark thoughts, I elbowed his leg and whispered, “Hey.”

  Jake blinked, and his eyes slowly found mine, relieved but disconnected as he resumed cleaning his rifle. I could feel his uneasiness and wondered if he was thinking of Harper’s prophecy about Clara.

  When Jake excused himself to talk to Harper, I left my post by the blazing fire and headed for the barn. I situated myself in the sleeping bags in the corner of our stall, knowing they wouldn’t be the only things keeping me warm for long—Jake had slept beside me every night since we left Sarah’s house. Remembering the images of Harper and Sanchez having sex, I blushed. I wished we were still back at Sarah’s so Jake and I could find someplace to be alone—the barn was far too cozy for intimacy.

  When Jake finally crawled into our joined sleeping bags, I savored the warmth of his body. After only a moment, he sat up, and his hands wandered down the length of my leg. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  The feeling of his fingers moving over my sweatpants made my eyelids spring open. Please have sex with me. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what are you doing with your feet?” His strong fingers closed around my toes as they wiggled back and forth.

  “It helps me fall asleep,” I said, realizing I’d been rubbing my feet together.

  “Cute,” he said quietly, lying back down and wrapping his arms around my waist. “And when did you start wearing a beanie to bed?” he whispered, his breath brushing gently across my cheek.

  I giggled reflexively, smoothing some flyaway hairs back into place before pulling the knit cap over my ears. “It’s freezing…my ears are cold.”

  “Really?” I heard a purr in his voice, and as I opened my mouth to reply, his lips were on the sensitive skin behind my ear. I welcomed his hands as they traveled over my hips and down to my thighs, pulling me back against him. His arousal was obvious, and feeling it made me want to rip my clothes off…I suddenly felt way too hot.

  “Are you warming up yet?” His voice was husky, saturated with the same desire that smoldered within me.

  “You’re killing me,” I groaned.

  He playfully bit the side of my neck, and his mouth lingered near my ear for a moment. “’Night, Zoe,” he said. Under the covers, his grip on my thighs loosened, and he ran his fingers over my hip like he was memorizing its contours. I shuddered.

  Hearing Harper and Biggs’s hushed voices only feet away, I knew nothing would really happen.

  Taking a long, deep breath, I sighed. “Night, you tease,” I said and pressed my backside against him, eliciting the exact response I wanted—a deep groan. Two can play this game.

  MARCH

  48

  DANI

  “Oh…ooooooh!” I screeched as I dumped frigid river water over my head to rinse soap from my naked body. The purple bar of lavender-scented suds had become my all-in-one body wash, good for everything from my hands to my hair. Salon shampoo and conditioner, specially designed to control my wild curls, were a thing of the past.

  I poured a second canteen full of water over myself and nearly slipped off my platform—a two-foot-wide, smooth, flat river stone. It was large enough that I could stand comfortably, and low enough to the water’s surface to make my bathing needs possible—and my bathing needs were needs. Since the disastrous encounter with Mistress Mandy nearly eight weeks back, we’d been avoiding nearly all houses and buildings…and the people they might be sheltering. It had been four days since we’d last seen piped-in water, and I was out of patience—thus the part where I was bathing in the Arkansas River…in the Rocky Mountains…in winter.

  “Ooooh!” I exclaimed one last time, doing a little dance to shake off as many of the chilly droplets as possible.

  Hearing a deep chuckle from the creek bed, I turned and glowered at Jason. “This isn’t funny! It’s cold! Like, COLD cold!”

  “I just liked the shimmy. It was a really good shimmy.” His eyes glinted in the rich afternoon light as he reclined against a mossy, fallen tree.

  “I’m sure it was,” I grumbled.

  “Hmmm…much as I’m enjoying this, you’re turning blue. It’s fire time. Let’s go, Red.” Jason stood, crunching the underbrush, and held out the towel he’d been keeping warm under his shirt.

  I hopped from stone to stone across the river, slightly hunched over with my arms crossing my chest. It was sunny and unseasonably warm for Colorado in early March, but I was still frozen to the core. I would’ve been embarrassed about being in front of Jason, naked and shaking with cold, if he hadn’t already done the same. Cold water could turn even the toughest man into a whiny, little boy.

  Plus, the weeks of hard travel and living off the land had trimmed and hardened my body—where once it had been petite with soft curves, my body was now a composition of lean muscle and smooth lines.

  “I think…I’m ready…for spring,” I mumbled through shivering lips as Jason wrapped the towel and his strong arms around me. Like me, living in the changed world had altered him, making his body more compact and lithe, quickening his reflexes, and sharpening the angles of his face. Though he’d lost much of his excess, bulky muscle mass, he was far more lethal than he’d ever been before.

  “No kidding,” he said. He dried me off quickly while I trembled, then tossed item after item of cold-weather clothing at me, enticing me to dress. I didn’t complain. “You’re lips are purple,” he said, leaning in for a slow kiss.

  “I’m not surprised,” I said when he pulled away. “I think I have permafrost.”

  “That’s not a medical condition.”

  “Thank you so much for that enlightening information.”

  “You know what’d warm you up?” Jason slipped his hand under my layers of tops to tease the chilled skin of my lower back.

  “Stop it! I just got dressed!” His touch made a brand new set of goose bumps cover my skin.

  Jason laughed. “What? I was thinking jumping jacks. Damn Red, get your mind outta the gutter.”

  “You’re a huge butthead, you know!” I wasn’t the least bit ashamed of my immature insult. He’d earned it.

  All he did was chuckle.

  “Oh shut up. C’mon,” I said, grabbing his hand. “I’m sure everyone else wants their chance to wash up.”

  “You’re bossy…I like it.”

  I laughed softly. “That’s what Zo says. It was one of the first things she told me when we became friends.”

  “That she likes you being bossy?” he teased, and still smiling, I shook my head. When he was around me, and only me, Jason shed some of his austere shell…some.

  “Just that I’m bossy.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, evidently interested. “How’d that happen anyway…you and Zoe? I mean, one day you were just…there.”

  It seemed an odd question, like he should’ve already known how Zoe and I began. But then I remembered that Jason had always been distant, and that the story of Zoe and me and the fortuitous start of our friendship wasn’t something we’d made public knowledge. In fact, it was a little embarrassing.

  Groaning, I said, “It’s no biggie…just a little playground incident.”

  Jason grinned and his eyes lit up. “Come on, Red. Spill.”

  I cringed and readjusted my hand in his. “Well…it was in fourth grade. I’d been cornered by a couple of girls behind one of the soccer nets during recess. They were teasing me about my hair, calling me ‘carrot head’…it was oranger back then…”

  “I don’t think
that’s a word,” he commented.

  I glanced at him sideways. “It was oranger…and I was too small to do anything but glower and try not to cry. Zo found us and yelled something like, ‘What the hell are you doing you fat trolls?!’ I’d never been good at standing up for myself, so I was completely in awe of her. I remember thinking that she looked like Xena with her long, straight, black hair and angry, blue eyes.” I smiled at the memory.

  “Anyway, the other girls got mad, and one tried to push Zo, but she was too quick—maybe because she’d had practice dealing with you. She dodged, and the girl stumbled and fell flat on her face and started crying. Zo and I ended up getting in trouble—the other girls tattled, saying we’d pushed and bullied them, but it was worth it.”

  After I didn’t say anything else for several breaths, Jason pointed out, “That doesn’t explain the bossy thing.”

  I flushed. “Oh, right. I…um…made Zoe take me home with her after school that day so I could tell your dad what really happened. I thought it was the most unfair thing in the world that she’d been punished for helping me. Then I made her play a game we invented and eventually called ‘Beat the Bully’. So dorky, I know. We practiced being the bully and coming up with insults so we’d be prepared next time. I think we ended up crying and laughing hysterically like a million times doing that. But anyway, it was after that second demand that she told me I was bossy.”

  Laughing softly, I looked askance at Jason. “You know, when I got offended by what she’d said, she told me it wasn’t really a bad thing. She said her brother was way bossier.”

  Jason shrugged, accepting the decades-old judgment with little concern.

  “Ever since that day on the playground, we’ve been inseparable…more like twin sisters than just friends. I’m sure a psychologist would say it was because we both have ‘mommy abandonment issues’ or something.” I held up our clasped hands and nudged my sleeve to reveal the black tattoo on the inside of my wrist. “That’s what this is all about—the bond between sisters, not the abandonment thing. We got ‘em on Zo’s eighteenth birthday.”