Survial Kit Series (Book 1): Survival Kit's Apocalypse

by Williams, Beverly

  “I haven’t been here before,” I told him.

  “I come here sometimes to think,” he said.

  The bleeding had stopped, and Thom cleaned my face with the rag and water from the river.

  I sat down in the shade. He sat behind me and made a frowny face with some river-worn pebbles. I closed my eyes again, fighting the wave of nausea that had crashed in on the migraine’s tide.

  “Lie back,” he instructed, guiding my head onto his ankles.

  I sensed the warmth of his fingers before Thom touched me. He pushed his thumbs up on my orbital indentations in the way I had for him when he’d needed it. He’d gotten the spot right, where the indentation of bone was palpable, but he was pushing with trepidation. I lifted my hands and pushed on his fingers, increasing their pressure. I exhaled slowly, listening to his steady, easy breathing and letting it buoy me through my storm and into a quiet, cloudy afternoon. My pulse throbbed against his fingers, and I felt so grateful.

  When Thom and I got back to the lean-to, there was a present on my bed. A metal half-mask Matthew had fashioned to cover my face where he’d punched me. It was lined with crushed velvet. Instead of seeing swelling and bruises, people would be noticing that and gossiping about it for a few days. I might’ve hugged Matthew if he’d been around. Thom helped me put the mask on and bent the metal until it fit my face perfectly. He secured the mask with its multiple braided ribbons and stood back to admire it. He reached into the bottom of his clean clothes pile, pulled out a bag, and handed it to me: inside I found a tea length summer dress.

  “I don’t know exactly what Eric’s up to on this mission,” Thom said, “but I have a feeling he’s going to need you desperately when he gets back.”

  I held up the dress and examined it. It was soft and light; antique ivory linen and mesh with pintucks which were delicate and feminine without being silly.

  “Wait until he gets cleaned up, though,” Thom said.

  “What do you know about…?” I started to ask, but he shook his head. “Okay,” I gave in.

  We talked about our rotter containment/elimination plans and ideas as we set aside soap and washcloths and towels in a canvas bag. We awaited Eric, sitting side by side against the back wall of our home, reading books and worrying.

  Eric returned to the lean-to in the evening. He looked sore and weary, and somehow older. He said hello to us and kissed me, but didn’t have anything else to communicate, aside from gesturing at my mask for an explanation. Thom headed off for the lake, and I shadowed Eric to a nearby stream to help him get cleaned up. How he’d gotten so filthy was a curiosity. He didn’t want me to get dirty by being near him, but I didn’t care. I scrubbed his back and washed his hair and didn’t press him with words. I washed and rewashed his arms, and he grinned at me for it. He turned away to give me privacy while I removed my soiled clothing and rinsed myself off. We wrapped up in towels and left our dirty clothes in a heap at the water’s edge.

  “Gonna burn those tomorrow,” he muttered.

  He noticed me admiring his shirtlessness and smiled again. I was glad it cheered him, my appreciation for his body.

  “I’m grateful for more than just that about you,” I said, stroking his arm, hugging him, and pulling him in the direction of home.

  “I know,” he replied, “but I like to see you enjoying it anyway.”

  We returned to our lean-to. Eric looked beyond exhausted, yet completely unwilling to tell me “no” if I were to ask anything of him.

  “Be right back. Consume,” I said, handing him water and some food to scarf down, knowing he was hungry but that he was too tired to bother with eating unless pressed to do so. I slid around the edge of the lean-to, removed my damp towel, and slipped into the dress Thom had given me. It was beyond beautiful.

  “Holy wow,” Eric said softly as I returned.

  “Lie down on your stomach,” I ordered while patting our blankets. I took off my gloves while he complied. I hiked the dress up to my thighs and straddled his lower back, like he was my saddle.

  Eric made an interesting noise. A bit pain, a bit pleasure, a bit… longing. I moved my hands onto the small of his back and pushed hard there for a moment, trying to ease his tense muscles. Whatever he’d seen and done today, it weighed him down as much as Thom had expected.

  “Okay?” I asked, trying to make sure I wasn’t hurting him worse.

  “Yeah,” he exhaled.

  I warmed some sweet almond oil between my palms, then massaged his neck and shoulders and arms and back. His muscles were tight, holding stress. I tried to work it from him, pushing with all my strength.

  “Tell Of?” I asked, not expecting him to give.

  “Tactical outing.”

  I gave extra attention to kneading his upper arms.

  He continued, “Things that need to be done to keep camp safe. Jeff may not recognize the threat of a rotter swarm, but at least he knows the threat of certain other people.”

  “You don’t have to shoulder that alone,” I told him. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. It’s mine, to do this. But your support helps. Besides, knowing you’re home and safe—as safe as safe gets—is reassuring. I would do anything to protect you,” he finished.

  “As I would for you,” I told him. “Well, let me know if ever I can help.”

  Eric was quiet for a few minutes. I wasn’t happy to let him take on this risk alone, but I was learning more lessons about love. I tried to push it from my mind, and concentrated on prying the stress from his shoulders instead.

  “That feels incredible,” he said into his pillow. “Didn’t know you did this.”

  “I actually don’t do this,” I told him, hoping for guidance.

  “Mm,” was his helpful response.

  Thom and Matthew arrived. They didn’t show surprise or discomfort at the way I was straddled on Eric’s back, oiling him up, with my dress hiked around my upper thighs. Weirdly, I noticed I didn’t feel any particular discomfort at being caught gloveless around them in this situation.

  “He sure smells better,” Matthew said with a dopey grin.

  “Looks better, too.” Thom winked at me. Thom hadn’t ever winked at me before. I liked it.

  “If I had the energy, I would kick you,” Eric said. No one was sure which of his brothers he’d directed this at, and we all smiled.

  I pushed hard at a knotted muscle and Eric grunted, “That hurts so good.”

  Matthew spoke again, “You look amazing in that dress, Kit. A little, ethereal angel.” He sounded massively stoned, and delivered the words in a way that sounded honest and earnest, without the slightest bit of condescension. I heard Thom snickering as he fished through his clothing pile for something. After another minute, Matthew added, “Okay, now I’m getting jealous.”

  “I don’t think ‘jealous’ is the word you’re looking for,” Thom chided, and Matthew grinned even wider.

  I blushed fiercely and focused on Eric’s back.

  Eric exclaimed, “You have a dozen women down the trail who would happily rub you out all night!”

  Thom paused while preparing to put on a clean shirt, and he and Matthew and I all giggled helplessly at the wording of Eric’s sentence.

  “Omit the ‘out’ next time,” Thom instructed his eldest brother, who’d been too tired to catch what he’d said. It was incredibly endearing, Eric’s knack for saying things that could be turned around into filthy jokes.

  “What are you guys, twelve?” Eric muttered.

  “Fourteen!” Matthew announced, cackling to himself in that unique stoned-person way.

  I was too busy appreciating Thom’s unexpected shirtlessness to comment. I inadvertently sighed a little when he moved again to put his clean shirt on. He stopped for another moment and picked at a nonexistent speck on the fabric, and I smiled, and the ghost of a smile showed at the corners of his mouth too. Thom set the shirt aside.

  Matthew complained, “Women take so much work.”

 
“Oh, your life is so tough,” I teased, poking at him.

  He grabbed my hand and we thumb-wrestled. I have bendy thumbs, so I can often beat him, but my hands were sore and oily, and he won that round quickly.

  “Turn around, shirt off,” I directed Matthew, not moving from Eric.

  “I’m still here, you know,” Eric mock-grumbled.

  I stayed straddled on him, wriggled my hips to resettle slightly lower on his body, and squeezed my legs tightly against him.

  “Mm,” was all he had to add again.

  Matthew sat beside us with his back to me and his shirt off. I gave him a quick massage with a tiny bit of oil. Matthew had fantastic shoulders. I’d already told him so.

  “Sweet! I expect it’s even better that way,” Matthew hinted, indicating how I was sitting on Eric.

  “Yup,” Eric said. “But your turn’s up.”

  “Damn. Now I’ve gotta go find another woman,” Matthew kidded. He grabbed his shirt and left the lean-to. Thom and Eric and I laughed at him, and Thom reclaimed his freshly vacated bed space.

  “Think he’ll ever settle down?” I asked.

  “At the right time, with the right one,” Eric responded.

  “Yeah,” Thom agreed. Then he reclined and wrapped his blanket over himself, leaving his arms exposed. He closed his eyes, preparing to sleep.

  I returned to working on Eric, until he finally relaxed. I released him and he rolled over. I pulled a blanket over him, stretched out on the bed, and kissed him lightly, resting a leg across his and pressing the not-masked side of my face onto his shoulder.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked.

  “Nah, got everything I need right here,” he said with his eyes closed and his fingers tracing a trail up and down my arm. He fell asleep almost immediately.

  I shivered; I’d settled down on top of our blanket instead of under it. I tried to free it without squirming too much, but gave up quickly. Eric needed rest desperately. Being a little cold wasn’t something I’d even have thought twice about before arriving at this camp. I felt amused at how luxurious my life had become. I shivered again, but it wouldn’t be enough to wake Eric up. Thom noticed, though. He scooted closer and tucked part of his blanket over me, giving me some of his warmth. He tugged lightly at a layer of the dress’s fabric.

  “Beauteous.” He passed me some ibuprofen for my hands.

  “Thanks,” I murmured as I consumed the medication.

  In the morning, I roused myself from bed early, collected the clothing from the stream, and burned it before Eric woke up. I returned to bed, lazing on my sleeping bag and blankets with a book until he was ready to get moving for the day.

  “Gotta dispose of garment pile,” he mumbled unhappily when he awoke.

  “Garment pile?” I asked, setting The Little Prince on Thom’s pillow.

  I took Eric’s hand to lead him into the forest.

  “Clothes at the stream,” he said, tugging me in the direction of the water, clearly not eager to deal with them.

  “There are no clothes at the stream,” I told him.

  He looked like he was going to protest, then I repeated the phrase, waving my hand in the air like a Jedi master manipulating someone’s thoughts.

  “Thanks,” he said, hugging me and looking relieved. He let me pull him away in a random direction off into the forest. I had no official duties for the day, and Eric had the morning free. We followed meandering trails and carefully observed nature’s tiny secrets hiding all around us.

  Eric sat on the ground to rest. I knelt beside him. I pulled his shirt off him, and he laughed, helping. Slowly, I examined him, kissing his skin, tasting him. Marveling at the way his scars somehow made him even more appealing to me, knowing what he’d had the strength to endure. I stroked the side of his face and gazed at him, reinforcing my memorization of every detail of his features. I leaned in, kissing him slowly, exploring the different textures of his mouth.

  “You are so fucking hot,” I told him, dragging my fingernails over his skin.

  “So you do just want me for my body!” he teased.

  “That would be so much less confounding.”

  Eric knew my emotions got me confused. I didn’t have a lot of tools for handling them. He’d been helping me to slowly sort out my new feelings, and teaching me (by example, mostly) how to deal with them. He guided me gently, with endless patience, and he did his best to make me comfortable. Sometimes it was a bumpy ride for both of us.

  “There’s nothing wrong or unnatural about your feelings, Kit,” he’d assured me during one particularly difficult discussion. “It’s beautiful, how you are. I see how you love me, and how you love Thom, and how you love Mattie, and how it’s all different. It’s cool to—hey, no, stop!”

  I’d tried to shush him, and he pushed my hands onto his knees so I couldn’t use them to continue to try to cover his mouth or my ears. I felt trapped, though that had been an inadvertent result of Eric’s action. I felt embarrassed and awkward and ashamed and shy and inexplicably guilty.

  He let go of me completely, noticing I was getting more flustered. “Okay. These things are part of growing and healing and becoming whole. It would kill me if you couldn’t feel those things.”

  We both sighed. Him because I was so afraid to fully consider his words, and me because I was frustrated for being frustrating to him.

  Eric wasn’t just incredibly attractive physically to me. He had substance; he was strong and smart and amazing in so many ways. Sometimes he pushed a bit hard for information, but he was right to do so. I allowed myself to admit that. I needed Eric, and I needed to face my secrets, and I needed saving, and he was the only one who had the strength to carry us both when I couldn’t drag myself along. He felt like the most important thing ever to have existed. He still does.

  I may have been confused about my emotions, but I felt no confusion over this: I wanted to be with him, always.

  One of Eric’s depressive episodes hit. He rolled up in a ball, in the middle of the floor in the lean-to. I curled my body around his and held onto him for hours I wished would be endless. I wanted to seize his depression from him and lie there with him forever. He never Told Of what bothered him so much. I worried about it, I asked about it, but he only could choke out a word or two before violently shaking his head and stopping.

  “I can’t,” he whispered hoarsely. He sobbed into my shirt, “I’m sorry.” His muffled apologies made me hurt more for him, but I let him cry it out.

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I told him inadequately. I wished I had more to offer him, but sometimes all you can do is be there with somebody. Eric taught me how to be there, and I hoped my presence would be enough.

  In time, his depression broke and we picked up the strings of our lives yet again.

  atthew had been in a fight. A real fight.

  Eric has his depressive streak, and Thom has one that’s worse, but Matthew seems to have escaped it. Just not the way he’s made up. He has lows, but he doesn’t have to wallow in them for long. He takes action instead: getting in a fight, or getting drunk, or seeking out female company. It’s like he’s got an emergency relief valve for when the pressure gets to be too much. I envied that, how Matthew could reach a low point, have a blow-up, and be past it so quickly.

  He ambled by, clothes rumpled and dirty and ripped. I grabbed my bag and caught up to him. We walked to the picnic area in silence, and he sulked on top of a table while I reached for the first-aid supplies.

  “I don’t need that,” he said.

  “You’re getting it anyway,” I told him, unwilling to risk letting his wounds get infected by disregarding them.

  He hissed as I cleaned his bloody knuckles. They were so raw I worried over whether anything was broken. I flexed his fingers, bending them and straightening them gently. Everything seemed to move fine.

  Matthew grunted and swore. “They aren’t broken.” He tried to pull his hand away.

  I wasn’t entirely certai
n of the truth of his words, but I moved on. I bandaged his hand and cleaned a gravel-rimmed cut on the upper part of his arm. It was pretty deep. Again, though, everything moved fine. There probably wouldn’t be any lasting damage. I made preparations to stitch him and he hissed louder this time, just looking at the needles and thread.

  Thinking of what he’d said when he sewed me back together, I pulled a flask from the bottom of my backpack. I opened it and handed it over.

  “Vodka,” I told him.

  “Ooh, wotka!” he said with a terrible Russian accent, then took a swig. “Grey Goose!”

  “Grey Goose,” I confirmed, cleaning his more minor wounds so the alcohol would have time to kick in before I started sewing. I realized I had the farmer’s wife’s narcotics, and I reached for them.

  “Good stuff.” He drank a bit more. And more.

  “There’s no reason to carry crap yet.” Cheap alcohol made me sicker than the higher-quality stuff. I handed him four pills. “Percocet. Chaser?” I offered him my tea.

  He swallowed the pills with a tiny sip of tea, then handed the bottle back. “Thanks.”

  I stitched him quickly, before he could get too upset. I painted on his iodine Cross of Courage.

  “You have the best backpack ever,” Matthew slurred as I finished up.

  “Yeah.”

  “Eric gets drunker,” he said thickly. Defensively.

  “Doesn’t matter to me. Finish it off if it makes you feel better.”

  “Might just do that.”

  He offered me the flask, and I took a swig.

  “Asses. I hate people,” he confided. “Like, groups of people, and other people. Not you. Not my brothers. Not… I mean, I hate people in general. Especially assholes. Try not to be an asshole, that’s one of my rules.”

  “Me too.”

  My body was humming from the tiny bit of alcohol I’d consumed.

  “Someones were saying,” he told me, “something…”

  I passed him the tea. This time, he chugged most of it in one pass. Someones?