by Amy Lane
He wiggled out of the crawlspace and pushed himself up, ignoring the embarrassment of the bad leg and hunting for another block. Preston had sighted one for him, and kicked at it futilely.
“I’m goddamned useless,” he burst out.
“Keep finding more of these,” Damien told him, hauling at this one. “You’re worth your weight in gold.”
“Preston sounds pissed off,” Glen said as Damien pushed the cinder block under. “Didn’t get his morning ritual?”
“Morning ritual doesn’t make him feel less helpless,” Damien muttered. “God, this thing got heavier. How you doing?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle of water he’d shoved there before getting the block from Preston. “Here—can you grab this?”
Glen grunted. “Shove it up over my head. Cash is stuck there. He can grab it.”
Damien did as ordered, and a dusty hand appeared to take the bottle. After a moment filled with Damien shoving the cinder block forward to match the other one, he heard Cash’s voice. “Turn your head, Flyboy. I’ll get you some water.”
Damien bent double, resting his back against the wall, and pushed up against the ground, his back taking some of the weight off Glen’s, and Glen did as requested. “Thanks,” he muttered. “How’s the plan coming, Damie? This shit’s getting old.”
Damien fell forward into the dust, grunting, and Glen grunted as the full weight came back. “One more block and I think we can lift this wall without making you into lunchmeat—I know you’re sad about that.”
“My driving ambition,” Glen said, voice as dry as the dust that choked him. “God, when’d you get your bitch back? I missed him.”
“Six hours in a cockpit with your damned brother. Blame him!” Damien had missed this, this sparring, this play. God, he really had to get Glen out of there so they could bitch at each other as old men.
Glen’s chuckle was weak but evil. “Finally. Jesus, you two. Fucking finally.”
One more cinder block and a couple of two-by-fours and Damien was ready. Or he thought he was.
As he made ready, Preacher dancing at his heels, to use one of the two-by-fours as a lever to shove the wall up off Glen’s shoulder and legs, he was conscious of movement by his side.
The townspeople who had worked to get their own families out from under the collapsed church were there, two taking the board from Damien, several others squatting to lift the wall itself. Damien dropped back, exhausted, and looked over at Preston.
“You?” he asked.
Preston shrugged. “I just waved a lot and gestured. They were smart enough to figure out we needed help.”
Yeah, but Preston had reached out to other people—people not his family. It was a big deal.
“Thanks,” Damien said, winking tiredly. Then he took one end of the two-by-four and called out, “Ready? Uno! Dos! Tres!”
And as a single unit, they lifted the wall.
People stronger than he was were doing most of the lifting, so Damien scrambled down and pulled Glen out, grimacing as his friend gave an agonized yell when Damien extended his arms. As Glen’s shoulders emerged into the sunlight, a smaller man scrambled out and took Glen’s hips, both of them clearing the wall.
“Is that it?” Damien asked, panting. “Nobody else in there?”
“The owner got out right before the wall came down,” Cash managed, falling to his backside with a thump. Damien peered at him, knowing him only by reputation as a pop singer. His shaggy sandy-brown hair and doe-brown eyes were dimmed by dust and some bloody scrapes, but even under the pain and fatigue, Damien could see he was a good-looking kid.
And the way he was gazing at Glen, with a combination of yearning and sadness, about broke Damien’s heart.
Damien took a deep breath and realized they weren’t out of the woods yet. “How we doing?” he asked Glen, and Glen, lying on his back and covered in dust, took a deep, shuddering breath.
“Been better, brother,” he confessed quietly.
Damien took stock. Glen’s shoulder looked pulpy and bruised through the tears of his shirt. Damien would have to wait for the town’s doctor to come take a look, but he’d seen the wounds on his back, and they hadn’t looked good. He’d left a lot of blood back under that demolished wall—Damien hadn’t missed that. Under the grime, his face had a waxy, peaked look that didn’t bode well.
Damien put his hand on Glen’s forehead and shuddered. Not cold. Not cold at all. His hand came back damp, and he looked around the town.
“Preston,” he said, trying to think. “Can you build a campfire and set up the water pots? We’re going to need to sterilize a lot of water to clean people’s wounds.”
“Will do,” Preston said. He moved and grimaced, the fact that he didn’t even have one hand really hitting him hard. “Can you ask someone to help me?”
Damien nodded and called out the request to Dolores Perez, who was apparently the town’s mayor. It had been her grandfather who had died in the church—but also her grandchildren and daughter who had been the first people to escape.
“Sí!” she called, and then turned to one of the older children of the village and nodded at him, pointing to Preston.
When she was done, Damien nodded her over and spoke to her in Spanish. He had the feeling she might know some English, but she was tired and frightened and he was a stranger. He stuck to the language that would help her feel safer.
“The water downstream was contaminated,” he said briefly. “I wouldn’t treat any wounds with it. We’re building a fire to boil some, but we can’t do it alone.”
Her eyes widened, and she called out rapid-fire instructions across to the rest of the townspeople. Damien took a deep breath, feeling glad he’d stopped a potential health risk, but still not happy.
“There’s no place to treat you,” he said to Glen, looking around. “Like—no place to treat you. I gather the doctor’s office was used for kindling last night, after the second quake. We brought supplies, but there’s only so much you can drag up a mountain on the back of one horse.”
Glen grunted. “Most of the buildings were standing when I texted you,” he said ruefully, looking around. “That aftershock took us all by surprise.”
“Yeah, well, I’d ask what in the fuck you were doing back here, but I don’t want to start anything.” He looked meaningfully at Cash, who looked away.
“I… I was looking for someone,” he said gruffly. “My friend. She’s up at Tranquila Paz.”
Damien’s eyebrows went up. “Tranquil Peace? Sounds like the name of a cemetery. Is that the McMansion we saw on the satellite pics?”
“It’s supposed to be a retreat for stressed-out celebrities,” Glen rasped. “But Cash escaped and called his manager.”
“It’s a cult,” Cash spat, “and it’s run by some asshole who calls himself Tranquilo, who’s not even as Mexican as I am!”
Damien blinked. “Tranquilo? For fucking real? This sounds very Batman, and you just made my head explode. Is that why you ran back from Las Varas? To get your friend out? Why didn’t you tell Glen so he’d help you?”
“He was too busy sucking my brains through my dick so I’d fall asleep and he could escape,” Glen muttered. “Jesus fucking Christ. Kid could spot an idiot who thinks with his balls a mile away.”
Damien couldn’t blink now. “Oh dear God. It’s like you met your kryptonite.”
“I didn’t know!” Cash said, sounding sad and desperate at the same time. “I didn’t know you were a good guy!” His voice dropped. “And that’s not why I did that.”
“Sure it’s not,” Glen said bitterly. He closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing for a moment. “What’s your assessment, Damie? I know you have a plan, I just need to hear it.”
Second time Glen had called him “Damie” and not “asshole” or “moron” or “dumbstick,” and Damien was officially worried.
“Okay. Me and Preston need to get you situated on the bedroll with some sort of treatment. We may boil you to death
, but we have to wash out your wound and try to beat the infection. I’ve got some painkillers and ointment that I can give you, but the big guns—the oral antibiotics and steroids and injections—all of that was in my saddlebags, and that got taken out in the flash flood down the hill.”
“Flash flood?” Glen’s eyes shot open. “Shit, Cash—do you think Tranquilo took out the fucking dam?”
Cash groaned. “Goddammit. Yeah. Glen, he probably got them all out of there. The dam was his last defense. He was going to blow the dam and then use off-road vehicles to get everybody to the secondary site.”
Damien closed his eyes and opened them, looking at Cash with pity. “That may work for the eastern slope of this mountain range, but here you have to do it on foot or on horseback. And none of us—I mean none of us—are in any shape to go after your friend right now.”
Cash nodded, his eyes growing red-rimmed. “I caused enough trouble as it is,” he said sadly. With a tentative motion, he brushed some of Glen’s filthy hair from his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
Glen moved like he would have caught Cash’s hand and then gasped, because his shoulder was in no condition to do any lifting. “It’s fine,” he said. “Don’t cry, baby. We’ll find her.”
Damien had to fight the train wreck in his head—Glen? Glen Echo? The cold-blooded sex-lizard who would risk his neck for a blowjob but didn’t risk his heart for anybody? He’d just been led by his dick over hill and over dale, and he was telling Cash Harper it was going to be okay? If they weren’t sitting in the middle of a disaster zone, Damien would have checked to see if the sky was falling.
As it was, he had other things to wrap his head around.
“Okay, we get you situated, and what? These people need more supplies, and they need help. The only way to get them in is the chopper—”
“God, that’s like a whole day away!” Glen muttered.
“No.” Damien looked at the sky, stunned when he realized it was only a little after noon. “No. Buddy’s got a crop duster lined up in the little crossroads where he dropped us off with the horses.” Damien frowned. “Where’s your horse, by the way? And the dirt bike you came up on?”
Glen rolled his eyes at Cash. “I don’t know if I’m the one who needs to answer that.”
Cash looked down and rubbed his neck. “I gave them to Tranquilo’s guards?” he said, smiling ingratiatingly.
Damien just stared at him. “I know there’s a story here,” he said, “but I’m so surprised you’ve lived this long. I mean, two days ago I would have put money down on Glen killing you for that alone.”
Cash shrugged. “I… I thought they ran the stable.”
“What stable?”
“You… you know. The stable that all small towns have? Like a garage for horses? And you know. A garage for the motorbike too.”
“Glen, you need to make him stop.”
Glen gave a weak chuckle. “If you only knew.”
“No, I’m serious. Your new boyfriend is going to make my eyeballs dry out, and I can’t have that happen.”
“No, you can’t,” Glen told him. “Because you’ve got to ride a horse down the hill, then fly the crop duster to Las Varas and fly the helicopter back, don’t you?”
Damien looked around, as though he could find another way. “And all before dark,” he said. “I can probably land between the buildings in the town, but it’s going to be hard to spot once the shadows fall.”
“I’ll ask the mayor to maybe build you some signal fires,” Glen croaked weakly. Damien met Cash’s eyes, his own full of sober resolve.
“You speak Spanish, Cash?”
Cash nodded. “Yessir. My mom’s an ex-pat who lives in Jalisco. It’s how I knew about Tranquilo Paz.”
“Well, Glen and Preston are going to need you. I don’t know what your thing is about taking off when there’s help right in your bed, and I know you want to find your friend, but we can help you find her—”
“Brielle,” Cash supplied miserably. “We’ve been friends since we were kids. I… I dragged her into this. The life. She followed me into rehab, and then we were supposed to come here and chill out and get our heads straight, and….” He looked at Damien in mute appeal.
Damien closed his eyes. “Young and lost and vulnerable,” he said. “How many people were at Dumbstick Piss’s compound?”
“Tranquilo Paz—”
“I’m not calling it that,” Damien said, voice sharp. “And you shouldn’t either. Not tranquility. Not peace. How many?”
“Ten? Fifteen?” Cash estimated. “I… I was only there for a week before I took off. They kept telling us we could leave at any time, but they wouldn’t let us use the phone, and there was always something else to do, and they wouldn’t let us sleep or eat—”
“Brainwashing,” Damien said. Because of course. Of course there was a cult of lunatics up here in the wilds of the Nayarit mountains. “Okay. We will help you. If you think Dumbstick Piss blew the dam, that happened last night. There is nothing we can do about it, and we’re not going to catch up with them now. These people—Glen, Preston, the townspeople—they need you.”
“I can barely wipe my own ass—” Cash protested, and Damien wondered if that was going around.
“Well, find a way to fix that quick. That helicopter can take four people, and there’s a Cessna Buddy can fly to the base of the mountains that can carry up to nine. We must get people triaged, we must get their status assessed, and we must get Glen someplace he can take antibiotics and get better. These things are nonnegotiable.”
He double-checked Cash’s situation and saw that the kid was starting to fade out. It might have been shock, or it might have been reality. Either one. “You need to get stitched up. Don’t think I don’t see the cuts on your head and forearm. You’re bleeding pretty heavily. So these are our needs: we need to see who needs medical attention, and we need to see if there’s anyone besides Glen who needs a hospital. There is a lot to do, and I’m going to be riding a bitchy-assed horse down the fucking mountain to get it started. Preston can barely move—he needs a cast and some serious drugs and probably some antibiotics too. So you’re it, kid. You’re what these people got. I have to leave the two people I love most in the world in your hands, and you had better not fuck this up.”
“Aw,” Glen rasped into Cash’s glassy-eyed silence. “You love me.”
“I love that bitchy-assed horse too,” Damien retorted. “Don’t read anything romantic into it.”
“What about my brother?” Glen asked, and if the sarcasm didn’t seem to be the only thing keeping him conscious, Damien would have told him to shut it. “Should I read something romantic into that?”
Two water bottles and a beach towel appeared at Damien’s side. Damien looked up to see Preston standing next to them, taking in their conversation with wide eyes.
“You can read anything you want into it,” Damien told him, dumping some of the water onto a clean corner of beach towel. “I’m not telling you shit.”
“We slept together,” Preston blurted. “It was great. He was the best I ever had.”
Glen’s tortured laughter echoed over the noise of the bustling townspeople and recovering victims around them. He closed his eyes against the brightness of the sun, which sat so directly overhead, there was no shading him. “Of course he was. You’ve been waiting for Damien your whole life.”
“We’re going to live together and be happy,” Preston told him, jaw out stubbornly. “Beat that. I dare you.”
Damien guffawed and started wiping down Glen’s face.
“Here,” Cash said quietly. “I’ll take over.”
“Good. I want to get him to the shade before we roll him over and strip off his shirt. I want a look at his shoulder before I go down the hill, and we need the doctor to help.”
“Make sure he gets those cuts on his arm,” Glen mumbled as Cash touched his face gently with the cloth. “Sweet touch, kid. Now watch my brother make cow eyes at Damie and report
everything you see. It’s my job to give him shit about it later.”
“You are lucky you have people who’ll come for you,” Cash replied tartly. “You should try being nicer to them.”
“I came for you,” Glen said, his voice suddenly stripped bare and vulnerable, his eyes still closed. “And look what you did to me, kid.”
“That’s ’cause I’m stupid.” Cash was on his knees, washing all of Glen’s scrapes, from the front of his shoulder to the big gash on his head. “A smart man would have known a good one when he grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.”
Damien’s heart ached for them. He suspected it was no easy road between the two men—but that was not his romance.
His romance was glaring at him with recrimination and hurt, and it was Damien’s job to fix it.
“I heard,” Preston said baldly as Damien took him aside and walked a few paces, until they were alone under a tree. “You’re leaving us.”
“I’m not leaving you!” Damien protested. “I’m going to get help!”
“It took us a whole day to get here,” Preston argued. “How are you going to get down the hill and then fly back in time to help Glen! You’re going to leave him here, and he’s going to… to….” Not even Preston could say it.
“Glen’s going to live,” Damien said, because there was no alternative. “He’s in much better shape than I was when I came down my own mountain. And we took a day to get here so we wouldn’t destroy the horses. Chewie and Sunshine are trail horses—they don’t have speed, just endurance. SnakeEyes was bred for hard-core riding. Buddy told me she’s done a hundred miles in a day before and woke up to do it again. She’ll get me down the hill, and I’ll be back by dark with the chopper. You need to keep your brother bitchy and brave, you hear me? You need to keep Cash from running, because sure as shit, once Glen’s situated that kid’s gonna take off. He feels like hell, and he doesn’t have a lot of patience with himself right now. So they need us both, you got it? But we’ve got one saddle, and baby, I’m the one who can ride. You and Preacher were the heroes here today—now it’s my turn.”
Preston closed his eyes and grabbed Damien’s arm with the hand with the bandaged wrist. “I don’t like watching you go,” he said nakedly, and Damien leaned forward to touch their foreheads together.
