The Break Free Series Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Fitch, E. M.

  “What are you doing?” she laughed, moving her curly, dark hair from her face before giving the limp ladder a shake. “I was going to pull this up, thought Andrew left it out.”

  “Just thinking,” Kaylee mumbled before jumping up from her perch on the truck. Pins and needles shot through her legs and she stamped her feet trying to break it up. Anna’s face flashed from confused to complete understanding as Kaylee grabbed the ladder. She wished Anna wouldn’t look at her like that.

  “Changed your mind about Jack then?” she asked in a quiet voice as Kaylee climbed through. Kaylee shook her head and pulled the ladder up, folding it carefully as she did. “Ah, then you haven’t changed your mind about Andrew, and he’s asking you to.”

  She spoke without question, because, of course, it wasn’t one. Anna had the uncanny ability to read people and Kaylee had never been an exception. “I know you don’t want to talk about it. Remember though, it’s not set in stone yet. We might not be staying here.”

  “He’s leaving regardless,” Kaylee whispered, intensely aware that Andrew’s room, the one he shared with his father, was only a few feet down.

  “Give it some time,” Anna urged, taking the folded ladder from Kaylee’s hand and placing it on the shelf to her left. “There’s no rush.”

  “Andrew thinks there is,” Kaylee said, allowing Anna to steer her towards the stairs by her elbow. She nodded. “And there isn’t much time. They’re leaving in a few days.”

  “Andrew’s threatened and Jack is unsure. Don’t block yourself in to spare Andrew’s feelings and don’t count Jack out yet,” she continued, following Kaylee to the second floor and their perspective rooms. Kaylee opened her mouth to argue but Anna shushed her. “Give it some time,” she insisted before she shut her own bedroom door leaving a frustrated and worried Kaylee alone in the hallway.

  ~

  The days passed with a painful drudgery. Andrew and Jack were both avoiding Kaylee. The rooms seem to literally clear of people when she entered. Her father was withdrawing steadily, Anna and Bill were busy trying to come up with ways to convince him to leave the city, and Emma remained clueless to Kaylee’s situation because she was so immersed in target practice on the roof.

  And though Kaylee understood Andrew’s aversion to her, she thought she had hurt him pretty badly with her latest rejection, she couldn’t understand Jack’s. Even with the confrontation in the garage and the tense morality discussion at the beginning of their walk, she had thought they had had a good time.

  “Think Dad will let me get an AR-15?” Emma asked, bursting through Kaylee’s thoughts.

  “No.”

  “Quinton says they’re the best fully automatic gun to have, good accuracy, you know?” Emma continued regardless of Kaylee answer. She paused to blow her hair from her eyes, resting her soapy arms on the edge of the sink as she pulled the drain plug. The two extra mouths to feed had equaled more dishes for the girls to get done and Kaylee was finding herself elbow deep in cold, soapy water more and more often. “Or maybe I could smuggle in a Gloc. Quinton says they’re really reliable and he’s already shown me how to take one apart, it just two pieces really, easy to hide. Hey!”

  Emma shouted as Kaylee forcefully dumped a bucket of fresh water in the sink to rinse the soap from the plates; a wave of dirty water slopped up onto her shirt. “Why would you do that?” she asked in angry bewilderment. “You do know we have to wash these clothes ourselves?”

  “You are not getting a gun to hide away from Dad!” Kaylee growled. Emma rolled her eyes, pulling an old rag closer to blot her sopping shirt. “I’m serious, Emma, you can’t.”

  “Who says?” Emma shot back, turning to face her sister. She was fuming, her jaw set in determination, as she threw the rag on the counter. “Dad isn’t even going to notice anyway! All he ever does is stay hidden in his room, he doesn’t care—”

  “He cares about you, about us both,” Kaylee said. She tried to make her voice soft and reassuring, but the words caught in a strangled whisper.

  “Whatever,” Emma mumbled before she turned her back to Kaylee, picking dishes out of the sink with hard, angry movements. But Kaylee knew she wasn’t really upset with her, it was their father. He was hurting Emma by staying so locked up and isolated. Growing up, if Kaylee had been the little princess, then Emma would have been considered Dad’s little buddy. It was she who enjoyed going to baseball games with their Dad. She had fished, hiked, and watched football. When they had first holed up in the fire station, it was she who had braved going into his room when they had first heard his unbearable sobbing.

  “Oh,” someone exclaimed as they entered the kitchen. Kaylee turned quickly and saw Jack teetering on the threshold, as though he had walked straight in and then attempted to backtrack. “Sorry, didn’t know anyone was in here.”

  “Hey Jack!” Emma spun around and flashed a smile, wiping her hands dry on the discarded rag. “What’s up?”

  Jack relaxed by degrees, grinning as he walked further into the kitchen. “Not much,” he responded easily, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaning back unto the corner of the table, “just looking for a snack.”

  Emma reached for an apple and threw it to him without hesitation. He caught it with one hand. “We’re almost done here,” Emma continued, gesturing to Kaylee and the dishes, “want to get a game of cards going?”

  “Umm, can’t,” Jack mumbled in response, catching Kaylee’s eye briefly before looking back to his apple. “I’m needed on the roof. Quinton.”

  Emma frowned at his back as he left, reaching the stairs in record time and practically running up them.

  “What’d I say?” she asked, Kaylee thought mostly to herself.

  “It’s not you,” she answered, pulling the last of the dishes towards her and beginning to dry them. “It’s me. Jack and Andrew are both avoiding me.”

  “You? Why?”

  “Jack I’m not sure about but Andrew’s really upset.” Kaylee bit her lip and let the statement hang in the air. The dishes clattered against each other as Kaylee filled the drying rack. The pieces were remnants from the old fire fighters. Kaylee had thought maybe they each had to bring in a few discarded dishes from home because the only matching features were the chips and cracks that adorned each piece. The silverware was even worse. There were only five spoons to begin with, so most mornings at least one person was eating oatmeal with a bent fork.

  “Yeah right,” Emma snorted, jumping up to sit on the counter next to Kaylee. “You’re probably just being sensitive. Andrew’s never angry with you. Remember that time you lost his doll?”

  Kaylee felt a weak smile overtake her features. She did remember that, though she hadn’t really lost it and it wasn’t actually a doll.

  “You mean that action figure he got for Christmas,” Kaylee corrected, her eyes trained on a green and brown stripe plate she was wiping dry. “Yeah, I remember. We were seven.”

  And that’s just it, Kaylee thought. We were seven. And this is more serious than his asking for a stupid piece of plastic back.

  “Well, he wasn’t pissed at you then,” Emma continued, shrugging her shoulders carelessly and oblivious to the shift in Kaylee’s mood. “And I remember him looking like he might cry—”

  “It’s not the same Em,” Kaylee interrupted, hanging the used dishrag on a hook over the sink and stacking the dry service set. The plates landed clumsily over one another, some settling into mismatched grooves, others tilting as though they were trying to shun the less deserving pieces. Emma sat watching Kaylee, frowning.

  “So, why’s he angry then?” Emma asked, the same tone of obvious dismissal in her voice.

  “He wants me to be with him,” Kaylee said tentatively, keeping her eyes to the teetering stack of chipped plates she was putting away.

  “Be with him? How could you not? We’re pretty much stuck here, I mean, where the hell else are you going to go?”

  “No, Em. Be with him. As in: us, together. A c
ouple,” Kaylee continued, waving her hand in a circle as she rambled on.

  How many ways are there to say it?

  She kept her eyes in the cabinet, past the plates and to the splits in the wood sides, tracing their grain and noting the dust that was gathering in the crevices. She refused to look back at Emma and see her smirking grin, refused to let her make light of the situation. But Emma surprised her.

  “Oh,” she said in a small voice. Kaylee turned and watched her blank features, noticing her working to swallow. “I thought there was time. I thought we we’re talking eventually. What’s the hurry?”

  Kaylee sighed, grateful to her sister for sharing her hesitation. “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, there’s not much you could do about it here anyway,” Emma continued in a rush, her eyes cast to her interlocked hands. “I mean, where would you stay? Our room? Would I get kicked out? What if you got pregnant?”

  Kaylee felt her breath leave in a whoosh. Pregnant?

  “No, Em, I don’t think he means all that,” she hurried to correct, feeling her face heat in protest of her sister’s assumptions. “Not, not that.”

  “Oh.” Her voice was small again, her eyes now darting from her hands to the floor but refusing to meet Kaylee’s. “Sorry, I just thought…”

  “It’s okay,” Kaylee answered as she trailed off. An awkward silence followed. Kaylee swallowed heavily and lift an unsteady stack of drying bowls, moving further from Emma to put them away.

  “So you told him no?” Emma asked, her voice still hesitant and quiet.

  “Not exactly,” Kaylee answered, shoving the bowls in their place and gesturing at Emma start handing her the clean mugs. “He keeps trying to erm,” Kaylee paused to clear her throat, “kiss me and I—”

  “He does?” Emma asked in a flash, her head whipping up to watch Kaylee. The small stack of cups in her hand shook and Kaylee rushed to grab them before the floor could. “When?”

  “Only a couple of times,” Kaylee answered carefully. She knew a blush was spreading rapidly over her cheeks and she turned from Emma to hide it. The mugs clanked noisily together as Kaylee separated them to place them on the shelf.

  “I didn’t know,” Emma said, sounding almost as lost as Kaylee felt. Kaylee bit her lip and nodded, turning back to Emma and leaning against the counter. She folded her arms across her chest and let her head fall just a bit forward, counting the individual nicks in the wood of the floor as she waited for Emma to say something.

  But Emma didn’t get the chance to say anything more because heavy footfalls were heard echoing in the garage just moments later. The sound of Anna’s ringing laughter drifted up from below and Kaylee dodged past the threadbare sofa in the living room to lower the rope ladder for them. Anna was the first to climb up, her backpack bulging, a hatchet slung from one of the straps. She let out a breath as she reached the top.

  “Someday,” she breathed, “I really am going to get too old for this.”

  “Good run?” Emma asked, leaning against the doorframe that separated the living room from the kitchen. Kaylee noticed her voice wasn’t nearly as bright as it normally was.

  “Yeah, not bad,” Anna nodded, pulling her hatchet free and tossing it on the low shelf in the corner. She moved out of Kaylee’s way, throwing herself on the sofa. “I brought you back a few things,” she said over her shoulder to Emma, winking.

  “Girls? Throw down the rope!” Bill shouted. Kaylee hurried around the opening to lower the thick rope with a hook fastened on the end. Excitement surged when a series of thuds sounded followed by a muffled curse. There was only one thing on earth that could reverberate with that dull, resonating clank as it connected with concrete floor. Cans.

  “No way!” Emma exclaimed, rushing over and knocking into Kaylee as she heard the echoing clatter the tin cans made as they fell from Bill’s arms and scattered over the garage floor. She braved even her hatred of the living room to catch a glimpse of the raid. Some had lost their labels, the light reflecting off their rippled exterior. Others had labels that were smudged with dust and grime, the dirt nearly obscuring the names, some with rips and rotting holes eating away at the advertisements. But the color gave those away: red and white of Campbell’s soups, green for Delmonte, yellow rings of healthy pineapple on backgrounds of light blue for Dole. Kaylee’s mouth watered.

  Canned food had been some of the first supplies to dry out. Which was ironic because really, canned food would have been the easiest to keep – designed to last for years and years. But scavengers had, the only instance in Kaylee’s opinion, used their brains when raiding for food. It still shocked Kaylee what people had broken into stores to steal: plasma TVs, radios, computers, MP3 players. What good were they? Did people not realize that electricity would fail? But this level if idiocy had not applied to food. Canned food, freeze dried meals, nuts, trail mix, jerky, all the food that would have kept had been taken. It had been a real challenge for Kaylee and Emma to diversify the meals they made.

  “Is that soda?” Emma asked, leaning so far out the opening in her excitement that Kaylee grabbed her belt just to be safe. Jack grinned up at them, a large flat of aluminum cans in his hands. There weren’t any labels to fall off these, just shiny symbols printed right on the sides: Pepsi, Coke, Sprite. Kaylee could already feel the fizz and burn of the carbonation as it slid down her throat. A smile fell into place.

  “You have to check the landing docks,” Jack said, setting the case by Bill’s feet. “And the trucks, not everything was left on the shelves.” Andrew was swinging up the rope ladder now, his lips twisting in irritation as Jack spoke. Kaylee offered him a weak smile. He rolled his eyes and smiled back.

  That’s new.

  Andrew had been so very careful to ignore Kaylee these past few days, brushing past her in the halls, keeping his eyes on his food in the kitchen. She hadn’t even noticed him when she went to the cornfield with Emma. She felt odd and hollow not feeling his eyes follow her through the chain-link fence.

  “I have something for you,” he whispered as he landed on the floor next to her. Her eyebrows quirked in curiosity and he grinned. “Meet me here after we get this stuff into storage?”

  Kaylee nodded, watching him as he got to the feet and tugged at the rope. His muscles strained as he hauled a good months’ worth of food up from the garage. His vision was in danger of being obscured completely by his fringe and from where she sat perched, Kaylee could clearly see the tracks sweat had made down his neck as he scavenged for food that night. His jaw set as he heaved one last time before the net filled with dented cans swung into view and Kaylee started as she realized that he really was very good looking.

  “Get up lazy,” Emma growled, a well placed kick to Kaylee’s side making her grunt. “Let’s get this all put away.”

  Chapter Eight

  Several hours later, which included twelve trips back and forth from the fireman’s pole to the storage room, three burst cans of soda, one very large can of beans landing on Kaylee’s foot courtesy of Emma, and an impromptu feast, she stumbled her way back to the nearly empty and very shadowy living room.

  From the doorway she could see a dark figure sunk unto the couch. A jar candle flickered lightly on the table next to him, the glass sides that encased it blackened. Kaylee recognized the scent: apples. She smiled softly. Andrew knew she loved the smell of apples. It reminded her of home and the crumble her mother used to bake, of life before the infection. He chose this candle for her.

  “Hey,” she murmured. He turned. Even backlit by the faint dimmer of the candle, Kaylee knew he was smiling.

  “You came,” he said, sounding too relieved for Kaylee’s liking.

  “Of course I did,” she said, walking past the end of the couch and sitting just out of arms distance from him. The flickering light sent odd shadows flying across the walls. They were the kinds of shadows that normally frightened Kaylee; they recalled fleeting glimpses of running infected, hands and feet and arms all pounding close
r, chasing. But tonight Andrew was here. And if Andrew was here, she was safe.

  “Enjoy the Coke?” he asked, smiling softly in her direction.

  “Mhmm,” she hummed in affirmation, the artificial buzz of caffeine still swimming through her veins. “Haven’t had one in a while.”

  “Pineapples too.”

  “I know!” Kaylee agreed, smiling. She loved pineapples, always had. “How did you not check the loading docks before, anyway?” she teased, knocking his shoulder. He scowled.

  “Jack,” he muttered the name as though it were a curse word. “The doors to the loading areas were locked. It’s not our fault we can’t pick them open in the pitch dark. He’s some kind of thief or something.”

  “Sure.” Kaylee rolled her eyes. He shrugged and kept his eyes on his hands. The quiet of the room enveloped them. The flickering candle, the dark corners, the warm feel of worn sofa underneath her nervous fingers, it was all so familiar and yet still felt new. It wasn’t so very long ago that Andrew and she would pass the time watching T.V. or playing video games. They shared music and chatted online, even though they were only a couple apartments away from each other and could have easily met in the halls. Now, just a year past, and some days it felt like no time at all, here they were: Andrew and Kaylee, the future of mankind. In that living room, they may as well have been the last man and the last woman on earth. And quite suddenly, as Kaylee shifted closer to him, she felt the urge to apologize. She wasn’t in love with him, not nearly that. And Jack still haunted her, particularly in those twilight hours of the mind, when sleep edged around her thoughts and mixed confusingly with dreams; but Jack was leaving. And Kaylee felt she owed Andrew this, at least this, for how wonderful he was to her, how kind and understanding.

  “Drew, I—”

  He cut her off before she could continue her apology, smiling ruefully. “I got you something. Not as good as what you were hoping for maybe, but I thought it’d be something for us to do.” From the folds of his jacket he pulled out a rectangular object.