Sunscorched

by Jen Crane

  Cooper elbowed Kade in the gut when she wasn’t looking, and the big man groaned. “He’s getting worse,” Cooper said, feeling Kade’s cheeks and forehead.

  Nori shook her head in wonder at Cooper’s performance. If the crusty old woman didn’t take pity on them, she had to be a walking corpse.

  “Hmph,” the old woman said. “Doctor died last year.”

  Cooper’s facade faltered. Maybe he was more worried about Kade than he’d let on. Kade made a sudden fuss of coughing and groaning, and Nori rolled her eyes.

  “But,” the woman eyed them again, “a newcomer says he has medical experience. You might try him.”

  “Thank you so much, ma’am,” Cooper gushed when she gave directions.

  “You sure this is the place?” Kade was skeptical, and rightly so. A shack, no more than three pieces of tin fastened together, was propped against the side of another building.

  “The lady said to look for the lean-to.” Cooper shrugged.

  “Lady.” Kade snorted.

  “Let’s just knock,” Nori said. “We’ll never know till we ask.”

  “Hello,” Cooper called toward the front piece of tin. “We were told you could help with a wound.”

  Something rattled inside the shack before its occupant pushed open the tin door.

  Kade’s mouth went slack, and he stared at the man inside the shack.

  Nori ran to him, afraid he would pass out again. “Kade? Kade, are you okay?”

  When he finally found his voice, Kade uttered a single word. “Grant?”

  39

  Big Surprise in Bannera

  The man’s slim fingers fell away from the makeshift door. Without saying a word, he turned and extended an arm to invite them all in.

  Nori’s gaze shot to Kade. His face had gone pale again, and not just from blood loss. His eyes fluttered shut milliseconds before he crumpled to the floor.

  “What happened to him?" Grant bustled about the small space, collecting medical supplies as Nori and Cooper moved Kade to the small but neat bed.

  “He’s been shot,” Nori said.

  “What?” Grant gasped, his sleek brown eyebrows drawing together. “When?”

  “Hours ago,” Cooper said. “We think it went straight through."

  “God,” Grant moaned, his hazel eyes filling with tears. “Oh God, Kade.”

  Nori and Cooper looked at each other, but didn’t say a word about the elephant in the room.

  “What do you know about gunshot wounds?” Nori asked. “Will he be okay?” She rubbed a sheen of sweat from Kade’s brow. “Wait. Do you even have medical training?”

  “I have more than anybody in this town since their doctor died,” Grant said. “And I took care of Kade for years. I’m the best shot he’s got.”

  Grant gently but efficiently treated Kade’s wounds, his gaze roaming his patient’s face as frequently as his shoulder.

  “Who are you, anyway?” Grant asked, risking a look away from Kade.

  “I’m Nori. I…ah…I took your place at the Pit.” Grant blanched but nodded. “This is Cooper,” she said with a shrug, not sure how to describe him.

  This wasn’t ideal, Nori thought. Kade needed serious medical attention, a real doctor. But Grant was right—he was all they had.

  “How bad is it?” she asked him.

  “The wound’s infected,” he said, “but he was lucky. It went through a muscle. I cleaned the wounds pretty well, but he’ll need antibiotics, and those are hard to come by. I have something, but it’s not very strong. Still, he’s strong, and in good health. It’ll be fine.” He looked away and said much quieter, “Please God let him be fine.”

  Cooper stood. “I’m going to look through the bikes to see what meds we brought from the lodge."

  Nori watched Grant fuss over Kade a few minutes more. “What happened?” she asked.

  Grant shot her a confused look.

  “Between you and Kade,” she said. “He told me about you. How are you here?” She shook her head. “How are you alive?”

  Grant’s body sagged and he released an exhausted breath, as if he simply couldn’t carry the weight anymore. “We were supposed to be the most important person in each other’s lives,” he said. “But he never put me first. Not really.” He laughed bitterly. “Story of my life. Anyway, I wasn’t happy at Hank’s or in Trogtown. We couldn’t be together, not really.” He stood to throw something in the trash. “For years, we were stuck in the same place, and I wanted to go forward. Together. That wasn’t possible at Hank’s, so I thought it was time to leave." He closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. “Kade wouldn’t. I wanted to start over somewhere new, but he wouldn’t go.” Grant’s nostrils flared with a sharp intake of breath. “He didn’t choose me,” he said and sat roughly on the bed at Kade’s feet.

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much what Kade said,” Nori nodded. “But why…why do something so gruesome, so dramatic as jump from a gorge? Why make everyone think you were dead? It just seems so cruel.” Nori searched Grant’s face. “I care about Kade, and you destroyed him. Why would you do that?”

  Grant’s head hung between his shoulders, and he put his face in his hands. “I was hurting. I was desperate. Heartbroken. I was in pieces, and when he wouldn’t believe me, when he wouldn’t leave with me, I just wanted him to feel as broken as I did.”

  “Well,” Nori said, her tone razor sharp as she stood. “You got your wish.”

  The cool air that blew into the shack at Cooper’s return brought Kade back to consciousness. He gasped and tried to sit up, but Grant was there with a hand on his chest. “No, no. Lie back down. Everything’s all right. You’re all right."

  Kade lay back down, but his eyes remained on Grant. Though he was injured and weak, his body was tense.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Grant?” His breaths came hard, but not because of the fever. “What the hell?”

  Nori cleared her throat and motioned Cooper outside.

  “Why did you call me out here?” Cooper asked once the tin door/wall had closed. “I thought Grant was dead, too.” He moved to go back inside. “I want some answers.”

  “Wait.” Nori grabbed the sleeve of his leather jacket. “Let’s give them a moment.”

  Cooper eyed her as if she were ridiculous.

  “Fine,” Nori relented. “Grant escaped from Hank’s and led everyone to believe he was dead. Even Kade. He started over, and landed here, I suppose.”

  “That’s messed up,” he said. “I mean, I can see why he’d orchestrate the whole thing so Hank wouldn’t come after him, but not to tell Kade… They seemed close. Poor Kade, man. What a shock.”

  “Poor Kade is right.” Nori nodded. “It shattered him. And to find Grant here, alive…”

  Cooper’s head tilted to the side as he worked through his thoughts. “So, Kade and Grant…”

  Nori nodded.

  “Not you and Kade?”

  Nori shook her head.

  “Ah.” Cooper’s Adam’s apple bobbed beneath a hard swallow.

  “Anyway,” Nori said. “Looks like Kade will be fine after some antibiotics. What now?”

  “Now?” Cooper did a rare thing. He smiled at her, and she nearly gasped at the beauty of it. “Now, let’s go see if we can scare up a hot meal. They have a lot to talk about, and if I have to eat another Vitabar, I’ll jump from a gorge myself.”

  Nori laughed and Cooper ran an arm across her shoulders as they walked toward the town’s main street.

  “Kade? Grant? We’re back, and we brought real food.” Nori knocked, and Cooper rattled the food containers he held.

  When Grant let them inside, the mood was much changed. The tension was gone.

  “You guys were gone a while,” Kade said. He still lay in the bed, his skin pale, but appeared to be past the risk of death, at least for the moment.

  “Nori had to have dessert,” Cooper teased.

  “They had chocolate,” she said. “And real coffee. Li
ke I was going to pass that up.”

  “Please say you brought me some. I’m starving.” Kade winced as he sat up in the bed.

  “No-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies. And real food! Look, potato pot pie. It’s still warm.”

  Kade fed himself with his good arm, closing his eyes at times.

  “It’ll be a while before we get another hot meal, I’m afraid,” Cooper said.

  Kade exchanged a nervous look with Grant.

  “What?” Nori and Cooper asked at the same time.

  “I…ah…I’ve decided to stay here. With Grant.”

  Nori looked between the two. “No… But… Why?”

  “You know why.” He looked at Grant as he spoke. “I made the wrong choice once, and it nearly killed us both. I won’t do it again.”

  She understood. She did. “Come with us,” she said. “Both of you.”

  “I can’t ride with my arm like this, Nori.”

  “You can make it with one good arm, and you know it.” Her voice broke when she said, “And you promised my parents.”

  Kade blew out a deep breath and looked away from her. “I do hate that part. But Cooper knows everything about this trek. I’m just there for moral support.”

  “And muscle.” Cooper’s attempt to lighten the mood had little effect.

  “Kade, are you sure?” Nori asked as she sunk beside him on the bed.

  “I’m sure.” He squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry to leave you, sorry to break my promise. But finding Grant here—it changes everything.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

  After a crowded night on Grant’s floor, Nori and Cooper woke early and readied the bike to leave.

  “Here.” Grant stuffed a few packs of non-perishable food into her arms. “You’re going to need this.”

  “Thanks,” she said absently, watching Kade and Cooper exchange goodbyes.

  “No.” Grant squeezed her arm. “Thank you. For saving Kade after what I did to him.”

  She shrugged and cleared her throat, hiding her emotion from Kade as he approached. He stood in front of her, holding his injured arm, but she suspected it wasn’t physical pain forming the clouds behind his eyes. She was barely holding it together herself.

  “Cooper’s a good guy,” he said. “You can trust him. He’ll make sure you get to your parents.”

  “I know. And I’m glad you found Grant. I just…I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye.” Kade clasped her to him in a bear hug, and she squeezed his waist. Her cheek barely reached his chest. “I don’t have many friends, Kade. I never have. I hate to lose you, is all.”

  “Hey.” He pushed her back to arm’s length and searched her gaze. “Hey. You’re not losing me.” At her doubtful look, he said, “You’re not. You can’t get rid of me that easy. When I get better, and we save some money, who knows? Maybe we’ll join you in Mexico. We can all get a big house together. I’ll cook bacon every morning, and you can be in charge of laundry.” That got a laugh, and he squeezed her one final time. “I’ll miss you, Noir.”

  Her smile was only for show. “I’ll miss you too.”

  Nori waved goodbye one last time before clinging to Cooper like she never had before.

  40

  Cooper Opens Up

  “I can’t feel my toes anymore,” Nori said. Standing on the bike’s foot pegs did nothing to increase blood flow to her feet. “Can’t we break for a minute? My head hurts, and I just want five minutes of silence.” The roar of the engine, the constant vibration of her body left Nori on edge; she needed peace, if only for a moment.

  “We need to make up at least some of the time we lost in Bannera,” Cooper said over his shoulder. “Let’s go another forty miles then we can stop.”

  She pounded her forehead against his back, but didn’t argue anymore. Without warning, the bike slowed to a stop and Cooper dismounted. He didn’t say anything to her before stalking around a bend.

  “Thank you,” Nori said when he returned. He shrugged and looked away. “Tell me about where you grew up.”

  “I thought you wanted quiet.”

  “I needed a break from the bike, okay? I needed to walk, to talk. We’ve been riding for hours, and I can’t hear you over the engine.”

  Cooper didn’t answer, and she didn’t speak for several charged moments. Finally, the silence was too much.

  “So, where did you learn to ride?” she asked.

  A smile flashed across his lips. “My mother.”

  Nori blinked. “Your mother taught you to ride a motorcycle?”

  “She taught me everything.”

  Nori nodded for him to go on, and he sighed, relenting.

  “I grew up in what was basically a commune. Everyone worked together toward the same goal. We shared resources and responsibilities. You’ve heard that phrase ‘it takes a village to raise a child?’ I had a village, though we called it the Settlement. It was a happy little life, actually, and at the helm of the ship was my mom. She was so smart, so independent. She made her own way without worrying about what people thought. The rules didn’t apply to her, you know?”

  Nori nodded, engrossed in the tale of a mother he obviously adored. It was the first time he’d opened up…about anything, really. His eyes brimmed with pride and love as he spoke, and Nori leaned toward him, elbows on her knees, anxious to hear more.

  “I never knew my father, though Gramps served that role as well as anyone could. He and Gran were steady figures in my life. They were both climate scientists who came to the Settlement during the first sunscorch.”

  “Climate scientists,” Nori repeated. “That must be fascinating in a world like ours.”

  Cooper nodded, but frowned. “Anyway, that’s the gist of me.”

  Nori barked a laugh. “Ah, I think you’re leaving a few things out.”

  “Like what?”

  Her eyes widened, and she threw out her hands. “Like, how you got mixed up with Sarge. Like, why you pretended to be in with them. And you never answered me about Chicago.”

  Cooper stretched his neck and avoided Nori’s gaze.

  “Cooper?”

  “Yeah,” he said too lightly.

  “You wanna come clean about any of that?”

  He shook his head and gave her his most charming grin. “Not really.”

  “Fine.”

  Cooper’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  “No,” she said, stomping toward the motorcycle. “We’re sleeping here tonight, and I’m taking the blanket.”

  Cooper muttered to himself as Nori snuggled into a corner with the only blanket they had. After a while, he sat at her feet and rested his head on bent knees.

  Nori woke surprisingly snug, considering she’d slept on rocks. Breath on her neck was like a welcome heater, warming skin not covered by the blanket.

  She jolted as comprehension dawned, her head slamming back to smack Cooper in the forehead.

  He moaned a muffled “ow” before fear overrode his pain. He jumped to attention. “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “You spooning me in my sleep, for one thing.”

  “Is that all?” He dropped the gun he’d apparently been holding in his sleep. “I got cold.”

  “And so, of course, you just snuggled right in.” Nori’s sarcasm didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Yeah, well, you had the blanket.” He turned, unfazed, to walk down the tunnel and out of her sight.

  “Hey!” she yelled after him. “Where are you going?”

  “A little privacy?” he said, his tone dripping with scorn. “Really, Nori, you need to work on boundaries.”

  “Oh.” She threw a handful of gravel at him. “Oh, I need to work on boundaries. You have got to be kidding me.”

  When she’d first considered the prospect, navigating a secret subterranean roadway to another country had sounded thrilling. To a girl whose disability had kept her indoors, days on the road with the wind in her hair and a powerful machine beneath her was
a dream come true.

  What Nori had failed to consider was that when traveling underground, scenery rarely changed. No pit stops for tourist traps. Besides an occasional swath of graffiti, it was just rock, rock, and more rock. Some parts of the path were smoothed by time or hand, and there were occasional veins of silvery minerals, but by and large, it was just a bunch of uninterrupted rock.

  Nori was so sick of it she thought she might be the first case of death by monotony. A whole new kind of stoning, she mentally snorted. Yeah, she definitely needed a change of scenery.

  “How many more days do you think we have to go?” she asked. “And any chance we’ll see something besides this stupid tunnel? Any towns?”

  Cooper turned and talked over the motor. “Drove through south Texas yesterday. Takes a while to go around big settlements like San Antonio and Laredo, though they have the best infrastructure. With any luck, we’ll pass into Mexico today.”

  “Cooper!” She punched his ribs. “I’m dying here. I need a shower. And real food. Why would you drive around a town?”

  “Generally better to go unnoticed,” he said. “Towns mean trouble. Gangs. Remember the Sword of Yahweh?”

  “That wasn’t a town, it was a cult,” she huffed. “Bannera was okay.”

  “We risked Bannera because Kade’s gunshot was infected. And it turned out okay because of Grant, who that town needs since there are no med schools and doctors are dying of old age. The important thing is getting to the 25th. Finding your parents. Don’t forget that.”

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten,” she snapped. “This is just…tougher than I’d thought it would be.”

  “I know. And I hate to tell you, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  She sat up higher on the bike. “What do you mean?”

  “The passages we’ve taken—all of the ones running under the US—were funded by the government decades ago.”

  “That’s not true.” Nori shook her head. “I never heard that.”