Edge of Collapse Series | Book 6 | Edge of Survival

by Stone, Kyla

  Hannah didn’t blame him, but she knew in her heart that this was the right thing to do.

  The communities had to stand together; there was no other option.

  If Trade Day was successful…if the alliance meeting went well…her heart beat faster. They could make a difference, a real difference.

  They could build something here that would endure through the Collapse and beyond.

  “We need something good,” Bishop said. “People need something to work toward, a goal. They need hope.”

  Hannah smiled. “Then let’s give it to them.”

  12

  Quinn

  Day Eighty-Eight

  “Ready for the last load?” Hannah asked.

  “As if we have a choice,” Quinn quipped, rolling her eyes.

  They’d already finished two loads of clothes, which were hanging on the clotheslines strung between a couple of maple trees in Gran’s backyard.

  She and Hannah had been busy washing two households’ worth of laundry. They used two five-gallon pails. Quinn had cut out a one-and-a-half-inch hole in each lid. The first bucket was for washing, the second for rinsing.

  Both were filled with water, with soap added to the first bucket, and a half cup of vinegar poured into the rinse bucket as a softener. She’d placed a toilet plunger with small holes punched into the rubber cup through each lid.

  Using the plunger, Hannah agitated the dirty laundry vigorously by pushing and pulling the plunger for about ten minutes. The wet, sudsy laundry was transferred to Quinn’s bucket of clean water, which she agitated for five minutes before dumping the water, refilling it from the well pump, and plunging the clothes again until they were rinsed.

  It sure beat kneeling over the tub and hand-scrubbing each item with Gran’s old-fashioned washboard and a bar of soap.

  The Winter Haven houses had electricity for their washers and dryers, but with all this dreary weather, power was limited. Besides, Gran insisted they know how to do it the old-fashioned way, and Hannah agreed.

  “If we’ve learned anything, it’s not to rely on something that might disappear tomorrow,” Gran had said. As much as Quinn hated it, she knew Gran was right.

  Charlotte lay on her back on a blanket Hannah had spread on the back patio a few yards away. Ghost lounged beside her, dozing with his head on his paws, soaking up the delicious sun.

  He’d gone squirrel hunting earlier in the morning, the remains of which had been proudly deposited by the back steps.

  During a break, Hannah made funny faces at Charlotte, who let loose a burst of giggles as bright and pure as pearls on a string. Hannah’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her green eyes tinged with sadness as she gazed at her daughter.

  “Charlotte is already changing so much, so fast, I forget what she looked like just a few weeks ago. I wish I could document her somehow, capture this special time for her.”

  Quinn’s chest tightened, guilt pricking her. The portraits she’d drawn of Charlotte were still sitting on her dresser, unfinished.

  It wasn’t just the lack of time. She’d lost the desire to draw and paint. She’d lost the desire to do pretty much anything, her heart too consumed with worry, grief, and rage.

  “I miss pictures, too,” she forced out, thinking of the millions of photos that vanished the moment phones died forever.

  “Maybe I miss disposable diapers most of all.” Hannah shook off the sadness and gave a self-deprecating laugh. “For such a tiny creature, her bowel movements are impressive. The cloth diapers just never end!”

  Quinn had changed her share of Charlotte’s diapers and agreed completely. “Tell me about it. At least we have soap.”

  Eventually, they’d have to create their own soap from scratch using wood ash to make lye and mixing it with rendered animal fat. Luckily, they weren’t there yet.

  Quinn was suddenly grateful for Gran’s huge stash of baking soda.

  Hannah sloshed the dirty laundry with the plunger, her jaw clenched in concentration, her injured fingers clasping the handle awkwardly. It looked like it hurt.

  “I can do that,” Quinn offered. At least she could be good for something. Laziness had never been one of her character flaws.

  Hannah shook her head. “The pain means it’s working, right? It gets a little easier every time, like it’s a dead thing coming back to life.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her arm and tilted her chin at Quinn. “You ready for Trade Day tomorrow?”

  While they did the laundry, Milo had gone with Gran to work on the community garden at the middle school baseball field.

  Mike Duncan and Robert Vinson were building several greenhouses with lumber, plywood, and repurposed windows donated from the hardware store, while the principal had scrounged up a few hydroponic towers she’d discovered in the science teacher’s classroom.

  The towers used aquaponics to grow seedlings in water without soil. Jamal, Mike’s son, thought he could build some homemade grow towers using PVC pipes.

  Bishop, Reynoso, and several of the others were busy manning the barricades and roadblocks. At sixteen, Quinn couldn’t participate. Yet.

  “We’re ready. We loaded Gran’s homemade applesauce and jarred peaches and tomato sauce into the Orange Julius this morning.”

  Quinn tried to drum up some internal excitement, but she couldn’t. These days, she couldn’t seem to feel much of anything.

  Except for anger. She never ran out of anger.

  Once the clothes were mostly dry, Quinn used a broom handle to beat them, then snapped each item a few times when they were fully dry before folding them. Fabric didn’t come out clothes-dryer soft, but it helped with the stiffness. Gran was right, as always.

  After a few minutes, Hannah glanced at her, brows lowered in concern. “Quinn, since we’re alone…I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  She went rigid. “Everything’s fine. I’m fine.”

  “We’ve all been so busy. And no one’s ever alone anymore, are they? Other people are always around. I haven’t been able to check in with you.”

  Her eyes burned. She tightened her grip on the agitator and pulled and pushed until her biceps felt like they were on fire. “I’m strong. I don’t need anyone to check on me.”

  “It has nothing to do with strength. We all need some help from time to time.”

  “Give your help to someone who needs it. Like Milo. He’s the one without a dad now.”

  “I will. I am.” Hannah hesitated. “Milo isn’t the only one hurting.”

  Quinn concentrated on the birds chirping, on Charlotte’s giggles, on the chilly breeze tunneling through her sweater. At the edge of the yard, all the trees stood in a row—thick tall trunks, branches like empty arms stretching for something they’d never be able to reach.

  “You experienced trauma, Quinn. Having to kill Rosamond. What Noah did, how he died. Right after it happened, everyone focused on Milo’s coma. But we haven’t forgotten about you. I promise. I haven’t forgotten about you.

  “You stepped up and protected Milo. Kept him safe and helped him deal with all the awful things that happened. But who’s helping you?”

  Quinn dropped her gaze to the bucket, her stomach doing nervous somersaults. She felt Hannah’s worried eyes on her, like how a mother might look at a wayward child she was afraid might bolt.

  Longing pricked her. Quinn tried her best to ignore it and failed miserably.

  Her mother, Octavia, had been in the business of causing harm, not healing it. Careless with other people’s hearts, she was never the one to bandage the wounds she’d inflicted.

  Gramps was the one Quinn confided in. The one who’d offered his shoulder to cry on, who’d sat in the Orange Julius and listened patiently to her little-girl complaints.

  Gran was all Quinn had left. She knew Gran loved her, but Gran wasn’t one to spill her guts or have heart-to-hearts about anything. The closest they’d ever come to talking about the hard stuff was after Octavia died. It was the only time
she’d ever seen Gran cry.

  She both wanted to confide in Hannah and dreaded it. Both drawn to Hannah’s tender concern and terrified of it.

  Hannah studied her. “You can talk to me, you know.”

  “I am talking to you.”

  “About anything. About everything.”

  Quinn didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure that she could.

  “How Noah died—”

  “I don’t want to talk about him.” Her words came fast and jerky, a smoldering ember in her chest, her cheeks hot.

  “It wasn’t fair or right, how it happened. When someone you care about makes bad decisions, it can be tough to process, to figure out how you feel about it all.” Hannah hesitated. “I know. I’m going through it, too.”

  Quinn’s throat thickened. “I’m fine.”

  “It’s okay to feel—”

  “I said I’m fine!”

  Hannah nodded slowly, reluctantly. “Okay, I understand.”

  Hannah probably did understand. Noah had been her husband. She had more of a right to grieve than Quinn did, more right to anger, pain, and betrayal.

  Even so, that knowledge didn’t change a thing inside Quinn, didn’t loosen the bitter knot in her gut or dissolve the darkness hardening in her chest.

  Half the time, she felt numb, disconnected. Empty. The other half, she was incandescent with rage.

  A brutal anger so sharp, she felt it cutting her up from the inside. Scarring her. Mutating her into someone—something—she didn’t recognize.

  In the last two weeks, the dark thing inside her hadn’t gone away. It hadn’t gotten better. It had grown bigger, darker, uglier.

  And it filled her with a bottomless terror.

  13

  Quinn

  Day Eighty-Eight

  Charlotte let out a vexed wail as she batted one of her toys out of reach. Her fat little arms flailed for it, but she couldn’t yet flip over or crawl.

  On his feet at Charlotte’s first cry, Ghost shook the leaves and twigs from his fluffy coat and circled the blanket anxiously, nosing her little body to discover the source of her unhappiness.

  Ghost panted his warm doggy breath into her face. Charlotte’s distress transformed into coos and giggles. Hannah abandoned the laundry bucket to retrieve the baby’s toy, check her diaper, and whisper a few sweet nothings into her pink seashell ear.

  Watching them, Quinn’s heart squeezed. She felt like crying for absolutely no reason, which just made her angrier at herself.

  Once Charlotte was situated, Hannah returned to the laundry and Quinn’s side. They worked for several more minutes in silence.

  “She looks like you,” Quinn said after a while.

  “It’s a small blessing, but one I treasure.” Wincing, Hannah stopped agitating the pole and rubbed her injured hand. “While I was pregnant, for the longest time, I couldn’t love her. I associated her with Pike—with the awful things that he did to me. But the night she was born, I almost died. I had to fight my way back, and when I did, I saw her for the gift that she is. She’s mine, not his. She was never his.”

  She met Quinn’s gaze. “For me, she is proof that beauty can come from ashes.”

  “You killed Pike,” Quinn blurted out before she could stop herself. Her cheeks heated. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bring it up. I have a big mouth, Gran’s always getting after me.”

  Hannah didn’t flinch or shrink away. Her gaze never wavered. “It’s okay. It’s not a taboo subject. It happened. It’s part of my story.”

  Quinn hesitated, glancing away and searching the trees. A crow perched on a branch, watching her with its beady black eye. “What was it like, to kill him?”

  For a minute, Hannah didn’t answer. Quinn worried that she wouldn’t respond, that no matter what she’d claimed, Quinn had offended her.

  “Terrifying,” Hannah said finally.

  “But you did it, anyway.”

  Hannah’s smile was pained, hinting at the scars she’d endured, but there was strength in her, too, a core of iron that radiated from her whole being. “Fear can’t be defeated, but it can be beaten, over and over again, if you’ve got something worth fighting for.”

  Quinn wanted that strength, that fortitude and toughness that Hannah exuded. How could someone remain so kind after such brutality?

  Quinn had never killed anyone before that night two weeks ago. Within an hour, four human beings were dead because of her. The militiamen she’d eliminated from a distance, at night, so she never saw their faces or glimpsed their pain.

  Rosamond Sinclair was up close and personal.

  Rosamond’s death was the one that haunted her. Rosamond—and Noah.

  “It wasn’t like in the movies,” Hannah said. “Where the heroine exacts revenge and walks away unscathed. Taking a life does something, means something, no matter who it is. Gavin Pike was a monstrous man. He deserved to die, he needed to die. It was self-defense, and it was justice, but it still took something from me.”

  Quinn said nothing.

  Near the woodpile, Valkyrie was on the prowl, hunting for mice, but Loki kept jumping in and ruining her plans. She hissed her displeasure and swiped at him with her claws.

  Loki meowed loudly and danced out of her way, only to follow her and foil her next ambush, too. Loki was a lousy hunter. Valkyrie, on the other hand, was born for it.

  “Killing a person changes you,” Hannah said. “There’s no getting around it.”

  She hated that Rosamond lurked in her mind and stalked her nightmares. She hated that Noah’s crumpled form was the first thing she saw in the morning and the last thing she saw at night.

  “I still have nightmares, too. I still see his face.” Hannah’s voice was so soft over the breeze and Charlotte’s coos and gurgles, Quinn had to strain to hear it. “It takes time to work through it—all the emotions and nightmares. You feel different than you think you should feel, than you want to feel. Is that how it is for you?”

  Quinn managed a faint nod.

  “It’s okay to feel upset about it,” Hannah said gently. “Everything I imagine you’re feeling right now—it’s normal. But never forget that Rosamond brought her death upon herself. She gave you no choice. Do you understand? You did what you had to do. You did the right thing.”

  They didn’t speak for a moment.

  Hannah’s gaze softened. Tears sparkled in her green eyes like emeralds. “We’re survivors, Quinn. You and me. We do what we have to do.”

  She felt it, like an electric current linking her to Hannah, the same current that connected her to Bishop—the bond between people who’d lost so much.

  A loss that obliterates you, undoes your life, unspools your very self, until you look in the mirror and the face you see isn’t yours anymore.

  “You can talk to me, Quinn. I promise. It’s okay to ask for help.”

  She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t ask for help or talk about it. She couldn’t even name it: the something going wrong inside her. How she could feel herself slipping away and something new creeping in.

  How she didn’t know how to stop it—or even if she wanted to.

  Quinn dropped the plunger handle and backed away, a scream locked behind her teeth. “I have to go.”

  “Quinn—”

  “I’m sorry.” The laundry wasn’t finished. It was rinsed, but everything needed to be wrung out and hung on the clothesline, or the towels and sheets would get moldy. “I’m sorry about the laundry. I’ll do all Charlotte’s diapers next time, I promise. I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t scratch Ghost’s chin or hug Charlotte goodbye.

  Eyes burning, hot tears strangling her throat, Quinn turned and stumbled across Hannah’s backyard, not toward her own house but away, into the woods, heading anywhere but here.

  14

  Liam

  Day Eighty-Eight

  Liam shouldered his pack and lowered his NVGs over his eyes.

  He made his way through the trees as soundlessly as possible, m
apping out his steps, avoiding twigs in his path and stepping heel-to-toe over the damp leaves, matted grass, and snow.

  The moon was out, the air brittle and cold. The night sky was cloudless, the stars bright shards. A silvery glow limned the trees, the branches, each gleaming patch of snow.

  The moonlight meant he was more exposed.

  He needed to be careful.

  Before the edge of the tree line, he paused and checked his watch. 2258. The patrol passed by this section of fence at 2300 hours, again at 2400 hours, and every hour after that.

  He took out his binoculars and glassed the area to find the patrol was right on time. Two guards with M4s on slings trudged along the inside perimeter of the fence, their flashlight beams sweeping back and forth.

  Security floodlights powered by a generator interspersed the fence. This section was located equidistant from the farthest lights, which made it the darkest area of the entire fence line.

  A few hundred yards east inside the perimeter, the sentries posted at the static position leaned against the fence. One smoked a cigarette. The second one appeared to be sleeping—his head tilted back, eyes closed.

  Liam waited in complete silence, hardly breathing.

  Once the patrol had passed, he examined the area one last time before moving out into the thirty yards of open space between the tree line and the fence. He kept low and moved fast, running at a crouch. His back twinged in protest, but he didn’t slow.

  He arrived at the fence and squatted, dropped the M4 on its sling, and reached for his pack and pulled out the wire cutters. He rarely packed tools in his go-bag, but for this trip, he’d brought several “just in case” items.

  He glanced toward the sentries, who weren’t paying attention. It was imperative he eliminate the sentries on his egress route. Speed was of the essence.