Wilder (Savage #2)

by Jade C. Jamison

  I walked to the end of the driveway and the back of my car to look at the truck. That damned truck—and its infected driver—had probably saved my life. Had I gone to my aunt’s by myself…

  No, I was exaggerating things in my mind. Had I gone to my aunt’s by myself, I wouldn’t have run out of gas. I was also beginning to wonder if Larry, now knowing that he’d been going a little off his rocker the whole time and had sabotaged our chances of getting out there, had ruined things with my aunt’s neighbors that he and Vera met without Kevin and me. Ah, but there was also how he’d ensured that my aunt’s car couldn’t get us out of there, either. That man had done everything in his power to strand us there, and I felt a chill wondering what he would have done now had Kevin and I not wised up a little bit.

  So, yeah. Fuck this truck. It actually threw me into the wake of a madman disguised as friend. But I wondered if he, too, would have been better off staying here. Maybe being around civilization would have kept him in check. Then again, he might have been one of the looters…or he might have been an officer of the law gone bad.

  As I stared at that truck, though, I couldn’t be angry. It had reunited me with Kevin Savage, and as much as my stubborn head and heart wanted to be pissed, wanted to wish that I’d never seen him again because I was once more having to experience the pain of loss, I would only be feeling that way because of what had happened between us in the first place. He had turned out to be what I needed at the time, whether I wanted to admit it or not. Last fall, before we were thrown together, I’d become just another body on this planet going through the motions. I was alive in body only, hanging on by a thread for my kids’ sake. I wasn’t truly living life. I was dead on the inside, almost dead on the outside, infected with the disease of needing to turn off everything that made me human in the first place—the ability and need to feel. That was back—I was back—and I had to believe that was a good thing.

  So maybe Savage was out of my life for good once more, but in spite of the tribulations we’d endured on that mountain, I would sometime in the future look back at those days fondly, only because of our time together. I couldn’t hate him for leaving, couldn’t hate him for needing to go on with his life now that we were free. He was a good man and I sent thanks to the universe for letting me borrow him, even if only for a short while. He’d been the spark that brought me back to life.

  Just those thoughts reinvigorated my spirit. I’d always been strong when I’d needed to be, and this time called for it like no other. I had to find my kids—I had to know where they were, if they were okay, and the only way to do it was to get my ass up north.

  So I had a problem to solve. My car was wedged in the driveway, trapped. There were two trees in my yard, but even if I could maneuver around them, there was a car in front of my house halfway on the sidewalk, the one the infected guy’s truck had dragged down the street. There was no way I could drive out that direction, even if I managed to turn my car that way. The driveway itself was blocked from the street by the truck and then the mailbox just past it, and then a fence on the other side.

  But maybe I could get the car turned so I could break through that fence. It was a wooden boundary on that side of the driveway next to my neighbor’s house, while the fence in my yard was chain link. With enough speed, my car could maybe break through either, but there was no way I could go fast in this tight space.

  I looked at that truck again. Maybe I could move it instead.

  I walked over, taking tentative steps, as though the truck could start driving itself or the driver would suddenly come back to life. I hadn’t gotten all the details about the infected—about how long they remained that way before either healing or dying—but my experience with them in the hills told me that it wasn’t like the flu. They weren’t feeling good as new just a couple of days later. Like the woman who’d tried to attack Kevin when he was checking out his motorcycle—I was convinced she’d been that way for a while, for at least a couple of months. Once I knew my kids were okay, I’d have to find out the whole story.

  I’d also have to help rebuild. It was a job I felt suited for and, somehow, this new society felt better, like people cared. Like they wanted to contribute. Like they wanted the best for everyone else and not just every man for himself. Granted, that notion was based mostly upon my meetings with people like Susana, but I was optimistic in a way I hadn’t been since I’d been a young naïve woman.

  Maybe that part of me needed to wake up to make it through this new world.

  I walked over to the driver’s side of the truck and peeked in the window. There was no doubt that poor man was dead now. His body seemed to be in a partial state of decay, and I felt overwhelmed with sadness that no one had been able to help him.

  Maybe there hadn’t been any help for him. Maybe he was one of those doomed to die because his body had succumbed to the illness.

  I tried to think back to all the shit I’d learned in high school history classes, about plagues from times gone by, like the black death. I wondered if the world had lost as many people proportionally now as had been lost then. When would we even restore our civilization enough that the statisticians could begin crunching numbers and let us know how great our losses were?

  Well…I had to start here. First, I took a deep breath and looked inside the window again. Yeah, the guy was definitely dead. The only possible harm that could come to me was becoming infected myself…and I didn’t understand enough about this virus to know if I was immune or just hadn’t been properly exposed. From what I could remember, though, I was pretty certain that it was like AIDS or Ebola in that I’d have to have an infected person’s body fluid make it inside my body somehow—through a scratch or mucous membrane or something like that.

  It was a chance I had to take. I’d already been around plenty of infected people and hadn’t gotten sick yet.

  Another deep breath and my hand gripped the handle of the truck. I pulled on it and slowly opened the door…only to be hit by the most putrid, overpowering stench I’d ever smelled in my life. I imagined a battlefield, if the bodies were left on the ground to rot, would smell much like this. My kitchen the day before had been nothing compared to this. I started gagging and dry heaving, my body responding to the odor, and I slammed the door. The guy was most certainly dead, but I didn’t think there was any way my body could handle that smell.

  I looked again once my stomach stopped convulsing, but the sight wasn’t helpful. I decided that, if I got desperate, I could maybe find a way to cover my nose, but for now…well, I wasn’t even considering it a possibility. And, for all I knew, he’d made the truck undrivable when he’d crashed it into the post.

  I could maybe walk up and down the street, looking in neighbors’ cars for keys and use theirs. But then I realized that I had no idea who was alive and who was gone. Susana had mentioned that many families were actually living at the college for now, and who knew when they’d return home? I decided at that moment that if something wasn’t mine, I wasn’t going to take it. I’d done more than enough of that on the mountain.

  So my car it was.

  I went to open the door and realized it was locked. And then I remembered my key was in my purse…still at my aunt’s house—as good as a million miles away. But I had a spare. My kids drove the car on occasion, and we had an extra key for it hanging on a hook next to the calendar in the kitchen.

  A calendar stuck on November.

  I went in the house and grabbed the key, looking at that damned calendar that no longer had purpose. I’d circled the Saturday before Thanksgiving in red, indicating that my kids were going to be home that day.

  And I blinked back another tear.

  Damn it.

  I clenched my jaw and went back out front. It was odd, not hearing all the spring neighborhood noises I used to. It was pretty quiet overall, and I didn’t know if that was comforting or creepy.

  I walked over to my car and slid the key in the lock. As often happened, it stuck, an
d I had to turn it twice. The automatic lock that opened with the help of a key fob had died years before, and I’d since grown used to opening the doors the old-fashioned way. I didn’t know if that reminder of the past reinforced a sense of security or if it was simply annoying.

  I chose to be optimistic and decided it was nice to have something feel familiar. After opening the door, I slid in the seat. The car smelled nice inside, probably because of some forgotten air freshener under a seat, because the scent was an almost new smell. I put the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine at first wouldn’t turn over, and I knew it was because I hadn’t started it in so long, but I stubbornly tried again. This time, I pumped it a little—probably a stupid idea—but then I turned the ignition and it turned over…once, then twice, and then it caught. It caught! I revved it then, several times, wanting to keep it going. Once I was sure it wasn’t going to die, I took my foot off the gas and rolled down the driver’s side window halfway. Then I just sat there, letting the car idle, and I looked out the windshield, then out the sides, and finally in my rearview mirror, trying to formulate a plan of attack.

  After five minutes, I was sure the car was no longer in danger of dying, and I put it into reverse. I decided to crank the wheel as far as I could to the right and then took my foot off the brake, letting the car back up until it looked like I was just hairs away from the truck that had crashed in front of my house. Then I braked and put the car in drive, turning the wheel far left and moving the car until it was mere inches from the house. I continued this back-and-forth for ten minutes and felt like it was futile, because—even though the car was finally at a bit of an angle—I’d barely made any progress. I looked down at the gas gauge and determined that I had plenty of fuel for the task…but I wasn’t sure I had enough patience.

  I put the car in park and considered letting it idle again but knew I’d also have to test if it would start now that I’d been using it. I needed to know before I took it out on the road. So I shut it off and went inside the house for a drink of water. This task was going to take several hours, it seemed, but I figured that I would get to a point where it would be easier and go faster. The biggest problem was that my car was in there tight.

  But I wasn’t ready to give up—and I sure as hell wasn’t ready to slap on a mask and sit next to the dead infected guy…not yet anyway. I walked around the car a couple of times, eyeballing the space, and I was fairly certain I could do it. It was just going to take a lot of time and a lot of patience—and, even though I might have been lacking somewhat in the patience department, I had plenty of time to spare.

  Might as well get started.

  I took a deep breath and grabbed the door handle…when I heard something. At first, it sounded like a chainsaw or maybe even a lawnmower. Neither made much sense. Well, the chainsaw could be explained if there were more infected people in Winchester or even had it been winter. The back of my mind knew, though…it knew, but it was afraid. How many times had I been excited or happy throughout my life and had wound up supremely disappointed?

  Unable to stand heartbreak again, I wallowed in denial.

  I was almost frozen, though, and I finally rested my head on my forearm across the top of the car and closed my eyes, listening to loud purr of that engine as it seemed to come closer to me, a little at a time.

  I didn’t want to let myself believe it was getting nearer.

  I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

  I didn’t want to allow myself even a glimmer…and yet I stood there, my muscles taut, nerves tingling, breath bated.

  So I continued to stand that way, even after I heard the motor stop near me. I estimated that it was in front of the truck, just past the sidewalk, based on the sound. I sucked in a jagged breath, knowing that it was stupid to not look up, because if it really wasn’t him, then I could potentially be in danger.

  I opened my eyes before lifting my head off my arm and swallowed. Yeah, it was Kevin Savage, the warm spring sun beaming down on him. He was a most welcome sight and it turned out that my hopes weren’t dashed by his appearance, but I was confused. Why was he here?

  He must have seen that unspoken question written on my face. “I forgot to tell you something.”

  Oh. And there was the disappointment. In today’s ravaged world, he couldn’t just send me a quick text or call me to pass on a piece of information he thought was semi-urgent. So what was so important that he felt the need to prolong the start of his journey—and the start of my healing—just so he could come back and tell me? I squinted, hoping it looked like the sun was in my eyes when really it was the desperate need to, once more, push the tears back. I swallowed, trying to keep my voice steady…neutral. “What was that?”

  He closed the gap between us and touched my cheek. “I love you, too.”

  Well, I might have been able to hold back the tears before, but there was no stopping them now. There they went, reminders of my thawed-out heart and renewed sense of self. I blinked, trying to make the stupid things stop falling, and fought to make my voice sound normal. “You wasted all that gas just to tell me that?”

  He smiled and then leaned over to kiss me, and I couldn’t stop my hands from grabbing the front of his shirt, almost afraid to let him go ever again. But he pulled me close, his arms around my waist, as if assuring me that he wasn’t going anywhere. When his lips left mine, he said, “Yeah.” His eyes narrowed before he kissed my forehead. “No. It’s…just something I think you needed to know, no matter the cost.” I knew then that that was all he would ever say on the matter, this man of few words. It felt like a love song, though, one that had been painstakingly composed for days until just the right notes, only the perfect words had been chosen.

  Still…I feared allowing myself to believe something without confirmation. Like a merchant of old, I had to bite the coin to make sure it was real. His answer to my question would be just that. “So…what now?”

  He looked down at me. “No sense me going north alone, when you need to check on your kids up there, too. We kill two birds with one stone—check my family and check yours. We get my truck while we’re up there, and if anyone needs to come home, we bring them with us.”

  “Home?”

  I saw a twinkle in Kevin’s clear green eyes. “I was gonna sell my mom’s house before all this…but I’m thinking of settling in there now.”

  “But what about work? Don’t you have a job in Greeley?”

  He chuckled. “After a five-month unapproved leave of absence? Besides…I have no idea what’s going on now. I know there’s some demand for oil, but I have no idea where it’s coming from. Maybe there, maybe somewhere else. But I think…I think my old hometown needs some TLC. It needs rebuilding…and it needs people to do the work. Was I wrong in guessing you wanted to be part of that?” I blinked. “Once you know what’s going on with your kids?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  He nodded. “Nothing says we have to do anything…other than checking on our loved ones. But I sure as hell don’t want to do it alone.”

  I continued looking at him, this man I’d fallen in love with again, only this time…this time, it wasn’t a schoolgirl’s infatuation, a fantasy of what could be. I loved the man, the real man, the guy I’d discovered during our ordeal. And I told him so. Never again would I allow inaction or unspoken words to lead to regret.

  “So what now?”

  “You wanna go get your kids?”

  I nodded. “That was the plan.”

  “Want a partner?”

  “More than you know.”

  A couple of hours later, our bellies full, our hearts fuller, we set out on the highway toward Colorado Springs with me on the rear of Kevin’s bike, holding him around the torso, my cheek resting against his back with him at the wheel. I didn’t know what the future would bring—if I would find my kids, if we would come back to Winchester, even what would happen as mankind rebuilt what had been lost—but I did know that anything I did from this point forward
would be with him.

  I was no longer alone.

  * * *

  Thank you so much for reading Nina and Kevin’s story. Several of my faithful readers have asked me to write a sequel (and I might) but, for now, I hope you love where the story lands, even though there are a few loose ends.

  If you liked Savage, you’ll love BULLET. What if the man you want is toxic? Don’t miss the Bullet series, starting with Bullet Part 1. Valerie and Ethan’s relationship is like a roller coaster ride…

  CHECK OUT BULLET PART 1 >

  If you like steamy reads, you’ll love HEAT. She’s about to get the happy ending she wasn’t expecting… Don’t miss Heat: Book One! Rachel’s new masseuse is undeniably hot!

  DOWNLOAD HEAT: BOOK ONE FOR FREE >

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  Turn the page for a short excerpt from Heat: Book One…

  Excerpt from HEAT: BOOK ONE

  “Mmmm. Oh. My. God.” Rachel couldn’t help but vocalize just how good Spike’s hands felt on her body. She never would have imagined it in a hundred years, but this man’s technique was even better than Mark’s. He’d already located one huge knot in her shoulder and was working it out, slowly, surely, and she could tell from the way his hands pressed against the stubborn spots that he was holding back untold strength.

  What a turn on.

  His touch was leaving her breathless in more ways than one. His fingers were powerful, banishing her tension and pain, forcing her muscles to release all the aches they created in her body on a daily basis, and she could feel in their wake pure bliss, complete relaxation.