A Wilderness Within

by Emma Castle

  Tears glistened in her eyes, and he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Fuck it.” He pulled her close and slanted his mouth down over hers. She tasted sweet, and her lips were so soft. He parted her mouth with his tongue and fisted a hand in her hair as he stroked her tongue with his. Kissing her was like touching a live wire. It was a violent shock to his system that made his ears ring and his blood roar through his veins. He could’ve kissed her for days, but he had to stop.

  He pulled back, all too satisfied with the dazed expression on her face. He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips. “Anyone still alive in this fucked-up world is strong. You got me?”

  “Yeah.” She reached up and touched her lips. A blush stained her cheeks.

  “We’ll meet people the more we travel, and they won’t all be nice like Glenn and Joanie. You have to be prepared, okay? We can’t save everyone, and we can’t be friends with everyone. Just be prepared.”

  “I am prepared. I’ve seen the best and the worst of what we can be in the last few months.” She paused for a moment and licked her lips nervously. “We are a team, aren’t we?” she asked, worry in her eyes. “You won’t abandon me if I don’t fit your plans?”

  “No,” he promised. She was his plan. Nothing else in this world made sense anymore except being with her, protecting her. He started driving again. Neither of them spoke until they reached the familiar place they’d been secretly calling home the last few days. It seemed abandoned, and it was far enough from anywhere that it might be untouched.

  “Remember to pack everything of value. We’ll load it and the chickens in the car tomorrow and leave at first light.”

  They entered the house, him first and her behind. But it took only a second to realize that they had made a mistake. The creak of floorboards, the rustle of cloth, the click of a trigger being pulled…

  “Run!” he bellowed to Caroline, shoving her back into the yard.

  Pain exploded in his shoulder, and he stumbled back, smacking the doorjamb. Caroline screamed, and he struggled not to fall. If he fell, he might not have the strength to get back up.

  “Lincoln!” Caroline screamed. He looked deeper into the house as three men approached him, all dressed in military gear, armed to the teeth.

  Fuck. How had he been so stupid? He should have left her in the car and checked the place himself first. Shit, shit, shit…

  “Caro…” He growled her name and tried to look over his shoulder, but one of the men grabbed him and swung his fist right into Lincoln’s face.

  8

  I am weary of days and hours,

  Blown buds of barren flowers,

  Desires and dreams and powers

  And everything but sleep.

  —“The Garden of Proserpine”

  by Algernon Charles Swinburne

  * * *

  January 2020

  Adam threw himself into his office chair, and Lincoln followed, lingering just inside the door. The briefing with POTUS hadn’t gone well. Everyone was terrified of Hydra-1 and everything it represented.

  “Dr. Kennedy at the CDC is doing her best to develop a vaccine, but they can’t seem to grow a live virus in the lab. It kills the host cells too quickly for them to learn much, and it won’t grow in isolated dormant cells.”

  “Adam,” Lincoln said, clearing his throat. “Mr. Vice President. What can I do?” There had to be something, a mission, a race to find the right scientist, something. He couldn’t stand feeling this helpless.

  “What you can do is call your parents, Lincoln.” It was the second time Adam had told him this, and knowing what Adam really meant chilled him to his core. They weren’t going to win this fight.

  “Do it here, my office.” Adam nodded toward the black leather chair in the corner by a wall of bookshelves.

  Lincoln sat, shifting his weapons, and pulled out his phone. He hadn’t dialed that number in over a year. His heart raced as he put the phone to his ear and listened.

  “Hello?” His mother’s voice came through.

  “Mom.” He almost had to repeat himself, the word came out so rough.

  “Lincoln?” Her joy at hearing his voice stung him with guilt. He loved his mother, but as long as she was married to his father, he couldn’t talk to her without having to think about or interact with him.

  “Mom. Listen, are you at home?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Sit down, okay?” He waited until she confirmed she was sitting down. “Something bad is coming. You’ve heard about the virus on the news? It’s going to spread. Things are going to get bad. Real bad. You need to buy bottled water, canned foods, bullets for Dad’s rifles. And you need to move to the cabin by the lake. You understand?”

  “My God, Lincoln…” His mother, a true mother to a soldier, knew better than to ask a million questions or let emotions run away with her. “Where are you?”

  “DC.” He glanced to Adam, who nodded. “With Adam. It’s bad, Mom. I want you to stay at that cabin. Do not go into the city, do not go looking for your friends. You have to close yourselves off. Do you understand?”

  “I…I understand.” Her voice trembled. He hated having to deliver such an awful warning to her, but it was the only way he could give her a chance.

  “Mom…”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  She sniffled. “I love you too, Lincoln. Do you want to speak to your”

  “No.” He cut her off. Even if the world burned down around him, he wasn’t going to talk to that man.

  “But”

  “Tell him that if he gets stubborn and doesn’t do what I just said, I’ll kill him.” Then he hung up before she could say anything else.

  “‘I love you, Dad,’ might have been more appropriate,” Adam said with chuckle.

  Lincoln clenched his cell phone in a white-knuckled grip. “We both know I wouldn’t mean it, so what’s the point?”

  “Fair enough.” Adam stood and walked to the window overlooking the street outside. For a long moment neither of them spoke. They’d worked together for years, had been friends even longer, and their silences often said more than words.

  Lincoln stood and joined Adam at the window, staring at the White House lawn covered in snow.

  “It feels like someone stepped over my grave, you know?” Adam raked a hand through his hair and glanced at him. “I hate feeling this powerless.”

  Lincoln understood. Whenever he cleared out a village run by insurgents, he would kill them, but he had to leave behind the women and children knowing that more would come after Lincoln left and sooner or later those innocents would be tortured and killed.

  Hydra-1 was worse than any tyrant, worse than any terrorist group. It had the ability to destroy everything, and there was no way to stop it. There was no playing the hero, not this time.

  “Maybe it’s time,” he muttered.

  “Time?” Adam turned, confused.

  “Time to wipe the slate clean. Humanity gets a chance to start over—assuming any of us survive, that is.”

  Adam faced his desk and leaned over it. He pressed his palms flat against the wood. He looked world-weary for a man in his mid-thirties.

  “Don’t ever forget what our purpose is, Lincoln. We may not be bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We may not be bound to succeed, but we are bound to live up to what light we have.”

  Leave it to Adam to quote President Lincoln at him, the sentimental bastard.

  “What’s your light, Lincoln?” Adam’s face vanished, and his voice seemed to soften to an eerie whisper as though from a vast distance in the dark.

  What’s your light…?

  Light danced across the backs of Lincoln’s closed eyelids as he struggled out of unconsciousness. Deep voices came from somewhere above him, dark laughs and mutterings. Where was he? A floating pain beat behind his eyes on invisible drums.

  “That car was loaded. Looks like they were going somewhere.”

  “Well, t
hey aren’t anymore,” someone said, and the others laughed.

  Every muscle inside Lincoln tensed as he remembered. Caroline…the house…a bullet tearing through his shoulder. He kept his body relaxed as he listened to the voices. Three men. Three. He almost laughed. He could handle three. He moved slightly, tensing his wrists as he tested for restraints. He wasn’t bound. They must have thought the blow to his shoulder would immobilize him after they knocked him out.

  Whoever they were, they were amateurs. Rule number one—when you incapacitate an enemy, always make sure they are restrained or put down.

  “We’ll find out what this one knows first,” one of the men said. “They came from the city. Might know where others are.”

  “And the girl? It’d be nice to have a piece of ass around for more than just a few hours.”

  “You want another mouth to feed just to have something to fuck?” one of the men snapped.

  “She’s small. She probably wouldn’t eat m—” The sound of a fist hitting flesh cut off that reply. He heard a grunt of pain.

  Lincoln almost laughed, and his stifled snort silenced the room. He listened to the boots entering the carpeted area where he lay. He could feel the thick shaggy carpet against his cheek and knew which room he was in. He pictured the living room in his head, the couch, the chairs, and the kitchen table behind it.

  Seconds before they reached him, he rolled onto his feet and lunged. He caught the man around the waist and tackled him into the couch. The second he had the man on his back, he swung a fist hard against his jaw. Then he dodged back, avoiding the other two men, who tried to grab him from behind. The one on the couch bellowed as he clutched his broken jaw.

  Lincoln vaulted over the L-shaped couch, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. He had to let the adrenaline carry him through this. He sprinted for the kitchen counter and grabbed the nearest weapon, a kitchen knife. He stabbed the man nearest him. The man hissed and wheezed as the blade punctured his chest, and in a fluid motion, Lincoln drew it back out and drove it up into his neck. The man fell over with the knife still lodged there, and blood frosted his lips.

  “You fucker!” The second man fumbled for his gun at the same time Lincoln grabbed one from the table. Lincoln was quicker. He shot the man in the center of his chest twice, then again between the eyes.

  The man he’d punched lumbered into the room and froze at the sight of the two bodies lying dead at Lincoln’s feet.

  “Where’s the girl?” Lincoln demanded.

  “Upstairs. Tied to the bed.”

  Lincoln could barely keep his control as a red haze of hateful fury descended over his eyes. “Did you touch her?”

  “Does it matter? You’re going to kill me either way.”

  “True.” Lincoln caressed the trigger, his body tensed for more killing.

  “We didn’t, though,” the man said, his words slurred from his fractured jaw.

  “Good.” Lincoln squeezed off a shot, and the bullet tore through the man’s skull and embedded into the wall behind him. The TV screen spiderwebbed with fractures outward from the two bullet holes. Sucking in a breath, Lincoln lowered the gun and then almost collapsed. Blood soaked his shoulder, and his vision was swimming in and out. Lincoln staggered out of the kitchen and toward the stairs.

  “Caroline?” He called her name and heard a muffled cry. He climbed the stairs and searched the rooms until he found her. A dish towel was stuffed in her mouth, and her limbs were tied spread-eagle to the bed. She was still clothed and shaking violently as she saw him.

  “It’s okay, honey,” he whispered as he untied the knots and freed her. She jerked the towel out of her mouth.

  “It’s not okay! I’m… Oh my God, you’re bleeding!” She grasped him by the shoulders, and he let loose a string of profanities before she released him.

  “Sorry!” she exclaimed, her eyes darting over his face and shoulder.

  “Do you see an exit wound?” he asked, turning around to show her his back.

  “Yes. There’s a bloody spot on your sweater, and it’s torn.”

  “Good…you won’t have to dig out a bullet, but you will need to clean the wound. I’ve lost too much blood. Grab my medkit from the bathroom. Use QuikClot—it increases…clotting.”

  Lincoln sank off the bed and onto the ground, leaning against the edge of the mattress. His head was already spinning.

  “Tell me what to do,” Caroline said.

  “You worked at a vet’s office… It’s all the same.” Those were his last words before he passed out.

  Caroline was paralyzed with fear. It rooted her to the bed for far too long. But when she got herself back under control, she had an idea. She ran to the bathroom and got a cup of clean water and soap, along with the medical kit he kept on the counter. She rinsed the wound with soap and water after she cut his sweater off. Then she dressed the wound with the QuikClot gauze she found in the kit and secured it with bandage tape. Then she kept him upright and in a seated position and waited for half an hour, checking his vitals. His pulse remained steady and strong, so she took a chance to leave him alone for a minute.

  When she went downstairs, she saw the blood…and the bodies.

  The three men who had broken into her temporary home and ambushed her and Lincoln were lying dead in the kitchen and the family room. The solemn sanctuary of this empty house seemed to have changed. It was violated by violence and death, which now settled like a black shroud over the once peaceful refuge. In that moment Caroline felt a surge of hatred inside her. How could they do this? These men… How could they take her home, her safety, almost take her and Lincoln’s lives?

  She was glad they were dead. These weren’t survivors—they were predators. Parasites. She wouldn’t mourn these men; their stories were over. All that mattered now was getting them out of the house and taking care of Lincoln.

  She dragged the bodies outside one by one and down the upper deck stairs and left them in a pile by the creek, where the scavengers could handle them. She didn’t have the time or energy to dig graves. Her back ached and her muscles cramped with the effort, but when she was done, she wearily climbed the porch steps and headed back to the guest room.

  Lincoln was still okay, as far as she could tell. But she couldn’t just sit there, watching him and worrying. She had to stay busy, so she returned to the first floor and mopped up the blood. There was no saving the expensive white carpets. Pink stains remained, despite her scrubbing for what seemed like an eternity with a cocktail of different cleaning solutions.

  When she was finished, she sank down against the door leading to the porch. Her back was knotted with pain, her clothes were stained with blood, and she suddenly had no strength left.

  Tears ran down her cheeks as she struggled to cope with what had just happened. If Lincoln hadn’t killed those men, she would’ve been raped by now. Probably dead. And he had almost died protecting her. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, exhausted, crying, frightened. Finally, she dragged herself back upstairs to check on Lincoln. He was sleeping, the soft rhythmic sounds of his breath were calming. She lay down beside him, curling her hand through his before she let sleep claim her. For now, this was comfort.

  She woke a while later, darkness thick around her.

  “Caroline.” Lincoln’s rough voice stirred her more fully awake.

  “I’m here,” she whispered and squeezed his hand.

  “Water,” he rasped.

  “Hang on.” She left the guest room and fumbled in the master bedroom until she found the camping lantern and then turned on the water and filled him a glass. Then she returned and put the cup to his lips. He drank the water greedily.

  “You okay?” he asked once it was empty.

  “Yeah, how about you? I did my best to patch up the wound.”

  Lincoln checked her work. “Not bad.”

  More than ever she wished she had actually been a vet rather than an advertising specialist. She would have felt more useful. With the internet
gone, her job was obsolete. Her specialty was useless.

  “Lincoln.” She studied his face, his piercing eyes and the proud chin covered by his thick beard.

  “Yeah?” He looked at her, the light from the small lantern creating shadows on his face, making him look world-weary.

  She kept her hand curled around his. “Thank you for saving me.”

  “You’re mine, honey, and I protect what’s mine.”

  She didn’t argue with him this time. In a way, she did belong to this man. In that same way, he belonged to her. Not as lovers or friends, but something else. She couldn’t quite find the right word. She felt like she understood what ancient men and women felt when they dwelt in the wilderness when those ancient forests were still young and the hills were full of a thousand dangers. Those men and women had formed a bond that kept them together. They’d survived by sharing their strengths and trusting one another.

  “I kept your upper body elevated, but I think you can lie down in bed tonight,” she offered.

  “That would be nice.” He started to get up, and she threw his good arm over her shoulder and helped. They walked back to the master bedroom, where she removed his boots and his pants. She blushed when she saw his briefs, but he didn’t say anything. Then he collapsed into bed, and she covered him with blankets.

  Afterward, she undressed and climbed into bed beside him, tucking herself against him, careful to avoid touching his shoulder. Three days ago she would have fought this moment of intimacy, but now she craved it.

  “I’ll handle the bodies tomorrow,” Lincoln said, sighing heavily in the darkness.

  “I’ve already handled them,” she replied, listening to his breath.

  “You didn’t have to”

  “I did. Rest. I’ve taken care of it.”

  He chuckled and then cursed. “So you’re giving the orders now, huh?”

  “Consider yourself temporarily relieved of duty, Major.”

  He snorted a laugh and then winced.

  She didn’t like admitting that she felt safer when he was in charge, but it was true. He knew about surviving in the wilderness. She would be glad when he was up and feeling better. Until then…she would take care of him.