Page 16 of Bait (After the End #2)

“I’ll clean up in the shower.” Candela gave me a knowing look as I scurried away, and I was pretty sure I heard Torch call me “coward” with an amusement in his voice as I slipped into the small shower and quietly let myself consider what I really wanted from those two.

I didn’t figure much out in the shower, other that I was horny as fuck.

But thankfully they caught me some slack during dinner.

We ate as we chatted obligingly about the settlement, and other topics devoid of any overt sexual innuendo.

After we finished, Candela suggested we go for a walk so I could see the settlement.

Soon I was wearing a very cozy sweater over my borrowed sweats and t-shirt and heading out along a stone path with my two oldest friends.

I couldn’t stop looking up at the sky. It was glorious to see the stars.

They seemed so close and there were so many.

The bunker had a planetarium where you could go anytime and see “the sky.” When we were in school, each class would get to do a sleepover once a year so we could sleep under the stars.

It was my favorite thing. I would go to the library and memorize one or two constellations and point the out to my classmates.

But that fake sky did not compare to the expanse of this one.

It was humbling. This world had been outside waiting for us, and we’d been down in that bunker being ordered around by Becker and the council.

But it made sense for them to keep us all down there.

In the bunker, they were still the gods they’d been out here before the Burst. Out here they’d have to band together like everyone else.

All the piles of money and stocks that made them so powerful were useless after The Burst. The only thing that helped you thrive in a place like this was to do for your neighbor just like you did for yourself.

“It’s not very easy to make out the constellations, is it?”

Candela, who was next to me, laughed and pointed at something up there I couldn’t quite make out. “That’s Ursa Major.”

I nodded like I could really see it and sighed happily. I thought after what I’d been through I’d be exhausted, but I was energized. Maybe my brain didn’t want to miss any of these new things I was experiencing with sleep. Maybe I didn’t want to risk it all being a dream.

“Flowers.” I marveled at the neatly planted rows of purple and yellow flowers.

We had some in the greenhouses at some point, but they’d stopped growing them when we began running low on water.

They were called pansies and they grew in the spring.

There were no seasons in the bunker, but for a long time the council made a point of marking them.

The greenhouses would grow flowers for that reason, but I’d stopped going to see them long before that.

“How did you survive that first winter?”

Candela turned to me for an instant, and I saw a little shiver go through her at whatever memory I’d forced her to conjure up.

“The winters are milder down near the bunker but almost no one stays down there, so we started walking. We tried to get into some of the settlements and a few gave us shelter. We ran into some trouble too.” She went quiet and pointed at some other flowers—daffodils, I thought—as we walked with Torch behind us like our personal guard.

Which was second nature to him. I wished he was on the other side of me, but I didn’t say it.

“Eventually this settlement was the one that took us in. We kept going back to the bunker to see if more people got out.” I realized she’d never answered that when I asked earlier.

“It was slow at first, one or two every few months for years, but once Becker figured out, he could bait raiders with people and get something in exchange, it picked up.”

I looked over my shoulder at Torch, whose face was impassive. In the moonlight he looked like one of those ancient warriors we’d read about in stories on the horrors of conquest who’d defended their lands against the Spanish with everything they had.

As we circled the settlement’s main road, we ran into some of the folks who lived there.

Candela introduced me as a new bunker exile, which I guessed was appropriate.

No one seemed surprised, but they were all welcoming and expressed their happiness at my getting out safely.

Again, I wondered if they’d talked about me to others, but if I asked, I’d sound conceited.

It was weird to see Candela and Torch so integrated in this community.

They’d both been such outcasts in the bunker, but here they seemed at home.

Just as we were coming around the bend to go back to the little clearing at the back of the settlement where we’d set up, an alarm sounded from the gates. Lights started flashing from there too.

“Shit.” Candela froze, instantly pushing me behind her. Soon there were a couple dozen people running out of their homes, all armed.

A rough hand spun me around and then I was face-to-face with Torch and his expression looked fierce.

Like he had that night he’d come to get me out of the bunker.

Whatever was happening this was serious.

Shit. There were more shouts, and I could hear the gates being opened.

“Run back to the rig,” Torch ordered, before I could ask him.

“It’s either a breach or they’ve got raiders looking to get in. ”

I didn’t want to go hide again. That’s what I’d always done.

I wanted to argue for them to let me join them in whatever was happening, but I also knew this wasn’t about me.

It was about defending this place. Bianca ran up to our threesome then, the friendliness from earlier replaced by a fierce scowl.

“Raiders?” Candela asked. She had a gun in her hand which I had not seen on her when we left the rig.

Bianca shook her head as she caught her breath, then widened her eyes when she saw me. “We’re not sure, the night lookout thought he saw some people circling the gates.” Torch frowned and pulled out another gun from under his shirt.

What the fuck? Were they always packing?

“I’ll go take a look, see if they need a hand.

” He looked at Candela and jerked his head in my direction.

“Take care of Sass.” He took off at a dead run without waiting for an answer, because of course he expected us to just do what he said.

Ass. I expected Candela to shoo me away too, but instead she put an arm around my shoulder and turned toward the rig.

“Don’t you have to go help?” I asked while I watched Bianca head to the main hall building in the center of the settlement.

“We are helping,” she told me, then flashed a grin at whatever face I was making.

“Torch is going for us, for now. If they need more hands, someone will come get us.” I frowned, confused.

In the bunker if that alarm sounded, it was understood that we were being summoned and if you didn’t respond, you suffered the consequences.

“Becker isn’t in charge here.” She waved a hand at some of the houses where there were lights in the windows and shadows calmly moving inside.

“It’s not that they don’t take the threat seriously.

But for now, they only need some of us. If they need us, we’ll come.

” I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding and unclenched my jaw.

“Okay.” I walked in silence the rest of the way to the rig, trying to make sense of everything I’d seen in the last day.

When we got back, Candela and I cleaned up the stuff from dinner and then I went to get ready for bed after saying good night.

As I was arranging my cot in the loft, I heard Torch come in.

He and Candela spoke quietly, but he didn’t sound alarmed.

The knot in my chest eased to know that it seemed like things were okay.

I got into bed listening to the sounds of Torch and Candela moving around the rig.

They spoke with the quiet ease of people who were used to each other.

By now I’d figured whatever there was between them, I could partake in.

Maybe not as a permanent thing, which was where the issue was.

I wanted them and was more than intrigued with the idea of being with them.

But I didn’t think I could be casual. Not with the history between us.

It was with those thoughts that I drifted off, still listening to them somewhere in the rig.

When I woke up hours later, the noises coming from Torch and Candela were quite different.