Page 5

I wake up the following morning when something nudges my leg.

I grumble. Who wouldn’t? My sleep might not be peaceful—it’s been tense and fraught for the past two years—but it’s still sleep. And I’m not ready to wake up yet.

More nudging.

Opening my eyelids enough to squint, I glare up at the nudger.

Deck.

Predictable.

He’s standing above me, as shaggy and unkempt as ever. Most of his features are covered by his long brown beard and the hair hanging around his face, but his eyes are clearly visible. Peering at me impatiently .

I scowl.

He scowls back.

Irrationally amused by our interaction, I hide it as I sit up, pulling my leg away from his big, well-worn hiking boot.

I had to sleep in my jeans last night with my loose T-shirt.

We traveled all afternoon, stopping occasionally to search for supplies, but as the sun was setting, there were no nearby buildings or structures to spend the night in.

So we camped outside in a clearing near a creek, and I slept on the ground like everyone else.

It’s not new for me. It’s how Hal and I were sleeping for at least a year. But without something over my head like in the den, I was anxious and exposed. And it’s weird to have so many people around.

I stretch out my back. Glance around to see that everyone else is already awake and getting ready for the day.

Jumping to my feet quickly, I say, “I slept too late.”

Deck frowns and shakes his head, using a finger to make the symbol for one.

“One minute?”

He shakes his head again, still holding up the one finger.

“One hour?”

He nods.

“Okay. Good. Then I’ve got plenty of time to get ready.” I wince when a roll of one shoulder provokes a stab of pain. I crane my neck to peer at my back and catch a glimpse of blood on my shirt .

Damn it. If there’s too much blood, it will ruin another one of my few pieces of clothing.

Deck sucks in an audible breath and takes me by my uninjured shoulder to turn me around so he can see.

I jerk away. “It’s fine! I fell on it the other night with Pete. It scratched up the skin and there’s a bruise. But it’s not serious. The scratches must have broken open again and started bleeding.”

He keeps trying to get a better look, and I continue resisting. The skirmish ends when I make a loud, frustrated sound and take several quick steps away from him. “I said no.”

Once again, I’m reminded that I really should be playing nice. I’m completely dependent on these people, and if they decide I’m too much trouble, I’ll be left alone and unprotected again.

Plus Deck has helped me. More than once. He rescued me the other night.

But there’s this twisting tension inside me, pressing out against the edges of my being. I can never unleash it for real, but the pressure nags at me constantly.

It makes me want to snap at anyone who gets too close, and right now that’s Deck.

He takes a few deep breaths through his nose and glares, obviously annoyed. Then, to my relief, he walks away.

I find a convenient tree to do what I need to do, and then I sit down on my blanket to comb out my hair and put on my shoes.

I’ve got an old sports bra—stretched thin from years of use—and I manage to maneuver myself into it without fully taking off my big T-shirt.

No one is looking at me, but still… I’m not going to go around in my underwear like some of the men do.

“Hey.”

I look up to see Burgundy smiling at me. “Hi.”

She’s holding a small plastic box. “Do you have an injury that needs treating?”

With a gasp, I shoot my eyes over to land unerringly on Deck, who is leaning against a nearby tree, trying futilely to appear innocent.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you are. But Deck thrust this first aid kit at me and pointed at you quite insistently, so we either need to take care of the issue or deal with Deck. And let me tell you, that man is as stubborn as a mule.”

“I believe it.” I get up with a sigh. “Fine. But I’m not going to take off my shirt in front of everyone.”

“We can go a little farther up the creek where there’s no one around.” Burgundy smiles.

She’s as unfazed by my bad temper as Deck is, but in a sweet way rather than an obstinate way. I follow her to the creek bank where several people—including Logan—are washing up. Then we keep going until no one else is in sight.

“Is it safe this far out?” I ask when Burgundy sits down on a rock.

“It is with our watchdog on guard.”

I jerk my head in the direction she motions and see Deck standing a distance away with his rifle, his back toward us .

He obviously can’t see my expression, but I roll my eyes at him anyway.

“Logan told him to watch out for you,” Burgundy murmurs, “so he’s going to do it no matter what.”

“I know. I know I should be grateful. He really saved me the other night. Big time. But…” That twisty tension rises up again, this time pushing into my throat. I lower myself to the ground beside Burgundy.

“But what?” She sounds genuinely curious as she pulls scavenged bandages and antiseptic wipes out of the first aid kit.

I pull my T-shirt off so she can get to the scratches on the back of my shoulder. “But it makes me feel even more helpless. I know I am—I am helpless—but I like to at least pretend I’m not.”

“You’re not helpless. I understood you survived entirely on your own for months ever since your boyfriend died. Hal, right?”

“Yes. Hal. And I did make it on my own, but I only made it by hiding most of the time.”

“Hiding is smart if you can’t fight. Hiding isn’t helpless.”

“Maybe. But—” I gasp when she touches the raw scratches on my skin with a wipe. “But it doesn’t feel like it. And I wish I could…”

“You wish you could what?”

“I wish I could…” I’m not going to answer. There’s no reason to answer. I hardly know this woman, and everyone who has ever loved me—everyone I ever trusted—is dead. Ripped away from me violently and far too so on. But I hear myself saying, “I wish I could really fight back.”

“You can. You were kicking out at Deck when he grabbed you from the Jeep.”

“Yeah. I guess. I thought that’s what I would do in a dangerous situation. But when Pete came after me, I… I couldn’t do anything.”

“That’s not your fault. He was bigger than you.”

“But I still could have done something. I don’t know what happened.

I froze.” I lower my voice slightly, suddenly worried that Deck might be able to hear.

“I froze. I never thought I would do that. It’s like everything inside me that was screaming to resist was…

was trapped. Bottled up inside me. It was… terrible.”

“It sounds terrible. But whatever your reaction, you’re not to blame for it. You know that, right?”

“I know it rationally. And I’m not blaming myself for what he did. I’m glad Logan shot him. He deserved to die. I just thought I would react differently. I’m always so angry at everything. I thought it would all come out at a time like that, but it didn’t. It makes it worse somehow.”

I was never a particularly reserved or guarded person until Impact, but since then I’ve withdrawn into myself.

So many other people have done the same.

Sharing oneself intimately requires a measure of safety, and that’s one of the things we lost when the asteroid hit.

I honestly can’t believe I admitted something so vulnerable to Burgundy, who is nice but still mostly a stranger.

“I don’t know much about it,” she says slowly, still carefully cleaning off my scratches and the surrounding skin.

“But I do know that sometimes—at least in my experience—some feelings are too strong to let out. Because if you let them out, they’ll overwhelm everything.

They’re too powerful. They’ll be dangerous. So maybe it’s like that?”

I think about what she said as I stare at an empty spot in the morning air. Then I say, “Yeah. Maybe it’s like that.”

We sit in silence as she works for a minute. Then I try to lighten the mood by asking randomly, “What did Logan do before Impact?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what was his job? He said that Deck worked for him?”

“Oh. Oh yeah. He owned a construction company in Saint Louis.”

“Really?” I stare at an empty spot in the morning air, trying to imagine the Logan I know with a job like that.

He took Pete behind the van the other night and shot him without even a moment’s hesitation.

The violent act appeared to have no effect on him at all other than the spattering of blood left on his face.

It’s hard to picture him as a regular man in the old world—one who worked a regular job and came home to a normal house to eat dinner and scroll on his phone.

“Yeah. He was super successful. He’s one of those people who is good at anything he tries. And everyone who worked for him loved him. Deck ran one of his crews. Micah worked for him too.”

“Micah did too? So y’all have known Logan for a while then? ”

“Micah started working for him when he was eighteen. I never really knew him well until after everything fell apart. Micah and I stayed with our family, but there were riots everywhere. We lost our parents and ran away and thankfully hooked up with Logan. I don’t like to think about what might have happened to us if we hadn’t. ”

“Have you been traveling all this time?”

“No. We stayed put for the first year, but all the food and supplies around got used up. We tried to grow a garden, but nothing would grow. So we took off to scavenge for what we could, and we’ve been on the road ever since.”

“Oh. That’s interesting.” I think about everything she’s said. “So Deck was running a crew back then? How old is he?”

“I don’t know.” Burgundy is applying a couple of big bandages now. “Since he was ahead of Micah at the company, I always assumed he was a few years older than Micah. That would put him around thirty, I guess.”

“Oh. Okay.” That tracks with my sense of him, but it’s as strange to think about Deck having a regular job as it was Logan. Did he look like Bigfoot back when he was living in the world before Impact? I’m having trouble visualizing it.

“Why? Are you interested?”

I turn my head to blink at her in confusion.

“In Deck.”

“What? Oh, no. Just curious.”

“Okay, good.”

“Why good? ”

“I don’t know. He really withdrew after Impact. Not just with words but with everything. He’s so closed off I’m not sure he could let someone in enough to have a relationship.”

“That makes sense. A lot of people are like that. I think maybe I am too.”

“Now if you’re interested in Micah, I could maybe help you get hooked up.” Burgundy is obviously teasing. Her dark eyes are twinkling.

I snicker, as she clearly wants me to. “No, thank you. I’m fine on my own.”

“All right then. But keep Micah in mind if you’re ever in the market. He’s a really good guy. You won’t find a better one. There.” Burgundy pats the final bandage. “You’re all set now. But those bruises look ugly. They must hurt like hell.”

“They’re not that bad. Thank you for helping.” I move over to the creek to cup water in my hands and wash my face, neck, arms, and armpits, shaking off the droplets before I pull my shirt back on.

“No problem.” Burgundy grins at me. “It’s nice to have another girl around my age. I haven’t had a friend for years.”

“Me either.” We smile at each other just briefly, and I feel better in more than one way when I heft myself to my feet.

I follow Burgundy down the creek bank. We pass Deck, and he puts a light hand on my arm.

When I frown up at him questioningly, he gestures toward his chest and then uses his fingers on both hands to make the sign for two and then nine.

I stare at him a few seconds before I nod.

We continue back toward camp.

Now there are two things I know for sure.

Deck is twenty-nine.

And he definitely overheard what I said to Burgundy.