Page 17 of Trade (After the End #7)

Chapter Eight

My thighs get tired first from crouching on a thick branch about ten feet up in the air.

They burn, and then they shake. Pretty soon after that, my calves cramp, and I have no choice but to climb down as silently as I can with all my joints locked up.

All the while, my heart is pounding like a drum.

Once I hit the ground, I hide in a clump of bushes and make myself as small as possible, holding my knife while I stare at Dalton’s pack ten feet away that I didn’t bring with me, too scared to go back into the open to get it.

I huddle there for what feels like forever. The sun disappears from the sky overhead and shadows lengthen.

A new bird shrieks in the distance. It sounds big. And close.

An illustration comes to mind. Charles R. Knight’s Life Through the Ages. A saber-toothed tiger defends his kill from a giant winged beast with a bald head and black ruff.

Life has obviously come back. But what kind?

The shriek sounds again, louder, directly overhead. My head shrinks into my shoulders. I don’t look up. That would be worse—to see its claws coming.

What do I actually know about what can kill me out here? We haven’t come across anything bigger than a squirrel, but Dalton is armed to the teeth.

I know I’m ignoring the obvious threat—the men that Dalton went to investigate—but that danger is too real, too present, so I worry about prehistoric birds instead and remember that Smilodon baring his canines as he loomed over that dead camel in a ditch.

By the time Dalton returns, my nerves are hanging on by a thread. The second he calls out, “Glory?” I tear from my hiding place and race to him where he stands staring up into the maple tree. I didn’t even hear him come back. I’m totally defenseless out here.

“What was it?” I demand.

“Glory, why aren’t you in the tree?”

“I’m thirty-nine, Dalton. I can’t sit in a tree for five hours.”

“It hasn’t been five hours.”

“Quit arguing with me!” My voice has gone shrill with panic. I force myself to take a deep breath through my nose. I can hear Bennett in my head. How do you expect to be taken seriously, Gloria, if you sound like a banshee?

“Okay, Glory,” he says, watching me warily.

We’re at a standoff, five feet between us, me glaring at him, my knife clutched in one hand, the other balled into a fist. I know I’m being ridiculous, but he left me alone, and I’ve never been that alone before in my entire life, and I was totally unprepared.

“What was it?” I ask again.

“Scroungers heading toward the mountain.”

“To trade?”

He nods.

“So we’re okay? They’re not coming this way?”

He nods again, slowly, brow creasing like he’s trying to puzzle out what’s set me off.

“I don’t know what’s a danger out here.” Hot tears spill from my eyes, washing down my cheeks, now, when he’s back and I’m fine. So stupid. I’m not a crier.

The crease disappears like I’m making sense, like I’m not a hysterical woman. “Scroungers are a danger to me since I’ve got you, but they wouldn’t hurt you. If I was alone, they would most likely leave me be. The valley is a safe zone. Most of us abide by that. Not all. But most.”

He stares at the tears streaming down my face, his pupils wide with alarm. He holds up his hands like a cowboy in a movie trying to calm a spooked horse, but he isn’t telling me to hush, and he isn’t saying, “Calm down, Gloria. You really need to put it in perspective.”

“What can hurt me out here?” I demand.

His nostrils flare, but he doesn’t hedge. “Rogues.”

“What’s a rogue?”

“Men too fucked up to trade. They drink too much or been alone too long or no one ever bothered to raise them. If we see them near the valley, we kill them, but they get through sometimes.”

“‘We’ is scroungers.”

He nods.

“And that’s everything? That’s all the dangers?”

His brow knits. “Drowning, I guess. You could fall. I’ve seen bobcats around.”

“What about the birds?”

His eyebrows rise, but his matter-of-fact tone doesn’t change. “The birds won’t hurt you. None of the smaller animals will, either, but if they’re friendly, don’t get near them. They’re only friendly if they’re sick. They could bite. So I guess animal bites, too.”

“But the water and the air aren’t poisoned?” I know it probably isn’t, or at least it won’t kill you quickly, since he’s standing in front of me as healthy as any person I’ve ever seen. I need to get it all out, though, now that the floodgates are open.

“The air, no, but the water, you have to be careful. Don’t drink from still water, and use the pills or boil it. Unless you’re desperate, if it smells, don’t touch it. You can die from bad water. Guess I should’ve mentioned that, too.”

“And people get old out here? Like older than me?”

“Sure. If they’re lucky. People who live places like the Mill live longer.”

“Where did all the women go? Why do you have to trade?” The questions are coming a mile a minute now.

He shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know. There have never been many.”

“Why don’t you trade for the women you have? You said there were some on the farms and at the mill.”

His lips lift in a wry smile. “Women on the Outside don’t trade unless you have property. You have to be a man of means. If you can’t pay the subscription, they won’t talk to you. You can’t get close enough to even see them.”

I don’t understand his use of subscription, but I get the gist. “Those men passing by aren’t rogues, though, right? They aren’t a danger to us?”

Somehow, his brown eyes soften and catch fire at the same time. “I’d never let anyone take you from me, Glory.”

“Because you traded for me, fair and square.” I’ve never heard petulance in my voice before. I’ve never allowed it.

“Yes,” he says, no shame, no regret.

It should be demeaning, right? I am a citizen vested with all the rights and privileges outlined in the Articles of Incorporation, and he’s treating me as goods, bought and paid for.

But that’s not how he looks at me, and that isn’t how I feel as he watches me, so carefully, gaze darting from my wet cheeks to the knife in my hand like he’s desperate for a sign that I’m calming. Like my upset isn’t an annoyance or a problem to him, but a hurt he wants healed.

I haven’t felt this way in years—that I can fall apart because someone will try to pick up the pieces. The feeling went away when Dad died, and I didn’t even notice it was gone.

Now I’m crying even harder and the crease between Dalton’s eyes is a slash.

“Do you want me to take you back to the mountain, Glory?” he asks softly, and I know—from the cast of his jaw and the grit in his voice—that it is the last thing he wants to say.

I shake my head, sniffling. “I don’t want to ever go back.”

I’ve never seen a man so happy and so confused at the same time. “Okay. Do you want to walk a few more miles before we camp?”

“Sure.”

Dalton slowly crosses the distance between us and eases the knife from my hand. He slides it back in its sheath and clips it to my pocket. Then he kisses the knuckles of the hand that’s still clenched in a fist. “Brave Glory,” he murmurs.

“Not really,” I snort. I hid in the bushes and then had a meltdown when I was safe.

“Quit arguing with me,” he says, smiling, throwing my words back at me as he hikes his backpack onto his shoulders.

Then he takes my hand and we walk on. Until it gets too dark to see where we’re going and we break for camp, he stays by my side, holding my hand.

I’m still shaken. Still scared.

But I don’t feel alone.

* * *

The next two days are uneventful. We hike. My feet ache. Our roles begin, not to reverse, but to change. Dalton has already told me the name of all the plants that he knows, so I tell him the names I know.

“Oh, see that? That’s golden ragwort.”

“That’s partridgeberry.”

“That’s a loblolly pine.”

“You’re making this shit up, aren’t you, Glory?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Loblolly? Ragwort?”

“Seriously. That’s what they’re called.”

“How do you know?”

“My dad taught me.”

“He was shitting you.”

“He was not.”

“You really love plants, don’t you?” He asked me that as I was considering the maple seeds I’d gathered while we ate lunch, deciding what I could bear to sacrifice from my little collection to keep a few of the adorable mustache-shaped thingies.

“I do.” I wedge a few of the mustaches into the very last space in my bulging pockets.

Dalton takes one of my leftover seeds, breaks it in half, and sticks it to his upper lip with its milk sap. He winks at me. “How do I look?”

“Like an idiot.”

He grins, the seed falls off, and my belly clenches. Smiling Dalton is dangerous. He is so beautiful that he fries my nerves, and my brain reverts to however old I was when I discovered boys, and seemingly overnight, they became mysterious and fascinating instead of loud and annoying.

I’m a grown woman. I know my reaction is hormones, possibly some kind of Stockholm syndrome, and most certainly a crush rather than any real kind of feeling, but oh, I’d forgotten that a crush is powerful stuff.

I blush and take off again for the lake so he doesn’t see. Dalton catches up in less than three strides, and he notices immediately, grinning even wider.

“Why is your face so pink, Glory?”

“Shut up, Dalton.”

“It’s pretty when it’s pink.”

“You flirt a lot for a man who says he’s never done it before.”

“Am I getting better at it?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Your face is almost red. I’m getting better.”

I don’t dignify that with a response.

That night he lies down on the blanket while I sit by the fire and stare up at the stars.

With the cloud cover, they weren’t visible the first night, but they are now, and they’re glorious.

In books, whenever a character gazes at the night sky, they feel insignificant, but not me.

I feel like I finally have a front row seat to the universe. Like all of this was made for me.