Desolation, p.24
Desolation, page 24
“If you say so,” Blondie said with what must have been the delay of the century. His voice was shaking, unmistakably so, and he did a bad job pretending to be unconcerned.
His gaze snapped to me, and the hatred and promise of violence shining in it should have given me pause.
It didn’t.
I simply held his gaze, waiting for him to look away first—which he eventually did as he turned and left, muttering angrily under his breath.
Jared watched him go, gleefully grinning after him.
I waited for someone to say something, but nobody did.
I wondered if that was sheer negligence; if nobody really knew who should have given Blondie a kick in the nuts. That task should likely have fallen to Jared, but he just kept on looking like the cat that ate the canary, revelling in everyone else’s irritation. Mike wasn’t responsible for our guys, and there was nobody set up to be Blondie’s superior.
Maybe it would have helped if I’d hurled vitriol after him, but I very much felt disinclined to do so, letting silence speak for itself.
Yeah, we didn’t need zombies to kill us off, one by one. If things went on like this, we’d do a great job of that ourselves.
More men stepped away, and I finally had enough.
Without another word—or glance at anyone—I stepped around Jared and made my way back to the SUV. If my spine was a little stiffer than strictly necessary, I made no move to correct that.
The door behind my seat opened around the time the last of the flashlights were shut off, casting our camp back into virtually full darkness.
I kept staring straight ahead at the dark wall of trees as I listened to the guys climb back in, Jared being the last. Some rustling and readjusting followed, but in under five seconds, Axel and Blake rivaled each other where snoring the loudest was concerned.
I could feel Jared’s gaze burn into the side of my face. No need to check if he was actually looking at me. I knew that he was. And he knew that I knew.
Shit.
Minutes passed.
The tension slowly leaked out of my body, and with it that calm, quiet void that my nerves had withdrawn into.
Emotions came rushing back, almost choking me up as fear and relief both slammed into me, making breathing hard for a minute or two. I felt my body start to shake, overwhelm threatening, but it was tantalizingly easy to shove that all back to where it had temporarily disappeared to… but I made myself not do that, instead embracing the moment of weakness and vulnerability as I had my little mental breakdown, crying and quiet sobbing included.
And I knew that asshole was still watching my every shaking inhale, transfixed by the spectacle.
Damn.
I couldn’t allow myself to slip up like this again!
Fucking hell.
And yet, deep down there was a small part of me that was leaning back, incredibly comfortable in her own skin, happy to give a satisfied nod.
Good.
And good that I’d found someone again who wasn’t about to run screaming for the hills—or, worse yet, stare at me, wide-eyed, in fear. Shy away from me like I was a rabid animal. Like Dharma had. Like Kas had, to a minor degree.
Shit.
It took me forever to be done with my little breakdown, which in and of itself made me want to laugh at myself. It wasn’t nerves because of what had almost happened. In fact, while that of course disturbed me on some level, I’d been through way worse in just the last week—although that was probably a bad frame of reference since it included zombie-raping lunatics, excessive drug use, and predictable withdrawal while being fucking locked up in a fucking cage.
Knowing that I could—and would—have defended myself helped. Plus, there was the sure knowledge that considering how quickly they’d been there to see what was going on, someone would have stopped things from happening if I couldn’t have stopped it myself. And even if that hadn’t happened—while unpleasant, some things were easier to survive than others. While it killed your soul, sometimes the smart thing was to fold and let it happen.
Of course, I’d been oh, so smart—and next time, Blondie would come prepared and expect a hell of a fight.
That’s why you should have killed him.
Hush, voice of reason that I don’t want to listen to.
But you know that I’m right. You had to be grandiose and oh, so strong.
I also didn’t want to get raped.
No. Next time, you’ll get killed.
Let him try.
I was quite happy that my dark sense of humor was happy to shut up and not continue our conversation.
Some things were best left unsaid—and unthought.
I must have been tossing and turning for easily an hour—trying but failing to find some rest—when Jared let out a small sigh.
It took that for me to notice that it had been a while since I’d heard anyone snore, fart, or try to get comfortable.
“If we leave now, we can get in five miles easily before sunrise,” Jared said quietly, but loud enough for all of us to understand. “Maybe ten, if we push it.”
“If they are right with that BS about the undead fuckers not roaming in the dark,” Blake complained from behind me.
“They’re probably right,” Axel volunteered. “We didn’t really test if there was a reason why our nightly patrols never encountered much. Guess we were all just happy it was an easy shift.”
I was still staring at the forest as I made myself answer.
“We never would have made it back from the power plant if it wasn’t so. You wouldn’t have survived, and we wouldn’t have, either. And makes sense, right? Those filmy eyes can’t be working as well as ours do—and the night’s a pretty rough terrain for us as is. Why bother if they have easily sixteen hours, maybe up to eighteen? Let us have the other six. They’re not missing much.”
Nobody answered my lucky guess.
Nobody had to, really.
“Go grab your shit. We leave as soon as we’re all ready. Without Noah and whoever he wants to bring along to shoot us in the back the second we find anything they think is useful,” Jared said, still calm as a cucumber.
All I did was wonder if he was being paranoid, if he was joking, or just sounded sad that it would never happen now that we’d double-crossed that trap.
Even fumbling in the darkness, we were ready in under five minutes, our packs only weighed down with the tools that might come in handy, our weapons, and little else. We wouldn’t be camping out somewhere, ready to share stories around a fire. If we had to crash somewhere, restless sleeping in discomfort would mean more alertness when something inevitably found us, so we didn’t even take sleeping bags. Limited rations—we would either find food or go hungry—which wouldn’t kill us for a day or two. I had my two bottles of water, my bat, the damn ax that had somehow found its way back to me, and that was it.
Before we left, Mike made an attempt to step into our path, but one look at Jared’s face made him think better of it and return to wherever he had been lurking in the camp.
It didn’t matter what the other teams would do—we had our objectives and a mission to either pull off, die trying, or survive and live to run for another day.
I was surprised how comforting that turned out to be—and how few gripes I had about my company. I was sure that would change down the line, but for now, it was all right.
13
Tension rose, fell, and then skyrocketed as we left the camp behind, followed the logging trail back to the road, and turned toward our destination.
Nothing lay in wait for us. Nothing jumped us.
In many ways, that felt worse since it just added to the latent anxiety now taking permanent residence in the back of my mind. At least an attack would have helped bleed some of that off, but I was realistic enough to acknowledge that yes, it was best that no undead came running and screaming toward us.
It also made a lot of sense. While we’d tried—to some degree—to keep a low profile, even we with our less-than-stellar senses could pinpoint when exactly we left the perimeter and all the stink it contained behind. To all kinds of predators, that must have been an even more obvious border. While that had kept all of the four-legged kind away, the bipedal ones wouldn’t have hesitated for a second to come running. Consequently, none were lurking close by, either, or else they would have found the camp already.
Finding the way back to the road had been possible but fraught with stumbling and low cursing. Once the full cover of the trees opened up, it got a lot better. Full moon had come and gone while I’d been stewing in my cell, but it was just about to go into the last quarter, still leaving a lot of illumination, the entire sky lit up with stars.
As much as I appreciated the lack of light pollution thanks to most city lights being a thing of the past, I wouldn’t have minded not having to traipse through what felt like utter darkness.
Thankfully, on the road, obstacles were few. No broken-down wrecks in sight, and in the little more than a month since society as we knew it had been annihilated, nature hadn’t done much to reclaim what was hers. We had to step over a handful of broken branches that had ended up across the road, and in one place dirt had buried a part of the road, but nothing that was an actual obstacle—or even made us stumble.
After the first tense five minutes, I allowed myself to ease up a little. Still, my grip around the bat was slick with sweat, and I jumped at any sound coming from the dense forest around us. And there were a lot of sounds away from the camp—that felt like a dead zone in comparison to this.
Without anyone ordering us to, we drifted into a loose kind of formation, walking two and two, with Jared and Blake in the front. When Blake stopped to investigate something at the side of the road—and then proceeded to take a leak—I took his place, walking on the right side of the road while Jared stuck to the left, a good car width of space between us.
My intention had been to remain silent as long as I could hold it up, but one thing kept gnawing at my mind. A rough mile from the camp, I finally broke down, incapable of keeping my trap shut any longer.
I hadn’t so much as cleared my throat when Jared glanced at me, as if he’d been waiting for this the entire time.
Just my luck, that was probably the truth.
I couldn’t help but feel like I was giving him way too much fodder for whatever intel on me he was compiling and filing away for later use.
Me, totally not paranoid. Not at all.
“I don’t know Krav Maga.”
Maybe not the revelation of the century, but his words to Blondie wouldn’t stop bouncing around in my head.
Even in the near darkness, I saw the smirk spreading across his expression.
“Never said you did.”
True. He hadn’t. I was clearly reading too much into this—
“But you know how to kill someone with a knife. And I’m pretty sure you have.”
I was surprised the sound of my stomach hitting the ground wasn’t audible.
Even though everything inside of me was trying to keep me from doing it, I cast a sidelong glance at Jared. He was still smirking, and while I didn’t get a good look at his eyes, I was certain that they were bright with glee.
Sure, keep making fun of the unhinged, drug-addicted girl—
Only that the way he was looking at me more closely resembled what any normal person would look like when they praised someone’s accomplishments. Like, great job on that valedictorian speech. We’re proud you finished running that marathon.
Why didn’t that really surprise me?
Since the only defense I still had left was not to react, I focused on the road ahead of us instead of giving him even another nanosecond of my attention.
Maybe it was just in my imagination, but I thought I heard Blake chuckle behind us.
And the worst part about it all? I had no one except myself to blame.
“You’re not even denying it,” Jared remarked when it became obvious that I was done talking.
Really, I should have swallowed that remark and never, ever uttered it.
“Would it make any difference if I did? You already call me a liar and a thief. Why not add murderer to that?”
He was still smirking as he replied.
“Could have been in pure self-defense as well, but thank you so much for confirming that.”
Try as I might, I couldn’t keep a frustrated groan down.
“Nobody self-defenses someone to death with ten stab wounds,” I pressed out.
“Probably not.”
It sounded very much like he was laughing at me now.
I screwed my eyes shut in frustration, if only for a second. It was way too dark for such antics. And it helped absolutely nothing to vent my frustration.
“Normal people wouldn’t be making fun of something like this,” I remarked when I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Jared actually chuckled under his breath. “See any of those anywhere around?” He actually turned his head to look at Axel and Blake walking behind us. “I don’t.”
Where he was right…
“Normal people also wouldn’t use one of their own to provoke—” I cut off there when I realized just how far his deception—or whatever that had been—went. “You fucking asshole! You used me as bait again!”
I didn’t need to see his expression to know it was a smug one.
“You were the one who didn’t take your bat,” he observed. “And you so perfectly ended that idiot’s actions before they could even begin.”
That he didn’t even deny it somehow made it worse.
“How the fuck did you… no, I don’t even want to know.”
He snorted. “Did you actually miss how that idiot has been leering at you since he realized you were with us? Right after the Colonel’s speech at the Enclave, since that’s going to be your next question. And you’re welcome.”
I had missed that—but I’d rather die than admit so.
“For what?”
“For making you look lethal rather than a stumbling victim,” he said, enunciating every syllable perfectly, clearly loving every second of it.
Damn. Arguing with him wasn’t fun when he turned things around on me as if he’d actually been supporting me!
“Why even go so far? And why do you constantly have to use me?”
“Blake makes a terrible wilting flower,” Axel suggested from the cheap seats.
I ignored him, instead waiting for Jared to answer. His friend’s comment made his grin widen into shit-eating territory.
“Because life’s too fucking short to be bored?” When I didn’t react to that, he went on. “Because Mike’s plan is solid but by far not ambitious enough. I’m not risking my neck for a stack of MRE boxes. The plan that his son and shithead of a friend had is fucking stupid. I’m not getting killed for someone’s illusions of grandeur. So I needed a reason why we’d go with Mike’s idea but get to do so without the dead weight.” He cast another sidelong glance at me. “That it came with the added benefit of peeling yet one more layer off whatever you’re so damn careful to keep hiding from the world was simply an added bonus.”
I hated it that he made sense even when I didn’t agree with him—but had to agree that his actions were probably for the best.
“Why do you keep being so fucking obsessed with me?”
He shrugged, as if it was all the same to him. “Why do you keep letting me under your skin? Maybe I’d get bored and stop if you stopped caring.”
We stared at each other for five seconds straight. That was as long as I allowed myself to let my guard down.
Something splintered in the forest off to my right, immediately making my attention jerk away from the asshole. With bated breath, I waited—but no zombie came for us to give me a convenient out of this farce of a conversation. Yet it had been enough to break the tension and finally allowed my brain to catch up with my mouth.
Shit, but he was absolutely infuriatingly annoying!
The sigh Blake uttered a few minutes later was shy of disappointed. Clearly, we had robbed him of his night-time entertainment and he was none too happy about that. Axel was wise enough not to say anything, but then, what else was new? In a way, I could make even less sense of his behavior. With Jared, his motives seemed mostly obvious. But Axel zig-zagged between borderline fatherly supportive and letting that idiot do whatever he wanted to, as long as it kept him off Axel’s hands.
Then again, Jared hadn’t—yet—uttered the single sentence that I didn’t want to hear, so I might as well see that as a victory.
As if thinking along those lines had jinxed it, Jared picked up the threads of our conversation one last time.
“You do realize that none of us are judging you for what you did—or didn’t do—in the past?”
I didn’t respond and kept my eyes firmly on the road ahead.
“Unlike those you call your friends,” Jared pointed out.
Nope, not going to react…
“Who are legit afraid of you. Who don’t even bother speaking up for you when someone else signs your death warrant.”
Don’t rise to the bait. Don’t you fucking dare—
“Some fear can command respect. But that’s not what’s happening. You know that, right? They just want you gone. And if you don’t simply die because of the odds stacked against you, sooner or later someone will start considering if they need to help it along—”
What I wanted to do was throw myself at him and smash his teeth in with my bat—but I’d already had my chance to do that once and massively bungled it. I wasn’t going to do that to myself again. Plus, there was that small detail about needing the three of them to survive out here, and with him down for the count and me badly injured, my chances weren’t looking good.
So I did none of that.
But I really fucking wanted to.
Instead, I stopped in my tracks and took ten deep, calming breaths that didn’t really calm me at all but kept me from going for his throat.
Jared took another three steps before he noticed my absence beside him, glancing back over his shoulder at me.
“You know I’m right,” he said, not even that much gloating in his voice—because he knew that it wasn’t required. “So why keep lying to yourself and pretend like you don’t know I’m right?”
