Desolation, p.32
Desolation, page 32
Jared considered—and kept considering, which already gave me my answer. That would have annoyed me if he hadn’t already been reaching for his knife to split the pill in half.
“You can have this—under one condition,” he said.
“Name it.” That was better than saying “Everything you want,” outright.
The intensity in his gaze increased.
“Callie’s not the name that’s printed on your birth certificate. Tell me what it’s short for, and the pill’s yours.”
I felt a smile curve up my lips. I hadn’t expected that he’d let me get away so easily… with a lie.
“Callisto,” I said after just enough pause to see annoyance spark in his eyes—because two could play this game. And because I was feeling generous… “And that’s not the name on my birth certificate.”
It shouldn’t have felt this good to see him realize that he’d played his cards wrong. There was no regret in his intense stare, though. Just a lot of promise that we weren’t done yet—not by a long shot.
I half expected him to try to go back on his promise, but instead, he split the pill in two, picking up his half before I could get any crazy ideas.
I licked mine right off the blade’s edge, careful not to nick my tongue on it.
The transfixed look on his face was definitely worth the risk.
After that, we were done talking—and I didn’t give a shit that he’d never given me his answer.
Eventually, we grew hungry and devoured the food.
Then we took a nap, although not a long one, since the drugs were still riding me hard and I had way better things to do than sleep.
We got hungry again, and Jared ventured over to the larger cabins to forage, returning with a bunch of canned meat, more bread, and a half-full bottle of booze.
Common sense dictated one should not mix their intoxicants.
Since common sense could go fuck herself, I pretty much chugged the contents of that bottle along with inhaling all the food I could get my hands on.
Then we got busy again.
The midday heat knocked us out for a while, but not even that was enough to keep my insatiable hunger down—and if I had bothered holding on to lucid thoughts, I would have deliberately said, fuck it. What we’d pulled off was nothing short of marvelous. The least I deserved was to have some fun.
And it wasn’t like I didn’t find my match for everything in Jared.
When we got hungry again—and I had come down from my high enough that I trusted myself not to stab someone for simply looking at me weirdly—we got dressed and together went over to join the others by the lake. There was a lot of booze making the rounds, and someone had thrown caution to the wind and was grilling meat over a makeshift grill at the fire pit. I ate a lot and drank a lot, and then I dragged Jared back to the cabin to burn some of the calories that we’d just inhaled.
Somewhere between all that, someone told me they’d contacted our people, and we would be meeting up with Osprey and his group tomorrow just after ten in the morning, roughly thirty miles from here.
All I cared about was that it gave me another sixteen hours to sober up, and I didn’t intend to sleep away much of that time.
Eventually, we did crash, but that was okay. Smoking three of Jared’s special cigarettes come morning and I was mostly feeling okay. That and strong, black coffee, and I felt ready for business. Regretful that it was over, but ready.
Jared watched me as I got up and started hunting down my clothes, finding them in the weirdest of places all over the cabin.
“You’re awfully quiet this morning,” he noted, sounding a little stoned himself.
No wonder. For every one cancer stick I’d smoked, he’d done two.
“Not quiet. Just thinking.”
“That much on your mind?” I didn’t reply, instead pulled on my bra. “Like, regret?”
That was the one thing that could have made me pause. I still finished pulling my underwear on before I turned to face him.
“No regrets. Not about anything we did.”
A ghost of a smile crossed his face. “Then what else do you regret?”
Talking too much, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. I’d already given him way too much ammo. No need to let him know those were platinum-plated bullets.
I considered lying—or making up something close enough to the truth to make it believable—but realized that I didn’t want to. As contradictory as it felt, I didn’t want to lie to him.
That was a first in a long, long time.
“It’s not regret so much as preemptive disappointment. That I’m not free to do whatever I want. That I need to uphold the rules—and I fucking hate how much they chafe. And that as soon as we leave here, you’ll morph back into an absolutely insufferable asshole.”
None of that got anywhere near to leaving a chink in his armor—not that I’d expected otherwise.
“I can tell when you curse me out in your head, you know?” he stated, highly amused when I grimaced. “You always get that special look on your face. Exactly like that. You narrow your eyes and scrunch up your nose…”
I turned away and picked up my shirt, briefly sniffing on it to make sure it was a fresh one. Who knew how many days I would be wearing it before I got a chance to clean up or change? Just because we were planning to be back in the Enclave just after midday didn’t make it so.
“Any chance you’ll scale back how annoying you are?” I huffed. “You know, now that you’ve gotten what you aimed for?”
I hated how much I liked watching his mouth twist into that smirk of his.
“I’ve only just gotten started,” he said—no, promised—and pushed off the bed to get his own clothes.
I wasn’t even mad. Mostly just curious.
What we’d done had been fun, but in no way warranted a cryptic statement like that.
“Are we keeping this a secret? Not that I’m ashamed of anything, but—”
His bright grin stopped me in my tracks. For a second, I thought he would even lean in and kiss me, but it remained at that.
“I’m well aware of how the hypocrites act that you pretend are your friends. No worries. Your secrets are safe with me.”
Fuck. I hated how loaded that statement was—and the way he kept looking at me left nothing to the imagination about what exactly he was referring to.
Damn drugs.
But there was nothing I could do to change that now.
I left it at a clipped, “Good.” What else was there to say?
“Good,” Jared agreed.
And that was that.
I sure as fuck regretted walking out of the cabin in the early light of morning, forcing my mind to switch back into Good Callie mode.
Because she was all there was. Nothing else existed.
Fucking hell.
18
I had no illusions that anyone was oblivious to what Jared and I had gotten up to—and probably aware of many more details than I would ever be comfortable with. But one thing the hangover I was rocking had going for itself: I really didn’t give a shit. Since nobody bothered with talking shit where I could hear it, I was happy to pretend it didn’t happen.
Mike and his people expressed their token disappointment at seeing us go, but nobody put an actual effort into convincing us to stay. I could see why they wouldn’t with Seneca’s shithead group. Apparently after we’d left the camp for Asheville, Blondie had continued to become everyone’s least favorite asshole to keep around. Plato’s guys were eager to return to the Enclave, probably thinking along the same lines as me.
Mines were damn easy to board up and wait out the undead masses to pass by. Since that was what the Enclave had been doing for over two weeks now—and successfully—the promise of a nice compound and some outlying camps wasn’t that interesting.
Even so, breakfast wasn’t a somber affair. Lots of raucous laughter and jokes were traded, as were promises for mutually assured assistance, should we make it through the coming weeks. While we’d been resting and recuperating, Mike had sent word—and likely part of their share of the loot—to their central compound. Their leaders were apparently very pleased and quite happy to declare us their new best friends.
I wasn’t heartbroken when Axel and Jared switched vehicles, meaning I would be riding back to the meeting point with Axel.
Jared and I hadn’t traded a single insult since leaving the cabin, but also very few words. I didn’t trust our newfound truce at all. He was probably as hungover as me, which was likely the reason for his uncustomarily easygoing ways this morning. He’d pretty much told me point blank that us screwing each other didn’t make a difference, and in that, I trusted him one hundred percent. Now I just had to somehow manage to keep what we had going on separate from my time spent with my friends, and all would be well. Since I doubted my expulsion from the central Enclave would be lifted anytime soon, that was likely not a problem at all.
Maybe we should cut back on the drugs and booze a little, but I doubted Marion would bat an eyelash if Jared and I just so happened to disappear for a while at suspiciously synchronized times. As long as none of his previous or future conquests decided to come for me with a knife, I saw no problems with that solution.
I was sure that reality would find a way to bitchslap me out of my momentary complacency, but in theory, all I had to worry about were the undead masses that might or might not come pouring all over our home any time soon.
Our three cars made up the rearguard of our convoy slowly trundling its way through the forested hills, deciding to take the same way back as we had come since that had been mostly free of obstacles. We would be meeting up with Osprey in half an hour, provided we didn’t miss their camp. Since they didn’t take a radio, we couldn’t reach them and let them know we didn’t exactly need them. They had nothing else to do, so they weren’t strictly missing. Until the plains opened up again, looting was going to get complicated, but that might make for easy guard schedules—not the worst that could happen in the late June heat that mercilessly beat down on us all.
I’d fully expected Axel to say at least something about my bender with Jared, but all that came from him was some light joking about the driving skills of the cars ahead of us, and an absent-minded remark that my bruises were by far not as bad as they’d seemed in the first light of day when we’d gotten to the lake camp.
I had to agree with him on that. All day yesterday, I’d figured Jared was playing nice by not saying anything—very likely not to put a sudden and dissatisfying ending to our bender. But when I checked my face in the car this morning, it really wasn’t that bad. I looked mostly tired and worn out, not like a failed panda impersonator, most of the redness and swelling gone. The bruises from the seatbelt still bothered me, but even those were already fading, like a bad nightmare.
The late morning heat was lulling me into a stupor that was hard to shake.
I’d hardly gotten any sleep, and it seemed my mind was hell-bent on correcting that as soon as possible now that the chemicals that had interfered with true rest were fully metabolized. Intellectually, I was very much aware that we were still deep in zombie country, but with so many people in so many vehicles ahead of us, it was next to impossible that I’d be the first to notice anything, anyway. Might as well get some rest when I could.
I needn’t have worried. We found Osprey and the others without issues—which wasn’t hard since they were actually already parked at the side of the road that we were driving along. I felt like laughing at myself when I realized how reluctant I was to get out of the car. For whatever reason, it felt like switching sides—and I was no longer quite as happy to find myself in that position as I’d been before. That feeling got a little better when I caught Kas and Dharma, both wincing as they caught a first look at my face, but it never fully receded.
I wasn’t the only one to get out of a vehicle. In fact, most of the others took the chance to take a leak or get some snacks—mostly beer. I had no idea where that supply had come from, but considering how many breweries there were in and around Asheville, maybe someone had raided a delivery truck that had never made it to its final destination. This once, I abstained, including from the cigarettes that Blake offered me in passing.
I’d had my fair share of everything I could possibly want over the course of the past thirty hours. I was good—for now.
Osprey eyed the column of vehicles parallel parked to his two critically.
“I thought you said you were trying to get to the city. Doesn’t much look like it,” he griped.
I pointedly glanced back to the very end of the column where Blake and previously Axel’s cars were standing, both looking as banged up as me.
“That’s why we hoofed it,” I snarked. “Only used the cars to get back to camp. Which you’d know by now if you’d brought a radio.”
Osprey gave me a weird look while blindly reaching through the window of his car—pulling out a clunky hand-held black box.
“You mean like that radio?”
I couldn’t help but frown.
“Mike said…” I trailed off. “Do we still have that previous radio silence protocol going?” I’d missed quite a lot when I’d been lying around in my cell. That much I had learned in the meantime. “Didn’t anyone from the Enclave call you?”
A few of the guys around us perked up, but nobody looked concerned.
Dharma shook her head. “We only had our usual back and forth with Seneca.” She gave me a tight, mirthless grin. “Probably just his way of making us feel even more obsolete. We’ve done nothing but sit around and twiddle our thumbs the entire time. They didn’t even let us patrol between our outposts and the forward camp to make sure the roads remain open for you. This is so much bullshit.”
She was probably right—and yet, I didn’t like the uneasy feeling slowly spreading across my upper back.
Like a million eyes watching me. Gauging how unprepared I felt. I was so tempted to get my weapons from Axel’s passenger seat right now, but forced the urge down. The last thing I needed was to trash their newfound sympathy for me by playing Guns-R-Us poster girl right now.
“So you did find something?” Osprey asked, his tone slightly sharp with exasperation.
Before I could reply, Jared came waltzing into our conversation.
“Did we ever.”
For a moment, I was afraid he’d throw an arm over my shoulder and pull me against his side—or, worse yet, slap my ass—but he remained far away from where I was standing without actually looking like he was avoiding me.
“Two cars full to the brim with weapons, ammo, and food,” I explained. “Probably more than we would have been able to pick up from the city if we’d ever actually made it close. We didn’t. The entire city is overrun with undead. Hundreds of thousands of them, if not more. They must have migrated along the interstate, or something like that.” I paused, then added, “And they do mostly hunt by light. Surprising them by night was the only way we managed to make it back across the interstate. By day, we would have been dead before we’d ever gotten close to the highway.”
Like Zeke and Noah.
Which reminded me…
I turned to Dharma, wondering if I should do this privately, but then decided there was no sense to it since her private issues were already common knowledge.
“I’m sorry to tell you that Zeke and Noah likely got killed when they tried to cross the interstate in the morning, using cars. We narrowly got through on foot.”
She froze for a second, then blinked a few times, as if trying to battle irritation.
“It’s not like I wished the worst on them, but I can’t say anything but good riddance.”
That was… colder than I’d expected her to be.
“Wasn’t Zeke your ex, or something?”
Dharma stared at me as if I’d gone insane. Then she suddenly started to laugh, going as far as to throw her head back. I traded glances with Osprey and Kas. They were equally dumbfounded.
“Ah, this is rich!” she brayed. “Oh my God, you’re serious? Zeke? Eww!”
Several of Seneca and Plato’s men looked over to us at her outburst, but nursing their beers was still more interesting, it seemed.
“Mike, then, huh?” I hazarded a guess.
Dharma finally calmed down, her mirth now taking on a sharper note.
“Are you done insulting me?”
Now I was really getting confused.
“I thought your issues were because, well—”
“I fucked the wrong guy?” she offered, her tone sickly sweet.
“Well, yes.”
Her smile turned into a smirk.
“No. Not quite.”
I couldn’t tell whether her audience was making her uncomfortable. Jared, Blake, and Axel were all shamelessly eavesdropping, although I had a feeling that was only due to this being the prime and only entertainment on hand right now. Dharma pointedly glared at them, but when nobody made a move to leave, she shrugged.
“Very well, then. No, I banged Zeke’s mom. After she got divorced from Mike something like ten years ago. I don’t think Mike was happy about that, or the fact that she got better game than him, his son, and his son’s shithead friend combined, but only Zeke and Noah made a huge deal out of it. Too bad all of that blew up exactly the day when the evacuation orders went up in Asheville. Best part was, Anna and I had already broken up and I was just waiting for a friend of mine to come by and pick me up. So when the sirens started to wail and talk about seeking shelter turned to talk about running for the hills, I decided it was in my best interest to, well, leave and never go back. I ran into some of those shitheads once, a week later, and they made it plain that I wouldn’t find shelter, food, or safety anywhere even close to them, so I said, fuck it, where’s the next best bunch of assholes that are not out to rape and kill me out of sheer spite? And look who I found.”
It was obvious that Osprey had previously heard that story. Corey and Liam—while looking surprised about some of the juicy details—also didn’t bat an eyelash. I didn’t need to check with him to know that Blake was sporting a stupid grin, likely not having heard a single word past “banging his mom.” Jared looked amused, but more in a benevolently bored “ah, children!” way. Axel, of course, kept his thoughts to himself, only portraying polite understanding.
