Love in the Time of the Dead (32 page)

“Did he tell you?”

“Yeah. He told me this morning.”

“You going, too?” she asked, unsure of his answer for the first time since the outbreak.

“I’ve been thinking about it all day, but every time I imagine how it would be to leave this place, to leave Eloise, nothing in me wants to go. I don’t want to fight blindly anymore. I want to protect a life that means something to me. I didn’t know how badly I wanted to settle down until the moment we drove through these gates.” His look pleaded for understanding. “I think this is where I get off.”

She understood. If her heart wasn’t wholly in charge, it would be her choice as well.

“What about you?” he asked.

She sighed regretfully. Guist was like family and she would miss him terribly. “Mitchell is my home.”

He smiled sadly. “I’ll come over and grab your pack after my shift. I’ll refill it for you one last time. For old time’s sake.”

Dinner brought a sense of peace to a confused part of her. The peacock tattoo that snaked across her back had been painstakingly drawn into her flesh to remind her of a belief that something beautiful and vital and worthwhile still existed somewhere on this broken planet. As she watched her friends’ laughing faces in the warmth of the mess hall, shielded from the whipping wind and stinging snow flurries outside, she knew she had found it. And that beauty was something to be protected.

She couldn’t find it in herself to ruin such a lighthearted mood with somber news. The tinkle of Adrianna’s laughter was enough to make her choose to savor the moment instead of darken it. So she listened to Sean, Finn, and Eloise joke and laugh until tiny tears stained the corners of her smiling eyes, trying desperately to capture every moment. To put it away in her mind like a picture of her personal paradise. Someday, when the end of her life came, she would need a happy thought. Something that would make all of the hurt and sacrifice of her nomadic life worth it. Someday she would draw on this moment to bring her peace where none existed around her physical form.

Guist caught her eye. “You okay?” he mouthed.

She nodded. He would understand her need to say her goodbyes later.

She checked the door for the millionth time to find that Mitchell wasn’t there. She wasn’t surprised that he was skipping a public meal, but she continued searching for him nonetheless. He was trying to get out under the radar. Less emotion involved that way.

After she parted ways with everyone, she tramped through a layer of snow to Mitchell’s cabin. She didn’t know what she would say, but why sweat the details? She climbed the simple porch quietly and raised her hand to knock. A noise stopped her fist’s advance and she stood there stunned and listening. A strum of notes drifted through the cabin, barely discernible through the thick song of the woods, but still audible to a listening ear. Mitchell was playing the guitar she had given him.

She lowered her hand slowly and stepped back to lean against the railing of the porch. The notes engulfed her completely. It was a sad melody, as lonely as a wolf howling unanswered into a sliver of a moon. She couldn’t talk to him. He was stubborn, and though he was wrong and confused about her feelings for another, if she tried to explain herself and failed, he would run in the middle of the night and she would never again be able to find him. She had no doubt a man as cunning as he was could disappear and never be found if he didn’t desire it. Like smoke. Like he’d never even existed at all. The thought felt heavy on her heart. She turned and climbed silently back down the porch steps and was startled to find a man’s figure contrasting against the steady snowfall.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” Sean asked.

She pulled her jacket more tightly around her and nodded slightly. “Walk me to my cabin?” she invited.

“Why now?” he asked as their boots crunched with a satisfying sound on the snow-covered trail.

“Mitchell’s leaving at first light,” she answered.

“Did he ask you to go with him?”

Her silence was answer enough.

There was a pregnant pause. “Do you love him?”

“More than anything,” she said honestly. “It just took me a really long time to figure it out.”

“I guess that means there really is no chance of a future for us,” he said quietly.

She slid a smile around the edge of her fur-lined jacket hood. “Sean, you and I would go nowhere fast. I will always be a fighter. I’ll always pine for adventure. I’ll never want to stay safe and confined. I’ll bring out the worst of your protective instincts and you will resent both of us for it. You need a partner who is more like yourself.” She turned back to the trail. “Someone like Mel.”

“Mel?”

“Oh, come on, Sean. You guys get along great. I’ve never once seen you fight. We fight every time we talk. And you can’t honestly tell me you haven’t noticed that Mel is a stone cold fox. I mean, anyone with eyes in their head can see she is a ten.” She stepped up onto the porch in front of her room.

“Will you ever come back?” Sean asked, peering at her in the dim light.

“I don’t know. I have to try to find a place Mitchell and I can both feel at home. Maybe someday. Take care of Adrianna.” She headed for her door before turning back. “Teach her to use a gun when she gets older.”

Sean chuckled. “Will do.”

He pulled his hands out of his warm jacket pocket and waved as she shut the door gently.

A knock before dawn had Laney up and hustling to the door across the cold wooden floorboards. Guist stood outside. The air he breathed puffed like steam from a train.

“He just left for the front gate. He did most of his packing yesterday, so you’d better be quick about it.”

She jerked her head as a silent invite out of the cold. Scrambling into her warmest layers, she handed Guist a handwritten goodbye for Eloise. He traded her for her pack, newly stuffed with supplies the way only he could do it. She shoved what clothes she could into the already full pockets and strapped into her weapons. When she was done she looked at him. Here it was. The moment she had dreaded and would forever remember.

“Stay safe,” he told her. He gathered her into a tight hug and patted her back roughly. “Keep your nose to the wind. Take care of our boy. Promise?”

Her throat tightened. “I promise.”

He let her go, and she stepped through the door. She looked back once and could have sworn his eyes were watering. A first. She blinked hard and cleared her throat to keep her own sadness at bay.

She jogged down the trail to the front gates. The fear that Mitchell would leave without her spurred her heart into an erratic pace. She saw a figure on the trail up ahead and slowed. She squinted through the early morning light. Vanessa. The emotional tidal wave emanating from the girl was almost tangible.

“Ugh,” she grumbled and high-kneed her way off the path and behind a large tree.

Vanessa could have easily seen her escape route through her obvious boot prints in the snow, but the girl was immersed in her own private misery. As Vanessa walked by, she muttered something that sounded like “that stupid skank witch,” but maybe Laney was mistaken. Vanessa was far too sweet to mutter such unbecoming things.

When she had passed and disappeared up the trail, Laney started to run to make up for lost time, and by the time she came to the clearing that encased the front gates, her heart was fit to jump right out of her chest.

Mitchell was there. He waved to the guards who were opening the gates and limped around the back of the truck they had driven into Dead Run River. Apparently he was still okay with grand theft auto.

“Mitchell,” she said, hurrying toward him. Her backpack jangled with her movement.

He opened the driver side door to get in, but didn’t turn at his name.

“Derek!”

He paused and turned his head slowly in her direction. She ran for him, her pack heavy and restraining against her back.

“Derek,” she said again, reaching the bed of the truck. “I thought I was going to be too late. I thought you would leave without me.”

His face was a mix of shock and disbelief.

“You called me Derek,” he observed in a low voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Going with you.”

He looked heavenward as if his patience were being tried. “I can’t do this. This is why I didn’t want to see you before I left. This is why—”

She threw her pack down and covered the small remaining distance between them. Throwing her arms around his neck, she kissed him. His surprise only lasted for a moment before his powerful arms snaked slowly around her waist. He pulled her into his warm body as his lips softened and moved gently against her own.

Pulling back to lean her forehead against his, she said, “It was always you. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it.”

She opened her eyes to find him smiling. She hadn’t realized how very much she had missed his smile until that moment. He looked as if the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders.

“Did you say your goodbyes?” he asked gruffly.

She nodded slowly and ran her fingers through the back of his hair. “I’m driving,” she whispered.

He snorted. “No. We’ll be dead in two miles.” He gave her bottom a firm squeeze and sidled around her to throw her pack into the back seat of the truck.

“Oh, so you think it’s safer for you to drive with a bum leg?” she argued happily.

He groaned, but his eyes said he didn’t mind a scuffle with her. “Is this what I have to look forward to, Landry?”

“It’s Laney to you, and yes.” She hopped in the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed with a thud. “Besides,” she said as he climbed into the passenger’s seat, “your driving is terrifying.”

“Not as terrifying as you in the mornings.”

“Pfffffft, there’s nothing more serene than me in the mornings.”

“I was talking about your hair.”

She rolled her eyes, and they both waved to the guards at the gate as she pulled the truck out of the colony.

Mitchell reached over and held her hand to his mouth. “Are you sure about this?”

She squeezed his hand in her own. “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” he said without hesitation.

“Well, I love you too, and I don’t want to waste any more time being apart.”

“Okay,” he said. His light brown eyes danced with affection. “No more wasting time, then.”

She looked in the rearview mirror as the gates of Dead Run River slowly faded out of sight behind them. She wouldn’t ever forget the place where she had chanced upon everything that meant anything. She had found where the Deads had gathered at the water’s edge in the mountains of old. She had found the place where peace could still be found in simple acts of valor and happiness.

She had found her asylum from the damned.

Epilogue

D
EREK
T
OOK
H
IS
E
YES
O
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HE
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OAD
long enough to look worriedly at Laney in the passenger seat of the truck. “You’ve been quiet for a long time. What are you thinking about?”

She smiled at the concern in his voice and pulled her attention from the passing woods outside her window. “I was just thinking about our time at Dead Run River.”