The Escape (21 page)

For some reason he expected a smart-ass answer. He thought Jenna would be angry at him for questioning what she’d done. After all, she wasn’t his, now, was she?

Was she?

Apparently not.

But instead, she looked ashamed.

“I’m sorry, Barker,” she whispered.

Clarissa stirred, opening her eyes when Jenna spoke. “Oh, Barker,” she said sadly, as if he shouldn’t have been there. Shouldn’t have seen what they’d done.

“It’s my fault,” Clarissa said. “I was so hurt last night, I just needed some comfort.”

“Clarissa,” Barker interrupted. “Can I talk to Jenna in private? I’ll go back to the other room so you can get dressed.”

As calm as he was on the outside, inside, everything hurt. The betrayal—God, was it even a betrayal, really?

He turned and closed the door.

Jenna came in a moment later, wearing the clothing she’d taken from Evan’s house, and leaned against the wall.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Maybe we don’t,” Barker said. “Maybe I have no right to feel hurt. I don’t own you.”

“No, you don’t own me,” she agreed, “but you have a right to feel however you feel. And I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Not sorry enough to not do it in the first place, though.”

“No.” Jenna frowned. “But I feel sorry now. Not just that I hurt you. But that I did it in the first place. Clarissa needed comfort, yes, but I should have been able to provide that for her without . . . without jeopardizing our relationship.”

“What exactly is our relationship?” Barker asked. “I’m not trying to fight here. I’m actually asking you, because I thought I knew, and I must have been wrong.”

“I care about you a lot.”

Jenna stepped away from the wall, came toward him, but he took a step back. Having her arms around him now would be too much.

“Then why? Why sleep with someone else?”

“Maybe you were wrong about me, Barker. Maybe I really am just a whore.” She said the words without malice. Only sadness.

“I think you’re wrong about yourself. You think you’re a whore, so you only relate to people sexually. But have you ever considered,” he asked, “just for a moment, that maybe I’m right about you, and you’re wrong?”

“What do you think I am, then?”

“A woman who doesn’t know how to share her feelings without sex.”

Jenna nodded, and wiped briskly at her eyes. “It’s a problem.”

“Do you think you can learn to be someone’s friend, without . . .”

“Without fucking them?” Jenna laughed dryly. “Don’t know. Never tried. Well . . . never succeeded.”

“I’m going to make this very clear, because I wasn’t clear before,” Barker said. This time, he moved in closer to her, and took her hands. “I want to be the only person you’re having sex with. And if you can’t do that, then . . . I don’t want to have sex with you anymore.”

“Barker—”

“Listen. Please, just listen,” he said. “You can have as many friends as you want, and me to sleep with, or you can have me as your friend, and everyone else to sleep with. It’s your choice, but I won’t be just one more friend you fuck. I won’t.”

“I don’t know if I can just be your friend, Barker,” she whispered. “Every time I see you—”

“You want to have sex. I get it.”

“No. I mean, yes, but—I was going to say that I feel differently around you. And it scares the fuck out of me. I don’t know what to do with those feelings.”

It wasn’t fair of her to pull this, not after what she’d done. But he couldn’t help himself from softening when he heard those words. Still . . .

“How do you feel?” he asked. Because it couldn’t be what he felt.

“Like . . . like you see me. Really see me, not the show I put on when I’m horny, or angry, or scared. You look at me like I’m real.”

Barker smiled, hurt. No, she didn’t feel how he felt. “You
are
real.”

“It hasn’t seemed like that, not for a long time.” She leaned against his chest, and he laid his cheek on her soft hair.

“What about Clarissa?” he asked.

“I owe her an apology. I should have been a shoulder to cry on, a friend to hug, and instead I let us get caught up in . . . escapism. That’s what sex is for me, I think. A way to forget everything. To just stop thinking about how the world’s gone to shit and feel good for a moment.”

“And with us?”

“It started out that way, yeah. But it’s changed. Now when we have sex it’s because I want to be as close to you as humanly possible. You’re the kind of man I never thought I’d ever see again, not since the Pulse hit.”

“What kind of man is that?”

“A good one, Barker.” She sighed. “A good one.”

Jenna didn’t know
what to do. He’d given her a clear choice: sleep with other people but not him, or only sleep with him. And sex with Barker was more than just sex. It was . . . it was making her fall for him.

She hadn’t even thought she was capable of falling in love

(no, not love, it can’t be love.)

and yet here she was, seriously contemplating giving up the only way she knew how to survive since the Pulse—by using her body—to be with him.

Could she do it? Did she even want to do it?

“I’m going to try to change,” she whispered. “For you.”

“I don’t want you to change,” he said. “I want you to be who you really are. And who you are is not just a body. Not just a vessel to be bartered or used.”

Jenna smiled. “You’re not going to spank me again, are you?”

Barker raised his hands. “I recall being in deep shit over that incident.”

“Maybe you
should
spank me,” she said coyly. “Maybe I secretly liked it.”

“Wait—you
want
me to spank you? The woman who told me she’d let me die in a hole in the ground if I ever did that again?”

Jenna nodded. For some reason, a spanking seemed perfect right about now. She wanted to feel the sting of penance, to be reminded that she was his, for now, at least. To be given a physical reminder that she was
not
a whore.

Not a vessel to be bartered or used.

“Please?” she asked.

Barker paused, as if weighing the sincerity of her request. He pulled her gently down to the floor, and laid her over his lap.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t feel the need to punish you. I’m not angry about Clarissa. Hurt, but not angry. Not like I thought I’d be.”

She looked over her shoulder at him and nodded. “I’m sure. It would make me feel better, I think.”

He lowered her jeans, exposing her ass. “I’m pretty sure it will make you feel worse.”

“I need it,” she whispered. “You told me to never call myself a whore again. I did, and I treated myself like one. And . . . God, Barker—I don’t want to do that anymore.”

Barker rubbed her ass with his large hand. “Then don’t,” he said, and brought his hand down, hard, making her gasp.

“Are you okay?” he asked, pausing with his hand in midair.

“Don’t stop,” she said.

He spanked her again, and again, until tears of catharsis filled her eyes, and she moaned.

“I’m so sorry, Barker,” she said, and he stopped, pulling her pants up, and cradled her on his lap.

“You’re an amazing woman,” he said, “to be willing to do this for me.”

“To be the fifties housewife?”

“No. Well, yeah, to willingly lie over my lap for a spanking, that’s pretty brave, considering how last time went. But I meant . . . I know it’s going to be hard for you, to be only with me.”

“Do you like spanking me?” she asked.

“When it’s like this, when you ask me, when you consent, yeah. It makes me feel closer to you. The last time I did it I felt like I’d driven you further away. And I didn’t like that.”

“I drove you away last night. Took myself away. So we’re even now.”

“Then let’s start again,” he said, and kissed her.

On the road again, Interstate 95

They’d been driving
for a while in silence. Barker kept checking the rearview mirror, expecting to see soldiers, expecting another battle.

But none came.

“Do you think Evan is okay?” Clarissa asked from the back seat.

“I don’t know,” Barker said. He didn’t want to think about what they might be doing to the kid. Would they execute him? Make an example of him?

Or just torture him until he told them everything he knew about their group?

“We’re going to get him back,” Jenna said. “We’ll get everyone out of there. But we can’t do it on our own.”

They paused at every freeway exit, looking for signs of . . . of what? Community. People. But there was nothing—nothing for miles and miles.

By the time they’d traveled nearly all the way through Connecticut, Barker had almost given up hope. Until he saw the men.

“Barker!”

Jenna pointed at the armed men, five of them, standing guard at the off-ramp to a town he’d never heard of. The green exit sign had once borne the name of a street, or a town, but it had been graffiti’d over, rendering it illegible.

A new word was painted in large, sprawling letters on top.

Letliv.

What the hell was Letliv?

“What are you going to do?” Clarissa asked as Barker slowed the truck to a crawl.

“We need to get out. To talk to them.”

“They’ll shoot us,” she said. “They could shoot us on sight.”

“I’ll go,” Jenna said. She pulled her rifle off her chest and laid it down on the passenger seat.

“Whoa,” Barker said. “Clarissa’s right. Let me talk to them, in case they’re hostile.”

“If they’re hostile, they’ll be a lot less likely to shoot an unarmed woman, don’tcha think?” Jenna hopped out of the truck and slowly walked toward the men with her arms up in the air.

“I’m unarmed,” Jenna
called. “Can I talk to you guys?”

“Down on the ground!” one of the men yelled, and Jenna dropped to the dirty pavement, her arms spread out at her sides.

He ran up to her and put his knee on her back, pushing the air out of her lungs. His hands patted her down efficiently, checking her pants and ankles and even quickly checking under her breasts for weapons.

“Clear,” he called back to the other men, and he helped her up. “Who are you? Who’s in that truck?”

He didn’t look like a soldier. The man was dressed in regular work clothes that smelled faintly of fish. He was young, and fit like a soldier, and clearly knew how to hold his rifle. But there was nothing about him that reminded her of the men at Grand Central.

Thank God.

“My name is Jenna. I’m unarmed. My friends Barker and Clarissa are in the truck. We don’t want to hurt anyone, we just want to talk. Haven’t seen many friendly faces on the road, you know?”

The man called to the truck, still idling down the road. “Turn off the engine, keep all weapons in the vehicle, and come out with your hands up.”

Barker and Clarissa emerged as Jenna had done, with their arms in the air, and lay down on the ground without being asked to.

Another guard ran up, and he and the first man patted down Barker and Clarissa.

“Clear,” the other guard said, and the one who was on Barker nodded in agreement, and let them stand up.

“I’m Ken Barker,” he said, and held his hand out to shake the guard’s hand, something Jenna had never seen him do before. Not even with Roy.

“Trent Taylor,” the guard said, lowering his rifle and shaking Barker’s hand. “Where you folks coming from?”

Barker looked at Jenna, as if asking silent permission to reveal the truth. She nodded.

“The camp at Grand Central Terminal. We . . . we escaped.”

The expression on Trent’s face would have been comical in any other situation, the way his eyebrows raised in recognition.

“Grand Central? I heard they’ve been doing a good job of keeping people alive.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Jenna asked.

“The radio,” Trent said. “They said they have all the survivors there.”

“You . . . you have a radio?” Clarissa asked incredulously. “Do you know Emily Rosen?”

Trent shook his head. “Sorry. No. But we do have a radio that was kept safe from the Pulse. The transmissions are infrequent, but there are some. We put out our own transmission once a day, at dusk. Just in case anyone’s listening.”

“Grand Central is keeping people alive, barely. It’s a hellhole,” Jenna said.

“We have a lot of people in Letliv with family who live . . . lived in Manhattan. We’re hoping they ended up at Grand Central,” Trent said. “That they survived. If I made a list of the names, would you know the people?”

Jenna shook her head. “It’s a long shot. There are thousands of people there. I know most of the younger women, by first name, at least. The ones who were on the Tracks. And the soldiers . . . well, Barker might know their names. I know some, mostly nicknames though.”

“I know a lot of the girls on the Tracks too,” Clarissa said. “But if it’s an entire family, or a married couple, they slept in a different area, so we probably don’t know.”

“It sounds like it would be worth taking a look at a list, though, right?” Trent asked. “We’d really like to know if the family we had in New York is alive.”

“They might be alive,” Barker said, “even if we don’t recognize their names. But we can try.”

Trent smiled. “Welcome to Letliv, then. You can go retrieve your weapons, but if you use them, you might get shot. Just a warning.”

“Duly noted,” Barker said, and nodded his head to her and Clarissa to follow him back to the truck.

“This is it,” Barker whispered. “Don’t you think? They’re even letting us keep our weapons.”

“I don’t know,” Jenna said. “They might just kill us and then take the weapons once we’re off the road.”

“No,” Clarissa said. “If they wanted to kill us, they could have when we were standing there unarmed. They want information.”

“What if it’s another place like Grand Central, though?” Jenna asked.

“I didn’t get that vibe,” Barker said. “Did you?”

Jenna shook her head, and so did Clarissa.

They geared up and headed back over to Trent and the other men.

“Letliv,” Barker murmured under his breath, as if trying out the name of the town.