“Jumpin’ Jack flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas…”
Piper segued into a through-the-teeth whistle for the guitar riff that followed, bopping her head along with the beat as she set out the supplies they would need for dinner. Behind her, Jack made a sound halfway between a laugh and a huff, and she allowed herself a brief, smug smile. When she turned to look at him, though, her face was a perfect mask of innocent neutrality. “Did you say something?”
“Nope.” Jack’s face, too, was inscrutably neutral, though there was a light in his eyes that could have been either irritation or amusement.
Interesting, either way.
Beside him, Ed was grinning, and even Owen had a little smile playing about his lips. She’d been at this all day, singing snippets of songs featuring the name “Jack.” It would appear all three of them had caught on, though Jack had yet to rise to the bait. A worthy foe.
Jack gestured to the food she was setting out. “Are we eating dinner cold, or do we want a fire?”
Piper looked around, scanning the evening sky before turning back to her task and answering his question. “Let’s stick with cold food. I know we haven’t seen anyone all day, but I’d rather not chance a fire. Not until we get a better feel for being on the road.”
“Works for me. I’ll help with something else, then, since I’m on fire detail. But first, I’ve gotta see a man about a horse.”
Piper suppressed a grimace while he disappeared around the edge of the hill they were camped on. Announcing bathroom breaks was just one of many safety practices they had been taught to implement, and it never failed to make her uncomfortable. Privacy was a luxury she had been denied completely during her time with Brody, and letting three men know when she had to tinkle made too many feelings stir in the depths, feelings she didn’t want or need to think about.
Ed, too, scanned the skies. “Looks like it’s going to be a clear and quiet night. I’ll get the sleeping bags and pads out, but we’ll skip the tents.”
With Rosemary trotting at his heels, he went to get the job done. At the base of the hill, Owen moved from bike to bike, checking tire pressure, oil and fuel levels, going about his duties in characteristic silence. They all had tasks to complete, some of which would rotate – Piper had KP duty today, but tomorrow Jack would take over - and some of which were permanent assignments, based on each person’s experience and aptitude. Owen had the most mechanical knowledge, so he would maintain the motorcycles. Ed had been a gardener and carried a book Anne had grudgingly given him on foraging for edible plants. He was learning to watch for flora they could augment their supplies with. Jack had declared himself “talentless unless it’s time to sing Kumbaya,” but had learned to dig a Dakota fire hole with admirable speed and skill.
Piper had the medical training she’d learned from Ruth, and though she wasn’t as supernaturally accurate as her mother, she was a superb shot. She’d be ready, when her skills were needed, in whatever capacity. She didn’t consider it a weakness to hope that she’d have little call for the former, and if called upon for the latter, she’d be aiming at game, rather than at a human.
The echo of a man’s sobbing voice, begging for mercy, floated up out of the depths. She swatted the memory away as she would ward off a persistent hornet – with annoyance and just a touch of fear – and focused on assembling their dinner. She loaded plates for all of them with boiled eggs, apples and sliced, fresh vegetables from Verity’s ridiculously abundant garden. Then she repacked the food they weren’t eating in the saddle bags on the motorcycles. Constant readiness to leave was another on-the-road safety rule. If they should need to abandon a campsite in a hurry, leaving supplies behind could cripple them. They had too far to go.
They were headed for Jack’s hometown of Pewaukee, Wisconsin. The hope was that Jack’s sister, Caroline – Cara, as he called her when he forgot to be stuffy and formal – would have returned to familiar ground in the wake of the plague. He also needed to confirm whether his parents were alive or dead, though he was as sure they were gone as he was convinced his sister was alive. Piper didn’t question his certainty; not only did she have the same kind of connection with her mother, but she could see the bond-line connecting Jack and his younger sister, a thin but vibrant green arrow pointing them unerringly to the northeast. It was the only bond-line Jack had left, other than the vibrant, opalescent one connecting him to Piper.
That one, she preferred not to think about. So she stuffed it down with all the other things she preferred not to think about these days and occupied her mind with finding another “Jack” song to poke at him with. There was a method to her childishness. You could learn a great deal about a person by watching how they dealt with irritation, and the better they all understood each other, the better they would work together when they ran into trouble. That they would run into trouble was certain; Piper had lived it, and Jack dreamed of it, almost constantly these days.
Between the two of them, the nightmares were relentless. Jack had been the first to broach the subject when Martin had been drilling into them the necessity of adequate sleep. Jack didn’t know if he talked or called out, he had said, but he suspected he did. Martin had nodded, then had turned to look at Piper, a single eyebrow raised in expectation. Apparently, Naomi had been tattling.
“Okay, fine. Yes, I have nightmares, too.” Martin’s other eyebrow had joined the first, and she had scowled. “And my mom says I talk. Sometimes I scream. What do you want me to do about it?”
“I want you to be smart. In the military you’re trained to go without sleep, but none of you have had that training. Nothing is worse than trying to run wired and tired all the time. You get stupid, and stupid will kill you faster than your worst enemy ever could.” His eyes had flicked between them. “Check in with each other, every morning. If you didn’t get enough sleep, say so. If you think the other one’s lying about it, say so.”
At that point his eyes had locked on Piper. “Don’t try to tough it out, and don’t worry about being the ‘weak link’ just because you’re the only woman. You’ve got nothing to prove, Piper. Ethan will tell you the same thing. If any one of you can’t carry your part of the load, it’s better to be honest about it rather than dropping it out of exhaustion.”
Martin and Ethan had helped them prepare for the 1,000 mile trip, and between the two of them, Piper couldn’t imagine a single disastrous scenario that hadn’t been anticipated and planned for. In addition to the supplies they had packed in the saddle bags on the bikes, they all carried backpacks with emergency food and water, along with survival gear and additional weapons. Rather than extra fuel, they carried fuel treatment and filters, as well as hand-pump siphon tubes for salvaging gas from abandoned vehicles. They were hoping to make it as far as possible on the motorcycles, but Ethan believed they were at the outer limits of finding usable fuel. It had been over a year since the plague, and even fuel stored under ideal conditions had degraded. The filters and fuel treatment could only do so much, he had cautioned. Besides, as they headed into more populous areas, the noise of the bikes might attract attention they didn’t want. It was possible they would be on foot by the time they reached Pewaukee.
With any luck, they would find Cara there and convince her to return with them to Colorado before snow flew again. Piper seriously doubted it would be that easy, but it was as good a place as any to start. According to Jack, Cara’s last known address was Saugatuck, Michigan, an artsy resort town on the Lake Michigan shore, but she had moved around a lot. Once they got closer, she was hoping Jack’s bond-line would serve as a guide. Between here and there, however, there was a lot of ground to cover.
For tonight, they were camped a few miles outside of Limon, just as they’d planned. Rather than risk the congested Highway 24 and subsequently the city, they had headed west and south out of Woodland Park, swinging through burned-out Cripple Creek, then Victor. Twice, they saw smoke rising from homes, but they didn’t stop. From Victor, they had curved and crept their way down Phantom Canyon Road to Highway 50, then east to Penrose. From there, they had scooted across the southern edge of Fort Carson, traveling off-road at times in order to stay well north of Pueblo, and had zigzagged north-east on country roads, ghosting by the tiny plains towns of Hanover, Truckton, and Rush.
They had seen more smoke here and there, and had all sensed eyes on them more than once, but, still, they did not stop. Establishing contact with other people wasn’t their primary objective at this point, not until they were on their way back home. Avoiding others, both Martin and Ethan had emphasized, was one of the most important safety precautions they could take. In times like these, people were trouble.
The only planned exception was a stop in Limon. Grace and Quinn had grown up in the small, close-knit ranching community, and Martin had lived there during the years he’d been married to Grace’s mother. Grace and Quinn had experienced some trouble right after the plague, a run-in with a father-son duo, but everyone involved felt this stop was worth the risk.
Limon wasn’t ideal, in terms of distance from Colorado Springs or Denver, but if there was a community here, they might prove to be valuable allies. A hub for travelers in the time before, Limon sat at the crossroads of Interstate 70, U.S. Highways 24, 40 and 287, and State Highways 71 and 86. The survivors living there might have useful information for travelers. With Martin, Grace and Quinn’s names as entrée, they hoped to make contact.
If they judged the situation and the people they met to be trustworthy, they would encourage them to connect with the people they’d left behind in Woodland Park. Piper had been taking meticulous notes in an atlas she’d brought for the sole purpose of marking human habitation. If the people in Limon wanted to send runners, she’d have information on safe passage for them. Maybe they would stay a few days, and she’d have a chance to add to the record of events she’d originally started so long ago, before Noah’s death, before Brody. Hopefully, someone somewhere else was doing the same thing, and eventually mankind would be able to patch together a record of what had happened in these dark times.
Owen was the first to join her, sitting down on the camp stool next to her and stretching out his legs with a sigh. There was a stillness about Owen that Piper found restful. For all his intimidating size and obvious physical power, he carried about him an aura of gentleness, and he was one of the few men she was completely comfortable around. Piper handed him a plate, and he thanked her quietly before beginning to eat. Ed was a few minutes behind him. As he sat, he made a shooing motion at Rosemary.
“Go on, girl. Go rustle up your own grub. There are rabbits all over the place.”
The dog was off like a shot, zipping into the tall grass that hadn’t been flattened by their activities. Piper handed Ed his plate, and he, too, began to eat. Piper waited for Jack, too thoroughly trained by her mother to start eating before everyone was “at the table.” Around them, the huge bowl of prairie sky was deepening to blues and purples as the sun approached the horizon. Piper gazed towards the west, where she could still see the mountains of home, craggy and dark and familiar. Sometime in the next couple of days, if all went as planned, she would turn around and no longer be able to see them. The thought brought with it both exhilaration and sorrow.
A rustle behind her announced Jack’s return. He sat down on the last camp stool and accepted the plate Piper handed him with a cheerful thank-you. Then, he bent his head and closed his eyes in silent prayer. He’d done the same thing at lunch. Piper waited until he lifted his head and began sorting through the selection on his plate.
“That’s still important to you? Saying grace?”
The corner of Jack’s mouth twitched up, a wry half-smile. “It’s important to me now.”
“It wasn’t before?” Piper might never sit in a classroom again, but she’d be a sociology student for the rest of her days. People had always fascinated her, the choices they made, the beliefs they embraced and decided to defend. She had never been close to someone who had chosen a religiously-centered life before. Jack didn’t seem to mind her endless questions, so she kept right on asking them. Besides, it limited their relationship to a form she was comfortable with: Piper as scientist, Jack as bug.
Owen finished his food and handed his empty plate to Piper, nodding politely. Then, he returned to the bikes. Ed, too, finished eating and handed over his plate. He left Piper and Jack to their conversation, stretching out on his sleeping bag and tipping his hat over his face. He had first watch, so getting a nap was a smart move. Piper bit into one of her eggs as Jack answered her question.
“Before the plague, it was a habit, something I didn’t think much about. I grew up in a religious home, and we always said grace.” He took a bite of crunchy red pepper and made a sound of appreciation. “This is from Verity’s garden, isn’t it? I can always tell. Vegetables and angels. Such a weird combo to excel at.” Then, he went on. “After the plague, I stopped praying at all. No grace, no daily devotions. Nothing.”
Piper waited to see if he would continue. When he didn’t, she probed. “Why? Were you angry at God?”
“Of course. Everybody was angry at God then. A lot of people still are. But I’ve been angry at God before. That wasn’t why I stopped praying.” His voice and manner were easy. Peaceful. This was something he’d come to grips with and settled in his mind. “I stopped praying because for the first time in my life, I didn’t want to stop sinning.”
When it was clear he didn’t intend to go on, Piper prodded again. “Care to elaborate on that?”
“Nope.” There was no rancor or defensiveness in the single word, nor in his demeanor. But his eyes flickered to Owen, and she knew with certainty that she would not be allowed to cross the line he’d just drawn.
She hadn’t known Jack well before, but both her mother and Martin had commented on how much he had changed – a “kinder, gentler Jack,” as Naomi put it. The Jack Piper was getting to know was smart and compassionate, quick to see the humor in any given situation, and obviously still grieving a woman who hadn’t been his own. Sooner or later, she planned to finesse that story out of him. But while grief for Layla may have broken and softened his intensity, he was still no push-over. Piper shifted tactics.
“As I understand Christian theory, you could have kept right on sinning and just asked for forgiveness. Isn’t that one of the basic tenets of your religion? That people will inevitably sin but will always be forgiven as long as they believe in Jesus?”
Jack’s lips twitched again, this time into a knowing smile. Obviously, he saw right through her shift to general theory gambit. “Sure, that’s an accurate description of the Christian faith, in its simplest and most basic form.” He pointed a crispy, raw green bean at her. “A question for you: Do simple and basic relationships satisfy you?”
It was her turn to smile at how neatly he’d turned her question. “Not really.”
“Well, there’s part of your answer. Another question: Do you accept less from yourself than you know you’re capable of?”
That question bothered her, stirred the depths again, but his honesty required her to meet it with her own. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “But never for long. Eventually, I reach a point where I have to reconcile. There’s always a reckoning.”
“Exactly. A point where you have to pay the piper.” He blinked at her, his face so perfectly innocent, she was wildly impressed. “So to speak.”
Piper grinned. “Have you been waiting all day to use that?”
“Yep.”
She laughed, and crunched into her own vegetables. “Well played, Jumpin’ Jack. Well played.”
They ate the rest of their meal in companionable silence. When she had finished eating, Piper stood up and stretched, taking the time to work out the unfamiliar kinks brought on by hours spent on a motorcycle.
If they decided not to stay in Limon, they would ride just a little longer tomorrow, and perhaps longer the next day. Both Martin and Ethan had cautioned them against a “sprint” mentality. It wouldn’t serve them to rush headlong into danger. Better to take longer and feel their way along, letting their intuition – a concept nobody scoffed at anymore – guide them safely. With that in mind, she walked to the top of the hill they were camped on to see if she could perceive anything about where they were headed tomorrow.
The town was a distant smudge on the prairie, a suggestion of straight lines against the soft curves of the rolling plains. She settled cross-legged on the ground and opened up her senses. She didn’t see any smoke, and she was too far away to make out individual bond lines, but the little town was suffused with a glow that told her people were there, working and living together. She should have thought to grab her binoculars.
Moments later, Jack joined her, settling down beside her and handing her the binoculars she’d just been wishing for. “Can you see anything from here?”
She took the binoculars from him, wondering if she should be freaked out, and decided not to be for the time being. “Just a subtle light. What about you?”
“Not much, but a faint sense of community. Bonds forged in hardship. They’ll have each other’s backs, and they’ll be suspicious of outsiders.”
“Which is smart. I’ll be suspicious if they welcome us with open arms.” Piper lifted the binoculars and scanned the town. There, a thin trail of smoke, and another a short distance away. Probably cooking fires. “Unless they’ve posted warnings or we feel something off, we stick to the plan: Leave the bikes outside of town and walk in, let them see we’re armed, but put out our best ‘not a threat’ vibes. As long as they don’t shoot first and ask questions later, we should be okay.”
“Here’s hoping.”
Jack leaned back on his elbows and crossed his ankles. Down at the bottom of the hill, Rosemary slid out of the tall grass bordering the camp, a limp rabbit in her jaws, and curled up next to Ed to consume it. She was almost as efficient a hunter as little Persephone, and though Ed didn’t have the same depth of connection as Naomi did with her dogs – he claimed not to have any intuitive skills at all – the bond between man and dog was obvious. Owen finished whatever he’d been doing with the bikes, and like Ed, reclined on his sleeping bag to rest before his watch.
Piper nodded in their direction. “So. Ed has been open about the fact that he hasn’t changed like the rest of us, but what about Owen? Any idea what’s going on with him?”
Jack’s face closed behind that neutral mask he was so good at slipping on. “No idea, but he probably wouldn’t confide in me.” He glanced at her and smiled tightly, with just a hint of razor’s edge. “We’ve never been best buddies.”
She returned the tight smile. “I’ll bet not.” She knew she was pushing, but couldn’t think of a reason not to. “Can I ask a personal question?”
Jack eyed her for a long moment. “If I say ‘no,’ you’ll just circle back to it later. So fire away.”
“Was the baby Layla lost yours?”
She catalogued and analyzed his physical response. A sharp intake of breath through his nose. Widened eyes. Dilated pupils. And pain. All over his face and bleeding off him in waves. She was pretty sure she knew his answer before he gave it.
“No, the baby wasn’t mine. Is that what people think?” He closed his eyes and held up his hand. “Never mind. Doesn’t matter what people thought, of her or of me.” He opened his eyes again, and this time, Piper didn’t have any problem reading what he was feeling. “Too far, Piper. That was too far.”
“I apologize.” But was she really sorry? She honestly wasn’t sure. “I could promise it won’t happen again, but I can’t leave a mystery alone.”
“It’s not a mystery. It’s my private life. It’s also my past.” His eyes locked on hers, and for the very first time, she felt the power at his disposal. “Leave it alone.”
His command rendered her reluctant to speak, reluctant to ask any more questions. Reluctant, but not incapable. “Holy shit,” she breathed, when she was able. “So that’s what people were talking about. What all can you do with that, do you know? I heard you can make people do things, but how far does it go? How long do the effects last? Can you make someone do something that’s in conflict with their core values? Can you -”
“Piper. Stop.” He didn’t put any power behind his words this time, but the weariness in his voice made her comply. “I can appreciate your endless curiosity, I really can. I’m interested in what makes people tick, too, and the changes in humanity fascinate me. But I can’t answer all your questions, and there are ones I won’t answer. I have hurt others with what I can do. I hurt myself, betrayed my own core beliefs.” He pinned her with his gaze again. “So unless you’re ready to bare your soul about everything you’ve been through, unless you’re ready to trade the dark truths you’ve learned about yourself for my ugly secrets, you need to respect the boundaries and leave it alone when I say to.”
Now she was sorry, truly. The ache of remorse in the center of her chest surprised her with its intensity. The bond-line between them coalesced into what looked like a solid cylinder of white light, though she had no earthly idea why.
“I apologize,” she repeated, holding his gaze. “And this time I mean it.”
“Well, then, this time I accept.” He looked away, and she felt him withdraw from the connection between them. It both relieved and frightened her. His voice, when he spoke, was deliberately light. “I’ll make you a deal, Piper. If we find ourselves hanging upside down over a pit of lava with no way out, and no hope of survival, I’ll tell all.”
She responded in kind. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, Jack. It’s good to know you won’t let me die curious.”
He waited a few beats, then shifted them farther away from the topic. “You’ve got third watch?”
“Dead of night,” Piper confirmed. They both knew the schedule forward and backwards, but the words helped rebuild the buffer between them. “One of the short shifts. I relieve Owen, and you relieve me, is that right?”
“Yep. I get to see the sun come up.” He stood. “Speaking of, I’m going to try to settle in, get some sleep. Martin said it would be tough, the first couple of nights.”
“Jack.” She held up the binoculars. “How did you know I wanted these?”
He shrugged. “Just knew. Does it bother you?”
Piper looked away. “I’m not sure yet.”
Jack gave her a brotherly pat on the shoulder then headed back down the hill towards their camp, whistling as he went. It took Piper a moment to recognize the tune, and when she did, she couldn’t stop a crack of surprised laughter. She sang along with his cheerful whistle as she followed him down the hill.
“Little ditty, about Jack and Diane…”