Chapter 7

Beyond the quiet desert town, past shifting sands and clouds of smog and dust and what might have once passed for cleansing rain, there was a body. The rain and the wind and the sand had done their best to rip the skin away, leaving the meat and organs exposed for the scavengers, not all of which could be classified as animal. There were tooth marks on the thigh and bicep muscles, rangy as they were, that were a testament to the humanoid scavengers that had tried the body and disregarded it. These gourmets preferred something more supple for the palate. But none of these elements, none of these 'natural' dangers had killed the once living form.


They couldn't have cared less for the bag full of bobbles that the man had once carried, and even ignored the crusty half loaf of bread and wilted, dried herbs hanging from the strap of the bag. In fact there was nothing of value but the body itself, and the wind and the sun had shriveled even that to leather.


A skin and bones bobcat sat in the crag of a large pile of stones, barely moving but for the occasional rasp of her tongue over a wounded paw, and the twitch of her tail. Her eyes watched as the wind lifted and tossed the flap of the dead thing's bag, knowing that the smell meant it was dead, but the movement still kept her interest. She had ventured from her hiding spot as soon as the sun went down to sniff at the body. But it had been too long dead and sundried to provide nourishment and after batting it a few times she had retreated back to the stones, a place more and more likely to become her tombstone.


Venturing from the mountains had been a mistake, but the prize had overwhelmed her sense of caution. Now, there were no kits to return to, her mate had died long ago, there were no new males worthy, and none of them had shown interest. They had moved farther north, closer to water and ready food. The two other females among them could feed the pack and bear their young. There was nothing left but this mildly amusing dead thing that was somehow not entirely dead, and the long cool night.


She had almost fallen into restful slumber when the lights swept across her face, cutting through the haze and repeating over and over again. A line of lights that moved through the desert without pausing or slowing. The lights were followed by dark shapes that growled and grumbled, marking their turf with angry snarls, then bafflingly, leaving the turf behind. A dark, unpleasant fog followed them before it was caught by the wind and tossed out into the emptiness.


The lights and the noise moved away from the mountains, away from life, and toward the place of death. A place that stank of progress and settlement and the death of all things wild. The bobcat watched, her eyes growing heavy again with the need for sleep. She panted until the insistent beat of her heart slowed and her body relaxed, giving a final disdainful snort before she lay her head across her paws and closed out the night.




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A week had passed, a week full of routine and bodies becoming accustomed to the strain of caring for another human being. Rachel was comfortable around Jack, and yet, the thought of him there, the threat that his mere existence posed, made her more and more paranoid.


One positive development. He was healing, getting stronger; and faster than Rachel would have expected. He had pulled himself out of bed only two days before and Rachel was horrified when she brought his soup in that morning, to find him standing, pale and sweating, but on his own two feet. Worse, he hadn't merely been trying to get from point A to point B, he had been pacing. For almost an hour, Jack said.


When she found him attempting a pushup the next day, and prostrate on his back after trying more the following evening the frustration and fear boiled  into a directed anger that she pointed solely at him.


"You're a damned fool! Idiot!" She spat going to her knees beside him. "Are you trying to kill yourself? How much blood do I have to clean up? If I didn't care so much for clean floors I would let you bleed out." She snarled, ripping the stained but clean shirt back from the bandages, and roughly pushing them out of the way too. The wound, still red in some places, and not nearly healed  enough for the trauma he had been putting it through, was seeping. With a grunt Rachel pushed the bandages back down, using them as a compress while she turned blazing brown eyes back toward startled and pained blue.


"Do you know how dangerous this is? Do you? You came into this town riding a motorcycle."


The thought spilled out, harsh and fast, before Rachel realized that it was happening out loud, that her long internalized arguments were overflowing into the outside world.


"The boss knows about the bike. She knew three weeks ago, because every man in this town that wants to get ahead, does it by snitching to her. They've been looking for it all this time. When they find out that I've been hiding you up here..."


Jack winced, his eyes settling into a dull and desperate apology that he couldn't vocalize. Rachel looked down to her hands, to the blood spots appearing on the bandage, surprised to see Jack's hands there too, trying to push hers away.


Taking a sharp, deep breath she yanked her hands back. The minute he was free of her Jack started to backpedal, crabbing backward until he had the support of the wall behind his shoulders.

"I've been hiding you." She said, watching her hands begin to shake. "We've been hiding you. Because you didn't deserve to die, and I couldn't have a dead body in my attic. And because..." Her words ground to a halt behind tears preparing to spill, her anger not anywhere near depleted. "Because you're from the outside. You know things. You escaped some other town, you had to have to be here. And...and that picture."


He was getting his breathing under control, some color was returning to his face, his posture was relaxing just a little, and no new spots were appearing on the bandage. Rachel flushed, realizing that her angry actions might have done more damage than his premature exercise. His eyes closed for a moment, like he was thinking about passing out, then they opened again and she could see his teeth clenched behind the mustache.

"The picture of my son.." He said, his voice like a neglected two-stroke engine coughing to life.

Rachel nodded.

"Micah...?"

She nodded again feeling the misery, the depression she had been holding at bay for the longest time settle on her shoulders and sink into her bones.

"How old is he?"

Rachel raised her knees up, drawing them toward her chest, defending herself against an enemy that could penetrate any shield. She started to lie, the way she always did, the lie more familiar to her tongue than the truth. But something stopped her.

"He's seven-years-old." She said bitterly.

"Seven...you're hiding him too, then."

"I have a deal, sort of, with the boss. But the price is higher ten fold each year. I'm..." Her face flooded with heat. She'd be paying very dearly by next year, and she knew no price truly guaranteed Micah's freedom. It would only take one wrong move on Rachel's part for the deal to be broken.

"He's smart." Jack said, and this time the flash of teeth was more like a smile and less like a grimace. Rachel agreed not wanting to know how he knew.

"We don't have much time." Jack said, reaching his left hand up towards the bed, his right hand to the floor, working his way back to his feet before Rachel could stop him.

Chapter 6

"How long were you on the road?"

"Weeks, months....years. Stopped thinking in terms of time miles ago."

"I guess that makes sense. We don't really use clocks here either." Rachel was silent for a moment, picking at a loose thread as it unwound from the compress she'd been holding. "First bell, second bell. We go by the worker's schedule."

Jack nodded, worked a sip of soup into his mouth. He was good with his left arm, but his right arm he could move only with difficulty. Somehow the muscles in his torso were connected with the muscles in his arm. One affected the other, damaged the other.

"So the tavern downstairs-"

"Tavern?" Rachel snorted. She hadn't expected so antiquated a term to come from his mouth and thought he was likely mocking her. She watched his face for the grin but it didn't come right away. He had been in earnest and Rachel looked away quickly, embarrassed.

"Alright...what do you call it?"

"It's a restaurant, or at least it was. Still is."

He narrowed his eyes at her and she could no longer read his emotions. She quirked her head to the side and that strange yet comfortable silence started again. She'd had half a dozen lengthy conversations with Jack since he'd awakened three days before, this silence had become an unavoidable part of them.

"It's not open all the time though." Jack stated.

"No...we only open for the lunch and dinner bells, we're open late, so we close in the mornings."

"In the old days that wasn't a restaurant."

"It also wasn't a tavern."

Jack closed his eyes and leaned back against his pillows. Rachel let him rest for a moment, waiting for him to lift the cup to his lips once more. When he did she asked, "How far did you travel?"

Jack cleared his throat and made a noise of appreciation as the soup slid down it. "Far...I started near the east coast, worked my way north, then south again, then west." Jack's eyes slid over to look into hers but Rachel dropped his gaze. She knew what would come next. They still hadn't talked about it. Still hadn't addressed the words that Rachel had blurted in the attic room when she thought Jack was about to die.

When he saw that she wasn't exactly eager to launch into an explination he dropped his gaze to the soup bowl and sipped from it. He swallowed, leaned his head back looking drained.

"Soup is thinner today." He commented quietly.

"It's end-of-the-month soup." She said, matter of fact. There was this seperation between her and the rest of the world that she had begun to feel when Jack started talking.

She wanted to ask him everything.

What was life like out there beyond the desert? Were things worse or better than those around her imagined daily? What were the real plans of the government? When would the good times come again? When would the shipments get better?

All of them were things she could only assume he knew the answer to. Anyone from beyond the desert had to have answers. It was something they had all hoped for.

And yet she hadn't asked, and he obviously hadn't answered. And she sat there staring into the light of knowledge and freedom, that she had been dying for, afraid to step forward.

Jack had closed his eyes, his finger tapping against the side of the half-emptied bowl. His breathing was settling and after a moment Rachel realized that he was keeping himself awake, tapping with his finger that way.

She pursed her lips and reached forward with one hand, grabbing the bowl and gently pulling it from his hand, pressing her other palm against his forehead, sweeping the hair back. He was still warm, but it was a healthier warmth, the difference between a living body and a dead one.

Hooded eyes opened briefly, sluggishly roving to focus on Rachel before Jack passed out completely.

It didn't surprise her. A body on the mend did what it willed and once the energy was gone, it was gone.

"Small steps.." She mumbled to herself, cradling the bowl of lukewarm broth in both hands over her knees. "But to what end?" The question, and the severity that entered her voice surprised her.

Would he survive? There was a very real chance now. When he was better, would he leave? Would she let him? What about the bike, the boss, the unveiled threat posed against her son...his son?

Rachel watched him sleep, numb to the passing of time, her mind running through imagined scenario after scenario.

Jack dying despite his miraculous recovery. Her and Cookie in the dead of night finding the bike, turning it over to the boss, buying another year. Or finding the bike and using it to escape the town.

Jack living, taking Micah and running; all of them running. The boss and her henchmen giving chase. Their dead bodies stretched out across the desert basin, covered in sand.  Somehow there was never a happy ending to any of the possibilities.

Saving the stranger, that had been her first big mistake, she accepted this. But the mistake was made and the consequences long considered.

The cold, calculated intelligence that guided her through many a trade had vanished the moment another human life entered the equation. Some would say she was too soft to survive, not thinking enough about number one. The voice, she recalled, that had said that long ago had belonged to a woman of about twenty that Rachel had been traveling with the day she found Micah.

"It's dead weight." She had said. "Leave it."

When Rachel, halted with the toes of her sneakers mere inches from the head of the infant, failed to respond, her red headed traveling companion stopped too and turned.

"It'll be buzzard food in a coupl'a hours, and you ain't lactatin' sister." She'd said. Rachel couldn't remember her name, something ending in an "er".

Whoever she was, she had turned then and continued along the road leaving Rachel. Over her shoulder she'd delivered what should have been the final and convincing argument. "You're too soft, Rachel. Remember, always think about number one. They ain't room enough for any others."

But Rachel had knelt, pulled the stiff infant into her arms and pressed it..him, against her breast. In moments the child responded, squirming, melding into the supporting embrace, seeking out nourishment that she couldn't provide.

A heart that had begun to harden after too many losses melted just a little, and despite knowing that the baby would be trouble, Rachel also knew that she had made the right decision for once.

There in the room with Jack, the sun setting and glaring its final sadistic rays into the room, Rachel felt it again. A thrill of adrenalin spiking in her stomach. The choice was made, and she knew it was the right one.