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.