Autumn in the Dark Meadows (The Autumn Series) (3 page)

“Nothing special about today, Shad,” I warned, turning to flee.  “Just another day.”

“Sounds like someone needs a birthday kiss,” Shad teased, wagging his eyebrows at me, and his handsome face broke into a wide grin.  His teeth shone brightly against his tan face, and his brown hair had grown shaggy and sun-kissed over the last several weeks.  It was obvious why he was so popular with the female residents of the community.

I frowned, annoyed he’d brought up the subject of kissing in front of Grey.  But Shad ignored my grimace and plucked a sequin-encrusted sombrero from a shelf and tried to put it on me.  I dodged out of the way.

“Oh come on, Miss Winters, let’s pretend we’re at Rosie’s Taco Shack!  I think I remember their birthday song,” he teased, trying again to get the sombrero on my head.  I ducked a second time and noticed the amused expression on Grey’s face.  I had to get out of here.

“Come on,” Shad said, laughing.  “Don’t be such a stiff.  Life’s too short.”

My temper flared.  I knew he was intentionally teasing me in front of Grey.  “Do you always have to be so inappropriate?” I said in my most offended voice.  I fled, face burning.

I put two aisles between us before realizing I was going in the wrong direction and swerved toward the desk in the back.  I was disappointed to see Royal, the more unpleasant of the two brothers, manning the desk.

“I need to pick up an order for Tess.”

“Right-o,” he said, twirling around on his stool to scan the crowded shelves behind him.  He plucked a box off a shelf, checked his clipboard and glanced up at me expectantly.  “Three boxes of produce?”

“Tess dropped them off – ” I began.

Royal interrupted me and yelled into a back room, “Manny!  Did you receive three boxes of produce from Tess?”  He waited, as if he already knew the answer, sharpened pencil hovering over his clipboard.  There was a short pause and then a sleepy “yeah” from the back.  Royal shook his head dramatically as he busily made a couple marks with his pencil.

I wished he would just give me the box so I could go.  I wanted to get out of there.

Royal finally slid the clipboard across the desk and handed me his pencil.  “Sign here.”  He motioned to the paper and then added, “And don’t steal my pencil.  I just sharpened it.”

I thought about telling him what to do with his pencil, but bit my lip and scrawled my name.  I handed the pencil purposefully back to him, and he looked over my signature closely, as if determining its authenticity.  It must have met with his approval, because he slid the box toward me.

“Thanks,” I said, taking the box.  I turned around and promptly crashed into Grey, who stood directly behind me.  He caught my shoulders to steady me.  I felt the warmth of his hands through my t-shirt and quickly side-stepped around him, slipping from his grasp.

“You seem to be everywhere today,” I muttered, hoping he’d catch my meaning.  I glanced sideways at Royal, who listened with interest.

“You could have gotten me in a lot of trouble this morning,” I said.  “How am I supposed to explain… something like that?”  I glared at Royal, who got the hint and disappeared.

“What if Connie had seen all those pictures?” I whispered angrily.  “How am I supposed to explain how they got here?  And I
don’t
want you coming into my house, or my
room
.”  My voice got harsher with every word as I vented my frustration.

“You didn’t like them?”

“That’s beside the point.  You’re not welcome in my house
or my room
without permission.”  His pained face made me pause, and the wind left my sails.  “Look, it’s fine.  I’ve got the pictures hidden away.  Just… don’t do anything like that again.”

He nodded, his face solemn.

“Happy eighteenth!” Ben exclaimed, appearing beside me.  He gave me a one-armed hug against his side, then sensed the mood and paused awkwardly, looking between Grey and me.  “Oh… um, sorry to interrupt.  Uh, Shad and I have a present for you,” he said, forging ahead.

Shad appeared behind Ben, wearing the sombrero from earlier.  “It’s outside,” he said.

“Why did you have to leave it outside?” I asked wearily.

“Well, it
is
kind of smelly,” Ben said.  He and Shad looked at each other, laughing.

“You’re gonna love it!” Shad exclaimed.  “We got you a big, smelly bag of shi –,”

“Happy birthday!”  Ben exclaimed, drowning out the rest of Shad’s sentence.

Confused, I looked between the two of them.  “Huh?”

“A bag of shi –” Shad began again.

“Shad!  Seriously!”  Ben interrupted.  “I knew Rissi was learning those words from somewhere… watch it.”

“Ease up, big brother.  She’s not around now.  She’s at school… teaching the other kids what she knows...”

I sighed, glancing at the clock on the wall behind the desk.  “If I’m late to work, Tess’s going to make me work late again.”

“You can’t miss the dance tonight.  Everyone’s coming... you’re coming, right?”  Ben adjusted his glasses as he stared down at me, looking concerned all of a sudden, and I was reminded of a night lit by distant wildfires last fall when Ben kissed me, and I pushed him away.  I’d been unsure of his feelings for me since then.

“No, I’m not going,” I said.  “I have to put in forty hours a week at the gardens if I want seed and tool privileges on the weekends.”

“There’s gonna be fireworks and everything.  The mayor’s had everyone keep an eye out for the past two months,” Shad said, then paused for dramatic effect.  “As I’m sure you recall, I was the one who finally found some in a garage in North Henderson.”

Ben rolled his eyes.  “When are you gonna drop it?  It’s not like you found a cure for The Plague.  And I still don’t understand how you got to North Henderson and back in a day.  That’s gotta be twenty miles one way.”

Shad wagged his eyebrows.  “Nothing faster than greased thunder.”

“
Lightning
, Shad.  The expression is ‘greased
lightning
,’” Ben said, sighing heavily.

“I know, but my horse’s name is
Thunder
.  So you see what I mean?  See how that works?”

“But it doesn’t work,” Ben argued, and I saw we were in for a short lecture on the origin of the expression.  “It doesn’t make sense-”

“Guys,” I interrupted.

“You have to come to the dance, Winters.  My fireworks are going to light up the sky like it’s the Fourth of July.”

“Connie’ll get her there,” Ben said to Shad.

“I don’t know.  Connie might have to bind and gag her,” Shad added.

“I’d like to see that,” Ben said.

“I’d
pay
to see that,” Shad countered and nodded, the sombrero wobbling on his head.

I sighed and glanced sideways at Grey, who leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest.  His usually composed face appeared sad.

“You know, fertilizer?” I heard Ben say and refocused my attention.  “You said you’ve been wanting some for your garden at home.”

“Took us a week to collect that much.  Hope you appreciate the shi–”

“Joke’s getting old, Shad!” Ben rolled his eyes.

“I was just going to say I hoped she appreciated
what
we went through,” Shad said, crooking an eyebrow at me.  “Cause you know, not all fertilizer is created equal.  We scooped only the best for you, Autumn.”  He batted his eyelashes.

“Thanks guys.  It’s a weirdly useful gift,” I said.  “I really should go.”  I smiled at them, then glanced at Grey and started to the front of the store.

I only went two steps when a siren pierced the air, wailing loudly over the howl of the wind outside.  I froze, my eyes darting to the store’s dusty windows.

Footsteps thumped loudly from behind me, and Shad flew by, flicking the sombrero onto a shelf as he flung open the door and ran into swirling dust outside.  He paused just outside the door, looking toward the nearest guard tower.  The wind pressed his shirt against his torso, and he protected his eyes with cupped hands.  I saw him mouth what could only be a curse but couldn’t hear anything over the wind.  He rushed back to the doorway.

“They lit the beacon!” he shouted.  “It’s not a drill!”

¹
Pronounced ‘Foe irr’

Shad’s words cut through me as Ben tore past and disappeared into the storm after him. I had to get to the greenhouses.

I started toward the door but found it blocked by Grey.

“Stay here,” he pressed, his blue eyes intent on mine.  “Go in back with Royal and Manny and don’t come out until the all clear bell.”  He took my upper arms in his hands, and my stomach clenched.  It was exactly how he held me in my dream.  I was afraid to breathe.  Just a dream.  Just a dream, I repeated.

I shook him off with a sudden burst of strength that always eluded me in my dream.  “I’m not just sitting by when people depend on me.”

I darted around Grey and into the deafening storm of sand and siren.

Moments later, Tess crashed into me as I threw open the door to Greenhouse A.  I jumped aside as workers crowded through the doorway to see outside.  Everyone plugged their ears to drown out the wailing alarm.  The wind blew hard around us, whipping clouds of dirt into miniature cyclones.

We ran drills once a month, but the siren only went off for thirty seconds while we practiced our invasion routine.  I looked toward the North Tower, the closest guard tower to us.  A light burned at its highest point through the blowing curtain of dust.

I grabbed Tess’s arm and pointed at the tower, “This isn’t a drill!  Everyone should get back inside!”

She nodded and began waving people in.

I squeezed through the crowd funneling through the door and ran to a small locker at the back of the greenhouse.  I fumbled for a key hidden in a pail full of stones, opened the locker and grabbed the two handguns hidden inside.

Muffled hoof beats passed the greenhouse as I reached Tess, who was locking the door.  We both turned to look through the clouded windows.  Shad galloped away from us on his dark Thoroughbred, Thunder, in the direction of the mountain pass leading to the dam.  As a member of the Hoover Guard, he would ride into the middle of any fight to safeguard the town.

Tess’s eyes lingered a moment longer than mine did, and when she looked at me, she tried to pretend there was nothing behind her gaze.  She tucked a curly wisp of deep brown hair into the bandana tied around her head.  Tess was twenty-six, curvy and elegant, even with dirt smudged on her face.  She looked like she might have been a model, but I knew she’d been an assistant at an accounting firm in Flagstaff, Arizona.

I handed her one of the guns, and we silently watched the street from the windows, as the Hoover Guard taught us when we volunteered to be Safety Officers.

I looked up at the few workers who took lookout positions around the large windows lining the greenhouse.  Everyone else crowded near the one windowless wall.  The wind and the siren howled, but they were locked outside, along with any number of possible threats bearing down on Hoover.

From my position near Tess, I could see into Greenhouse B beside us.  Workers there had locked themselves inside and manned their stations around the windows.  I glanced back at Tess.  Her lips were pressed together, and she was still, as if straining to hear something.

The siren wound higher and higher, coiling my insides with it.  Then it slowly unwound, until it slowed and finally stopped.  Tess and I looked at each other.

“Now we just wait for the all clear,” she said, and I noted only partial relief on the faces around me.  The threat wasn’t over, but at least I could focus now that the siren stopped.

“We haven’t had a real alert in a while,” Tess said in a hushed voice.  “The last time was when... well, it was when The Reconstruction Front attacked us last summer.”

I nodded.  It wasn’t something anyone at Hoover liked to talk about.

Late last summer, before our group arrived here, and before I even joined up with those hiding in the basement of Hollywood High School, the leader of The Reconstruction Front, Karl, set his sights on the power of Hoover Dam and tried to negotiate his way into acquiring it.  Hoover rejected his offers, and The Reconstruction Front mounted a surprise attack on them to take control of the dam.

The attack cost Hoover the lives of many of its residents, but they’d driven The Front away, keeping the dam and their town safe from Karl's grasp.  Shortly after, Mayor Westland created the Welcoming Committee, which screened all potential residents and travelers passing through for potential threats.  Suspicion kept everyone alive.

The head of the Welcoming Committee was a man named Josh Hamilton.  My “fame” preceded my arrival, so the interview process was fairly short.  But it was long enough for me to grow a healthy dislike for Josh.  He was about thirty and might have been a decent person except that his extreme suspicion of every townsperson made him detached and cold.  I never shook my discomfort of him, always feeling as if I were being scrutinized under his watchful eye.

“It can’t be The Front,” Tess said, interrupting my thoughts.  Her voice didn’t sound sure at all.  “They’d be stupid to try again.”

“Probably just outsiders looking suspicious,” I suggested.

Outsiders were always welcome, but Hoover was very careful all the same.  That’s where Josh Hamilton came in.  He and Mayor Westland understood Hoover sat on a place of power, because they had control of the dam, and with that came electricity and fresh water.  They knew The Front might not be the only group to try to take it.

 “Did you know I broke Karl’s nose once?”  I didn’t know what made me think of it at the moment, but I thought it might help calm her nerves.

It worked.  She glanced up at me, her hazel eyes wide and her mouth a perfect oval.  “Are you kidding me?”

I shook my head.

“How?  When?”  She was almost giggling.

“Right before coming here.  He found our camp, and he cornered me.  There was a piece of cement nearby and, well, I couldn’t resist.”

She covered her mouth and laughed quietly.  “Glad you’re on our side,” she said.  After a few moments of silence between us, she looked at me seriously.  “We should really hang out more often, Autumn.  You don’t have to always go off by yourself.”

I was about to deny what she said when I heard a bell peal three times, the notes carrying loud and clear on the wind.  The all-clear signal.  I breathed a deep sigh of relief, thankful we could exchange our weapons for rakes and shovels again.

I wondered how long it’d take the mayor to get word out about what just happened, and suddenly missed the flatscreen at The Water Tower with a million news networks.  I made a mental note to ask Ben, who worked at the mayor’s office, the next time I saw him.

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” I heard someone mutter, as everyone went back to work.

Tess pulled off the bandana and shook out the mass of brown curls framing her face.

“So, Tess,” I said, coyly.  “Did I see you eyeing a certain Thoroughbred a few minutes ago?  Are you in the market for a horse?  I hear he’s pretty fast.”

She shrugged, laughing.  “What?” she asked, as if I’d caught her doing something naughty.  “There’s a serious shortage of datable guys in Hoover, and I know Shad’s a year or two younger than me, but he’s kinda hot, especially when he’s being all heroic and riding out to save the town,” she said, scrunching her already curly hair.  “He seeing anyone?”

“It’s hard to tell.  Seems like he’s dating the whole town sometimes,” I said, hoping that might deter her from asking more questions.  I liked Tess a lot, but Shad was a huge flirt, and I didn’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt.  And I was in no mood to play matchmaker.

“Will you introduce me?” she asked, and my shoulders sagged.  Her eyes had the same manic look they got when she pruned the giant lemon tree outside.  She loved a challenge.

 “Not positive he’s a one-woman kind of guy,” I said.  “Just so you know up front.”

Tess winked at me and went back to work.  Well, maybe they were perfect for each other, I thought.  Tess was a pretty big flirt, too, and very much Shad’s type, with her sassy personality.

As I worked in the sun and wind, the morning turned to afternoon, and I found myself recalling the details of the pictures hidden in my room: the part in my mother’s hair, the shape of my dad’s glasses, the fabric on our old couch.  Homesickness prickled in my stomach, and I leaned back against the wind to take a deep breath through my bandana.

I missed home.  I missed my parents and my best friend, Sarah.  I missed how my dad ate half his dinner while making it.  I missed the chair in the corner of my parents’ bedroom.

Given the chance, would I go back?  Back to the time when my parents were alive?  When my biggest problem was a past-due paper?  When I didn’t need to know how to take care of myself, ride a horse, or defend someone I loved?  Back to the time when I didn’t know Grey?

Would I go back if I had the chance?  The answer didn’t come.  My mind hesitated.  Don’t be stupid, I told myself.  Of course you would go back... wouldn’t you?

I stood up, brushing soil from the knees of my overalls.  I didn’t like that my mind fumbled for an answer.  Of course I wanted Sarah and my parents back.  Of course I wanted to be able to go back to a place that was so carefree and easy.  But to exchange all of that for the people I knew and loved and depended on now?  It frightened me when I realized just how much my new family meant to me.  Ben, Rissi, Connie, Shad and... him.

How could I have been so close to him when he might have caused the deaths of my parents, my best friend and most of humanity?

Tightness in my stomach warned me my thoughts were heading into dangerous territory.  I moved into the orchard and picked up one of the many burlap blankets blown loose from the tree it was supposed to be protecting.  I shook it out, squeezing my eyes shut to the dust swirling around me, and began the process of re-wrapping the tree.

It was a two-person job, especially in the wind, but I didn’t want company.  I hardly ever did these days.  I felt better alone.  Exiling myself was easier than facing those left.  Knowing the cause of death for their families and friends was more than I could bear, so I busied myself with projects, volunteered for jobs no one else wanted and isolated myself as penance.

I secured the burlap blanket around the struggling fruit tree, protecting it once more from the buffeting winds and stinging sand.  I moved down the line of trees while the sun sank, turning the western sky the smooth red orange of a desert mallow petal.

By the time I saw workers leaving the greenhouses, I was almost finished.  “Just a couple more,” I told Tess when she walked out to me.  The wind had calmed as the light receded, and we worked side by side, finishing the row, then returned to the now silent Greenhouse A.

“Any word about that siren yet?”  I asked Tess as she looked at her reflection in the greenhouse window and rubbed a smudge of dirt off her nose.

“Huh?  Oh yeah. Group of people from LA, I think.”  Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “Hey, what are you wearing?”

I glanced down at my overalls and then back at her in confusion.  Tess saw me in this outfit every day.

Her eyes widened, and she stared at me.  “You are
not
wearing those hick overalls to the dance tonight.  I know you’ve got this reclusive tomboy thing going on, and I can hang with that at work, but come on!  Your mom was a
movie star
!  I’m sure you polish up nicely.”

Before I knew it, she snatched off my sweat-stained Dodgers hat and pulled the band out of my hair, letting my ponytail loose.  Dust poofed from my head as my long, red hair spilled over my shoulders.  I grabbed for my hat as she spun around, inspecting it.

“This thing is disgusting!” she said, laughing.  “You should seriously consider washing it... or burning it.”  She grimaced.  I yanked the hat from her hands, jamming it back on my head.  She looked at me sympathetically and said, “Honestly, Autumn, are you
trying
to look unattractive?”

“I’m going home.”  I shouldered past her, but she caught my arm.

“Autumn, you should come.  We should all be there.  And I happen to know a few guys who would be disappointed if you didn’t show up,” Tess said, lifting an eyebrow.  “You get more admirers all the time.  You and that ex of yours.  I’ll never understand how you could let go of a specimen like
that
.  I mean, hello, People’s Sexiest Man Alive! Forget the perfect blonde hair, those
eyes
! I've never seen anything so blue in my life!”

I concentrated on the pegboard of tools behind Tess as she continued, “Well, he won’t stay single for long.  I’ve heard too many girls talking about him.  He’ll be off the market again soon.”  Tess paused, and I glanced at her, my face composed to reveal nothing.  I could tell by the smile threatening her lips that she was just trying to make me jealous so I’d go to the dance.

“Probably... well, see you tomorrow,” I said simply and turned to the door.  Though I knew she was only baiting me, my stomach turned over when she mentioned other girls being interested in Grey.  It surprised me how much it bothered me.

“Autumn,” Tess said, and I stopped, my hand on the door and my back to her.

“Yeah?” I said, after a pause to steady my voice.

“If you do decide to come tonight, wear something green.  It makes your eyes sparkle.”

Minutes later, I cantered Snicket down the middle of Main Street, straining to hold her back from a full-on gallop.  She was restless, pulling on the bit in her mouth, and her usually steadfast legs felt like coiled springs of pent-up energy under me.  The street was busy for that time of night, and the lights from stores spilled out in yellow puddles.

The windstorm blew itself out just in time for everyone to attend the first ever social event in Hoover’s short history, and people in various states of dress hurried between buildings.  A few men in dirty coveralls stood in line for the public shower, the lettering across their backs showing they worked at the energy plant inside the dam.  Three girls in dresses hurried into Sweet Sweet Su’s to look at the display of oatmeal cupcakes and cookies.

Electricity flowed through the dirt streets tonight, though it wasn’t quite excitement.  It was like the quiet drawing in of a breath before a scream, or the silence before the crash of an ocean wave.  Like there was something large looming nearby.