Fingers grabbed at my hair and some of my long brown locks were ripped out of my head. I kept running, the pain only spurring me on. They would do far worse than pull my hair if I was caught.
The bush clawed at me, and I gave a final burst of energy and stumbled out onto the open road. I’d come out about twenty feet south of the gate; between me and safety was the pack. I backed up as fast as I could, angling towards the fence line while still keeping an eye on the stalking pack. I could toss Nero over the fence and then climb it, but I wasn’t sure I could make it in time. The pack was advancing steadily and I held Nero tight. Tears started to trickle down my cheeks as the realization hit me. I couldn’t save us both. I’d been stupid to run out of the safety of the farm, right into the Nevermore’s trap. Either way, Nero was going to die. I kissed the top of his once downy head, my tears dripping onto his fur.
“I’m so sorry Nero,” I whispered.
12
I started to put him down on the road, his big brown eyes staring up at me. Dark pools filled with trust that broke my heart.
“Get over the fence woman!” Dan yelled. I looked up to see him inside the gate, his gun propped up on the top rail. I clutched Nero to me, spun and ran for the fence.
The pack screamed and howled as Dan fired into them, their attention completely diverted away from me and Nero. I stumbled through the ditch and found myself at the old barbed wire fence first, the nice, clean, easy-to-climb page wire another 6 inches in.
Holding Nero by the scruff of his neck, I reached over as far as I could and only had to drop him two feet instead of four. Then it was my turn. I started up the barbed wire, the rusty points digging into my hands, my back crawling with the fact that I couldn’t see how close the pack was behind me.
I didn’t need to.
A mouth clamped onto my upper thigh, my jeans the only thing to keep them from slicing into my flesh. I couldn’t stop the cry that slipped out past my lips. Her teeth cut clamped on tight and the pain rocketed through me. I was caught with one leg on the farm side of the fence and one leg in the mouth of a Nevermore.
I pulled, but the Nevermore (one of the women) growled around her mouthful of my leg. I rode the edge of the two fences. The barbed wire bit into my inner thigh while I pulled on the brace that ran along the top of the page wire, trying to free myself. It was no use; there was no way I could pull my leg out of her mouth. I steadied myself with my left hand and cocked my right arm.
“Let go!” I yelled, snapped my arm forward and landed a solid blow, hitting her square on the nose.
The moment slowed as cartilage crunched under my fist, blood flew from her nose and a howl erupted out of her mouth. Unbalanced, I rocked in my precarious position and found myself thrown forward.
A breath, then another, as I struggled to keep myself from falling between the two fences. The Nevermore had stumbled away from me, shaking her head, dirty blond hair splattered with blood.
“I’ve got you.”
Sebastian.
He helped me down from the fence and, though my legs were wobbly, I managed to stay upright.
Bending down, he picked up Nero and cradled him in his arms. “I heard the screaming. It woke me up.” His eyes were fuzzy and I could tell he was uncertain. Did he wonder if he was still asleep, caught in some strange fever dream?
Words caught in my throat and I gave up trying to speak. I reached up and touched his cheek, the hollows so prominent from the sickness the cure brought on. His skin was clear of any hint of yellow and the images of broom plants under his skin were gone.
His eyes, though, remained golden, giving evidence to the fact that he had indeed been a Nevermore.
“I’m sorry Mara,” he whispered, and I slid my fingers over his lips. The Nevermores continued to rant at the fence, but we ignored them.
“You don’t need to apologize,” I said. A glance over my shoulder at the pack as I reached for Bastian’s hand. “Let’s go inside.”
We took a few steps and he stopped. “I do need to apologize. For giving up, for making you carry me and you both through this.”
I closed my eyes and bit my bottom lip, pausing for a moment before answering. “Would you have acted any different if the roles had been reversed?”
“Of course not, but I’m supposed to take care of you, it’s my job,” he said.
I laughed and shook my head. “Bastian, that is a two way street.”
With a gentle tug, I got him moving again.
Once inside, I tended to Nero’s wounds first. They weren’t life threatening, but they were going to take a long time to heal. Dan came stomping in as I was cleaning out the holes the sticks had made.
“Damn it to hell and back. Woman, you nearly got us both killed over a dog,” he snarled, throwing himself into a chair, a grimace on his face. Nero lifted his head, saw Dan and wagged his tail.
A sneaking suspicion crept over me. “You know what I was trying to figure out Dan?” I asked.
“What?”
“How a small puppy like this could have survived for so long and only just now got caught by the pack,” I said, rubbing a small amount of polysporin on the open wounds.
I glanced over at Sebastian who was sitting quietly at my side, his hands working at a burr on the back of Nero’s leg.
I looked back to Dan and he flushed bright red for the second time that day.
“Ok, so I took care of him while you were gone. He took off when the house burned down,” he grumbled.
I smiled and reached out to touch his arm. “Thank you Dan.” There were cracks in the tough guy veneer after all.
Sebastian leaned forward. “We can’t stay here.”
“We’ve already discussed that Sleeping Beauty.” Dan snapped his cigar, barely even recognizable now he’d chewed it so much.
I rubbed at my eyebrows, an ache beginning to form. “We need to get a boat and get across the straight. They’re still evacuating people out of the Vancouver airport. It isn’t much, but it’s all we’ve got.”
Sebastian nodded slowly. “Then tomorrow, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll find us a boat.”
“It isn’t like before,” I said, sitting down beside him. “You won’t be able to sneak past the Nevermores. You aren’t one of them.”
“I’m not going to sit here and let you and Dan do this on your own. You especially, Mara. Have you even thought of the baby with everything you’re doing? Do you even realize how many risks you’ve taken?” he asked.
The blood drained from my face; I could feel it disappear. I spoke in clipped words so I wouldn’t start screaming at him. “Everything I’ve done has been in an attempt to keep not only the baby safe, but you, too.”
“Like taking the bait and going after Nero?” he asked.
I glared at him. “Like going into a pack of Nevermores to keep you close, like fighting off Donavan to get the cure, like hauling your sorry ass all the way back here to make sure you would live!”
Silence weighed the room down and it was Dan who broke it.
“With all you’ve been doing Mara, he’s right. Let us find the boat.”
I stared at him in disbelief. Only a short time ago we’d been discussing Deep Bay and how we were going to acquire a boat.
“Fine,” I said. I bent and pulled Nero into my arms and stomped my way upstairs. Dragging out a laundry basket, I made a bed in it for the pup and put it beside the door. Then I all but threw myself on our old bed, the covers a little dusty but otherwise relatively clean.
Footsteps echoed up the stairway and I rolled to keep my back to the door. It gave out a little creak, and I closed my eyes.
A weight on the other side of the bed, which I also ignored, rolled me a way to the middle.
“I’m sorry if I upset you, babe. It’s not that I don’t think you can do it,” Sebastian said.
“Then why are you trying to make it sound like I have been deliberately putting the baby in danger?” I asked, still not turning to look at him.
He was silent a long time before he answered. “This whole time, you’ve had to take care of yourself, even though I was with you, I really . . . I wasn’t. You had to be strong for all three of us. Let me take some of that now; let me help.”
Now I did roll over on to my side, propping my head on my hand. “I don’t want to lose you Bastian. Four times now I’ve thought you were gone forever.” I ticked them off on my fingers. “When you told me you’d taken the Nevermore shot, when you went off with Jessica,”—he tried to interrupt me there but I rolled over him. “The water in the lagoon and now dealing with a cure that we aren’t entirely sure of. One that seemed determined to fry you from the inside out. I refuse to think about losing you anymore. It’s too hard on me, on my heart.”
He turned and stared down at me. “You won’t lose me.”
“I’ve fought for you Bastian. I’ve learned that I was stronger than I ever knew before. Don’t try to strip me of that because you feel like your manhood is threatened,” I said.
His jaw tightened and the muscle under it twitched. I’d hit the nail on the head and we both knew it.
“We all go together or we don’t go at all,” I said. “It’s safer that way. More weapons at hand, more eyes to scan for trouble.”
He couldn’t argue with that. Standing up, he kept his back to me. “Have we changed so much that you can’t even tell me you love me anymore?”
Emotion caught in my throat. “Don’t turn this into a game, Sebastian. We’ll both lose.”
He turned slowly and looked down at me, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I didn’t think we’d ever be here again, not together. And, I am making a complete ass of myself.”
Lips trembling, I smiled at him. “It’s one of things I love you about you.”
“That I make an ass of myself?” he asked, his eyebrows lifting. I nodded and bit down on a smile that was creeping out the edges of my lips.
Two steps and he was on the bed with me, his hands stroking my face, our foreheads pressed together. “Please Mara; forget everything I’ve said except this. I love you; I will do anything to keep you and the baby safe, to keep us a family.”
“That’s all I want, too,” I whispered.
His lips found mine, teasing a groan out of me, the soft whisper of a love thought lost. His hands worked me out of my clothes and his quickly followed. No matter what else went on in our lives, the fear and uncertainty ended when it came to the love we had for each other and the passion that sealed the bond between us.
13
It was decided that we would go together, with all the supplies we could muster in the backpacks. Nero couldn’t walk yet, so we made a sling out of an old sheet to wrap him in and then hung from Sebastian’s chest.
Everything else would have fit in the bottom of one pack if it hadn’t been for the blackberries.
“This isn’t much,” I said. The medicine cupboard went into the bottom of the pack and we’d harvested the last of the veggies from the garden. Blackberries were stuffed into plastic containers and filled the rest of the bag. A few bottles of water when into a second pack, then that bag, too, was filled with blackberries.
“It won’t take long to get across the straight,” Dan said. “A few hours at most.”
“What if there aren’t any boats with engines? Can we row across?” Sebastian asked. It was the same question hovering in my mind. There was no guarantee of a boat at all, never mind one with a running engine.
Dan let out a grunt and stuck a toothpick in his mouth. He’d had to convert once he finally gave up the cigar he’d chewed to near non-existence.
“I’ve got a boat down there, inside the bay but anchored off shore. Fuelled up and ready to go,” Dan said.
I started to smile and then frowned. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“Didn’t want you leaving without me,” he said.
Sebastian slipped one of the packs on. “Maybe that’s something you would do old man, but at the very least, you’ve got to realize Mara would never do that. Hell, she ran straight into danger for a mutt.” He gave me a wink to soften the words and I slapped him on the shoulder, our old camaraderie securely back in place after our talk and lovemaking the previous night.
“Let’s go boys,” I said, securing my own pack. Dan handed a gun to each of us with his good arm. I didn’t know what kind it was, only that the safety was off and I knew how to pull the trigger.
Sebastian led the way out the front door, his broad back a comforting presence as we started on what I hoped was the last leg of this journey.
The gate creaked as we opened it, and as we stepped through, I turned around to stare at out little farm, our sanctuary in this world that had turned upside down. The farmhouse, the woodpile, our garden. We would never see any of it again; of that I had no doubt.
“Let’s go woman, before the wildlife shows back up,” Dan said.
I took a deep breath and turned my back on our farm, prepared this time to leave it behind.
We headed down the dirt road until we hit pavement and then hung a left. We planned to stay on the main roads as much as possible, avoiding the bush and all it might hold.
The birds were singing, a good sign, and the heat was starting to fade as summer slipped away from us. We hadn’t gone very far when Dan, who was in the lead, put his hand up to stop us. Finger to his lips, he crouched into the shadows, Sebastian and I following suit.
Adrenaline filled me, prepping me for a flight or fight situation. Keeping as low as we could, ducked into a small cluster of huckleberry bushes, I peeked through the leaves to see why Dan had stopped us.
The sweet scent of the tiny orange berries filled my nose as I scanned the road in front of us. A large black bear trundled out onto the road, his nose lifted in our direction. Bob wasn’t looking so good though. My heart started to slow its pace; I feared Bob far less than I feared the pack of Nevermores. We may have taken their numbers down between the barn and Dan’s shooting, but there were still at least fifteen left.
“Stay low. Bob isn’t as friendly as he once was. Soon as I wasn’t able to feed him, he turned on me,” Dan said in a low whisper.
Bob made his way to a large apple tree that was hanging low over the road. There weren’t many apples left, maybe a half dozen in the higher branches. He stood on his back feet and wobbled closer, his reach just enough that he could pull an apple down.