Released (9 page)

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard,” Carter said holding his side.

Taya added, “Me neither, my cheeks hurt.”

Later that night we al did our part in securing the house for the night and decided to al share the huge bed in the master suite. The guys took the outer edges of the bed, squeezing Taya and me in the middle. It was the safest I had felt since our trip started and I was hopeful that I might actualy get some decent sleep.

“Abby, you awake?” Max asked in the middle of the night.

“I am now. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to say that I am sorry for earlier. You know, for kissing you.”

“Oh.” I could feel a knot growing in my stomach at the thought that he hadn’t meant to kiss me and was now regretting it. “No apology needed. Good night Max,” I said in a sharp whisper. I cursed myself for letting my feelings for him show so easily, I should have known it was too good to be true. Guys like him didn’t date girls like me, they dated cheerleaders or models. I was just a tomboy, and his best friend’s little sister. What was I thinking?

“Don’t be mad Abs. I didn’t mean it like that.”

I roled over to face him and saw the bags under his eyes. He had obviously been up most of the night trying to decide what he should say to me. Trying to think of how to let me down easy. “Wel, how did you mean it?”

The faint light of the moon bathed his face in a white glow and I found myself staring into his deep brown eyes. They danced around under his unnaturaly long lashes as he sought to find the words to what he wanted to say and at that moment the last chains of my restraint gave way. I knew he didn’t feel the same way about me, but if he was going to break it off before it even started I wanted to lay everything on the table.

“You know what Max, I don’t forgive you and I’m not sorry we did it either.” His face looked shocked, but he didn’t say anything so I roled over, puling my body closer to Taya trying to get as far away from his as I could. I was proud that I had finaly told him the truth of how I felt for once.

A strong arm curled around my waist and Max puled me to him. I could feel the weight of his body on me and his warm breath on my neck as he leaned in close, lightly pressing his lips against my ear.

“I hate it when you’re mad at me.”

I didn’t say anything at first as my mind raced to decipher what was happening. Shivers shot down my spine and my entire body felt filed with electricity.

I was in a bed, wrapped in Max’s arms. Other than the fact that we were sharing the bed with two other people it felt as amazing as I had always thought it would, but I never imagined I would be mad at him at the same time. We were always like that, always baiting each other, always testing and teasing, but things were different now. It mattered to me how he felt more than I wanted to admit.

“Look at me Abs.” I roled over onto my back and our eyes locked. I felt like he towered over me as my body seemed to shrink against him. “I don’t regret kissing you either. I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time.”

He stroked my face and we just held each other in silence for a long moment, our bodies tangled. There were so many thoughts flowing through my head in an emotional tidal wave, but I ignored them al. I just wanted to enjoy this moment as long as I possibly could. I felt my eyes getting heavy as a sense of ease took over me that I had not felt in a long time. I burrowed my body deeper into Max’s embrace as I closed my eyes. He squeezed me tight and kissed my forehead. I then slept the best night’s sleep I had in over six months.

“You two love birds want to wake up?” I heard a cheerful voice ask with a bit of a giggle.

I opened my eyes to see Taya sitting indian-style on the far edge of the bed, her two hands overflowing with feathers and she smiled evily as she tossed them at us.

A rainfal of white floated onto us. I tried to sit upright, but a heavy arm held me down. I looked over to see Max’s face buried into my shoulder. He looked so peaceful; I didn’t want to wake him. I slowly puled his arm off me and slithered out of bed.

Taya watched me silently, a tiny smirk planted firmly on her face. I looked at her, raising my eyebrows, “What?”

“Oh nothing,” she smiled larger, “you two just look awfuly comfy for not being a couple.” I thought back about last night and the feel of Max’s breath against my neck, the sensation his soft lips sent across my skin and I could feel myself blush.

“Oh my gosh!” Taya squeeled as she lept off the bed. “You gotta tel me everything. I can see it in your eyes, something happened!” I was reluctant at first, but it became quickly apparent that she wasn’t going to leave me alone until I told her every detail, not even when I wanted to go to the bathroom.

“Wow, that’s so romantic,” she said dreamily, surveying her reflection in the mirror. I was hesitant at first, but the details of the night were so monumental to me it was hard to hold in. It felt so good to be able to say out loud to someone how I felt about Max. Before everything happened, if I had told any of my girlfriends they would have immediately told the first person they saw even if they were vowed to secrecy. Before the day was over the whole school would have known, so I had always kept my lips sealed about my secret feelings for Max.

After getting dressed, Taya demanded she do my hair, so I let her. It saved me the trouble of having to deal with the tangled mess anyway. She styled it in two French braids parted down the middle, and I had to admit to her what a good job she had done. She beamed with pride and I could tel she thoroughly enjoyed herself. I guessed this is what it would have felt like to have a sister.

Leaving the bathroom, I saw the empty bed and was a bit disappointed. I had wanted to talk to Max before we approached Carter, but I knew it was too late.

Taya had told me that the sound of Carter cursing and noisly leaving the room is what woke her up. She said she had done her best to try talking to him. He had refused to tel her what his problem was, so she came in to wake us up herself. I was grateful that it was her and not Carter who had done it, because I was sure it would not have been feathers that were thrown at us.

I know Carter had sensed my crush on Max before, when I was around Taya’s age, but he had firmly told me that Max was trouble. Max was known for having many girlfriends and none of them lasting for very long, and I knew Carter was just looking out for me. Not wanting his little sister to be just another notch in Max’s belt.

Making our way into the kitchen I was greeted with the smel of something delicious. Max was manning a smal camping stove I had guessed he had found somewhere in the house and was flipping giant pancakes onto a plate.

He smiled at me as I entered. “I made breakfast. You hungry?”

“Starving. How did you manage to make pancakes?”

“Magic,” He said while plopping two steaming pancakes onto my plate. “I found Tang too.” He pointed to a pitcher of juice on the bar.

There wasn’t any butter, but there was syrup, so I drowned my pancakes in it and took a large bite. “Wow, Max, these are realy good.” He smiled and continued cooking. I admired him for a moment and continued eating. Being in such an expensive looking kitchen with granite countertops and stainless appliances it was funny to see Max using such a simple looking hot plate, but it suited him. Max was a man’s man, and like me, fancy digs like this huge house didn’t seem to fit our character.

When I was done I asked, “Where’s Carter?”

“He’s in the garage. Don’t worry, I talked to him.” Max glanced at me with the same look in his eyes as he usualy had. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, I thought things would feel different now between us but they didn’t.

“Oh.” I wasn’t quite sure if I wanted to know what they had talked about so I asked, “What’s he doing in the garage?”

“Wel, when he woke up he went looking around the house. Found some useful stuff in the garage.”

“Like what?”

“Like….a realy powerful radio.” He looked up at me from the corner of his eye waiting to see my reaction.

“A what?” I said choking down the rest of my Tang. “A radio? Seriously? Does it work?” I couldn’t believe he hadn’t told me as soon as I walked into the kitchen.

I almost wanted to snap at him for it, but I was too excited about the thought of hearing the transmission again.

“He hasn’t gotten it to work, but it looks like whoever was living here was listening. They rigged it up to be more powerful, so they could pick up the signal better.

Carter thinks they probably heard the transmission and left.”

“Holy crap!” I hopped off the bar stool and headed toward the direction I thought might be the garage and looked back to Max for confirmation. He nodded and turned off the hot plate to join me.

I entered the garage to find Carter and Taya deep in concentration, trying to figure out how to get the radio started. It looked like the previous tenants had raided a radio station. There were several black boxes stacked on top of each other, ful of dials and knobs. There were large ear phones, wires crisscrossed every which way in a tangled heap on the cold concrete floor of the garage. I noticed a CB radio was also set up. A dial displaying the signal power was stuck at zero.

“Hey guys!” Taya said as she saw us enter the garage.

“Hey. So you two get this thing started?”

“No, it’s hooked up to some kind of generator, but we think it’s out of power. Carters thinking about hooking it up to the car battery and see if that would work.”

“It could work.” Carter added. “Or I’l electrocute myself to death. What do you think Abby?”

“Wel…” I looked around the garage and saw the car battery they were talking about. It was in an old sports car, by the looks of it I guessed the previous owner was in the process of trying to restore it. “Looks pretty questionable; look at al the corrosion.” I pointed my finger and Max leaned to get a better view. “What’s wrong with the generator?”

“We don’t know, just can’t get it to start.”

“Did you check if it needed gas?” I probably sounded like a smartass for asking, but guys didn’t always check the most obvious of solutions to problems sometimes.

“Yes, we checked that. I think it’s just burnt out, it’s realy old,” Carter said.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Over there.” Carter pointed to a far wal while checking that al the wires were securely plugged it.

“Carter you might wanna back off for a sec,” I said while I flipped the switch for the generator. I stood and watched it for a second while nothing happened and Max joined me, squatting down to watch the gauge on the front.

“Stand back Abs.” Max used his arm to push me back a few steps and then swiftly kicked the generator as hard as he could.

“What the hel Max!” Carter yeled running to the generator.

“Watch out dude!” Carter tried to shove Max out of the way again, but not before Max got one more good kick at it.

“What the hel do you think you’re doing?” Carter started to shout, but was cut off at the sound of the generator sputtering to life.

“It worked, it realy fucking worked.” Max laughed and turned around to hug me and swing me around as Carter was frozen in shock. I couldn’t tel what bothered him more; the fact that I was wrapped in Max’s arms or the fact that Max had actualy fixed the generator by kicking it. The crazed look in his eye quickly dissolved as the hum of the generator filed the garage.

“Your welcome,” Max said sarcasticaly as Carter rushed to the radio and I folowed, being equaly as excited about the possibility of hearing the transmission.

I watched him like a hawk as Carter started flipping switches and turning knobs, lights flickered to life while others blinked steadily. Taya was eager to help, taking orders from Carter on pointing the antennae this way or that.

At first it was nothing but static, and we al held our breathes in an attempt to better hear any tiny bit of transmission that might make it through.

“Did you hear that?” Carter asked slightly turning a few knobs. Just below the buzz of static we could faintly hear a voice. The same voice we had heard in our house so many weeks ago.

“They are stil there!” Carter said with a deep sigh. “I told you Abby. Everything is going to be ok.” It was almost impossible to know what they were saying, but we had listened to it so many times it was engraved into memories. We al repeated along quietly as the message played faintly through the static, “This is Staff Sergeant Richardson, of the U.S. Marines, at Holoman Air Force Base in New Mexico. We can promise shelter, safety, food and water for al those who come here. This is the resistance, you are not alone. There is hope.”

Carter got up to face me. I could see tears building in his eyes. We al hugged, silently cheering at this faint symbol of hope.

Filed with a renewed sense of hope we quickly got ready to leave. Taya and I raided the pantry, finding mostly food that I didn’t want to eat, even during an apocalypse. There were containers of caviar, fancy crackers, some bottles of wine and lots of jars of olives. I had located a smal section in the pantry that must have been alotted to the children of the house and was able to snag more tang and easy mac. It was expired, but I was fairly certain that powdered cheese could last wel past the expiration date.

“You girls ready?” Carter asked as we made our way into the living room.

“Yep. I cal shotgun!” Taya caled as she walked briskly through the front door.

We quickly settled in for a long day of driving and Taya insisted we play twenty questions to help pass the time. I was certain it was just a ploy for her to get to know more about my brother. However, Carter was quickly able to manipulate it, into a game of recaling significant details about the demons we had seen. He had not had a chance to detail much about the smal gremlin-like demons we had seen at the camp and he was chomping at the bit, so he had enlisted Taya to write the information down. As always she was eager to do so, and I noticed what use to annoy me about her, was sort of endearing. I could tel she realy liked Carter, maybe she had a soft spot for brainiacs. Who was I to judge?