“Yeah, she’ll enjoy that.”
Kael leaned into Anna, accepting more comfort than she had in days. “I forgot how nice this feels.”
“That’s why I’m reminding you,” Anna said. “Just remember that no matter what, I’m here. And so is Elin.
And we both need you right now, okay?”
“Okay.” Kael leaned forward to take Anna’s mouth in a brief kiss then picked up the bags and left, saying, “I understand.”
Anna sighed. I hope so.
The city was deathly still.
Anna trailed her fingertips along the back bumper of a car as she reached it, then tossed a nervous look back at the office building where her lovers slept. I really shouldn’t go more than a block or two away. If she got lucky, Kael and Elin wouldn’t completely flip out when they woke up and found the note she left. If she were even luckier, she would make it back before they missed her at all.
Two weeks trapped inside, and she felt like a prisoner. She needed to breathe fresh air and see the sky above her head. Kael insisted on running all their errands in the city, but it was time she learned that Anna could take care of herself. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life stuck in the role of defenseless girl who takes orders without protest.
Anna looked up and down the deserted street. An orange leaf skittered down the sidewalk on a cool breeze that also blew her hair into her face. After a moment of hesitation, she turned right, toward a blue truck that was parked at the end of the block. She swung the baseball bat casually at her side, attuned to the streets and buildings around her, ready to strike any threat that appeared.
Listening in the city was different from listening in the forest, but she was confident that nobody was within the immediate area. Her fingers relaxed on her weapon, and she started to pay attention to the vacant businesses she passed.
There was a bakery that had the meager remnants of old, desiccated cakes and cookies on display. Anna wrinkled her nose at the twenty-plus-year-old delicacies and looked across the street at a shop that advertised various electronics. Television sets sat in the front window, a dozen blank screens staring out at Anna as she passed by and headed for a sporting goods store at the corner of the block.
Though she had been to more sporting goods stores than any other kind, she thought maybe she could find a present for Kael. Not that it would keep him from being pissed at her when she got back. The front door lock had been torn off long ago, and Anna entered the store and made her way along aisles that were still well stocked with various sporting equipment. She perused the baseball bats, but decided to keep her current weapon. There was no reason to trade up. Bored with the same old stock, she wandered up to a glass display case that at some point had been smashed and ransacked.
A slingshot!
She grabbed it with a satisfied grin. The body was black, with a tan rubber sling, and it had a decent heft to it. Kael would love it. She was surprised he didn’t have one already. Garrett had sure loved his. She was opening a box of steel pellets when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up in sudden awareness. Her head snapped up, eyes immediately drawn to the front door. The flesh of her upper arms pebbled and her stomach flipped in uneasy anticipation. Shivering, certain she was being watched, she scanned the street outside. Everything was as quiet as it had been when she walked in, and then she hadn’t felt anything more than her typical guardedness.
I’m just feeling guilty about sneaking out. After all, Kael has gone out almost once a day for the past week and a half and he hasn’t seen a damn thing. If he had, we would’ve been out of here days ago.
Anna gave the front window one last suspicious glance before finding a large paper bag with cord handles behind the counter. She stuffed the slingshot and pellets into it, then set off to look for a bookstore. Elin was tired of reading the same few books she carried with her, and Anna could imagine how thrilled she’d be with some new ones.
She looked both ways when she exited the sporting goods store, taking in the length of the city block. The long-abandoned buildings stared back at her; the traffic signals and parked cars bore silent witness to her disquiet. Anna continued down the street the way she had been going, scowling at the storefronts as she passed from one block to the next. The fresh air was nice, but she was feeling more creeped out than she’d expected.
By the time she found what she was looking for, she was more than two blocks away from the office building. The sign said Barnes and Noble, and inside the smashed front windows, faded posters advertising books from twenty years earlier fluttered from overturned display stands. Books littered every surface. From the size of the store, there could be thousands of them.
Shaking off her lingering nervousness, Anna tiptoed her way through broken shards, wincing at the crunching noises beneath her feet. Inside the massive store, nothing stirred. It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Row after row of books, categorized by subject, surrounded her. To her left was a long wooden counter lined with computer monitors. Old racks of candy and bookmarks sat at each station of the checkout.
For a moment Anna imagined what it must have been like in the days when a store like this would have been filled with people. She smiled at small tables that sat in front of a section of the store that sold coffee and baked goods. Elin would have loved a place like this. Anna could almost visualize her sitting at one of the tables with a hot drink and a stack of books by her side. Maybe I’ll ask Kael if we can stop in before we leave the city. I’d love to watch Elin exploring in here.
She made a slow circuit of the store, reading section names. She lingered at the gay and lesbian literature section, reading the backs of various paperbacks and wondering if Elin had ever read a lesbian novel.
Hoping to find one she’d like, Anna rested her bat against her leg and flipped through the pages of several stories, pausing when a few sexual words caught her attention. She read the entire page of a rather graphic sex scene, then, with rosy cheeks, tucked the book into her bag with Kael’s slingshot.
This one is a definite keeper.
Pleased to have found the ideal gift, she ambled through the general fiction and picked out a couple more novels, one by Virginia Woolf and another by Stephen King, then she hurried toward the front door. Enough time had passed. She didn’t want Kael and Elin worried sick as well as angry.
She turned a corner and looked up at the front door, then stopped dead, paralyzed by the sight of a gray-haired man standing just inside. Oh, fuck. She tightened her fingers on her baseball bat and kept a firm grip on the bag she carried. She trained her face to remain calm even as her heart started thumping in her chest. Of course I had to run into trouble. As if Kael wasn’t going to be mad enough. His body was wiry-thin, but the bare arms exposed by a sleeveless T-shirt were defined and lined with corded muscle. He wore a trimmed mustache, and his stringy hair came to his shoulders. His baggy cargo pants were tattered and stained with age.
“Hello,” Anna said, to break the silence. “How are you?”
He studied her with a wild gaze, looking her up and down. “You sick?” His voice rasped as if he hadn’t spoken in years. “I don’t want no sick people ‘round here.”
Anna shifted under his scrutiny, forcing herself to affect a casual air she didn’t feel. He might be friendly, you never know. “No, sir. I’m not sick.”
“So you say.” He took a step closer, shoes crunching in the broken glass just inside the doorway. “What are you doing here?”
Anna held her ground, raising her bat so that the end rested on her shoulder. “Shopping.”
“You lie,” the old man growled, and his volume rose until he was nearly shouting. “You’re all sick, and I don’t want you ‘round here.”
Anna flinched and glanced over his shoulder to the empty street behind him in pure nervous reflex. Well, he’s not worried about anyone hearing us. His face twitched with his agitation, and he dripped sweat. Then again, I’m willing to bet that he’s a few arrows short of a full quiver.
Anna gave him a respectful nod. “Well, I’ll just be getting out of here, then, and I’ll leave you to your…bookstore.”
“You think so? You think I’m just going to let you waltz out of here to spread your sickness around?”
Anna lowered her bat from her shoulder, holding it out in front of her in a protective stance. “Listen, friend, step aside and let me leave.”
“Oh, I’m not your friend, you diseased little whore,” the man ranted. “You wouldn’t believe the death I’ve seen, and all because of your sickness.” He reached into the back pocket of his pants and withdrew a black object.
Raising it into the air, he pointed it directly at Anna’s face. After only a moment, it registered.
Gun. That’s a gun.
Anna’s mouth dropped open, and she stumbled backwards, still holding the bat that now felt so ineffectual.
She hadn’t seen a gun since the soldiers raided their house only days after her father died, seizing the weapons he kept locked in a closet. The government had sent the military to confiscate all civilian firearms during the sickness and the ensuing riots, and while they surely hadn’t found them all, enough had been hidden away or destroyed so that she had spent the past fifteen years without ever seeing one. The sight of the pistol clutched in this man’s hand turned her knees to water. Where did he get it? Does it work?
Does he even have bullets?
“Are you alone?”
“Listen, guy…just calm down.” Anna held up her hands, bat in one and paper bag in the other. “If you let me go right now, I promise to walk right out of this city and never come back. You can have it.”
The old man waved the gun back and forth in the air, apparently lost in his own paranoia. “You lie. They all lie.”
Fuck this. If I get shot, Kael will never let me live it down…if I live through it.
Not allowing herself the luxury of a second thought, Anna struck out at the man’s gun arm. The blow from her bat landed with a solid thwack, and her would-be assailant screamed in pain as his weapon tumbled to the floor. Anna kicked out at the gun, sending it skittering beneath the front counter nearly twenty feet away. As the man tried to scramble after it, she threw a hard punch to the side of his head with the hand that still held the paper bag. Then she took off running, out the front door and straight into the solid chest of a lean man.
She gasped, then cried out in relief when she realized that it wasn’t a man at all. It was Kael.
“Anna, what the fuck—”
“Quick, let’s go!” Anna looked frantically over her shoulder, half-expecting to see the gray-haired man with crazed eyes stumble out of the bookstore waving his pistol. “He’s got a gun. A man in there.”
Kael blinked at that, then shoved Anna aside with an impatient hand. Drawing her sword, she rushed into the bookstore. “To your left,” Anna shouted. “I kicked it under the counter.”
She gulped a breath as she heard a quiet groan followed by the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor. The absence of a gunshot meant that Kael was the victor in their confrontation, but Anna could only draw comfort from that for a few seconds. Now he’s going to stroll back out here and finish the job that lunatic started. She contemplated making a run for it back to the office. Elin wouldn’t let him kill me.
When Kael emerged from the bookstore, it was with steely eyes and a grim face. The blade of her sword dripped red blood; her entire body trembled with quiet tension. “He’s dead.”
“I could have gotten away,” Anna said. “He wasn’t going to catch me.”
“He wouldn’t have had to catch you, not with a gun.”
“If he even had bullets,” Anna whispered, and lowered her eyes to the bag she held, a glimpse of the cover of the Virginia Woolf novel inside.
“That’s irrelevant,” Kael snapped. “He had a gun, Anna. What the fuck is wrong with you? Can’t you follow simple instructions? I told you not to go out.”
Kael’s condescending tone raised her hackles, and Anna demanded, “Did he have bullets?” I had that asshole beaten. I took care of myself, but Kael will never admit that. “I know you must have checked the gun.”
“The gun wasn’t loaded. That’s not the point. You aren’t supposed to be out here alone, and you know it. I don’t understand. Are you stupid or just suicidal?”
“What I am is an adult. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I did it for over a year before I met you, and I can do it now.” Exhausted despair overwhelmed her anger. “Please, Kael. Just leave it alone. I don’t need the lecture.”
“We can’t have this discussion here.” Kael scanned the upper-story windows in the apartment building across from them and started walking. “I left Elin alone to come find you.”
Well, I knew he would be mad. Anna’s feet felt heavy as she trudged along behind Kael in dutiful silence.
Maybe it was a stupid idea, but what does he expect when he treats me like a child?
“I’m sorry that you had to leave Elin to come find me.” She spoke to Kael’s unforgiving back as they approached the office building. “But I’ve still got to live my life. Just like you never hesitate to live yours. If I want to go out, I’ll go out, whether it’s dangerous or not.”
Kael didn’t even glance backwards. “Inside,” she ground out, and pulled the office door open, stepping aside to let Anna pass.
As soon as they were safely indoors, Anna protested, “Kael, I’m sick and tired of feeling like you think I’m just some stupid girl you can order around.”
Kael’s lip curled into an angry snarl. “You think I’m just trying to exert control over you? For no reason at all? Elin was worried sick about you when she realized you’d left this morning, Anna. You think that’s okay?