What Survives of Us (Colorado Chapters Book 1) (29 page)

Finally, they gave up.  Before they dispersed, The Boss gave a final order:  “When she’s found, she’ll be executed.  Publicly and painfully.”  His mild tone rendered his words all the more chilling.  “It’s been a while since we’ve made an example.  Now go get some rest.”

The area around the trailer grew quiet.  Grace could hear activity in other parts of the camp now, could smell the scent of smoke and cooking food, and still she stayed put.  She had a plan – find other clothes, preferably something with disguising bulk and a hood, move with confidence, don’t run or sneak, watch where other people moved and move with them, lose herself in the neighborhoods surrounding the park at the earliest opportunity – but she couldn’t make herself roll out from under the trailer.

Another hour passed.  Finally, a desperate need to urinate got her moving.  She scooted to the far side of the trailer, took two deep breaths, and rolled into the open.  She stood up and steadied herself for a moment, blinking to adapt her vision, and found herself staring straight at Quinn.

Several things happened at once:  Her bladder let go, her legs wobbled out from under her, and the world started to revolve sickeningly.  She slumped against the side of the trailer, gaping, as Quinn strode towards her.  Without a word, he zipped her into a dark brown sweatshirt three sizes too big for her, tucking her hair under the hood.  Grace looked down, plucking at the grungy fabric.

“Huh.  This is just what I was hoping to find,” she said.  Her voice sounded slurred, which struck her as strange in a distant sort of way.  She squinted up at Quinn’s face.  “You’re supposed to be dead.”

Quinn didn’t answer.  He cast a look over his shoulder, then looped an arm around Grace’s waist.  “Can you walk?  It’ll look weird if I carry you.”

Grace took a shaky step, then another.  “Let’s go.”

They moved through the camp at a leisurely pace, leaning into each other like young lovers.  In no time at all, they had slipped into the neighborhoods surrounding the park, and
still they kept moving.  Quinn seemed to be following a path known to him, mostly through abandoned yards, always under cover, always moving to the northwest.  Neither one spoke a word.

Grace guessed they had walked for half an hour when they stopped, tucked under a sagging pergola in someone’s overgrown back yard.  Quinn disappeared around the side of the house and returned a moment later with a plastic-wrapped bundle, which he held out to Grace.  “Clean clothes and some water I stashed here earlier.  I didn’t pack any food – I was afraid an animal would get after the bag.”

“Thank you.”  But Grace just stood there, arms hanging at her sides.  She could not wrap her mind around this, couldn’t adapt any of her carefully made plans to this.  Quinn was not dead.  Tears started into her eyes, which surprised her, because all she could say she was feeling was shock.  She gazed up at him, feeling the tears slide free one by one.  “I don’t know what to do now.”

Quinn opened the bag, showing her the carefully folded jeans, t-shirt, underwear, socks, even a pair of tennis-shoes that looked to be her size.  He had yet to meet her eyes.  “See?  Everything you need.”  He rummaged in the bottom of the bag, pulled out several bottles of water and a washcloth.  “I thought it would make you feel better.  You can have a real bath later.  I’ll turn around.  You can get rid of your old clothes and put on the new ones.”  He took her hand, looped the handles of the bag around it.  “Just take the next step.  That’s what you always said to me.”

He turned around, and she felt her face contort, ruined, wrecked, leveled by his kindness.  She started to undress, moving faster and faster as she freed herself of the clothes that had started to rot on her body, clothes that smelled like all the men she had endured and that awful room.  Naked, she had to sit down on the edge of the picnic table because the world was spinning again.  She picked up the first bottle of water and the washcloth.

She wet the cloth and ran it over her face, wet it again, and ran it down her arms and over her torso.  She was caked with grime, the creases of her elbows and wrists black with it.  Her thighs were chapped where her jeans had been wet with urine, and she patted them gingerly with the cloth, hissing at the stinging pain.  Then she stopped.

There, above each knee, were black marks that wouldn’t wash off.  Her hands started to shake so violently, she accidentally dumped the rest of the water on the ground.  She scrubbed, scrubbed harder and harder, and still they wouldn’t budge.  Bruises.  Handprints.  She heaved a huge, hiccupping sob and scrubbed with all her strength.

“Gracie, shh, Gracie, it’s okay.”  Quinn was kneeling beside her, taking the washcloth away.  He opened a fresh bottle of water, wet the cloth again, then smoothed it over her face.  His voice was a constant low murmur of instructions and comfort, but it was shaking, like he was crying, too.  “You’ll feel better after a real bath and some food, let’s get you dressed so we can get going, let me help you, it’s okay, it’s okay…”

She couldn’t stop sobbing as he slid her into the clean clothes, even tying her shoes for her.  And she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.  She didn’t feel sad, or angry, or even embarrassed.  She didn’t feel anything at all.  It was like her body had decided it was time to cry, and she was just along for the ride. 

Quinn coaxed her into drinking the remaining water bottle, then helped her to her feet.  He still hadn’t looked her in the eye.  “I found a place a ways from here where we can hide,
maybe five miles as the crow flies.  It takes a couple hours to walk it.  Are you okay to go on?”

Grace nodded, still not in control of her voice, and Quinn led them on their way.  She just followed, not thinking, hurrying when he told her to, hiding when he said.  They stopped to rest a few times, and the sun was high when Quinn led them out of a neighborhood and into an area Grace recognized.

Tears had plagued her on and off throughout their journey; her throat was raw and her eyes burned.  She had to swallow several times before she could speak.  “Quinn?  Are we at Garden of the Gods?”

“Sort of.”  Quinn had been checking endlessly over his shoulder – his neck had to be stiff by now.  They paused at the edge of an open meadow so he could take a long look around, then he hurried them down a dirt path.  The path curved, they passed a windbreak of trees, and the modern world dropped away.  “Didn’t you ever visit Rock Ledge Ranch when you were in school?”

“Well, yeah…”  Grace stared around her, flummoxed.  They were approaching an old stone ranch house, and a little valley spread out in front of them, green and lovely as a picture.  “What in the world made you think of this?”

  “I needed somewhere to keep Koda that was safe, a place where he could graze.  There’s a stable here, and a fenced pasture, and water.”  Quinn’s voice got more enthusiastic as he talked.  “They did those historical demonstrations here, so a lot of stuff actually works.  It was still a working ranch.” 

Grace stopped dead in her tracks.  Sure enough, there was Koda, grazing in the pasture.  And beyond him – “Buttons!  Quinn, how did you get Buttons?”

Quinn looked down at the ground, scuffing his boot in the dirt.  He didn’t answer for long minutes, and when he did, his
voice was hoarse.  “That’s not Buttons.  Her name’s Kava, at least that’s the sign on the stall she goes to.”  He looked up, squinting at the towering red rocks of Garden of the Gods to the northwest.  “I think there were more horses, but the fence was broken when we got here.  She was the only one left.  She kept her distance for a few days, then came right up to me one morning.”

Of course.  How silly.  She didn’t look anything like Buttons, now that Grace really looked at her.  The tears started again, but Grace ignored them.  “How long have you been here?”

Quinn’s head went down again, and he scuffed the ground harder.  “Since five days after they took you.”  He was quiet for a moment, then continued with obviously forced enthusiasm.  “Oh, I almost forgot - someone started the garden, before the plague hit.  It’s weedy, but we’ll have food.”

Food.  Plants, and probably more seeds where those came from.  Bean Counter would love to know about this place.  And Quinn was just the kind of person he was looking for – a talented and knowledgeable gardener.  “There’s no one else here?  Surely someone else thought of this.”

Quinn shook his head.  “I heard people talking in camp – the gang has already made a pass through this area.  They killed a lot of people – people who were weak, or old, or who didn’t want to join them.  Pretty near emptied the area out.  I haven’t seen a single person anywhere nearby.”

For now, Grace thought, with a chill of foreboding.  Neither one of them spoke, then, standing there in the mid-afternoon heat, the air around them alive with the sounds of insects and birds.  The fledgling apple orchard was in bloom, and the soft sweet scent of apple blossoms drifted to them on the breeze.  Grace closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun.

It was so quiet here, so steeped in peace.  She opened her eyes again, and swept them around the little valley, noting the big white Victorian house, two more modern buildings, the big white barn, and the log-walled general store.  A few chickens were strutting around, and some sheep were grazing in the open space to the east of the pasture, near the thriving garden Quinn had mentioned.

The plague hadn’t touched this idyllic place.  It was so clean.  So safe.

She looked up at Quinn.  “Can we stay?”  Her voice sounded tiny, young, even to her.  “Can we please stay?  Just for a while?”

He turned to face her, but looked at her left shoulder.  “We can stay as long as you want.  Whatever you need, Gracie.”

He turned her then, and led her up the porch steps and into the ranch house, taking her back to the kitchen.  “Are you hungry?  I’ve got some canned soup – I can heat you up a bowl, then you can have that bath…”

Grace sat at the table, letting him fuss and care for her.  After those first moments, nothing about her escape had gone as planned, yet here she was.  Free.  Safe.  Suddenly, Woodland Park seemed very far away, the journey too long and dangerous.  Eventually, they would have to make the trip, if for no other reason than to warn any survivors...  Grace let her mind drift away from that train of thought, and looked around the homey, old-timey kitchen.  It was so cozy here.

              After she’d eaten, she soaked in the big galvanized steel washtub Quinn had hauled into the kitchen area and filled with water he’d heated on the stove.  When she was done, the water was grey, and she was nearly asleep.  She crawled into the soft t-shirt and sweatpants he’d set out for her, and went to find him.  Her eyes were so heavy she could scarcely keep them open.

Quinn was on the front porch, rocking in an old bentwood rocker, gazing out over the valley.  Grace glanced to
the southwest, noting the thunderheads building over the mountains, as they so often did this time of day.  Looked like they were in for an evening shower. 

“Is there a place I could lie down?  I really need to sleep.”

Quinn nodded and they went back in the house.  She could see where he’d been moving aside the historic artifacts to create living space in the dining and living areas.  He led her to a second floor bedroom, where the walls were bright with yellow-flowered wallpaper, and a soft breeze stirred lace curtains at the window.

“I made the bed up fresh, with sheets and blankets I found at another house,” he said, gesturing at the bed.  “The ones on it were antique, just for show.  They smelled musty.  And the mattress isn’t too comfortable.”

She thought about sleeping on a cement floor for the last few weeks, then pushed the thought away, let it drift right away on the breeze.  She yawned until her jaw cracked and crawled into the bed, curling on her side, already drifting.

Quinn moved around the room for a while, and she watched through slitted eyes as he straightened up and folded clothes.  Obviously, this was where he’d been sleeping.  She turned her face into the pillow, and sure enough, there was his scent.  Just his scent, no one else’s.  On that thought, she slept.

Hours later, the low rumble of thunder nudged her from sleep.  It was dark, and she didn’t know where she was at first.  Lightning flickered, lighting the room like a strobe, and memory returned.  Rain drummed in uneven surges against the roof as the storm gathered strength, until a particularly strong gust of wind spattered Grace with raindrops from the nearby window.  Probably ought to shut it.  She sighed, stretched, and swung her feet to the floor.

Quinn woke from where he’d been sleeping on a pallet beside the bed, all surging, violent motion.  He lunged across the floor, knocking over a table, and Grace heard glass break.  He crashed into the wall, then swung around.  In the flash of lightning, she saw his wild eyes and twisted face.

“Run!” he gasped.  “Gracie, run!  Run!”

Grace huddled against the headboard, clutching the covers so hard her hands cramped, heart pounding.  “Quinn, what’s wrong?”  Was he awake?  Should she run?  “Quinn, tell me what’s wrong!”

She could hear his labored breathing.  Lightning flashed again, showing her he was now leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed.  A few minutes later, she heard him start to move around.  He struck a match, and she shielded her eyes from the sudden brightness.  When she looked up again, he had lit a hurricane lamp.  He picked it up and carried it to the table beside the bed, then sat down cross-legged on his pallet.  Finally, he heaved a deep breath.