- - End of All Things, The (20 page)

“You’re welcome.” Carly grinned and barely restrained herself from skipping as she went back over to her own spot on the other side of camp. She lay down on the sleeping bag on her stomach and propped the book she was reading on the pillow in front of her. Her legs were bent up behind her, ankles crossed in the air. She didn’t know Justin was watching her until she looked up. His expression was strange, indecipherable. When he caught her eye, he quickly looked back down at his plastic-covered page, a small frown on his lips. She thought she detected a hint of a blush and wondered why.

God, she hoped she hadn’t offended him in some way. People could be really sensitive about that sort of thing.

Later, as Justin cooked, that small frown returned. Carly couldn’t contain her curiosity any more. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“Nothing important.”

“You seem to be concentrating on
nothing
rather intently.”

 “I’m sorry, Carly. I just have . . . some things on my mind. Don’t let it worry you, all right? And thanks for the plastic idea. It really helped me.”

“You’re welcome.” Maybe that was what was bothering him. Who knew? She could never figure out men’s thinking patterns.

After dinner, Carly took their dishes down to the beach to wash them, and she sat there afterward, looking out over the water at the mountains. She was leaving behind everything she knew and trying to shape herself into the kind of person this new world required. Struggling to adapt, just like in evolution, to develop the traits she needed to survive. Then, maybe, Justin wouldn’t see her as a helpless little pest. Maybe he would see her as . . .

Carly didn’t finish the thought. 

Their days soon fell into a comfortable pattern. Justin was careful not to rush them. Every day, Carly got stronger, and they were able to cover more ground. They traveled with the sun. Justin woke her each morning at dawn, and they’d have breakfast before tearing down the campsite and reloading the wagon. They were usually ready to start moving again by the time the sun broke over the horizon. When it began to set in the evening, they would stop and set up the camp again.

Justin showed her how to purify water, using bleach or iodine, and then how to make various distilling devices, and how to capture water from the earth itself through evaporation if she couldn’t find a creek. He showed her how to make a snare to trap game, though Sam brought them a rabbit or squirrel almost every night. Sam appeared to be proud he was feeding his “pack.”

Justin seemed to enjoy teaching her survival skills and Carly worked very hard to remember it all. She needed him to know she wasn’t dumb; she just had never learned these things. Once she learned them, she would be just as capable as he was.

While they traveled along, they chatted companionably. They discovered they both had a taste for British comedy, and Justin declared she was the sole woman under forty he knew who liked Monty Python. That led to both singing the songs from the movies and television shows, and Carly discovered his singing voice really
was
as off-key as it had been when he sang
Come Sail Away
while he washed their clothes. He seemed to know every single love ballad from the 1980s, and to hear him belting out
Total Eclipse of the Heart
in his awful voice made Carly laugh until tears streamed from her eyes.

Whenever they passed a house, Justin would go in to scavenge, replacing the supplies they’d used. His goal was to have enough for them to survive for at least six months if they were trapped somewhere, unable to move on or replace what they used. Carly knew he was thinking of winter. It was unlikely they’d make it to the South before the snows came.

If the house was empty, they would sometimes stay the night, but Carly was always a little uncomfortable about it. She looked at family photos, clothes left behind in closets, toys scattered in small bedrooms, the artifacts of the prior owners’ lives, and felt like she was violating a shrine left to them. This would be their only mark left on earth. The sole memorial to their lives since no tombstone would ever be erected to mark the place where they lay.

Justin didn’t seem to be troubled by the same thoughts, which became quite obvious when she found him tearing up a white silk wedding dress one evening.

At her cry of horror, he stopped. “What?”

“Why are you doing that?”

“Making bandages.” 

“Out of silk?”

“If the wound doesn’t need absorbent padding, silk bandages are gentler. They were working on modified spider silk bandages when I was in the service. It promotes healing, because of the proteins in the silk. I’ll boil them and then store them in an airtight container.”

Carly was quiet for a moment. “You’re ripping up someone’s dreams.”

Justin stopped. “Carly, they’re gone. They don’t care.”

“It just doesn’t seem right. If I think of someone tearing up my mom’s wedding dress, I—” Carly stopped suddenly. Tears filled her eyes, not at the thought of the dress being destroyed, but at the realization she’d never be able to wear it when she got married as she’d always dreamed.

“What would your mom think?” Justin asked. He laid aside the cloth and took Carly’s hand in his own. “If her dress could help someone survive, wouldn’t she want them to use it?”

She knew she was being overly sentimental, and she tried hard to keep the emotion from her voice as she answered him. “Yes, she would want them to use it.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

“Because it’s people who matter, Carly, not things.” Justin gestured with his other hand, indicating the items in the room. “All of this is
nothing
compared to life. When I die, I hope someone finds my things and is able to use them. Hell, they can hollow out my body and use it as a canoe for all I care.”

Carly sat down beside him. She picked up one of the large sections of the dress, and began to help him rip it into strips.

“Were you ever in love?” Carly asked that question one afternoon as they coasted down a slight incline. Justin was throwing a tennis ball for Sam, who galloped ahead to catch it and then trotted up beside Justin to drop it into his hand. She was amazed at how fast Sam was. He could sometimes catch it on the second bounce, leaping high into the air with a graceful twist.

Justin cast a quick glance at her—one she couldn’t interpret—before he answered. “No, I never was. Thought I was once, but that was when I was very young, and very hormonal.”

“So, it was just physical?”

“Just a crush,” Justin said and didn’t add any more detail to it.

“Did you—”

“Oh, shit.” Justin coasted his bike to a stop.

“What? What is it?”

“Look,” Justin pointed ahead. Carly followed his gaze to the river ahead, though she still didn’t see the problem. She parked beside him and then was able to see from his angle.

“Oh, shit,” Carly whispered, her voice faint. Up ahead, the bridge across the river was broken about half way down the span. The opposite bank was torn away, eroded back at least twenty feet by the river, which had decided to change course and eat away at the embankment until the end of the bridge fell away from lack of support.

“Is there another crossing nearby?” 

Justin was already fishing around in his pack for the map. He unfolded it on top of the tarp over the canned goods and scanned it.

“Fuck!” He traced the route they would have to take and then looked at the river and then at Carly speculatively. “How well can you swim?”

“I can do laps in a pool, but I’ve never tried to swim across a river.”

Justin rubbed his chin. She could almost see the gears turning in his mind.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Justin. We don’t know how strong the current is.”

He nodded to acknowledge Carly’s words but continued his thinking, staring at the river as though he was trying to gauge their chances. 

“They always tell you not to drive your car through a flood, let alone try to swim it.”

“It’s not flooding right now. See the marks on that bank over there? The river is at its normal stage.”

How the hell he could tell by striations on a bank, she had no idea.

“It’s either swim or backtrack over three hundred miles, Carly. We’re going about ten miles an hour now, so that’s thirty hours of riding. That’s at least four days at our current pace and another four to get us back to where we are now. Eight days of progress lost.”

“How would we get the wagon over?”

“The tarps are waterproof. We can run a tarp beneath and bind up the sides, and it just might have enough displacement to make it float. I’ll attach a rope, swim to the other side and then haul it across, and just hope like hell the bastard doesn’t sink. Even if it does, the meds and everything fragile are stored in those waterproof plastic tubs. I’ll tie everything down well, so even if it does get wet, it won’t float out and get lost.”

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Carly said. “What about Shadowfax and Sam?”

“Both of them can swim.”

“I know, but what if they don’t want to cross the river?”

Justin’s voice was soothing. “Honey, they’ll be fine. I’ll swim back across to get them if need be, okay?”

Carly helped Justin prepare the wagon, passing one tarp beneath to tie up around the sides and then using the second to tie over the top to keep the things inside from floating away if the wagon did sink. 

Carly didn’t have a swimsuit, but she knew how heavy clothing could get when it was wet and didn’t want to be weighed down. Justin looked away as she stripped down to her sports bra and boy shorts underpants. Carly didn’t know why. She was more covered in that than when she wore the bikini she used to have.

Justin stripped off his jeans and shirt before he put their clothes into one of the plastic tubs. Carly sneaked a peek. She had never realized how cut he was. Not vanity muscles built up in a gym but lean, wiry muscles from hard work. She reminded herself to ask him the meaning of the symbol tattooed on his chest over his heart, which looked like a series of letters, twined together. Three jagged lines of lightning wound around his upper arm. It looked like the lightning bolt from his Unit tattoo, but she couldn’t be sure without staring.

Justin paused at the bank. “Wait here for me. I’m going to swim to the other side and tie off a rope and then come back.”

“Justin, this really scares me.” Carly couldn’t call for help if he was swept away or sucked under by the current.

“I’ll be fine.” Justin came over to stand in front of her. “Trust me, Carly.”

“I do . . . It’s just . . .”

“I know, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it was safe. If I thought there was any danger, we’d make that four-day trek to the other bridge.”

Carly nodded, but her brow was crinkled with worry. Justin gazed down at her for a moment and then planted a swift kiss on her forehead. Carly felt her heart hammer in response, and she wondered how he would react if she hugged him, but she lost her courage. “I’ll be right back.”

Justin waded out into the river until it was up to his chest and then began to swim. He went with the current, swimming at an angle toward the shore. She held her breath until he emerged on the other side. His boxers hung low on his hips and were glued to his flesh.
Is it wrong to admire his ass right now?
Right or wrong, she enjoyed a nice, long stare.

Justin tied the rope to the tree with a complicated knot and then headed back into the water. He swam back quickly and surged up out of the water onto the bank. “See? Nothing to it.”

“I see all right,” Carly said, her tone full of awe. She gaped at him.

“What?”

“Um . . .” 

“Jesus, Carly, what is it?” He spun around to make sure there wasn’t something behind him that would justify her reaction and the look of impressed astonishment on her face. 

“You . . . Maybe the current was a little faster than you thought.”

He followed the direction of her gaze and discovered he had lost his boxers. He snickered. She giggled. They both burst into laughter, and Justin flushed a little. Still shaking his head at the absurdity, Justin untied a flap of the wagon and fished out another pair of shorts. This time it was in a boxer-briefs style, which would hopefully stay on.