Shades of Gray (6 page)

“Oh yes, he told me all about that, but not the reason behind it.” She grew quiet and laid a hand on my arm. When the silence became obvious, I looked up into her face.

“I’m fine, Nancy. Just a little burned out is all.” I closed my hand over hers and gave it a squeeze.

“Alright, honey.” She wiped her hands on the front of her apron. “Course you’re fine, I don’t know what I was thinking. You know you need to make up with her though, right?” With that, Nancy turned back to her soapy dishes.

I closed my eyes and blew out a quiet sigh of relief.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll get right on that.” I squeezed her shoulder once more and shoved off the counter. “Thanks for supper.”

“Anytime. Hey, I think John and the others are in the Head Room, going over assignments for tomorrow.”

The “head room” was actually the large den adjacent to the living room. It got its nickname from the kids, because of all the animal mounts hanging on the walls. Deer, moose, elk, and one bear head. It just kinda stuck.

“Okay, I might drop in. Or I might just head up and shower. Hit the sack early tonight.”

I waited an extra beat in case she had more to say. She kept scrubbing the dishes, so I backed out of the doorway and headed toward the Head Room. I was pretty sure that by this time everyone would’ve heard about the fight and be aware of Mia’s position on me going back out. Most likely I’d be on wall duty for the next week or so as punishment for Andy’s death. I sure as hell wasn’t going to hide my face in shame. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

The den’s door was closed when I got there. The voices on the other side were muffled, yet it was obvious they were discussing something that had Jake bent out of shape. Even through an oak door, the trademark swearing could be made out with ease. I raised my fist to knock and paused, wondering whether to wait or plunge headlong inside. I figured they were talking about me, whether I should be “grounded” or not. I wasn’t aware of anything else going on that would cause Jake to tear into them like he was. After raising and lowering my fist three times, I said screw it and knocked twice. The muffled voices died immediately, and I heard footsteps approaching the door.

“Hey, girl, about time you got here,” John said. He grabbed me in a hug and pulled me inside, shutting the door behind me.

“Uh, thanks, John.”

I scanned the room. Everyone was there except Troy, Todd, and Eric.
They must be on the wall
. Troy was a pretty decent guy, but Dumb and Dumber had made my shit list about three weeks after settling in at the Winchester. Obviously the kids weren’t there either: this was a grown-up meeting, as Sam would’ve called it.

“Pull up a seat. We were just going over the assignments for the week.”

John patted me hard on the shoulder, as was his way, and pointed to an empty chair by the window. I spoke a word or two to the others as they said their various
hi’s
and
welcome home’s
, then sat down and relaxed back in the overstuffed leather chair. My fingernails tapping on the arm was the only sound in the room for an uncomfortable amount of time. It was quickly apparent to me that Mia was still pissed, as was Jake. Michael looked annoyed and John just seemed very tired. Only Abby and Jonah appeared to be totally at ease. That made sense. Abby didn’t give a shit most of the time and Jonah was hard-wired with a slow temper.

“Was I interrupting something? I can leave if—” I started to say. Michael’s hand flew up and stopped me.

“No. Stay. This concerns you.” He looked at John and signaled him to continue with whatever it was he’d been saying before I showed up.

“Alright then.” John glanced at me and leaned against the corner of the desk, lifting one leg and resting his thigh and part of his ass on the old walnut. He chewed on his bottom lip and rubbed one large hand against his pant leg, glancing around again, this time to everyone. “We were going over assignments for the week, Kasey. I’ve already given out theirs.” He waved a hand, gesturing to everyone but me. “Apparently some people aren’t happy with them, but it’s not up for discussion.” He glared hard at Jake at this last bit.

I made sure to make eye contact with Mia before speaking up. “Yeah I know what’s going on. I could’ve saved you a lot of trouble, if I’d known about this little meeting.”

Everyone except Jake gawked at me with doubt. I pointed a finger in his direction just as his mouth flew open.

“No. Shut it. Now.” I kept that finger pointed at him until he gave in, then turned my attention back to Michael and John. “I meant to talk to you both about taking a break. Looks like you beat me to it.”

The room grew very quiet. I suppose they were embarrassed, or nervous, or maybe they thought this was too personal of a topic to be discussing as a group. You’d think they had been talking about my period, as stupid as they were acting. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“So…John, why don’t you tell me my assignment so I can shower up and get some rest?”

A few people cleared their throats; Jake literally bit his lip and squeezed his eyes shut. Everyone except John was doing their level best to look at anything other than me. After a couple minutes of this I started to get worried. What the hell did they have planned for me?

“C’mon,” I said, my voice rising in pitch. “John?” I settled my eyes on the big man and noticed Michael was moving around the other side of the desk, coming in my direction. My eyes flicked back and forth between the two, then stopped on Mia. “What the hell did you tell them?” My hands were gripping the chair arms by this time and I had leaned forward in the seat.

“I didn’t tell them anything I haven’t already said to you. So just chill out, alright?” she answered.

It occurred to me then that I might have misunderstood the situation and as a result, was overreacting.

“You always overreact,” Ben said on my left. I refused to look, hoping his ghost would go away. It didn’t. “You overreact, then you get your friends killed.”

“Yeah, Kasey, let’s just all relax,” Michael said, suddenly at my right elbow.

I snapped my head around and stared at him, then leaned back and turned my attention to John. The only way I could get out of that room with even an ounce of credibility left was to sit there and keep my mouth shut. To literally force my body to settle down. I’d fake it if I had to.

After waiting a long moment for the air to settle, John finally dropped the hammer. “Waters wants you off the rotation. For good.”

Suffice it to say, I wasn’t expecting that. “Wait, what?”

“He thinks you’re a liability.” He held up a hand. “His words, not mine. Apparently, we’ve lost more ‘live’ ones during rescue missions than he thinks we should’ve. He says the majority of those deaths occur—” John grabbed a paper from the desk and scanned down the page. “Here it is. Blah, blah, ‘deaths occur while Miss Stratford is in command.’ End quote.” He tossed the paper back onto the desk and studied my face, his hands clasped together and resting on his thigh.

Of course this pissed me off immediately, but I bit my tongue. Flying off the handle would only add fuel to the fire at this point. Twisting in the chair, I glared at Michael.

“I thought you said he understood all that? Why shit happens out there sometimes?”

The tenacity was starting to leave my voice, I could hear it. If I could hear it, so could the others. This was already a lost battle, only the realization was just dawning on me. What I had confused as nervous embarrassment before was now looking more and more like accusation and distrust.

“I know what I told you, Kasey. You need to understand, I’ve been running a lot of interference between the Guard and us. Up until now, Waters has been reasonable.” Michael took a couple of steps forward, one hand resting on the back of the chair I was sitting in, the other hand on his hip. “To be honest, I don’t know what the hell happened in the last couple hours that’s got him singing a different tune.”

He was speaking to everyone by this point as he walked toward John, his arms crossed over his chest and one hand rubbing his chin. It seemed Michael was reconsidering his stance, finally questioning his absolute loyalty to Waters.

“She’s not even the one who killed this last asshole and you know it,” Jake spoke up. I shot him a warning glance and then rushed to cover him.

“No, I take responsibility for what happened out there. That was my fault, not Jake’s.”

I leaned forward again, feeling a little more hopeful than a moment earlier. I studied everyone’s faces, for the third time questioning what I was seeing. Normally I could read people pretty well. I could not for the life of me figure out what they were thinking. My head was really screwed up, that was becoming painfully obvious.

“It doesn’t really matter who killed who. Waters is pissed, and he’s using Kasey as the scapegoat. Question is, why is he so pissed
all of a sudden
? And what’s he really pissed about? Cause it sounds to me like he’s all bent out of shape because we aren’t bringing in as many living folk as we should be. Or as many as he
needs
us to bring in. Think about that,” Abby said.

At least I knew where Abby stood regarding my…issues. She brought up a very good point though, one I hadn’t even considered. Being so preoccupied with my own problems, I automatically assumed this whole thing was about me.

“You’re not the center of the universe, murderer,” Ben said. His specter was hovering by my left shoulder.

Not real, not real, not real.

“Wait, so we’re
not
talking about whether or not Kasey should be benched?” Mia asked. She had been sitting on the couch with Jake up until then. Once the question was out of her mouth, she jumped to her feet.

“I believe that’s still on the table. What Abby’s sayin’ is maybe we need to be thinkin’ about what’s motivating Waters. Not two hours ago he was
glad
they killed that cannibal. Now he’s raisin’ hell and issuing this demand? That’s a good point Abby made. We need to consider it.” Jonah had been quiet this whole time. When he spoke up, everyone listened.

The dynamics in the den had changed so dramatically it made my stomach flip. I know I had a
what-the-fuck
look plastered on my face. That’s one step above the
what-the-hell
look that’s usually there. I must have been staring at Jonah, because he smiled and tossed me a cigarette. Before I could say thank you, he was whipping his naked-lady Zippo at me. Luckily, my hand-eye coordination was still sharp.

“John and I were actually talking about something similar before all of you came in.” Michael had paced all the way over to the opposite side of the room and was standing with his back to us. It’s hard to make out someone’s mood by the back of their head. If I had to guess, I’d say he was mad. “John, what’s your opinion?”

John took a breath and rubbed the space under his lower lip. “Let’s look at the facts. Since we started working for the Guard, we’ve been taking orders from Waters, correct? In exchange for this, he’s been making sure we get what we need. Fuel mostly. The rest, we’re pretty well set. He won’t tell us where all this shit comes from - the supplies he needs over at the prison, and whatever stuff we ask for. Up ‘til now, we haven’t really cared. We’re supposed to go around and pick up survivors that his guys find, either by radio or by those aerial scouts he sends out once a week. That’s not including the people we’ve found on our own, by radio and from just being out there riding our asses off. What was it he said about a month into this?” John turned to look at the back of Michael’s head.

Silence.

“Michael?” John asked again.

Michael’s upper arms were flexing but his back was turned. I couldn’t really tell what he was doing. The only thing I knew for sure was that he was being too quiet.

“Yo, Mike,” John said again, this time coming clear off the desk and stepping toward Michael.

“I heard you, John.”

“Shit…what’s wrong?”

“Waters said ‘Bring back every single survivor, no matter what.’” Michael slowly turned around and the look on his face shocked even me. “He never said anything about those already infected. We just
assumed
we weren’t supposed to bring them back. So we put them out of their misery. John…he said
every single survivor, no matter what
.”

“Son of a bitch,” Jonah muttered so quietly almost everyone missed it.

“So what’re we sayin’ here?” Jake asked.

John and Michael turned to face the rest of us, John looking slightly confused, Michael looking like his world had just been turned inside out. Which was something considering zombies roamed the damn planet. John decided to take the pressure off Michael and wrap up the meeting as quickly as possible. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t blame him.

“I think what we’re saying is, until we can figure out what the fuck is going on with Waters, we keep our heads low and Kasey off the rotation. Kasey, this isn’t saying anything about you or your skills. I think other people here have a problem with that, but not me. That wasn’t the point of this meeting. For now though, we need to be careful and play along. Least ‘til we figure this out.”

“Alright. I can go along with that,” I said.

Michael stepped away and resumed his hunched position facing the wall. That dude was doing some serious thinking. He was the military guy, maybe he knew a few things we didn’t. Maybe he was starting to wonder where Waters’ orders were coming from. Perhaps they came from the same place from which all the mysterious supplies were originating.