The Beginning at the End of the World: A Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian Series (The Survivor Diaries Book 2) (25 page)

∞

The king of all awkward silences went on for minutes that felt like hours.

Finally, Jackson said, “He won’t tell. He’s my brother.”

“Yeah, I know how army bros lie to cover up each other’s trysts.”

“Is that what this is to you, a tryst?” he asked accusingly. “Okay, here is how this has to go, so listen. This never happened. Mark can never find out.”

That knife to my gut stung more than anything Jackson has ever said to me.

“Is that how it is? Wave your magic wand of lies and this all goes away?” I asked.

He looked at me carefully and said, “No, you don’t understand. You and Mark are the Queen and King of the Village. They like him, he’s a good guy, and they need you both together. I am just the lying government to them. If you climb out of here with your complete inability to lie and tell them about this, the Village will fall and most of them would go and do something stupid and probably die.”

“You don’t want me?” I asked because that was all that I could hear from what he said.

“I have never wanted anything in the world more than I have wanted you. I’ve loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you. It was about a year before the war started. The real estate agent was showing me the house. I wasn’t sure that the Monte Vista neighborhood was the best place, knowing what was coming. But I saw you unloading groceries from your car with Mark. You were staring off in a daze and you looked sad, Laura. You were really sad, yet your sadness was so beautiful.” He caressed my face as he continued. “And even though I had no idea who you were, I wanted to run over to you and hold you until that sadness went away. I don’t know where it came from, but I had this knowledge that I could take it all away. Not even my compatriots know this, but you are why I chose the Monte Vista Village to save.”

“I know why I was sad,” I said. “My life and my marriage were not perfect before the war. Not even close. We were no prince and princess fairy tale, Phillip. Mark’s not innocent, either. He was having an affair and I knew. I knew, and I did nothing but let it eat me up inside for months until I finally just exploded with it. He begged me not to leave him, and I don’t know why, but I didn’t.”

“So, is that what this was? Revenge?”

My eyes spontaneously spurted tears, and I couldn’t control them. “You think that I would…”

“No, no, honey. I am sorry. Don’t cry. Please don’t cry,” he said encircling me in his arms. “I know that is not who you are. That was my old defense mechanism, making you seem like the bad guy so that it will be easier to let you go. But that is what I have to do, Laura. I have to give you up, for the Villagers. Because they are what you live for, what you have been living for since the Last War. The Last War… guess we named that one too soon. Heh.”

“I am not as good of a person as you are, as it turns out. I don’t want to give you up,” I said.

Follow your gut, girl.

He grinned and let out a breath of relief, which made what I had to say next so hard. “But you are right. They won’t understand.”

He nodded. “You know I’m not
that
good, either. When we get them safely to the Valley, I am going to come to you. But now you are going to have to do something that is going to be so completely against your nature; you have to tell a lie of omission. Can you?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Since we are gushing all these truths, I have to tell you something else,” he said.

I wasn’t sure I could take anymore truthfulness. “Maybe we can just be two big old liars,” I said.

He laughed. “No, I don’t want any more lies between us, Laura. I let you believe that I had something to do with you being chosen as the leader. Those people,
your people
, picked you on their own. They knew you would guide them with honesty, gentleness and love. It was all you in the end.”

A new flood of tears erupted.

Jackson took me, and I melted into his arms. “Your tears are my bloody Kryptonite.”

∞

“How long do you think we are going to be stuck in here?” I asked. We found comfort in each other again, and we were lying under the sleeping bags, but this time we got dressed right after.

“Ah, so you’re sick of me already?” said Jackson with a full-bodied laugh.

I laughed, too. “Nope, but I am starting to get those old familiar feelings. I am fighting it, though.”

“Good, you can take more pills if you need to, but if we could get you past this without them, maybe you could kick it for good,” he said.

I stood and pulled shoes onto my sockless feet and realized they were no longer covered in bloody goo.

“Thanks for cleaning these,” I said. I got up and started to walk around our manmade ice palace. “So, how can I get past my phobia? It’s not something that I like about myself.”

“First,” he began seriously, “I know how hard it is, all of those people wearing all of those really awful clothes. It’s bad.”

I burst into a fit of laughter until the cave began to tremble with the sound of engines. I dove into Jackson’s arms again.

“Planes, not trucks,” he told me. “Your body is vibrating you’re shaking so badly. Remember to listen to my voice and breathe. I won’t let anything happen to you. Isn’t there something, like, ‘who, who, ha’?” he asked, demonstrating a proper breathing technique.

“That’s Lamaze, you foolio,” I said. “I’m not giving birth.”

“Now, that would be a real twist, wouldn’t it?” he said with a glance at me through the corner of his eye.

I couldn’t help but giggle at my gullible self. He pulled me in and kissed my raw, swollen lips.

We sat for the next ten minutes without a word between us. Jet engines continued to roar over our heads.

And then they just stopped.

“What’s next?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

A half an hour after the last rumble of an engine we heard the unmistakable sound of the lid to our cave scraping open.

“Knock, knock,” said Fitzpatrick. “Everyone decent down there?”

“Ha, ha,” Jackson said. “Get your ass down here.”

“What’s happening?” I asked him.

This time he came all the way into our shelter, past the boxes that were arranged to help keep us warm.

“Turns out Major Kim got some of her translation wrong,” he told us.

I didn’t even know that she was listening in. So, at least some of the transmissions were in Korean.

“Mark was able to verify the Arabic, and it turns out that they were not sending convoys down the trail. They were leaving. That’s what we just heard.”

“How can we be sure Mark’s right?” asked Jackson.

“He’s right,” I jumped to my husband’s defense. Jackson glared at me. “It’s his first language, for Christ’s sake.”

I pulled on one of the uniform jackets and woolen beanie hats. I must have looked ridiculous, like Private Benjamin.

“We need to let everyone know. Sound the all clear,” I told them. Jackson opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off. “It’s my rodeo, right?”

“That it is,” said Jackson. He turned to Fitzpatrick. “Start, I’ll be right out.”

Fitz left us. I was eager to get the hell out into the fresh air, but it was hard to leave knowing that we would not have private time again, at least not for a while.

“We’ve said a lot down here,” Jackson said. “And we did a lot down here, too. What I need you to remember is that they need you and Mark together right now.”

I looked at him, feeling a small amount of betrayal in his truth.

“When we get to the Valley,” he said. He lifted my chin so our mouths met and gave me a long, determined kiss. I turned and ascended the ladder, back into reality.

∞

The moment my boots hit the ground I was ready to be compliant in the Villager’s reality again.

Mark was waiting up top. “Nice limp,” he said as I walked by him. I knew him well enough to know that he would never have bought it anyhow.

I marched right past him as if I hadn’t heard what he had said. I tore the plywood away from the opening of Annie’s snow cave and crawled inside. Bailey jumped into my arms, shaking violently.

“It’s okay. We are all okay,” I told her.

Mark crawled in and took her from my arms. He kissed her forehead and rocked her back and forth.

Jake arrived at his heels. We were soon united in a full group hug in the very small space.

“Mark, you sure about what you heard?” I asked him, feeling like a complete hypocrite.

He nodded and shot me a glare. “Idiot Major Kim doesn’t know jack.”

I knew his emotional, unadulterated anger. And the anger was really aimed at me. Fair enough.

“I need to talk to the Village. Jake, will you tell Jackson that I need everyone gathered? Ask him if there is anything I could stand on to raise me high enough for everyone to see me.”

I felt stronger than I had since we left the Village; maybe stronger than I had felt in years.

“Mark, I need you and the rest of the MT to brief me first. Will you pull that together?” I asked, not sure that he wouldn’t just tell me off in front of my whole family.

He nodded and handed Bailey to me. She had stopped shaking. “Hey, Bailey Bug,” I said. “Do you want to come up on whatever Jackson finds and stand with me while I talk to the Village?”

“Can I say, ‘Good morning, Villagers?’ ” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I said, putting her down. “I’ll see you out there.”

I crawled out of the opening and into the freezing snow. I had a flash of Jackson holding me before I moved on, and I shivered.

Mark shouted at me, “We are in the Com Center.”

I shook my head, “Where’s that?”

“Our, no,
my
cave,” he said.

“Fine,” I couldn’t believe he thought this was the time for the inevitable to play out. “Don’t do this now.”

I grabbed the rope and slid down, forgoing the rungs.

Once we were gathered I said, “Who’s going first?”

No one spoke, so Fitzpatrick rolled his eyes and started. “After you ran out after Rolette, we got transmissions that the enemy combatants were minutes away from our coordinates. We know that they hit Monterey pretty good. The Valley was hit, but it’s harder to say how far out it was and what kind of damage we are talking about.”

Mark took it from there. “All transmissions between enemy forces in the immediate area have stopped. We know that they are headed to Colorado. We need to make a decision of whether or not we are going to warn Denver. It could send those a-holes right back to us if we do.

“Also, I heard that there is damage to the trail. It sounds like it is in both directions. Now we need to figure out whether or not to head forward or go back.”

“We have ways to warn Colorado when we think it’s safe,” said Jackson.

“What else?” I asked the group.

“I’m sorry, Laura,” said Major Kim. Her face said it all. “I thought I understood. Korean’s not my first language.”

“Better safe than sorry… no harm, no foul,” I reassured her.

She nodded her head gratefully.

“If there is nothing more, I’m ready to speak to my Villagers,” I said.

“What happened to Rolette?” asked Jake.

“You are about to find out with everyone else.”

“I have some people bringing up the table from our cave for you to stand on,” Jackson said. I hoped no one would notice that he called it “our cave.” I looked at Mark; he did.

I went up the ladder and saw the place where everyone was gathering. I found Bailey with my family in the crowd.

I thought about what Jackson had said about the Village needing their Queen and King and asked Mark to hand Bailey up to me when I was on top of the table. He did as I asked.

I looked at the child in my arms and asked her if she was ready. She smiled, and I looked out over the crowd in front of me. “Good morning, Villagers,” she said in her small voice.

I set her next to me and said in my much louder voice, “Yes, good morning, Villagers.”

A cheer rose to my freezing ears. I waited for it to end.

“It’s been a very eventful last few hours,” I told them. “First, I have some sad news. We did lose one of our own.”

I searched the crowd for Tiffany, and when I found her we locked eyes. She nodded at me. She knew.

“Steven Rolette had a breakdown during the attacks. He ran out and tried to get the attention of the planes. We were forced to take him down so that the rest of us would live.”

“He deserved it; I’m glad,” someone screamed.

“I might have felt that way, but I was there. He was just a very confused man. I wish we could have helped him, but he refused everything from religious to psychological counseling. I think that something in his brain snapped during the Last War.”

I waited for the mumbling to stop. “I have some other things to tell you, and I hope that you are able to accept that we don’t have all of the facts yet. All of you have shown such amazing strength through this crisis, and I ask that you continue to be strong. I will not lie to you or hold back the truth about what has happened in the latest attacks.”