Love in the Time of the Dead (17 page)

Finn leaned forward. “Guist asked Mel where they should trade for a jacket for you and she said to grab one out of the front coat closet before you leave. She doesn’t want you catching cold.”

“Lucky,” murmured Mitchell. He stood and walked briskly to the coat closet near the front door. He rifled through an impressive selection of winter jackets before he held up two for her to choose from.

She tried them on and settled for a simple, fitted, navy blue one that hugged her curves. It was surprisingly warm for feeling so lightweight. She peeked in the closet to find a plethora of pink and leopard skin printed coats. She gave Mitchell a nod of approval before she sat back down, cuddled snugly into her new jacket. He was a jack-wagon ninety percent of the time, but that man knew her tastes and didn’t tease her for it. Usually.

The second in command, Nick Creedy, made his appearance a few minutes later. He was a grizzled man with a long, full, graying beard and deep wrinkles covering skin leathered from time spent in the sun. After they all put in their applications for guard duty, Nick pulled out a large clipboard with a list of available housing. He assigned Sean and Adrianna to a detached cabin and Finn a trailer that was located a short distance away from it. Mitchell and Guist would be roommates in one of the larger attached cabins, and Nick assigned her to a single room in one of the long cabins a little farther down the mountain. Her room was located closest to the doctor’s cabin.

She would have a room all by herself. She couldn’t even name the last time she had privacy or a space of her own.

Nick provided them with a packet of information and maps to everything in the colony including a mess hall, gardens, doctor’s office, outhouses, and showers. There were short papers on the history of the Dead Run River colony and surrounding areas and a schedule that listed their times to do kitchen duty. Nick also handed them little welcome bags containing a bar of handmade soap, a small tube of lip balm, a disposable razor, and a plastic baggy containing three chocolate chip cookies.

“Sorry,” Nick said with a sheepish grin. “The welcome bags kind of just have whatever we can get our hands on.”

“Don’t apologize,” Laney said. “This is the nicest reception we’ve ever had at a colony.”

Nick highlighted their housing assignments on the maps. Before he sent them off he told them, “At your job assignments, you will be paid every Friday in credit to the general store and market located here.” He highlighted it on Laney’s map. “They’ll have everything you need, and if they don’t you can put in a request to get it. We always see what we can do on supply runs.”

Sean came out of Mel’s office as the rest of them were finishing up with Nick. He took his offered packet from the second in command and shook his hand in greeting. Sean looked pale and drained, but he talked to Nick cordially for a couple of minutes before he met up with the rest of the group. “I’m familiar with the housing in this colony if you want me to show you where you’ll be staying.”

Mitchell looked like he’d rather lick a toilet seat than accept Sean’s help, so Guist was the one to speak up. “Sounds good, man. We could use the help, especially in the dark.”

As they started down the main trail that led back down the mountain to the housing areas, Finn swerved off toward his own trailer. It was located right beside Sean’s cabin, which was about two hundred yards away from Mel’s house. He said his goodnights and left the group for the first time since he had been assigned as her guard in the Denver colony.

The trail looked different at night, as all things did. Small solar lights had been stuck low to the ground every few yards, and the dim blue light reflected off vegetation that edged the dirt path. The noise of breeze and river and bugs singing into the night air made the place feel like magic. If only Jarren had lived to see this place. He had been so close. The group walked quietly as if they were also affected by the weight of such a perfect night. Or it could have been that they were all in different stages of despair and exhaustion. The latter was more likely.

Adrianna asked to be held, and Sean picked her up. Laney followed behind him, and the little girl smiled sleepily over his shoulder. Mitchell and Guist, accustomed to forest footing, followed behind her as quietly as a whisper. If she weren’t so attuned to their movements, she wouldn’t have even guessed they were there.

Lantern light swung lazily back and forth up ahead. Sean didn’t miss a step, so they must have been common when the colony’s inhabitants chose to walk the trails at night. The dim light coming from the gently rocking lantern was quite mesmerizing, so other than a quick body count when the small group of five passed by them, she didn’t catch faces or genders. They were talking easily as they passed and one of the women greeted Mitchell, but she barely registered their conversation.

“Adam,” Mitchell said quietly.

The context was confusing. She most definitely didn’t want to relive their earlier conversation. In fact she wanted to stop thinking about her past altogether.

“Mitchell, I don’t really want to talk about him anymore.”

Mitchell had stopped and was looking back toward the group that had just walked by. “Adam,” he said a little louder.

His exclamation brought a man in the middle of the passing group to a halt. He froze so quickly, the two women behind him ran into his back. The man swung his head around, and his gaze landed squarely on Mitchell. Laney’s heart stopped.

The man was at first unfamiliar, though she could never forget his face. His blue eyes had aged a hundred years since she had seen them last and weren’t quite as bright as she remembered them. His blond hair was thinner, and he wasn’t as tall as she remembered, but she still thought him a handsome man, made more attractive by the wit and humor that hid just beneath the surface of those pooling cerulean eyes. The light from the lantern in his hand danced across his face, and his nostrils flared ever so slightly as recognition lit his features.

“Derek? Is that you?” he asked in shock.

Her hand rested on Mitchell’s still back, but she couldn’t recall how it got there. His muscles were tensed, and she brushed his back lightly, searching for softness where only brute power resided. She was sure that if she took it off, the beast in Mitchell would escape. Her hand was the only thing that kept him frozen in place, of that she was certain.

At his failure to respond, Adam approached slowly, as if his mind had convinced him he was dreaming. Every step he moved closer to Mitchell moved him closer to her. She stood, shocked into complete silence, behind the hard planes of Mitchell’s back.

Adam was alive.

When he was close enough to see Mitchell and Guist clearly, he let out an excited yell. He grabbed Guist in a rough hug. “Oh, man! I thought I’d never see you guys again. I thought surely I’d never see anyone I knew again,” he said with exuberance.

Guist patted Adam on the back stiffly and pulled away without saying anything. He walked past Mitchell, and stood loyally by her. He looked as if he had no idea how to react to the situation, and the questioning glances her teammate threw her out of the corner of his eye snapped her out of the trance she was in. When Adam approached Mitchell with his arms out to embrace his old friend, Mitchell side-stepped to reveal her presence.

Adam froze in his advance. He let his outstretched arms fall limply to his sides.

“Adam,” she whispered. Tears were welling up in her eyes, but she didn’t care. Adam was alive. Her Adam.

She threw her arms around his neck and felt his hands gently slide up her back. “I thought you were dead, Adam,” she said quietly. “I tried to find you. I’ve searched dozens of colonies for you, but nobody had ever seen or heard of you. I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.”

“Who the hell is
she?”
a woman spoke up from behind Adam.

Adam pushed Laney away, and she wiped her eyes in confusion.

“She’s—” Adam started. Unable to explain her away, he gave up with a shrug and looked to her for help.

“I’m Laney Landry. Who are you?” she asked the woman, who had stepped into the lantern light to reveal she was very pregnant and very pissed.

“I’m Adam’s
wife
,” she growled.

Wife. He was married and very nearly a father and Laney couldn’t seem to remember how to shut her gaping mouth. That was supposed to be her. Silence stretched on as she fumbled for any words to relieve the maddening embarrassment that consumed her under the woman’s murderous glare. “Oh, of course,” was all she could think to whisper. She wiped her eyes and gave a trembling smile. The lantern light flickered across the harsh planes of the woman’s face, which only served to make her look angrier. Was she pretty by daylight?

“For three years I’ve watched Laney pine for you,” Mitchell ground out.

“Mitchell, please. It’s okay. Let’s just go.” She tugged at his arm, but he wouldn’t be moved. She had one too many helpings of embarrassment, and to make matters worse, Sean was staring in bewilderment at their humiliating reunion.

“No, Laney. He should hear what he did. Why should a man not be held accountable for doing this to a woman?” Mitchell rounded on Adam again, who was trying unsuccessfully to pacify his seething wife. “Do you know how hard we searched for you? And you couldn’t even send word? I want to know why!” He pulled the crumpled piece of gray paper from his pocket and flung it at Adam’s chest.

Adam looked at the wrinkled, hand-drawn picture on the ground without surprise.

“That’s what I thought,” Mitchell said with a cruel and humorless smile. “You’ve probably seen this a hundred times. What, you couldn’t be bothered to send a notice out? Too much effort for you? You moved on, so the girl you left behind doesn’t matter anymore?”

Adam looked from her to Mitchell and back again. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking wholly uncomfortable. “I met Sabrina when the outbreak first happened. We came here together, and I knew she was it for me. I’m really sorry.”

“We were still together, Adam,” she said through her acute disappointment in a man she thought she knew. “If you’d found another woman, fine, but you could have sent word and let me know what was happening. You kept me from moving on.”

Adam slumped his shoulders and looked miserable. He looked from one face to the other and tried to look through them to Sean. “Jarren, you have to help me out here, buddy. I know you understand why I had to cut myself off from her completely.”

Who did he think he was talking to? She looked around in confusion, and Mitchell spoke up with an unmitigated fury. “That’s not Jarren, ya dick. Jarren died. Yesterday.”

Adam’s wide eyes darted from face to dimly lit face, and his eyebrows furrowed in pointless apology. “Man, I’m sorry, Derek. It was an honest mistake. It’s dark out here.”

“Don’t do that,” Mitchell said, shaking his head.

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t call me Derek.
You
can call me Mitchell. You don’t know me anymore. You don’t know any of us anymore. Your choice,” he said jabbing a finger in Adam’s direction.

“Look, Laney seems like she’s doing all right without me, so it all worked out. Right?”

She stopped mid-scurry, effectively putting a halt to her retreat to the shadows where the men hopefully wouldn’t be able to see how badly she was affected by it all. Mitchell’s eyes looked black with anger in the dim lantern light, but they softened when they fell on her.

“Yep, I’m awesome,” she called out overly cheerfully. “Congrats on the baby. And the wife. She seems super nice.” She was probably hysterical.

“Shhhh,” Sean said quietly, interrupting her awkward tirade. He put his arm around her and pulled her back to continue on the trail. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

“Do you think Mel knows?”

Sean sighed and squeezed Laney’s shoulder before he released her to adjust a sleeping Adrianna in his arms. “Mel knows everyone in her colony.”

The betrayal stung. Why hadn’t the woman told her? Given her some kind of warning that a horrible encounter in the woods with
the
ghost of her past was a possibility. Without a heads up, she’d been shamed in front of two men she was completely confused and torn over. Damn that woman.

The hike back to the cabins felt like it took a hundred and thirty-seven years. Realistically it was only a fifteen minute trek at the slow pace they adopted because of the darkness, but it was tinged with a shade of desperation to escape the witnesses to that ghastly ex-boyfriend scene. Did no one want her? Adam was married, with a child on the way, so she had wasted three good years looking for a man who was happy with another. How silly she had been for having imagined that man to be more than he was.

At the first row of cabins, Sean pointed out the room Mitchell and Guist had been assigned to. Guist gave her a squeeze on the shoulder, but Mitchell kept his distance when they parted ways. Both men from her team gave parting, comforting words in the form of colorful curses at Adam, and it made her laugh, despite the wretched clenching in her gut. Mitchell leaned up against his doorway until she and Sean had disappeared down a smaller trail that connected the newly built rows of cabins.

Her cabin was only a few minutes’ walk from Mitchell and Guist’s room, and she and Sean went the rest of the way there in silence. Not even the crickets felt brave enough to interrupt their private, awkward moment. When they got to the door and checked the number to make sure she wouldn’t be walking in on some poor, unsuspecting family who had long been asleep, she hurried in to try to avoid conversation with him altogether.