Fall (Roam Series, Book Two) (26 page)

“It felt good to swim,” I moaned as he went for the splinter, jerking my hand. He held it immobile, removing the shard of wood smoothly.

“I’m sure…,” he stopped in mid-sentence, slamming the tweezers to the countertop. Leaving me sitting there, he hurried to his bag, removing his laptop. “Three men?” The impatience in his hands was obvious as he waited for the laptop to power up on the kitchen table. “War, pestilence…,”

“What’s wrong?” I landed on my feet, hurrying to his side. “Does that mean something?”

He opened the internet, loosening his tie. “Yes… it means something… damn it.”

I watched him open Google and type “three men war pestilence.”

“Apocalypse?” I read, narrowing my eyes. “What, he’s spouting stuff about the end of the world?”

“Those aren’t his words.” West scrolled through passages, leaning forward.
“He said ‘three men.’” West typed something else, and I lowered slowly to a kitchen chair next to him. “In a letter to his son, Nostradamus wrote, ‘Now the sword of death approaches us, with pestilence and war more horrible than there has ever been - because of three men's work.’”

“That’s exactly what Troy said to me. Nostradamus… the sixteenth century prophet?”

“Yes.”

I sat back, staring at the screen as West read.
According to the passage, Nostradamus had written a letter to his son, advising him and explaining to him that his prophetic visions were vague because he could not begin to determine what the things that he saw in his visions were.

Eventually I moved my eyes away from the screen, staring at the open cut on my hand.
The bleeding stopped, and the deep ravine that the splinter had gouged left a burning scrape in my palm.

“Three men.” He turned to me tiredly. “The bringers of death. Troy, Logan.” He sighed deeply. “And me.”

“
I think I’ll go lay down,” I stood, walking to the stairs.

“Roam.”

He reached for me, and I turned into his chest. “Do whatever you want to him. I want it all to end. I don’t care anymore.”

I curled up in his bed, closing my eyes. Around nine, he came in and undressed me, tucking the blankets under my chin as I shivered. He held me through the night, and I fought with sleep, letting it in just long enough to wake in a panicked sweat, clawing at him and crying. By morning, I was more exhausted than I was before I went to bed.

He waited for me to shower and get dressed, and we were on the road by seven AM. “Are you going to tell me where we’re going? And if it includes caffeine?”

He smiled lightly. “We’ll stop for breakfast,” he promised. We ate in the village, and
I managed a little toast with two cups of coffee. The sun came out as we got back in the Pilot, and I turned toward its rays, relishing in the small bit of heat on my face.

“F
orty-eight degrees,” West gestured to his dashboard. “Not bad for December.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured absently. It took only a few minutes to realize where we were going. “Paine Falls?”

He nodded. I smiled, tucking my face against his warm coat.

The park was empty, so we walked down to the falls hand-in-hand. I watched the water rush over the flattened rocks, remembering our first time there. He led me off the path and around a split-rail fence intended to keep visitors from pas
sing. “Watch your step here…,”

“We’re not supposed to be back here.”

“I’m not concerned.” He caught me as my foot slid on a wet, snowy patch of dead oak leaves, pressing his lips to mine.

“This is nice.”

“We have something to do,” he continued on further, finally stopping at a large, granite flagstone nestled against the hillside. Where the sunlight touched, it appeared to reflect like diamonds in the cold grass. “We’re here.”

“Nice rock?” I lifted my eyes uncertainly. He pulled me against him, pressing my head to his chest. I slid my arms around his back, inside his coat.

“We need to say good-bye.”

“What?” I started to pull away, but he caught me, breathing a soft laugh.

“Not to each other,” he kissed my head. “To Eva.”

I stiffened, trying to pull away. “West…,”

“I’ve buried you, and our child, too many times,” his words fell down, and I lifted my face to his. Tears slid down his cheeks, and he let them come. “This is the hardest. But you’re here with me, and I’m here with you… and that, I’m grateful for.”

My fingers twisted the back of his shirt, and the lump in my throat made swallowing impossible. I turned away from the rock, pushing my forehead against his chest as hard as I could. His fingers tightened on my head, and as his chest rose and fell in a tearful breath, I cringed at the anguish corroding my heart.

“I can’t say good-bye to her,” I shook my head, soaking his shirt with tears. “I don’t believe she’s gone. I can still feel her.”

“Roam…,”

“No. She’s still here,” I begged, looking up toward the sun over the leafless treetops. “I just held her.
I just held… her…,
”

We sat at the flagstone until the sun clouded over and the rain began to fall once more.

West and I spent the entire weekend in each other’s arms. Grief was a transitory process, weaving in and out of laughter and anger, and settling into a permanent state of defeat.
He continued to take precautions against another pregnancy, and when we talked about why, his answer was always the same.

“We will find another way.”

On Saturday night, I woke screaming, unable to remember my nightmare. Digging my iPod out of my bag, I lay next to West, finishing the nineties playlist he’d set up for me on the plane. I thought that he was sound asleep, but as I pulled my ear buds out of my ears, he turned to face me in the darkness.

“Did you take notes?”

I grinned, turning on the pillow we shared. “As you can see, Mr. Perry, I have no pen or paper.”

“Nor do you have any clothes.”

“But… my general impression… great music.”

“Best decade?”

“So far.”

“I’d say
I told you so
, but you’ve never liked hearing that in the past.”

“Good to learn from the past.”

We had until Saturday to prepare for the inclined plane. Logan was going to skip school on Friday to pick Violet up in Virginia. I spent the hours in school preparing for every possibility of what to expect.
We could go, and it could lead us nowhere… or it could take us to the wasteland of a world that Troy described.
Either way, with Morgan and Jason joining us, we would assemble a small army to save Laurel.

On Wednesday, West texted me and asked me to meet him at the library after school. I hurried into his Pilot, careful not to be seen. “
Hi baby,” he smiled, squeezing my hand. “Didn’t you bring a coat?”

“I have a sweatshirt on,” I gestured to my hooded
, Aeropostle zip-up.

“
I need to show you how to shoot.”

“G
uns?” I asked in disbelief. “Are we taking guns with us?”

“I haven’t decided what I want to take ye
t. Have you ever been shooting?”

“No. Morgan has gone with dad, but I…,
” I tucked my cold fingers beneath my thighs to keep from twisting them.

He gave me a sideways glance, raising his eyebrows. “Do they make you nervous?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

He reached for my neck, brushing my hair away from my ear before slipping his hand behind my hair. “I don’t want you to be afrai
d of them. What about them make you nervous?”

“That I know nothing about them,” I realized.

“So, if I teach you about each one, and how they work, will that help?”

I considered his question. “We could try that.”

He nodded. “I can do that.”

He pulled off the road and onto a back road
thick with icy potholes. I followed the trees out the window, wondering if there were trees in the strange world where we would be going. “Where will we shoot?”

He swerved around a water-filled hole, taking a quick right. “I have a lot of land. This is where it begins, and backs up to my house.”

“How many acres? I can’t even see your house…,”

“Twenty-three.”

I climbed out of the SUV, watching him move around to the back of the vehicle. “Wow.”

Between the natural setting of foothills and trees, targets in various sizes and shapes littered
the landscape. Several round discs hung suspended from the air, and metal posts with colorful circles branched out on either side. Steel plates in the shape of small animals lined the ground, and plastic, one gallon milk jugs filled with water sat perched on various edges. A long, wooden table hosted plenty of space for loading and unloading weapons.

“Okay,” he lifted the back hatch, and I gaped at the array of black and gray cases, varying in size and length. “There are a few that I want you to try. Come here,” he tugged me against him, catching my mouth open in his. Off-balance, I swayed, and he
steadied me, tilting my face with his fingers. “Hi. How was your day?”

I smiled, laying my hands against his cheeks. “Long. I missed you.”

“Good.” He took my hands in his, brushing them rapidly. “You’re freezing.” He shrugged his coat off, wrapping it around me. “I’ll hold the coat when you shoot. I want you to start with this,” he pulled a small, black case toward him, snapping the plastic tabs upward to open. “This is a Glock 19. It is a semi-automatic pistol.”

“My dad has one of those. He and Logan used to go shooting all the time.”

He nodded, as if he already knew that information. “This weapon was invented by Gaston Glock, an Austrian engineer.”

“It’s plastic,” I watched him push a magazine into the bottom of the pistol. “We don’t know who… or
what
… is coming at us. Will this be enough?”

“We know we’re going to a castle surrounded by ice. I’
ve fought wars in snow and ice. Glock’s knowledge of plastics improved the reliability of handguns… a million times over.” He removed a pair of yellow-tinted glasses. “You have to protect your eyes and ears here, but we won’t have that luxury later… so I’ll have you take the muffs off in a little while.”

“West,” I pulled the ear protectors over my head, tugging at the hair that flattened against the side of my face.

“I’m going first. Magazine in, cocked, thumbs together.” He kept the pistol pointed at the ground. “Ready?”

I nodded.

He walked forward slowly, lifting the gun and aiming at various targets. The first shot made me jump out of my skin, but by the fifth I was only flinching. Brass ejected from every shot, flying through the air to his left, right, and behind him. He hit each target, even the ones I had to squint to see with my 20/20 vision.

“Don’t be afraid of it. If I’d been able to get my gun on Thanksgiving night, he wouldn’t have had a chance to touch you.”

“Logan would be dead,” I pointed out.

“That’s all that makes me feel better… about not being there for you.” He cleared his throat, moving behind me to wrap his arms around mine. After removing his coat, he lifted my hands and wrapped my fingers around the sandpaper grip. “Keep your finger beside the trigger until you’re ready to shoot. Don’t flinch or close your eyes when you squeeze. Lean in… move your legs apart a little.”

My hands dissolved into tremors. “I’m not going to be able to hit anything.”

“You just have to try this. I don’t expect you to hit anything. I just want you to know how to use it, if you have to.” He lowered his lips to my neck. “Lean in. Follow this
sight. I’m putting a red dot sight on everything we take, so it’ll be easier…,” he brushed his lips on my ear. “Just lean in.”

I chose a wide, blue target a few yards away. The first time I pulled the trigger, I automatically closed my eyes,
recoiling with the shock. Brass expelled near my face.

“Keep your eyes open. Use your mind. Picture what… or who… you want to take this bullet.”

Opening my eyes wide, I saw Troy, but still balked at the incredible jolt.

He watched me intently, and then glanced back at the Pilot. “We’re going to try a .22. You’re so small.”

The .22 gave less of a kick, but I still couldn’t stop jerking every time I pulled the trigger.

“What are you going to shoot?” I placed the
.22 on the wooden table, recoiling as if it’d strike out at me like a snake.

“
Logan and I already discussed this, and we’ve agreed on AKs.”

“What… like a machine gun?”

“Whatever we take has to fit under our coats. We’re going in a public place.”

I accepted his coat again gratefully; the wind picked up, and snow began to fly. I half-listened to West as he went on about the Russian sergeant who invented the assault rifle, reliability, charging handles, three-point slings, and folding stocks.
A sulfur smell settled in the air. After a while, he lowered the weapon and glanced at me.