Page 16 of A Wilderness Within

What the hell are we supposed to do, honey?

The virus hadn’t taken either of them. What was next? He sat down on the edge of the bed, removed his boots and reached for one of the extra blankets. When Lincoln started to reach over Caroline to turn off the lantern, he stopped. The thought of darkness swallowing them up tonight didn’t seem right. From the moment he left the bunker, he’d had nothing to lose. But now? He had Caroline. And he wanted to fall asleep looking at her.

When he started to slide down in the bed beside her, he heard a distantpop-pop-popand then silence, followed by anotherpop-pop-pop.He reached for the lantern and slammed his fingers down on the button. The light vanished. He’d crushed Caroline in his effort to kill the light, and she woke with the start of a scream. He covered her mouth with his hand, and she tried to scream even harder.

“Shut up!” he hissed. “Listen! Someone’s shooting nearby.” He held still, keeping her pinned beneath him. She froze, and he wished he could see her face. He could only feel her, her mouth against his hand, her body warm beneath his. More pops, farther away this time, which made Lincoln relax. He let go of Caroline’s mouth and rolled away from her. Then he slid off the bed and crawled over to the window, pulling the curtain back a few inches.

The silence in the bedroom seemed to thicken until finally she whispered, “Do you see anything?”

“No, but there’s barely a sliver of moon. I’m not sure I could see anything out there if there was something to see.”

He continued to stare into the blackness beyond, searching for any hint of danger. But when he heard nothing more after several minutes, and saw nothing, he finally crawled back to bed.

“I’m sleeping here tonight,” he said, then pulled back the blankets beside her and settled in. He expected her to try to leave or possibly to punch him, but she didn’t. Maybe she was actually starting to trust him.

“You have a gun here, don’t you?” she asked, her warm breath so close that he felt it. Something about that made his chest ache. The feel of another person so close while darkness and danger ruled the night… It gave him a sense of comfort he wasn’t sure he deserved.

Lincoln shifted, sliding one hand under his pillow and curling his fingers around his Glock.

“Yes.” With that single word, he was making a promise that he would protect her.

“Good.” She turned on her side to face him. She was a dark outline between the pillows and blankets, yet he could feel her gaze upon him.

“Good night, Caroline,” he whispered, hoping she would fall back asleep. It unnerved him to think of her watching him back. He preferred to see and be left unseen. While she was in his care, she would see more of him than anyone else had, maybe even more than the men from his unit, even Adam. He dreaded to think of what would happen when she saw too much and ran away from him.

“Good night, Lincoln.”

Dawn arrived, and Lincoln watched the sky, still black with fires. But this time he couldn’t hide them from her.

“The other survivors are setting fires?” She joined him at the windows. She barely limped and no longer needed him to carry her about. She needed to be mobile, just in case things went south and they had to run.

“Men like to watch things burn,” he said and sipped his coffee. He’d gotten used to making his own coffee ages ago.

“But why? There’s so little left. We should be rebuilding, working together to save one other.” Caroline’s hazel eyes were more of a soft green rather than brown in the pale gray today. For a moment, he was lost in the fracturing splinters of the colors blending in that worried gaze.

“You still haven’t lost faith in humanity, even after everything you’ve seen?” He couldn’t believe it. Was she that naïve?

“No, I haven’t.” She met his astonished stare and half smiled. “I’m not stupid—I know people are running scared, that they’re doing terrible things. But someone has to find a way to reach them, to remind them what we used to be. The world wasn’t perfect before Hydra struck, but humanity isn’t without hope. As long as there are people who believe in goodness, there’s always hope.”

Lincoln wanted to believe her, to trust that burning certainty in her eyes. She wasn’t naïve—he could see that now. She was a crusader, a person who would never stop fighting for what she knew in her heart to be right. It was a damned brave thing in this brave new world. But he had to make her face the fact that the world she wanted to save might be unsavable.

“Mankind has always felt the need to control its environment. When we lose control, our fear overpowers us. Fear makes us do anything we can to feel like we’re in control again.” He knew what he was telling her might frighten her, but these were truths she needed to know. The civilized world was gone. People as she understood them had changed. Law-abiding citizens, governments, rules, police, all those protections put in place over the past hundreds of years were gone. Animal instincts were all that was left.

“I fought men overseas, all afraid of what change would bring. Groups of men who believed that different beliefs halfway across the world spelled doom for their own religion. I fought governments who believed women were property and should have no control over their own lives. I’ve seen corruption take root like rot in the trunks of ancient trees and how it spreads through the ranks of soldiers until no man is left untouched. All of them have one thing in common. They will destroy what threatens them, what is out of their control or beyond their understanding. A quickly spreading illness turns us against each other rather than unites us. So…” He met her gaze again. “Men burn things to ash rather than stand together. It’s one of our greatest failings.”

He could feel the weight of the Glock where it rested at his lower back, tucked into his jeans. The sweater was loose, and he covered it from Caroline’s view, but he felt the weight of it all the same.

“I wish…” She pressed a palm against the wide window, still looking over the yard below. “I wish the world didn’t have to burn.” She curled her fingers into slight claws against the glass. “I just want to find my family. I just want to go home.”

Lincoln nearly told her that her family was likely dead, had to be. But then he considered, if she was immune, maybe her parents or siblings were too. A slim chance, for sure, but still a chance.

“Where is your family?” he asked after a moment. They probably had to leave here soon, and he preferred to have a destination in mind ahead of time.

“Missouri. Joplin,” she said and looked his way again. Her eyes burned with sudden hope. “Will…will you help me get there?”

Right now, he would follow her to the ends of the earth. But telling her that would only scare the shit out of her.

“Look, I know we didn’t get off to the best start, you kidnapping and drugging me”

---