Page 12 of Protected

“Maybe. But—” I gasp when she touches the raw scratches on my skin with a wipe. “But it doesn’t feel like it. And I wish I could…”

“You wish you could what?”

“I wish I could…” I’m not going to answer. There’s no reason to answer. I hardly know this woman, and everyone who has ever loved me—everyone I ever trusted—is dead. Ripped away from me violently and far too soon. But I hear myself saying, “I wish I could really fight back.”

“You can. You were kicking out at Deck when he grabbed you from the Jeep.”

“Yeah. I guess. I thought that’s what I would do in a dangerous situation. But when Pete came after me, I… I couldn’t do anything.”

“That’s not your fault. He was bigger than you.”

“But I still could have done something. I don’t know what happened. I froze.” I lower my voice slightly, suddenly worried that Deck might be able to hear. “I froze. I never thought I would do that. It’s like everything inside me that was screaming to resist was… was trapped. Bottled up inside me. It was… terrible.”

“It sounds terrible. But whatever your reaction, you’re not to blame for it. You know that, right?”

“I know it rationally. And I’m not blaming myself for what he did. I’m glad Logan shot him. He deserved to die. I just thought I would react differently. I’m always so angry at everything. I thought it would all come out at a time like that, but it didn’t. It makes it worse somehow.”

I was never a particularly reserved or guarded person until Impact, but since then I’ve withdrawn into myself. So many other people have done the same. Sharing oneself intimately requires a measure of safety, and that’s one of the things we lost when the asteroid hit. I honestly can’t believe I admitted something so vulnerable to Burgundy, who is nice but still mostly a stranger.

“I don’t know much about it,” she says slowly, still carefully cleaning off my scratches and the surroundingskin. “But I do know that sometimes—at least in my experience—some feelings are too strong to let out. Because if you let them out, they’ll overwhelm everything. They’re too powerful. They’ll be dangerous. So maybe it’s like that?”

I think about what she said as I stare at an empty spot in the morning air. Then I say, “Yeah. Maybe it’s like that.”

We sit in silence as she works for a minute. Then I try to lighten the mood by asking randomly, “What did Logan do before Impact?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what was his job? He said that Deck worked for him?”

“Oh. Oh yeah. He owned a construction company in Saint Louis.”

“Really?” I stare at an empty spot in the morning air, trying to imagine the Logan I know with a job like that. He took Pete behind the van the other night and shot him without even a moment’s hesitation. The violent act appeared to have no effect on him at all other than the spattering of blood left on his face. It’s hard to picture him as a regular man in the old world—one who worked a regular job and came home to a normal house to eat dinner and scroll on his phone.

“Yeah. He was super successful. He’s one of those people who is good at anything he tries. And everyone who worked for him loved him. Deck ran one of his crews. Micah worked for him too.”

“Micah did too? So y’all have known Logan for a while then?”

“Micah started working for him when he was eighteen. I never really knew him well until after everything fell apart. Micah and I stayed with our family, but there were riots everywhere. We lost our parents and ran away and thankfully hooked up with Logan. I don’t like to think about what might have happened to us if we hadn’t.”

“Have you been traveling all this time?”

“No. We stayed put for the first year, but all the food and supplies around got used up. We tried to grow a garden, but nothing would grow. So we took off to scavenge for what we could, and we’ve been on the road ever since.”

“Oh. That’s interesting.” I think about everything she’s said. “So Deck was running a crew back then? How old is he?”

“I don’t know.” Burgundy is applying a couple of big bandages now. “Since he was ahead of Micah at the company, I always assumed he was a few years older than Micah. That would put him around thirty, I guess.”

“Oh. Okay.” That tracks with my sense of him, but it’s as strange to think about Deck having a regular job as it was Logan. Did he look like Bigfoot back when he was living in the world before Impact? I’m having trouble visualizing it.

“Why? Are you interested?”

I turn my head to blink at her in confusion.

“In Deck.”

“What? Oh, no. Just curious.”

“Okay, good.”

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