Page 54 of The Pale Rider
Rage Heads kind of made these squishing and popping noises when their rotting bodies moved, but the burned ones kind of crackled. It was like you could hear their skin splitting open, and all manner of nastiness oozed from the cracks.
The fire had done a number on the landscape. It was pretty sad. It looked like this area might have escaped the bombs, but now everything was scorched and reduced to ash. This differed totally from the woods and ghost towns in Washington State and the community that had come together in California. This was people burning shit down for no reason.
The temperature was starting to drop, and the sky was going from orange to gray. That was usually a sign we would stop for the night. Aeron had this route planned down to a T. I didn’t quite know what he was looking for until he pulled Meremoth up to a burned house with most of the brick structure still standing.
“We’ll set up the tent in there. The walls will give us cover if there are any humans that come by, and it’ll make it more difficult for the Rage Heads to get to us.”
I could agree with that. Aeron left me to set up the tent like I’d been camping before. Honestly, I couldn’t remember if I had or hadn’t, but this tent didn’t have an instruction manual, and I was probably not the best person for this job. Whatever he was doing, we probably needed it, so I struggled to get this fucking tent together.
I’d only managed to get half the tent up by the time Aeron had dismantled most of a burned car and strung up the pieces around the house. If anyone tried to come near our tent, we would hear them. Neat idea. If only I had contributed better with the tent. Aeron didn’t say a fucking thing about it either. He just came over and started helping me.
We had the tent up in no time. Dinner was cold canned beans and homemade granola bars from Miss Mabel. God bless that woman because she was a mean cook, and if we weren’t rationing food, I would have eaten all of those granola bars.
It was different sleeping in a tent. Not that I didn’t mind roughing it. We were sleeping on top of rubble and burned flooring. It was just the drastic temperature difference between night and day now. It was so fucking hot during the day you sweat buckets. Most of the time, it was days before you could get a shower. As soon as the sky turned gray, it was like this switch got flipped to arctic.
We finished our dinner without talking much. We both knew what would happen next. I could either keep letting my lizard brain get in the way and freeze my ass off all night or get over my shit and share body heat with Aeron.
I was tired of this. He swore he would tell me everything when I met all of his team, and I believed him. Sure, he omitted the truth like what really happened at the gate, and he kept trying to decide what I was ready to hear, but at the rate I was having shit flung at me, it might eventually get to be too much. Maybe Aeron would answer one of my questions, and I would totally lose it. I mean, he’d told me some pretty fucked up shit so far. I needed to stop getting mad at him.
“Want to use one sleeping bag as a mattress and the other as a blanket?”
I only had to ask, and Aeron set to work, making it happen. There wasn’t room for pillows in the saddlebags, so we used rolled up shirts, but this could work. My entire body was frigid cold, and that sleeping bag looked warm. The one he spread out on the tent floor gave a little padding, but it would do. I yanked the other sleeping bag up to my neck and tried to get warm. I felt Aeron climb in behind me, but he kept his distance because I just told him I wasn’t ready for this.
I was sure I was giving the man whiplash with my mood swings. I was expecting some snarky comments back.
“Can you hold me?”
Aeron spooned my back and nuzzled my neck.
“I was hoping you would ask. I’ll always try to get you whatever you ask for.”
And he had. Except for answers to some of my questions. I didn’t want to think about that. I just needed to accept that Aeron gave his word that I would eventually have all the answers. I turned in his arms and gazed into those silver eyes of his. Aeron had shaved his face with this massive pocket knife when we had water to spare, but right now, he had blond stubble on his chin. I caressed his cheek.
“I’m sorry. I’m being a brat. I know you’re doing the best you can, it’s just really frustrating that I can’t remember. I remembered everything about Miss Mabel when I saw her face. I got bits and pieces in my apartment, but I still don’t remember why I painted those paintings or why they made me agree to meet with you.”
“You trusted Leif and me by then. You hadn’t confided in us about what he did to you when you were a child, but we talked about everything else. Leif always says the first thing that pops into his head. He finally just told you that we knew who your father was and that he was up to something. It spooked you, and you disappeared for a week. You didn’t come to the chatroom, and you wouldn’t text or call. You called both of us on three-way a week later to say you were coming because you painted something confirming he was up to something big.”
“And the sex painting in my bedroom?”
“I had to get embarrassed when Mabel presented that to me after she beat me with her broom. She—”
I interrupted him. I wanted to remember what we talked about so severely, and yes, I wanted to do this again ever since Aeron did it the first time. I tangled my hands in his silky hair and pulled him in for a kiss. Aeron let out a little growl and rolled me on my back. I dug my nails in his neck and wrapped my legs around his waist. Aeron was nibbling on my neck when we heard the jangle of hubcaps.
Aeron buried his face in my neck.
“To be continued,” he whispered.
He placed his finger over my lips to be totally quiet. He didn’t need to tell me. It could either be torched Rage Heads or humans wanting to slit our throats out there. That was when I heard it. They weren’t even trying to be quiet. It was humans outside our tent.
Aeron grabbed his sword and went charging out of the tent. I could hear him trying to talk to them, telling them we didn’t want any trouble. I didn’t care what he would say later, I grabbed Smurfette and joined him.
There were five men wearing masks at the front of our tent. They didn’t speak English, and I only spoke a little Spanish. I got the gist of what they were saying. They would let Aeron keep his tent and supplies if he gave them me to play with. That wasn’t happening. I’d bash their brains in myself. It didn’t look like they had any flaming tequila bottles to throw at us. They had machetes and knives.
Three of the men moved in on Aeron, and the other two tried to grab me. Bashing an unarmed Rage Head’s brains in was easy, but fighting two men with machetes was a little complicated. It turned out one of them spoke English.
“Hello, sexy. Why don’t you put that bat down? I’d hate to scar up that pretty face.”
I didn’t know the first thing about fighting someone with a machete, but I knew I wasn’t getting kidnapped and raped tonight. I swung hard at the man closest to me. I think I surprised him. He wasn’t expecting me to fight back. Smurfette connected with his hand, and his machete when clattering away.
