Knock, knock.
I sat up, rigid, the copy of Gulliver’s Travels clenched tight in my hands.
Jamie made it to the door of our room first, and peered out the peephole, her Beretta in one hand. In the aftermath of the elections, New Wilderness had settled down to an unexpected calm, but for those of us who knew, there could still be a danger lurking within our midst that had yet to be unmasked.
Maybe the real spy got away already? Maybe it was some nobody, and they ran off into the night during the raid? Just as long as its not . . .
Both her slender shoulders relaxed, and Jamie threw the door open with a grin. “All hail, the new generalissimo!”
Standing in the doorway, Chris rolled his eyes at her. “Ha, ha, very funny. Don’t forget, this whole thing was your idea, Lansen. You don’t get to tease me.”
Hunched behind my book, I tried not to make it obvious that my eyes roamed over him. Chris wore a simple t-shirt with a flannel long sleeve over top, and a light-wash pair of jeans belted at the waist in a snug way that made my brain spin. It was almost unfair that he could just waltz in here, looking like that, while I sat in my bed with shorts and a T-shirt on, my damp hair flopped over one shoulder in an uncombed mess.
“Of course it was my idea.” Jamie made a haughty shrug of her shoulder and threw me a wink as she went back to her desk. “But I’m still gonna tease you, Dekker. It’ll keep you humble.”
Chris’s eyes flicked to me, and I didn’t duck behind my book in time. “Hannah, you got a moment?”
Oh man.
My cheeks flooded with heat, but I put the book down, and coughed. “Yeah. Give me a sec, I’ll be right out.”
His face slipped, as if my timid response hadn’t been quite what he expected, but Chris dutifully turned and went back out into the hall, closing the door behind him.
From where she leaned against her desk, arms crossed, Jamie watched me with curious, but somewhat concerned eyes. “Well, that was decidedly less peppy than I would have thought. Everything okay?”
“Uh huh.” I stuck my feet into my sneakers, and tried to keep my hands from shaking as I ran a brush through my hair. How could I still be this nervous around him? If Chris truly was a spy, he could have done something by now to eliminate me or the others, and who could have stopped him? Did I honestly think he was a threat, or was this more subconscious stalling because I was too afraid to let someone get close enough to see the real me?
How can I be sure of anything anymore?
Jamie didn’t miss my uncertain tone, and her sandy eyebrows arched higher on her forehead. “Really? If something’s bothering you, I can tell him off. You don’t have to go out there.”
“I’m fine, Jamie.” I did my best to smile, even though a shiver racked me, more of anxiety than anything else. “I’ll be back in a little while.”
With that I paced to the door and slid out into the hallway.
Chris looked up from where he stood against the opposite wall, hands in his pockets, scuffing at the carpet with the toe of his boot. “Hi. I, um . . . h-how are you?”
Redness tinged his cheeks, and I fought the desperate urge to smile. He was cute when flustered, like a bashful little boy still lived inside the handsome man who put my mind into a tailspin every time he looked my way. I had to keep a level head about this, had to be smart, mature, sensible. If Chris was a spy, then I might be the only one in New Wilderness who could expose him, and that required being impartial. All the same, I couldn’t draw myself away from those eyes, and the warmth inside flared in happy bursts at his charming smile.
Oh Chris . . . why did we have to get tangled up in this? Why couldn’t we have met in a coffee shop, or a library, or a movie theatre? Why here, in a war, with neither of us sure if we can trust the other?
Dropping my eyes to the floor, I shuffled on my feet. “I’m good. Yourself?”
“Tired.” He chuckled and rubbed at the back of his head. “I shook enough hands to build the pyramids tonight. I have a feeling most of them won’t like me half as much in the next few months.”
I nibbled on my lip and turned his words over in my head. Was that some kind of Freudian slip, an admission of guilt? Or was I overthinking things once again, to my own detriment?
If he really is the traitor, then the smart thing to do would be to get my gun and . . . no, no way. I’m not like Carter. I won’t do that.
“So,” Chris elbowed the air in the direction of the hallway. “I still have your camera if you want it.”
I swallowed a lump of embarrassment. As soon as those rockets had soared into the sky, I’d left him standing there on the back deck, shoved Chris’s gift right back into his hands and ran without so much as a ‘thank you’. Sure, it had been a matter of life-and-death, but I could at least have taken the camera with me, or better yet, grabbed Chris’s hand and pulled him along. How rude had that been, how selfish, and only now did it occur to me what that must have implied to Chris, given that he’d watched me read his note.
“Sorry about that.” Wrapping both arms around myself, I wished I’d brought a long-sleeve shirt, the air-conditioning of the lodge more than adequate for the dying throes of September. “I didn’t mean to just run off. I tried to find you later, but everything was just so . . .”
“Crazy?” He made a weary half smile that I felt, both of us exhausted from the day’s ordeal.
“Yeah.”
Chris seemed to ponder that for a moment, then waved for me to follow him like we were back on patrol. “Well, my place is on the third floor. Hope you don’t mind one more climb up those stairs for the day.”
We padded alongside each other down the soft carpet of the corridor, the building quiet save for a few distant voices of cleaners in the ransacked ball room, or various other tenants behind their room doors. With the elections over, and the same officials back in their usual places, (with the exception of Chris as a newcomer) much of the tension had dialed itself back between the citizens of our tiny city-state. It was the first time in days that I should have been able to fully relax, enclosed within the protected walls of New Wilderness, the impending doom of civil war averted, the beacon no longer in my possession. However, I couldn’t appreciate any of that for the fact that the boy next to me could be a hidden enemy . . . and yet I found myself attracted to him by an inescapable pull that threatened to drive me insane.
On the third floor, we paced down a corridor similar to the one Jamie and I lived on, with doors numbered in the 30’s and 40’s. As we passed one door, a muffled sound caught my attention, a series of short, grunted cries that repeated over and over in time with some odd wooden thumping.
What the heck is going on in there?
At my puzzled look, Chris’s face contorted into an amused snicker, and he shook his head at the guilty door. “Kendra Smith. One of the original crew here at New Wilderness. Nice girl, and a really good driver, which probably explains why she and Sanderson hit it off.”
“Is she okay?” I couldn’t understand his callous take on what sounded like someone chronically short of breath.
Chris’s eyes twinkled, and he fixed me with a knowing look. “Well, since she’s had Ethan in there for about an hour now, I’d say she’s doing just fine. That poor headboard might need rescuing, but I’m not going in there after it.”
It struck me just what he meant, and I sheepishly darted after him down the hall, the amorous moans fading in the background. Despite my accidental walk-ins on Matt and Carla, I had as much sexual experience as a ream of printing paper, and the fact that I’d openly displayed that for Chris made me want to melt in humiliation. It occurred to me that we were going to Chris’s room to retrieve my erstwhile gift, and any other girl might see this as an opportunity to rough up some unfortunate bedstead. For me though, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat self-conscious.
The only thing I looked mildly sexy in was that dress, and thanks to ELSAR it’s basically dish-rag material now.
“Here we are.” Chris worked a key in door 42 and paused to throw me an apologetic wince. “Fair warning, I tried to tidy the place up, but didn’t have much time, so . . . yeah, brace yourself.”
That made me grin, a nice shot of normalcy in this ocean of the unexplored. “Dirty laundry isn’t going to scare me off.”
“Oh, I wasn’t talking about that.” Chris quipped with dry wit as he held the door open for me.
Part of me had expected a drab environment with heavy metal paraphernalia, maybe a poster of some beautiful girl in a bikini, or a muscle car calendar. The suspicious side of me waited for an ambush of hidden ELSAR agents in balaclavas, or a super-spy display with some kind of advanced radar screen, or a homemade bomb with a timer rigged to explode. At the very least, I readied for some kind of simple no-frills dwelling that would fit the rugged mystique of the guy who had survived multiple nights in the mutant-ridden wilderness all by himself.
Instead, I found my breath stolen from my lungs by a gasp of surprise.
Like the room I shared with Jamie, it was done in knotty pine, but the carpet had been covered by a gorgeous medieval pattern throw rug that looked like it came right out of some fancy magazine, and pewter candlesticks held real wax candles in places around the room. The beds and desks on either side were parallel opposites, one with a cardboard box full of little soldier figurines on the desk at its base, the other with a guitar propped in the corner beside an old-fashioned phonograph. It smelled of sawdust and cocoa in the room, an inviting scent that made me want to curl up in a blanket and take a nap. But the real shock came in the form of wall-to-wall bookshelves that looked as if they’ve been cobbled together from wood scraps, so full of novels that they sagged in places, more stacked in piles on the floor when shelf space ran out. Every topic, from science fiction to horror, historical drama to comedy, or mystery to romance adorned the miniature archive, and as someone who gobbled books as a kid, it was like a palace.
“Like I said, it’s kind of a mess.” Chris shut the door behind us and stood beside me with his hands in his pockets. “I definitely have some organizing to do tomorrow.”
Such messes we should all have.
“It’s incredible.” I walked around to examine the various columns of romance books, surprised to find so many in a boy’s room. “How did you get all these?”
Chris ran an affectionate hand over a corner of the nearby bookshelf. “I found a big vacation house some old couple had built on a patrol a while back. They were long gone of course, but they had mountains of books, along with the rub and candelabras. Seemed a shame to leave it all to rot, and I figured they weren’t coming back for it, so I got my roommate to help me load our truck full.”
Curious enough to be coy, I flicked my eyes between the two beds. “So are you the guitar guy, or the miniature orcs-with-swords guy?”
He paused, and Chris’s cheeks shaded crimson.
No way.
I giggled, too surprised to let the anxious thoughts from earlier pull me down. “Oh my gosh.”
“Let me explain . . .” He raised his hands to slow me down, but I had to admit, I now understood why Jamie loved teasing him so much. With that adorable shade of scarlet on his face, his stuttered protests, and the disarming awkwardness, Chris took on a sweet demeanor that ignited a blaze in my heart.
“You’re a nerd?” I shook my head with a mischievous smile and picked up one of the little figurines to study its precise hand-painted lines. “Wow. Did not see that one coming. I like the little army guys though, they’re cute.”
Chris put both hands on his narrow hips in mock disapproval of my words, though I could see in his gleaming eyes the pride he had for his handiwork. “Cute? My dear lady, if you only knew of the mighty battles the Dregorat Guard fought against the Sveric Orcs, you would not laugh.”
My eyebrows rose higher, and I dared to press the issue, basking in this strange form of flirting that I’d stumbled into, and somehow found myself good at. “I’ve never heard of those places. Is that a game, or did you make those up?”
“I, um . . . I may have created a storyline once we got done casting the pieces in the armory. And drew some maps. And made a few scale models in paper mâché.” Chris tried to lean against a bookshelf to look cool, only for the entire tower to wobble, and a few books to fall almost on his head. He had to juggle them just to keep the shelf from falling, and it was so out of character for him, that I covered my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.
Who knew clumsy could be attractive?
I caught a stray book, and helped him prop the shelf back up, my heart skipping a beat at the way he looked at me, those sky-blue eyes like shining stars in the dim glow of Chris’s desk lamp. “So that’s what the mysterious Christopher Dekker does in his spare time, huh? Does your roommate play nerdy games too?”
Chris’s face rippled with a pained wince, and he gestured to the simpler bed with the phonograph. “He used to. Darren was the one who helped carry most of the books back.”
Darren. His face flashed through my mind, along with his broken body as the bear flung it away into the dark trees like a used Kleenex. All this time, I’d been worried about Jamie, Chris, and myself, but it had never occurred to me that Chris might have a roommate too, a friend like Jamie was for me, and how he would have felt when he died. It chipped away some of the suspicion that I’d shrouded around Chris lately, and sank more guilt into my chest for how I’d been treating him.
Ashamed of myself, I hung my head, and sorted a stack of books in my arms for something to distract me. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”
“Hey, come on, don’t do that.” Chris patted me on the arm and slid the books back into something like an orderly pile. “You didn’t know. Besides, the bear had it out for all of us. Maybe if I’d been quicker on the gun . . . but it doesn’t matter now.”
He strode to a squat dresser at the head of his bed and retrieved a familiar brown leather case.
Taking the camera put a weight back on my shoulders, and I sighed, wishing I didn’t have to leave. These few moments with Chris had restored some of my hope that perhaps he was innocent in all of this, that maybe I had a chance, that maybe everything wouldn’t explode into some awful death-match conflict where one side annihilated the other.
Even if he rambled for hours about his make-believe fantasy world, I’d listen.
I cleared my throat, desperate for our conversation to continue. “So, I get the idea of the little army dudes, but why so many? I mean, no offense, but there’s, like, a hundred in that box alone.”
At that, Chris perked up, and strode to his desk to show me a drawer replete with hand tools, paint brushes, and sandpaper. “Christmas is coming. We’ve got dozens of kids here, and nowhere to buy toys from. I figure if I can make enough by December, each kid could have a set, and their parents won’t have to spend the extra cartridges in the market.”
My heart turned to mush inside my chest, and I stared at him. “You’d do all that for free?”
“It’s not charity if it comes with a price tag.” He chuckled at the question, and Chris slid past me to sweep both arms at the books around the room, his eyes alight in a passion that burned brighter than when he’d given his speech at the Assembly. “All this is going too. I got the green light from Sean to turn the old storage room in the visitor’s center into a public library. Kids can borrow for free, adults for one cartridge a book. What we make can go to paying a teacher, so we can set up a school. Then, maybe we can get together enough instruments for a music program and . . . what?”
Jeez Hannah, if you stare any harder, you’ll start drooling.
I flushed and looked down at my shoes. My world had been upended once again. In the span of ten minutes, I’d gone from wondering if I should shoot Chris, to wanting to help him build a new society out of his room. I still didn’t know if I could fully trust him . . . but I wanted to try.
Even if it meant being vulnerable.
Even if it meant letting him get close.
“Jamie was right.” I hefted the camera in my arms. “You’re going to be good at this government stuff. Maybe someday, you’ll be running this place.”
He stepped closer, and something else took over Chris’s handsome features, a tentative yearning that sent my already frazzled brain into overdrive. “That’s not what I want.”
“Oh?” Nervousness tightened in my throat, but I refused to look away from him, the camera clutched to my chest. “Then, what?”
Chris stopped mere inches from me, the two of us so close I could have leaned forward and touched him. Heavy silence cloaked the air, and my pulse throbbed in my ears.
He searched my face, as if I were some kind of map that could reveal long lost treasure. “Look, if I was too forward earlier, I apologize. But I meant what I wrote. You’re one of the smartest, kindest, bravest people I know. If it hadn’t been for you, both Jamie and I never would have made it back. Whether you think so or not, you’re beautiful, inside and out, so . . . my offer still stands.”
There is no way this is real.
My blood surged, my chest burned with a renewed fire, and butterflies exploded in my stomach. I waited for the punchline, the gotcha-moment, but none came. I was the skinny girl from Louisville, a nobody, the camera tripod with legs. This kind of thing never happened to people like me, and yet somehow, I’d been given a second chance. On the precipice of this moment, staring out into a vast unknown beyond the lonely darkness of my old life, every voice inside scrambled to hold me back, from the shaming criticisms of my looks to the angry hiss of Carter’s warning in my memory.
In spite of them all, a new longing called me forward, one I couldn’t hold back from as the tide of joy welled up inside like a fountain.
“Dinner sounds great.” I sniffled, my smile so wide it hurt.
Chris’s face lit up with a stunned, but happy grin. “Really?”
“Really.” Ready to burst in a sensation I didn’t know was possible, I beamed up at him, soaked in his gaze, and fought the wonderful emotions that threatened to spill over my face. “Coffee, dinner, anything. Anywhere you want to go.”
“Awesome.” Chris slid a hand into mine and ran his thumb over my knuckles to pour warmth down my spine. “But there is one more thing I want.”
What sort of thing?
A momentary spike of unease went through me, and my eyes slid toward his bed.
Chris’s eyes widened, and he shook his head, mortified. “No, no, no, that’s not what I—”
“It’s fine.” I breathed a sigh of relief at his reaction and tried not to grimace at the fiery trepidation on my cheeks. “I’m just not used to all this. So, if it’s not that, then . . ?”
He paced to the phonograph and pulled a big vinyl record from a paper sleeve, setting it on the turnstile. Placing the needle on the fine rings of the black disc, Chris switched it on, and turned back to me with a pearly smile.
“I was hoping to ask at the party, but I never worked up the nerve. Would you like to dance?”
My glee returned, and I set aside the camera with a modest shrug. “I only know the cha-cha-slide.”
“And no one does it better.” Chris took my hand again and led me out onto the center of the throw rug, draping his flannel shirt over my shoulders to ward off the crisp air-conditioning. “My ouma taught me this one, it’s not hard. It’s meant to be slow, so we can make a few mistakes.”
Daring to try, I let him press one hand into mine, the other around my waist, his palm on the small of my back. My other hand went on his forearm, and something about the old-fashioned position felt right, like we were two marionettes made to dangle from the same strings.
Our feet fumbled in the pattern of steps, mine more so than his, but over time we got used to the rhythm, as if our bodies were conjoined at the fingertips. Chris’s calloused hand on my back made warmth pool in my core, and I relished how close his embrace brought us. The song that played was a classical piece, with violins and cellos that made me think of a majestic tree growing in some sunny garden far away. I’d never been one for such music before, but in that moment it fit perfectly, and we spun like sprockets in a clock, round and round on that old rug.
At some point, I rested my head on his shoulder, and Chris’s hand slid out of mine so he could wrap both arms around me, holding me tight to his chest. I pulled my arms in, spread my fingers on the wall of satin-covered-steel that was his torso, and shut my eyes with a blissful smile. Of all my imaginings, all my nights spent alone, all the time I’d dreamed of a future someone in my life, this blew everything out of the water. He smelled so good, like the chocolate stand from the state fair, and his soft flannel shirt brushed my skin to send delighted shivers down my spine.
I want to die this way. Just the two of us, happy, old, and gray. I don’t need anything else.
With a happy sigh, I raised my head just as he lowered his, and our chins bumped into each other.
We both turned the color of fire-engines, but our eyes locked, and I found myself stuck, unable to move. He was right there, so close. On the inside, I dreaded taking such a leap so soon, but a part of me had been awoken that had never seen the light of day before, and I didn’t want to deny it.
Shaking, I slid my hands up around his face, and tilted his head down to mine.
Chris crushed me in his arms, and one hand burrowed into my hair in a gentle yet aggressive tug that lit an inferno in my skull.
His lips met mine in a melding of rose-petal softness and brought my trembling to a halt.
Deep down in my core, the warmth turned from sharp campfire smolders to gooey erupting lava, a flaming desire that coursed through every part of me from head to toe.
Wow.
With both eyes shut, I let the tears roll down my face, my heart beating in a new sequence, everything else fading away. I didn’t care about the mutants outside the walls, or how far I was from Louisville, or what might come tomorrow. I didn’t care about Carter’s suspicions of Chris, or the conflict between him and Jamie. In that moment, enraptured in his arms, with his lips on mine, all I cared about was the blue-eyed boy who had pulled me from the moldy heap of shoes, and how he held me like I was the only person left in the world.
The record player sang to a stop, but we remained on that rug, locked together, hearts beating in sync. Outside, the nocturnal cries of our primitive new world rose on the night air, with fresh moonlight streaming in from the balcony doorway. Several adays ago, I’d been a skinny girl, terrified of my own shadow, lost in a gray modern expanse that barely knew my name.
Now I was Hannah the Mutant Killer, a Ranger of the New Wilderness Wildlife Reserve, and for the first time in my life I didn’t want to be anyone else.