Caspar’s grandfather and his friend based the tubes on the subs they spent time on in their Navy days. Disaster preppers before it was cool. They were built for shit like this. This is how they’ve survived massive storms for years unscathed. Now, we’ve got a good start on this fucking apocalypse.
“At least there are no zombies,” she said, and then smiled. “I can already tell that this place is as good as the D.C. bunkers. And the Camp David ones.”
Is that where you were?
“For the past year, yes. I only went with Charlie on a goodwill trip—my first one. That’s where those men took me.” She swallowed hard and tried to get me to believe her. Whatever the real story, I did believe that the LoV had dragged her on a hell of a trip from D.C. to here. Made it so she and Charlie couldn’t’ve been found easily.
But the LoV and Keller would be headed this way soon. It’d be the first place I’d look.
“What are you going to do if they come here?” she asked me.
Tell them they can’t have you.
She blinked at me like I was a fucking lunatic. “You’ll tell them I’m here?”
I held up my hands, shrugged and smiled.
“He plays dumb well. But he’s right—lying’s worse,” Bish told her. “We can’t hide you forever.”
“I’ll stay underground forever if that’s what it takes,” she whispered.
That’s no way to live. Bish translated for me. Defiance has taken you in. You want to go back to your family, you can do that and let them protect you.
“I don’t want that.” She hugged her arms around herself tight and I forced myself not to tell her that I didn’t want it either.
Chapter Fifteen
No one’s gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong
Jessa
The next morning, Bishop and I sat cross-legged on the bed, our knees touching. Intimate for sure, but if I wanted intimacy with Mathias, I’d have the same with Bishop.
Mathias was training some of the Defiance members. There seemed to be a major shift on the compound over the past twenty-four hours, with drills happening left and right.
“This is all because of me, isn’t it?” I’d asked Bishop when he’d first come in to give me a sign language lesson.
“It’s because of Keller,” Bishop had told me. On one of my first nights in the guesthouse, he’d slipped me an America Sign Language cheat sheet, and although I’d been trying to memorize, I knew it would be better if I could actually use the signs. And I didn’t want to screw up in front of Mathias—it was too important to mess up his language.
For an hour, I mirrored Bishop’s signs, trying to get the same speed and accuracy he had. That was, of course, impossible, but I made some good headway with simple words that required only a single sign. And I used the cheat sheet. A lot.
“I feel like I’m running out of time,” I told Bishop, and he shook his head and made me sign it before he’d acknowledge anything I’d said. And that took forever, a painfully slow process.
Then he made me translate his signing. “A lot of people think we should turn you over to Keller and save ourselves. And a lot of people don’t think that’s the right thing to do.”
“Caspar?”
“Caspar needs to make all the hard decisions.”
“And you’re both getting a lot of shit because you brought me here,” I said, and Bishop let that go without signing. “You saved my life.”
“It was his idea,” Bishop said, and then he gave that sly smile and signed something. It took me many long minutes and a lot of his repeating the signs to decipher that he’d said, Mathias is good at saving lives.
“Does he do that a lot? Save people?” I asked. Bishop wouldn’t answer me until I’d signed all of that, which I did.
Bishop nodded, encouraged me to move along, my signing painfully slow. He showed me some shortcuts, more military signs than anything, he’d added, and I watched how fast his hands moved.
Mathias follows signs, he signed.
Saved. Yours. Too, I finally managed to shorthand, my hands starting to feel slightly less clumsy.
I know he told you, he signed back.
Will he be mad if he finds out you’re helping me?
He knows.
I took that for what it was. Because whether or not Mathias was angry about it didn’t bother me. I was kicking down his doors. I didn’t come this far, risk this much, only to let Mathias slip away from me. “Who are you saving?” I asked.
He shifted, an almost imperceptible movement that told me there most definitely was someone. “I plead the Fifth”.
“Then tell me this...whoever she is, does she need saving”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
A couple of hours later, I was lying under the heat lamps in one of the cabins on the compound, in between Mathias and Bishop. I’d mentioned that I missed the sun last week, and since it wouldn’t make an appearance for at least another week, Mathias escorted me to the lamps.
They were as close to the real thing as you could get these days, and with my eyes closed, I could pretend that the heat on my skin was from the real thing and not an artificial light.
A shadow fell across me and I blinked and opened my eyes to see Caspar standing above me.
“Charlie’s asking for you,” Caspar told me. I sat up and tugged at the bottom of my tank top—it was all I wore, along with my underwear, and I’d pulled the tank up under my breasts. I’d lost some inhibitions, but still.
Mathias was signing and I’m pretty sure, judging by his expression and the few signs I caught, he wasn’t happy about Charlie’s request. Bishop propped on his elbows and watched the scene without comment.
Caspar wouldn’t make me talk to Charlie, but I’d put this off too long. “I’ll go see him. It’s probably best if I went in there alone.”
I turned to Mathias and gave him a nod that I hope said, I’ll be all right. He glanced at Caspar then back at me and signed something. Caspar said, “I’ll meet you there.”
“You’ll need pants. And maybe a chastity belt”, Bishop drawled as Mathias shot him the finger and I stifled a laugh as we got up and walked through the compound back to the guesthouse.
“Thanks for that—I hated missing the sun last week,” I said. I hadn’t realized we’d been lying there for almost two hours.
I pulled on pants and a sweatshirt and came back outside to walk between Mathias and Bishop until we met up with Caspar. At that point, Bishop fell back to let Caspar walk beside me. It was a military precision kind of move and suddenly I felt captured.
Maybe Mathias felt my tension, because he took my hand in his, and that was definitely not a military move. He gave my hand a squeeze as we headed into the warehouse.
It was quiet on the compound—most of the bikes were gone—as the MC members had taken advantage of the sunlight earlier and went on long rides. My skin was pleasantly tight from the sun. I’d been using sun lamps at my parents’ compound almost daily and I knew Defiance had some, but I hadn’t thought to ask for them. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d needed the sunlight until the heat hit my skin.
I shivered now as we approached the door to where Charlie was being held. I was burned, because the lamps were stronger than what I was used to, but that wasn’t the only reason for my sudden chill. I’d never realized how cold Charlie left me, because neither of our families ever showed much emotion. Stiff upper lip and all that. I thought that’s the way it was, the way it had to be.