“We better get back down there.” He always did this. When the memories came, he always slipped into business mode. Take care of business and work and stop using your brain. It was the only thing that helped. “I’m sure Alec and Lana have about forty jobs for us.”
“That have to be done today,” Trina added. “Today! Or the world will end!”
She smiled, and that helped lighten things up. At least a little.
“You can read more of your boring book later.” He climbed to his feet, pulling her up along with him. Then they set off down the mountain path, heading for the makeshift village they called home.
The smells hit Mark first. It was always that way when going to the Central Shack. Rotting undergrowth, cooking meat, pine sap. All laced with that scent of burning that defined the world after the sun flares. Not unpleasant, really, just haunting.
He and Trina wound their way past the crooked and seemingly slapped-together buildings of the settlement. Most of the buildings on this side of the camp had been put up in the early months, before they’d found people who’d been architects and contractors and put them in charge. Huts made of tree trunks and mud and bristles of pine needles. Empty gaps for windows and oddly shaped doorways. In some spots there were nothing but holes in the ground, the bottom lined with plastic sheets, a few logs lashed together to cover it when the rains came. It was a far cry from the towering skyscrapers and concrete landscape of where he’d grown up.
Alec greeted Mark and Trina with a grunt when they walked through the lopsided doorway in the Central Shack’s log structure. Before they could say hello, Lana came marching briskly up to them. A stout woman with black hair that was always pulled tightly into a bun, she’d been a nurse in the army and was younger than Alec, but older than Mark’s parents—she and Alec had been together when Mark had met them in the tunnels below New York City. Back then, they’d both worked for the defense department. Alec was her boss; they’d been on their way to a meeting of some sort that day. Before everything changed.
“And where have you two been?” Lana asked when she came to a stop just a few inches from Mark’s face. “We were supposed to start at dawn today, head out to the southern valley and scout for another branch location. A few more weeks of this overcrowding and I might get snippy.”
“Good morning,” Mark said in response. “You seem chipper today.”
She smiled at that; Mark had known she would. “I do tend to get straight to business sometimes, don’t I? Though I have a lot of wiggle room before I get as grumpy as Alec.”
“The sarge? Yeah, you’re right.”
On cue, the old bear grunted.
“Sorry about being late,” Trina said. “I’d make up a great excuse, but honesty’s the best policy. Mark made me go up to the stream and we … you know.”
It took a lot to surprise Mark these days, even more to make him blush, but Trina had the ability to do both. He stammered as Lana rolled her eyes.
“Oh, spare me.” Lana waved and added, “Now go grab some breakfast if you haven’t already and let’s get packed and marching. I want to be back within a week.”
A week out in the wilderness, seeing new things, getting some fresher air … it all sounded great to Mark, lifting his spirits out of the hole into which they’d fallen earlier. He swore to keep his mind on the present while they traveled and just try to enjoy the hike.
“Have you seen Darnell and the Toad?” Trina asked. “What about Misty?”
“The Three Stooges?” Alec asked, followed by a bark of a laugh. The man thought the weirdest things were funny. “At least they remembered the plan. Already eaten, gone to pack. Should be back in a jiffy.”
Mark and Trina were halfway through their pancakes and deer sausage when they heard the familiar sound of the other three friends they’d picked up in the tunnels of New York.
“Take that off your head!” came a whiny voice, right before a teenage boy appeared at the door with a pair of underwear pulled over his brown hair like a hat. Darnell. Mark was convinced the kid had never taken a thing seriously in his entire life. Even when the sun had been trying to boil him alive a year past, he seemed to be ready with a joke.
“But I like it!” he was saying as he entered the Shack. “Helps keep my hair in place and protects me from the elements. Two for the price of one!”
A girl walked in after him, tall and thin with long red hair, just a little younger than Mark. They called her Misty, though she’d never told them whether that was her real name. She was looking at Darnell with an expression of half disgust and half amusement. The Toad—short and squat, as his nickname implied—bounded in and pushed his way past her, grabbing for the undies atop Darnell’s head.