LITMIR.BIZ

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the military just stamped on your soul, and that was one of them.

      Another complication.

      “I won’t do anything stupid,” she assured him. “I have no desire to. But I’ll just be alert and keep my eyes out, okay? I can do that while I paint without being obvious.”

      He supposed he was going to have to be content with that. But then he got to thinking about what might have set her off yesterday. If she could figure it out, that could be important. He absolutely hated the possibility that it might happen to her all alone in the woods.

      “What were you thinking about yesterday morning?” he asked.

      “What? Oh, you mean when...it happened?”

      “Yeah. Maybe there was a trigger of some kind.”

      She fell silent long enough for him to wonder if he had offended her. But eventually she spoke, just as they were reaching the outskirts of town.

      “Truthfully? I seem to remember thinking how peaceful it was in the square, and how nice to be able to look at all those blank windows and closed doors and not have to wonder what was behind them.”

      Blank windows and closed doors. “That may have been it,” he remarked. “Think about it.”

      “Perhaps,” she said presently. “It could be. It was a funny way for my thoughts to turn, but then I’m usually busy with something and don’t pay attention. Yesterday I wasn’t busy at all.”

      “I’ll tell you a secret I’ve never told anyone else.” He felt her eyes on him. “When I first got back, I couldn’t stand closed doors even inside my own apartment. It took a while.”

      “Yes,” she answered quietly. “And driving. It was six months before I could drive without seeing everything on the road as a threat.”

      “Yeah. I remember that, too. Once burned and all that.”

      He wheeled the truck into the parking lot at the La-Z-Rest Motel, next to her car. “If you want, pack up enough stuff so you can stay overnight at the cabin. I can show you the way back later. It’s not far from where you were painting, believe it or not.”

      “Thanks, I’ll think about it. Your bosses won’t give you trouble?”

      “Not if I tell her first.”

      He bent across her, getting a whiff of deliciously womanly scents that drove his libido into high gear. Crap. The downside of spending so much time by himself was a certain group of unsatisfied needs. But now was definitely not the time.

      He pulled a radio out and handed it to her. “You’ve probably used these before.”

      She looked it over. “It’s very similar to one I had in the army.”

      “It’s almost identical. The government tends to buy big lots.” Despite his every resolution and all his good common sense, he couldn’t stop himself from touching the back of her hand and then squeezing her shoulder. “Keep in touch. I want to know where you are, okay?”

      For an instant he saw a flash of rebellion in her face, but it vanished quickly. Evidently, she understood the sense in his request. “Will do.”

      He sat with his motor idling while he watched her disappear into her motel room.

      Trouble, he thought. For the first time he wondered who was going to give him the most: Sky or Buddy.

      Then he put the truck in gear and backed out. Time to get to work.

      * * *

      Buddy watched Cap’s three guys unload nonperishable food from two box trucks into his beat-up barn. The barn would serve for now, until they finished the new cabin and its underground cellars.

      What almost nobody knew was that beneath Buddy’s own cabin, over the years he’d built an underground bunker for his family. Nothing fancy, but bit by bit he’d strengthened it until it could stand against anything but a direct nuclear attack, not that he was expecting one of those here on his remote mountain.

      But now Cap and his guys were joining Buddy, and that meant more food and necessarily a bigger bunker, or at least an additional one. Buddy didn’t mind. He kinda liked the way Cap thought, and he liked the control Cap exerted over his men, as he called them. They jumped to do what he said like good soldiers.

      But it also gave Buddy a chance to impress Cap, because building underground on the side of a mountain had certain problems. Buddy knew how to deal with them, and Cap didn’t. So Buddy might not have an army of his own, but he was an expert in some things. That meant Cap needed him.

      As the thought drifted across Buddy’s mind, he felt a quiver of unease. It had seemed like such a good idea to join forces with Cap and his group. It helped with a lot of things, like the guns, the ammo, the expense, even the food.

      But on the other hand, from time to time it occurred to Buddy that Cap could just take over. That he could decide to run the show, maybe even get rid of Buddy and his family.

      Each time he had the thought, though, Buddy told himself he was being too paranoid. Cap had never done anything even to hint that his thoughts ran that way. Hell, if that’s what he wanted, he could have taken over already. Instead he was building an additional bunker and cabin, and bringing in plenty of supplies of his own, not using up Buddy’s.

      So no reason to regard Cap with suspicion. He had no reason not to think the guy was a man of his word.

      Preppers had to stick together, after all. If they started turning on each other, no way they’d survive the coming apocalypse.

      Nobody was really sure what form that apocalypse would take. Sometimes he and his wife and now Cap would sit around in the evening and talk about all the possibilities, each worse than the next. Cap seemed to lean toward revolution, and Buddy considered that a definite possibility.

      He only got edgy when Cap kind of hinted that maybe they should just go ahead and get the ball rolling. But every time he said something like that, Cap would then laugh as if he were making a joke.

      The guy had a weird sense of humor.

      The three men had just finished carrying the last boxes of MREs into the barn when the sound of an approaching engine reached them. While the trees muffled noises for the most part, the facing hills had a contradictory effect, bouncing sounds back this way.

      “Pull those trucks behind the barn,” Cap barked at his guys. “Make yourselves invisible.”

      The three guys hopped to. Buddy enjoyed that.

      Cap looked at him. “You expecting somebody?”

      “No.”

      “What about that ranger?”

      “Craig? He never comes from the county road. Ever. Besides, this is my property. The Forest Service stays off it.”

      Cap nodded. He felt the sling of the AR-15 hanging over his shoulder. Buddy found it strange that the guy was never more than six inches from his gun, especially out here where there was damn all to be worried about most of the time, but that was Cap.

      “Maybe I should get out of sight,” Cap said.

      “Naw. You’re my friend. But you might stash the rifle until we know what’s going on. For all I know it’s a UPS delivery.” That was a joke, because UPS dropped his stuff in town with a friend willing to hold them for him. He didn’t get deliveries out here.

      Joke or not, it got Cap to put his rifle out of sight. Buddy couldn’t say why that relieved him, but he knew he wasn’t ready to be looking for trouble. Talking to that painter at Cap’s prompting had brought him a lot more attention than he really wanted.

      The vehicle that eventually rounded the final bend of his driveway and emerged from the trees was a sheriff’s SUV. Buddy tensed immediately. The deputies stopped by occasionally, but rarely. Usually neighborly type calls to see if he needed anything.

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