Chapter 7
7
GAGE
Living out in California, the biggest natural disaster threat I generally encountered was an earthquake. Sometimes, we had wildfires. Due to the lack of humidity on the West Coast, once the earth went dry, flames took root.
In Australia, we would get tropical cyclones every once in a while. Some areas, primarily in the northwest, frequently had bad storms with tornadoes interspersed between the heavy rains, winds, and lightning.
Yet, I’d faced those in a house or a military bunker.
However, with as many precarious situations as I’d found myself in over the years, it was safe to say that it was my first time weathering a major thunderstorm, while hunkered in a camper, with a baby tucked against me who screamed whenever thunder slapped.
“I’m sorry, love,” I whispered, smoothing Thandie’s hair. “It’ll pass.”
It was a fact of life; storms moved, so this one eventually had to pass, but my biggest concern was whether it would pass without destroying our makeshift home.
“What if Uncle Gage told you a story?”
In truth, I had precisely zero stories to tell.
Everything I’d known, from folklore to fairy tales, disappeared. All I could grant Thandie was glimpses of how things were before because she would never see the world I’d grown up in. Then, not only did I lose her mother, but I was also doing a shit job of keeping us out of any further hell than we’d already encountered.
There were times when I’d found myself wondering what the point of it all was. If the world as we knew it was over, what purpose was there in trying to continue? Wouldn’t the fight to stay alive invariably end in my death anyhow? And in, quite possibly, a gruesome manner?
However, something worth living for, at least for Thandie and Ari, existed on the other side of this. My job was to help them make it to that world and hope Julien would be there to welcome them into it.
“Once upon a time, there was a…” I searched every corner of my mind for a woodland creature, “frog.”
Thunder rocked the sky.
Thandie continued to wail.
“This frog was a special frog. This frog was from a faraway place on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. A place where no man had dared to travel. You see, this faraway place, this island, was protected by a…magic spell.”
Thandie buried her face against my chest.
“I know, I know. Uncle Gage sucks at fairy tales.”
Something knocked against the camper’s exterior wall. The sound brought Thandie’s wailing to a halt, and her tiny arms latched on to me as best as they could.
“It’s all right,” I said, hoping the tone of my voice instead would be reassuring for her, considering the story was a failure from the start. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’ve got...”
Light flickered in one of the windows.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I leaped to my feet and quickly wrapped Thandie against my midsection, making sure to cover as much of her body as possible. If I could see actual flames and smell the cloying scent of smoke and curling tree bark in the air, this fire was already too damn close.
I gathered the necessities—the formula and medicine the doctor shared with us—my duffel bag and something to drape over Thandie’s head. Then, after mumbling a quick, useless prayer, I dashed out into the rain.
For shits and giggles, the universe rewarded us with a moonless night sky, the clouds fat with wispy tails that funneled toward the ground. The rain came down in sheets as thick as waterfalls, and I positioned the heaviest piece of fabric I’d grabbed—a waterproof Anorak jacket we’d had since Virginia—over Thandie’s head.
I didn’t know where to go.
I didn’t know where we could go.
Starting for the encampment the doctor had mentioned seemed like our only option, but setting out tonight would be foolish. We had to find somewhere to hunker down, and there was a neighborhood close by that I believed I could get us to before we were washed away. At least one of the multi-car garages lining the abandoned street had to be empty.
I lifted a corner of the jacket and took a peek at Thandie to make sure she was okay. Gratefully, she was quiet, but as those round eyes stared up at me, I saw all the fear she was too young to express. I saw, in her eyes, that she was asking me to do the very thing I’d failed to do for her mother.
Please, Uncle Gage.
Keep me safe.
“You okay, sweetheart?” I pulled a smile from a deep, deep place, my voice rising above the noisy rainfall.
She blinked.
Then, she set her head on my chest.
I lowered the heavy fabric again, situating it so that I didn’t turn her into a sausage wrapped in an L.L. Bean casing.
I’d barely made it thirty yards into the woods when strong fingers gripped my shoulder and jerked me backward. Shrugging from the hold, I spun around and came face to face with ashen skin. The once-human creature snarled and snorted, its mouth wide open, emitting an odor that closely resembled decomposing human flesh. Then, it sniffed, and its hollow eyes lowered in Thandie’s direction.
“Try it,” I said, reaching for my knife. “I fucking dare you.”
Suddenly, it went still.
I went from raising my arm, ready to sink a knife into its skull, to shielding Thandie from chunks of tissue and fluid. Brain matter, if one could call it that, splattered my skin and clothing, but with how heavy the rain came down, it immediately washed away.
The once-human fell to the ground.
Behind it, like velvet curtains being drawn to start a Broadway performance, someone lowered a gun, which highlighted a face tucked beneath a raincoat hood.
A woman’s face.
For a moment, she seemed unreal. As though, if I looked back in the direction of the camper, I would find it engulfed in flames, me and Thandie’s bodies still inside.
She came closer.
I raised the knife again.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” she said. Then, she glanced at the rifle and quickly returned it to her side. “I wasn’t shooting at you. I swear.”
I frowned.
I recognized that voice, this face.
It was dark out, the only light the occasional flash of lightning and the castoff from the flames, which continued to build despite the rain. But I knew that face, and I knew that voice as if I’d heard it many times before, over and over, from as low as a whisper to a loud cry against a quiet night.
“Tayler?”
“Do we...know each other?” she asked. She squinted up at me, and then her gaze fell to the jacket. “Wait, you’re the one I talked to at the clinic, aren’t you? The one with the baby. Thank god I found you. How is the baby? Actually, scratch that. We need to get you two out of this rain.”
She grabbed my wrist.
Like I was being controlled by a magic wand, I went with her until we reached an SUV, and part of me wanted to laugh at the fact that I was following a stranger into a vehicle. Regardless, I slithered onto the cracked leather seats and tossed the wet Anorak onto the floor.
Thandie sneezed.
The doctor climbed onto the seat beside me.
I glanced at the lack of a driver behind the steering wheel. “Are we not going anywhere?”
She rose onto her knees, facing me. “Can I take a look at the baby?”
“Answer the question first.”
“I’m not alone,” she said, tilting her head to try to see Thandie’s face. “I kind of ditched my group, and they won’t be happy when they get back, especially because they told me to stay behind.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No, and it’s good that I didn’t, right? I saved your life.”
I didn’t respond.
She sent me a tiny smile.
When she finally got a full view of Thandie’s face, she softened her voice and cooed with a gentle tenderness that I felt as if I needed myself.
“Hi, baby girl. Hi, sweetheart. Do you mind if I take a look at you? I’m Dr. D, and I’m so glad to see you, my love. You don’t know how happy I am to see you.”
I removed Thandie from the soaked baby wrap but didn’t hand her over. Tayler, her knees brushing the side of my leg, began her examination, and while she examined my niece, I studied her. At the clinic, I didn’t get the chance to fully take her in as I’d been primarily occupied with keeping Thandie hidden.
With the hood lowered, I cemented the image of those long locs framing her face, which moved with each turn of her head. I mentally sketched those stormy eyes that contrasted against her brown skin, both too lovely to belong to someone under the circumstances we were currently facing. For a split second, it made me feel as though the world had been restored at some point, and my dumb ass was the only person who hadn’t gotten the memo.
She was beautiful.
Damned beautiful.
But with the way she handled a gun, I didn’t know if “angel” was the appropriate term to use, even though she’d saved my life.
“Her name’s Thandie,” I said.
“So,” she flicked another look my way, “does Thandie’s daddy have a name? I mean, it’s only fair, right? You remembered mine.”
“Tayler’s an easy name to remember.”
“Tell me yours, and I promise I’ll remember it, easy or not.”
The door opened behind her.
A man, his dark hair plastered to his forehead, stood on the other side, his chest heaving. “Tayler, we found the camper, but we didn’t...” His gaze landed on me. “Who is this?”
“We came looking for a person with a baby,” Tayler said. “And I found a person with a baby.”
The man’s brows dipped. “Tayler, did you leave the truck?”
Two additional men entered the vehicle. One sat in the passenger seat while the other hopped behind the steering wheel. As if finally realizing a storm was raging outside, the dark-haired man groaned, slammed the door, and climbed into the third-row seat behind us.
“Tayler, did you leave?” he asked again.
Tayler pointedly ignored him and looked up at me. Her lips parted, and I heard when she inhaled as if getting ready to say something, but then her hand was on my face. Suddenly, her fingers were tangled between the damp strands of hair that the rain had glued to my forehead.
“You have a scratch here, friend.” She lightly passed her thumb along a scratch I’d picked up on the way back from the clinic. “I’ll take a look at that when we get back.”
I wanted to tell her it was fine, that the scratch was nothing, but if I talked, she would lower that hand. And I really needed her not to lower that hand. Had we more time, I would have spent hours sitting there, more than likely with my eyes closed, letting her touch linger on my skin. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been so starved for human affection that I would have preferred it over a substantial meal.
“So, you didn’t answer my question,” she said, her voice low.
“I forgot what it was.”
“Your name.”
“Oh. Gage.”
Her brows rose. “Gage? As in ‘gauge’? Was that what she meant? Gage, were you traveling with anybody? Say a Black woman with blond hair?”
My heart stopped in my chest. “Ari? You found Ari? Is she okay?”
“She’s with us. I’ve been taking care of her, and I promise to do everything I can to make sure she pulls through. She has to see this beautiful little girl grow up.”
She stroked Thandie’s cheek.
Thandie offered her a wispy, reluctant smile.
The driver started the SUV and ambled out of the woods. Once we reached the road, I allowed Tayler to lift Thandie off my lap. Thandie, apparently not ready to be away from me, started to cry, so I took her back into my arms and repeatedly kissed the top of her head.
“You hear that, baby girl? Mommy’s alive, and we’re going to see her.”
I snuggled her close, and I was pretty sure that, had it not been for my present company, I would have shed a tear or two.