Chapter 2
TWO
“It’s giving prepper,” Jesse said.
His reply was a grunt. Wyatt abandoned him at the tree line to drag a beat-up jon boat down to the lakeshore.
But Jesse couldn’t let this one go. The shit-talking potential was just too good. “Wyatt!” Jesse called after him. “Are you for real a prepper? Do you have a tinfoil hat? Where’s your contrail log?”
“You’re a real fucking smartass, bud,” Wyatt muttered, but Jesse knew that expression by now, the thin-lipped, flat line of Wyatt’s mouth. He was thinking about cracking a smile, trying hard not to laugh.
“C’mon, man.” Jesse nodded to the lake in front of him. It was the weird, cloudy green-blue of meltwater. He threw out an arm, encompassing the island there, the cabin on the island, the literal definition of nowhere. “These are some highkey prepper vibes, my dude. You legitimately can’t deny it.”
Wyatt didn’t. “It’s not mine,” he said instead. “I knew a guy who knew a guy.” The huff that Jesse liked way too much. “But odds are good he kept a contrail log.”
“Yeah? And where’s Mr. Tinfoil Hat now?”
An eyebrow raised in Jesse’s direction.
“Ah,” Jesse said. “Dude’s a zombie.” He let it sit the second it needed to, just to really hang out in the realms of bad taste, then, “Guess he didn’t prep well enough, huh?”
Wyatt made a strangled noise as he scrubbed a hand across his face. “Jesus, Jess.”
“It’s funny ‘cause it’s true.”
“It’s not funny at all.”
“It’s a little funny!”
It was, but Wyatt obviously didn’t appreciate Jesse’s comedic stylings. He scruffed Jesse by the back of the neck and made him hop all the way down to the boat.
The hopping wasn’t optional, not after spending the whole day hiking on a fucked-up ankle. Or maybe more like half the day, until Wyatt got tired of the whining and fireman-carried Jesse instead, up hill and off trail, all the way to his little off-grid prepper-core cabin.
Carried Jesse for hours and miles, with both their packs and all of their supplies, which maybe negated the enforced hopping just a little. But whatever. Wasn’t like Jesse picked the place.
“Careful,” Wyatt murmured. He put his hands on Jesse’s hips, on his waist, steadying Jesse and then lifting him into the boat when it became wobblingly clear that Jesse wasn’t getting in under his own steam.
But Jesse could repay a favor as often as he could be brave. This was his good deed of the year. He helped Wyatt stow their stuff in the empty space between the benches. Not a whole lot of room left when he was done: all their gear and supplies and most of their gas.
They’d emptied out the truck. Left it hidden under a tarp a little ways off the byway, covered over with branches and wilted bracken and the promise of more snow.
Or Wyatt had done that.
Jesse had mostly just sat on a tree stump and watched. Wasn’t like the view was shitty, though.
Still wasn’t.
Wyatt was pretty easy on the eyes for an old guy. The square jaw, the salt and pepper hair, mostly salt, the beard that could only be described as luxurious, the bulk of the guy, jeez.
Big dick too.
Not that Jesse had ever looked, not actively. But fuck, live out the bed of a truck for half a year and you’re gonna catch print. Catch more than print. Catch that wholeass schlong-a-long-a-ding-dong.
“Jess.”
Jesse jolted. He’d been a little mesmerized, maybe, watching the shift of Wyatt’s shoulders under his worn-soft flannel, the flex of muscle as he argued with the boat’s ancient outboard motor. “Huh? What? What’s up?”
Wyatt just stared at Jesse a second, like maybe if he stared long enough he’d be able to figure out what the fuck was going on in Jesse’s head. Wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar look.
“You good, bud?”
“Yeah, man.” Jesse was, mostly. His ankle ached. His cheeks felt a little hot, no reason. “Couldn’t be better. Or, like — could be better. A whole lot better. But, you know, the zombie apocalypse, am I right?”
Jesse absolutely was right, but again, no acknowledgement of Jesse’s comedic timing or his exquisite smarts. Wyatt just raised an eyebrow and got back to work.
So Jesse got back to watching.
And now that he was looking, now that he was really lowkey pondering, it was a good view, no cap.
A package with a package. Wyatt must have scored some crazy pussy in the before times.
Like, crazy crazy. Jesse did okay, but that was mostly just because he could run his mouth in a way women found entertaining, not sleazy.
But Wyatt?
Damn. If Jesse was a chick, and Wyatt was asking? You bet he’d hit it. Of course he would. Crack it too, tap it, slap it. Pick a noun, he’d do it.
But Jesse wasn’t a girl, and Wyatt wasn’t fucking him. Poor guy was stuck fighting his way through the zombie apocalypse instead, wrangling some doofus half his age, hauling that doofus’s loser ass out of one self-induced fuckup after the other.
Jeez, Jesse would have left Jesse at the roadside on day one. But Wyatt? Nah. Never gonna happen. Wyatt didn’t leave anyone behind, not even fuckups like Jesse.
The outboard sputtered into life. “Ready?” Wyatt asked.
“Born ready.”
That got Jesse a snort. “Born something, sure.”
And then the motor wasn’t the only thing sputtering. “Hey!”
* * *
There were solar panels on the cabin’s roof. There was a dinky turbine bolted to the west-facing wall. There was a wood pile, already overflowing. Top all that off with a reinforced door and shuttered windows, and the cabin was taking those paranoid self-sufficiency vibes to heights unknown.
“Oh my god,” Jesse breathed, looking around. “Wyatt? Wyatt, my dude, this is perfect.”
Wyatt bolted the door and slid past, a look on his face that wasn’t a smile but wasn’t not a smile. “It’ll do, huh?”
“Do?” The setup inside the cabin was pretty simple.
A bed that took up most of the room, a nook masquerading as a kitchen, a drop-leaf table on the wall with two mismatched chairs, and a saggy old couch decaying in front of the fireplace.
Not much, but after six months of living out of the truck, “It’s freaking paradise on Earth. ”
Another one of those not-smiles. “Sit,” Wyatt ordered.
Jesse didn’t argue. He collapsed down onto the couch, strings cut. His ankle was aching bad, and it was for real swollen. If Jesse was one of his patients, he’d be all about that rest, ice, compression, elevation — not hobbling for miles with no pain relief.
But he wasn’t his own patient, and he was an all-round shitty patient besides, and his ankle was so swollen now that he couldn’t even flex it. “Shit.”
Wyatt dragged over a chair and propped Jesse’s foot up on his knee. Rolled up Jesse’s jeans and started unlacing his boots.
“Wyatt, man, c’mon,” Jesse said, a crazy feeble protest. “I can do that myself.”
Wyatt ignored him, because Wyatt had a whole heap of practice doing that.
He loosened the laces completely and maneuvered the bulk of Jesse’s boot and the tight pressure of his sock clear of Jesse’s swollen ankle, Wyatt’s big hand supporting Jesse’s heel the whole time, making sure nothing hurt more than it had to.
Except—
Fuck, it did hurt.
Not his ankle. Like, his ankle hurt. Of course it did. He didn’t mean that. Just— inside. Like, deep down. Somewhere in Jesse’s belly and his chest. They were full of this gnawing ache, and it wasn’t hunger, wasn’t homesickness, wasn’t something that Jesse could name.
It was just, to be touched like that, by Wyatt, so freaking gently and full of care, after all of it, the zombies and the apocalypse and Maddie’s sudden but inevitable betrayal. To be touched like that after so long of not being touched?
Yeah, it really fucking ached.
Jesse sucked in a breath, quiet as could be. Didn’t let Wyatt hear it. He wasn’t brave at all, but he really wasn’t brave enough for that.
Wyatt swapped his knee for a dusty cushion stolen from the couch. “You good like this?” and when Jesse managed a nod, “Okay, bud, then stay put.”
Jesse’s eyeballs were burning, suddenly. His throat felt thick, like he needed to stab an epipen into his thigh. Fuck that, Jesus. He screwed his eyes shut. Kept them shut until the burn faded to a familiar exhaustion, then kept on keeping them shut.
Time passed in a weird way.
Maybe Jesse slept or dozed, but he wasn’t all there for a while — not until the slap of an icy-cold rag against his ankle made him startle awake with a hiss. “Warn a guy, jeez!”
“Eat.” A bowl of amorphous stew appeared in front of Jesse. It tasted of nothing, it was mostly beans, but it was warm, and the crackers they ate with the stew weren’t stale. The water they drank was fresh, without the weird chemical taste of purification tablets.
Belly full and ankle icy-numb, Jesse tipped over onto the couch. He napped again in front of the fire Wyatt lit. Watched, sleepy-eyed, as Wyatt futzed around with the transceiver unit he’d found in a supply closet.
He’d set it up on the table, and he was tapping in some beep-bop code that Jesse didn’t understand, too quiet for him to really hear.
Wyatt didn’t know Jesse was watching. At least one of those brick walls was only half built. He set the shortwave aside and scrubbed a hand across his face, across the thick scruff of his beard. He was looking at the fire and at nothing both at once, and he looked as exhausted as Jesse felt.
Because, like, of course he did.
He’d hiked for miles, carrying Jesse the whole way. He’d saved Jesse’s ass yesterday, hauled Jesse clear of a zombie horde last week, shot their way out of a lawless encampment the week before that.
Fuck, Wyatt had to be even more exhausted than Jesse. He just wasn’t letting Jesse see it, not until then — and then not at all.
Wyatt looked up and caught Jesse watching. His face settled, blank, the wall rebuilt in record time. Nothing left to read. “Good sleep?”
Jesse managed a nod. His throat felt thick again. Still. But he nodded. He could do that much.
“Then wanna come sit?”