10. Mika #2
“He is,” Mav grunted. “You think so, too.”
Xander stared at him, and for a moment I thought he was going to lose his temper; instead, he sighed.
“Fine, so I do. But in this situation, that’s not the case.
He’s got plenty of history with all sorts of bullshit, but he’s green when it comes to this shit, and we’re going to treat him as such.
Which means while this is going on, it’s Mav who’s considered the second, so you go through him or me, got it? ”
We all agreed Mav had been at the job the longest after Xander. He apparently had experience in that sort of work before he’d come to the outpost, but the only people I knew for a fact knew what that entailed were Xander and Cait, and probably Carter.
I couldn’t help but glance at Colin, and realized the rest were doing it too. Colin snorted. “Quit looking at me; it was my idea.”
“I was already thinking it,” Xander said, then scowled when most of us snickered at the childishness. “He’s still the medic though, so you listen when it comes to that, got it?”
“Got it,” we echoed.
“And you’ll be buddied up,” Xander continued, looking around. “Carter and Mav.”
“Shocking,” Reno muttered, and we chuckled.
“Shut it,” Xander said, but I would have sworn he smirked. “This is about comfort, skill, and how well you work together, so don’t get smart or cute with me. Next is, and don’t fucking say it, Jake and Reno.”
“Pfft,” Carter snorted, but he kept any comment to himself, more out of fear of Xander than because he was being polite.
We’d all seen it coming, but the lack of response from Jake or Reno made everyone look around uneasily. If they hadn’t noticed something going on between Reno and Jake, they suspected it.
“And me?” Aidan asked quickly, and I smiled.
The man could walk into a room full of people and impulsively say the most mindlessly insensitive thing in the world without meaning the slightest harm.
And yet, when he had a read on the room, he had it memorized, annotated, and was prepared to give a dissertation-level presentation if necessary.
The attention shifted back to Xander because, like Aidan, they were curious.
None of us were surprised when Xander searched out Colin first, and I would bet that only the newer members were surprised when he then glanced at Mav. The stoic man sat in silence for a few heartbeats before lifting his chin. “Trevor and Colin, Mika and Aidan.”
“Hmph,” Xander said, the sound too neutral for us to glean whether he agreed with the assessment.
Whatever his personal feelings, he was clearly willing to show trust in the man he had assigned as his temporary second and nodded.
“Then there’s your groups. Obviously, it’s not rigid, and if pairs need to swap around or you need to move around, you tell Cait. ”
“And you tell me quick,” Cait said, stepping into the room, and Xander stepped back, letting her speak.
“I don’t care if you’re going a few feet away to take a piss, you let me know, you hear me?
Your partner is there to watch your ass, but I’m the one who needs to know where all the asses are.
If you move to help someone else, if you swap partners for whatever reason, you tell me.
That means you too, Colin, we know your ass might have to move around and quick depending on how tits up things go, but I want constant updates, you hear me? ”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and I heard the easy, expected obedience of a soldier in his voice…or sailor, in his case.
“And she means it,” Xander said, looking at Aidan and Carter. “And if you don’t listen, if you don’t do what she says, pray that I get to you first because there won’t be much left if Cait gets her hands on you first.”
“Understood,” Aidan said easily, and I believed him.
Carter nodded, but…I knew it wasn’t unfair to single them out.
Aidan was still an unknown since he’d never been in a genuine emergency before, but Carter…
sometimes his young age and inexperience showed when his emotions got the better of him.
It hadn’t been a serious problem in the middle of an actual threat, but there was always the chance, and I didn’t blame Xander for pointing it out to them.
“Good,” Xander said, and I wondered if he was actually satisfied or if he was just accepting he had no other choice. “Mika, any word on how bad things are going to get?”
“Bad enough,” I offered and sighed when I saw Xander’s scowl. “You wanted the answer.”
“I wanted something more than what a kid could give me after looking it up online,” Xander ground out.
“If you wanted someone to give you an answer that sounded right but wasn’t, then you should have got a forecaster in here,” I told him with a frown, ignoring the way Aidan shifted in his seat to get a better look at me as Xander’s eyes narrowed.
“I’ve been here for over three, almost four years now, Xander, you know how I operate.
For all the advances we’ve made in my field, Mother Nature sometimes likes to feint, and sometimes she pulls a brutal ace from her sleeve.
I have nothing definitive, but we can count on some damage to the forest and buildings, high winds and probably debris being thrown around, and we should monitor the nearest rivers because their levels are probably going to rise. ”
“Flooding?”
“Right now? That’s a probably. How bad the flooding will be, I don’t know. I said I would keep you updated when something significantly changed, but right now, I’m still waiting.”
Aidan cleared his throat softly, nervously, but I ignored him, save to bump him with my leg to assure him everything was fine.
Colin was clearly the one who had absolutely no fear of butting heads with Xander, but everyone had had their moments with Xander as well.
The one thing I had learned was that the people with the hardest heads and a tough will were the ones who stayed.
I didn’t know if it was because Xander got rid of those who didn’t make the cut, or if they got rid of themselves rather than be bulldozed constantly, but the result was the same.
He wasn’t afraid to push us, but neither was he afraid of being pushed in return.
“Do that,” Xander said and turned to Cait. “And our new arrival?”
“Another one?” Jake asked, the first words he’d spoken.
Xander sighed. “Yes, I was supposed to tell you sooner, but all this got in the way, Cait?”
“There’s no way we can bring someone new and na?ve into this,” she said with a shake of her head. “And with kids? Hell no. He needs to stay in town until we’re ready.”
“Kids?” Carter asked, flabbergasted. “Since when do we have kids here?”
“Since orders from someone making more money and with less sense than me said so,” Xander scowled.
“Kids?” Reno repeated, looking wary. “Here? I mean, even if we pretend for a minute that this group isn’t exactly the sort you want around kids…shut up, you all know it’s true. Anyway, where the hell are we housing kids?”
I remembered first, or at least said it aloud. “The exile house.”
“I’m sorry, the what now?” Aidan asked with a confused laugh. “There’s a what now?”
“Oh, shit,” Jake said with a little laugh. “I forgot about that.”
There were noises of agreement from everyone but Carter and Aidan, who just looked confused.
Cait rapped her knuckles on the counter.
“Focus boys. To answer Aidan, it’s what everyone has called it for years.
It’s on the edge of, I guess, what you’d call the outpost property, opposite end to the outpost building. ”
“Uh, outpost building?” Aidan wondered.
“It’s what people call where me and Mav work most of the time,” Carter explained.
“So the outpost building for this outpost, great, that makes complete sense and doesn’t invite confusion at all,” Aidan muttered with a snort.
“It hasn’t been used in ages because it just…
hasn’t,” Cait said with a shrug. “It used to be the house used by the head of the outpost before Xander took on the role. The cabin he uses now was considered a guesthouse, and we rarely had overnight guests; he took that instead, and the other house went unused.”
“It’s a house?” Carter asked. “The fuck, he gets a house?”
“He and his children get a house, yes,” Cait said, shooting him a sharp look that shut him up.
“Wouldn’t it be run down by now?” I wondered. “We haven’t gone out to clean it since…God, this time last year, and it was looking rough.”
Colin snorted. “Raise your hands if you somehow missed the crews that were here last week.”
I looked around and sighed when I had to join the sea of hands that went up and looked at Aidan in surprise. “You did?”
“I’m more surprised that you missed it,” he said with a curious look. “They were cleaners.”
“And Trevor was busy the week before, getting it back into a livable state of repair,” Cait finished, and we looked at Trevor, who shrugged, clearly unbothered by our lack of attention.
“Idiots,” Xander said. “Cait, run interference. Make sure they pay for him to get a room for a few days while we hunker down here.”
“They’re going to whine, bitch and moan.”
“Then you send them my way. I’d be glad to lay out the facts for them.”
“It’s true,” Colin said with a chuckle. “I’ve heard him talk to them a few times over the phone.
You’ve all seen how he can get. Now imagine you’re some mild-mannered desk jockey, or a cocky bureaucrat who’s used to their position keeping people in line.
And then you’ve got Xander rolling up in your ear. ”
We all thought about it, but it was Aidan who snickered. “Damn, I feel bad for the first guy, but the second? I worked for the middle manager assholes before; I’d pay good money to witness that.”
“It’s fun,” Mav grunted and ignored us when we looked at him.
“Ah, and I thought I was special for having seen it when no one else had,” Colin said in a tone that said he wasn’t the slightest bit bothered, but was enjoying the way it made Xander sigh heavily. Trouble had clearly left paradise.