40. Knox
FORTY
KNOX
When I wake again, the room is the same as it was the first time; only Lucy is asleep on the floor and Ava is gone. I saw Ava fleetingly between her ensuring I ate something and her exam with Malia in another room, and I nodded off again sometime after that.
Spotting a pair of pants and a t-shirt folded on the foot of my bed, I decide to give walking a try. I feel all right, all things considered, which is good because I can’t stay in this room with all my unanswered questions for a second longer.
Lucy springs to her feet as I carefully climb out of bed. The back of my head is sore, but my mind feels clearer, and I dress easily enough, taking my time as I measure the lingering pain.
“So—” I meet Lucy’s eyes. Her butt swings back and forth with more excitement than should be legal this early in the morning. At least, it feels early. She licks my bare foot, making me twitch. Chuckling, I shove her away. “Where should I start?” I roll on a clean pair of socks. “Find Ava and get some answers, or find Andrew or Dillon since they’ll likely have answers too?” I crouch down and tug on my boots that were left by the door with my backpack.
Lucy gives me unsolicited morning kisses, and abandoning my boots, I wrap my arm around her neck, drawing her in for a fierce hug. “You’re a good pup,” I tell her. “You have horrible morning breath, but I love you anyway.” She licks me again, and I nudge her away with another laugh. “Since you can’t brush your teeth, why don’t I brush mine?”
With a final rub behind her ears, I stand up, grab my bathroom pouch from my pack, and head into the bathroom. It’s made with cement bricks, like the other room. There is no glass in the shower, only an inset space you have to step into. A long, narrow window dotted with raindrops faces a field, letting in natural morning light.
It’s clean—industrial, and new, and if I had to guess, this is one of the government’s retrofitted shelters they spent billions of dollars building over the past decade.
I let the water run as I brush my teeth, waiting for it to warm a little before splashing a handful on my face to chase the lingering grogginess away. The scent of sulfur is nonexistent, and I slurp a mouthful of water from my hand, unable to resist. As it coats my tongue and throat, I think I’ll never take drinkable water for granted again.
Lucy waits patiently by the door as I study the reflection staring back at me and shut the water off. Other than the dark circles under my eyes and the three-day-old scruff on my face, I look much like I always do, which is lucky. My fall, Ava on her own—it could have ended much worse than winding up here with a bump on my head, three stitches, water to drink, and Lucy at my side.
I decide to start the day like I would any other and give myself a close shave. When I’m done with my morning rituals, I head back to the exam room and leave my things where I found them. I follow Lucy down the hall, since she’s familiar with the place, and we pass two other patient rooms, empty and dark, before the distant drone of conversation reaches my ears.
I step into a scantily furnished reception area and peer around. It’s nestled in the corner of a giant, utilitarian building with cement pillars every dozen feet and tinted floor-to-ceiling windows, filling the space with gray morning light.
A young girl, leaning back in a chair behind a curved reception desk, tosses a rock up and catches it, quietly humming. She’s a smaller version of Ava with dark hair and tanned skin, only her cheeks are rounder and her eyes are lighter. I can’t tell if they’re green or dark blue as her gaze darts up and down with each toss and catch of the rock. She’s maybe nine or ten years old with a doctor’s coat hanging off her that’s four sizes too big, and she has no idea I’m standing there.
I clear my throat.
The girl catches the rock with a start and eyes me up and down. “Wow.” She pushes a giant pair of glasses up the bridge of her nose, only for them to slide back down. “You look like hell.”
My eyebrow lifts, though my expression gives nothing away. “Thanks.”
Her ponytail whips her in the face as she tugs herself closer to the desktop, but she barely notices, too focused on the folder in front of her. “Knox, is it?” She sets her rock aside. It’s an arrowhead, I realize, and it gleams in the morning light.
“I might be.” I step up to the desk as she peers at me over the rim of her glasses. “And you are?”
“You can call me Dr. Robinson. I’m taking over for Malia while she’s resting. You’re supposed to be asleep.”
She has gumption, I’ll give her that. “I got tired.” She looks at me. “Of sleeping,” I say dryly. I glance around for an adult I might speak with. Unless this place is managed by child prodigies? “Dr. Robinson, is it?”
She nods.
“What’s my diagnosis?”
“It was touch and go there for a while.” The little girl shrugs, flipping through the papers in the folder, though she’s not even reading them. “But I think you’ll live.”
I hum in understanding. “That’s a relief.” Dr. Robinson has no idea how much of a relief, but any playhouse concern she has for me is entirely forgotten when Lucy abandons all other distractions and prances over to her.
The little girl’s blue eyes light up and she jumps up from her seat. “Hello, doggie.”
“Her name’s Lucy.”
She pulls a face—a that’s a dumb name sort of look only a kid could get away with. “You don’t look like a Lucy,” she mutters, petting her under her chin.
My eyes narrow on the girl. “And you don’t look much like a doctor.” The girl ignores me, but I notice the closed laptop on the desk and a walkie-talkie discarded next to an open-faced Stephen King book. “Where?—”
“Ah, Knox.”
An older man with a trimmed, gray beard and a bald head walks toward us. He looks like a civilian in his Dockers and thermal shirt, but he walks with rigid purpose like a man in uniform would. He takes a slurp from his mug. “I was just getting some chow.” He cants his head toward Dr. Robinson . “What are you doing over here, Harper?”
She glances sheepishly at me. “I was looking after the patient for Malia.”
“I see,” the man mutters. “And smudging up my glasses while you’re at it.” He holds out his hand for them.
Harper begrudgingly hands them over. “I didn’t smudge them.”
He makes a derisive noise and sets his mug on the desk. “I’m Elijah.” He turns to me, offering me his hand. “ I’m covering for Malia.”
“Are you a doctor?” I say sardonically, glancing from him to Harper.
Elijah smiles. “No. Well—a medic in the army a lifetime ago, but here, I’m the head of environmental engineering. Malia is my wife and she asked me to keep an eye on you while she gets some shut-eye. You had this place in a tizzy when you arrived last night.”
“Funny. I can’t seem to recall.” It’s a joke, a bad one, delivered with skepticism that Elijah’s arched eyebrow tells me doesn’t go unnoticed.
I glance around the building, eyeing it more closely. There are sofas and sectionals arranged in front of the windows that could serve as a lounge or waiting room, and beyond the sitting area are four rows of cafeteria tables across from an industrial kitchen.
“What is this place?”
“Facility 38,” Harper supplies proudly.
“We call it the Watch House,” Elijah adds. “We’ve been monitoring all seismic activity and catastrophes since April. And now SOS calls, it would seem. At least within a hundred-mile radius.” He nods toward the people descending the stairs, then those beginning to cluster by the kitchen. “We’re not typically an evacuation center, but the last few days have been...unprecedented, to say the least.”
A few people stride across the second-floor landing, snagging my attention.
“The extra bunkrooms and staff living quarters are up there on the second floor,” Elijah explains. “We’ll get you squared away with a room now that you’re awake. The third floor,” he continues, pointing higher, “is our comms room, research lab, and the lookout tower. Civilians and servicemen from all over Oklahoma are housed here. We’ve been assessing the rapidly changing landscape for months—some of us for years, actually. Facility 38 is one of fifty—or at least there were fifty when the project started. We’ve since become the only shelter left between San Antonio and the panhandle.” He glances around, shaking his head as if he can’t really believe the turn of events. “Nearly a hundred people have come in the past few days alone, and I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of them. We’re working on an alternate location to send folks because we’re nearly at capacity.”
I’m not sure if his explanation is unsettling or makes me hopeful, knowing there are other safe houses still standing. “Where are you looking to send people?”
“North.”
My heartbeat ticks up a notch since that’s the way we’ve been heading. “What’s north?”
“Currently?” Elijah walks to the clipboard on the desk with a sigh that sounds like reluctant acceptance. “With Facility 32 under evacuation in Wyoming, we have six still operational throughout the Midwest and dozens of military bases from here to the East Coast that we’re currently in communication with. At least, what’s left of them.”
“What’s left of the East Coast?” I say carefully. I’m sure my eyes bulge as I consider the West Coast is submerged in water and all of Texas is a lava bed. But as my gaze darts to Harper, who’s watching me intently, I quash any outward concern.
Elijah gives me a sidelong look. “A lot has happened in the past week,” he reminds me.
No shit goes unsaid, and with a nod, I look at Harper again.
Elijah sets the clipboard down, and I don’t miss the way Harper eyes it curiously. “Why don’t you go grab some breakfast, Harper?”
“But, I’m not hungry.”
“Harper—” Elijah says more firmly.
With an indignant sigh, she jumps down from the chair. “No one ever wants me around,” Harper grumbles. She grabs her arrowhead, and marches away.
Elijah steps closer, his expression stark and his eyes rimmed with shadows. “I’m sure you have a dozen questions,” he says carefully, “and we’ll get them answered for you as best we can. For now, there’s a whiteboard with a current list of safe places.” He points to a wall-length board in the common area, sectioned in a grid. “As well as which states have gone dark.”
My eyes snap to his.
“We update it at six a.m. and six p.m. each day with any new information we receive from around the country.”
States that have gone dark?
Elijah lets me process that for a moment. “I hear you came from Texas?”
Immediately, I think of Ava, and wonder where she is. “Yeah—Sutton County.”
“Texas is—” He shakes his head. “If you have any loved ones still there, it’s not good.” My dad flashes to mind. So does my brother. I’d started out hoping my brother would find his way home, and now, I pray that if he’s still alive, he went nowhere close to it.
“Where’s Ava?” I say, clearing my throat.
Elijah raises his hand to chin height. “She’s the one about yay-big, long dark hair, and a no-nonsense look about her?”
I huff. “Could be.”
He glances toward the cafeteria. “Breakfast, I believe.” I scan the increasing number of bodies at the tables for her. “If I may,” Elijah starts, and his careful tone gives me pause. “Has she talked to you yet about what happened last night?”
My body stiffens. “Not really, no.”
“As far as Malia knows, Ava hasn’t talked much to anyone since she’s been here, which is fine, but she has been asking questions.”
I frown, uncertain why that would be a problem if this place is what he says it is.
“Specifically, about learning self-defense,” he adds. “I just thought you should know.”
At first that surprises me, then my heart sinks. I have no idea what Ava went through last night, and my entire body tenses as I consider why that would be on her mind. “Thanks.”
Elijah nods and motions toward the cafeteria. “Last I saw your friend, she was sitting at the middle table.”
“Thanks,” I mutter again. The why behind her desire to learn self-defense makes me feel like there’s lead in my feet and screws in my stomach as I start toward her.
Lucy is twenty steps ahead, scouting the floor for crumbs. A handful of people gravitate toward the coffee station and another dozen or so stand in the breakfast line. There are twice as many people as when I looked last time, and when I spot the analog clock on the wall, I note it’s just shy of eight a.m.
One child clutches a singed teddy bear like it’s his lifeline. And I notice a man wearing rumpled jeans and a long-sleeve shirt that look to be a few days old, like the clothes on his back are all he has left. Other people are freshly showered or shaven, their clothes pressed or at least clean. All of them, however, have a harried, haggard sheen in their eyes that I feel bone-deep.
I spot Ava sitting with her back to me at one of the tables. She’s alone, picking absently at her food. Relief knots with apprehension, and I walk over to her. “Good morning,” I murmur.
Ava’s head snaps in my direction and she swallows a mouthful of food. “You’re up.” She licks her lips as I sit beside her and straddles the bench, facing me. “I thought you’d sleep longer.” She frowns, eyeing me up and down. “Should you even be walking around?”
“I’ve barely got a headache. I’m fine.” I watch the others in the common area. “I’ve got too many questions to lie uselessly in bed all day.” Ava tosses her napkin on the table. Her hair is damp, straight and loose from a shower. She’s in a clean, black long-sleeve shirt and jeans, but her boots are covered in mud. It’s her expressive, amber eyes that catch and hold my attention, though. She’s relieved to see me, but something else brews behind them as well. “Besides,” I hedge, “I actually slept last night. Did you?”
“I slept,” she mutters, and she scoots her perfectly proportioned breakfast tray away. “A little.”
“At least you’re eating.” I steal a piece of bacon from her plate, eyeing the few bites of egg and toast she has left. It’s obvious they are trying to ration, which means they are preparing for scarcity or are already worried about it, all of which is a concern I tuck away to worry about later. “Well, except for your fruit cup.” I notice it’s not even open.
Ava chuckles. “I’ve never been a big fan of corn syrup.” I must have a wild look of hunger in my eyes because she grins and scoots her tray to me. “By all means. Have at it.” She smiles playfully, and I can tell she has rested a little. Her mood is lighter, or rather, her easiness is more genuine than last night.
I take another bite of bacon and hold her gaze. “So.. .” I watch the way the corner of her mouth tugs between her teeth. Even when she’s not dwelling on something, she still worries, even if she doesn’t seem to notice.
“So, what?” She blinks those big, beautiful eyes at me and I want to kiss her.
“Are you going to tell me?” I ask quietly and probably too gently for it to sound conversational.
“About what?”
“Ava.” I can’t help my exasperation. “About what happened yesterday. Last night. All of it.” I stare at her, anxious and afraid and a little bit angry, even if I don’t fully comprehend why. “Tell me. Please.”
With a soft, wavering smile, Ava groans and leans in, resting her forehead on my shoulder. “I did something stupid.” Her voice is barely audible.
“It couldn’t have been that stupid,” I tell her, running my hands over her shoulders and down her arms. I’m not sure if it’s for her comfort or mine. “We’re here, after all.”
Ava sits up, picking at her fingernail. “I went back to the farmhouse.” Her eyes search mine and I think she holds her breath.
Scrolling through my memory, I revisit our path and the few places we saw on the road. Finally, I remember the gated farmhouse with the warning signs, and my uneasiness drops like a tire iron to the pit of my stomach. I hold her gaze. “And?” I murmur, my blood suddenly raging as I consider every nightmarish, horrible thing that might’ve happened.
“Ouch—” Ava winces and tugs my fingers from her forearm. I snap my hand away, unaware I was holding onto her at all. “Sorry?—”
“It’s fine.” She waves my apology away. “It’s bruising, that’s all.”
I glare at her arm sleeve. “What’s bruising?”
When Ava doesn’t answer me, my gaze snaps to hers again. Shame reddens her cheeks, and Ava looks away.
“Ava—”
“You’ll laugh when I tell you.”
“I highly doubt it,” I grit out.
Picking at the edge of her napkin, Ava mutters something.
“What?”
“I said,” she annunciates more carefully and with a bite of sass, “an old woman bit me.”
“ What? ” My eyebrows shoot to my hairline. “An old woman bit you?” I reach gently for Ava’s arm, and carefully pull her sleeve up, my teeth grinding with only slightly-curbed abhorrence. A black-and-purple bruise blooms around the indent of teeth.
“She wasn’t...right.”
“No fucking shit, Ava. An old woman bit you. Why did you go back there in the first place?”
Ava glares at me. “Are you serious? Because you were unconscious, Knox. For all I knew, you were dying last night.” She points toward my recovery room. “You were out cold, and I had no idea where to go or how to find help. So, yes, I went back to the only place I could think of.”
Guilt worms its way through me. Or it could be self-loathing for putting Ava in that position in the first place. “Is that all that happened? Was there anyone else?—”
“No,” she mutters, raking her fingers through her damp hair. It falls back into her face as she looks down in shame. “There was no one else there. Not alive, at least.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I wrap my arms around Ava, pulling her closer. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just—I wasn’t expecting... that . I would have gone back, too.” I’ve never found comfort in someone else’s warmth before, not since my mother, and even if I hate that I wasn’t there with Ava, that she’s sitting here—that I can smell her apple-scented hair and feel her fingers pressed into my back—is all that keeps my firestorm of emotions just below the surface.
Sighing, Ava pulls away and rests her elbow on the table. “I feel like there were a dozen things I should have done differently, but at the same time, I can’t think of a single one. At least, not with so many uncertainties.”
I take Ava’s other hand from her lap and lace my fingers with hers. “What the hell was wrong with her? Was she rabid?” It’s a small, horrible attempt at levity, but Ava doesn’t laugh.
“Not rabid,” she says, shaking her head. “But she was sick and...she was starving. I don’t know the last time she drank clean water or ate a real meal.” She frowns to herself. “I don’t think she’s stepped off her porch in fifty years, Knox. Her husband is still lying on his deathbed.”
My jaw ticks as I stare at Ava in disbelief. “You saw that?”
Ava sighs in answer. “She was going to shoot Loca. That’s why she locked me in his room.”
I tilt my head back and squeeze my eyes shut, my toes curling painfully in my boots as I force myself to stomach every image Ava paints and feel the depth of her fear. For me. For herself. For Loca. I want her to stop telling me these things because I can’t bear much more of it, but that’s selfish and insensitive, and I swallow a curse instead.
“It was fucked up,” she continues, “and I might’ve put myself in that position, but?—”
My eyes snap open. “You did what you had to, Ava. And you got yourself out of there in one piece. Don’t play the blame game unless you want to be angry at me for putting you in that position to begin with.”
“Rooster, actually,” she counters. “Maybe we should ground him.”
I huff a laugh despite myself, though none of this is funny. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, and all because of me.”
Ava shakes her head with a soft, exasperated chuckle. “You definitely owe me,” she teases, and as her gaze lingers on me, her worry alleviates a little. “I would’ve done everything I had to, Knox. Just like I know you would have. And besides—” Ava runs her teeth over her bottom lip, lost in her thoughts again. “That’s not really what bothers me the most.”
I fidget with her fingers in my hand, waiting for her to continue.
“That’s twice that I’ve been in a situation where I’ve felt that kind of fear and borderline helplessness because of someone else, and I don’t want it to happen again. Not if I can help it. I thought I was strong before, that I could protect myself because I’ve been on my own for so long. But this—this is different. I want to learn more about guns. I want to learn how to defend myself so that I’m not scrambling to figure it all out, hoping for the best, because it won’t be a feeble old lady next time.”
“Next time,” I repeat, realizing Ava is right. This isn’t likely the last time she’ll find herself at someone else’s mercy. My size would make anyone second-guess picking a fight with me, but Ava—save for that fiery glint in her eyes—looks like much easier prey. I take Ava’s chin between my fingers so she’ll look at me. She blinks and runs her tongue over her lips. “We’ll find someone to help us,” I promise. “And I’m so fucking sorry you had to deal with all of that alone.”
Her eyes mist a little and a hint of a smile tugs at her mouth. “I’m glad you’re awake,” she whispers. The cafeteria rings with voices, but hers is all I hear. She is all I can see, and unbidden, my gaze shifts to her soft lips again, and I kiss Ava because I’ve craved her since I woke up last night, her body curled around me in sleep.
Her mouth parts, and she grips my arms, kissing me in return. Everyone else falls away as I bask in the heat of her mouth and the caress of her breath against my skin. But before I can get too carried away as we sit in a mass of onlookers, I pull away, leaning my forehead to hers. “Thank you, Ava,” I rasp. I swallow the sting of my own failures and steady my breath. My heart is full of gratitude and an almost crippling amount of solace. “For what you did for me last night,” I say, squeezing my eyes shut. “And for what it cost you.”
Ava pulls back and her lips curve. A true smile fills her face, and her eyes glitter impishly. “You could make it up to me,” she says.
“Yeah?” I watch the way she nibbles on her lower lip and admire the dark lashes that frame her eyes. “What sort of payment do you have in mind?”
“Pausing time for a little while would be nice.”
“Oh, is that all?”
She grins. “It would be nice to take another mini reality break is all.”
A thought crosses my mind. “I have an idea.” I kiss her again, short but unrushed and sweet, unable to resist. “I’ll talk to?—”
“Tony.”
The words die on my tongue. “What?”
“Tony.” Surprise lights Ava’s eyes, and she turns my face to the breakfast line behind me. “He’s here.”
I zero in on the stalky, dark-haired cowboy in faded Wranglers and a Dallas Cowboys football jersey and rise to my feet. “Tony!” My voice booms through the space and he glances in my direction.
The moment Tony sees me, his eyes bulge, and his entire face brightens. “Hey, boss.” He steps out of line and rushes over. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see your ugly face,” he jokes. I pull him in for a hug, and tears fill my eyes as he claps his hand on my back.
A week ago, I thought he was dead, along with everyone else I loved and cared about. “I can’t believe you’re here.” I can barely find my voice through the shock, so I squeeze him tighter. “And I’m no longer your boss, so stop calling me that.”
“Fair enough,” Tony agrees. When I finally pull away, all I can do is stare at him like he might not be real.
When Tony notices Ava, he stills. It’s only a split second of surprise before a shit-eating grin fills his face. “And you’re with Ava Hernandez?” He glances between us, then reaches for her, pulling Ava in for a hug. “Color me surprised. I didn’t see that one coming either.”
“It’s good to see you, Tony,” Ava rasps. The two of them have always gotten along, so her stilted hug surprises me.
“I hoped you’d gotten out of Sonora before—” Tony’s words fall on deaf ears because I see the increasing panic in Ava’s eyes as she pulls away from him, and I realize what’s happening. Her face pales as she looks at me.
“Knox...” Her voice is thick with panic as she looks around, taking in her surroundings with compulsive swallows like she might be sick. “I need to sit...”
“Shit.” I reach for Ava and pull her into me. “I’ve got you,” I promise as I lower myself onto the seat. “It’s okay.”
She mumbles incoherently and then her body slackens against me. As Ava starts to slip, I hold her tighter.
“Tony—” I meet his panicked gaze. “Find Elijah or Malia.”