Colin #2
“Jake?”
“My name, you said you didn’t know my name…it’s Jake.”
“Good to meet you, Jake,” I said with a snort. “My bags?”
“Gotcha,” he said, bending to snatch them up and shove them into my hands. “You a gymnast?”
“I’m a medic, remember?” I asked as I stepped back so he could close and bar the door again.
“What, now we’re in here, you’ve got jokes?” he asked with a snort as the bar dropped into place.
“Well, helps when I’m not wondering if Mother Nature is going to take me out,” I said as I glanced around.
“If a little storm is going to bug you, I think you might have come to the wrong place,” he said with a laugh as he led me up the stairs into a hallway that split in three directions.
He took me to the right, and I blinked at the bright light overhead, seeing a kitchen.
It was a little ramshackle; the stove looked like it was from when my parents were still in puberty, and the microwave looked last century.
It was clean, though; not a crumb of food, and the stove, ancient as it was, gleamed. “Hungry?”
“A little,” I admitted as my stomach growled loudly at the offer. “I sometimes get airsick, so I didn’t eat on the plane or before.”
“Geez, worried about storms and you get airsick? Did they have you on the ground the whole time?” he asked with a snort as he opened a cabinet and dragged out an apple, an orange, and a banana, holding them out.
I took the banana with a grunt of thanks.
“Just because I’ve been neck-deep in life-or-death situations doesn’t mean I look forward to them.
And I said I sometimes get airsick. Not always.
I just figured it would be safer not to eat, so I didn’t end up yacking overpriced Panera Bread into my neighbor’s lap. ”
“I hope they understood the sacrifice you made for them,” he said with a grin as he heaved himself onto the counter and looked me over. “Probably a good thing I didn’t make us go to the other door; you look like a drowned rat.”
It was probably a bad idea, but with a grimace, I pulled out my phone and flipped on the front camera to look at myself.
Sure enough, my black hair was glued to my forehead, the tips dangling over my hazel eyes.
Under the harsh light, my fair skin looked positively sickly, and the smattering of freckles across my nose and under my eyes were washed out.
His assessment was right; I had a thin face and a pointed nose, so the soaked look really gave the idea of a rat expelled from a storm drain.
“Not my best look,” I admitted, pushing my phone back into the safety of an inside pocket and pushing my hair off my forehead. “Knew I should have got a haircut before I left.”
“I’d take you to your room, but I’m not allowed to give tours anymore,” Jake said, swinging his long legs back and forth, his heels thumping the wooden cabinets. “Something about giving the wrong idea to new people.”
“Not something,” a fresh voice added, preceded by the welcome smell of coffee. “You were given a write-up for it. In detail.”
“Aww, you know I can’t read,” Jake said with a pout. “That’s mean, picking on someone with a disability.”
“Stop forgetting to get tested, and maybe we’ll be able to make accommodations,” the woman said as she stepped into view.
Her blond hair was pulled back into a messy bun, and when she looked at me, I wondered how old she was.
There were lines on her face that said she was creeping up the age bracket, or had lived a hard life.
Her eyes, though, were bright, tinged with annoyance that I suspected had more to do with Jake than anything else, but they were shining and alert and made her seem younger.
“You must be Colin, good to see Jake’s ability to get people to and from in one piece during shitty weather is intact. ”
“That would make you Catherine,” I said, setting the half-eaten banana on the counter to step forward and take her hand. “We spoke a few days ago.”
“Catherine outside these walls, but Cait here,” she said, shaking my hand and looking me over. “Christ, he make you go all the way around?”
“No,” Jake said with a huff and a scowl. “We came in through the normal ass door, Cait.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Funny, I’ve been waiting to hear that buzzer go off to say someone was here, but I find you trying to flood the kitchen.”
“It was just a little friendly B barely even touched anything on the way in.”
“He’s…easily impressed,” I noted as I grabbed the banana. It wasn’t going to do shit for me but at least I could trick my stomach into thinking it was something substantial for a little while.
“Simple mind, simple pleasures,” she said, waving her mug. “Now, why don’t we get the tour out of the way? Not much to see, then we can get you to your room so you can change…and probably shower. Jake, mop up this mess.”
“Aww, but why can’t I—”
“Clean it up since you decided not to use the buzzer like a normal human being,” she said with a scowl. “Colin, wipe your feet so you don’t make this one cry because he has to do more cleaning.”
“He was the one who broke in!”
“At your behest, I’ll bet; clean.”
Jake sighed, shoulders slumping. “Yes, Mom.”
“I’m not your momma,” she said grimly. “If I was, you can bet I’d have beaten you a lot more than you were.”
Jake wrinkled his nose. “She didn’t beat me…no one did.”
“And there’s the problem,” she said, then nodded at me. “Let’s go.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, grabbing my bags.
She waved me off. “Jake can take them since he’s gonna need to clean up in here, anyway.”
I shot Jake an apologetic look as he groaned, but it didn’t take a genius to understand that while Xander’s name was listed as the head of the outpost, Cait was not afraid to throw her weight around.
That was the calmest I’d seen Jake, and I wondered how many other guys here were as obedient when she snapped an order.
“Mess is on the other side of that wall,” she said, gesturing to the doorway behind me.
“We do group meals when we can, but you’re gonna end up eating what you can when you have moments depending on how things go.
When it’s not crazy, we have a cooking rota, there’s a list of food so you can figure out what to make ahead of time, it’s polite to write down what you’re going to cook on your day so someone doesn’t use the bacon or whatever.
Check it tomorrow or the day after to see when you fall. ”
“Better hope you can cook,” Jake said with a sigh. “Or you’ll end up like Trev.”
“Trev?” I asked, quickly pushing away from the counter and throwing my banana peel away as Cait turned and left the kitchen.
“Trevor,” she said with a sigh. “That man could MacGyver a snow plow from an old TV, a shovel, three sticks, and an old pack of gum, but anytime he sets foot in that kitchen intending to cook, the whole place becomes a fire hazard. He pulls double cleanup duty and is in charge of keeping an eye on the kitchen inventory to make up for it.”
“Well, I’m not going to burn the place down, but no one will be impressed by my bachelor cooking,” I said with a wince as she led me across the hall, past the stairs and through another door.
“Most of the guys here can’t cook that well; there’s a reason we eat so many burgers, you’ll get sick of ’em,” she snorted and led me into a full garage.
There was another large truck like the one Jake had picked me up in, a jeep, and a smaller truck that was up on two standing jacks.
“That would be Reno’s truck. Xander is gonna give him hell for not getting it out of the bay before the storm hit, but that’s not my problem. ”
“Pretty spacious,” I noted, seeing tools on one wall, then stacks of containers next to a large workbench. “I was led to believe this place wasn’t that big.”
“Oh, government’s been using this place off and on for years.
Some jackass or another comes along and adds new things to fit their big ideas, suckin’ off someone higher up the food chain to get it, no doubt.
Then someone else comes along and uses it, and they add something.
Xander hasn’t done it yet, but he’ll probably end up making something in the basement to lock some of these dumbasses up when they get too annoying,” she said, and I smiled.
“There was a lot of fondness in that insult,” I said with a chuckle.
She eyeballed me. “I’ll let that one pass because you’re new, and you look kind of pitiful at the moment…but never make these assholes think I like them. The minute they think I like them, they think they can get away with more than they should.”
“I’ll take that to heart,” I said, and she grunted.
“Xander’s been the head of this outpost for almost ten years, and makes the most of what we’ve got. We try to keep personal vehicles somewhere else, but Reno kept putting off getting his truck fixed and…eh, we’ll hear the complaining about it later. C’mon.”
I dutifully followed her into the hallway, peering into the kitchen to hear Jake singing softly as he mopped up the mess. My brow rose when I realized that despite singing under his breath, he actually had quite a nice voice.
Cait tapped the door nearest to her. “That’s my office. Used to be Xander’s, but he’s not so good at ignoring when people get loud. So he uses the ‘guest house’ for his office and apartment, I guess you could say. I’m your handler, so I get the calls, I direct you, and you listen to me, got it?”
“Got it,” I assured her.
She eyed me for a moment before grunting. “Good, saw you did time in the Navy, looks like they taught you to mind your manners.”
“I think my mother and grandmother took care of that before the government came along,” I admitted with a chuckle, running my hand through my hair and making a face when the cold press of my hair reminded me of the chill settling into my skin. “At least with women, anyway.”
“Daddy not around?”
“Um, was married to my mom and technically living with us, yeah.”
“Technically.”