8. Unexpected Kindness
Unexpected Kindness
Even after the tears had stopped and Layla was settled beneath a blanket, Josie’s fingers still trembled as she touched her daughter’s face.
Cara exchanged a quiet look with Jay. They didn’t need to voice it—leaving this woman and her child to sleep alone after everything that had just happened was not an option.
“I’ll take the other SUV tonight,” Jay said, gesturing to Beast. “There’s more space for you three in here.”
Josie blinked, stunned by the offer from a stranger. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re not,” Cara assured her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Layla needs you close, and you need to feel safe. Tonight, we’ll make that happen.”
Cara climbed into the back, joining Josie beside her sleeping daughter. Exhaustion had settled deep in Josie’s mucels—the kind born of fear, adrenaline, and too many days surviving on empty. Cara gently spread the quilt over mother and child.
“You sleep,” she whispered. “I’ll be right here keeping watch.”
Josie’s eyes welled up again, but this time the tears were not from panic. They came from a relief . “Thank you. I... I thought all the decent people were gone.”
Cara’s expression softened. “There are still good people out here. Well we try to be, anyway.”
Outside, Jay shut the other SUV’s door and brushed snow off his jacket, nodding at Seth. “She’s safe. That’s what matters tonight.”
Seth let out a slow breath, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah. But she’s going to need time.”
“We all do.”
They climbed into their beast. The interior was dark and cold, save for the faint glow of the dashboard. Seth leaned back in the passenger seat, the leather groaning under his weight as he exhaled. Jay turned the key, enough for the heater’s low hum to fill the silence.
Seth spoke, his voice low, “They gotta stay with us. No way we’re leaving them out here alone.”
Jay didn’t argue. “Wasn’t planning to.”
Back in the other SUV, Josie finally let her head drop to Cara’s shoulder, her voice small but steadying. “I don’t know how to repay any of this.”
Cara looked down at Layla’s tiny fingers curled into her mother’s jacket and gently shook her head. “You don’t. You simply stay alive. Both of you.”
The cold night pressed against the windows, and Josie slept. Outside, Jay and Seth kept watch through the dark hours, two silent figures against the gloom.
Josie woke with a start, heart pounding as if she’d been running. For a disorienting moment, she couldn’t place where she was—the ceiling a shadowed blur, cold glass pressing lightly against her shoulder. Then, memory snapped back, one brutal frame at a time.
The parking lot. The man. The gunshot. Cara holding her as she fell apart.
Layla.
She turned her head sharply. There, her daughter lay, curled on her side beneath the sleeping bag Cara had tucked around her, a small fist beneath her cheek, her hair a tangled golden mess against the blanket. She was completely unaware of the nightmare she’d slept through. Completely innocent.
A shaky breath escaped, and the tension that had locked her shoulders eased fractionally.
Thank God.
The sky outside remained mostly dark—blue-black with the faintest gradient of dawn threatening the horizon.
Her muscles ached and her eyes burned. She’d slept but it wasn’t restful, every fragile doze broken by flashes of grabbing hands, her daughter screaming, that voice promising every imaginable horror before a single shot silenced it forever.
She pressed her palms into her eyes, forcing the tears back. She didn’t have the luxury of breaking down— not now—but last night had broken something in her the way nothing else had, not even the end of the world itself.
She glanced toward the other SUV through the foggy window, she could make out two silhouettes: Jay in the driver’s seat, and Seth reclined on watch with the rifle across his lap. He wasn’t sleeping. His posture was too rigid for that, his jaw too sharp against the faint dashboard glow.
He looked like someone whoed seen things, Josie thought.
She’d known soldiers like that. She could spot a military man even in the dark: the way he carried himself, the way he’d automatically positioned himself between danger and her and Layla. Everything about Seth spoke of training, discipline.
And something else, too. A stillness she recognized—a heaviness in the shoulders, like he was carrying gear he never set down.
What had he lost? Who had he lost? And why did she carry this overwelming gratitude toward him—a killer, yes, but the kind who killed to save?
Her hand drifted to Layla’s hair. Without him, they would have died out there. Or worse.
She swallowed hard, trying to ground herself.
The soldier in her took over: assess the facts, steady her breathing, build a plan, then get moving.
Get distance. Get to Denver. But the mother in her—the part that had lived through hell in the last twenty-four hours—could only circle back to one truth: she and Layla were alive this morning because of him.
She glanced back through the window. His face was turned toward the dark horizon, unreadable, eyes fixed on nothing and everything at once.
Cold, she had thought last night.
Now, in the quiet, she wasn’t so sure. Not cold. Just empty, by what she couldn’t say. And maybe protecting others had become the only thing keeping him going—a purpose to stand in place of whatever he’d lost.
She understood that better than she wanted to.
She reached for Layla again, pulling the sleeping bag higher and brushing a kiss across her forehead. The little girl sighed softly in her sleep.
The world lay in ruins. Danger found them everywhere they went. But against all odds—they were still breathing. Because of him, A man with a rifle and eyes that seemed full of too many ghosts.
“Thank you,” she whispered into the early dawn, unsure whether she meant it for fate, for God, or for Seth himself.
Maybe all three.
Jay crouched near a small fire he’d coaxed to life using scrap wood from the old church steps. The flames crackled softly in the half-light, casting warm flickers across his face as he poured a second round of water into the beat-to-hell tin percolator.
A few yards away, Seth sat on the hood of the SUV, the heat from his metal mug doing little to warm his hands.
He kept his back to the fire, his gaze fixed on the two vehicles.
Sleep headn’t come. Every time his eyes drifted shut, the image flared behind them: the man falling, the woman’s sobs echoing in his ears.
It was a familiar weight, this exhaustion that had nothing to do with being tired.
Movement caught his attention.
The passenger door of the back SUV swung open, and a small figure climbed out—hair tangled from sleep, teddy bear clutched in one hand. Layla hopped down, boots hitting gravel with a light thunk, and looked around with the bright curiosity only a child could still possess in a ruined world.
Something stirred in Seth—not unwelcome, just unfamiliar.
Josie followed more slowly, sliding out with the guarded care of someone who hadn’t slept deeply in a long time. Cara emerged right behind her, guiding Layla gently toward the warmth of the fire.
Jay smiled as they approached, rising just enough to hand Josie a ceramic mug he’d scavenged from the church kitchen. “Coffee. It’s pretty strong but it will wake you up.”
Josie wrapped both hands around the warm mug, letting the heat ground her. “Thank you,” she murmured, her voice still raw from the night before. She hesitated, then her gaze found Seth's, his expression unreadable.
Her throat tightened. “Last night... I meant it. Thank you. For saving us.”
Seth gave a single, sharp nod—controlled, not dismissive or cold, just careful. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said, his voice even. “You did what you had to do. I did what I had to do. That’s all.”
She took a sip and her eyes slid closed. “Omg, this is amazing, my coffee supplies ran out months ago.”
Cara gently pulled Layla onto her lap, distracting the girl by teaching her to stack pinecones into a “tiny forest.”
Jay handed Seth a second cup of coffee, clapping his shoulder once. “We’ll regroup in a few minutes. We should all eat something, warm up, then we figure out how to move forward.”
Seth nodded, his gaze drifting to Layla despite himself. The little girl held up a crooked pinecone tower and beamed, utterly unaware of how close she’d come to losing everything.
He took a long drink of coffee, letting the heat burn down into his chest.
Maybe today would be different. Maybe today he could breathe.
By the time the ashes had cooled enough to scatter, the morning had shifted. The air still held its sharp, early-spring chill, but the group moved with renewed purpose as they repacked the vehicles.
Jay cinched down the last strap on the trailer and dusted his hands on his jeans before turning toward Josie, who stood buckling Layla into the back of her SUV. She looked up.
“Josie,” he said, approaching at a respectful angle. “Can we talk for a minute?”
She closed the car door softly and stepped toward him. “Sure.”
Jay gestured toward the open stretch of road ahead. “Where were you headed before all of this happened?”
Josie hesitated, rubbing her thumb over the faded strap of her backpack. “Denver,” she said after a moment. “My parents live there. Or...” She swallowed. “They were there when everything started.”
Cara and Seth drifted closer, listening without crowding her.
Jay’s expression softened. “That’s where we’re going too—the outskirts, anyway. A big city means big risks but big supplies. We’re hoping to stock up enough to get our place fully stable before winter hits again.”
Josie nodded, absorbing the information, her shoulders sagging with a mixture of relief and exhaustion. “I don’t know how far I would’ve made it alone. I just wanted to get Layla somewhere safe.”
Seth’s voice, low and even, cut through his rigid posture. “Keeping her alive this long is more than most could do.”
Josie offered him a tight, garded smile.