Chapter 2 Cora #3
"I told Mark I would not cry until the convoy was out of the gate. I'm doing okay so far."
"You are."
"I am going to cry when the gate closes."
"I know."
"You won't be there. You will be ten miles down the road."
"I know."
"It's not your problem."
"It is. It is exactly my problem. It is the reason I am taking the convoy."
She looked at me. The Polaroid was in my hand. She looked at the Polaroid and then at me. Her face did something I did not have a clinical word for.
"Drew is on the team."
"Yes."
"Good."
"Why good."
"Because he is going to walk through fire to bring her home, and he is going to do it because you signed the paper, and he is going to be alone out there with you, and I do not know what he is to you and I do not know what you are to him, and I do not need to know.
But he is going. He is the reason I am sleeping tonight. "
She stood up. She did not take the Polaroid back.
"Eight months I have not slept properly. I am going to sleep tonight, Cora, because Drew is on the team. You did not put him on the team for that reason but it is the reason I am sleeping. So thank you."
She went out.
I held the Polaroid for a long time. The lantern was low. The chemical bleed in the corners looked like an old water stain. The dog was a yellow lab. I did not know the dog's name.
I put the Polaroid in my chest pocket.
I picked up the route map. I redrew the Bay handoff. The numbers worked.
I slept three hours.
* * *
At oh-six-hundred I was at the strip.
Cruz was already there. He had a kit bag and a duffel and a rifle case and a Marine's patience, which was the kind of patience that consisted of standing perfectly still and waiting and absorbing whatever was around him into the inventory of things he could use later. He nodded at me. He did not speak.
Sylvia came next. She had a medical pack the size of a small car door, strapped to a frame Brecca had built her last month for this exact contingency.
Brecca was with her. Brecca did not stay long.
She put her hand on Sylvia's shoulder, hard, once, and walked away without speaking.
Sylvia watched her go and then turned to me with the look of a woman who had decided something and was not going to discuss it.
Renn arrived at oh-six-thirty. He had two blades, a rifle, a bandolier of dried meat, and the calm of a Vampyren warrior who had been a Vegas scout for nine years and a Mojave camp resident for one and who had been quietly hoping to be invited on a long-range mission for the entire year.
He nodded at Cruz. He nodded at Sylvia. He did not speak.
Drew came at oh-six-forty-five.
He carried no visible bag. He carried a single blade at his hip.
He had Auriel's wooden carving in his pocket.
Tess had given it to him at oh-six-thirty, in her tent, and he had taken it from her hand, and Tess had told me at oh-six-forty that he had said "thank you," twice, with three words between them, and she had not asked.
He had a small canvas roll at his belt. I did not know what was in it.
He nodded at Cruz. Cruz nodded back. He nodded at Sylvia. Sylvia nodded back. He nodded at Renn. Renn looked at him for a long second, then nodded. The nod was Vampyren-formal, the kind a senior warrior gave to a junior in a unit. Drew did not respond to the formality. He just nodded back.
He came to me.
"Ready."
"Ready."
The trucks were loaded. The fuel cans were on the racks. The cache lists were in Cruz's bag. The route map was in my chest pocket on top of the Polaroid. The radio was on Crystal's table, off-channel for the dawn check.
I looked across the camp. Crystal was at the gate.
Mark was beside her. Cassi was at the wall with her arm around Crystal's shoulders.
Loren was on the watchtower with Kiera. Brecca was at the medical tent flap, not looking but not turning away either.
Tess was at the kitchen tent with Auriel on her hip; Kal was beside her.
Marta was at her tent door with her arms crossed, watching, not waving.
I climbed into the lead truck. Drew climbed into the passenger side. Renn took the second truck with Cruz; Sylvia rode third with the medical pack.
I started the engine.
The convoy rolled to the gate.
Cassi stepped forward as we slowed. She put her hand on the truck's door frame.
She looked at me. Her dark eyes did the thing they had been doing for six years, the thing they had been doing since the night the Vampyren had come for her mother.
The thing she did when she was sending someone off and she did not believe she had the right to be the one staying behind.
"You bring my best friend's daughter home, Cora."
"I will, Cass."
"And you bring my best friend's would-be-rescuer home too."
I looked past her. Drew was looking out the windshield, not at her. He had heard her. He did not respond.
Cassi tapped the doorframe twice. Stepped back.
The gate opened.
I drove through.
In the rearview mirror, Crystal was standing with her hand over her mouth. Mark had his arm around her. Her shoulders were shaking.
She had said she would wait until the gate closed before she cried.
The gate closed.
In the mirror, she did not move her hand from her mouth.
I drove on.
Drew was quiet for two miles. Then he reached into his pocket and took out the wooden carving Tess had given him. He turned it over in his hand once. Set it on the dashboard.
"For luck," he said. "Tess told me to set it on the dashboard. She did not say why."
"That's why."
"That's why?"
"Because she is not coming, and Auriel is not coming, but the carving is coming, and the carving is from the only person in the camp besides Crystal and Mark who has lost a daughter and gotten her back.
Auriel is alive because Tess walked from Newport Beach to LA pregnant in three days.
Tess is telling you that you can carry something you cannot fix. "
Drew looked at the carving on the dashboard.
He looked at me.
His face did nothing.
He looked back at the carving.
"Yours," he said. Not to me. To the carving. "Mine. Theirs. I don't know what this one is. Tess gave it to me with one hand. I took it with one. I should know what it is."
"You will."
"You think so."
"I do."
He did not say anything else.
I drove east toward Vegas. The sun came up behind us.
The dashboard caught the light. The carving caught the light.
The wood was pale at the curves where Kal had whittled but had not yet finished, and the dark grain ran along the spine of whatever animal it was supposed to be, a bear, maybe, or a wolf, and Drew did not move it the entire first day.
I drove. I counted miles. I counted fuel margin. I counted the people in the camp behind us.
Two hundred and fourteen humans. Eleven Vampyren. One half-Vampyren adult. Six Lucian who'd stuck. One baby. Six in Urbana, waiting.
Drew did not say six. He had heard me say it. He had heard me say it twice now. He had not said it himself.
He would. Eventually. Drew was not a man who avoided numbers. He was a man who waited for the number to arrive on its own.
I drove on.