They aren’t talking about any of it. Not saying a damn word. It’s eerily silent except for the sound of a knife carving through flesh.
He and Kara have weapons. They could win this battle if everything goes right.
If it doesn’t, they’d both end up on that table.
His mind is reeling with worst-case scenarios, so he tries to distract himself by thinking of how they should do something about this if given the chance. Leaving these men alive is giving them a license to kill others, and they’ve grown good at it. Have a whole setup going, nasty as it is. Maybe they owe it to the next passerby to clean this place up. He’s just not sure how or when to execute that plan, and as the minutes tick on, it becomes clear they might be here a while.
Once the meal prep is finished, it’s nap time. He watches them collapse on those dusty cots while an old-fashioned hand-crank record player blasts out an odd choice of classical music.
Not much to do now except wait. Wade lowers himself to the ground slowly, settling on his ass with bent knees and she does the same, having to scoot in so close she’s nearly in his lap.
They aren’t in the habit of this kinda thing. Never have been. Back before the end of the world, it was too difficult being close to her without wanting her, so he kept a firm line in the sand.
Then, after Silas left him a shell of who he was, he feared he could never be close to anyone again. Couldn’t fathom that he’d ever want to.
He does want to, though. It’s surprising and terrifying, the depth of his desire to feel Kara as close as they can get. It’s far deeper than any physical attraction he’s felt for her before. The comfort and solace in her touch soothes all his wounded edges, and he is growing addicted to the safety of her embrace.He would have lain in bed with her all day when they woke up that morning if she hadn’t jerked away. He tries not to read into that too much, or he’ll fall down the rabbit hole of insecurities and convince himself he’s a fool for hoping. It is so simple to believe that if it hasn’t happened by now, after so many years and mutual declarations, it never will.
So he very pointedly does not overthink her reaction.
The only thing he knows for sure is thathelikes being in here with her far too much. Sure, there’s some kinda backwoods shit happening five feet from them and he should be focused on that instead of the scent of her hair and how warm she is pressed to him, but he never claimed to be rational.
It’s a devastating blow when his nervous system betrays him and his fingers begin to tremble, his mind shifting from how good she feels pushed to his body, to how trapped he felt back in his cell, stuffed into a small space like this for so long that his bent legs ached.
Her hand closes around one of his, squeezing gently as she rests her head on his shoulder.
His eyes flutter shut, and he focuses on the softness of her skin, on the way her exhales flutter his collarbone, and the weight of her in his lap. On anything and everything that isn’t a fractured memory trying to break out of his head and risk exposing their hiding spot. She hadn’t been thrilled about her last experience in a tiny space either, when she was trapped in that pantry, yet she seems far more relaxed now. He wonders if it’s only because they’re together.
It takes an hour before loud snoring tells them it’s safe to make a break for it. Once those fuckers wake up, someone might come searching for things in the pantry, then they’ll be extra screwed.
The door creaks slightly as he opens it and he winces, knuckles whitening as they curl around his knife, but no onestirs. Then Kara jerks with a hiss, cutting herself on a nail sticking out from the wall and they both wait for the shit to hit the fan.
It doesn’t. The snoring never quits.
He can’t ask her if she’s okay or check for himself. Has no choice but to put one foot in front of the other toward the front door. It’s easy enough to slip out and once they’re free, they waste no time in running, going in the opposite direction of the river they came from, and landing smack in front of another field of cars twice as big.
The bike rests just inside a makeshift wire fence.
“Are you good?” he asks, gesturing to the hand she’s pressed to her stomach.
“Yeah, it’s not that bad.”
He hesitates, needing to address the obvious before it’s too late to do anything about it. “If we leave them alive, they’ll kill again.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t know what to do here.”
“We don’t know for sure what’s happening. If they found their…victims already dead, or close to it. If they collected these cars after they were abandoned.”
“Kara, there’s a fucking jar full of eyeballs in the fridge.”
“I know,” she sighs. “But I can’t be the judge and jury anymore. If someone was in there being held against their will, we’d help them. Of course we would, but I can’t go back now and kill three people in their beds. I can’t.”
It seems pretty obvious to him that those men back there were already the worst kind of feral before this apocalypse ever happened. Then the freedom of it left them to their own devices. Someone doesn’t collect body parts or have half a torso on the kitchen table if they had rational sense to start with. It’ll nagat him forever to walk away from this, knowing they could put anyone else in danger.
But…everyone else isn’t his responsibility. Kara is. The very idea of dealing with this seems to eat away at her already, and that’s a new development that he isn’t tempted to test.
“Okay.” He could try to do it alone, but she’d never agree to that, so he doesn’t bother offering. “Let’s get outta here.”
