“You did more than that. Why are you wearing that silly dress and those braids?”
He’s way too clever for his own good.
“You did some sort of damsel-in-distress act to get inside, didn’t you?”
“Maybe.”
He lets out a pained, breathy laugh and cups my face. “If I had more energy, I might have words with you about putting yourself in danger.”
“You can have all the words you want. I did what I had to do. The world wouldn’t change, so I changed it.”
His smile is like the sun coming out from behind gray rain clouds. “Yeah, you did. You’re a fucking angel sent from heaven.” He pulls me down to kiss me again. “But I always knew you were.”
18
A couple of weeks later,Cade is out of bed and back in action. At the moment, he’s seated at the largest table of my section of the Pub.
With him are his parents, two of his friends from his hometown, Nell, three couples who run the most productive of the local farms, and the town’s mayor before Impact. Cade has been going since early this morning, and he looks tired. I want to tell him to save this conversation for tomorrow, but everyone wants to get it ironed out now.
The region has been in upheaval since we took the militia compound and ran the survivors who wouldn’t submit out of the county. While chaos and upheaval might be the state of the world right now, it’s not good for the security and smooth running of a community. So the time has come to make some decisions.
I pass around the table the beers Pete just poured out for me at the bar. Then I lean against a nearby wall to hear what’s being said.
Because I want to listen, and because I can.
“Everyone knows you’re gonna be the new mayor,” one of the farmers says to Cade. “I’m all for democracy and all that, but it seems like a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“We can do it without much trouble,” Nell says. “I can think of a few different ways to make taking votes easy.”
“Now that the militia is gone, the county’s been cut in half in population.” That’s Cade’s father, who has a similar gruff persona as Cade as well as his soft heart. “Not all that many of us left around. Counting votes won’t be hard.”
“No,” Cade agrees. “It won’t. And I’m not accepting an elected position without an election.” He glances over at Nell. “Would you mind working on a system for us to use?”
Nell agrees, and the conversation transitions to setting up guard posts and perimeter patrols in case more gangs move in or what’s left of the militia regroups and attempts to strike back.
Pete got Danny to cover the bar for him so he could come over to listen too. He’s leaning against the opposite wall from me, observing in his laid-back way but missing absolutely nothing. He makes one suggestion about how to layer the guard rotations but otherwise stays quiet.
When he catches me looking at him, he gives me a wink.
I’m smiling back at him when I notice Cade glancing toward me. I give him a small nod—nothing really. Just a silent gesture to somehow show how much I love him. How proud I am of him.
His cheeks flush slightly, and he smiles down at his beer.
If I could go over right now and give him a hug, I would.
But I can’t, so instead, I walk back to the bar to get a round of drinks for the table of locals that just came in.
About a half hour later, I’m bringing out bowls of stew when I hear Cade say, “Okay. I’m fine with that. Pete’s right. We’re starting over, so we’re not keeping this town named after a legacy of evil. If everyone agrees, we’ll rename the town Monument instead.”
Six months later, I’m carrying glasses of whiskey over to a group of travelers passing through.
They’re kind of rowdy—travelers are always the biggest risk, since not a single one of the locals wants to get banished from the Pub—but so far these guys haven’t done anything particularly troublesome.
Cade is sitting at his normal table this evening, so he’ll step in if they try something.
The guys at the table accept their whiskey, regaling me about their adventures driving down from the northeast, including accidentally skirting around the edge of a drove.
The huge horde of collected gangs that there’s been rumors about for a while is evidently a real thing. People are calling it a drove, and it’s currently moving slowly toward the west, devastating the communities it encounters.
