AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Hold on!” Peaches’ voice grumbles from the direction of the bed. I don’t know how she finds her footing, but I listen as she makes her way to the door and swings it open, the golden light enveloping her. “What time is it?”
“Six thirty,” the person outside says. Definitely a woman’s voice, but I don’t recognize it. “Sun’s up, time to get a move on.”
“I didn’t volunteer for this part,” Peaches says. “Let me just get Tilda—”
“Oh no you don’t,” the other voice says. My eyes adjust to the light and I fling the blanket off, rolling my neck to work out the kinks. The sofa is okay, but I feel like I’m going to have to find a more permanent place to sleep soon. With all my old wounds, my body tends to get pretty sore, especially on the tail end of a gunshot that should have killed me. Weirdly enough, I’m not as sore as I would usually be getting out of bed in the morning.
I tell myself itisn’tReyes’ bite, but I have a sinking feeling that it is. I don’t want it to be this helpful.
Peaches groans and heads over to tug on her pants under her loose sleep t-shirt, re-tying her hair as the newcomer joins us in the room. I stand up and stretch just as a petite girl walks in, her hair in dirty blond waves around her shoulders. “Elijah and I made a run to the city yesterday to get seeds after we heard from Mateo,” she says. “I want to get started on this as soon as possible.”
“Veggies are important,” Peaches agrees, clearly still half-asleep.
The newcomer turns toward me. “Hey,” she says, holding out her hand for a shake. “You must be Tilda.”
“And you are?”
“Charlotte,” she says. “I’m fairly new here myself.”
“I presume you came here under different circumstances,” I smirk.
She clicks her tongue. “Hm…not so different as you might think. I’ll tell you all about it once we get to work, but let’s get a move on. Don’t want to waste any daylight.”
We throw on our clothes and then I join Peaches and Charlotte in the tunnels, our steps quiet in the wee hours of the morning. I’m relieved to find that Arden isn’t outside watching this time; Reyes must have spoken to her. I get the feeling that others are still sleeping and that this isn’t the normal order of business—if most of their work is raiding enemy encampments and hunting, they probably do it at night. Charlotte doesn’t seem even a little bit tired, though, striding ahead faster than I would expect from someone so small.
I can feel myself breathing fully again as we near the exit of the den, where the cavern mouth opens up wide onto the prairie. I can see a wooden fence in the distance—the tall fence around the property. This was once a tourist location for travelers in the Texas hill country, but now it’s a militarized zone.
Sometimes it fucks with my head how much this land has changed.
“Alright,” Charlotte says, spreading out some seed packets on a table just outside. “I’ve got everything we need, I think. Where do we start?”
“Well, you need more than just the seeds,” I say. “We need trimmers, spades and hopefully something to mow down all this grass…?”
“I think there’s an old push mower in the maintenance shed, but it’s probably rusted through,” Charlotte says. “We’ll have to make do.”
“And the tools?” I ask.
“Might be able to adapt some stuff from the garage,” Peaches shrugs. “I can head there now.”
“Do that,” I say, placing my hands on my hips. She takes off and I look back at Charlotte. “Did you manage to get your hands on any fertilizer?”
“Working on it,” she says. “I’ve got allies in the city that are trying to scrounge up supplies, but they haven’t exactly been charitable with what they’re willing to share.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. “I thought you were all on the same side?”
“The rebels in the city apparently don’t like us much,” Charlotte shrugs. “I’m still coming to terms with it myself, but they…they think we’re monsters.”
I nod, trying to shrug it off. “It’ll be fine,” I say. “We can make it work. But just something to keep in mind—any castoff organic material, we need to turn around and compost. That meansanyspare stems, rotten veggies…we’ll want to get a barrel to get everything set.”
“Sounds good,” she says. “So what should we do?”
“You wanna go grab that mower?” I ask. “We need to clear the grass and figure out how we’re going to organize this first, then I’ll parse through the seeds and see what’ll take this time of year.”
Something delicious hits my senses—incense and red wine—and I let my eyes slide shut as I realize what that means. A moment later, Reyes appears coming from the direction of the visitors’ center and the old maintenance shed, dragging not one, buttwolawnmowers behind him.
I really thought he was going to leave me alone. I should have known I wouldn’t be so lucky.
“Figured you two might need these,” he says.
