AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why did you just serve for five years?”
Justin took a hand off the handlebars and rubbed his chin. “I... uh... Stress, I suppose. They thought we would burn out. And they were right. Some of us didn’t even make it the full five years. Others stayed on after their term of service was up to become instructors, like your dad.”
“He must have seen some awful things. My dad, I mean. Because when he had the fever—” She couldn’t go on. “I think you must have seen some awful things, too.”
“I have.” He didn’t elaborate, and his expression was carefully impassive. She knew better than to ask.
“But it made you better able to survive in this new world. You can do things other people can’t.”
He cursed softly. “That’s not always a good thing, Carly.” That impassive expression had become grim. She saw a muscle twitch in his cheek.
“You’re not a bad person, Justin. Just one who’s strong.”
“What if I told you I was a bad person, once?” Justin’s voice was low; it was almost lost in the whirring of their tire spokes.
Carly thought about it. “I’d say you’re even more amazing for being able to change. Most can’t, you know. Most bad people justify their actions, at least to themselves. I bet if you took a poll, very, very few people would say they’re bad. They’re good people with bad circumstances, they’d say. And even those who seek forgiveness in religion or in the secular world don’t always manage to change themselves. That takes a massive amount of effort. Not many are able to accomplish it because it’s just too hard, or maybe they didn’t really want to change in the first place. They just wanted justification.”
Justin laughed softly. “And you say you’re not smart.”
Carly shrugged. “I read it in a book somewhere. But I know you’re not a bad person. A bad person would have hurt me and certainly wouldn’t have brought me along, or let me keep Shadowfax. A bad person would have hurt that man back there and taken what little he did have. But you’re able to be strong when you have to be. I would have given in and shared some of our supplies with that family. I’d be thinking with my heart, not with my head. But you? I bet you never think with just your heart.”
“I have, a few times,” Justin said, and that muscle in his cheek twitched again. “It usually didn’t end well.”
“Why did you join the army?”
His hands tightened on his handlebars until the knuckles were white. “I didn’t have many options in life, Carly. I bounced around from foster home to foster home. I barely graduated high school and didn’t have a chance in hell of going to college. The day I turned eighteen, my foster mother handed me a duffel bag with my belongings, gave me twenty dollars, and showed me the door. A few months later, I passed a recruiting station, and it seemed like a good idea.”
“What did you do for those few months before you went into the army?”
“Things I don’t want to talk about,” Justin said bluntly.
“Okay.” Carly had things she didn’t want to talk about either.
“My recruiter happened to know Lewis, who was one of the commanders of The Unit at one time. He thought I seemed like a good candidate, and I was, but not for the right reasons. Ironically, it was The Unit that straightened me out.”
“What did you do after you retired?”
“Wandered around, for the most part. I’ve got a good pension. Had a good pension, that is. So I just traveled where the road took me.”
“Were you looking for something?”
Justin seemed startled by the question. He ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “I never thought of it that way, but yeah, I think I was. I don’t know what that might have been, though.”
She was pretty sure she knew what it was. “A home.”
Justin stared at her.
“You never had one, it sounds like,” Carly explained.
“I owned a house in Chicago.”
Carly shook her head. “That’s not a home. A home is where people love you.” It made her sad that he didn’t know the difference.
“Tell me about yours.”
She almost laughed at how he switched the focus to her, moving away from a topic he wasn’t comfortable exploring, but she played along. “My home? You were there.”
“Yes, but tell me what it was like before.”
