Shoshanna Evers - The Pulse

When he got back to where she stood over the rekindled fire, he had to stop and admire her beauty. She was a target, for sure. But not for the reason she thought.

Then again, if she really had stolen something valuable, like a gun, that could be a definite asset. And, for her, a potential liability.

She glanced up at him and he grinned. “Potatoes,” he said, holding up the can.

“Potatoes!” she repeated, smiling. “That’s perfect.”

Mason snapped open his utility knife and stabbed deep into the can, carefully tearing it open. “We can cook them in the can,” he offered.

“Um, I know this seems gross, but there are some metal bedpans,” Emily said. “They’re sterilized, I swear. It might make a good pot for potato soup.”

Mason frowned. Why not. “Sure.”

Emily came back a moment later with an admittedly clean metal bedpan and started boiling water to add the canned potatoes to. She turned to him. “We shouldn’t watch the water boil, it will take longer.”

He laughed, but as she came up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck, his face grew serious. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you pass the time,” she said, looking up into his face with a small smile.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. He couldn’t have her coming onto him out of a misguided sense of obligation.

“I—you’ve been so nice to me. I want to return the favor.”

He pushed her away, gently. “No. No thank you.”

She looked confused, hurt. “You don’t like me.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want you prostituting yourself.”

“That’s what I am to you, huh?” she asked bitterly. “A prostitute.”

Mason sighed. It had been a long time since he’d had to keep up any sort of conversation, and apparently his skills, if he ever had any, were fading with time spent alone—first in prison, then on the streets after the EMP.

“I don’t care what you are,” he said. “You do what you have to do to survive. But not—not with me. I don’t want you thinking you have to sleep with me in exchange for protection.”

“Don’t I, though?” she asked, her voice deadly calm. “You won’t come with me. You don’t want me around. How can I convince you to keep me safe? What do I need to do?”

She pulled her shirt off then, exposing her small breasts, the nipples immediately hardening in the cool air.

Masonturned away from Emily, heat rising in his face at the sight of her naked breasts, and groaned inwardly. She was making this difficult for him.

Damn it.

He felt her hands on his back, touching his shoulders through the thin material of his T-shirt. He had to stop her, had to show her this was not the way.

Growling, he turned and faced her, pulling her toward him with such ferocity she gasped.

“Is this what you want?” he hissed. “To be used for my pleasure, just so I’ll take care of you? Is this what you want?”

She trembled in his arms and he realized a tear had rolled down her cheek. It left a clean streak through the light dusting of soot that smudged her face.

Emily pulled away. Turning her back on him, she picked up the can of potatoes with shaking hands and emptied it into the now boiling water.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, picking her shirt up off the floor. “Here, put this on.”

She took it from him, not looking him in the eye. She’d wiped away her tears, but her face held a stony determination that concerned him.

“What’s wrong, Emily?”

“I can’t go back to the Tracks.”

“No one says you have to.”

“But you won’t go with me.”

“No,” he agreed. “I can’t leave. I won’t.”

Emily nodded, looking into the pot of soup. “I appreciate that you aren’t forcing me to… earn my keep. But, I want to. I really do.”

Mason wished he could plug his ears like a child so he didn’t have to listen to her tempting him.

He could ravish her right then and there on the floor if he chose to—why did she push him? “You should be glad I’m leaving you be.”

Emily ate herhot potato soup, enjoying it even more since she wasn’t as starving as usual.

Mason looked at her. “You can’t leave, Emily.”

She paused with the mug halfway to her lips at this pronouncement. “I have to. I have no choice.”

“You do have a choice,” he said, setting his mug down. “Come stay with me.”

Stay with him? The thought sounded lovely—and frightening. She still had no idea what sort of criminal he’d been.

He seemed so… good, though, deep down. Like maybe he had gotten caught up in some sort of burglary by accident as a young man, but now he was reformed. Maybe truly regretted whatever he did that had sent him to Rikers.

Could she live with a criminal? She glanced at him, sipping from her mug to give herself time to answer.

“Why,” she asked, “do you want me to stay with you if you have no intention of sleeping with me?”

He scowled. “Then don’t stay with me. I don’t care. I just—I wanted to give you an option.”

“I can’t stay in New York. They’ll catch me,” she said finally. “I have to leave.”

“You may as well shoot yourself now, then.”

Emily gasped. “What are you talking about?”

“You need me to protect you, you said it yourself. And since I’m not leaving, you shouldn’t either. That’s all.” He looked away. “Forget I said anything.”

He was probably right. She could die escaping on her own. But what choice did she have? If she stayed in New York the military would find her. And she would definitely be killed then, or worse.

She couldn’t—wouldn’t—go back to Grand Central.

They ate in awkward silence. Emily enjoyed the soup, perfect on a cold morning. Funny how her tastes had changed since the Pulse.

She wanted to sneak off and listen to the radio, to try to get it to work for her. She had been too scared to mess around with it when she first stole it, but now it beckoned her from her worn backpack, calling for her to fiddle with it.

Why did this radio work, when none of the others did?

And how, how on earth could something be broadcast on the radio? Wasn’t every place hit as bad as New York City? If the attack hadn’t devastated all of America, then help would have arrived by now. The silence from the rest of the country was a deafening testament to the scope of destruction.

“Mason?” she asked, sipping the last of the soup out of her mug.

He looked at her warily, as if he was afraid she might try to jump his bones again. “What?”

“Do you know what happened?”

“What happened, when?”

“The attack. The war, I guess. One minute everything was… normal…”

Mason nodded and she paused, allowing herself the luxury of reminiscing for a moment. She had taken it all for granted. Electricity. Running water. Cars. If she could get it all back, she’d be grateful every time she flipped a light switch or turned on a faucet.

“The next thing I know,” she continued, “we were all thrown back to the dark ages. I know it was the Pulse. I mean, an EMP. But I don’t get it, not really. Why doesn’t anything work? Why didn’t generators kick on? Why haven’t they been able to get the power back on like it used to be?”

“That’s a lot of questions,” he murmured.

“Do you even know?”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Unfortunately.”

Emily looked at him with interest. His tousled hair fell in his face but she resisted the urge to sweep it out of his eyes.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You just hear… nuclear. And it makes you think—well, when everyone started saying there’d been a nuclear strike against the US, I really expected—something different, I guess.”