Jay Posey - Three

“We’ll rest here,” Three said, almost at full voice. The sudden volume was shocking in the dull and heavy silence that pervaded the dead city around them, and Cass couldn’t help but flinch.

“Are you sure it’s safe?” she whispered.

“Not at all,” he answered. “But you need it.”

He glanced to her briefly, caught her eye, added a little nod. Cass had started to protest, but Three’s tone was neither condescending nor accusatory. Not gentle, perhaps, but there was a hint of care or concern in his voice that she hadn’t noticed before. And suddenly, she was glad for it. Cass only now realized how exhausted she was.

They found a niche in what had once been a large fountain, though no water ran there now; a curving serpent wrapped around a stylized mountain, which offered them cover from three sides and some slight concealment from the fourth. Cass and Wren nestled together with their backs against the concrete base. Three produced some sort of ration from his harness: a synthetic combination of carbohydrates and protein; spongy, flavorless. They ate it without conversation or enjoyment, though Cass could tell it was at least nourishing.

After they’d eaten, Wren lay down and put his head in her lap, while Cass leaned back and let her eyes drift closed.

“So what’s the plan?” she asked without opening her eyes again.

“North a few more miles, then west.”

“Where does that get us?”

He inhaled deeply.

“Northwestish.”

Cass cracked an eye open. Three crouched by the opening, hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees; the closest thing to relaxed Cass had yet seen of him. Whether he had intended to say more or not, Cass wasn’t sure, but he reacted to her when he saw her looking. A half-smile, one corner of his mouth turned down slightly. A lightness in his eyes. A joke.

“The Vault’s up that way,” he continued. “Heard of it?”

Cass shook her head.

“Yeah, not many have. Not the nicest place, but it should be safe for a night, maybe two. Gatekeeper’s a friend of mine.”

“You have friends?”

Three exhaled abruptly through his nose; apparently his version of a chuckle.

“Enough to get by,” he replied. Then added with a nod, “Get some rest, girl. We’ll move soon.”

Cass let her eyes fall closed again, felt herself drifting off already, welcoming the deep embrace of sleep under Three’s watchful eye.

Three ran a thumb back and forth over the checkered grip of his holstered pistol, mind working to calculate all the variables that would affect the rest of their travel. He’d already let the woman and kid sleep nearly half an hour. Every minute that ticked by robbed them of precious daylight, their only ally out here in the open. They’d been making better time than he’d expected. Much better. Tough as the two were, though, they’d been showing signs of exhaustion. Three didn’t know how far he could push them.

Five more minutes. Then he’d wake them.

Three scanned their surroundings from his constrained viewpoint. Less visibility than he would’ve liked. And it was rarely a good idea to back into anything that only had one way out. But he knew Cass and Wren would feel safer here, surrounded by walls, hidden from view.

He chuckled humorlessly at that, touched the shallow, weeping cut across his throat. Seemed like he’d been making a lot of compromises lately.

He glanced over at the slumbering pair, and found Wren sitting upright, staring at him with glassy eyes, blond hair standing straight out from the side of his head where he’d been lying in his mother’s lap. Three nodded. Wren wiped an eye with the back of his hand and tossed a casual wave in response. For a moment, they just sat there, looking at each other, Wren’s sea-green eyes fixed unblinking on Three.

Three flashed back to when he’d first seen those eyes, back at the Enclave, back in that dive bar. Days ago? Another lifetime. Something in those eyes had captured his notice and escaped his definition then. Even now, sober and alert, Three found he couldn’t quite identify what he saw there. Something hovered at the outer edge of his consciousness, just beyond his grasp, a vanishing dream he fought to recall. Something…

Cass spasmed abruptly, eyes wide, hands shooting up from her lap; the sudden movement made Wren jump.

“They know,” she rasped. “They know I’m alive.”

Three was already in motion.

“Tracerunnin’ you?”

She shook her head.

“Can’t be. But he knows.”

Three’s mind scrambled through the scenarios. They’d been headed in a different direction before the blast. Not directly opposite, but far enough off-track to make other routes equally plausible. They’d avoided the obvious double-back. And there was an outside chance that the Vault was off-grid enough to escape Asher’s notice… No. No reason for optimism now. Three never counted on the outside chance, unless it was bad.

“If he can’t track your signal, he’ll have to split his crew, three, maybe four ways to cover the bases. Worst case, I figure we get to the Vault a good hour before they do, and by then, well…”

He trailed off; probably best if she didn’t know just how close they were cutting it.

“We’ll stay ahead of ’em,” he added. “We’ll be alright.”

Without hesitation Three stood and stretched a hand out to Cass, helping her to her feet; action conveying his certainty better than words. He dropped low, and glided out, quickly surveying the area before committing to an exit. Cass gathered their things, prepped Wren.

And once again, they were on the move.

Cass had traveled through more of the mummified carcass of the world than 99.9% of the remnant populace, but somehow she had never noticed before just how much everything looked the same. Gray or brown, concrete and rust, punctuated by flickering sparks of tech still happily humming with some internal purpose; gaudy, like Christmas lights on a gravestone. Maybe it was the exhaustion from the travel, blurring everything into one dreary, colorless smear, but most likely, she thought, it was some sort of newly acquired way of seeing things. Seeing them as they actually were, in the real world, rather than what they had been, before, as told by their lingering swirl of residual signal. Something learned from Three, perhaps. Or maybe just a fanciful musing from her weary mind.

She glanced at the sky above, framed from her vantage on either side by empty, towering high-rises. A vibrant orange, filtering to a muted purple, boxed in by the ever-present cold and lifeless gray. No, she was the one in the box… the sky was up there, gloriously free. She felt a twinge of envy, though she knew it was ridiculous to be jealous of the heavens. They simply were, as they had always been. Unchanged by the events that unfolded beneath. Cass shook her head with a humorless chuckle, wondering how exhausted she must be to be thinking that way.

They had held up well. By any sane person’s standards, she and Wren had made a heroic effort, a feat of nearly inhuman strength and endurance, to travel so far in their condition. Even at the best of times, running at full strength in Asher’s crew, she’d never traveled this far in the open in a single day. But compared to Three, she felt like they should’ve covered twice the distance. The man was tireless. He walked a few paces ahead of her, steps still even, strong, and sure, even though he had added her backpack on top of his own harness, and was now carrying Wren on his back as well.

Their pace had quickened significantly in the last two hours or so. Three insisted it was because he knew the area was safer than the others they’d passed through, but Cass couldn’t help but feel he was risking more than he would admit. And she understood. In another thirty minutes or so, it wouldn’t matter how much ground they had covered if they weren’t locked safely inside somewhere.