State of Emergency

“Who the hell else would it be?” He climbs the last few feet separating us and yanks me to my feet, throwing me against his chest. I grab his shoulders to keep from taking a sled ride to the bottom of the hill just as he presses a fierce kiss to my lips. I wrap my arms around his neck, threading my fingers through his hair. He pulls away suddenly and glares, hands gripping my hips so hard I think he’s leaving bruises.

“Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been about you?” he demands.

I touch my mouth, feeling some of his black camo paint rub off on my skin. I stare up at him, his beautiful green eyes flashing with totally not subtle anger.

“I had to go, Chris,” I say. “You know that.”

“I thought you were dead,” he says, holding me around the waist with one arm, his other hand cupping my cheek. His hands are wrapped up with strips of cloth. He looks like he’s been fighting some kind of war.

“Why would even think that?” I ask. “I can take care of myself.”

But while I’m talking, all I can think is:

Chris is here. With me.

Complete, utter relief floods me like a drug.

“I found a dead body a few miles back,” Chris says. “Omega was out in full force in the lower part of the mountains. They’re searching for campers in the hills. I thought maybe you were caught in the crossfire.”

I pale, realizing he must have found Bree.

“Did you find anybody else?” I whisper.

“No. Why?”

I shake my head.

“I was there,” I say.

Chris squeezes me tighter.

“I’ve been tracking you since you left,” he tells me, his thumb trailing down the side of my neck. “Why would you do that to me?”

“Do what?”

“Leave without saying goodbye.”

I sigh.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I didn’t want to make you choose between me and your family.” There. I said it. Finally.

He looks shocked and then kisses me slowly, sending a shiver down my spine. Everything around us dissolves — the cold weather, the trees, the dirt. It’s just the two of us, and the only thing that matters is that he’s holding me, and I feel safe.

Completely safe.

“I think we already had this discussion,” he says, his voice soft. “You are apart of the family, now. So you should start acting like it.”

I lower my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I answer. “I just had to go before I lost my nerve.”

My lower lip wobbles a little, tears threatening to spill onto my cheeks. “Chris, the body you found,” I say. “I was with that girl when she died.”

His gaze narrows and a muscle ticks in his jaw.

“And you’re lost,” he states. “Tell me what happened.”

I nod, sinking down to the ground. Chris keeps his arms around me as we lean against the base of a tree. I snuggle into his warmth, so glad that I’m not alone anymore. Because believe me, when you’re completely alone in the woods, companionship is the most wonderful thing you can have.

I give him the whole story, leaving out no detail, and by the time I end my sad tale, I’m crying into his shirt over Bree’s death all over again.

“I didn’t even know her,” I choke. “But nobody deserves to die like that.”

“No, they don’t,” Chris agrees, weaving his fingers through my hair. Soothing me. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I tried to tell them,” I say, guilty. “But they wouldn’t listen.”

“Hey, look at me,” Chris says, tilting my chin up. “You went back and saved those kids’ lives when you could have kept ru

I nod slightly, Chris kissing the tip of my nose.

“You feel like moving?” he asks.

“Where are we going?”

“To your cabin. Or has there been a change of plans?”

I blink a few times. It honestly hadn’t crossed my mind that Chris was going to help me find my dad. I thought he would come here to try to drag me back to the Young farm.

“You’re coming with me?” I exclaim, a smile creeping across my face.

“Cassidy,” he whispers, taking my hands in his, “where else would I be?”

Chapter Thirteen

There’s something about tromping through the wilderness that really makes you feel good. It’s the kind of feeling you just can’t get if you’re walking down a sidewalk in LA or New York. It’s a feeling of absolute freedom. Plus, the lack of pollution might make it easier to breathe so you just naturally feel better.

Who knows?

Chris was able to find the highway in record time, making my navigational skills look worse than ever before. I asked him why he didn’t take the Hummer we stole from Omega in the Valley to find me, and he said he wouldn’t have been able to track me in a car.

I didn’t even bother to ask how he tracked me, anyway.

As we get higher, it gets colder. The air gets drier and I swear the elevation change makes me hungrier. Note: Hungrier than usual. Chris has got more supplies from his mother’s food cabinet in his backpack, which means my chances of starving to death are a little smaller than they were when I was on my own.

There are still no cars or signs of humans. There isn’t even any sign of evacuation. I guess there just aren’t very many people up here. Besides, how many people who live way back in the hills are even going to know about the EMP or the takeover? They could still be living so isolated from the outside world that they have no idea about the kind of crap that went down.

We cover about four miles. I just can’t go any farther. I’m exhausted. We reach some pine trees so there’s a place for us to camp off the road.

I curl up in a tight ball next to Chris. In this way I can siphon off his extra body heat and keep from turning into Frosty the Snowman during the night. Not to mention it makes me feel a lot safer holding onto him while we’re lying in the middle of a dark forest.

“You ever been camping before?” I ask.

“Yeah.” Chris shifts his arm underneath me, pulling me just a little tighter against his chest. No complaint here. “You?”

“No.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“But you and your dad have a cabin up here,” he says. “Haven’t you ever been up here before? To a campground?”

“Believe me, our cabin is pretty much the same thing as camping,” I reply, smiling. “The only difference is the roof and the mattresses. Other than that, it’s like sleeping outside.”

Chris nods, kind of a pointless gesture since it’s too dark to see anything.

“What are you going to do if he’s not there, Cassidy?” he asks after a long silence. I finger the zipper on his jacket, listening to the calm beat of his heart against my ear.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “I don’t want to think about it.”

“You need to. We’re lucky that it’s a dry season,” he says. “But all it takes is one big storm to trap you somewhere. You need to decide if you’re going to stay there and wait for him, of if you would come back to the house with me.”

“Can’t I just decide when we get there?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, which is his way of saying, “You can, but you shouldn’t.”

So that’s what I decide to do. I’ll just wing it. I’ve never been one for laying out plans or plotting courses. I just ride the wave, so to speak, and go from there. My dad is exactly the same way, which makes me wonder what he’s been doing if I show up at the cabin and find out that he’s been there for a few weeks, waiting for me.

Depressing.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Chris says, changing his tune. He probably felt my heart rate speed up just thinking about making the decision. “It’ll work out.”

“Yeah,” I reply, unconvinced. “Sure it will.”

We actually sleep pretty well in the dirt until twilight, when everything is covered in a dusty gray light. Prime bear-roaming time. I wake up with a neck ache from being so tense sleeping in the cold. Chris seems unaffected.