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When they finished their bowls, they rinsed them with water and returned them to the bag. The fire still crackled but was well on its way to becoming hot coals. At least the smoke from the flames seemed to drown out the smell of the moldy bus that was soon to be their bed.
“Everyone, get some sleep. I’ll take first watch,” Eva said, then retrieved her pack from the bus and planted it on a stack of tires.
As she settled, Derek approached her and said, “Wake me in a couple hours, I’ll take second watch.”
Without looking at him, she nodded, and Derek turned and threw his shoulder into Krieger’s as he moved past him, again, before entering the bus with the other members of the crew.
He stayed planted where he was, unable to will his feet to move from where he stood. He couldn’t believe they were just going to leave this young woman to protect them from what lurked and bumped in the night.
Not even Mother Earth could make him get on that bus. In a short stride, he was at her side, making a nest out of a pair of tires. He could feel her eyes on him, but he refused to look at her because he knew she would want to argue over him staying.
When she opened her mouth, he held up his hand. “Nothing you say will make me leave this position.”
Her head tilted to the side as she threw something his way. “I was gonna say ‘here, take this’ before you so rudely interrupted me.”
A soft blanket landed in his arms, a sign she was accepting his company. Did she want him close by?
He searched her face. “Thanks.”
She quickly averted her eyes, yanking her bag onto her lap. Eva dug through the contents and removed a plastic tarp, then shook it open. He didn’t need to ask what it was for—within seconds, it started raining. He felt the first drop on his forehead, then his hands. More water fell as she wrapped the tarp behind her back and over her head and sat on her tire.
The hot coals hissed as the water doused the small flames.
She extended her arms out and asked, “Are you coming or what?”
He sat next to her under the tarp and took hold of the edge just as the light rain turned torrential. With his other hand, he placed part of the blanket she’d handed him over her lap. The plastic thudded in protest as visibility became almost impossible.
“They won’t attack now. Can’t see shit,” Eva said over the thick, pounding droplets.
He nodded and turned his attention to her. She watched the rain with a serenity he didn’t understand. “Do you like the rain?”
She cast him a glance, gauging him as if deciding whether to profess some secret, then looked back out at the pouring rain. “My mom did. She said the rain left the earth with a clean slate.”
Her mother? “She lives at Everwood with you?”
“She’s dead.”
He shifted his weight on his rubber seat. “Shit, I’m sorry. How did she die?”
Her eyes scanned the darkness, trying to see through the rainy haze that covered the land. “My mother, Laura, was a nurse, as good as any doctor. She was born and raised in Germany. My father was in the military and had been stationed in Mannheim. They met and married there before returning to America. She cared for the people of Everwood—the people injured after the apocalypse. She even cared for them on the field of battle.”
She paused briefly before looking at him and continuing. “I was with her that day, seven years ago. Crouched in the grass, treating a man who had been stabbed in the gut, as the fighting raged on in the distance between us and Stone Haven. She’d wanted me to learn to heal, not fight with a gun. She didn’t hear it—I didn’t hear it. The shot that rang out, the bullet that coursed through the air... before striking her in the chest, killing her instantly.”
She took a deep breath, her nails digging into the rubber of the tire and her eyes glistening with unshed tears. “The man we’d been treating... he lived.”
He placed his hand over hers. “It wasn’t your fault, Angel.”
She turned her face away from him, in the direction of the abandoned building. He wasn’t sure if she could see anything through the heavy rainfall, but he was positive he heard her sniffle.
She pulled her hand out from under his and moved a stray hair from her face before glancing up at him. The pain and tension he’d just seen in her face were gone, hidden far beneath the surface.
In the span of only a few seconds, she’d built a wall, blocking out any comfort he might have given.
“My father took me under his wing, trained me to fight—harder than he had anyone else before—how to survive and lead the people around me. Never again will I be weak or defenseless.”
He believed her.
Her tone had changed. A harsher, rougher quality now replaced the soft, gentle tenor her voice once had. An angel from the front and a vixen from the back.
