Page 27 of Rarely Pure and Never Simple
"Hey?" Blaze called from the front seat.
He's getting impatient. I have to calm down. I have to—
"You mind if I take time for a quick look around? I'll just be a couple."
Blaze got out of the car before he could answer, and just like that, the stress dissolved with that one gallant act. Damien pulled in a shaky breath. How had Blaze puzzled out so much about him in such a short space of time? Was it instinctive? Did he simply observe more keenly than most? Given time and space, he completed his rounds of counting without incident. Their chosen space in the world was safe again, and he could crawl into the passenger seat.
High, white cloud horsetails brushed the sky. Damien watched them as he waited for Blaze, trying to appear relaxed. Someday, maybe he would achieve actual calm, a day when there wasn't a lead ball lodged in his stomach while he waited for the next bad thing, when he slept through the night and snuggled back under the covers in happy indolence when he woke.
Other people did these things. So he'd heard.
It had been a colossal mistake to hold Blaze through the night. He didn't mind that his arm had been all pins and needles when he woke. That was a small, temporary misery. No, the problem was hewanted, and having Blaze nestled up beside him only fanned the spark of want into a roaring fire. It could never happen again. The quickest way to lose Blaze as a friend would be to try to sleep with him. It could only end badly, and friendships were so rare for Damien they could have qualified as functionally extinct.
Now where did that come from? Blaze and friend in the same thought…
The man himself interrupted his thoughts by sliding back into the driver's side. "All clear. Doesn't look like anything came near us last night."
Damien was happy to play along with the polite fiction. "Good."
"Point the way, Mr. Compass Man."
"We need to stay off the interstate. Head northeast. More north for now."
"Nice. North by northeast-ish. Very specific."
"Best I can do right now." Damien pressed his lips together as he concentrated on the trails he had zeroed in on the day before. "We're coming up on a convergence."
"What's that? Where trails cross each other or some shit like that?"
"Yes. Some shit like that."
Blaze shot him a fierce grin as he adjusted course around a group of tumbled rocks. "I like it when you're snarky. Gives me hope for mankind."
"Hmm."
For several hours, they drove in silence except for Damien's occasional corrections in heading. He would have liked to call it a companionable silence, and perhaps it was as close as he would ever come, but he was too keyed up to say he enjoyed the drive. The pain and leaden dread that cropped up along the trails of the dead failed to manifest. He found himself leaning forward, gripping the door handle tight as the trails drew clearer and sharper.
"Five, no six," he whispered as they broke out of a cluster of pines within sight of what the car assured him was Mahogany Peaks.
"Six what? Kids?" Blaze's hesitation lasted several heartbeats. "Do I slow down? Are they dead?"
"Yes. Yes. I don't think so." Damien registered Blaze's sputtered growl as frustration. He pointed to the left. "That way. Slow down. Slower. Stop."
"There's nothing here."
Damien gulped for air, the multiple trail ends so close they threatened to suffocate him. "I need to get out. Blaze, please."
The Raptor jerked to a stop, settling to the ground with the clunks and thuds of reconfiguring wheels. Damien shoved the door open and stumbled out before the wheels settled, the heat of the trails so recent they threatened to blind him. Slowly, he forced himself forward, one foot, then the other, around the burned-out hulk of an old RV. He fought the images his imagination tried to thrust at him of the occupants fighting for their lives, probably slaughtered for their meager food supplies during the worst of the starvation years.
The driver's side door slammed. Metallic clicks indicated Blaze checking and cocking weapons as his heavy tread followed, first in hurried footsteps and then painstakingly slow to match Damien's.
"I've got your back." Blaze's deep voice soothed him, grounded him. "Would it help if you talked to me?"
"It's—they're six of them. I don't… not close enough to untangle which ones yet." Damien stumbled over loose stones, righted himself on fir branch, and corrected his course to the left. "They meet up ahead a bit. Past—I think—past those first hills."
Through another stand of firs, he caught a flickering of light. Curious, he headed toward it, the flicker resolving into a tiny holo projection. He thought at first it had to be a marker of some kind or maybe even someone's memorial, though who would leave such a thing out here?
"Blaze…"
