Page 69 of Breaking Danger
No matter. He gripped the wheel harder, fighting the temptation to speed up. That could get them killed. They’d get to Haven when they got there. Not before and not later.
After six hours of driving Jon’s muscles were aching. If this were any other situation he’d stop and stretch. But it was what it was and he didn’t want to endanger Sophie by stopping, not even if the scanner was clear.
He was trying to negotiate a sudden dip in the land that turned out to be almost a pit when Sophie said, very quietly, “Jon.”
He couldn’t look at her until he’d gunned the engine to work the vehicle up and over the other side of the deep depression. Then he spared her a quick glance.
“What?”
“Infected.” She tilted the scanner so he could see clearly. Yep, a pack of them. About twenty, milling aimlessly about five hundred meters west.
“Car’s very quiet,” he said. “Maybe we can slip by without them noticing.”
He concentrated fiercely on the road, speeding up. They would be safe in the cabin but he didn’t want to engage with infected at all. He pushed the car’s speed up even more, carefully threading around trees and humps in the ground.
Finally Sophie spoke again. “We’ve cleared them.”
“Good.” Jon eased up on the accelerator. They’d been travelling dangerously fast, at a clip he couldn’t maintain without risking an accident. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? There’s some food and water in the the cooler right behind my seat.”
“I’ll eat and drink at Haven.” Sophie reached out, caressed his cheek lightly. Her hand was warm, soft. Comforting. “Until then I think we need to pay attention to the road.”
Jon grunted. It was exactly what a fellow soldier would say. Top priority—the mission. Creature comforts can come when the op is done. In the meantime, do what you have to do to come back safely.
Sophie looked around. The darkness was absolute but the quality of the darkness changed. “What’s the landscape like now?”
“More open,” Jon replied. “We’re coming now into open ground. If the clouds break, you’ll see starlight.”
She craned her neck to look out the side window but the cloud cover was thick. “The darkness is oppressive,” she said quietly. “I’m glad you have night vision.”
Jon grunted. He was glad too. Otherwise, this night-time journey across California would have been impossible.
To the north was a source of light, showing up in night vision as a diffuse glare. They turned a corner and even Sophie could see it. “What is it?” she asked.
Jon checked that they had a relatively flat surface for the next kilometer then tapped the side of his night vision goggles, turning them into high magnification binoculars. “A fire.” He exhaled a breath. “Looks like either a school or hospital.”
They were both silent. Schools. Hospitals. Universities. All the things that helped humans live human lives. Without them people lived short stunted lives, ignorant and bestial.
Sophie’s voice was quiet but determined. “We’re going to rebuild. As soon as we can get the vaccine into production, we’ll do our best to inoculate as many people as possible and we’ll get the vaccine to the military as soon as they are capable of doing more than defending against the infected. But we’ll do it and we’ll rebuild. All of us will have a difficult five or ten years but our children will live normal lives. We’ll make sure of it.”
Our children.Jon’s heart gave a huge thump in his chest. Children. He knew that she was speaking generally and that she didn’t mean that she and Jon would have kids together but somehow the idea, the image, zinged straight to some up-to-now dormant part of his brain and lodged there. He couldn’t shake it out of his head.
His and Sophie’s children. A little girl, maybe two, looking just like Sophie. Pretty and solemn and smart. Loving him, looking to him for protection. Oh God.
What the fuck was this? He hadneverwanted kids, ever. And had taken great precautions against fatherhood because the idea of a kid of his alone in the world, without protection…
His heart gave another huge thump in his chest. Good thing he knew, without a doubt, that no kid of his was out there.
His parents had been great at giving a big example of how not to be parents. Feckless and cruel in their indifference to anything but the next high, he’d had an example up close and personal of what not to do.
He knew what not to do. He had that down pat.
But being a good father? No frigging clue. He’d never seen it. He’d found structure and discipline in the military and then in Ghost Ops but there wasn’t any touchy-feeling nurturing going on there. Military life was really binary. Do-not do. Obey-not obey. Andnot doandnot obeyhadn’t been options. You aren’t gently persuaded to do something in the military, explaining the reasons why. No moral lessons drawn, no rules for living. Just—get this done or you’ll be sorry.
That was how he had intended to live out his entire life. Under the iron discipline of a military existence.
Jon wasn’t a naturally philosophical person but the few times he ever thought about his future, maybe life after Ghost Ops, he’d drawn a blank. He was going to die young so what was the use of planning for life after Ghost Ops. What could possibly fill his life? He’d had plenty of sex partners but never a girlfriend so the question of a long term relationship or—God!—kids had never come up.
Marriage and children, a family, had never filled that blank space in his head. Being a husband and father wasn’t anything he could ever see for himself. Or, really, for any of his teammates, though Mac and Nick seemed happy now that they were settled.
