The Valley: A Lee Harden Novel, page 4
It seemed to happen without him even realizing it, until his eyes glanced off of hers like ricochets and they both looked away with mild embarrassment.
But she’d been looking too.
Sam sighed and forced his eyes over his surroundings again. Dusty dirt. Metal boxes. Strangers’ faces. Rolling hills of patchy, emaciated green. A hazy, hot sky.
Back to the woman again.
This time she wasn’t looking at him. He found himself mildly disappointed by that, and yet pleased to be able to study her. Dark brown hair. Skin that looked like it did not get along with the sun—probably why she wore long sleeves, despite the warm day, and the wide-brimmed hat she had pushed back off her head. In that pale, flushed face, her blue eyes stood out starkly, even from a distance.
And then they swiveled and caught him.
He huffed out another sigh and looked down, scuffing his boot in the dirt. “Aw, hell, Jonesy.”
“What?”
Sam righted himself, bringing his gaze back to the woman in the lookout, meeting her eyes and not flinching away this time. “Guess I’m gonna go talk to her.”
Jones scoffed. “What is this? A high school dance? I don’t give a fuck who you talk to.”
“I never had a high school dance,” Sam admitted, pulling the sling of his rifle away from the skin of his neck. “Never went to high school.”
“Aw,” Jones sang. “Such a babe in the woods.”
Sam glanced down at himself. Dusty boots with the soles starting to split from hard use. Pants with faded bloodstains on them. Plate carrier with who-knew-what staining every nook and cranny of it. Battered rifle, held in callused hands, the knuckles still cracked and scabbed over.
Babe in the woods, indeed.
He smirked up at Jones, then started walking towards the lookout. Over his shoulder he said, “How’s it go again?”
“What?”
“Talking to girls.”
Jones sighed theatrically. “Bro, it’s easy. Just swagger on up there and tell her you got two tickets to Poundtown.”
“Right.” Sam gave him a finger gun. “Got it.”
Leaning lazily against the front of the truck, Jones called after him: “If it doesn’t work, it’s because you didn’t do it right.”
Sam walked the rest of the way in silence. It was only twenty yards or so to the base of the lookout, but he could feel her attention shift to him, and then become sharp with focus. It was obvious that he was walking towards her, and it was also obvious that she didn’t want him to.
Sam didn’t know what else to do but raise his hands. And that struck him as funny: The new courtship rituals of humans started with convincing them not to shoot you.
What exactly did he think was going to happen? Hell, he didn’t know. But life was short, and if he knew one thing, it was that tomorrow was not guaranteed—not for him, and not for anyone he had an eye for. He’d learned that lesson the hard way, and been forced to take a refresher course multiple times.
Fuck decorum. Fuck courtship rituals.
There simply wasn’t time for it.
He stopped at the base of the lookout and peered up, squinting against the bright sky. She frowned down at him like a barbarian at her gates. He realized that, from the truck, he hadn’t been able to see the scar that ran down the left side of her face. Seeing it now, it came and went through his consciousness, barely raising a stir outside of a mild curiosity of how she’d gotten it. Everyone had scars these days. Sam had seen some doozies—had some doozies—and this one was pretty tame by comparison.
“Hey,” he said. No charm or seduction to it. Just a frank greeting between two people that didn’t know each other.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
Prickly. But that’s to be expected, isn’t it? At least she wasn’t pointing the rifle at him. So things were already looking pretty good.
“I’m Sam.”
“I didn’t ask you for your name.”
“Well, I gave it to you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, I’m not giving you mine.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Sam said, turning around to look back at Jones. The lookout was just tall enough to cast a decent shadow, which Sam was currently in, and it felt twenty degrees cooler. “I was just grabbing some shade anyway. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”
She didn’t respond outside of a soft snort.
Sam smiled to himself. Caught Jones looking at him. Jones gave him a hopeful thumbs up, clearly in plain view of the woman eight feet over Sam’s shoulder, and then made it worse by suggestively pumping his fist back and forth in what Sam assumed to be a mime of “Poundtown.”
It was not missed by the woman, who breathed out a derisive “Christ.”
“Yeah, he’s a gem, isn’t he?” Sam said absently. “Hey, you know, there’s probably a good chance that we’re going to be here for a while. I’m going to end up learning your name anyway.”
“Well, good for you.”
Sam leaned back against the metal wall. “You strike me as somewhat hostile. Can I ask why?”
“Just not in the mood, Sam.”
“Oh, hey, that’s good. You used my name. What are you not in the mood for? Conversation?”
“Men.”
“Ah. Well. Does it help if I tell you I’m very young?”
“No. That makes it worse.”
Sam snickered. “Alright, I can appreciate that. How old are you anyway?”
“Too old for you, hotshot.”
“Alright,” Sam said, smiling evenly back up at her. “Well, I won’t try to climb your walls if you don’t want me to, and it sure doesn’t seem like you want me to.” He dipped his head towards her and flicked a salute off of his sweaty brow, then turned.
He took two steps before stopping, his gut giving him just the tiniest twist of regret.
Aw, hell.
He turned and looked at her over his shoulder. Her face was every flavor of go fuck yourself. But that was okay. This part was for his own peace of mind.
“Don’t take this as weird, but I learned a long time ago not to hold back what I wanna say, ‘cause I might never get another chance. So, since you’re here and I’m here, and neither of us are dead yet…You’re beautiful. It was a pleasant surprise.”
She blinked a few times, her face caught in some sort of dilemma on whether to continue to be hard and unyielding, or to let herself be flattered. He didn’t see which one she went with. He’d already turned back around and strode the rest of the way to Jones.
Who was shaking his head. “You didn’t say the line. I told you to say the line.”
“No, I said it,” Sam lied, knowing that Jones knew it was a lie. Knowing that Jones didn’t actually want him to say the line. Knowing that Jones probably had never said that line to a woman before, unless perhaps on a dare. But this was the act they played at, and it was a familiar call and response: Jones, the wild jester who fancied himself wise, though everyone knew he was an idiot; and Sam, the naïve kid who didn’t know any better than to listen to the jester.
“Must not have said it right,” Jones sighed.
“Maybe it was something with the cadence?”
“Yeah, it’s a very specific cadence. You gotta get the beat right. It’s the rhythm of it that lulls them into having sex with you.” Jones shook his head. “Welp. Keep practicing, young padawan.”
“Damn.” Sam snapped his fingers. “One of these days, Jonesy. One of these days I’ll lose my virginity.”
Jones put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I know you will, son. And when you do? I’ll be right there, cheering you on.”
“Thanks, Dad. I can’t wait until I can be just like you.”
“Me neither.”
“Hey! Hotshot!”
Sam jerked his head up to the lookout.
The woman had her rifle shouldered with one hand, and with the other was pointing.
“We got incoming!” she snapped.
Sam whirled around, hands snatching up his rifle without thinking about it, and angling closer to the engine block of the truck. Distantly, he worried about his pack in the bed—it contained everything he owned in the world, and he really didn’t want it shot up. Secondarily, he worried about his own skull and brain matter, and thought about his helmet in the backseat.
Jones had already started moving towards the engine block of the truck as well, but when he saw what the woman had pointed at, he slowed. It was a tiny little dust cloud, cresting a hill maybe two miles distant. No need to rush.
Sam moved for the cab of the pickup, wondering how worried he should be. “Ma’am?” he called behind him.
“What?” the woman hollered from the lookout.
“You got any idea who that is and whether we should be worried?” Sam yanked open the back door, snatched Jones’s lid and shoved it at him, then grabbed his own and plopped it onto his head.
“Worried? Always. And as for who it is? Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”
Sam buckled the chin strap. Considered his pack in the bed, but if he tried to secure it under the engine block, it’d either get in the way, or get left behind. It surprised him how badly he didn’t want the things in that pack to get perforated.
He slammed the door behind him and moved with Jones towards the engine block.
“Someone wanna tell Lee?” Jones murmured under his breath.
Sam just shrugged. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with first.” Then, over his shoulder. “Ma’am, who is it that you—”
He jerked in surprise to see the woman running up to him, her eyes fixed in the distance.
“Listen!” the woman hissed. “I just scoped them. It’s these two—”
“Wait-wait-wait,” Sam hissed.
“What?” she demanded.
“I can’t just keep calling you ‘ma’am’.”
The woman’s eyes widened. And again, that moment of indecision that he could see so plainly written on her face: Tell him to go fuck himself, or just acquiesce for the sake of expediency?
She acquiesced. “It’s Bea. Now, are you listening?”
Sam nodded, smiling at this small victory. “Roger that, Bea, I’m listening.”
She thrust her finger towards the horizon. “That’s Bran and Kat. They’re bad news. And they’re coming this way. Which is even worse news. They only ever come around if they’ve got a bone to pick. I’m going to run and warn Ted.”
“What do you want me to do when they get here?” Sam asked.
“Just stall them. And…” Bea started backpedaling, looking worried. “And don’t piss them off too much, okay? Trust me. You do not want to make them mad!”
Sam frowned as she twirled and sprinted away.
Jones stared after her. “What? Is one of them the Hulk?” He glanced at Sam. “But seriously, if we’re not supposed to piss them off…”
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t speak,” Sam preemptively agreed.
Jones coughed out a laugh that turned into an actual cough, then a throaty hack, then he spit a glob of phlegm off to the side, and then, as though that had all been an eloquent speech, he said, a little hoarsely, “But I digress. Really. It’s just the two of them. Why don’t we just wax ‘em?”
“Oh, you know,” Sam said, hiking a weathered boot up onto the front bumper of the truck. “Geopolitics being what it is, we usually refrain from ‘waxing ‘em’ until we have a better idea of what’s going on in the area.”
“Okay, alright. I’m just sayin’, your girl didn’t look too happy that they were coming. These obviously aren’t friendlies. What’d she call them?”
“I don’t recall, but there’s a cat in there somewhere.”
“I think the other one was Bran.”
“Short for Brandon or something?”
Jones shrugged. “That, or Bran Flakes”
“Or Bran Muffins.”
“Oat Bran.”
“Brannnnn…” Sam drew a blank. “…nanas?”
“Brananas?” Jones looked pained. “I can’t even look at you.”
“I’m sorry. It got away from me.”
“You sure you wanna do the talking here?”
“Oh, yes. I’m sure.”
“Why’d you say it like that?”
“Because you’re an idiot.”
“Oh. My. God.” Jones shook his head. “There’s so many times I can think of when I’ve been way smarter than you. But now’s not the time, because they’re here.”
Sure enough, the dust cloud had coalesced into a quiet little side-by-side ATV that trundled into the main drag of the settlement, slowing its roll while the cloud of dust in its wake was swept up by the breeze and pushed away. It was a dust-coated white, with black accents. Two occupants, just like Bea had warned them. An older male that didn’t look all that scary, and a younger woman with a blue bandana that covered everything from her nose down.
“Ooh,” Jones murmured as the ATV slowed to a stop, about ten yards shy of their truck. “What’s she supposed to be? An old-timey bank robber?”
Sam lowered his boot from the bumper and took a miniscule step out from the truck—not enough to fully expose himself, but enough to be visible. He didn’t want to give whoever these people were the impression that he was cowering behind the truck. He also didn’t want to hide and then accidentally surprise them. Sometimes people started shooting when they got surprised.
Taking a cue from Lee’s book, Sam decided to go with what he considered to be the most effective tactic for dealing with unknown parties: Being overly friendly. So he raised a hand and gave them a little wave.
Both pairs of eyes locked onto him, and Sam had the fleeting notion that he was a piece of meat dangling over an alligator pond.
But he still kept his hand upraised, a sunny smile on his face.
There was a reason this technique was so effective. People just generally had at least a slight mental block about trying to kill someone who seems happy to see them. And maybe-just-maybe you’d exchange only words and not gunfire.
In Sam’s opinion, that was always worth a shot.
The small side doors of the ATV swung out and both the man and the woman stepped out at the same time, the man grabbing a shotgun from between the seats. The woman didn’t seem to have a weapon at all.
The fact that they were not very heavily armed only alarmed Sam more. Bea was clearly terrified of these two—as was the rest of the settlement, considering how they all shrunk back and gripped their weapons a little tighter. It’d be foolish to assume their fear was baseless.
The man and the woman approached and stopped a few yards shy of Sam, right about at the tailgate of the truck. The masked woman peered around her with squinted, predatory eyes, while the man stayed locked onto Sam with a look on his face like Sam was a mysterious monolith sculpted entirely out of dog shit.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded.
“I’m Sam. This is Jones. We’re just visiting.” He considered extending his hand, but decided against it. “Are you Bran?”
The guy tilted his head, the side of his mouth curling up slightly. His grip on the shotgun worked, but it remained pointed at the ground. “Visiting, huh?” He chuckled softly and raised an eyebrow. “Like, you got an auntie in the neighborhood or something?”
“Oh, you know,” Sam said, still smiling. “Just passin’ through.”
“Huh.” The guy spat off to the side. “See, when you say that, I get all hinky inside because it really feels like you’re hiding something.”
“Well, I really wish you wouldn’t get hinky, because I was explicitly told not to piss you off.”
“That’s nice. But I’m just trying to figure out why I’m even talking to you and not Ted.”
Sam pointed helpfully in the direction of Ted’s Conex box. “Oh, Ted’s in a meeting with my boss. I’m sure they’ll be out in just a minute. We were just standing out here, guarding our truck. And then you pulled up. And now we’re talking.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed. “I can’t figure out if you’re being dense or a smartass.”
“Neither. I’m trying to be civil.” He tried to get his name again: “Are you Bran?”
The man seemed wholly unable to make heads or tails of Sam, but eventually sighed. “Alright, kid. Yeah, I’m Bran. Now, I don’t know what kind of comedy routine this is supposed to be, or who put you up to this, but I’m going to issue a word to the wise here…” he lowered his voice and leaned in. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re dealing with right now, and it is in your best interest to get the fuck out of my way.”
Sam looked down at the ground, then to either side of him, as though making the point that he really wasn’t in anyone’s way. “Well, Mr. Bran, sir, my boss parked the truck right here, and told me to guard it. Sooooo…” He smiled again. And shrugged. “I can’t just walk away from the truck. I’m sure you understand. You have a boss too, don’t you?”
Bran studied him for a moment, his smile widening. Then he chuckled and shook his head and started moving forward again, angling around Sam. “Alright, kid. You guard your truck. Me and Kat are just gonna go have a word with Ted.”
Sam made a regretful noise and stepped into Bran’s path. “Oof. Well, I can’t really let you interrupt my boss’s meeting either.”
Any good humor fled from Bran’s face. The woman beside him—Kat, presumably—issued a low growl.
“Kid,” Bran said, his voice husky and low. “You remember how you weren’t supposed to piss me off?”
Sam nodded. “I do.”
“Well, you’re pissing me off right now.”
Sam made a cringe-y face. “Ah, man. I wish you weren’t getting pissed off right now. Because I’m really just trying to do my job, you know? I’m sure you’re trying to do your job too. Sucks that our jobs are kind of…butting heads right now.”
Bran stared at him, unmoving. Sam couldn’t even see the pulse of his carotids in his neck. Either this guy had the lowest blood pressure on the planet, or he was dead calm. Which was impressive, because, despite his cool demeanor, Sam was starting to freak out just a little bit, wondering where the hell Bea was and why it was taking her so long to get Ted. How far was he supposed to take this stalling tactic?
