Cyberevolution aftermath.., p.6
Cyberevolution Aftermath II, page 6
That sent a jolt through her.
She didn’t know why she didn’t instantly dispute it—not then and not later.
She was surprised. She was stunned.
She thought she might have put it down to a ‘line’—the sort of bullshit men said afterwards that they thought a woman wanted to hear.
Yes! Lie to me!
Right!
But she missed the moment and then … well it just didn’t fit the next moment or the one after that.
Caleb came through the door as if he’d been thrown through it just about the time Trinity finally dismounted. Striding toward the pallet, he gave Trinity a shove to roll him out of the way and dropped to his knees. “Beloved,” he murmured, dragging her up for a kiss that ….
Well, actually stunned her.
It was just that good.
It lifted her right out of the ‘I’m good! Go the hell away!’ mood and set her in the ‘maybe?’ column.
In a few minutes it was definitely. Amanda had no idea how he managed to lift her from completely sated to hungry in only fifteen or twenty minutes of gnawing and sucking on every patch of flesh he could get to, but he resurrected the dying embers of passion and they were both thrashing around on the pallet in search of a good fit.
He found it—almost as if he’d been watching and taking notes.
Suspicion flickered through her, but, really, she had no brain function at the moment to hold on to much of anything.
Manacling her arms above her head before she could grab his ass, he pumped into her fast and then slow until he apparently determined the depth of penetration and the speed of the strokes that produced the most moans and groans. And then he dragged her up to the top of the mountain and catapulted her off of it in a major volcanic eruption that so completely drained her that she sank into oblivion in the aftermath.
She didn’t think she hit comatose for long, though. Trinity was busy preparing the noon meal when she came around and Caleb, now dressed, was working on something at the table.
It was really bizarre.
Not that she’d expected them—either of them—to be cuddling with her when she woke up, but she got this weird feeling kind of like déjà vu except that it was the sense that she’d imagined everything that had happened.
She was naked, though.
And both of them had made a deposit so she was icky sticky.
And her clothing, she discovered with outrage, was wrecked. “Trinity! You asshole! This is like one of the only things I have to wear—had, damn it!”
Balling it up, she threw it at him and then struggled to her feet with the crutches and began stalking toward the door the best she could.
She didn’t look back to see how they’d taken the rebuke. She didn’t care. She was pissed off about it.
She was stark naked, too, and without a change of clothing, but she was too mad to consider it and, even if she had, they were in the middle of nowhere, high in a tree, and she’d had sex with all three men. It seemed way late to worry about modesty at all.
It was after the shower—while she was trying to figure out how she was going to get back up the ladder she’d hobbled down—that she realized she’d screwed up—majorly. She stepped out dripping because she’d forgotten to take anything to dry off with. Motion below caught her attention and she looked.
It wasn’t Kameron coming through the woods, though.
It was a boogery looking bearded man with long, greasy, scraggly hair.
Sucking in a sharp breath, Amanda jumped away from the railing, managed a few awkward steps in a ‘race’ up the ladder to the door and then stumbled and fell through the door as she reached it.
Pain shot through her when she hit the floor.
Caleb and Trinity both rushed to help her.
“Man!” she gasped as Trinity hauled her to her feet and Caleb tried to shove the one crutch she’d made it inside with into her hand. “There’s a man! I saw him when I got out of the shower.”
The concern on Trinity’s face disappeared and the ‘war mask’ took its place as he brushed past her and went outside.
Caleb scooped her off her feet, glanced around and then carried her to her pallet. “Do not move!” he growled at her.
Taken aback, Amanda gaped at him, but he’d already turned away and headed toward the door.
Trinity stepped back inside before he reached it. “Five.”
Caleb changed directions and followed Trinity to the back wall. When he pressed on one panel, a door popped open. Reaching inside, he grabbed something and handed it back to Caleb.
It was a rifle.
He handed Caleb two full clips of ammo and then took a rifle and clips out for himself.
“You know who it is?” Amanda gasped.
Trinity looked around as if he’d forgotten she was there. “The floor is reinforced where you are. Stay put.”
Reinforced?
The thought had barely boggled her mind when they heard a gunshot, followed by an impact with the floor. A hole appeared and a bullet flew through it.
“Give us the woman!” a man bellowed from outside. “And we’ll call it even.”
Caleb and Trinity stalked outside and strafed the ground below with what sounded like maybe a hundred rounds. By the time they stopped, she was nearly deaf and the air was full of smoke from the gunpowder.
“No!” Trinity bellowed back.
“Fuck you!” Caleb seconded him.
A hail of bullets hit the cabin, seemingly peppering it from every direction. Holes appeared in the floor and walls, the glass in the window shattered. Amanda made herself as small a target as she could and she was still amazed she didn’t get hit.
“We’d consider splitting the bounty on her if you guys are willing to negotiate.”
Trinity and Caleb answered by emptying another clip.
Caleb slammed into the cabin and ran to the ammo locker to get more clips.
“What did he mean, bounty?” Amanda demanded.
He flicked a glance at her. “He is a lying bastard,” he growled, slamming out again.
The smell of smoke wafted up through the floor and horror filled Amanda.
They were at the top of a tree in a building made out of firewood! It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the attackers had decided on an easier way to get them—which wouldn’t have made sense if the objective was to take her in alive.
Caleb and Trinity emptied two more clips each and then Amanda heard firing below—but no bullets hit the floor or the walls.
She wrestled with the need to know what was going on versus the possibility of getting her head blown off the moment she stuck her eye to one of the holes.
Stupidity won out and she inched toward the closest to get a quick peek.
The entire bottom of the tree, she saw to her dismay, was on fire.
And the reason none of the bullets were flying up was because Kameron was standing near the tree line firing at the men on the other side.
At least a half a dozen bodies littered the ground below the tree.
Caleb burst through the door with Trinity directly behind him.
Amanda sat back guiltily.
Both of them whipped a look at her.
“Gather what you can,” Trinity said grimly. “We will have to move—soon.”
Dismay enveloped Amanda. “You can’t put the fire out?”
“They had soaked the trunk with fuel and lit it. We have dumped all of the water we had and it has done very little.”
Amanda grabbed her duffle and everything close enough to reach and stuffed it in the bag. Then she got her crutches and struggled to her feet. It was born in fairly quickly, though, that she wasn’t going to be much help on crutches. She did manage to move the bag within reach so that they could finish filling it.
There was a crash on the porch deck outside the door that almost gave Amanda heart failure—especially when the cabin swayed wildly for several moments.
Kameron burst through the door, scooped her up, snatched the coverlet from her pallet to cover her nakedness since she hadn’t had the time or the brain function to find clothing and dress, and then turned and headed out again. Then he leapt down to the lower deck where the shower was—or had been—and from there dropped at least twenty feet to the ground, absorbing the impact with his legs. When he straightened, he took off at a run.
Trinity and Caleb, heavily burdened with bags and weapons, hit the ground right behind them and also launched into a run.
Amanda had no idea whether they were running from the fire or the men who’d been shooting at them or maybe both, but it didn’t seem like a good time to try to get the answers. In any case, she had to clench her teeth together because of the jarring run just to keep from biting her tongue.
They must have run two miles. It seemed like forever that she was expecting someone to get a bullet in the back.
Thankfully, there were no more bullets that flew toward them.
They came to a corral of some kind eventually. Kameron stopped and lowered her carefully to the ground, steadying her until she was able to balance herself with the crutch she’d managed to hang on to. Trinity and Caleb also stopped, dropped their packs and then all three climbed over the top railing and virtually disappeared into the gathering gloom—the first she’d actually realized that the sun was setting or had set and darkness was gathering. They returned a few minutes later leading … monsters and tied the reins of the halters the beasts were wearing to the top rail.
Caleb climbed out and began to lift and toss the packs and guns they’d carried to the men inside the corral and Trinity and Kameron loaded them onto the rumps of the beasts and tied them off.
Something they were supposed to ride, Amanda wondered with an inward shudder?
They weren’t just horrible to look at, they were huge beasts. And they stank to high heaven.
Sure enough as soon as they’d finished loading everything, they tossed the top pole out of the way and led the beasts out of the pen. Then Kameron picked her up and mounted the one he was leading.
“What happened?” Amanda asked finally since it seemed safe enough to talk.
“Scavengers,” Kameron said succinctly.
That threw her into confusion. “That were shooting at us?”
“That would be my guess. I had returned to the wreck to see if there was anything useful that was left and the scavengers had been before me. Most everything that was of any use had already been taken. I was headed back when I heard the shooting. Ordinarily, there are few people this far out so I am thinking it was the same group.”
“You think they’re still after us?” Amanda asked uneasily.
“No. They are dead.”
A jolt went through her, but she decided not to ask how he was so certain. “I wonder what that bounty thing was about?” she muttered rhetorically.
Kameron said nothing for several moments. “Did the company have insurance on you?”
Amanda swiveled around to gape at him. “What would that have to do with it?”
He shrugged. “If you are dead and there is proof then the insurance will pay. If the insurance company can find you alive, then they do not have to pay. My guess is that both had put up a reward for your return—dead or alive.”
A coldness swept over Amanda.
She would have argued. She wanted to, but she’d heard the bastard say that there was a bounty on her.
Well, she supposed on the entire crew and she wondered now if any of them had managed to make it out alive.
“That’s why we’re in such a rush?” she asked cautiously.
“No. The mens are dead. It is the fire. We will need to get to a place where it cannot reach us.”
Amanda struggled until she could look back in the direction they’d fled from. To her horror, she saw the sky was lit up red and the blossom was clearly growing, spreading very quickly. “Oh my god! They won’t stop it? Put it out?”
“They will not because they cannot. They have nothing to stop it. They will focus on trying to protect what they have and, quite possibly—very likely—they will lose everything in the path of the fire anyway.”
Chapter Seven
The beasts carrying them fled before the fire at their best speed—which was impressive, particularly since they were forced to run for hours. The beasts of the forest raced them, in some cases running till they dropped.
Amanda had no idea where they might run to escape the flames but, thankfully, Kameron and Trinity, and Caleb seemed to have a destination in mind.
She hoped she wasn’t placing her faith on a myth.
They left the forest behind in time, however, exchanging the abundant life of the forest for poor, rocky soil, climbing until they had managed to put what seemed a full mile between them and the fire.
They reined the beasts in, then, forcing them to slow and finally to stop.
Kameron, Trinity, and Caleb dismounted. Kameron helped her down and settled her on a flat-ish area.
The poor beasts were nigh dead, gasping for breath, drooling from a need for water. Kameron and the others led the beasts a little higher until they found a trickle of water escaping the rocky crag. The beasts hobbled to it and began to slurp noisily.
The sound was enough to remind Amanda that she’d had nothing to drink for hours.
Nor food.
Trinity had been preparing their evening meal when they were attacked.
Guilt smote her abruptly as it occurred to her to wonder if it was her stalking out to the shower that had set the disaster in motion.
And it was a disaster, both on a personal level and … well not globally, she didn’t suppose, but bound to effect a lot of the colonists.
It might well burn them out before it stopped.
That was hard to grasp, hard to process, but she couldn’t think of anything that might stop the fire unless it was … a place as useless as where they were standing—where virtually nothing could live or did.
It was terrifying only to think about.
It was worse to watch it advance toward them, to smell the smoke, to hear the screams of the terrified or dying animals.
Kameron distracted her by dropping her duffle beside her and then crouched next to her. Trinity took the space on her other side and Caleb, after looking around, settled behind her.
The night air was chilling—the air blowing hot one moment and cold the next. Amanda didn’t really want to drop the blanket she was wrapped in to put on clothes that were also cold, but she dug around until she found something and dressed beneath the blanket the best she could. Dropping it only when she’d made as much progress as she could, she finished pulling the clothes on and covered up again.
Kameron draped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him.
It felt protective and comforting and as completely natural as breathing.
She settled against him, wondering where they would find shelter. Where would they sleep? Did they have any food?
Trinity and Caleb got up after a short time and answered those questions. They built a campfire to cook and set a pot on it and filled it with water and the makings of a stew. Then they set up a tent and filled the interior with bedding and blankets.
Kameron helped her up and supported her while she struggled across the uneven terrain with the one crutch she’d managed to bring away.
“I will make you another,” Trinity said when he’d watched her struggles. Then he glanced at the fire. “If there is wood left that is not burned.”
“The owner of the company will be enraged,” Kameron observed coolly.
Amanda glanced at him. “I imagine everyone will.”
He shrugged. “All of these lands belong to the company. He will do a cost/loss assessment and then, mayhap, he will put some firefighting equipment in place.”
“And mayhap not,” Trinity said dryly. “What would be the point after the fire has cleared everything?”
* * * *
It rained or the whole world might have burned down. Amanda, for one, wasn’t convinced it wouldn’t have.
The fire swept past the rock where they’d taken refuge, leaving it pretty much untouched, although it rained ash and sparks that set fire to the little scrubby brush that had managed to gain a toehold on the mountain. It drove everything that could run fast enough from the forest fire to escape it up onto the rock with them.
Fortunately, the beasts were in too much shock and still too terrorized to present a danger to their fellow refugees. They huddled alone or in knots, shaking, looking around wild eyed at the other beasts that had joined them. Predators and prey shared the refuge in uneasy truce.
And that included the tree house group.
They had urged Amanda, convinced her, to climb into the tent and rest while they split the watch, but they didn’t split it. Kameron, Trinity, and Caleb were up all night guarding the territory they’d staked out.
Amanda was still awake when the rain started. She could hear the first drops hiss as they hit the rock and further afield. The sprinkle became a deluge that threatened to make her tent into a raft, calmed to little more than a smattering of rain after a few minutes and then roared again over and over. Each time Amanda was convinced it was going to stop. Thankfully, it didn’t. At some point the rhythmic pattering lulled her to sleep.
She woke when she heard the men trying to make fire.
By the time she’d climbed out of the tent, they’d given up and scrounged through their supplies for something to eat that wouldn’t need to be cooked.
They had water. The tiny rivulet from the night before when they’d first stopped had become a raging trickle almost a foot wide.
They had no cups to drink from, unfortunately, but they did have some strange bag-like things to carry water and they drank their fill and refilled them.
Most of the animals that had camped out with them had disappeared before the first fingers of dawn into the wasteland that had been a bountiful forest. Although how they managed it when the whole thing was blackened and only skeletal trees and brush remained, and little of that, was beyond her.
No doubt they were out in hopes of finding food.
