My hands clench around my shirt, twisting it. The events of the last few days, weeks—heck, years—are bubbling over into my emotions. I want desperately to understand. I need to.
At my words, Lucky’s face turns grim, its playfulness stilled. Henrietta lets out an anxious squawk, and he sets her down with an absent, soothing rub of her feathers.
“That’s the police, I think. We’re ‘Rangers Lead the Way,’” he mutters as he shoves his hands in his pockets. His gaze skirts mine. “Maybe you should chat to Dom about this one, I—”
I lift my chin and force my hands to unclench, and he breaks off with a grimace. I like Lucky. He’s easy to be around and has made me feel welcome and included, without the underlying pressure I feel from the others. But it just isn’t fair, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t matter to me.
If I’m being honest, I wouldn’t have just killed to have what they have—the things or objects. In the early days especially, I was so desperate to feel safe. I’m not a fighter. I don’t have any crazy, special survival skills. Even when everything went dark so suddenly, even though the broadcasts stopped, I was so confident the Army, the cops, someone would get organized eventually. That sooner or later they would sweep through, take control, and protect us. That we would recover some semblance of government and order.
But it never happened.
I learned to protect myself, and I’m better for it. Not with guns and fist fights, but with learning and patience. But how many others died who really needed the help that these men—trained and so much more capable—could have given?
Sure, the Army was scattered, destroyed. But surely even the five of them could have done something on a small scale.
Couldn’t they have helped innocents on the ground, rather than holing up together and only caring about themselves?
I can’t let this go.
So instead of backing away from the confrontation, my usual instinct, I take a deep breath. “No. You brought me out here.
Explain it to me. Make me understand why you all felt it was okay to hide out in paradise while innocent people were butchered.”
Lucky blinks at me in shock.
“Well, damn, sweetheart. And here I thought you were sweet and shy.” He runs a hand into his hair, seeming to forget it’s in a bun. He scowls when it loosens, and his arm drops. “We did try, okay? We tried a couple times early on.”
He hesitates a moment, like he’s trying to find the right words. He looks as though he’d rather be anywhere else. “When we first came out here, we collected nearly twenty people before we even had resources to support them. A few families, some couples, a handful of loners. We lost four on the way—attacked by asshole marauders like your friends from the other day.
They were attracted by a big group of soft targets, I guess. We fought them off, but there were too few of us to protect that many in the open. A woman died, two men . . . and a kid. Wouldn’t have been eight years old.”
My stomach drops, and I bite my lip.
A brown feathered chicken plucks at Lucky’s shoes and he scowls down at it, but I’m not sure what he’s seeing. There’s a vulnerability in the downturn of his mouth. The memory clearly hurts him.
My self-righteous anger melts into concern. Gently, I take his hand again and tug until he lets me lead him out of the clearing. Lucky drops the scoop, but when I move to release his hand, he squeezes it. Avoiding my eyes, he stares at our cupped palms. We’re standing too close, but I don’t move away again. Absently, I run my thumb over his wrist.
When he continues, his voice has steadied. It’s matter of fact, like he’s reading a report. “It got tense after that. A few people started thinking that they could have done better, wanted us to share around the weapons.”
He snorts, and the sound is colder than I thought him capable of. “Like we’d hand our weapons over to civilians who don’t know their asses from the right end of a rifle. ’Specially ones muttering about how they’d be better in charge. By the time we got to Bristlebrook, it was a pot ready to boil over. The rest of the group was picking sides, who they thought would win out.
We got the most, but Sam—the loudest of the assholes—got the ones willing to cause trouble.” He grimaces. “Everyone was distracted the first week or two, but it didn’t take long before they tried a coup.”
The final residues of my anger wither like fire-caught parchment. I’m such an idiot. Clearly I’m too emotional right now.
What was I thinking, accusing him of not caring? Beau’s first reaction on seeing me was to calm me down and tend my wounds —and Lucky instantly wanted to bundle me up and cart me back with them. Of course they would have tried. Imagining them asleep and helpless while the people they’d protected came after them . . .
I’m beginning to get a bad feeling about why they’re alone.
“Dom had figured them out, though,” Lucky continues, almost motionless. It’s unnerving. Like he’s been powered down, all that joy and animation sucked into some dark, yawning black hole. “He was watching Sam’s group closely, so they didn’t catch us unawares and take us out in our sleep like they hoped. We caught them in the act. Subduing them was easy, at least—they weren’t so keen on fighting us while we were awake and armed, funnily enough—and soon we had ’em tied up all nice and pretty. But then we had to figure out what to do with them.”
Lucky looks back at the clearing, his neck corded with tension. Henrietta is nestled up against the wire fence, as close as she can get to him. A beady black eye rakes me head to toe. If I were a more fanciful person, I might think the ruffle in her black feathers is aimed at me for upsetting her friend.
Shifting my hand, I twine our fingers together until our naked palms are pressed against one another.
“We told the rest of the civilians the next day, asked them what they thought we should do.” The grim cast to his face is so unlike the Lucky I’ve seen so far, I feel the urge to cuddle up to him. “There was only one smart thing to do. They knew where we lived, they were full of hate, and they wanted what we had. We didn’t have the resources to keep them as prisoners, so . . .
the group wanted us to . . . to take them out.” He swallows, then looks at his feet. “I mean, it made sense. Would’ve been safer, you know? To kill them.”
A chill seeps into my skin, and I barely hear the last part. Did he say ‘take them out’？
I take a breath. Would I have been able to let those men go if I had them at my mercy? Knowing that they knew where I was and when I’d be vulnerable? Knowing they could, and most likely would, come back for me at some point?
He catches my expression, and his face softens. “We couldn’t do it. It’s one thing to kill someone in combat, it’s a whole different thing to execute civs in cold blood, even ones who attacked us first. We’re not murderers.” Rubbing the back of his neck, he sighs. “We exiled them. Don’t know if you know this about Rangers, but we get pretty extensive surveillance training.
We made it clear they weren’t allowed within fifty miles of Bristlebrook, and we spent weeks setting up motion sensor cameras, remote controlled cameras, the works, just in case they came back.”