“No, I’m good.” I squeeze his hand. “So. Have you, um, talked with my dad about…anything interesting?”
He raises an eyebrow, stopping to help me crawl over a fallen log. We’re traveling into the high mountains, now. The foliage is thinning out as the air gets colder. Lodgepole pine trees dot the landscape, and the sparser cover makes it important for us to pay attention to our position. We don’t want to climb up an open meadow and give our location away.
“What kind of interesting things?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Just stuff.” I make a weak attempt at a poker face. “Maybe…something about us.”
“Us?”
“Yes. Us.”
His lips twitch, a clear sign that he’s fighting laughter.
“Oh, that.” He threads his fingers through mine, shifting his heavy pack. Adjusting the rifle slung over his shoulder. “No. It hasn’t come up.”
Call me shallow, but I can’t help but feel disappointed. Stupid as it is, I kind of wanted Chris to walk up to my dad, say, “Hey. I’m in love with your daughter. I promise to take good care of her.” Chivalry, you know?
Instead I get: No. It hasn’t come up.
“You’ll have to tell him sometime,” I point out.
“He’s figured it out, Cassie.” He gestures to our intertwined hands. “He’s not blind.”
“Still. I think you should say something.”
“Why me? You’re his daughter.”
“You’re a grown man!”
“You’re a grown woman.”
I bite my lip. Am I? My birthday is in two weeks. I’ll be twenty.
“I guess so.” I shyly glance at his face, gauging his expression. “But it wouldn’t hurt you to be there when I dump it on him.”
“Dump it, huh?” He breaks out in a wide smile. “That’s a nice description.”
“You know what I mean!” I shake my head. “I just want him to like you.”
“It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
He’s right. But, strangely enough, it’s somehow comforting to worry about something as normal as whether or not my father will approve of Chris. It’s a lot easier than sitting around, wondering when Omega will jump out of the bushes and put a bullet in my chest.
Just saying.
“You two having a heart to heart chat back there or something?” Jeff calls back. He’s helping his mother scale the side of the mountain. Decomposed gravel and loose shale slide down the slope, making it easy to trip and take a tumble to the bottom. “Come on. Pick up the pace!”
“This isn’t a marathon, you know!” I say.
“Oh, yeah? Says who?”
“Says me.”
“You two,” Mrs. Young murmurs, smiling. Her gray hair is falling in soft wisps to her shoulders. Mr. Young — an aged version of his two sons — climbs up behind her and takes her hand. “Let them be, Jeff,” he says, winking at me.
I sigh. A flash of normalcy on an otherwise totally odd day.
It’s nice.
We stop to have lunch, resting under the green tent of the forest. Our food consists of supplies the militia had time to gather up before they fled the base camp. Dried meat, crackers, canned vegetables. Water. Gone are the days of sandwiches and bottles of soda.
As we hike, I catch up with my dad. We have a conversation that lasts for hours. I give him a recap of everything that’s happened to me since we got separated after the EMP. Everything from escaping through underground tunnels in Bakersfield to getting imprisoned in a slave labor camp under Vika Kamaneva. For some reason, talking about what I’ve been through in the last year makes everything seem that much more real. Like waking up from a dream.
Yes, it actually did happen. Yes, the world really did end.
Yes, it’s a lot to swallow.
At least Dad and I are back together.
“So,” Dad says at last, just as evening starts to set in. “Chris Young. What’s going on between you two?”
“Oh. Um…”
Idiot. You’ve been rehearsing this all day.
“Chris and I… we’ve been through a lot,” I shrug. “We’re kind of together, I guess.”
Dad raises an eyebrow. “He’s a lot older than you.”
“I know.”
“A lot older.”
“Older isn’t bad. I mean, you’re older.”
“Don’t try to change the subject.”
We duck under an overhanging, mossy branch. The temperature has dropped substantially, so I pull my jacket out of my backpack and wrap it around myself.
“He’s a good man,” I say softly, glancing behind us.
Chris is overlooking his militia, alert and ready.
“I believe you,” Dad replies. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to trust him completely overnight.”
“You don’t have to.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “But you will, eventually. You’ll see what I see. He’s special, Dad. There’s nobody like him.”
He shakes his head, kicking a rock down the trail.
Seriously?
“You’ll see,” I press.
“I’m more concerned about the age difference than anything else.”
“It’s not exactly cradle-robbing, Dad. I’m going to be twenty.”
“He’s almost thirty years old.”
“He’s twenty-eight.”
“Exactly. He’s a man. A SEAL. Tough guy.” Dad exhales dramatically. “Don’t get caught up in something you can’t handle. The last thing you need right now is a relationship that consumes you. Our lives right now are walking the razor’s edge already. One wrong move and you can throw everything out of balance. Be careful.”
“Chris is the only reason I’m alive,” I state. “You have no idea what he’s been through to keep me safe. He took control of this militia just to break me out of Kamaneva’s labor camp. Who does that? He’s not your typical guy, Dad.”
Dad falls silent. He opens his mouth to say something just as Isabel sidles up next to me, twirling a piece of moss between her fingers.
“Look,” she says, holding it under her nose. “A mustache.”
“Wow. Impressive.” I grab it, holding it beneath my chin. “But a beard is cooler.”
“Nothing is cooler than a mustache.”
“I don’t know about that…”
I rub her head, mussing her blonde hair. Dad walks faster to keep up with his men. I roll the moss between my fingers, watching the back of his hat bob up and down with each step.
I guess that concludes our father-daughter chat.
It could have gone a lot worse.
Right?
Chapter Four
Our trek into the high mountains lasts exactly four days, just like Dad said it would. The woods are quieter here. The shadows are deeper. And the weather is cooler. I can’t detect a single sign of human life. We occasionally spot deer or squirrels, but that’s it. No people.
I decide that this is a good thing, given our track record of run-ins with unfriendly locals in the mountains.
Dad and Chris have been talking off and on all day in hushed voices. Whatever they’re discussing, they don’t want me to know about it. As ticked off as I am that they’re keeping secrets, I don’t let it eat at me for long. Cassidy Hart, the girl who left Los Angeles with a backpack and her grandfather’s pistol, no longer has time to worry about petty things.
Funny how priorities change.
“I’m very ready to be done with this hike,” Sophia comments, walking beside me. The last couple of days have been nothing but a sheer uphill climb through slippery terrain. “How about you?”
“Yeah,” I pant. “I’m ready.”
We walk for a couple more hours before Dad and Chris slow our group to a halt. I peer ahead, spotting a small clearing. Wait. It’s not a clearing, it’s a road. Sophia and I share a bewildered look. We’ve been making a point of avoiding any and all roads. Why? Because roads mean people and people could mean Omega.