Marie woke up to the sound of hammering. Sun was rising, and she could hear occasional curses and footsteps from the roof above her, then some more hammering. Logan. As if he had sensed that she had woken up she saw him drop down past the window.
“Showed Sam how everything works and sent him to field with Ug and Glug. Figured he could make himself useful as long as he stays here,” Logan said, leaning in through the open window.
“That’s good. But… What are you doing? I thought you fixed the roof last week?” She asked yawning.
“I did. I took one of the machine guns from the truck. I’m going to mount it on the roof. I’m going to make some other changes as well.”
“Why? We haven’t seen bandits in ages. And you said yourself that we could defend this place from them easier with the truck than…”
“I’m not worried about bandits. I’m more worried about what or who might follow Sam to here. I… Shit. I didn’t want… Just promise you won’t freak out, okay?” Logan nearly begged, fiddling with the hammer.
“Freak out? Logan, what… You’re scaring me. What is going on?”
“Army. Sam got enlisted.”
“I kind of figured that out myself. You don’t get scars like that just by driving a truck.”
“Yeah. And that’s not all there is. He ran. They might be coming after him. Last night… I cut him. He had a working tracking chip in his arm. I cut it out and we burned it, but I don’t know how long he’s been on the run. Chances are that he just got out and came straight to here, but it might be that he’s been running for some time already, and in that case they have tried to track him down with the chip.”
“Oh…”
She wanted to crawl back in to bed. Pull covers over her head and stay hidden until it was all over. But she didn’t have the luxury of playing damsel in distress. She could read it from Logan’s eyes.
“I need you to start practicing. I can cook. Sam can cook. We can keep the place up while you… Practice. Just find a place far enough and downwind from here. But don’t go too far. I need you back here if something happens.”
He could see both Sam and Marie from where he was perched up on the roof. Sam was probably cursing camels to the lowest level of Hell right now, seeing as they were standing in the middle of a large, muddy puddle and the trolley wasn’t moving. Marie was just standing out on the desert, naked as the day she was born, head bowed and hands spread wide apart. She had been standing there for half an hour now. Not moving, whole posture tense, sun beating her form mercilessly. He thought he had seen faint blue glow around her few times, but he could have been mistaken. From this distance sun distorted everything and made people see things that weren’t really there. One reason why he had decided to sacrifice yet another vital part from the truck. He had taken out the radar and tried to find a way to rig it together with the machine gun he had already mounted on the roof. If he could scrounge up fully automated system, all three of them could efficiently concentrate defending themselves instead of keeping one of them constantly behind the trigger of the gun.
At noon Sam had finally gotten enough. He was returning, pulling his reluctant partners from the reigns and cursing a blue streak every time they mooed and tried to stop. He tied the camels in front of the stable.
“What is she doing? Trying to get a sunstroke?” Boy asked, waving to general direction of where Marie stood. Logan spat out nails from the corner of his mouth and put down the hammer. Better leave them up on the roof before his urge to bash in Sam’s skull got the better of him.
“She’s practicing. Which means it’s our turn to cook. You know how to cook, don’t you?”
“Practicing?”
“We figured it would be good to have ace in the sleeve just in case we get more visitors. She’s trying to find a trigger for the blue mist,” Logan explained and slid down from the roof, landing in front of the house with a soft thud, his booted feet raising small clouds of dust from the scorched ground.
“Since you’re no good for much else than guard duty…”
“I know how to fight, dad! How the hell do you think I stayed alive this long?” Sam huffed.
“You can fight. That’s fine. But what do you think would happen if I swiped your gut open right now? You’d fucking bleed to death under a minute, and that’s only if you were lucky. You don’t heal. Your only advantage in battle has been, and will be your senses and your instinct. They won’t do you much good when they flank you and put you full of holes.”
“Last time I checked mom doesn’t heal either.”
“She does now. And can cause hell of a lot more destruction than you have ever seen as soon as she has her head sorted out. So stay the fuck away from her and let her do what needs to be done. Get back in the field. I’ll call you when food’s done,” Logan spoke with clipped tone, squeezing the railing of the front porch for stopping himself from tearing in to Sam. To his relief boy kept his mouth shut, climbed on the trolley and turned the camels towards the field.
It was already dark when Marie returned. Exhausted, covered to sweat and dust from head to toes. Healing had kept the sunstroke at bay, but she was hungry, dehydrated, and plain tired and frustrated for trying so hard and gaining so little.
“Sit here,” Logan helped her to sit on the porch and fetched some water from the well, as well as a soft rag, and started wiping off filth that cling to her skin. She took a careful sip from the glass of water Logan had given her.
“I don’t know what I did, or how I did it, but… I can’t seem to find the right way anymore. It’s there. I can feel it, but it’s just out of my reach…” She kept muttering, leaning against the cool rag Logan pressed to the back of her neck.
“You’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about it. But it would be maybe better if you didn’t spend the whole day out there. You’ll exhaust yourself and then you’re too tired to think properly. Maybe few hours at time, in the morning, or night, when the sun is down,” Logan murmured.
“We don’t have time to take this slow. If you were right, they could be here tomorrow! I need to be ready before…”
“You need to stay healthy. You’re no good to anybody if you’re too tired to even lift your pinkie when they come. If they come tomorrow, we’ll be screwed. If they come year from now, we might be equally screwed even if you have the control over it. You’re not the main defense. I am. And that machine gun. Even Sam. We’re the front line. You step in if it looks like there’s nothing left to do.”
“Even if I was the last reserve, I won’t do much good if all I can do is drain and heal! I need to find a way to make it work! I won’t find it if I sit at home and wait!” She hissed, yanking the rag from Logan and started to scrub herself clean almost feverishly.
“This is exactly what I meant when I said that I don’t want you to freak out. There’s every possibility that I’m just paranoid! They might even not care about Sam enough to come looking for him, for Christ’s sakes!” Logan grunted.
“And since when you being paranoid has meant that there’s nothing to worry about?”
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