Logan limped behind Laura slowly, the mountainside shrouding them in the half-blue tones of early night. The effort to get up, to walk, was no easy feat, but he had come to the detached realization earlier in the day that the wounds in his chest were finally starting to stitch themselves together, slowly, nerve by nerve, tendon by tendon. He was clueless as to why, but there it was. It would take several more days, but his body was being pigheaded, stubbornly managing to keep him alive. The cough remained, though. The inner ache…that stayed. It hurt to walk. Hell, it hurt to stand, but Logan had spent the majority of the day sleeping in the back of the Bronco while Laura bided her time. She had tried, uselessly, to find a way up the steep mountainside, and at some point, the roar of the engine and the jostling had woken Logan only enough to understand Laura had found some dirt road on the other side of the bluff so that they could avoid the cliff. By the end of the day they had both finally found themselves staring at the cabin, at the lookout tower, at Eden.
It wasn’t much. Two buildings, as far as Logan could tell, long-since abandoned. Laura had been cautious to get out of the car at first, but now her pace quickened ahead of him as he struggled to keep up. The summer wind had a colder bite to it up here, and as it whipped through the bluff, it kicked up the dust in the clearing. The light changed then, the sun lost behind a stray cloud, and a shudder overtook Logan. He stopped walking, muscles tense, as he finally lifted himself enough out of his own deep fog to realize the subtle signs of foreboding that he had at first clearly missed. The smell had been on the breeze. It had changed everything.
Extra tire tracks in the dust under his boots. Splintered wood around the doorknob leading into the cabin. The faint smell of sulfur, gun smoke, maybe no more than a day or two old. And then, on top of it all, the faintest smell of blood. Not his, not hers, but someone else’s. He already knew. No one was here now, but a lot of people had been. Recently.
Logan tried to call out to Laura, but she was already almost at the cabin door. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; his voice refused to work.
“¿Dónde están?” Laura questioned, trotting up the steps to the cabin.
“Laura-” Logan attempted. His voice felt like gravel. He was slower, but he was almost to the door now.
“Hay cosas aquí! ¡Prisa!” she shouted.
“Kid-” Logan began again, limping up the steps and then lingering at the battered door frame. Laura had stopped a couple paces inside. They both stood frozen. The place had been ransacked. There were overturned beds, mattresses stripped. Backpacks were strewn everywhere, provisions, supplies littering the floor. Scattered board games, shattered glass vials. Bullet holes ravaged one side of the wall. And there, a small splatter that worked its way across one of the window sills. Blood, the kind he had smelled. She might have been willingly ignoring her senses before, but now he knew she could smell it too. See it. Know it for what it was.
Laura suddenly stalked further inside the place, before he could put a hand out to stop her. She fumbled through the broken furniture, looking under beds, through packs. The more seconds that passed, the more desperate she became, her movements frantic and sloppy. Logan stood—managing that was enough right now— and watched with unease. He knew, and he suspected she knew too, that no one, dead or alive, would be found here. The search was hopeless. Logan did his own rummaging, but for him they were for the right words, when the cold, stark realization seemed to hit Laura all at once. She threw down a random box, wiped the sweat from her head, and snarled. Immediately two claws sang as they sprang alive and they found their way into the wooden beam beside her.
She stood like that for a moment, breathing heavily through her anger, before she murmured something from under her breath. “Aquí. Here. Estaban aquí. They were here,” she whispered. It was then she turned her head to look at Logan, tears in her eyes.
Logan’s stomach churned. His surroundings spun as his restlessness mounted. It was a look that haunted him, and suddenly Charles’ face filled Logan’s mind. Distant and pained as he murmured, before his last final breaths let him go. Boat. Sunseeker.
Laura removed her hand from the wall, splinters of wood flying everywhere. Logan straightened a little from where he had been leaning on the frame, turning away to face the mountain air. He and Laura were creatures that sensed everything, that felt everything. They were what they were. Words were secondary, and they didn’t come easy.
He was surprised to hear Laura following him though, and in moments her smaller presence was by his side, a handful of inches from him. The anger had left her. She was exhausted, he could see that now, as she stood quiet and motionless beside him. He hesitated, lingered, stalled, and it was in that moment he could have sworn he heard another voice, her voice. A sharp tsk in the air.
You need to do something, sugar. Say something to her, it whispered.
Logan breathed in, the bile rising in his throat.
And how would you know? He thought, bitterly. I'm fucking here, alone.
But even as this thought crossed his mind, the presence had faded as soon as it had emerged, gone with the slightest shake of his head. Before he even realized what he was doing, he lifted out an arm, hesitantly, and put it around Laura’s thin shoulder.
“I’m sorry, kid,” he heard himself saying. Laura easily leaned into him then, and his grip on the child’s arm tightened reflexively. Vultures flew overhead. The forest hummed with noise. A little time passed like that, but nothing else was said. And no other voices came on the night wind. Anyway, it seemed enough for Laura. And that was good. Because it had to be.
Meanwhile, the last of the sun was setting. Darkness was waiting on all sides. And his internal clock that ticked so awfully slow now quivered as it moved another minute hand forward. Logan shifted his position slightly, releasing his arm finally, so that he could look down at the smaller mutant.
“Laura, I need you to go in one more time, and help me find what supplies we can salvage. Understand?”
The small girl straightened, the steely resolve etched once more into her features. She looked up at him and nodded, before tucking her hair behind her ear with one hand, the blood on her knuckles already drying.
“Anything left over,” he heard himself saying once more. “Anything we can use. And, tonight, we don’t… we don’t have to sleep in there. The car’ll do.”
She nodded once more and put a little more distance between them, the sound of dusty boots scuffing on creaking floorboards. He breathed out steadily, another fucking moment ticking on. He turned back to the cabin, resigned to his task. It had all meant something. He knew it had. He only hoped it was enough.
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