Free Foamers by Justin Kassab

them. They
hadn’t lost him. She hadn’t lost him.
    Mick jogged around the front of the bus. “I couldn’t find her.”
    “She’s on our side. Kade’s alive,” Tiny replied.
    The corners of his mouth pulled, almost as if he could smile, before they turned
down. “Lucas isn’t.”
    Mick took a step, then stopped and stared at the end of the bus. Grace came toward
them, slow and skittish, like a wild animal wandering into a campsite.
    She waited at the back of the bus and watched Mick storm off, his mud-covered face
now streaked with tears. He had seen death before, even of those he loved, but this
rattled him to the core. This wasn’t murder—something he understood as a police
officer—this was war, an area in which he had no expertise. For the first time, Mick
recognized just how scared he was of the Primal Age.
    * * *
    Kade bit his fingernails until his cuticles bled. They hadn’t moved since the attack,
and he still hadn’t heard from X or Ashton, although Tiny reassured him they were
just out of range. No need to alarm them with what happened.
    Kade still didn’t understand what happened, other than the fact that his chest hurt
like someone went at it with a baseball bat. The bruise already had formed over most
of his sternum. Mick wasn’t willing to talk about what had happened, and was taking
his frustration out on the ground while he dug a grave for Lucas. Each metallic ring
of the shovel was louder than the last. However, Mick had taken the time to make
the argument that Grace was still a threat, so Kade volunteered to watch her until
they were sure of her intent.
    Tiny and Victoria were salvaging what they could from the cop car, while Kade watched
Grace replace the flat tire on the SUV. Argos was traveling between the groups, as
if keeping tabs on everyone.
    He knew Lucas and the Wilson Brothers were dead, and his team had given him the broad
strokes of what had happened. No matter how much he was told, he felt he would always
be in the dark.
    Grace’s hands shook and she lost her grip on the tire iron, which landed on the cup
of lug nuts. The lug nuts flew out in every direction, clanging off the ground and
scattering into the darkness.
    Grace snatched the tire iron and smashed it repeatedly off the ground. After a half
dozen bashes, she sat back and wept into her hands. Kade sat down beside her putting
his shoulder against hers. He set his shotgun on the ground opposite Grace.
    “Did you ever see A Christmas Story ?” Kade asked.
    Her fingers parted and she looked at him with one eye.
    “In that the kid said fudge, but he didn’t actually say fudge when he spilled the
nuts,” Kade said.
    “What did he say?” Grace asked, still hiding behind her hands.
    “You’ve really never seen it?”
    “We weren’t the holiday type.”
    “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise then,” Kade said.
    Grace dropped her hands and glared at him. “Do you really think I’m ever going to
get the chance to see it?”
    “I don’t honestly know, but I do know I am worried about Ash and X. And I know that
if I talk about anything it takes my mind off of them,” Kade said.
    “My brother shot you. You could be dead right now. One of your friends was killed.
I killed one of my brothers. How can you find any way to distract your mind with
all of that going on?”
    “Practice.”
    “Practice?”
    “Yes, practice. Ironically I used to use the Primal Age as my playground of distraction.”
    “The Primal Age?”
    “Yeah, sorry I forget not everyone calls it that. There’s a book called The Doomsday
Doctrine . A handbook for the different possible end of the world scenarios, and it
calls the overall concept of Armageddon, the Primal Age.”
    “You’ve been prepping for this?”
    Kade laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t think anything could have
prepared me for this.”
    He heard the shovel strikes of Mick’s frustration. No amount of studying, theory,
or even practice could have given