Free Out of Exodia by Debra Chapoton

briefly
pressed her face against his biceps. She rubbed a new chill from
her arms, held her jealous thoughts in check, and with measured
calm asked a difficult question. “Bram, are we close to Kassandra’s
ranch?” She barely perceived his affirmative gesture. “Do you want
to send for … for your son?”
    * * *
    Send for my son? Lydia’s gentle inquiry
strikes me hard. I stare at her. She looks like she’s ready to cry.
Her eyes are puffy and red, matching some welts and bruises from
the fight that I only just now noticed. She shivers.
    “ Come closer.” I wrap my
arms around her, feel her shudder. Because she’s nearly as tall as
I am I only need to drop my head a bit and our cheeks enjoy a
warmth that spreads throughout my body. Her breath tingles along my
neck, little hurricanes of heat that roll along my skin.
    “ I was so afraid I was
going to lose you,” she whispers.
    I pull back and look into
her eyes. I frown my question why? and she responds, “Because they wanted to capture
you.”
    I bring her back into a tight embrace,
try to squeeze my unspoken words of love and comfort into her
heart. “You don’t need to worry about me,” I whisper into her hair.
“Not ever.”
    We stand together, glued, joined, and
perhaps too rigid. I loosen my grip, relax.
    “ And your son?” she asks
again.
    I absolutely want to see him. I would
have sent Barrett to fetch him along with Raul and Katie and
Kassandra, but Barrett is gone.
    Now I’m the only one who could find the
ranch. Maybe it would be all right to let the people camp here a
day or two while I go.
    “ I would like to see
Gresham.” I don’t mention Kassandra; I’ve never missed
her.
    “ I could go with you,” she
says with a question in her tone. She leans back, not to break our
embrace, but to see my reaction. There’s no right answer. If I tell
her no because the journey is dangerous she’d be insulted or doubt
my devotion. If I tell her she can come along she’d see the
hesitation in my eyes and read it wrong.
    “ I’d like to see my son,
but I have a job to do here. I have to lead these people to the
place that is prepared for us.” I watch her face brighten. “I can
search him out later.”
    * * *
    Most of the day was spent loitering
around the fields waiting for the cloud to move. Malcolm was
stymied as to why it didn’t lead them north. The box hummed, the
people were packed, Bram was anxious to journey on, but nothing
happened. By evening the cloud spread itself wider over the airport
obscuring the skies. Packages of meat pelted through the silver
puffs landing neatly at the feet of all the travelers. But they
didn’t travel that day, nor the next. By the third day Eugene’s men
were devising ways to build a city right where they were. They
ignored Bram’s commands and scoffed at Korzon’s blunt advice. They
even shunned Teague whose wise words they’d always heeded before.
Instead, they sent out runners to scout for farmland or salvage
supplies from the old neighborhoods that flanked the airport. They
had no success. They returned with upsetting stories of feeling
watched by human eyes or stalked by animals. Some came back with
injuries, skin rashes, or fits of vomiting from eating wild berries
or plants.
    On the fourth day the cloud rose
higher, like a helicopter ready to ascend straight up and then take
off. The people cheered. Some had grown fearful that the
cave-dwellers who survived would return with reinforcements. They
ran to the front of the line only to change their cheers into
disappointed groans when the cloud sank back into a shape like a
pillar. Bram held up the rod and calmed the people. Despite their
noise he faintly heard something he thought he’d never hear again:
a certain melody sung in the clear tones of his former wife’s
voice.
    Many scowled at him as he turned back
to the control tower. He raced through the crowd leaving Lydia and
Harmon to wonder what he was up to. Mira, though, had seen the