Such an asshole.
After another indeterminate period, I’m going to kick the shit out of you.
Jericho’s inner voice had always been unkind to him, but it had never actually threatened violence before, and it tended to be more specific about Jericho’s failings. Was this the afterlife, then? A new world, with an even meaner, vaguer voice yelling at him?
“Stupid son of a bitch.”
Wait a second.
Jericho fought to open his eyes. Yeah, he had eyes. He had a damn body. He tried to sit up, panicked when he couldn’t, then realized he was squeezing warm fingers in his left hand while a somehow-familiar bulk leaned over him and pressed on his chest. “Stay still, asshole. The doctors spent a lot of time on you. Don’t fuck it all up now.”
Jericho knew that voice, knew that scent, knew that hand. “Wa . . .” he tried. Well, that wasn’t quite right.
“Shhh.” For the first time, Wade sounded almost gentle. “You’re okay. You’re an idiot and I’m going to kick your ass, but you’re okay. Stay still.”
“Wh . . .” Jericho honestly couldn’t say whether that had been an attempt at Wade’s name again, or one of the w questions: Where, Why, When, and definitely What the fuck?
Wade apparently decided it was the last one. “You’re in the hospital. You got us both blown up and then you got yourself shot up. Remember?”
Did Jericho remember that? All he could truly recall was the gaping emptiness in his chest where Wade was supposed to be. And now Wade was back? “De . . .” Well, this one was worth working a little harder for. “Dead?” he croaked.
“You sound terrible. And using that voice to say words like that? Jesus, Jay, I’m an invalid. You can’t be freaking me out all the time—not cool.” He squeezed Jericho’s fingers. “I already buzzed for a nurse, but I’m gonna go hunt one down and carry her back here, okay? She’ll— I don’t know, give you ice chips or knock you out so I don’t have to listen to you or something.”
But when Wade tried to extract his fingers and Jericho squeezed tighter, trying to hold on, Wade didn’t leave. And a moment later, there was a brush of softness against the back of Jericho’s hand. A kiss. “You scared the shit out of me,” Wade said, his words muffled and soft. “We aren’t doing that again, Jay.”
Jericho wanted to say okay. He wanted to say more than that. A lot more. Instead, he faded away, back into the hazy world of drugs and injury, and he stayed there for quite a while.
The next time he came to—or maybe not the exact next time, but some other time—he wasn’t clear on linear progressions right then—he heard Kayla’s voice. And this time when he tried to open his eyes they worked, basically. Stung like he’d been caught in a sandstorm, didn’t show him anything but way too much light and some general, moving shapes, but his eyelids opened. He tested his left hand, and Wade was still there. He tried to turn his head in that direction and set off an explosion of pain and dizziness and nausea. Jesus. He wanted to see Wade, but not that much. Feeling him was probably enough. Hearing him would be nice. “Hey,” he grunted.
“You’re an asshole,” Wade responded.
There’d been enough of that. “Wh? Why?”
“Kay showed me the fucking security tapes from the school—I get a tiny bit knocked out and you go fucking Rambo? I mean, I was feeling you when you got up on the truck—that was smooth. But you should have kept your ass up there! What was all this charging around like a kamikaze bullshit?”
How to explain? And whether to explain? And did he really need to explain?
“Couldn’t find you,” he managed, pleased that his voice, although thick and gritty, was at least coherent.
“Too fucking bad,” Wade said, his own voice muddier than usual. “If you can’t find me, you still have to take care of yourself, you big fucking baby.”
It might be better to just feel Wade, rather than see or hear him. Jericho squinted down toward the end of the bed. “Kay? You all right?” There seemed to be too much white on her torso, not enough beige. She was in uniform, but wearing a sling?
“I’m okay,” she said. “You scared us, Jay, but you did a good job. Nobody made it to the school. The prisoners didn’t escape. Nobody escaped—we’ve got fourteen injured militia members, but the rest of them—”
“The rest of them should have stayed the hell out of Mosely,” Wade said, and there was the promise in his voice that if anyone ever messed with his town again, they’d meet the same fate. A bit hard to reconcile that with the man who’d planned on finding a beach when this all started, but Wade had never worried too much about being self-contradictory. So Jericho wasn’t going to worry about it either.
“Our side?” Jericho asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Might be easier to just fade back into drug-land and not hear about the consequences of the battle.
“A lot of injuries.” Kayla’s voice was tightening up, and Jericho regretted the question. He wasn’t the only one who’d be feeling bad. “Some of them fairly serious. A couple amputations. Meeks is just down the hall, and he’s in better shape than you.” She paused, took a deep breath, and then before she could continue, Wade broke in.
“The only deaths came at the school,” he said. “You, me, and Mike Darby are the only ones who came out of that alive.”
Mike Darby. He had all those kids, so that was good. But— “Oh shit.” Jericho wished Kayla were closer, wished he were fitter so he could hug her. Her dad had been at the school. “He was— Damn it. He was protecting his town. His people.”
The beige and white blob nodded, maybe a little too hard. Maybe as if it was trying to shake tears back into its head.
And then Wade let go of Jericho’s hand, and the cool clamminess of the skin left behind made it clear this was the first time they’d been out of contact with each other for quite a while. The black and gray blob moved to the foot of the bed, the beige and white blob took half a step back, then half a step forward, and then the gray blob’s arms were around the beige and white blob, and everything was as good as it could be expected to be.
