Between a Bear and a Hard Place(59)

“What do you mean, wallet stolen?” I’ll just do what I do best – distract him and myself both with questions that don’t mean a goddamn thing.

“You know,” he said. “Like someone took me for a ride. The abduction stories,” he yawned, and from the way he quickly tried to stop himself from doing so, he didn’t mean to have done it. “Sorry, the stories about abductions, they always leave me feeling like someone’s trying to sell me some class one bullshit.”

Claire considered what he’d said for a moment, especially in light of the fact that she, first off, hadn’t mentioned aliens at all, and second off, actually had been abducted, sort of, even if she wasn’t particularly wanting to be saved from her captors. Or... had she been kidnapped? They had given her a choice of going with them or not. Their words still echoed in her ears – come with us, we can’t protect you otherwise – as she had cried out to be either saved or taken away from all the carnage and the terror.

Of course, as hours turned into days, she’d stopped worrying so much about all that. And then when she found out Eckert was somehow still alive? Yeah, none of it mattered one damn whit. That’s what her dad always said instead of “shit”.

“No,” she said. “I wasn’t abducted by anything. And I don’t really know how to say this, but I’m sorry I never called.”

He made a clicking sound. It was like he slapped his tongue against the back of his teeth. “Sorry?” he asked. “I gotta be honest. I’ve never had someone not call me for two months, and then call and apologize for not calling me.”

Both of them laughed at the same time.

“You asked if I had been pulled away on something important?” she asked.

“Yeah, I mean, some weird, secretive work project. I heard you guys talking about working at GlasCorp. I know that place is pretty...” he whistled The Twilight Zone theme music to make his point instead of bothering with words.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that I’ve read some stuff, heard some things. I mean,” Nick had fully woken up by then. His voice perked up, and he no longer sounded like a sleepy frog. “I mean, everyone’s heard the stories, right? I figured you were just on some secret project and not allowed to talk to anyone until it was over.”

His innocent naiveté just about stunned Claire as she sat on a stump, staring at the first fiery fingers of dawn. Along the ridge where she and Fury and Stone had settled in to an uneasy camp, the side of a mountain fell away in a sheer cliff. They’d wandered far and wide, but this was the most off-the-grid, wilderness-surrounded place they’d ever been. And that’s saying quite a bit for a threesome who had been in the deep woods.

This was the sort of place regular bears came through every so often.

Of course, those weren’t much of an issue, given the circumstances.

“Nothing important,” she said with a grin. “No, nothing like that. I just... I lost track of time is all. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was one place, and then I was another. Kinda like a blackout except it lasted for two months.”

“Then,” he paused for a second. A brief, but courteous second, because this was when he was going to drop the bomb. “Why the hell did you wait two months to call me?”

It wasn’t an atom bomb, because it didn’t destroy like eight square miles around her.

But damn if that question did make one hell of a mess in Claire Redmon’s brain.

She looked at her phone – eighteen percent still left in super power saver mode – and clicked to end the call. She hated it when she did, she felt like she was abandoning the last friend she’d had. Except the irony of the whole thing is that Nick was the only person who apparently remembered her, and also had no idea who she actually was.

He cared more about her than her drinking buddies, or her co-workers. He cared more than her parents – who hadn’t called her since two weeks before the grand disappearance – and it was all because he just liked her smile.

Simple things. Easy things. Honest things.

If I’m going to give myself up to this, I have to really give myself up to it. I have everything I need right here. The old world, the old me... they’re gone.

The next sounds Claire heard – wind howling through trees, birds defiantly singing, and Fury snoring like a buzzsaw – reassured her that she’d made the right decision.





-18-


“Why is it always helicopters?”


-Claire


They woke, not to the sound of birds chirping and little frogs croaking, but to helicopter blades.