“Carli,
please come back here.”
She
looked up and smiled. Renee marveled at Adam’s
patience as he returned the smile. He'd
worked with Carli for the last hour trying to teach her to shoot the small
handgun he’d taken from a pawn shop. He
hadn't accomplished much. Carli didn't
refuse to learn outright, but she had her own devious ways of getting out of
what she didn't want to do.
“Sorry,”
she said and rejoined them.
Adam
sighed as he handed her the unwanted Firestar.
The small gun seemed massive in her tiny hands, but she held it steady
as she pointed at the rusted cans lined up on a fallen log.
The
log, with its collection of beer cans they'd found strewn all over the
weed-choked ground, marked the edge of a wooded area. The trio stood in the foothills of the
Virginia mountains.
Renee
wrinkled her nose in distaste. The
surroundings reminded her of too many redneck hovels back home. Behind them stood an unpainted ramshackle
house, its boards gone silvery gray with time.
A refrigerator perched on the porch, kept company by a torn, stained
sofa. A dented school bus, its tires
rotted and flat, rested by one side of the shack. Its shattered windshield glared in the
bright sun. On the other side of the
house a Buick crouched on cement blocks.
Ivy invaded the car's interior; indeed the foliage worked to swallow
it.
Nature triumphs over technology, Renee
thought. Man is by no means guaranteed a footnote in time.
Adam's
voice reclaimed her attention as he instructed Carli, and Renee noted how close
he stood to the blonde. He'd shaved his
beard, and as she’d suspected, a handsome face had emerged. Thus far, Carli maintained only a friendly
sparring relationship with him.
Let it go, she advised herself. If
she decides she wants to be with him, it's none of my business.
Newly edited version releasing end of July.
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