The coat was a lot better than nothing: charcoal gray and long enough to fall midway between her butt and knees. The fabric gave off a musky scent that smelled of safety, like being wrapped up in strong arms that you knew would never let go.
Tom held up a mug and an aluminum camp plate heaped high. “I know you’re hungry, but take it slow, okay? Be nice if that stayed down.”
Ellie was already gobbling and Alex’s stomach was screaming with hunger, but she made no move to take the food. “Look, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, and I know you shot that guy …”
“That guy’s name was Jim, he was a really good friend of mine, and you’re welcome.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. And thank you. For saving us, I mean.” She wouldn’t back down. “But I don’t know you, and I don’t remember what happened after you … after you shot your friend.”
“Well, you passed out. Any closer to the river, and I’d have had to go in after you. After I made sure you were still breathing … Ellie, what happened next?”
“You helped me get off the tree, Tom,” Ellie said. Her chin glistened with grease. She beamed at Alex. “Tom let me carry his gun.”
“Which you did very well,” said Tom.
“Because you had to carry Alex and her head was bleeding like stink.”
“Which it was.” Tom looked back at Alex. “Then I stitched you up and set up camp, got Ellie out of her wet clothes, and then Ellie and I got you out of your wet clothes, and then … Do you really want me to go on?”
“No … yes.” She hugged herself. “Are you a, I don’t know, a nurse? Or, like, in medical school? How do you know so much?”
“You learn basic battlefield medicine in the army, and then some, if you hang around the medics and care to learn.”
“Okay. So, if you’re in the army, how come you’re here?”
“I’m on leave from Afghanistan. We were camping—me; Jim; his uncle, Stan; and Jim’s dad, Earl. Jim was my team leader, and no, I can’t tell you exactly where we were, because then I’d have to kill you.”
She tried not to smile. “That’s not very funny.”
“No, I guess it isn’t.”
“Where is Stan? Where’s Earl?”
“Look, I’ll be happy to answer all your questions after we eat.” When she remained on her feet, he placed the mug and plate on the ground. “At least sit down.”
“Why?”
“Because when you pass out again and fall into the fire, I don’t want to have to put out your hair, and I’m kind of partial to that turtleneck.”
Now she did smile. She lowered herself to a cross-legged sit. “Better?”
“Much.” His dimple showed. In the firelight, his skin glowed orange. “Ellie said you were kind of stubborn.”
“Oh yeah?” Alex shot Ellie a look of mock outrage. “She say anything about herself?”
“She said you used to think she was a pain.”
“Well,” said Alex, fishing up her plate, “she was.”
“Hello, I’m right here,” said Ellie, sounding very pleased.
“I think, given everything that’s happened, we’re all entitled to a couple bad days,” said Tom.
Alex spooned a mouthful of beans and meat. The smell was so good she thought she was going to faint. “Do you know what’s going on?”
“Food first,” said Tom. “Then we’ll talk.”
Despite Tom’s warning, taking it slow with the food was hard, what with her stomach clawing a hole right through her gut. The raccoon was tough and a little gamey, but she was too starved to care. She shoveled down mouthful after mouthful, chasing the food with gulps of tea until her spoon clicked metal and her mug was empty. To her right, Mina let out a plaintive whine, and Alex put her plate on the ground for the dog to lick clean. “There. Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
“That dog eats like a horse.” Tom refilled her mug. “If you’re up to it, we can hit the trail again tomorrow morning. Ellie said you were headed for the ranger station?”
Nodding, she sucked back a mouthful of tea, let it roll around her tongue, tasted the sweetness and an edge of char. Russian something or other, she thought. Her mother had been the tea drinker. “It was the only thing I could think of. I mean, other than going back to my car, but I don’t think my car will start.”
“Yeah, I’d say that’s a safe bet.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“You mean to Jim, or to everything?”
“Yes?” She tried to make it a joke and then thought there really wasn’t anything about the situation that was remotely funny. Ellie came to snuggle, and she hugged the girl close as Mina finished with the plate and came to lie against Alex’s left thigh.
She saw Tom’s eyes flick to Ellie, as if he were debating what to say. “Look, I only have a couple ideas, and not all of them make sense, especially about …” He gestured at his own head. “You know. What happened to Jim or his dad.”
In the firelight, his eyes—she suddenly remembered that they were a strange smoky blue in daylight—were black. For a disquieting moment, she thought of the dead woman with her glasses on a keeper chain and nothing but empty sockets. She wanted to ask about Jim, but she had so many questions, she didn’t know where to start. “Did you feel it? The Zap?”
“Is that what you’re calling it?”
She nodded. “Did it happen down here in the valley?”
“Oh yeah. I thought my head was going to explode.”
Okay, that wasn’t good. The mountain was about twenty miles away. She pushed through the ache in her head to do the math and then wished she hadn’t. Assuming the Zap spread in a circle, that meant it had hit the entire Waucamaw, and beyond. “Are your electronics dead, too?”
“All the solid-state stuff, yeah.”
“So what could do that?”
“Well.” Tom’s eyes dropped to the fire and then rose to meet hers again. “I don’t know for sure. I mean, we’re in the middle of the woods, and we’ve got no way of getting information, you know? But I know the military, and we’re testing out stuff all the time. So, based on that and some other things I know—just putting it together—I think it was an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse. Probably more than one, too. A single EMP’s not supposed to fry people. Actually, I don’t think that’s supposed to happen if you set off twenty. That’s the theory, at least. No one’s ever tested it out before.”