Sudden Independents - By Ted Hill Page 0,14

in his lap and reached over for Vanessa’s hand.

Vanessa’s face twisted as though somebody had kicked her in the gut. Jimmy slid his chair back. “Are you okay?”

Her expression relaxed a bit after she puckered her lips and blew out a long stream of air like a deflating balloon. “It’s time. I think the baby’s coming.”

Mark, Samuel and Jimmy jumped and their chairs crashed backward. Luis’s chair slammed over with him still occupying it.

It was going to be a long night, and Scout already felt drowsy from a full day’s riding. His adrenaline burned out a while ago. Now he was running on will, and that tank was close to empty, too.

Hunter slept, his chest rising with even breaths. At least he wasn’t snoring. All traces of his smirk dissipated after the wreck, obliterated by the pain.

Catherine lay peacefully beside him. She exhaled and blonde strands of hair lying across her face billowed like a curtain in front of an open window.

Scout completed wrapping Hunter’s arm in the splint with the clean shirt he’d torn into strips. He felt pretty good about setting the break, thinking he’d got it right, hopefully. Accidents and broken bones happened in the Big Bad, and Scout tried to counter them by always being prepared. In Hunter’s case, he was lucky Scout was along. Otherwise, the fool would probably be dead from a lethal combination of shock, exposure and stupidity.

Now because of his brainless riding, Hunter had probably gone and messed up a good thing. Jimmy would be upset and worried, and he and Vanessa would blow the whole incident out of proportion forcing Hunter and Scout into the buddy system again. That’s what happened when parents died. The oldest sibling took charge.

Unlike Hunter, Scout never complained. If it weren’t for Vanessa being strong for the both of them in those early years, he would be just another casualty. She was a trouper. They endured through so many days of no food and shelter when she made the difficult decisions that kept them both alive. Scout learned quickly to stick close to his big sister.

But riding with Hunter again wasn’t something Scout wanted. They shared an amount of job-related camaraderie and even lived in the same house, but that didn’t mean they wanted to ride together. Sometimes, a little space was nice.

Scout built up the fire to keep Hunter warm. Catherine stirred as light from the flames flickered across her face. She was a big mystery. Hunter had found himself a little girl surviving alone. At least that’s the story she was trying to sell, but Scout wasn’t buying. More than likely, she carried another story giving her nightmares, a story she refused to bring out into the light.

He poked at the fire and Catherine stirred again, folding her arms together against the cool night air. Scout dusted off his hands on his pants and unhooked the sleeping bag from his motorbike. He zipped it open like a blanket and covered Catherine, who snuggled under with a contented smile.

Then Hunter started snoring like a chainsaw ripping through a forest. Scout groaned, cringing with each thunderous inhalation, and within moments, tension throbbed between his shoulder blades. He snatched up the water bottles and scampered out of earshot.

His eyes adjusted away from the fire, picking a path down to the stream he’d located earlier for fresh water. The shimmering stars reflected off the creek, causing a phosphorescent band that laced over the plains. Scout dipped the bottles into the flow and waited for the gurgling to cease. He retrieved the iodine from his pocket and added a couple drops into each bottle. Then he screwed the lids tightly and leaned back on his hands for a little stargazing.

Scout couldn’t remember what the starry sky looked like before the plague. In the middle of the city, he thought there were only a couple hundred stars total because all you saw were the brightest ones. The first time he looked into the night sky after the power winked out, he saw billions of stars sparkling from every direction in the thick soup of space.

Tonight, he thought about how lucky he was with a billion possibilities shining back at him, even if he wasn’t sure that God was up there watching his back.

“There you are,” Catherine said behind him.

Scout flopped on the grassy bank as if he’d just been hooked out of the stream. He sat back up after controlling the initial surprise, but he still had difficulty catching his