Please stick with me if you think I have lost my ever loving mind. Which I probably have. There's Samcedes in this chapter. Awkward and somewhat uncomfortable Samcedes because they both are crazy, but Samcedes nevertheless.

Standard Disclaimer: No copyrighted material used in this chapter belongs to me. This story belongs to Linda Howard/Jones with some RIB and the writers of Glee mixed in.

Chapter Six

Mercedes Selah Jones couldn't sleep.

The house was just too quiet, too dark; the hours crept past like cold syrup, barely moving. Normally Cedes went to bed between nine and ten, but after she'd gotten home and locked up—something she double-checked, because not having lights made her feel more vulnerable—there was nothing to do, no television to watch, and she was exhausted from almost two days of nonstop work. Going to bed seemed like the only logical thing to do.

You would think from being so tired her head hurt that sleep would have come easy, but it didn't.

She slept fitfully, awakening every other hour, tossing and turning, sleeping some more, then her eyes popping open as she lay staring upward in the darkness, her mind racing with details of all they had done, all they could have done, and all they still needed to do. She went over and over the community meeting, trying to think of who should be in charge of what, but the reality was they'd have to go with the group of volunteers they had regardless of their individual skill sets. In any given community, there was a small core of people who were willing to commit their time and efforts to getting things done while others simply waited to reap the benefits. Whether or not that core of workers would be large enough remained to be seen. More "volunteers" might have to be drafted.

Too bad Sam Evans wasn't one of the volunteers.

Her memory flashed to his hard, scruffy face, the fierceness of his green gaze, and the reluctance with which he'd warned her about the coming disaster. Interacting with people didn't come easy to him; even she was better at it than he was, and most days she sucked when it came to socializing. But he'd made the effort, which meant he wasn't totally closed off; perhaps she could convince him to join them.

Or not.

The problem was, they needed him, way more than he needed them.

Thinking about him wasn't conducive to falling asleep. Suddenly she was too hot, though she had only the top sheet pulled over her; the house was too warm without air-conditioning, even with the screened windows open. She threw the sheet back and lay there in her tank top and pajama pants, hoping for a cooling night breeze, but the air didn't seem to be moving.

A red glow lit the room, then vanished.

Startled, she sat up and cocked her head, listening for unusual noises. Was there a fire? Her heart thumped, because a fire now, with the valley's resources so drastically limited, would be catastrophic for the people involved.

The red glow shimmered through her bedroom again.

She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, expecting to see a neighbor's house on fire. Instead . . . the fire was in the sky.

"Ohhh," she breathed, looking at the sky above. Entranced, she stared upward for a few minutes, then raced through the dark house, unlocked the front door, and stepped out onto the screened porch where she had a much broader view. She stood transfixed by the sight.

If she'd needed a reminder of the magnitude of this event, if she had not yet accepted that the CME had arrived, this was it. The sky was on fire. Not literal fire, but still . . .

A blood-red aurora danced across the sky, above and around Cove Mountain like a gentle ribbon of crimson light twining into the darkness in all directions. It was a haunting, celestial waltz of power, and she caught herself holding her breath as she watched. She couldn't remember ever being more entranced and terrified and awestruck.

She unlatched the screen door and went down the steps to stand in the yard, turning slowly around, eyes still on the sky. The aurora danced behind her as well. She'd never before seen an aurora, much less a rare red one. They simply didn't happen this far south, until now.

Now the blood-red color, shot through with green streaks, covered the sky like a sheet, trembling back and forth, vanishing briefly, then flaring back to life and morphing into a shimmery curtain.

How many of her insomniac neighbors were watching the fiery display that stood testimony to the immense solar storm? She couldn't see anyone else in their yards, although the trees blocked most of her view anyway; surely she'd have heard them talking, though. She seemed to be alone in the night, alone with this unbelievable and unexpected breathtaking vision taking place above them in the crimson skies.

Sam had been walking for a few hours, driven by a bone-deep impulse. He was walking patrol; he knew it, but still he couldn't stop himself. He was annoyed and bitter about it, even angry. Didn't matter. He was driven to do what he'd been trained to do. This was an emergency situation and civilians were at risk; he didn't have to join their meetings or chat with them or share his supplies with them, but evidently he damn sure had to keep the boogeymen away from them, at least for tonight.

It was bullshit. He knew it was bullshit.

He still did it.

He'd managed to get a few hours of sleep, but once he'd awakened there was no going back to sleep. And why should he? Through his windows he could see the dancing curtains of red light; why miss the once in a lifetime celestial show? Restlessness gnawed at him, telling him he should be doing something, so he'd gotten dressed, slid his Mossberg shotgun into a scabbard across his back, and started walking the dark, narrow road down the mountain.

Silence enveloped him. Normally the night was alive with animal sounds, but not tonight. Even the insects were quiet, as if the world around them had changed and they sensed it.

As he drew closer to the town he saw and heard—and smelled—what appeared to be a big cookout in a clearing off the main road. There were a few lights shining dimly, but not too many. He heard the hum of a generator in the distance. Whoever was manning the smokers and grills kept their voices and lights low. It was a smart move, cooking up the meat they had on hand.

He gave the area a wide berth, preferring to continue on alone and unnoticed. Soon enough they were behind him, and the silence—and dark—turned deep again.

The eerie ruby sky glowed and danced over the dark, looming mountains. The Smokies were old mountains and had undoubtedly seen skies like this before, but he sure as hell hadn't. Amaze-balls, that was one heck of an aurora. It was the color of blood, immense and unnatural. The atmosphere had to be highly charged for the sky to turn that shade of red—any shade of red, come to that.

He'd seen the northern lights before in Alaska. Auroras were supposed to be blues and purples and greens across a quiet night sky, not this ominous bloody red. Still, it was quite impressive, this testament to the power of a star about ninety-three million miles away.

If he had to spend the night walking through the hills and the valley, at least he was getting to watch something that was breathtakingly surreal.

The little town was completely dark. So many nights and early mornings he'd sat on his porch and looked down at a blanket of lights; he could see the service stations, the houses with outside security lights, the lamps of night owls who were up late or very early birds who had already started their day. No matter the time, there had always been an occasional vehicle going up and down the roads or running down the highway, headlights stabbing forward. Not now; now there was a quiet darkness, no vehicles, no lights. It was as if the entire planet and civilization had been turned back two hundred years—and civilization had, in most of the industrialized world.

The government with the military had contingency plans, and would function on a deeply reduced basis. The armed forces would be as prepared as possible, and had portable nuclear reactors that would keep the bases functioning as well as likely providing the key points from which recovery would begin. Some small electrical company somewhere, maybe several of them, would have hardened its grid, taken precautions, had backups in place, and would likely come back online well before the major cities. Those small bright spots would probably be overwhelmed with refugees, though, and might deliberately stay offline until recovery was well underway.

Regular people were pretty much screwed. They'd have to get by the best way they could.

And he'd walk night patrol in his tiny corner of the world.

His well-worn boots crunched softly on gravel as he turned down one of the smaller side lanes. With the red glow above lighting the dark earth almost like a red lens on a flashlight, he could make out the name on the sign: McKinley Road. This was where Mike Chang had said he lived—and that Cedes Jones lived on the same road. His steps slowed, and he almost turned back. He didn't want to know where she lived, what her house looked like; he didn't want to be able to imagine her going about life in her neighborhood, know the roads she would walk, speculate about which room was her bedroom. Yeah—that. Feeding his already uncomfortable interest in her wasn't smart. He should turn around, literally not go down that road.

He didn't turn around though. He kept walking ahead.

It was a nice little neighborhood. None of the houses were new, but they all looked well tended, at least by what he could see by the light of the aurora. All of the yards had neat grass, there didn't seem to be any piles of junk lying around. He could smell a few late-blooming flowers, overlying the faint but telling scent of autumn. Their survival would have definitely been easier in summer, but summer was almost over.

There were a few dim lights shining in the neighborhood. At least one house on McKinley Road had a couple of solar-powered garden lamps. The lights were far from bright; he wouldn't have spotted them from his vantage point high on the mountain.

Then he spotted her vehicle, a small Honda, in the carport of a one-story ranch house with a screened porch across most of the front. The house was maybe forty to fifty years old, sturdy but not modern and flashy. A line of evergreen trees blocked the view of the neighbors' house. The windows in the house were dark of course, and he got the sense of stillness. Deliberately he moved his gaze forward, and in the eerie red glow saw that the road dead-ended about fifty yards ahead.

"Hey."

The single word was soft, so soft that if he wanted he could legitimately pretend he hadn't heard it. It came from the direction of the dark porch. Maybe she thought he'd seen her, and rural manners had prompted her to greet him. Maybe she didn't really want a conversation in the dark early-morning hours. He could keep going . . . but he'd already had this talk with himself, and look where he ended up like a homing pigeon.

He stopped in the middle of the road, turned his head toward the house. Yes, he could make her out, a blur barely visible in the dark protection of the porch.

"Hey," he said in return.

Cedes had stood in her yard for a while, face turned skyward, then returned to the porch with the intention of going back inside to try to get some sleep. The red sky held her, though, and she remained standing at the screen door just as entranced as she had been when she first saw the glow. Then she saw Sam. She recognized him almost immediately, though she felt a split second of alarm at seeing a strange man walking down her road. The smooth, silent way he moved registered with her and with some astonishment she realized she'd watched him enough that she knew how he walked, and could recognize him even in the faint, eerie red glow.

Her heart began pounding.

She started to shrink back, and not say anything. She had no idea why he was walking down the middle of the road in the wee hours, but one thing she did know about him was that he didn't like interacting with others. The fact that he'd warned her about the solar storm was more astonishing than if he hadn't. At the time she hadn't fully appreciated what he'd done, but now she did; however well they survived this crisis, they would have been much worse off without his heads-up. The least she could do was say thank you.

"Hey," she said, the only word that she could manage because her heart was beating so fast and hard that she didn't have the breath to say more. She doubted he'd be able to hear her, her voice had been so timid and quiet.

Then he stopped, looked at her, and repeated her greeting back to her. Her knees went weak, so weak she almost slumped against the screen door. Her reaction to him was so extreme she felt like a teenager; the realization was enough to strengthen her spine, her knees, and she barely trembled as she pulled open the screen door and stepped outside so he could see her, perhaps recognize her. That was as far as her determination carried her, and she sank down on the top step. She scrunched her toes, the wood cool under her bare feet, and waited to see if he'd resume his walk down the road.

She expected him to; a part of her even wanted him to. When, after a pause so long she almost stopped breathing, he turned and walked across the yard toward her, she sucked in a quick breath of . . . maybe shock, maybe panic, maybe excitement, likely all of the above.

As he got closer she could make out some kind of stick across his back . . . no, a scabbard. A stock with the barrel of a gun not visible, was protruding from it. Of course; no sane person would wander these mountains at night without the means of protecting himself from the wildlife there were mountain cats as well as bears.

He slipped the scabbard off over his head and without a word sat down on the step beside her. He kept the gun at hand, though, right beside his leg.

She took a deep, silent breath, caught in the moment with ruby magic above her and him beside her. On a cellular level she realized she'd remember this forever, no matter where life took her or how long she existed. This, now, was ingrained in her being. Crimson ribbons danced overhead, fading, then pulsing with power again. The bloody red glow bathed them, making it seem as if the heat she felt all along from his nearness came from the lights in the sky instead of from him. He wasn't actually touching her but he was so close there seemed to be a mild magnetic field between them, lifting the fine hairs on her arm.

Cedes tilted her head and looked upward, permanently giving up the self-fiction that she was uncomfortable with him for any reason other than the power of her own reaction. She felt almost painfully alive at his nearness, her skin heated and ultrasensitive, her nipples pinched and aching. This was pure physical chemistry, lust on the most basic level. Likely it was one-sided, because he'd never looked at her with even faint interest. Her experience in dealing with something like this was basically zero, because she'd never reacted so intensely to any other man, not even Anthony; this was outside both her experience and her comfort zone.

After about thirty seconds he still hadn't said anything. She wanted to bombard him with questions—Had he been in the military? Why had he moved here? Had he ever been married? Did he have any kids?—but she held them all back. She might be ridiculously turned on by his nearness, but instinct told her that the best way to make him leave was to push. Normally he avoided personal contact. Just the fact that he hadn't ignored her, that he was actually sitting beside her, was enough for now. She settled for murmuring, "Thanks for the warning. It really made a difference."

She was still looking up, but by the movement beside her she could tell he turned his head toward her for a brief glance, before he, too, gazed upward. "You're welcome," he finally muttered, as if he'd had to think about the right response.

Wow, at this rate in a year they might manage a real conversation. She wanted to laugh, but she was exasperated with herself, too, because she wasn't much better than he was. The unfolding crisis was a safe subject, though, so maybe she should stick to that.

"I keep thinking of things I should have done," she admitted. There, that hadn't been agonizing; she hadn't even really thought about what she'd say, the words had just come out.

"Such as?"

She realized she wanted his evaluation of what they'd done, his advice on what else they could do or improve on. She wanted to know if she'd done the right thing, if she should now concentrate on something else. She wanted to hear his voice, deep and slightly rough, and so masculine it gave her the shivers, wanted to keep him talking even if he didn't think she'd done the right things. Learning what not to do was important, too.

"We concentrated on food, mostly, canning as much as we could. I bought things that will not spoil, like canned meats, peanut butter, and dried beans. I think we'll be okay there, though we'll have to cut back, and be careful not to waste anything. I have extra fuel for the generator, wood for the fireplaces, candles and oil lamps, prescription refills and first-aid supplies—but I almost forgot about water for flushing and taking a bath, so we don't have much on hand," she confessed. "Right now I have plenty of bottled water, but it won't last long. After it's gone I can handle water for drinking by boiling it, but I should have gotten a rain barrel for the rest. Making trips to and from the creek is going to get old fast. I've been trying to think of what I already have that I could put under the downspouts to catch the rain, and the best I can come up with is some big plastic storage totes." She made herself stop talking, giving him a chance to weigh in.

When he spoke, it wasn't about her preparations. "We?"

He'd asked a semi-personal question. She was so startled that she blinked up at him. "My Aunt Roz and her granddaughter, Bree. They live together just up the road. The blue two-story. You've seen Roz in the store, the one with the blonde hair. She was elected community leader at tonight's meeting."

He grunted an acknowledgement. Maybe he'd already known she and Roz were related, but likely not, because she rarely called Roz, Aunt Roz, and they looked and acted like complete opposites. "You should combine resources and move in with her."

"An old friend already has, and taken the spare bedroom. If things get desperate I will, but for now—I like being alone."

He made another sound, this one not quite a grunt. She suspected he understood wanting to be alone.

Finally a light breeze began stirring through the night. It felt wonderful on her overheated skin and she sighed in relief. "Anyway, dipping buckets of water out of plastic containers will be easier than hiking to the creek and back every day." She didn't specify which creek, because it didn't matter; the area was veined with creeks.

"That should work," he commented.

He hadn't exactly praised the idea, but she was pleased. She was thinking, she was identifying problems and coming up with solutions. In the coming weeks she'd be doing a lot of that, and could only pray the solutions would work.

The breeze picked up, and a faint chill ran over her bare arms. After the heat they'd been having it felt nice to actually be chilled, but soon the moving air on her bare feet was too cold and she pulled her legs up and tugged the legs of her pajama bottoms down to cover her toes. Her movement made her arm brush against his; the skin to skin contact, slight as it was, almost took her breath. He was so hot she felt almost burned where she touched him. She immediately stopped moving, still touching him because in that second she was incapable of movement, and all she could do was wait to see if he moved away.

He didn't. Neither did he increase the pressure, or move closer himself, but he didn't move away. It was as if he hadn't noticed something that, though small, had rocked her so off-balance. Tilting his head back, he watched the red aurora that was flooding the sky and with admiration said quietly, "This is simply amazing."

The change of subject was welcome, even though it brought home to her how insignificant the moment was to him. She was really overthinking . . . well, everything, rather than simply living in the moment. Realizing that gave her the inner composure she needed to pull herself out of her thoughts and back into the world. "Yes. I'm glad I couldn't sleep. I'd hate to have missed this."

More silence. She was becoming comfortable with it, and let herself enjoy simply sitting beside him in the dark. Not having to search for something to say was remarkably freeing, not to mention relaxing. If he'd been expecting to be entertained by her wit and insights she'd have been miserable, but while she didn't know much about him she did know that he preferred silence better than noise, and solitude more than company. For him to be sitting there now, and showing no signs of itching to leave, was like an early Christmas gift, and she accepted it for what it was, without wishing for anything more. This was enough.

Oh Lord, he could see her nipples—the shape of them beneath that thin tank top, anyway. She probably thought she was safe in the darkness, but it wasn't all that dark because of the glowing aurora, and he had very good night vision anyway. Her breasts were large, and her nipples were tightly puckered from the cool breeze.

After being mostly alone for so long, even by his own choice, being this close to unfettered breasts felt like the erotic equivalent of a naked lap dance. Better; he was as turned on as if he were on top of her, about to slide home—which was nuts, because their only contact was a light brush of her bare arm against his, and all he could see was the outline of her nipples. Not having sex with a woman didn't mean he hadn't jerked off now and then, so it wasn't as if he hadn't come in three years. He had, just not inside a woman. Which meant he wasn't so turned on because he was sex-deprived, but because there was something about her that checked all his boxes especially the physical attractive ones, her voice, her smell, her looks, her body. He hadn't known he would be this stupid, but only a fool ignored the evidence right in front of him. She was his Kryptonite. His desire for her not just her body would be his undoing.

He should leave right now. He didn't like the companionable silence between them, or sharing the magic night sky, because this was about connecting, and he didn't want to connect with her. He wanted her to stay a distant acquaintance, someone he recognized from the service station. He wanted to go back up his mountain and sit in solitude on his own porch, not beside her on her wooden porch steps.

But . . . her lovely body.

It was hard for him to walk away, with hard being the operative word.

Which made her even more dangerous to his self-imposed semi-exile from the human race, because every time he came in contact with her, he became more interested in finding out who she was, what made her tick. She was so quiet and self-contained that even years into the future she could still surprise him, and he wasn't a "future" type of guy. He was a here-and-now, don't-let-anyone-close-enough-to-give-a-heck-about type of guy. He shouldn't be wondering if she had a temper, how far someone would have to push her for her fire to surface, if he could make her scream in bed or if she tried to be as quiet as possible during lovemaking—

Lovemaking. Not sex. Calm the hell down little Sam. Yes, he knew for sure he was crazy. Just when he was calming down, he had to ruin it by thinking about making love to not just screwing the incomparable Cedes Jones.

She said, "If you run short of food, we'll share ours. We wouldn't have what we have if it hadn't been for you."

He surprised himself by almost snorting a quick laugh, holding it back at the last second. Here he'd been torturing himself thinking about having sex with her, and she'd been thinking about sharing their meager supply of food with him. There it was in a nutshell, the difference between men and women.

Most women were nurturers/caregivers. Thinking of survival. While most men thought with their dicks. Being providers so they could get their dicks wet propelled by the need to prove their worth to their mates. He felt he could do both. Provide sustenance for Cedes as well as sexual pleasure for the both of them. He had the self-control to really make a woman happy, several times a night or he had somewhere in his distant past. Give him five minutes, and she wouldn't be thinking about sharing her meager food with him to eat, he'd be eating, but it wouldn't be food, it would be—

Oh hell! He needed to get out of here. He needed to go, and go now before he ruined everything with her and his self-imposed exile. Kryptonite...

His thoughts were interrupted when a bright curtain of red waved over the sky, and he saw a black shape on the other side of the road. He was on his feet and the shotgun in his right hand, pulling her upright with his left, before his brain finished forming the word bear. She didn't yelp, though he knew he'd startled her. He released her to pull open the screen door, then hurried her up the step and onto the screened porch. He joined her, putting himself between her and the door and silently closing it.

He pointed toward the bear, hoping she could see his gesture in the deeper darkness of the porch. She turned her head in the direction he'd indicated, and went totally still as she spotted why he moved them so quickly.

The bear was rooting around on the ground, likely looking for fallen acorns. The breeze was in their faces so it hadn't scented them, and a bear's nose was far more acute than its eyesight. It was likely they could have stayed still and remained sitting on the steps without the bear even knowing they were there—and he had the shotgun—but he didn't want to kill it if he didn't have to, and most importantly, he did not want Cedes in harm's way. They were safer on the porch, where he could quickly get her inside if the wind shifted and the bear scented them.

They stood motionless at they watched the bear root around. They heard a few grunts and snuffles, then it moseyed deeper into the bushes and was soon lost from sight. Sam listened as it got farther and farther away, and the sounds faded.

He realized he was holding Cedes's wrist, his big hand wrapped completely around it. Her skin was cool and silky smooth under his rough fingers, and the impact of willingly touching someone after years of holding himself apart was so strong that he felt as if he'd been punched in the gut. He really didn't want to let her go. He had to force himself to release her.

"I got to go."

He pulled the screen door open. His voice sounded raw and a little strained, but at least he'd gotten himself moving in the right direction far away from Kryptonite.

She didn't ask him to stay. Instead she only said, "Be careful." Then she let herself into the house, leaving him there, and he heard the click of the door lock.

He blew out a sigh of relief when he was once more walking the road, heading back toward his cabin. He kept the shotgun in his hand because obviously the bears were active tonight . . . and she hadn't asked him to wait until the bear they'd seen was farther away. She hadn't fussed, but her quiet "be careful" carried the weight of a benediction that warmed him all the way home through the still red night.