"Artie!" Jonah shouted. "Where the hell you been?"
"I had to go into Jericho, Jonah." The shouting stopped as Jonah moved forward to hold Apostle's reins as Artia swung down from the horse. His hands steadied her as she dropped to the ground.
"Why?" He asked. Artie had never really been one to enjoy the town, and while he understood that she was a loner in ways that he'd never be, he'd thought that some socializing with a more diverse set of people than he and his crew would help her.
"I had to go to the medical center." Artie explained. "Why're you home early?" She asked.
"The crew intercepted a truck bound for Jericho from New Bern." Artie's eyes widened. From Bonnie and Mimi she'd heard that relations with New Bern were full of tensions, and Jonah had related some rumors that he and the crew had heard while out and about. "Mortar rounds, and I don't think they're selling them to Jericho."
"You think that they mean to use them." Artie realized. "Shit. And I'm right in the way of any offensive."
"You have choices." Jonah stated, and Artie realized that there weren't that many of the team around the farmstead. Jonah noticed her dawning intutition and explained. "They're on watch duty around the farmstead. We could move the livestock into Jericho." Artie shook her head.
"I do that, I lose independence. I know you have a second place, a safer place. The dually is fully fueled, we could attach the trailer, load the animals inside, and you could move them to your alpha site. I keep Apostle and Hobbes with me, and I defend this place."
"It's an eight acre farm and they had mortars, Artie." Jonah restated. "You won't be able to defend it."
"Do I at least have the night?" Artie asked, and Jonah nodded. "Spend it here with me?"
Jonah nodded at the quiet desperation in her voice.
"I'll be gone in the morning." He stated. "But I'll stay the night."
Artie rolled out of bed, tiptoeing out of the living room and into the kitchen where the cooking fire was still burning. She'd grown into the habit of leaving that particular fire always burning, something always simmering above it over the last few months. The solar panels in the roof allowed her to have electrical power, but after the amount of time she'd spent fixing them after the EMP she never relied on them anymore.
Taking a sheet of paper out of the drawer in the mobile workspace, she grabbed a pen and went to sit at the table.
"Artie?" Cory asked from the doorway. "You still up?" His eyes were on the woman wrapped in a thick terrycloth bathrobe sitting next to the kitchen fire, and he wondered for a moment what she was wearing underneath it, then shook his head, realizing that Jonah would kill him for those thoughts. Not that it would stick, but picturing a woman in the nude wasn't worth waking up again.
"Yeah. You heading off shift?" She asked.
"Jonah asked me to stay with you." He told her. "I'm off shift, heading to bed. You?"
"Jonah's asleep, but I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd sit in here for a bit."
"You're writing something." Kronos/Cory stepped into the room, slumping across the table.
"Just a note." Artie stated. "To Jonah. I thought that he might need something to remind him that he's loved while he's elsewhere, maybe once I'm gone."
"Now that's morbid." Cory nodded, going out into the hallway, across and into the dining room, then upstairs to the bunk rooms.
Artie finished the letter, folded it. Got up from the kitchen table, pushed in the chair, went to the coats on the coatrack, placed in an internal pocket. He'd find it in a few days, he had no real reason to be in that pocket. She hoped that he waited.