AN: Shelby - Thanks. That was just the kick in the pants I needed. Buttercups3 - It's been a heck of a month, but I swear I'm back in the saddle for real now. Everyone else - Thanks for sticking with me. There's a rollicking adventure ahead. :-D
Shocks
It takes Miles six whole minutes to get out of the complex and back into the woods where Nora and the rest of the Matheson family are waiting for him. Danny's jumpy as hell and almost shoots him in the dark with Charlie's crossbow before his sister stops him.
Miles grins at Charlie. She actually grins back, and damn, he's starting to love that kid, because apparently they're the only two people around who can appreciate the macabre humor in the fact that they're on the run again, this time because of plain old shitty timing.
Of course, if the patrol had passed their way two hours earlier, they'd probably all be dead. So it could have been worse.
Hell, that should be his life motto.
"Where's Aaron?" Leave it to Rachel to sound disapproving when anyone else would sound worried.
"Staying with Bass." Miles grabs the horse Nora hands him – she looks relieved to be rid of it – and mounts up, automatically making fifteen-odd minute adjustments to his reins, seat, and balance. The horse feels good - fast, but not flighty.
Rachel opens her mouth, and he's less than not in the mood, so he cuts her off: "He's a hell of a lot safer than we're about to be." She shuts up, Nora gives him a smirk, and everyone climbs as silently as possible onto their horses.
The ride away from the Eberhart plantation is Miles' favorite kind of riding – the kind that requires your full concentration and forces you to be completely present in the moment. At first, it's holy-shit-that-was-a-gopher-hole dark and they have to ride cross-country on unfamiliar paths, deer trails clogged with fallen logs, and the edges of old roads. The roads are the worst. By then, the clouds have traipsed away from the moon, and Miles spends the whole time hyper-aware of how clearly they're silhouetted against the sky and how easy it would be for someone to snipe them right off their horses. Four hours into the ride, his neck's coiled steel-cable tight from trying to keep a 360-degree watch.
Normally, Nora would be some kind of help, but for someone who's had to spend as many hours in the saddle as she has, she's still one of the worst riders Miles has ever seen, and at the breakneck pace Miles is setting, it's taking all of her concentration just to stay on her horse.
Surprisingly, it's Charlie who picks up the slack as his wingman. The kid's muscles have got to be screaming after nearly ten hours in the saddle out of the last twenty-four, but she keeps pace with Miles' horse without complaint. Several times, he catches her scanning her side of the road for threats, and once, she keeps him from plunging his horse through a stream that turns out to be much deeper than he'd expected. He chalks it up to younger eyes, but after that, he slows the pace a little.
Twice, Charlie drops back to check on Rachel and Danny (and Nora, probably, though neither would ever admit she needs checking on), then returns to his side. He doesn't ask for an update. Danny's tougher than he looks if he survived four months on the road with Neville; Nora's ridden on enough campaigns with him that Miles knows this is just how it goes with her; and there's no way in hell Rachel wants his help, whether or not she needs it.
A wave of blind fury at Bass takes Miles almost completely by surprise. But before he can ponder that bit of unsettlingness, his horse stumbles, nearly throws him, and he's forced to put all of his concentration back on riding. Charlie sucks in a sudden gasp as Miles barely manages to keep himself and his horse upright – and sometime, he's got to talk to that kid about wearing her emotions on her sleeve – but finally, the horse finds its feet with him still on its back.
He pulls to a halt a second later. Charlie rides up close enough to knock stirrups with him, and he's about to tell her to give the horses some room before they both get hung up in each other's tack when she taps him on the arm and points. Miles squints.
Trees, trees, fallen log, couple of rusted out cars – Bass had taken to calling them "carcasses" about a year into the Blackout and acted like it was the funniest joke anyone had ever heard... – tall grass, another fallen log, more trees… He can't see what Charlie's seeing, but she's still pointing, so he listens instead.
And he can't articulate it, but there's something wrong with the way the wind moves through that tall grass.
They dismount in tandem – Miles to the off side of his horse to avoid being sandwiched between their two mounts – and the rest of the group follows suit. In relative silence – so, one notch below bullhorns announcing their presence – they lead the horses behind the cover of a thick copse of trees.
Miles flashes Nora a series of clear hand signals – Stay here; watch that way; we'll circle around – then motions to Charlie: Lead the way, kid. She nods like she's trying to salute him with it, and Miles winces, because he's seen that look on one too many eager recruits. But then Charlie grins like the sun and draws her crossbow, and she's off into the woods like she was born in them. Which, really, given how young she was when the lights went out, isn't far from the truth.
They move through the woods as twin shadows, silent even to Miles' own ears, and it should turn his stomach that his niece is becoming about half as terrifying as he is, but instead he's grinning in the darkness and he hates himself for it. Slowly, they slip up to the back of the patch of tall grass –
– and there, low to the ground, Miles can just make out a shadow, big enough to be a man. Charlie aims her crossbow; looks at Miles. He springs…
…and scares up a goddamn deer. The thing's so startled it jumps right at his face, shoulder-checking him flat onto his ass as it leaps past. From his back, he hears the twang and the slight rattle of Charlie's crossbow firing, and a soft thunk as the bolt hits home.
When he rises a moment later, rubbing his shoulder, Charlie's bent over the downed deer, tugging her crossbow bolt out of its forehead. Her shoulders are shaking, and he actually puts a hand on her arm in concern before he realizes she's shaking with silent – but hysterical – laughter.
"Yeah, okay, kid, barrel of laughs…"
It takes her a full ten seconds to compose herself before she wheezes out: "Miles, you should have seen your face…" Apparently, the recollection is too much, because she's wracked with silent laughter all over again.
"All right, yeah. Hysterical. Comedy hour's over, Charlie. Prep that deer, and we'll – "
Something big hits him from behind, latching onto his neck and shoulders and rattling him hard enough to knock loose his sense of direction. That little warning tickle at the base of his brain tells him he's about to be in unbelievable pain, but he's got at least a half a second before that happens.
And Miles Matheson can do a lot in half a second.
He's got no idea which direction he's moving, but he twists, pushing against the weight on his back and drawing his short sword as he falls. With one backwards thrust, he buries it in his attacker. There's an unearthly scream and a rush of hot breath near his ear and FUCK, that's a mountain lion. Holy hell, he'd better have killed it, or Charlie –
His half second's up right about the time he hits the ground – stars exploding behind his eyes, a sound like a freight train in his ears, and a fire like the base of his skull's been flayed open and somebody's jabbing at it with a live electrical wire; all the familiar symptoms of catastrophically disastrous injury. He'll have another five to ten seconds now before whatever it is that just happened gets bad enough to stop him from moving.
Fortunately, he's pretty much an expert at ignoring blinding pain. He twists the sword hilt as hard as he can until the big cat shifts and pulls away from his back, then rolls the rest of the way over and frees his other sword from its scabbard. Dimly, he catalogues that the grass under is back is tacky and soaked with something that's most likely a lot of his blood.
Then the mountain lion leaps at him again.
A crossbow bolt suddenly blooms out of its chest, and Charlie sprints around his left side, aiming another shot – get the hell out of here, kid – but the cat twists to see her as it lands on him, and his first sword thrust misses its throat by an inch. He jams the hilt between its teeth as it snaps at his throat, and is rewarded with a deafening snarl and a spray of blood and saliva.
For a terrifying second, his right arm won't respond to his brain, and he briefly considers the absurd and desperate idea of trying to kick the lion in the balls – and wouldn't Bass piss his pants laughing at that? – but then someone – Charlie? And if so, how the hell has she gotten there so fast? – grabs the short sword out of his hand...
...and drives it home into the cat's heart.
He's got to make sure it's dead, so he rolls out from under the thing and cuts its throat with the sword arm that's still working.
Forcing his feet under him, Miles straightens to a shaky stand and looks across the dead mountain lion at the figure holding his short sword.
It's Jason Neville.
God, does he wish he had time to untangle that mystery of convenient timing, but the seconds are ticking and first he's got to make sure:
"Charlie?" His own voice sounds odd. Sticky.
Charlie appears in front of him next to Jason, and it's a testament to how bad he must look that she barely spares pretty boy a glance. Instead, she stares wide-eyed at him across the body of the dead cat. "Uncle Miles?"
Hell, she hasn't called him "Uncle" since she'd been trying to play on his familial heartstrings when they first met. He must really look like shit.
"You okay, kid?"
She blinks at him, then coughs out a single, disbelieving laugh. "You're kidding me, right? Miles, you look like…"
He doesn't get to hear what he looks like, because suddenly, his five to ten seconds are up. The pain doesn't really get any worse; his body just stops responding to his directions. One moment he's standing there, Charlie's laugh still ringing in his ears, and the next, he's in the dark.