Brotherhood ~ Chapter 5

With late spring now swiftly becoming summer, the days not only were turning hotter, but more humid as well.  Monsoon season seemed poised to arrive much earlier than usual this year.  Bringing with it much needed, and much welcome, rain, it would also usher in dangerous flash floods.

Aidan and I had begun our trek upland towards rim country where we could find relief from the impending heat.  I was game for that since humidity accompanied by high temperatures were not on the top of my most pleasurable list of things to experience.  I hated humid weather with a passion – it would always make me feel dirty, even when I was not.  Aidan seemed to revel in the elements, though, each and every change he took in stride.  It was all just a part of God’s World, he would say.  Well, be that as it may, that didn’t mean that I was required to like it.

Dirt I didn’t mind, but dirt and sweat combined together – then I took issue.  Needless to say in the lower deserts water was a scarcity, which meant bathing wasn’t exactly a frequent occurrence, unless we stuck to a river where water still flowed.  However, curiously Aidan strayed far from obvious water sources.  The man sure knew an awful lot of secret places to find water, though, I took note with interest.  Way more than I did, that was for certain.

As we meandered through the wilderness, we would chat.  Correction – I chatted while Aidan listened.  He certainly wasn’t much of a conversationalist when it came to idle banter.  However, if it was a topic of great interest to him?  Or if he thought he could impart knowledge upon me which would be beneficial to our continued survival?  Then he would get somewhat wordy – or about as close to wordy as this stoic man could possibly get.

There was one thing that struck me odd about Aidan, and practically from the get go.  The man seemed to always be on alert for danger.  He would keep us moving along, never lingering in one spot for any length of time.  If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that Aidan suspected us to be hunted.  That was the word which most often came to mind.  Needless to say, this did not give me a warm and fuzzy.  After all, I had not seen another living soul in the seven years before I met Aidan.  Whatever was out there that had kept Aidan hopping, then I had a hunch that it wasn’t the local fauna – or at least, not the four-legged ones, anyway.

Brazil nut – the man was like a Brazil nut, I decided.  You really had to work at removing that outer shell but still leave the nut inside intact, without smashing it to pieces.  My subtle prodding inquires, as well as not so subtle ones, were usually met by his typical silent recourse.  What his line of work had been in the Time Before, as he referred to pre-apocalypse days, I could only speculate.

Sparing of words, proficient with weapons, a dead-on marksman, downright unnerving stealth, cool, calculating and cautious with patience in excess – the evidence kept adding up.  He must have been CIA.  Nothing else fit, I told myself.  I had no clue if I was right or wrong, but putting together the puzzle pieces of this man gave me a new hobby of sorts.  Besides getting cozy with this one extremely enticing man.  I had not realized just how much I had missed the feeling of being so close to the male body.  Such simple pleasures and the day we first did it?  Well – to say that heaven and earth had moved would have been no exaggeration.  Amazing how seven years without intimacy will totally change one’s perception of the act, I considered.

Since Aidan was not big on talk unless it was a topic of his choice, I let him do the choosing.  Getting him to talk was at times, though, was like pulling teeth – painful for both of us.  And so, when he wanted to be silent, or more like when he wanted me to just shut up, I appeased him and would keep my mouth closed.

I noticed that Aidan looked at the world much differently than I did myself.  He seemed to view everything with a critical and decidedly analytical eye, even the topic of religion.  This brought to mind an image of a warrior-monk, or one of those Knights Templar guys.  Although this man was anything but a monk, taking great pleasure in our couplings, as did I.  He truly believed that the pleasures a woman and man shared were a gift straight from God.  Gift or no, I was careful not to get too interested when it was close to my time of ovulation.  The thought of pregnancy in this world devoid of doctors and hospitals still scared the living crap out of me.

As I came to know Aidan, it was clear that he was downright honorable, but there was so much about this guy that I could not even being to fathom.  One thing of which I was sure, he had never been your average everyday Joe Sixpack, and not by any stretch.  Growing to trust him had come quickly and easily even though we had only been acquainted a short while.  I had always been the kind of woman who went with her gut feeling, especially when it came to character.  However, I still could not shake the feeling that Aidan was continuing to hold something back.  This led me to consider that the station he had once held in his previous life was one he felt I might not look upon with kindness.  When asked, he would just brush off the inquiry, either with silence or by saying that was another time, another place.

This did not mean that I didn’t keep right on trying, of course.

Our journey seemingly droned on without direction, each day blending into the one that followed.  Although, I had to admit that it was nice to have someone else leading for a change, to decide which way to go.  Prior to Aidan coming onto the scene, I had pretty much wandered about without any rhyme or reason.  I supposed that was one reason why I had meandered back towards the Valley of the Sun.  It had always been a place of permanence in my past, and permanence was something that had sorely been lacking during the past seven years of my life.

Now that I had Aidan in my company, though?  The thought of settling down had great appeal – at least to me, at any rate.  I wasn’t so sure about my traveling companion, however.  If one was to look up the word wanderlust in the dictionary, then a picture of Aidan would have been predominantly displayed.  He sure didn’t let any grass grow under his feet.

Not that there was a lot of grass in the desert, that was.

One day we were tracing our way along a seasonal river that twisted and squeezed its way through a narrow ravine.  As the day drew on, our progress became more labored.  We encountered a stretch littered with scattered boulders and debris from the flash floods of previous monsoon seasons.  This made passage a chore since the day had turned hot early on and now there was a noticeable lack of wind, or even a breeze for that matter.  It was dead still – hot and heavy the air hung about us and it seemed the only thing on the move were flies.  Thankfully, Aidan decided to stop and take a short break before we continued to work our way through the flotsam and jetsam.

“Aidan,” I tentatively began as I sat down, leaning my back up against a boulder with a yawn and a stretch, “don’t you ever get tired of wandering around?  I mean, you’re the only person I have seen in the past seven years.  I seriously doubt we’re going to find any other people way out here, if that is even what you are looking for?” I prodded, since I had the reverse impression that he did not care if we ever crossed paths with another soul.  “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m kind of hiked out” I told him, folding my arms across my chest as I studied his face, trying to gauge his reaction.  Without betrayal of his position on the subject, he sat down beside me, resting wrist to bent knee.

“There is so much yet to see in this desert wilderness, Sierra” Aidan made effort to reason with me, but I wasn’t sure why he was bothering.  He was going to drag me along regardless my wishes.  “You’ve but barely scratched the surface in all your years of travel” was his assessment.  “There are many natural wonders on which you have yet to lay eyes, ones that only I can show you.  It would be a shame to anchor yourself to one place when God’s World is wide open to us.

“Now that you travel with me, I will take you to some of the most breath-taking sights to be seen in desert southwest” the man made promise, with absolute confidence no less, and so I had no doubt he would make good on his promise.  “You wouldn’t want to deprive yourself of the opportunity to see some of God’s most wondrous natural creations, would you?” was his position but I only looked down for a moment, releasing a heavy sigh of disappointment.

“I know you’re weary,” he now continued, getting as wordy as I had ever heard him be, “but what else would you propose to do if we did not travel?  Stay home and play cards?  Plant a garden?  Weave baskets?” was his deadpan inquiry but then he unexpectedly laughed at his own humorous suggestions.  A rare, heartfelt smile graced his face and I thought how vibrantly alive he became when he was lighter of heart.  This man needs to smile more often, I considered.  Aidan was close most of the time, as if he carried some burden that he felt unable to share with me.  Cautious and guarded were words that often presented themselves when considering this guy – just two of many words I had squirreled away in a repository of words that summed him up.

“Well, since you put it that way, what choice do I have?” I replied pleasantly enough but in reality my heart sank with a resounding thud.

“You always have a choice, my love – although I would hope that you’d choose to be with me” he quietly expressed, now intently regarding me with those compelling dark eyes of his.  Reaching out, he took my hand in his own, tightly squeezing it as he offered up in temptation smile full of warmth.

Leave him?  Never – that wasn’t even an option now.  So where he went, this little lamb was sure to follow since I had fallen in love with him.  Plain and simple.

How could I not?

With each passing day I had come to find myself more and more in love with this stranger – this tall, dark, handsome stranger, no less.  In a way, Aidan reminded me of a character out of some Gothic novel – he had jet black hair which he wore very long and knotted at the nape of his neck into a ponytail.  He also sported a beard which he kept neatly cropped.  Even his actions most times seemed what one would consider chivalric, I mused.  The man was larger than life, when you got right down to it.

Just as I was about to assure him that where he led I would follow, this was when I heard it.

Close but faint.

Faint but near.

Aidan was immediately on alert, sitting bolt upright.  Straining my ears to hear into the distance, I then froze.  Aidan was the quicker and had already sprung into action.

“Stay here!” he barked at me in command.  Now grabbing his crossbow he then bolted off in the direction sound.  Before I could even get my bearings, the man was already long gone, out of sight.

A dread foreboding quickly overtook me.  Not in response to the sound, which were the barely discernible cries for help from another human being, another man.  It was rather the icy look in Aidan’s eyes when it had become clear to him that we were no longer alone.  And when he reached for his crossbow, the look on his face was one I’d seen many times – when he was hunting.  Instinctively I knew it was his intention to kill the owner of those cries.  Although I could think of no logical reason why he would want to do that sight unseen, I just seemed to know this as fact.

Leaping to my feet I now took chase, running as if my own life depended upon it – but he was so swift!  I had barely caught up to him when I came upon the source of those pleas for help, and disturbingly enough Aidan had already raised his crossbow.  With deadly accuracy he had it trained upon a man whose left arm and leg were pinned beneath a pile of boulders.  Quickly assessing the scene, it was clear that the man had been trying to negotiate his down a steep slope, one littered with treacherously loose debris.

Looking from Aidan to the unfortunate man I couldn’t fathom how this guy could possibly present any threat to him, or even to me for that matter.  It was a wonder that the man had not broken his neck in the dive he must have taken which ended with him almost being buried alive.  So what did Aidan have to worry about?  Yet there he was, ready to let loose a lethal arrow into a fellow human being who was very much at his mercy.

It was then that I noticed Aidan appeared undecided – which was wholly out of character for him.  With this revelation, a little red flag abruptly popped up its head.  This man was never unsure about anything, making split second decisions which were always correct, but now he appeared hesitant.  Needless to say, much to my relief.  I couldn’t care less the reason since it bought me precious time.  This trapped man could do us no harm, so then what was the real issue here?

“Aidan!” I called out as I grabbed hold of his arm, trying to force him to lower his crossbow. “What on earth are you doing?!”

“Do not interfere” he cautioned me in a low. guttural voice, one which did nothing short of frighten me.  This was also grossly out of character for Aidan.  What on earth had gotten into him all of a sudden?

“Why are you so tweaked?” I shot back as I now positioned myself in front of him, notably between Aidan’s crossbow and the injured man.  “This man obviously isn’t any threat, given the fact that he is buried alive!  Get a grip!” I demanded, stomping my foot in protest, but Aidan still refused to stand down.  He considered the man for a moment longer and then turned his attention to the surrounding area.  With measured patience he surveyed every inch of terrain within the scope of his sight.

After what seemed like ages, he finally lowered his crossbow and then cocked his head to one side, now intently regarding the unfortunate man.  Did I detect a hint of a smirk on Aidan’s face? I wondered, confused by his reaction to this encounter with such a rarity – another homosapien.  In complete disregard of Aidan’s caution, I decided to approach the man who was pinned beneath the boulders, a man who so desperately needed our help.

“Don’t worry – we’ll get you out of there” I tried to reassure him but apparently Aidan had a different idea.  With blinding speed he grabbed hold of my arm to then abruptly pull me backwards with a jerk, startling the heck out of me.  Never before had Aidan behaved like this and quite frankly, he was doing a good job of freaking me out.

“Go back to where we left our packs – you will wait for me there” Aidan instructed me in a cool and uncompromising tone of voice.  Ok – so what was with the Jekyll and Hyde routine all of a sudden?  This whole thing was absurd and therefore could not be happening.  Aidan’s intent was to kill this, injured man!  I could read it in his eyes.  Had all sanity left this world right along with all its people?

“Aidan, what do you intend to do?” I willed myself to calmly question him but in return Aidan only lent me a fleeting glance.

“What need be done” was his response, one which sent a chill down my spine.  “Now, please – do as I say” he commanded and now going one further, he forcefully turned me around.  Aidan then gave me a not so gentle shove back in the direction from which we had just come.

“Hey, c’mon – you might not have noticed, but I’m in no position here to be a threat… to anyone” the man now found enough strength to speak despite his agony, but yet he was keeping eye contact with me instead of Aidan.  It was clear this man well understood that there would be no bargaining with my maile traveling companion on the point of his salvation.

It was more than just that, I suspected – the man was riveted by my appearance, reminding me of how Aidan had looked at me when the two of us had first met.  This man was also looking at me like I was a ghost.  With his eyes he pleaded for me to help, but how could I go against Aidan if he was hell-bent on doing the unthinkable?

This is just so fucking absurd! I thought in anger and frustration.  There were just too few people left in this world to let one die right in front of my eyes, just to justify some warped perception of Aidan’s that this man might mean us harm.  Or rather become competition for what he considered to be his female, at least this was my summation.  Part of his reaction, I knew, stemmed from a need to protect me at all costs – this I could understand, and even laude.  But protect me from a man who was doomed to die unless we helped him?  That was one insane notion.  It was then that I made my decision.

Unexpectedly, I made a swift and decisive move, twisting round.  Once past Aidan I then sprinted as fast as I was able, making a bee line to where the helpless man lay.  Having caught Aidan off guard, which admittedly surprised the hell out of me since nothing ever got past him, it was with relief that I landed on my knees right next to the injured man.  At this point, I latched onto him.  If Aidan wanted to murder this man, then he’d just have to kill me too!

“Thank you, my dear – thank you” the man breathed through his pain.  Pain which I was sure had been made worse by indiscriminately throwing myself onto the portion of his body which was not buried beneath the stones.

With great effort, the man now flashed me a gorgeous smile in reward.  He had almost no breath left to speak.  Upon closer inspection, I was now in fear that this man would not live even if I was able to extricate him from beneath the boulders, which I knew was a task I would not be able to undertake without help from Aidan.  The man was in dire straits and might just die anyway if he had sustained internal injuries.

But I had to try, at the very least!

Aidan wasted no time recovering his stride and was fast upon me, grabbing my arm to tear me away from the stranger.  Desperately trying to fend off Aidan, I fought for the life of this helpless man.  It was not much of a fight, however – with Aidan being very tall and me just being a short little thing, a Mexican midget, an itty-bitty beaner, by all accounts.  Within moments Aidan had peeled me away from the man as if I was nothing more than an annoying little tick.

“It would be kinder, Sierra, to finish him off now and put an end to his suffering,” Aidan sternly, yet gently, spoke in my ear, “than to let him linger in pain, to suffer until death takes him.”  He made it sound like putting to sleep an aged family pet – but this guy wasn’t a dog, he was a person!

“For the love of God, Aidan!  You don’t even know had bad his injuries are!” was my adamant protest.  “What is wrong with you?!  You wanted to kill him before you even saw him!” I boldly accused.  His reaction to an injured fellow man made me feel sick to my stomach.  To my surprise, however, Aidan now loosened his grip on me to then place his hands on my shoulders, slowly turning me round to face the man beneath the boulders.

“Would you want to suffer like that?” he patiently, gravely, questioned of me as I looked on.

“I hate to interrupt, but would anyone care to ask me that question?” the man implored, his agony being inescapable, but regardless he made another concerted effort to smile.

Glancing up over my shoulder at Aidan, I saw him bow his head and close his eyes.  I could have sworn that he was fraught with indecision.  Something was there, some reason why he felt this man would be better off dead – a reason he was not willing to share, at least not with me.  I wasn’t about to ask since I knew it would be a question without answer.  What was there, then, that he felt a need to hide from me?  This troubled me way more than his reaction to the man.

“My love, this isn’t an injured bird we have here” he tried to reason with me.

“So?  You won’t let me take care of those either!” I snapped, and then I heard the trapped man as he grunted a curt laugh, and so swift I was to cast him a black look.  Here I was trying to save his life and he was exactly making it any easier.  Giving Aidan my attention once more, I now pleaded with my eyes, tugging on his sleeve like a little girl begging a favor of her daddy.  And why not?  The man was probably old enough to be my father anyway, so maybe playing the daddy’s little girl angle would work here.

“Ok, Sierra – have it your way” Aidan actually caved as he now looked to the man and yet again I could see something in Aidan’s eyes, but it was far too fleeting to finger.  “Now, let’s get your wounded sparrow out of there.  Chances are I won’t have to put him out of his misery.  He’ll most likely be out of his own misery before dusk, by the looks of him” was his expectant statement, even to the point if sounding hopeful.

We then spent the next hour carefully extricating the man from his rocky prison.  He seemed to be of much better spirits once he was finally free, as if just knowing that now if he was to die, then it wouldn’t be alone on a rocky slope, a meal for any number of the desert’s predators.

And this was how Collin came to join us.

I was elated beyond words that for once Aidan had been wrong – Collin did not die, much to my delight.  I wasn’t sure just when I had decided the more the merrier, but it was refreshing, as well as exhilarating, to again be surrounded by people, even if it was only two men.  However, in this Time After that could indeed be considered a crowd.

Collin, I was quick to discover, was almost the exact opposite of Aidan.  This new addition to our little troop was open, warm and funny, and full of boyish mischief as well.  This was a trait I found to be most endearing; one which tugged at my heart, I had to admit.  A major breath of fresh air Collin was.

Aidan, in contrast, was always so serious but Collin, even for his injuries, had a devil-may-care attitude.  He also was an extremely intelligent man whose smarts shown through his conversations.  Collin could talk for hours on end, about all things if one, and for a change I was the one listening instead of doing all the talking.  How refreshing! I considered with glee, but then would feel a pang of guilt for being thoroughly engaged by this man.  In doing so I was likely making Aidan jealous, and so I made a conscious effort to tone down my enthusiasm while he was around.

Collin was full of a renewed joy for living once his death sentence had been rescinded, but he was not yet out of the woods, though.  God had favored him since he had no internal damage, except some bruised ribs.  His other injuries were more serious.  His left arm, like his ribs, had only been badly bruised.  However, his left leg was another story – it was broken, and I knew from experience that it took quite a while to recover from an injury like that.  Wrong I was, however, because Collin healed with exceptional speed, and exceptionally well in addition, much to my relief.

Once committed to something, Aidan would give it his all even if the task did not set well with him – I had to give him this much at least.  With expertise he had set Collin’s the broken limb, doing a damned fine job, I thought, for someone who I suspected had not been a doctor by trade.  I wondered where he had learned how to do that?  Not to mention other skills and talents which he seemed to possess in abundance.  I had no idea what Aidan’s station in life had been in the Time Before, but now more than ever I was convinced that it had not been flipping hamburgers.

Over the course of time, Collin’s leg did heal, but time it still took even if it was not as long as I had expected it to be.  If everything in this world about mankind had changed, then there was the one thing that had remained the same.  We were still, by all accounts, frail creatures subject to illness and injury.  Because of Collin’s misfortune, we were not able to resume pursuit of Aidan’s wanderlust and so we had to set up a semi-permanent camp, the necessity of which did not please Aidan.  Rather openly he was opposed to lingering in one place for any length of time.  Conversely, and I thought somewhat conspicuously as well, Collin kept quiet and would offer up not one single word on the subject, although he did not appear to share Aidan’s concerns.

As if to drive home the validity of his point of view, Aidan was now spending more time each day patrolling the area surrounding our encampment.  Under the auspices of hunting, but to me this smacked of sentry duty.  It was clear that he was on the lookout for other people.  This thought was unsettling – not that others people might be nearby, but rather what Aidan might do to them should he take them at unawares, committing the unthinkable.  I should have been praising Aidan’s vigilance instead of deriding it, I now thought with shame, but I was still of the mind that he was going overboard on this one.

Maybe he did have just cause, I now just as quickly considered in counter.  After all, in such a short span of time I had been able to make the acquaintance of not only one, but two, men – and where there two, there was bound to be more.  A persistent question, though, asked itself once again – just why was it that I hadn’t seen anyone, or any sign of anyone, during the previous seven years?  This kept skulking around in the back of my mind, slowly pecking away at me like a crow on carrion.

Both these men had recounted brief versions of how they had come to survive and be part of this world, but my woman’s instinct told me that neither man was being wholly forthright with me.  I wasn’t stupid, after all, intuition being a strong suit of mine, but I wasn’t about to call them out on the carpet.

Not just yet, anyway.

As the days went by, Aidan was turning more and more inward – and more so with each passing day it seemed.  His demeanor had changed for the worse once Collin joined our little group.  Aidan became extremely reserved, very close – tight as a clamshell would be an apropos analogy I supposed.

In Aidan’s growing absence, which was a byproduct of his endless vigilance against God only knew what, I now spent most of my time helping Collin.  He would regain full use of his leg, but as with all injuries it would take considerable effort for him to be good as new.  However, the man was a cooperative and willing patient.

In light of Aidan’s distrust, as well as dislike, of this man, it followed suit that he wasn’t exactly thrilled by my being so near to Collin.  Although, Aidan tolerated its necessity for my sake, if not for Collin’s.  He saw my determination to bring back to full health this new addition to our clan – the wounded sparrow who did not die on us.

It was no surprise either that Aidan had become even more possessive of me since another male had come on the scene.  In so short a time that age old struggle for dominance had reared its ugly head and I had to laugh – men, they never change.  Put two men and one woman together and the males will fight like two rutting bull elks, I chuckled to myself.  Perhaps Aidan was concerned about what might happen if Collin made advances towards me, and more so if I should just take a notion to entertain them.  He would have been justified if Collin had indeed shown any overt sign of such intent, which he wisely did not.

However, Collin had plenty of little innuendos that he would impart upon me whenever Aidan wasn’t around.

My patient, though, was obviously frustrated.  I wasn’t easy for him to be so close to a woman and keep his urges in check, but he treated me with respect all the same.  He behaved like a gentleman – or maybe more like an officer and a gentleman.  As with Aidan, I suspected that Collin, in the Time Before, had not been flipping hamburgers either.  He conducted himself in what I would say was an almost a regal manner.  It was hard to put a finger to it, though – at times Collin could behave decidedly stuck up and uppity.  Like he was a blueblood or something – it really was as odd as it was amusing.  After all, we three were civilization as we knew it – so who was there to impress?

For all of Collin’s restraint, however, I was having no less a hard time myself being so near to him and still remembering to act like a lady.  We had both noticed a strong chemistry between us from the first touch, so much so I could tell it confused him as much as it did me.  Perhaps even more so for Collin, for after my first laying hand to him I had the impression he had pondered on our synergy – long and hard and at great length.

Collin was every woman’s dream, I wistfully considered – he was more than easy on the eyes, drop dead gorgeous would have been the phrase used by women in the Time Before to describe this prime example of a man.  He had coppery blonde hair and fascinating, gem-green eyes which once locked in their sights a woman would find herself captured merely by his glance alone.  He was a tall, stately man, but not quite as tall as Aidan, perhaps being six-feet-two, and Collin had a beauty of body to go along with that uncommonly handsome face of his.

When you got right down to it, Collin and Aidan were exact opposites in just about everything – even their physiques differed.  Aidan was more slender and lithe – nimble and flexible and if like a cat sounds cliché, then it was one apt cliché none the less.  Collin, on the other hand, was more muscular and robust, and held a one very commanding presence.

By the day, my mind weighed more heavily on Collin, and helping him exercise his stiff limbs didn’t do a thing to thwart my inappropriate desires.  It was impossible not to notice his need for a woman.  Two men and one woman would spell disaster, in the Time Before as well as now in this Time After.  I could not help but think how quickly our lives had become so complicated!  At times I found myself reminiscing about simpler days when I had been at peace as I wandered in the desert – alone.

Two is a pair; three is a triangle – and it certainly did not take a psychic to figure out where this scenario would inevitably lead.