Clinton exhaled, and Joe turned around and left.
TWENTY-ONE
Flix was sure he’d heard wrong. “You cannot be serious.”
Joe remained stone-faced, his hair flecked with water droplets. “I am. Get Devin up and have everyone ready in the next thirty seconds. They want us gone.”
Flix made a grab for Joe’s arm, but Joe pushed past and disappeared into the kitchen. Flix threw up his hands and swore. He started to follow the dickhead, intending to force the conversation, when Devin levered himself out of Clinton’s cushy recliner and staggered into him.
Flix tensed under the weight of Devin’s big body but managed to stay upright. He wrapped an arm around Devin’s waist and pressed his free hand against Devin’s shoulder. “Steady.”
“I’m okay. Help me pack?”
“You can’t seriously be planning to do what he says?”
Devin’s unfocused eyes swept in Flix’s direction. “What else are we supposed to do? He says they want us out.”
Flix rounded on Aria and Peter. “What about you two?”
“He said it’s not a democracy, remember?” Peter said.
Flix growled. “Grow a backbone. Aria? He doesn’t get to boss us around without a real explanation.”
Before Aria could answer, Joe came back, carrying a couple cucumbers, four apples, a jar of peanut butter, and all their backpacks. He set the packs on the ground and began to stuff the food inside. “They won’t miss a few things.”
“Why are we leaving?” Flix asked. “Your skinny ass needs fattening, and the rest of us like it here. We can stay until spring. They like us.”
“Flix, you can hold the rifle.”
That was supposed to make it better? A bribe? Like Flix was a bratty kid who’d give in once he got a shiny prize? “You have lost your fucking mind.”
“He’s right, Joe,” Aria said. “If we stay, we could get some medicine into Devin in less than a month when the supply drone comes back around.”
Joe spun Peter around and shoved the backpack on him like he was a preschooler. “Shut up and fall in.”
This was crazy. Flix watched Peter’s open mouth, the way his pupils had dilated, slivers of green around the edges. He grabbed at Joe’s hand to get him off Peter.
Joe shoved him into the wall and held him there, forearm pinned against Flix’s chest.
Flix froze. Joe had accidentally broken Flix’s arm a few months ago. He’d flown into a rage brought on by grief at his old partner’s death, and he hadn’t even realized what he’d done. Flix didn’t hold it against him, but he didn’t want a repeat performance, either.
Joe was so damned intimidating. As much as Flix had wanted to bone him, he’d always been a little afraid of him, too. Joe’s hotness was in direct correlation to his general standing as a badass. Which was fine when his cold anger was never directed at Flix. Now that more and more often it was, Flix had to fight to keep his posture straight and his fingers from fidgeting. But he couldn’t let his friends get hurt just because he was scared. “No. This isn’t smart. We need to wait here —”
Joe tightened his grip, adding a hand like a vise on Flix’s hipbone. His rapid breath hit Flix in the face.
Flix flinched, and his cheeks burned. He’d been forced against the wall, powerless. Were the others watching? “I hate you.”
“When we get to Minneapolis, you can make your own choices, and I won’t interfere. Until then, I swore I’d keep you safe.”
“Like you kept Marcus safe?”
Joe stopped, and Flix was hit with the crazy fear that Joe would leave him behind. He realized Joe’s hands were shaking.
The pressure on Flix’s chest eased. He stood very still.
Joe leaned in so close that his chapped lips scratched Flix’s ear. It almost felt like a kiss. “I told you, they don’t want us here. If I didn’t force us to leave, they would.”
“Then let them try their best to force us,” Flix hissed. “We outnumber them.”
Joe shivered and laid his head on Flix’s shoulder. “I’m afraid of how much I want to force them to let us stay. I can’t be that person, Flix. Let me do what I have to.”
When Joe backed away and told everyone that Clinton and Maribou needed them to go and thought they’d be better off, Flix shouldered a backpack and resigned himself to doing what Joe wanted, cursing himself the whole while.
***
Vision shields did not have a blizzard setting. The Nightsight worked as well as ever, though, so it made sense to Joe to keep walking once night crept in. His lungs ached from the combination of the cold and exertion, but he didn’t have much choice. The continuous movement kept them from freezing to death anyway, at least until they could find someplace protected to stop for the night. So far, all he had found was snow.
It had started an hour after they’d left Clinton and Maribou, gentle and floaty at first, then heavy clumps, and finally, hard, wet flakes that came down as fast as a heavy rain. The snow accumulated quickly, thick and slippery under their feet. Then the winds picked up, biting and harsh, and the snow scattered and gathered in great drifts, obscuring everything else as it moved.
The rusty road markers were almost covered over, but they jutted from the great piles of white enough that Joe at least knew the markers were there. Those alone kept the group from being in danger of walking over a thinly iced lake or something equally catastrophic. They could go over a broken highway like Marcus had done back in Dallas, but this time Joe had tied everyone together, backpack to backpack, when it got hard to see, so hopefully only he would fall before the others got their wits about them and dragged him back up.
He should have put Devin in the back; he was the biggest and hardiest, the most able to hold his ground and haul a human-sized load, but Joe couldn’t bear the thought of being
