living_history (living_history) wrote in the_colony, @ 2010-03-27 01:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 06, bridget mackenzie, jed bailey, | bridget and jed |
Week Six - Monday Evening
Character: Bridget Mackenzie and Jed Bailey
Location: The roads of Las Vegas
Summary: A near miss on the road leads to a new resident at the suites.
Rating: PG
Aside from the buildings, Vegas was pretty much nothing but flat land. So when the sun was setting and you were driving west, you were pretty well screwed. Jed had his cowboy hat as low on his brow as he could go without it becoming a blindfold, and he still had to squint to see the road lines.
"An' this is why I stick to goin' out in the day," he muttered.
It had been worth it, though. He had a couple of jackrabbits in a sack in the truck bed; they'd been out scavenging that evening, pretty easy to pick off.
Nearing the Suites, he took a sharp right.
And scared Bridget half to death as he cut in front of her.
The young woman hadn't been able to resist going out and getting a feel for the city after her third day in town, just driving along and marveling at the sights. It had been so long since she'd spent any time in a functioning city that she'd almost forgotten what it was like. Aside from the creepiness of the town being completely devoid of people that is.
She had met one person so far though, Searle, with the promise of meeting more soon.
So absorbed in her own thoughts she hadn't paid much attention to the road, and it hadn't been an issue since nobody else had been on it until a red Dodge Ram came out of nowhere. Bridget slammed on the breaks and swerved to avoid hitting the other vehicle, sending her beat up truck over the median and into the other lane.
The engine protested at the sudden stop, and gave a shudder before dying completely. Bridget swore and pulled her pistol as she scrambled to put the bulk of the auto between herself and whoever was in the red monstrosity.
"Shit, shit, fuckin' shit," Jed hissed, gripping the wheel tight. His hands were shaking, and he could have sworn his break-and-swerve left an inch of rubber on the pavement.
It took a moment for things to register, and he finally looked back at what had been a big blur of screaming death. Otherwise known as an old-ass truck, apparently. He saw a shadow moving behind it, and grabbed his shotgun before rolling down the window. "Hey!" he yelled. "You alright?"
"I'll be fine! Go on your way!" Bridget shouted back. It had to be a man, didn't it? It fucking had to be a man. She should have known better than to let herself get distracted. He sounded about her age, maybe a few years older. Whoever he was, he'd be in his prime.
Not someone she was going to let get anywhere near her.
"I've got a gun and I know how to use it!" She slid the action back on the pistol to chamber a round and waited.
"Jesus, alright, I got it, calm down," he called back. Nothing like a gun-wielding woman on the edge. Leaving wasn't a bad option, but after a stop like that, he needed to check on the truck. It'd be hell if something broke down on him while he was driving. "Look, I'm juss stayin' in the cab. You go on and leave, I got no problem with that."
"You do that," Bridget huffed under her breath as she peeked up above the hood of her truck.
Whoever the man was, he seemed to be doing what he said he was going to do, so Bridget climbed back in through the passenger side door to try and get the truck restarted.
She put the thing in park and turned the ignition, and all she received in reply was a whine as the engine tried to turn over but wouldn't catch. There was something odd in the pitch of the whine that made her think something was broken as well.
"Un-fucking believable." She muttered to herself, then glanced down at the dashboard to address the subject of her frustration. "You couldn't have waited a few more hours? I was heading to a dealership this evening and you'd have gotten a nice rest."
The young woman glanced back at the other truck and began shoving a few essentials into her backpack in preparation for making a break for it on foot. Hopefully she'd be able to lose him in the twilight, though the streetlights might make that difficult.
Then again, it wasn't like he'd been looking for her when he nearly slammed into her truck. Didn't mean he wouldn't take a target of opportunity if he could get it though.
Jed waited for a bit, glancing back at her. What was she doing? He rolled down the window more, leaning his head out. "Hey, you sure you alright?" he yelled, not all too sure she could hear him.
Bridget paused in her stuffing and glanced over at the other truck. "Truck's dead. I'm going to go my way, you go your way."
It wasn't the worst idea, but she was alone and sounded scared, in a blow-your-head-off kind of way. And the whole point of everything he and Alice had been doing was to help people.
"I could take a look," he offered, holding his hands up to show they were empty. "I ain't a mechanic, but I used to have a clunker, so I might be able to get 'er goin'."
Bridget visibly thought it over. The windows and locks were manual, so the young woman moved to roll the windows back up and push the locks down. "All right, I suppose that won't hurt anything."
She didn't think it would fix anything either, but he was being friendly enough. If it didn't work she could wait in the truck until he left and then hoof it until she found some new wheels.
That thought in mind, Bridget pulled the lever to pop the hood. "Take a look."
Jed did have second thoughts, but if she was going to shoot him, she could have done it already. Getting out, he finally got a good direct look at her. She was pretty, in a sharp sort of way. He wondered what her smile looked like, but wasn't going to hold his breath on that one. Going around to the back of his truck, he grabbed his toolbox before going to hers. It was a bit odd, her just sitting in the cab like that, but he gave her an awkward wave before lifting the hood.
Her eyebrows went up when he got out of his truck. The man was a giant, Taller than Jake had been and at least twenty pounds more muscle. Definitely a good thing she'd locked the doors and raised the windows, there was no way in hell she'd be able to break his hold if he had ill intent. Taking another look Bridget upped his age to over thirty, though probably not much past it.
She waved back a little awkwardly as well. The whole thing was crazy, but the world had stopped making sense a while ago.
The man rummaged around under the hood for a few minutes but she couldn't see what he was doing. After a few minutes she heard him say to try it and she turned the ignition again.
Same response. Whatever was wrong it didn't seem like it was something that could easily be fixed on the street.
Okay Bridget, now what?
Jed closed the hood, giving her an apologetic shrug. That was basically the extent of his car knowledge. "Some of the folks I'm stayin' with know cars. They could have a look. You should ditch it, though; gonna fall apart anyway," he said, walking over to the driver's side door.
"That was the plan." Bridget rolled the window halfway down. It was still warm out and in all honesty if the man was going to try something he would have tried it before now. That didn't mean her pistol wasn't below his view pointed out toward the door, but that was just a common sense precaution. "I thought we had an understanding, this truck and I about when it could die, but it seems to have had other ideas."
"You're with other survivors?" Maybe this was the same group Searle had been talking about. But maybe not, and she wasn't going to get her hopes up yet.
"Yeah, there's about a dozen of us. All ages," he added. She seemed to be warming up to him a bit, and letting her know they had kids seemed a good way to keep things going the right direction. "My name's Jed."
"You're Jed?" Bridget recognized the name, but honestly hadn't expected to run into him until the meetup. He looked the part of a leader in a post apocalyptic society, she had to say. A man of his size and looks fit right into the Hollywood typecasting of a warrior king.
But was it really the same Jed? A little test couldn't hurt. If the man was lying to her then the information she was about to tell him wouldn't cause a reaction. "I met a girl the other day, about sixteen or so, goes by the name of Searle. She said she was with a group led by a Jed, and someone named Alex."
That got a laugh. "Jesus, Searle's gonna go red as a beet when he hears you thought he was a girl. Guess he could use a haircut. Hell, I'm gettin' shaggy myself." He ran a hand through his hair, already a bit damp at the scalp from being out in the heat. "And it's Alice, not Alex. She's a native I ran into back in the spring. The group kinda grew from there."
Bridget's lips twitched slightly in amusement at his response. "No need to tease the boy, I knew what he was. I wanted to make sure that you did." At the same time she spoke the words there was the audible noise of her removing the clip from the pistol so she could safely eject the round.
"For all I know there could be more than one Jed running around, and not all of them would be boy scouts."
"Well, I ain't exactly a boy scout, but I'm one of the good guys. We wear white hats," he said, tipping the brim of his hat which age and wear had turned near gray. "That's how you can tell."
"Close enough, to hear Searle tell it." Bridget replied as the round was reinserted into the clip and the clip put back in the pistol. She stuck the weapon back in its holster and tugged on her somewhat worn but freshly laundered baseball cap emblazoned with the Penn State logo. "I kinda like mine, but not as iconic I guess."
She motioned for him to back up. "I'm going to open the door now, I'd just as soon not hit you with it."
Beaming, Jed stepped back, his back straightening. He'd always been pretty good at getting people to trust him, but it felt better now than it did before the Flu. Probably because he was actually trustworthy now. "So what's the plan?" he asked as she got out. "We can hop in my truck and go fetch someone, or I can take you where you need to go."
"I think I'd leave it here if it wouldn't be in the way of some other poor unsuspecting speed junkie." Bridget said, glancing at the truck in exasperation before peering up at Jed. The man was at least a good eight inches taller than her, and built like a mountain.
"So Searle told me you have meet-ups at a museum every day. What's your plan? If you've got a group together you must have a plan, right?" He was here, she was here, no time like the present to discuss things. It wasn't like it they had to worry about traffic.
The brunette leaned against the door and waited for a response. She wondered how far ahead his group had thought things through.
Jed shrugged. "Survival's good a plan as any. We got a good stockpile, always addin' too it, and we got a greenhouse goin'. Got guard duty, 'cause there's some bad folks around here, too. Got a pool," he added with a grin. "Juss keep people safe and keep 'em company, I guess."
He really couldn't think of a plan beyond that.
Not so far then, but better than anything she'd be able to do on her own. Bridget looked down at her feet and scuffed the pavement idly with a hiking boot. Part of her wanted to ask what a person had to do to join this group of his, but she couldn't make the words come out.
The silence stretched long enough to be a little uncomfortable, but she'd already spoken more words in the day than she had in a month. She glanced back up at him. "Have you seen a man a little shorter than you, red hair, green eyes, goes by Jake Mackenzie?" If he was running these meetups, he'd have a good idea whether Jake had been seen.
Bridget looked back down. "We were...separated... back around Denver a while back. The days have kind of blurred since then, maybe a month or two months ago? Las Vegas was the goal, because of the dam."
Another one looking for family. Jed's expression fell as he shook his head. "No, no one like that's come by. Don't mean much, though. We got the information painted on walls around Vegas, but lots of folks probably don't come 'cause they think it might be dangerous or stupid."
Bridget didn't look up. "Jake would have." She said quietly. "He was a believer, more than I am I think. But that's one of the things I loved about him." The woman forced herself to stop. She wasn't going to talk about her husband in the past tense, not in front of this man.
"Maybe he just had worse trouble than I did finding something else to get through the desert." There, that was a positive spin on things.
"Yeah, definitely. Ain't that may cars left prob'ly, and you don't wanna get stuck in the desert with somethin' that's gonna die on you," Jed said with a firm nod, though he shuffled his feet. He was pretty sure they both knew what the more likely reality was.
"Yeah," Bridget agreed softly. She would not cry. Not now. Not here.
The young woman gathered her emotions back together and forced herself to look up at Jed a bit more brightly. Jake would want her to survive, and she'd have a better chance of doing that with a group. "I don't suppose you could use any Historians in your group? I was starting on my dissertation when everything went crazy. We left Pennsylvania around Thanksgiving, Jake was sure that this would be the place to start the rebuilding." Hopefully the fact that she'd made it more than 2300 miles would attest that she wouldn't be dead weight.
Jed's grin returned at her words. "Don't see why not. All's we ask is yer willin' to help out. Most anybody can pick up a hoe or hammer." He paused, chewing his tongue. "Sounds like this Jake guy is pretty smart. When he turns up, we'll be there to meet him."
He knew he shouldn't have said it, that getting any kind of hopes up was useless at best, but it was hard not to try to make her feel better.
"I can pull my weight." Bridget assured him, lips twitching slightly. "I grew up on a farm, there was always something that needed doing. We didn't get excused just because we were girls, had to put in along with the boys." A pained look flashed across her face as she realized what she'd said, mentioned her twin, but it was gone just as quick. Of all her siblings, she missed Calleigh the most. Only to be expected, given the nature of twins.
"He is," her lips curved into a brief smile at the admission, the first one she'd had since The Day. "He's a few years older than me, already had his PHD. Civil Engineer. You need a bridge built or water system fixed he's your man." Of course, engineers had started out designing siege equipment and cannon back in the day. Bridget had a feeling those days would be back before much longer.
"Hell, that'd definitely be handy," Jed said. His smile was a bit forced. Time to get off the subject. He nodded for his truck. "C'mon, I'll show you the place. That is, long as you're okay gettin' a ride from a stranger."
Grateful for the subject change, Bridget offered a lightly curled fist. "Bridget Mackenzie, one time assistant professor of American History and current Jill of All Trades at your service."
His grin softened as he bumped her fist. "Jed Bailey, lifetime Jack of All Trades and yer driver for today." He headed for the truck. "Grab what you need. We better get goin' before the rabbits I got start cookin' in the truck."
Bridget nodded and efficiently moved to grab her gear. There was more than she'd started out with in the morning, but soon enough a duffel bag stuffed full of clothes and other acquired treasures was deposited in the bed of Jed's truck along with her backpack, rifle and a few other items. She was still a little tense at the idea of riding with him, but she had her pistol and knives, and her teeth if it came down to that. Worst case scenario she'd have to bail in mid-ride, but the brunette doubted that would be necessary.
With a grunt she climbed into the cab of his truck and shut the door. "Ready."