Chapter 4: Hot Water

The shower in the old pump station still worked.

I knew because I had spent ten minutes after midnight with my hand on the water heater.

I had listened to the blue light hum through the tank.

When the first hot water in fourteen months hit the pipes, Bria shouted from the generator room that she was going to cry.

She did not cry.

She went and sat by the radio instead, with her back to us, and pretended she didn't want a turn.

Tova took the first watch with the prisoner tied to a chair in the control room.

She told me to stand down, and that I had done enough for one day.

I was standing in the dark corridor with my forehead against the cold wall when Hallie found me.

"Your turn," she said.

"I'll wait."

"You're covered in blood and road dust, and I'm going to have to clean it out of your cuts anyway."

"You can do that out here."

"I can," she said. "I'd like to do it in there."

She said it flat, but she was looking at my mouth.

I followed her.

The shower room was a concrete stall with a drain in the floor and a bare bulb on a wire.

Steam already curled up from the pipe.

She shut the steel door behind us and turned the bolt.

"Take off the jacket," she said.

I took it off.

She took the shirt next, peeling it carefully away from the scabs on my back.

Her fingers were rough from work and very gentle.

"These aren't closing as fast as the ribs did," she said.

"Maybe it's picky."

"Maybe it's tired."

She turned on the water and tested it against her wrist, then stepped back and began unbuttoning her own shirt.

I watched her do it.

She was tall, almost my height, with strong shoulders and a long back, and the braid hung down between her shoulder blades like a rope.

Under the shirt she wore a worn grey tank top, and under that, nothing at all.

"You're staring," she said.

"You told me to."

"I told you to take off your jacket."

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