“We’re alive,” I told him. “Not everyone is.”

“Our lives have been in danger several times. Is that a reason to stay attached to that psycho?”

I felt a bolt of defensiveness. Tuck was the one who’d saved us more than once, be it by jumping on a moving horse-drawn buggy and fighting a man with a gun or hunting for scarce food that he’d shared with us. Charlie was threatened by him, and honestly…he should be. Not only was Tuck far more equipped to lead us on this journey, but over the last six days, my feelings for Tuck had only grown, while my feelings for Charlie had soured, almost completely.

chapter twenty-seven

Tuck

Several hours later, the sound of a clattering engine met my ears and we all turned, the sight of a white pickup coming toward us. We stepped out of the road, and I waved, the older truck with an emblem that advertised Elrod Coltrane, General Contractor surprisingly slowing and then coming to a stop. I reached out, signaling to Emily to stay back until I’d determined the people inside were safe. A young man rolled down the window, another guy his age in the passenger seat leaning forward to see around him. “Professor Tecton! Holy shit!”

I could practically feel the glow of Charlie’s grin from next to me. He moved past and reached out to the driver for a handshake. “At your service.”

The guy laughed and as Emily and I approached the window, I saw that both men were wearing sweatshirts with the University of Tennessee logo. “Damn, this is crazy as hell,” the driver said. “Charlie freaking Cannon is just walking down the road all normal-like.” The young man laughed again, a sound of both amusement and disbelief. “I’m Emilio and this is Wells,” the driver said, hitching his thumb over to the guy next to him.

I introduced myself and Emily did too, and then Emilio leaned his arms on the window frame. “Wait, Nova, right? Charlie’s girlfriend?”

Emily nodded and mumbled something that sounded affirmative.

“You’re coming from Tennessee?” I asked, gesturing to Emilio’s sweatshirt. I glanced at the logo on the truck. I was going to assume that whoever Elrod Coltrane was, he hadn’t given these two young men permission to borrow his work truck.

“Yeah. We’re engineering students there. We all got evacuated because of the flood. A dam upstream of the Tennessee River broke and the entire campus was knee-deep in water. The wreckage from homes was floating past. We didn’t want to wait and see what else was gonna be in that water.”

“A dam broke?” Charlie asked, his voice incredulous.