Nightfall by Ellen Connor Page B

probably kill her.
    Jenna handed over the clothes. “Do you think we’ll make it?”
    Through the week, let alone through the winter. That part went unspoken.
    The other woman squared her shoulders, like she’d turned a corner in her mind. “We can. We have to. Women are the strong ones, you know? Men go around being all badass, but we’re the glue that keeps everything together.”
    â€œI’m more like rubber cement,” she said with a sigh. “That stuff sticks, but it stretches and stretches until it’s going two miles in either direction. And when it snaps, it isn’t pretty.” She nodded toward the shower. “But enough of that. Get cleaned up before the guys jump line.”
    Ange nodded her thanks.
    Jenna moved off to give them privacy. From two rooms away, she heard the lighter pitch of Tru’s voice, responding to something the doctor had said. Maybe they’d managed to drag the dead thing inside.
    So what was Mason doing? She should check on his injuries, even if that meant revisiting that damn kiss. He might do it again, for all she knew, but she wasn’t unwilling.
    But her stomach rumbled, and she needed to check out the cooking facilities before she tried to go all Betty Crocker on everybody. She checked back down the hall, finding a big room with no exits to the left. That appeared to be a lab for various experiments. Nobody inside. Just equipment. She moved on.
    Back out in the hall, she explored further and turned into a smaller room filled with lab tables, presumably for examining dead specimens; it was clean, white, and filled with sterile supplies, cabinets, and shelving. She found Tru arguing with their host.
    â€œWhat do you mean, you can’t find it?” Tru asked. “It was in front, like, a hundred yards out.”
    â€œWell, it’s gone now. Maybe the dogs you described dragged it back with them.”
    â€œOr ate it. They’re good at that.”
    Chris rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s nothing I can do without a specimen.”
    â€œYou could always head out there and bag one yourself.” Tru held his rifle between them like a peace offering, but his posture said, Eat me .
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    â€œAw, poor trigger-happy Harvard.”
    That was enough for Jenna. At least bickering gave them something to do.
    Two more rooms lined either side of the hall before she reached a utility area. On the left, she found a dormitory, one big space divided into three individual chambers containing two bunks each. She could tell where Chris had been sleeping because a neat stack of notes waited for him beside one mattress, along with an eyeglass case.
    The last room on the right appeared to have been devoted to botanical research and contained a fully hydroponic Omega Garden, lavish with greenery. The air was lush and clean, welcoming in a way that she hadn’t experienced since leaving home. She wasn’t surprised to find Mason in there, sitting alone.
    He still needed a shower, but they’d done the best they could using the lab sink. So much blood. Jenna inhaled sharply, controlling her reaction to his injury. If she never felt that sick and helpless again—well, that’d be a good thing.
    Mason raised his head. Maybe he’d heard her breathing. His face was hard and remote. Newly etched lines attested to the pain of his wounds.
    She hesitated, unsure of herself. “Should I go?”
    His voice rasped like velvet over rusty metal. “Stay. Go. Do what you want.”
    That didn’t sound promising, but neither did she want to be by herself, jumping at shadows and noises. Ange was in the shower, and the others still bickered over lack of a corpse. Not much choice. She crossed the floor and sat down four feet away, more than an arm’s length.
    â€œIt’s nice in here,” she mumbled, finding herself tongue-tied.
    How ridiculously banal.
    Heat rose in her cheeks. Damn