The storm's sounds were muffled by the dirt, and when a light flared in the darkness, then brightened, allowing her to look around, Kendle was glad to know they wouldn't be laid up short.

Luke lit the lamps hanging in each corner of the 8' x 10' x 30' room, and Kendle stared in approval. Everything they needed was here. The walls were concrete, the floors, ceiling, chairs, and small table all made of plain yellow wood - as were the long rows of shelves running the length of the back wall, and everywhere she looked, there were supplies. Serious survival supplies.

Lamps, batteries, weapons, a gas stove hooked to a grill, lots of dusty boxes marked 'fragile, handle with care'. It was all neatly arranged, and there were personal touches here that were missing from the bare walls of his small cabin, like the pictures of a jungle, behind American soldiers holding rifles up and grinning.

Were these the men he had served with in 'Nam? LJ hadn't said he'd been there, hadn't even told her that he was a soldier, but she knew. He was way too tight-lipped and organized to be anything but military, and she'd figured the place by his age. He had told her he would be sixty-one on the sixth of July, but she was pretty sure that back in the day, Luke had been a badass. The young man in those pictures certainly looked the part.

"This is amazing. You built it yourself?"

Luke unfolded a blue tarp behind the open door as she got a towel out of the backpack to wipe her face. "Dug it, mostly. Frank helped when I started putting in the walls and ceiling. We're only three miles from the cabin, but we're almost a hundred feet higher. Even a rogue wave won't reach here."

He ducked back out into the storm, and Kendle forced herself to wait, hating the awful loneliness that swept over her every time Luke was out of sight. She could follow. He'd made it clear he liked having her around. He hadn't even wanted to tell her that the doctor had a room in town if she felt uncomfortable staying with him. She got the sense that he was lonely too, and his full days backed that up. It spoke of someone wanting to be too tired to think or even dream when he went to bed, and that, she understood completely.

Kendle covered her face with her wet sleeve as she sneezed. Wrist aching, swelling a little, she looked around for a place to change. Seeing nothing private enough, she settled for peeling off her drenched shoes and socks and hanging her dripping jacket over a chair. Shivering as she listened to the rumble of the storm, the castaway waited nervously for her host to come back.




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