Chapter 2

And he’d done it. He’d lived. Kaeva flexed his hands into fists. So fuck the doctors and the politicians. Fuck the Estranged, and fuck this line of thinking. He wasn’t one to dwell on where he’d been, and he didn’t want to start now. He was alive. He’d made it to thirty-freakin-six. It was a goddamned miracle. And now he had a home, a food source, a job, and space enough to be left the hell alone. Out here, he was only a danger to himself, and that was the way it needed to be. He liked it that way.

Kaeva shoved himself up and out of bed. He dropped and did pushups and sit-ups before standing to jump and grab the Metaline bar attached to the A-frame of the cabin’s roofline. Toes dangling over the loft’s edge, Kaeva did pull-ups until his shoulders ached and his arms burned. Then he swung safely back into the loft and did the whole routine over again.

Heart and blood pumping, Kaeva climbed down the ladder into the kitchen. When he reached for the refrigerator door, he heard the electricity surge and crackle. Frowning, Kaeva stepped back, breathed slowly and deeply for a full minute, and managed to get close enough the second time without incident so he could pull the small fridge out from its nook beneath the countertop and check the triple insulation on the wiring. There was a tiny tear near the wall. Kaeva found his insulation tape, ripped off a strip with his teeth, and wound it around the tear. It would have to hold until he could get the good cage insulation from the mainland.

Which meant that Kaeva would have to go into civilization and place his order. Kaeva gnashed his teeth. The fridge stuttered, and Kaeva moved away, cursing under his breath. Why he and the Cure couldn’t have been born in the Dark Ages, he’d never know. No electricity? No problems.

Maybe it really would be better to dig a hole out back for cold storage. He’d thought about it often enough. This was an island, though. Digging too deeply wasn’t an option, and there was still wild game to think about, too. An outbuilding would fix that problem and keep the animals at bay.

Then again, it’d be a lot less work to bite the bullet and spend the credits to encase the entire fridge in insulation wire mesh. Kaeva mulled over the options and nudged the fridge back into place with his foot.

Every Exile resident was provided with basic living supplies along with the freedom to earn credits and buy better stuff or get it from the mainland. Kaeva had been no different, though he’d had to modify all of his: insulate the wiring with mesh, exchange electric lights for oil lamps and candles. He burned those or the fireplace at night, if the weather was right. Some battery powered safety lights worked okay, too, and he had those as backup. The fridge unit was a simple one, as was his washer-dryer combo. The washer was indestructible, a real trooper. The fridge, though, was a bitch.

Kaeva went to the shelves that lined one entire wall of his cabin. His pride and joy were on display: his collection of books and records. He had a guy on the mainland who stayed on the lookout for new additions and would hold them until they could be picked up. Kaeva had over fifty records, now, and he had three times as many books. History, fiction, self-help, old auto manuals, anything went. Kaeva loved reading. He plucked a book off the shelf and strolled to his record player. He kept it underneath a mesh-wire insulate cage to make sure he couldn’t short out the playing mechanism or the speakers. He lifted the cage lid enough to move the needle onto the record and the bar over so the music would repeat, and in seconds the first few notes of the Bee Gee’s, “To Love Somebody” started to play. He stood there for a long time, reading and listening. Simple life, simple pleasures on Exile.

When he was calm and centered again, Kaeva dropped the book on an end table and walked through the single room serving as the cabin’s living, dining, and kitchen areas. He opened the back door to walk onto his screened-in porch. The screen was insulate mesh, and the porch was really a big container to ensure that when Kaeva got bad, he had a place to shield himself so he didn’t blow the island’s safety network. Still, Kaeva liked being out here. There was a couch, a couple of chairs, and he had a view of the gently rolling grassy land that met the beach and the water. The sun was rising above the black-blue Atlantic. The light and heat were burning off the chilly fog. Gulls and beach birds cried out overhead. Kaeva loved this time of year; loved being this close to the lulling sounds of waves and sand. He needed that serenity, with or without the Estrangement that required him to stay calm.