I couldn’t blame her, but I had to eat and I hadn’t slept, besides being blacked out a couple of hours, in over a day. I was in no shape to navigate the ruins in the company of what would be, if anyone saw her, a walking target. I was starving and so was she. We just couldn’t leave, right then. So I ate. At least the crazy fucker had plenty to eat. I tore the place apart looking for seals that just weren’t there. Woody hadn’t taken the seals. Someone else had. That same someone who’d painted the Preacher logo where I’d see it. I searched some more, bordering on passing out from sheer exhaustion. And then I slept. It was strange sleeping outside of armor, free of containment barriers, near another human. I lay with my eyes shut and listened to her breath for a long time. I thought, before I drifted off, that I could hear Jenna’s heartbeat. I dreamt that night, but not of the day my father had gunned down my mother. Instead I dreamed of the day I’d returned the favor. For years my father had bordered in a state somewhere between rational thought and outright insanity.
