29
ATTICUS
I rapped my knuckles on the screen door before going inside. David was still reading his newspaper in the recliner; Emily and Shannon were in the kitchen, but came out the moment I re-entered the house.
“Where’s the girls?” Emily asked, wiping her hands covered in flour on her apron.
“They’re on their way.” I gestured casually toward the barn. “Getting to know each other, I guess.”
David’s eyes raised from the newspaper, the black-and-white corner folding down with the movement of his work-worn fingers. Without turning his head, he looked toward the large window that framed the field, stared a moment in consideration, and then looked at me again.
“I had a feelin’ those two would hit it off better than my Shannon,” he said. “Any sign o’Lance out there?”
I shook my head.
“Nothing yet,” I said. “Hey, would you mind if I cleaned up?”
Emily and David’s eyes met across the room. I watched them all closely, every movement, every facial expression, not for a second letting them onto the reason I was really there. A quiet sort of communication passed between the brother and sister.
David gave her a short nod.
“Sure, right this way.” Emily gestured me to follow her down the hallway. “Just’ let me get the laundry out of the floor for yah.”
Once I had her in the confines of the narrow sheetrock walls, I reached down into my boot and pulled my knife, whirling around behind her and seizing her body against mine.
Emily yelped; the knife pressed against her jugular; I pushed the blade against her throat, daring her to move.
Hearing the scuffle in the hallway, David and Shannon rushed toward us, their heavy footsteps reverberating through the weak floor. They stopped cold when I forced Emily into their view, exhibiting her life-or-death predicament.
“I won’t hesitate,” I warned. “Put the gun on the floor.”
David looked down at the gun in his hand, and then raised his hands out at his sides and moved his finger away from the trigger. “Now there ain’t no need for this,” he said. “If ya jus’ wanna take somethin’ and leave—whatever ya want—then ain’t no one gonna stop ya. But ain’t no need to hurt my sister.”
“I SAID PUT THE GUN ON THE FLOOR!”
Emily squeaked, and her body jerked in surprise. A moment later I caught the stench of hot urine wafting into my nose.
David bent over and set the gun on the floor, springing back up into an upright position quickly enough that suggested he possessed more deftness than he appeared. A lot of things about these people were not as they seemed.
Shannon backed away, arms raised out at her sides, threatening scowl twisting her features with rage. “You’re just like the rest,” she accused acidly.
“Shut the hell up—no one ever robbed you,” I said, recalling the story she’d told. “This whole thing is a setup, and you’re not fooling me. Move back into the living room—now!” I squeezed Emily’s body, the blade fastened to her throat, and her head fell back against my shoulder in response to it.
Keeping their hands up, David and Shannon backed their way into the living room.
Moving toward them down the hall, I stopped when I stood boot-to-barrel with the gun. Without letting the blade fall away from Emily’s throat, I fell into a squat, taking her down with me, and scooped the cold metal into my free hand. Once I had the gun, I gave Emily a shove in the back and sent her falling forward. Unable to keep her balance, she tumbled onto the floor, then scrambled toward David and Shannon on her hands and knees, her long dress catching under them.
I pointed the gun at David, and shoved the knife back into my boot.
“I’m not going to spend what little time there is listening to your lies,” I said. “The girl out in the barn already admitted that people are coming for us—who the hell is it and how far out are they?”
“W-We don’ know what you’re—”
In two enormous strides I went toward them, gun raised and ready to fire.
David held firm, and pretended to know nothing of the accusations. Had I been wrong about them? Had paranoia gotten the best of me? No—I refused to believe that I was wrong.
“You’ve been burning tires,” I pointed out, “since we got here. Tires. The perfect signal to let someone, oh I don’t know”—I cocked my head to one side in a sarcastic fashion—“someone out hunting maybe, to know that you’ve got new people in your house. That’s why Lance hasn’t come back, isn’t it? Because he saw the black smoke, and instead of coming home, he went to alert someone. Am I about right?”
I knew that, undoubtedly, I was. And judging the shell-shocked faces the family wore but tried so hard to hide, it was further proof I knew all I needed to know.
“Why else would you be looking out the windows toward the field all day?” I added.
No one said a word.
I laid out all of my suspicions, my evidence, and all the while I had Thais in the back of my mind. I needed to hurry. I needed to do what I came here to do so I could find her before someone else did.
“No one,” I said, “no matter what skills they possess, or how many chickens they raise, can survive out in the open like this with just a few people.” I glanced at the coffee table and then back at them with a ridiculous look on my face. “Magazines? Fucking potpourri? This isn’t real”—I waved my free hand about the room—“you’re living like this because someone else protects you.” I gestured at them, cocking my head to the other side. “But for what in return? Or for who in return?”
I saw David’s right hand fall behind him—but mine was quicker. A booming shot rang out half a second later, and Shannon screamed as blood from her father’s head sprayed her face. His body collapsed on the floor in a heap of plaid and blue jeans; blood pooled on the scruffy rug, soaking into the fabric.
“Daddy!” Shannon shrieked; she sank to her knees beside him; her hands were covered in blood as she grabbed his head, trying to stop the blood flow. “Bastard! You shot my father! You fucking bastard!”
Emily, unmoving in her fear and dress soaked with piss, gaped up at me from the floor, shaking her head in a short, rapid motion.
“Push the gun away with the back of your hand,” I instructed Shannon when I saw the one David tried to pull from the back of his jeans was within her reach. “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will. Push it away with the back of your hand—now.”
Shannon did what I told her, her anger benefitting me as she shoved it farther than she probably wanted to. It slid across the rug and stopped underneath a magazine rack set against the fireplace.
“Did ya kill my daughter?” Emily spoke through trembling lips. “Is Rachel dead?”
“No,” I said right away, “but I’m going to, along with both of you if you don’t start talking.”
David’s death was enough to convince Emily.
“Everthin’ you said is true,” Emily admitted. “But Lance don’ live ‘ere—he lives jus’ up the way, ‘bout a few miles from ‘ere. He’s a lookout, and he ain’t the only one in these parts. Families like us, we burn the tires when people come through ‘ere with no place to live, nothin’ to eat. We signal for Lance and then he goes to bring ‘em back.”
“Bring who back?” I gripped the gun so hard it hurt the bones in my hand.
“Lexington City raiders,” Emily answered, and I flinched.
I had never heard of outsiders living like this, commissioned by Lexington City to lure and capture unsuspecting travelers.
“How many are coming?” I ordered. “How many!?”
Shannon glowered up at me from the floor; her dead father lay pressed against her leg. “We don’t fuckin’ know, you piece of shit,” she hissed. “But however many there are, they’ll be here soon, and when they—” She stopped and turned to look toward the door; Emily looked up too.
My heart fell into the pit of my stomach when I turned and saw Thais standing in the doorway on the other side of the screen.
She opened it with a creak and stepped inside; the gun I had given her was in her hand, pointed at the floor.
For a moment, I could get no words out; I wanted to yell at her, and force her back onto the horse and back into the woods where she was supposed to wait for me. But then panic set in: she was here, and Lexington City raiders were on their way.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Thais started to explain, but I, adopting an entirely new plan now that the situation had changed so drastically, went toward Emily and Shannon, the gun pointed at Shannon’s head. “Get up! Get up now!”
“W-What are ya gonna do?” Emily unsteadily pushed herself to her feet.
“UP!” I glared at Shannon, and finally she rose into a stand beside her aunt.
“Let’s go!” I stood back and made a gesture with the gun toward the front door.
THAIS
I stepped out of the way, and Atticus shot me a cold look as he hurried the women out the door and down the porch steps.
Before I could will myself to follow, I caught sight of David’s body lying dead on the floor; the rug had hungrily soaked up a bucket-full of red-black blood. I looked down at the gun grasped in my hand and suddenly the weight of it felt heavier; my heart felt heavier; my stomach felt as if a hot wind churned inside, tossing around everything I’d had to eat the past two days.
Not wanting to look at the body another second, I ran out the screen door, letting it slap against the frame behind me.
“Oh Lord Jesus in Heaven!” Emily bellowed. “Please don’ let this man kill us!”
Shannon shook her head as they walked briskly through the front yard with Atticus at their back.
“Please Jesus!” Emily cried.
“Oh, shut up,” Shannon barked. “Jesus ain’t gonna do shit for you, you crazy old bat.”
Emily ignored Shannon’s jibe and rambled on about Jesus all the way to the concrete storm cellar jutting from the ground.
“Raise the door and get in,” Atticus demanded.
Emily and Shannon looked at each other.
“GET IN NOW!”
Startled, Emily grabbed the handle and lifted the heavy door; it screeched and groaned, metal on metal. Emily went in first, carefully taking the steps, her hands braced on the doorframe. Shannon followed.
Standing next to Atticus, I looked into the hole at the women whose faces stared up at me from the shadows of the 5’X7’ walls that surrounded them. Seconds later, their faces disappeared behind the heavy metal door as it closed with a clamorous bang. Emily’s muffled voice, crying out for Jesus, filtered through the bulbous air vent set in the roof. Then the booming echo of hands beating the metal from inside sounded in my ears.
Atticus stepped hard onto the door to keep it in place.
“Go over to the stable,” he told me, “and find something strong that’ll fit into this hole—hurry!”
I glimpsed the small metal contraption set one part in the door, the other part in the metal around the door, lined perfectly for a padlock to be used. I nodded and then turned, sprinting toward the stable nearby. Moments later, I came running back with a pair of plyers and put them into Atticus’ hand. He slipped the thickest part of one handle through the holes and then released his boot from the door.
“Let’s go,” he said, grabbed my hand and took off running back toward the house; I could hardly keep up with his long legs.
“What are we doing?” I asked, out of breath.
Atticus swung open the door.
“We’re getting supplies.”
His boots went heavily over the wood floor. I followed closely behind.
“We’re going to rob them?”
Atticus stopped in the hallway and whirled around to face me.
“Yes, we’re going to rob them,” he said with disbelief. “They were going to hand us over to raiders!”
Not giving me time to argue—though I hadn’t planned on it—Atticus resumed down the hallway, swinging open the doors in a fit as he went.
He found a backpack and we stuffed it until it was bursting. And we stuffed a pillowcase half-full of bread and dehydrated meat and crackers and Ramen noodles. We found two more guns hidden in the bathroom closet: a handgun and a rifle. Just before we left the house, Atticus snatched up a pair of cotton pants, and he shoved them into one of the pillow cases.
“How are we going to carry all of this stuff?” I asked as we went toward the mare standing behind the house.
“However we can.”
I reached for the mare’s reins, but Atticus stopped me. “No. Leave her,” he said, hoisting the large backpack onto his free shoulder. “Her shoes are too worn. We’ll take the horses from the stable.” He grabbed the quilt from the mare, tossing it over his arm.
Before we set out for the woods, in the opposite direction of the field beyond the highway, Atticus stopped to look out at the wide-open landscape.
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
Peering into a pair of compact-sized binoculars he’d found inside the house, Atticus scanned the area.
“No, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
The muffled sound of Emily and Shannon screaming and beating on the inside of the storm cellar door could be heard on the air. I wondered about them, if someone would find and rescue them before they died of dehydration. I thought about Rachel, bound by duct tape in the barn, imagining that if she had to, she could roll her way back to the house—but then what could she do to free herself when she got there? And I thought of David, still feeling a pang of guilt for being a party—whether I was there when it happened or not—to his death. I trusted Atticus. That much I knew. But whatever his reasons were for turning on the family, I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of regret and responsibility. Turn us over to raiders? Maybe so, but no reason could quell the guilt that assailed me.
ATTICUS
I felt anxious; my plan to stay behind and fight the raiders, picking them off their horses with shots from inside the house as they approached, had been wrecked.
When Thais defied my instructions and came back, there was nothing left for me to do but get her as far away from the farm as I could and take as many provisions with us we could carry. But we still had raiders following us. They were close. And some of the soldiers, I recalled, were good at tracking. I could do nothing about the hoof prints in the soil as we set out now in a westerly direction; there wasn’t much I could do about the piles of horse shit left in our wake—I stopped a few times to shuffle leaves over it, but gave that idea up when realizing leaves piled in unnatural formations would only draw the attention I’d intended to deter. All we could do was keep moving. And we did, well into the late afternoon.