by Skylar Finn
“She always did have a way of making sure she came out on top,” he mused. For a moment, it felt like old times; us discussing our respective exes and their various atrocities late into the night. Then I remembered where we were, and why. And so did Ethan.
“We have to leave before Benny comes back here tomorrow and sets their plan in motion,” he said. “We’ll set out at first light. They’ll realize we’re missing, of course; but what can they do? They can’t send anyone to the farmhouse to stop us without tipping off Dexter and ruining the element of surprise. They might assume that we went back to the ranch house, but I don’t think they’d care, even if we actually did. The important thing is that we get to that house before they do.”
“I agree,” I said. “But Ethan, what will we do once we’re there? Some of them will be gone to collect Grace’s ransom, but the rest of them are still there. They’ll have Grace under guard, under lock and key. They’ll have lookouts stationed. Dexter might have his best people there, including himself. How are we going to get past all of them with just the two of us?”
“I considered it,” he said. “The entire time that old windbag was talking. Since we first went to the farmhouse, since they first took Grace. I think part of me always knew it would come to this. We’ll have to sneak in, the way that I did before. I’ll draw a map of the house for you before we go to sleep. You’ll need to commit it to memory. We just have to get up to the attic and then onto the roof. One of us can go down the drainpipe first and catch Grace. And we’ll have to kill anyone that gets in our way.”
He made it sound simple, but I felt very sure there was a strong likelihood one of us would die, if not both of us. I knew that Ethan had planned for it to be him, in the event it came to that. He would never say it out loud, but I knew he trusted me to get Grace out no matter what. I just hoped that I could ensure that she was free and safe before anything happened to me.
But if it did, where would she go? Back to the house with Peterman and Tom, maybe, but what if they were killed during the ransom exchange? It didn’t seem like there was any outcome that could end well for any of us--let alone all of us.
“I just want all of us to get through this safely and come out on the other side,” I said, burrowing under the throw blanket. I immediately felt selfish doing so, as I wondered if Grace was cold.
“We will,” said Ethan, gazing into the fire. I wondered who he was trying to convince: him or me?
Ethan woke me at first light. I didn’t even remember falling asleep. Knowing him, he hadn’t slept at all. Aside from when he’d gotten shot, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d witnessed him sleep since the EMP. He seemed to spend most evenings sitting upright in a chair with his eyes shut, which didn’t really seem like the same thing.
“They’ll be up any minute, I’m sure,” said Ethan. “Wentworth strikes me as the early-to-bed/early-to-rise type. Assuming that he even sleeps at all.”
“According to Benny, he doesn’t,” I said. “What if they see us leaving? What will we tell them?”
“They won’t see us leaving,” he said.
Although it was his first time in the house, he took me out a back door I hadn’t known was there and down a narrow path lined by shrubs. It was as if he’d lived there his whole life.
“How do you know about this?” I whispered as he climbed the fence and reached back to help me over. I didn’t feel comfortable speaking aloud until we were free and clear of Dexter’s property.
“I looked at every place within a thirty-mile radius before I bought ours,” he said. “I started looking ten years ago, long before Wentworth and his people moved in. The Aldersons’ place was already theirs, of course; the Davidsons’, too. But this place was empty at the time. I gave it serious consideration. It appealed to me, probably for similar reasons it appealed to Wentworth. Remote, with just enough forestry to provide natural cover. Easy to fortify. But ultimately, it just didn’t feel like home.”
We reached the edge of the field that demarcated Wentworth’s property from the tree line. The woods were dark and cool at this time of morning, the sunlight topping the trees. It almost would have been beautiful if our circumstances weren’t so horrible. We walked toward the farmhouse. Ethan had calculated that by the time we reached it on foot, Dexter’s people would just be arriving at the ranch.
We walked in silence for a while. At about the halfway mark, Ethan stopped and turned to me.
“I don’t feel right about this,” he said.
“Right about what?” I asked, befuddled. “We’re getting Grace back.”
“No, right about you going in there with me and risking your life,” he said. “I don’t feel right about asking you to do that.”
“I love her, too,” I said, hurt.
“It’s not that,” he said gently. “I know you love Grace like your own daughter. You always have. You’ve been a better mother to her than Sharon ever was. She barely even remembers to call on Grace’s birthday. But if you die--and you could die, Charlie, which I hate--if you die, Grace will have no one.”
“If you die, and I’m not here, Grace might never get out of that house alive,” I said stubbornly. “Even if we both die, but Grace lives--if she escapes--it will have been worth it.”
I turned away and started walking again. After a minute, Ethan followed. He caught up to me and took my hand. We walked in silence.
23
The farmhouse looked quiet from the outside. The same lookout we saw the last time we were there was stationed in his spot on the front porch. He looked marginally more alert today: he sat upright and chewed tobacco while he gazed off into the distance at nothing. There was no way to know for sure how many were inside without having any way to communicate with Peterman and Tom at the ranch. We could only hope that their numbers had been drastically reduced.
I wondered if Dexter was here, or if he’d gone with the rest of his crew to collect our supplies. I hoped that he’d gone to the ranch for the ransom for our sake, while simultaneously hoping that he hadn’t for Peterman and Tom’s sake. I didn’t really believe we’d be fortunate enough to get through this without encountering Dexter. I figured he’d stayed behind to guard Grace, in case we tried to renege on our deal.
Ethan crouched behind a tree at the edge of the front yard. He reached into his duffle bag and removed one of the propane tanks he picked up in town. I watched as he taped something roughly the size of a matchbox to the side.
He gave a little twitch of his head and I followed as we decamped a good distance away. Far enough, but not too far. I remembered the list he’d given me when we arrived at the ranch: All the heavy stuff and the things that are more...involved. I got down on the ground and covered my ears. Ethan was a perfect shot. He never missed.
A fireball erupted in the air, shooting like a geyser into the trees. I heard a shout from the front porch as the guard stumbled down the steps and abandoned his post. The screen door opened and slammed shut as more of them ran out to investigate the source of the sound.
We ran around the back of the house. This time, instead of concealing myself in the shrubbery and waiting while Ethan ventured into the house, I followed him into the yard.
The minute or so it took to cross the lawn, completely exposed, was when I felt the most tense. If someone were to come out on the back porch, or so much as glance out of a window, we’d be seen immediately. But the house remained silent, the blinds drawn. It made me even more ill at ease: as if they already knew we were coming and this was some kind of a trap.
Ethan led me to the side of the house and crouched on the ground. Among the overgrowth of tall grass and weeds, I could see a narrow window just above ground level. My first thought was that I wouldn’t fit, but I reminded myself that Ethan had gotten in.
He leaned over and tugged at the window, a look of intense concentration on his face. I assumed he was wondering if they’d locked it since our last excursion to the house. The rusty latch gave under his hand and the
window opened with a creak.
I though he must have made it in and out of the house with none of them being the wiser, or they surely would have taken further precautions since. Unless it was, in fact, a trap. In that case, they would want to make it as easy as on us as possible to get in.
I pushed the thought from my head as Ethan wriggled through the open window. I heard only the quietest of thumps from inside the basement as he dropped to the dusty floor below. I crawled through the window and lowered myself into the basement after him. The drop was a few feet, and he steadied me as I fell to make sure I landed on my feet. Ethan reached up and closed the window behind me.
We waited a moment for our eyes to adjust to the dim light. The only source of illumination was the narrow shaft of sunlight peeking through the basement window. Dust motes floated in the light, revealing the objects immediately around us: an old lawnmower, a broken crib, furniture under mildewed sheets. I caught sight of my frightened reflection in a dirty mirror across the room. The rest of the junk receded into the shadowy dark corners I was unable to see. I tried not to think about what--or who--might be in them.
Ethan walked ahead of me toward the rickety wooden steps that led to the first floor. I’d memorized the floor plan from the rough map he’d drawn the night before. The plan was that he would go first to dispatch anyone who might get in our way. He’d added a silencer to the Governor before we’d even left the ranch house. He hadn’t had much faith in Wentworth, based on what I’d told him even prior to meeting him, and confided in me at the compound that he assumed we would either have to shoot our way out of Wentworth’s or would eventually end up in our current situation. His foresight was dazzling, and the only thing I hoped he was wrong about was his reason for going ahead of me: if anything happened to him, I would get to the attic as quickly as possible for Grace, letting nothing and no one stop me on the way.
Ethan skipped the third step from the bottom and turned to me, glancing down at it, indicating for me to do the same. I avoided the creaky step and found myself at the top too soon, holding my breath as he gently pushed the door open the tiniest sliver. He peered out, then pushed the door open wider. He stepped into the hallway and gestured for me to follow.
We advanced slowly down the hallway. I felt exposed with my back open to the kitchen and continually glanced over my shoulder with every step we took. But the kitchen was empty. There was no one in sight.
Ethan paused at a wide open doorway, leading to what he’d indicated on the map was a living room. He glanced in. Very slowly, so as not to make a sound, he crept past the doorway, his gun trained on the room. When he was on the other side of the doorway, he nodded to me. He kept his gun aimed into the living room while I crossed the open doorway.
In the living room, one of Dexter’s men sat in a high-backed armchair, his back to us, busily cleaning his gun on the coffee table in front of him. I could see my reflection in the dead screen of the old tube TV across the room. So would he, if he only glanced up at the wrong second.
He was completely immersed in the activity. He didn’t look up in the heart-stopping few seconds it took me to cross the length of the doorframe. I stopped behind Ethan and slowly, silently exhaled the breath I’d been holding. We were now at the bottom of the staircase leading to the second floor.
Ethan glanced at the stairs and raised his eyebrows at me. I nodded. He proceeded up the steps, sticking close to the wall. He skipped the second, fifth, and final step. I followed suit, imitating his pattern. My eyes were glued to the living room door the whole way up until we were safely out of sight on the second floor landing.
Had Dexter taken his entire crew to the house? All the doors were closed, and the second floor was silent. I was jumpy. Again, it seemed too easy somehow. I felt like Dexter was lying in wait, as if any moment he’d come flying out of a hall closet or the bathroom to end us.
Ethan walked ahead of me. At the end of the hall, I could see the attic door just as he’d described it: bright red with an old-fashioned keyhole lock. My eyes were fixed on the door. We were so close. We were only a foot from the door when I heard it: the long, slow sound of a door creaking open directly behind us.
Ethan pivoted, lightning quick, with his gun aimed. I turned to find the muzzle of Clarice’s gun pointed directly at my forehead.
“Drop it,” she said. I held my gun out at arm’s length and let it clatter to the floor. Her eyes flicked back to Ethan behind me. “I said drop it! Unless you wanna watch me decorate the wall with her brains.”
I heard Ethan set his gun on the ground. I wondered if Clarice had been waiting for us all along; if she’d seen us creep across the yard to the basement window from her vantage point upstairs.
“Dexter knew you’d try something like this,” Clarice said, handing me a coil of rope and nudging me towards Ethan. “I told him no way, but he had me listening with my ear at the door all damn day. And what do you know? Here you are.” She poked me in the back of the skull with her gun. “Tie him up. You make one wrong move, and I will blow him away.”
My eyes flicked over to where my gun lay on the floor before returning to Ethan’s wrists in front of me.
“Don’t even think about it,” Clarice said. “I will shoot him in the face before you get your finger on the trigger.”
I tied his hands looser than I knew she wanted, but tight enough to look like I’d made a genuine effort. As soon as I was finished, she hit him on the head with the butt of her gun. He slumped to the floor, unconscious.
“Just in case you made it a little loose,” she said sarcastically. “On your knees. Hands behind your back.”
She secured my arms behind my back, tying the rope so tightly I could feel it cutting into my wrists. She re-tied Ethan’s bonds and dragged him down the hallway into the room she’d come out of. She gestured to me with her gun and I followed.
“Sit,” she said, looking at the wooden chair in the corner. I sat. She tied my ankles to the chair’s legs and my bound wrists to the back of the seat. Then she went over to Ethan’s prone form on the floor and tied him to the radiator on the far side of the room. She eyed her work approvingly before turning back to me.
“Time to get Dexter,” she said pleasantly. “He’s gonna be real pleased. We’ll get all your stuff, your doctor, and ideally the rest of you will be dead by dusk. I would say this was pretty much a win-win situation. For us, anyway.” She laughed. She left the room, pulling the door shut behind her. I heard the sound of a key turning in the lock.
A thin trickle of blood ran down Ethan’s temple as he lay motionless in the corner. I thought of Clarice with hate, imagining what I would do to her if I only got a chance. My thoughts turned to Grace and how miserably we’d failed her. How arrogant we’d been to believe we could get in and out of the house undetected and escape in one piece with all three of us, unchallenged. We were aware of the risk, but we thought at least one of us could make it out with Grace. Now neither of us would.
I waited for what felt like hours, though it was probably closer to thirty minutes. The whole time, my eyes were fixed on Ethan, willing him to wake up. But he never did. I pictured what was happening at the ranch house: were Tom and Peterman still alive? Or had they been killed in the melee between Dexter’s men and Wentworth’s?
After the EMP, when the city was plunged into darkness and my only thoughts were of finding my family, I thought things were the worst they could get. Now I saw that the human condition--how quickly people unraveled the pretenses of civility and became savages at the first opportunity--had mired an already bad situation into unspeakable depths.
It seemed like little coincidence that I was considering the unspeakable depths to which humanity was willing to sink when I heard the key turn in the lock a second time. My whole body tensed as the door creaked open. When it swung inward, the door temporarily blocked my view of who was on the other side of it. But I knew who it was.
“Well, well, well.” He let the door swing back with a
heavy thud and smiled ear-to-ear at me, his gold teeth glinting. “So we meet again.”
Dexter’s boots thudded on the heavy floor. There was a heavy wooden chest at the foot of the bed, and he perched on it, facing me. He studied me for a minute without saying anything as he reached into the pocket of his denim work shirt and withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it with a match. My eyes watered at the smell of sulfur and cigarette smoke. He held out the pack and raised an eyebrow at me. I shook my head.
“Suit yourself.” He returned the pack to his pocket then regarded me through half-closed eyes, twin tendrils of smoke curling from each nostril. “I knew you’d be back. That’s right, I know about last time, too. My guy saw you leaving through the woods from the upstairs window through his scope. Could have taken you out--” he made a popping sound with his mouth--“right then and there, but I told him to hold off. I knew you’d be back. And I was right.”
“Where’s Grace?” I asked, my voice rasping from a combination of terror, exhaustion, and rage.
“She’s fine.” He ground his cigarette out on the floor with the heel of his boot. “I keep my promises. Unlike you.” He glanced over at Ethan. “He’s not looking so good, by the way.”
I wanted to spit in his face, but kept quiet. I was well aware of the power he had over us now. One wrong move would mean death for both of us. It would probably be the end result, regardless. But as long as we were alive, I had to keep playing my hand in the hope we could somehow survive.
“So, this raises an interesting question for me.” He studied his yellow fingernails in a show of appearing contemplative. “The question of, what do I do with you now? You’ve been nothing but a thorn in my side from minute one. You’ve demonstrated nothing but a will to defy me.”