by Katie French
“Go!” he says, squinting through the smoke that seers his eyes like acid. He fires again, the bullet pings off something metallic in the distance. “Go, Riley!”
“Not without you!”
He opens his mouth to protest, but a bullet zings between our two heads, hitting a light fixture that rains sparks on our heads.
A guard pops up ten yards away behind a metal bench. My finger draws back the trigger and my gun explodes, rocking my shoulder back. The bullet cuts through the smoke and hits the guard’s vest. The guard staggers back, his mouth open. When he realizes he isn’t dead, he smiles tauntingly. He lifts his gun to finish me. There’s a crack beside me. The guard’s neck springs a leak. His gun clatters to the tile. Blood patters the wall as the guard topples over the bench and sprawls on the floor.
I squint through the haze toward the wall of guards. Our victories are a drop of water in the ocean. The guards keep coming.
I shoot a look down the hallway. Betsy and Ethan round the corner and disappear. Thank God for that, I think. Time to go.
A gun cracks. A cry of pain pulls me out of my thoughts. I look over. Clay’s hand is tucked to his chest. The palm is such a bloody, shredded mess, I can’t tell what’s happened. His revolver clatters to the floor. I reach for him, but the guards smell their victory. Bullets fill the air like lead rain.
“Come on!” I scream, dragging him away. “Run!”
He turns and stumbles alongside me. Bullets zip past, slicing through the smoke, spraying plaster and shards of light casings on our heads. Something punches into my calf. I stumble, but Clay’s good hand on my arm steadies me. Then a bullet smashes into his shoulder and he goes down on the tile.
“Clay!” I scramble over to him and drag him forward. He’s drenched in blood. One pant leg clings to him in a red sopping mess. His white t-shirt is soaked through with blood. He stares up at me, his eyelids fluttering.
“Go,” he croaks.
I slip my arms under his and drag him back along the tile. His boots leave two red tracks on the floor. Ahead the pounding of footsteps sounds like a giant, crushing wave. We’re about to drown.
I grunt and tug, but it’s no use. They’ll soon be here. My eyes are already streaming, but the sobs that shake from my chest are new. “We gave ’em a good fight,” I whisper. I lean down and kiss the top of his blood-speckled head. Beneath the blood and smoke and gunpowder, there’s still a trace of his familiar scent. I’ll take it with me wherever this path ends.
A door pops open across the hall. Through the haze, I can just make out Dr. Rayburn’s shocked face behind his bleary glasses.
“Good God,” he says. Then his eyes flick to where the guards are breaking through the smoke. “Come on.” He waves me over. I heave Clay over with all my might, but my wounded calf has stiffened and doesn’t seem to work. Rayburn scuttles out, puts his hands under Clay’s armpits and drags him into the door. I limp after.
The door slides shut. Dr. Rayburn mutters over the keypad, frantically punching buttons until the lock clicks. He stands against the door, breathless. His white lab coat is streaked with Clay’s blood. He adjusts his smeared glasses and runs a trembling hand through his greasy hair. “Door won’t hold them for long.” He nods toward the back of the room. “We got a truck.”
We’re in the same storage room where Rayburn handed me off to Clay and the Sheriff. There’s an idling supply truck by the open garage door. I stare out into the fresh night air on the other side of the door. Can that really be freedom? My mother’s lying in the back of the van still hooked to her IV. Ethan sits beside her, holding her hand. When he sees me he waves and then frowns. He starts to climb out but I shake my head and hobble forward. Betsy, who’s busy chucking supplies into the van, stops when she sees me.
“Oh my heavens, are you hurt?” She waddles over and reaches.
I shake her off. “Help me get Clay into the van!”
Her eyes go wide at the sight of him. She grabs Clay’s bloody boots. I take his arms. Rayburn jumps in the van’s driver’s seat. The engine revs.
Fists pound on the door. Rifle butts slam into the metal, denting it. If Rayburn was right, they’ll be here in seconds and my legs won’t move any faster.
My wounded calf throbs, but Betsy and I double-time it to the van. It seems like a million miles. My back finally bumps into the van’s bumper. I hoist myself up and then reach down for Clay’s arms and draw him inside. He’s so heavy and my arms so weak. Ethan reaches down and takes an arm. Together we heave Clay upward. Betsy pushes on his legs, her pudgy face red with strain.
The door flies open. Guards pour in like insects. They’re coming.
“Come on!” yells Rayburn, looking in the rearview.
It’s a swarm of guns and arms and angry faces. And black gun barrels. Hands reach out and grab Betsy’s pudgy arms and legs. They drag her backward into the mound of guards. Rayburn hits the gas.
“Betsy!” I scream.
I drag Clay into the van as we bounce out of the storage room and into the parking lot. I get a glimpse of Betsy’s terrified face in the sea of guards. So frightened. Then Rayburn takes the corner.
She’s gone.
I scramble toward the van doors. I gotta go back for her.
Ethan’s hands grab my waist. I turn my tear-filled eyes toward him. “Let me go!”
Then I see them, Clay and my mama both unconscious on the van floor. Ethan’s terrified face is speckled with blood. “Riley,” he says quietly. “We need your help, too.”
I fold into his arms. He holds me as we speed through Albuquerque’s darkened streets.
Now it’s my turn to cry.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
We drive for eight straight hours.
Rayburn and I take turns driving and tending to the wounded. Clay is in the worst shape. He’s lost so much blood. Rayburn stops the bleeding and administers antibiotics, but without blood to give, it’s hard to tell if he’ll make it. When I’m not driving and gripping the steering wheel so tight my fingerprints embed in the wheel, I’m sitting in the back of the van holding Clay’s and Mama’s hands. She has yet to wake up. Rayburn just shrugs, but from what Dr. Vandewater claimed, Mama’s life is in as much jeopardy as Clay’s now.
We run out of gas next to an abandoned church down a long driveway. I look up at the bleached adobe building as Rayburn pulls slowly behind the back wall with the last of our gas. Some of the colored glass windows have a few panes intact. The giant wood cross aims skyward from the roof like a conduit straight to God. I sigh. It’s as good a place as any to see who lives and dies.
I hobble through the old church, scouting out a room for Mama. In the sanctuary, with rows of sagging wooden pews, I scare a flock of birds out of the nest they’ve built in the organ pipes. They fly up out of a hole in the roof. Two tattered banners drape from the walls on either side of the little stage in the center. One says Peace with a silk dove down below it; the other says Hope with a large brown cross. I grab a few crusty pew cushions and carry them down the hall.
I find the room a few doors down. This quiet little nook must’ve been the church’s small library—stacks of yellow books lie in piles where they’ve spilled out of the tilted shelves. I push them out of the way. A book called The Fiddler loses its binding and cracks in my hands. The pages flutter out like tattered moth wings. The Heaven Answer Book must’ve had better glue because it stays intact. I turn the crackling book over in my hands. Maybe I’ll try to read it if I have time. I could use some answers. Like why Betsy and not me? And what will happen to my mama if she dies? I set the books down and make a cozy nest for my mother. Then I walk back out to the van and help carry her in.
Rayburn and I settle her on the cushions. They smell faintly of bird droppings but it’s the best I can do. I lay her veined hands over her stomach. She looks lovely with the dim afternoon light filtering in through the cobwebbed windows. Her burned face is set as in a peaceful slumber. Suddenly I have a vision of her inside
one of the plushy coffins from before things fell apart. I shake the image away.
“Mama,” I whisper, pushing a few strands off the burned part of her face. “Wake up,” I say, running my thumb over her hand. “Ethan needs you.” I choke back a sob. “I need you.”
When she doesn’t stir, I set her hand down and limp out to the van to help bring in Clay. I find Ethan and Rayburn hauling him out. In the sunlight, Clay’s face looks like the pages of the books in there, pale, worn and fragile. There are large grayish circles under his eyes. The apples of his cheeks flare bright red in the white of his face. His eyes flutter open and he groans as they ease him into the small sanctuary. In one corner I’ve made a bed for him out of pew cushions. As they settle him onto the cushions, puffs of dust swirl through the triangles of light streaming in from the ceiling. Rayburn and Ethan go back to the van for supplies. I sit beside Clay and tuck the cushions around him.
Clay’s eyes flutter as he reaches for me with his good hand. His bandaged right hand lies lifelessly on his chest. I’m too afraid to look at what’s underneath. Will he ever draw from the hip again?
He runs the back of his hand over the bruise where his father hit me. I lean down and touch my lips to his parched ones.
He gives a delightful moan. “Is that all I get?” His voice is gravely and weak. “No sugar after I shot our way out?”
I smile wanly. “You’ll get plenty of sugar when you’re better.” I brush the sweaty clumps of hair out of his eyes. His lids flutter again. He swims out of sleep and his face tightens in pain.
I start to stand. “I’ll get you some of Rayburn’s magic pills,” I say. “Thank god for those supplies Betsy got us.”
And there it is, the wave of pain that punches me in the stomach every time I think about Betsy. I haven’t slept since the hospital. When I do, I know I’ll see her face as those guards closed in like piranhas on a chunk of meat. Her terrified eyes greet me from every darkened doorway. Her cries echo from every quiet corner.
I jump as Clay’s hand closes over mine. I offer a weak smile.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he says. “Nothing you could do to save her.”
“Nothing?” I ask. I picture Betsy’s face. I’ve spent the hours since going over every detail. If I’d had Clay’s feet instead. If I’d been a second quicker. If I’d jumped out of the truck instead of hesitating. There were lots of things I could’ve done.
“Stop torturing yourself.” He reaches for me again, but this time I don’t fall into his arms. I like torturing myself. Maybe someday I’ll stop, but not today.
“Riley!” Ethan’s shrill voice calls from down the hall. I snap my head around.
“Go,” Clay says, his eyes wide with fear.
I bolt from the sanctuary into the little library where we’ve tucked my mother. I scramble to a stop, knocking over a pile of books, sending up a cloud of dust.
“What?” I ask, stepping over the books to get to Ethan. “What is it?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he moves aside.
Mama’s eyes are open. “Riley?” she asks.
For weeks, I’d been racking my brain to remember the color of Mama’s eyes. I remembered they were brown like mine, but what shade? Chocolate? Mocha? Coffee? Were there flecks in the center? How did they look when they fell on me? How did I feel at that moment when my mother saw me and liked what she saw?
I kneel down, my trembling hand reaching for hers. Her cracked lips draw up into a smile. “Baby,” she whispers.
I look into my mother’s deep brown eyes. Now I remember.
In the light of an electric torch, I lean over Clay’s sweat-flecked face as Rayburn readies the scalpel over Clay’s exposed thigh. I look into Clay’s eyes.
“Are you ready?” I whisper. I offer a leather bible cover. Clay folds it in half and nods. His face tightens, sweat streaming down in rivulets. He places the cover in his mouth and bites down.
I take his hand. “Squeeze as hard as you need.” If only I could take the pain for him.
He nods again, but his eyes trace up into the rafters of the church as he readies himself.
I watch his face as Rayburn takes the scalpel and presses it into the bullet hole in Clay’s thigh.
Clay’s grip tightens on my fingers. His teeth pierce the leather. Rayburn begins muttering as he digs.
“Hurry, Rayburn,” I say, as Clay’s back arches and a little moan escapes his lips.
“I’m, uh, trying,” Rayburn says. He swipes his forearm across his sweaty brow and goes back to searching for the bullet. Clay’s hand tightens around mine again. The smell of blood and antiseptic makes my stomach churn, but I clench my jaw and fight the sickness. Clay needs me. Finally, Rayburn sighs and holds up bloody tweezers. At the end is the red slug.
I let out a puff of air. “Over,” I say, patting Clay’s hand. He gives a slight nod, but his face is still twisted in pain. He’s more pale than usual. A shiver runs through him, though it’s still nearly eighty degrees inside the church. I press my lips to his sweaty forehead. “You did great.”
He leans into me and tries to smile. “Nursemaid, too,” he says. “Nothing you can’t do, hmm?”
I smile and wipe sweat from his brow with the hem of my shirt. “Can’t keep you from getting shot up. Can’t do that, can I?”
Rayburn finishes bandaging the wound and packs up his med kit. “I’ll, uh, go out to the fire.” He looks at me, adjusting his bleary glasses. “I gave him some morphine. He, uh, he needs to rest.”
Clay nods, his eyes drooping. “You go out to the fire,” he slurs. “I’ll be fine.”
I kiss his hand, the one that’s not a giant, bandaged mess. I tuck the ratty curtain he’s using as a blanket around him. Before I’m out the door, he’s breathing evenly.
In the barren churchyard, Ethan’s built a small fire. Rayburn sits Indian-style on the ground, digging into a can of food from the van. Mama and Ethan sit hip to hip. She’s got her arms around him and he leans into her embrace. It’s so good to see them sitting there together. Now it’s my turn.
“I told her everything,” Ethan says as I walk up to the fire.
“Lord, I hope not,” I say smiling. She smiles back. It’s so good to see my mother smile.
“He told me all the best parts,” she says, her voice lilting, musical. “He saved the gory details for later.” She pats the curtain she’s spread over the dust. “Come, darling. Fill in the rest.”
I fold myself into her.
Ethan pokes a stick into the blaze and then uses the burning end to trace red shapes in the darkness. “Mama knew Clay’s mother. You know, the lady at the hospital.”
I turn to Mama. “You knew Clay’s mother?”
Mama nods. She’s still weak, almost frail, but her mannerisms are all the same as I remember. The corner of her mouth lifts just before she speaks. “When I knew her, Nessa Vandewater wasn’t such a fancypants. She was just another patient like me at the Breeder’s hospital. That was the year before you were born,” she says, touching my knee. Her eyes trail back to the fire.
“They brought Nessa in just after she’d had a baby. I guess that was your friend Clay.” She looks up at me. I blush and turn my eyes to the glowing embers.
“Anyway, Nessa always told us she was some sort of genius. All us girls on her floor thought she was crazy. Some girls come in that way, baked in the head.” She looks down at Ethan who’s writing his name in the dust with his stick. “Then they came for her one day and we didn’t see her for a long time. We thought she’d been taken down to the experiments. Later we found out she was in charge of them. Turns out she was a genius after all.”
I study the fire, considering this. “So she experimented on the same girls she’d been friends with?”
Mama shakes her head. “Nessa never had friends. She didn’t care if she ruined girls’ lives, killed people.” My mother shivers. She lifts her eyes to mine. “I’m sure your friend Clay’s not like that.”
“H
e’s not,” I say. I think about him alone in that dark church and frown. “What about Clay’s brother, Cole? He was born four years after Clay.”
Mama shrugs. “That was after your Auntie broke us out of the hospital, sweetie. What happened to Nessa after that is anyone’s guess.”
I ponder this while the fire crackles and the bugs chirp shrilly around us.
“What’d we do now?” Ethan asks, chucking his stick into the fire. It crinkles and pops as the blaze eats it up.
We all look at him as if it hasn’t occurred to us to ask this question. Of course, it’s occurred to us. Just none of us are sure of how to answer it. I open my mouth to speak, but then my eyes flick up to my mama.
She nods at me. “Don’t stop on my account. What should we do, Riley?”
I sigh deep. “I think we should go back for Auntie. With the Sheriff dead, Clay’s got claim as leader of that town. The Warden won’t give up easily, but we can’t leave Auntie behind.”
Mama nods. Her eyes shine as she pats my hand. “I couldn’t have said it better myself, darling.”
Above the stars are a handful of sparkles tossed across the night sky. The fire pops and crackles. The night insects sing their shrill melody. Beside me, Ethan hums a little tune under his breath. Even Rayburn’s shuffling and sniffing blends in until, if I closed my eyes, the scents and sounds could transport me home. With my eyes still closed, I lean in and rest my head on my mama’s shoulder and inhale her earthen scent.
For a moment I almost say, Let’s go home, but I stop myself. Here in the dark, with my family and Clay not too far, I realize home isn’t a building or a place we’ll travel.
I’m already home.
Three Weeks Later
“Get a move on, slowpoke!” I yell down the hallway. Yelling in a church is probably a sin, but I’m not sure anyone’s up there counting. If they are, I owe them big time.
Ethan comes loping around the corner, carrying one of the hospital supply bags over his shoulder. It looks like it weighs more than he does. I grab it for him and heft it up. “Is this the last of it?”