by Ninie Hammon
Sam was suddenly beside Charlie and a single word escaped Sam’s throat.
“Shep?”
Shepherd Clayton.
There might be ten different men in Nowhere County named Shep. Might be a hundred, or a thousand. It didn’t matter, this one was Shepherd Clayton. Charlie knew that in her bones. That was Abby’s husband, striding across the meadow with a rifle pointed at Stuart.
Abby Clayton, the monstrous creature that had shambled out of the shadows in Merrie’s bedroom and told Charlie she had locked Merrie in the airless kiln.
Abby, who had shot Malachi.
Abby, who had exploded, blown apart in the Middle of Nowhere.
She’d been so desperate to get to “baby Cody and Shep” that she’d have killed anybody who got in her way. Now, her Shep had a gun on Stuart, and Charlie had no doubt he was every bit as ruthless and crazy as Abby had been.
This could not be.
This would not be! Not now. Not after they’d all been through. Not after the world had finally been set aright. Charlie would not lose Stuart now!
She screamed.
With every fiber of her being, with her very soul, Charlie McClintock cried out in horror and anguish, a shriek that tore out of her throat in a wail that almost sounded like the cry of some dying animal.
“Nooooooooo!”
Stuart’s ears rang from the blast of sound.
The rumble ate up the world and he tensed for the pain.
Nothing.
As he watched in amazement, a small, red hole — no bigger than a nickel, really — appeared in the chest of the man pointing a rifle at them.
The rifle dropped to the ground at his feet, but the man stood for a moment longer, the raging fury that had twisted Shep Clayton’s features into the mask of a monster melted away. He lifted his eyes, and for an instant, they met Stuart’s.
There was a look in those eyes at that moment. It appeared in a flash and then it was gone, the eyes unfocused and the skinny man folded up and crumpled to the ground. Stuart would think about that look often, ponder it, consider it. The doubt might come then, later, that maybe he hadn’t seen …
But there was no doubt in that first moment. That instant when Stuart and Shep connected, soul to soul, the look in Shepherd Clayton’s eyes was gratitude.
Stuart turned slowly to Cotton, who still stood with a pistol in a two-hand grip, pointed at the spot where Shep Clayton no longer stood. Stuart reached out carefully to the gun, gripped it and pulled gently. Cotton let go of it, took a step back and gasped for air.
Stuart stooped and knelt beside the still body of Shep Clayton, whose eyes were open, but now they stared sightlessly upward.
“Where did you get …?” Jolene started to ask Cotton but ran out of air before she finished the question.
“Borrowed it from a friend when I went to Carlisle yesterday,” Cotton said. He seemed to be having trouble drawing in enough air to speak, too. “Wasn’t gonna come back out here again today defenseless.”
The nickel-sized hole was on the left side of Shepherd Clayton’s chest, right below his collar bone. At a range of less than fifteen feet, Cotton had fired the bullet directly into his heart. Stuart continued to kneel where he was because his knees suddenly felt like they might not want to hold him upright if he stood. He still had the pistol, couldn’t think what to do with it so he just laid the weapon carefully on the ground beside Shep Clayton’s rifle.
He got to his feet then without stumbling, but clearly he was not fully in possession of his faculties because he was imagining things. Looking around to see who had screamed, he saw … Charlie … running down the hill.
It was so crisp and clear that his heart almost leapt out of his chest in longing for it to be real.
Then he heard Charlie’s voice, calling his name.
Cotton and Jolene had turned and were staring at the hillside where the children had floated down. They saw the people, too. A man and two women. But the woman racing ahead of the others was … looked like …
Charlie.
Couldn’t be.
Absolutely Could. Not. Be.
He started running without consciously willing his feet to move. Had no sense of crossing the distance between where he stood beside the dead body of Shepherd Clayton and where Charlie … Charlie? Charlie!
Then she was in his arms. He could feel her, feel her.
She was calling his name, sobbing, clinging to him.
It was real.
Dear God in heaven, it was real.
Pete stood in the middle of Main Street beside Lester Peetree, removed in some way from the pandemonium so that he was aware of it happening, but wasn’t connecting to it in any real sense. He recognized that packed-in-cotton sensation from battle where the whole world was kinda on mute. It would pass.
He felt more exhausted than he had ever felt in his life, felt like all the energy he had ever had, had been expended on that rooftop and now he was just negotiating reality on fumes.
Though he was moving fast as he could, it seemed to take him an hour to get from the roof of the beauty parlor to the roof of the drug store, where Judd lay. Most of the top part of the right side of his head was missing. In that detachment that enabled you to do impossible things, Pete made a mental note to make sure Doreen and the girls didn’t see Judd this way. Then he’d climbed down the ladder off the building, liked to fell twice his legs was so weak, and found Lester Peetree waiting for him there, beside Obie Tackett, whose dead body was draped over a sawhorse standing beside the rear door of the building. He’d landed on the sawhorse on his back, and kinda broke in two over it.
They was lots of dead bodies around, but it was gonna have to be up to other folks besides Pete Rutherford to make arrangements for them and tend to the wounded. He’d done his part. It was over. Lester helped out, of course, and he’d be the one packing the dead bodies away at Bascum’s. Oscar Manning’s girl Chastity, Skeeter Burkett, Thelma Jackson, Raylynn’s Aunt Effie Bennett, and Eula Mae Reynolds were taking instructions from the O’Conner kid, name of Brian, to patch them up as had got shot. The boy had said he was in medical school until he’d broke his leg and had to come home to his parents’ house outside Twig. Though E.J.’d borrowed his medical school books for reference, Sam had had her doubts about what the kid’d been telling his parents about his education. Still and all, best as Pete could see right now, the boy did appear to know his way around a bandage.
Oscar Manning had … manned up, so to speak, and took Viola’s boys who could still walk “into custody,” whatever that meant. What he planned to do with ‘em, Pete didn’t have no idea and didn’t plan to ask. He could hear Viola grumbling and cussing so she’d made it through. Two of her boys didn’t — Obie and Zach. Neb was fine. He’d took one shot at the rooftop, but soon’s bullets started flying, he’d crawled under a parked car and hid.
Pete was sure he knew most of the dead men sprawled out in pools of blood, but he didn’t look at their faces, didn’t have no desire whatsoever to see who they was.
“You might ought to sit down,” Lester said, putting his hand on Pete’s arm.
Reality returned to the world then, no cotton wrapping, nothing muted. He could hear the war zone of pain cries from wounded men, horror cries from women that somebody should have kept out of the street, and the smell of blood and cordite. Across the street, Bri Haggarty stood on the sidewalk, gaping. Pete hadn't seen her in a month of Sundays and he sure hoped none of the dead was her kin. Then the shock on her face blossomed into a huge smile, so if any of them was her people, Bri musta been real glad they’d got shot. Mamie Scully sure wasn’t. She’d knelt down beside one of her boys — he didn’t know which one — and was wailing.
Pete opened his mouth to tell Lester he couldn’t sit down because he was afraid he might not be able to get back up again but didn’t get the chance to say anything — because that’s when he heard it.
Everybody heard it at the same time, turned as one toward t
he end of the block where the unmistakable sound of squalling airbrakes filled the air. They all gawked as the big black bus turned the corner and drove slowly up the street toward them, then stopped in front of where Pete and Lester stood — to keep from running over them, and other people both dead and alive.
The bus was a big sucker, one of them things that had bulging-out tinted windows and side mirrors that hung down like the antenna of an ant. Black and shiny, with the words Cumberland Mountain Tours emblazoned on the side.
The implications of the sight were so staggering that it totally knocked the wind out of everyone on the street and they just stared in slack-jawed amazement. Hadn’t nothing been able to get out of or into Nowhere County since J-Day almost three weeks ago. This bus obviously came from outside, so did that mean …? Had Charlie, Malachi and Sam …?
Pete's gaze yanked back to Bri Haggarty on the other side of the street, a look of joy on her face that'd melt frost off a windowpane. Now that he thought about it, there'd been nobody standing in front of the drug store and then Bri just … appeared, so did that mean … ?
There was a whoosh and a soft whumping sound and the door opened. In the sudden silence on the street, it was easy to hear the sudden hysteria on the bus as passengers got a good look around them. The driver come stumbling down the steps — starched blue uniform with the name Reginald Blackaby stenciled above the right pocket and the bus company logo above the left.
What kinda mama names her baby boy Reginald?
The driver didn’t get all the way out of the bus, paused on the bottom step and looked out at the carnage in horror. Understandable. It wasn’t like he’d been expecting to find a battlefield full of dead and dying people when he’d rounded the corner at the end of the block thirty seconds ago.
Mr. Blackaby looked at Pete and Lester, and Pete saw sudden fear in his eyes. Wasn’t until then that Pete realized he still had his M1 rifle in his hands.
“What …?”
That was it, the only word the man seemed able to form.
“Can we hep you with somethin’?” Pete prompted, and hadn’t meant any humor by it, but when he saw the look on the man’s face and considered the situation, he had to swallow as hard as he could to hold onto a bleat of inappropriate laughter.
Pete’s words shocked a knee-jerk response from the bus driver.
“The map doesn’t show … it’s not on … I’m lost. Where are we?”
“You ain’t nowhere,” Lester said, matter-of-fact as pass the mashed potatoes. “But you ain’t got to the center of it yet. The Middle of Nowhere’s another couple miles down that way.”
Pete turned away then, his shoulders shaking. He thought he was laughing, but then he felt the tears on his cheeks and realized he was crying.
Chapter Thirty-Six
They wouldn’t all fit in Sam or Charlie’s houses, had briefly considered holding the event in the auditorium of the West Liberty Middle School, but ditched that idea quick. Liam had died there. Too many bad memories of that place. Even though Pete Rutherford’s map had been framed and hung permanently on the back wall of the room, it still …
Then Sebastian Nower had stepped forward. Sam didn’t even know how the man knew they were looking for a big place to hold Thanksgiving, but he’d found out somehow and graciously invited all of them to consider using the Nower House.
He didn’t have to ask twice.
In truth, Sam had never been inside the Nower House, had always wanted to see it, and discovered to her delight that it was as ornate and beautiful as she had always imagined it’d be. It stood like a beacon now on Main Street with its fresh coat of paint and the National Historic Landmark sign restored to the front yard. Apparently, Sebastian’s brush with losing his house, however briefly, had made him realize how much it mattered to him. Almost losing a thing has a way of doing that to you.
Charlie’d wanted to pay to have the whole Thanksgiving gig catered, but Sam had said she wanted to do it. Charlie had pointed out, in her no-nonsense Charlie way, that this would not be a small gathering.
“I know you love to cook, can whip up a meal for all the blond men in the Norwegian army in fifteen minutes and not leave a single dirty dish in the sink,” Charlie had said. “But we’re talking fifteen … maybe twenty-five people.” The final number depended on how many of Lester Peetree and Sebastian Nower’s families managed to attend.
And it was a little intimidating, but Sam had forged ahead. Thanksgiving was her hands-down favorite holiday, much better than Christmas because there was none of the hassle. No wreaths/garlands/Christmas lights to haul out and put up. No tree to decorate, gifts to purchase and wrap. Just good food. Lots of good food. And Sam did love to cook.
She was enjoying this a little more than some other Thanksgivings of her life, when she’d dreaded the struggle to fit into her jeans carrying the extra pounds she would put on. This year, she was in deficit. She could eat all the turkey and pecan pie and candied sweet potatoes and mashed-potatoes-and-gravy she wanted. She’d lost fifteen pounds. She didn’t imagine anybody in the county had gained weight in June, but fifteen pounds was a lot even for a woman her size.
“I’ll be in charge of the kitchen and order the rest of you around like a drill instructor,” she’d told Charlie.
Sam had put Malachi in charge of the turkey. He could buy the thing, figure out how to cook it, do the cooking and the carving. All things turkey were his problem. Charlie had gotten light duty. Given that, for her, making toast was a culinary challenge, she’d considered cutting up celery and chestnuts for the dressing a stretch.
Jolene Rutherford, who’d taken what she’d called a “spook sabbatical” to take care of her father, Raylynn Bennett and Thelma Jackson had insisted on bringing “covered dishes.”
Sam leaned over and peeked at the rolls that were browning nicely in the oven — one of three in the Nower House! Sam’s stove had a single oven, limping along. She had to keep a thermometer resting on the rack because the temperature in it waffled up and down like the warble in an off-key soprano.
She straightened up as Merrie plowed through the kitchen, chasing a little dog with white feet that looked like it was wearing gym socks. That one was Poopy. Or maybe Santa Claus. No, Santa Claus had big claws.
Sam could not imagine how the child had talked Charlie into letting her have three puppies! But maybe it was Stuart who had caved, couldn’t resist when the little girl batted those big blue eyes at him.
That man would have done anything to make up for the hurt he had caused his wife and daughter. It had been some colossal mistake, had had something to do with loaning his credit card to his best friend, so he could surprise someone with a trip to Hawaii … or something like that. The explanation had made perfect sense when Charlie had told her about it, but Sam couldn’t remember now. It didn’t matter anymore.
“Twinkle Sparkle, you gots to get back in your kennel,” Merrie cried as she barely avoided a head-on collision with E.J., who was still not steady on his feet, even with a cane.
“Comin’ through,” he cried, trying to clear a pathway for the giggling little girl.
Malachi came up behind Sam and held out a piece of turkey. “Taste test,” he announced, and dangled it above her nose like a treat above a dog.
“What difference does it make how it tastes? It’s not like you can do anything about it now.”
“Ah, but Pizza Hut still delivers.”
He smiled at her and she smiled back. That was all, just a moment and it was over. They were still finding their way, seeing how things worked out, taking nothing for granted. That was enough. More than enough.
Charlie saw Malachi dangle a piece of turkey over Sam’s nose and snatch it away like he was training one of Merrie’s puppies. One of Merrie’s puppies. Charlie shook her head. Stuart had likely wondered how on earth she’d gotten talked into such a thing — and she hadn’t gotten talked into anything. Stuart must have sensed that, because he’d never asked.
&nbs
p; Charlie heard his voice from the other room and stood very still for just a moment, listening. E.J. and Pete had goaded him into telling stories about the Pittsburgh Steelers, not that it took a lot of goading, and she loved the energy she heard in his voice.
It had hurt so bad to think Stuart had …
Charlie wouldn’t go there. The Jabberwock had damaged her in so many ways but like everybody else, she’d been in survival mode at the time and just soldiered through. In the months since, however, she suffered something akin to Malachi’s PTSD. She’d wake up with a jolt, tangled in the skeins of a dream about singing a lullaby outside the locked door of the kiln. She’d sometimes be overwhelmed with a wave of despair, the residue of that awful time, and there was no cure but to go and be near Stuart. She didn’t tell him about it, of course, didn’t admit why she’d suddenly found it absolutely necessary to look for a lost whatever right where he happened to be sitting. She thought he knew, though.
“Merrie, watch where you’re going,” she cried, when the little girl almost bowled E.J. over. Charlie was concerned that he was still so weak, but Sam had been reassuring — said that what he’d been through simply required a long recovery time. The series of rabies shots and his immediate allergic reaction to them had hammered him. In his weakened state, with the obscure staph infection in his leg wound, his blood pressure had tanked and he’d almost died. A full week in the ICU, and another three in the hospital later, he’d emerged rabies free … but looked like a returning prisoner of war. Raylynn had promised she’d come up with yummy deserts to fatten him up.
Raylynn and E.J.
Nobody knew quite what to do with that, including the two of them. He was thirty-two years old. She was seventeen, a teenager — in years only, though. In maturity level, Raylynn Bennett was a strong young woman. She’d had the state police waiting at her house when her father came rolling up the driveway in “After.”
“After” was what they’d all come to call those nightmare crazy days when the Jabberwock disappeared and they all suddenly had to deal with the magnitude of the horror it’d caused.