by K. M. Fawkes
Brad was having trouble blinking the persistent haze of gray from in front of his eyes and staying upright wasn’t easy either. He knew that he must be as white as hospital sheets.
Lee’s mouth quirked into a half of a smirk and then he shrugged. “Fine.”
Just as Brad felt his body relax slightly, Lee drew his gun.
“No!” the man yelled, but he barely had time to finish the single syllable.
Chapter 9
The shot seemed to echo for a long time. Brad couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t look at the gaping hole that had been the man’s face. Lee calmly tucked the gun away again.
“My God,” Brad said, swallowing the bile that rose in his throat. “What in the hell were you thinking? Why would you…why would you do this?”
“I’m thinking that’s Garcia’s truck out there,” Lee said, pointing to the pickup that was still running outside. “I’m thinking that they probably killed my friend and took his shit.”
“They might have just found the truck!” Brad protested. “God, you didn’t even give him time to explain!”
“What do you want, Bradley? Did you want me to give him his last rites?” Lee sneered.
“I…”
“I don’t have time for any of your sympathetic bullshit,” Lee went on as he casually began to search through the dead man’s pockets. “There are probably more of them, if this guy really didn’t know where the guns and supplies were. There could be a whole group of people who settled here. We don’t want to run into them.”
“Then we should go,” Brad said, already moving toward the door. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand to look at the men or stand there breathing in the copper scent of their spilled blood. It seemed to coat his tongue and it left him on the verge of gagging.
“Yeah, we’ll go in just a second,” Lee said absently as he continued digging through the dead man’s pockets. “See if that guy has anything worth having on him while I finish with this one. Then we’ll head out.”
Brad didn’t want to take the time to argue so he rifled through the other man’s pockets, trying not to come into contact with the still warm body. The only thing that came to light was a small pistol, which didn’t seem worth it at first. Not considering that a much bigger gun lay just out of the body’s out flung hand.
After a second, though, Brad decided that it might be helpful after all. In his initial horror, he hadn’t realized what a good idea his father’s ankle holster was but now that his heart wasn’t threatening to beat free of his chest, he could see the obvious benefits to it. People didn’t tend to search that far down when they were looking for hidden weaponry.
He glanced from the dead man to the ripped-up couch. There wasn’t anything else of value on the man’s body. There had been some food, but it was soaked with blood now. Brad left the man where he was and pulled a piece of leather free from the couch. He would make a holster like Lee’s to go around his ankle while they drove.
Lee grabbed the body on the couch by the arms and jerked it down, letting the back and legs fall heavily to the floor. Brad, who hadn’t been expecting that, jumped slightly as he pushed the leather strips down into his jacket pocket. Lee began to drag the body away from the couch, moving toward the door.
“What are you doing?” Brad demanded. Surely his father wasn’t about to do what it looked like. Why in the hell would he move the man to the front porch? But even as Brad dismissed the idea as insane, his father opened the intricate series of locks and shoved the door open with his shoulder.
“I wouldn’t want them to miss seeing their friends when they come back,” Lee said as he dropped the body on the front porch steps with a sickeningly heavy thud. “Go on and get in the truck,” he said. “See if the heat works while I get the other one.”
“Lee, I don’t think—”
“Hell, they don’t feel it,” Lee said with a smirk. “The time to worry about how I treated these fuckers is long gone, son.”
“I know, but—”
“Just check on the damn heat.”
Brad walked over the truck, which was still idling in front of the house. Exhaust fumes were pouring out of the tailpipe, adding plumes of white to the growing fog. He wasn’t sure exactly when the weather had changed, but he didn’t like the look of it.
As he stood uncertainly beside the dark blue truck, he watched the fog roll over the ridge that surrounded the small neighborhood. What kind of place had this been before the end of the world? Had they all looked out for each other? Had they been suspicious of the prepper at the end of the road or had they counted on his protection. When he hadn’t been able to save them, had they turned on him or had he simply survived longer than anyone else on the street?
Again, the frustration of questions that were doomed to go unanswered filled him. Brad was the kind of man who liked to know. He tugged open the door and felt a welcome surge of heat from the interior of the old truck. He was shaking, but he wasn’t sure that he could entirely blame that on the cold air.
He stood on the running board for a second before swinging himself into the passenger side of the vehicle. Lee might not have appreciated it or thought that it was necessary, but Brad wanted to watch his back. If there were more people in the town…if they’d heard the shots…they’d be heading this way. Once they saw the bodies, they wouldn’t be very pleased.
Brad knew better than to try and slide in behind the wheel of the truck. In Brad’s memory, his father had never allowed anyone to drive him anywhere. When Brenda’s license had lapsed, Lee had refused to pay the fee to get her a new one because she “never drove him anywhere, anyway.”
He glanced over his shoulder. The fog was growing thicker and Lee was still on the porch. He was searching the body that Brad had searched before. Just like Lee to check behind him. Brad was darkly pleased when Lee came up empty too.
His father stood upright and looked out from the porch. For a second, Brad wondered if he was thinking about heading off in another direction. He wondered what he would do if Lee simply walked away. Part of him didn’t want to think about it. Another part of him knew that he would simply slide behind the wheel and head for the cabin.
Lee jumped down from the porch and then bent down once more. Brad flipped open the glove box and rummaged through, hoping to find a map of some kind. He found a bag of beef jerky and a few napkins, but no map turned up.
When he looked back for his father, he finally saw him walking over to the truck. Lee didn’t even check to see which side Brad was sitting on before he walked to the driver’s side. He dropped into the driver's seat after another long look up the snowy, foggy road.
His fingers were red and it took Brad a moment to realize that it was with cold rather than blood. That was why he was bending down once he had left the porch. He must have wiped his hands off in the snow. Brad was glad that he wouldn’t have to smell the metallic scent of blood during the whole car ride.
As Lee slowly negotiated the sharp turn to head back in the direction that they’d come in, Brad kept his head down, working on the new holster. On the one hand, his father’s quick thinking had possibly saved his life. He couldn’t be sure that those men would have used those guns, but it was a strong possibility given what they’d found in Garcia’s house.
He wished that Lee had waited a few moments, at least until they had some kind of explanation for what was happening and what the men with guns had planned to do with them. What if Vanessa had reacted the same way to Brad falling flat on her porch? What if he had been that quick on the trigger when he’d seen Anna for the first time?
His own hands weren’t clean. In fact, there was much more blood on them than he had ever expected he would manage to gather in his lifetime. But every single life he had taken, he had taken in self-defense.
The man who had shot him in the shoulder had definitely been planning to kill him. The Family members who had burned his cabin out from underneath him had also had pretty damn clear intentions o
f ending Brad’s life. He probably could have stayed alive if he had been willing to bow down to Major Walker’s requests, but he hadn’t been about to acquiesce to a madman. The soldiers that had died in the ensuing explosion had been more than ready to step into the Major’s shoes, so they hadn’t left Brad with a choice, either.
He had never tortured anyone, though. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wouldn’t be able to, even now. If he had to kill someone, he would have to do it quickly, no matter what they had done to him. Before today, he would have said that his father would have done the same.
When had Lee become so ruthless? Brad could still hear that man’s screams in his head. He couldn’t seem to shake the image of his father doing everything he could do be sure that the man died in absolute agony.
Looking back on it now, he couldn’t believe that he had shaken aside his worries this morning, content to consider his father normal just nine hours ago. Had Lee finally gone over the edge?
It had been a worry of Brenda’s, Brad knew. His mother had been constantly on edge when she dropped Brad off to spend summers at the cabin. Was that what she had seen in the future? Had she seen something of the desire to hurt in Lee’s eyes that Brad had missed?
What would happen if things went back to normal? Would his father be able to integrate? Or, if not integrate, would his father be able to accept authority? To at least put up with it the way that he used to? Could a person come back from doing the things that Brad had just seen his father do?
The short answer was that he had no idea. Brad remembered how worried he had been about his own mental state before he had run into his father again. At least this experience put that worry into sharp perspective.
He hadn’t lost his humanity. Moreover, he now vowed that he wouldn’t. No matter what happened to the people around him. He would remain the person that he had always been. Somehow.
The truck lurched suddenly as Lee hit the brakes. Brad looked up, bracing one hand on the dashboard. There were several men standing on both sides of the road. Lee’s mouth quirked. Brad sat up straighter.
“Get down,” Lee said. “They’re not gonna let us out of here easy.”
“What are you going to do?” Brad asked.
“What the hell do you think I’m going to do?” Lee snapped back.
Brad looked around frantically as the men began to raise their guns to their shoulders. They didn’t look like anything he had ever seen in a store. So they had broken into Garcia’s stash.
“No, Lee,” he said sharply when his father began to push the gas a little harder. “I saw the tires on this thing. You can go up the bank over there, it’s low enough.”
“And what? Drive through the damn forest?” Lee snarled. “It’s a hell of a lot easier to—”
“Easier isn’t better, you said it yourself! You can cut back over there,” Brad said, pointing to another clearing that had clearly been a walking trail at some point. It was hard to see because of the thickening fog, but he could make it out anyway. “You’ll be out of their range in a minute or two and then you can get right back on the road and we can get out of here. They don’t have a damn thing to gain from following us.”
Just revenge. But hopefully the men didn’t know exactly what his father had done to their companions. Unless they’d had a spy, they couldn’t know just yet.
“Those are Garcia’s guns,” Lee said, his jaw tight and his voice ragged.
“And killing them won’t bring him back!” Brad said quickly. “Don’t do this, Lee.”
A big man in fatigues raised his gun. At the very last second, Lee turned and gunned the engine. The truck roared up the embankment, the tires crunching as they gripped onto the rougher terrain.
Brad gripped the dashboard, his knuckles white as Lee fought a skid. Finally, so roughly that Brad’s shoulder bounced off of the door, Lee jerked the truck back under control.
They could both hear the guns going off as Lee sped along the top of the ridge. Brad ducked down, fully expecting a bullet to come crashing through the glass any second. But it didn’t. His stomach felt like it was dropping out as they jounced down the next ridge and hit the snow-covered pavement again.
Lee floored it and they left the crowd behind in the fog. He was driving dangerously fast, so Brad kept his grip tight on the dashboard. He knew better than to speak, so he stayed silent. Eventually the pressure would be too much. His father wasn’t the kind of man who could hold everything in and remain silent.
“What the hell was your problem with me taking those bastards out?” Lee finally demanded when they were a few miles outside of Ashland.
“What was the point of it?” Brad asked, trying to sound logical.
“They killed my friend,” Lee snarled.
“We don’t know that.”
“I’d say that them having his truck and his guns is a pretty goddamn good indication, wouldn’t you?”
Brad shrugged. “Maybe it is, but how can we know for sure?”
“What else could it mean?” Lee shouted, banging his fist so suddenly on the steering wheel that Brad jumped. “Do you think that Garcia invited them in for a fucking tea party? That he just let them take whatever they wanted out of the goodness of his heart? That maybe he gave himself a little paper cut and he’s in one of their houses recuperating?”
Brad felt his own jaw going tight. “I don’t know where Garcia is,” he said. “Obviously. But don’t you think that it’s possible that he’s long gone?”
“You saw his house!” Lee shouted. “You saw that it had been occupied pretty damn recently! Jesus, didn’t you learn anything that I tried to drill into your thick skull?”
“Yes,” Brad said. “I did. The house was clearly occupied recently. Someone had been eating the food and the bed had clearly been slept in—”
“Excellent work, Sherlock,” Lee cut in.
Brad let out a long breath. “But that doesn’t mean that your friend Garcia was the one who was eating the food and sleeping in the bed,” he finished.
“And just where else would he be?” his father demanded angrily. “Garcia wouldn’t have been anywhere but at that house, Bradley. He just wouldn’t have. He had everything worked out; he had everything planned for something just like this! He wouldn’t have gone away now that it finally happened!”
As Lee spoke the proclamation, he took a sharp curve in the road. The tires skidded and Brad held his breath as they approached an embankment at high speed. It took a lot for his father to put the truck back on the right course this time.
“And I didn’t think that you’d be anywhere but at your cabin,” Brad shouted back, finally losing control. “But you were all over the goddamn place! Garcia could have gone anywhere on God’s green earth! You all might have had your plans, but some of them didn’t amount to shit and it’s time that you accepted it! Maybe those people killed him, but there is a good chance that they didn’t and it wasn’t worth murdering them just in case! And you need to either slow down or let me drive because I’m not going to die while you throw a goddam temper tantrum!”
Lee was silent for a long moment. Brad could hear his own harsh breathing as he waited for his father to speak. The truck slowed to a more reasonable pace as Lee lifted his foot from the accelerator.
“How many people have you killed, Bradley?” he asked suddenly.
Brad stared at his father, but Lee didn't turn to look at him. “What?” he asked.
“When I asked you about Jamie, you said that you’d killed people.”
“What difference does it make?” Brad asked. “I killed in self-defense.”
“And you think that somehow that makes you better?”
Brad sighed. He hadn’t managed to get through to Lee. It shouldn’t have been a surprise—he had never managed to make a real impact during the talks they had had when he was growing up—but in a way it still was.
“Yeah,” he said heavily. “If you want the truth. Yeah, I do think it makes me better. I thin
k that it makes me human. I don’t want to lose that.”
Lee made a scoffing noise low in his throat. “What the hell does human mean anyway?” he asked.
“I don’t know what it means for everybody else,” Brad said honestly, watching the trees move past at a comfortable forty-five miles per hour instead of the blazing seventy that the truck had been doing. He adjusted one of the heater vents so that it blew into his cupped hands. “I can only tell you what it means to me.”
“Go ahead, then,” Lee said. “Let’s waste time with a little philosophy class since you care about your fellow man so damn much.”
“It would be easy to give in and be afraid,” Brad said, refusing to rise to the bait. “It would be easy to try to take out as many of the other guy as I can. But I’m the other guy to them. And we’re all going to need to work together if we want to rebuild—”
Lee scoffed again. “Rebuild what?” he asked.
“Society,” Brad said. “Don’t you want that? Don’t you want things to be like they were before?”
“No,” his father said flatly. He never took his eyes off of the road, but Brad saw them narrow. “The last thing that I want is to rebuild what I finally escaped from. I don’t know why the hell you would.”
“Because I liked my life,” Brad said. “I worked hard to get to where I was and it made me happy. I’d like to know what that was like again.”
“What did you even do?” Lee asked.
Brad blinked, stung. He had learned much worse things about his father today than the fact that he hadn’t paid a damn bit of attention when Brad talked about his former career, but it still wasn’t fun to hear.
“I was a veterinarian,” he said.
“At least you picked something halfway useful to do,” Lee muttered.
“Thanks for the approval.”
Lee only shrugged. Brad was content to let silence fall between them. His father kept his eyes on the road as Brad worked with the leather holster for the small caliber pistol he had picked up from the man in Garcia’s house.
With nothing else to distract him, he managed to finish it on the drive with no problems. Brad braced his foot on the seat and strapped the fun to his ankle, making sure that the holster was tight enough to stay in place and loose enough not to cut off his circulation.