After and Again

by McLellan, Michael

  Frank Olsen looked at Miranda Martin, the one person that he could remember being truly kind to him, lying in an unbelievably large pool of her own blood. He suddenly felt uncertain for the first time since he had done that thing with Sandra Whitehall. “Please.” she implored. He looked at her doubtfully, and then down the hall where Cap Young had gone, and knew that he only had a short time.

  “Godamn Trask got us comin all the way out here for one—” Frank Olsen buried the machete in Cap Young’s skull as Cap walked out of one of the Martin’s bedrooms. He fell to the floor with a thud.

  Frank bent over and pulled the machete from Cap’s head with a grunt, then walked back to the great room and stood over Miranda Martin. “I can’t help you,” he said after a moment, and left the room.

  Frank took the iron tongs from the rack and used them to pull a smoldering piece of wood from the firebox of the kitchen stove. He walked outside, stepping over the body of Toby Martin without a glance, and then entered the barn. He opened the three stalls that held horses and shooed the animals out. He then dropped the chunk of wood into a pile of hay and walked over to Toby Martin’s worktable and picked up a small hand scythe. With a howl of pain he raked the scythe across his midsection from collarbone to hip, leaving a shallow but ugly looking cut. Smoke was beginning to fill the barn. “Good,” he said to no one, and walked out.

  Trask and Taylor had left three horses tied to the fence at the front of the house; his, Cap’s and an extra. He took the reigns of the two riderless horses and mounted his own. Sparing a brief look at the house, Frank Olsen rode away.

  15

  The three riders were less than five miles away when they spotted the smoke. For Zack, the fear was indescribable; it was as if he had been plunged into a recurring nightmare that would repeat itself over and over and over. They pushed the horses, Grace showing what a generous gift she really was as she left the other horses behind, reaching the house well before them. Zack leapt from Grace before she was even fully stopped and saw a body lying at the foot of the porch steps. He ran to the figure; it was Heath Martin, and he was dead, an arrow through his neck. Holly, Kendra and Cassie reigned in with Max right behind them, and ignoring his usual unwillingness to get too close to humans, he paced around the dooryard with his head low, sniffing the ground and growling deeply. Simultaneously, Zack stood up and ran up the porch stairs shouting “Mom, Emily!” And Max, catching the scent he was after, ran around the house toward the burning barn.

  Zack burst into the house heedless of the danger and saw Miranda Martin lying half on the fireplace hearth and half on the floor. He ran to her and kneeled, his pants getting soaked in her blood. She was breathing shallowly and her face had gone the pasty white of bread dough. “Oh Zack, where is Toby and Heath? They took Emily….that horrible giant….and his face, it was….” Zack took her hand in his.

  “Miranda, what happened to you?” Zack asked, not being sure because of all of the blood. She closed her eyes, and was silent of a moment. Zack was dimly aware of the other women now standing behind him.

  “….A man stabbed me….Where is Toby?”

  “I don’t know where Toby is, Miranda. Do you know where my mom is?”

  “Martha and Lisa took….her….fishing…”

  Kendra came around and knelt at the other side of her and started examining her wounds. “It’s getting pretty smoky in here, I think it’s from the barn but why don’t you go check the rooms Cassie,” Kendra said, not looking up from Miranda. After a moment Miranda continued weakly,

  “He wanted to find you….Emily said…you were dead….They took Emily….Oh Toby… Frank Olsen was …”

  Miranda Martin closed her eyes and never opened them again. Zack began to cry and reached his arms around the woman and pulled her up into an embrace. “No no no….”

  he repeated over and over, rocking Miranda Martin’s limp body. He didn’t notice when Holly Sanderson turned and walked out of the front door.

  “Why don’t you come over here and sit down for a minute,” Kendra Goodman said, helping Zack to his feet.

  Zack’s thoughts were in a jumble; how could Trask be alive? He allowed himself to be led to one of the leather-upholstered chairs well away from the hearth. Kendra Goodman took a throw off of one of the sofas and draped it over Miranda Martin’s body.

  “I have to go after Emily,” Zack said, “Kendra, will you ask Lisa Mccarron to look after my mom until I get back?”

  “You’ll have to ask her yourself, Zack, we’re leaving for the time-rip, right now, today,” Holly Sanderson said from where she was standing in the front doorway. “Cassie, go get the gear out of the bedroom.” She was holding Zack’s pistol in one hand and the map in the other.

  “What are you doing, Holly?” Kendra asked, alarmed.

  “I am not waiting another minute!” Holly exclaimed, nearly shouting. “We have to go and stop all of this from ever happening, and I can’t risk Zack having other ideas. Everyone has been running around doing whatever he says like he’s the Prince of All, but he’s just a boy!”

  “A boy who saved your life, and mine ‘n Cassie’s as well, we can’t forget that Holly,” Kendra said.

  “I appreciate what you did, Zack, really, but there’s no sense in even going after Emily because once we go through the time-rip and come back, everything will be back like it was, just come with us and you will be saving Emily, and your mother too.” Zack saw something in Holly Sanderson’s eyes that he didn’t like, something familiar; he recalled how Trask had stood over him saying that he was going to skin him alive. Holly Sanderson, Zack realized, had gone mad.

  “And what is Emily going to have to go through over the next couple of weeks while you’re traveling to the rip?” Zack asked, growing angry now, “and then you don’t even know for sure that you’ll make it there safely, or if it will even really work if you do.”

  “We’ll make it there safely. I’m taking your guns, with or without you. And it will work, everybody heard what the man’s voice on the machine said.” Just then Cassie came through the room, her arms full with travel gear. Holly stood aside to let her out the front door. “Cassie, go to the smokehouse and cut out some meat as well,” Holly ordered.

  “I’ll help her,” Kendra said, moving for the door. “I’m sorry, Zack,” she said, looking at him almost plaintively, “but I have to stick with Holly. We’ll go and make things right….for everybody.” She then hurried past Holly to go and help her daughter pack the horses. Holly stood near the doorway silently for several moments as if trying to remember what she was saying, then said. “We’re really doing the right thing, Zack, I wish that you could see that.” Just then a low growling came from the doorway where the kitchen met the great room. Zack turned and saw Max slowly advancing into the room, head low, and not taking his eyes off of Holly Sanderson. Holly leveled the pistol at the wolf. “You just stay where you are,” she said fearfully while slowly backing through the doorway and clumsily grabbing the knob with the hand that held the map. Once over the threshold she quickly closed the door. Max padded over in front of Zack, just out of arms reach, and stretched his neck out and sniffed the air. He then walked over to Miranda Martin’s covered body and sniffed at it as well. Apparently satisfied—with something, Zack wasn’t sure what—he walked back out the way that he had come.

  Zack sat quietly in the chair, covered in Miranda Martin’s blood, and wept.

  After several minutes, sadness, guilt and despair gave way to the now familiar anger. He would not make the mistake of leaving Trask alive a second time.

  He stood up and walked purposefully to the kitchen. Once there he filled two huge stockpots with water from the cistern in the corner and set them on the stove. He added wood to the embers in the firebox and then stripped off his shirt and threw it in as well. He walked out the back door and found Toby Martin’s body lying in the dirt. Zack was not surprised by the discovery but more tears came anyway. Standing over the body, he was momentarily conflicte
d. The need to leave right away battled with his need to do right by the Martin’s. He couldn’t just leave them lying where they had been murdered.

  The barn had burned most of the way out before he and the women had even arrived at the house. At some point it had collapsed to its left side and caved in a portion of the smokehouse. He would have to look elsewhere for what he wanted. He entered the large fenced off garden and saw the spade leaning up against a pea trellis. After grabbing the spade he looked quickly around for a pick but didn’t see one. He walked back into the house leaving the spade by the porch.

  The water on the stove was barely even warm, which was good he thought, as his next job was going to take awhile.

  Zack lifted Miranda Martin’s body; she was much heavier than he expected, and he struggled to get her over his shoulder. He carried her out the back to the small cemetery that the Martin family had kept for generations. He wasn’t sure if there was a particular place where the Martin’s had intended to be buried, but thought that they would understand if he just chose one.

  He found that he couldn’t lift Toby’s body and was forced to drag him to the cemetery before walking to the front of the house to do the same with Heath’s. Max was lying under the shade of the large oak at the front of the dooryard—the same shade shared by Grace, who seemed to have grown used to the wolf’s presence.

  The earth was not stony and after the first few inches he found that it was still moist from the early spring rains. It took him about an hour for each of the Martin’s graves, and by the time he was finished, anyone who saw him would most likely have run screaming. Every inch of his body was covered in blood and dirt, then streaked and smeared with sweat.

  He walked to one of the two well pumps that the Martin’s had behind their house and primed the pump with the little bucket sitting next to it. He washed off his arms, hands and face, then walked to the front where Grace was tethered. Max raised his head questioningly and then lowered it back to his paws. Zack took his backpack (which had been hung carelessly on the saddle by Holly Sanderson) and the saddlebags then walked back to the house. He noticed that she had taken the rifle that Toby Martin had given him but not the scabbard.

  Sitting on one of the great room sofas he went through the pack. Holly had taken his pistol and the two boxes of ammunition that he brought from the cave, and of course the map. He assumed that she had taken the thirty-thirty ammunition from the leather pouch attached to the rifle scabbard when she had taken the rifle as well. Next he pulled the clothes that he’d taken from the cave out of the saddlebags and laid them on the table in front of him. Then he pulled Trask’s six-shooter from the bottom of the bag. He had meant to see if the bullets from his pistol would fire in the six-shooter but hadn’t gotten to it. He set the pistol aside for later.

  The water had been boiling for some time and the kitchen was filled with steam. He took the pots, one at a time, down to what the Martin’s called the guest bathroom, and dumped them in the bathtub. For convenience the bathroom had a rear door that opened right next to where the second water pump was located. Zack filled one of the pots several times until the bathtub had enough water in it for him to bathe.

  After washing himself, looking at the color of the bath water made him feel queasy. He stepped out of the tub and walked naked out to the pump where he again filled one of the pots, this time dumping it over his head. He repeated this several times until he felt completely rinsed. He returned to the bathroom and examined his bullet wound in the mirror hung over the basin. The front was nearly completely healed and the back, which he could see if he stretched his neck around just right, was about half the size that it had been and there was new pink skin all around it.

  He dressed in the clothes from the cave; the jeans were a little big, but were fine with his belt and the bottoms rolled up a little. A blue and red checkered shirt that buttoned up the middle, and the most wondrously soft socks that his feet had ever felt.

  There was only about two hours of daylight left and as much as Zack wanted to get going he let his better judgement prevail. He didn’t know how long he would be out and needed to pack food, there was the weapon situation to deal with—Zack could shoot a bow well, but doubted his skill against the likes of Trask and his men. Grace had been neglected all day and needed to be fed, and he had to figure out how to get word to Dalia so that she didn’t come back to discover all of this unwarned. He was actually surprised that they didn’t see the smoke from the Sanderson ranch.

  With these things in mind he set back to work, beginning with Grace. He removed the tack, and with a few soft words led the mare around to the back and released her in the pasture. He then walked to the smokehouse and helped himself to two large beef briskets and a smaller ham. He set the meat down on the kitchen counter and cut one of the briskets in half, then took one of the halves to the front porch and called to Max. The wolf got up from his place under the tree and walked to the bottom of the porch steps. “I don’t have a lot of time boy, if you want this, then you better come get it now,” Zack said, calmly but firmly. Max, without any hesitation, walked up the steps, took the meat from Zack’s hand and walked back to his place under the tree. “Dogs,” Zack said, shaking his head.

  The bullets fit perfectly in the six-shooter once Zack figured out how to load it. He had put a log from the woodpile on top of a fence post at the far side of the garden. He was now standing on the opposite side with the heavy pistol aimed at the log. He squeezed the trigger and there was a thunderous report. Satisfied that the bullets from his pistol worked in the six-shooter, but disappointed that he had missed the log, he fired the revolver empty and then reloaded and did it again. He hit the target seven out of twelve times, and was amazed that the bullets knocked the heavy log off of the post every time that he hit it. Not wanting to waste anymore ammunition he released the empty casings, reloaded, and went back to the house.

  Zack opened the door to the Martin’s huge storage room feeling like a thief. Everything in the house now belonged to Dalia Martin. He could only hope that she would understand. He walked over to the big cabinet and opened the doors. He selected the other thirty-thirty and then knelt down and also took three boxes of ammunition. After putting the rifle and ammunition in the great room with his pack and saddlebags, he walked down the hall to the room that he and Jonus had been sharing and gathered up some of his things: a change of clothes, two boxes of ammunition for the pistol (from his first trip to the cave), a straw hat that Heath had given him, a tin cup, and his bedroll. He deposited all of this in the great room as well.

  Zack pulled the mop bucket and mop out of the closet in the kitchen and cleaned the blood off of the fireplace hearth and the wood floor adjacent to it. After that he cleaned out the bathtub.

  He was getting tired but wanted to pack food and have it ready so that he could leave at first light. He put the biscuits that Miranda had baked that morning, the meat from the smokehouse and some dried fruit and preserves in the saddlebags. He wasn’t hungry but ate a little of the ham and some of the cherries that were in a bowl on the kitchen table.

  He awoke on the sofa in the great room with the first light of day peeking in through the windows. Max was lying in front of the sofa and Zack reached his hand down and silently stroked the wolf’s thick coat. Max allowed himself to be petted; I guess were friends now, Zack thought.

  Zack put a pot of coffee on the stove and then added a small amount to his food bundle as well. He took a small piece of charred wood from the firebox before re-igniting it. He guessed that Tal and everyone—thankfully including his mother, would return before Dalia and Jonus. So after sharpening the small piece of charcoal he wrote the following note on the inside of the top half of his pistol box.

  Dear everyone,

  Toby, Miranda, and Heath have been killed by Trask.

  He was alive, but I don’t know how. He took Emily, I am going to look for her with Max.

  I buried the Martins in the cemetery but they need stones and
I had no words, maybe Tal can say something. Holly took my pistol and rifle and map to the time-rip, she was not herself. The Goodmans went too.

  I borrowed another rifle from Toby, I think it was Heath’s, and some food andcoffee. Please take care of my mom.

  Zack.

  Zack deliberated for a moment and then chose to attach his note to the rear door. He put a chair under the knob of the front door to assure that anyone coming to the house would have to use the rear one.

  After quickly drinking a cup of coffee, Zack went to the back with Max padding behind him, and whistled for Grace. The mare came at once and he began saddling her and packing on his supplies.

  Zack was not a tracker, and assumed that Trask would stay on the north/south road at least as far as Auburn. After that it was anyone’s guess and Zack had no idea where or what The Crack even was. Another problem was that he also had no idea how many men Trask had with him. He was going to assume that it was a small party, but he really couldn’t be sure.

  He opened the door to the room that Emily had been using, again feeling like a trespasser, and saw what he wanted at once. Hung on a hook in the corner was the light blue scarf that Emily wore when she worked in the garden with Dalia. Zack put the scarf up to his face smelling, the clean-sweat smell of Emily, and was overcome with heartsickness so strong that he nearly collapsed. He hardened himself instead, and strode out of the room.

  “Here Max, here boy,” he said to the wolf, squatting down and holding out Emily’s scarf. Max walked up and gave the scarf a sniff and then looked up at Zack expectantly, wagging his tail. “We have to find her Max, okay?” Max continued staring at Zack with that same expectant look. “Well, I don’t know if you understand or not, but let’s get going anyway.” He gave the wolf a small portion of meat, then mounted Grace and took a long look at the beloved Martin house. It was one hour after sunrise.