Far Cry: Absolution

by Urban Waite

  “I’d say we’re at an impasse.”

  Will ran his eyes over Drew. He was watching the horses but Will could tell he was listening, too. “What’s he say?” Will asked Jerome.

  “He says there’s nowhere we can go that Eden’s Gate can’t follow us, and he says wherever we go, and to whoever we find that might help us, their lives are forfeit. He says John will burn buildings to the ground.”

  “John is pleasant that way, isn’t he?”

  Jerome was watching the horses, but he turned now and looked at Will. “We can’t take him or Mary May to my church, or to the bar. Both places would be too easy.”

  “I know it,” Will said. “I don’t think the cabin they gave me would be any better. I think going back to town is out, too. There are too many eyes there watching.”

  “Mary May needs medical attention. We need somewhere to go that she can wash and clean the tattoo John gave her.” Jerome looked to Will. “You need medical attention, too. Drew said you’re sick. He said we shouldn’t put stock in you, that you’re a dead man walking. He said you coughed up blood and nearly passed out right there in front of him. Is that true?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “That doesn’t sound fine to me,” Jerome said.

  “I’m a healer. I just need time and I just need space. We need to get out of here and we need to do it now,” Will said.

  “I don’t know what to do. Drew says that Eden’s Gate is always watching. And I don’t see any reason to think otherwise.”

  “No, I don’t either.” Will looked out on the fields and the houses farther on. He didn’t doubt that even now someone was probably watching. He took a few steps then put a knee down in the grass and placed the shotgun there beside him. He scooped water from the stream and brought it to his face. He washed his cheeks and neck. He dipped his forearm in the water and felt the coolness of the liquid across the broken skin.

  He was still thirsty but he knew he had water in his bag. He stood now and looked to Drew. Something about the whole thing was bothering him. Will thought about Lonny. He thought about the surety the man had right up until he went over the edge. Will picked the shotgun up and walked to where Drew sat. He put the barrel to the man’s chest. “You know something we don’t?” Will asked.

  “They’re going to burn you, Will. They’re going to gut you and string you up with your own intestines and they’re going to burn you when they’re done.”

  “You’re an asshole, Drew.”

  Drew tried to spit on him but the spittle missed and fell harmlessly to the grass.

  “Asshole,” Will said again, stating it like the fact it was. “You notice they didn’t seem to care that when they shot at me, they also shot at you? You should probably think about that.”

  “John is going to find you,” Drew said. “He’s not going to be nice, either. You’re one of us, Will. You’ll always be one of us and there are punishments for those that go against us, for those that accepted The Father and then looked away.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Will said. “But right now we need to clear something up before we get into whatever cluster fuck you seem to think is coming.” He pushed the barrel harder into Drew’s chest and Drew went to the ground. Will now handed the shotgun over to Jerome and told the pastor to hold it on Drew while Will checked him.

  Will ran his hands up one leg then down the other. He patted Drew down across both arms, his chest, his back, and every place Will could think to check. When he was done he stood and stared down at the man and shook his head. “I think he might just be plain crazy,” Will said, taking the shotgun back from Jerome.

  “What did you think you’d find?”

  “A transponder. John was using them in the mountains. He says his eldest brother Jacob uses them to track wolves. I found out the hard way that they also use them to track people.”

  “But you didn’t find one?”

  “No. I would have thought he’d have one the way he’s talking now.”

  “Then we’re okay?” Jerome asked.

  “I guess so. But it still doesn’t solve our current problem.”

  “Where to go?”

  “Yes,” Will said.

  “You got nothing?”

  “I got something,” Will said. “There’s a little food there, and medical supplies. But it’s not ideal. It’s someplace I’ve been avoiding for a long time now. But it might be the best we have.”

  * * *

  SHE WAS AWAKE WHEN THEY STOPPED BEFORE THE GATE. SHE looked out on the hillside. The driveway went on for another hundred yards or so and at the top of the hill she could see the low roof of the house and the dark windows that looked across the property and down over the land beyond.

  “I remember this,” Mary May said.

  Will leaned forward from the backseat. “Your dad brought you and Drew here once or twice when you were really young and your mom was working at the bar. We used to barbeque a little and you and Drew would roll down the hill here. But that was a long time ago—twenty years or more.”

  She could see it held something still for him. She could see why he hadn’t wanted to come here, but he had. For Will there was more locked away in this place than just rooms. “We’ll be safe here?” she asked.

  He looked again on the property. She saw his eyes swim a little in their sockets. The house atop the hill, with its view out across the county road below and the varied patchwork of farmland they could see farther on. “It’s a good place,” he said. “You all see how it backs up to the cliff there and makes it approachable from only one direction.” She watched him look around again, watched his eyes land on the gate and the chain there with the padlock. “It will be good,” he said again. “If they come, we’ll see them before they’re knocking on the doorway.”

  Jerome looked around at Will then back out on the gate. “You have a key for that padlock?” he asked.

  Will shook his head. “Any claim I ever had on this place has long been lost to me. But we won’t need it. I think you’ve taken us far enough,” Will said. “We can’t ask you for anymore. They don’t know you’re with us at this point and I was thinking it might be better for you if we kept it that way.”

  “You’re asking me to leave you here?”

  “I’m saying you should keep yourself safe.”

  “No,” Jerome said. “That’s not how we’re playing this. In the next few days you’re going to need things: food, water, supplies. That sort of thing. I can do that. We’re going to hole up here and after everything dies down a bit I’m going to get the three of you out of here and we’re going to go for help.”

  Mary May looked over at him. “What kind of help?”

  “The sheriff would be a start.”

  “No,” Mary May said. “I think he means well. I really do. I was there just a few days ago. I asked for his help. I told him what I would do. That I was going to go up to Eden’s Gate to get Drew. I didn’t talk to anyone else but him. You get it?”

  “I think I see where this is going,” Will said.

  She turned and looked to Will then to her brother. “John was waiting for me. It was like he knew. He even said he knew why I was going up there,” Mary May said. “I don’t think it was the sheriff but someone told John I was coming. I just couldn’t say who.”

  She watched Drew shrug. He turned and looked out the window. She wanted to say something more but she could see it would do no good.

  The engine was still running and now Jerome reversed the car then brought it down off the drive into a little stand of trees that sat to the side of the gate. “I’m coming with you,” he said, cutting the engine now and taking the keys from the ignition. “When this is done we’ll get out of the county and look for some federal help. I’ve seen enough already to know this place needs it.”

  * * *

  WITH HIS HUNTING KNIFE WILL CUT SLENDER BOUGHS FROM the trees then laid them atop the Oldsmobile. Stepping back he turned and looked the car over. He spoke with J
erome, “It’s the best camouflage I can give.”

  “You’d have to be right up on it to know there was a car here,” Jerome said. He looked around him now, looking to Mary May as if for a second opinion.

  Mary May looked from the car to the gate. “Do you have bolt cutters in the house?”

  Will ran his eyes to the house again. He’d looked up a hundred times at it already, as if he feared it would go away. “I’m not sure what’s up there anymore. We’ll see. There used to be some supplies put away, but I honestly don’t know anymore. I’ll look for a bolt cutter then come back down and cut the lock. Then we can bring the car up away from the road here.”

  “Just shoot it off,” Drew said.

  Will spun to look at the man. Will had in some way forgotten he’d been with them, staying quiet there on the ground where they’d put him after they took everything from within the car. Will shook his head now. “That seems a sure enough way to get your buddies looking out this way.”

  “They’re your buddies, too,” Drew said.

  Will ignored him. He bent and picked up the backpack with his water, snares, traps, and remaining .308 cartridges within. He brought it to the gate and tossed it over. Next he slid the rifle in between the metal gate rails, making sure it was out of anyone’s way.

  Now, he told them to start climbing. They took with them the flak jacket and the shotgun. Jerome helped Mary May to get up and over the gate. Will and Jerome both noticed how hard it seemed for her to move her arms, each pull of muscle or stretch of skin causing her face to change. From what they’d seen of the tattoo they both knew why, in many places, the letters looked carved upon the bone.

  Now, Will bent and lifted Drew up then brought him to the gate. And between the three of them they got him over. Will followed. He looked up at the house again. However it came out in the end, he knew without a doubt that this was where it had all started for him, one way or another, years before.

  He was trying to hide what it meant for him to come back here, but he knew in some ways they must have known. He lifted his rifle and bag then turned back to the group and told them it was time to go. They walked two by two up the hill and though Will hoped to find some salvation here, he did not know what they would find, and though he had forgotten about this place for years, he wondered now if that had been true for all.

  When they came to the top he could see the rope swing was still there beneath the lone tree like it had been when he’d given the property over. He stopped and stared at the two lengths of rope and the wooden seat below. He knew he was here for a reason, but he wondered now why the fear of death had been the deciding factor in his return. He stared at the swing while the others passed him by. When he was able to break free from the spell it had cast upon him, he turned and saw that Mary May, Jerome, and even Drew, were waiting on him, staring back at him from where they stood next to the house.

  “Just taking a trip down memory lane,” Will said. He had said it as a joke but no one laughed and they were all still watching him as he walked up. The single-story house had been left pretty much the same. The paint was chipping and the surrounding land was overgrown. In several places weeds grew out of the gutters, but it was his home still, even now that it wasn’t.

  He’d raised his daughter, Cali, here. He’d put that swing up himself, pushed her in it when she’d been little, watched her play on it when she got older. He looked on it now as if it had no reason to be here, though he knew very well that it did. He gave a piece of himself away when he gave this property to the church, and foolishly he thought he’d be rid of it.

  Under a stone near the door he found the key. After turning the key in the lock he used his shoulder to push the door the rest of the way. The sound of the wood working against the frame was harsh in the relative silence. Shadows were waiting inside and warm trapped-away air ran out and met them where they stood. The air smelling of old locked-away places and the damp unused hint of dirt and mold.

  He stepped in and ran his eyes about the room then took several steps inside, kicking an old beer can that sat there on the floor. He had not seen it and he heard it roll away from him then saw it move into the light of the moon that lay in a square on the living room floor.

  “Looks like you had squatters,” Jerome said. He had come into the room leading Drew behind him, Mary May last. She closed the door now and all of them looked about the place.

  Will had never thought his drinking was as bad as it was until the morning after he had lost them. Even now, looking around, he could see how wrong he’d been about even that—his drinking had been even worse than he had thought. Empty bottles were everywhere, some from before the death of his wife and child, but many more were from after. He would drink them and toss them and, in one corner of the living room, a pile of shattered glass lay from all the bottles he had thrown. In spray paint on the wall above the broken glass was written the single word, MURDERER. Though Will knew they were all thinking it must have been someone else, Will knew he had written it with his own hand, and that he had meant it at the time.

  He wished now that he’d died instead of them. He wished now that he had just pickled himself in alcohol, like he’d tried to do so many days and nights after they’d gone. And though it hurt him to think on it now, he wished they hadn’t loved him as much as they did. Then, he thought, they wouldn’t have been out on that road that night. But even as he thought it he knew it was not the answer. And if he was being truly honest with himself he knew he should have been the one to change.

  “There should be some kerosene lanterns in the kitchen,” Will said now. He looked around on the three of them. He could see the careful study they were giving this place, as if they’d stepped unwelcome into the prison of memories Will had made here. “Top shelf on the right. Matches should be there, too. And if the fuel is gone I think there is some more beneath the sink. At least there should be.”

  They went out of the room and he heard them rummage around, then find the lamps. First one went on then the other, he saw the warm glow build back in there and he heard their talk. There were cans of food and at the bottom of one shelf they found a twelve pack of soda water.

  Will came into the kitchen and saw them laying out the plunder and already he could see that the simple fact of food had put them in a better mood. He tested the faucet but nothing came. Then he tested the stove and there was not a click or spark of any kind. He stepped away and stood trying to figure out what could be done.

  After five minutes, he came back in with the old two-burner camp stove he’d used when he was a young man, freshly back from the war. He found fuel for it as well and after dialing up the fuel pressure, he tried the knob then heard the hiss of gas. With a match, he lit the burner and they all stood there in a bit of wonder while it danced then settled.

  By the time Will had found the medical kit they had started heating green beans and corn in an ancient pan, and on the other burner they had concocted a kind of soup with diced spam and tomato paste, made fluid with water taken from cans of soda.

  “It smells like heaven,” Mary May said. She held the medical kit. “Thank you. I know that it must have been hard to come here.”

  “Twelve years is a long time,” Will said. “I should be okay.”

  “But you aren’t,” she said. “We can see that and that’s okay, too.”

  He looked at her. He had been trying not to meet her eyes. She had lost her mother and her father and maybe even her brother in the span of three weeks and she was the stronger one. He knew that. He could see it just as easily as she could probably see his own pain.

  “My brother,” she said, turning now to where Drew was slumped against one wall of the kitchen, his hands still tied behind him and his legs outspread on the kitchen floor. “I want to untie him. His fingers look blue at the ends. I know he’s hurting.” She had turned back to Will and he watched her and thought about what she was asking him to do.

  Will went over to Drew then dropped down on hi
s haunches and looked the man over. “Your sister says your hands are tied too tight, that true?”

  “You can look at them yourself,” Drew said. He had turned slightly, his eyes cast down to where his arms disappeared behind his back, as if they might share this moment somehow. “I can’t feel anything past the wrists.”

  Will looked at the fingers. What Mary May had told Will was true. They looked a little gray in that light. Will bent and pulled them out so that he could better see them. Now, he looked away, running his vision to Mary May first, then to Jerome.

  Jerome was standing at the two-burner stove, stirring the tomato soup. When Will’s eyes went to him, the man—slowly and deliberately—shook his head in silent opposition to giving this man any freedom to hurt them.

  Will stood now. He went back through the house. When he came back into the kitchen he held a length of climbing rope and some zip ties and a woman’s shirt. He set these on the table just on the other side of the two-burner stove. Jerome was still looking at him, still watching, not saying anything.

  Will dragged one of the chairs from the table and set it there in the center of the room. He looked to Mary May. “I know you love him. I know you want to help him. I want to help him, too. It’s why he’s here and not dead back there at Eden’s Gate. But I also need to tell you that he can’t be trusted. He might be family. He might be all you have left, but right now, in this situation, we really can’t treat him that way.”

  She looked her brother over then looked back at Will. “Then what?”

  Will walked to where the second kerosene lamp sat by the sink. He lifted it up and then, moving back toward her, he picked a can of soda from out of the twelve pack and delivered both to Mary May. “I’m going to untie your brother, but I want you to take that shirt and the supplies and go back there to the bathroom. Start to clean up that tattoo John gave you. I’m going to put Drew in this chair and tie his feet, then his chest, and then I’ll cut his hands free.”

  “And you don’t want me to help?” she asked.

  “No,” Will said. “I don’t want you to help because if Drew gets loose at any time I don’t want you stopping me. Or stopping Jerome. We mean to keep him safe but neither of us trust him. You understand?”