by Urban Waite
“I’m on your side,” she said. “I could help.” She looked past him to Drew and Will turned to see Drew watching all of this with amusement.
“I know that,” Will said. “But things change quickly. It’s why John sent Drew away when he started tattooing you. And it’s why I’m sending you away now. Family makes people do strange things. That’s all.”
She looked around at all three of them, then she agreed. They watched her go down the hallway to the bathroom. The light from the lamp, refracted off the walls of the hallway, was the only thing to follow after she had gone. Then, far down, Will heard the sound of the bathroom door closing and afterwards there was no light to be seen at all.
Will brought Drew to his feet then walked him to the chair and set him down again. Jerome had already taken up the shotgun and angled off to the right for a clear shot that would not hit Will if Drew did decide to fight them. Will cut a length of rope away then tied it around the back of the chair, securing it in among the wood. Then he tied Drew’s arms down at the elbows, looped the rope across his chest, and tied it all taut behind. He did the same to his ankles, looping the separate length of rope about the chair legs before securing each ankle to each chair leg. Only afterwards did Will cut the electrical cord from about Drew’s wrists. The rope around his chest and arms was loose enough that he could, with difficulty, bring his arms around and set them on either thigh.
Will tested each rope then stepped back. He looked to Jerome then motioned for Jerome to lower the shotgun.
Drew sat there working his hands open and closed, repeating it over and over again. He looked straight at Will and smiled. “See, you can trust me,” he said.
Will turned away. He found several thick blankets and some nails then tacked the blankets up across the front windows to block what light came from the lamp and the cooking. He was nearly done with this when he looked out the front window on the tree there and the swing moving slightly in the night breeze that came up the hill.
He let that vision pour into him for a time, memories in his head and the knot they created in his throat and in the muscles of his stomach. Then, in only a whisper, he said, “I hope wherever the two of you are you’ve made a life of it better than I ever could.” He let that hang in the air for a while, then he reached up and hammered in the last nail.
* * *
IN THE MEDICAL KIT SHE FOUND GAUZE AND ALCOHOL. SHE found things like scissors and bandages, an ACE wrap, and the little metal clips that went along with it. She laid this all out before her on the bathroom counter. The light of the lamp flickering ever so in the stillness of the bathroom, causing each of the items and even the medical kit itself to wax and wane in shadow on the bathroom wall.
She listened for a time but she heard no struggle and she assumed everything had gone okay and even now her brother sat on the chair, his hands free. Mary May did not blame Will for the way he’d talked to her. She knew it was true, she knew when it came down to family, people did irrational things.
“Like crash their pickup truck and run into the mountains for a day or two,” the woman in the mirror said to her, looking at her out of the lamplit gloom.
“John did try to give you an out,” she said to herself. “He tried to tell you not to go up that mountain but then you did anyway and now you have this to deal with for the rest of your life.” She pried one edge of her shirt down and away from her skin. It was stuck in places from either the blood or sweat that had dried there. She looked the word over. It was barely even visible with all the dirt and dust she had on her, and that stuck on her as if she was some fool from yesteryear who had let themselves be tarred and feathered.
She picked up the scissors now and cut the shirt all the way down then shucked it from off her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. She found the can of soda water Will had given her. She cracked the top, poured a little over some of the gauze, and began to wipe it down her chest. She followed the edges of the letters, not wanting to directly touch them yet, the skin beneath the dirt and blood looking red and swollen.
When she was done she brought out a separate swath of gauze, poured alcohol over it and then started in again, wincing with the pain, sometimes crying out as the alcohol touched the raw skin. When she was done she stood unmoving at the mirror, looking at the word there in the lamplight. The tattoo was dark on the skin, she could see in some places how John had gone over it several times, and then in other places she saw how he had used a lighter touch. The effect gave the tattoo a loose and somewhat lopsided appearance, like the drawings of a child.
ENVY. She closed her eyes, hoping in some way it would not be there when she opened them again. But it was there, spanning the skin between her collarbone and the beginnings of her bra, marking her. She thought about what John had said to her as he had put the sin across her chest. She knew she would not forget, but she knew, too, that the way she thought about it and the way John had intended it were two completely different things. She would not forget, and if John had killed her daddy, Mary May was certain she would come for John first.
She slipped one bra strap off, then the other. She kept the back clasped and began to press clean bandages down across the red and swollen skin. If she had lotion or some sort of ointment she would have used it, but everything she turned up was old and had separated within the bottle and certainly could not be trusted. Next, she wrapped the ACE bandage and secured it with the clips. It looked all right. Not professionally done but it worked for what it was.
She put the straps of the bra back over her shoulders then picked up the shirt Will had given her. She put the still-folded garment to her nose. Dust and locked-away places. Mildew, and the faint smell of another woman’s perfume. It was his wife’s and she’d known that since he’d brought it out to her. Now, Mary May let it fall full before her. A gray button-up blouse. She knew he’d picked it out because it would not sit atop the tattoo, but still it was not like the T-shirts she was accustomed to. She put it on and turned and looked herself over. It was almost as if she were someone else. It was almost as if it hadn’t happened, but she knew no shirt could erase the tattoo from her mind, it would always be with her, however she chose to try and hide it.
When she opened the door and came out with the lamp held before her, she could smell the cooking. There was the sound of metal silverware and the low talking of the men. She walked forward but then stopped. In the living room the windows had all been covered with thick blankets, but the lightest of them showed a slight red flicker, like light seen on the bottom of a pool, diffuse and distant. She knew though that this was not light on the bottom of a pool, or anything as pleasant as that.
By the time she reached the window she was sure of it, something was burning. There was a faint smell in the air that had not been there before, rubber or something acrylic. She now had the blanket in hand and she parted it from the window and looked out. The fire lit the night up and the smoke rolled and billowed black into the sky, the flames licking upwards at a height of twenty or thirty feet. All of this was down at the edge of the property. Something had been set afire there at the gate, the flames rising and spreading upward into the trees overhead.
* * *
IT WAS JEROME’S CAR. WILL PUT THE SCOPE ON IT AND WATCHED the flames licking upward to the trees above. Many of the branches were now aflame and the thermals were working upward among the tree boughs and causing them to curl inward and dance in cruel fashion, like the last dying moments of some spider clutching at the air in spasm.
Will dropped the scope and moved back from the window. He had seen nothing but the car afire, windows no more than red flame and the dark exterior of the car burned an ashen gray beneath the moon. He had seen no one, but it did not mean they were not out there—they were. If the tattooed skins stapled to the walls had been any indication, it was likely John was there and many, many more.
When Will turned now, they were all waiting on him. Mary May right next to him, Jerome halfway across the room, and eve
n Drew back there in the kitchen, still tied to his chair. “Get your shit,” Will said to all of them.
He watched them staring back at him, seeing in them his own baffled expression. They had thought themselves safe. They had thought themselves free in that moment, but they had not been, and never had been, and it was Drew all the while who had been right. Eden’s Gate would come for them and there was nowhere they could hide.
“Come on,” Will said. “We need to go. There’s no time left.” He moved to where he’d dropped his bag. He brought out the box of rifle cartridges and emptied the contents into his pockets then stood, bringing the bag up with him. He was back at the window in another second. He put the scope out there on the night again, and he had to still the rattle of his nerves that now ran through him like a freight train.
Out there in the night, seen through the scope, was a mass of twenty or thirty people. All armed, all moving up the hill, fanning out around the property from one side to the other. And leading them was John. His dark shape and the dark shapes of those behind all lit by the rising flames, each among them like the Devil’s own hellspawn set forth upon the world, walking ever nearer.
Will turned again and caught sight of Mary May, she was at the other window looking out, watching as Eden’s Gate approached. She had stuck the .38 down the front of her waistband. She let the blanket drop and Will met her halfway across the room and together they found Jerome in the kitchen, standing over Drew with an old kitchen knife held in one hand.
“What should I do?” Jerome asked. “Should I cut him loose? We need to run. We already might be trapped.”
Will looked to Jerome, looked at the knife then turned and looked back at the diffuse light of flame seen everywhere now at the windows, as if the whole of the property were on fire and not just the stand of trees there at the bottom of the drive. “We could let him go,” Will said. “We should. There’s a way to get out of here, but we couldn’t carry him and we couldn’t trust him to move as fast as we need to go.” He turned back to them now. He looked from face to face, he could see the fear in each of them and he wondered if he was the only one who still thought they might live through this.
“I’m not leaving him,” Mary May said.
Will turned sharply. He had little to say to this that he hadn’t already said. Family made people do strange things, and though he thought in that instant she couldn’t be more wrong, he also understood. Will would have fought through hell and back if he thought he could save his wife or daughter and preserve what little he had left.
“Okay,” Will said. He didn’t argue. He just went across the room as fast as he could, picked up the flak jacket and shotgun and shoved them toward Jerome and told the pastor they needed to hustle the fuck on.
Jerome looked wildly at Will but soon he had set the knife down and taken up the flak jacket in one hand and held the shotgun in the other. He looked back at Mary May now. “You should take this,” he said to her, holding up the flak jacket.
“No,” she said. “You should. If they mean to kill me they’ll do it. No vest is going to stop that.”
Will waited a half second, even though there was not a half second to give in this world and each passing moment brought them a little closer to whatever it was that was coming. He looked at Mary May. “Use the zip ties on the table there for his hands and then cut him loose from the chair. Get him outside and in front of John. Don’t let them inside here. You want to be in the open where more eyes are on you. John could have killed you at Eden’s Gate but he didn’t, that might still count for something now.”
That was all the time he had for a good-bye and he went out the back door now with Jerome following. They came out into the night and the rough gravel there and looked about them, somewhat in wonder that they were still alone and no member of Eden’s Gate stood waiting for them.
Grass grew in clumps here and there, but it was patchy at best with the shade of the house on one side and the rock cliff another twenty feet away leaving much of the land in shadow. The property itself was sloped and ran toward the road below. Will knew this. He knew every inch of this land and though it had been years since he had walked it, he still knew which way to go.
He crossed over the barren earth quickly and came to the face of the cliff just as fast. Jerome came shortly after, still carrying the flak jacket in one hand and the shotgun in the other. When he reached Will he glanced back at the house and the red sky farther on that was not daylight or dawn, but the burning of his own car in the darkness of the night. “We shouldn’t have left her there alone,” Jerome said.
Will kept running his hands up and over the rock face, he was looking it over, trying to retrace a path he’d taken years and years before. “I’m not leaving her,” Will said now, finding the first handhold on the rock. “I’m climbing to the top of this thing. If she gets Drew outside I should have a shot on any who try to hurt her.”
Jerome looked up at the cliff.
“My daughter discovered this when she was just eight years old,” Will said. “There’s hand and footholds for the first ten feet, and then we can sort of scramble our way to the top from there.”
“You won’t let anything happen to Mary May?” Jerome asked.
“If it comes down to it I’ll use every bullet I have.” He turned and looked Jerome over. The man had been at war but he looked now more like a civilian than anything Will remembered from his own time. “Give me the shotgun and put that vest on.”
Jerome handed the shotgun over and Will strapped it down on the side of his pack then started up the rock face, using the hand and footholds he knew were there. Jerome tightened the vest down across his chest and soon was following.
* * *
“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS,” DREW SAID.
He sat in the chair and one at a time she brought his hands forward on his lap, while his arms and chest were still secured beneath the rope. She zip-tied Drew’s hands together at the wrists then sawed the knife back and forth across the ropes until they came loose. He stood now and she took the .38 from her waist, held it on him, and said, “I’m trying to save your life. Can’t you see that?”
Drew smiled at her. “And I’m trying to save yours,” he said.
She didn’t know what to say to that. She thought of the young herder in the mountains. She thought about what he had said to her, “I hope you mean the same to him as he means to you.” She did not know if that was true anymore. But she still wanted it to be.
She motioned toward the living room and the door there and he began to walk. She set the knife down as she passed the little table they had used for cooking. She followed him now with their father’s .38 pointed directly at Drew’s back. He put his bound hands on the doorknob then turned back to her, waiting on her go. “We leave this place and there’s no going back,” he said.
“There was no going back a long time ago,” she said. “We passed that when Daddy died trying to get you off the mountain.” She parted the blanket from the frame and looked out. John was waiting there. They had come nearly all the way up the hill now and they stood fifty feet away, twenty of them, if not more. All of them waiting on her as if they knew already she would come.
She went to Drew and placed the gun to his back and told him to turn the doorknob slow and let them out. They came out of the house linked this way, Drew out front and Mary May behind, holding the gun on Drew and walking after him.
Immediately she felt outside her element, sweat began to stand atop her skin and the feeling now was one of complete and utter terror. The line of people, women and men, constricting now upon her, all with weapons and all moving inward to encircle her as she went.
Mary May kept looking around at all the faces, half were people she knew—or thought she knew. One of her elementary school teachers was there. A couple farm workers she recognized from the bar that had not been in for years. A rancher her father had run cows for once upon a time. Many she knew by name and many more she knew by sight. These
were people she might have said hello to on an afternoon, passing down the road like anyone else. She could hardly believe it. Drew had been right, Eden’s Gate was everywhere. It was a virus, attacking any that came in contact with it and like any newly discovered virus it was slowly taking over before the cure could be found. She looked ahead of her now to where John stood, waiting on her and Drew.
“What’s your plan here?” John called to her. He had done nothing but stand there and watch the two of them move toward him as Mary May pushed at Drew. Her nerves laced so tight within her that they might snap just from simply breathing.
“We’re walking out of here,” she said, still moving, but feeling at each step that the faces around her were closing in. She stopped now, seeing no opening in the crowd. She had thought in some way she’d be able to make one, that she’d wave the .38 around and they would part and she and Drew would just walk through. Now she stopped and she felt each and every one of them around her. She spun, holding the gun in her hand, keeping it low, but her eyes reaching out to each. “You know me,” she said. “Some of you knew my parents. My family. You have to see this isn’t right.”
None of them said a thing to her and she spun again, the gun held a little higher. The faces that surrounded her were unchanged, cold as stone and just as unforgiving.
“Careful now,” John said. “We’re not the killers you think we are. We’re farmers, we’re shop owners, loggers, mill workers, delivery drivers, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. We’re like you. All of us. We’re not killers like you think, so don’t go waving that gun around. You might make someone jump who would rather not. Then where would we be?”
She held to her brother’s shoulder now and kept the gun half raised. “How did you find us?” she asked.
“Finding you would imply we lost you to begin with,” John said. He gave a wide look at the crowd around her. She was cut off now from the house and she could see each of them carried a weapon, from baseball bats to machetes to shotguns and assault rifles, they were armed not like any farmer or logger or anything else Mary May had ever seen. “Our people are always watching,” John continued. “They’re from every walk of life imaginable. Our faith is what unites us and our loyalty to one another is absolute. If someone attacks us, we attack back.”