He squinted, and the person holding the flashlight stepped up to him.
“You killed my boy,” the man said, dropping the hand holding the flashlight to his side. Turning it off and pocketing it. He stared at Daniel in the scattered moonlight. Blinded by the flashlight’s beam, it took a minute for Daniel to take in the full shape of man. He was tall and bald, and his grey beard hung in what looked like a triple-braid down his chest and across his fat gut.
“Eh,” Daniel said. He cleared his throat, said the only thing that came to mind. “Fuck you.”
“Oh, stop that,” the man said. His voice was soothing, calm. “I’ll bet you’re smarter than that, son.”
“Huh-huh-huh,” Daniel said, and realized that he was shaking. Samson stood close behind the man who Daniel assumed was his father. Daniel let his head hang forward.
“You killed Marcus,” the man said. Stepping closer. His breath reeked. “Marcus wasn’t very smart, but he was my son, and you killed him. He’s the second child I lost since all of this started.”
“Good,” Daniel said. His mouth was dry. This was a shame. He wanted to spit in the creep’s face.
The man seized Daniel’s hair in his left hand and slammed the back of his head against the tree. With his right he pressed the barrel of a small revolver to Daniel’s cheek.
“Do it,” Daniel said.
“Not a chance, little boy,” the man said. He stepped back and holstered his gun. “You’re gonna die tomorrow morning, badly, and I just want you to spend the next few hours thinking about that, okay?”
Thirteen
“Brock?” Kimberly said, staring into Colleen’s face. They were somewhere; she didn’t know where. Maybe in one of the three small cabins, impossible to be sure.
Her friend stared back, but her eyes were empty. There was blood on Colleen’s face, a thick crimson stipple and a small drying coil of something on her right cheek.
“Come on, Brock,” but Brock had nothing to say. She just stared and stared, and sometimes her eyes fluttered shut, but mostly she just stared, silent and unmoving except for her bottom lip—it quivered once or twice.
At some point, a semblance of clarity returned to her eyes, and Kim thought that she’d gotten through. That was important, getting through to her friend. If she got through, they could figure out how to get out of this.
She never got through. They came and took Colleen, who mumbled and screeched and slapped her own face, and Kim lay alone, her hands and ankles bound, but she was not alone for long.
“You’re not good enough for my daddy,” one of them said, and soon she learned that he was Daniel’s brother, Jacob.
“You’re good enough for me, though,” he said, grinning, and Kim screamed and struggled against the ropes binding her ankles and wrists. “Oh, yeah.”
She cried and she screamed some more, and Jacob freed her hands and her ankles and wrists and waved a gun in her face. She stared into the barrel and knew it would be better if the bastard pulled the trigger but she wasn’t brave enough to wish for it.
He didn’t. Instead, he led her into the forest and to a house of doors, where he bound her to a stinking and stained cot. She wept and she screamed and she wanted to sink her fingernails into his eyes, but the gun was in her face and that was really all it took. She let it happen, God help her—she allowed him to bind her to the cot, and that was it, at least she was still alive. She had a chance yet, she just had to take it. If she fought, she’d be dead.
There were two dead bodies in the house of doors. They hung writhing from chains and Jacob bragged that it was so easy, driving down to Santa Cruz and picking up homosexual men and taking them back here. No one cared about them; no one ever looked for missing fags.
And no, he wasn’t one, he told her, slamming the handle of his gun into her face, breaking her nose, and that’s when she realized that she probably should have fought back or simply refused to lie on the cot. At the very least, she’d be dead.
They carried Colleen through the forest. She kicked and she screamed, and the trees spun and jerked and marched by in a blur. There was pain, distant and dull, and there were faces, enraged and scowling and cursing. Samson was no longer among them, she knew that much. There were four or five or six of them, she did not know how many, but she knew that one of them was dead. His blood was cool and tacky on her face. She’d looked into the open ruin of his chest, her ears ringing, the air heavy with the reek of gunpowder and blood and shit.
“That bastard,” one of them said, and it sounded to Colleen as if he were crying.
“Fucking bastard,” someone else said. “Fuck.”
Her head jerked to the right, hard.
“Don’t hit her again,” someone said, but the words didn’t really make sense to her. She slept for a while, and for a time Kimberly was there and then she wasn’t, and when Colleen opened her eyes there was no night and no day, only darkness. She lay in darkness, seemingly alone, a soft mattress beneath her. There was a pillow beneath her head. She rolled onto her side, pressed her face into the pillow and inhaled. Fresh. It smelled so fresh, like home, and soon she would be slaughtered. The world and hell had switched places, they were all going to die like animals, and she was lying in a freshly made bed that smelled like fabric softener.
Forms churned in the dark, not-really-there afterimages like birthday party flash-burns taking shape, and with them the ghosts of sensations. The feel of Guy in her mouth, and his smell, his unwashed smell in her nose, the little soft mound of flesh below his navel pressed to her face, the hairs tickling her nostrils, and then the knife and the screams, the thunder and the blood.
What the hell had happened?
Colleen closed her eyes, for what it was worth, which was nothing: she could still see Guy’s penis lying in the dirt, see a work-boot clad foot coming down onto it. She slapped at her face and screamed until screaming wasn’t really possible anymore. She didn’t fall asleep so much as shut down, and, mercifully, she did not dream.
She opened her eyes. Her left arm was extended, her hand resting on what could only be a bedside table, the small room in which she laid cast in the cool hues of early morning. Thin curtains covered the small room’s only window. They fluttered. The air was fresh. She smelled dew and grass and dirt.
She sat up, looked around. There was a lamp on the bedside table. She turned it on. There was a door leading outside and a door leading to what she assumed was a bathroom. There was a chair in the corner and a glass of water beside the lamp. She brought it to her lips, and only after it was half gone did she consider that it may have been spiked with something. She considered it, and decided it didn’t matter. Things could not get worse, she reasoned, and finished the rest of the water.
She looked down at herself. She still wore her jeans. They were filthy, the crotch dark with menstrual blood. She remembered Guy, the knife, and the flash of red blossoming just before she’d squeezed shut her eyes. Her stomach hitched, and the water she’d just swallowed arced out of her mouth and onto the floor. The strength to stand left her and she collapsed onto the bed, moaning.
Time passed. She went away again, and when she came back, it was brighter. There was a new smell in the room—cheap cologne. She sat up. Two people stood, watching her. A man of maybe sixty-five, tall and bald and built like a fortress, a fluffy grey beard hanging down to his stomach. A woman, early fifties, her dark hair pulled back from her face, her body concealed in a shapeless red dress that looked homemade.
“How are you feeling?” The man said, pulling up the chair from the corner. It creaked beneath his weight. The woman remained behind him.
Colleen’s head swam. Her gaze drifted from the man and the woman to the lamp. She lay on her side, staring at it. Guy’s screams seemed to have gotten trapped in her head, bounced around, kicked up echoes of echoes. The smell of blood was in her nose.
The woman stepped toward Colleen, sat down beside her, reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away, let her hand be
held, but regarded the new hands holding her own like the jaws of a pit bull playing nice.
“I’m Huffington Niebolt, Sam’s dad,” said the man with the craggy face and the ridiculous beard. “But they all just call me Huff, so you can, too, okay?”
Colleen’s body rattled. She was shaking now. When had that begun, and when would it stop? The woman scooted closer, put an arm around her. “Shhh,” she whispered. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”
“This is my wife, Embeth,” The man said, and Colleen allowed her eyes to drift from the lamp and to his face. He smiled. His perfect teeth seemed out of place in the weathered, wrinkled bed of his face. “She’s going to take care of you, okay? Get you all cleaned up. What’s your name?”
Colleen closed her eyes, pressed her face into her hands. Her chest heaved once, twice, and the tears came.
“You’re upset, I understand,” the man said. “I’m upset, too. This is hard enough for you, I know, without everything else that’s going on. But we have to work together here, okay? What’s your name, honey?”
Colleen allowed the woman to guide her into a sitting position. She touched Colleen’s chin, gave it a little nudge upward. “Tell him.”
“Cuh,” Colleen said through her tears, snot bubbling from her nose. She tried again, her words barely a mumble.
“Colleen? A pretty name for a pretty girl,” he said. “Am I right, Beth?”
“Yes,” the woman said. She stroked Colleen’s hair from her face, wiped her eyes and nose with a soft cloth.
“And the other girl? Kimberly, is it?”
Colleen looked up, met his gaze for the first time.
“Fu-fu-fuh,” she said, her eyes losing focus.
Huffington Niebolt smiled, shook his head. “What is it with you kids and your potty mouths? My boys are all the same way. It’s all fuck this and fuck that, man. Fuck you and fuck me.” He laughed, and it was the warm and welcoming laugh of a favorite uncle.
Colleen crushed her eyes shut and started keening, crushed her hands into each other and used them joined to beat her chest as she howled and the howl turned into a long, strained gasp.
“Okay, listen here,” he clapped his hands once, rubbed them together. “This isn’t going anywhere, but that’s okay. You’re a little messed up right now, and who can blame you? I don’t know what the hell is going on out there in the world, but I can promise you this. It will not reach us here. We’re safe.”
She heard the chair creak, heard his footfalls moving toward her, felt his fingers beneath her chin. He smelled of soap and cologne and mouthwash. Colleen looked up at him. She tensed, and the woman, her right arm around Colleen, pinned Colleen’s hands to her lap with her left hand.
“I got someplace to be this morning. Work to do. Gotta bury my boy. The one your brother killed.”
Colleen gasped. The man’s eyes widened.
“You didn’t know?” He asked, genuinely surprised. He seemed to think about it for a second, then shrugged. “Makes sense, I guess. From the sound of it, things were out of hand.” His face darkened. “You were not supposed to see what you saw. You weren’t supposed to be forced to do what they forced you to do, darling, and I want you to know that I’m sorry.
“My boys can get a little crazy when I’m not around.” He took a deep breath. “They don’t always listen to me, and one of them paid for it with his life because of this.”
He stood up, scooted his chair back into the corner and stepped toward the door.
“I lost another son, too, you know? My youngest.” he said, looking back. “Him I don’t get to bury. Now clean yourself up and take a look around afterwards. We’ve got a nice place here.”
Huffington Niebolt left, closing the door behind him. Colleen wept until no tears would come, and the woman remained at her side, holding her hand. She stopped crying, drifting away once more, the world retreating.
“Come on, honey,” the woman said, startling her.
“Huh?”
“You really need to get cleaned up. Down there especially,” the woman said, once more easing Colleen into a sitting position. “Don’t want to get an infection.”
She stood, allowed herself to be led from the bed and to the bathroom, where the woman turned on the shower and peeled away Colleen’s clothes, balling them up and putting them on the floor next to the toilet.
The water was warm. Colleen allowed her face and her hair and her body to be washed, and when a voice in her mind told her to attack this strange bitch whose hands were lathering her hair, she ignored it. It was so distant, this voice, and she could barely tell that it said.
The woman dressed her—clean panties with a thick cloth pad, a bra that did not quite fit, and a red dress not unlike the one the woman wore. She saw that her own filthy clothes had gone from the bathroom, surely out with the rubbish. She sat her on the edge of the bed, and when the woman tried to slide socks onto her feet, Colleen took them away and did it herself. The woman, Embeth, handed Colleen a pair of slippers. They were comfortable.
Somewhere, a child laughed, and that wasn’t possible. Colleen shook her head once, sharply, like a horse trying to shoo a fly.
“Do you want to talk about it?” asked the woman.
Colleen blinked. No more tears. She was all cried out. She didn’t have to close her eyes to see Guy’s dick lying in the dirt, but she could nudge the image away and to the side, and when she did that the voice urging her to lash out was louder. She’d listen to the voice. It was her only choice.
“No,” she said. She searched for something else to say, felt that other words were in order, but her mind was buzzing and empty at the same time. She choked down the urge to scream.
“Okay,” Embeth said. “Would you like to take a walk? The fresh air will be good for you, Colleen, and there’s really something you should see.”
“Sure,” Colleen said, wondering where Guy’s dick actually was now. Still in the dirt, in the same spot, drawing ants and flies? Where was Guy? Could you die from blood loss that way?
More laughter, more than one child, and she stood up, wondering if she’d gone insane.
“Good,” Embeth said. She opened the door and stepped into the morning light, and Colleen saw that her hair was pulled into a braid. It hung down past her waist. Squinting, she trailed Embeth into a fenced-in yard roughly the size of a basketball court. The façade of the building behind her was part of the enclosure. Across from her, a door led into a building that ran the entire length of the courtyard. There were picnic tables and scattered toys and a flowerbed exploding with color. A see-saw, a swing-set, a slide. The voice urging her to attack this woman was choked into silence.
Three women sat on a bench, each of them wearing the same damned amorphous red dress, their hair pulled back tight. One of them, clearly the youngest of the three, was very pregnant. They watched four laughing children chase one another around the courtyard. Embeth walked over to the other women. She looked back at Colleen, smiling.
One of the children, a plain-faced little girl no older than six, ran up to her.
“Are you Miss Colleen?” She asked. Her front teeth were missing. She grinned. “Wanna play with me?”
Colleen’s legs gave out, and she crumpled to the ground.
Fourteen
Scott Ardo, known to everyone in Beistle as Cardo since he was nine or ten, was the first police officer to arrive at Proust’s. Ignoring the cries and the taunts of those gathered outside of the store, he shouldered his way to the entrance and rapped on the glass until Eddie Proust stopped ignoring him and came over to the glass.
“What?” Proust yelled, red-faced.
“You need to open up.”
“What for? We’re closed. Come back later.”
Proust stomped away and Cardo was left staring at the ghost of his reflection in the glass door. He rubbed a hand over his stubbly head, leaned in close, looking over the top of his sunglasses. Proust reappeared, eyebrows raised.
“You see
what’s going on out here?” Cardo said. As if to accentuate his point, someone bumped into him. His nose bent against the glass, left a greasy smear.
Proust scowled. One of his meathead sons came over. He also scowled. Looked just like his dear old dad, too. If he looked around, Cardo was sure he’d see Proust’s meathead grandsons lurking about, as well, each of them scowling.
“Looks to me like the problem is out there,” Proust said, pressing his forefinger to the glass once for out and again for there.
“You’re right,” Cardo said. “And you’re making it worse. These people are coming through, one way or another. The longer you keep these doors locked, the worse it’s gonna be when they come through.”
“I’ll shoot them if they break through these doors,” Proust said. “We’ve got guns.”
“I’m sure you do, now,” Cardo said, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against the cool glass. He opened them and looked at Proust. “When are you gonna open for business?”
“When we’re ready,” Proust said. He looked at his watch. “Maybe an hour.”
“What are you doing?”
“Getting ready.”
From what he could tell, Proust and family had moved things around. Bags of rice and beans and canned goods stood in heaps near the front of the store, and some of the aisles had been roped off. A hand-written sign declared:
“CASH”
ONLY
!!!NO CHECKS!!!
Someone bumped into Cardo again, and this time it felt intentional. He looked back, and everyone looked everywhere but at him. He asked those nearest him to back away. They did. He didn’t expect that level of courtesy to last. He pointed to his ear and then to the door, cupped his hands around his mouth and pressed them to the glass. It took Proust a few seconds to catch his drift. He pressed his ear to the glass.
“Listen,” Cardo said. “I understand where you’re coming from, Eddie, but you gotta help buy us some time, okay? Tasgal and Clark just radioed. They’re on the way. They’ll help control the crowd, but you at least have to let me in, make it look like we’re negotiating, buy ourselves some time.”
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