by Dulaney, C.
The back half of the cabin was one large bedroom, each man taking up one side or the other as denoted by the crap they had stuffed in and around their beds. Michael’s side was tidier than Caleb’s. There was a coat rack on one side of his bed and a dresser on the other. Two boot racks took up the space between the beds. On Caleb’s side, there was a pile of clothes at the foot of his bed and a chest of drawers in the corner.
The kitchen was large enough for a table, and Kasey found the men already seated around it by the time she and Mia arrived. Her dad had just brought in the last of the food from the summer kitchen out back, so at least they hadn’t started eating yet.
Kasey glanced around and noted an extra empty chair. “Jonah made it back yet?”
“No,” Caleb answered. He set the food down on the table and motioned for her to sit. “Said he’d be back by dark.”
Kasey pulled out her chair and looked to the kitchen window. “It’s damn near dark now.”
Her dad made a face and said grace. Mia swatted Jake’s hand when it darted out for a biscuit.
After he finished, Caleb passed the beans to Michael on his right, but fixed his stare on his daughter. “How was it in Gibson?”
Kasey sat on the opposite end from her dad, Mia and Jake across the table from Michael. She didn’t dare glance at them before answering. “It was fine. That peddler was back. Saw a couple of Bill’s people.”
“Yeah?” Michael spoke up. “Everything okay with Bill?”
Kasey nodded. “They just came in to do a little trading.”
Caleb’s eyes darted to the bag of turnips on the floor next to the counter. “What did you trade for it?”
“Can of the powder.” Seeing her dad begin to frown, Kasey added, “I figured we had a little to spare.”
“We didn’t.” Caleb spooned some lumpy mashed potatoes onto his plate and passed them to Michael, who remained silent but watched Jake and Mia.
Kasey took a slow breath. “I can go back and trade for more if we need it.”
“What did you trade for it this time?”
The clinking of spoons in bowls abruptly died.
“Marlo needed a mess cleaned up,” Kasey finally answered.
Michael caught her eye. “What kind of mess?”
“The kind we know how to take care of,” Jake interrupted. “Now will someone please pass the damn carrots?”
Michael handed the bowl over. “What kind would that be?”
“Hell,” Jake said. “No one got naked again, if that’s what you’re worried about. I told you that was one-time thing… maybe two times.” He waved a hand around. “Anyways, our honor is intact, and you got your goddamn gun powder.”
“I don’t know about that,” Caleb muttered.
“Don’t know about what?” Jake shot back.
“Let’s just,” Michael said, motioning with his hands, “let’s just eat, okay? Everyone settle down.”
“Good idea,” Mia agreed.
“No,” Jake said to Michael. “I wanna know what the problem is. Same bullshit every time, and I’m about sick of it. We’re the ones goin’ out there, gettin’ the work done. And we gotta listen to this when we get home?” He jerked a thumb at Caleb. “You need somethin’, we make sure you get it. Don’t we? Someone sends a message, needs their ass wiped, we go do it. Don’t we?”
Mia laid a hand on Jake’s arm and whispered, “That’s enough.”
Jake pursed his lips, then scooted back from the table and stomped off outside. A moment later, Caleb cleared his throat.
“We’re not bounty hunters or hired guns. We’re not thugs, thieves, or degenerates,” he said.
Kasey’s face reddened.
“Someone wants a mess cleaned up, they do it themselves.”
“We needed that powder,” she said.
“Not that bad.” Caleb picked up his fork and started eating, ending the conversation.
Mia and Michael traded an uncomfortable look. It seemed they’d lost their appetite.
✽✽✽
The next morning, Jonah found Kasey in the field behind the barn. She sat on an old tree stump and played fetch with Gus.
“When did you get back?” she asked without looking behind her. The beagle ran towards her with a stick in his mouth and dropped it at her feet. She picked it up and threw it in no particular direction.
“Last night.” The cowboy squatted down beside her and fished a pack of stale, hand-rolled cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “Didn’t wanna wake ya, so I bunked on the couch.” He watched the dog bring the stick back two more times. “Pretty good at gettin’ stuff, ain’t he?”
“Yeah,” Kasey said. She threw the stick again and kept her eyes on the field ahead of her.
“You’re good at gettin’ stuff, too.”
Kasey snorted.
“I heard about it. Don’t mind the old man.” Jonah lit a cigarette and took a long drag. “He just worries about the three of ya.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. Gus brought the stick back, but she didn’t throw it again. Instead, she turned it over in her hands while the dog panted and waited at her feet. “He’s just had a funny way of showing it ever since−”
“Hey,” Jonah interrupted. “You didn’t kill her. Either one of ‘em.” He turned to face her. “You did your family a mercy.”
Kasey chuckled. “No, I didn’t. I killed my mom and my brother,” she said and emphasized each word by poking at the air with the stick. “I put down that whole group of terminators so those people could resettle Gibson. That’s what I did. That’s how Dad sees it.”
Jonah took a few more drags so he could gather his thoughts. When he spoke, his voice was so low it forced Kasey to finally look at him. “You sure that’s how he sees it? Or just you, Kase? They were gettin’ out of hand after they ran outta deadheads. You tried to feed ‘em, and we know how that worked out. You did what ya had to, so don’t blame your dad ‘cause of your own guilt over it.”
Kasey stared at him.
“What’s that called?” he asked. “Transference?”
“… yeah.”
Jonah rubbed her knee. “Come to the big house with me. Got a job for us.”
Instead of throwing the stick again, she leaned over and gave it to Gus. “C’mon, boy. We’ll play again later.”
Jonah patted her knee and stood, dropping the cigarette butt on the ground and grinding it out with the worn-down heel of his boot. Kasey followed him across the yard and met Jake and Mia halfway. They were headed in the opposite direction, toward the barn.
Confused, Kasey asked, “Where are you two going?”
Jake hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Michael wants us to check the perimeter.”
Kasey waited for an explanation. It’d been a long time since they’d had to monitor the perimeter of the farm, ever since the appearance of the terminators. Things had been safer since then. They’d been able to sleep better at night, move around more freely than before. Lately, though, the terminators had been getting restless, ornery even. Some folks had been hurt simply by being in the way sometimes, but never directly attacked.
“Why?” Kasey finally asked. “What’s happened?”
Jake traded a glance with Jonah.
Mia said, “Just get on over there. Michael and your dad will fill you in.” She tagged Jake’s arm and they headed off to their horses.
Kasey stared at their backs.
“C’mon,” Jonah called over his shoulder. “Daylight’s wastin’.”
“Yeah.” Kasey walked backwards until her two friends disappeared out of sight. “Right behind you.”
Once inside, she motioned for Gus to go lay down, then joined the men in the living room. Michael studied a map spread out on his desk while Caleb packed a few backpacks with a little food and bottles of water. Kasey cleared her throat.
Caleb looked up and motioned to one of the packs. “Go on over to your cabin and get your gear.”
“Why?” she asked.
He went back to packing the bags. Jonah caught her eye and jerked his chin toward the door.
“Christ sake,” she mumbled. “Gus.” She spun on her heel and left. Gus shot out of the doorway and she let the door slam a little on her way out. The attitude was starting to get old, but she tried to remember what Jonah had said, and tried to see things from her dad’s point of view instead of through her own pain-skewed view of things.
Gus, the damn little devil, made a beeline toward the pasture field. Kasey could see Jake and Mia along the far side, riding along the fence line with rifles hanging from their shoulders. Gus barked once, Jake called out to him, and Kasey watched his tail wiggle this way and that through the tall grass as he ran. He was a good hunter, and age hadn’t hurt his sense of smell; he’d always been a big help scouting the perimeter of the farm.
She jogged up the steps to the cabin she shared with Jonah and went inside, straight to the gun rack. After slinging her rifle over her shoulder, she checked her sidearm and grabbed a couple boxes of ammo. Her dad had been packing three bags, so this was going to be another routine job. She’d have to wait for Mia and Jake to get back, go over whatever message Michael had gotten, and come up with a quick plan. But the other two had just left and probably wouldn’t be back for a while, so what was the hurry?
She took her time walking back to her dad’s cabin. Her eyes scanned the ground, and lingered on the dirt drive and beaten down places in the grass. No tracks. Riders carried messages back and forth between the camps and settlements now, and she saw no new hoof prints in the dirt.
The door swung in, she laid her rifle and ammo on the kitchen table, then went straight over to Michael.
“Did we have a rider here last night?”
He looked up from the map and tilted his head. “Huh?”
“A rider.” Kasey looked around at the other two men. “A message? I didn’t see any tracks outside.”
“Oh,” Michael said. He slowly turned and nodded to Jonah.
“No message,” Jonah explained. “We’re goin’ down to Matias.”
Kasey furrowed her brow. “What’s happened?”
“We’re going on a stakeout,” Michael said. He rolled up the map, tied it, then walked over and stuck it inside the top of his backpack. Caleb nodded to him and handed it over, then held one out to Kasey. She stepped over and took it while Jonah shouldered his own.
“The three of us,” Kasey said.
“Yep,” Jonah said. “Saw somethin’ of interest when I was scoutin’. We’re goin’ back, try to figure out what’s goin’ on.”
“We saw it, too. Half a dozen of them, just lying on the ground.”
“Was that the first time you came across anything like that?” Caleb asked.
Kasey said, “If we’d seen it before, we’d have said so.”
Jonah spoke up, “We’ll look ‘em over, set up somewhere in town, see what happens.”
Kasey met her dad’s eye. “See what happens.”
Caleb waited a beat, then nodded.
“Good,” Michael said. “Let’s get going.”
Chapter Two
Instead of taking the road to the bottom of the hill, they cut through the woods on foot and followed one of Jonah’s trails. Technically it was a deer path, but the cowboy used it and others like it when he went out scouting. Kasey and Jake had tried several times to talk him out of doing that, explaining that it might muck up their hunting. Spook the deer enough they might start moving along different routes. Jonah had only laughed and said that if they were good enough at hunting, it shouldn’t really matter. It did, but they gave up trying to argue.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when they reached Matias. The terminators were in the same spot as the last time Kasey and Jonah had seen them; lying on the pavement in front of the post office, baking in the afternoon sun.
“It doesn’t look like they’ve moved,” Kasey said.
They came out of the woods by the edge of the road and made their way towards the post office. Jonah and Michael had their rifles halfway up and kept an eye on the area around them. Kasey moved with her hand on her pistol.
“Maybe they’re dead,” Michael said.
“They’re not.” Jonah didn’t even look at the group of bodies. Instead, his eyes searched for a suitable house to spend the day in. Michael and Kasey said no more; they’d learned a long time ago not to question the man.
But the closer they got, the more Kasey wondered if Jonah was actually wrong this time. The group of terminators was a hell of a mess. Most of their clothes had come apart or been ripped away. The flesh underneath was cut and scratched. Some of the wounds were deep and still oozed blood. All the places that weren’t cut up were bruised. There were broken noses, missing ears, split lips, and in a couple cases, clearly broken limbs. They looked like a crowd of people that had been run over by a semi.
“Goddamn,” Michael whispered.
They stopped a few feet from the nearest body. Kasey watched closely and after a moment saw the rise and fall of its chest. She counted all the way up to thirty before the chest rose and fell again.
“It’s alive, but that thing’s breathing awful slow.” She walked closer and kneeled next to it. Michael hissed behind her but she paid him no mind. She reached out and pressed two fingers to the side of its neck. She felt a beat, then started counting. Same thing. “Holy shit,” she whispered and stood. “How’s this thing alive?”
“Hibernation,” Jonah said. Keeping his eyes on the bodies, he walked around the group and stood in the shade underneath the post office’s overhang.
Michael followed Kasey’s example and started checking all the bodies for a pulse. “But why?” he asked.
Jonah shrugged. “Nothin’ to eat? Wearin’ out? Maybe this was part of the plan.”
Kasey joined Jonah in the shade. “Part of the plan,” she repeated.
Jonah grunted.
“Alright.” Michael straightened and stepped away from the bodies. “Now what?”
Jonah motioned across the street. “Set up over there. See what happens next.”
“Don’t know about you boys,” Kasey said, heading off toward the house Jonah had indicated, “but I’m pretty sure we don’t wanna know what happens next.”
Michael laughed. “Do we ever?”
✽✽✽
A large picture window in the front of the house afforded them a perfect view of the post office and the group of bodies lying out front. Michael forced the door in and did a half-assed check of the house, but these days they didn’t have much to worry about except bandits and cannibals, so the three mostly concerned themselves with setting up in the living room and getting comfortable. They didn’t complain about it being hot as hell inside; they were pretty much used to the lack of air conditioning.
Kasey jerked a couple cushions off the couch and tossed one to Michael. Jonah dragged in a kitchen chair and set it in front of the big window. They went about these things in silence, mostly because they were just used to being around one another, but also because they’d all lost the need for small talk a long time ago. Jake was really the only one who still jacked his jaws more often than not. And Mia. Though in her defense, she was usually telling Jake to shut the hell up.
Michael took first watch. He propped his rifle next to the window and dropped his bag by the chair. Jonah and Kasey settled down on their couch cushions and snacked on jerky Caleb had packed for them.
“How long do you think they’ve been like that?” Kasey asked after a time.
Jonah see-sawed one hand. “About five days.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Kasey scratched her chin. “How do you know?”
“Read the signs.”
Kasey was a decent tracker, but sometimes she didn’t have a damn clue what Jonah was talking about. She hadn’t seen anything earlier that would have told her how long the terminators had been lying there, and she’d looked. She didn’t bother asking; sh
e knew he’d just answer with a smirk, or say something to the effect of, “Well, when you’ve been tracking for as long as I have…”
Sometime after dark, Michael and Kasey traded places and she kept watch. The two men stretched out on the cushions and went to sleep. Kasey watched for a long time and couldn’t see shit. It was dark and cloudy, so no moonlight to light up the street even a little bit. So instead, she kept her eyes moving, hoping that if anything did happen, she’d catch movement in her peripheral vision. Doing that also helped keep her awake.
Several hours and a couple naps later, Jonah relieved her. As she crept over to her cushion, she really hoped those terminators outside would just spontaneously explode, or else this was going to be a very long stakeout.
✽✽✽
A little less than an hour before dawn, Jonah was sitting in front of the window, rolling a cigarette and keeping his eyes on the bodies across the street. Unlike the others, he could see them pretty clearly. A faint, yellow glow outlined each body. That was his talent, his skill. He could see what others couldn’t. Whatever he wanted to look for, or watch, always had that glow, and it allowed him to see details others would normally miss.
That was also why he got most of the shit jobs and a reputation for being the mysterious one.
It was still cloudy; a storm front had moved into the area and he worried the terminators might drown if it rained too hard. He thought about going over there and rolling them over, but decided against it when he realized it might be worse for them to lay with their faces in puddled water. He could have dragged them under the overhang, but there was only enough room for maybe two or three.
He glanced over his shoulder; Michael was still asleep, and Kasey was still pretending to sleep. He smiled a bit and looked back out the window.
One of the bodies was up on its feet.
Jonah’s back stiffened and his fingers paused mid-roll on the cigarette he’d been working on.
The terminator stood still for a long time. The only thing that moved was its right arm, and just barely. After a moment, Jonah realized why. The thing swayed back and forth and the momentum caused its arm to swing. Then it staggered to the side and fell over one of its buddies. The body it had tripped over started to stir, and the next thing Jonah knew, they were both climbing to their feet. They didn’t move like a person would, though. They were too clumsy.