“Plus,” she added ominously, “we don’t wanna do nothin’ with the bridges ’til we know for sure if the Army’s really gone.”
The men in the kitchen nodded.
“And no more girls,” she said sharply.
Hank looked at Jerry Brady and winked.
Hank was already working out something for that, though Abby didn’t know. There was an old shed about a mile and a half from the house where they could take them from now on. They called it “the clubhouse” now.
“But, first things first:” she said, “We’re gonna lay our loved ones to rest. They deserve it. Then we’re gonna get whoever done this to Joel and the others. Jerry says Louis LaCroix’s gonna meet us with a contingent of their guys up at the old beaver pond, when the snow stops. Then we’re goin’ after ’em.”
More heads nodded. A few even clapped. Those who didn’t nod acceded by virtue of their silence.
“Now, let’s give my Sweetie a proper rest,” she said wearily. “I’ve been up all night. I wanna get this over with.
“You do what yer supposed to do,” she ordered Jerry Brady.
And with that Brady stepped forward. In his left hand he held a Bible.
“You do a good reading, now,” she warned.
He looked around until the room fell silent.
As Abby had instructed him, he began reading from Ecclesiastes:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboreth?
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.
And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God.
I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.
That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.
When he finished, Abby said, “Now you find that Twenty-third Psalm and say that, too.”
Jerry turned to a marker he’d placed in the Bible.
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou anointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.
When he was finished with that, he began reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
When Abby joined in, so did others, until the whole room had joined in prayer.
Abby cried throughout.
When they finished, she kissed Joel on the lips. “Granny-great will see you in Paradise, Sweetie.”
With that, she stepped back and Jerry closed the casket.
Six men stepped forward and lifted it. They carried it out the door with Jerry leading, Abby in tow, and Hank at her side. The others formed a train behind her. She wailed as she followed it. Like mass hysteria, almost all the women and half the men joined in the wailing.
They trudged through the snow. But when they got to the cemetery, she was startled to see no one had cleared the burial site and the graves were already filling with snow. She started screaming at the men as if they had personally had a hand in the weather.
All the wailing stopped and, as she screamed, men ran and got shovels. They started clearing the snow away.
While she waited, Abby turned and singled Clara from the crowd of mourners. “You! You go start me some tea. I’m gonna need something warm when I’m done here.”
Clara hesitated. She thought she was supposed to be at the funeral.
“Get movin’, girl!” Abby yelled.
With that, Clara returned to the house.
The men holding the casket were unsure of what to do. Its weight was becoming uncomfortable and they started shifting their hands to get better grips.
Meanwhile, the snow removal went on while, all around them, more of it fell, mindless of Abby’s wishes.
There were three more funerals after this including Abby’s other grandson, Barry, and kin of the deceased were eager to send their own to their final rewards before the accumulating snow made it impossible. But, as per Abby’s orders, Joel had to go in the ground first.
Chapter 15
August 29
With a vague uneasiness, Danielle followed the man through the forest. Sometimes, she talked to Whoopsie, other times she sang her songs. But what she was really doing was trying to distract herself from darker thoughts of what might lie ahead. More than once she considered turning around and finding her way back to the road. At times the man was sullen and scary while at other times he was solicitous or he’d become too quiet. But she came to realize that at all times he showed an interest in Whoops and that made her uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, she hugged her sister and trudged on behind him, getting ever further from the road, and taking Whoops deeper into uncertainty and possible danger.
She could barely feel her feet anymore and, as they became number and number, she found herself stumbling as she walked. To keep her balance, she kept her head down, watching where her feet fell every step of the way. She used his ski tracks as her guide. It seemed as if she walked this way for miles until, suddenly, she saw skis and she abruptly stopped. He was standing right in front of her, watching her. She’d almost walked into him.
Behind him was a cabin—an A-frame. About thirty feet from the cabin was a shed. Coming off the side of the cabin, on the same side as the shed, was some framing with nothing attached to it. At the bottom of the framing were logs that seemed to mark the bottom of some kind of structure they and the framing had once supported. On the other side, and apparently running behind the house, was an add-on with a roof canted to shed snow. She turned to look back and saw where their tracks had left the trees and crossed a snow-covered field that lay in front of the cabin.
Without a word, he removed his skis and opened the cabin’s door. He stepped aside to let her in, first. She hesitated.
He waited for her to cross the threshold.
A sickness filled the pit of her stomach. She and her sister were at his mercy, now. He could do anything he wanted to them, now. But she walked in.
He looked back at the dog and said, “Stay.”
The dog obediently sat in the snow.
To Danielle, the man seemed surprised when the dog obeyed him.
“Take your boots off,” he said to her as he crossed the room. They were his only words since leaving the road.
She wa
tched as he unslung his rifle and stood it against the wall. Then he took a handgun from his pocket and laid it on a table near the wall. Finally, he removed his jacket and his boots.
The room was cold. She left her own coat on and settled into a stuffed chair in the middle of the room. She held Whoops in her arms.
Zach kneeled in front of the fireplace insert and opened its door. He made a small mound of tinder inside. Around and on top of the tinder he built a pyramid of kindling. Around that he placed some larger pieces of wood. It would be several minutes before the cabin would begin to get warm.
The ratcheting sound of the revolver’s rotating cylinder was unmistakable and, in the same instant, he felt the barrel of the gun pressed against the back of his head.
“Don’t move,” Danielle said with a trembling voice.
“What are you doing?” he whispered.
She didn’t answer.
He didn’t move.
She didn’t move, either. “You will not touch me,” she finally said in a strained voice.
“I won’t…I’m gay.”
That was a surprise.
“You’re not going to hurt Whoops, either.”
He shook his head ever so subtly. “I wouldn’t…ever.”
He waited, but she didn’t say anything else. But she didn’t take the gun away from his head.
Very slowly he turned his head toward her until he was looking into the barrel. The gun was cocked. Her finger rested on the trigger. Whoops was on the stuffed chair in the middle of the room.
He raised his eyes and whispered, “Why don’t you put that away before one of us gets killed.”
She didn’t move.
They stared at each other for several seconds.
Slowly and carefully he reached with his left hand until his left pinky finger touched the barrel and he gently pushed it to his left a few inches while he gradually leaned to his right.
She took another half-step back so his finger wasn’t on the barrel anymore, but it was pointed at him, again.
“Uncock the gun,” he whispered.
She hesitated. “I don’t know what that means,” she whispered back.
“Take your finger…away from the trigger. It’s a hair-trigger.”
She didn’t move for a second, but gradually she pushed her finger forward and took it out of the trigger guard.
“Thank you,” he whispered and let out a deep sigh of relief, but he kept watching her.
He turned his left hand palm up and softly said, “Put it in my hand.”
She paused. She didn’t want the gun, but she didn’t want him to have it, either. She looked into his eyes and he nodded.
She subtly shook her head no.
She’d already crossed her own Rubicon when she put the gun to his head. She had intended to kill him. But she had no plan beyond that. Now, it was kill him or give the gun up and accept the consequences. The consequences could be dire. Whoops began to cry. She stood there longer. The baby’s crying became more insistent and intense. They continued to stare at each other, she kept the gun pointed at him. Whoops’s cries got louder and started to come in uncontrolled, desperate spasms.
Her resolution began to fade and her sister’s bawling became more disconcerting. Whoops needed her. Her hand began to shake. The crying was relentless. Reluctantly and carefully she laid the cocked gun on his palm. Then she watched as he brought his right hand up and, pointing the gun away, he carefully uncocked it.
They stared at each other, again. With the gun now lying in his open right palm, he slowly offered it back to her. “Put this back on the table where you found it,” he whispered.
She couldn’t believe he was handing it back to her.
“Please,” he added.
She took it, turned, and slowly walked to the table where she set it back down. Then she went to Whoops and picked her up.
Once in Danielle’s arms, Whoops’s crying was reduced to intermittent sobs. Soon, it stopped altogether.
Zach turned his back to her, again, and took a butane lighter from his pocket. His hand was shaking violently. But each fire had to be lit with one flick. As each lighter was emptied, it became a relic. No one was making them anymore. There could be no waste. He’d wait until he stopped shaking.
“Don’t ever do that again,” he said softly, without looking at her. There was no emotion in his voice.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” she said softly.
“I haven’t, and I won’t.”
His back was still turned to her.
“Yes you did,” she said softly.
“No I didn’t,” he said in a low voice, but with emphasis.
“You’re a liar. You felt me up in the burrow out in the woods.”
He thought a few seconds and remembered waking up in the burrow to her screams. His hand finally stopped shaking and he lit the fire. With his back still to her he asked, “Is that why you yelled at me then?”
“Of course it was. You woke me up.”
“I don’t remember doing it.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
He hovered over the burgeoning flame and watched it spread from the tinder to kindling. Gradually, the larger pieces began to catch. He closed the insert’s door and made sure the vents and the flue were wide open.
“It’ll warm up in here pretty quick,” he said. He didn’t expect a response from her.
She watched him. She didn’t think about the gun anymore.
After several minutes she asked, “Who’s the woman and the two kids in the picture?” He looked first at her, then to where she was looking. She was staring at a framed photo on the mantel above his head. He stood up, took the picture in his hand, and carried it to a desk in the corner of the room where he put it in the top drawer. Then he went back to his fire.
That’s his answer, she figured.
Still not looking at her he said, “When the snow lets up, you’re going back to the road.”
“Good,” she said.
There was another long silence, until he asked, “What was going on back there?”
She didn’t know what he talking about, so she didn’t respond.
He realized he had to be more specific. “Back there in that field, with those men and the girl?” he added.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she replied.
“Okay.”
He watched the fire grow.
After another several minutes she asked, “Why’d you let them shoot Anne?”
“Was that the other girl?”
He knew it was when she didn’t answer.
“I didn’t know they were going to do that to her,” he said.
“Why’d you save me?”
“I didn’t save you.” After a long pause he said, “I saved your baby.”
“You’d have let them shoot me if I didn’t have Whoops?”
“Yes,” he said without looking at her.
“Faggot,” she said.
He ignored her.
With the fire now going, he grabbed his sleeping bag and unrolled it on the floor.
Four little holes irregularly strung out in a line the length of the bag, recorded where the bullet had gone through, and there’d be four more on the other side. He started mending them and stuffing back the little bits of down that were leaking out.
For several minutes she watched him close the holes with thick black thread. “How’d you get the holes in that thing?” she finally asked.
He froze for a second, then went back to his task.
He wasn’t going to answer her.
She observed how deftly he wielded the needle.
As he finished mending the fourth one, she broke her promise never to cry again.
He glanced at her. She was hugging the baby. She sobbed, but she was trying to keep it quiet.
He turned the bag over.
She was still crying.
“What’s wrong?” he asked without looking in her directio
n.
She didn’t answer.
He began mending the holes on the other side.
Finally, between sobs, she said, “I asked him to kill Whoops.”
He drove the needle into his finger and it started to bleed, but he still didn’t look at her.
She was lowing like a cow, again. “I begged him. I wanted him to…because they were going to leave her in the snow after they shot me and I didn’t want her to suffer. I love her, but I held her up…I begged him to shoo…shoo…to shoo…” She was crying uncontrollably, now, and couldn’t finish her sentence. “I love her so much. She’s all I…” She didn’t say anymore.
He finally looked at her. Tears were running down her cheeks in rivulets, her nose was beginning to run, and she was drooling. She clutched the baby to her as if she’d never let her go. The baby was just happy to be held.
He went back to his mending.
Eventually, she stopped.
A few minutes later he was finished with the sleeping bag. When he looked at her again, she was sleeping. It wasn’t a restful sleep. Her eyes moved frantically under her eyelids. She was dreaming. Her body twitched even though she was still holding the baby, now sleeping, in her arms.
He was about to roll the bag up. Instead, he took it and draped it over her and the baby.
She woke up abruptly. “Keep your fuckin’ hands off of me!” she screamed. Terror was written on her face.
He stopped, then finished laying the bag over them.
Danielle Kidnapped: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Ice Age Page 16