The Monster (Unbound Trilogy Book 2)

by J. D. Palmer

  Harlan gives me a quizzical look. Curious, I guess, to see what I will say.

  I think of my rampike. Of the dark bark with the twisted white ribbon from the lightning bolt that killed it. I look at this dog with the stripe down his chest, this animal filled with joy, but also scarred on the outside. Scarred. Like me. Like all of us.

  “Pike,” I say. “His name is Pike.”

  HARLAN | 5

  NAILS SCRABBLE FOR purchase in the bed of the truck, Pike lurching over the wheel well. Beryl grabs my elbow as I slow down around the curve. The dog smiles at me in the side view mirror, resuming his stance with a paw propped up on the edge of the truck bed, ears flopping in the wind and bliss written across his face.

  “Maybe drive a little slower.”

  Of course.

  It took us the rest of the day, walking, to find a vehicle and the keys. Big enough for all of us. With no serious decomposition. And gas. It shouldn’t be this hard. But maybe whatever capricious spirit that haunts my travels has gone ahead and cleared our path of anything usable.

  I wanted to drive that night. I wanted to, but then I’d be doing it alone. Theo was asleep before we had even made a fire.

  It’s morning now. Just barely. The others bundled into the car at first light, Sheila already passed out again in the back. I had hoped to make up for lost time.

  The wind has changed. I think. Hard not to see the new gusts, cold and sudden and strong, as a signal of some transformation. Clouds, wispy and thin, speed northeast and dapple the road in front of us, changing it to something more like a river.

  Cows lift heavy heads and some spur themselves to trot by the fence as we speed by. Hungry for human contact, to know that everything is okay. Or maybe just hungry. I wonder if they are far too domesticated, too dull of spirit, to break out of the fences and pastures that will otherwise be their graveyard.

  I wish I had the time to stop and help. To set them all free.

  “Fuckin’ cows have to be the stupidest goddamn creatures alive.”

  Sheila’s awake.

  I hope she doesn’t hear my heavy sigh. Judging by the look on her face, her head hurts too much to respond. She cracks the window, the sudden howl of the cold wind plugging everyone’s ears.

  “Sorry, sorry.” She closes the window and rubs her face with her hands. Then crawls across Theo and Josey so that she’s laying across them, her head in Josey’s lap. It would be a sexual gesture, or an attempt to garner attention, if it didn’t have a certain amount of desperation to it. A little fear. The need to feel held.

  We drive for an hour, through an empty land and no sign of progress being made to my impatient mind.

  “Har?”

  Theo says it softly so as not to disturb Sheila.

  “Next town can we stop for some food?”

  I hate that he has to ask. I hate that I’m immediately pissed about it.

  “Yeah, of course. You must be feeling better.”

  “I am.” He sounds relieved.

  Have I been pushing us that hard?

  “We need more booze, too.” Sheila senses my mood and can’t help herself.

  “We aren’t stopping for that.”

  “Yeah, you will. I’m not doing Nevada sober.”

  Before I can stop myself I am snapping back. “Too fucking bad. How about instead you drive a little bit today.”

  “Oh yeah?” She sits up, pawing her way onto the center console to stare at my eyes in the rear view mirror. “I should drive? Why? Not my goddamned fucking mission to get to who knows where, in such a goddamned fucking hurry, to find everyone dead.”

  I don’t have time to respond. Beryl’s elbow cocks back and slams into Sheila’s nose. She recoils, blood gushing.

  “What the fuck!? Why the fuck would—”

  “Don’t.” It’s all Beryl says. And I don’t see her face. Or her eyes. But there’s only silence from the back seat. I start to slow, thinking I had better pull over before things escalate any more. I hear Sheila heave in a breath…

  Then a chuckle.

  “Mickey would be so turned on right now.”

  Beryl cocks her head, then a slow, confused smile spreads across her face. A grunt, then Theo lets loose with his high-pitched giggle. Josey is laughing, even while his face is locked in a horrified mien.

  Sheila leans her head back and tries to stop the flow of blood from her nose, occasionally breaking down into a fit of laughter so hard that tears flow down her cheeks. And the tears continue long after the laughing has died down.

  I don’t understand. But, I guess, I’ll take it.

  Ahead is a town that either didn’t have a name or was too small to warrant one. There are signs for mines, or mining materials, or placards that simply say “mining” that greet us as we exit the Interstate. A block or two back is a post office, a church, and two bars. There’s also a mercantile store that doubles as a drug store.

  Sheila disappears, strolling down the only road there is. Josey and Theo tell me they’re going to go look for food. But I see them shadow her as they move along the houses. Always keeping her in sight.

  I get to see something new in Beryl. Something manifesting itself in the last two days. Something that was, at first, out of place in this hardened woman, someone exemplified by strength of will.

  A nurturing side.

  I watch her comb through Pike’s fur, using her bandanna and a bottle of water to dab at wounds old and new. She takes his head and shakes it as he smiles in her face. She puts her forehead against his, and both of them with crooked grins.

  I was angry, at first, with this new situation. With the car and the lost time. With Beryl for instigating this. I wanted to be mad at this dog, too. An interloper who needed care. More time that would be wasted. Something to be worried about in an environment that, really, can only lead to more heartache.

  And I am honest with myself. He took a little bit of Beryl away from me. A jealousy that is pointless, and asinine, but no less real.

  Until I remembered the chain around his neck. What that would have meant to Beryl. Surprised that I didn’t feel it at the time. Horrified that I didn’t feel it at the time. And the moment that I do see it, that I remember what it felt like, then I see myself crouched in that ditch with that woman. I see the routine, the dreaded routine you hate, but take comfort in knowing. The flinch when the master is angered. When you are merely a burden and doing your best to please someone, doing your utmost to satisfy a person you loathe beyond words.

  I look at this dog and wonder how it can romp, and smile, and lick another hand after what it went through. I envy it’s soulful buoyancy. So much.

  He isn’t ignorant. He hasn’t forgotten. Maybe he isn’t tainted because he only sees the future. You can’t be tainted if the past has no hold over you. But if you live like that, aren’t you doomed to make the same mistakes? The little voice whispers to me from the back of my mind. It’s true. But I’m still envious.

  “Are you okay?” Beryl is standing, head cocked as she looks at me.

  “I love you.”

  I don’t know why I say it. I don’t know why it decided to come out at that moment. But it’s truth, and it’s simply me, in the moment. The back of my mind whispers to me again, an elbow to figurative ribs, that I’m only dooming myself to more hurt.

  Fuck it. A life without scar tissue wouldn’t be worth living.

  “I love… you. So much.” She says. And Pike farts. And we both smile. And life, for the moment, is simply there. Placid water that does not belong to the swirling wind above or the creatures roiling beneath the surface. It simply is.

  BERYL | 6

  I KNOW HARLAN is frustrated. Anger over lost time. A full tank of gas and “plenty of juice.” That car could have taken us all the way there.

  I hadn’t meant, intentionally, for the car to be part of the deal. But… it aids my secret desire for more time. To stay away from that endpoint in Montana.

  I’m a horrible person.


  We don’t stay on the road when we finally stop for the night. Farther away than usual. As if the highway can transport evil. Maybe it can. Better to hunker down in the cacti and rock. Amongst the scorpions and snakes and whatever else inhabits this most desolate of deserts.

  It bothers us not at all.

  Each camp is different, but the same. The same tension. The same slumbering forms. So wonderful to me. My overprotective brother double-checking that I don’t need him to take my turn on watch. The sister who hates me. Or pretends to. But brings me an extra blanket and calls me an idiot. The cousin who sings in his sleep. And Harlan. Harlan who keeps my spot warm when it’s my turn to keep watch.

  My home.

  Where we sleep changes every night. But the camp is always the same.

  I drink in the night air. The sky. Freedom and the trust they all have in me. In us. The slumbering forms of the people who not only mean the most to me, but the only people to mean anything to me. And my mind is present, and awake, and does not yearn to be in any other place. In fact, I imagine my inner home, my rampike, slowly falling into decay. Sand getting thicker across the floor. The pages of books yellowing, pictures fading. The loss of those words, those memories, nothing compared to what lies ahead.

  A rustle in the bushes. Pike lifts his head off my lap to stare. He starts to summon a bark and I scratch his head, rubbing the crease between his eyes in a circle. The bark turns to a low, annoyed growl.

  He is like me. How I was. Always tense. Never knowing when I’d have to leave. Where the next home was. The next school or dinner. The next person who said I was in their “care.” He doesn’t know us yet.

  How many words did I say today? I try to think back. I count the usual ones. Har. Theo. Sheila. Josey. I think… Wait. Stop. There. We need… What else? It’s usually so easy. I feel a smile creep across my face. I don’t know. I don’t know. Too many to remember.

  Pike lifts his head again. His head turns, cocking from side to side. I pet him and he looks up at me, large mournful eyes that reflect the moon. Then he heaves himself up off my lap and trots out into the darkness, head down and tail dragging.

  What?

  I will not leash him. Or chain him. Ever. But I thought there was an established bond. Something that existed between creatures such as ourselves. Ones who had known the yoke.

  I follow him. I see his form trotting parallel to the road. I muster my voice. “Pike.” A whisper into which I pour all the comfort I can. He stops. The tip of his tail, lodged between his legs, wags a short, frantic beat. He licks his overly large jowls and takes two steps back to me. Then, as if beckoned by an unseen voice, he turns back towards the road and pads away, still the image of misery.

  I follow him. I can understand having a calling, something in his life that requires his attention. But this is not how I would say goodbye.

  I walk up and onto the highway. I watch Pike slowly skulk down the road and into the night. A shadow, and then gone.

  “Fare thee well,” I whisper into the night. Three words I haven’t used yet today. Nor in the last year. Maybe ever. Words that seem foreign, but all I can think to say.

  A whisper of wind. A change. A scuff of a boot on dirt and then my skull explodes with a wall of light and I know no more.

  “Why’d you knock her out so bad?” A woman’s voice.

  “She woulda made noise. You want them others after us?” A man’s voice, breathing heavily.

  “What are we gonna do with her?” Gruff.

  “I can think of a few things.”

  There is a smack on my leg. “You wouldn’t.”

  I realize the woman hit me rather than hit the man who said it.

  “She’s a beauty, that’s for sure. Probably never suffered a day in her life. Always had everything handed to her. Never had to scrap and beg like us, never had to—”

  “Shut it up, Terry.” The other man is angry. “What are we gonna do with her?”

  Silence from the others. Heavy. The feel of three minds thinking about you and none of it nice.

  “We could give her to the lady. Trade her for food and stuff.”

  “After they did what they did? Fuck them.”

  “They was just havin’ fun, just—”

  “Ya fucking with me, Terry? You serious? They wasn’t bein’ friendly. I know friendly. Fucking fuck.”

  A heavy sigh. “I’m sure things have settled down now, and she told us where to go if we found someone special. She fits the bill, right?”

  A snort from the woman. “Who knows what those perverts wanted.”

  Silence again. I open my eyes. Just slits, just to see where I am. The dirty knees of my jeans are in front of me. I hadn’t realized my arms were wrapped around myself. I’m on the floor of the backseat of the Prius. The woman sits above me, a gun in her lap that she grips with two hands. Like a kid with a squirt gun. She looks down at me and I close my eyes.

  “She’s awake. Hey! Hey! I see you!”

  I open my eyes again and lift my chin, almost poking my eye on the tip of the pistol. I stare at her. She is discomfited by my silence. I run my tongue around my mouth, test the edges of my voice. I think I can speak, if I want to.

  Interesting. Yay for me.

  A rustling in the back. Pike’s head appears over the seat. He stares at me before turning sideways and giving a whimper. The woman snaps her fingers and raises her hand, as if to hit him, and he disappears again.

  The woman gives me a grin.

  “Didn’t think I’d let you have him.” She pulls a whistle from inside her shirt. “Ain’t no way he ain’t coming back to mama.”

  I’m not mad at him. I spent more than enough time mindlessly obeying someone for fear of their anger. Or their imagined anger. The imagined punishments.

  “Sorry about hitting you.” Gruff voice speaks to me as he drives. Terry’s face darts around the seat and he looks down at me. Gives me a smile.

  “Ooh you’s in a pickle now, ain’t ya?”

  No. No, this is not a pickle.

  I realize I’m not afraid. The only fear I have is of losing my group. Losing Harlan. But I know they will find me. Or I will find them.

  The way the woman holds the gun, the way she points it at me lets me know she’s never used it. At least on a person. The nervousness. The attempts to intimidate. They are new to this game.

  I shift my foot. They didn’t bother looking for more weapons on me, the knife is still in my boot.

  I will kill them.

  A truth as cold and plain to me as the moon in the sky.

  Gruff turns to look at me briefly.

  “They won’t be hard on you. Not if you do what they say. And it looks like maybe you weren’t having it so easy, anyways.”

  The woman scoffs. “What are you talking about? She bein’ all high and mighty with us earlier. And if we didn’t show them sense they wouldn’t have even given us the car.” She looks at me, licks her lips. “Bitch deserves whatever she gets.”

  Terry gives a chuckle and holds out his hand to give the woman a knuckle bump. She returns it before darting her hand back to the gun, a pleased smile on her face.

  Every mile we travel is more distance between me and everything I hold dear. I stare out the window just past the woman’s head. As if resigned to my fate. Waiting for the moment that she drops her guard.

  I lower my hand down to my boot, hooking a finger in the lip.

  “We aren’t bad. You started this shit with us, you have to admit that.” Terry is staring down at me, forehead creased, the beginnings of anger stealing into his voice. Apparently my silence is more condemnation than if I were weeping. Or begging. Or any of the other things I won’t give to strangers.

  “I… don’t think you’re bad.”

  I think you’re going to die soon, regardless.

  “So you agree? That you brought this on yourself?”

  I ignore the question. “I think… You are making a mistake.”

  The woman lau
ghs. “People like you never change. High and mighty and always speaking down to people like us. Even when you deserve what you’re getting.”

  She stares at me, and I hold her eye, keeping contact as I slowly work the knife up and out of my boot.

  Pike gives a low growl and then begins to bark in the back.

  “Shut up!” The woman reaches over with a balled fist and swings blindly, unwilling to look away from me. A thunk and Pike stops barking, only a single, low whine to mark his discomfort.

  “What’s your name?” Gruff says.

  “We don’t need to know her name, Jesus Matt! Why do you always gotta—”

  Pike surges up from the back seat, nose pressed to the glass as he barks wildly. The woman, startled, turns backwards, the gun swinging away from me. I twist on the floor, preparing to power myself upwards, when Matt suddenly veers.

  “The hell?”

  Pike is still barking relentlessly. Past him, out the window, I see two trucks speeding down the hill towards the highway. Behind them are five figures on horses, guns raised in the air. One of them fires.

  “What are they doing?!” Terry is frantic. “Matt, go faster!”

  “I’m going! Fuckin’ going!”

  Pike cringes with every gunshot, spinning in a circle, eyes wide with fear, only to resume his deep, angry barking at the window.

  “Shut him up, Jesus!”

  The woman is jetting out small streams of air through clenched teeth, as if at labor with the world and willing herself to give birth to a resolution. Her eyes are shut, but the gun still aimed at my head, one bump or bounce away from firing.

  “Rita, shut him up!”

  Her name opens her eyes. She reaches back and fishes for the choke chain, finding it and jerking it tight so that Pike’s head is brought over the rim of the seat. His panicked expression joins ours, an odd triangle of scared eyes darting back and forth. He lets out a whimper and she jerks the chain again.

  The engine of a truck revs and I can see the top of it from my place on the floor. It speeds up and the Prius jolts as it’s rammed from behind.