He spent his time thinking about Bryan, and how much of a coward he had been not to pursue what had been between them when he’d had the chance. He understood how little he’d lived and how much he’d sacrificed, enslaving himself to his father’s will and ambitions. Now he knew, but it was too late to go back and claim the life he should have had before. Too late for everything.
He looked toward the window. The light coming through seemed different now. How long had he been off in his head? Had he lost hours?
No, the clouds had only thickened, and the drizzle that had been brushing the window before had turned into pelting splashes of sleet. March was late for this sort of weather, but it figured that even nature would conspire to keep Zach pinned in the house with Jacob and the reverend. The temperature must have dropped too; he could see transparent sheets of ice encasing the tree branches outside his window. Zach lost himself in the shifting weather, his mind wandering over everything and nothing, while the wind died down and the sleet turned to snow.
He didn’t notice the shadowy form moving out by the shed, some twenty yards from the house, until he heard his father yell for Jacob to bring the shotgun, followed by a scramble of activity from the main level of the house. By the time Zach made it downstairs, the patio door was open and the reverend was shouting at someone.
“Get the hell off our property, or I’ll shoot!”
Oh hell. Zach had no interest in supporting his father and brother, but he wasn’t going to leave them vulnerable to looters who would steal their precious supplies. He changed course to swing by the gun cabinet in his father’s study before stepping outside with another rifle.
“Please,” someone called from inside the shed. A man’s voice, though it cracked and broke. Was he just cold, or sick, or was he panicked or sobbing over something? Whatever it was, he sounded desperate. “Please don’t come any closer. I was . . . attacked by someone a couple days ago. I don’t know if she was infected or not, but I wouldn’t want to risk your safety.”
“Then you’ll move on right now,” the reverend snapped.
“I can’t.” The voice quavered, as if its owner was trembling too hard to speak. Which made sense considering the wind chill. “Look, I’m begging you. Let me get out of the wind and heal up for a few days. I broke some ribs when my car crashed, and I can’t walk any farther. I’ve got my own provisions; I just need some shelter and some rest, that’s all.”
“And if we take that chance, you can kill us in our sleep for the house and food stores,” his father sneered. “This is your last warning. Get moving!”
“No!” Zach raised his voice to be heard over the wind, keeping the rifle to his shoulder and stepping back to aim it at his father. “No, Father. We’re not going to drive off someone who is just asking for the use of our shed, for crying out loud! What’s he going to steal, our pool net? A gardening rake? He’ll freeze to death if his injuries don’t kill him first, and I won’t have that on my conscience. Leave him alone.”
“Zacharias!” Through the haze of snow flurries, Zach could see the reverend’s face flushing dark red. “Put that rifle down or so help me—”
“You’ll what? Make me sleep in the shed? Think you’ll still be able to call yourself a godly man when you’ve driven out one of your two surviving children to be murdered by looters, or eaten by revenants, or to die of the Rot? If we can’t show one iota of compassion or mercy, then we may as well have died with the rest of the population.” He shook his head fervently. “No. This is not how it’s going to be, Father.”
The look on his father’s face was so ugly and full of hatred, Zach almost thought the reverend might actually consider killing him. Whether he was or not, Zach was well aware that he had escalated their uneasy armistice into outright warfare. His father lowered the shotgun and stormed past him.
Zach would need to tread very carefully until it was safe for him to strike out on his own. Assuming it ever would be again.
That night, after the reverend and Jacob went to sleep, Zach sneaked down into his father’s study and emptied all the ammunition from the weapons in the gun rack. He collected the boxes of spare cartridges and bullets and slipped into Naomi’s bedroom, where none of them had gone since returning home. With his pocketknife, he cut a small slit along the side-seam of her mattress on the edge closest to the wall and hid everything within it, then carefully fitted the bottom sheet around it again. Then he went to the bedroom that Mary and Rebecca had shared and gathered the blankets off their beds, rolling them and stuffing them into garbage bags.
The snow had let up after night had fallen, leaving the sky clear and the moonlight reflecting off the sheets of white on the ground. He stopped a good ten yards from the shed and called softly, “Hello?”
“Y-y-yeah?” The voice from inside was weak, and breathy, and punctuated by a worrisome cough.
“I’ve brought some blankets. I apologize for my father and brother. They’ve forgotten that the Lord told us to love and care for one another.”
“D-don’t come any c-closer. I m-m-meant what I s-said about not w-w-wanting to risk i-i-infecting you.”
“I won’t. I’ll leave them out here. You can collect them after I’ve gone. Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“G-g-g-got any h-homemade chicken soup?”
Zach stared a moment, then chuckled softly, answering the raspy laugh from inside the shed. “No, sorry. We’re on dried rations, just like I’m sure you are. Um, I think we might have some jars of stewed tomatoes left, though. If I can sneak it tomorrow, I’ll try to heat some up for you. It’s not quite soup, but it will help keep you warm.”
“No. I d-don’t want to take any of your s-supplies. I’ll be okay once I get warm. M-m-maybe if you get a chance, c-could I have a sp-spare sheet to tear into b-bandages? I s-should try to b-bind my ribs.”
“I can do that. I’ll bring it out in the morning and leave it here by the patio steps where I’m leaving the blankets.”
“Th-thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Try to rest.”
“Y-y-you too. Good night.”
Zach returned to the house shivering, but with a warm feeling in his chest that told him that maybe, just maybe, he was finally being the man God wanted him to be.
A blow to the side of his head jerked Zach out of a sound sleep.
“Where is it, you little bastard?” his father snarled. Zach had barely opened his eyes when the sight of another hand heading toward his face made him close them again. The open-palmed clout was not exactly a slap, but neither was it a punch. Still, it caught his ear and made his head ring. “Where did you put it?”
“It’s gone, so you can’t harm anyone with it!” Zach managed to get his arms up to shield his head and face, struggling to untangle himself from his blankets as the blows continued to fall.
“You’ll tell me where it is if I have to beat it out of you!”
A belt buckle jingled, and his efforts to get out of the bed grew more frantic. Finally free of the blankets, he scrambled away while the reverend was still jerking his belt out of its loops.
“Father? What’s going on?” A sleepy Jacob appeared in the doorway, blocking Zach’s exit.
“Hold him, Jacob!” The first stroke of the belt was wild and uncontrolled, catching Zach on the upper arm as he tried to bolt past his father. Jacob reached for him, and while Zach was trying to evade the grip, another strike slashed down his back, making him yell.
“No!” Larger than Jacob—though not by much—Zach shoved him back, sending him stumbling into the hallway, then whirled on his father. The belt returned, wrapping around Zach’s forearm like a band of fire. Suddenly furious in a way he’d never been before, he grabbed the lash, and ripped it out of the reverend’s hands. “No!”
His father’s face was nearly purple with rage. “I want him out of here!”
It wasn’t hard to guess who the reverend meant. It had been nearly two weeks of almost nonstop arguments over what to d
o with the man recuperating in their shed. The ice storm had passed and spring had returned, but Zach had invited Nico to stay where he was until his ribs healed well enough for him to travel again.
“He’s not harming us!” Zach shouted, throwing the belt across the room. The buckle smacked the mirror on his dresser with an alarming crack, but no breaking glass followed. “Are you so lost to God’s love that you can’t even spare an injured man a few square feet of space in our shed?”
“He could infect us!”
“He’s taking care to stay far away from us to avoid exactly that, Father, and you know it. We’re not in any danger!” The stripes where the belt had struck him burned, but it was nothing compared to the despair that took root in Zach’s heart, crushing his will to fight. Every day it just got worse. Was this to be the rest of his life—the endless strife, the enmity that poured out of his father every waking moment? “Can you really be so selfish? So completely without mercy?”
“Where’s the ammunition?” the reverend growled, his hands clenched at his sides.
Zach swallowed hard. “I destroyed it.”
“Bullshit. There’s no way you could have.”
Zach allowed himself a bitter, gloating smile. “For all the good it’s going to do you, I might as well have.”
“You’ve left us no way to defend ourselves, you idiot!”
“If I thought you had any interest in actually defending us, I wouldn’t have taken it.” Zach shook his head sadly. “You’re full of hatred and violence, Father. Until you push that out of your heart, you can’t be trusted. If necessary, I’ll defend us. All of us. But I won’t let you hurt people just because you’ve turned your back on God.”
Silence fell, punctuated only by the irregular slashing of the reverend’s infuriated breath. Finally, he shoved Zach aside and strode toward the door, bellowing, “Jacob! I want you to tear this house apart and help me find it. Now!”
He slammed the door shut behind him, and Zach slumped against the wall, covering his face with his hands.
Lord, please give me the strength to get through this. Please let me do Your will.
Even that small, simple prayer comforted him, filled him with the peace of God’s love and grace. When he was arguing with his father, sometimes he lost that sense of surety that he was doing the right thing, the Godly thing. But in these moments of quiet, it returned.
Pulling himself together, Zach made his way into the bathroom attached to his bedroom. He winced as he stripped off his shirt to inspect the welts his father’s belt had left on his skin. The thick lines were an angry red, already shifting toward purple as bruising set in. The brush of his clothing hurt, as did any effort to move the arm the belt had wrapped around. Sighing, he plugged the sink and filled it with water to bathe, since they had agreed not to use the showers to avoid depleting the fuel cell powering the water pump from the well. Once he’d sponged off, he submerged his forearm in the sink, hoping the cold water would lessen the pain and bruising.
His battered soul proved much harder to soothe.
His father and Jacob had done exactly what the reverend had said they would do, and now the house was in shambles. Furniture was overturned, the contents dragged out of closets and strewn everywhere. The mattress where Zach had hidden the ammunition had been flipped over and searched under, but clearly no one had thought to strip off the sheet and look inside the thing. Now it was tossed haphazardly back onto Naomi’s bed frame, its contents still secret.
Zach moved around the wreckage trailing through the whole house, making his way to the door. He opened it and crept out onto patio. “Nico?” he called from the steps, where he always stood when he checked in on their guest in the evenings. “You still in there?”
“Yeah, I’m here.” Nico’s voice sounded wryly amused as he pulled the shed door open a crack. “Not like I really have anywhere else to go. You all right?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I heard shouting. Again. I thought I heard you scream.”
Shame seared through Zach. He didn’t know why, but he desperately didn’t want to tell Zach that his father had beat him.
“I’m okay. Just the usual stuff.”
“That’s usual?” Skepticism rode heavily on Nico’s gentle tone.
“These days, yeah.” Zach sat down on the steps and pulled his knees up to his chest, trying to stifle the sniffle that came when his eyes began to burn. He laid his forehead on his knees and let the despair wash over him again. “I don’t know how all this happened.”
“What do you mean?” Nico’s voice was a little clearer, and Zach looked up to see the hint of a leg lying across the narrow opening of the shed door. Nico must be sitting right there, just inside the threshold. It was his first sight of any part of Nico; he’d always stayed well away from view.
It should feel dangerous, not knowing whether Nico was infected with the Rot. Zach should be afraid that they were becoming too lax in keeping a safe distance between them. But it didn’t and he wasn’t. Perhaps it was naive of him, but he couldn’t reconcile the notion that Nico could possibly pose any danger.
“Things with Jacob and my father,” Zach answered. “I can’t understand how they got so bad. I mean, I can, but it doesn’t seem real.”
“I should probably be moving on.” Weariness hung heavy in Nico’s words, and Zach ached to hear it. “I’m making things worse for you, staying here.”
“No, you’re not. They were already getting bad before you came.” Zach sighed and buried his face against his knees again. “We’re all safer if we stick together. But how can I live like this?”
Nico cleared his throat. “I’m— Um, when I leave, I’m going to be heading to Colorado Springs. I understand a bunch of survivors are gathering there, outside the military installation at Cheyenne Mountain. They wanted to take shelter underground. You could come with me. I mean, if you need to get away from your dad and brother.”
“I can’t leave them. They’re family.”
“Maybe you could talk them into going too?”
Zach smiled at the reluctance in Nico’s voice as he floated that offer. “Maybe. Our supplies aren’t going to hold out forever here. Only a few more months. We’ll have to do something.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe if I get my father away from here, away from the place where he feels like he controls everything, he’ll stop acting like such a despot.”
“Well, you let me know.”
Silence fell, and Zach looked out across their property, watching the sun descend. “When will you go?” he asked at last. “I mean, once you’re sure you’re not infected?”
“I’m not.” He heard Nico clear his throat. “I lied about that. To keep your father and brother at a distance.”
Something about his voice sharpened Zach’s focus, and he found himself staring at that dark opening at the doorway of the shed as if he could study Nico through it. “No, you didn’t. I heard your voice that night. You were genuinely concerned for our safety. But you’re lying to me now about it. Why?”
“Zach . . .” Nico groaned softly. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“No.” Pain. That was what he was hearing in Nico’s voice now, an undercurrent running beneath the words. “I’m not a danger to you, I promise. But I can’t really talk about it.”
Zach had heard that sort of guilty tone before, in the youth he’d counseled before he’d had to give up his ministry, in some of the unfortunate souls in the shelter. It was the sort of self-condemnation that came when an otherwise good person was convinced they’d done something terrible.
“All right,” he murmured gently. “If you don’t want to tell me, I won’t make you. But if you do, I promise I will listen and I won’t judge.”
“Right. Because you true believers are big on not judging.”
He refused to let himself rise to that bait. He’d heard that sort of bitterness before too. People like his father and brot
her made it difficult for others to understand that not all Christians were the same.
“The Lord tells us not to judge if we don’t want to be judged ourselves,” he said calmly. “The reverend may have lost sight of that, but I haven’t. The God I worship is a God of love and mercy. And that love and mercy is unconditional.”
There was a long beat of silence before Nico said softly, “I wish I could believe that.”
“I’d like to pray for you tonight, if you don’t mind. I’ll ask God to help you begin to heal from whatever burden you’re carrying. Don’t worry—” He cut off the protest rising from within the shed. “I’m not trying to convert you. I’ve always thought someone’s faith would have to be pretty weak and insecure to be threatened by someone who doesn’t share it. But if I can help you find peace, I would like to do so.”
“Sure, go ahead, if it’ll make you feel better.” The resounding lack of enthusiasm in Nico’s words made Zach smile.
“Thank you for your permission. I should probably get inside now. It’s going to be dark soon, and I’m not sure I’d put it past my father not to lock me out of the house.”
“Okay. Look . . . if my being here creates too much trouble for you, I’ll go, okay? Promise me you’ll let me know if it gets to that point?”
The voice coming from that dark aperture in the shed was so unsure of itself that something moved in Zach’s chest, gravitating toward it. “I will, Nico. Good night.”
A furtive thump near his bedroom door woke Zach, bringing alertness rushing in with the screaming instinct that something was wrong. He lay still, keeping his eyes closed, and soon there was another soft sound. His door was closed and no one was barging in, but whatever his father or Jacob were doing out there, it couldn’t be good.
Trying to remain quiet, he slipped out from under the covers and tiptoed toward the door, placing his hand on the knob. It turned, but his door wouldn’t move.
Oh God. He jerked at the knob, pulling harder, but while the door rattled in its jamb, it remained stubbornly closed. He pounded on it.
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