I look over at Jonathan. He raises the rifle once more, aiming it at her. He waits for her to move, and when she doesn’t he closes the distance between them.
“Stupid cow!” he yells before kicking her body with his boot.
Mrs. Rosen’s body shudders just a little before going perfectly still.
I bite down on my lip. Hard. I want to scream. I want to run, but I can’t. They’ll shoot me too.
“We should’ve killed her two days ago,” Jonathan says. “Mistakes like that can derail everything. We can’t afford them anymore.”
“Pioneer wanted her to die with the others today. Are you questioning his instructions?” Mr. Brown asks.
Jonathan shakes his head. “No, no, I’m not. It’s just …”
“We can discuss this later. Get her off the road quickly. There could be a car coming any minute.”
Jonathan opens up the van doors and stoops down. For one heart-squeezing moment I can’t really see him and I have this awful conviction that he’s scrabbling across the ground like a beetle, scurrying toward me on all fours. But then he stands up and starts dragging Mrs. Rosen’s body to the van. I can hear her shoes scrape across the ground. The sound makes me want to vomit.
Jonathan lifts her up, favoring his bad hand as he does. His bandage is more red than white. He inches her upward a little at a time until her backside leans against the van’s bumper, and then he lets her upper body fall backward into the van itself. Brian comes up beside him and throws her legs in after her. The van is all white, but now there’s a long swipe of blood across the side where Jonathan put one hand to steady himself. Mrs. Rosen’s blood. Jonathan shuts the van doors again and shakes his head, runs his bloody hand through his hair. He kicks at the tire and then looks around, up the road in both directions. He’s making sure no one’s around.
I have to hide better.
Get lower.
Now!
I try to readjust, to make myself small, and make a tiny move backward—right onto a fallen tree branch. It gives immediately, the cracking sound every bit as loud to me as the gunshot. I wince and look up. Just in time to see Jonathan startle and peer into the trees. I know he sees me when he lunges forward to grab his rifle. I don’t know what to do. So I do the only thing that comes to mind.
I run.
If you aren’t with us, you are against us, and I will not mourn you one bit when you die.
—Brian Wallace
TWENTY-SIX
I hurtle through the trees, leaping over fallen limbs and trying desperately not to fall. Still, I fall twice, my feet slipping on patches of snow. I scramble up and look back. He’s coming.
Fast.
I face forward and lean over to try to propel myself faster, my eyes focused on what’s just ahead of my feet so I don’t fall again. I can’t, he’ll have me if I do. I can hear him crashing around behind me, the sounds getting louder and louder. Much too close.
He shoots at me once. The bullet takes out a chunk of the tree trunk to my left. Bark hits my sweatshirt, a light tap on my shoulder. I scream—one short burst before I’m out of breath. I suck in more air and try to go faster. I need to go faster. I can see the top of the barn up ahead. I’m getting close to the trailer park now. But can they help me? Will they want to?
The trees begin to thin and the ground becomes less treacherous. I full-out sprint, putting every ounce of my energy into it. But then so does he.
I can see the first trailer. The lights are on. I open my mouth to scream.
There’s a sudden breeze behind me and then Jonathan slams into my back. All the air rushes out of me. I hit the ground. My chin knocks against a tree root and my teeth clack together. There’s pain, sharp and bright inside my head, and I can taste blood.
I claw at the ground. Several of my nails tear off as I struggle. I keep trying to grab hold of something. Anything. The ground is too hard and cold to give me traction. Jonathan’s breath is in my ear. I feel his mouth brush against my skin and his spit on my cheek. I grunt, try to take in some air so I can yell, but he’s pressing my chest into the ground and I can’t get my lungs to work right after the fall.
He yanks me onto my back and puts one hand over my mouth. It’s cold and wide and rough against my lips. Then he puts his other hand around my neck, his palm pressing hard under my chin, and starts to squeeze. He settles his weight more fully on my chest. My heart thunders in my head. I kick my feet against the ground and slap at him with my arms, but I can’t get a good hold on him through his jacket. Panic rushes through me like a speeding train. I can’t get away. I can’t breathe.
Black spots start to drift in front of my eyes—a nightmarish blizzard of them. I can barely see. I keep kicking, but it’s getting harder and harder to. Jonathan moves his hand off my mouth and adds it to the one around my neck. He squeezes so tightly that I feel the cords of my neck shift. I’m pressed so hard into the ground that my lower back is burning. It must be on top of a rock or root or something that keeps jabbing into my skin.
I can’t move my head. He’s all I can see now, his face ringed in black where my vision is already failing. He’s not looking at me at all. He’s looking above me, toward the trailer park. The last thing I see before the whole world goes black is the underside of his chin.
I’m feral when I come to, all clawing hands and kicking feet. But he’s not on top of me anymore. I’m not where I was, in the trees. I’m staring up at a quickly blueing sky, my hands resting on blacktop. I don’t know how long I was out. I try to turn my head to see if I can make better sense of where I am—the road maybe—but the pain is a live thing, writhing and screaming inside every muscle there.
I move my eyes to the right, but I can’t see anything. There’s a dark spot on my right eye that blots out most of my vision. It’s red along the edges. Is my eye bleeding?
I bring a hand to my neck, but I can barely touch the skin. It’s like someone rubbed it with sandpaper, then doused it in rubbing alcohol. Tears roll down the sides of my face. There’s noise somewhere close by, a flurry of slamming doors and footsteps. We must be back by the van. Very, very carefully I sit up. The world tilts violently and I have to lie back down. Mr. Brown is above me a second later, his face tense and angry.
“What were you doing out here?”
I try to answer, but I have no voice. Literally. All I can do is wheeze.
“You’re never going to be right again, are you?” He runs a hand through his hair. His nose is bright red from cold. His hands are shaking. “She has to go with you,” he says.
Jonathan and Brian are here now too.
“I know.” Jonathan grabs me under my arms and pulls me to a sitting position before I have time to protest. My whole existence revolves around trying to keep my neck still. I whimper as he jostles me into his arms and walks with me the few feet to the van. The road’s empty in both directions.
Brain’s opened the back doors to the van again. Inside is a pile of empty white bags with the words AMMONIUM NITRATE on them, a crowd of large blue plastic barrels, the red gas cans, and several propane tanks lined up like soldiers, all turned in the same directions. Beyond them, mashed into the far right-hand corner, is Mrs. Rosen. I can’t see her face because her head is tucked into her chest like she’s just dozed off. There’s a puddle of blood under her legs.
Jonathan leans into the van and dumps me onto the floor. My hands land on Mrs. Rosen’s legs. Her shoes poke into my chest. I move out of the way, try to scramble back out of the van, but Brian’s got a rifle pointed at me. “Don’t,” he says. He makes me lie on my stomach so Jonathan can tie my hands behind me. The ropes are so tight that my fingers tingle. Then he leaves and Jonathan shuts the van doors and I’m trapped inside.
I press myself against the side wall and work my way up into a sitting position. Up front Jonathan settles into the driver’s seat. There’s a wire mesh screen separating the front of the van from the back. He looks back at me through the rearview mirror. “It’s
locked from the outside. You can’t get out.”
He starts the van and the radio blares on. That song about “walking in a winter wonderland” fills the car—so bright and cheerful and completely wrong right now that it hurts to hear it. He pulls out onto the road, swinging the van wide so that he can head in the opposite direction, toward town. I fall against Mrs. Rosen before I can steady myself. Her body topples over into the blue barrels and her head lolls back. She doesn’t look like she’s sleeping now. My eyes fill with tears and the red film on the right one makes everything in the van look drenched in blood.
The only way they’re gonna feel something, the only way they’re gonna get the message, is quote: “with a body count.”
—Timothy McVeigh, Oklahoma City bomber and protester of the Waco siege
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Where are we going?” Every word is a knife in my throat. I wince.
“Town,” Jonathan says. He turns down the music and I maneuver so that I’m kneeling behind him again, my head on the mesh screen and my hip resting on Mrs. Rosen’s shoulder. I try not to think about it.
I look out at the road. A car appears, coming from the opposite direction. I watch it speed past, a blob of pea green that’s gone so fast I barely have time to register that it’s Cody. If Mr. Brown and Brian are still back there on the road … I shake my head. They won’t be. He’ll be okay. He has to be okay. But I can’t make myself believe it when my jeans are wet around the knees from Mrs. Rosen’s blood.
“What are you going to do?” I ask Jonathan.
“Prove myself worthy, make a statement that’s so loud and clear it can’t be ignored,” he says. “You don’t need to know the details. Not yet. Let’s just say that most of my life has led up to this day.”
We’re in town a few minutes later. It’s early still, but there are cars everywhere. Hanging above the street is a sign with the words WINTER FESTIVAL written in red and green letters. My stomach somersaults. The van slows down as we approach the traffic light near the diner, and Jonathan looks back at me. “Try to scream or attract any attention and I will shoot you.” He holds a small black handgun up and presses it to the screen to show me that he’s serious. He keeps it low enough that people outside won’t see it, but high enough that I can.
I watch as a trio of men walk in front of the van toting a Christmas tree, followed by a mom struggling with a double stroller. Jonathan waves at them and the mom gives him a harried smile; she doesn’t see me behind the screen. He’s going to do something at the festival. Hurt all these people. He doesn’t have to come right out and say it for me to know. I yank at the rope around my wrists, but I can’t get loose and even if I could I’m locked in the back of the van. There’s nothing I can do.
When the light turns green, we make our way closer to the park where the festival is. Cody’s mom had a map tacked up in her dining room that showed where all the game and craft booths will be. The festival spans the whole park and the parking lot beyond it that belongs to the grocery store. There are supposed to be groups from Culver Creek High School and both the middle and elementary schools performing there this morning. The whole town will be in this one spot for the next four or five hours.
Jonathan steers the van into the parking lot now. There are a few spots left open, but most of the lot is blocked off for the ice-skating rink. There are already racks of skates waiting. Cody and I were supposed to work there today. Toward the grocery store itself are several sets of risers. No one’s on them yet, it’s too early. The program won’t officially start for another hour, but the parking lot is still full of people heading into the festival. We take one of the last parking spaces that face the risers and not the road.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Now we wait.” Jonathan turns the van off. He pulls out a phone and sits it on the dash before fishing a first-aid kit from the pile of books on the seat and setting it on his lap. I read the titles, looking for something, anything that might clue me in to why we’re here. The Anarchist’s Cookbook. I’ve never heard of it or the half-dozen other books strewn across the seat. I blow out a frustrated breath.
Jonathan undoes his bloody bandage while I watch, transfixed. I’m finally going to see what’s underneath. I’m not prepared for how badly injured his hand is. The skin is puckered and, even after all these days, an angry pink. In some places the skin is actually peeling off.
“Chemical burns,” he says. “Not from the owl like you thought, though that stupid bird did try to take a chunk out of me. Hard to avoid them, given what I’ve been building. Hurts like crap, but it was worth it. I did better than most guys doing this for the first time. I could’ve been burned worse, or blown my fingers off.”
I can’t follow what he’s saying. How does a fire blow off your fingers?
Jonathan rebandages his hand and then picks up his phone again, stares at the screen before he puts it back down. “Soon,” he mutters to himself as he peers out the front window.
Phone. I still have Cody’s phone. I move away from the screen and sit back on my heels. My hands are tied behind me, which makes it hard to get to my pocket, but I manage after nearly twenty minutes of contorting my body to make it easier to reach. I am sweating and sore, and the parking lot is getting loud with people by the time I manage to finally fish the phone out and let it drop on the floor beside me. It makes a small thud and I freeze.
Jonathan turns around. “What are you doing?”
Can he see the phone? My heart hammers in my chest. “Nothing.”
Suddenly there’s a ringing and I shriek, sure that it’s Cody’s phone going off, but it’s not, it’s Jonathan’s. He swivels away from me and I pick Cody’s phone back up. Its screen is shattered. Bits of it are missing. It must have happened when he tackled me in the woods. I swipe my finger across it anyway and a sliver of glass cuts into my skin but the phone lights up.
Jonathan’s phone stops ringing. “Hello?”
I don’t have much time. I press my finger to the screen, but I can’t get it to work. I think maybe it’s too far gone. I slip the phone back into my pocket.
“Lyla, I think you should hear this too,” Jonathan says from up front. He holds his phone up to the wire mesh screen.
“Little Owl.”
It’s Pioneer.
“I’m disappointed in you, Little Owl. I thought you’d come around.” He makes a tsking sound into the phone. “After all the hard work I’ve done to bring you home, you still aren’t obedient. Tell me, what’s a good shepherd to do if his sheep refuses to come home? How many times does he save her from the wolves? I’ve tried my best to keep you out of harm’s way, but there’s a limit to my patience, child.” He sighs. “You’ve left me no other choice. I’m going to have to give you over to the Brethren and let them sort you out.”
There’s a beat of silence while he lets this sink in.
“Jonathan?”
“Sir?”
“Is everything prepared?”
“Yes.”
“And your heart’s right, brother?”
“It is. I’m ready to play my part.” Jonathan’s face is bright, excited.
“There’s a seat of honor for you among my people. All you have to do is claim it now. You will have a special place in history after today.”
Jonathan’s eyes well up with tears. He’s so choked up that he can’t speak.
“Give Little Owl a front-row seat today.” Pioneer’s voice manages to sound sweet and ominous at the same time. “For me.”
“Sir, yes.” Jonathan stares at the phone and then at me. “I promise I will.”
“Then let the end finally come.”
The line goes dead.
Jonathan wipes at his eyes and puts the phone back on the dash.
“What is he making you do?” I ask.
Jonathan whirls around. “He isn’t making me do anything. I want to do this. For so long I didn’t understand my purpose. I used to think it was the Rangers, but it wasn’t, i
t wasn’t even close. They were just a way to get me here. I mean, I didn’t know, I didn’t see it until I met Pioneer … I could feel the rightness of what he was saying about this world in my gut.”
“What are you going to do?” I say as loudly as my throat will allow me.
He grins. “What I’ve always been meant to do. Start the apocalypse.”
I look back at the big blue barrels beside me and the yellow tubing striping the van walls. This is what a bomb looks like? The only thing I picture when I say the word is a black ball with a string coming out of it—something cartoon-like and almost comical. This looks like stuff out of a hardware store. Utilitarian. And somehow this is what makes it feel real to me.
“Don’t do this. Pioneer’s wrong. The sheriff was right to raid us. Pioneer’s not a prophet, he’s just a man. If there were any Brethren at all and they were powerful enough to save us from the end, why aren’t they powerful enough to start it themselves?”
Jonathan hits the screen with the flat part of his hand. “Shut up! You may have turned your back on your family, but I won’t. You can’t corrupt my destiny. I won’t allow it.” He opens his door and gets out. He slams it closed and then he’s at the back of the van. I open my mouth and scream, but my voice is still so weak that it’s not loud enough to be heard outside the van. He hops into the back and shuts the doors and I turn and kick at him with my feet. I land a heel into his chin and the skin splits along his jaw. His eyes go wild and he throws himself at me, punches me in the stomach and the head. I feel my bottom lip swell up. My vision, already red around the edges, doubles.
Astray (Gated Sequel) Page 24