Among These Bones

by Amanda Luzzader

  “Alison.” Chase had raised his hands as well. “They don’t know. They don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay? That’s not why we’re here right now.”

  “It’s why I’m here.” I didn’t take my eyes off them. “I want to know why they were following him, and I want to know what they did to him. And I want to know right now.”

  There was an animal growl in my voice. I almost thought someone else was speaking—it surprised me. Something was surging inside me that wouldn’t recede. I knew these men weren’t responsible, but at the moment I didn’t care. They had to know something. I had to start somewhere. And weren’t they a part of it? The Agency? Voluntarily or not. They were the ones who stole my son from me.

  And then it happened. One of the men laughed.

  It was just a chuckle, but then he got a dopey grin on his face and he couldn’t control it. Then the other man started laughing, too.

  “Why are you laughing at me?” I shouted.

  “Alison stop,” Chase yelled.

  But it was too late. My finger was already pulling the trigger.

  I missed my target by several feet. The bullet went through the wall, but one of them fainted. The other man stayed frozen with his hands in the air. He stopped laughing.

  “Oh, my God,” I cried. I dropped the gun and collapsed to the floor. All the anger that had erupted within me suddenly changed to sorrow.

  Chase scrambled from the dust to zip-tie the hands of both guards. I sat down and cried.

  After Chase finished with the men, he wrapped his arms around me.

  “I just want Arie back,” I said.

  “I know,” Chase said. He stood up and began collecting the assault rifles that lay strewn in the chaos.

  Woolly came running toward the building, flanked by Carlos with his hunting rifle. Woolly stepped into the building over the demolished window sill and surveyed the destruction.

  “Interesting approach,” he said, stroking his beard. He looked over at Chase and me on the ground. “What happened?”

  Chase frowned and gestured vaguely at me, as if that were all the explanation the scene required. He laid the rifles into the bed of the truck and then shook the glass and plaster dust from his hair.

  There was only one computer in the office. It lay beneath an overturned desk half-pinned by the bumper of the truck.

  Chase told me to get in the truck and rest, and so I sat sheepishly in the driver’s seat as the others set to work.

  Chase questioned the guards while Woolly worked to extract the computer from the wreckage. He did his best to dust off the monitor and find a level place to turn it on, finally setting it on the fender of the truck. He got it plugged in and powered up, then sat on a chair with the keyboard in his lap, staring up at the monitor, which had numerous cracks running through it. It flickered and displayed crazy sprays of color. Only a few small shards of it actually worked properly.

  Nevertheless, within five or ten minutes, Woolly announced, “I got it. The manifest for 8234-C. I think I can find the serum.”

  Ruby appeared, accompanied by Glen. They were winded and red-faced.

  “We checked the north end,” puffed Ruby, putting her pistol away. “No one else around.”

  “Yeah,” said Chase. “These chumps say they’re the only ones here, and they won’t be rotated out for a couple days. We’re safe, I think.”

  “Everyone okay?” asked Ruby.

  Chase nodded.

  Ruby glanced at me through the truck window—my red eyes and puffy face—but said nothing.

  “Did someone cut the phone line?” she asked.

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Chase said. “We arrived quite suddenly.”

  “Good,” she said. “We know where we’re going yet?”

  “Yeah,” said Chase. “I think so. We might all be leaving in the Taurus, though, if that truck won’t start.”

  Ruby assessed the Tacoma. Its grill was veiled in a web of twisted chain link. The crumpled hood was buried in plaster and mortar dust, and a wisp of steam rose from the radiator. A galvanized fence post lay uprooted and bent and dangling from one fender, and the pebbles of pulverized safety glass rattled around in the cab like sparkling popcorn. The windshield was crazed with silvery cracks, and the driver’s-side door would no longer open.

  “Well, Alison,” said Ruby. “Will it go?”

  I turned the key and the engine roared instantly to life.

  Chase rolled his eyes. Carlos and Woolly looked at one another and nodded.

  Ruby flashed a grin and said, “Let’s go shopping.”

  *

  Glen cut the lock to the warehouse and everyone but me scattered inside. Woolly rushed back to the truck with a crate labeled MEDICAL SUPPLIES. The others loaded up more—food, clothing, and other supplies and equipment they’d found. In fifteen minutes, the truck bed was full. Ruby tapped the hood of the truck. “Get her home, Al.”

  Chase was quiet as we drove back to the ranch house to pick up Gracie. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t killed anyone, but I’d tried. Ruby had said to never point the gun at someone unless I was ready to kill. And I’d been ready to kill. It scared me. Even though I’d asked for the gun, until that moment, I didn’t know I could actually be capable of killing someone. Especially that way—someone defenseless, maybe even innocent. It more than scared me; it terrified me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “For back there.”

  He wouldn’t look at me. “You could’ve killed someone, Al.”

  “I know. I know. I just—”

  “You just let your emotions get in the way of your brain, is what you did.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I did.”

  Chase looked out the passenger side window. “You’re outta the team. I’m telling Ruby to take you off.”

  “No, Chase, please. I’m sorry.”

  “You know this whole time you’ve only ever thought about yourself. You realize that? All the rest of us are out there risking our necks trying to make life better for everyone, and you’re out there putting us all at risk just to get some revenge.”

  “That’s not it,” I protested. “It just—hurts so much, Chase. Please. I’ve learned my lesson. I was wrong.”

  “You have? What lesson is that?”

  I recalled that moment when Chase sprinted to the office, and how I tried to protect him and how I would for any of the others on the team. It wasn’t all selfishness. It really wasn’t.

  “That I’ve been going about it the wrong way. I’m not going to be able to find out what happened to Arie with a loaded gun. I’m going to have to plan it out and work with the rest of you. I need the team to get what I want, but I want to help the team get what we all need, too. I promise.”

  Chase scoffed. “You just don’t get it, Alison. Your broken heart doesn’t give you license to do whatever you want. You’re not the only one who’s ever been hurt.”

  I heard something in his voice. A vulnerability. A longing.

  “You lost someone, didn’t you?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You didn’t lose somebody?”

  “I did.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “You’ve forgotten them already?”

  “No.” He waved his hand. “It was before the new year. Maybe a long time before.”

  “You remember something from before? How?”

  “Al, no. It’s not that. I don’t remember them. I feel them. I miss them. I don’t know who I lost but I know they’re gone.”

  His words struck me inside and rang like a massive, brooding bell. It was a deep, mental chime that resonated.

  “You ever feel like someone’s missing?” he asked. “Someone you can’t recall, but someone you know is gone?” He finally glanced over.

  It took a while for me to answer. I was worried that my voice might crack.

  “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 19
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  As we drove up to the old ranch house, I keyed the mic of the walkie-talkie.

  “Little Lamb,” I said. “This is Toyota Girl and Mountain Lion. Can you hear us?”

  There was no response at first. I got ready to transmit again when we heard Gracie’s voice. “Hi,” she said.

  Chase chuckled and looked over at me.

  “Hi, Gracie,” I said. “I mean—hi, Little Lamb. We’re coming to get you, okay? See us coming?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Then she keyed the walkie-talkie again and added, “I’m bored. And hungry.”

  “Okay, sweetie,” I said. “We’ll be there in a few minutes. Sit tight.”

  She apparently had not gone into the house, but she was smiling when we pulled up. Chase smiled, too, and I was glad. I was still smothering under a cloud of regret and embarrassment, but it seemed to dissipate a little when we saw her stand and wave to us. Chase waved back.

  Then, Chase and I climbed down from the cab and went straight to Gracie. She had delicate features and such tiny teeth—she reminded me of a kitten. You couldn’t help but smile when she was around. No wonder Arie liked her. On the patch of ground where we’d left her, Gracie had constructed a small village of pebbles and twigs and grass. In another place, she’d used a stick to scratch tic-tac-toe games into a flat spot of dirt. All of the games had ended in cats’ games.

  “Let’s get going, little girl,” Chase called.

  Gracie bounded into the truck and scrambled into the jump seat. Chase and I got in and buckled our belts.

  “Why were you gone such a long time?” said Gracie.

  Chase shook his head. “Hard to say.”

  Before I started the truck, I paused for a few moments. The way we were seated. Chase and I up front and Gracie behind—it felt so comfortable, so correct. I thought of how nice it would be to just drive, the three of us—just drive with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Maybe go to a beach or somewhere warm.

  I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw that Gracie’s eyes were already closed, her arms wrapped around her lamb.

  I began driving, but steered carefully so that I wouldn’t disturb Gracie. She was so little. It was hard to imagine that she’d been surviving on her own for a year. And what had she done before that? I didn’t remember our world from before, but I knew it had existed and I longed for it.

  The drive back to Thrill Harbor took us through a small canyon. I steered onto the left-hand fork and the road took us higher, banking up and around a gentle curve. The sun was high in the sky now, and I squinted as it glared in through the windshield, which was hazy with grime and lined with silvery cracks.

  The roads there in the foothills had been mostly devoid of cars; it was the highways and the closely packed residential streets in town where the failed evacuations had trapped so many vehicles, which now sat in impotent ruin on their rotting tires. That’s why I immediately took notice when we rounded the broad bend and a massive black vehicle came into view just a few hundred yards ahead of us.

  I stood on the brakes.

  We flew forward hard, catching in the shoulder belts.

  “Al, a little warning, jeeze” said Chase, rebounding into his seat.

  He followed my gaze and saw it, too: an Agency troop carrier.

  “Back up, back up, back up,” Chase ordered, his hands flat on the dash.

  “I know, I know,” I said fumbling with the gear shift.

  Gracie began to cry.

  We’d come up on the troop carrier from behind; it was traveling in the same direction and it kept going, but I knew only one backward look by one Agency soldier was all it’d take for them to spot us.

  I rammed the shift lever into reverse and got the Toyota backing up, and I turned in my seat to see out of the rear window of the cab. Chase watched out the front window, then behind, then front again. I caught sight of Gracie—her eyes were wide, her little mouth open.

  The Agency vehicle disappeared around the bend and over the hill, but I kept backing up for another hundred yards.

  “I’ve never seen a mounted patrol this far outside the boundaries,” said Chase. “Must be something going on. Must be looking for something.”

  In the rear view mirror another angular and hulking form caught my eye. Another black troop carrier, this one coming up from behind.

  “Us,” I said, jamming in the clutch and putting the truck in first gear. “They’re looking for us.”

  Gracie was crying steadily, her arms over her face and eyes.

  CHAPTER 20

  Chase shouted a series of crazed driving directions laced with more profanity than I’d expect even from him. He pointed, swiveled in his seat, looking forward and then back. He shouted some more. I floored the gas pedal and we raced back up the road, but then there was a new series of curses—from both of us, this time—when we realized the two Agency vehicles were converging on us.

  “Off the road! Off the road!” hollered Chase. More cursing. More pointing and waving.

  “Stop screaming at me!” I shouted back at him. “I can’t drive while you’re screaming.”

  “Get off this goddamn road!”

  “And stop swearing at me!”

  Chase bit down hard on his lip and held up a hand in an apparent apology. He looked behind us. Gracie shrunk down in her seat.

  “Should I just stop?” I asked.

  “No!” Gracie shouted.

  “They’ve seen us,” Chase said through bared teeth. “There is no place we can go but off the road.”

  “Where do I go?”

  “There! There!” he blurted, pointing. “Off the road and down the hill.”

  I veered sharply left and the Toyota’s suspension squawked noisily as we dropped off the highway and began to cross a down-sloping checkerboard of overgrown vacant lots. The grass was higher than the hood, and it hissed against the fenders. The dense clumps of sage and rabbit brush were topped with little caps of snow, and as we lurched over them, the snow exploded onto the hood and windshield.

  I checked the mirror. The patrol vehicle proceeded along the road as though it might not follow. Chase spun around to see.

  “Maybe they haven’t seen us,” he said with a maniacal little half-laugh. “How could they not see us?”

  In the mirror, I saw the troop carrier slowing to a stop, and then the turret traversed until the massive barrel of the machine gun was trained on the truck.

  “They’ve seen us,” I assured him, hunching my shoulders to brace myself.

  There came the rapid booming of heavy automatic gunfire. I felt it concussing in my inner ears, in my lungs. Chase cursed wildly. I pushed on the gas.

  “Serpentine, Al, serpentine!” he said.

  The gun ripped off another burst and I saw the rounds impact ahead of us in tall dirty plumes.

  “Serpa what?” I screamed.

  Chase grabbed the steering wheel and pulled it hard to the right. The truck swung right and all three of us were pitched over to the left. After a moment Chase pushed the wheel suddenly in the other direction and we leaned opposite. The truck’s springs squawked and moaned.

  “Serpentine,” Chase hollered, letting go of the wheel. He made a snakelike motion with his hand. “Don’t make it easy for them.”

  I snaked left again just as another deafening burst of gunfire erupted behind us, and the rounds kicked up dirt a mere yard away. I yanked the wheel hard right and they missed again.

  Now just couple hundred yards behind us, the troop carrier left the road and followed our path down the face of the hill and into the sea of grass. I watched it in the mirror. The gun muzzle flashed and smoked and there came an unsettling delay as the sound caught up and another volley of rounds shrieked our way. This time the little Toyota shook with a series of sickening clanks and I knew we’d been hit. In the mirror, I saw the truck bed pitched up crazily and mangled, as if an enormous shark had chomped on it. The tailgate swung merrily from some remaining tendon of its hinge.

  “F
aster, Al!” yelled Chase. “Down the hill.”

  The incline got steeper and down we went, picking up speed and tearing through old fence lines and debris buried among the grass. Gracie screamed as though we were riding a derailing roller coaster. Clumps of brush whooshed past the busted-out driver’s-side window, the last jagged fragments of which jounced on the floor of the cab.

  It sounded as though the troop carrier was firing continuously now, and I heard it with my whole body. When my eyes darted to the mirror, I knew the Agency vehicles were gaining ground on us.

  “The trees!” cried Chase.

  With a flurry of pointing motions, Chase indicated a long row of old cottonwood trees at the edge of the lot ahead. “Head that way!”

  The truck caught a low berm and went airborne for a second, then crashed down again. Gravel and dirt rattled against the undercarriage, and I fought the wheel to keep control as we thundered over the broken ground.

  As we barreled down the slope and on toward the line of trees, I realized suddenly why Chase had steered me there. The thick trunks of the ancient trees were spaced far enough apart to allow the Toyota to pass, but definitely not the bulkier Agency vehicles. If we could crash through the wall of trees and brush, we might buy back some time and distance.

  For a second or maybe two I narrowed my eyes in an attempt to calculate which two cottonwoods were best spaced to accommodate the width of the truck, but this was utterly futile in the time remaining before impact, and so I chose two at random and locked my elbows as I white-knuckled the wheel. The troop carrier kept firing.

  We hit the tree line. There was a split-second roar of scraping metal, both of the side mirrors vanished in a leafy blur, and I knew we’d passed between.

  But the wall of cottonwoods apparently marked the boundary where the gentler hillside ended and the cliff-like face of a much steeper slope began, and when we emerged from amidst the trees, the ground fell away beneath us, and the truck dove into an empty space. It was a drop of perhaps only twenty feet, but it seemed as though we descended for minutes upon minutes through open air. In the pit of my stomach I felt the sudden tickle of vertigo, such as when a car reaches the top of a steep hill and then plunges into the dip beyond.