After the Fall

by Robin Summers

  It was a start.

  For two more days Taylor stayed in her room, still refusing to talk to anyone or come outside, but she was eating. For that, Duncan was grateful, as he was that she had stopped crying all night. He wondered if the pain was easing, or if she had just run out of tears.

  Finally, on the sixth day, Taylor emerged. Emmett reported seeing her walking along the eastern edge of the farm, far away from any of the work details or any of the farm’s other daily activities. Clearly, she still wanted to be alone, which saddened Duncan more than he could say. He wanted to talk to her, to try and offer some comfort, but one look at Kate told him it still was not time.

  On day seven, Taylor once again left her room before dawn and spent the day far out on the property’s edge, only to return well after dusk. That night’s dinner was subdued at best. It seemed that everyone was worried about Taylor, though no one talked about it. After dinner someone turned on the music just like every Saturday night, but no one seemed to have an appetite for celebrating. The party, if you could even call it that, ended early for the first time that anyone could remember. After everyone had gone to bed, Buck came to Duncan and asked him if he would mind being taken off the wall crew for a few days and given a new assignment. Duncan was more than happy to oblige.

  Sunday morning began to break across the horizon, but Duncan was already awake and dressed and lurking around the side of the north barn. He did not have to wait long before he saw her, a ghost in the October breeze. He waited next to the barn, not hiding exactly but being sure to keep to the shadows. She headed out and away from both barns toward the southwest, where the darkness was still deep and quiet. He waited until she began to disappear into the gloom before setting out, confident enough in his tracking skills that he knew he would be able to find her even if he lost sight of her.

  He did not want to spook her, he told himself. The truth was a little more complicated than that.

  He followed her for more than an hour, until the sun finally began to show itself. Their pace was slow, set by Taylor. She plodded along, her hands shoved deep into her pockets, her head always pointed toward the earth. Flames of crimson and gold licked the morning sky, a rich contrast to the rapidly deepening hue of blue that served as a backdrop. It was going to be a stunning day. Duncan wondered if Taylor had even noticed the sunrise, or if the only color she could see was the sluggish green of the autumn grass dying beneath her feet.

  She began to slow, and Duncan had to practically crawl so as not to catch up to her. A small cluster of rocks lined the base of a gentle hill that edged the property line, like a mini-Stonehenge looking out over a good deal of the farm. The hill served as a natural windbreak to the west, but this part of the farm was slightly elevated over the rest, providing an excellent vantage point. Duncan had been here before, enjoying a bonfire and a couple of beers with his crew after a long day of work. He had always thought about coming back on his own. It was a nice spot to be alone.

  Duncan watched Taylor ease herself down onto a small boulder between two larger ones, feeling even more like an intruder than before. He inched closer, scanning the area for someplace to be inconspicuous but finding none. Hiding between the rocks, she would be invisible to anyone looking up toward the hill from another part of the farm, but she could certainly see them. She could see him, too, Duncan quickly discovered.

  “You might as well have a seat.”

  She spoke quietly, without any hint of emotion, and yet her words carried clearly along the crisp morning air as if she were shouting. He did not move at first, unsure of what to do. He wanted to go to his friend, even as the concept seemed daunting, and yet he had been given strict instructions by Buck, which he had already failed to follow.

  Taylor said nothing more, and Duncan wondered if he had just wished she had spoken. But the flatness of her tone echoed in his head, propelling him forward. He picked out one of the stones along the outer edge of the natural rock garden and sat, perching on the edge, ready to take flight with the slightest provocation. Taylor remained silent, neither acknowledging his acceptance of her invitation or even his presence any further. She had apparently said all she was going to, at least for now.

  The sun rose higher in the sapphire sky, announcing the passage of the day. Duncan shifted in the dirt, trying to find a more comfortable part of the boulder against which to rest his back, having slipped to the ground early on after realizing just how tiring it was to perch on a rock. Birds spent their whole lives perched on things, although maybe that was why they were always flitting about.

  He was starting to grow hungry, and thirsty for that matter. He cursed himself for having left this morning without even thinking about bringing any supplies. No tracker worth his salt would have done something that stupid. His daddy had taught him better than that.

  Once he started thinking about food and water, especially water, he could not seem to stop. He might as well have been wandering the desert for how dry his mouth felt, how harshly the sun seemed to be beating down on him, leaching what little water he had in his body. Taylor, however, seemed immune to such concerns, still sitting in exactly the same position in which she had settled hours earlier. He wondered how she could be so still. Maybe it was some sort of Zen thing, some Buddhist trick of the mind far outside his Christian upbringing. When he was a boy, his daddy had told him stories of the warriors and chiefs of early American tribes who would spend hours or even days fasting in sweat lodges, without food or water, communing with spirits, purifying themselves to some unknown but perfect point of clarity. Duncan wondered if that was what Taylor was doing, consciously or not.

  She stared out upon the farm, unblinking. But Duncan didn’t really think she was seeing anything in the here and now. He thought if he stood up and stepped before her and looked into her eyes, he would see images flickering upon them, movie screens playing some private film just for Taylor.

  “When I left Washington, I thought it would only take a few days to get home. I was so naïve.”

  Taylor spoke quietly, leaving Duncan again to wonder whether he had simply imagined that she had spoken.

  “I thought I’d have enough gas to make it to Pittsburgh. I hit empty southeast of the city, in the mountains. The stations were all out of gas by then, but the emergency broadcast on the radio said the National Guard was trucking more into the area, so I waited. I waited for nearly a week, but no trucks came. There were maybe a dozen of us camped out in this town, just waiting and hoping. Eventually, we realized we were on our own.”

  Her voice was monotone, like she was reciting a book report she had memorized for school.

  “We’d pretty well run through the food at the gas station by then. Some folks decided to start walking to wherever it was they had been headed, but I was scared. I didn’t think I could make that kind of journey on my own. I wasn’t the only one. But there was this boy, Tim. Not a boy, really, probably about nineteen. He had been heading home from college and said his family lived only about twenty miles from where we were, and he was sure we’d all be welcome there. It seemed like the best option, so I followed Tim home.”

  Duncan leaned forward, mesmerized by both the tale Taylor was weaving and the fact that she was telling it at all. Especially now. He assumed there was a reason she was telling him this, but he could not understand yet what that reason was.

  Taylor had not looked at him, was speaking as much to the rocks around her as she was to him. All he could do was keep listening.

  “Three of us followed Tim. Me, Claire, and Claire’s husband John. He’d wanted to head out with the others, to keep going, but Claire was scared they couldn’t make it. Better to wait for help, she said. So we went with Tim, too frightened to go on to more unknown. It took us two days to reach Tim’s home, and we were all exhausted when we finally got there. I felt bad for the kid. He had never considered that his family might not have made it. His parents were gone, along with his grandmother and younger sister. But Tim’s brother, Jac
ob, had survived.”

  Although her voice barely wavered, there was something in the way Taylor said Jacob’s name that made Duncan shudder. He studied her, trying to figure out where this story was heading. Taylor kept her eyes straight ahead, still watching that movie of hers in her mind.

  “Jacob had opened their parents’ farm to other survivors, and before we arrived there were already about twenty camped out on the property. A few women, but mostly men, from teens to maybe midforties. They had been scavenging for weeks and had built up a pretty good supply of canned food and bottled water, but I worried it wouldn’t be long before things were stretched to their limits, especially with four new mouths to feed. Tim reassured me that we would make do, that we were all welcome. He was a sweet kid.

  “Jacob welcomed us all in, said we would be safe there on that farm. He said they’d heard a military convoy was moving through the area, distributing gas and supplies to folks who were stranded, and they should arrive in a few days, maybe a week. I didn’t question how he knew that. None of us did. We were just relieved that we would all be okay. The army was coming. The government hadn’t abandoned us. It was all going to be all right.”

  It took a moment for Taylor to continue, and Duncan wondered whether he should move closer. His gut told him to stay put, to give her the space to finish her tale as much as he wanted to sit beside her and put an arm around her shoulder.

  “Things were fine for a while. Days stretched into a week, then two, but Jacob just kept telling us the convoy was coming, that we would be saved. But soon our supplies started to run low and tensions began to flare. The men who went out scavenging for supplies had to go farther and farther out, and soon there was nothing left within walking distance to find. We began to ration what we had, and it seemed like we had solved our problem, at least for a while. What we didn’t realize was the lack of supplies wasn’t our real concern.

  “It was the little things at first. A comment here, a look there, things that we were used to ignoring in the old world but that here, where the women were surrounded and outnumbered by men, seemed more threatening, somehow. We had all been sleeping in our own tents, but soon we started pairing up, then tripling up, afraid of something of which we had not spoken but understood all the same. Except for Claire. She stayed with her husband in their tent. You could tell, though, that John was nervous, too.

  “We started to talk at night, whispering with each other so the men wouldn’t know. It felt like they were watching us all the time. I could feel their eyes on us even as they kept their distance, and it started to feel like any minute something was going to give. It wasn’t all of them, of course, but it was enough. And Jacob…he was the worst because he was the most quiet. He never said a thing, but you could see it, and it was like the others were feeding off it.”

  Taylor shook slightly, just for a moment. The knot in Duncan’s stomach tightened and grew.

  “We finally started talking about leaving, but we knew we needed supplies, which we couldn’t get access to because Jacob had ordered they be guarded. Just a precaution, he had said. It wasn’t until it was too late that we started wondering what threat he was taking precautions against. But I knew we could trust Tim, and we agreed I would ask for his help. Just a few things to get us through a couple days until we could find more supplies. Tim told me we were being paranoid, that his brother and the others wouldn’t hurt us, that they just wanted to help. He said we should just tell Jacob we wanted to leave. He didn’t understand why we were trying to be secretive. I begged him not to say anything, told him we would just go and to not worry about the supplies. He said he would keep it to himself.”

  Taylor grew quiet again. Duncan waited for her to continue, but she remained silent. He knew there was more, knew this was not even close to the end of the story, but as the seconds stretched to minutes in the stillness, Duncan realized Taylor was done talking. And that, Duncan knew, was a problem. Not only because he wanted to know what happened next even as he dreaded hearing it, but also because his bones and blood understood in a way that his mind never could that this tale needed to be told. That Taylor had started talking for a reason, even if she did not consciously understand it, and she needed to finish. She needed to get it out. She needed to let it go.

  “But he didn’t,” Duncan finally said. His voice, though soft as a whisper, startled Taylor. She turned her head slightly, as if truly seeing him for the first time. Her eyes were wide, but they were focused entirely on Duncan. She reminded him of a doe caught in the open, ready to run but too frightened to move. “He said something.”

  She continued staring at him until finally, almost imperceptibly, she nodded. Taylor breathed in deeply, as if she was trying to inhale the will to continue.

  “We went to bed with the intention of sleeping a few hours, just until we were sure the others were asleep, and then leaving in the middle of the night,” she said, looking away from Duncan once again.

  “The screaming woke me. Then there were hands grabbing my clothes and dragging me out of my tent. I didn’t know what was happening. They lined us up, tied our hands behind our backs. We were crying, and they were shouting at us to shut up, to quit our fucking crying. John was arguing with one of the men, pleading with him. Jacob walked up then, right up to John, and told him there was no room for thieves on this farm. Then Jacob…”

  Taylor’s voice caught, and she choked back a sob, forcing herself to go on.

  “Jacob pulled a revolver out of his coat pocket and shot John in the head. He just shot him down, right in front of us, in front of his wife. Claire fell to the ground, clutching John’s body, screaming. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry. I just stood there, numb. The other men…well, I think Jacob had surprised all of them, because for a moment they looked as scared as the rest of us. Then Jacob was barking out orders, and we were being dragged off to the horse stable.

  “They locked us into the empty stalls and left us there, told us to stay quiet. Morning came and we were still there. Any time we tried to talk to each other through the stalls, one of the men came and beat on the stall doors. We got the message. Day turned into night again, then another day. I don’t think they knew what to do with us, not really. I heard some of them arguing outside sometimes, but I could never tell what they were fighting about. Eventually, there was no more arguing.

  “Three days went by, just locked into those stalls. They brought us food, water to drink and wash with. I started to wonder if maybe this was all just a big mistake, if Jacob had really just misunderstood what we had been planning and was trying to protect the rest of the people on the farm. But then, that night...”

  She took another deep breath, another attempt to find the strength to continue. Duncan’s heart broke for her. For all of them.

  “Their footsteps pounded as they came. Two or three of them, I don’t know. Then there were shouts. Someone, I think it was Liz, started screaming, ‘No, no, please no.’ One of them slapped her and she cried out. I could hear her being dragged out of the stall. She screamed the whole time. She was gone for hours. Everyone was crying while she was gone, sobbing to themselves. We were all too afraid to speak. Then I heard them bring her back. She was moaning. They threw her back into her cell. I heard her body thud against the floor. Once they had left, I tried calling out to her, but she didn’t answer. She just kept moaning. I might have thought she was dead but for the moaning.

  “A few nights later they came again. I don’t know if it was the same guys or if they were taking turns. They took Melanie that night. Another few days went by, and it was someone else. For nearly three weeks all we would hear were footsteps and dragging and screaming, then them bringing whoever it was back and throwing her in her cell. Every time it happened it was worse than the time before. I can still hear them laughing as they brought someone back.

  “Then one night they took someone, but they didn’t bring her back. It was Claire.”

  Duncan’s heart pounded with the horror of it. I
n his most terrible nightmare he could never have envisioned such things. The urge to scream, to beat something into bloody oblivion, was overwhelming. But he remained silent, knowing there was more to tell.

  “After Claire, it became every night instead of every few nights. I guess they really had developed a taste for it then.”

  She paused again, and Duncan could not help himself.

  “Did they…?”

  Taylor let out a long, slow breath. Her voice lost all trace of emotion.

  “Not they. Jacob. Just Jacob.”

  Duncan shut his eyes, trying to block out the truth. But it was no use. The images came rushing in, and he could do nothing to stop the onslaught.

  “The first time, he came into my stall, all quiet and calm. He knelt down before me, talking softly, cooing words of apology and reassurance. I was terrified, but I couldn’t help myself. I spit in his face, told him to go to hell. He decked me, sent me flying back into the wall. My head was spinning. He grabbed me by the neck and hauled me to my feet. His hand was like a vise. He punched me in the face, over and over. I was starting to lose consciousness, from the blows or from his hand squeezing my throat, I’m not sure. Finally he threw me to the ground. But that was just the beginning.”

  Taylor’s body shuddered and shook, but her face remained an impassive mask. Then she turned to Duncan.

  “He didn’t come back for several days. I had almost convinced myself it was over, but…then he was there. He came in the same way, oozing concern and compassion. He liked playing that game, acting like this was somehow all okay, like it wasn’t his fault. Like he thought I would actually buy his lies. I stood up, my fists clenched, ready to die before I would let him rape me again. He noticed my hands and clucked his tongue, shaking his head like I was a five-year-old who just wouldn’t learn. He was on me before I could move. He slammed my head into the wall. This time I did pass out.”