by Adrian Birch
Bryce was here with me, too, and he didn’t seem to want to leave. I would have been happy just to sit here talking with him all day about anything other than whatever crazy shit was happening in Muldoon.
I let go of Morgan’s hand and sat back in the hay.
“So you never miss a concert, or what?” I asked Bryce.
He shrugged and smiled. “Not if I can help it.”
“How’d it all happen for you? You just loved country music so much you couldn’t stop playing it, and suddenly you were on tour?”
He laughed. “Not exactly. To tell you the truth, I don’t really care for country music.”
“Seriously?”
“My mom used to make me play it. She had me playing professionally by the time I was a teenager. Honestly, I’m kinda tired of it. I actually really like some of the indie stuff I’ve heard lately.” He laughed. “Don’t tell anyone this, but who I really, really like is Lady Gaga. I can’t stop listening to her.”
I broke out laughing. “Are you kidding?”
“And you know what else? Want to know what my real name is?”
“It’s not Bryce Tripp?”
“Nope. It’s Reggie Wislowski.”
I laughed even harder at this. “Reggie?”
He laughed, too, and tried to put his hand over my mouth while I swatted it back.
“Don’t laugh!” he said. “I’ve gone by Bryce since I was a kid.” He sat back in the hay. “Don’t tell anyone my secret.”
“I won’t.”
Bryce glanced at Morgan again. She was sleeping peacefully and still breathing strongly. Even the swelling around her eye had gone down.
“I guess you must really regret coming to do this concert here, after all,” I said. “Don’t you?”
For a moment there was a distant look in Bryce’s blue eyes. But then he looked right at me and gave my shoulder a soft, playful push. “Not so far, I don’t.”
I didn’t know what to say. For a moment I forgot all about Mr. Hershel and Ian and Shawn. It really was a shame that I’d actually slept with this staggeringly attractive country singer who had a secret passion for Lady Gaga, but couldn’t remember a thing about it.
“Thank you,” I said. “Really. Thank you so much for everything.”
“It’s nothing,” Bryce said. “Look. You need to get back to your folks tonight. Why don’t I stay here and look after Morgan?”
I didn’t want to leave him, but it was an attractive offer—the chance to get a good night’s sleep and wake up to find Bryce still waiting for me, watching over Morgan as she healed in the hayloft. And he was right. I did need to get back to my family—we were going to Mr. Hershel’s funeral service tomorrow.
“You really don’t mind?” I asked him. “Really?”
He shrugged and smiled. “What else am I going to do with myself?”
* * *
The next morning I woke up at dawn to the sound of a text message on my phone.
It was from Bryce.
come quick!!!
I slipped out of my old bedroom, tiptoed down the stairs, and ran to the shop.
All the way there I thought about how at one point Morgan had seemed to be getting better, but she’d only ended up getting worse. What if it had happened this time, too, and she’d slipped back into that awful, feverish state of labored breathing? What if this time she really had died?
I ran up the rickety stairs that lead to the hayloft. I was moving so fast that one of the steps cracked. My foot broke through, and I stumbled, but I caught myself on the next step, which held. I peered into the loft.
Morgan was awake, sitting up, and talking with Bryce. She was smiling.
I rushed to her and hugged her.
“I see you’ve been getting yourself into trouble while I wasn’t around to watch out for you,” Morgan said. She smiled at me, then raised her eyebrows in Bryce’s direction. “Don’t even try to tell me you two behaved yourselves while I was out cold.”
“Shut up!” I laughed.
I hugged Morgan again. Less than a day earlier, I’d thought she was dead. Now she was glowing, looking healthier than ever. I tried not to start crying, but I failed.
“I’ll give you two a moment,” Bryce said. He climbed down the stairs and left us alone, sitting in the loose hay.
“How do you feel?” I asked. “Honestly, you look great.” Even the swelling around her eyebrow had almost completely gone away.
“I feel great,” she whispered, confused. “I shouldn’t feel great, I know. Not after everything that happened. But I do. I don’t understand it.”
“You remember what happened? Everything?”
Morgan nodded. “I think so,” she whispered. “I remember everything up to Ian shooting Robert. Shooting Mr. Hershel, I mean. I remember that.”
“What happened after I dropped you at your house? Did he break in?”
Morgan looked away. “Not exactly.”
“What happened then?”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. So,” she said, “you remember how I told you I was sleeping with someone else besides Jason?”
I nodded.
“It was him. I was sleeping with Robert Hershel. I had been for a couple weeks.”
I couldn’t believe it. It was true that Mr. Hershel had always been one of those classically handsome cowboy types—or he was before his death—but he was in his sixties at least. He had a wife and grown kids. I couldn’t think of him as anything other than a sweet old man—before he cracked up and went totally insane, that is.
“You were having an affair with Mr. Hershel?”
“You have no idea how much we never knew about Robert,” Morgan said. “I couldn’t believe the secrets I learned he’d been keeping. Did you know he used to have an account on this website for married people who want to cheat on their spouses? I know that sounds creepy. It is, I guess. But at the same time, he was actually, like, the sweetest guy I’d ever met.” Now Morgan started to cry. She wiped her eyes. “I think I was a little bit in love with him. I know it sounds stupid, but I was.” She heaved a sigh. “But, then, I don’t know what happened. He started getting more and more distant. Then he started getting really rough with me. And that night I got home, and he was waiting for me in nothing but that stupid holster… He liked to wear it when we were fooling around. But this time he was completely out of his mind.” She shrugged and looked into the distance. “And now he’s gone. So that’s the end of that.”
I wondered if Morgan would say anything about Ian or about kissing him. But either she didn’t remember, or she didn’t want to bring it up. I let it go.
“Morgan,” I said. Mostly I couldn’t stop thinking about how much pain she’d been in when Ian and I got to her house. “I’m so, so sorry for what he did to you.”
She shrugged. “I lived.”
I put a hand on her knee.
“Look. A lot’s happened while you were unconscious,” I said. “Someone—the police or the military or someone, I don’t know exactly—took Shawn and Ian from the house. We can’t reach them. Their phones are off, and they’re not calling.”
Morgan shook her head. “What the fuck is going on around here?”
“That’s not all,” I said. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think you’re safe, Morgan. Before Ian got taken away, he was really worried about you. He thought someone would come after you. I don’t know why or who. But that’s why we’re here.” I gestured at the hayloft. “Bryce has been helping me keep you hidden.”
“But… What? I don’t get it,” she said. “What would anyone want with me?”
“I don’t know, not exactly. But I think it has something to do with how you got so sick. I know you’re feeling better now, but Ian didn’t want to take you to the hospital because he was worried about what they’d do to you there.”
I looked at my phone. I was going to be late for the funeral.
“I have to go to Mr. Hershel’s service,” I said. “There’s no way I c
an get out of it. I don’t know if you’d even want to go, but you don’t really have the option. We can’t let anyone know where you are right now. You’ll have to stay here with Bryce. I promise I’ll be back in a couple hours. We’ll figure out what to do then. Okay?”
Morgan nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I won’t go anywhere. Look, I trust you. Just hurry back. Seriously. Hurry back.”
* * *
Mr. Hershel’s service was at the farmhouse where he’d been born, grown up, and spent his entire life.
Because the roads were blocked off surrounding Muldoon and nothing could be shipped in or out, my Dad had volunteered to build a coffin from scratch. Mr. Hershel had been well over six feet tall, and the large, rough-hewn box dominated one end of the living room. Its lid was closed.
Hardly anyone came. Mrs. Hershel sat silently throughout the service in the front row of plastic chairs someone had set up, but otherwise there were only a few close neighbors. Anyone who’d been able to leave Muldoon before the road blocks went up couldn’t get back into town now, and most people who were trapped here were too afraid to venture out of their homes.
Not only were Ian and Shawn not there, but there wasn’t a single male who wasn’t elderly or a child. I wondered if all the able-bodied men were being whisked away, just like my husband and brother-in-law.
I tried not to think about how the world seemed to be falling apart. I just needed to get through the funeral so I could get back to Morgan and Bryce and figure out what to do next.
But the pastor was going on and on. Just as he was finally completing his closing prayer, I heard someone rush into the room behind me.
I turned, terrified that I’d see another military police officer sweeping into the room.
But it wasn’t the military police. It was Bryce.
He kneeled to whisper into my ear. I was embarrassed. I could feel the eyes of everyone at the memorial service on me. Just about every one of them had seen me drunk and dancing with Bryce at the bar, and now here he was disrupting the pastor’s funeral prayer by talking to me.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded as quietly as I could. “Did you leave Morgan? Is she alone?”
“We have to get out of here.” Bryce was scared. He was trying to pull me from my seat. “Someone came to your house,” he said. “Men, armed. I heard them calling for Morgan. But not just her, Ashley. They were looking for you, too.”
The sound of boot steps suddenly came from the porch. “Now,” Bryce said. “We have to go now.”
He pulled me into the adjoining kitchen just before a troop of armed military police filed into the living room.
“What is this?” the pastor complained.
“We have a warrant issued for the immediate detention of Morgan Hall, Ashley Young, and Reginald Wislowski. If any of these individuals is present on these premises, make yourself known.”
I turned to Bryce. “They’re after you now, too?”
He whispered, frightened, “What do they think I have to do with any of this?”
Thankfully, my dad had the wherewithal to lie. “I’ve never heard of any Reginald whoever,” he said in the other room, “but Ashley Young’s my daughter, and she’s not here. You know where she is? She’s out looking for her husband. Her husband who you people detained without any goddamn good reason.”
“Sir,” the military police officer said. “You need to cooperate. We won’t hesitate to make arrests if necessary.” He shouted, “Everybody out! One line in the driveway! Single file. Have any personal identification you can provide at this time, ready.”
We kept as quiet as we could in the kitchen while the living room emptied, but another squad of military police appeared at the back door. One man peered in through the kitchen window and moved to open the door. We had nowhere to flee other than back into the living room.
We had seconds to figure out what to do before the military police finished searching the kitchen and pantry.
I scanned the small living room for hiding spots. It had been mostly emptied to make space for the rows of plastic chairs. Otherwise, the coffin was the only object.
Suddenly my thoughts flashed to something Ian had said before he’d been taken away. He’d said that he had to “take care” of Mr. Hershel’s body.
I still didn’t really understand what that meant, but on a desperate hunch I lifted the coffin’s lid.
It was empty.
My hunch was right. Ian must have hidden the body for some reason. But who was he trying to keep it from? And why? For now, I couldn’t waste time wondering.
“In here,” I said to Bryce, holding the coffin’s lid open.
It was our only choice. We were surrounded. The only other option was to give ourselves up.
“No fucking way!” Bryce stepped away from the strangely empty coffin.
My eyes darted to the kitchen doorway. At any moment the military police would be in the living room.
“It’s your choice,” I whispered, and, without any better plan in mind, I hopped up into the coffin.
In the kitchen, one of the military police shouted, “Clear!” Footsteps approached down the hall.
“Fuck it.” Bryce scrambled into the coffin beside me. He landed facing the opposite direction, with his feet at my head. I lowered the lid.
From the darkness inside, we could hear the sound of heavy boots hitting the floor and the shuffling of plastic chairs.
And then something tapped on the coffin. It sounded like the tip of an assault rifle.
“We checking in here, too?” asked a voice.
Another set of footsteps approached.
“I’ve seen way too much lately to open up another fucking coffin,” said a second voice.
There was a pause.
Finally, the first voice very quietly said, “Me, too.”
Their boots scraped away as the men left the room.
“Are they gone?” Bryce whispered. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I listened. Another set of footsteps, softer than the last, was approaching.
“Someone else is coming.”
Now the softer footsteps approached the coffin. They stopped right beside it.
We heard something land on top of the coffin’s lid. There was the sound of someone going through a bag, and then came the loud, grinding whir of an electric drill.
Someone was screwing the coffin’s lid shut.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Bryce started hyperventilating. He couldn’t speak any louder than a terrified whisper. He pounded three times on the coffin’s lid.
Then he stopped. His body went limp.
He’d passed out.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!”
I started pounding on the lid. It was time to give up. I was ready to get out of this already-overheated, cramped space. Whatever the military police planned to do couldn’t be any worse than getting locked inside a coffin.
But the drilling didn’t stop.
I heard a second screw bite into the wood and felt the lid tighten. The meager light that had been making its way beneath the lid dimmed.
I pounded again. “Hey! I’m in here. I’m in here!”
“Shit,” someone said. It was a male voice, young—maybe a teenager. “This is a loud one.”
“Don’t listen to it,” said another voice—another teenager. “You keep forgetting what they said in training.”
“I didn’t forget. It’s just loud this time.”
“Well, don’t even fucking say anything about it. When you say something, it just gets worse. Just pretend like you don’t hear anything. Let’s get this over with.”
I pounded twice as hard on the lid. “Let me the fuck out! Someone’s in here! I’m alive!”
The drilling paused.
“It’s an illusion, remember?” the second voice said. “They’re dead. They’re not really conscious. It just seems like they are. They’re like puppets, remember? The bodies will die later. If we don’t do this, the
disease will keep spreading. Give me the fucking drill.”
Another screw. Then another. The lid tightened further. The dim light vanished.
* * *
For a while, I went into a state of disconnected shock.
I just couldn’t really believe that this was actually happening. I had this irrational sense that I was like some character in a video game—I’d lost, but I would just get to restart from the beginning and try again. There had to be some way out. This wasn’t how I was going to die.
When I felt them move the coffin into a vehicle, I started pounding on the lid again and screaming. I didn’t stop, not even when I heard an engine start and felt us start moving. I paused only long enough to catch my breath and pull my cellphone out of my pocket.
In small towns in the middle of nowhere, coverage is spotty. As soon as you get outside the city limits, you’re lucky if you get a signal. We were already out of range.
Who would I have called, anyway? Ian and Shawn were unreachable. My dad? What could he have done, even if I’d been able to reach him?
I kept pounding and screaming even though I had no idea whether there was anyone else in the back of whatever truck or transport vehicle they’d put us in.
Bryce’s legs began to stir at my shoulders. My head was wedged against his shoe. He was waking up. My arm was burning from pounding the lid, and I was going hoarse, but I didn’t stop. When Bryce remembered where he was, he started pounding, too. He was crying.
I felt the vehicle make a sharp turn, and then we started jostling over a rough road. We came to a stop.
There was the sound of a sliding door opening. Then, in the distance, I heard a large diesel engine and a slow beeping.
It was a backhoe—I was certain of it. It sounded just like the one my dad had. The only reason anyone used a backhoe was to dig large, deep holes.
Bryce started sobbing harder and pounding the lid ferociously. The wood splintered slightly under his fist and, for a moment, I had a glimmer of hope. But realistically I knew he’d never be able to break through. My dad was a good carpenter. The coffin was too strong.