by Sam Sisavath
Ted had switched to the auto body shop’s roof, crouching low to keep from becoming an easy target. She could hear him moving above them, the crunch-crunch of his boots, a reminder that he was bigger than the average man.
Will and Danny hung the Rayovac LED lanterns they had brought with them from Houston around the garage. The space was limited, but they were able to stash their supply trailers and still have enough room for the office couch, on which they laid Luke. The teenager was unconscious, and he still looked dangerously pale. She was heartened to see that he was breathing, his chest rising and falling through the day, even if he did seem to struggle with it periodically.
He’s alive, that’s all that matters.
She found Will and Danny in the diner next door and was surprised to see them packing night-vision gear. “Why are you taking those?”
“Just in case we get caught out there when night falls,” Will said. He picked up one of the Motorola radios and removed a couple of wires attached to them before handing it to her. “We don’t think the shooters’ home base is far from here. Maybe three, four klicks. They wouldn’t want to set up their ambush too far from where they can walk to and back.”
She took the radio. There was dry blood along its edges. It was part of the comms system Luke was wearing. She remembered seeing him putting it on this morning before they left, and how young he looked, wearing gear designed for men who lived and died in war zones.
He was so young. He is young.
“Kate,” Will said, his voice bringing her back.
She looked up from the radio.
“If we don’t make it back before nightfall, we’ll radio in if we can,” Will said. “These things usually have a three- to four-kilometer range, but those woods look pretty thick, and radio signals might have a hard time getting through.”
“Is all this really necessary?”
“Expect the best, prepare for the worst,” Danny said.
“What is that, some kind of motto?”
“Ranger motto,” Danny said. “Well, ours, anyway. That, and ‘Never screw a farmer’s daughter until you know how often she spends her free time in the barn.’ We learned that the hard way during a practice jaunt in Oklahoma.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Will said. “We’ve never even been to Oklahoma.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Will said to Kate, “You’ll have to watch over the others until we get back.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“But what if.”
“That’s not going to happen.” He put down the spare magazines he had been loading, reached for her hand and pulled her close to him, then kissed her softly. “We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“Promise?” she whispered, feeling childish, but unable to stop herself.
“Promise,” he said and kissed her again, more forcefully this time.
Behind them, Danny said, “Get a fucking room. I’m trying to work here.”
*
She and Ted watched Will and Danny leave on their ATVs from the roof of the auto body shop. They headed back in the direction they had fled just a few hours ago. Had it only been a few hours since the gun battle on the road?
“They’ll be okay,” Ted said. “This is what they do, right?”
“Yeah.”
She watched the ATVs until they were gone, leaving just the sound of their engines in the air. Soon, that too was gone. She touched the radio clipped to her hip and fought the urge to call Will and tell him to come back, that they should wait until tomorrow.
She glanced at the sky instead. It looked darker, clouds gathering.
“How long should we stay up here?” Ted asked.
“Maybe an hour before sundown.”
She sensed Ted wanted to say more, but something was holding him back. The big man fidgeted with the rifle in his hands. He suddenly looked very young to her; his imposing size made it easy to forget he was still in his early twenties.
“Are you okay, Ted?”
He gave her a grin that came out wrong. “Back there, when they shot Luke… Were you scared?”
“I was scared out of my mind,” she said, relieved by the admission. It was easier with Ted. He was like her, a civilian pressed into war. She could never be this candid with Will or Danny.
“Yeah, me, too,” Ted said. “I think I might have gotten one of them.”
“Yeah? Danny said at least one of the ambushers had been shot.”
Ted nodded. “I saw a figure in my scope. It’s stronger than yours, you know? I’m pretty sure I got one of them.” He paused, seemed to struggle with his thoughts. “When you started shooting into the trees, I saw one of them moving behind this big tree and I shot at him. I wonder if he’s dead.”
I hope they’re all dead. I hope it was painful and they lay bleeding. They can all go to hell.
“We’ll find out when Will and Danny come back,” she said instead.
CHAPTER 22
LARA
Lara felt overwhelming relief whenever they left her alone in the cabin, and suffocating fear when they returned, as they invariably did, day after day after day. It had been almost two weeks since she had become acquainted with the Sunday brothers, and each day introduced a new level of fear she hadn’t thought possible. It was a debilitating feeling, one she lived with, breathed in, and even slept with, perched on the tip of her lips. It wouldn’t go away as long as the Sundays were alive, she knew that intimately.
They were coming now, the heavy grunts and rutting noises they always made as they moved around. Except this time there was a difference. It sounded more urgent, more desperate, and for a moment she allowed herself to enjoy this new sensation. The sound of the Sundays in obvious distress made her smile.
They left three hours ago, leaving her, as usual, chained to the floor by her ankle. In those three hours, she heard gunfire and recognized the Sundays’ hunting rifles. They often hunted in the woods around the cabin, so hearing rifles throughout the day was normal.
Then she heard other gunshots that weren’t hunting rifles, and knew it was some kind of gunfight. The Sundays had found someone who was fighting back! She imagined them shot to pieces and lying on the side of the highway, bleeding slowly to death. Moaning in pain, crying out to each other.
Her fantasy lasted until she heard them coming back, their huffing and puffing, their grunting and groans of pain.
She reflexively stood up. The chain was only five feet long, so she couldn’t move very far. The doors and windows were at least twenty feet away, and the kitchen even farther. There were small bedrooms in the back—one for John, the other for Fred and Jack, the younger brothers. Not that she could have called for help even if she could reach the door or windows. There was no one out there. She found that out her first night in the cabin, when she screamed at the top of her lungs for seemingly hours on end.
There was no one out there. It was just the Sundays.
John kicked the door open and rushed inside. He and Jack were dragging Fred, the youngest, between them. They had their rifles, except for Fred.
As soon as he saw her, John gritted his teeth and shouted through his patch of thick beard at Jack, “Go unchain her!”
All three brothers were bloody, though only Fred looked hurt. It was Fred’s blood on the others’ clothes. They must have dragged him through the woods, all the way from the gun battle. They were covered in sweat and dirt and blood, the way they always looked in her nightmares.
Jack let go of Fred and rushed forward to her. He was a lanky twenty-seven-year-old, ten years younger than John, though much smaller. Fred was taller than both of them, but frail looking. John lifted his little brother and carried him to a heavily scarred oak table in the back. Fred bled all the way there, squirming uncontrollably in John’s arms. John looked almost annoyed.
Jack took a key from his pocket. He undid the shackle around her ankle without a word. Sh
e felt immediate relief. The skin around the ankle had bled and scabbed over a dozen times, and in a sick way, she had become used to the feel of the heavy, cold steel pressed against her flesh.
“Go help him,” Jack said. “He’s been shot.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“I told you, he’s been shot,” Jack said impatiently. “Go help him, Goddammit!”
He pushed her roughly. She stumbled, stepped on the long hem of her dress, and almost fell, but managed to stay upright somehow. She didn’t wear the dress, it clung to her, covered in dirt and sweat. She had slept in it for the past five days. It was torn around the edges and badly frayed all over, its floral pattern faded. She was afraid it would fall apart any day now, exposing her to the brothers.
She hurried over to John and Fred. It didn’t pay to move slowly around the brothers, especially John. How many times had he hit her for being too slow? She had stopped counting.
Fred’s wound was big and wide, and it looked like the kind she saw on the animals the brothers brought home after each hunt. She had seen post-mortem wounds on cadavers at school, but nothing fresh like this. Her stomach turned, and she instantly remembered Tony.
Sweet Tony, lying dead on the road, lifeless eyes staring back at her…
She looked at Fred now, twisting in pain, soaked in his own blood, and wondered if it was Fred who shot Tony. She was too afraid to ask. It was probably John, since he did most of the killings.
Fred was eighteen, but he looked much younger despite the hand-me-down clothes and facial hair. He didn’t have the stomach for most of the things his two older brothers did. Of the three, he was always the kindest to her. Even when he chained her up, she could see his discomfort, and once he even apologized.
She always had to remind herself of who they were. Not just John and Jack, but Fred, too, because he went along with them. He was just as culpable as the others. The Sundays killed anyone who had the misfortune of running across their highway ambush. The lucky ones managed to get around the roadblock when the brothers weren’t watching from their perch in the woods. The unlucky ones, like her, or the two girls that came after her…
John was staring at her, his face twisted into that demonic expression that warned her something bad was about to happen. “Stop just standing there and stop his bleeding.”
She moved closer to get a better look at the wound. This was why John kept her alive, long after he had gotten tired of her, long after they had realized her cooking wasn’t anything they couldn’t do themselves—and better. When he learned she studied medicine, it was as close to happy as she had seen him.
“Well?” John grunted. “Can you fix him up or not?”
“I don’t know,” she said. It was an honest answer, but it was the wrong one. She hadn’t even finished speaking when John hit her across the face with the back of his hand.
She reeled back and fell to the hard cabin floor, a place she was familiar with.
He loomed over her, his massive bulk blocking her view. Spittle hit her face as he grunted out, “You fucking save him or I’m going to cut your tits off one by one. Get to fucking work!”
She nodded through the throbbing pain, relieved he hadn’t knocked loose one of her teeth. She remembered the two girls they brought back that night, how one of them had a mouthful of blood and gaping holes where her teeth used to be…
Stop it! Concentrate on the moment!
John lumbered across the room to Jack, who was looking on from a distance, as if afraid to get too close and become infected by Fred’s injury. She could see it in Jack’s face. He was scared. Not just of John—he was always scared of John—but of what had happened out there.
She turned back to Fred. He had a soft, almost cherubic face, but right now he looked old and tired, grimacing through the pain, staring up at her with tears welling in his eyes. He didn’t make a sound except for the occasional wheezing that slipped through his lips. He was putting on a brave face.
“You’ll be all right,” she said.
He smiled at her, though she couldn’t be sure if that was because he believed her or saw right through her lie.
John stomped back to them. Lara quickly began unbuttoning Fred’s shirt to reveal the hole in his belly. It was huge and pumping blood, and she almost fainted at the sight. She blinked through the horror and concentrated on his pale, sweat-covered face instead.
“Well?” John said behind her.
“He’s bleeding badly. I need supplies…”
He was already thinking ahead of her and thrust a dust-covered first-aid box into her hands. John walked around the table and stared down at the hole in Fred’s stomach. Jack had come over, too, and was standing behind her. She could hear him breathing, raggedly, as if he were the one lying there bleeding to death instead of Fred.
“Hurry up and stop the bleeding,” John said.
She opened the box and took out the roll of gauze tape. She looked at Fred, saw the desperate sadness in his eyes, pleading with her to keep him alive.
Please, God, let him live, so I can live one more day…
*
Fred was alive, but she didn’t think he would last very long. She would be surprised if he survived the night. She hadn’t done much, except clean his wound and cover it with gauze to stop the bleeding. The bullet had gone clean through, entering his stomach and out his back. It was a miracle the bullet hadn’t severed his spine, though it had come close.
She hoped that saving him for now would mean something to John. If not, he would punish her again…
She wanted to live. She hadn’t been sure that first night in the cabin, but she was sure now.
She wanted to live.
They left Fred on the table, unconscious. She had given him enough morphine to tranq a horse, partly to keep him under, but also because he looked like he needed it. John had brought the sticks of morphine and a syringe out of his bedroom. She didn’t know where he had gotten them, and didn’t ask.
In the past few hours, Jack had become a part of the window, staring out through the burglar bars at the woods beyond, his rifle clutched tightly in his hands. There were only two windows left in the entire cabin, and both had black bars fastened tightly over them. Two other windows in the back had been sealed up before she arrived at the cabin. The door was protected by a security gate.
It was safe in here, in the cabin. She had to admit that much. Partly it was the isolated location, but the Sundays were smart about surviving. In the two weeks she’d been there, the creatures never attacked the place. At night, the Sundays turned off the lights and generators and slept in total darkness. The first night they left her outside in the living room chained to the floor, she was certain the creatures were out there, moving around, waiting.
It was a nightmare situation. It was safe inside the cabin, but she was at the mercy of three men she would murder in their sleep if given the chance.
John came back from his bedroom with two handguns stuffed in his front waistband. He hadn’t bothered to change, and dried blood clung to his shirt and faded jeans. The same with Jack.
She kept an eye on the brothers without making it too obvious. It was a skill she had developed. John handed a handgun to Jack, who looked at it oddly before taking it and tucking it into his waistband.
She smelled fear in the cabin. Not from her this time, but from the brothers. They were afraid, especially Jack. Maybe John wasn’t afraid (or maybe he just controlled it better), but he was definitely anxious. That counted for something, too.
“You think they’re coming?” Jack asked.
John didn’t answer right away. Instead, he loaded a second rifle. “I don’t know. Maybe. Doesn’t matter. If they do, we’ll kill them.”
“But there’s more of them,” Jack said, almost defensively.
“Who gives a fuck,” John grunted. “We’ll just kill them all. This is our place. No one attacks us.”
“Maybe we should go…”
“What d
id you say?” John stopped reloading and glared at Jack.
“Nothing,” Jack said quickly.
John shoved a finger in Jack’s face. “Listen, this is our place. No one’s driving us off. Not those fucking dead things and not these fucking people. You get that?”
“Yeah,” Jack said.
“You fucking get that?” John shouted.
“Yes, John, I got it.”
“Stay the fuck here.”
He got up and stomped across the cabin and disappeared back into his bedroom. She glanced out the window, seeing nothing but trees beyond.
Jack snickered at her. “You think they’re coming to rescue you? Think again. You heard John. We’re going to kill them.”
“Then why are you so scared?” she said.
She hated Jack, but she wasn’t afraid of him like she was afraid of John. He knew better than to touch her, to strike her. She was John’s domain. She imagined she wasn’t the only one who felt John’s wrath. How many times had John struck his brothers over the years? Enough to make Jack docile and turn Fred into a feeble, worshiping kid.
“Shut the hell up,” Jack said. “When this is over, I’m going to make it so you can’t talk for a few days.”
She smiled to herself. He didn’t sound very convincing at all. Jack wasn’t just scared, he was terrified.
John came out of his bedroom. “You wait here, I’m going outside,” he told Jack.
“Alone?” Jack said.
“Fucking chain her if you’re so scared,” John said, laughing. He slammed the door shut behind him.
Jack, still clutching his rifle, watched John through the window, like a kid wondering where his father was going and why he couldn’t go, too. His handgun was sticking out awkwardly from the front of his waistband. She wondered how hard it would be to get to the gun, to cock back the hammer and shove the barrel into Jack’s gut and pull the trigger, leaving two Sundays with bullet holes in their bellies instead of just one.