by K. M. Fawkes
“No, no, no,” Uncle said, shaking his head and leaning against the wall. He looked eager for the debate, so at least Brad had made the right choice there. “See, most people,” he speared Brad with a gaze. “People like you,” he said pointedly, “they take the Bible literally.”
“I know that there were a lot of parables,” Brad said, strangely indignant at being taken for a fundamentalist. “But—”
Uncle held up his hand, cutting him off. “That doesn’t matter. That’s not what we mean. We know the truth. The Bible was just a story.”
Brad blinked, not expecting that sentence from a man who had a cult church under his house.
“It was a story,” Uncle said again, clearing enjoying the surprise on Brad’s face. “And it was telling us not what had happened, but what was going to happen later.”
As Uncle warmed to his subject, Brad had a flashback to spending his spring break from college with a friend who lived in the south. They’d gone to his grandfather’s Baptist church for a Wednesday-night service and the preacher’s intonation had been close to Uncle’s. There was a pattern to it. Lots of stress on every other word. It was oddly effective and strangely lulling.
“We’ve been living in Eden,” Uncle said. “And we’ve been corrupting it this whole time.” He stopped for a moment and then sighed as he said, “The nanobots were the apple.”
That statement broke the momentary spell. Brad stared at him in confusion. “Excuse me? The…the apple?” he said.
“The fruit we shouldn’t have taken!” Uncle snapped, clearly disappointed in Brad all over again. “The fruit of the tree of knowledge! We took what was not ours and so we were cast out. And now, Lucifer walks among us to punish us for our conceit.”
“And you…worship him?” Brad asked. He still didn’t understand the theology at all. It seemed like they’d just picked and chosen the parts of the Bible they were interested in and twisted them to suit their weird doomsday worries.
“We understand him,” Uncle said with a shrug. “That’s all. After all, he, like us, was cast out for reaching for greater things than he was meant for.”
“Okay,” Brad said. It seemed to be the only thing he could say.
“The darkness has come,” Uncle went on. The man kneeling at his feet began to pray even more quickly, his voice rising slightly. Uncle ignored him as he said, “The son of Dawn is here. And we shall reunite him with the Lord, our God, and inherit the Earth.”
“Right.”
“But none of that matters,” Uncle went on, his voice brusque and businesslike again. “At least not to you,” he amended. “Because you don’t believe.”
Brad stood up a bit straighter. He could lie, but he didn’t really want to. Even without being religious, he knew that this was a load of shit. It was just an excuse for them to be batshit crazy.
“No,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe. Not in this.”
Uncle only shrugged. “That’s fine. I’d be content to let you die in your ignorance.”
He paused just long enough for Brad to wonder if he was actually going to get out of this without bloodshed. Then, he smiled and shook his head.
“But I can’t go that easy on you, Brad. You see, you took something of mine.”
“What’s that?” Brad asked, trying to look as confused as he’d felt a few minutes ago.
“Let’s not play dumb,” Uncle said. “I don’t have the time or the patience for it. We want our daughter back. We want our Martha.”
Brad shook his head. “No.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Uncle said. “You’re keeping her in the darkness when she belongs in the light. She belongs in the Family.”
“She doesn’t want to stay with you,” Brad said, striving to sound calm even though he didn’t think it would do any good. One couldn’t reason with crazy and that was exactly what was staring him in the face.
“We often reject what we know will do us good,” Uncle said with a sad shake of his head. “Especially when we’re young. The long and the short of it is that what she wants doesn’t matter. She’s ours. She’s branded. She’s family.” He said it the same way that Brad would have told someone that water was wet or the sun rose in the east. As if it was incontrovertible truth.
“Now, I’m going to make it easy on you,” the man continued. “You just bring her on back to us and then you can go back to whatever living you’re scraping up. Till Lucifer finds you, that is,” he added with another glance at the cross. “But that’s neither here nor there. I’ll give you till sundown tomorrow. If she’s not back by then…well, you will have brought what happens on yourself.”
Uncle stepped back and Brad edged toward the steps. There was clearly nothing more to say and they both knew it.
“Run along,” Uncle encouraged. “You’ve got a ways to go to get to that little cabin of yours, and I don’t want you freezing to death before you get a chance to do the right thing.”
Uncle turned his back, kneeling at the cross. Brad bolted. He ran the entire way home.
Chapter 12
Even with his punishing pace, Brad didn’t get back till near dinnertime.
“Brad!” Sammy called, running out onto the front porch.
Martha ran out too. She didn’t speak. All she did was throw herself into Brad’s arms and press her face against his jacket. He put his arms around her, too, his chest tightening. What was he going to do? How was he going to keep her safe?
“What in the hell were you thinking, just disappearing like that?” Anna demanded when he stepped into the house, but she trailed off when she saw his face, pale and strained. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Brad could feel both of the kids watching him. He shook his head. “I need to talk to you,” he said.
With a worried frown, Anna nodded.
“Where were you all day, Brad?” Sammy asked.
“In the woods,” Brad said. “I was trying to find a deer, but I didn’t have any luck.”
“But you said we had plenty of food…” Martha said.
“Yes, but a little more never hurt anybody,” Brad countered. “Why don’t you two go get washed up and we can have dinner? I’m starving.”
They ran to do so and Anna quietly dished up the beans, rice, and deer meat that she’d cooked. Despite what Brad had said to distract the kids, his stomach clenched at the sight of food. He’d always had a hard time eating when he was nervous or worried.
He got through the meal as best he could, happy to let Sammy and Martha take the lead in the conversation. They’d gone to chop up ice for water and they were very proud of themselves for the three full buckets that now sat in the corner. Once the meal was finished and the dishes were done and the kids were finally in bed, Brad gestured for Anna to follow him into the living room.
“I met the cult today,” he said, deciding to be direct. There was no point in trying to cushion the blow. Not when everything else he had to say was just as bad.
Her mouth dropped open and she sank back into her chair. “What? Where?”
“Back at the house I found Martha in.”
Anna stared at him in confusion. “Why would you go back there?”
Brad took a deep breath. This was going to be the hardest part. “I had to. I left a note when I picked Martha up, explaining that we had her and we’d keep her safe.”
“You left a note?” she demanded after a long moment of strained silence.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“And these people found it?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?” she asked, her voice deceptively calm.
“It wasn’t descriptive,” Brad said. “Just that we were in a cabin and I’d come back to check for a response. I didn’t say where or how far away.”
She didn’t look as relieved as he’d hoped, but he couldn’t really blame her.
“What happened out there today?” she asked.
He told her everything
, from the shots to the ride in the truck. Then, he told her as much as he could about the “religion” that Auntie and Uncle practiced. He told her about the huge house they lived in and the multitude of followers inside it. He didn’t hold anything back.
“And they want Martha back,” he finished up when the fire had started to burn a little low. “We’ve got until tomorrow night to return her to them, or we face the consequences.”
Anna leaned forward in the chair, pressing one hand over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
He reached out to her, but she sat up quickly and shrugged him off with angry movements. “How could you do this?” she spat, looking up at him with fire in her eyes.
Brad drew back, surprised. “Do what?”
“Any of this!” she said, gesturing around wildly as if to encompass all of the story he’d just told her. “And most of all, how could you lie to me like this?”
“I didn’t lie to you,” he said, stunned by the ferocity of her anger.
“Oh really?” she demanded, standing up once again. “What exactly do you call it, then? She began counting on her fingers. “You didn’t tell me about the note! You certainly didn’t tell me that you were going back to get the damn thing!” She faltered for a second when she couldn't think of a third lie, but then she veered, going on to a different attack. “We were out here like sitting ducks all day and you didn’t even warn me! You could have died and I never would have known what happened to you!”
Brad couldn’t deny that she had good points. He’d been trying to protect her, keep her from worrying. But keeping her in the dark about things like this hadn’t been the right thing to do, and he knew it. He’d been so busy trying to correct his mistake that he hadn’t thought about what was best for her.
“I—” he began, intending to apologize, but she cut him off.
“You were the one going on and on about being able to trust me,” Anna said, her voice low and thrumming with anger. “Do you really think that I can trust you now?”
She didn't wait for his answer. She just left the room, leaving Brad at an utter loss as to what to do.
Chapter 13
Anna still wouldn’t speak to him the next morning. This time, it wasn’t just awkward and standoffish. It was pure, cold fury.
Once Sammy and Martha had finished breakfast and settled down to their assignments, Brad went around to check the traps. He couldn’t take the atmosphere in the cabin on top of his own worry. He’d laid awake most of the night trying to figure out how they were going to keep Martha safe.
Not that it had done him any damn good. He hadn’t come up with a single idea over the hours he’d stared at the living room ceiling. In fact, he had fewer ideas, now that he’d met the cult.
For starters, he no longer had any illusions of being able to outgun them. There had been at least ten able-bodied adults in that house, not counting Auntie and Uncle. And that left out however many had been waiting to ambush him and drive him into their trap.
Martha’s words kept replaying in his mind. “They train us to fight. I don’t like hurting people.” He might have done a lot of things in this new world that he had never imagined, but he knew that he couldn’t shoot a child. Even one that had been trained to kill him.
But neither could he let Martha go back with those freaks. If the punishment for pouring out a cup of cider was a week’s worth of wood chopping and the badge of honor for belonging to them was a brand, he didn’t want to know what they would do to her for daring to run away.
On the other hand, there was Sammy and Anna’s welfare to think of. He’d promised to take care of them first. And now, he’d pissed off a cult. How had he screwed things up this badly? And what the hell could he do?
He swore when he realized that he’d come full circle in his thought process. The fact of the matter was clear. There wasn’t a damn thing that he could do. He’d tell the cult to fuck off; they weren’t getting Martha back.
Maybe Anna and Sammy and Martha could hide out somewhere. Auntie and Uncle had talked a big game, but they couldn’t know every hiding spot around. The cult could ransack the place, but if they didn’t find the girl, what more was there to do? Kill him, probably. He wasn’t an idiot. His time was seriously limited if he pissed these people off. Which was exactly what he planned to do.
The further he walked away from the cabin, checking the traps for game, the more he began to feel that the woods weren’t as empty as they usually were. Once he’d checked about half of the traps, he couldn’t take the feeling of being watching anymore. He turned and went back to the cabin, giving in. These might be his last hours on earth. He’d rather spend them at home. Anna looked up at him, but she didn’t speak. He didn’t bother to say anything, either.
They whiled away the day in separate rooms. Anna finished up her lessons with the kids and then went upstairs. Brad got out his kit and began cleaning his guns in the living room. Sammy and Martha were happy to join him, Martha picking up a book and Sammy grabbing a block of wood he’d started on the day before. Brad glanced over and then took a longer look, impressed with the scene that was taking place.
“I like the way you do the letters,” he said when the boy stopped to eye the piece critically.
“Thanks!” Sammy said, blowing at the wood shavings. “I like how spiky they are.”
“Me too,” Martha said quietly, leaning over to look. “How’d you learn to do it like that?”
Sammy shrugged. “I didn’t really learn it. I was just trying to make them look like the labels on the boxes in the attic.”
Brad smiled when he realized that Sammy was modeling his carving on Lee’s handwriting. “My dad would be proud.”
Sammy grinned and went back to work. Martha went back to her book, turning the pages in silence. She was a fast reader with a tendency to become fully absorbed in the story. Brad liked that when she was reading, all the worries that were typically in her eyes vanished.
This might be the last time he saw it. This might be the last time any of this happened, and the thought broke his heart. No. He wasn’t going to let them take what he had. He still didn’t have any idea what he was going to do, but he’d figure something out. He had to. He didn’t think that he could stand losing his own little family.
As night fell, Brad grew more and more tense. Anna herded the kids up to bed earlier than usual. Then, she joined Brad in the living room. She still didn’t speak to him and he could feel the heat of her glare. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Why don’t you tell me what you would have done?” he asked.
She jumped in her seat, clearly startled by the tone in his voice. “What?” she asked, her voice slightly shaky.
“If you’re going to sit there and judge me for my decision, why don’t you tell me what you would have done,” he repeated. “If you found a kid who told you she was waiting for her family to come and get her. Who’s starving and freezing and nearly cries when you say you can take her somewhere warm where she won’t be alone. Who doesn’t say a damn thing about having run away from a cult, because what kid would?”
He flung his hands out wide, wanting to get through to Anna, wanting her to understand that he couldn’t have done anything different. Wanting to hear her say that she understood.
Anna didn’t speak. She only stared at him. Somehow, he’d lost her. Maybe irrevocably this time.
“None of this would matter if you’d listened to me and left when I suggested it,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?” Brad asked. “Sure, okay, we wouldn’t be dealing with this. Because we’d be frozen to death on some road!”
“You don’t know that for sure,” she said.
“Yes I do. And you do, too,” Brad growled. When Anna didn’t say anything else, he went on. “I thought I was doing the right thing by bringing her home, Anna. So, you tell me. Would you have left her there if you knew what you were getting into?”
“That’s not a fair question, Brad! I
don’t know what I would have done because I wasn’t there!”
“Exactly. You don’t know. You weren’t there.” Anger began to eclipse his fear and frustration, and he was tired of holding it back. “Because you don’t go out. You don’t have to see the shit I have to see.”
“I go—”
“To the lake,” Brad said cuttingly. “You go to the lake and fish. And then you push every single other thing else off on me!”
“That’s not—”
“How do you think it feels to be responsible for all of you?” he demanded. “To know that I’m the one who put us in danger? To know that there’s not a damn thing I can do?”
“Brad, I—”
A sharp knock on the cabin door cut her off. Brad grabbed his shotgun and headed to the door. Anna took a knife and followed him. Brad opened the door and saw Auntie and Uncle on the doorstep.
Auntie smiled a wide, predatory smile that he might have seen as friendly if he hadn’t known her.
“We’ve come to pick Martha up,” she chirped.
“You can go to hell,” Brad said flatly.
“Watch your language around the ladies,” Uncle snapped in a warning tone.
“You can go f—”
Anna pushed Brad’s shoulder and he stopped. She was right about that much. This wouldn’t do any good.
“Hi,” she said as she stepped forward. “We haven’t met yet. My name is Anna.”
“Hello, dear,” Auntie said with another of those smiles. “It’s always nice to meet the neighbors, of course, but it’s a little chilly for a long conversation. If you could just go get our girl, we’ll be on our way and out of your hair.”
“Martha wants to stay here,” Anna said, her voice firm but still polite, which was more than Brad could manage at the moment. He took a moment to admire that.