“Take the t-shirt off,” I told him.
“Hurts,” Les said through clenched teeth.
That insolence didn’t bother me. I grabbed a handful of it near the throat and sliced down with the blade, the cotton fabric parting like a knife through hot butter. I savagely ripped the rest open. His chest was cut on almost a straight line, and where I’d shot him in the plate, he already had a purple bruise, his chest slightly deformed. The .45-70 rounds at close range had halfway caved in his rib cage, but apparently hadn’t gone through the plate of the vest, something I’d check later if I had time.
“Get up,” I said, my words coming out guttural as Jessica started crying behind me, sobbing the words “no” over and over.
Les didn’t move for a moment, so I jabbed him in the groin with the tip of the knife. He yelped, but I hadn’t done it hard enough to cut through the fabric, I had no doubt it hurt though. He put his hands down and pushed himself up, then doubled over, leaning on a pallet, both arms crossed over his chest. He was half sobbing from the pain himself. I grabbed a handful of hair with my left hand and slammed him backwards into the wall near the three by three opening by the floor. His head bounced just hard enough that his eyes started to roll back.
“Do you know what you’ve done?” I asked him, one hand on his neck holding him upright with my left hand, the tip of the switchblade just under his chin.
“I killed… our traitor…” he said softly, every word paining him.
“You know who she was to me?” I snarled, digging, seeing blood welling at the tip of my knife.
“Your whore sister,” he spat, “you turned her.”
“Wes, don’t,” Jess said from behind me, but I didn’t turn, my focus was on Les.
“Did you know that Spider wasn’t her biological father?” I asked Les.
A look of confusion crossed his face, then it started to change to a look of horror.
“Liz…?” he asked.
I pulled the tip of the knife away from his throat and stabbed with it, below the waistline. Les screamed as I sunk the entire blade into the inner thigh, twisting it. I yanked it back out, red droplets covering my hand, spattering on the floor.
“Yes, Liz. My mother,” I said, then sank it into his meaty stomach.
Les screamed in a high-pitched voice as I crouched nose to nose with him. He struggled, but I’d cut his artery in his leg; he was already weak, in pain, and he couldn’t fight me. The knife to the guts was sadistic of me, but I was losing control. Losing it all. Losing myself. I stabbed him in the stomach a second time, leaving the blade in his guts.
“See, my mom had a one night stand with her father’s best friend. Emily is a result of that affair,” I said, twisting the knife, then pulling it out, putting it at his throat as his legs started buckling.
I went down on my knees as Les collapsed, keeping a hold of his neck, his eyes locked onto me.
“You not only killed my sister, you just killed your own daughter,” I screamed in his face.
Raider whined and Jess came from behind me and put a hand on my shoulder.
“The artillery is starting to rain down. We are out of time,” she said simply, something soft in her voice.
I turned to look at her. She was covered in gore. The blood was probably both Emily’s and Spider’s. Raider sat at her side now, his ears down, looking away from me. I turned slowly back to Les, my knife at his throat. I realized I’d gotten tunnel vision and had blocked out all sounds not in the immediate vicinity. The ground was shaking and upstairs and outside, and explosions were ripping through the air. Dust was falling from the cracks in the flooring above.
“I killed my own daughter?” Les asked, and before I could answer, he jerked forward, the switchblade going into his throat.
I don’t know if he intended to jerk his head side to side, but he did before I could drop the blade. Red fluid sprayed and I scrambled back, letting the knife drop.
“Wes, we have to go,” she said, turning to the stairs.
“We can’t go that way,” I told her, using my foot to push Les’ spasming body aside. “We go out the way Les came in.” I pointed to the tunnel.
“We don’t know where it goes,” Jess shot back, panic in her voice.
“Take Raider with you, you go first, I’ll be along in a moment.”
“Wes, I can’t leave you behind,” she said as an explosion seemingly hit right above us, making everything shake, knocking me off my feet.
“Go,” I screamed, “I’ll be right there I promise. Raider, get her out of here!”
The last wasn’t a proper command, but he understood, chuffing and grabbing Jessica’s sleeve with his teeth, pulling her backwards towards the dark opening in the earth.
“Wes!”
“I promise you,” I said, standing, “I’ll be right behind you.”
She went, and so did I. She and Raider disappeared into the gloom. I picked up the BFR I’d shot Spider and Les with, and holstered it on my way to Emily’s body. I pulled her off Spider, who now, in death, looked at peace. I put Emily over my shoulder and found her revolver. I would have put it in her holster if I had time, but I didn’t. A shell hit right above us making the whole room shake, part of the ceiling on the right side start to give. I tucked her gun into my belt and ran for the hole in the wall near Lester’s corpse. I was pulling Emily in after me into the cramped escape tunnel as another shell hit, and everything went black as the top of the cabin came down into the basement in a burning inferno.
21
We buried Emily next to my grandpa, near my mom, who’d died of an overdose in the final moments as we’d made our escape. The other side of Grandpa was held in reserve. It was a morbid thought, but Grandma was still alive and as ornery as all get out, twice as much on Sundays. We didn't do much in the way of funerals, but once we'd put her to rest, Mary and I had planted wildflower seeds over the area, praying we were all done with burials for a while. I was sitting between gravesites, a bottle of shine in my hand, working on getting quite drunk, reflecting on everything that had happened.
The structure above us had come down as I'd pulled Emily's body into the tunnel system. Jess had screamed for me, and Raider had come back to find me. He'd pulled on me, but Emily had gotten stuck on something. I wasn't going to leave her. He'd dug around her foot, and suddenly she'd been freed. The tunnel seemed endless, but we crawled for a minute or two until we'd come out. The shelling had stopped, and Jess was talking into the radio. We were told to wait in place, and it hadn't been all that long until Young, McKinney, Monty, Raines, Higgins and Donovan along with more soldiers swarmed the area and found us.
They'd taken over from there and gotten us clear of the area. It'd been a blur to me after that. Anybody from our group who was found had been returned to our farm, along with us. Young gave a halfhearted attempt up at asking us to disarm and gave it up with an, "Oh hell with it," and left after getting radio frequencies from Michael and Linda. Jay had wandered back into camp a few days after that, banged up, gunshot, and delirious with infection. Linda had set to work on him with the supplies that Donovan and Young had dropped here.
The KGR who hadn’t given up had died in the artillery barrage, having fallen right into the trap Spider had tried to warn them about at the last second. Many of the slaves in the labor camp fifteen miles to the East had been left to fend for themselves, and our people who’d been taken were returned to us at the homestead. Most of us had wounds, whether mental or physical. There had been a lot of dead to bury, too many loved ones.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Jess asked, sitting down next to me.
“It’s kind of over,” I told her.
“What do you mean kind of?” she asked me.
There was a bark, and a little girl squealed as two furry missiles chased her. Mary’s little pigtails flew back behind her as she ran.
“The KGR. The National Guard. The whole double-triple-agents thing. Somebody could write about all the love, loss, an
d deception of this era, and it’d be shelved in the fiction section. Nobody sane would believe this really happened. I guess now all we have to worry about is Lance and his boys.”
“No, not really. He walked into the homestead an hour ago and gave himself up to Sheriff Jackson.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked as I saw Raider chasing after a stick Mary had thrown, Yaeger chasing after him.
“He’d rather face your justice than the governor’s.”
I thought about that. At some point, somebody somewhere had put me in charge of our small community here at the homestead. More responsibility that I didn’t want, didn’t deserve, and wished somebody would take away. I think it was my grandpa, but it could have easily been my grandma. I looked back at the two graves. Wooden crosses had been built out of timbers, the names hand carved into the wood. I ran a thumb along Emily’s name and then across Grandpa’s. I didn’t want to get up, but I had responsibilities, and getting drunk and feeling sorry for myself was probably a self-fulfilling prophecy that I didn’t want to explore too much.
I got to my feet with a groan. My ankle was better, my head bothered me a little from time to time, but all the stiffness from sitting here on the hard-packed earth, talking to my dead family members, had taken a lot out of me.
“I better go talk to him then,” I said softly.
“I’ll take this,” Jess said, grabbing the green bottle out of my hand and corking it.
I didn’t object and took her hand. We walked into the center of the homestead where the never ending cook fire was going. A pork-based stew was bubbling, and some fall greens were piled up alongside with a pile of wild onion and leeks to be added near the end of the boil. The community members who weren’t working on winterizing the barn were sitting all around the fire, but there was a big open patch in the middle with three bodies sitting huddled together. I recognized Lance and Marshall right off.
“You sure you want to do this right now?” Jessica asked.
“I think so,” I whispered. “I’m in bad shape, though. Can you make sure I don’t get my ass kicked too badly?”
She goosed me, and I tried not to let out a squawk, but some of the ladies saw what she did and a murmured giggle filtered around the fire. I took Jess’ hand and started picking my way through the small crowd.
“Raider!” I called loudly, making several people look up, the smiles dropping from their faces.
A dog answered with a big woof, and I turned to the porch to see Grandma sitting there, a shotgun across her lap, Diesel sitting by her side, staring at me. I heard a scrabbling of claws behind me, then Raider was bumping my left hip, making a sneezing sound. We finished the walk as the three of them turned to look up at us. I felt the weight of the BFR in a cross draw rig on my left side and was careful not to make any sudden moves.
“Mind if we sit?” I asked Marshall, his woman, and Lance softly.
“Please,” my nemesis, Lance Warcastle said.
Jessica and I sat, and I told Raider to sit and watch, which wasn’t quite guard, but that was kind of the same thing.
“Marshall, how are you doing?” I asked him softly, my hand held out.
“Good Mister Wes. I’m glad to see you again,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it.
“Thank you for taking care of him,” Lance said, looking me in the eyes. “I know you probably hated every second of it, but he says you were kind to him, gave him work.”
“He’s been working as a teacher to the younger kids,” I told him. “Reading, writing, and arithmetic. He reads stories to the kids at night and has been helping provide meat from trapping he’s been doing with some younger kids in the group.”
“He… I never would have guessed,” Lance said softly.
“You saw something special in him. You saw something innocent.”
“You protected him,” Jessica said softly to Lance. “I never understood that in school, but now I kind of do.”
“I just … if anything happens to me, as a result of my actions, my past, I am here to humbly beg that you won’t take it out on him. He’s the only good one in the family.”
“Marshall will always be welcome in our community,” I said with a small grin, because our community had shrank to the point the forty odd souls here barely made a dent in the food storage we’d confiscated from the KGR.
“As for me…” Lance’s words fell off as he put his hands up, palms out, “you know what I’ve done. I’d rather face you than the governor’s men.”
I thought about it for a long moment then nodded.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, standing up. “Raider, follow.”
Marshall’s face went blank, but a tear went down the side of his cheek. Lance had gone white, but he followed.
“Wes?” Jess asked.
“I don’t want you to see this,” I told her.
We stood across the street from our driveway. We were within sight of our manned lookout posts, but far enough away that nobody could hear us.
“Did you rape any of the women and children who were in the camps over there?” I asked pointing to the Crater of Diamonds.
“No,” he said after a moment, looking me in the eyes.
“Did you sell any of them into slavery?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said simply. “Spider’s men had a group they were in contact with. I didn’t want to do it, but he had my cousin.”
I looked down at Raider who whined. I agreed, I didn’t think he was lying either. I’d seen my father’s M.O.
“Have you murdered anybody during the power failures?”
“Besides trying to kill you?” he asked. “Not on purpose. I shot somebody when they shot on me and my men first. I’ve killed men when I went looking for supplies and was ambushed. I didn’t know they were the homeowners at the time, I didn’t care, but it bugs me late at night, or sometimes in my dreams. I keep telling myself it was survival, but it still haunts me, if that’s the right word.”
It was.
“Wes, I’m ready to take responsibility for what I’ve done,” Lance said, closing his eyes.
I realized that I’d drawn and cocked the BFR and had it aimed at him. This wasn’t Emily’s pistol I’d recovered—it was my father’s. The only thing of his I’d kept.
“Open your eyes,” I said, raising the big bored handgun up so it rested between his eyes.
Lance opened his eyes, then squeezed them shut, blinking tears away. I lowered the hammer and holstered the pistol.
“Lance, you and I had a beef over untaxed liquor. We got into our own fights. You tried to kill me. I tried to kill you. You hurt others when you didn’t think you had any other choice, and sometimes when you did. You’re asking me for judgment, but I don’t think I’m the right guy to hand that out. If you want me to determine your fate for your crimes, I can do that. You’re going to live a long life. You’re going to have those nightmares. You’re going to listen to that small voice in the back of your mind that softly asks you how you got to where you are, and if you want to stay there. I think that’s fitting for your crimes, don’t you?” It all came out in a blur, in a rush.
“I … I don’t understand.” Lance said quietly, looking at my holstered pistol.
“You see, I’m just as guilty as anything you’ve ever done, maybe even worse. I have a personal body count so high that I can’t remember all the faces and names. I’m not the guy you want to ask forgiveness from; you want him,” I said, pointing straight up. “Because I’m not sure He and I are going to get a chance to talk when it’s my final day.” I looked at my feet.
Raider grabbed my left sleeve in his mouth and pulled on me gently. I looked at him and he sat, his tail wagging, and he barked at me once. I patted him on the head. He rolled his neck so I could scratch his ears the way he wanted. He was at peace and I realized, as much conflict I had in my soul, I mostly was too. Despite what I’d told Lance, I felt in my heart I had followed God’s laws as best as I could. When it came to ma
n’s laws, that was a different matter. I definitely wasn’t the right person to pass on judgment, though, I could maybe offer redemption.
“You promise to give up your old ways and live your life as your cousin’s keeper, you got a place here in the small community of Murfreesboro. All slates wiped clean.”
“What? I mean, Sheriff Jackson and Dave Rolston—”
“Live and work with us. I think I can talk to them. If they don’t agree with me … well, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been an outlaw.”
22
Two Months Later
Jessica, Mary, and I were sitting on the couch. Grandma was tending to the cookfire when we heard a knock at the door. I ran over and opened it and smiled. Linda, Jay, Sheriff Jackson, Dave Rolston and Sgt. Young were on the other side. I invited them all in.
“Stomp your boots outside, and if you track snow all over my rug, I’m going to stomp a mudhole in your ass,” Grandma called from the wood stove as she put a fresh percolator of coffee on the cook surface.
“Feisty,” Young said, walking in.
“You have no idea,” Linda joked back.
“Hi!” Mary called from the couch. “We put the doggies in the bedroom.”
Young looked relieved. Last time he’d been here on the homestead, he’d been a chew toy, and I’d sucker punched him. Jess took my hand, and I looked over at her. She glowed, and her baby bump was starting to be noticeable. I gave her hand a brief squeeze back.
“Everybody settle in,” Grandma said, pointing to the table, already having taken her meal earlier, and placed the percolator on the stovetop.
“Are we having a meeting tonight?” Mary asked, snuggling in on Jessica’s side.
Still Surviving (Book 5): Dark Secrets: Page 16