by Shows, Greg
“No one’ll be out in this but us.”
“Which means we’re the most likely people to die from it.”
“Come on,” Callie said, and she shoved through the chokeberry branches and stepped out onto the dusty road. Sadie followed, and when no one attacked them or shot at them, she began to jog, heading straight for the dead trees. Sadie glanced back at the bridge, but the men who’d been on it were gone. For as long as the oncoming storm raged, Sadie thought, they would be safe.
Chapter 15
“You sure you won’t stay?” Sadie asked as flames flickered in the fireplace. “Till the storm’s over?”
Callie told Sadie she wanted to be miles away from Steubenville by next morning.
“Those people are crazy,” she said. “They got at least a hundred women. You’re lucky they didn’t grab you.”
“They’d have paid for trying,” Sadie said.
Callie smiled.
“Yeah, they would’ve,” she said. “And then you’d have died.”
Sadie nodded.
“You got what you need?” Sadie asked. “Take whatever you want. And if things don’t work out, come to Texas.”
Callie hugged Sadie and kissed her cheek. “Maybe I’ll see you at your grandfather’s house someday.”
Sadie nodded as Callie stepped out of the farmhouse and into the darkness. Lightning flashed and thunder exploded, and for an instant Sadie saw Callie’s back moving south across the scrubland. Then the night went black and she was gone.
The old farm one-story farmhouse they’d found was dilapidated and nearly falling down...a ghostly memory from another time. Its driveway was overgrown, and before the dust had killed them, several mulberry trees had grown up so close to the house that their trunks had shifted the eaves and torn up the roof. But the house was at least off the main roads, and most of its windows were intact, and it was five miles south of Steubenville—farther than any of the guards were likely to venture.
While the storm had raged and climaxed, the girls sat together on a dirty old couch, exchanging more details about their lives, and promising to visit each other—if life ever returned to some semblance of its past normalcy...maybe someday...years in the future.
Remaining unsaid was the truth both of them already knew: life would never return to any semblance of its past normalcy. Not in their lifetimes. Maybe not ever.
As she sat and thought about what she should do next, the overwhelming fatigue creeping up on her since her swim came back to her. Before she could even change from a sitting position to a prone one, she fell asleep.
She dreamed of sunshine and Callie and her grandfather on his land, riding a tractor through the trees as they toured the acreage, checking fences and coyote traps. She felt happy as the wind whipped her hair around her face and her grandfather shouted parodies of poems or made up his own doggerel on the spot.
Then Blakely appeared, fully armed and angry-faced, blood pouring from a wound on his forehead. “Deserter!” he screamed, and Sadie awoke, not knowing where she was. But then the adrenaline kicked in, and she jumped up from the couch, her rifle at the ready.
The house was dark and quiet, the fire having died back so that only a few small flames remained among the red glowing coals. Whatever sound had awakened her was gone. All she heard was the wind blowing in through a hole in the window of the kitchen—the room next to the one Sadie was in.
Sadie took a step, feeling her way forward with her boot, trying not to make the floor creak. She stood waiting, her legs trembling, for what seemed like an hour before taking another step, and another, until she reached the door leading into the kitchen.
I’m going to kick your butt if you’re just scaring yourself.
One more step pushed her rifle barrel into the kitchen, which was the moment Blakely had been waiting for. He snatched the barrel and shoved it up toward the ceiling as he stepped around the corner. Then he swung his other hand into Sadie’s chest in an open hand strike he hoped would stun but not actually hurt her.
Sadie fell backward, letting go of the rifle and reaching back to keep herself from falling hard as she went down to the floor.
Lightning flashed outside, illuminating the dimly lit room, and for a brief instant Sadie saw the blood on Blakely’s face and hands and chest.
“Oh my God!” she said, looking up at him from the floor.
“That wasn’t a very nice thing to do back there,” Blakely said, his voice raspy and weak.
Then he took a stumbling step forward and dropped Sadie’s rifle as he collapsed to the floor and lay still.
“Oh boy,” Sadie said, and scrambled over to Blakely, wondering, as she reached for him, what she was going to do now.