Beauty and Dread

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  Because if she missed, the emissaries would die. Of that Steven had no doubt. And besides, they had a backup plan. It was just a hell of a lot bloodier.

  “I know. We’ve been over this a hundred times,” the girl said when she felt his gaze upon her. “The Kestrel 4000 is telling me everything I need to know – wind speed, density altitude – I’m on it. I won’t take the shot unless it’s a lock. You want me to get into position now?”

  Steven studied the plain, eager young face. She should be holding a clarinet instead of a Remington Long Action; should be marching onto a high school football field rather than crawling into a sniper hole. That such a monstrous burden was placed on those round shoulders evoked a wave of self-loathing; a familiar emotion these past months. At that moment he realized Pablo didn’t feel mere disapproval when he looked at Steven. He felt revulsion.

  And understandably so.

  Delegating this looming task to Calvin would only add a layer of contempt to already unfavorable opinions of him. He had made a lot of tough decisions in the process of preparing their town for the coming invasion; he could only hope he would have the opportunity to address those sentiments later, when and if they all survived.

  “Yes, please. I know it’s not comfortable in there, and I don’t know how long this will take. Stay frosty, Annie. There’s a lot riding on you.”

  The girl rolled her eyes but didn’t respond. Instead, she placed her portable weather station in front of a decades-old Kenmore top-loading freezer and crawled inside with her rifle. Through the drilled hole in the south-facing end, she would be able to see the digital numbers of the Kestrel 4000 and beyond to the long, flat stretch of highway 281. The hole was large enough to accommodate the barrel and scope of the Remington. She could see for almost two miles with the scope, but she wouldn’t risk a shot on anything farther than half of that distance. At least that was the plan.

  “What’s your answer, Steven?” Calvin prompted.

  He turned to face the preacher.

  “We’ll do it your way. I appreciate the offer and hope you don’t regret making it.”

  “Regret is a destructive emotion and one in which I don’t engage. It was the right decision. I know it wasn’t an easy one.” He clapped Steven on the back, turned to Natalie and pulled her into his arms, kissing her with the passion and abandon more befitting a randy schoolboy than a man of God. She broke it off after a few seconds.

  “Okay, then. Good luck,” she said with an embarrassed glance at Steven.

  “Ed, my good man! Are we ready for this great adventure?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be. Don’t forget, preacher. You make any fishy moves and I’ll take you out.”

  “Understood. Steven, one more thing. I haven’t had a chance to tell you how sorry I am for your loss. Marilyn was a fine woman. Also, if something should happen to me, please promise that you’ll look after my lady and her daughter. Such pretty girls need looking after,” he said with a wink.

  Calvin turned on his heels and began maneuvering through the traps set around the barricade. Ed kept a distance of several yards between them when he caught up to the preacher.

  They wouldn’t have too far to walk. Through his binoculars, Steven could make out two people on horseback and one person shuffling between them. They weren’t close enough to see minute details, but he saw enough to make his stomach lurch.

  He lowered the field glasses.

  “Do you see her?” Julia demanded.

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “She’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

  “What the hell is it, Steven?”

  When she pushed against his chest, he was surprised by how much strength was behind the aggression. Julia was almost as tall as him and even though her thinness bordered on gaunt, the shove felt plenty solid. Back when they were kids, she kicked his ass on a regular basis.

  There would be no dissembling with his sister. She knew him better than anyone.

  “It looks like her face has been cut.”

  “Just a cut? Is it bad? Give me those binoculars.”

  “No. You don’t want to see. Not now. Let’s get through this, Julia, then we’ll take care of her. I promise.”

  They stood mere inches apart now. Julia’s wide eyes held his narrowed ones in a flinty tractor beam; her expression was a mixed bag of challenge and fragility. Finally she broke.

  “Fine. Do what you need to do. I’m telling you, though, all I care about is getting her back safely. I don’t care about this town or your precious greenhouse or your ‘fledgling civilization.’”

  “Yes, I get that. Now please either go to the basement if you’re not up to your assignment or get into position.”

  She blinked once, then turned her back on him and headed toward town. She wasn’t a great shot, but she would not hide out with old people and children. She would stand by in their redoubt location with all the others whose skill set didn’t include sharpshooting and hand-to-hand combat.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “Natalie, you too. Get to the basement.”

  “I’m going. Please be safe, Steven!”

  She wrapped her slender arms around his neck and planted a lingering kiss on his lips before he could stop her. The next moment she was peddling away. He worked up some saliva and spat on the cracked pavement.

  “Amelia?”

  The tiny woman had opened her eyes and was studying him.

  “Yes, Steven?”

  “Why are you here?”

  A smile played about the corners of her mouth.

  “I had something to do. I’m leaving now.”

  He watched the enormous knife in its sheath strapped to the child-sized back as she walked away. It always amused him to see it; the barbaric weapon was half as tall as she was. Still, when he considered the ferocity the diminutive woman seemed to barely hold in check these days, he wouldn’t want to tangle with her and her giant knife.

  Steven glanced at Pablo, who stood beside him now. He had asked the young man to be there because Chuck was positioned at the western barricade in anticipation of a flanking maneuver. Pablo’s mind was one of the quickest in town, and if something happened to Steven, he hadn’t wanted Calvin left to his own devices at this critical location. Since Steven was no longer the emissary, he would observe the parley from a distance, in the presence of this brilliant young man who despised him.

  Pablo didn’t look at him. He was gazing through his own binoculars; the corners of his mouth were turned down in concentration or perhaps abhorrence. Maybe both.

  “They’re almost there,” he mumbled.

  Steven peered through his own binoculars. There were contrived holes in the debris barricade through which they could watch the action without being exposed to any snipers the approaching invaders may have in their ranks.

  “I see them. Did you look at Dani?”

  “Yes. Her face is a travesty, but her body language doesn’t harmonize with it. I don’t think her spirit has been broken.”

  “Oh my god. What is wrong with that woman on the horse?”

  “Genetic birth defects would be my guess.”

  “Annie, how are you doing in there?”

  “Fine. No shot yet,” was the muffled reply. “Please don’t lecture me again. I know what I’m doing.”

  It was the price one paid for being a controlling micromanager, and it glanced off him like a well-thrown stone on a placid lake.

  “Isaiah isn’t what I pictured in my mind,” Steven said. “He’s holding back a bit...keeping that woman in front of him.”

  “Too bad we didn’t have a sniper we could place at their flank,” Pablo replied.

  It was an admonition, of course. Jeffrey had been positioned at the much safer sniper location in town.

  Steven ignored it.

  “Looks like they’re talking now,” he said. “Calvin is making that hand gesture he uses when he’s proselytizing. Damn, I wish we coul
d hear what they’re saying.”

  If he had known someone other than himself would be meeting Isaiah, he would have planted a two-way radio on them, turned to the squelch setting. He watched as Calvin, his shirt dazzlingly white against the drab, dirty pigments of a broken world, glided about in front of the riders; his movements so graceful they seemed choreographed. He could imagine the man on stage at one of those mega churches, preaching the Word to millions through syndicated Sunday morning television. He strode from one side of the highway to the other, gesticulating as he walked. Steven realized suddenly what he was doing. He was drawing Isaiah out...enticing him away from the safer position behind the other rider. Was he trying to Annie Oakley a clean shot? That would fly in the face of everything Calvin had been saying about the sanctity of life for months. Had he had a last-minute change of heart?

  Whether he was doing it intentionally or not, it was working. Isaiah’s horse was taking small steps forward, giving its master a better view of Calvin’s performance. Steven almost felt mesmerized by the lithe movements of the preacher. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until the moment was shattered by the explosive report of rifle fire.

  Annie Oakley had taken the shot.

  The horses reared and pranced about, barely held in check. Calvin stood facing the animals and their riders, frozen in place, his arms pointing skyward. Ed began to run back to the barricade.

  Isaiah still sat astride the enormous black horse.

  The next moment, the back of Calvin’s head exploded, spraying blood, brains, and skull fragments onto the blacktop. Then the same scenario in reverse with Ed, his forehead bursting open in a crimson fountain.

  “Annie, let’s go!” Steven yelled.

  The girl was already out of the ancient freezer. She scrambled to the edge of the rubble pile, exposing herself, to line up a second shot.

  “Annie, now!”

  The rifle’s discharge pushed the youthful shoulder back but the girl knew how to absorb the energy. She was lining up a third shot, crying.

  “Goddamn it!” she screamed in frustration.

  Steven began running toward her, intent on grabbing her arm and pulling her out of harm’s way.

  Instead, he watched the gray woolen cap covering the girl’s head jerk backward. Just like in the movies, the world slowed to a crawl. Her body crumpled to the ground at quarter speed so he wouldn’t miss a single detail. By the time he skidded to a stop, the lifeless eyes stared at him from below, blood oozing from her temple and trailing down the round cheek, then dripping onto the winter-dead grass.

  He turned away and vomited.

  “Come on, Steven. We have to go.”

  It was Pablo’s voice. He looked up into the young man’s face and saw nothing but frozen tundra in the depths of those golden eyes.

  “My fault,” he muttered.

  “Probably. Let’s go, Steven.”

  Steven allowed his compartmentalization talent to take over. The horrors he had just witnessed – for which he was largely responsible – were delegated to the same part of his consciousness where grief for Marilyn was being stored.

  “Okay.”

  The two men jogged back to the scooters waiting for them. There was no need for stealth at this point. Both engines fired up simultaneously.

  From her hiding place, Amelia watched them motor back toward the direction of town. She closed her eyes and forced the calm state necessary to maximize her scythen’s reach.

  Chapter 52

  “A pitiful, pathetic ploy. Did they think we wouldn’t be expecting this?” Isaiah said as he urged his horse forward from the ranks of more than a hundred wiry, road-weary soldiers. He stopped next to his body double from the parley group, who wasn’t controlling the strong-willed Friesian nearly as well as Isaiah himself did. The similarity between the men was uncanny until they were side by side. Still, Isaiah’s doppelganger had been good enough.

  “I’m sure they have more tricks up their sleeve, asshole.”

  Even in her miserable state, Dani wouldn’t let him intimidate her.

  “Your insults are becoming tiresome in their crudeness. You are becoming tiresome. And since the gentleman’s agreement has been broken, I’m no longer under any obligation to release you. I can kill you whenever I want. I think that time has come. I have accomplished my reckoning, and now you simply bore me. I’m ready to wash my hands of you and begin the next chapter in my glorious life.”

  Dani noted the lack of excessive alliteration as she watched him dismount the gray gelding. He must be distracted, which was good. She had to admit that using the decoy had been clever, and Steven had taken the bait. It was another reason she knew she couldn’t count on help from him and the townspeople to get her out of this mess.

  She held her arms behind her, just as if they were still tied. During the pandemonium the night Lily had wandered off the reservation, she managed to snatch a sharp-edged rock before anybody noticed. It had taken her the next twenty-four hours to covertly hack through the paracord which bound her wrists. The hardest part had been to allow the mutilation of her face to continue when she could have escaped. It had been necessary to stay in place, feigning constraint, to remain close to Isaiah and kill him when the moment was right. She wouldn’t have had a chance before now; he had doubled his personal guard to six soldiers. They surrounded him everywhere he went, even when he used the latrine.

  But she had gambled that during the excitement and chaos of approaching Liberty and preparing for battle, there would be an opening...a chink in his armor. And once she killed him, that circus freak Dolores would be next. She wasn’t doing it to save the town or to impress Steven or even Julia. She was doing it for herself and the sublime gratification their deaths would bring her.

  After that, she didn’t care what happened. Her face looked like Lon Chaney in Phantom of the Opera, and Sam was surely dead by now, courtesy of Dolores. There wasn’t a whole lot about living that appealed to her anymore.

  As she watched Isaiah walk toward her wearing that bat-shit crazy grin and carrying her beloved K-bar in his right hand, she slowed her breathing down, then did the same to her heart rate. She began to enter the state of consciousness that allowed her to perform feats that seemed to defy the laws of physics. This ability had come naturally to Sam – she had to learn it.

  Sam.

  An invisible knife plunged into her chest.

  Twenty more feet...come on you psycho fucktard...I want to be rid of you once and for all...then I’m going to take a bit more time with Dolores the Disgusting...

  She continued making minor adjustments to the mentally choreographed movements which would be necessary to knock the knife out of Isaiah’s hand, retrieve it from where it would land seventeen inches from where he would be standing at that point, then in a rapid pivoting motion plunge it into the exposed throat.

  Or perhaps the right eyeball...whichever option was most expedient. She hoped the throat would win out. She had an intense desire to hear that rich honeyed voice gurgling with blood.

  “General, be careful. She’s a wily one. I should know!” Dolores said.

  Dani ignored her, but registered her location by the vocalization, and plugged the coordinates into her mental logistics. She knew the girl was still astride the chestnut mare she had been riding since arriving at their camp and winning Isaiah’s favor. It was a strange twist of fate that Lily, the woman who had mutilated her face, was dead as a result of that nasty bit of business sitting on the mare. Dani placed the mare fifteen feet behind her at a five ‘o clock position.

  Dolores wasn’t long for this world, but Isaiah first.

  The maniacally charming smile was only ten feet away now. Dani’s quadriceps tensed for the spring without being told by her brain to do so. She had written the code, now it was up to the cerebrum to execute the program.

  Dani smiled in return, wondering for a fleeting moment how macabre her face must look, engaged in what would be a pleasing human expression o
n a non-disfigured face.

  The heels of her boots hovered an inch above the cold earth.

  Isaiah was a mere five feet away, raising up the K-Bar like it was fucking Excalibur. Her grin broadened. He was so preoccupied with visions of glory and whatever else was going on in that mincemeat he called a brain, that he was leaving his vulnerable bits wide open.

  Yes...it could well be the throat.

  Suddenly a blur of movement registered on the right side of her peripheral vision, originating from the grassy stretch just past the shoulder of the highway.

  The next moment Sam flew head-first into Isaiah, knocking him to the ground and snatching the knife from his hand. Before anyone could react, he had grabbed Dani by her arm and was dragging her with him, back to the tall grass next to the road. He was moving so fast, she thought her shoulder might pop out of its socket any second. When they reached the motorcycle hidden behind an ancient pickup truck, the bullets had started to fly.

  “You’re not tied up anymore?” he hollered as he straddled the machine.

  “You’re not dead anymore?” she yelled back as she jumped on the seat behind him.

  “I almost was. I’m a fast healer!”

  “Where are you going?” she screamed above the thundering of the motorcycle’s engine and the bullets that zipped around them.

  “I cut a hole in the fence. We have to go through this field. There are traps near the road.”

  Sam zig-zagged the motorcycle as they plowed through the fallow corn, the withered stalks making it difficult for Isaiah’s people to draw a bead on them. The rough terrain caused the beetle-green Kawasaki to bounce and twist mid-air, a mechanical salmon swimming upstream through a pale ocean of dead vegetation. It was working though. The rifle fire was diminishing with every furrow they navigated.

  Dani gripped the motorcycle seat with her thighs and Sam with her arms. She closed her eyes and held on tight, breathing in the smell of him.