by Lee Hayton
“I'm all right,” she called back. “These boys were just leaving.”
Lou broke first. His body hadn’t even finished turning before his feet led him away in a run. Josh was slower moving, backing up one step at a time, eyes remaining fixed on her pocket. Then he stuck his hand out to grab the trunk of a tree, swinging around it and speeding into a run after his companion.
“Where the hell did they come from?”
Frankie whirled, her hand still fisted in her pocket. Her brain issued the order to let go of the phone, but her fingers refused to uncurl. After a stalemate, she reached her left hand across to prod at it, physically uncurling her forefinger before the paralysis broke.
“How should I know?” she snapped, flexing her right hand until it came under her complete control again. Tears of relief threatened, and Frankie blinked rapidly to disperse them.
I want to go home.
Logic told her the myriad reasons that was a dumb idea. The pall of black smoke they’d driven through last night hadn’t just come from the parking lot. The whole city was burning. Rioters were cavorting their way through the streets. Frankie pictured the two men in a muscle car forcing an entire suburb to toe a newly imposed line.
Each thought pulled her heart farther down into her stomach.
Robert stared at her with a concerned frown on his face. Frankie walked past him, clipping him with the edge of her shoulder. “Sorted out your stupid plan yet?”
She tramped back along the path to the bench then farther on to the car, only pausing near a redwood sapling for long enough to pull the phone out of her pocket and flick on the screen.
Ten percent battery remaining. No messages.
Blain
As Becca fell silent, Blain lay still on the back seat and closed his eyes. She was outside, her back resting against the side of the car. The door lay open between them.
Farther away, the voices of Annie and Robert drifted back toward them. The wind whipped away some of the words, but he understood most of their meaning.
“We can’t just assume we’ll be able to refuel. If we can’t reach a location with the gas we’ve got, then we should choose somewhere else.”
“The farther we can get from the city, the better. Fine, if we have trouble getting gas we can change our plans, but look at how many cars are just abandoned. We can always borrow a new one.”
Annie’s next sentence was swept away, then returned. “—those girls touching dead bodies. What they’ve seen already is traumatizing enough. There’s a commune near Redchester. I say we go there.”
Blain raised his eyebrows. He knew that place.
“They’re a farming commune. Lots of people. Lots of guns.”
“They’re hippies.”
“I doubt anyone shooting at us yesterday started out the day as a mass murderer. Hippies can aim a gun and shoot as well as anyone else. We need to pick up some camping equipment and just get away.”
“We can’t expect Blain to walk out into the wilderness, and we’re not equipped to carry him. He needs somewhere close by with access to a road and medical supplies.”
The wind rose again. Because Blain had spent his childhood in the country, the great outdoors now irritated him—the way the treetops caught and rustled with every movement, for example. In movies, they were always quiet places where stepping on a branch at the wrong moment got you caught. The reality was a constant din of background movement, drowning out other noise.
“—and I vote we leave him.”
“If you do that, you can leave me and Becca and Frankie as well. I’m not giving up on finding my son to join forces with—”
“—any choice. He’s badly hurt. I don’t know how to treat him. Do you?”
Rustling. The call of a wood pigeon.
“Sure, walk away then.”
He smiled. Annie’s tone was identical to his mother’s. Getting ratty, his father called it. Getting her way would’ve been a more apt description. His mother’s use of that voice heralded his father’s oncoming capitulation.
Becca laid a hand on his shoulder, and Blain tilted his head to look at her. She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“Don’t worry. If Robert wants to leave you behind, he’s leaving me as well.”
Blain smiled, then his lips twisted as memory enveloped him: a toddler running for his mother; Blain gunning him down.
He pulled his hand back. “No. Don’t do that.” He rubbed at his forehead, as though it could erase the memories inside his brain. “You look out for yourself first. Promise me, okay?”
Becca frowned at him. “Okay, I promise,” she replied, shaking her head while she said it.
Despite the movement causing a wide range of stabbing pains, Blain sat upright. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to walk around outside for a few minutes, to give a good demonstration of how minor his injuries were.
He placed his sneakered feet on the ground next to Becca and pushed up from the seat with his hands.
A cry tore out of him as the pain geared up and caught him off guard. Becca stood and grabbed his arm as Blain started to fall back into the car.
The pull forward stretched his thigh muscle even more. Pain crested a wave and crashed down into a sea of agony. The bright morning sky began to blacken and fade.
“Help. Someone give me a hand,” Becca cried out as he stumbled.
So much for his plan to look fit and well.
Blain tumbled against Becca, weighing her down. She managed to slow his descent to the ground, but that was all. He rolled over onto his back, staring at a grayscale sky. He could feel his white blood cells multiplying in defense as the disease mounted a full-on assault against his thigh.
“Blain.” He blinked, and Becca turned into Annie, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Blain, can you hear me?”
He smiled and opened his mouth to answer, coughing a black spray of blood into the sky instead. The color flooded back into the world, sharp-edged, hypersaturated.
“Don’t try to talk,” Annie said, pressing on his shoulders when he tried to sit up.
“It’s his leg,” Becca said. Blain felt her nimble fingers press around his wound, a gentle assessment.
He blinked and the rough tug of cotton as his jeans were yanked down. A cool breeze blew an icy kiss against his burning hot thigh.
“The bandage is soaked through with pus. We need something thicker,” Annie said.
A pulse throbbed in his leg, and Blain could feel the bullet trapped deep inside. He tried to say, “Just use my shirt,” but his tongue was too thick and rubbery to form words. He heard a gurgle, realizing a moment later it came from him.
“What about a car seat cover?” Becca asked, her voice slow and fractured. “We can tie it in place with his belt.”
Blain felt the leather strap being snaked around the inside of his thigh. A terrible pressure increased in his leg until he thought it would explode.
Voices tumbled about in his head, some real, some imaginary. The world swam away from him then reappeared in Technicolor, lights crystal bright.
They’ll leave you behind. You’re a burden. It’s what you deserve.
Blain squeezed his eyes shut tight. He bunched his hands into fists. Annie had mentioned Redchester earlier, and that was his ticket in with them.
“My parents—” He broke off as a cramp twisted his stomach. Becca raised his head and dropped two capsules into his mouth.
“Tylenol,” she said then held a bottle at an angle to his lips. “Swallow.”
Blain put his own shaking hands around it and sucked at it greedily. The plastic sides crumpled in at the force. He’d never been so thirsty.
Annie’s face appeared again, panicked eyes darting back and forth. “Just rest for a while. Don’t try to speak.”
Blain ignored her. “My parents run a small farm, not far from here. My dad’s the local vet.”
When she nodded, her gaze immediately breaking away, Blain’s lips twisted. “It’s o
ut of the city. There're medical supplies. Only Mom and Dad are there, not a crowd of gunned-up hippies.”
This time her eyes locked with his, and her brow smoothed as she nodded again. Blain gave a shaky laugh, and let out a long breath. Then he reached out to grab her arm as his fear ignited. The memories of the terrible things he’d done slid away.
“You’ll need me to find it. Don’t leave me behind.”
Chapter Eight
Robert
“Hello,” Robert called out. He’d already knocked, but he tried it again. The sound of his knuckles echoed back across the front porch.
He turned around to the car and shrugged at Annie. Their approach in the vehicle had made enough noise that if someone was on the lookout for visitors, they had ample warning.
She unclipped her seat belt and turned to speak to the trio in the back seat. As she walked toward him across the dusty front yard, he rapped his hand on the front door again.
“Nothing?”
“I don’t think anybody’s home,” Robert replied. “Is Blain awake?”
Annie shook her head. “He’s out cold.”
Robert bent forward and lifted the corner of the welcome mat. The boards beneath it were empty save for ground-in dirt. He stood on tiptoes and pressed against the top of the doorjamb with his fingertips. Halfway along, he gave a cry and pulled down a key.
“Good call,” Annie said. After Robert opened the door, she followed him in. She held a hand up with fingers outstretched back to the car. Five minutes.
Two steps inside, Robert smelled the heavy scent of copper. His stomach rolled over, and he turned back to Annie. “Do you want me to look around—alone?”
She shook her head and strode past him, stopping at a doorway to the kitchen. Robert closed his eyes for a second then followed her steps.
For a moment, his brain refused to decode the scene in front of his eyes: deep red flowers blooming across a tiled floor. Then the crimson and white petals resolved to blood and pale skin, a pile of corpses stacked against the cupboard doors. His brain ran a stock-take: six sets of legs. As adrenaline flooded his system, a creaking sound came from behind him.
Frankie stood in the doorway, craning her head inside. Robert ran across the room and pushed her outside, slamming the door behind him.
“It’s not safe in here yet,” he said, shepherding her back toward the car. Blain was still sleeping in the back seat. Thank God for small favors. After seeing Becca’s reaction to her mom, he didn’t want to see the young man find his parents' dead bodies.
Robert jogged across to the garage. When he pulled on the door, it turned and opened. He slid it up into the roof. No bodies.
“Get back in the car,” he told Frankie, walking back. “I’ll drive it into the garage, out of sight.”
She frowned and walked in that direction instead. Robert jumped into the driver’s seat and followed, pulling up behind another vehicle.
“We just need to do a spot of cleaning,” he announced, climbing out of the car. “The place isn’t fit for us to move into yet. Stay here until Annie or I fetch you.”
Robert didn’t wait to see if they’d taken it on board. When he got to the front door, he pulled the key out and stuck it in his pocket. With it locked in place behind him, it didn’t matter whether his instructions were obeyed.
“There’s more upstairs,” Annie said. She stood on the bottom step, her neck twisted to look behind her. “I think I’ve found Blain’s parents.”
Robert held a hand to his abdomen, pressing it tightly.
“I think they killed themselves,” Annie whispered, her right hand making the sign of the cross. “What are we going to do?”
“Give me a minute,” Robert said, walking upstairs. He closed his eyes for a second before opening the bedroom door.
A man and woman, dressed in finery, lay on top of the covers. Their hands were touching. A froth of white spume spilled from the man’s mouth.
Blinking to clear his eyes, Robert looked around the room. A bottle lay on the table, empty, a picture of a giant rat with a cross through it decorating its side.
Note. There’ll be a note.
Robert checked the table, the windowsill, bent down to look under the bed. Nothing. He grunted as he got to his feet again. On the wall above the bed, a picture showed the same couple much younger. A boy held aloft between them bore Blain’s features.
We can’t let him see this.
Slowly, Robert returned down the stairs. Annie had a pile of sheets beside her in the kitchen. She leaned across the top body, forehead creased in a frown, the man’s shirt between her fingers lifted to expose his belly.
“This isn’t a gunshot.”
Annie looked up at him then stepped back. She placed her hands on her hips, waiting for a response. Robert didn’t know what to do, what she wanted. He offered a halfhearted shrug.
“Everything that happened yesterday happened with guns. Greg—” Annie broke off and put a shaking hand on her face. “Greg fired on a neighbor at the corner. Blain was caught in a shootout at the mall when he was buying beer. Frankie and Becca were in a school shooting.”
“I don’t see—”
“They were all using guns. On the TV—the news showing the death tolls—gun violence every time.”
“Just because people were picking up guns as a first resort doesn’t mean anything.” Robert felt a sigh trying to escape and bit his lips shut for a moment until the urge passed. “Whatever was driving people mad yesterday was doing just that. Driving them insane. The TV said it’s neurological—swine flu of the brain or something. People pick up guns ’cause they’re easy.”
Annie bit her lip and looked back at the bodies. Robert touched her on the elbow to draw her attention back. “If we hadn’t come along last night, Blain would have burned to death, right? No guns. Just a mental guy with fuel and a lighter.”
“This isn’t random,” Annie said. She squatted beside the bodies and pulled the shirt of the bottom victim up. “Look at this.”
Robert couldn’t mimic her stance without an accompaniment of cursing sound effects. Instead, he bent forward at the waist.
The female corpse’s gray skin mottled into dark purple and black where it touched the floor. All the blood left in her body had pooled at the lowest point. A wound sliced her abdomen apart, cross cuts doing more damage, yellow fat on each edge. Her mottled organs were visible in the viscera of her open belly.
After a moment, Robert had to turn away, his breath shortening as he remembered Annie was showing him a person, one who yesterday would have walked and talked and told a dirty joke after a glass of wine.
“I don’t understand what you want me to see,” Robert said. He stepped away to look back at the front door, the wind chimes outside announcing a quickening breeze.
“There’s a pattern here,” Annie said. “These bodies are on display. Like the couple upstairs.”
Blain’s parents. Robert would have to tell him they were dead.
“No one is on display,” he said, lowering his voice when Annie winced. “This is just more of the same carnage we’ve already seen.”
He thought of Annabelle, still not returning his message. Robert remembered the gatekeeper, Tim or Tom, who’d let him out of their gated community yesterday. The man had looked sick but had turned up for work just the same.
I remembered the saltines, Annabelle. They’re still in my briefcase.
A wave of despair washed over him, tugging his legs out from under him in its wake. He fell to his knees.
“Robert? What’s wrong?”
The girls can’t see this. Blain can’t see this. Get to your feet, old man.
“I just felt dizzy for a second,” he said, pulling himself up by the counter. “Can you lay out the sheets? It’ll make it easier to move the bodies.”
While Annie arranged them, double folded, Robert let himself out the back door. Following a worn track, he came to double-wide barn doors. They were fastened shut
with an old oversize turnkey lock. The key was still inside it.
The doors opened to display a flatbed truck. It would be easy to drive this up to the back doors and stock it up with human cargo. When Robert stepped inside, he again smelled the tang of rich copper in the air.
#
“One, two, three.” Robert swung in unison with Annie and let go of the sheet at the height of their swing. The corpse lifted into the air, landing with a dull thud in the flatbed of the truck.
The truck was old, the gas tank close to empty. For a minute, Robert thought he wouldn’t be able to start it up. But the engine caught, and he’d driven it the short way from the barn. If they needed to, they could push it back in there by hand.
Robert wished for the comforting blast of a stereo. Instead, the grim work stretched out in front of him with no hope of relief. Not a task befitting idle conversation.
“One, two, three.” As they let go, hair escaped from his end of the sheet. Long brown strands blew in the wind like a model in a shampoo commercial—culminating in a squelching thud as her body landed atop a fellow corpse.
Robert turned to the side, exhaustion winning over his need to vomit. He staggered and leaned his shoulder against the wall to recover.
In addition to the six bodies in the kitchen and the couple holding hands upstairs, there’d been seven bodies propped up in the barn. This time, Robert caught a glimpse of what Annie had referred to.
Each body was seated, backs hard up against the barn wall, legs laid straight out in front. The corpses were gutted, their entrails pulled out and divvied up between each victim’s carefully cupped hands.
Once the gruesome cargo had been loaded onto the truck, Robert hopped into the driver’s seat. He tried for five minutes to start the truck engine until Annie banged her palm flat on the door panel.
“Want me to give you a push?”
He nodded and took off the handbrake, twisting his head to keep Annie in view in the side mirror.
The slope down from the house to the barn assisted, and Robert soon coasted the truck inside. Annie ran after him, eyes widening as she saw the grisly tableau.