by Joe Hart
Zoey aims the flare gun she took from the ASV’s first aid kit.
Time halts.
The pain in her wrist fades, taking with it the aching in her back. She is unfeeling now. As deadened as the nerves in her legs.
She sights down the short barrel, remembering Chelsea dressed in the gown of red and put on display.
Sees Merrill being led into the coliseum, hands shackled before him.
Watches the huge blade falling and beheading the man on his knees.
And she feels Halie going limp in her arms, the last breath she never exhaled coming from Zoey now as she squeezes the trigger.
The flare gun’s hammer falls and the pistol kicks.
A sizzling corona of red launches from the barrel, a thick smoking tail extending behind it.
The trucks have stopped. Several reverse. The men howl, rubbing at their eyes as they stumble and roll back down the side of the mountain.
And the flare screams toward them.
The light is the first thing her eyes register. It is beyond anything she’s ever witnessed before. The air itself ignites into a glow so bright it flashes her entire vision white.
Next is the heat.
It rushes past her in a furnace blast that tightens every inch of exposed skin. Her hair crackles. She bats at it, feeling it burning, choking on the fumes and smoke.
And still the heat climbs.
Fire encompasses the entire ski run. Even the trees to either side are alight, the snow guns spewing fountains of flame. It is a roiling inferno of orange and yellow that cascades like an avalanche to the base of the mountain.
And in the center of it all, the men shriek.
They are walking pyres, lurching, falling to the scorched earth. The vehicles amble sideways or roll backward, balls of fire that crush the dying. A gas tank explodes, showering more waves of flame outward before melding with the rest of the blaze.
The lift carries her up and away from it, high enough to see everything, every last square foot of the destruction that is her doing.
She owns it. All of it.
She can’t look away, can’t break her seared vision from the spectacle, the burning men, the carnage. The smell of charred flesh reaches her and she retches even as her feet clip the ground, heels dragging roughly on dirt.
She’s at the top of the mountain, the lift bringing her to a cleared area beside another building that’s crumbled in on itself. Zoey tries to unhook herself, forcing her legs to function, her feet to steady on the ground that’s still speeding by.
Then she’s rounding a bend, a huge pulley creaking above, cable popping in its groove, and her feet leave earth again. The light and heat that was lessening at the top of the run ramps up once more.
She’s being dragged back into the flames.
Zoey struggles, trying to break her wrist free of the strap, but it holds fast. She reaches up, realizing she’s still clutching the flare gun and drops it, gripping the steel bar she hangs from.
The heat magnifies, as do the tortured screams of those still alive, so unearthly and warbling they make her stomach clench. She pulls, lifting herself, and tries to release the hooks, but loses her grip and falls, hanging from her wrist again. That hand is senseless now, discolored and unmoving. She grasps the steel again and glances down.
The ground is falling away, more and more with each second.
With a final heave she drags herself up, hooking her chin over the bar before pulling her latched wrist free.
She has a split second to realize she’s going to die, and falls.
In the weightlessness she wishes she could’ve apologized to Chelsea and Merrill and all the rest. Told them how sorry she is for tainting their lives with her presence.
Told Lee how much she misses him and how she would gladly take his last name now.
The impact is tremendous.
It knocks her breath away as if she’s never had it before. It feels as if she swallowed a glass jar and it shattered inside her. Her eyelids flutter, making the burning world strobe in a succession of hellish images.
Trees on fire.
Vehicles smoldering.
Bodies so burnt they are unrecognizable.
Her lungs inflate with agony. She sucks in scorched air, the black spots dancing on the edges of her vision receding. The ground is tangled beneath her, dried brambles and angles of rock jabbing through her clothes. She tries to sit up and manages it after a horrifying moment of complete paralysis. There is a thudding pain in the wrist without the hooked strap, but when she examines it there are no bones poking free of skin as she feared. Slowly the glass shards in her center dissolve.
Below, the mountain has gone silent except for the crackling of fire. The nozzles of the snow guns flicker but are done spewing flame.
Fuel must’ve run out. Or Eli shut it off. She glances around. The chairlift continues to run, all of the chairs circling overhead on fire now. They shrink and elongate her shadow into something monstrous, but maybe that’s her true shape now.
Maybe it always was.
“Zoey!” Her name drifts across the smoke-laden run, Ian’s voice strong and full.
“Over here!” She wants to yell it but it comes out a murmur. She tries again, louder this time, and in the haze three shadows approach through the gloom.
Zoey cradles her injured arm tight to her body, gazing down at what she’s wrought.
And the void within her becomes a desolation so thick and dark, all the fire on the mountain can’t penetrate it.
46
She fades in and out of reality, consciousness as insubstantial as gas shadows.
Eli and Tia are carrying her through a smoldering portion of forest.
Darkness.
The inside of the ASV, something soft beneath her and Ian’s face above, kind, smiling, rough hand against her cheek.
“Rest now.”
She does.
The rumble of the engine and a series of bumps. A glow filling the cab of the vehicle.
Lee’s fingers intertwined with her own. His lips pressing against hers, the repressed longing coming back full force.
You’re safe. Sleep.
It is only minutes and years later that the sound of the doors opening wakes her, achingly familiar voices close by. She opens her eyes to Merrill and Chelsea climbing in beside where she lies on the bench. They kneel, Merrill’s hand grasping hers. Chelsea placing a cool palm on her forehead, brushing her singed hair back before checking her pulse.
“Hey,” Merrill says, voice thick.
“Hey.”
“How do you feel?”
“Great.” She smiles.
“How . . .” His mouth works but nothing comes out.
“You’re both okay?” she asks, reality returning by degrees.
“We’re fine,” Chelsea says. “It’s you we’re worried about. Ian says you can’t walk.”
“No, but—” And she doesn’t realize it until that second that her feet hurt.
She can feel them.
“Can you sit me up?”
They bring her to a sitting position while Chelsea moves to her legs. With an effort that breaks sweat out on her brow, she twists her feet around in small circles, one of the rehab exercises she’s done countless times. Relief nearly makes her sag back to the bench again but she’s terrified if she falls asleep now the feeling will be gone when she wakes.
“You inflamed your injury. That’s why you can’t walk,” Chelsea says, checking several cuts on her legs before returning to her side. “Let me see that wrist you’re holding like it’s going to fall off.” She extends her arm and Chelsea gently examines it. “Sprained. We’ll wrap it as soon as we get back on the road.” Chelsea gazes down at her before tears well up and stream down her face. Then Chelsea’s hugging her, hard enough that it causes pain, but she doesn’t care. Zoey squeezes her back, her throat closing. Merrill’s arms encircle them and she leans her head against his chest while Chelsea strokes her hair.
<
br /> “I thought we were going to lose you both,” she whispers. “That’s why . . . why . . .”
“Shhh, we know. It’s okay.”
A sudden thought draws her back from their embrace.
“Is Rita’s mother okay?”
“She’s fine,” Merrill says. “Safe.”
“And the women in the container?”
“Eli and Ian are getting them out right now. When you . . . when the fire started on the mountain, the remaining guards ran. There were only a handful left. Most of the performers are gone too.”
“I want to see.”
“No. You need to rest.”
“Please. I need to see.”
Merrill and Chelsea share a look before he sighs. “You’ll have to help her since I’m not the man I once was.”
“I’d give you a hand, but you need a foot, brother,” Eli says from the doorway, wide smile lighting up.
“And if I had it I’d give you two guesses where I’d shove it.”
“Don’t be flirtin’, your lady’s right there.”
Zoey can’t help but laugh, and it feels good even though her bruised ribs make her pay.
They help her to the ground, easing her to her feet. For a second the feeling that’s been growing from her ankles upward vanishes and she bites down hard on her lower lip, fixing her concentration to a pinpoint.
With one arm around Eli’s shoulders, she takes a tentative step. Then another. They move slowly through the trade, between tents that are half disassembled, flaps open like ragged wounds. When the shipping containers come into view, Zoey spots Nell beside a long-haired man holding a frail woman dressed in stained clothing. There are two other women huddled together, blankets around their shoulders. Nell asks them something and both of them nod before she turns and sees Zoey.
Nell comes to her and they simply stare one another in the eyes for a long moment before the older woman hugs her.
“Thank you,” she whispers in Zoey’s ear. “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Zoey sees the smoldering things on the mountainside that were once men and nausea churns in her stomach. “I do.” Nell draws away from her, a strange look on her face that’s both confusion and pity. “We’re going to take you to Rita,” she continues, fighting down the bile that threatens the back of her throat.
Nell absorbs this, lower lip trembling before she gives a quick nod. Zoey is about to tell her something else about the daughter she hasn’t seen in over fifteen years, but the scream of an engine cuts through the night to their left and they all turn as one.
A large truck with armored plating attached to its sides races between the nearest two rows of tents in the direction of the midway. In the brief flash that it’s there and gone, Zoey sees the maniacal grimace of Presto Preston’s face in the driver’s window, the shape of his wife beside him.
“It’s them!” she says even as Nell’s cry of rage overshadows her voice. She begins to turn to Ian, but he’s already on the move, rifle coming off his shoulder from where it was slung in a fluid motion. He runs around the side of the coliseum in the direction the Prestons headed as the truck’s engine roars louder, followed by the crash of steel rending.
The truck shoots out into the open field beyond the trade in a shower of sparks, a section of fence hanging from its bed. The entire group shifts as one to get a better view of the vehicle as it bumps over a deep rut and begins to accelerate into the night.
A gunshot booms from the other side of the arena. Zoey would know the sound of Ian’s rifle anywhere.
The shrinking shape of the truck slews to the side, brake lights flaring, flayed tire tread flying. Then it is on two wheels, the undercarriage appearing and disappearing twice as the vehicle rolls and comes to a stop on its side.
Deep quiet rushes back in.
Eli helps Zoey to a nearby crate and eases her down onto it before running in the direction that Ian went. Nell starts to follow them but Chelsea grasps her arm.
“Wait. They’ll bring them back if they’re alive.”
Zoey watches the edge of the arena, the Prestons’ overturned truck out of her line of sight. After several agonizing minutes Ian appears, rifle ready in his hands, and behind him are the Prestons, Eli training his weapon on their backs.
Elliot, wearing a mask of disdain, glances at each of them in turn. Sasha stares past them into the night, chin up, a line of blood trickling from her hairline.
“Looks like she hit her head and his right hand’s banged up,” Eli says. “Otherwise they’re full of piss and vinegar.”
Nell walks forward, stopping a pace in front of Elliot.
“You,” he says, voice dripping with venom. “You did this. You ruined our troupe. Killed all those innocent men.”
“They weren’t innocent,” Nell says. “The innocent ones left years ago.”
“You miserable, ungrateful bitch. We took you in, fed you, clothed you, and this is how you repay us?”
“You kidnapped me and sold my child!” Nell screams into his face. “Kept me here for fifteen years and used me, just like you use everyone, to hide how you failed your own daughter.”
It’s like she’s struck both of them. Elliot blinks, jaw slackening, while Sasha lets out a small gasp.
“We were good to her,” Elliot says, voice weak. “We were good parents.”
“You don’t even know the meaning of the word.”
Elliot’s face contorts, and in the split second before he raises his arm, Zoey sees what he’s about to do. She yells a warning and tries to stand, but her legs refuse to hold her and she falls.
Elliot’s right hand opens, and it isn’t injured at all, only camouflaged with blood. There is a clicking within his sleeve as he brings his arm level with Nell’s head and a small pistol shoots into the palm of his hand.
Nell slaps the gun to the side as he fires, the round pinging off the shipping container, and steps hard into the punch she throws.
The blow catches Elliot in the mouth and he stumbles back, feet tangling before he goes down, sitting stunned at her feet.
Sasha makes a mewling sound and drops to the ground beside him, cradling his head as Elliot spits a tooth onto the ground.
“Give me a gun,” Nell says. No one moves. She looks around at them. “Give me a gun with two bullets.”
Zoey catches Merrill’s eye and waits, watching his reaction. After a long pause he nods. “Eli?”
Eli steps forward, drawing his pistol. With a deft motion he ejects the magazine and thumbs out all of the shells but one before snapping it back in place and handing it to Nell. “There’s one in the chamber already,” he says quietly.
Nell gazes at the gun, turning it over slowly before extending it toward the couple sitting on the ground.
“You stole years of my life. You killed Robbie. You took my daughter from me.” Her voice trembles and Zoey sees the gun’s barrel wobble. “You deserve much worse than what I’m going to give you. Now get up.”
Everyone looks surprised, but none more so than the Prestons. They hesitate before rising to their feet. “Over there. Move,” Nell says, gesturing toward the women’s shipping container. She walks them to the open doors of the steel box and they stop before it, turning back to her. “Get in.”
“What are you doing?” Elliot says.
“Get in.”
The old man stares at her for a drawn second and Zoey’s sure he’s going to rush her and that Nell will kill him, but then she realizes her initial impression was right. He is only an old man now, hollow and alone but for his wife who stands beside him, both of them looking pitiful and small in their suit and gown. A king and queen without crown or court.
Slowly they turn and shuffle into the container. Nell closes the doors with a resounding clang and locks them in. She begins to turn away but stops, emotion warring in her features, and in that moment she reminds Zoey so much of Rita it’s as if her friend is standing before her.
Nell turns and strides to the s
ide of the container, pushing the pistol through a hole cut at head height. The weapon thumps the padded floor inside.
“There’s a bullet for each of you. Like I said, it’s much better than you deserve.” Nell walks away, coming to Zoey’s side and helping her to her feet.
The group moves as one through the abandoned midway, silent as a grave now, no pervading smells other than the faint scent of smoke coasting through on a cool wind. Rain begins to fall, flecked with ice. It patters a machine-gun drumbeat on all of the tents and roofs.
And Zoey can’t be sure if it’s her imagination or not, but as they’re loading up the vehicle and preparing to depart, she thinks she hears the faint sound of a single gunshot followed by another.
47
Riverbend comes into view in the late afternoon of the third day.
They took their time traveling back, stopping often and setting up camp well before dark each night. They paused in the area of the Quiverfull community, taking half a day to locate one of the families Travis and Anniel had mentioned. After some deliberation, the women from the shipping container, along with two of the men, decided to stay. One of the young boys of the host family had fallen ill two days prior, cementing the decision for James, who began tending to him immediately.
When the time came to say goodbye, Zoey walked down the long drive to the highway, leaving behind the thanks she knew would be uttered to her, the embraces of the grateful women and men. Instead she gazed across the brown and gray hills to the south where a bank of clouds dropped snow in wide columns of white until the ASV had rumbled to a halt beside her.
Now she sits next to Merrill in the front passenger seat, the rattle of his makeshift prosthetic a constant background noise. Tia had cobbled it together for him using the tools they’d brought and a broken leaf spring they’d found in a desolate gas station garage on the side of the highway the first day. His first attempt at walking on it had drawn giggles from everyone in the group along with a few colorful insults tossed in by Eli. When Merrill had attempted to chase him down, the leg partially folded, leaving him in a heap to even more raucous laughter. Even Zoey had smiled.