It was just a prettier trap.
“Please, Bert…I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I wish you’d minded ye’ business! God almighty, son! Lord knows I don’t want to hurt anyone—never have wanted to. It’s not my way. But…but…”
Ben watched him. The gun shook and there were tears in his eyes, and Ben felt a momentary measure of pity for him, but he knew it was a foolish emotion. The loft was off limits for a reason, and Ben was pretty sure he understood what that reason might be.
“I’m stepping down off the ladder, Bert. Just coming down is all.”
“Oh, we’re all coming down, boy,” Winston replied, his voice almost a whisper. His eyes went vacant, and spittle bridged the space between his lips. “Been down for a long time. Since the very beginning of all this durned wickedness, back in the garden that He set aside for us, we’ve all been down.”
Winston kept the gun pointed at his chest, tears glistening on his cheeks, his thin lips trembling around nubs of tobacco-stained teeth. “I didn’t expect anyone else to come,” he hissed. “I thought that road was done producing. Finished! It’d been so long since the last ones came. Such a durned long time.”
“I know. I understand, Bert,” Ben said, taking a cautious step forward, “but you can be forgiven. We can be forgiven.”
Winston’s face brightened. He studied Ben with shining, mad, inquisitive eyes. “Forgiveness? Really? You really think so?”
Ben took another small step. If he lunged, and if he was lucky... “Forgiveness, Bert. Forgiveness for everything.”
The old man sighed and shook his head. “No! No…no…NO! It’s just not that easy! None of this,” his eyes darted wildly around the barn, “can be forgiven so easily! I shouldn’t have let you in, son. I never should have let you come inside here!”
“Bert,” he said, steeling himself, gathering himself, “forgiveness isn’t conditional. I think, if there’s still a God in heaven, that he’ll listen...”
“Oh, there’s a God in heaven,” Winston interrupted, “but He quit listening a long time ago, son. A damned long time ago indeed. We’re on our own down here…”
An expression of purple sorrow twisted Winston’s face into a mask. His arm straightened, the barrel of the pistol rising three inches. Time compressed and Ben saw, with exquisite clarity, Winston’s index finger squeezing the trigger.
Adrenaline spiked and his body was dipping and turning, instincts taking over, even as he lunged.
The pistol barked, a flash exploding in the four feet of space separating them. Ben felt the concussion of the blast—gunpowder and cordite peppering his face—at the same time the bullet slammed into his shoulder.
He ducked into a roll, keenly aware that his right arm was loose—that the best term for it was, in fact, loose—and then he was up again and launching himself at the old man. He took Winston high in the chest as the old man squeezed off another shot, this one flaring wild with a tinkling crash.
They collapsed onto the planked floor and Ben felt the wind and the fight go out of the frail bastard all at once. Winston lost his grip on the gun and Ben snatched it up with his left hand. He put it in the man’s face, touching the tip of its smoking barrel to his cheekbone. The iron singed the man’s thin flesh and he screamed.
“Christ, old man! You didn’t have to do that!” Ben’s arm dangled at the shoulder, like it had been pinned there with a thumbtack. He flexed his fingers and was thankful to see them move. It was an odd sensation, as if everything below the shoulder wasn’t really connected to him anymore.
Winston hacked and sputtered, struggling to breathe beneath Ben’s weight. Ben gave him some room and Winston sucked air in great wheezy gusts.
“Ah, I’m so sorry,” he finally spat. Despite the guttural tone, there was an underlying sincerity in the apology. “I’m so sorry,” he blubbered, bursting into fresh tears.
Ben set his jaw. It took some effort, but he was able to stand. A searing, throbbing pain gripped his torso, from shoulder to ribcage. He was light-headed. “Get up,” he grunted. Blood flowed down the interior of his right forearm, soaking into his heavy coat. It pooled in thick black droplets on the dusty floor.
Winston scrambled up. “God, I’m so sorry, Ben. I’m just so sorry for all of this….”
“Get over there and put your back against that gate.”
Winston moved to the steel gate of the closest stall.
“Sit down and put your wrists through that slot.”
A pair of sturdy horizontal beams provided just enough space for the old man’s spindly wrists to fit through the opening. Ben put the pistol on the ground and, working as quickly as he could with one arm, managed to bind the man’s wrists with a bungee cord he’d found on a workbench. “I’m tying you up for now, Winston. I got to get inside and see to my arm.”
Winston just sat there, snuffling, his respiration wheezy. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Ben.”
“Yeah? Well, damnit…I’m sorry too. None of this had to happen.”
He rummaged in a cabinet until he found a length of chain; he looped it twice around Winston’s chest before securing it to the stall fencing with the padlock from the barn door. He slipped the key from around the man’s neck.
“I’m going back into the house now, Bert, and I need you to tell me truth. Is there anything I should be aware of? Any traps? Anybody hiding in there? Be truthful, Bert, or so help me I’ll kill every last person in there and then come back out here and execute you where you sit.”
Winston had become a child—a confused and defeated child. “No,” he whispered. “There’s nothing to be afraid of in that house. It’s…it’s a safe place, that house. Always has been. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”
He kept muttering, the words becoming a feverish mantra, and Ben left him there.
“It’s my place,” Winston whispered, his wide eyes staring into the abyss of what almost certainly were the early throes of Alzheimer’s. “It’s always been my place—always been my place, yes sir and yes indeedy. And I’m sorry, oh GOD how I’m sorry! IamIamIamIam oh I am really and truly and honestly sorry! Lord, forgive me…”
Aside from a thin band of gray light sliding off into the western horizon, it was dark. Clouds blocked the stars, and Ben entered the house, thrilled by its warmth despite the pain that gripped his midsection. Each step was an exercise in agony.
There was a kerosene lantern on the kitchen table, and he lit it. He found the bathroom on the first floor and rummaged through the medicine cabinet. There were a few bottles, most of them empty. The old man was a packrat, it seemed.
He found a first aid kit beneath the sink.
It took time and effort, but eventually he stood before the mirror, stripped to the waist, the wound in his shoulder about the size of a quarter. He studied himself, repulsed by what the image reflected by the mirror.
The scars of his youth would never heal—the surgeries, one after another—that had made him the horrible thing that he was. He traced the hardened ridge of discolored tissue that extended from the top of his sternum to just above his navel. Things had been set in motion and they couldn’t be undone, but this new destruction—this fresh trauma—well, there was still time to make it right.
The blood fell in thick rivulets. It made a sound as it pocked the linoleum.
He took a few squares of cotton and stuffed them into the wound. Using his teeth to sever the strands, he taped the bandage in place. He made no effort to clean the wound.
Pain management and security. Those were the priorities. Everything else would just have to wait.
He pulled a t-shirt over his scrawny frame, snatched up the pistol and started his investigation. He went from room to room—poking the barrel of the gun into closets and behind doors. He knelt, peering under beds.
After a time, he was satisfied that Winston had not lied to him.
He shifted gears. Ammunition for the pistol. Booze. Medication. He found some whiskey—something
called Wild Irish Rose—in a cabinet in the kitchen. He took a long drink, flinching a little as it bit into him.
He searched the kitchen cabinets until he found the aspirin. There were four plastic bottles of it in the cabinet above the stove. The open bottle was almost empty. The other three still had tufts of cotton beneath cellophane-wrapped caps. He counted out six of the capsules, chased them with whiskey and turned his attention to the stove.
The pot simmered. He could hear it—little eruptions of steam rattling the lid.
His stomach seized, and he was suddenly dizzy with hunger. He removed the lid and found a hearty stew there, bubbling in thick brown gravy. There were potatoes and herbs and—he looked closer, the rich scent now rendering him faint with desire—chunks of meat!
He dipped a finger and tasted it; the infusion of flavors—salt and pepper and the tang of protein and the earthy hint of tuber—made him swoon. He took a deep breath and clamped the lid back down on the pot. To eat now would be a grave mistake. He had to hold onto his edge. There was still the old man to see to, and he couldn’t relax until he had that sorted out.
Ben ladled a portion of stew onto a plate. He checked the revolver—seven shots left—and tucked it into the back of his jeans. He took the lantern’s wire handle in his mouth, collected the food with his left hand and plunged back out into the cold, his threadbare t-shirt flapping in the wind.
How long until winter arrived in earnest? The far north—what used to be Canada and New England—was probably already buried beneath gray snow. Winter would be here soon, flexing its grip over the land until the world was choked with snow and ice clear down to the tip of the old Florida peninsula. He smirked. There had been a time when folks were alarmed about global warming.
Ben carefully set the lantern down. He nudged the barn open with his elbow. It was dark inside, the skylight revealing a muted indigo high above.
“Winston?” he called.
“I’m here,” the old man replied from the shadows. “I’m here, and I’m cold. You left me out here in the durned cold, Ben.”
“I brought your dinner.” He found Winston where he’d left him. “Here. It’ll warm you up.”
He put the plate at the old man’s feet.
“You’ll have to feed me.”
Ben nodded, digging a fork from his pocket. “Figured.”
He speared a chunk of potato and brought it to the old man’s mouth. Winston ate greedily and Ben shoveled the stew into him. When the plate was empty, he stood.
“You’re outside for the time being. Least until I figure out where you and I stand.”
Winston cocked his head—confusion and fear clear in his expression. “Outside? I’ll freeze to death out here, Ben! I surely will.”
“No, you won’t. You deserve to freeze, but you won’t, Bert. I’ve been out in this weather for years. It’ll take you some time to adjust, but we’re still a few weeks away from the deadly temperatures.”
“Can’t I have…can’t I at least have a blanket or something?”
“You’ve got your jacket. It’s more than you would have done for me and you know it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to see to this bullet you put in my shoulder.”
“This jacket ain’t enough, Ben! It’s not nearly enough!”
“Oh, it’s enough. It might not feel like it come 3:00 a.m., Winston, but you’ll survive the night. Might be close, but I believe I’ll still have you to deal with in the morning.”
Winston grew silent. He stared off into space, apparently grasping the nature of the night ahead of him.
Ben collected the plate and the lantern. He was almost to the door when he heard Winston’s wheezing laughter.
“What is it, old man?”
“’Might be close’ you said! Might be close! Guess what, Ben?”
Ben turned. Winston was grinning there in the gloom.
“The difference between drowning and treading water is just an inch or two. That’s close. You remember that, son, come 3:00 a.m.! A dad-gum inch or two!” He cackled until his laughter dissolved into a coughing fit. Ben watched him a moment longer. He closed the door and headed into the house to prepare for surgery
.
TWO
He couldn’t keep the stew down. Three times he had tried, and three times his stomach had rejected it, in addition to the apples he’d eaten earlier. His body had adapted—the years of protein powder, tepid water and 800-calorie days had seen to that—and it would take time to adjust.
He put a pot of water on the wood stove to warm while he gathered the supplies he would need: iodine, as well as a needle and thread. There was the aspirin and maybe a pint of whiskey left, most of which he poured into a tin cup.
He worked at the sink, ruefully eyeing the stew that taunted him while the wind gusted outside.
When he had a rolling boil, he dropped the needle and a steak knife into the pot. The blade was dull, but it would have to do.
While he sterilized the implements, he dipped off a cup of water and added half of the iodine. He was nervous about using so much, but he wouldn’t get a chance to use the rest of it if he acquired an infection.
After a few minutes, Ben used tongs to retrieve his tools.
He removed the bandage and gripped the knife as firmly as he could. Wind howled in the darkness outside the kitchen window, and he studied the changes in his gaunt reflection—he cataloged his own agony—as he touched the steaming blade to the edge of the wound, and then down, deep down inside, searching for the slug and searing his flesh along the way.
Ben screamed—a shrill, pathetic shriek that filled the room and died instantly at the window pane, the wind outside billowing ash against the glass and swallowing the frantic cries of a terrified old man in a barn and an injured young man in a kitchen, a world of difference between them.
THREE
Ben lay still in the dark, unable to sleep. The pain in his arm had dulled some—the aspirin and whiskey and the removal of the slug had seen to that. But his conscience chipped away at him. With every gust of wind, his thoughts floated out to the barn.
That man tried to kill you, he chided himself. You’re damned lucky to be alive, and you know it. You don’t owe the bastard any favors!
It didn’t matter. Sleep wouldn’t come until he checked on him.
“All right,” he finally hissed. “Shit!”
He left the warmth of Winston’s bed, found an ill-fitting jacket and went to the linen closet. He grabbed a comforter and went downstairs, feeling his way through darkened corridors.
He looked outside and found that the clouds had parted. The silver moon offered just enough light to catch the dull shine of the slug on the windowsill. It was a misshapen mound of metal, and he’d been fortunate the bone hadn’t shattered on impact.
He lit the lantern and went outside.
“Got a blanket for you, old man,” he called into the gloom of the barn. It was cold and silent and the space felt empty and dead. He shined the lantern on the stall door and saw that Winston had vanished, the chains coiled like a timber rattler at the base of the gate.
“Shit!” he wheeled, thrusting the light into the center of the barn. The lantern wasn’t much, but it was enough to see what had happened.
Bert Winston dangled from a rope he’d looped over the rafters, up near the loft that had caused the whole damned incident. His head slumped forward on his chest, his eyes, mercifully, shut.
Ben crumpled to the barnyard floor. A sudden rack of sobs gripped him, and he was overwhelmed by the strange sense of loss he felt for the old man.
But he shot you! the voices—those constant companions—chided him. Just be thankful you didn’t have to kill him yourself. He did you a favor, Ben! A favor…
They were little comfort.
The truth was that the world had passed into shadow—into a state of decay so total that even sunlight rarely penetrated the gloomy miasma of ash. But this place and this…this dead old man—they were, in their w
ay, tiny rays of sunshine in their own right.
They were survivors.
Over the last three years, Ben had encountered but a handful of other wanderers. And those, almost to the very last, had been dangerous, desperate people.
They had been hungry people, and he had taken great care in his dealings with them.
Ben knew there were places where people were gathering, makeshift towns where survival was predicated on violence and betrayal.
He avoided them, and the people that called them home.
But Winston had been different. The old man had coaxed fruit from the trees. Hell, he’d managed to keep the trees alive in the first place. He’d made food from the earth. He’d taken pride in his home, and he had struggled to build a life for himself, when everything and everyone else seemed content to simply allow the old ways to wither and die.
Ben swiped away the tears, keenly aware of what he still had to do. He went to the work bench and searched through the drawers until he found a stubby knife with a curved blade. He climbed the ladder and sawed through the rope.
Winston’s body crashed to the floor in a heap.
Ben turned his attention to the loft. Winston had been curing meat. An inexplicable object—a small, top-loading freezer—hummed in the corner. The old man was running juice to the place after all! There was even a dim fluorescent light mounted in the corner.
Ben approached the nearest rack, where he found rows of paper-thin strips of drying meat.
Jerky.
He resisted the urge to sample it; instead, he went to the freezer.
When he opened it, ice crystals cascaded down onto a pile of parcels wrapped in faded newspaper. Ben took the first and cut away the twine.
It was a roast. A simple bottom roast—not unlike the dinners he’d enjoyed when he was living with the Beamers back in Jacksonville.
There were other packages—scores of them—and he rummaged through the freezer until he found what he was looking for. Hoping, praying even, that it might be poultry (maybe even a chicken!), he unwrapped it.
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