Defender

by G X Todd

  Something touched the top of her head and she recoiled. But it was only the woman’s hand.

  ‘It’s OK.’ Her voice was hushed, raspy. Her palm stroked Lacey’s hair. ‘It’s OK . . . What is your name? You never said.’

  Lacey blinked, confused, then realised she hadn’t introduced herself. Heat crept into her face. ‘Lacey,’ she said. ‘My name’s Lacey.’

  The woman’s swollen eye squinted when she smiled. ‘That’s pretty.’

  ‘It’s better than my middle name. Olive. Can you believe it? So bad. What’s your name?’

  ‘Alex. No middle name for me.’

  ‘Alex is pretty, too. Unless you were a man or something, then I guess it’d be handsome or strong.’ That sounded stupid, so she hurried to cover it with more words. ‘How long have you been here?’

  Alex’s smile trembled, went away. ‘Three days, I think.’

  A chill of horror replaced the warmth in Lacey’s face. Three days. In that room. Lacey had spent ten minutes with them, a mere sliver of time when everything her grammy had tried so hard to protect had almost been ripped away, torn from her like the rind off an orange and exposing her to the world. How was this woman standing upright and talking to her? Stroking her hair in an effort to comfort? Asking her name?

  ‘Oh my God,’ Lacey whispered. ‘Oh my God, I’m sorry.’

  ‘No.’ The word was firm, almost gruff in Alex’s raspy voice. ‘Don’t be sorry. I’m glad to meet you, Lacey. You don’t know how much.’

  Lacey remained crouched at this woman’s feet, staring up in a kind of horror-struck awe, and then stood up too quickly, stumbling a bit and laughing nervously, cutting the sound off immediately. Apologising again.

  ‘If you help me finish getting dressed,’ Alex whispered, ‘I’ll forgive you anything.’

  As Lacey quietly helped, they touched each other maybe more than was necessary – a balancing hand here, a steadying touch there, an adjustment to help smooth out a wrinkled sleeve or turn down a collar – but to Lacey the brief touches were the only warm thing in the cold night, and she welcomed each and every one of them. She thought Alex needed them, too: the touches of someone who didn’t want to hurt her.

  A time or two, she noticed Alex’s eyes drifting over to her motel room. She wondered if the dead woman inside was someone Alex knew, was someone she was close to.

  To distract her, Lacey said, ‘Here, let me look at your wrists for you.’

  ‘Hm?’ For a second, Alex seemed to have trouble tearing her gaze away from the yawning black doorway the Boy Scout had vanished through, but when she met Lacey’s eyes, she blinked and focused. ‘Oh. Yes. Thank you.’ She allowed Lacey to take her arm, and Lacey squeezed in beside her, settling herself on the door ledge. She reached for the bottle of water.

  ‘Where are you from, Alex?’

  The woman tried to clear her throat, but it turned into a grimace. She carried on in a whisper. ‘Wyoming, originally. Kind of all over since. What about you? And . . . what did you say his name was?’

  ‘The Boy Scout? I’ve only known him for, like, half a day. I live just a few hours from here. He’s taking me to Vicksburg. Which, I have to say, is a whole lot closer than Wyoming. Is that where you were when everything happened?’ She wanted to steer the conversation back to earlier things, away from this place, but also because she wanted to hear this woman’s story. ‘Did things go crazy there, too?’

  But Alex had drifted away again, her head turned towards the motel room, her voice low and preoccupied. ‘Yeah. Yeah, craziness there, too. And then it went quiet. Deathly quiet everywhere – at least on the surface.’

  CHAPTER 12

  Before re-entering Room 8, Pilgrim pulled his neckerchief up and over his nose. He headed straight for the bathroom, the lantern they had left offering a welcoming glow. That welcoming aura soon vanished when he stepped into the musty, dingy little room. Green slime covered the tiles down at floor level, and smears of brown Pilgrim didn’t even want to think about caked the toilet bowl and the pipes running out the back.

  Above the scum-stained sink, a medicine cabinet was cracked open an inch. He swung it open the rest of the way and checked inside. He left the dirty nail-clippers alone but picked up the pill bottle. He gave it a shake. No rattling pills answered. The bottle went back on the shelf. There was nothing else of interest, other than an overturned cockroach, its legs crooked and pointed up at the ceiling. And he had read that cockroaches could survive anything.

  ‘Guess you shouldn’t believe everything you read.’

  The bathroom’s acoustics lent an eerie echoing quality to his voice.

  He closed the cabinet and caught a glimpse of himself in the broken mirror. His left eye was splintered into fragments by a crack, spiralling outwards as though a pebble had been dropped into the mirrored surface; jagged glass ripples grew out from the epicentre of his iris. With the lower half of his face covered by faded cotton, his eyes’ stare was strangely mesmerising, their depths cold and unreadable. He barely recognised them and had to drop his gaze after only a few seconds.

  Voice sang in a sweetly haunting voice. Something about recognising a stranger from afar but having never been seen himself.

  ‘One of your own?’

  Purloined it from the back recesses of your noggin. Kenny Rogers? Or Dolly? Don’t know which.

  ‘Neither do I. We’ll have to remain ignorant together.’

  Pilgrim picked up the lantern and left the bathroom.

  The body on the bed made valleys and hills of the blanket covering it. A little kid with a toy Matchbox car would have fun vrooming up and down that mountainous landscape.

  He didn’t want to, not really, but he went over to the covered body and pulled back the blanket. Even steeling himself for the blank eyes and yawning mouth didn’t prepare him for it; a lesson he had learned too many times to count but one which was now compounded by this poor woman’s expression. There was no dignity in death.

  He wanted to close her eyes, but it was too late for that. He knew that some mortuary technicians would place a small bit of cotton ball on the eye and pull the lid down over it. That would do the trick to keep the eyes closed for when the loved ones came to visit, but Pilgrim was all out of cotton balls. What he did do was fold the pillow under the back of her neck so that her head rested higher, her chin dipping forward and her mouth closing. Holding the lantern high with one hand, he used the other to lift the blanket. She was as naked as the other woman had been. He didn’t pause to study her injuries but continued searching, not looking for anything specific but feeling like he owed her something. He found it on the inside of her left wrist, partially hidden by wire and dried blood. He worked the wire loose so he could see the tattoo clearly enough to read.

  Faith.

  It was more likely a personal reminder to the woman, something to the effect that God was watching over her, or to have more faith in herself, or some other private message. Whatever the reason, it was as dead now as the woman herself. It served as an identifier for him, though. Faith. She wasn’t a nameless stranger any more. He had seen and acknowledged her, a woman who had struggled to survive, had endured hardship and pain only to be slaughtered by two cowards. Fairness and justice had lost their place in the world. If they’d ever had a place in it to begin with.

  He considered saying something, a few words of comfort, but he caught himself quickly on the sentiment. She was dead and gone and wouldn’t hear a single thing he said. He freed both her wrists, covered her up again and left her where she lay.

  When he stepped outside the motel for the final time, Pilgrim tipped his head back and stared up at the stars. They glinted coldly back at him. Their scattered presence, spread over the vastness of the sky, made him feel like a speck of dirt. Nothing he would ever do would impact on those stars. Nothing he would ever do would impact much past the moving of molecules around himself, a very small spherical ball of cause and effect, never stretching further than a few feet.
>
  When he lowered his head he found the woman watching him. She was dressed and sitting sideways in the car’s passenger seat, her legs in the V of the door’s opening, sneakered feet resting on the ground. The girl was squeezed in next to her, the water bottle clamped between her knees. She patted at the cuts on the woman’s wrists with a damp cloth.

  The woman’s eyes continued to watch him as he approached.

  He tugged the neckerchief down. ‘Does the car have gas?’ he asked.

  She didn’t answer straight away, as if considering how wise it would be for her to offer any information. She dropped her eyes to the girl then returned her attention to him. She nodded. ‘It did. Half a tank, maybe.’ Her voice was husky; it cracked halfway through the ‘maybe’ and fell into a mere silent moving of her lips.

  Screaming a lot could do that, he supposed.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, raising the lantern so the girl could see better.

  Her head lifted to look up at him. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘There’s some hydrogen peroxide in the first-aid kit,’ he told her.

  ‘Already used some.’ She snaked a hand behind her, fishing in the footwell of the car, and came up with the hydrogen peroxide. She applied some to the cloth then went back to patting the woman’s cut wrists.

  The woman didn’t make a peep, although she did bite down on her bottom lip, her face frowning in discomfort.

  Pilgrim sank to a crouch, took a rolled-up bandage from his kit and waited for the girl to finish her administrations. He took his turn with the woman’s wrist, wrapping the bandage around it a few times. He held it in place with his thumb and grabbed the adhesive tape, using his teeth to tear off a piece.

  ‘Best get the cuts on her face, too,’ he told the girl.

  She got busy with them while he wrapped up the woman’s other wrist. Her fingers were long and graceful, but her palms were callused and strong, the nails neat. And although her wrists were slim, they felt sturdy in his hold. He had to wonder how the two siblings had gotten the better of her.

  They got the better of you.

  Pilgrim frowned at that but said nothing. Voice was right. The girl had been an added distraction, yes, but he should never have assumed the situation wouldn’t turn hostile, no matter how genial the person he was speaking to appeared to be. He had been lax in reading the signs, pure and simple, and he would not be caught unawares again.

  He realised he was staring down at the woman’s wrist, which he still held on to. The woman had certainly put up a fight – they had physically wrecked her – and yet she was still whole, at least on the outside. He wondered if witnessing the other woman being tortured and killed had made it harder or easier. Harder because you could see first-hand what would be done to you once it was your turn, but easier because while they were busy working on her you were getting a stay of execution.

  Wonder if they knew each other, Voice said.

  Pilgrim glanced up into the woman’s face. One cheekbone was swollen, the skin shiny and tight over the bone, making the eye above narrower. Her lip was split and her hair hung in tangles around her face. He thought she would probably be a dark blonde once she was washed up, but he couldn’t be sure. Her eyes were sharp, though. Sharp with pain and anger and wariness, sharp with a whole multitude of emotions.

  He studied her eyes.

  They’re not related, Voice noted. But there’s something there.

  ‘Yeah. Something.’

  ‘Who are you?’ the woman whispered, her voice almost giving out. ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘Same place you did, most likely. West a ways.’ He busied himself with packing away the first-aid supplies the girl had left scattered on the ground.

  ‘He’s a clam,’ the girl said, a touch of admonishment in her tone. ‘He won’t even tell me his real name.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell Lacey your name?’ the woman asked.

  He sighed impatiently and straightened up, first-aid kit in one hand, the lantern in the other. ‘Are you finished with her cuts?’ he asked the girl.

  She surprised him with a smile. It lit up her face, warmed it, made her lovely.

  Pilgrim felt a muscle twitch at the corner of his left eye and wondered how much trouble he was already in, and if he still had time to extricate himself from it without causing even more.

  ‘I don’t need to know your name, Boy Scout. I like you anyways.’

  Pilgrim turned on his heel and stalked away.

  Voice laughed in his head.

  Pilgrim did his best to ignore the girls when they started talking quietly again. He couldn’t ignore Voice, though – he came from a place there was no walking away from.

  He would have been tempted to leave them both right there: they had a car with gas, an open road and a weapon to keep them safe. There was little need for him to escort the girl anywhere now, deal or no deal. However, Lacey had already stuffed his pack into the car’s trunk (‘Saves you having to carry it,’ she’d told him), and both women were sitting in the front of the car, its engine purring, waiting for him to lead the way.

  There had been a brief discussion about whether to bury the dead woman’s body or not, most of it conducted between him and Lacey. The woman seemed unwilling to discuss it and had only shaken her head a few times, eyes downcast. They agreed that she wouldn’t need anything more from them; he had untied her and covered her with a blanket and, for him, that was sufficient. He didn’t particularly want to expend energy and time digging a hole. His head hurt, and his shoulder and hip had stiffened up where he had landed on them, claws of pain digging deep into the joints at every other step. The subject of burial had quickly been dropped.

  I don’t know how you get yourself into these situations, Voice was musing. This morning there was just the two of us, now we have a teenager, an assaulted woman and a deceased cat under our belts. You need to stop picking up strays.

  ‘Someday it’d be nice if there was just the one of me,’ Pilgrim said.

  Voice retreated into a sullen silence after that, and Pilgrim didn’t feel one ounce of guilt for being the cause of it.

  He rolled up to the car’s passenger side, his bike’s engine silent, and waited for the girl to wind her window down.

  He ducked his head so he could address the woman behind the wheel. ‘If I flash my brake lights four times in a deliberate manner, you stop the car and stay stopped till I come back to get you. Four times. Got it?’

  ‘Four?’ Lacey said. ‘I just wanna make sure I understand right.’ She held up four fingers in front of his face.

  ‘Four,’ he said, enunciating the word.

  ‘We understand,’ the woman said.

  ‘Where we going?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Don’t worry. Not to any more motels.’

  He lifted the neckerchief up to forestall any further conversation and fired the bike up, loudly and deliberately revving its engine. He led them back on to the main street and towards the open highway.

  Originally not wanting to travel once darkness had fallen, Pilgrim now found it a comfort, even if a cold one. He rode through the night’s landscape, wanting to put miles between themselves and the motel. Because the moon was full and bright, he chose to leave the bike’s headlamp off and, following his example, the car that ghosted in his wake did the same. He was confident that the road would remain illuminated well enough to navigate safely. The land was awash with a blue-white glow, as if all the colours had been leached from it, leaving an alien world in its place. Even the usual chh-chh-chh of insects and the howling yips of distant coyotes were absent. All was still and silent except for their engines. His shadow flitted beside him as it raced along the blacktop. And above him lay a whole other world – a world of twinkling stars that swept across their velvety backdrop as if God had dropped silver glitter into the breeze and bade the winds carry its treasure to each horizon.

  The temperature had dropped along with the setting of the sun, cooling out the rocks and the blacktop an
d injecting a chill into the air. Pilgrim had shucked on a jacket and some riding gloves, but cold fingers of wind found their way up the jacket’s sleeves and nipped in around his neck. The bike’s engine kept his inner thighs and calves warm, but his ankles and feet soon began to grow numb.

  He glanced over his shoulder from time to time, but the car never fell back further than a hundred yards or so. He couldn’t see beyond the moon’s wavering reflection gleaming off the windshield, but he knew they were in there, looking out at him in between their quiet conversation. And that comforted him, too, although he didn’t dwell on the feeling. He also knew that they were feeling safer, cocooned in the warm confines of the car’s cab (which had undoubtedly trapped the evening’s heat), the miles stretching further and further between them and the motel’s carnage. He knew it as well as he knew they were tired and sore and needed sleep, but he wouldn’t stop again until he found what he was looking for.

  His eyes felt full of grit. Each time he blinked he could almost hear the dry sandpaper rasp of the lid drag over his eyeball. He slowed their speed to forty when the road’s centre line became two then blurred back into one. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept.

  His patience rewarded him. He tapped his brakes four times, glancing back to make sure the woman was stopping as he had instructed. The car slowed and pulled half off the blacktop, the two passenger side wheels dropping into the gravelly rut that ran alongside the road. The car crunched to a stop, lopsided in its parking.

  He rolled to a stop himself, planting a boot on solid ground. He pointed towards the barn he was planning on going to investigate. It was two hundred yards off the road. He couldn’t see the girls inside the car, but he got a flash of their headlights to show they had seen his signal, and then the lights and engine shut off, leaving the car dark and silent.