A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  “Why do I feel like that happens a lot with you two?”

  The night is clear and quiet, Highway 83 unobstructed except for a couple cars on the shoulder, a truck jackknifed across the left lane. I follow the glow of Chase’s taillights as he veers past it, scouting for trouble ahead.

  “After what we saw here, we’re going to need someone out front on the way to Wyoming to make sure we don’t run into any more roadblocks,” he’d said, and I’d agreed. If one town was doing it, there’d be others, maybe worse. And for as much as I don’t relish the thought of Chase riding into a roadblock alone, I like the idea of blindly taking the girls into one even less.

  “I just think you really want to ride that Harley,” I’d said.

  And he’d given me that devastating grin.

  It feels good watching him now. Seeing him enjoy himself even if I’d selfishly rather have him sitting beside me. Having a private conversation. He never was the kind of person meant to live behind walls, or stay indoors.

  Or drive the limit.

  He’s the opposite of me in practically every way. Worldly, where I’ve been sheltered. Wild to my domestication. Testing rules that I kept without question all my life.

  I wonder what will happen with us when the lights come back on. When problems can’t be solved by blowing up an enemy compound, or skills better suited—as Simon so aptly pointed out—to crime. When the reality of making money and raising a kid who isn’t even his and needs clothes and rides to school sets in.

  Who are we then?

  “It’s like he thinks we’re Bonnie and Clyde or something,” Chase says, bringing me back to the present.

  “Those are actually the names I was using for both of you in my head,” Simon says. “Until Sylvia told me your real ones.”

  Ahead of me, I can see Chase turning his head to laugh. And am about to say I have no idea who they’re talking about when a set of lights flashes to life on my left.

  The headlights of a black pickup.

  Accelerating toward the intersection, straight for Chase.

  I scream and lay on the horn. See him turn to stare right at those high beams—

  Before surging ahead with a burst of speed as the truck barrels across the highway.

  I touch my brakes just enough to avoid a collision. Hit the gas as the truck slows and pulls over the median.

  “Wynter, speed up!” Chase says.

  I floor the pedal through the intersection as the truck accelerates around the corner and comes after me.

  You told him to come get you, idiot.

  “I guess he took you literally,” Chase says.

  “Guys?” Simon says. “What just happened?”

  “The Warden,” Chase says.

  “What about the Warden?” Simon says, audibly panicked. “And why did he just call you Winter?”

  “He’s on my tail!” I shout, as headlights flood my mirror.

  “You have to outrun him,” Chase says.

  “No—wait. Is he alone?” Simon.

  I glance up. “Yes.”

  “Then he’s not alone!”

  “What?”

  A shot punches my back window. I scream, swerving.

  “I’m coming back,” Chase says.

  “No! You can’t.” He’s unprotected, an open target. I fumble with the buttons on the left armrest, trying to lower the window. Lower the one behind me and then lock the doors instead.

  “I’ve got a rifle, too,” he says.

  The truck surges ahead, looming in the crystalline web that is my back window. Nudges my bumper. I grit my teeth. If I scream again, Chase will come back around. I punch the buttons on the door and the window finally goes down. Grab the pistol in my front pocket. Brace the heel of my hand against the steering wheel and chamber a round.

  Another shot hits the car, cracks the windshield. I thumb off the safety as the Warden swerves, rushing the left lane.

  “It’s a trap!” Simon says.

  “Where?” Chase says.

  A shot flies past me, missing the car entirely.

  And then I realize he was shooting at Chase. My eyes narrow and I swing my arm out the window and back. Fire once. Twice at his windshield.

  “Did you just go through State Farm?”

  “Yes,” Chase says. “He came through the intersection from the east. Must’ve come around the edge of town past the truck stop.”

  The Warden rams my left side, sending me onto the shoulder. I drop the gun and overcorrect, swerving into the left lane, smashing against his passenger side with the grinding squeal of metal.

  “There’s a road—like a frontage road, that hooks into Eighty-three—called Dodge Hill Road,” Simon says quickly. “It’s a blind exit. You won’t see them till they’re on you. You have to get rid of him now!”

  I can see him now, the heavy brow over his glittering eyes like a vulture’s. The flag on his camouflage hat.

  I feel my lips pull back from my teeth in a grisly smile.

  I’m going to kill you.

  “I see the sign for it.”

  “Don’t drive past it,” Simon says. “They’ll be waiting. Oh, my God. You have to—”

  I jerk the wheel to the left. Elcannon shoves me back into my lane—and then raises his rifle.

  I duck, instinctively tap the brake.

  “Waiting with what?” Chase demands.

  “Spikes. Guns. Whatever it takes.”

  A shot whizzes over my head. The passenger window shatters as I fall back.

  “There’s a line of trees ahead,” Chase says. “I’m heading for them. Be behind you in thirty seconds to gun him down.”

  “No! That’s the drive! The road comes out just past it!” Simon says.

  I search for the pistol and then grab the rifle instead. But by the time I grasp it, Elcannon’s slowed, is raising his gun to fire again.

  “Baby, you’ve got to do it,” Chase says.

  I see the trees, the break in the pavement ahead.

  “You’re running out of road!” Chase shouts. “You need to take him off it!”

  I tap the brake hard enough to let him surge ahead—

  “Wynter, take him out!”

  —and then turn straight into his rear tire.

  The Warden’s truck spins to the right directly in front of me, but instead of maintaining my speed, I hit the accelerator, ramming into the side of the vehicle—

  And sending it flying.

  I saw a pair of ice skaters once, last November while I was living at Julie’s. A couple from China. The girl looked like she was maybe a whole five feet tall. I was amazed at their routine. I hadn’t seen ice skating since I was a kid, and I’d never seen it like that—especially when the man threw her into the air and she spun, four times, horizontally, at least five feet over his head.

  I hit the brake, conscious of the road connecting to 83 less than fifty feet ahead. Unconsciously counting the truck’s rotations as time slows into a lazy spiral.

  1 . . .

  2 . . .

  3 . . .

  4 . . .

  It lands in the ditch right side up for a fraction of an instant. Before rolling down the embankment and halfway up the other side into a tree.

  Call it four and three-quarters.

  “Chase!”

  I try to pull over the median and into a U-turn, but the truck’s losing speed even when I floor the pedal, wheels grinding like there’s something stuck underneath.

  I go cold, panic turning my limbs to ice.

  I have intrusive thoughts like this, waking nightmares my mind doesn’t know how to let go of.

  “Chase?” I say, my voice terrible.

  “Oh, my God,” I hear Simon say faintly. “What happened?”

  I hear the motorcycle before I see it, coming down the road. He stops beside me.

  I fall forward against the steering wheel in relief, my hands shaking.

  “Baby, we gotta go,” he says, reaching out a hand. “Now.”

&
nbsp; “The truck, it’s not—”

  “Your front end’s pushed into your wheel wells,” he says. “The truck’s done.”

  Shouts from fifty yards away.

  I get out, legs like Jell-O. The back of my head stings. I retrieve the duffel and hand it to him before grabbing the rifle and hurrying to the wreck.

  “Wynter! What are you doing?”

  I run across the road, down through the ditch to the truck in the dark.

  The airbags have deployed. There’s blood.

  Chase pulls up as I lean down, searching the backseat . . .

  Then I see it—a soft-sided carrier case. I reach through and grab the strap, pull it toward me.

  “Goldi . . .” the voice croaks from the front.

  I’m not a killer, then.

  Just a liar.

  I can live with that.

  I unzip the carrier just enough to peer inside.

  Bottles and jars of medicine.

  My breath leaves me all at once.

  Half of them are crushed.

  I drop the strap across my body, push the carrier behind me, praying there’s enough intact to save Julie. Sling the rifle over my shoulder.

  Chase is frowning, but I don’t know at what as he helps me on behind him, the duffel across the front of the bike.

  “The gas!” I say.

  “No room,” he says. Someone yells, and a shot splices the air.

  No time.

  I wrap my arms around him as he pulls onto the road, over the median, and into the northbound lane.

  “Simon,” he says.

  “Here,” Simon says. “Glad you’re both safe.”

  “Can you lead us there another way?”

  “Sure can.”

  “Hold on, Wynter,” Chase says.

  I never intended to let go.

  • • •

  I’VE NEVER BEEN on a motorcycle before. I always wondered how people without helmets kept from losing an eye to a flying grasshopper.

  Chase lifts one of my hands from his chest and gently slips off the glove. Touches his lips to my fingers. I should tell him not to do that; it isn’t safe. I should ask how we’ll get to Wyoming now, without even a car we can all fit in.

  Instead, I close my eyes, cheek against his shoulder. Hearing nothing but the rumble of the bike, the wind, devoid of smoke, rushing past us with the miles.

  He slows a short time later and pulls off onto a county road. Brings the motorcycle to a stop.

  “Simon, we’re making a quick stop,” Chase says. “I need to check something.”

  “What’s wrong?” I say, awkwardly getting up and even more awkwardly getting off the bike.

  He guides me to sit, sideways on the leather seat. Opens the duffel and grabs a flashlight, clicks it on and pulls out one of the first aid packs.

  “Are you hurt?” I say, alarmed.

  “No,” he says, tearing the pack open. “You are.”

  I blink at him and then down at myself. The blood on the strap and front of my overalls. I reach back, but he guides my hand away as he tilts my head forward, parting the hair above my nape while he shines the flashlight on it.

  “Oh, thank God,” he says, exhaling a sigh.

  “Is she okay?” Simon says.

  “Wynter—I mean Syl—”

  “Chase, give it up,” Simon says. “I know who she is.”

  “No,” he says quietly. “You don’t know her.”

  “You’re right. I don’t. But my daughter’s with me. I just need to know before you get here that we’ll be safe.”

  “I can’t think of a better person for your daughter to meet.”

  “Okay. What happened to Wynter?”

  “She got grazed in the back of the scalp,” he says.

  “How bad?”

  “She’s okay. You’re okay,” he says, looking at me.

  I tilt my forehead against him as he pulls on a pair of gloves and dresses the wound.

  “You’re okay,” he says again as though this time for himself.

  1:13 A.M.

  * * *

  Simon breaks down when Chase opens the cooler just outside Wallace. He covers his face with his hand and then grabs each of us in a fierce hug.

  “Hi,” I say, leaning down to smile from behind my mask at his daughter. She’s barely bigger than Truly, though she’s two years older, with large brown eyes. The sight of her fills me with longing to get back to the silo and pull Truly into my arms.

  We load the insulin, a stack of MREs, flashlights, batteries, and other gear in the back of the car.

  “There’s antibiotics and some other things in case either one of you gets sick,” Chase says.

  “What happened to uh . . .” I gesture to the trunk, not wanting to say “the guys we tied up and threw in here before setting the sheriff’s office on fire” in front of Keira.

  “Craziest thing,” Simon says, looking at his daughter. “We pulled over on our way out of town because we kept hearing this thump thump in the back.”

  Keira nods, somberly. “It was loud.”

  “Really,” I say, eyes wide.

  “And there were these two guys tied up in the back!” Simon says. “So weird, right? So we untied their legs, but before I could even untie their hands, they took off running.”

  “That’s crazy,” I agree and then look at Simon. “Where will you go?”

  “I have family in the Black Hills, South Dakota,” he says. “Or at least, hope I still do. Guess we’ll find out.”

  “Be careful,” Chase says, shaking his hand.

  I drop the carrier strap across my shoulders and we get back on the bike.

  “Oh, wait—” Simon says, and rushes to the car. He returns with something in his hands.

  Otto’s sketchbook.

  “Thank you,” I say, and clasp it to me as we pull onto the interstate.

  2:16 A.M.

  * * *

  I switch channels as we near Sidney.

  “Micah?” I say. “Irwin?”

  Nothing.

  “Micah,” I try again, heart drumming. “Delaney.”

  “It’s the middle of the night,” Chase says, head turned so I can hear him. “They might be sleeping.”

  I tell myself he’s right. But a part of me had just assumed someone would be manning a headset at all hours.

  I keep trying anyhow, all the way to Gurley.

  2:55 A.M.

  * * *

  I squint in the darkness, heart hammering as we reach the corner of the Peterson place, searching for flashlights, the glow of a walkie-talkie’s LED light, moonlight on a gun barrel near the entrance.

  Chase pulls out his pistol and slows as we reach the gate. And then my heart stops.

  Even in the dark I can see that it’s not only unmanned, but open.

  “No,” I say, struggling, irrationally, to get off. “No—”

  “Stay on,” Chase says, turning up the driveway.

  “Go!”

  I unsling the carrier and am off the bike the minute he reaches the rubble of the barn.

  “Wynter, wait!” he says.

  But I’ve waited too long already to get back.

  Rifle in one hand, stick-on light in the other, I kick open the silo door.

  It swings back with a dull clang that echoes all the way down the stairs.

  “Hold up!” Chase hisses, pushing past me onto the landing, beam of his flashlight shining down below us.

  The door of the atrium is open.

  We pound down the metal grate to the concrete. Standing at Chase’s shoulder, I steel myself for what we might find, already knowing I won’t be prepared for it, already losing myself to panic.

  Chase moves into the atrium, the powerful flashlight illuminating it like a lamp. He goes to the wall, tries the light switch.

  Nothing.

  “Truly?” I say. “Lauren!”

  “Wynter—”

  I push past him, through the tunnel, and then I’m screaming their n
ames as I hurtle down the spiral stairs to the empty dining room. Barely registering the random mugs and plates still on the tables. Past the kitchen and down, following the concrete wall of the silo itself past the first dormitory level to the second, where I burst through the door.

  The beds are empty. The living quarters dark.

  “Truly!” I shout. “Lauren!”

  I lift my hand to my mouth as Chase comes in behind me.

  “Where are they?” I cry. “Where is everyone?”

  I pitch forward, hurry to my living quarters. Shove through the door, and stop.

  It’s exactly the way I left it, the drawer still open, shirts hanging over the edge from when I rifled through it as I dressed to leave for town.

  “Wynter,” Chase calls from the common bunk.

  I walk out and find him at the end of the room, standing near a bed different from the others that I recognize as one from the infirmary.

  Two of the single beds have been pushed together to form one large one near it, Truly’s coloring book on the comforter. One of Lauren’s hairbands on the pillow beside her earbuds.

  I grab them and turn to Chase. Hold them up. She would never willingly leave them behind.

  He turns slowly, obviously baffled.

  “I haven’t seen any signs of a struggle. It’s like they just . . .” He goes still. “Ezra.”

  We hurry down the stairs to the infirmary.

  “Stay back,” I say as I reach the landing first. He does, a step behind me, as he trains the flashlight through the door.

  There’s a sign taped to it I’ve seen too many times:

  INFECTED

  DO NOT ENTER

  I don’t have to search to find Ezra; he’s splayed on the infirmary floor, a red splatter on the front of the nurses’ station, gun a foot from his body.

  I crane to see past the edge of the window, but he’s the only one there. I note that the pharmaceutical cupboard is empty.

  We check the storage level just to be thorough, not expecting to find anything in the space cleared out of all the supplies that sustained us for six months, only empty containers left behind.

  “But we made it in time!” I shout, voice echoing. “How could they—why would they go and take the girls? Why would the girls go with them?”