The fire.
And then it became clear to her. What she would have to do.
Her head swam and she felt faint.
No.
She couldn’t do it.
She glanced back at Charlotte, whose eyelids were fluttering now. They opened again and she looked around. Then she winced heavily, a wave of pain washing over her. Rachel took her friend’s remaining hand and held it as Charlotte surfed the pain curling through her body.
She held Charlotte’s gaze.
“I have to close you up.”
“How?” Charlotte eked out.
Rachel quickly cut her eyes to the blaze.
Charlotte moaned, a low guttural mumble from her throat, a mumble of reluctant agreement.
Rachel studied the scene carefully, trying to figure the best way to cauterize Charlotte’s arm. Was she supposed to simply dip the stump into the blaze and hold it there until it sealed shut?
No.
Metal.
She needed a piece of metal.
The flat of their hunting knife.
Rachel slid in behind Charlotte until her back was pressed up against her chest. Charlotte’s shirt was drenched in sweat and Rachel could feel her heart thrumming against her breastbone. She pressed her hand to Charlotte’s forehead; it was cool to the touch, but she doubted it would be for much longer. Infection would set in soon.
Inch by inch, she scooted her bottom along the ground, closer and closer to the fire. Charlotte was barely conscious; her head lolled back and forth, jerking to attention for a moment before dipping to one side or another. The heat from the blaze intensified as they drew closer to it, uncomfortably warming Rachel’s left flank as she jostled their bodies around toward the fire. Will paced back and forth near the fire, running his hands through his hair. His eyes were red with tears and his upper lip was shiny with the mucus running from his nose.
Oh, what a mess what a mess what a goddamn mess.
Charlotte was less than a foot from the fire now; Rachel took care to support the girl’s body lest she tip forward into the blaze and make a big problem even worse. Rachel slid around so she was perpendicular to Charlotte.
“Will, come here. Sit behind her and hold her up.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to use the fire to seal up her arm.”
His eyes boggled.
“It’s her only chance. We have to stop the bleeding.”
“Will it work?”
“I don’t know. Just do what I ask.”
The boy obeyed his mother for possibly the first time in his life and took his spot on the ground, propping their nearly unconscious patient up.
Rachel took a deep breath and let it out.
“Buddy, this is going to be awful, worse than you can probably imagine, but no matter what, you have to hold onto her. She’s going to scream like hell, and it’s going to hurt her worse than anything you can imagine, but she’ll die if we don’t try.”
He nodded, his eyes big and wide.
She tilted the knife into the flames and let the heat do its work. She held it as long as she could, using a swatch of her jacket sleeve to protect her skin as the handle grew hotter. As the blade began to glow, she hugged Charlotte and kissed her gently on the cheek.
She wrapped her fingers around Charlotte’s upper arm. The tourniquet had come loose and the wound was leaking again, tracing ribbons of blood around Rachel’s fingers and hands. It was slippery and made it hard to keep purchase on the knife. She got her first close look at the wound; it was huge, uneven, ragged, shredded skin and muscle and fat hanging limply from the stump.
“I’m sorry.”
Her hand trembling, Rachel pressed the knife blade to the wound and Charlotte’s body jerked briefly as the hot metal kissed her flesh for the first time. The acidic smell of singed hair and burning meat filled the air. Rachel’s stomach roiled from the odor and she began to dry heave, her stomach clenching and hitching, trying to expel food that wasn’t even there. And they were just getting started. They had a long way to go, several more inches of open flesh to close. Tears triggered by the smoke streamed down Rachel’s cheeks as the heat sealed off the outer edge of the wound.
Then Charlotte began to scream. It was otherworldly, blurring Rachel’s vision as Charlotte’s howls of agony penetrated her, violated her.
“Shh, shh,” she whispered, feeling as colossally stupid as she ever had in her entire life.
She pulled the knife away from the skin, which had turned bright red and puffy. But Charlotte was still bleeding, still screaming.
“Hold her tight, buddy, wrap your arms around her waist.”
Charlotte was mumbling now, the howling on hold for the moment. Rachel leaned in, pressing her ears to Charlotte’s lips.
“Stop, please stop, please stop, please stop…”
Rachel leaned away from her, but Charlotte continued mumbling.
“You’re doing great, sweetie, we’re almost done.”
She couldn’t stop, she had to keep going. Charlotte would die otherwise.
The knife went back into the fire for another minute, until the steel was glowing red. Rachel began the second round of cauterization, holding the metal toward the devastated center section of the wound. The effect on Charlotte was galvanic, her scream apocalyptic, like nothing Rachel had ever heard in her life. Her hand trembled as the metal did the work, cooking away flesh and hair and skin. Her will began to fray at the edges and other thoughts began to creep in like mold.
Pointless.
No point.
She’s dead anyway.
Already dead.
The howling, somehow, deepened, Rachel’s entire arm shaking now. Will was crying now, burying his face in Charlotte’s shoulder blade as he wept, his arms still wrapped dutifully around her waist.
She couldn’t.
She lifted the knife from Charlotte’s arm and immediately, the girl’s body went slack, like a puppet whose strings were cut, and the screaming stopped.
It was for Charlotte. She couldn’t keep inflicting that kind of torture on her friend. For what? For a negligible increase in her odds of survival? Statistically speaking, Rachel was elevating Charlotte’s odds from precisely zero to about zero.
It certainly wasn’t because Rachel couldn’t do it, nope, heavens no.
It wasn’t because Rachel didn’t have the stomach for it, that she would do literally anything to keep Charlotte from screaming again. Because that would be the act of a coward, of someone who had failed a friend in her most desperate hour, someone who wasn’t really cut out for these types of things, who would lead them all to their deaths.
And she wasn’t a coward, right?
It wasn’t that Charlotte was dead because of her and then it wasn’t that Will would be dead soon and then she would be too. Or maybe she would die first because she was dumb and she would leave Will all alone out there and he would die alone and afraid and it would be because his mother was nothing more than a coward, the worst kind of coward.
But that would only be if she were a coward.
Which she most certainly was not.
She gently pulled Charlotte away from the fire, away from Will’s embrace and laid her down on a soft patch of ground. Her eyes were closed, and her chest rose and fell slowly, her breathing slowing in the aftermath of the trauma she had endured.
This was it then.
Charlotte would die and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
“Are you done? Did it work?” Will asked, his voice spiced with a hint of hope.
“We’re done, sweetie.”
Rachel lifted Charlotte’s head into her lap and gently stroked her hair. Her back ached and her butt was sore, almost numb from sitting on the ground, but she did not move. At dusk, Charlotte’s breathing slowed. Rachel pressed a finger to Charlotte’s wrist. She found a pulse, but it was faint, like the twinkle of a faraway star.
When the dusk had melted into d
arkness, the terrain beyond the reach of the fire black with night, Charlotte Spencer took one last breath and died.
17
They carried Charlotte’s body back to the house. She was a wisp of a thing, maybe a hundred pounds, but it had been awful, excruciating work. Rachel slept fitfully, her brief stretches of sleep punctuated by dreams about the bobcat, about Charlotte’s agonizing last minutes of life. The next morning, Rachel spent an hour cleaning off her body, freshening up her face with a makeup kit she found in the master bathroom vanity. She didn’t put much because Charlotte would have hated it. Only enough to make her look as beautiful in death as she had in life. Then she dressed her in a black cocktail dress from the woman’s closet. It was about two sizes too big, but it would have to do.
While she tended to Charlotte’s body, Will saw to the grave. There was a rectangular-shaped raised garden where the soil had been soft and made for easy work. He had dug the grave himself, simply starting without prompting, carving out the weedy patch of ground, working silently for hours until the hole was big enough.
Together they had laid her body in the shallow grave. Will backfilled the dirt, gently tamping it down with the back of the shovel, making it nice and neat. When he was done, he placed a large stone above Charlotte’s head. His hands and face were black with dirt.
They spent the next two days holed up in the house, each mourning in their own way. Their minds were scattered, and she didn’t want to risk any excursions when they were at less than one hundred percent. They passed the time in the sitting room, leafing through paperbacks and old photo albums belonging to the family that had lived here. Little was said, as Rachel wasn’t sure how to discuss what had happened with Will. Three of the most important people in his life, snuffed out in a matter of weeks. A crash course in the real world. And it was her fault.
When she tired of reading, she wandered the rooms, looking for work that would need to be done. Some plywood to cover up the windows, keep the elements at bay. There was water damage, of course, but that was true of any uninhabited structure still standing these days. She wasn’t ready to leave Omaha yet; they were too shell-shocked. They needed a few days to collect themselves.
But it was time to start scavenging, laying in supplies and hopefully finding some canned goods in the surrounding neighborhoods. She wasn’t optimistic, as most places had been picked clean over the years. But what choice did they have? Winter was on its way, and the bony specter of starvation cast a long shadow, the edge of which was right at their heels. She found herself doing the math in her head constantly now. They had three days of food on hand. Three days. They had three days to find some food before the shadow would start to overtake them, before the gnawing in the belly would become the center of their worlds.
“Follow me,” she said to him on the morning of that third day.
This elicited no quarrel from him, which underscored the heft in her voice.
She needed to train him how to use a gun. Something she should have done years ago, and that was something Eddie had been right about, bless his shitty soul. But she had put it off and put it off, telling herself she would get to it someday. But she hadn’t because she hated guns and to teach him to use them would be admitting they lived in a terrible world, that Will would never have a happy childhood because she would have taught him to kill.
Look where that had gotten them.
A little boy wandering in the woods and Charlotte ends up dead.
There it was.
Charlotte was dead because of her.
If she had done a better job raising Will, he wouldn’t have ended up cornered by that goddamn bobcat and Charlotte would still be alive. End of story. The simplest If-Then statement imaginable.
“What are we doing?” he asked as he followed her down the hallway to the large galley kitchen.
“Come stand next to me,” she said as she set a Glock on the speckled granite counter. The heavy weapon hit the granite with a satisfying thud.
“Need to teach you about guns,” she said
His eyebrows rocked upward.
“Really?”
“It’s time. We might be on our own for a while. And you need to be able to protect yourself if you get into trouble.”
He looked down at the floor; she hadn’t meant to make him think about Charlotte, but it was inevitable, she supposed. He was old enough to understand there were consequences to actions, even if he didn’t think about them before taking those actions.
“This is a Glock,” she said.
After making sure it was unloaded, she walked him through each of the gun’s components. They went over it until he could identify each part himself.
“I want you to remember something,” she said, recalling the lesson her father had given her. “If you fire this gun, other than when we are practicing, you have made a decision to end a life. That doesn’t mean you won’t miss. That’s not the point. The point is that the sole purpose of a gun is to terminate life, and that’s the only reason it should ever be used. Understand?”
His eyes were wide and bright, and he nodded slowly.
Her heart broke.
“Sweetie, I’m sorry you have to know about these things.”
“It’s OK.”
“When I was your age, I was in the sixth grade, watching movies and texting with my friends. My stepdad took me to baseball games. I never had to worry about my next meal.”
“S’OK, Mommy.”
Her will began to waver, and she debated putting the gun away for one more day, preserving his innocence and childhood for a little bit longer. But that time had come and gone. His childhood had ended long ago, if it had ever even started. He was born into a world that demanded adulthood from the get-go, and she had pretended it didn’t.
She removed the Glock’s magazine and racked the slide to make sure the chamber was clear. Then, following the guidance her father had passed onto her, she racked the slide multiple times before aiming the barrel away from her and Will and pulling the trigger. After hearing the satisfying click, she flipped the weapon upside down, pressed the release button and removed the slide, the spring, and the barrel, explaining each component as she went along. A score of parts made up a Glock, but she focused on the four main components – the slide, the barrel, the frame/receiver, and the guide rod/recoil spring assembly.
“How many bullets does it hold?” he asked.
“This one holds fifteen.”
“Do you have to clean it?”
“Yes, every few months,” she said. “But it’s a very reliable gun. It was one of the most popular types in the old days. We can go through a few hundred rounds between cleanings.”
She put it back together, keeping the magazine to the side, and held it out, muzzle pointed downward, for him to hold.
“Go on.”
His eyes fixed on the gun, and he reached out slowly, like a frightened puppy considering an offer of a treat. He took it from her hand and wrapped his fingers around the grip.
“It’s unloaded,” she said, “but you still never point it at anyone unless you plan to use it.”
Will nodded imperceptibly, his eyes wide open, his lips pressed tightly together. He seemed to grasp the gravity of the situation, of the lesson underway here. Simply by handing him the gun, she was telling him she wouldn’t always be there to protect him, that he would have to protect himself, and that in this world, he might have to do violence. Not like the old days, when your gun was far more likely to be accidentally fired by a toddler than by you against an intruder. No, the odds were good he would have to use it for real.
They went outside to the expansive backyard, where she set up a series of targets on a folding table, using the tops of cardboard boxes she pilfered from the family’s collection of board games. She folded each top in half, forming a reasonably stable triangle at which to take aim. She took a few steps back and eyed the box tops, adorned with the bright imagery of happy families playing Life and Monopoly and Troubl
e.
“A few rounds today,” she said. “To give you the feel of it.”
She spent a few minutes going over the correct firing stance, again repeating the lessons Adam had taught her, the lessons he had learned from his own father when he was a boy.
“Stand behind me now,” she said. “Watch carefully.”
She waited until he took a spot to her four o’clock, about ten feet off her right hip. Then she sighted the first target and squeezed the trigger at the Trouble box. The Glock was a remarkably stable weapon, hitching only slightly as it let loose the 9-mm round. Her aim was true, and the box top burst into the air before floating back to the ground.
“Good shot, Mommy,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. “Your turn.”
She handed the gun to him.
“Remember,” she said, “there’s already a bullet in the chamber.”
He took the gun and mimicked her movements, assuming a decent firing stance, gripping the weapon properly.
“It’s going to buck a little when you fire it, but not too badly,” she said. “You might be sore tomorrow.”
He nodded, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. His hand trembled, giving the barrel a slight shimmy. He took another breath, steadying the gun before nerves washed over him again and the barrel began wobbling once more.
He fired.
The report of the gun blast echoed across the yard, across the neighborhood; her thoughts flickered briefly to those unseen strangers who would have heard their gunfire and wonder what was happening.
“I missed,” he said.
“It’s OK,” she said. “Try again.”
“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” he said.
Irritation rippled through her and she bit down on the corner of her lip to keep herself from lashing out at him. Time. It was going to take time.
“It’s OK,” she said.
She gently took the gun from his hand and cleared the chamber.
“We’ll try again later.”
“No.”
“It’s important for you to learn.”
“No!” he said, turning and fleeing for the house, leaving her standing alone in the yard.
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The Immune Box Set [Books 1-5] Page 69