All Dark

by Boyd Craven

  “You were in bad shape, and we had to work on you right away. We… couldn’t get you back to our compound fast enough,” Linda said, walking into the tent.

  “Thank you,” I told her.

  “You know, you and I are going to have a talk,” she said shortly, “but not right now. It’s good you’re awake. Mrs. Flagg, would you like to let your husband know he’s awake? I’ll send some guys with you to help out.”

  “Nice strapping young men? Like that Carter or Jimmy?” Grandma said, an eyebrow raised.

  Linda laughed. “As long as your husband doesn’t mind,” she said with a rueful grin.

  “You take care of yourself,” Grandma said, running her hands through my hair. “Looks like you’re coming home soon. Not today, but soon.”

  Raider barked happily.

  “Hey, Grandma,” I called softly as she was rising to leave, she turned. “How did Raider get loose? He’s the one who woke me up.”

  “I opened the door and told him to go find you,” Grandma said, then walked out of the tent, wiping at her eyes.

  Both of us watched her go. I was tired more than anything, but there was a restlessness in my body. I might not have been strong enough, but I wanted to move; I wanted to stretch and more than anything else, I wanted a bath. I felt grimy, despite Grandma washing my face with a warm washcloth. That’s when Duke and Linda’s husband, Dave, pushed open the flap and walked in.

  “Good, he’s awake,” Dave said.

  “Yup,” Duke said.

  I finally got a good look at him. He looked vaguely Samoan or Pacific Islander, but super-sized. He was almost seven feet tall if I had to guess, and his hands were the size of my face. His shoulders seemed to fill the room. Carter was a big dude, but Duke here had him beat by a third or more size and strength wise by the look of him.

  “You must be Duke?” I asked.

  He nodded, and I held up my good hand. I was too tired and weak to hold it up properly, but I shook his as best as I could.

  “Thank you for pulling me out of there. If it hadn’t been for you and Jessica…”

  “You did something stupid,” he said curtly, and then sat down on the stool Grandma had been using next to my cot.

  The wood protested, but I think he could have as easily sat on the dirt floor and it wouldn’t have made a difference. He unclipped my arm and then gently moved the strap out of the way before peeling the bandage wads back and out of the way. I looked in part curiosity and part horror at the bruised and mottled flesh on my shoulder. It had hit me in the meaty part, not the joint. Hurt like hell, but nowhere near as bad as when it had first happened. I could tell they had used iodine or something like that to keep the area clean, otherwise the bruising was in streaks.

  “Healing good, the swelling is down. Seems to be draining well. How does it feel?” Duke’s voice was as I remembered it—deep, rumbling.

  I looked at Raider who seemed at ease with the big giant, then to Linda and Dave who had their arms crossed, watching.

  “I don’t know, throbbing? Not as bad as when I first woke up in the woods. My head's still sort of ringing though.”

  “That blow to the head could have been worse. You had a bad infection when you were found,” Linda added from behind Duke, who I had to move my head to see around.

  “Concussion, that and you had an infection, shock, gunshot wound that was all kinds of nasty. Boy, you should have been dead.”

  I bristled internally about being called ‘boy’ and tried to sit up more, but he gently pressed on my chest, still touching around the side of my shoulder. I winced and looked. It was angry around the edges, but I could see where sections had been stitched around the main entrance. Duke turned for a moment, getting into a box I hadn’t noticed on the floor, and came back up with a handful of bandages and gauze and started re-packing my shoulder.

  “What were you thinking?” Dave asked me suddenly, his voice almost a hiss, angry.

  “That Duke probably ate the Stay Puft Marshmallow man from Ghostbusters,” I said immediately, then grinned.

  “Next thing you know, you’re going to start calling me the Jolly Green Giant,” Duke said, though I could tell he was sort of amused.

  “No, sorry. Just… Dude, I hung out with football players in college. None of them were ever… I mean…”

  “Tumor as a kid. Finally got it out when I enlisted about thirty years ago. They said it’d shorten my life span if I hadn’t, still might. I thought the Army life was going to do me in more than once. Now get ready, this is gonna hurt.”

  My eyes went wide as he put the last of the bandages on and then took my left arm and raised it ninety degrees to my body. I winced in pain, but it wasn’t lightning bolts of agony. I grunted then rolled my shoulder. That hurt like a bastard, but old tendons crackled, and Duke gently lowered my arm to my side.

  “What they want to know is why did you go back there alone? You blew up half the camp and burned down most of a national park.” Duke’s voice was serious as ever.

  “Because nobody else was doing anything about it. I heard what they’d done to other women. I’ve seen them beat and shoot themselves. I saw that Danny guy get knifed twenty feet away from where I was hiding. If they do that stuff to their own people, what was going to happen to the women and children? You guys weren’t going to help. The numbers were too overwhelming.”

  I was pissed, and my anger was growing, making me strong. Duke tilted his head to the side, as if listening to a petulant child. I swear he rolled his eyes at me. That just pushed me to continue on.

  “I went in trying to disable their vehicles and make enough of a ruckus that I could get the captives out of there if I could.” I finished in a gasp instead of the roar I thought it would be.

  Duke reached down into a bucket in front of him and came out with a washcloth and squeezed the water out with one big fist. He flicked the dripping remains on the floor and wiped my face down with it. It was humiliating in a way, but it was gentle. Like he’d done it before. Hell, he probably had. Thirty years ago? How old was this guy? He didn’t look more than five or ten years older than me.

  “You did a brave but stupid thing. It was practically a suicide mission. Nearly was,” he said pushing it through my hair, wiping the dried sweat back off my forehead.

  “Did it work?” I asked suddenly, realizing I didn’t know.

  In fact, when I’d last seen Jessica, she’d had blisters and her hair had been singed in a large portion. Then I remembered the charred-out trailers, and with a start, realized they were the ones I’d thought the captives were being held in.

  “Yes, though we have a dozen injured, theirs and ours. Lots of bad burns. Seems you have rubbed off on Miss Jessica. When she said that she was going back after dropping off Marshall, we had to either force her to stop and sit on her or send some men to go after her. When the bombs blew, half of their crew bugged out. The fire got pretty bad and most of the injuries happened getting the people out of the trailers. Not enough water to put it all out by the time we could gain control of the area.”

  “Emily and Mary?” I asked him.

  “Here, waiting to talk to you. Jessica is here too, but she’s kind of pissed at you,” Duke said, deadpan.

  Linda snorted, while Dave made a disgusted sound.

  “Is that because I told you that you have the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen, and I wanted to stare into them until the end of time?” I asked, batting my eyelashes.

  Duke laughed hard, obviously surprised. He slapped his leg, which to me sounded like a tree being snapped. His stool gave out at that point, spilling him on his butt, which made him laugh louder. Linda grinned and shook her head, but Dave stormed out, furious. It would have been a grand exit, stomping and all, but it was hard to beat a laughing giant in terms of drama. I grinned.

  “You have a sense of humor. Good. I understand you’re a chemist and a distiller?” he asked between chuckles that were slowly drying up.

  “Chemist
ry by training, but yeah, basically.”

  “Good. We used a lot of resources on keeping you alive, stuff we can’t get back.”

  “You want me to make you… what?” I asked him.

  “Ethanol, medications, antibiotics, sedatives, bomb making materials. I assume that’s what you used on the Crater gang? Home built stuff?”

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t too precise in my measurements. It had a little more bang than I expected,” I admitted.

  “I had eyes on the man holding up a jar,” Linda interrupted. “One second he was there, the next… he was chunks flying fifty feet in all directions, several others as well.”

  “Spider?” I asked her.

  “Burned but got himself out. Couldn’t get a shot on him without hitting an unknown, but he got away,” she answered.

  “Did any of the captive women and kids get hurt?” I asked them.

  “No,” Duke answered for her, “almost happened though. A burning bike came down on one of the trailers, crashing through the kitchenette. There were doors at either end of the trailer. That’s the one where our people got the burns.” Duke’s voice had softened in the telling, but I could see Linda’s eyes, and she was not happy.

  “So, they all escaped?” I asked.

  “The gang took half of them,” Linda answered, “but we were able to rescue some.”

  And Emily and Mary were safe. Here. Waiting. And Jessica?

  “I’m tired, but my stomach is hollering that my throat’s been cut,” I said suddenly.

  Duke chuckled and took my right arm and a piece of gauze and tape. He removed the gravity fed IV and taped a spot over the vein in my inner elbow. Then he gently, surprisingly gently, put my arm back in a sling, making sure my shoulder bandage didn’t shift. He looked me over, then snorted, leaving me alone in the tent with Linda. She gave me a piercing look, then looked back at the flap before coming close.

  “I appreciate what you were trying to do, but you got a lot of our people hurt,” she said softly. “I won’t forget that.”

  Her words were cold, and they felt like a bucket of ice water had been thrown on top of me. I shifted in the bed. I realized that I felt pins and needles all over; I’d been laying down for a long time. As the blood flowed, I felt a little stronger. I risked sitting up and was able to make it halfway there. Before I could crash back, Linda had an arm around my back and was pulling a pillow behind me to prop me up better.

  “I feel if we’re going to argue, I’ll make a stronger case if I’m not stuck on my back,” I told her lamely, though it was the truth.

  “I’m not here to argue. The only reason our people went in was because my daughter did. If you hadn’t done what you did… not to sound like a broken record but—”

  “You weren’t going to do anything. I’m sorry your people were hurt, but at least I did something. You guys watch and wait. Apparently, you’re all set to hunker down until things are safe, but I can’t ignore the horrors that are going on around here without caring. How can you?”

  Raider gave me a chuff and put his head on the edge of the cot. I rubbed his big head slowly as my circulation returned and stared daggers at Linda. I was pissed; I knew people had been hurt, but people would have been hurt or worse if we’d all done nothing. They chose to get involved. I owed them my life, but I wasn’t going to have them beating me over the head with it or using it as leverage. I didn’t owe them any more than what they did for me, which was a lot, granted, but Duke had made it plain. He wanted a way to make medications and replace the stuff they’d used fixing me up.

  I technically could do what they wanted with the supplies and proper equipment, but I didn’t really know how to go about it. I had focused more on industrial instead of other applications of chemistry when I was going to college, but my mind was trying to do too many things at once. That’s when I noticed Linda’s face turning beet red. My words had struck home, and she was either furious or—

  “You bastard,” she said softly, a large tear running down her face, “don’t you ever accuse me of not caring!”

  I waited, my mind reeling as her chest hitched and she sat down hard on the floor next to me. Her whole body shook as she started sobbing, one arm leaned against the cot by my feet, covering her face.

  “What’s going on?” Linda’s husband, Dave, walked in.

  I shrugged. “She read me the riot act, and I gave her some truth.”

  I saw the tent flap open again and another figure step in. Things were about to get busy, and Raider gave out a low warning growl, his muscles going rigid under my right hand as I continued to pet him. I waited. A moment later, a blistered Jessica moved out from behind her father who was kneeling next to Linda.

  “I’m ok,” Linda said, “I’m just not as much of a monster as you make me out to be,” she said, looking at me, her face tear streaked.

  I felt ashamed suddenly, and Jessica’s eyes followed her mom, then looked up at me.

  “I’m sorry your people got hurt,” I told the room at large, “but I didn’t ask anybody to come after me. I would have died if it hadn’t been for Duke and Jessica, but that was a price I was willing to pay. One man’s life, if it meant saving ten or fifteen others. I was willing and ready to pay it.”

  “Twenty-three and a half,” Jessica said.

  “What?” I asked, turning my attention to her.

  Raider calmed at her voice and sat down on his hind end. It was a pain to reach him, so I pushed myself up with my good arm.

  “Twenty-three and a half women and children. That’s how many we got from the trailers and into the bushes before the gang organized and got the rest.”

  “A half?” I asked.

  “Apparently, one of the gals we got out is six months pregnant. Unless it’s twins, I’m only counting half a head until the baby bump is born,” Jess said.

  Her face was tight, and I didn’t know if it was anger or pain. The blisters I’d noticed when I was being dragged out had drained and were scabbed, her beautiful hair was half burned off on one side, and she had a long streak on her arm that was still blistered, as if she’d brushed up against something hot. All in all, she looked fantastic still.

  “Is she ok? Is her baby ok?” I asked.

  “Wes,” Linda said, getting up and wiping her eyes, “I have half a mind to let you have it, but I can see why my daughter’s fallen so hard for you. You weren’t shot horribly, but the wound grew infected, and you had a concussion that left you unconscious off and on for days. The shock and infection almost killed you anyway, and some of the first words out of your mouth are to ask how everyone else is doing?”

  “The boy has some cajones,” Dave said quietly, “but you can’t blame us for the inaction. It could have easily gone the other way. We could have all died, so could have you.”

  I looked away as Jess nodded in agreement with her father. Again, it was a price I was willing to pay.

  “So, you’re saying Jess has a thing for me?” I asked them.

  Linda let out a bark of laughter, wiping her eyes. Dave grimaced and shook his head at me. I looked at Jess who just rolled her eyes skyward.

  “Mom, Dad, there are a couple people outside who want to see Wes, and Mom, you’re wanted by communications. Scouts have an urgent message for you.”

  “How bad?” Linda asked, suddenly sober.

  “Bad. We are going to have to move, but they think we have time to hunt a hole.”

  “On it,” Dave said.

  “You and I aren’t finished,” Linda said, standing up.

  “For now, we are,” I shot back.

  She rolled her eyes this time and turned and stalked out. I could tell she wanted to stomp the way Dave had earlier. How much of this was real, how much an act? I couldn’t tell. The only thing constant I could trust was sitting next to me, my hand scratching behind his ears.

  “How are you?” I asked Jessica as we were suddenly alone.

  “I’m pretty good, all in all,” she said, motioning to her fac
e and arms where the scabs from the burns were evident.

  “You look good,” I told her.

  She snorted and walked over, pushing my eyelids up. Raider sat up taller, watching her intently.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to make him cry,” she told my dog, “this time,” She finished under her breath.

  “Concussion seems to be gone. They say you have to take it easy for a week or two afterward, but yours was pretty severe. Say two to three weeks. And I do not look good; half my hair caught fire trying to find you.”

  She sat down on the floor next to me, noting the crushed stool next to the cot and she raised an eyebrow artfully.

  “Duke,” I told her lamely.

  “Ahh, yeah, he’s a big guy. When he joined the group, we had a ton of people who were quietly begging us to be sure he had enough food for himself and then some.”

  “How are you?” I asked her again.

  “I’m fine,” she said, pushing her hands through my hair until a sharp pain had me wince.

  “Ouch,” I said, flinching away from her grip.

  “I’m just checking the stitches,” she said.

  “Stitches?” I asked.

  “Whatever hit you in the head cut your scalp open. You had bone showing. Our doc cleaned you up and stitched you closed. I told him you were never that pretty to begin with, so it didn’t matter if—”

  She squeaked as I reached over and poked her in the side. She rolled her eyes again and gave me a smile.

  “What’s coming? You mentioned something about communications and timing?”

  “Remember me taking Marshall to our people?” she asked me.

  I nodded, remembering the fishing jokes and Grandpa’s lewd commentary.

  “Lance’s people have picked sides. Lance now works for Spider directly, judging by radio intercepts we’ve gotten. They pretend they still have Marshall, but he’s safe with us. Apparently, Spider has people. A lot of people. Hard to imagine in Arkansas that there were this many criminal masterminds but…”

  Her words trailed off and I brushed my hand through her hair, careful not to hit the scabs and healing blisters. She moaned softly and leaned in. I ran my hands through her hair, marveling that with the world ending, I was making a move on my new girlfriend.