by TJ Klune
Still no bars.
He eyed the roof of the cabin.
Probably not the best idea.
He should just leave. Get back in the truck and head back down the mountain.
If he took it slowly, he’d be back in Roseland in a couple of hours.
His phone would work.
He could find a cop. Hell, he could call Big Eddie. He might not even have to get all the way back to Roseland before it worked.
Yes. That sounded like a plan.
“All right,” he muttered to himself. “I’m going to do that. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s smart. It’s safe. Good plan.”
He got back into the truck and reached down to turn the key.
Except there was nothing there.
Because he didn’t have his keys.
“Motherfucker,” he growled, slamming his hand against the steering wheel.
When had he last had his keys? It would have been at the shed before he—yeah, fine, before he fainted. He’d felt them cool against his neck, buried under all that terror of having a fucking gun pointed at his head. Either they were still sitting on the ground by the shed, or they were inside after they’d carried him in—
And that—something buzzed a little at that, didn’t it? Like an electrical pulse in the back of his brain. It was disbelief mixed with ??????? because how had that happened exactly? The man had passed out. The girl couldn’t have carried him in herself. The man must have woken up and carried Nate inside, but… he was injured. He’d been shot. Nate had never been shot, but he could imagine what kind of pain he’d be in. Nate may have been thin, but he was a hair over six feet. He wasn’t small. Yes, the man was much larger—probably had a good sixty pounds on Nate—but if he was hurt, and if Nate could take him by surprise….
Unless they were just pretending the man had been shot.
Or if there was another person in the cabin. Someone he hadn’t seen yet. Maybe the girl’s mother.
He had a feeling the keys weren’t by the shed.
He got out of the truck.
He turned toward the road.
He started walking.
He made it three steps before he stopped.
He turned back around.
They were in his cabin.
He wasn’t the one that needed to go.
He took a step forward, determined.
They had a gun that had already been fired in his direction.
His next step was less determined.
As were the ones after that.
By the time he reached the porch steps, he was sweating despite the cold mountain air. His hands were shaking, and his head was pounding.
He managed to make it up the steps, the wood creaking underneath him.
The door was still open partway. He couldn’t see much.
He steeled himself, took a breath, and pushed the door open.
The man was still sitting on the chair, head tilted back, eyes closed.
The girl was next to him, her hand on his side.
The gun was sitting on the coffee table.
“Told you he’d come back,” she said without turning around.
The man cracked an eye open. “Huh.”
“Who else is in this house?” Nate asked, going for firm but landing somewhere around shrill.
The man closed his eye. “What?”
“The house,” Nate repeated. “Who else is here?”
The girl cocked her head, waited a beat, then said, “No one. Just us three.”
Nate nodded, head jerking up and down. “Fine, then you’re not really shot.”
The man snorted.
“He is.” The girl patted the man on the knee. “He shouldn’t have been, but he’s an idiot. Do you like sunglasses?”
“Art,” the man said, a warning in his voice.
“What?” the girl asked. “It was just a question.”
Nate wasn’t sure what was going on. “I don’t care about sunglasses—”
“Oh,” the girl said. “That’s too bad.” She brightened. “Are these your books, partner? Going down the dusty trail on your horse named Benny with your clichéd and borderline racist caricature of a Native American sidekick that—”
“Yes,” Nate said. “Those are mine. The books are mine. That chair you’re sitting on is mine. Everything you see here is mine.”
“Okay. Jeez. You don’t need to brag.”
Nate sputtered. “Jesus, I’m not bragging. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The girl squinted at him. “Nothing. What’s wrong with you?”
“Listen, little girl—”
“My name is Artemis Darth Vader. I told you that already.”
“That’s not a real name!”
“It is,” she insisted, and for the first time since this craziness had begun, the girl looked almost… upset. “It’s mine. It’s my name. No one else can have it. It belongs to me. You can’t take that from—”
The man winced, but he lifted a hand and dropped it on her shoulder, squeezing gently.
The little girl’s chest heaved once, twice, three times before she sighed.
“Her name is Artemis,” the man said quietly. “Art, for short. She’s… very partial to it.”
Nate didn’t know what to say to that.
“He’s my Alex,” Art said. “And he’s been shot. There’s no one else in the house. We didn’t know who lived here. We didn’t hurt anything. I read some of your books. We ate some of the food, canned stuff that didn’t look like it’d be missed. We slept in the beds. He needs to feel better. Okay? That’s all I want. I need him to feel better.”
“Where are my keys?” Nate asked quietly.
“I dropped them,” Art said, looking back at Alex. “By the shed. I couldn’t get them and you and Alex at the same—”
Alex coughed. “We couldn’t lift you and grab the keys at the same time. Not with how weak I am.”
“Right,” Art said. “Because you’ve been shot. In your skin.”
Nate moved across the living room, giving the two strangers a wide berth.
Neither of them went for the gun.
He was out the door before they could speak again.
There they were. Just… sitting in the grass next to the shed.
He bent over and picked them up.
The generator hummed.
He looked down at the keys in his hand.
All he’d need to do was get back in the truck. That’s it. He had what he needed. His phone was in his pocket, his keys in his hand. He hadn’t even unpacked anything. He hadn’t had time. If the man had been shot, he didn’t need to know how. He didn’t need to know what they were running from. Who was after them. He didn’t need to be involved. Hell, he didn’t even have to tell anyone about them. He could go back inside, tell them they had a day to clear out before he called the cops, and he could sleep somewhere down the road in the truck. He’d come back tomorrow and they’d be gone, and he could pretend none of this had happened. He would go about living his strange, isolated existence where he was going to figure out what he’d do next. He’d grieve over that lack of grief he felt at his parents’ loss and then move on. He wouldn’t have to worry about a dangerous man and his weirdly named daughter.
Yes. That sounded good.
He turned back around.
The girl was standing there.
He jumped and made a rather embarrassing sound.
“Howdy,” she said, staring up at him.
“Don’t do that,” he snapped at her.
“You’re really jumpy.”
“You snuck up on me!”
“Yes. I’m really quiet. It’s one of my strengths. What are you doing? Are you contemplating? I do like contemplating. It’s so… normal.”
He stared back at her.
She smiled up at him. If he hadn’t felt the air splitting around a bullet near his ear only a little whil
e before, he might have thought her beautiful.
But as it stood now, she was obviously a fugitive on the run and had somehow involved him with her crazy father.
“Yes, well,” he said stiffly. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be leaving—”
“Do you have more food?”
“Yes. No! I don’t—”
“Which is it?” she asked, cocking her head.
“What?”
“I asked if you had more food. You said yes and no. It can’t be both. It’s paradoxical.”
“How old are you?”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t you—I’m twenty-seven.”
“Oh. Alex is forty. He’s older than you. Do you have more food? There wasn’t much in the pantry. And he needs to eat to get his strength back. I was going to go to another cabin to see if there was more food, but then you came, and now we’re standing here with you saying both yes and no to a question that was either-or.” She paused, staring up at him, barely blinking. Then, “I like sunglasses. Alex got me some. They are inside. I’m not wearing them now because it’s nighttime, and Alex says you can’t wear sunglasses at night because it makes you look stupid.”
“Yes, I have more food,” Nate said, desperate to get this strange girl to stop talking. “I can—”
“Oh good.” She reached out and took his hand. He barely flinched. “Let’s mosey on over, then, to that thar horse and buggy you pulled up in, partner. I like your books. They make me happy. Do they make you happy?”
They were walking toward the truck. Nate hadn’t even known they were moving. “I don’t… know?”
“Oh. That’s okay. Sometimes not knowing something makes it wonderful. That’s what Alex said. But he only says that when I ask him a question I don’t think he knows the answer to. He’s clever like that.”
They were at the truck. She watched with interest as he lowered the tailgate, like she’d never seen such a thing in person before. “Do you have soup?” she asked politely. “I read that soup makes you feel better when you are sick.” She grunted lightly as she pulled herself up into the back of the truck and started rooting through his stuff.
“He’s not sick,” Nate said. “He’s been shot. Don’t touch that.”
“Yes. Do you have soup?”
He did. It was cheap and easy. Most of what he’d brought were nonperishables or stuff that could sit in the freezer for months on end and still be edible after being nuked in the microwave. “He needs a hospital.”
“No. I’m on it.”
“The wound could get infected.”
She stared at him. “That’s what the soup is for.”
“Look, I could take you both down the mountain to—”
“We’re fine here.”
“This is my cabin.”
“Yes, but there’s only you, and there’s so much room. We can share. Oh look. I found the soup. Wow, there is a lot of it.” She looked back over her shoulder. “Are you sick too?”
It would explain all of this if he were trapped in a fever dream of some sort. Maybe he’d wake up soon in his apartment in DC and none of this would be real. “No. I’m not sick.”
“Not like Alex. But I think you’re sick somehow.”
“Would you stop going through my—why do you call him that?”
She had stacked four or five cans of soup in her arms. “Call who what?”
“Alex.”
“That’s his name.”
“Why don’t you call him—let me carry that. You’re going to drop it.”
She looked at him defiantly, her chin propped against the cans of soup stacked in her arms. “I can carry it.”
“Fine, but how are you going to get down?”
She looked at the tailgate. Then back at him. Then she walked toward the edge of the truck. She crouched down and let the cans fall. They clanged against the truck. She turned them all upright at the end of the tailgate. She jumped down. She turned back toward the truck, then reached up and grabbed the cans before stacking them once again in her arms. “Like that,” she said simply before turning toward the house. She stopped at the porch steps. “Hey,” she said, looking back at him. “Do you also have bread? Because I read that soup goes with toast and bread becomes toast when you put it in the toaster.”
“I have bread,” Nate said.
“I know. I saw it. I was just seeing if you would tell the truth. Can you bring it, please?”
Then she was up the steps and through the door.
Nate stared after her.
The keys were still in his hand.
He pushed the tailgate up and locked it in place.
He could leave now. He had everything he needed. He’d helped them as much as he could. There was nothing else he could do. All he needed now was to get in the truck and drive away.
He walked around to the driver’s door.
He reached for the handle.
Or at least he tried to.
Instead, he reached into the back of the truck into one of the paper bags. He found the loaf of whole-grain bread he’d bought at the market in Eugene.
“Leave,” he told himself quietly. “Just leave.”
He walked toward the house.
chapter three
Alex had moved (been moved?) to the couch. He was covered with the same afghan Nate was under when he’d awoken. His eyes were closed, his breaths shallow. Nate didn’t think he was asleep.
The gun was sitting on the chair Alex had been on before.
Art was in the kitchen, carefully putting the cans on the counter, her tongue poking between her teeth as she concentrated.
Nate gave a wide berth to the couch, wondering if he should go for the gun. But he’d already had it in his hand once, and that hadn’t ended well for him the first time. There were knives in the kitchen. Maybe he would get one of those.
“None of these are chicken soup,” Art told him as he entered the kitchen.
“I know.”
“This one says it’s hearty chili. That’s not even soup. The word soup isn’t listed anywhere on it.”
“That’s because it’s not soup.”
“That’s what I just said.” She looked up at him. “Chicken soup makes you healthy. None of these have chickens. How is Alex supposed to feel better if he doesn’t get chickens?”
Nate didn’t know how to answer that. So he said, “This one,” and tapped the top of a can.
She eyed it dubiously. “Vegetable beef.”
“Yes.”
“That will make him better.”
“Yes.”
“This is scientifically proven. Like the chicken.”
“It’s not science—yes. Yes, it is scientifically proven. Like chicken.”
She nodded. “Okay. I reckon this will suffice, partner.”
He watched as she moved away from the cans and went to a drawer near the sink. She pulled a can opener from it like she knew exactly where it was. Like she’d done this already. Which, if she was to be believed, she had.
She set the can opener down next to the vegetable beef and went to the dining table. She pulled one of the chairs toward the counter. Once it was pressed flush with the bottom cabinets, she climbed on top of it and then onto the counter.
“I can help you—”
“I know how to do it,” she said. She opened the cabinet and found what she was looking for. Bowls, old things that had been there since he was a kid. She pulled down three of them, setting them on the counter before she shut the cabinet and slid back down to the chair. She picked up the bowls and brought them next to the can opener and the soup. Then she went back to the chair and moved it in front of the stove. And then it was back to the cabinets again, this time to a lower one. She pulled out a pot and closed the cabinet. She went back to the stove and climbed onto the chair before setting the pot on one of the heating coils. She climbed back down the chair, crossed the kitchen t
o the soup, grabbed the can opener and three cans of vegetable beef, and went to the stove again.
Nate hadn’t moved through the entire process.
“Can you turn the bread into toast?” she asked without looking at him. “I’ve never done that before and don’t want to ruin it.”
“What is happening?” Nate whispered.
“We’re making soup and toast, Nathaniel,” Art said, grunting as she squeezed the can opener. “Obviously.”
Obviously.
The toaster was sitting where it always had been, next to the bread box. It felt like he was moving in a dream as he crossed the kitchen, an unopened loaf of bread in his hand. He set it on the counter as Art poured the first can of soup into the pot. She leaned over the stove and twisted the dial. He thought about telling her that children shouldn’t play with the stove. He didn’t, though. He didn’t want to be rebuked by what had to be a ten-year-old little girl. He’d already had enough of that for one evening.
“We didn’t have bread to make toast,” she said as she poured the second can. “I looked, but there wasn’t any. I found crackers, but they were hard, and Alex doesn’t like hard crackers because he said they were stale. I didn’t think they were bad, but I didn’t want to make him sicker, so I threw them away. I’m sorry if you liked them.”
“It’s fine,” Nate muttered, wondering what he’d done in his life to get to this point. “They were old.”
“Not all old things need to be thrown away.”
Nate didn’t know where to begin with that. So he said, “I guess.”
“And I also threw away rice. Because a mouse had chewed on the bag and it spilled.”
“I don’t care.”
“I cleaned up the rice too.”
“I don’t care.”
“I put it in the garbage.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
She looked at him from where she’d started stirring the soup. He didn’t know where she’d gotten the ladle from. “Because these were things that were not mine that had to be dealt with. I wanted you to know in case you worried about them. Alex said that this wasn’t our house, and we had to be respectful. I am showing you respect.”
“I don’t—just—” He shrugged helplessly. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Is that how you make toast? You hold the bread in your hands?”