This is the shit hitting the fan.
Annalise grunts and brings her hand to the back of her head, spinning to find her attacker. She recovers and lets another arrow fly in Blue’s direction. Missing, or we’d hear Blue’s involuntary cry of pain. I take my shot, piercing Annalise’s shoulder. When she folds forward, Birdie rushes from the woods and delivers a fierce sidekick that knocks her down. She pounces on her and starts throwing punches that land hard with snapping thuds. Magda crawls forward to rip Birdie off her daughter. Out of nowhere, she’s pegged in the face with an egg-sized rock that could have only come from Blue’s slingshot. Magda reels and Blue pegs her again. Blood spurts out of Magda’s mouth and runs down her chin. The look in her eyes is murderous as she advances in the direction of her attacker, bow drawn. I let loose another arrow, piercing her leg above her wounded knee. Two down.
Someone sneaks up behind me. A fourth Burrower lying in wait. I land a hard elbow strike, spin, and pin them to the ground before doing a double take. I’ve never seen this person before. He’s in a hoodie and jeans and definitely not one of the Burrow Boys.
“I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you,” he says, choking and wriggling. “Let me go. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“It’s me. Bucky.”
“What the fuck did you say?” I ease up just enough to slam him back down again, my adrenaline going haywire
“I said it’s me. Bucky. Your brother.”
Ansel rushes over and grabs a fistful of my jacket, pulling me to my feet. “Get up. Get off him. Move. Rémy Lamar showed up and said that guy’s your brother.”
“What?” I’m a live wire, wriggling out of Ansel’s grasp. “We don’t have a brother.”
I use the light of the full moon to stare at the guy Rémy brought with him. He looks so much like the imaginary Bucky from my mind, only older and without buckteeth.
“Honey! Snap out of it,” Ansel shouts.
A new awareness strikes me like a stick across my back. Rémy is here? Now?
The guy claiming to be Bucky stands and Ansel grabs him by the shirt and pushes him toward thicker forest. “Run behind those trees with Rémy and stay there. Don’t move.”
He listens without question, making a mad dash to safety only to drop into a hole with a surprised yelp. He lets out an anguished groan that tells me he got injured in the fall.
I start to run toward him, and Ansel catches me by the arm. “Leave him. He’s safer out of sight. Find some rope. I’ll cover you at your six and nine.”
“Go ahead.” Annalise’s smug voice comes through clenched teeth.
I freeze and look back. Birdie has Annalise’s arms pinned under her knees. Gerber knife hovering, ready to plunge it into Annalise’s chest.
“Do it,” she says to Birdie. “Then live the rest of your life knowing you watched me kill your boyfriend while you stood there like a zombie, powerless to do anything to help.”
Birdie roars in rage and lifts the knife higher, her hand shaking.
“Fuck!” Ansel runs hard and dives sideways, knocking my sister off Annalise. Birdie scurries to her feet and charges forward again. Ansel catches her and holds her back by her arms. “Stop. You’re not a murderer, Birdie.”
“I might be. I want to kill her. I hate her,” Birdie yells, inconsolably.
“Look at me,” Ansel says. She refuses and he shakes her shoulder. “Birdie, look at me. Please.” Her chest is heaving. Her breaths coming hard and fast through her nose. “You are not a murderer.”
My sister whimpers, fists still balled in outrage; she must be feeling the loss of Daniel all over again. There’s a slip of silence before Ansel says, “You, on the other hand.”
“Shoot me then,” Annalise spits back.
“Don’t tempt me.”
I race to my INCH to get the rope while Ansel handles Birdie and his sister. I trust him. I’ve always trusted him. Blue bolts past me before I reach my bag, bringing Ansel her cordage. That’s when I see Connor, facedown, wrists and ankles trussed, and I know what Ansel has in mind.
It doesn’t take us long to tie all three of them against separate trees, stripping them of weapons. They’re bleeding and wounded, but not fatally.
“Are we gonna leave them out here for animals to find?” Birdie says.
“They are the animals,” I tell her.
“Can I come out now?” I’d know that strident voice anywhere.
“Yes. Come out.”
I wait for him to show himself outside the cover of trees, and lace into him. Just not exactly in the way he’s expecting. “What the hell are you doing out here?” I grab him by his puffy vest and throw my arms around him in a hug. “You could have been hurt.”
“Killed, actually,” Birdie says.
“Your brother saw you on TV and called the school and left a message for me. We followed the map you sent from the burner. I thought you’d be glad to see us. I wasn’t expecting the melee.”
My eyes flick to Ansel when Rémy mentions the burner.
“Our brother?” Birdie guffaws. “Did Blue hit you in the head with her monkey fist or something?”
“Who did you bring out here with you?” I ask. “We don’t have a brother.”
“I think you do, actually.”
I stare at him blankly, taking in his flashlight and headlamp. Ever the prepared one. “No. That’s not possible.”
“Then who’s inside this hole?” Blue asks from somewhere in the near distance.
I search for her cobalt hair in the darkness and find her at the edge of the trees. We rush to the hole that swallowed Bucky during the fight.
“It was covered with brush,” Blue says, pulling up long conifer branches. “It could have been any one of us.”
“It should be all of you,” Annalise says. “Thanks for shooting that rattlesnake, by the way. The venom came in handy.”
I raise my bow and sink an arrow into the tree an inch above her head. Rémy shines his flashlight in the hole, and I peer down at the boy calling himself Bucky. The first thing I see is the Punji spear piercing his thigh. “Are you okay? Can you talk?”
He looks up at me wide-eyed and nods, but he has the woozy look of someone on the brink of passing out from pain or shock.
Birdie shakes my arm. “Did you hear what Annalise said? What if Daniel was whittling the spears clean before he died and missed one?”
My heart leaps into my throat. “Ansel, he’ll die. The venom.”
Without thinking, Bucky does the dumbest thing imaginable. He grits his teeth and pulls the spear out of his leg with a groan, never considering whether it hit a major artery.
My yelp of “No!” comes too late.
Ansel jumps into the hole and lifts Bucky up so we can grab him under the shoulders and pull him out and onto his back. Blood is seeping through the leg of his jeans.
“Keep his head above the wound in case she isn’t lying about the venom.”
“Use the scarf to tie it off,” Rémy says.
Ansel climbs out of the hole. “It’s too thick.” He peels off his jacket, removes both his shirts, and tears the fabric of his cotton undershirt into strips. He wraps Bucky’s leg, trying not to make a tourniquet. Tight is the usual impulse, but preppers know if the spear was tainted with venom that’s the wrong move.
“Oh my god,” Birdie says. “Look at him.”
I understand her meaning instantly. Even with his cheeks scraped from the fall and smeared with dirt, I see it. Saw it early when I had him pinned to the ground. He has our same nose with the flattened bump, our big brown eyes, and puffy lips. I shake my head to stay focused on the immediate threat to his life, but my heart is fluttering like a butterfly trapped in a box.
Bucky is real. Bucky is real. Bucky is real.
“Rémy, how far is the road?” I ask. “Can I run for help?”
“No.” Bucky grabs my forearm. “We have to stick together. No matter what.”
> My gasp is echoed by Birdie and Blue. The skin on my arm rises in goose bumps from Bucky’s hand all the way to my scalp.
“How?” I whisper. A one-word question weighed down by a million more.
“The antivenom is on the compound,” Magda says snidely behind us, taking away Bucky’s chance to answer me. “You’ll never make it in time.”
“She’s right. It’s thirty miles away,” Birdie says. “We’ll never hike there fast enough, even if we make a stretcher.”
“Phran,” Bucky gasps.
“You have a plan? You can barely move.”
“He drove us here in a catering van,” Rémy says. “It’s three miles west.”
“That’s our best bet,” Ansel says, buttoning his flannel. “I can carry him, but it would be easier if we still had some rope to strap him onto my back.”
“I brought rope,” Rémy says. “I didn’t know what the hike out here might be like, so I brought some rappelling gear.”
To be honest, the Boy Scout answer wasn’t what I was expecting, but I’m glad he came prepared. All my assessments of Rémy Lamar have been wrong.
“We can’t leave Daniel here,” Birdie wails. The thought has her verging on hysterics.
“Where is he?” Rémy asks. “I can go get him.”
“He’s in the cave.” I shake my head, eyes downcast.
“Oh.” His eyes bulge then flick to Annalise with “Oh” again. Understanding what could have happened to me in the woods when Annalise let her arrow fly, grazing my arm when she could have pierced my heart. Rémy looks at my middle sister. “Birdie, I know you don’t know me. But my dad was a cop. You guys shouldn’t move the body. It’s better if we send someone back for him.”
“What about us?” Annalise says. “You can’t just leave us here.”
“We’ll send someone for you, too,” I say. “Maybe not who you want, but someone.”
Rémy takes Ansel’s bug-out bag and his own backpack by the top handle. My sisters and I wrap the rope under Bucky’s butt and over Ansel’s shoulders like a backpack. Then we gather our INCH bags and hike out of the woods, fast as humanly possible.
It takes us an hour to get to the catering van, but feels like ten when nobody knows what to say. Not me to Bucky, who seems like he’s losing the fight with pain. Not my sisters, who are as confused as me. Not Rémy, who just saw enough to explain who I am apart from what everyone assumes at school. More than what they assume, if not worse.
A tan dog with a black muzzle starts barking wildly from the passenger seat of the van when we reach the road. My eyes shoot to Blue, because he’s the dog of her dreams, and I finally understand how prophetic her opinions have been all along.
“I always wanted a dog,” she says.
“You have one,” Bucky chokes out.
“Banjo.”
“Banquo,” Bucky says. “Close enough.”
Blue smiles and calls down her falcon. Achilles sails and descends, landing on her gloveless arm more gently than I thought capable.
Bucky is hanging on through the pain, looking wide-eyed at Blue’s falcon and a little worse for wear. He asks Rémy to help him get his phone and keys.
“I’ll drive,” I tell them.
Rémy hands me the keys without question and takes the passenger seat without contest from Birdie, who’s helping Ansel make a soft place for Bucky with the Bivy sacks in the back of the van. Blue climbs inside with her falcon and raises her arm to a stack of rubberized containers. Once Achilles finds a secure place for himself, I pull onto the road and take off, driving way over the speed limit and trying not to swerve. For Bucky, and for Achy, who should be in a carrier.
“You know,” Rémy starts, “if someone told me I’d be speeding down a winding road someday in a catering van with the Juniper sisters, a trained falcon, a dog named after a Shakespeare character, the son of a prepper cult gone rogue, and the long-lost Juniper brother that got infected with rattlesnake venom, I would have laughed in their face and said they were on drugs.”
“And then you got to know me?” I offer.
“Know is a weak way to put it,” he says.
I give him a sideways glance, because that’s true for me, too.
“Our last name is Ellis,” Bucky says.
Ellis. I repeat it a few times in my head before tuning in to the one-sided conversation Bucky is having on the phone.
“I found them,” he says. “Yes. All three of them.” There’s obvious strain in his voice. He’s getting worse.
There’s a long pause.
“They’re fine. I don’t really know. A lot happened. What do you mean you already knew?”
Another pause.
“You’re in Washington State? With Mom? Who’s Tom Lockey?”
I glance over my shoulder when Bucky says with Mom.
Our real mom.
Ansel says, “That’s Whitlock’s real name.”
I go completely bug-eyed, even though that wasn’t the thing that initially tripped me up. “Who is he talking to?”
Bucky puts the phone to his chest and answers, “Jonesy. Detective Blake Jones. He’s been looking for you for years. He’s on his way. Another agent named Tom Lockey called him after he figured out the cases were connected.” His voice grows weaker with each word. “He’s already on his way to your compound.”
I swerve the van and Rémy grabs the wheel from the passenger seat.
“Just focus on driving. Your sisters and Ansel can handle what’s happening in the back.”
“Okay. Everything is gonna be fine,” I say, glancing at myself in the rearview.
I listen in on Bucky telling Detective Blake Jones about the Punji spear, that we’re on our way, and to send an ambulance.
“Tell him to send two,” Birdie says. She meets my eyes in the rearview and I recognize her fierce look. She’s out for blood.
I speed south on route 503, listening to Rémy tell us how they followed the map I sent. When they saw Blue’s falcon, they took it as a sign. It’s so strange to hear him tell me that Bucky, who isn’t our imaginary friend at all but our brother, Toby, reached out to him after he saw the news coverage of the art competition. The same story that was going to get us thrown out of The Nest is what reunited us. Bucky chimes in, telling us about false leads, letting Rémy fill in blanks whenever the pain becomes too much. Bucky is fighting more discomfort with every mile, but hell-bent on showing us age-progression photos. The roads are winding, and I need to watch where I’m going or we’ll crash and never get there.
THREAT ASSESSMENT:
TOBY ELLIS|5’10” AVERAGE BUILD|OPEN SOCIAL GROUP|UNTRUSTING
MOST LIKELY TO: fight for what he believes is the truth.
LEAST LIKELY TO: give up after being told no.
8/10 WOULD IMPEDE GROUP SURVIVAL IN AN EMERGENCY SITUATION.
CASUALTY POTENTIAL: medium
“Katherina,” he says weakly. “That’s your real name. Katherina Ellis. Birdie is Imogen and Blue is Cassandra.”
“Those are Shakespearean names,” I say.
“Yes. Our mom used to paint modern Shakespearean scenes.”
I swerve the van again. “You don’t mean Evie Ellis, the painter?”
I adjust the rearview and see him clutching his leg, nodding, and my heart goes berserk and pumps out truths.
This is why we’re artists. This is why we’re artists. This is why we’re artists.
And then Bucky says something to my sisters about living on Juniper Road in San Diego, and the big twisted trees in front of our house, tripping a memory I always believed was nothing more than a vivid dream.
The familiar brown station wagon with wooden panels pulls up and I worry we’re in trouble for not following directions.
“What are you doing out here alone, honey? You’ll catch your death dressed like that. Your sister looks like a little lost bird walking about without proper shoes, and you,” she addresses our youngest sister directly, “your lips are turning blue. Get in and
I’ll take you home and make you all some hot chocolate to warm you up.”
It is wet and cold as a bathtub filled with ice outside. Colder than a Popsicle straight from the freezer that sticks to your tongue because you can’t wait for a lick. I didn’t know what else to do when the electricity blinked out on us. I urge my sisters to pile into the warm back seat and we huddle together, wet and tired from walking. And, to tell the truth, a little lost because the heavy rain changed the way everything looks.
Hanging from the rearview mirror straight ahead is a green paper tree, cut out of thick cardboard. I am old enough at six to sound out the white letters printed across the front. J-U-N-I-P-E-R. A pretty word that fills the car with a rose-like woodsy scent when the heat starts blasting, a smell that is much stronger than the two big trees we left behind. This is better. Much better, I think, and close my eyes and inhale.
Alice.
Alice Juniper?
TEOTWAWKI
THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
I SPEED DOWN the dirt road to our homestead, growing anxious as I steal glances at Rémy. He would have found The Nest if he kept following the map. I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but his face isn’t registering shock or surprise. I suppose, to the Outsider, it might seem like the land of milk and honey. A small family farm in a place full of family farms. But he knows it’s more than that and still he’s not judging us. Ever the open-minded one. The Burrow, on the other hand, would probably bowl an extra pin like him over with its obstacle courses, shooting targets, and bunkers.
“Stay in the van,” I tell him once we’re parked. “I don’t know what we’re walking into and everyone here has guns.”
“My dad was a cop.”
“They’re not cops,” Ansel says, backing me up. “Honey’s right. Stay here.”
Beads of sweat are peppering Bucky’s upper lip as he hands Rémy his phone. “In case Jonesy calls. Use the GPS to give him our exact location if needed.”
“What do I do with the falcon?” Rémy asks.
Blue opens the back of the van. “Nothing. He knows what to do.”
Achilles flutters to the open van doors and takes for the sky.
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