by Thomas Locke
“You can’t take us all!”
“Don’t need to. All I need to take is you. And I will. Now haul up that barrier or my shooter will plant one in your belly.”
They climbed slowly out of the valley. The sheriff let Caleb and his rig set the pace. Caleb fought down wave after nauseous wave. He didn’t feel brave. His residual terror was a stain on the day.
They crested the eastern side and rode through unkempt meadows. As they left the roadblock farther behind, Caleb’s sense of distress returned full force. At first he wondered if perhaps it was a rising tide of remorse over yet another foolish deed. But he quickly discounted the notion. Something out there was very wrong.
Ferguson whistled and pointed Caleb toward a grove of ancient oaks. When they pulled up, the sheriff asked, “What got into you back there?”
Caleb climbed down, walked around to the rear of the wagon, and pulled out a fresh shirt. “He was going to take half my goods.”
Ferguson’s weathered grin exposed a silver tooth. “Man’s got you ready for the lash, and all you can think about is your shine.”
“Our product could feed the enclave through a bad winter, if need be. And set us up a new source of income for hard times to come.”
“Well, you got spunk. I’ll give you that.”
“Thank you for your help back there, sir.”
“Don’t mention it.” He pointed to where Zeke emerged from the woodlands. “Here’s your buddy. And I got a friend out somewheres . . . Here she comes.”
The woman rode a dappled grey and carried a rifle across the front of her saddle. “I don’t see anyone following.”
“Caleb, Zeke, meet Hester Lear.”
“Thank you for your shooting, Miss Lear,” Caleb said.
“Hester will do.” She swiveled her right leg free and dropped to the ground. “And I missed.”
Caleb started to thank Zeke, then realized his friend was watching Hester with a stunned expression. The gun dangled from his left hand, forgotten.
Ferguson caught it too and suppressed a grin. “You both did just fine back there.”
Hester was a small woman but looked immensely fit. Her skin was honeyed and silky-smooth. Her almond eyes were pushed to a slant by pronounced cheekbones. Her raven hair was cut tight to her head. She was attractive in a dark, feral way. Caleb thought she would probably be both very dangerous and hard to take down.
She asked Zeke, “You fired that second shot?”
He blinked, shook himself, and said weakly, “I missed too.”
“Firing at a downward angle will do that.”
Caleb asked the woman, “You’re a deputy?”
“I used to serve with the Charlotte militia. But I quit.”
Ferguson said, “I offered Hester a position as deputy, but apparently she’d prefer to work on her own terms now.”
“I have a problem with the militia’s brand of authority,” she said. “I hate them, and now they hate me. Or at least Hollis does. Kevin helped find me a place among the Overpass private security guards. I owe him. Which is why I’m out here saving your hide.”
Caleb pointed along the eastern road. “Kevin said he’d meet us at the Highwayman’s Tavern.”
“That’s about a mile farther on,” Hester said. She was a tad shorter than Zeke but still managed to spring into the saddle one-handed. “Let’s get moving.”
Caleb stopped midway back to the rig. Halted as firmly as if a fist had slammed into him from the sky.
Zeke demanded, “What is it?”
“Something bad has happened.”
Zeke moved up beside him. “So it wasn’t the checkpoint after all.”
“No.”
Hester said, “Time’s a-wasting, gentlemen.”
Zeke glanced over, worried, then turned back. “Can you say where?”
Caleb made a mess of climbing onto the wagon seat. He was still weakened from the close call before. Now his legs threatened to collapse under his own weight. He steadied himself on the hand brake and turned. Searching. “It’s something terrible.”
Ferguson stepped closer. “What’s going on here?”
“Quiet,” Zeke snapped. “Caleb, is it Maddie?”
“No!” For the first time, in the first instant, he knew with utter certainty. “It’s Kevin.”
Hester kneed her horse over close to the wagon. “What are you saying?”
Zeke propped the rifle on the wheel and sprang up beside Caleb. “Where is he?”
“I don’t . . .” He finished the circle and started again. He wanted to weep from the dread certainty. “I think he’s dead.”
Ferguson yelled, “What’s going on here, mister?”
Zeke seized Caleb’s arm. “Tell me where!”
Caleb followed the shred of sensation, the lurking pain beyond the horizon. He pointed south. “There!”
16
Kevin pushed on well past moonrise. As he climbed out of the valley he kept flashing on the Charlotte militia patrols he had encountered in his duties. Until that night, he had never fully understood what it meant to be on the run. Exposed, hunted, without the department or his allies or his badge to protect him. If the Charlotte militia caught him, they could do what they liked. He held to a pace one notch below a full run.
The highland meadow was perhaps a mile and a half wide. Kevin passed a couple of long windbreaks of stunted pines. He kept to the high grass until he was well south of the road, then as he turned east he came upon the game trail. His first trainer had called such trails his next best friend, second only to the deputy’s own wits. In the moonlight the trail shone like a thin silver ribbon. It curved slightly away from the road, as though the wild animals shared Kevin’s fear of the troopers.
The next valley was shallower and the slope clear enough for him to hold to his speed. The creek at its base was a thin sliver of water rimmed by thick mud. He paused long enough to strip off his boots and cram them into his pack. Crossing the small creek proved to be a very hard slog. Kevin sank to knee depth with each step. Pulling one foot free only jammed the other in deeper. The mud clung to him and sucked resentfully with each step. By the time he reached the opposite bank he was gasping hoarsely and sweating despite the night’s chill.
The trap was well laid, at the point where the mud ended and the hard earth began. Kevin might have noticed the way cut grass had been laid over the path, had sweat not formed a veil over his vision.
The jaws slammed shut on his shin with a metallic bang.
He could not fathom the pain. The metal teeth sank into his leg with the ferocity of a hunting beast. If he’d been told at that moment that the pain alone could kill him, he would have agreed and asked it to happen swiftly. But the agony held him as tight as the trap. And grew steadily worse.
He knew he could not wait. He had to get out before his strength drained away. His leg and foot were black with blood, as was the bank, the chain holding the trap, the water close to where he sprawled. All stained with his rapidly flowing life.
His flailing right hand caught a huge branch, carried downstream by the winter’s torrent and now trapped in the muck. He craned and moaned and reached and managed to get both hands around the slippery wood. He dragged it back and fitted it into the trap next to his leg.
Prying the jaws apart was pure unbridled agony.
The pain from the circulation returning to his foot was immense. So too was the exquisite sense of freedom. He shouted against the burning effort required to haul his leg from the metal teeth. He shouted again as he ripped off his shirt and fashioned a tourniquet and wrapped it tight below his knee. Then he lay back, utterly spent.
He knew he was not done. But his mind refused to move beyond the throbbing ache. His gaze was growing steadily dimmer. He knew he had to flee, but he could not move.
Darkness crept in from all sides, silent as feral cats. Kevin did the only thing he could think of, which was to clamber further into the treacly muck. He poured it over himself with the h
and not clenching the tourniquet. The mud felt cool and almost welcoming. He lay back, gasped a few final breaths, and was gone.
17
Kevin’s consciousness returned in a few grim flashes, each lanced by pain. The first flash he feared was a mirage. Hester Lear, the former Charlotte militia he had helped settle in Overpass, appeared directly above his head. She called something to people he could not see, then consciousness swam away with the cool creek waters. The second flash was much worse. He woke to a tearing sound combined with a searing, white-hot burst. He screamed, or wanted to, but he only heard a high-pitched whine and had to assume it was his.
“Easy, man, easy.” Caleb’s face hovered above him. “Zeke has to peel away your trouser and apply a field dressing. We’ve got to stop the bleeding.”
None of the words made sense. Zeke was with Caleb and Hester was in Charlotte. The only item strong enough to defy the pain was his thirst. He tried to ask for water, but he was already gone.
Even so, the next time he rose to awareness, the nozzle of a water skin was fit between his teeth. “Drink, Kevin. That’s it—no, easy, slow down, you’ll choke.”
He drank and coughed and drank and gasped until the effort drained him and the blackness swallowed him whole.
When he next awoke, the world bumped and blurred and he saw everything from a slanted perspective. None of his limbs worked. Then something jostled his leg, and the pain cleared his vision. He realized he was lashed to the hind quarters of a horse, behind the saddle, slumped forward with his arms tied around the rider. The man in the saddle was small and lean and incredibly strong. He grunted with the strain of taking Kevin’s weight. The horse’s flanks were lathered.
Kevin heard a woman call out, “Time to shift.”
“Another mile,” the man gasped.
“Zeke, your horse is about done.”
“His leg is leaking. The bandage is soaked through. If we don’t get him . . .”
Kevin wanted to tell them to slow down, the thumping motion banged his leg. He thought they might like to know his leg didn’t hurt so bad anymore. But he did not have the strength to keep his eyelids open, much less shape the words. This time the blackness seemed to welcome him home.
Kevin’s dreams were tiny shards, so slippery they came and went in sparks of light and pain. Then he awoke, and he was certain of two things. First, that he was truly back. Second, that he was going to make it. The feeling was so exquisite he sighed noisily.
“Well, well. Now you choose to wake. After we have struggled to shift you onto the bed and before I am finished with my work. Which means you are both stubborn and foolish!”
His leg throbbed noisily, but his thirst was stronger. Kevin took that as a good sign. He pried his dry lips apart and whispered his first word in eons. “Water.”
“Yes, yes. Of course.” The man slipped a glass straw between his lips. As Kevin drank, what he saw registered clearly. The man’s black hair was flecked with silver, as was his trimmed beard. His dark eyes were warm and sparked by intelligence and something else—humor perhaps. “Slow, slow, there is no rush. You are safe.”
When Kevin sucked out the last drop, the doctor took back the glass and lifted a pitcher. As he did so, Kevin saw his hands and forearms were streaked with blood. When the doctor fitted the straw back into place, he saw the direction of Kevin’s gaze and said, “Be glad you had any blood left to stain me with.”
He drank until he could not swallow again, then shifted his head and asked, “My friends?”
“Such questions I hear from my patients when they wake. Yesterday I bring a man back from the brink of death and what does he ask? Where is his dog. How I am supposed to know about an animal? But I tell him the beast is fine. He sleeps again. Two hours he sleeps. Because he hears some hairy object is safe.” He moved out of Kevin’s line of sight. “You, it is friends. This I can answer. Your friends, they are exhausted. The small one, he must be made of iron. Now he is stretched out on my floor. I would think he is dead, but he is snoring. And in all my medical training, never have I heard of a corpse who can snore. At least, not so loudly as this one.”
Kevin recalled hearing about a new doctor who had set up shop in Overpass. The man’s name escaped him, but he remembered that someone had pointed him out as a genuine curiosity. He had come as part of a group of Orthodox Jewish refugees, driven from somewhere north. The man’s heritage was not what made him curious, however. It was the fact that everyone he had treated spoke of him in glowing terms. A doctor who healed, they said. What was more, a doctor who cared.
Kevin doubted the man could recognize him. He had always volunteered for the more dangerous boundary regions, both because he liked the challenge of solitude and because it brought him into contact with the most vulnerable of refugees. People who feared even the relative safety of Overpass. People who would perish if he could not help.
The doctor broke into his thoughts by asking, “Where is your home, young man?”
“Catawba enclave.”
“A good enough place by all accounts.” He continued to work below the rim of Kevin’s vision, tugging gently on his flesh. “I would go there. For my children. But my wife . . .”
Kevin spoke because he sensed it was expected of him. “Catawba is very different from here.”
“That I believe. And why is that? Because they grow them big in Catawba! That is the only reason I am working with needle and thread, and not a saw. Because of how they grow you men in Catawba! The muscle of your leg saved your foot, young man. And what muscle there is! Do the Catawba women also grow such muscle?”
“No.”
“Of course not. And not all the men either. I knew this already. The small man snoring on my floor is testimony, yes? My teachers would be ashamed of such a question.” He tugged and snipped and tugged and snipped. “You are a trader, yes?”
“My friends are. I am . . . a guard.”
“A worthy profession in such times as these. The man with your wagon came in earlier. He rode much slower than the little one who snores in my other room. He said to tell you that Gus was helping to settle them in. That is another good man, the sheriff. What is it you bring to sell?”
“Corn whiskey. Brandy.”
“So much business you bring me! I should treat you for free. But my wife . . .” He stitched and tugged and snipped again. “And so I remain, and one patient comes in with a head wound. Don’t drink the whiskey, I tell him. And if you must drink, don’t fight. And if you must fight, bring silver!”
The doctor moved into his vision and glowered. “You and your friends, you have silver, yes?”
“We have applejack.”
“Humph. Yes. All right. But don’t tell my wife. Now you must turn over. No, no, wait, let me help. Good. Such a mangling that trap gave your leg. Thank goodness you are muscled and not skinny like your snoring friend. Where was I?”
“Silver.”
“No, no, no. Business! You really must pay better attention. The man leaves and a woman comes in, she tells me, ‘Oh, oh, my liver, like a balloon it is swollen.’ I say stop drinking the alcoholic beverage for a month. Eat no fat, no butter, no meat, no salt. Fruit and nut and dark bread only. Drink nothing but water. She returns a month later. ‘Doctor, you’re a miracle worker! Look at me, I’m fine!’ I say, ‘No, your body is the worker of miracles.’” He tapped Kevin’s thigh with a bloody finger. “Just as yours better be, my muscular young friend, if you ever want to walk without a limp.”
“I won’t lose my leg?”
“Who can say? You must lie and rest. Soon you will walk with the cane I shall give you. After that, who knows what can happen. You could be shot! And then what? You lose more than your leg, that’s what! But from this injury, no, I think your leg will stay where it belongs. And so much leg there is here!”
The pain came and went in waves timed to the doctor’s needle. But it was bearable now, almost comforting. And this time, when the darkness returned, Kevin greeted it as h
e would a familiar friend.
18
Three days after their arrival, Caleb left the shop they had acquired and climbed to the very top of Overpass. The structure stood as a reminder to a time and a world now lost to myth.
A vast north-south road crossed a flat bridge over a deep rain culvert. The bridge was over a half-mile long, a hundred and fifty feet wide, and split down the middle by a crumbling concrete barrier. This was topped by a second bridge, longer than the first, that ran east to west. Overpass was an expanding region surrounding the twin bridges. It had become a melting pot, fed by the constant stream of refugees. The sheriff’s department was responsible for law and order, backed up by private guards hired by the Overpass merchants. It was a raucous, bruising place whose frenetic energy was fed by its temporary nature. Most Overpass citizens came from somewhere else and dreamed of someday moving on.
A small park had been established at the center of the top bridge. This had originally been home to a Charlotte militia garrison. But seven months earlier the garrison had mysteriously caught fire and burned to the ground. Volunteers tore down the rubble with the sheriff’s tacit approval. Now there was a small lawn and a few swings and a sandbox and picnic tables and trees growing in carefully tended tubs.
Caleb settled on one of the benches facing south and unfolded the letter from his mother. The pages were beginning to fray along the creases, but that hardly mattered, since he knew the words by heart. He read the familiar lines, stowed the letter away, drew a pen and leather-bound journal from his pack, and wrote her back. It was the first diary Caleb had ever kept, and the task of being fully open seemed unnatural. But he was faced with so much that was both alien and hard to fathom, the journaling had become an important part of his very busy days. He had no idea if or when his mother would ever read his words, for the entries were far too sensitive to entrust to the post. But the act of sharing drew her close. Caleb was certain she would approve of his actions.