Mercy

by Tara Ellis

  Tom stood silently as everyone said their final goodbyes. He had mixed emotions about the senator leaving and the unstable political atmosphere she was about to attempt to control. So long as Mercy didn’t end up in the middle of a power struggle, the role they played was theirs to define. Senator Jenson seemed like a woman of her word, and with his mom helping bridge any gaps, he felt more secure about Mercy’s future.

  Once the wind from the helicopter died down and the aircraft was heading toward the distant mountains, there was nothing left to do but go back and finish their celebration. As Danny reached for his hand, another bolt of lightning cut through the churning clouds overhead and momentarily turned the sky abnormally orange. It was a good reminder that the military might prove to be the easiest hurdle to get over.

  “Let’s get back,” Danny urged, cringing from the ensuing thunder. “And we should make sure the soldiers at the north gate believed us. Hopefully they have a way of contacting their base to confirm everything.”

  “Caleb can help with that if it’s an issue,” Patty suggested.

  Tom had so many different thoughts tumbling through his head that he’d forgotten again about the other group of soldiers. Picking up his pace, he gave Danny’s hand a tug. “Whose idea was it that I become mayor?” he said with a crooked grin.

  “I hate to jump right back into politics,” Bishop interrupted as he kept pace with them. “But things are going to move fast. I’d suggest another meeting with the town leaders so we can fill them in on everything, including The Farm. We’ll be called upon soon to make some big decisions as a town.”

  “We?” Danny asked, still smiling.

  Bishop looked over to where James was walking with his men, and then at Sandy. “I hope I’m not being presumptuous, but I’ll need to stay close in order to oversee The Farm. I suppose I could operate out of the office, but if you’ll have me, I’d rather assign Hicks there and remain a part of Mercy.”

  Sandy moved around Tom and hooked her arm through Bishop’s. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. The Miller Farm wouldn’t be the same without you.”

  Bishop began to smile, but then glanced at Tom expectantly. Tom appreciated the show of respect, though it wasn’t necessary. Stopping, he extended a hand to the older man. “We’d be happy to have you. Just don’t ever do anything that’ll result in me getting my butt handed to me again.”

  When Sandy rose her eyebrows at him, Tom shook his head. “Another time, Mom.” She was about to insist on more details, when the sound of a running horse drew Tom’s attention and he was surprised to see Tango come charging around a bend in the road.

  “Dad!” Ethen yelled. “I’m glad we found you. What’s going on? We saw the helicopter leaving.”

  As Tango got closer, Grace trailed behind them, and it was obvious Ethan had been pushing the horse. Tom frowned when he saw the blood on Ethan’s face and a fresh shiner forming on at least one of his eyes. When Chloe peeked out from behind Ethan, Tom already knew something was very wrong.

  “You’re bleeding!” Sandy cried as Tango stopped near them.

  “What in the world happened to you two?” Tom demanded, immediately on guard when he saw there was also blood on Chloe’s shirt. “Are there more soldiers up at the spring?”

  “What? No!” Ethan retorted, wiping warily at his face. “What soldiers?”

  “I’m fine,” Chloe gasped, holding tightly to Ethan. She looked dazed as Bishop ran to help her.

  “The military showed up, and we managed to work it out,” Sheriff Waters intervened while gesturing to Ethan. “Right now, I think you might have a more urgent matter to fill us in on.”

  “She was shot,” Ethan said without preamble. “By Father Rogers.”

  “I wasn’t shot!” Chloe argued, wincing as Bishop lifted her down. “It’s just a graze.”

  Tom had moved to take Tango’s reins and froze at his son’s words, his breath catching.

  “Wait.” Patty looked pale. “What do you mean? Father Rogers did this? Where? Why?”

  Danny knelt down as Grace leaned into her and she ran a hand down the dog’s back. “There’s blood on her!” she exclaimed.

  “It’s mostly mine,” Ethan said, still on Tango. He met Tom’s fierce gaze with an intensity a boy his age shouldn’t possess. “Grace saved our lives, Dad. And you know how you told me to stay out of Henry’s Hollow?”

  Tom blinked. “Henry’s Hollow?” He was having a hard time following what his son was saying. None of it made any sense. “Was there a cave-in?”

  “No,” Ethan said quickly. “It was almost something a whole lot worse.”

  “We’ll all need to sit down for this one,” Chloe said grimly. “But let’s just say nothing good ever happens in a cave.”

  Chapter 29

  STEVIE

  Northwestern Washington State

  Stevie drew a thick line across another day on the calendar with a Sharpie and took a deep, shuddering breath. He normally marked the days off in the morning, but he’d forgotten until the sun was going down and he noticed it wasn’t done yet. He was doing that a lot lately. Forgetting things.

  Twenty-four days since “it” happened. That was more than three weeks. Dropping the calendar back onto the kitchen table, it knocked an empty can of pop off and Stevie watched it clatter across the floor. At first, he’d been very careful about picking trash up because he knew if he made a mess his mom would have a conniption when she got home. That was part of the deal they made at the beginning of summer. If he got to stay home while she worked, he would have to clean up after himself.

  Snoopy whined and nudged his hand that was hanging limply down by the side of the chair. Stevie gave up early on trying to get the dog to answer to Slayer, so Snoopy it was. “What?” he muttered, turning his hand over so the lab could lick it. “I’m okay, buddy. Just tired, is all.”

  They were running out of food, and had been for a few days. Stevie scavenged as much as he could from the vacant houses near him. He still had several cans of vegetables and corn, but he didn’t think it was giving him enough of what his body needed, since all of the good stuff was gone. Good food like chili, peanut butter, candy bars, and chips. Well…he knew the chips didn’t have much in them, but the other stuff at least had fat and calories and made his brain feel better.

  Stevie kinda felt like the time when he got the flu and had to stay home in bed for a week. His body hurt, and it was hard to think. He supposed he wasn’t starving yet, except he might if something didn’t change.

  He’d gotten the barbeque to work the second week, and began boiling water to drink. He even caught a few fish. Then, the rains started and the fish stopped biting. The grass was turning brown, even though it rained a ton. Stevie thought there might be something wrong with the rain, though it didn’t do anything bad to him.

  Kicking at the soda can, he was suddenly very angry. Nothing was right, and he didn’t know what to do anymore. Stevie looked at the back door and his backpack that was stuffed with supplies, ready to go. If he ever made up his mind to leave.

  The propane feeding the barbeque would run out soon, so he’d need to start making regular fires to boil water or cook. He’s only found one lighter and that wouldn’t last forever. He could go look through the house’s junk drawers for more, but Stevie was just so…tired. Of scavenging, of being dirty, of not knowing what was happening, or if his mom was alive.

  His breath caught and Stevie wiped roughly at his nose. He told himself he wouldn’t cry like a baby anymore about his mom. It’d been a month. He’d been alone for almost a month.

  “She isn’t coming back, Snoopy,” he yelled at the dog, as if it was his fault. Snoopy only looked at him with his brown, sad eyes and whined again. Feeling instantly guilty, Stevie dropped from the chair and onto his knees so he could grasp Snoopy’s face in his hands and rest his forehead against the dog’s. “I’m sorry. You’re a good boy. You’re a good boy, Snoopy.” Snoopy thumped his tail happily and licked at Ste
vie’s face, forgiving him of all his sins.

  Stevie wasn’t sure he deserved it. He didn’t think he was being a good provider for his best friend. He didn’t know how to hunt, other than fishing, and he was afraid to go farther than the ten houses he’d already searched. A few days earlier, he’d ventured beyond what he called the “safe zone”, and nearly been shot. People were crazy now. They’d kill you for a glass of water, let alone some of the good kind of food. He suspected they would eat Snoopy if he got caught by the wrong people. Maybe even him, too.

  Stevie shook his head at the thought, still nose-to-nose with Snoopy. “Uh-uh. We can’t go into other houses, Snoop. It’s too dangerous. I’m either gonna have to figure out how to go all caveman and make fires and hunt and stuff, or try to go to Jay’s.”

  He remembered how to get to his best friend’s house, it was just so far. A half-hour in a car, so probably around two hours on his bike, was Stevie’s best guess. Last summer, he tried to ride his bike there after his mom told him he couldn’t spend the night. He made it halfway before she tracked him down and grounded him for a month.

  It wasn’t that Stevie didn’t think he could go that far, it was the people in between that scared him. That they might try to steal his bike, or his bag, or his dog. He saw a group with horses two days ago, only two blocks away and inside the “safe zone”. They were long, country blocks, but it was close enough that seeing them made him feel sick. Like, he nearly puked on his shoes while hiding behind some bushes.

  The men were dirty, and some of them were bloody. They had guns and after they went into one of the houses Stevie had been thinking about visiting, he heard a gunshot. He had no way of knowing if they killed someone or not, but that was sure what it looked like.

  That was why, even though he was running out of food, and gonna run out of propane, and he had his bag all packed…he was still sitting in his kitchen. Stevie was afraid so much of the time that his gut had a permanent knot in it. Like all the fear was moving through his body and going straight to his stomach, where it hardened into a ball that was getting bigger and bigger until one day it was just going to explode.

  Snoopy’s ears pricked up and his gentle whine turned into a low growl.

  Stevie jerked upright on the hard, wooden chair and held his breath. Snoopy had much better hearing than him and warned him once when another mean dog was out in the front yard.

  There!

  The sound of gravel crunching. Crunching?

  Stevie jumped to his feet and made his way through the shadowy family room so he could peer out the front window. His breath caught when he saw a horse-drawn cart at the end of their long driveway. There were several people standing next to it and they were dressed like the men he’d seen before. The ones he needed to hide from.

  Running back to the kitchen, he grabbed his backpack and took the stairs to the second floor two at a time. In his room, he had a ridiculous thought that he needed to find the box of his favorite action figures to take with him, and he struggled for a few wild heartbeats to control his breathing so he could think more clearly. He was panicking. Stevie knew he was panicking and he was gonna get killed if he didn’t stop it and think straight.

  The front door banged open. He froze, then forced himself to tip-toe to his bedroom window. It was already open, the screen removed, and he slipped out onto the porch roof that faced the back of the house. He turned to whisper to Snoopy, but the black lab was already leaping out after him. Pulling the curtain back across the opening, he then eased out as far as he dared, and lay flat on his stomach.

  He’d come up with the escape plan late the night before. If he was lucky, the scavengers would go through the house and leave without ever knowing he was there. They’d have no reason to look out his bedroom window, unless he gave them one. Throwing an arm over Snoopy, who was lying down next to him, he hummed softly in the dog’s ear to calm him and keep him from whining or barking.

  “Steven!” A muffled voice yelled from the kitchen below him.

  Stevie stopped humming.

  “Stevie! Are you here?” The voice was louder as they came up the stairs.

  Stevie closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He had to be delusional. He was finally losing it.

  There were noises in his room for what felt like forever, then the curtain above his head was drawn back and a woman’s face appeared. “Stevie? Oh praise God, is that really you?”

  Stevie looked up, and his mouth hanging open as his throat constricted with emotion, preventing him from crying out. Her face was bruised and it looked like she had stitches in her forehead, but he would always recognize his mom. Of course, she would be the one person who would know to look for him out on the roof. It was where they always use to lay together and watch the stars, before the world fell apart.

  As the reality washed through him, the fear was chased away and Stevie’s eyes filled with tears of relief. He finally found his voice as the woman crawled through the window and scooped him into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Mom!” he cried.

  She’d come home.

  Chapter 30

  CHLOE

  Miller Ranch, Mercy, Montana

  The storm finally hit with a vengeance late the night before and then stopped abruptly just before dawn. Chloe thought it mirrored their own intense experiences from the Fourth of July. Except unlike the fresh, crisp air the rain left behind, she continued to feel burdened by her run-in with Russell.

  Chloe focused on her breathing and stared at her feet as they pounded on the dirt trail. She knew the exercise and familiar routine would help calm her nerves, even though her side ached with each jarring step.

  “You were shot in the chest and you’re still faster than me!” Ethan gasped from behind, his voice straining with the effort to keep up.

  Chloe slowed and grinned at him when he came alongside her. “Quit being so dramatic.” They’d gotten an early start and were already headed back to the farm as the sun crested the mountains and began to warm the air. She stopped to give her ribs a break, and soak up the peaceful energy in her favorite grove of evergreens. “Dr. Olsen even said it’s only a scrape.”

  Ethan’s face pinched up and he wagged a finger at her. “I believe what she said was that the bullet scraped your rib, which prevented it from going into your chest. Pretty sure I saw some bone in that scrape.”

  Chloe rolled her eyes before taking off again, determined to prove that she wasn’t really injured. She knew it was silly, but it made her feel better. If she could shrug off nearly getting killed, then it made the rest of the traumatic encounter easier to handle.

  “I think you got the worse end of the deal,” Chloe said without any humor. She kept her pace slow enough so that Ethan could stay beside her, and she stared at him critically. One eye was almost completely swollen shut and the other had some bruising spreading under it. His neck was scratched and there were so many bands of color across it that he looked like someone had taken a paintbrush to him. Only, it wasn’t a painting, and Chloe saw it as a painful reminder of how close they’d both come to dying. The irony of it all was enough to make her scoff whenever she thought about it. After everything, some freak posing as a priest was what almost did them in.

  “What do you think he was?” Ethan asked, clearly having similar thoughts to Chloe, and ignoring her observations about his own injuries.

  Chloe shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. You heard what Bishop said last night. They didn’t find any ID in his stuff, except for the deputy badge and nametag. We’ll probably never know who he really was.”

  “No.” Ethan reached out and took ahold of her arm, gently pulling her to a stop and forcing her to face him. “That’s not what I mean. What was he, Chloe?”

  A chill she’d been working hard to suppress since the first time she’d seen the man in Henry’s Hollow slithered around her chest, causing a fresh flare of pain in her damaged rib. Absently raising her free hand to press at the wound, Chlo
e swallowed hard and returned Ethan’s intense gaze. Yes, she knew what he meant. “Something I hope we never see again.”

  Nodding slowly, Ethan glanced around at the thick trees, clearly spooked by the conversation. “We should get back now. Grandma’s going to start breakfast early, and Crissy and Trevor should be getting here soon so we can get up to the lake on time.”

  He was referring to the special meeting Tom had called to fill the town leaders in on the details they’d been missing out on. Trevor and Crissy would be coming with Dr. Olsen. Chloe wouldn’t be surprised if Crissy told her she’d decided to live with Melissa. Turned out she was a natural at being a medical assistant, and ever since the attack, Crissy was a nervous wreck while at the ranch.

  Chloe thought it was smart to hold the meeting on the farm, and Tom’s choice to take them up to a lookout over Mercy was only fitting. They would, after all, be talking about the whole town’s future. Which was now also her future.

  Before Ethan could pull away, Chloe stepped forward and kissed him briefly on the lips. Smiling, he looked at her questioningly. “What was that for?”

  “For being you.” Chloe didn’t know how else to say it. Ethan was the best friend she’d ever had, and the bond they shared was something she knew would last through anything.

  It must have been the right thing to say, because his expression became serious as he hugged her tightly before abruptly letting go. Jogging backwards, he waved a hand in the air. “I have a confession. I was holding back this whole time, so if you want any chance of eating some of the leftover steak, you’re gonna have to run!”

  Laughing, Chloe chased after him, feeling so much lighter than when they’d started. The darkness they faced in the cave was something that rubbed off on them. It couldn’t be explained, but they both felt it. Together was the best way to overcome it, and Chloe was sure that with time, it would be a piece of the memory rather than a part of them.