by Maira Dawn
Skye and Jesse ran to Dylan. He opened his arms to both, surprised the action almost seemed normal. The boy only wanted a pat or two before moving on to Wade. Dylan’s brother clapped Jesse on the back and plied the boy with questions. But Skye stayed with Dylan, her hands clinging to the sides of his shirt. When Dylan laid an arm on Skye’s back, she winced.
Something protective welled up inside Dylan‘s chest. “What happened?”
“We're fine. Just fine,” Skye mumbled into Dylan‘s t-shirt. The words weren’t convincing since tears soaked his shirt.
With gentle hands, Dylan took her by the arms and held her away from him. “Do you see all this ain't getting better now? You can't go wanderin off.”
Skye tried to dry her tears, but her hands couldn't reach her face, and Dylan wasn't letting go. "Sometimes I have trouble seeing what is right in front of me."
Dylan scoffed. "You’re tellin me!”
"I'm an idiot, okay? I should’ve waited. Now stop yelling at me and let me go."
Dylan removed his hands. He brushed back a bit hair that had fallen in Skye’s face. “I'm mad at ya now.” Skye made a little face at him, and he said, “Hey, you're the one always sayin it’s better to notify others of our mood.”
“I’m mad at you, going off in the woods like that.”
Guilt sliced through Dylan, and he hung his head. “I apologize for that. It wasn’t one of my finer moments.”
Skye uttered a watery chuckle and sniffed.
It was the sniff that did it. Dylan's anger at Skye faded away as fast as springtime snow in a warm morning sunrise as he looked down at her red, tear-stained face. His reaction startled him. That little sniff and I’m done for.
Dylan wanted to pull Skye back to him, but instead he stepped back and crossed his arms. He dropped his gaze to the ground. Friends, just friends.
When Skye followed suit, Dylan tipped his head to look at her down-turned face. “I’m mad at myself for not bein here. It won’t happen again.”
Skye nodded. “I appreciate that, but it’s my fault too. I left, and I should’ve stayed until you got back.”
Jesse’s waving arms attracted Dylan’s attention, and he turned to listen to the boy’s story. "...was holding Skye real tight. She couldn’t get away. Skye looked at me, and I knew she was thinkin something. I waited, like Dylan said. When the big man tried to put Skye on the car, she pushed on it real hard, and the man tumbled backward. Then I took my knife and I—“
Skye held up a hand. "That's enough, Jesse. It's all over now."
Jesse sighed and flapped his arms. "But I want to tell Dylan how I hamstringed the guy like he taught me. I hamstringed him real good."
"What is the boy saying?" Dylan’s voice as hard as steel.
"Nothing. We're fine." Skye tried to reassure him, but Dylan wanted the whole story.
"I want to hear this." Dylan gestured for Jesse to continue. Skye sighed and turned away.
Jesse relaunched into his story. This time, Dylan heard it from the beginning and something dark surged in him. He looked at Skye and felt sick she’d had to endure the man’s touch.
Dylan felt strong and weak at the same time. Strong because he would take care of this, weak because he wasn’t there when she, when they needed him. How did he let that happen? Anger returned and swirled white-hot through him.
Without a word, Dylan turned to the back of the pickup and strapped what heavy weapons he could to his body. He piled the ones he couldn’t on the seat, then Dylan leapt into the driver's seat. One hard look at Wade and his brother was doing the same thing.
Skye followed him with her eyebrows drawn. "Where are you going?"
Dylan slammed the vehicle door shut. "I'm gonna kill them."
Twenty-Six
A Mistake
The blood rushed from Skye’s face as Dylan looked at her and repeated his words, his voice becoming more resolute as he spoke. "I'm gonna kill them. Those men touch you, the boy, like that? They die."
Skye studied Dylan’s clenched jaw, the vein at his temple and his whitened knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel. He was barely controlling himself. She expected anger, but this was way more rage than he had displayed before. As the jolt of Dylan’s words wore away, Skye became just as determined to stop him as he was to go.
Skye stepped up on the running board of the truck. "No, no! Look at me, look at Jesse. We are fine! There will be no killing today."
“You gonna let them get away with treating you like that?” Dylan practically roared as he waved toward her. Clearly, there was no doubt in Dylan’s mind that he and Wade needed to handle this. “There ain’t no police here, maybe even no law. If we don’t take care of this, no one will, and these men—they’ll do it again. There is no mistaking that.”
But Skye wouldn't be swayed. "No one got away with anything. One guy won't ever walk the same. The other, well, he hit hard. He may never get up. The third guy isn't going to do anything without their help." Skye half-explained and half-pleaded her case.
Dylan gave one quick shake of his head before settling himself further down into his seat and reaching for the ignition. "I'm killin them."
"No!" Skye's voice was shrill as she grabbed his arm.
"You think you can stop me?" He shook himself from her grasp.
Skye bit the inside of her cheek. She needed to stay calm. One of them had to use some self-control and it wasn’t likely to be Dylan.
Skye took a deep breath. "I know I can't stop you, Dylan. If you want to kill people, you will do it. But it isn't like hunting. It’s not the same—killing animals and killing people."
"I know what it's like.” Dylan’s gaze flashed from Skye to the front windshield and stayed there. His jaw tightened.
Skye stilled for a moment. She hadn't expected that. "Okay, then, I'm asking you not to go. I can't—I can't have another death on me. I can't live with that."
"It ain't on you, it’ll be on me." Dylan's scorching anger cooled for a second as he gazed at Skye. He twisted the steering wheel until it protested, and his voice lowered from a roar to a growl. "You gonna let them rape and murder all up and down this road? There ain't no way to stop guys like them but kill them. What else are you gonna do?”
“We aren’t certain they have been or will do this again. But I hear you, I really do, but I--I can't kill people like that. This is a longer discussion, for another day, when we are not emotional."
Skye reached out and laid her hand gently on his upper arm. " Please, Dylan." Skye turned to search for his brother. "Wade?"
Wade leaned against the long side of the truck during the conversation and now turned away from her. He jerked a finger toward Dylan. “Him. One hundred percent. Those men’ll be gearing up for another round as soon as they’re walkin.” Wade raised his hands in the air. “But hey, I’m not gettin in the middle of this argument. I’m not the one romancin the girl. But if she’s all worried about this, maybe just rough ‘em up a bit.”
Dylan looked from Wade to the front window of his truck for a moment before shaking his head and heaving a sigh. "All right, we'll go and just make 'em wish they hadn't touched you. Make them not want to touch anyone ever again." He started the ignition. Wade jogged over to the passenger side.
Skye reached over Dylan and turned the truck off. If Dylan went, he wouldn’t stop at a beating, not in this mood. Dylan closed his eyes refusing to look at her .
Skye held her ground. ”No. It was my fight, and I took care of it the way I wanted. I could have killed or maimed them. I didn't. It's done. I want to go home." Skye lightly pushed on Dylan’s shoulder so he would seek her face. "Please, just take me home."
Skye and Dylan’s eyes locked, and she watched Dylan’s anger melt away when she called his house home. When Skye saw his demeanor change, she lowered her gaze. But Dylan wasn’t done, he brought a hand to her jaw and waited for her to look at him again. “You’re makin a mistake. The only reason I’m listening to you is because I can’t take how you’ll feel when
it’s done. But it will be done at some point. Those men—they’re gonna die. Leaving them here, it’s a mistake.”
Tears flooded Skye’s eyes. “Perhaps. But as we know, it isn't the first one, and I doubt it will be the last I will make."
“It burns me to let them go. This shouldn’t be ending in a question.”
She raised her hand and laid it on top of his. “Thank you.”
Skye took advantage of Dylan’s hesitation, afraid he would change his mind, and arranged the cars. “Wade, do you want to take my car and let Jesse drive some? He needs more practice." Then she hopped into the truck with Dylan.
Dylan sat for a moment one arm over the steering wheel as he studied Skye. ”You're too softhearted, and it's gonna be the end of you.”
Skye gazed at Dylan but didn't answer. Perhaps he was right, and she was making a grave error. Skye pressed her lips together. If she acknowledged that, he'd see it as permission to go after the men, so she kept silent.
Skye chewed the inside of her lip. If she found out those men hurt other people when Dylan and Wade wanted to stop them right here, she would never forgive herself for that either. This was just one of the many moral dilemmas ahead if the world never righted itself again. But she wasn't ready to be someone's jury, judge, and executioner. Not today. Even if someone else was doing the actual execution. She couldn't help it, that was the way she felt. Without a doubt, though, this would be something that would be argued out another day. It was unavoidable.
Talking Man watched as Skye banged the door of Dylan's truck shut and both vehicles drove south. He made a note of that for when he and the boys came back later. Not a mental note, he said the words out loud.
"South. And she's got muscle too."
Calvin had always been a talker, with others or alone. He claimed to be one of the best salesmen on the east coast because of it, though his wallet wouldn't have said the same thing.
Calvin, and his buddies, Tony, and Pete had wrecked havoc on the Sick and the healthy alike along this stretch of road. From the Sick, they took whatever supplies they could, whether that meant their deaths or not. From the healthy, they took everything else.
Their wicked spree left many starving, broken and dead. But today a woman and a child brought their streak of fun to an end. That outraged Calvin.
"How dare she? How dare that woman think she and that boy have any say in the matter? This is a new world, and we decide the rules."
Before the AgFlu, Calvin's many silent imaginings had been just that. He'd kept them to himself and a handful of like-minded people, typing the words he could never utter out loud in a private Internet chat room. As he'd sat in that darkened corner of his living room, he'd never dreamed he could ever act on them. But how things had changed. Now he was a king, and the world—it was his for the taking. Take it he would.
No woman would get in his way. He would make sure she knew her place in the reboot of this world.
He seethed as he got back in the car he used to follow her. He'd say he'd been fortunate to find a car that had the keys in it so quickly, but he didn't see it that way. To Calvin, it was more as if it was meant to be.
"She didn’t even suspect I was on her tail.” He laughed as he turned the car around. His mind was already surging with how he would punish a woman like her.
Now, he needed to go scrape his friends off the pavement. Then they would make a plan.
Twenty-Seven
Hurry
The car was silent. Dylan’s anger had returned and now wafted off him as if it were a heat wave. Skye kept quiet. It was better to let him have his space, anything she said would likely cause an argument. She gazed out her window blindly letting the blur of trees go past without notice as she tried to put away the events of the last few hours. It wasn’t easy both because of the tears that threatened to fall and the increasing aches of her body.
Skye changed her tactics and instead tried to relax and drown herself in the overcast fall day, the sunlight muted by fog sitting low on the ancient mountains. Every so often they would drift through a small, seemingly deserted town as they wound their way back through the landscape.
A wire fence ran alongside the road, and Skye lazily gazed at it as they drove. When she saw one, then another, and finally a horde of Sick at the barricade, Skye wiggled herself up in her seat.
"Dylan?"
"I see 'em.” He slowed the truck.
The Sick were a pitiful lot. Their arms stuffed through the holes in the fence, they reached out to the vehicles that Dylan and Wade drove for help. Their sad eyes pleaded even as their mouths uttered incomprehensible sounds of confusion, anger, and pain.
Skye gasped and turned away. Is this how her family would end up? There was little she could do but pray that wouldn’t happen to them.
Dylan stared at the horde, his shoulders sagging, then banged his fist on the steering wheel a couple times. “This day.” He shook his head. “We can’t even do anything for them.”
“There is food and water in the car. We won't need it anymore now," Skye offered leaving the decision to him.
Dylan rolled down his window, waving Wade and Jesse‘s car up beside him, and explained what he planned to do.
Once he was done, Dylan turned to Skye. "You stay here.” His words were gruff and his look sharp as he punched the seat with a finger.
Skye bristled. "But, I can-"
Dylan‘s eyes widened. “Is there ever gonna be a time ya just listen?"
Skye looked down. She had just told herself that he had ore experience, that he knew what he was doing. She needed to let him do it, and show she had faith in him. “I’ll stay here. Please be careful.”
Skye made sure Jesse still sat in the Jeep, then watched Dylan and Wade take food and water to the people behind the fence. A lot of the Sick were in the last stages of the disease and wouldn’t be interested in sustenance, but there were those among them that seemed alert enough to want it. Those desperate for supplies strained their arms through the wire openings, fingers opening and closing as they reached for the meager help Dylan and Wade provided.
Dylan and Wade handed some water bottles and food, but for the Sick in the middle and back of the horde, the men threw the nourishment over the top of the fence, deep into the field behind the large group. Some followed it, picking it up where it fell. It helped lessen the weight against the fence.
Skye frowned. There was still a lot of Sick pushing on the fence and staring at Dylan and Wade with too much aggression in their eyes. Skye scanned the barrier again. If the Sick kept pushing against the barrier, it would come down. Dylan and Wade needed to hurry.
Skye bit the inside of her cheek. The horde now worked together, pushing at the fence in unison, their blue-tipped fingers shaking the thin fencing. Skye held her breath. The small swing of the fence was getting wider, and the brothers noticed the back-and-forth movement.
Dylan rocketed the bottles into the pasture. Wade pointed to a few of the Sick that looked like teenagers and moved that way.
"Hurry, hurry," she whispered clenching the edge of the seat and willing the men back to the cars.
The Sick, even in their fevered haze, realized what they were accomplishing and pushed harder. The wire wall swayed and bent only to bounce back, at first. But as they continued to shove at it, the metal poles loosened from the soft ground.
"Hurry!"
Skye slid to the driver's seat, her eyes following the men’s every move.
At last, Dylan and Wade’s arms were empty, and they turned toward the cars. Behind them, the fence gave way. Their feet dug deep into the soil looking for traction as they started their fierce sprint. The horde were inches behind them.
Skye rolled down the driver's window and yelled to Jesse, "Get the car ready. We will have to leave fast!"
Jesse gave her a few quick nods.
A heavy thud against the passenger's side of the truck caught Skye’s attention. She jumped. Dylan thumped on the windows again and pointe
d the locks.
Skye’s stomach tightened as she looked at the driver door of the unfamiliar vehicle. There were so many buttons, it looked like a rocket console. She glanced out the window at Dylan only to see the Sick closing in behind him. Skye laid on the horn. The Sick stepped back almost as one. It held them at bay for a moment.
Skye hit buttons. Beeps and pops sounded with each one. When her shaking hands hit the right one, she punched it again just to make sure the doors were open. Dylan jerked open the door and leapt into the vehicle.
Dylan reached for the steering wheel and blasted the horn again to hold the horde back until Wade reached his car.
“Good move,” he said over the noise.
“Yeah. They hate it.” Skye pointed at the Sick‘s twisted faces. “Problem is, it makes them more upset.”
Wade made it to the Jeep, steps in front of the angry Sick. Skye and Dylan exchanged looks of relief when Wade‘s door banged shut.
Agitated, the horde gathered around the back of the truck, thumping against it.
"Go! Go!" Dylan bellowed to Jesse.
Jesse’s car left black marks on the road as smoke poured from the tires. It caught and took off. Skye's hand went to her thumping heart. When Wade straightened in his seat and reached the wheel to help Jesse, Skye sagged with relief.
As soon as the Jeep was out of her way, Skye floored the truck and shook off the Sick clinging to the sides. She glanced at their stricken faces. They only wanted help. Her heart ached anew knowing they would never get what they sought.
Skye looked Dylan over starting at his feet. When she reached his face, he was staring at her.
“Are you okay? I'm so, so sorry," Skye said, "Just being out here, I put myself and Jesse in danger as well as you and your brother."
Dylan grunted. "Yeah, you did. Well, now ya know."
“I never imagined it would lead to all this. I won’t do it again.“
Skye drove for a while. After the excitement, the two were quiet, each in their own thoughts.