They’d eaten and then worked until the light was gone.
Exhausted, but satisfied for the most part with what had been accomplished, Ashar slept well, and then used the first filters of morning light to begin packing for the trip to come. Having a settled camp meant they had accumulated things that wouldn’t be necessary to take, or would have to be left behind simply for ease of travel.
Ashar picked up the gun. His pack was at his feet, open and waiting for more. He wanted to pack it. With the appearance of Marcus, and then John and Drew, he thought it was likely that they would encounter others as they traveled. Not everyone would be safe.
He wasn’t comfortable with the gun, but knew that he needed to be. It was black, said Smith & Wesson on the right side, 9mm on the top of the gun. Ashar disengaged the safety, examined the piece. Picking up a magazine, he slid it into the bottom, pushed up until it was solid. Thinking back on movies he’d seen, he grasped the top of the gun and pulled it back, listening to the click as a bullet entered the chamber.
Slipping the safety back into place, he tentatively clutched the gun in both hands and aimed it at the wall, imagining a bear or a solider coming at him. It wasn’t heavy in his hand. Could he pull the trigger? Would he hit what he was aiming at if he did? He hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Irv had taught him well and they hadn’t yet crossed paths with a bear. A soldier or a hostile person was more likely.
He put the extra magazine and ammunition in his bag, and buried it at the bottom.
Hesitating, Ashar contemplated scenarios, wanting to convince himself that he didn’t need to carry it. The darkness of the metal made him uneasy. His hand tightened on it as a sharp stab of premonition slid over his bones, cold instead of the heat he was used to.
He didn’t want to tell the others about the gun, but he wasn’t sure why. It didn’t make him feel any safer, so he wasn’t sure they would either. Especially if he told them he wasn’t even sure he could use it. Ashar shivered. Was God trying to tell him to put it away?
“What are you doing!” A horrified shout came from outside his shelter and Ashar frowned, quickly checking to make sure the safety was on and shoving the gun into his jacket pocket.
He pressed against his door and started to step out to see what the commotion was about then stopped, shifting backwards and easing the door almost closed to peer out. Ashar could see what he thought were Patrick’s legs from the knees down on the ground between his shelter and the kitchen. Had Patrick fallen?
Confused, he searched for who had called out. He thought it had been Adam. Beside his own hut was Adam’s. Monty stood rigid facing the inner area of it, his loose clothing taut over his shoulders. His hair was disheveled. There was something odd about Monty’s posture and it took Ashar several long seconds to realize it was similar to his only moments ago, feet planted, one arm raised. The door hid Monty’s hand and what it held.
Alarmed, he scanned the area, searching for Chloe and the kids, or any sign that Adam was not in his shelter. Carl stepped out of the tree line, pausing, a confused look crossing his face.
A loud pop exploded in Ashar’s ears. Carl shouted out, but he couldn’t make out the words. His ears were ringing. Monty was turning toward Carl, his arms still raised, and in his hand, a gun.
Adrenaline scrambled like scurrying bugs along his veins and his fingers curled around the gun in his pocket, where he still had one hand tucked. Not a bear, his mind told him. The gun felt warm in his hand, suddenly heavy and bulky as he pulled it free and raised it, reaching up with his other arm to steady the weight. This is a person, his heart cried out. A person he knew.
His finger slid over the safety, releasing it as though it knew what it was doing.
Monty was turning so fast. Carl. Was Adam dead?
“Shoot him!” Carl screamed and Monty’s head jackknifed toward Ashar. His body followed. The arms holding the gun swung, sunlight flashing off of the metal.
Monty was straight ahead of him. Ashar angled his body, aimed the gun, squinting instinctively. Five. Monty’s arm was almost lined up with his body. Four. What if he missed? Three. Please God, I’m not ready to die. Two. Pull the trigger. One. Pull it again.
All he could hear was himself breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Was the air hazy? Had he killed him? Had Monty shot him?
“Ashar!”
Why did Monty have a gun? Why had he shot Adam? Was Patrick dead?
“Ashar!”
Carl was there, through the haze. Ashar felt cold. So cold. Had the temperature dropped?
A warm hand curved over both of his, took the weight he was struggling to hold away from him. He stared at his hands in front of him, through the haze of each exhale. They were shaking.
He’d shot a man.
“Am I shot?” Had he spoken aloud? He’d meant to, but he couldn’t hear his voice. “Is he dead?” The ringing in his ears was a dull buzzing, but his voice seemed to be lost.
“Ash, sit. You’re okay. Sit down, come on.”
The fire pit was there. The pieces of wood in the fire were black, low flames flickering red above the gray ash beneath them. The stumps around the fire were empty. Ashar kept looking, waiting for others to sit down too. “Where are they?” he asked Carl.
Carl’s eyes lined up with his, serious and sorrowful. “Just sit for a minute, okay? Just sit. I’ll be right back.”
He’d shot a man.
Pain clenched along his rib cage and Ashar grimaced. He found the hole in his jacket with stiff cold fingers and dug two of them through it, clutching at his hem. “God, what have I just done?”
It hurt to breathe. He held his breath, trying to stop the pain, and looked down at the hand settled in his lap. There was no blood. Was that possible? He’d pulled the trigger twice. He’d never taken a shot before, though. He’d probably missed. “Monty?”
Confusion ricocheted through his head, stabbing at his temples and eyes. He lurched to his feet, tears coating his eyes, anguish expanding in his mouth, a gurgle that built and held before pouring out in a guttural cry.
A hard hand came down on his shoulder, and Carl was there.
“Ashar, breathe, come on, breathe. We can’t fall apart right now.”
We? Ashar’s eyes sought the empty logs again. He shook his head, the tears unclogging as they spilled over and he could see with clarity that the logs were all empty. No. Adam was standing there. “Adam?”
Adam’s eyes were full of pain. He was clutching his shoulder. There was the blood. So much of it. Adam’s dark brown sweater was half stained with it.
“Ashar!”
Carl’s hands seized his shoulders. Heat pulsed to life on his back. Panic, fear, and desperation rushed into him and cascaded over his shock, effectively drowning it. Carl’s emotions.
He sucked the haze in deep, closed his mouth and blinked away the lingering tears. Releasing his jacket, he lifted both hands and gently pushed Carl’s hands away from him, the flow of emotion abruptly halting.
God, where are you? His heart called out and he felt a breeze lift his hair. Around them, the branches swayed, leaves surrendered and fell. He exhaled slowly.
“Where are the others?” he asked calmly, holding Carl’s eyes as he waited for an answer.
Relief flooded Carl’s face, was replaced quickly by grief. He shook his head, emotions roiling over his features as if he was trying to decide which he felt. “Dead, Ashar. All dead.”
The shock scraped sharply along his insides, a searing pain that threatened to pull him back into the haze. His breath caught and he shook his head violently, opposing the answer and struggling to maintain his focus.
He made himself look. Monty’s body lay, still, splayed on his back, both arms out at his sides. He could see the dark lashes of his eyes, the curve of his upper lip over his slack jaw. There was a trickle of blood along the side of jaw he could see.
Ashar looked back at Adam, focusing in on the bloody shoulder. “I don’t know any first aid,” he sa
id, looking at Carl. “There’s a kit in my shelter. Go find it.”
Carl didn’t hesitate, seeming to need something to do, and rushed away. Patrick’s legs were out of place, a symbol that violence had found them in the forest. The first aid kit would not help him.
Neither Ashar or Carl knew anything about caring for wounds. Ashar didn’t want to think about the dead bodies around them. Instead he focused on Adam, on what they needed to do to help him. The bullet seemed to have gone through Adam’s shoulder, so he and Carl each took a side and cleaned the bloody holes the bullet had torn, doing their best to stitch them up.
Ashar prayed the whole time, bouts of it aloud, most of it silent. He prayed that God would keep infection from setting in and heal the wound quickly, and take away the pain Adam was clearly in.
He refused to pray about any of the rest of what had happened, because he was afraid he would lose his focus.
When each finished, they poured water from the bottles to clean blood from their hands. Ashar dried his hands and prepared himself for the next part. The bodies.
He looked at Patrick’s legs again. “I need to understand, Carl.”
“I can’t tell you,” Carl answered morosely. “I saw the gun as he was standing in Adam’s doorway. I…” He half coughed, half sobbed. “After you shot Monty and I sat you down, I checked on Adam. He was still breathing, so I went to check on the family. I saw Patrick. Chloe… she’s… the kids… they’re…” Carl broke down, his hand landing on the ground where the dirt was stained red. He crumpled, his hand pushing into the wet dirt, black red-tinged dirt clinging to his fingers as he sobbed.
Ashar swallowed hard. He stood. Plans had just changed. First, he had to figure out how to dispose of the bodies so no animals would tear them apart. Second, they needed to search Monty’s shelter, try to find some reason for why he had done what he had. Then, they needed to leave. Quickly.
Their camp had suddenly become a burial ground and Ashar knew none of them would sleep at all within the darkness of it. None that were left, he thought, blinking hard.
They had nothing to dig a hole big enough for all of the bodies, and though it made his stomach roil, Ashar and Carl expanded the fire, added all of the wood they had stockpiled to it until the flames rose high, then they carried each body, wrapped and sealed inside of a sleeping bag, to the fire.
The children were the hardest. There was no sign that they had suffered in any way. Monty had murdered them somehow and lain each of them in their sleeping bags as though they simply slept. Or he had killed them while they slept. Ashar didn’t know.
Chloe had been suffocated, Patrick bludgeoned, the left side of his skull caved in from the blow.
The stench of death was strong. Burning flesh worse. None of them were able to hold in the contents of their stomachs.
Unwilling to watch the nauseating sight of the flames embracing death, they entered Monty’s shelter. He was fully packed, everything tidily set by the door so he could grab it and go.
Ashar dragged the pack outside and unzipped every compartment, pulling things out and tossing them to the ground. Clothing first. The bedroll. Food.
A bag at the bottom held Monty’s secrets. Another gun, ammo. A picture of his family.
“Poison,” Carl said grimly, holding up a bottle.
“He must have used that on the kids,” Adam whispered from where he sat watching, propped against a tree.
“There’s no why,” Ashar growled in frustration. “Why did he do this?”
Carl picked up the picture, stared at it as though it would give him answers. “He must have planned it. Irv gone with John and Drew. Marcus and Mariah gone. Smaller numbers.” His head snapped up. “What if…?”
“What?” Adam pressed.
“What if he was one of them? Waiting all this time for his chance?”
“His chance to what?” Ashar demanded.
“To kill us all. Because he’s Axis,” Carl stated.
That didn’t make sense. Monty’s family had died when the war had hit America. Why would Axis murder the families of their soldiers? Ashar shook his head. “All the pieces don’t fit.”
“Maybe not,” Carl admitted. “It’s just a theory. I need to make this make sense somehow.” He looked toward the fire, the burning bodies, then shuddered and quickly averted his eyes. “Let’s finish packing up and work on the rest of the shelters while we wait for…”
Ashar nodded in agreement. “Adam, you okay? You should rest.”
Adam nodded and rose to make his way toward his shelter. He paused. “My hut is a bloody mess.” He hugged his arm close to his body, his shoulders drooped.
“Take mine,” Ashar offered softly. He wanted to find a sleeping bag and crawl in, zip it closed and reverse time, go back to when he’d been annoyed at Chloe and Patrick’s attitudes. Missing Irv. Pondering the journey to the cave. He couldn’t think about it. They needed to focus on something, wait for the bodies to burn so they could put the fire out, and leave.
The further away the better.
Carl’s theory that Monty had waited for the smaller numbers did make sense. It was terrifying to think that Monty may have been Axis, and if there was any truth to it, then the possibility that he hadn’t been the only one had to be considered. Irv had said half the security for the President himself had been Axis. Traitors. If the security detail of the presidential office could be fooled, anyone could be.
It would have been convenient to find more in Monty’s shelter. A diary detailing the plot, a certificate of acceptance into a cult. Proof. Ashar had been greatly sheltered, he realized. Despite his parents’ secrecy, he had suffered little, and was naive to the evil of mankind. Processing the knowledge of an army destroying his homeland still seemed surreal. Thinking an enemy soldier had been among them was a whole different story.
Ashar had been mocked, ridiculed, bullied. Treated as though he were diseased. But no one had tried to harm him. Rejection was a familiar feeling. That he was used to. Words he was used to.
Ashar straightened abruptly, and tossed down the sturdy limb he’d just removed from the roof of the family’s shelter. He’d been duped. Again. Anger pooled. Blinking hard, his hand fisted. He was gullible, he realized. Too trusting.
John and Drew had warned him. Furious, he reached out and tore another limb free, tossing it down angrily. The clink of wood rang out. A thud as another hit the ground. A tremble started from deep inside and vibrated out. Tears wet his cheeks, but he didn’t notice. Ashar tore at the logs, the skin on his fingers rubbed thin, broke open and bled.
He pulled at the thick pine boughs covering the back half of the roof. This shelter had been the largest. Could he trust Mariah? Had she volunteered so quickly to go search for a cave with the intent to murder Marcus? Even now, Marcus could by lying dead somewhere and she could be waiting for them.
Or Marcus could be Axis. He was military. He had the know how to take them all out. Monty could have been his partner, and the plan all along could have been to separate the group and kill them.
Carl. Ashar froze, hands wrapped around a circle of wood. Had Carl really not heard as Monty had killed the family? He couldn’t have been far away. He struggled to swallow, and released the log with a jerk back, his torn fingers leaving a trail of blood.
He felt overheated. Dizzy. Like his breath was catching and he had to force the air out of his lungs to gain more.
He turned to seek out Carl, watching him as he worked on Monty’s shack, the smoke from the fire giving the movements of his body a murky appearance.
No, he couldn’t trust him. Not now. He needed to wait, to observe, gain insight into Carl’s agenda.
Adam. He had been so focused on his anger that he hadn’t been paying attention. Even now, Adam could be dead, an easy explanation ready because of the gunshot wound. He jumped down and strode across the ground to yank open his door, his heart hammering hard enough that he could feel the pulse in his throat.
Dropping to hi
s knees beside the form huddled in his sleeping bag, he tugged the flap back and leaned over, expecting to discover that Adam no longer breathed.
Short puffs of breath expelled from Adam’s mouth, each one hollow with pain.
“He all right?” Carl asked from the door.
Perching back on his heels, Ashar refused to look at Carl and nodded. “I was just checking on him,” he explained flatly.
“The bodies are burning quicker than I thought they would.” Carl’s voice was full of sorrow, but Ashar supposed that could be faked easily if one wanted.
Rising, Ashar hesitated, his eyes on the wall. Carl blocked the doorway. “Let’s get this done,” he muttered, turning but keeping his eyes to the ground. He was afraid of what he would see if he looked into Carl’s eyes. Maybe the cold gleam he had seen in Monty’s, or nothing at all.
He couldn’t let Carl know he was on to him.
They both fed the limbs they were pulling from the shelters into the fire as they worked. It was a red flag to anyone near where they were, but they would wait until it was done. Ashar knew he would never get the images out of his mind. Fire consumed flesh and bone disintegrated into ash, falling to pieces as he shoved the logs into the flames so the process could complete.
This was war. Horror coming to life right in front of you.
Trauma you could never forget, never recover from.
Being forced to do things that scarred deeper than any physical wound.
Losing the ability to trust and believe that the person next to you was safe.
Chapter Eighteen
Adam couldn’t carry his pack.
Neither Ashar or Carl had realized until the remains of the fire had been covered with rocks, the remnants of those they had known buried.
All of the shelters had been torn down in the hours it had taken for the bodies to be devoured. There were signs of their habitation, but they had done what they could to return the land to what it had been before they had arrived.
“We’ll take turns,” Ashar directed, struggling to keep his voice monotone and without emotion. “We can’t leave it.”
Seal Two Page 12
