Melt | Book 9 | Charge

by Pike, JJ

  Triple-H returned to Jacinta’s side with his hands laced over his head. What choice did they have but to surrender?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MARCH 2022

  The back of Hanzlik’s head exploded, his traitor-liar-cheater-asshole brains splattering down the front porch steps in joyous, glorious clumps.

  The bullet took a sharp left and barreled through Stuart’s thick, empty skull leaving no brain matter on the deck because there was no gray matter inside his cranium. He was a numbskull and a dunderhead and a thicko and had bound Hedwig’s hands behind her back when he’d finally come out of hiding to do his master’s bidding.

  Hedwig loaded her imaginary hand cannon a third time and shot her captors, this time making them jump and spin and flail around before they came crashing down in the dirt, their eyes blank and their tongues hanging out of their mouths in silent supplication. They might beg for mercy but she’d never give it.

  Again and again she riddled them with billions of imaginary bullets. Again and again they died horrible, gory deaths.

  But in spite of the vehemence of her wishes and the pinpoint accuracy of her shots, the real men—not those of her imagination—continued to walk ahead of her and the twins, oblivious to the fact that she was blasting them out of existence.

  Hanzlik had reprimanded Stuart for his act of cowardice by refusing to meet his gaze which made the little man insane and punchy, barely able to concentrate.

  With Hanzlik and Stuart at odds the chances of Caleb’s plan succeeding went up. She didn’t know what the plan was exactly. Her favorite twin had told her to “trust him” and that they would “make a run for it, when the time is right.”

  Soon, she thought. Make the “right time” real soon.

  She was tied to Caleb who was roped to Rowdy, the three of them dragging behind Stuart like pack animals to the slaughter.

  Except the doctor and his lapdog couldn’t kill their prisoners. Not yet. Not until Caleb had shown them where the drugs were.

  HEDWIG: Please, God. Don’t let Caleb give the antibiotics away. Please, please, please. Please. Everything else, sure. But not the antibiotics.

  God was quiet. Busy elsewhere. Marshaling reinforcements with any luck. Or guiding Hanzlik and Stuart toward the snares or spring-loaded traps or spear pits. Or giving them strokes or heart attacks or whatever.

  HEDWIG: Make them go away. Please. If someone has to die, let it be the bad men. Don’t let Paul die. Please.

  When God didn’t answer, she called up all the fictitious ammo and weaponry she could muster; pistols and whips and nunchucks and poison darts. She shot, hung, and bludgeoned the two men so many times there was barely a shred of flesh left between them.

  And yet there they were, heads together, lips moving, plotting and gesticulating and nodding like idiots.

  Hedwig was magma, lava, pyroclastic flow…anything that would erase them from the face of the planet. She was Kali the Destroyer, Medusa the Snake-Haired, Cronus the Child-Eater; she was every demon conjured by the ancients to explain man’s antipathy to man and God’s rank indifference.

  He remained silent, content upon His throne; willing to leave her to her fate.

  She hung her head. It had taken so little for her to abandon Him. All she’d faced was a kidnapping, a forced march, a room full of dying soldiers, twenty-seven mercy killings that still didn’t feel wrong; and being tied up, slathered with gunpowder, used as a bargaining chip to force Caleb’s hand.

  Ugh, if she’d been able to keep her face perfectly impassive Caleb would never have caved. She’d have lost a hand, but she’d still have gotten the antibiotics. Eventually. Because that was the whole point of her now. She was the one who saved Paul who’d saved her and made her believe—in her heart, where there was no room for doubt or questioning—that not all men were Pigs. If she failed in that one, small task what was she? Nothing.

  She couldn’t fail.

  Wouldn’t.

  She straightened up and looked at the back of Stuart’s intact head. ‘You, Piglet. You do not win. I do.’

  ‘You are not alone.’

  Hedwig feared, for a fraction of a second, that she’d cracked, fallen apart, gone bonkers. Sane people might imagine shooting their captors, but they didn’t hear voices. Like, real voices. Like, right in her ear.

  But she had.

  The wind was light, barely rustling the leaves. It wasn’t that. The water wasn’t close enough to have burbled in a voice like way, though for crying out loud, when did water talk? She’d heard a voice. A real, live voice. It wasn’t her imagination. She hadn’t made it up, provided the answers, told herself what she wanted to hear.

  She looked over her shoulder at Caleb and Rowdy. No, they hadn’t spoken. It hadn’t even sounded like them. The voice was bigger. Deeper. A sound that resonated through her so hard it was like hugging a massive bell while it clanged out over the city.

  ‘You are not alone.’

  There it was again, the voice to slay all voices.

  It was the stress. She’d lied to herself. She wasn’t okay. She was unraveling just as she’d feared she would since the day Eddie the Enforcer had raped her in front of a room full of men.

  Not men. Pigs. Men didn’t do things like that.

  ‘Do not fear,’ He said. ‘For I am with thee.’

  A real voice. Really speaking. Completely clear. And definitely Him.

  God was talking to Hedwig.

  She’d never heard Him before. Not like heard-heard. She’d imagined what he might say, opened her heart to His message, but He’d never spoken to her directly, with sound, and words, that she could hear, and hadn’t made up. Not like that; loud and clear and directly into her ear. The voice wasn’t even inside her. It was outside her head, coming from the ground and the trees and the wind and the sky and the air. From everywhere and in everything.

  He took the imaginary weapons from her bleeding hands, kissed her wounds, and lay His hand upon her head.

  ‘Be at peace, child. I will not forsake thee. I am with thee. For thou art beloved.’

  He sewed up the vacuum He had made in time and space and left her clean and whole and herself again.

  Hedwig hadn’t felt that good—peaceful, normal, in charge of herself—since before.

  She floated past the barn where the dead men lay, unaware that Stuart was barking orders at her. His face was a misty, far-away mask of insipidity and pointlessness and stupidity that could do her no harm. The same was true of Hanzlik. He was a cardboard cutout of a man, barely worthy of that name. She could see through him to the towering oaks beyond.

  It wasn’t until they reached the tree line which gave way to the open fields that she brought herself back down to Earth and checked in with her surroundings.

  “Everything’s the other side of the quarry. It’s a long hike. I’ll take him…” Caleb pointed at Stuart. “She’ll just slow us down. You stay here with her. I’ll even leave Rowdy with you, so you have a guarantee that I’ll come back.”

  Stuart looked to Hanzlik, who shook his head. “We’re not leaving anyone behind. We’re all going. Together. Now. Start walking.”

  Hedwig didn’t let the smile reach her face. The doctor didn’t trust his henchman. Another good sign that He wasn’t going to let her down. Or let her do this on her own. Or allow Paul to die. She could feel Him in the copper around her wrists and the rope that linked her to the boys and the fear that radiated from Stuart.

  The road to the quarry was partially hidden by vines and weeds and fallen trees. Spring was giving way to summer, the daffodils bowing out and making room for the purple-flowering raspberries and the white-and-yellow daisies she used to pluck and turn into bracelets and crowns with her friends. Where were they now, those girls? Safe with their families? Hiding out in caves like her? Marching through the forest with two good men and two bad ones?

  This wasn’t the life she’d imagined for herself. And yet. The road was hers to tread; the path hers to find
; His way hers to obey. It was all going to work out. He’d said so.

  Stuart trod gingerly, his eyes on the ground.

  Hedwig was directly behind him and was able to track his swiveling little head and twitchy, mincing sidesteps. He was avoiding something.

  She scoured the ground, eager to see what he was seeing. It took her the better part of an hour, but she finally threaded that needle. Without leaving the path and seeking not to bring his master’s attention to him, Stuart was on the lookout for traps. Not her traps. Not the “step on it and your ankle is mine” sort. His were the “break the bottle and you go boom” type. It wasn’t the bombs themselves that told her the story. The unexploded canning jars remained underground, unseen. It was the holes along the side of the road that gave him away. There were too many of them to be badgers’ dens, they were too large to be the entrances to rabbit warrens, and they were too-regularly spaced. They’d booby-trapped the road to Jo’s house.

  Why?

  She stuck a pin in it. When she was on the other side of this there’d be time enough to ask Caleb and Rowdy what they knew about these madmen and their plot to weaponize the countryside. And if they didn’t know? Well, that wasn’t the end of the world. She was curious, but not on fire for that data.

  With one problem solved but another million miles of hiking to go, Hedwig busied herself with making mental notes of which places were hardest to navigate and where she thought there might be buried bombs. She’d update the map when she got free of the Pigs. Not that any of her people would come this way. It took them in the wrong direction. She and Sean would go north (normally) to meet Caleb and Rowdy and, eventually—when she convinced Bill it was really, really, really time—they’d all move south to safety. This wasn’t a route they were ever going to take. Which got her to thinking: The far side of the quarry seemed like a weird place for the boys to have stashed their haul.

  She didn’t know how they’d been captured or how long they’d been tortured or why Stuart had been sent to get her or…the more she thought the more questions came…

  Why had Stuart pretended to be part of Caleb’s crew? Well, why not? It was what had convinced her to go with him.

  Why had he let Sean and Barb live? Easy. If he’d killed them she’d never have gone with him.

  What was the deal with the blood samples? No clue. That was a bona fide mystery.

  Why had he conspired with Hanzlik to trick her into killing those men? They were assholes. They wanted someone else to do their dirty work. She and God would have to talk about that later. Was he going to be okay with THOSE deaths? She hoped so. They’d been so desperate, so pathetic. Who would want to live like that? No one.

  But, most puzzling of all, why hadn’t Stuart mentioned the silver since they’d arrived at Jo’s house? He’d poked and prodded her all the way from Barb’s place, needling her for information then dropped it. Did he have a plan that Hanzlik knew nothing about? No, that wasn’t possible. If he’d tortured Rowdy for information—that’s what the bandage was all about and why Caleb had stepped to her rescue so quickly; they knew what their captors were capable of—there was no way Hanzlik didn’t know about the silver. So why not go there first? Why go all the way out to the quarry and back?

  The road rose ahead of them, steep and narrow. They were all sweating but none more so than Stuart.

  She stole a look over her shoulder. “Is it time?” she mouthed.

  Caleb widened his eyes and smiled. “Almost.” He spoke just above a whisper, but Stuart was panting so hard he couldn’t hear them.

  So, soon? Was that what he meant? They were going to make a run for it soon?

  “Look,” said Caleb. He raised his hands and pointed at Stuart’s back.

  Hedwig looked at Stuart, back at Caleb, then swiveled to Stuart again. The bulge in the middle of his back was her gun. He still had her gun tucked into his trousers.

  Stuart caught his toe on a root and tumbled forward, dragging his prisoner-pack-mules with him.

  Hedwig grabbed up the rope and pulled it away from him. He was whining too hard to notice. She crawled on top of him fumbling with his belt, eager to retrieve her weapon. She had it. In her hands. She held it to the back of Stuart’s head.

  Click.

  Nothing.

  He rolled over, clutching the knee that was scuffed up, and laughed in her face. “You think I’d be that stupid?”

  She pulled the trigger a second time. Another empty click.

  Hanzlik joined the pile of humans on the ground grinning and nodding and scoffing at her. He offered Stuart a hand and pulled him up. He took the rope Hedwig had so gleefully snatched away from Stuart and tugged it hard. “Get up.”

  Hedwig rolled to her knees and stood.

  “Nice try,” Caleb whispered.

  “Move,” said Hanzlik.

  The boys stood.

  “Is your hand okay?” Hedwig pointed at Rowdy’s bandaged hand.

  He smiled. “All good.” He waved it at her. There was a smudge of dirt on one side where he’d broken his fall, but he’d lucked out. No blood had seeped through the gauze.

  They walked ahead while Stuart lagged behind and wrapped his knee. When he caught up he had to hobble-run to keep pace. Rowdy, who had a flesh wound he’d just fallen on didn’t make a peep while Stuart who’d only grazed himself oofed and groaned and sucked air through his teeth.

  That was the difference between men and boys, the good ones and the bad ones, the Pigs and the humans.

  They rounded a corner to find the lake in the middle of the quarry glistening blue with tiny white crests of wind-driven waves below. The road wasn’t close enough to the cliff’s edge for Hedwig to take a run at Stuart and push him over but she amused herself for ten minutes thinking about the look on his face as he fell to his death.

  They crested the hill and entered a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a square patch of grass, longer and greener than the wild grasses that surrounded it. It was man-made. No doubt about it. Nature didn’t produce perfect squares, six-foot by six-foot. It reminded Hedwig of the grass over the septic tank back home. They had to excavate the earth, which meant more nutrients (or something, she wasn’t actually clear on the details), which in turn meant the grass over the septic tank grew faster and thicker and stood higher than everything else in the yard. Her dad used to joke that it was their “magical manure mound” coming to bless them with tall grass.

  “Here?” said Hanzlik.

  Caleb nodded.

  “Start digging.”

  There were no shovels or trowels or tools of any kind.

  “Use your hands.”

  Hedwig looked to Caleb for guidance. Were they going to do this? Dig up the meds that would keep her family alive for another month and hand them over to these horrific humans?

  He didn’t meet her eye. He was already scratching the soft earth. Did they have that twin connection that Petra claimed for herself and Paul? Were they telepathic? Was he shooting messages to Rowdy so he’d know what to do or when the time was right?

  She knelt in the dirt beside him and pecked at the grass with the tips of her fingers. It had been disturbed recently, the sod replaced. The grass was easy to shift.

  Stuart put his boot to her back and nudged her. “Properly. Dig. Like the man said.”

  No one spoke. Not Caleb or Rowdy or Hanzlik or Stuart or God. Not a peep.

  Hedwig made her hands, still bound and bleeding, into a shovel and did her best to move fistfuls of dirt to one side.

  An hour passed. Then another. There was no food, no water, just Hedwig and the ground under her.

  The twins were competing. Who could burrow the fastest, move the most, get to their stash first? Rowdy ignored his injured palm, thrusting both hands into the packed earth as if they were tailor-made for the job. He’d grab two heaping handfuls and toss it over his shoulder, grin at his brother, and go in again. They were the Road Runner and Speedy Gonzales and Sonic the Hedgehog: fast and fearles
s and furiously digging.

  Why, though?

  Why out here?

  Why so deep?

  Why were they standing in a hole, up to their waists, laughing and sweating but still showing no signs of stress when their whole operation was about to be decimated? Hedwig wished she had whatever genes they had that allowed them to put aside reality and slip into their own world. All she’d managed was a non-specific promise from God that it would all be okay in the end.

  Caleb sidled up to her, still working so their overlords wouldn’t step in, but looking to talk. “Would you be willing to trade?”

  “Trade?” she said.

  Caleb’s breath wafted her way. He needed to brush his teeth. And floss. He was close enough she could taste the rot. “We can give you more than a month’s worth.”

  Saliva pooled in Hedwig’s mouth and her shoulders bunched up tight behind her neck. She nodded. She wanted it all. The regular supplies and next months’ and the month after that. She wanted as much as he would sell her.

  “Tell them where the silver is,” he said.

  Hedwig snapped to attention. “Them?”

  Caleb winked. What the hell did he mean? Conspiracy? Trick? We’re in this together?

  “Hey, Hanzlik!” Caleb twisted himself around to face the doctor-not-doctor. “Mac!”

  Hanzlik clomped to the edge of the pit waving his gun in a nonchalant way, like it wasn’t something that could part their heads from their bodies. “No talking. Keep digging.”

  Caleb looked up. “I have a proposition.”

  “I’m not interested in any propositions,” said Hanzlik. “I’m interested in your working this hole and getting what’s mine.”

  “You’re going to like it.” Caleb grinned and leaned back. “Hedwig’s going to tell you where the silver is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  JANUARY/FEBRARY 2022

  “Where’s Alice?” Michael asked the same question every morning when his breakfast—eggs, bacon, sausage, and coffee—was delivered.