by Pike, JJ
They were ready and waiting, pressing through the door the second the final lock gave way.
They were ragged, filthy, and raging, just as they had been in her dreams.
And in the front of the crowd—emaciated, with a shaggy beard and even shaggier hair—was her former boss and the boss of all Wolfjaw, Alistair Lewk.
CHAPTER THIRTY
MARCH 2022
Hedwig didn’t know whether to keep digging or look up, act surprised or shocked or hurt or baffled or—best choice, kiddo—nothing. What were you supposed to do when the guy next to you played 52-Card pick up with your life? Tell them where the silver was? How did that make a lick of sense? Hanzlik and Stuart would take everything: The silver, the medication, their lives. Caleb was supposed to be this big brain, “Bringing capitalism to the apocalypse” as Sean said. What the hell was he playing at?
Caleb leaned back in the hole. “Hedwig needs meds for her family. Like, lifesaving shit. No joke.”
Hanzlik and Stuart stood over them, waiting.
“Give her what she needs in exchange for the silver and we’ll call it even.”
“What do you get?” Stuart, the blunt-force instrument, said what Hedwig would have said if she could have put one thought in front of the other and produced a sentence. She couldn’t.
“Our lives,” said Caleb. “We’ll trade you the rest of the meds—only if you give her what she needs, that’s part of the deal—in exchange for our lives.”
Rowdy nodded. Had they talked about this before? Did they know they were going to barter with the Everlee silver? They couldn’t have done. Why would they have allowed Hanzlik to bring them all this way only to negotiate for the Everlee silver?
“I have a better idea.” Hanzlik nodded at Stuart. “Get him out of the hole.”
Stuart pulled Caleb out of their pit. Hanzlik put a gun to Caleb’s temple. “She tells us where the silver is or I blow your brains out.”
“Don’t. Don’t do it, bro. Seriously.” Rowdy swung his bound hands at Hanzlik’s ankles and missed. He grunted and grabbed and tried to elbow his way out of the hole.
Hanzlik stepped on Rowdy’s bad hand. “Stay.” He returned the gun to Caleb’s face. “What do you think? Should he live or die? You like this game. You played well earlier.”
“You won’t do it,” she said.
Hanzlik drew back the gun and smacked Caleb across the temple. Blood streamed down his face, pooling in the hollow of his neck before trickling down his T-shirt.
All her bartering ability was about to be wiped out. They’d moved some silver to the salt mines but left most of it secreted around the old Everlee house for safety. The theory being they shouldn’t have all their assets in one place. They were going to use that silver to buy their way south. If they ever went south. Which wasn’t going to happen if they didn’t have thyroid blockers. Or Paul died. Or…her brain blanked…what else was she supposed to collect? Prenatal vitamins for Petra. Shit. And chemo meds for Mimi.
“Tell them.” Rowdy’s face had collapsed in on itself, like someone had crumpled him up in their fist and not flattened him out properly. He was on the verge of tears. “Please.”
Blood from Caleb’s head wound landed beside her in the tamped-down grass.
She couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t. The silver belonged to the Everlees. Bill had been stashing it away for years; surprising his children with his preparedness. Her lips were glued together, her heart splitting apart. She hated Caleb. Not as much as she hated Stuart and Hanzlik, but enough. He probably had contacts ready to restock his supplies but he’d backed her into a corner and was forcing her to hand over the keys to their future. There had to be another way. Her brain was jammed and fritzing and giving her nothing but static. She couldn’t fight her way out of this. She had nothing. There was only one choice. She had to trade.
“It’s under the water barrels.” Her vocal chords had been paralyzed. It sounded more like “Wawabawa…”
“Don’t fuck with me.” Hanzlik smacked Caleb with his gun, just as hard as the first time, spraying his blood over her and Rowdy.
Rowdy leaned against her. It was the handcuffed version of a hug. He was lending her his strength, his voice, his thanks.
“It’s under the water barrels,” she said.
“The water barrels?” Hanzlik crouched down beside her. “Which water barrels?”
“The ones by the burned out house. There are four.”
“I know where they are.” Stuart was there, all waggly tail and bright eyes, wanting to be top of the class. “We walked right by them. Bitch wouldn’t tell me a thing.”
“I’m going to send Stuart and Caleb to find the silver.” Hanzlik’s eyes searched her face for clues.
All he’d find was a broken girl.
She hadn’t outsmarted them or found a way to save the silver or been triumphant. It didn’t all work out. It all went wrong. She longed for her bed, a meal, Paul’s voice telling her it was alright and he understood. All she got was the grim visage of a man who’d tortured her friends to get what he wanted.
“If it’s not there, Stuart has my permission to shoot him.” He put two fingers to Caleb’s heart. “Blam. Two to the heart, one to the head. Do you understand me?”
Hedwig nodded, angry that her eyes were leaking and her nose had filled with snot. It wasn’t voluntary. She was pissed and tired and stabby and defeated. They’d won. Worse, she’d told them the real place and not a dummy location. They’d take the silver and the meds stash and run.
Caleb had opened the door to failure, but she’d walked through it. She wasn’t going to get bupkis unless she could pull one last trick out of her hat. What trick, though? She had no weapons. The gunpowder on her hand had been rubbed away. She was one girl with four men, two of whom were outright evil and two who were almost as defeated as her.
“Tell me I’m not going to have to kill a man today,” said Hanzlik.
“It’s there,” said Hedwig. “You have my word.”
“Do we believe her?” Stuart’s puppy-dog routine was pissing her off. Hedwig wished there was a way to see the tables turned and him coughing up everything he cared about while she wielded the weapons and dictated terms.
“We believe her,” said Rowdy. He held up his wrists. Stuart unwound the rope and helped him climb up and out of the pit so he was standing with the rest of the men. Rowdy unbound his bandage and threw the wrap and gauze into the pit.
There wasn’t an ounce of blood on it. It was clean. That was one fast-healing wound. She craned to see his palm, but he was too high up. He rubbed his hands together then wiped them on his shirt to get rid of the dirt.
Hedwig kicked herself.
“We good?” Caleb clapped Hanzlik on the back.
There had been no wound.
“Yup.” Hanzlik put his gun back in his pants. Why didn’t any of them have holsters? What was it with wearing their guns in their pants? They weren’t even real gangsters but they’d outwitted her.
The four of them were in it together. The boys had been chill because they had no skin in the game. They’d been playing her this whole time. They’d brought her out to the middle of nowhere as a form of pantomime. Pure drama. She was the target. They were going to kill her and take everything. She’d been duped and no one would ever know where she’d died or why. Worst of all, she was standing in her own grave.
“Do we kill her here?” Stuart was willing, wanting, waiting to end her.
“No,” said Caleb. “We don’t kill her.”
Oh, whoop-de-doo. The traitor had something else planned.
“If she’s lying about the location of the silver we’ll need her.”
Oh, so not so much, ‘We don’t want to kill her’ but ‘we don’t want to kill her yet.’
“That hill…” Stuart looked back the way they’d come. He’d sustained an injury on the way up.
Would that it had been worse. Would that she had taken a stab at tipping him off the cliff when she’d had a c
hance.
Caleb slung his arm around Stuart’s shoulders. “You’ll be fine, man. Just pop a couple of oxy and you won’t feel a thing.” He bent down to Hedwig’s level and offered her his hand. “No hard feelings.”
She spat in his face. “Traitor.”
“Don’t make it harder, Hedwig. It’s just business. You got played. That’s what happens.”
He still had his hand out. Like she would ever take help from him. She was up to her armpits in a hole in the ground, her hands tied in front of her, but she was damned if she was going to let a Pig put their hands on her. She kicked the wall four times. Made a foothold. Raised her other leg and created another a foot higher. She was going to have to bend and dig with her hands. She wasn’t going to bow before these nasty, worthless, jumped-up shitbags. She walked to the other side of the pit, turned her back on them and started digging.
“Like it makes a difference to us.” Stuart led the jeers. Of course he did. Lowest on the totem pole. He had to take shots at her.
The others didn’t need much encouragement.
They jeered and sneered and called her all the names they could think of. The worse it got, the more her brain returned to its rightful place. These were precisely the Pigs she’d vowed she’d vanquish. They were all assholes, but Stuart made her blood boil until steam came out of her ears. He might be the lowest ranking male of the pack but he needed to be taught a lesson.
She hauled herself out of the hole and stayed hunched down. She needed a second to gather her thoughts.
“You fell for it.” Stuart cackled. “Stupid bitch.” It was his favorite word, apparently. Not very imaginative. Ridding the world of a Pig like him could be considered a service. If it cost her life it wouldn’t matter. Barb would nurse Sean to health and he’d find the medication Paul needed. Her job now was to take these guys out so they could do no more harm.
Her wrists bled through the dirt. She didn’t care about that, either. She was going to take these losers down. She stood to face the enemy. New mandate. New goal. New Hedwig.
“She didn’t even guess.” Stuart was on a roll. Slap some mustard on him and someone might eat him. Like a bear for example. “Not even when you guys were yucking it up. I thought for sure she’d work it out.”
He was half right. She’d smelled a rat but didn’t want to believe Caleb and Rowdy were bad guys. She’d given them the benefit of the doubt because she didn’t want her soul to be as dank and rotten as theirs.
“Bitches be stupid…” Stuarts attempts to get the others to be all buddy-buddy with him were falling on deaf ears. Caleb and Rowdy were talking shop. Hanzlik was readying the rope so he could lasso her and lead her back down that hill.
They weren’t going to be daisy-chained together, so she couldn’t take all four of them at once, but she might be able to take two of them if she played her cards right. She knew one thing. She wasn’t going to hesitate. Ever. Never ever again.
If she kept the rope long enough, though…
“I don’t want to have to smell his stinking breath.” She kept her eyes on Hanzlik but shot a look at Stuart so she knew he knew what she was talking about. “You’re going to tie me up. Fine. Whatever. And he has to be your lackey and hold the rope for you. I get it. He does your bidding or you look weak. Whatever. I just don’t want to be close to him. So. Get your piece of rope and make it good and long because if you let me anywhere near him I’m going to take him out.”
The boys stopped talking. They hadn’t expected that. She held her head high. Let them think what they wanted, she had a plan hatching. It was easy for them to imagine she hated Stuart most because they themselves held him in such low regard. In fact, she hated them all equally. Pigs, every last one.
Hanzlik swapped out the short rope for the one that had been used for her, Caleb, and Rowdy, coming up the hill. He affixed it to her wrists and then, ostentatiously and with great ceremony—because he was a loser and a phony and thought it made him look like he was doing her a favor—walked it away from her until it was fully extended. “Good enough?”
Hedwig shrugged even though it was perfect. Ten feet of rope. That would do it. Stuart wouldn’t dare disobey Hanzlik. He’d walk ahead of her and never see it coming.
Now, if she could just get them to walk in formation: Stuart up front, Hanzlik, Caleb, and Rowdy in the middle, her bringing up the rear like a donkey. She could rush around back of them, tangle them in the rope, grab Stuart, and plunge them over the edge and into the beautiful blue waters below in a glorious arc of screaming-laughing wonder.
The decision brought her a modicum of peace.
She’d almost forgotten they were in a beautiful place. She’d been so focused on her mission. There’d been the dead men who’d been piled high in the ditches and the man hanging from the tree with his sad medals still pinned to his chest, then the side trip to Jo’s place, then the trek to find the meds-that-had-never been there that she hadn’t looked at her surroundings. MELT might be in the air; nuclear waste might be in the soil; the world might have gone mad with expectation and grief, but there were still tiny purple flowers bursting from the edges of the path.
They began the walk of shame. She’d been played. She should feel guilt. But the sun was shining, the grass was still waist high here and ankle-deep there and speckled with hyssop blues and buttercup yellows. She wasn’t going to close her eyes to beauty simply because it was over for her. What had Barb said? “The song is done, but the melody lingers.”
She’d be remembered. Paul would forgive her in time. The Everlees were good people; they’d understand. Her folks. Damn. They’d be pissed if they knew what she was planning. They’d never get it. They thought you chose life, no matter the cost.
But that wasn’t how it had played out.
She’d chosen life until she had to choose death.
There was one more conversation she needed to have. Because He was hard core about this shit. And taking her own life, along with the lives of these Pigs, might not sit well with Him.
HEDWIG: Hey, God.
She slowed her step.
HEDWIG: Sorry that I didn’t get to talk to you more.
She waited. Nothing. The voice wasn’t an on-demand feature.
HEDWIG: It’s not that I didn’t believe, exactly. I just…
What had her faith been to her before this had gone down? Like the rest of her life it had been insipid, tame, boxed in, only brought out on Sundays. She couldn’t say why, but she wasn’t disappointed that He didn’t talk back. There was a plan. She would do her part. He would do His. She trusted He would act if she got it wrong.
Caleb and Rowdy passed her, joining Hanzlik on the road ahead.
If Hedwig had been the old version of herself she’d have laughed out loud. It was lining up. She was going to get her shot. Just around the corner the road came dangerously close to the edge of the cliff. Her heart was full. Her brain buzzed. She gathered the rope up in her hands and began to tighten it. She needed to take them off guard. It was all about surprise.
The road buckled, rising up to meet her. The flash—no, three flashes in quick succession, threw dirt up into the air. After the first explosion she couldn’t hear a thing. Dirt rained down on her, clods of it. Chunks. A hand. No forearm. Just a hand. With a ring. A class ring with a green stone.
She lay still, letting the world fall down around her.
Stuart had stepped on a mine.
The idiot had been dancing about, trying to impress the boys and he stepped on one of his own hand-made bombs. It would have been funny if she’d been able to hear or see or think.
A hand on her ankle brought her back. She coiled her leg back and kicked, screaming and thrashing and bringing her hands up so she could smash his skull—didn’t matter which he, they were all bad, bad men and deserved to die—until it was pancaked into the ground.
Her fists met hands.
“It’s okay.”
Hedwig fought back. It wasn’t okay. They deserv
ed everything she had. Even if God Almighty had stayed her attacker’s hands and bought her some time she was willing to hand it back in order to end these evil, wicked men.
“Hedwig.”
She opened her eyes.
“It’s me.”
Aggie. Couldn’t be. How? Where had she come from?
“Can you move?”
Could she move? She could move and shake and run and hide and do whatever was needed.
“We need to go.” Aggie helped her up. The blast had separated her from the men and the rope from their grasp. She let Aggie untangle the final bonds and lead her away.
“Caleb,” she said. “They double crossed me. Rowdy…they…”
Aggie nodded. “I don’t use a saddle anymore. You okay with that?” Aggie’s horse, Indie, was in the trees, munching on the succulent spring grass.
“We have to go,” said Aggie. “Barb is waiting.”
The tears wouldn’t stop. Hedwig couldn’t speak. She didn’t know how she got on Indie’s back or when Aggie had sat in front of her. “I didn’t get the meds. I failed.”
“You’re okay.” Aggie sat forward in her seat, her elbows moving in a giddy-up motion. “I’ve got the meds. We’re okay. You’re okay. We’re going home.”
Hedwig wept and slept and gave thanks, though not in that order and not only once.
Home. To her heart. Never to see those Pigs again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
MARCH 2022, SOUTH POLE
FIELD NOTES: ALICE EVERLEE
I want to DO something. BIG. I want to change the world. Literally, not figuratively. I’m tired of this pod/cell. Tired of being Professor Baxter’s lab rat. Tired of sitting here, doing nothing.
They said they’d brief us, but life continues in the same groove as it has since we got here. I get the sense they herded us into that room just to placate us. Which is why they gave me a pen and paper: To placate me.
I should be more like Michael. He was angrier than I thought he’d be. He threw things. Swore. Said he’d have his revenge, though who does he think he will be revenged upon? Who is there to hold accountable? The people who set this in motion are either dead or soon will be.**
