by Skylar Finn
“I’m going to put Clover in the barn,” I said. “In case anyone comes while we’re inside. I don’t want them to see her.”
The Aldersons didn’t stay at their ranch often enough to keep horses, their barn being a holdover from the previous owners. I closed Clover in a stall and went back to the house.
Peterman had already checked the doors. “They’re all locked,” he said. “So I guess that means those people haven’t been here yet.”
“Let’s try the windows,” I said, heading around the side of the house.
The bedroom window was unlocked. Lydia had always commented on how safe she felt at the ranch, like she didn’t even have to lock the doors. “Who would come all the way out here looking for trouble?” she always said. I didn’t have to ask what Ethan thought about that.
The window might have been unlocked due to Lydia’s false sense of security in the country. Or it could have been something else.
I slid the window open. I turned to Peterman, who carried the hunting rifle slung over one shoulder. He looked apprehensive.
“Ready?” I asked. Then I boosted myself up on the windowsill and crawled inside without waiting for an answer.
10
My first thought was how Ethan would have seen this place, doing “reconnaissance” as a child: inefficient, decorative, frivolous. The flowery duvet, the four-poster bed, the mahogany dresser. Right away, I spied the pictures in frames lining the top of it: a wedding photo of Bud and Lydia, school pictures of all their grandchildren, and one of those professional family photos where everyone wears a matching shirt and stands on a beach. I imagined how they would have seemed to a much-younger Ethan: like a whole other world.
Peterman emerged from the bathroom, looking perplexed. “There’s nothing in the medicine cabinet,” he said, turning a single jar over in his hand. “Nothing but a container of Vicks VapoRub.”
“They’ve been here,” I said grimly. “Let’s see if there’s anything left.”
While the bedroom was relatively undisturbed aside from the medicine cabinet, the kitchen had clearly been ransacked. Chairs were overturned and cabinet doors hung open, revealing only empty space. There was a single can of sardines lying sideways on the counter, as if someone had picked it up, seen what it was, and flung it away in disgust. Glasses were smashed on the floor.
Peterman considered the damage from the doorway. “I understand why they were looking for food,” he said. “But why break things? Why destroy everything in their path?”
“That’s what they do,” I said. “It’s not enough to take. They also have to destroy.”
“But why, though?” He seemed frustrated, like a man accustomed to seeking rationale and reason in every situation. “What’s the point?”
“It’s pointless,” I said. “That is the point. There are people who take pleasure in destruction, plain and simple. It might go a bit deeper than that. It might be that the perfect order of a place like this, something that belongs to people who’ve worked hard their whole lives and have something to show for it, awakens resentment in people who are driven by laziness and greed. Maybe it gives them satisfaction to vandalize the pristine. Or it could just be the animals in them coming out.” I opened the refrigerator, which was bare except for a box of baking soda. “Either way, it would be best if we hurry, in case they come back.”
“There’s no food and no medicine,” said Peterman. “Did they have guns?”
“Bud, maybe,” I said. “Definitely not Lydia. We can check the closets, but I highly doubt there’s anything still here. We do have one other option, though.”
“What’s that?” asked Peterman.
“Lydia had a summer kitchen,” I said. “It wouldn’t have looked like anything to them, just a garage with an oven.” I left the kitchen and headed down the hallway, opening the closet on my way toward the front door. It was empty.
“Who keeps a garage in the oven?” asked Peterman
“It’s so the kitchen in the house won’t get hot during the summer while they’re cooking or baking,” I explained. “They do the bulk of their cooking outside in the warmer months because they don’t have central air.”
“I’ve never heard of these things,” he explained. “I lived in a high-rise downtown and ate out every night.” We went down the front steps and crossed the yard to the detached garage.
“A lot of people did,” I said, peering cautiously through the garage window before I opened the side door with my gun drawn. “They’re probably not managing too well right now.”
“I wouldn’t be either,” he admitted. “If I hadn’t met you and your husband.”
“Well, if you hadn’t met us, Ethan would be dead,” I said. “So it’s definitely a two-way street.”
The garage was empty. A few of Bud’s tools were missing from their pegs on the walls, but aside from that, the place looked relatively untouched. I crossed my fingers as I approached the oven. I opened the door. Both shelves were lined with pureed pumpkin, boxed bread crumbs, cranberry sauce, and bags of walnuts.
“She keeps this stuff inside the oven?” asked Peterman, accepting the bag of walnuts I handed him and shoving them into his bag.
“Lydia’s always been a bit eccentric,” I said. “And anyway, it’s not like it’s on. Here, you take the pumpkin and I’ll take the cranberry sauce.”
“Cranberry sauce.” Peterman sighed. “I’d sorely hoped never to see this stuff again. My mother made us eat it every year and I swore when I grew up I’d never touch it again.”
“You don’t have to eat the cranberry sauce,” I said. “You can have the sardines from the kitchen.”
A shot rang out in the distance. Both of us froze.
“What was that?” whispered Peterman. “Is that them?”
I went to the garage window and peered out. I could just make out a figure on the front porch, pointing his gun in the air and laughing. The front door slammed and the woman with the red hair, Clarice, stomped out. She was yelling so loud I could hear her from inside the garage.
“Buddy, what the hell are you doing! We’re supposed to grab what we left and get out, not run around acting a fool!”
Buddy lowered his gun, looking disappointed. “Aw, I was just having a little fun.”
“We’re not here to have fun,” Clarice shot back. “And Dexter’s not a man who tolerates fun, so you’re lucky you’re here with me and not him or he’d have shot you already.”
“Sorry,” said Buddy sullenly, returning the gun to his waistband.
“Get in here and help me with this,” said Clarice. Buddy followed Clarice back inside the house and disappeared. I turned to Peterman.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Before they come back.”
He hastily zipped up his pack. I tightened mine against my shoulders as I headed for the side door of the garage. “Be ready to run,” I said.
We slipped along the side of the building, our eyes glued to the house. I had the Governor drawn and Peterman clenched his rifle. We ran across the yard to the barn. Clover was where I’d left her. She pawed at the ground and snorted, as if sensing our distress.
“We’ll ride out the back way,” I said. “If we can get to the road, they might not see us.”
However awkward Peterman had been earlier, fear and adrenaline seemed to have stripped him of his clumsiness on horseback. He hopped up onto Clover behind me after we opened the barn door. We galloped out and across the yard. The front door slammed open when we were halfway down the drive.
“Hey!” screamed Clarice. “It’s them!” she called over her shoulder. She raised her gun and fired as we thundered toward the road. I was afraid Clover would spook and throw us to the ground, but she ran even faster. When we got to the end of the drive, I turned left instead of right.
“Where are we going?” called Peterman over the thundering of Clover’s hooves down the dirt road.
“We can’t let them see us going in the direction of the ran
ch,” I said over my shoulder. “We’ll go to the next place up and circle back around.”
I had an ulterior motive for my plan. The next ranch after the Aldersons was Pat and Mary’s. It would give me a chance to check on them and make sure they were safe before we went back to Ethan and Grace.
The Davidson ranch was farther from the Aldersons than they were from us, and I slowed Clover to a trot a mile out. I didn’t want to tire her out before we made the long trek home. The Davidsons had horses of their own, and I could feed and water Clover properly before heading back.
Dusk was settling when we got to the Davidsons. I took Clover to the barn after Peterman slid off and shook out his horse legs. The barn was empty.
Had Mary left with Tom? Maybe they’d ridden out to our place while we were riding out to the Aldersons. I led Clover to the trough, patting her sweating flank. I put her in the barn and went toward the house.
The huge front bay windows overlooking the front yard were shattered. The front door hung wide open, the screen door flapping in the breeze. My stomach sank like a rock. Whatever happened here, it had been bad.
I climbed the porch steps, hoping against hope that Tom and Mary fled. Maybe they ran to the barn, got on the horses, and rode to safety, long before those fiends had ever showed up. But I had the terrible sinking feeling that they had never known what was coming until it was too late.
Peterman stepped through the front door and I bit back a scream. I came to my senses when I saw that it was him. I brushed by him to go into the house. His gentle hand on my shoulder stopped me.
“You don’t want to go in there,” he said quietly.
“I have to see—” I broke away, starting to push past him. He put an arm up, blocking the door.
“You don’t want to see,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Charlie. There was nothing I could do.”
I thought of all the trauma patients he’d seen in the ER, how many times he’d had to break the news that someone had died, and what, for him, constituted the unseeable. I turned away from the door.
“If only I had come sooner,” I whispered. “I could have helped, I could have stopped it—”
Peterman shook his head. “They would have killed you, too.”
“They have their horses,” I said suddenly, realizing how far they could be from the Aldersons by now. “What if they’re already at our place? What if they’re there right now?”
I took off running toward the barn, Peterman hurrying to catch up to me.
“Charlie, we have to stay calm and think rationally,” he called after me. “The entire house is boarded up. Ethan is armed. He’d shoot them both the second they came through the door. And you led them away, Charlie! If they came in any direction, it would have been after us.”
I ran into the barn over to Clover, hauling myself up onto her back. I could hear Peterman, but distantly, my mind was wracked with worry and fear. I vaguely recognized the logic of what he was saying, but all I could think of was coming back to the ranch only to discover a similar scene to the one at the Davidsons’ place.
We raced back to the ranch. Clover was a young horse and maintained a steady clip for most of the way, but she was weighed down by both of us and our packs and we had to take the last leg at a trot. I couldn’t stand it and slid off the horse once the house was in sight, running up the road as quickly as I could with the loaded bag on my back.
“Charlie!” Peterman called after me. I knew how foolish he thought I was, watching me sprint up the road in the darkness, completely exposed. But it wasn’t that. “How do I stop?” he yelled.
I ignored him. I reached the back door and banged once, then twice, and once again. It was the secret code knock Ethan had invented before we left. I waited for a heart-stopping moment, imagining the worst.
The door creaked open.Grace’s small face peeped through the narrow crack. “What’s the password?” she asked.
“Password?” I said, baffled. “There isn’t one.”
She opened the door the rest of the way. “It’s a trick question. I was looking for ‘there should be,’ but I guess your answer will do.”
I stumbled inside. Ethan looked amused by Grace, but when he saw my expression, the smile on his face dropped right off. “Charlie?”
I knew I should tell him what happened at the Davidsons, and the Aldersons before that, but the prospect of repeating what had happened to Mary and Tom out loud was too much to bear. I rushed into the bathroom and closed the door, collapsing against the wall, and slid to the floor, shutting my eyes.
I heard Peterman come in a few minutes later. He said something to Ethan. The bathroom door creaked open.
“Charlie?” Grace stood over me. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” I forced a smile.
“You don’t have to lie,” she said accusingly.
“I’m okay, really.” I stood up and splashed cold water on my face. Grace put her small hand in the center of my back and we made our way back to the bedroom.
Wordlessly, Ethan reached for my hand and I collapsed onto the bed beside him. He ran a hand through my tangled, sweaty hair, combing out the knots.
“I’m sorry about Tom and Mary,” he said quietly. “The Davidsons were good people.”
“All the more reason,” said Peterman as he took Ethan’s vitals, “for us to leave as soon as you’re up and about.”
“We’ll talk about it when the time comes,” said Ethan. “But right now, we’ve got to focus on making this place impenetrable.”
“How can we keep them out?” asked Peterman. “These people are completely blood-thirsty, Ethan. I’ve never seen anything like it. They destroy just because they can. They kill without remorse, without a second thought. If they wanted to come here—which they will, and most likely sooner rather than later—I’m not sure that there’s anything we can do to stop them.”
“I have a plan,” said Ethan.
11
The afternoon sun burned high in the sky, yielding boiling autumn temperatures as we worked outside. Ethan sharpened sticks on the back patio while I dug a stake pit in front of the back door. Peterman rigged a trip wire, attached it to an air horn, and stretched it across the front porch. Grace sat on the roof in a camp chair, scanning the horizon with her bird-watching binoculars.
Ethan had a considerable amount of barbed wire, originally purchased for the fence and left over in the shed. We used it to make barbed wire entanglements, arranging them under the windows. After we set up the entanglements, I padlocked the barn to keep Clover safe.
By the end of the day, we were all sweaty and exhausted. There had been no sign of Dexter and his crew, lulling us into an uneasy peace. We might be safe for now, but it didn’t mean it would last forever. Based on what I had seen so far, they had already hit the stores on Main and the nearest houses to us, so it seemed like it would only be a matter of time before they showed up at the ranch.
Ethan was in good spirits, and Grace was content when he was content. She sat peacefully drawing in the corner of the living room. I built a fire in the fireplace. The sun was setting, and the house had an almost cozy feel. Ethan found some marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate in the back of the pantry and whittled four much-smaller spears so that we could make s’mores.
“Should we tell ghost stories?” Peterman joked. “Some sort of campfire tale? This brings me back to my time in the Scouts.”
“What made you decide to become a doctor?” asked Ethan. “You helped save our lives when we fled the city, and I feel like I still barely know anything about you.”
“Well, considering that we met during an imminent disaster, I think it’s only natural that we missed the typical getting-to-know-you exchange,” said Peterman. “There’s no dramatic or emotional storyline behind it: all my family are doctors, and it’s just sort of expected. I guess if anybody ever ended up being entirely squeamish, they could become a painter or something. I don’t think it would be frowned
upon, necessarily. Arbitrary and financially inadvisable, maybe, but not frowned upon.” He turned to me. “What about you, Charlie? Why did you become a doctor?”
I snorted. “I don’t think my doctoral status is in the same realm as yours, Dr. Peterman.”
“Please, call me Charles,” he said. “Being called ‘Dr. Peterman’ makes me feel like I’m doing rounds.”
“Well, Charles,” I said, considering the question. “I guess I was just extremely curious about the human condition: what makes people the way that they are? What makes us do the things that we do? I was interested in the intersectionality between our behavioral patterns, our instinct, societal conditioning, environmental factors, nature versus nurture, and so on. But the thing that interested me most was the aspect of free will. It’s what I wrote my dissertation on.”
“Free will?” asked Peterman. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, it would be easy to dismiss ourselves as merely animals who have developed sentience, or to imagine that we are higher beings who just coincidentally have to deal with an accompanying set of biological functions as a side effect of our existence, but I believe both those concepts are over-simplifications that lead to other problems,” I explained. “It’s our biological imperative to survive and procreate, but if that’s all we are, then why do people sacrifice themselves for others? Love is a higher impulse. It surpasses any need for self-preservation or inclination for destruction. We’re determined by our choices, not by genetics or by the accidental fact of our existence.”
“Love and sacrifice,” echoed Peterman, absently rubbing a thumb over his ring finger. I could just barely make out the outline of where a ring might have once been, which was the first time I’d noticed it. “I was in love once. With my wife of twenty years. She was killed in a plane crash, flying to Mystery, Alaska in a puddle jumper.”
I was surprised and saddened. I had made the automatic assumption that he was a lifelong bachelor.
