by Katie French
Nolan stared, heart pounding as Kindy’s eyes met his and flickered down. He followed the movement, noticing the bundle in her arms.
Something wrapped in a bloody white cloth was moving.
A tiny cry broke the silence.
Nolan’s heart hitched. “The baby.”
Slowly, Kindy nodded.
Stunned, Nolan lowered the gun.
The first man cracked a smile, showing off his pointed teeth. “A gurl and a baby to boot. Why, the bounties that’ve been bestowed on us today, José.”
When he didn’t answer, the first man turned back toward his partner. “José?”
But José was staring off toward the road. As they watched, his legs buckled under him and he fell into the dirt.
“José!” the first man said, leaning down to grab his partner. When he rolled him over, José’s problem became apparent. A hole had opened inside his head and was leaking blood.
“What the hell?” the first man shouted, launching upright and turning on Nolan. “You!”
But Nolan had taken that moment to raise his gun. He aimed the barrel at the man’s chest, squeezed his eyes shut, and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was deafening. The report threw his arm back and made him stagger, but from this close, it was hard to miss. Nolan watched as the bullet smashed into the first man’s chest, spraying blood out of his back.
Pure shock registered on the man’s face as he gripped his bloody chest, gasping. Then he went down, falling onto José.
Nolan stared at the man he’d shot as he squirmed and kicked at the dirt. What Nolan had done was a sin. He knew that. But Kindy. The baby.
Still, he felt like throwing up.
The gun felt like a million pounds in his hand, but he knew better than to drop it. What if the first man got up again?
He heard the click of a safety behind his ear.
“Drop the gun, boy,” the male voice said.
Surprised, Nolan didn’t react quickly enough for whoever was standing behind him. He felt a whack to the back of his head, making him stagger. “I said drop the gun!”
“Smith, don’t. This is my… brother. The one I was telling you about. He’s with me.” Kindy looked over Nolan’s shoulder at whoever was behind him. She knew the person who’d just hit him?
“Well, he isn’t with me,” Smith said, wrenching the gun out of Nolan’s hand. A hand on his shoulder whirled him around until he was face to face with Smith.
Compared to José and the first man, Smith was a regular Joe with sandy-brown hair under a sweat-stained hat, brown eyes, and a dark curly beard with a twenty-something face beneath. His gun was shiny, well maintained, and tipped with a long cylinder attachment. He must’ve been the one who killed José.
Smith examined Nolan as he kept the gun trained just above his heart. “Kindy’s brother, eh? How’s that possible if Kindy was a Breeder baby?”
Nolan flicked a glance at Kindy. She pleaded with her eyes. “I’m… her brother. We were twins. Sometimes boys are born to the Breeders too. It’s not an exact science.”
Smith rubbed his beard with one hand as if mulling this over. “You know what? It don’t matter one bit to me. I don’t need another man in my crew. She comes with me, and you stay here. The good news is I won’t kill you, but I will need that pistol.” He nodded at the gun in Nolan’s hand.
“No,” Nolan shouted, stepping back.
Smith raised his gun.
“Don’t, please,” Kindy said, putting a hand on Smith. “I’ll go with you. Just don’t hurt him.”
Nolan shot her a look. Did she want to go with this man or was she saving Nolan’s life? She had called him her brother, but maybe it was a way to keep Smith from getting jealous. God, he didn’t know which way was up anymore.
“Kindy,” he pleaded.
“Nolan, it’s fine,” she said, bouncing the bundle a little bit. “It’s better this way.” She wouldn’t look at him. “Smith will take care of me.”
Her words were like knives through his heart. Smith will take care of me. Meaning Nolan would not. He dropped his head, not sure if he could bear what was happening. When he raised his eyes to her, she still wouldn’t look at him.
“Kindy.”
“Don’t,” she said, turning and walking away. “Come on, Smith.”
Smith pocketed Nolan’s gun, keeping his own in his hand as he walked around the dead men and followed Kindy toward the truck. Nolan watched from afar as they got in the truck and began to drive away. Watching the truck peel out and drive away cut a path through his heart.
She left. She’d wanted to.
Or was she saving him?
Why wouldn’t she at least look at him?
With her, he’d always be on the run. Without her, he could go south and get a job. If he could find a way. He rubbed his hands over his face, fighting tears. She’d left him with nothing. Twice. She didn’t deserve his tears. She didn’t deserve anything other than the life Smith was giving her.
It took him time to get up the courage to go through José and the first man’s pockets. He found a good folding knife, a water flask, a packet of jerky, some pills in an orange bottle, and Greta’s keys. Under José, he found the rusty revolver, but any gun was better than no gun. He opened the barrel and looked inside. Two bullets.
Nolan shuffled toward the road. He’d try to hitchhike. The gun would help his chances if he were ambushed again. He had a water flask and a little bit of food. Hopefully, he’d make it to civilization.
What if she was leaving only to save his life? How would he ever know?
When he was almost to the busted blacktop, he heard a sound that made him whirl and scan the ground. It sounded like a puppy whining. His eyes scanned the scrub brush until he found a white bundle. He knelt and moved the bloody cloth aside.
The baby peered up at him and yawned.
Kindy had left it here to die.
Kindy
She pictured Nolan, his blue eyes and the way he looked at her. No one had ever looked at her the way he did. His eyes tracked her like she was the earth and he was the moon, orbiting around her. But she had left him. And the baby. She was a monster.
What choice did she have? Smith would’ve killed them.
“Got any more of that liquor?” Kindy asked, clicking on her seatbelt. Smith was driving like a maniac now. Probably afraid Nolan would come after them. Would Nolan come after them? She could only hope.
“Shit,” Smith said, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and using the other to fish around in his pocket. “You gonna drink me out of house and home.”
She took the flask he offered and tipped it to her lips. Maybe it would help her forget. She needed this whole flask for that.
He watched her carefully. “You’re gonna need to pay me back for that, you know.”
“I left my wallet in my other pants,” she said, taking another big gulp. But she knew what he meant. The nannies thought the girls didn’t know about sex, but what did they think would happen with a hospital full of girls and male workers who roamed the halls? Sure, the men knew they weren’t supposed to touch the girls, but when the doctors in charge were doing it, what good did that rule matter? Half her friends had had encounters with someone who worked with the hospital, consensual or not.
Still, the thought disgusted her. Smith disgusted her.
Drink to forget. She took another swig.
The baby. Smith had made her leave it on the side of the road. Once he’d checked to see what it was and realized it was a boy, he’d frowned and spit into the dirt. “Don’t want that thing stinking up my truck.”
Kindy had looked between the baby in her arms and Smith’s hard face. She was the one stinking, still covered in fluid. She didn’t answer, but looked down at the baby’s face. Red and scrunched up, the baby boy had a thin nose and pink lips. Did it look like her?
“We can’t just leave it.”
“I said I don’t want it stinking up my truck. Leave it an
d get in.” He stared hard at her, his hand on the butt of his gun. Walking around to the driver’s side, he started the engine. “Come on, now.”
How could she leave the baby? How could she not? Not only would he hurt them, but Smith could also hurt Nolan as well.
Shaking, she took the bundle and placed it carefully in the shade of a bush. She should do something. Fight. Run. But it was hopeless. Fighting had gotten her into this mess in the first place.
There were so many reasons why the child wouldn’t have lived even if she had cared for it, but she was haunted by his face.
She hoped he wouldn’t suffer.
Her head was fuzzy and her thoughts floated around without landing. She took another drink. When Smith swerved around debris in the road, she knocked her head against the window. It nearly made her black out.
“You should wear your seatbelt,” she mumbled.
“Shut up,” he said, glaring at her.
She didn’t respond. She was fading out. Kindy welcomed the grayness that settled over her. Right now, she’d give anything to go back to sleep. To go back to Plan B where she was nobody and nothing she did would hurt anyone.
Nolan
A baby. Kindy’s baby alone, lying on the desert floor. Nolan leaned down and pulled the dirty rag away from the child’s face. At first, Nolan had thought the baby was dead, but it blinked open its eyes and peered at him. It was alive. For now.
Nolan scanned the road, seeing the dust still lingering where Kindy and Smith had driven away. How could she leave her own baby to die? Unless she knew something about the infant Nolan didn’t. Sam had said the baby was dead long ago. But here it was.
No, she’d left this little one just like she’d left Nolan.
He’d been able to justify all her actions but this one. This was unforgivable.
“She did it to me, too,” he whispered to the child, shading it with his body. There was no way the baby would survive if he left it here. There was little chance of it surviving at all really, since Nolan had no way to feed it. There was only one person he knew who would be able to keep this newborn alive, but she had driven off.
Stirring, the baby opened one eye and looked up at Nolan.
He ran one of his fingers gently down its downy head. The child didn’t deserve this—didn’t deserve to be abandoned, to be alone.
Carefully, he picked up the baby and held it to his chest. The child let out a sigh and settled against Nolan. With a peek, he realized the baby he held was a boy.
There was only one way this little guy would survive. And Nolan was angry enough to try to make that happen.
It took him a while, running as fast as he could, but he made it back to where Greta was abandoned on the side of the road. He opened the passenger door and set the child on the seat. “It’s okay, Sam, just wait right here. Let me see what I can do.”
He went around and lifted the hood, looking at the greasy inner workings. He’d tinkered on cars with his dah, most of the boys had, but without tools, there wasn’t much he could do. But if Nolan could get her to start, he could drive her until she died. Sure, he’d be a billowing cloud of smoke rolling down the road, but she’d travel for a bit. He slammed the hood, palmed the keys, and got in the car.
“We’ll see how this goes,” he said to the baby sleeping beside him. Then he sent up a quick prayer and turned the car key.
The car chugged and wheezed, but amazingly, the engine turned over. When it rattled to life, the black smoke spilled from the sides of the hood and curled toward Nolan and the baby.
“Greta lives,” Nolan shouted, hitting the steering wheel. He pulled out, following the trail Smith and Kindy had taken.
Driving Greta was not like driving the Breeder’s high-tech truck. Not by a long shot. Greta sounded like a trash bin thundering down the road, letting anyone within a mile radius know she was coming. But the worst part was the cloud of black smoke that billowed around and into the car. Nolan coughed and pulled his shirt over his face. He slowed down long enough to put the little guy on the floor in the backseat so as to minimize the baby’s smoke inhalation.
Every so often, Nolan spotted tire tread in a swatch of sand and knew he was on the right road. It was a main drag south, which made sense. Everyone was headed the same place—to the mythical White Sands. Hope in a hopeless world.
When he spotted Smith’s truck, his heart began to pound. Anger flared in his chest again as he gunned it.
What was his plan? Nolan wasn’t sure, but he pulled the rusty firearm out and readied it.
Smith must’ve spotted Greta—or heard her coming—because it sped up. Nolan pressed the accelerator to the floor. Greta lurched, belching horrible acrid smoke like a chimney.
He was almost to the truck now. Lifting the revolver, Nolan rested it on the steering wheel. He’d already killed a man. He didn’t want to kill anyone else, but he had to make Kindy see reason. This child would not die today.
There was a horrible bang, and Greta shook. At first, Nolan thought gunshot, but he saw no bullet holes. It was Greta, slowing despite his foot on the accelerator. The engine made horrible screeching noises. He’d pushed her past her breaking point.
“Christ!” he yelled, slamming his foot on the gas over and over. Nothing would coax Greta any farther.
As he coasted to a stop, he peered through the smoke as Smith’s truck grew smaller and smaller.
They were getting away, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Kindy
She lurched awake to a terrible noise.
“What was that?” she asked, turning to look at Smith.
His face was tense, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “Bastard is following us.” His eyes flicked to the rearview.
Turning around, she saw a beat-up car held together with Bondo and wires. “Who’s following us?”
“Your boyfriend. Doesn’t know when to quit. But his engine just seized up on him.” Smith stuck his head out the open window, his Stetson fluttering against the wind that rushed by. “Nice try,” he yelled, sounding smug.
Kindy turned again and stared at the car that seemed to be coasting to a stop behind them. Smoke billowed out like the whole thing was on fire. “That’s Nolan? It can’t be.”
“It is,” Smith said. “Thought he’d come claim what’s mine.”
Kindy whipped her head to look at Smith. “I’m not yours.”
He glanced at her and then back at the road, saying nothing.
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not yours,” she repeated.
“Fine. Whatever.” Smith continued to stare straight ahead. She could tell he was trying hard to keep his face expressionless. She’d seen men do this before. Lying men. Deceitful men.
Nolan had never made that face before. Never even come close.
“Stop the truck,” she commanded.
He didn’t twitch, just kept going.
“Stop the goddamned truck,” she said, reaching for the steering wheel.
He grabbed her hand, gripping her wrist until pain shot up her arm.
Kindy gritted her teeth and stared at him. She wouldn’t cry out, wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I won’t go with you anymore. From now on, if you want me to do something, you’re going to have to make me.”
He turned and glared at her, his expression steely. “Fine by me.”
The time to let fate drag her along was over. She didn’t think, didn’t calculate the repercussions of her actions. Just reached across the truck’s cab with her other hand and yanked hard on the steering wheel.
The truck swerved hard right and then left. Tires squealed on the pavement. Smith yelled, letting go of her wrist and grabbing the wheel with both hands. The truck fishtailed across the road. Smith fought hard to right it, but he couldn’t gain control. Hitting gravel, the truck careened off the road. Gravel pinged against the metal underbelly and clattered against the windshield. The truck lurched to the right and begin to tilt. It began to roll, the world t
ilting, objects inside the truck flying past. Smith screamed.
Kindy just closed her eyes.
The impact was sudden and earth-shattering.
Noise and debris filled the truck cab. Her body slammed against the seatbelt, cutting off her air supply. Glass rained on her as the truck continued to grind its way across the desert floor. Small rocks pelted her body. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see.
Things grew fuzzy.
When she came to, she was lying on her side against the truck’s smashed-in door, the ground now replacing her missing window. Ahead of her, the windshield was gone. Through the open area, she could see the tree that had finally stopped their advance buried halfway into the engine block. The metal hood split down the center like a pie crust someone had ran a fork through.
Around her, bits of glass glittered in the sun. Papers from the smashed glove compartment were scattered around her feet. Her eyes landed on a bright red key ring that said:
Lazy Days = Good Food, Good Friends, and Shuffleboard.
I’m alive, she thought. All that, and I’m still alive.
Kindy scanned her body, feeling a terrible ache spreading across her chest where the seatbelt had caught and held. Probably a broken rib. At the minimum, it was some serious bruising. Her hands patted her head and came away with spots of blood on them, but nothing was gushing. Her legs and her arms seemed to work.
And Smith was nowhere to be seen.
With trembling hands, she tried to unbuckle her seatbelt, but it wouldn’t give. It took several more minutes to find a shard of glass that would cut through the fabric, but it left the palm of one hand bleeding. Careful with the other bits of glass, she crawled through the open windshield.
The truck had cut a large furrow from the road and down the shoulder about sixty feet before stopping at the tree. Looking around, she saw a large form on top of a jagged boulder.
Smith.
Stepping carefully, her body aching, she walked to where his body was crumpled.
If the windshield hadn’t killed him, the boulder had. His neck was kinked at a very unnatural angle. Blood ran from a giant cut down his forehead, covering his face and neck.
