by The Behrg
“I don’t want him to see me!” she screamed.
Jenna entered the room, her young face flushed red. She scooped Adam up and nestled her lips against his neck, blowing on him and making him laugh. Through his giggles he cried out, “Stop!” She looked at Blake, mouthed, “Sorry,” and then left, taking Adam with her.
Blake watched her go, unable to peel his eyes off her. He was surprised to feel stirrings down low, especially in the presence of his dying wife. Not so surprising considering where he and Jenna had come from. Or where they were going after.
She was staring at him when he turned around, and through sheer force of will, he was able to meet her eyes. Wounded eyes. Rachel eyes. If she hadn’t known before, she knew now.
She had known before.
“Tell him I love him,” she said.
“You’ll tell him when—”
“No.” They both knew she wouldn’t be getting better. “Tell him.”
“I will,” he said.
“Every day.”
“I promise.”
The words were as hollow as the empty room he spoke to. Finally Blake heard the soft tick of another second pass by.
4
Adam sat across the hall in a bedroom a quarter the size of his own on a low mattress as hard as the concrete ground he had slept on the night before. The blankets were tousled, with stains larger than any of Conrad’s puddles. He had fed Milton his story and now, like an accused criminal, awaited his fate. As the voices across the hall grew louder, he suspected that fate would fall far from his favor.
“That’s just what he wants you to think!” Gary’s voice.
“This gets out, that we crossed one of our own? Who does business with us will be the least of our concerns.” That was Stu.
“There’s always business,” Gary countered.
“You want the people we sell to comin’ for us?” Stu again.
“Nah, nothin’ here is what it seems.”
“I agree with Gary.” Milton, a voice no one argued with.
Adam had made the mistake of thinking they feared Joje. He had been under the impression the whole song and pony dance when they had purchased the weapons was all for Blake’s sake.
He had been wrong.
He bent forward, unlacing his shoes and pulling them from his feet. The bed groaned, old springs singing at the shift of weight. Within seconds Gary was at the open doorway, no doors to any of the bedrooms.
“The hell you doin’?”
“I barely slept last night. I was just gonna lay down?”
Gary looked at the bed then back at Adam. “Don’t get comfortable.” He snorted, then left, rejoining the others.
When Adam stood, the noise of the bed sounded the same as if he were lying across it. He stepped cautiously, testing each floorboard before letting his weight fall. His back against the wall, he listened to the men arguing a few feet away.
“. . . Whole thing feels like a setup.” Milton. Or maybe Gary.
“Good money for the amount of merch.” Definitely Stu.
“Not for the kid.” No, that was Milton.
“Ain’t no amount enough for that.” Gary.
Milton, Gary, and Stu, the three stooges, Adam thought. And they trusted Joje as much as his father did.
He peeked around the corner, pulling immediately back. The open doorway diagonal from his own was blocked with Stu’s bulky frame. He stood, back to Adam, leaning against the frame with one arm. Another glance—Adam couldn’t see past him, which meant Gary and Milton couldn’t see him.
He stepped into the hall closing his eyes, something he had done as a child. The mere act of walking with his eyes shut always made him feel invisible. He crept to his right toward, presumably, the front of the cabin.
“Then we pick him up and end this quietly before it begins!” a voice shouted, causing Adam to freeze. He thought it was Gary but couldn’t be sure. He didn’t glance back. If they noticed him, Adam was certain he’d know.
The end of the short hall opened not into a front room as he had hoped, but into a bathroom, a showerhead that would run onto tiled floor, no tub or wall separating it from the single toilet and bucket of water next to it.
How could there not be a front entrance?
Looking back down the short hall, he noticed the door he had somehow missed—an actual door, fitted into one of the smaller doorways. A thin plate of glass ran through the upper half, a sort of window looking onto a staircase, winding down.
Of course the front entrance would have to be lower than the back. Just open the door enough to squeeze through, creep down the stairs, and he was home free, though he had no idea where he’d go from there.
He wasn’t even sure where home was. Not for him.
Turning the handle, an old round knob that spun with ease, he pulled it slowly toward him.
Creeeeeeeaaaaaak.
The hinges couldn’t have announced his exit any louder. He spun into the narrow stairway, slamming the door closed behind him and taking the stairs two at a time. Before he hit the final step the door flung open above.
The bottom landing opened into a room the size of a closet; cement floor, a door to the right, one to the left. Adam chose the one away from the house, leading outside. He flipped the deadbolt and rushed through.
Sunlight hit him, cement changing to dirt, rocks pressing through his socks and into his feet. He ran, bracing against the pain with each step, his socks flopping, beginning to slide off.
He leapt over a ridge of dirt and rock at a curve in the rough road that lead away from the cabin just as he heard the men spill from the front door. He ducked lower, flattening himself to the dirt.
Had they seen where he had gone? How many options were there, and how long before they narrowed them down?
Not long.
Ten feet away the first of a forest of trees staggered up from the ground. Tall thick trunks, dense enough that he might be able to lose them. Getting that far would be the trouble.
He inched along the raised ridge on his belly, following its gentle curve. Ahead, the trees drew closer to the road. It also put more distance between him and the cabin, him and his captors.
His new captors.
“Don’t anyone touch him,” Milton shouted. “I want the pleasure.”
Adam couldn’t wait any longer—he shot forward in a full sprint, loose rocks kicking out from beneath his feet.
“There!” someone shouted.
Adam looked back. Gary stood on a ridge, rifle at his shoulder. Adam leapt, still a few feet from the trees that might offer some protection. He hit the dirt, the whirl of a bullet whistling overhead. His legs found purchase, half crawling, half running toward the slope of trees.
He reached the first tree and wrapped himself around it just as another bullet plunked into the wood behind him.
“I said don’t touch him!”
“You want him to get away?”
“He ain’t goin’ nowhere. Not out here.”
Adam’s breathing was labored, his feet burning, rocks and stickers driven into the soft flesh of his feet. No time to do anything about it.
He pushed off the trunk just as a body stepped into his path, blocking his way. A branch snapped beneath the man’s weight.
Stu.
His automatic rifle, the one Adam had shot, was held down at his side.
“Please. Let me go?” Adam knew it was pathetic begging for his life, but the tears just under the surface weren’t fake. Neither was his quivering lip. “Help me?”
Stu gave the slightest of nods and stepped to the side.
Breath returned, Adam’s heart beat again. He stepped past the large, bearded man, a whirl of motion following him.
A weight slammed into the back of his head. The world tilted—leaves, branches, rocks, pulling toward him, drawing up from the ground.
When he hit, he slid, the sharp twangs of pain in his feet now plunging into his stomach, arms, palms, and face. He pushed himself up,
legs still down behind him, and managed to crawl another inch or two before collapsing.
Somewhere between the haze of his throbbing head and the darkness swirling before his eyes, he thought he heard the words “I am.”
5
The bouncing of the SUV along the uneven dirt path had taken its toll on Jenna’s body, her legs flaring beneath her seat. They had followed a trail that lead nowhere but up at an angle she hadn’t known her Escalade could handle. Trees swarmed around them, pressing in. Soon the road would be too narrow to traverse.
“Our friends don’t know we’re coming,” Joje said, “and they’re not keen on visitors.”
She heard Drew rustling in the back, something clanging against her folded-up wheelchair. It was the sword. Drew set it between his legs, a samurai meditating before battle. An extremely overweight albino samurai.
His eyes flickered toward her, then away. Was he thinking of doing it? Thrusting the sword through the seat into Joje’s back? Was he capable of doing it?
“Not sure that’ll help, Dwew, when the bullets begin to fly.”
“It’ll help,” Drew answered.
“I thought you said they were friends of yours?” Jenna said.
“They were.”
They continued in relative silence, the noise of tires churning over rocks and jostle of shocks and undercarriage replacing conversation. The dirt road banked up high on the right, and as they came around the corner, they felt rather than heard the first gunshot. A plink of metal followed. The vehicle shuddered.
Joje hit the gas. They topped the crest, view opening up to a cabin a hundred yards out. Jenna saw a man disappearing behind it.
She felt Drew’s hand on her arm. “Get down,” he said.
Light reflected off to the right in the trees, and then the windshield lit up with bullet holes, glass splintering outward, puffs of air streaming past Jenna’s head. Drew had crouched low, as low as his large frame would allow, and Joje screamed—not in pain, in exultation.
He cranked the wheel hard to the left. The back of the Escalade turned and spun on the rough dirt, and then the vehicle jerked, its momentum carrying it in a direction its tires no longer allowed. They lifted into the air.
Jenna braced for impact.
It came quick, the back of the vehicle slamming down on its side first, then rolling, tumbling, sky above, below, rotated to the side, glass and the terrible sound of crunching metal. Airbags sprang, from the side, from the front, and when the vehicle finally came to rest, Jenna lay on her side, gravity pulling her toward her door.
She was breathing, uninjured as far as she could tell, except for the aggravated throbs pulsing from her legs. She turned her head and felt a stiffness there that would certainly grow.
Joje suddenly fell into her with abandon, an elbow colliding into her chest, his head knocking against hers. He pushed off with a grunt, stepping onto the armrest. “Keep down and stay quiet.”
The windshield in front of them was shattered, glass clinging to the outer edges of the frame. Joje reached down, wiping something from Jenna’s face.
Blood.
She hadn’t even registered the pain. Still couldn’t.
He winked at her, then began to moan. He kicked at the glass, making a wider hole, then crawled through. It was a weird sensation watching him stand just outside, a sense of vertigo gripping Jenna like she had never felt before.
Joje spit a glob of blood onto the ground, hands on his knees, wavering.
A man stepped from the trees into the clearing, a large gun strapped around him and held near his waist. He approached with caution. Jenna almost shouted a warning but thought better of it. She should be so lucky.
Joje fell to his knees, arms raised, hands coming together on the back of his head.
“How’d you find us?” the man asked. He was old, thin. “No one knows about this place.”
“You can’t think I’d do business with someone I don’t know?” Joje said. “Gary Blanchard?”
The man, Gary, tightened his grip on the rifle.
“Ex-marine, served from sixty-eight to seventy-one in Southern Quảng Trị, Regimental Landing Team Twenty-Six. Court martialed December eleventh of seventy-one and deserted shortly after. In seventy-five you came back to the States in part due to our dear President Ford’s proclamation that changed your discharge from dishonorable to a mere clemency discharge. You were in Florida till nineteen eighty, mostly in construction, then moved to Montana with the gal pal you were shacking with at the time, Elizabeth Hulton. Fathered a daughter, and that’s when the records get a little light. But I don’t stop at light. You joined the Militia of Montana that holed up in the Gallatin Mountains outside of Bozeman, later deserting to the King’s Mountain Militia somewhere in the early nineties. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, you left the King’s Men, spending a few years in Mexico where you also fathered a son, one you never knew about. He died before his tenth birthday, so no love lost there. Entered California in oh-six, whereupon you regrouped with Milton Steed, a former King’s Man himself. And here you’ve built your enterprise selling to the same groups you once believed in, customers like John Trochmann, Mark Koernke, and Chris Kerodin and his Threepers.”
Gary looked visibly shaken, like he should be the one on the ground, Joje standing over him with a gun.
“Did I miss anything?” Joje asked.
“Milton was right. You are dangerous.”
“More than you could ever know.”
Gary’s gun drew up, but not before Drew appeared beside him, sword whirling in his hands—he thrust it through the man’s chest, a single shot releasing from Gary’s rifle before the blade was withdrawn. Gary toppled to the ground. Drew kicked the rifle away and then squatted in front of the man, blocking Jenna’s view. The arc of his blade, however, was clear enough, as was the spray of blood that spread outward onto the parched dirt.
“Took your time, didn’t you?” Joje said.
And then Jenna heard a cry. “Mom! Dad?”
It was Adam. Her son.
6
“Adam!”
Jenna’s voice broke through the clearing, and Adam felt something swell in his chest, then a boot slammed into his backside and he stumbled forward another few feet, falling onto one knee. His parents’ Escalade lay on its side, his mom calling from within.
“Drop it or the little guy eats dirt,” Stu shouted behind Adam.
Drew stood over the body of Gary on the ground, one foot on the man’s head as if he had stopped a soccer ball. The head, which was no longer connected to the rest of his body.
“Okay, okay.” Joje flung a small pistol away.
“The, uh, sword? You can drop that too.”
It took Drew longer, but he leaned down, sliding it their direction in the dirt.
Where was his dad? Hiding? Had they all really come to rescue him?
“Adam! Are you okay?” Jenna asked. Adam could see motion through the windshield, Jenna trying to move or get out.
“I’m good,” Adam yelled, expecting a kick but receiving none.
Joje didn’t seem that concerned with the automatic rifle Stu had pointed at them. He kept looking toward the cabin, moving gradually away from the car. One wheel still spun lazily in the air. “We’re just here for the boy,” Joje shouted. “No one else needs to get hurt!”
Adam caught movement out of the corner of his eye near the cabin.
Milton knelt in the rocks, raising a large cylindrical tube to his shoulders. It’s a rocket launcher—Adam almost wanted to laugh. Milton’s angle kept him out of view from both Joje and Drew, though he had a perfect shot at the vehicle.
Jenna. Trapped within.
“No!” Adam turned, jumping onto Stu, clawing at his face.
The rifle connected with Adam’s jaw, sending him sprawling. He heard commotion behind him, someone running.
“Get my mom out!” he shouted.
Stu was on one knee, bringing the rifle up in a quick and tra
ined motion. Adam leapt at him again, causing his first shot to go wild. Stu held Adam back with his left hand pressed into Adam’s face.
“Stop it, kid—I’m on your side!” He shoved Adam back down, raising the rifle up and firing. No aim, no scope, and only one shot. Its noise rang out.
Adam followed the direction Stu had fired.
Toward the cabin.
Stu rose onto his toes to see if his shot had landed. Joje was still running, reached the corner of the cabin and turned back toward them, arms waving in the air.
Man down, or whatever the hell it meant.
Adam reached his arm up toward the bulky bearded man to have him help him to his feet. “You were with them the whole time?”
Stu took it, pulling Adam up, then shoved him forward with such thrust Adam flew back to the ground, barely keeping from hitting his head. He slid in the dirt, a prickly weed scratching at the side of his face.
“You could have gotten someone killed,” Stu said, clearly pissed. As if that wasn’t exactly what Stu had done? He left Adam there, walking toward Joje and the cabin.
Adam went to the Escalade.
He lay down in the dirt, hand reaching through the broken windshield to take hold of Jenna’s. A lock of hair had fallen over the left side of her face, and Adam could see it had darkened near her forehead.
“I wanted to come to you,” she said.
She was bleeding. How bad?
“Where’s Dad?”
“Home. I think.” Her tone lost any of its brightness. “They’re going to kill us.”
“They saved us!”
“No, Adam, they are going to kill us.” Her grip tightened on his until it hurt.
“I won’t let them,” he said.
Her lips rose in a forced smile. She didn’t think he could.
“I don’t know why, but I mean something to them. I can protect you,” Adam said.
“I’m glad I’m your mother,” she replied.
And for the first time that Adam could remember, he didn’t know what to say.
She pushed at the hair falling over her face, and it fell out in one large chunk. Adam gasped—it looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to the side of her head. The pink and gristly material that had formed like mold on her scalp pulsed with a heartbeat of its own. Her head fell forward, grip releasing from his hand.
