by Aaron Dries
She pulled her right leg through the door and lowered her kneecap onto the hood. A muscle gave way and she fell flat onto her chest, her leg slamming against the grillwork. Oxygen emptied from her lungs. So many adult concepts had been forced upon her today that something as natural as breathing now seemed a complication, a hiccup in her fight for survival. Breathe! She took a mouthful of air and felt better, her mind focused.
“Everyone down!” Michael half-yelled, half-whispered.
The curtain in the window shifted. Behind it was the solid shape of the mother, not the son.
Diana dropped her head and looked at her hands. They are not my hands. My hands would have held on to my sister. They wouldn’t have let her go. They would punch the old bitch and the man with the veins in his arms. They would not let this happen.
The woman in the window continued to peer.
Diana could even sympathize with the mother, who had rushed to her daughter when she collapsed on the lawn, dragged her dead weight back into the house. Maternal instinct had given her strength. They would not let their family go. They are stronger than me, she thought.
Julia was on her side, lying as still as she could. It was too late to go back now. A smile parted her lips. She hugged her stomach and waited for the all-clear signal.
The shadow in the window scoured the lawn and the bus. Then it disappeared. The curtain fell back into place and relief filled the passengers. It wouldn’t last for long.
Michael was too scared to speak at first. He composed himself and told Jack that the woman was gone.
Jack informed Sarah who in turn pushed her face into the gap and told Julia, “The coast is clear.”
Julia looked at the old woman through the jaws of the door. Her face instilled faith in Julia.
Sarah reached through the door and her hand lighted on the girl’s leg; what she’d intended to be a comforting touch turned into a desperate, shivering grip. “I’m so sorry,” Sarah said.
Julia nodded.
“Be careful.”
Shattered glass. Clouds. The lawn. Dirt and dead grass. The barren trees near the house and the jungle vine of Christmas lights in their branches. The blood-speckled cut-outs and below them, Peter’s corpse. A crow nestled on his broken skull. His eyes were gone. Plucked out. One dangled from the beak of the bird.
Julia was afraid of a lot of things. The driver and her family, even Jack scared her. But above all she feared the crows, coming for her before she was dead.
She knew the only way to overcome the fear was to move. She rolled off the hood and landed on the ground. Hard. Hair fell over her eyes, her knees curled up towards her stomach. It was then she heard the hissing.
There was a snake near the busted tire of the pickup, lured from the bushes by the prospect of rain. A thought jabbed into her mind. It’s here to bite and kill me. Fate.
Too shocked to be scared, Julia crawled around the front of the bus to the opposite side, which faced the driveway and not the house. Inside, Sarah and Diana crossed the aisle, tracking her movements. Michael focused on the windows of the building across the yard. Watching it had the effect of an optical allusion, or one of the Magic Eye illustrations he enjoyed when he was younger. The longer he looked at the house without blinking, the more it seemed to be breathing, alive and hungry.
The driveway was a steep incline directly in front of Julia but still some distance away.
I could just run for it, she thought.
She remembered the snake and looked under the bus. It slithered under the wreckage, leaving winding curves in the dirt.
She stood and looked at the windows on her side of the bus. Jack’s face was almost unreadable through a series of hand streaks on the glass, highlighted like feathers by sunlight. Sarah kissed a finger and pushed it against the window.
Julia saw her sister crying. They shared a moment and then she motioned for Diana to keep watch. “Go. Help me,” she mouthed.
Julia turned from the window and stepped back into shadow. She forced herself flat against the side of the bus, stepped along its length, keeping her hands on its warm, metal surface.
It was like playing hide-and-seek as a child with her school friends; some inanimate object or playground feature was “home” and therefore “safe”. If you were touching it, you had outplayed the seeker. She felt the same anticipation now. As strange as it was, the bus was “safe”.
Julia came to the end and knew it was now or never. Her hands went to her stomach. She wished she had more of a bump, something she could really wrap her fingers around. But it was enough to know that there was life in her. Julia peeked her head around the rear of the bus and had a clear view of the shed. When the time came to sprint for it, there would be no turning. Her course was dead ahead.
She scanned the ground for upraised rocks or anything that could trip her—a forgotten cricket bat or Frisbee. Anything. She couldn’t afford to go sprawling onto the grass. If she did, she would die. She looked at the house. The windows were empty. The front and back doors, even the windows—they were all places her enemy might charge from. Julia knew that if they did come running rabid and angry, she was dead.
Every moment she stood there was a moment closer to them checking, and that could not happen. She was a mother.
Julia readied herself and ran.
Thirty-Four: The Shed
Her feet pounded the earth.
The faces on the bus slid from view, drawn into time-lapse blurs as she increased her speed. Her hands swung in tight fists, back and forth, hard and fast.
The shed loomed closer.
Julia was a mouse under the eye of an overhead hawk.
She increased her speed but it just didn’t feel quick enough. Every step was half a step too short. She faltered for a moment, then regained her footing. She pushed herself forward.
Run.
The shed door swallowed her whole.
Darkness painted her vision. The temperature dropped. A chill climbed her back. She was out of breath and dropped to her haunches. Her eyes took some time to adjust to the dimness.
I made it, she cheered to herself. Her personal victory was so powerful she almost forgot where she was, that she was only running from one hell to another.
I did it! I did it!
Her parents would be proud. There was an insane moment when she wished they were with her to witness such bravery. They would smile at her, clap their hands. When she returned to the bus with the weapons, they would take her in their arms and tell her how wonderful she was, how heroic.
The first thing she noticed was the punching bag suspended from a rafter in the middle of the room. The tin roof ticked under the heat. Julia stood and walked around the room, fighting the urge to close the door behind her. Such a decision would be stupid; the family would notice. And then I would be dead. Just like the others.
Old car and hunting magazines covered the floor. Yellowed newspapers littered a workbench; on top were a small collection of tools and loose screws. A hammer. She lifted it up, the metal head scraping against the paper and then the cool, satisfying heft of it in her grip.
I could never hit anyone with this.
She grew uncertain. After all, she never thought she was capable of doing what she had done so far. At some point she might have to defend herself with a hammer. Could she break someone’s skull with a blunt object to save herself? She was not sure and shook the thought away.
What about saving her sister, her child? Julia felt the weight in her palm and her fingers tightened around the handle. Maybe, oh Jesus, just maybe. Shaking, she slid the tool into the deep, rear pocket of her jeans and returned her focus to the table. She had to be quick.
Her fingers sifted through the mess, tissues and cigarettes. Ancient tobacco flakes stuck to the gummy blood covering her hands,. A clear, empty vial and a roll of gaffer tape. Julia went to the door and surveyed the house.
Nothing.
The clouds were darker.
The headlights
of a half-assembled Volkswagen caught the sun and glowed in the darkness of one shadowy corner. Seeing it there made her stomach constrict. It was like some half-dead monster, peering at her with grimy eyes, waiting for the right moment to draw together its old, battered bones and pounce. Julia could still feel its stare on her back when she turned away.
There was a toolbox under the bench. She skidded to her knees and flicked the latches. The snap echoed through the room. It’s okay—just keep moving. The box held nails, a small ratchet, a couple of loose ball bearings and a can of WD-40 spray grease. Next to it there was an X-Acto utility knife. She picked it up and thumbed the blade. It rose from its shallow casing with a rusty squeak. Yes, it was something they could use. Without a doubt. She pocketed the knife, a giddy laugh escaping her—just another small victory in the face of madness. I’m doing it, I really am. This is going to work. Julia stood, not bothering to close the lid, and spun on her heel to face the opposite side of the shed.
She stopped.
On the far wall were rows of guns on antler racks.
A hot gust blew into the shed.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. Right beside her. Julia stumbled backward.
It was only the punching bag swinging in the wind.
Stop it, Jules, you’re losing it. Stay together, okay? You can do this.
Determined, she returned to the rack. Underneath the horns and dust-covered guns there was a metallic chest of drawers. She stood next to it and attempted to grab for the nearest gun. She couldn’t reach.
Julia pulled open the bottom drawer of the chest. The metal screeched as it opened, reminding her of Freddy Krueger in those Nightmare on Elm Street movies and the way his horrible, child-murdering finger-knives had scraped against metal pipes. She’d seen the film with friends and been unable to sleep after it. Her mother was angry with her for watching such nonsense. “It was fun, Mom,” she told her. It was fun to be scared, even if it gave her nightmares, because when the nightmare was over she went on with her life, normality returned and she was safe. Standing there in the dank shed, Julia wondered if she would ever see her mother again, or if there would ever be another day without this fear.
She put her left foot on the drawer and pushed herself up. Careful now, Jules. Her weight bore down on the chest, rattling objects within. Her right hand stretched up toward one of the guns. She grabbed the handle and started to twist if off a polished boar tusk.
Julia felt the tickle on her left hand and looked down.
A spider sank its fangs into her skin. Her eyes were on it for only a microsecond. Time enough to register its size—about a centimeter, with a scarlet hourglass on its abdomen. A red-back.
Julia let out a short scream, flicked her hand and lost her balance, taking the chest with her. The contents inside rushed towards the front of the drawers and it leaned forward, unbalanced. Julia wrestled with its weight, the gun dropping to the ground. The spider had vanished.
The drawers started to fall open, pushing against her breasts and thighs. With a loud bang and rattle, she pushed it back onto its four corners and started clawing at her clothes. The spider could still be on her somewhere. She spun on the spot, shaking her arms, slapping at her hair and face. When she stopped, she looked at her arms and saw nothing.
On the ground next to the gun the spider crawled back towards the corrugated wall. It did not make it.
Julia crushed it with her foot.
She knew red-back spiders could be deadly but took comfort in knowing that people did not often die from their bites. She knew that if you were bitten, you had to rush to the hospital—
The venom pumped through her body. Panic was replaced by shock, then discomfort. She brought her hand up to her face and looked at the small, pink teat of upraised flesh where two tiny fang marks wept clear liquid. She squeezed the bite as though it were nothing more than a pimple she awoken to find on her face. She stopped as pain seized her arm. She fell onto the dirt, crying.
How could I have been so stupid! It was, after all, the perfect environment for the red-back, all dark and dusty. Julia had always been taught to shake out her shoes before putting them on, just in case a spider had crawled inside during the night, and to never walk under or between trees in the summer for fear of webs. She’d always been so careful, fear acting as the best discipline.
Pain settled again, a second wave latching on to her arm. Her memory flashed to lessons at school, advice from science teachers about spider bites. Everything was cloudy. Should she tear strips from her shirt and make a tourniquet? Or was that for snakes? Was it better to localize the venom or let it spread and dilute? She couldn’t remember. What about my baby? She sat upright, grabbing at her stomach. Nausea painted her face gray.
“Oh my God,” she said. The chances of her going to a hospital were impossible. She was at the end of the earth and flooded with the venom from the second-most deadly spider in the country. Diana will know what to do.
Julia picked up the gun and put it in her front pocket. It rested against her hipbone. She ran to the door and looked out.
The sound of the clanging cabinet and her screams had not reached the family. All was still. “Thank you, thank you.”
She approached the chest of drawers with caution, her injured hand held against her chest. The fingers on her good hand wrapped around a drawer handle and pulled.
The drawer she opened was full of unlabeled boxes, loose bullets and shotgun cartridges. She whipped the gun out of her pocket and tried to open the chamber to see if it was loaded. Pain rocketed through her shaking hand. With a gasp of frustration she pushed the gun back into her pocket. Julia opened random boxes, shoveled handfuls of bullets—big and small—into her jeans. She backed away from the cabinet, not bothering to close the drawer.
Somewhere there was the sound of a barking dog. It was a deep, rasping noise, hungry and full of anger.
She stopped near the door. For a moment she considered running out into the remaining daylight without looking to see if the coast remained clear. She slammed her hand against her forehead, cursed herself for her stupidity. Images filled her head of her minuscule child contorting and screaming inside her womb, strangling, as venom reached its tiny, unformed heart. The images themselves were poison, weakening her.
Somewhere there was another sound. Louder than the barking dog.
Julia pushed her hair out of her eyes and moved a little closer to the door. From here she could just see the rear windows of the bus and the faces of the passengers who signaled for her to run. Arms waved, a hand stuck out of one of the sliding glass planes and beckoned.
The thought of running across that barren no man’s land again was overwhelming. There was the sound again. Crashing.
It came from inside the house. Breaking glass and muted yelling. A woman, the driver perhaps. No—another woman. The mother.
Julia listened. Her fingers gripped the doorframe until her knuckles turned milky. She looked at the bus again, at the hurried signals for her to break free from the shadows. She closed her eyes. Her hands touched her stomach once more. Julia crouched low, head between her knees. Hectic, random words spilled out of her like water from an overfilled bathtub. Soon there was a tattered melody lost among the torrent. Before the minute passed, Julia was singing “Rock-a-bye Baby” to herself, to her child.
She tugged at her earlobes, something she used to do as a toddler when she was scared. The lyrics drifted away; soon there was only half-hearted humming.
My baby is a girl. She is going to be beautiful. It will be hard for her to grow up without a dad. Maybe he will come back. Answer my calls. It’s hard to have an adult life with adults looking down at you. I'm sure my parents think I'm into drugs or something. Ha. Maybe that would be easier. They would hate me for being pregnant. I understand why but I don’t agree. Not any more. Now I love it. Because I love my little daughter. She is going to be so beautiful. She is going to love music and movies, just like her mother, and she is
going to do well in school and meet a nice boy and be married one day, and then maybe, just maybe, she will have her own child. She will be happy because all she will ever know is the happiness her mother fought for. I love my baby, my tiny, little Tinkerbell, fluttering in the deepest part of me. My bub, she is like light. So beautiful, so wonderful. It’s like magic. My daughter’s name is going to be Astoria, after my sister’s hometown in America. I want to go there so bad, to see all the places that meant something to her and her own mother, before she died. Together, Diana, my baby and I will sit at the crossroads near the train tracks beside the docks and watch the water. Astoria.
“…cradle and all.”
Thirty-Three
Liz stood in the doorway. Her eyes were deep red scratches in her face. She staggered down the steps.
A current of terror palsied Julia’s legs as she ran into the daylight. She didn’t see a woman running across a lawn towards her; instead she saw death closing in. Her ankle twisted, bullets fell from her pockets. She hit the ground.
Helpless, the passengers screamed at her to get up, the bus rocking. Through the hair hanging over her eyes, Julia saw her sister banging on the windows, screaming her name over and over. Diana’s voice hooked under her skin, reeling her to her feet.
Liz lurched forward. “Where are you going?” she yelled. Above, the clouds flexed and belched the day’s first thunder. “Don’t leave me!” Her arms were outstretched before her. “Take me with you!”
Jed appeared at the door. “Mom, Dad! She’s out—come ‘ere!” He rushed down the stairs. Thunder boomed again as he started sprinting.
Wes stepped from the shadows onto the veranda.
Julia was close to safety. Her aim was for the mangled nose of the bus where the door met the shattered truck. Stealth didn’t matter any more. The direct course was shedding critical seconds from her run. She pushed herself harder.
Wes watched his son run towards Liz and registered nothing. Things were happening too fast for him to grasp the situation. He started when his wife latched on to his arm, her fingers digging into his flesh. He shook her off and headed for the shed.
