Divided We Stand

by C. A. Rudolph

  “Goddammit, Mark!” Sasha squealed. “They’ll kill you…they’ll kill us both! Don’t you get it?”

  “Let them. I don’t care,” Mark said furiously. “I don’t care.” His body tensed as he continued to fight against her. Then he started to sob. “Look what they did to him. Just look what they did to my brother. They shot him. I can’t believe they shot him.”

  Sasha gritted her teeth as she pulled on the submachine gun with all her strength. “And he’s going to bleed out if you don’t stop fighting me! Let go!” she yelled, then punched him squarely in the nose.

  Mark recoiled backward and let go of the MP5. “Why did you do that? Why?”

  Nearly out of breath, Sasha rolled to her knees and tossed the gun into the brush. “Because I don’t want to die any more than you do.”

  Within seconds, a group of armed DHS agents tackled them, placed their wrists into flex cuffs, and took them in to custody. Another lone agent manhandled Chad. As he writhed in pain, he was rolled over, cuffed, and forced to his feet.

  “Bring them over here,” a voice bellowed from the lead SUV’s passenger-side window. “I want to see the three blind mice who fell into my trap.”

  The agents pushed Sasha along without much effort, but they had to shove and drag Mark, as he had chosen to fight them tooth and nail the entire way.

  When they got to within several feet of the SUV, the tinted window rolled the full way down, and a face that Sasha recognized, but hadn’t seen in a while, turned to look at her.

  The man in the truck cocked his head, looking bewildered. “What the hell? You’re that woman. That biker’s wife, aren’t you?” Seth Bates asked.

  Sasha glowered. She rolled her lips between her teeth and jerked her head backward, knocking the hair from her eyes. “Widow.”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. He is dead, isn’t he? Yet you remain alive still. Funny, I could’ve sworn we watched every one of you get killed that day.”

  Sasha’s eyes narrowed sharply. “You were watching?”

  “Of course we were watching,” Bates replied. “We have eyes on everything—we’re the damn DHS, for crying out loud.” He paused, looking her up and down. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

  Sasha hesitated, trying to decide what the best answer would be. She gestured her head in the direction of the other houses. “Food.”

  Seth looked indignant, and his tone quantified his appearance. “Food?”

  “Yes, food. We’re hungry. And that house over there had a ton of food in it, last time I checked.”

  Seth smirked. “Likely story. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all gone. We seized it all. It belongs to the government now.”

  Sasha nodded, turning her head guiltily away. “What about—”

  Seth’s face perked up. “What about?”

  The former biker’s wife turned her head away and hid her face.

  “So you were here looking for something else, weren’t you? Or was it someone else? Maybe even a few of them?”

  Sasha looked to Seth, minor hope slipping through the desolation in her gaze. “Are they okay?”

  Seth chuckled and turned to his driver, who shared a laugh with him. “Oh, yeah. They’re doing fine. They did resist us, though…when we initially found them. So they were placed into custody, like you.” He ogled Sasha. “Don’t you worry, though. You’ll be seeing them soon.”

  Seth bawled orders at his men. They pushed Mark and Sasha into the backseat of the lead SUV and shoved a bleeding Chad Mason into the rear compartment. They rejoined the convoy on the road and motored out of the neighborhood, never to return, bound for FEMA Camp Bravo.

  Chapter 22

  The cabin

  Trout Run Valley

  Friday, December 3rd

  Grace nervously contemplated her predicament while she perused the hand of cards she had been dealt, in more ways than one. Initially, she had requested to be returned to the Masons’ home, but Max refused. He had instead propositioned her to keep him company and play a game of Spades with him, partnering her with one of his underlings, a thickheaded man by the name of Jeff.

  Grace had played online as a teenager in a virtual reality with computerized players, and as a young adult, she had revisited it with an authentic deck and actual living, breathing, human players. It was a game her father, Alan, had been fond of playing at times when there had been enough family members around to support a match. Currently, Grace was counting herself lucky that she’d learned as much as she had from him.

  Grace arranged her cards in order in the same manner she always did, where the higher-ranking cards stood out separately from the throwaways. Most importantly, she calculated the number of spades in her hand, carefully assigning rank to the definites and the definite maybes.

  Of the four suits in a standard deck, spades contained all the trump cards, most of which were capable of taking any of the hands they were played on, provided the player utilizing the card had no other option than to play it, having exhausted all other possibilities beforehand.

  It was ironic that Max had chosen to play cards to pass the time. He had done so in more ways than one, even metaphorically off the table, and he and his men were currently holding the highest trump card, while Grace was only concerning herself with playing the right card at the right time.

  She glanced down to the sheet of paper that she’d been keeping score on, noticing she and her partner were only about five books away from winning the match, which was being played until either team reached five hundred points.

  Grace scrutinized her hand casually and counted the cards that would dictate her bid before the hand was dealt, then waved a hand around to get her partner’s attention. “Jeff. Oh, Jeeeff…” she called to him, drawing his name out in tune.

  “Huh?”

  “How many do you have?”

  Jeff exhaled as his eyes nearly crossed. “Uh, hell, I don’t know. Doesn’t look like much to me. I don’t think I can get any. I might can get one.”

  “Okay…so you might can get one, or you might can get none?” asked Grace scornfully. A hot flash moved through her, only to quickly subside. “Because typically, a person capable of playing the game would go nil and try to empty his hand without pulling books. But something tells me you’d find a way to fudge it up.”

  “That so? What in hell you want me to do, then?”

  Grace sighed and waved him off. “Just bid one. I don’t need your help. I’ve been playing most of this match on my own anyway.”

  Grace’s partner made his bid and then stared her down as the bidding continued around the table. When the bidding reached Grace, she said, “We’ll go six.”

  Max ended up with the closing bid this time. “Six? There’s no way,” he griped. “Bob and I barely have four between us, and Jeff went one. That’s a bullshit bid, Grace. And you know it.”

  Grace shrugged. “Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it doesn’t matter. Even if we end up with sandbags, we’re still going to win the match with this hand.”

  “You think so?” Max pestered.

  “I know so. You and Bob the bumpkin are going down.”

  “I think you’re cheating. Counting cards or something.”

  Grace batted her lashes. “I’m not counting cards. I just know how to hustle the shit out of this game. I’ve been playing since I was a kid, and my dad taught me some tricks.”

  Max grunted. “What sort of tricks did he teach you? And where did he learn them?”

  “He showed me how to bid, how to play off, and how to set my opponent,” Grace said with a smirk. “He told me he learned how to play that way in prison, but he might’ve been stretching the truth. He was a damn good poker player, too.”

  Max let out a sigh. “Well, I suppose we may as well toss our hands down and let you win, seeing as how you already know you’re going to. On second thought, screw that, let’s play this out.”

  “Have it your way.”

  The game
continued with players laying out their cards one at a time, following suit. Several minutes later, the final card was placed on the table, the final book was taken, and just as Grace predicted, her team achieved victory.

  “Damn,” Max said. “You are good, aren’t you?”

  Grace smiled as a feeling of sudden emotion overtook her. She didn’t know where this influx of sentiment was coming from. She’d always been so adept at keeping her feelings hidden from view. But things had changed for her since falling for Christian, and for some reason since he’d left, she’d had more encounters with her emotional side than ever before.

  Even now, Grace felt sick and uneasy, and it seemed to have gotten worse since the point Kim had uttered the words, thereby setting off this ‘pregnant Grace Louise’ performance. Still, there was something more to it than that, and even though Grace couldn’t pinpoint the source, she couldn’t push the thought from her mind. Had what Kim said to keep her from getting pummeled by a lead glove somehow become psychosomatic?

  Grace knew deep inside, though, there was something else troubling her, something else entirely, and her newly developed moral sense of integrity was eating away at her core like acid on a new finish.

  “Max, can we talk in private?”

  “Mr. Armstrong.”

  “Sorry. Mr. Armstrong.”

  “About what?”

  “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” said Grace, blurting out the words without so much as thinking them through. “Something’s been…bugging me.”

  A frustrated look on his face, Max gathered the cards together on the table in a pile, ready to shuffle them. “Something’s been bugging me, too. This blasted game, for instance. I’m ready for a rematch.”

  Grace leaned forward and batted her eyelashes at Max, having seen the gesture practically nullify him before. Her act was still working, but she was growing weary of holding a woeful secret inside, one that had risen to the surface since Max had so candidly provided the story of his family with her. “If it’s possible, I’d like to talk to you about it alone.”

  While beginning to shuffle the cards in his hand, Max studied Grace’s features a moment and then handed the deck to his partner while Jeff looked on. “We’ll be back in a minute.” He gestured to the front door. “After you.”

  Grace led Max outside and to the rear of the property, heading toward the bridge over Trout Run.

  “Where are we going, Grace? On a hike?”

  Grace rotated her head, looking back over her shoulder at Max’s shoes. “Hardly. I detest hiking. And those kicks of yours wouldn’t make it a mile in these mountains. There’s something over here I need you to see.”

  “And what might that be?” Max asked, adjusting his khakis. “Something special? Just for me?”

  “That depends on your definition of special,” Grace replied. “If anything, it will clear my conscience a little. It might provide you with some answers, too.”

  Grace continued on with Max following in tow to the far rear of the property, until the point they reached the laurel grove, which had been chosen as a burial place months before.

  Upon seeing the site, Max’s expression changed from one of anticipation and curiosity to one of skepticism, followed by confusion. He glowered as he walked past Grace to where the crucifix had been placed over the little girl’s grave. He pointed at it, his face contorting. “Why are we here, Grace? And who the hell is Angel?”

  Grace hung her head. Her skin felt warm and flushed as a feeling of sadness swept through her while she remembered the last time she had stood here. Her feelings had haunted her until this very moment and were now in the process of clawing their way free. “I don’t know. None of us knew who she was. I was hoping after what you told me, we might be able to piece the story together.”

  Max turned to Grace with a sullen look, rage building in his eyes. “Why would you think that?”

  Grace hesitated, not knowing exactly where to go with this. She only knew there was no going back now. “What did Isabel look like?” she asked, her tone low and genuine.

  Max cocked his head and took a couple of steps closer to her. “What?”

  “Was she about four feet tall, skinny, with sandy blond hair?”

  Max didn’t answer and stepped even closer, his stare fixed on Grace’s every movement, and every word.

  “Was she wearing clothes that didn’t fit her? Or maybe clothes that did at one time, but didn’t anymore because she’d lost weight?”

  His face turning crimson, Max rushed briskly to Grace and shoved a finger in her face. “You stop this. You stop this right now! You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  Grace elevated her head, her lower eyelids welling up with thick tears. “She was wearing a pair of those shoes, wasn’t she? The kind that light up when you take a step…”

  Max drew his arm back and balled his hands into fists while his eyes grew wide and his jaw tensed. “No! This isn’t right! This can’t be!” A searing blend of anger and misery began to overtake him, and he turned away while he pounded the sides of his head with his fists.

  “I think it is,” Grace said softly. “I think the young girl we knew as Angel was your Isabel.”

  Max lumbered to the grave and fell to his knees, his hands finding their way to the crucifix. He sobbed, loudly at first, then tranquilly for a moment while clinging to it. “What happened to her? I want you to tell me what happened, Grace, and don’t lie to me, either. I’ll know if you do.”

  Grace closed her eyes and shook her head. “I have nothing to lie to you about. You’re not exactly what I’d call a benevolent person, Max, but you’ve done nothing but be up front with me, and I think you deserve the same. That’s why I brought you here.”

  “What…happened?” Max growled. “Tell me. Or you’re going to see just how malevolent I can be.”

  “She was shot.”

  “By whom?”

  Grace hesitated and bit her lower lip. “That’s the tricky part about this whole sordid ordeal. It’s…beyond comprehension, difficult to even bring up, much less put into words.”

  “Which one of your people did it? I want to know. You’d better come clean with me, or I’ll beat the answer out of you.”

  “None of us did anything to her,” Grace hissed, a slight bitterness in her voice. She hesitated. “It was her mother.”

  Max exploded into the air from his position on the ground. He ran to Grace and latched on to her shoulders, shaking her. “That’s a lie and you know it! I told you not to lie to me!”

  “It’s not a lie!” Grace shrieked. “I swear on my unborn child, it isn’t! It happened right over there. My sister found them in our shed, trying to take our food and supplies, and she told them to leave. But the woman had a gun, and my sister was forced to shoot her.”

  “Oh? And where is your sister now?”

  “She isn’t here! She thought it was over…the woman dropped the gun, but she’d told the girl to get it for her. When Angel gave it to her, the woman turned the gun on her…and shot her.”

  Max backed away from Grace and brought one of his hands to his mouth as tears rolled from his eyes, down his cheeks, and onto his clothing.

  “You said she was on medicine,” Grace said, trying desperately not to cry. “That could explain it…why she did what she did.”

  Max’s face turned pale and he walked back to the crucifix. He hesitated a moment before yelling loudly into the woods and kicking it to the ground. “Isabel.”

  “What?”

  “You called her Angel again, and that’s not her name.”

  Without another word, Max stomped off, departing the cemetery and leaving Grace to stand alone.

  She stood there stoically while drying her tears, watching him walk off and out of the woods, back toward the cabin, not able to believe he had left her by her lonesome. Without moving her feet, she scanned the trees in search of another one of his minions, perhaps two or even three of them. There w
as no way he had chosen to just leave her there, knowing she could choose to escape.

  With Max completely out of sight, Grace finished scanning the woods, only to find that she was indeed truly alone. Her first instinct was to get the hell out of there, to leave and try to find help somewhere. But where would she go? She didn’t know much about the outlying areas beyond the valley. She only knew it was dangerous.

  After a few minutes of review, the idea of leaving was slowly becoming a moot point. She could run somewhere and hide, but Grace knew how much she despised running. With no supplies and the air getting colder by the day, there was simply no way for her to survive very long.

  A breeze blew through the grove, and Grace picked up on it immediately when her body shivered in response to a sudden chill. It was then she realized she wasn’t even wearing a jacket. “I guess I underestimated you, Max. You left me alone because you knew only an idiot would attempt to escape in these conditions.” Grace threw her hair back, disgusted with herself for her lack of proper planning and inability to capitalize on an advantage. “Guess I’ll be revising this act from the beginning.”

  She started off, making her way out of the laurel grove and into the short stint of forest between the grove and the cleared-out portions of the property. She stopped upon hearing a loud snap beside her, not far away.

  Grace shuddered a bit, not knowing the source of the noise but fearing the worst. “Dammit. I swear, if that’s a friggin’ bear, I’m going to shit myself.”

  She stood motionless while attempting to remember the proper way of dealing with bears in the wild, but couldn’t remember if black bears were the ones you were supposed to play dead with or climb a tree to escape. Just before her imagination and fear got the best of her, she heard a muffled voice call to her from the same direction she had heard the snap.

  “Grace,” the voice whispered. “Grace! Over here.”

  Realizing bears were incapable of speech, and even if one could talk, there was no way it could know her first name, Grace turned her head and soon found a set of eyes peering out from behind a large pine tree. She put a hand to her chest and took a step back, swallowing over the fear-induced dryness in her mouth and throat.