by Brian Hodge
No, not now, damn it…lemme…lemme get…
No way could he fall short here, on the threshold of repaying the earth for all her favors, lifetimes of food and water. He couldn’t believe that the earth would not be just as offended by the likes of Peter Solomon as were decent folk. He’d chased this moment all the way from Ohio, and damned if he was going down two feet from it.
Lungs afire, Caleb gulped air and drove in with his heels, keeping his arms locked around Solomon with both hands gripping the opposite wrists. He felt Solomon wriggle, maneuvering the gun, felt the thing stuttering between them. A chunk of Caleb’s side was blasted away just as he gave one final heave with jittering legs.
They balanced, teetering on the edge for an eternity.
“Lessee you get outta this one,” he wheezed into Solomon’s ear.
Falling.
Landing moments later, brownish-black walls towering over them, Caleb and Solomon were wedged into the bottom of the fissure with a ribbon of sky visible far above. Caleb coughed, retching, broken ribs tearing his lungs, and he could no longer breathe. Just as well. Another few seconds and he figured all they’d have to breathe was dirt.
The earth gave another rippling shudder and he looked up to see an avalanche bearing down on them. He welcomed it as he would welcome the sight of his wife, his long-dead daughter. Surely they would not be far away, ready to guide him the rest of the way home, ushering him to a place far better than what he was leaving.
The soil felt blessedly cool and soothing…just as he figured a grave should feel.
* *
Solomon lay at the bottom of the trench, the heavy weight of the crazy old bastard squashing down atop him. A minor setback, he was down but not out—gods always rose above their blackest trials. And then his wrath would burn the world.
Light seeped from above, looking surprisingly like the last glimpse of the light in his childhood room, just before the closet door swung shut for hours and hours and hours. Hello darkness, my oldest friend. In the end there was darkness, and funny thing, it wasn’t so good anymore. Truth be told, it looked downright lethal.
With a roar, the darkness descended, crushing and absolute.
He couldn’t move, except to open his mouth to scream. He first tasted Caleb’s oily white hair, and then the soil.
He felt an overwhelming sense of failure, of losing to insects, betrayed by peons and weaklings who hadn’t even understood enough to serve him better. Hatred radiated out in a sphere, hot enough to melt earth to glass. The utter isolation of it was like the condemnation of the universe.
And then he felt nothing. The closet door had latched for good.
* *
How long had the earthquake lasted? Jason had no idea, knowing only that it had felt like hours.
When at last the ground stilled beneath them, Jason latched onto the truck and pulled himself to his feet. It took a couple of tries. He never thought he’d need sea legs in the Midwest. Beside him, Diane rolled over, sat up, rubbing her forehead and pushing her hair out of her eyes.
He looked around, reorienting himself to an entirely new landscape. Like the old saying: When the smoke clears and the dust settles…
Jason gazed toward the truck that Travis and the last of his ragtag army had barricaded themselves behind, finding that it had overturned. Overturned toward them, he was pleased to note. All he could see was its undercarriage. That, and at least one pair of legs poking out from underneath. Maybe more, fingers crossed. He could always hope.
A shadow moved out from behind the truck there. Red hair followed, then a big belly. Hagar, stumbling and disoriented. Jason retrieved Caleb’s rifle from the ground, bolted it, took his time bracing it on his own truck and putting a single bullet through the center of the man’s chest.
He bolted it once more, ejecting the spent cartridge and finding no more. He dropped the gun to the ground. Pulled Diane to her feet, holding her hand until she was steady.
“Anybody left?” she asked.
He watched for a moment, saw another hint of movement, then pointed. No need. Travis stepped into plain view, facing them across a field littered with bodies, slashed with the bare earth of the fissure that had opened up, then closed in again. Moans still drifted over from the carnage strewn across the highway, audible over the crackling fires, but Jason didn’t think anyone hanging on over there was in much shape to cause much of a problem anymore.
Just Travis. Looking as mean as ever.
“Ah hell, wouldn’t you know it,” Jason said wearily.
Even as he watched Travis charge across the field, hating him for it, Jason had to admire the reserves of energy within the man. You just couldn’t wear him down. He had the durability of iron. Jason was still fumbling around, looking for a weapon, when Travis arrived, roaring and red-faced and as unstoppable as a bull.
He remembered how hard Travis could hit from the day Billy Strickland had betrayed him. The months since hadn’t changed a thing. Travis nailed him in the gut and drove every bit of air from his lungs. The next two punches, he wasn’t even sure where he’d been hit. It was like getting worked over with an anvil. The world was gray and brown, and he felt himself landing in the truck bed, his legs dangling over the side, blood dribbling from his mouth.
The fact that Diane had leapt onto the man’s back didn’t seem to mean a thing to him.
* *
The bitch couldn’t hit very hard, but what she lacked in power she made up for in persistence. Travis figured she must have rained about a dozen fists down onto his head and face, shrieking in his ear the whole time.
He latched onto her wrist and jerked forward, flipping her onto the ground in front of him. She landed with a loud thud. He let her have it across the face a couple times to shut her up. Her head snapped one way, then another, sweaty locks of hair clinging around her face, a trickle of blood threading down her chin from a swelling lip.
Once she was docile enough to suit him, he began dragging her toward the highway.
“Remember how your little friend ended up?” he asked. “Huh? You remember that?” He yanked her roughly along at his side, not giving her a chance to get to her feet. “You know, I didn’t even want to do that. But you made me do it. You. Made me. Do it. I’m standing there after, and I’m looking at this girl, and I’m thinking, look what that fucking Diane made me do.” Travis looked down at her in disgust. “But this one I do for me. The other, that was just a warm-up.”
He’d start out on the highway. No soft cushion of earth and grass underneath her, oh no. He was going to strip her down and pound her right on the asphalt, let it burn right through her hide. Hot as that sun was, she’d think he’d tossed her into a frying pan.
He dragged her past the Sunbird, now canted to one side and pointing away from I-55. Dragged her along the white line, let her feel the heat baking up. Dragged her until her jeans were ripped through and her knees were bleeding. Dragged her…
Holy shit.
He’d dragged her until there wasn’t any more highway.
Travis kept her wrist clamped tight as he looked over the precipice. The huge slab of highway just ended, that’s all there was to it. Either the portion of land they were on had risen or the other had lowered. A steep incline, nearly vertical, led down to the rest of the highway, the median strip. It looked to be a good fifteen feet down the slope, the gradient rolling with pebbles and black chunks of asphalt and loose dirt.
They might as well be standing on a cliff. Lover’s leap. As good a place as any to toss her once he was finished.
“Yeah,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “That poor girl, that was just practice. You’re gonna wish you were that lucky.” He dropped to his knees beside her, wrestled with her, grabbing both struggling wrists. “’Cause I promise you this is gonna take a while.”
“Having trouble getting it up
these days?” she spat through clenched teeth.
He swung an open hand at her and she bit the meat under his thumb. He drew back to swing the other, this time a closed fist.
Travis never got the chance to follow through.
* *
Jason felt like one good breeze and he would go over for good.
He’d hobbled after Travis and Diane, found his cane in the Sunbird. Stumped over to them as quietly as he could while they struggled on the asphalt.
As he approached from the back, Travis hit her once and was getting ready to do it again. Jason gripped the cane like a ball bat, ready to nail one over the center field wall. He swung, felt an immensely satisfying crack as the handle connected with Travis’ elbow.
The man was up and on him before he could manage another swing, but this time Jason pressed close, grabbing and holding on like a boxer in a clinch. Give Travis room to tag him with one good punch, and that would be it, he’d be done.
As Diane scrambled away, his hopes were buoyed, maybe he’d bought enough time for her to do something. Find a loaded gun, maybe. Something, and fast.
He swayed with Travis, desperately hugging close, letting his legs do most of the work. First one way, then the other, they pushed and pulled at each other, finally toppling over as one. They hit the pavement and rolled, just as the highway shuddered beneath them. Aftershock, maybe. Jason felt the slab of asphalt tilt, tipping toward the drop-off. Travis’s weight, atop him, gave an abrupt shift, and Jason knew he’d never get another chance. He jackknifed up to lean into Travis with his shoulder, throwing the man’s weight off-balance…until he toppled over the edge.
OH SHIT!
All of Travis had gone over except his arm, still reaching up and over the rim and clamping onto Jason’s wrist in a vise-grip. Jason was flat on his back, trapped arm caught at the worst angle imaginable, twisted back past his head. Travis’s weight slipped down the incline and he felt it drag him headfirst across the asphalt. He could see only sky, clouds, smoke. Could feel only the numbing pressure on his forearm, the scorching asphalt at his back. They slipped an inch or two with a jolt; another one like that and he was sure his arm would break over the edge of the drop-off.
Jason frantically clawed his free fingers across the asphalt alongside his body, finally finding the broken segment near his hip. He dug his fingers into the crack and held tight. It hurt like hell, but it beat slowly slipping over the edge.
Standoff, he thought.
Neither of them could go anywhere.
* *
Diane got back to the highway just in time to see Jason’s face contort with the anguish and effort of keeping himself on the highway. She watched his fingers gouge into the small crevice of broken asphalt. Safe for a moment.
“Hang on, Jay,” she said, and he gave her the dirtiest look she’d seen all day.
Diane knelt at the cliff’s edge, peering over at Travis as he struggled in vain to clamber up the almost-sheer drop. His breath came in harsh gulps, every muscle bunched and trembling; sweat and dirt and blood grimed his face; tangles of wet hair curled over his forehead. He was looking straight up at her.
Diane stared down, her face oddly placid for the rage she felt boiling inside. She wanted to savor the moment, to see him sweat, see him squirm. She wanted him to think of everything he’d done to Farrah, every last detail, and regret each moment of it. A thousand times over. She wanted him to regret the day he’d been conceived.
His eyes bored up at her, his teeth clenched as he fought an inch up the slope.
“That’s right, keep trying, keep hoping,” she said quietly, and then showed him what she’d been holding behind her back.
Travis’s eyes widened as she swung it at him, hard and vicious, slamming it onto the arm he was holding Jason with. The carpet tacks studded around the pipe bomb punched a golf course of little holes into his forearm. He screamed, letting Jason go and beginning to slip down the incline. But Diane was faster, catching his wrist and straining to hold him in place for just another moment or two. Not yet, not yet…
Before his scream faded she thrust the pipe bomb at his face, his mouth, jamming it into the waiting shaft of his throat. Pushing it down, down, deep and tight. She kept her eyes locked on his as they bulged with more fear than she thought the man was capable of feeling. Blood streamed from his lacerated mouth and she heard a choked gargling deep in his throat.
Diane held his gaze as she dug into the pocket of her jeans for the lighter. She drew it out slowly, held it so he could see it. Nodded with satisfaction at the plaintive, weak little shake of his head.
“You still deserve worse,” she said.
Diane thumbed the flame to life and touched it to the fuse, held it until it sputtered into crackling sparks. And finally, forever, let him go.
* *
Sliding, sliding, he was sliding down…
Travis clutched at his throat with one hand, clawing at the loose wall of asphalt and earth with the other. Fingernails broke and tore away, and he hadn’t helped himself one bit.
He thought he’d known what pain was before, but what a fallacy that had been. This was real pain, the pipe gripping the inside of his throat like a thousand razored talons. It felt like he’d swallowed a pineapple. A warm torrent of blood oozed down his throat, gagging him and draining into his windpipe.
He couldn’t even budge the damn thing.
The best he could do was tumble to the bottom of the gorge and stare at the pipe jutting from his mouth, watching the fuse burn toward the cap, unbearably alive and aware of just how fucked he was every second of the way.
Pinch the fuse, pull it from the bomb—that’s all he had to do.
Yeah? And then what?
When the sparks sputtered into the cap, he was glad.
* *
The moment after she’d let Travis go, Diane fell sideways and threw her arms around Jason, dragging him away from the drop-off. She held him tight, listening to Travis’ descent into hell. With a dull, coughing roar, a spray of red showered up over the edge. A faint mist speckled her arms, her cheek, Jason’s face. Finally, except for the fires and the wind, silence.
She lay at his side for a moment, one hand linked loosely with his.
Calm, and still.
Diane felt the things that tied her to St. Louis, to the past, felt them shed their anchors and drift away. For better or for worse, it was over. She knew it likely that she would still have nightmares, still see Farrah’s unknowing eyes watching when her defenses were down. But now she could deal with it, and get on with living again. And that was a start.
Jason had been right earlier, in the hour before dawn, which now seemed so long ago. Killing Travis hadn’t made her feel any better.
But it had at least set her free.
And sometimes free was all you needed.
* *
Sometime later, when they could stand, they helped each other back from the highway.
Diane stood over the spot where they’d seen Caleb tumble into the fissure with Solomon, and she bowed her head. Jason looked for Erika, a search that didn’t take long. She was still in the same spot he’d last seen her.
Only now she was much more dead than alive.
Jason sobbed, legs buckling as he fell beside her. He took both of her hands in his, holding them close, and she offered no resistance.
Her jeans had once been a faded, dingy blue. They were mostly red now, as well as the bottom of her shirt. Blood had dampened the ground beneath her, stained the brownish grass. He quickly searched for a bullet wound, so he might apply some pressure over it, and found nothing.
In a moment of intuition—Erika rubbing off on him, finally, too late, too late—he realized it must’ve had something to do with the week she’d spent as Solomon’s prisoner. In retrospect, something had seemed to nag at the back of her mind s
ince his return. Something she’d wanted to say, to unburden herself of. And, selfishly, he’d figured if there was anything, she’d bring it up as needed. With no prompting.
She didn’t speak now, either, but her lovely green eyes held him, touched him, caressed him. She didn’t speak. It would’ve been redundant. Her eyes told him everything. So much that would be lost. So much she could’ve taught him, learned from him, shared with him. All gone now. There had been no victors out here today, only losers, losers all.
Erika moved painfully, so painfully, and it hurt him to watch. She turned onto her side, curling toward him as a child might snuggle close to a parent. She pressed her cheek against his knee. Her hands were still in his. She squeezed hard, once, then relaxed.
Totally.
Jason knelt in the shade of the absurd tree she’d chosen, a hot, wet wind gusting like warm breath. He closed his eyes and knew that this, this, was rock bottom. To have the inside of your heart so hollowed out it felt as if it would cave in on itself.
“I’m sorry,” came a hoarse whisper behind him. Diane.
Jason nodded, chin dragging on his chest. Sorry. Right. Weren’t they all? Sorry? Such an easy word.
“She was someone I wish I’d gotten to know a lot better.”
He laid a hand on Erika’s belly, nodded again, then looked at Diane. Her long, drawn face, tears making glistening tracks through the grime on her cheeks.
“Me too,” was all he could say.
They sat in the shade for a long time, and all the while he kept staring down at Erika’s stilled, fetal form. He hoped for some miracle to work its way up through the land, the mighty earth that she’d somehow been in touch with. It was simply unnatural for her to no longer live.
But she just lay there.
Why’d you have to be the one to take him on? he wanted to ask her. Were any of us worth this? Whatever he did to you?
No answers, no replies, from anywhere at all.
Diane left him while she fashioned a crude cross, her second in as many days. This time she made it from Caleb’s rifle and Jason’s cane, which he said he didn’t want anymore. She lashed the two together with the strap cut from her nylon bag. She erected it over the spot where she thought Caleb would be resting, shoving the rifle barrel down into the soft earth that had sealed him over.
