by James Hunt
“Well, look what we’ve got here.” The older of the pair spoke first, the end of his pistol switching between the huddled group by the fire and Mark. “A party? And we weren’t invited?” He shook his head, clucking his tongue.
The second one, younger and thinner, stepped toward the group, his weapon trained on them as well. Holly was in that group.
Mark’s gun rested beneath the counter, blocked from view of the inmates by a short wall. It was just out of arm’s reach. He stepped toward it, and the fat man brought Mark into his crosshairs.
“Go on,” he said. “Join the others.” Then he looked past Mark to the closed door. “What you hiding in there?”
Mark shuffled closer to the gun, his eyes falling to the bloodied body on the floor, then looked back up to the big man. He slowly raised his hands, stopping them at waist level, just high enough for the gun.
“Don’t move,” the big man said.
But Mark’s hand was only inches away. He could almost feel the cold of the metal, the hardened steel. He didn’t dare look for Holly in the group. She was tucked away safe in the back somewhere.
“I said don’t move!” The big man stomped forward, finger on the trigger.
It happened quickly. Mark reached for the pistol and curled his fingers around the handle, placing his index finger on the trigger. The recoil from the gunshot caused him to miss, then a bullet entered his chest and slammed him back into the wall.
Cold washed over him, blood leaking through his clothes and staining the front of him red. A few screams filtered up through the air, but the only one he recognized was “Daddy!” His legs gave out, and he slid to the floor. The big man who’d shot him stomped over and knocked the pistol out of his hands before he had a chance to use it again.
“Shut up! All of you!” the big guy shouted, keeping his gun aimed at Mark’s head, and then pushed open Luke’s door. “Got another one in here, Billy.”
Mark wanted to speak, he wanted to reach out and call for Holly, but darkness was falling over him now. Death pulled the veil over his eyes, and all sensation disappeared from his body. The last few noises he heard were the screams of women and Luke’s defiant grunting as the big man pulled him from bed and dragged him out with the others. He wanted to tell Luke that he loved him. He wanted to say the same thing to Holly. But all faded to black.
10
Kate wasn’t sure how long they kept up their sprint before exhaustion finally gripped its relentless and inevitable fingers around their bodies. She only knew of what happened when they stopped.
“I can’t.” A puff of icy air flew from Stacy’s mouth. “I need a break.” Her legs stumbled along with her words, and finally she collapsed to her knees.
“We can rest at the cabin,” Rodney said, though his tone sounded as if he was as weary as the woman. “We’re close. It’s not that much farther.”
Captain Hurley squinted through a blast of snow, his officers clustering around him, most of them ill prepared for the sudden escape, finding themselves half frozen. “We can push it. C’mon.”
Whimpering, Stacy complied and started walking. Kate waited for the officers to catch up to her, letting Harley pass, and then found Luis, who’d showed her the Morse code machine. “What are the chances that the message went through?”
Luis huffed, shuffling through the snow, his head down and his shoulders hunched forward. “One hundred percent.” He groaned, fatigue catching up with him as well. “But the chances that the National Guard troop actually listened to it?” He shrugged, shaking his head.
“And you’re sure it was the National Guard that you were hearing?” Kate asked. “It wasn’t something else? Something you weren’t—”
“I know what I heard,” Luis answered.
Kate dropped the subject. She was pushing her hopes onto a situation she wasn’t even sure would come to fruition. But that gun Rodney had brought with him to save them killed a lot of Dennis’s men, and they now had more trained shooters on their side. Even if the message didn’t go through, their circumstances were improving despite the cold, and despite the odds.
A light flickered up ahead, breaking the monotony of the darkness and the shape of the cabin came into view. Kate hastened her pace, stumbling past the other tired bodies and taking the lead. But as she drew closer Kate realized that something was wrong.
The front door was open, and despite the distance, Kate saw someone sprawled out across the floor.
“No,” Kate whispered and then sprinted from the group.
“Kate, wait!” Rodney shouted after her, no doubt having the same tingling suspicions as she, but she had too much of a head start on him.
Hot tears streaked down Kate’s cheeks, running back into her ears and hair because of the wind, only to freeze in place due to the cold.
Kate leapt over the body and the pool of blood on the floor, launching herself into the living room.
“Holly! Luke! Mark!”
Four more bodies lay on the living room floor, the glow of the fire illuminating blank and lifeless stares of the dead. Relief flooded her veins when she didn’t see Holly or Luke among them, and then when she stepped around the kitchen counter toward Luke’s door, she froze.
When she first opened her mouth to scream, there was nothing. She shuddered, gasping cold air, and then it came slowly, her cry bellowing up and out of her like some ancient, primal thing born from nothing but pain.
She dropped to her knees, screaming until her throat went raw, and Rodney was standing next to her, staring at Mark’s dead body. She tried to crawl to him, but Rodney held her back. She viciously smacked his hands away. “Let me go! Let me go!”
Rodney released her, and sobbing, Kate crawled to her husband. Her fingers hovered above his body, as if she were almost afraid to touch him. Her mouth quivered as tears dripped onto the wound that killed Mark.
Kate ripped off her gloves and tossed them aside in anger then cupped Mark’s face, the scruff of his beard coarse and cold against her palms. She ran her hands through his hair, whimpering. Behind her, she heard the gasps and cries of the others who had lost loved ones, the others who had dead waiting for them to collect.
Luke’s door was open, and Kate lifted her red and tear-soaked eyes to the empty bed. The sheets had been torn off messily, and a cup lay on the floor, its liquid staining the wood a darker shade of brown.
Slowly, grief gave way to rage. Luke’s body wasn’t here. Neither was Holly’s. Which meant they were taken. And Kate knew who had done it.
Anger pushed Kate to her feet, propelling her past Rodney and the others toward the front door. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill all of them.
The cold touched her face, and then Rodney grabbed hold of her, yanking her back inside.
“No, Kate.”
“Let me go!”
Rodney pulled her close, keeping her from escape. “You can’t do this by yourself.”
“I’m not losing my children to him!” Kate huffed and lunged at Rodney like a wounded animal. “You don’t know him. You don’t know what he’ll do.” She turned away, stomping out into the snow.
“Who?” Rodney asked, screaming and following her into the woods, catching up to her and stopping her once again. “Kate, you’ll die.”
Kate stopped and collapsed into the snow on her knees. Rodney was right. She couldn’t march into town alone, armed with nothing but a pistol. That would only get her killed, and that wouldn’t help her children.
“We can get them back,” Rodney said. “But the only way we get them back is if we’re smart about it. And the only way we’re smart about it is if we take our time.”
“I don’t have time,” Kate said.
Rodney smirked. “We didn’t have time in New York. We didn’t have time on the road here. And I didn’t have time to make it to the patrol station.” He gripped her shoulders. “But we did it.” He inched close, only a breath separating the two of them. “I swear on my life that I won’t let
them get away with it, and I swear I will do everything I can to get your kids back to you safely. Let me help you.”
Kate wrapped her arms around Rodney, squeezing him tight, and she cried. The same guttural screams that she let go in the cabin escaped into the night air, which echoed her grief, and Rodney held her until it had run its course.
Kate peeled herself off of him and then looked Rodney in the eyes, wiping the tears from her own. She took a breath, clearing her throat and doing her best to compose herself. “There’s something you don’t know. Something that’s important for you to understand before we go any further.”
Rodney pressed his eyebrows together questioningly. “What is it?”
“That man, the one who is in charge of the inmates, he’s Luke’s father.”
Rodney laughed, as most people do who are given such news, but when Kate’s expression didn’t break, when she said nothing else, the smile and laughter disappeared. He stepped away, running his hands through his hair, shaking his head in disbelief. “How is—” He turned around in a circle. “How?”
“That doesn’t matter now,” Kate answered. “All that matters now is getting them back. I don’t know what he’ll do if he finds out who he has. He’s never met Luke, and Luke’s never met him. But I know that if he does find out who he is, he’ll do whatever he thinks will hurt me the most. And that will involve my children.”
The march back to town was quick and then painfully slow. Dennis wasn’t sure how many men he’d lost, but from the looks of the survivors, he would have thought they’d all died. Every once in a while, he would scream, that bug of his burrowing around in his head, and he’d fire his pistol into the woods, striking nothing but snow, rocks, and trees.
A man clutching his stomach, struck by shrapnel from the big gun’s bullets, collapsed to his knees and face-planted into the snow. There he lay still, none of the inmates around even glancing down as they passed. It was just another dead man. All of them had seen plenty of dead men in their lifetime.
Firelight from the windows of Duluth fanned the flames of hope, and everyone sighed with relief. The fires of the town brought warmth from the bitter cold, the layers of ice on everyone’s body starting to thaw.
The moment Dennis’s men were back in their home base, anyone who wasn’t seriously wounded grabbed liquor and food. But mostly liquor. One of them passed by Dennis, and he snatched the bottle from the man’s hands and then smashed it on the ground.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dennis roared, turning every head in camp. “You think that you’re taking a break? No!” He pointed to the building that acted as their armory. “We’re going to find those pigs and kill them!”
“You saw what they had,” a voice cried out from the crowd. “It was a fucking machine gun. Heavy artillery. They mowed us down like cattle. That’s not a fight—that’s a massacre. I’m not going back out there.”
Nods of agreement rippled like a wave through the crowd, and Dennis watched his authority slip away. He wanted to shoot all of them. And the bug that burrowed deep into his mind, urging him to grab a cluster of grenades that they’d found and start flinging them around, was suddenly silenced by a single word.
“Boss,” Billy said, catching his breath, tapping Dennis on the shoulder. “We found them.” He was grinning, smiling from ear to ear, his fucked-up teeth and rancid breath up close and personal.
“What?” Dennis asked, but then he saw the string of bodies that Billy’s brother, Martin, pushed forward aggressively. They all had their faces down, all of them shivering, dressed in the same clothes that they were wearing tucked away in their warm houses.
“These are the ones who attacked the town,” Billy said proudly. “And I know where their cabin is if you want to take a look.”
Dennis clapped Billy on the back, his sour mood salvaged by this wonderful new gift. “Good work, Billy.” He gestured to his house. “My woman is inside. Help yourself to some fun. Hell, take your brother with you.” He laughed, rubbing his hands together greedily as Billy and Martin hopped off to Dennis’s cabin. He didn’t care. He was going to kill the bitch anyway to make him feel better. But this—this was a gift he didn’t see coming.
“So,” Dennis said, walking down the line of lowered heads. “You are the little bandits that got away.” He smiled, noting there weren’t as many as he hoped. “And which one of you was the one in charge?” He lifted the chin of an old woman who was crying, trembling wildly from his touch. “No, not you, I suppose.” He flicked her nose and moved on to the next person, a middle-aged woman, whom he undressed with his eyes. “Was it you?” He leaned close, tilting his ear toward her. “Speak up.”
“She’s not here,” the woman said, her voice shaking like her body. “The woman who helped us. She’s not here.”
“She’s not?” Dennis asked, his voice innocent, almost sweet. And then, like flicking a switch, he grabbed the woman by the throat, his hand clamping down hard, and roared. “Then where is she?”
The woman could only choke, and she clawed at his arm. She looked at him the way everyone did when you killed someone with your bare hands. She was afraid, and her fear only made him feel stronger.
“She’s dead.” The voice came from farther down the line. It belonged to young man, shirtless and with a bandage over most of his chest. His skin was a shiny red and white. He fidgeted in the cold. Another few hours exposed in the weather dressed like he was, and he’d pass out then freeze to death in the snow. “A bullet caught her on the way back from the town. We buried her in the snow.”
“Buried?” Dennis asked, then released the woman who collapsed to her knees, gasping for air. He walked to the young man. “Why? Plan on visiting her grave, boy?” Dennis noted the young girl at his side, clutching on his leg, acting like a crutch to keep him upright. He dropped to his knee and forced her gaze toward him. “Is that true? Did she die?”
The girl’s face scrunched up in preparation in tears. “I-I don’t know.”
Dennis laughed and released the girl’s face, which she buried in the boy’s leg. He glanced up at the boy’s face, and gauging from his expression, the little girl meant something to him.
“So,” Dennis said, standing, the boy nearly meeting his eye line. “This woman died and left you all to fend for yourselves.” He stepped close. “And you’re sure she’s really dead?” His voice was threatening, though his tone was barely above a whisper.
The boy didn’t move, didn’t even blink. It was one of the best poker faces that Dennis had ever seen.
“C’mon,” Dennis said. “Let’s go to my place and chat.” He grabbed the boy by the back of his neck with his right hand, and used his left to swallow up the little girl’s hand, forcing both toward his house.
In the kitchen, they could still hear the moans from Billy’s good time upstairs, and Dennis spit a sharp and fast laugh as he shoved the kid into a chair, the legs screeching against the wood as it slid back. But he kept hold of the little girl’s hand, keeping her close, which triggered an angered snarl from his new captive.
Dennis nodded to the bandage on the boy’s chest. “What happened there? Girlfriend beat you up?” Dennis laughed, but the boy didn’t react. “Oh, sorry. Boyfriend?”
The boy grimaced, and Dennis released a sympathetic moan. “Aww, don’t be like that. Hey, I’m not offended if you like to take it up the ass. Believe me, after a few years in prison, there were a lot of guys that didn’t mind it either.”
The little girl whimpered, and Dennis looked down to see the tears streaming off her face. When he looked back at the boy, his eyes were focused on her.
“So how do you two know each other?” Dennis asked, the innocence in his tone contrasting against the malevolent stare in his eyes. He kept both hands on the girl. “You two…” He bounced his eyebrows suggestively, and when the boy clenched his fists in anger, Dennis released another hearty laugh. “No? Well, then you probably don’t mind if I take a stab then, do you?”
&nbs
p; “Ahh!”
The boy launched himself off the chair and at Dennis, his movements lethargically slow, and swung his fists like a windmill. But the boy was so weak it only took Dennis one arm to keep him at bay.
“Whoa! Easy there, cowboy!” Dennis thrust the boy back into his seat and brandished a knife that he placed against the girl’s throat. “Let’s not do anything rash.”
The boy tensed, but he stayed in his chair.
“We’re going to play a game,” Dennis said. “I’m going to ask you a question, and then you’re going to give me an answer. If I think you’re lying to me, then I cut her.”
The girl shivered, the boy’s eyes locked onto the knife at the girl’s throat.
“Now,” Dennis said. “Is the woman still alive?”
The boy’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed before he answered, “Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
“She went to a highway patrol station,”
“How many more of you are there?”
“Ten left the cabin to go to the station,” the boy answered. “I don’t know how many came back.”
The girl was crying hysterically now.
Slowly, Dennis glanced down at the girl, and when he raised his eyes back toward the boy, he smiled. “Is this your sister?”
The words hung in the air between them, and the boy moved his lips to speak, but the silence spoke volumes.
Dennis applied enough pressure against the girl’s throat to draw blood. “Is. This. Your. Sis—”
“Yes.” The answer left his lips quickly, and for the first time since their interaction, the anger gave way to grief and fear, and the boy’s eyes watered. “Please, let her go. If you want to hurt someone, then hurt me.”
Dennis smiled then looked down at the little girl, pulling her hair back and exposing the soft pale flesh of her throat. “You know, I’ve never killed a kid before. Came close once, though.”
More blood trickled down the girl’s throat and into her shirt, staining the collar red. She sobbed violently now. “Luke, please, help me.”
