by Tarah Benner
“Can’t,” said Bernie, taking another sip.
“Why not?”
“I’m dead,” she said matter-of-factly.
Lark choked, and a gulp of berry-flavored slush slid down the wrong pipe. “What?”
“I know,” said Bernie with an eye roll. “It sucks.”
Suddenly a motorcycle groaned in the distance, and Bernie hissed in pain.
“What’s —” But Lark didn’t finish her thought. A large pool of blood had blossomed from Bernie’s abdomen. She gasped and put her hand on her stomach, but the blood flooded out from between her fingers and ran down her thigh.
“No!” Lark gasped, knocking over her drink in her haste to stand up.
The nightmarish hum of the motorcycle seemed to grow louder, and Bernie began to shake. Blood was pouring out of her at an alarming rate, and Lark grabbed the towel from the back of her chair to stop the bleeding.
Tears leaked out of Bernie’s eyes, but still Starlight continued to play. Then the sky turned stormy, and the waves, which had been lapping so peacefully a second ago, churned violently and rushed onto shore.
Suddenly a gunshot pierced Lark’s eardrums, and Bernie’s head snapped back in a violent spray of blood.
Lark sat straight up in bed, panting and sobbing. Denali whined and clambered over Lark’s knees to lick her face, and Lark pushed him away and looked around.
She’d been asleep in the guest room for what felt like hours, and judging from the pitch-black sky, it was still the middle of the night. The sheets were soaked with cold sweat, and they were twisted around her legs like shackles.
The house should have been quiet and still, but there was a flurry of activity coming from the floor below. Lark could hear furniture scraping around downstairs and footsteps thundering down the hall.
Then she heard a sound that made her stomach curdle with dread: the real-life groan of a motorcycle outside.
Lark scrambled to her feet and tripped on the sheets. She threw out an arm to stop her fall and bent down to grope for her borrowed pajama pants on the floor.
Just then, the bedroom door burst open. It was Soren. He was wearing a pair of black sweatpants but no shirt. His hair was sticking up in the front as if he’d just been roused from sleep, and he looked panicked.
“Get down,” he said, crossing the room in two strides and nearly tackling her to the floor.
Three gunshots erupted in quick succession, and Lark fought the urge to be sick. She heard the sound of breaking glass down below, and Denali darted out of the room with his tail between his legs.
Soren had his bare chest pressed against her face, using his body to shield her from the window. “Come on,” he whispered, rising into a crouch and pulling her toward the door.
Lark grabbed her flannel pants off the floor and darted across the room, watching the window out of the corner of her eye. She could see headlights blazing down the dirt-and-gravel drive, and it seemed as though the entire house was vibrating. At least a dozen motorcycles were circling the house like vultures, and in Lark’s numb terror, she wondered if she was still dreaming.
By the time she reached the foot of the stairs, Thompson, Axel, and Walt were stationed along the exterior windows, taking aim at the bikers outside. They were all still in their nightclothes, but they looked wide awake. Katrina was pulling rifles out of a compartment near the stairs, and Simjay was helping Mitch barricade the front door.
“How many?” asked Soren, taking a rifle from Katrina and hunkering down behind the couch, which had been shoved onto its side in front of the windows.
“I count at least ten.”
“Make that eleven,” growled Thompson.
“Same bikers from the church?”
“No,” said Axel sarcastically, peering through his scope. “There’s another asshole biker gang that has it out for us.”
Soren opened his mouth to argue, but another gunshot shattered the window to Walt’s right, and Soren yanked Lark down to the ground.
She heard frantic footfalls coming from the rear of the house and turned in time to see Starlight in a pair of lavender feather-print pajamas leading Mitch’s wife to the alcove under the stairs. Karen was pulling a sleepy Jack by the hand while Ava howled.
“Stay down,” said Soren.
Katrina slid a rifle across the floor, and a burst of nausea rose up in Lark’s throat. The metal felt cold and heavy in her hands, but she choked down her panic and took her position between Soren and Simjay.
Simjay was positively beside himself. He kept glancing down at his hands and back at his target, sweating profusely and trying to steady himself with long, exaggerated breaths. Lark felt a surge of sympathy toward him. She knew that he probably had the same horrible sinking feeling that they were going to have to kill these men.
Breathing deeply, Lark pivoted around and squinted out the window. The yard was a blinding frenzy of headlights and swirling dust. She followed the path of one biker circling the house, but before she could fire, the window above Axel burst apart, showering them all in bits of glass.
Axel swore loudly and unloaded a stream of bullets in the offending biker’s direction. Out of the corner of her eye, Lark saw another man jump off his bike and head for the door. She took aim and fired, but the bullet missed him by nearly a foot and lodged in one of the porch rails.
Lark swallowed and fired again. This time, the biker threw himself to the ground — the bullet having just whizzed past his ear.
A second later, Axel stood up and knocked the remaining shards of glass loose from the window. He leaned his upper body out into the lethal darkness and fired.
“Asshole,” he growled, ducking back inside as two more bullets lodged in the exterior wall.
Thompson and Walt had been shooting nonstop, but it was so dark outside that there was no way to tell how many bikers they’d taken out. Somewhere above them, another window shattered, and a moment later, Lark caught a whiff of smoke.
Walt let out an animalistic cry and shot the nearest biker squarely in the chest.
A glimmer of light flickered in Lark’s periphery, and she realized with a jolt of horror that the bikers had lit the fields ablaze.
Lark fired and heard a groan, but she didn’t see whom she’d hit. Suddenly Thompson let out a stuttering hiss, and Lark’s heart seized.
Thompson was pulling away from the window, clutching her left shoulder. Her fingers were bloody, but her face was still hardened with resolve. She hesitated, as if she thought she might be able to keep shooting, before dropping her gun and slumping down against the wall.
“Jackie!” Starlight cried.
Lark turned to look over her shoulder, and everything slowed down.
Starlight was lunging toward her sister. Katrina turned around and opened her mouth, but it was too late.
“Don’t!” she yelled.
At that moment, a tiny pinprick of red appeared over Starlight’s breast pocket. She let out a soft gasp and stumbled, looking as though she were suppressing a hiccup.
They all watched in horror as she teetered on the spot. Starlight blinked in surprise and collapsed onto one knee. Then her hand hit the ground, but she couldn’t stop her fall. Blood was spreading quickly across her chest, staining her crisp pajama top an ugly shade of red.
For half a minute, all the noise outside disappeared. All Lark could hear was Katrina’s howl of pain as she scampered across the room on all fours. She caught Starlight before her head hit the floor, staring in horror at her partner’s bloody chest.
Simjay was the first to react. Keeping his head low, he army crawled across the floor, but Lark knew it was already too late.
Starlight’s eyes were still open, but she was trembling violently in Katrina’s arms. It was as if Lark’s nightmare had come to life, but instead of Bernie bleeding out on the beach, she was watching Starlight die right in front of her.
Silent tears were streaming down Katrina’s face. She held Starlight’s head in her lap as Si
mjay desperately tried to stop the bleeding, looking as though she were trying to hold the world steady on its axis. Starlight trembled for a few more seconds, and then she went still.
A cold, choking numbness spread from Lark’s core to her throat. In the minutes they’d all been watching Starlight, the remaining bikers had circled the house. The walls were riddled with bullet holes. The entryway mirror lay in shards on the floor, and it smelled as though there was a fire blazing somewhere upstairs.
As Katrina gasped and sobbed, Lark turned back to the window and pressed down on the trigger. Tears clouded her vision as she shot into the dark, but she didn’t stop. If she put her gun down — if she paused to acknowledge the mounting pain inside of her — she thought she might unravel for good.
A window shattered somewhere in the kitchen. There was another crash, accompanied by the sharp stench of gasoline. Lark looked over. Flames were lapping at the floor, catching on a rug by the refrigerator and engulfing the table.
Lark coughed as smoke drifted into the living room, and Soren rushed into the kitchen. He blazed past the tower of flames and thrust his upper body into the cabinet under the sink. He emerged a second later with a fire extinguisher and smothered the flames with a blast of thick powder.
The scene wavered before Lark through the noxious cloud of smoke, and she saw people moving in her periphery. Karen was staggering toward the back door with Jack and Ava in tow, trying to block Starlight’s body from view.
To Lark’s right, Mitch was screaming at Walt. He was kneeling a good six feet away, but he was yelling loud enough to be heard over the blasts of gunfire.
“What are you doing?” Mitch yelled, staring at his father as though he’d lost his mind.
“I’m defending my home!”
“There are too many of them!”
“It doesn’t matter!”
“Dad — This is crazy!”
“What’s crazy is how little you give a shit!” Walt yelled, his old-man skin flapping beneath his undershirt. He was standing rather than kneeling by the front door, as though he’d forgotten they were under attack.
“We have to leave!” Mitch yelled.
“Take Karen and the kids into the crawl space. I’m going out there.”
Lark and Soren froze.
Mitch made a grab for his father, but Walt shook him off. “Let go of me!”
“You can’t go out there!”
“This is my home, goddamnit!”
“I can’t let you do this.”
“I’m a grown man, Mitchell. Just because you grew into a sloppy liberal coward —”
“Look around you!” Mitch yelled. “The fields are burning! The house —” He glanced around at the bullet-strewn walls.
Walt gave his son a dismissive wave of disgust before turning toward the door.
“You selfish piece of shit!” yelled Mitch, choking with emotion. “Do you really care more about your farm than you care about us?”
“This farm is all I have.”
“You have us!”
“I’m doing this for you.”
“Bullshit!” yelled Mitch. “You’re doing this for you.”
“I swear to god, Mitchell, if your mother was still alive —”
“Mom would want us to leave.”
“You have no idea what your mother would have wanted.”
“Mom wouldn’t have wanted you to die over a piece of land!”
Walt shook his head slowly, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “A piece of land? Is that all this is to you?”
“Mom hated this place!” Mitch cried. “She hated Loving and Carlsbad, but she stayed here for you.”
“You didn’t even know your mother in the last years of her life!” Walt spat, jowls quivering with rage. “You were too busy fussing over your ridiculous restaurant! Meanwhile, your mother and I were slaving away to build something real for you kids. But you . . . You forgot who you are, and you abandoned your family!”
“I was building a life for my family!”
Walt shook his head. “It’s always the same with you — always some new spin on things.”
“You know what?” Mitch growled. “I don’t even know why I try. You’re just a miserable old man, and you want everyone else to be miserable, too.”
“Stop it!” yelled Katrina. “Both of you, stop it!”
Mitch and Walt turned, equally surprised by Katrina’s outburst.
For a moment, nobody moved or spoke. But then Mitch gave his father one last disgusted look and strode across the room toward the back door. Karen and the kids had already disappeared, but whether they’d hunkered down in the crawl space as Walt had suggested, Lark didn’t know.
“Go, then!” Walt yelled, trembling with fury. “Coward!”
And, before anyone could stop him, Walt shoved aside the enormous cherry-wood chest and thrust the front door wide open. He raised his weapon and opened fire, walking out into the blaze.
“Dad!” Katrina screamed.
“Walt!” yelled Soren. But it was no use. Walt had walked right into the gunfire, unleashing a storm of bullets that sent bikers scattering in every direction.
Soren turned and took aim at a biker crouching beside the porch. His aim was true, and the biker collapsed into the dirt. Lark fired until she ran out of ammo and groped around for a spare magazine. Katrina was the go-to gun person, but she was still hugging Starlight’s lifeless body.
At that moment, someone fired four shots in quick succession, and all other gunshots ceased. Three or four engines roared to life, and Lark watched in disbelief as the remaining bikers circled out of the yard.
Walt kept striding across the patchy dirt lawn, firing at the bikers’ retreating backs.
When the last biker’s taillights faded into the distance, he lowered his gun and stared out into the night, looking ancient beyond his years.
The farm fell silent, and Lark slid down against the back of the couch, trying to catch her breath. Her heart was beating in her throat, and yet she felt strangely empty.
Katrina was still curled on the floor with Starlight. Thompson had crawled over beside her and was holding her sister’s lifeless hand. Simjay was kneeling next to Thompson, quietly doctoring her shoulder.
“Are you hurt?” Soren croaked, turning to Lark and prying the gun out of her hands.
Lark shook her head.
Axel had already disappeared upstairs to put out the fire, and a moment later, Denali emerged and padded across the living room toward Lark. His fur was smoky and standing on end, and Lark wondered where he’d been holed up.
She reached down to pet him, thinking how close they’d all come to death. The bikers were gone, but still Lark didn’t feel safe. If anything, the attack had only solidified her realization that they would never be safe again. If it wasn’t the bikers or the police, it would be something else.
Starlight was dead. Bernie was dead. And the part of her that was like them — beautiful, carefree, and full of hope — had died somewhere along the way.
eleven
Bernie
Bernie remained shackled to her bed for the next three shifts. People moved in and out of her room intermittently, sometimes only staying long enough to glance at her monitors or bring her a meal. Other times they arrived in pairs to change her dressings, adjust her position, or help her to the bathroom.
Nobody would tell her what day it was, and the tasteless meals arrived with such irregularity that it didn’t help her determine the time. None of it was edible, anyway: Agent Orange Jell-O, tapioca-puke pudding, chicken-fried rubber, and Cold War fruit cocktail.
She tried to gauge how long she’d been there based on the shift changes, but her medicated haze was so disorienting that she often woke up unable to remember how she’d gotten there in the first place.
It was a loud bang from down the hall that finally jolted Bernie out of her fog. With great effort, she peeled her eyes open and blinked around for the source of the noise
. Four blank walls stared back at her, along with all the grayish-beige machinery they seemed to need to keep her alive.
The first thing she noticed was that her senses had returned. She was lying on her back with her left wrist cuffed to the bed, and she was in pain. A persistent, all-consuming burn was radiating from her bullet wound, draining her from the inside out.
She turned to her right to complain to Portia, but Portia was gone.
Bernie gave a start, pulling herself into a semi-upright position. She got a sharp twinge of agony as she disturbed her mangled leg, and it was all she could do to avoid crying out in pain. Her heart was pounding very fast, and it took an extraordinary amount of effort to suck air into her tired lungs.
She hadn’t imagined Portia. There was a human-shaped crater in the middle of the mattress where she’d been, and the sheets were scrunched in a pile near the foot of the bed.
But where had they taken her? To run a few tests? To serve out the rest of her sentence in some supermax facility in Albuquerque? Bernie had no idea how long she’d been gone. It was possible that they’d hauled her off for interrogation, but if they hoped Portia might be able to shed light on Lark and Soren’s whereabouts, they were going to be sorely disappointed.
Still, the thought gave Bernie an uneasy feeling. Portia was always looking out for Portia. It was possible she could have struck a deal and made something up in the hope that they’d shorten her sentence. She could be feeding the guards false information just to fuck with them. Portia lied as easily as she breathed.
But it was also possible that the guards weren’t interested in interrogating Portia at all. From what Bernie had seen, San Judas did not play by the rules. They’d been using the inmates to test pesticides and fertilizers, they’d looked the other way during Mercy’s brutal reign of tyranny, and they had eviscerated Finn with a weaponized drone. It would be easy to make Portia disappear.
Bernie shivered. Once the initial shock had worn off, a deep, body-draining fatigue set in — not from the drugs, but from the energy it took to ignore the incessant burn in her leg.
