Divided We Fall (33 page)

She was dead. My mother, Kelly Elizabeth Wright, was dead.

I promised I would always look out for her. Promised to bring her home safely. That’s all I wanted to do, bring her home. I clenched my fists until blood began to soak through the bandage on my wounded hand.

My mother was dead. The damned Fed had ruined everything.

“They killed her,” I whispered.

One medic shook his head. The other looked up at me. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“They killed her,” I said louder. I rushed to JoBell and grabbed the AR15.

“Danny, no!” JoBell shouted.

Sweeney and Cal were still back by my busted-up truck, yelling for me to stop, but I didn’t listen. I ran up beside the wire obstacle, closer and closer to the border, clenching my left fist at an angle above my head, trying to stop the blood that was already soaking through parts of my white bandage. I held the rifle in my right hand, the stock supported under my armpit, as I came to within a dozen feet of the state line. The Feds over there must have been scared of the Apaches coming back. They stayed behind whatever cover they could find. “You killed my mother!” I shouted across the border. “Why the hell can’t you leave us alone!”

I opened fire. One, two, three rounds at a cement barricade. Soldiers ducked behind it. Another Fed shot at me from behind a tree. I gave him two rounds, but my shot went wide.

“Come out and fight, cowards!” I shot again and again, most of the Feds staying covered, my adrenaline keeping me moving as a few rounds struck the ground around me. “You want war? We will give you a war!”

Finally, the trigger brought only a dull click as my rifle ran out of ammunition. Idaho Humvees rolled up next to me and soldiers rushed out to stop me. I dropped to the ground, sobbing, feeling as empty as my weapon.

It was a warm day for late October. A light breeze rustled the bare limbs of the trees overhead, but the sky above was the deepest blue I could ever remember. The world all around was bright and fresh.

And completely wrong.

“… beloved wife and mother, Kelly Wright devoted herself …” Chaplain Carmichael droned on beside my mother’s grave. JoBell, sitting to my right, squeezed my hand. Becca, on my left, pressed her hand to my shoulder, over the new suit she and JoBell had bought for me.

“Lord, we thank You for sustaining us through these difficult times, and we ask You to please help us avoid open conflict,” the Chaplain continued. “We need to have faith that this will remain, just a training exercise.”

“Amen,” said the small crowd gathered at the graveside.

“Danny.” It was Mom’s voice. At first I thought it was coming from the coffin, but then I figured I must be hearing things. “Danny, it hurts,” the voice came again.

I turned around and saw Mom standing a few feet away. She stumbled toward me, holding her bleeding chest, and I ran to her.

“She’s dead,” JoBell said. “You can’t change that.”

“Yes I can! There’s still time!”

Mom fell to the ground. I kneeled, and from the cargo pocket of my suit I pulled the field dressing, unrolling it and pressing it to Mom’s wound. “Can someone help me!? She’s lost a lot of blood. Can someone start an IV?”

The boots of that Fed medic stepped up to me. “It’s too late,” he said.

I looked up at him, but it wasn’t the medic after all. It was the staff sergeant I’d killed in Spokane. Blood leaked from his chest and his mangled stump of a hand. He stood next to the Humvee gunner I’d shot during the chase.

When I looked back at my mother, the redheaded girl from Boise lay dead on the ground next to her.

I jumped up and backed away from the girl, her blood soaking through the legs of my pants. My mom was gone. At the grave, her silver casket slowly descended into the earth.

“I’m sorry, Danny.” Becca stood next to me in her rodeo jeans, her shiny “Cowgirl Up” belt buckle shining right below her belly button. She shivered a little in a purple lacy bra and slid her arms around me, her fingers tracing my cheek. We kissed softly at first, but then with more hunger. When she stepped back, her arms and chest were covered in my mother’s blood. “I’m so sorry… .”

I sat up in bed quickly. Each night, the nightmare was a little different, but it always involved one last phantom chance to save my mother. It had never involved kissing Becca before, though. I was glad I wasn’t one of those people who spent a lot of time trying to figure out the meaning of dreams. Though as for that, if dream Becca wanted to make out with me, I would rather have that and skip the horrible funeral.

We’d held the real funeral a couple days after Mom died. After she was shot. After those Fed bastards killed her. After I killed her, trying to get her back.

I’d lived at Sweeney’s house in the two weeks since. There were too many memories where me and Mom had lived. Eventually, I’d have to go back there and clean the place out so I could put it up for sale — not that anyone was buying houses in Idaho. Still, now that nothing got into the state except for stuff the ICC smuggled in, good secondhand items sold well, and I could probably make some money selling some furniture, her dishes, and some of her clothes.

I groaned a little as I swung my feet out of bed. I never could manage to get back to sleep after these nightmares. Whenever this happened, I had to go out and take a walk around the lake. I’d been taking a lot of walks lately. My head ached a little after last night’s drinks. I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, still a challenge with my bandaged left hand, but less and less so as time went on and my injury healed.

I picked up my new .45 and stared at the gun, squeezing the grip. My friends and I were always taught that guns were dangerous, that they had to be respected, that they were absolutely not toys. Still, guns had seemed so cool, especially after I’d first enlisted. Whenever I held the weight and cold metal of a weapon in my hands, I felt a certain excitement, maybe power.

I stood up and strapped my belt and holster around my waist. I hated guns now, but I never went anywhere without my .45. I needed it for protection.

My shooting of that sergeant had made the news. So had my mom’s death. Someone had even put a video online of me carrying her out of the Beast, her lifeless arms dangling as I screamed for help. That video had only been viewed twenty or thirty thousand times. The real viral hit was the video of me holding my bleeding hand up and shooting at the Feds. Someone was even making T-shirts and little flags and stuff with the image of my crooked fist wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage, the red-and-white tail hanging down.

Privately, the governor was absolutely furious at me for my border run and for killing Kirklin. He flat-out told me that he wanted to turn me over to the Fed or prosecute me himself, but that he couldn’t “afford the political liability at this critical time.” So publicly he still protected me. It was lucky for me then that he survived his recall vote. While the majority of those who voted in the special election wanted to remove the governor from office, that majority still wasn’t more than the number who had elected him in the first place. Montaine treated it like a huge victory.

The air was cool and crisp on that bright November morning. Well, I’d slept late — it was more of a beautiful early afternoon. I tried to focus on the trail, on the rocks and trees and the cold clear water of the lake. On anything but all that had happened. But waking or sleeping, I couldn’t shake the memories of my mother screaming and bleeding, of the way she’d lain so still on the ground after she’d been shot. The way she’d been so peaceful in her casket. My eyes stung and I wiped away hot tears.

Later, I was walking a low path that ran along the base of a cliff, a few feet from the lake. When I saw someone coming toward me down the slope on the path ahead, I instinctively reached for my weapon.

“Hey,” JoBell called down to me.

I relaxed, sat on a boulder, and looked out at the water. I was halfway around the lake. She had walked far to find me.

“Care if I join you?” she said as she sat down next to me.

I took out a small cigar, clumsily clipping the end, working the cutter with my bad hand, and lighting up. The cigar had been a present from Cal, one of only a handful that he’d smuggled on our stupid so-called rescue run. It cost about eight bucks in Washington, but due to the short supply of tobacco, probably sold for nearly thirty here in the sanction zone. I owed him. I owed all my friends, big.

“How you doing?” JoBell finally said.

“Shitty,” I said. “Same as always.”

A crane or some other large bird flapped its huge wings and took off from where it had been swimming on the lake. Its wings beat the surface for a while, cutting a line in the smooth cold glass, and then it soared off. A cool breeze blew in off the water, sending a shiver through me despite my coat.

JoBell slid her hand up my back and rubbed my neck. I closed my eyes and let the warmth from her fingers flow through me in waves. We’d been together so long that we didn’t always have to talk much to say a lot.

“You were right,” I whispered.

“What?”

“You were right,” I said louder. I covered my eyes with my hand. “I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you, JoBell. If I hadn’t gone to Washington to get Mom. If I hadn’t …” My throat tightened up. “Maybe she’d still … Should’a listened to you. You were right. Shouldn’t even have enlisted. Now both my mom and dad are dead, both killed because of the Fed. I got no family. I’m alone.”

“Shh.” JoBell gently touched my cheek and turned me to face her. “Don’t talk like that. You’re not alone. You have me. You have Cal and Becca and Eric.” She wiped away my tears. “And don’t apologize to me. That’s why I came out here today, Danny. I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

I shook my head. “No, you see, I’ve figured —”

“Let me finish,” she said in her firm no-argument voice. She kissed my cheek and pressed her face to mine. “I’ve been so hard on you, Danny.” She shook her head. “You’ve been wrapped up in this thing that’s so much bigger than either of us. So much has happened that you couldn’t avoid, and all I’ve done is tell you to run away from it, as if it were your fault.” She kissed me on the lips. “I’m so sorry, Danny. I’ve been wrong. And now with everything that’s happened, I can’t go to Seattle. I’m staying right here. Maybe I’ll head down to Boise State after everything calms down. If everything calms down.”

Since Mom’s death, I’d felt a very real, physical cold weight somewhere in my core. Now, hearing this from JoBell, I noticed a little warmth there. I felt like thanking her, almost like celebrating, but I knew that I had to say what was right. “JoBell, you can’t give up your dream.”

“Like I said, this is bigger than either of us. During the chase, I was firing in self-defense, but the Fed won’t see it that way. I’d probably be arrested if I went anywhere near Seattle.”

Was that the only reason she was giving up all her plans and dreams? Because my botched rescue had ruined them? I’d passed my problems on to her, made her a part of all of this. I looked down and kicked a rock off the trail.

JoBell leaned down so I’d have to look at her. “I
want
to stay, Danny. I want to be here with you.”

Her arms slid around my waist. We kissed, long and deep and warm, like we had before I’d proposed and everything got so weird between us.

Like we had when Mom was still alive. The memory of my mother came on so fast that the tears started before I could even think about trying to stop them. “I’ll never … never see her again,” I gasped. “Never talk to her ever again.”

JoBell rested her forehead on mine. “I know,” she whispered. “I know. I miss her too. I loved her too.”

We stayed like that for a long time.

*  *  *

A while later, as we walked hand in hand along the last part of my lap around the lake, JoBell stopped me. “I have to warn you. I tried to talk them out of it, but they wouldn’t listen. Sweeney and Cal think the best way to help you right now is to have a little party tonight.”

I sighed. “Well, maybe they’re right. Maybe it will help me get my mind off all the horrible things that have happened.”

“Really?” She squeezed my hand.

I squeezed back. “No, but I thought I’d try to believe that, since the party is happening anyway.”

She laughed a little and leaned her head on my shoulder as we went back to Sweeney’s house.

The thing about Eric Sweeney was that his concept of a “little party” was at least twice the size of anyone else’s. Close to a couple dozen people packed his house, some playing video games, others watching a movie, some hanging around talking or slipping off somewhere to make out. Almost everybody was drinking. Although I really wasn’t in the mood for any of it, I had to appreciate his skill in lining up one of the most insane parties I could remember.

When I asked how he’d done it, Sweeney flashed his million-dollar smile and put his arm around my shoulder. “Priorities, my brother! While Schmidty was crawling around storing gas and whatever in the basement of your shop, I knew there would be a different, much worse shortage.
Beer
. I’m too young to buy it from the store, and I knew the supply would run out fast. So I rushed out and bought up all the home brewing equipment and supplies I could get my hands on. I spent, like, fifteen hundred, and put it all up in the loft above the boathouse. I’ll easily make back four times as much selling my surplus beer. In the meantime” — he took a swig from his unlabeled brown bottle — “we won’t have to worry. Our parties will be well supplied.”

I had to laugh. The guy was a genius. “Okay, give me one of these beers of yours.”

“Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about!” He reached into a cooler, pulled out a bottle, popped the cap with the opener he kept on his keychain, and handed me my first beer of the night. “Here’s to a good party, and some long-overdue fun.”

We clinked bottles and I took a drink. It had a nice bite. “Strong stuff.”

He drank again. “Yeah, well, if you’re too much of a pussy to handle it, you can always drink the pink berry punch with the girls.”

I slugged him in the arm.

“I’ll have a beer,” JoBell said.

Sweeney gave her one. The three of us touched our bottles together.

The party rolled on. Brad must have downed almost a dozen beers. He swayed back and forth with his arm around Crystal as he and Randy yelled, “Nothing is so clear, as when I’m drinking beer” along with Hank McGrew on the living room screen. Someone had either invited TJ or he’d just showed up on his own. He was playing with Sweeney’s office putter set, only he whacked the golf ball way too hard, sending it bouncing off the wall so that it flew back and almost hit a window. What a jackwad. Cal and Samantha had disappeared a while ago, so that was one good thing.

Skylar came up and leaned on me. He was one of those guys who acted like he was completely hammered and could hardly walk after only a couple beers. “Wright, I haven’t had the chansh ta talk to ya too much lately.” He pointed at me. “I jush gotta shay, I saw that … video.” He held his left fist up above his head and made a finger gun with his right, acting like he was shooting. “You were shooo badass.”