Authors: Katie French
Two vans are parked just inside the doors. The first is a polished supply van, but the second is dusty and battered. Through the darkened windows people move inside.
My sobs subside. “What’s this?” Rayburn’s already shuffling toward the van, muttering.
The passenger door opens and Rayburn leans in. I crane my neck, but the windows are black. Rayburn talks to someone inside. Then he stumbles out, closes the door and shuffles back to me, raking a nervous hand through his greasy hair.
I strain forward wildly. “Who’s in the van, Rayburn?”
He gives me a sidelong glance, as if he’s forgotten me. Then he starts undoing my handcuffs, a slight tremor back in his hands. “Don’t run,” he says, as he leads me to the van. “You’ve got nowhere to go.”
I struggle against Rayburn as he pushes me up to the back doors. “Who’s in there?” I scream. “Tell me!”
The doors pop open. A giant, bare-chested man in overalls stares blankly at me, his mouth open, his eyes slipping over my body. His giant hand cinches around my bicep.
“No!” I scream as the thug pulls me into the van. His hands are the size of baseball mitts. They clamp me to his large sweaty body. The van doors shut. The engine starts up.
Pressed against some strange man’s chest, his hot breath in my ear, the reality of my situation sinks in. First plan B. Now this. What is happening?
Huge biceps block my view. I can’t see over the frayed backseat. I struggle against the beast holding me. We pull out of the hospital warehouse and bounce onto the road. We’re leaving Mama. I open my mouth to protest. Then several things happen at once.
A head pops over the bench seat. “Riley!”
It’s Ethan.
My fear recedes at the joy of seeing my brother. Ethan. What’s he doing here?
There’s another voice from the front. “Let her go, Hatch.”
That voice. I turn toward the front of the van and there he is. Clay’s climbing over the bench seat toward me. His dimpled smile washes over his face as he drops into the back and pulls me from Hatch’s grip.
“I thought I’d never see you again.” His fingers delicately cup the skin of my wrists. He kneels, his face expectant, astonished, relieved.
Clay. Clay’s here. I meet his eyes.
Then I lean back and punch him in the face.
“God!” Clay yells as he cups his jaw and shoots me a wounded glare.
Before I can process anything, giant hands grip grab me back in a thick, muscled embrace. I bat out with hands that must seem infantile to this giant. He squeezes me to his chest, the metal buttons of his overalls digging into my cheek. His chest is sleek with sweat.
I hear Clay behind me. “I said get your hands off!”
The giant releases me just as the driver swerves. The van rocks and I crash into the wall with a
thunk.
My elbow throbs where it dented the van wall. When I sit up, Hatch squats beside me, staring wide-eyed. My hospital gown has slipped off revealing my bare shoulder. As I snatch at the gown, his eyes watch my hand and then trace down other parts of my body. I don’t like the hungry look on his face. He leans forward. Clay grabs the straps of his overalls and hauls him backward.
“I told you to keep your goddamn hands off her!” Clay’s tone is dangerous, considering this monster, with his tree trunk arms and barrel chest, has eight inches and seventy-five pounds on him.
The giant brushes Clay’s hands off with a flick of his wrist. “Boss said keep her still.” Even his voice is meaty and slow. His sausage fingers curl into fists.
Clay pokes a finger into the denim bib on Hatch’s chest. “I’m boss’s son and I say get the hell away before I make you!” His hand claws toward the revolver at his hip.
“Boys,” says a familiar voice from the front, “knock if off, gawddammit.”
I see the crescent-shaped scar first. Then the crooked smile. The Sheriff grins at me from the driver seat.
“Been a while, little lady.” He nods and tips an invisible hat. “Welcome to the family.”
Chapter Twenty
The tension in the van sits thick and heavy.
They let me ride in the middle bench with Ethan. Clay sits up front with his father. Hatch rides behind us. No one talks. Every now and then, Hatch farts or the Sheriff whistles a little tune through his teeth. The only other sounds are the road and the thoughts blaring in my head. How did this happen? Where are we going? Is Ethan okay? Looking at him, curled into me, his hair’s too long (he keeps blowing it out of his eyes) and he’s got what looks like his lunch smeared at the corners of his mouth, but he’s all there. Clay’s been taking care of him after all. I slink one arm around his shoulders.
My eyes flick to Clay up front. There’s a puffy, red lump where my knuckles mashed his jaw. He sits ramrod straight, tightened fist in his lap. He’s worked up, though I’m not sure if it’s Hatch or his dad or me. He deserved the punch. He put me in that hospital where I was almost raped and used for birthing experiments. And now he’s here with his father. They saved me from plan B, but whatever the Sheriff’s got in mind can’t be much better.
I watch Albuquerque, or what’s left of it, zoom past as we drive by. Ethan stares up at the angling buildings, their windowless sides tracking up higher into the sky than any he’s ever seen. “Did people live way up there?” he asks, his eyes on a battered skyscraper.
I nod. Ethan stares upward, his mouth open. My eyes are on the dark doorways, the abandoned cars, the empty parking lots with garbage skittering like crumpled animals. Every now and then we see vagabonds with dark vacant eyes and tattered clothes living in abandoned buildings. Occasionally we see people with matching shoes, full sets of teeth. There’s one benefit to the Breeder’s hospital. They’ve created jobs, income and a sustainable place to cluster around. Some of the buildings show signs of repair: boarded-up windows instead of gaping holes, swept sidewalks, cars that might actually run. We drive past what must’ve been a park, with decrepit benches, tall branching trees and a large grassy field. Vendors have set up booths made of recycled material. Ethan points at a vendor selling both scavenged office furniture and handmade items, chairs pieced together with plywood and two-by-fours, tables molded out of street signs and rusted rebar. The delicious smell of cooked meat wafts in the open window. A man ladles stew out of a large vat, spewing steam into the air. It makes me think about all we’ve lost as a civilization. How so much seemed to fall away when the population tanked and we were reduced to basic survival. As Auntie always said, “Leave men to their own devices and this is what you get.” Maybe the Breeders will bring some civilization to our uncivilized world after all. Too bad they’re willing to sacrifice human life for progress.
A little further out of town, we drive into what used to be a housing area: cozy lanes that now hold abandoned houses falling into decay. We drive past a row of houses burnt to a crisp, their blackened walls standing alone like charred tombstones, marking the demise of the American dream. I spot a square adobe house. The garage door is long gone and piles of fallen plaster litter the garage floor. Next is a sagging two-story where the walls have shifted and the roof bowed. The trees and shrubs someone carefully planted and outlined with stones have withered and died to yellow stalks.
The Sheriff turns down a particularly long driveway and stops in front of another adobe house. I stare at the matching white garage doors, both bent, rusty and cracked open like sleepy eyes. To the left, up a little walkway, the front door stands open. I peer inside to a dark hallway, my heart spurring up in my chest.
“Boys,” the Sheriff says, drawing his gun, “search the premises. No dinner guests. You got me?”
“Stay here,” Clay says to us as he slides open the door.
The men jump out. Ethan and I scoot to the edge of the battered bench seat and watch out the front windshield as the men slink up the sidewalk and through the door, guns drawn, faces tense.
After five minutes, Clay strides up to the van and pulls the side door open. “All clear. Come on in.” Ethan jumps out. Clay offers me his hand to help me.
I glare at his hand like it’s a viper and push past him.
The fresh dusk air is clean and cool after the smog in the van. I inhale deep. It’s the first free air I’ve breathed in a week. Then my eyes meet Sheriff Tate’s as he saunters back to the van for supplies. Not so free after all.
I take a step toward the house when Clay blocks my path. “Hold up,” he says. He’s got a pocket knife in one hand and pair of tweezers in the other. I gape at him. He points to my neck. “We need to get that damn transmitter out or they can track you. I can do it.” He looks down at his utensils. “Gonna hurt a little.”
I shrug. “Won’t be any worse than what I’ve already been through.”
His face tightens. Then he twirls his fingers in a turn-around gesture.
I face the van. He steps behind me. I feel the heat of his body as he leans in. “Close your eyes and count to ten,” he says in my ear. I try not to focus on his breath pulsing on my neck, the pressure of his fingers cupping my shoulder.
One, two, three
… There’s the small jolt of pain as the knife pierces my skin.
Four, five, six
… A deeper pain as the tweezers go in.
Seven, eight
… I feel something detach.
Nine
… The trickle of blood down my neck.
Ten
… His hand pressing a cloth to the wound.
“Done,” he says, sounding relieved.
I turn around slowly. His hand’s still on the cloth on my neck. My eyes travel up his outstretched arm to his face. If he weren’t so handsome with his steel blue eyes and easy smile, it might be easier to stay mad.
“Here,” he says holding the tweezers out. He drops the bloody chip into my palm. It’s so small, about the size of a button, yet so complex with its tiny wires. A green light fades in the center, like a firefly winking out. “You can keep it,” he says. “A memento if you want one.”
I place the chip carefully in my pocket. I have to remember the hospital. My mama’s there.
“Come on,” he says, waving me into the house.
The smell of mildew and decay hits me as we walk in the front door. The air’s thick, swirling with dust we churn up with our boots. The foyer opens into what used to be a kitchen and living room. The part of the kitchen ceiling has fallen onto the buckling cabinets. Everything of value has been stripped, so all that remains is warped linoleum, dirty carpet and piles of trash. My hand brushes over a flaking newspaper on the kitchen counter that crumbles to pieces before I can read the headlines. Cobwebs drape from the corners. I spy a trail of brown animal droppings near the splintered sliding glass door. It’ll be an interesting night’s sleep.
The barren backyard doesn’t look much better with the tilted swing set rusting in the dust. Other dilapidated houses dot the landscape as far as the eye can see. I grab Ethan by the hand and pull him toward the yard. I need to get him alone to ask all the questions thudding around in my brain.
Clay looks up from the armload of wood he’s carrying—a broken kitchen chair, piece of a picture frame, what looks like a dusty jewelry box. “Where you two going?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “To pee. Do you mind?”
He frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t think you should wander around alone.” His eyes flick across the yard to where Hatch drags a fallen tree trunk like a twig to the woodpile.
I hold up Ethan’s hand that I’m clutching. “I’ve got Ethan, okay? We’ll be back in a few minutes. Feel free to hold your breath till we return.”
I turn on my heel and drag Ethan along. We trudge past Hatch and into the neighboring yard. Before us stands the remains of a three-bedroom ranch, but the back half has been eaten by fire. I pull Ethan in, stepping over what looks like a dead animal, but I don’t stop. When we get to the middle of what used to be the living room, now blackened and missing the roof, he pulls back. “Riley,” he says, crossing his arms over his narrow chest, “I
do not
want to watch you pee.”
“You’re not. Listen, I need to ask you some questions. No fooling around, okay. We only got a few minutes.”
He squishes up his face, but nods.
I brush the hair out of his eyes. “What happened after I got shot?”
Ethan frowns. “You were bad, crying and bleeding all over. I thought you were gonna die. Clay said we had to take you to the hospital. I didn’t want to, but we had to.”
I nod rapidly. “How’d we get outta town?”
“Clay found gas and we took a car and drove to that big hospital, the one with all the shiny lights.”
My eyes flick out the open front door. Out there are men. “What else?”
Ethan scratches his head and looks across the room. His eyes lock on a splash of red in the corner—a plastic toy car, melted and half-buried under a pile fallen plaster. I lean over until my head blocks his view. “What. Else.”
His eyes flick back to me. “After we dropped you off, Clay got us a room. We sat on our butts for days, trying to figure how to get you out once you was better. One day, Clay’s daddy just shows up at the door. Riley, I thought you and Dad were bad, but you should hear Clay and his daddy fight.”
Arn. A mention of him still hurts like a finger dug into a raw wound. I twirl my hand in a hurry-up gesture. “How did they get me out of the hospital?”
Ethan shrugs. “Clay just said, ‘We’re gonna get Riley.’ That was yesterday. We got in the van and drove to that big hospital. What’s it like in there?”
“Later.” I stare up at the charred ceiling as I try to piece it all together. A cloud slips over the setting sun, plunging us into shadow. The birdcalls stop for a moment. I shiver. What does the Sheriff have to gain from getting me out?
Clay’s voice calls from the front door. “Hey, you two in there?”
“Yeah, Clay,” Ethan yells back.
“It’s getting dark.” Clay’s voice sounds strained.
My time is up. I grab Ethan’s shoulders and turn him around. “Look away if you don’t want to see me pee.”
As we step over the broken concrete steps and into the open, Clay’s there. His hat’s tucked into the crook of his arm and his damp hair clings to his forehead. His shirts stuck to his body with sweat. His normally clean-shaven face sprouts a stubbly beard. His eyes flick to mine for a second and then swing uncomfortably away. He throws his arm around my brother’s neck. “Come on, little bro. Pa brought us some chicken.”