“Tia’s been there before. She told me about it years ago. She’ll know the way,” Merrill says.
Zoey shares a look with the others before returning her gaze to Travis. “Thank you. That helps a lot.”
“You’re very welcome, but you’re not thinking of seeking this trade out, are you?”
“Curious. That’s all.”
“Well, be forewarned, they are brutal men. If you come across them your only hope is to run the other way.” A strained silence falls over them before Travis says, “In any case, please, by all means, consider staying with us as long as you’d like. We don’t have a lot of room, but the house is warm at night and there’s plenty of food.”
“We appreciate your and your wife’s hospitality,” Merrill says.
The fire crackles and spits a small ember out onto the tile that Travis moves back into the flames. “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews 13:2.” He smiles again at Zoey and she tries to return it.
“I’ll bring these in to Anniel,” she says, standing with the dishes. She moves past Ian, giving him a wide-eyed look, and sees the corner of his mouth quirk.
In the kitchen she finds Anniel at a deep sink filled with steaming water. A woodstove in the corner throws waves of heat across the room, and Isaac holds a small, wooden hammer, banging it on the floor where he sits. Zoey places the dishes on the counter beside the sink.
“You didn’t have to trouble yourself,” Anniel says. “I could’ve come got them.”
“It’s fine.” Zoey stares at Isaac who begins inspecting a knot in the hardwood floor with acute interest. “Can I ask you something?”
The older woman pauses in her washing. “Of course.”
“Do you ever worry about bringing children into the world?”
Anniel smiles broadly, her wide face lighting up. “No. I don’t.”
“How can you not? Today you hid from us because you were afraid we were here to take you away and do something terrible to your family. How do you live in fear like that and ever in good conscience subject another life to the same thing?” She realizes she’s shaking now, voice sharp, rising in volume. Anniel stands placidly beside the sink, eyes soft and knowing. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay, dear. I can understand what you’re saying. But our faith is something beyond the fears of life. God’s will transcends barriers we put around ourselves as well as those in the outside world. In the face of belief, all fear pales.”
Zoey feels something brush her leg and she nearly reaches for her handgun before seeing it is only Isaac balancing with one hand against her thigh. The little boy looks up at her, eyes very blue and clear, studying her with innocent curiosity.
Abruptly he holds up his arms.
“He wants you to hold him,” Anniel says.
“What?”
“He’s only been walking a few months and he gets tired. That’s his sign for wanting to be held.”
“No, that’s okay, I really shouldn’t—”
But Anniel cuts her off by picking Isaac up and placing him in her arms.
The boy looks at her for another long second before flopping against her shoulder. One of his hands winds in her hair, tugging gently. He is warm, and soft, and there is no reservation about how he embraces her. His trust is complete.
She feels a growing warmth in her chest that has nothing to do with Isaac’s body heat. Zoey places one hand against his back and he makes a sound that is between a giggle and a sigh.
All at once the image of the mass grave returns to her.
The stark whiteness of the bones.
Scraps of withered clothing.
The wristwatch still attached to the man who died trying to climb free of the pit.
She sees him clambering over dead bodies and she knows each and every one of them. There are her best friends, Meeka and Lily, and those who were kind to her, like Simon and Crispin. Merrill and Chelsea lie intertwined, the backs of their heads broken and ruined. The man climbs over Ian’s lifeless body, paws past Tia and Sherell and Rita, who lie faceup, mouths open in breathless screams. He steps on Eli’s and Newton’s limp bodies, reaching the edge of the huge grave, and there is a concussive blast, a gunshot that takes him in his back. He falls, twisting over, blood spraying from his torn chest, and it is Lee who looks up at her then, Lee who is dying, the wristwatch shining with his blood.
And she can feel the gun in her hand.
Zoey presses Isaac into Anniel’s arms. She tries to say something but her tongue is a useless lump, too large behind her teeth. She stumbles out of the kitchen, through the living room past surprised faces, and into the open evening air.
Eli and Tia glance up at her as she rushes past them and three of the boys, who are cartwheeling in the driveway. She makes it to a skeletal thicket of bushes before vomiting. Bracing her hands against her knees, she tries to force away the image of Lee’s bloody face and torn body, but can’t and is sick again. Her hands shake and she rubs them against her pants, unable to rid the feeling of the gun in her palm. Slowly she straightens, head pounding, stomach still clenching like a fist.
Footsteps sound behind her and she turns to see Ian approaching. He stops at her side, looking out over the darkening field behind the house that merges with the river and trees.
“Are you all right?” he finally asks.
She wipes her mouth, acid thick on her tongue, in her nostrils. “Yes.”
“Whatever it is you’re carrying, the weight is too much, Zoey. You can tell me, no matter what.”
“I’m fine.”
“No. No you’re not. Some things are too heavy to manage on your own. Certain burdens will break a person if they insist on bearing them alone.”
The wind begins a gentle caress of the long grass, undulations of a great, unseen hand. The light fades further to a purple hue that blankets the east, sliding closer and closer toward them.
She almost tells him then. Almost spews out the words as she did her dinner minutes ago. But she can’t. It is like the truth is locked solidly inside her. She is a prison of secrets.
“I’m okay,” she says finally. Ian’s face is half-shrouded in shadow and she gives him only a quick smile before starting back toward the house. The three young boys round the house’s corner as she nears it, Eli in close pursuit behind them, playfully growling. The littlest trips and falls and Eli tickles his sides before standing the child upright once again.
“Can we play tag again, Mr. Eli?”
Eli winks at Zoey, his chest heaving. “I don’t know. You boys are wearing me out!”
“Aww, you’re too big to get wore out,” the next oldest boy says. Zoey thinks his name is Michael. “Maybe when John gets back we’ll play more! He’s really fast. The fastest of us all.”
Zoey is about to reach the front of the house when she stops and turns back to the children. “What did you say about John?”
“He’s the fastest,” Michael says earnestly.
“No, you said when he gets back. Where is he?”
“At Pastor Rogers’s house. He lives a few miles, uh, that way,” Michael says, pointing in the direction of the highway.
“What’s he doing there?” she asks, an icy tingling beginning to grow in the base of her stomach.
“Telling Pastor Rogers and the rest of our church about you so they can celebrate. He’ll be back soon.”
Zoey locks eyes with Eli, who is already moving. “I’ll get the others,” he says, hurrying around the building.
Ian stops beside the youngest boy. “What’s the matter?”
“Travis’s oldest son went to tell their pastor about us.”
“Oh no.”
They hurry to the front porch, where Eli and Tia are talking with Merrill and Chelsea. Travis is in the doorway, hands held out in a placating gesture.
“You have nothing to fear,” he is saying. “Nothing at all. John is very obedient. He’ll return soon with our pastor and you’ll see. This is a blessed night.”
“You sent him?” Zoey asks. “You sent your son to tell others about us? About me?”
Travis smiles. “Yes. But there’s no need for alarm. Our community is close knit. They will relish your presence and it will sustain their hope for years to come simply by seeing a woman as young as you are.”
She is about to swear at him when a sound rises above the slight wind.
Engines.
Several of them.
When she looks again at Travis, a frown has creased his brow. He stares past them down the long drive and steps close to the porch railing.
“That’s not right,” he says. “The pastor doesn’t have a vehicle.”
Zoey’s head spins, thoughts whirring past faster than she can reckon them. “We have to go. Now!” she yells. She begins to run around the side of the building, Merrill catching up with her at once. “Where’s the ASV?”
“Behind that farthest stand of trees by the river.”
“Go. I’ll be right there.” He yells something at her but she’s already gone, around the back of the house. She sprints to the small wooden door set there and almost bowls Anniel over as she pushes it open from the inside. Isaac is in her arms, eyes wide and shining in the near dark.
“Come on,” Zoey says, grasping the other woman’s arm. “You have to come with us. The boys too, everyone.”
“Travis said to get in the cellar.”
“They’ll find you. You need to come with us.” She tries to yank Anniel with her but the woman moves in the opposite direction. Three small shadows race out of the house, running ahead of their mother as Isaac looks back in Zoey’s direction, whimpering quietly.
“They’re going to kill you,” Zoey hisses, an almost irresistible force dragging her in the direction of the ASV.
An engine revs somewhere beyond the house and a powerful light slices across the tops of the nearest trees.
Anniel pauses at a rough rectangle of darkness that’s opened in the ground before her, then vanishes inside it as if swallowed whole.
Zoey turns and runs.
Her feet slip in the heavy dew that’s becoming frost with the falling night and the lower part of her spine sends a lightning bolt of pain down her left leg as she catches herself and continues. Numbness floods her thighs.
No. Not now. Not now. Can’t fall. They’ll find me. Can’t fall.
The engines are nearer, loud against the field’s broken tranquility. She glances left as she enters the long grass and gains sight of the house’s front yard.
Three vehicles are parked there, vivid orbs of light blazing from their grilles and cabs. Travis is walking toward them, hands out as they were before, his thin body outlined like ink on a white page.
“I’m alone except for my son! Where is my son?”
A gunshot rings out and Travis’s head rocks back, knees folding as he pitches forward and falls to his stomach on the driveway.
Zoey cuts off the moan that tries to come from her chest and plunges into the long grass, its touch wetting her pant legs instantly.
The ASV. It’s their only hope. Inside they have a chance of breaking through, of outrunning or at least buying some time since the armored vehicle will protect them from gunfire.
The strong light begins to sweep toward her across the field, igniting the trees and bushes to her left.
She pitches forward, falling hard on her side as the light passes over, tingeing the dead grass white. She breathes hard, breath pluming above her until she realizes that anyone watching will see it highlighted there, and covers her mouth and nose with her shirt collar.
The seconds tick by.
Her left leg is numb to the knee, the crawling deadness seeping down into her calf.
Men’s voices float across the night. One yells a high, piercing shriek followed by stuttering laughter. Another gunshot rings out and it is then she hears something that shrivels her heart in on itself.
Isaac’s short, wailing cry.
It warbles to her, slightly muffled, but unmistakable. There are several whoops and more gunshots before a man’s voice cries out to cease fire.
They’re going to find them. She has to do something.
Zoey yanks her handgun free, flicking the safety off as she sits up. A large truck is parked to the closest side of the house, a spotlight mounted in its bed. The light points to the ground in front of the bumper and a man stands near the tailgate, a rifle propped against one hip. She searches the night for any figures nearby and sees nothing. Two men appear from the back of the house and begin sweeping flashlights across the lawn.
She can do it. She can save them if she goes now.
Zoey pushes herself up to a crouch, another bolt of pain flashing through the leg that isn’t numb. She’s about to launch herself up and sprint for the shrub nearest the house when two hands grasp her arms and yank her back into the grass.
A scream wells up inside her and she brings the handgun around, but a rough palm covers her mouth, another grasping her wrist.
“Stop, Zoey, it’s me,” Merrill whispers in her ear. The fight goes out of her and he takes his hand from her mouth.
“They’re going to find them.”
“Come on, crawl after me. It’s only another hundred yards.”
“No. We have to stop them.”
“There’s nothing we can do. There’s at least twenty of them, heavily armed. They’d kill us all.”
Isaac’s cries continue to drift to them and tears film her vision. “Please, Merrill.”
There is a single pop and a man’s strangled cry, followed by a chatter of automatic rifle fire.
Then complete silence.
Zoey curls onto her side, soundless sobs strangling her. Merrill places a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. A series of yells come from near the house, followed by a hoarse exclamation of pain. But everything is muted background noise, her hearing deadened like her entire left leg. She lies there, crying silently into the rough, dying grass and cold ground as Merrill holds her.
After an unknowable amount of time, the spotlight dances across their hiding place, turning her vision into a thousand fractured jewels. Zoey wipes at her eyes even as Merrill whispers into her ear.
“They’re coming. Be ready to shoot. Ready to run.”
Footsteps, crackling closer and closer. A pause. Then voices.
“The fuck I gotta look out here for, man? I’m the wounded one. I should be in the truck.”