Page 8 of Embers

I’ve got to get out of town and back to the motorcycle, but I’m too scared to make the return trip right now. It’s pure luck no one saw me before. It’ll be safer to wait until dark and slip out while there’s less chance of my being seen.

So I wait in the basement. Hour after hour. I don’t have a watch, and I can’t see the sun, so there’s no way for me to gauge the passing of time. But after a very long, bleak stretch of interminable minutes, it’s finally dark when I peer out the small basement window.

That’s when I leave.

I do okay to begin with. I still have a pretty good memory of the layout of town even though it all looks different now. I can’t see more than a foot in front of me, but I prefer it that way. I move quickly, silently, darting out of the way anytime I hear footsteps or voices or an engine coming toward me.

I make it to the edge of town, and then I start to run. There’s no more than a mile now to reach that Exxon station and the motorcycle.

Despite what is clearly my own naive ignorance, I manage better than can be expected. I might actually have made it unscathed if a Jeep hadn’t been heading into town at exactly the wrong moment. It comes around a curve, so I only get a few seconds of warning. I jump off the road as soon as I see the headlights, but the guys in the Jeep see me first.

Two of them come after me. I fire a couple of shots with my pistol, and I must manage to hit one of them, if the angry cursing is any indication. But another of them catches me before I can aim again, grabbing me by my long braid so violently I cry out. While I’m distracted, he wrests the pistol from my hand.

“Lookie here,” the man behind the driver’s seat says in a voice that makes my stomach lurch. “Pretty little bitch all alone in the dark.”

The guy holding me cackles—in exactly the same way I remember those guys who attacked Derek and me did.

It’s still the worst sound I’ve ever heard.

Life is over for me. I know it for sure. My blood is pumping with the remnants of panic, and my fingers and toes have gone cold. But there’s also something else overtaking me right now. A dark, barren kind of relief. It’s over. Pretty soon I won’t have to do any of this—life—anymore.

Maybe it will be better. Maybe I’ll see Derek again.

There isn’t anyone left in the world who will care that I’m not alive anymore.

“We gotta take her to Buck,” the guy who’s still holding me by the braid says. “Too bad ’cause we coulda had a lot of fun with her.”

I have no idea who Buck is, and I don’t really care. My only thought—the only idea that’s driving me—is I’d rather kill myself than let them do it. The guy holding me has my pistol. He’s got it loosely in his free hand. He must assume that I’m too scared to make a grab for it, but he’s wrong about that. I might be able to snatch it back and pull the trigger before he knows what I’m doing.

A bullet would be a much easier way to go than whatever Buck might have in mind for me. I might be unforgivably naive, but I know at least that much.

I’m bracing myself for the pain I’ll feel from the bullet when a familiar crack of sound makes me jump. The guy behind me lets go of my braid and crumples to the pavement.

It’s only then I realize he didn’t actually release me. Half his head is blown off.

I know what I’ll see even before I turn to look. Cal’s truck is stopped behind the Jeep. And Cal himself has gotten all the way out and is firing at the guy behind the wheel of the other vehicle even as I watch.

Cal looks hard as stone. Rough as gravel. And angry.

Since the guy dropped my pistol when he fell, I grab for it and shoot at the third man, the only one left standing. He’s the one I must have winged before, and he’s already raised his own shotgun toward Cal, but I get him with a better shot in the shoulder, and he goes down before he can fire.

Cal is scowling as he strides over and shoots that guy in the head too.

It’s too much. All of it. The grief and the panic and the despair and the violence. I turn away from Cal and vomit painfully onto the road. I haven’t eaten anything but jerky today, so there’s not much that comes up. I end up on my hands and knees on the pavement.

While I throw up, Cal is busy. He checks the Jeep and hauls out a couple of zipped black bags. He collects the dead guys’ weapons and tosses them into the back of his truck. As I’m straightening up and wiping sweat, tears, and snot off my face, he slashes all four tires on the Jeep.

Then he walks over, grabs me by one arm, and drags me to my feet. My knees buckle. I can’t even stand.

It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so many other things. So many worse things.

Without a word, Cal heaves me off my feet and slings me over his shoulder like I’m a sack of grain. He carries me over to his pickup truck. I’m vaguely conscious that the motorcycle I left at the Exxon station is already in the truck bed. He must have found it and followed this road toward town.

Pure luck—good, bad, or indifferent—that he showed up before those guys took me away to whoever the hell Buck is.

I’d thought everything would be over soon, but it won’t be. Not now that Cal came after me.

He opens the passenger door and drops me in the seat, slamming the door behind me. Then he gets into the driver’s side and shifts the transmission into gear, giving me a sideways glare.

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