Page 4 of Homestead

It’s all over my hands now. I sit in stunned frozenness and stare down at them.

A couple of drops of blood fall from my hands onto my jeans.

“Y’all right? Y’all right there?” It’s a male voice. It’s getting closer. It almost certainly belongs to the man who won the gunfight.

But I can’t turn my head. Can’t move my hands. Can’t do anything but try desperately to breathe.

“Hey,” he says, right next to me now. “Hey there, girlie. Are you hurt? Did you get shot?”

I try to reply. Try to turn my head. Can’t do anything more than part my lips.

He’s evidently not the kind of person to wait around for an answer. He reaches in and takes me by the shoulder to turn me around. He’s not exactly gentle, but he’s also not rough or violent. Efficient more than anything else.

He checks me out all over, and I let him. My head is throbbing and my body is shaky, but I don’t think I’m injured.

But Grandpa is dead.

He’s dead.

Which means I’m now entirely alone in the world.

“Can you stand up?” the man asks.

“Probably.” The word comes out of nowhere. My brain is definitely not working well enough to come up with such an appropriate reply to his question.

He lifts me to my feet. My knees wobble but don’t buckle.

“We need to get out of here,” he says. He’s younger than I thought at first. His longish hair and beard are brown, and his face isn’t wrinkled. He’s a lot bigger than me. “Where the hell did you even come from? Why were you on the border?”

I have no idea what he’s even asking. “The border?”

“The border.” He sounds more impatient now. “It’s dangerous here. Why the hell were you driving here?”

“We…” I lose my breath, so I have to try again. “My grandpa and I were… were looking for food and stuff. We’ve never been here before. We didn’t know it’s dangerous.”

His eyes are dark, and they narrow as he peers closely at my face. “Where did you come from?”

I gesture toward the thick, vast, overgrown forest that’s been my home since I was fourteen.

The man turns in the direction I pointed. His face changes.

The world is getting dark again, like the sun is suddenly hidden behind a cloud. I can’t take a full breath.

Grandpa is dead.

I’m almost positive the man mutters in disbelief, “You came from The Wild?” just before I pass out.

* * *

I’m not sure how long I’m unconscious. It can’t be for very long. But when I come back to awareness, everything is different.

I’m in the passenger side of the ATV, and the big, strange man is driving it.

Blinking a few times, I orient myself. Then I gasp and look around frantically for my grandfather’s body.

“He’s in the back,” the man says, correctly guessing the source of my urgency. “We had to get away from the border, so I had to move him.”

We are no longer on a road. We’re driving through a field of long grass.

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