Page 42 of A Wilderness Within

“Your kid? With my life,” he promised.

“I figured. But I meant Caro.” He closed his eyes for only a second before looking at Lincoln again. “I’ve known her since she was a kid. She’s all heart.” He smiled. “Natalie used to say Caro would save the world someday, if we would just let her.”

Lincoln smiled too. From the moment he caught a glimpse of Caroline, he’d sensed that same thing, she was his future, and somehow not just his, but possibly everyone’s future.

“You’ve got to protect her,” Rick said. “Promise me. She’s tough, but she still needs someone to have her back.”

Lincoln nodded. “I’d die for her.”

“Good.” Rick relaxed a little, and then his gaze flicked to the gun Lincoln held. “Don’t let me stay down here. Do what you need to do, and bury me beside Nat in the backyard.”

“Okay.” Lincoln swallowed down the hundreds of other words he wanted to say to this man besidesokay. But his lips wouldn’t form any other words, and his throat constricted. The world was full of silence now, silence like the one that transpired between them in that basement, as Lincoln realized what Rick was asking of him. A silence heavy and aching with pain no man or woman should ever have to feel. A pain of a loss so deep that it burned through a man’s bones and left scars. Lincoln was done with being the man who had to take the life of someone good, someone true, someone whose breath meant hope for a better world.

“Fuck…” Lincoln’s eyes blurred with tears, and he wiped his forearm across his eyes, trying to clear his vision.

“I’m sorry to ask you to do it,” Rick murmured gently, a saintly glow around his face now as he stared up at Lincoln with concern. Taking the life of a good man didn’t just leave a stain on his soul—it left him with a burden upon his shoulders that no one could ever help him carry.

“I’d ask the same if it was me.” Lincoln’s voice broke. “Damn, I wish we were getting that beer.” He would have given almost anything for that, for the future neither of them would have. He squeezed Rick’s hand, afraid to let go or else he’d break like no man was supposed to.

“I’m ready,” Rick said. “Should’ve died days ago. I think I was waiting for you and Caro to come find us. Now you have. I can rest.” Rick closed his eyes, and a hint of a smile curved his lips, and he let out a slow breath.

Lincoln recognized when a man was ready for death. Rick was at peace. It didn’t make what he had to do any easier, though. He wished he had something he could give him to make it quick and painless, but all he had was his gun.

“Just think about that beer,” Lincoln whispered to him. “The two of us, watching our girls and the sunset playing off the water of a backyard pool in endless glints of light. Taste the sweet bitterness of a good old IPA beer.”

“Yeah…I can taste it,” Rick sighed.

For a moment, Lincoln was there with him in that memory of a moment that would never be, and he could feel the sun and see the water sparkling and hear Caroline laughing while he tasted that beer. His throat burned, and he could barely breathe.

His usually steady hand shook as he stood and raised the pistol. The sound of the shot rang out like a cannon in the concrete-walled basement. His ears rang for several long seconds as he looked anywhere but at the body lying still at his feet.

Another life to add to the list of his sins, even though it had been done with good intentions. His road to hell was paved with hundreds of well-intended stones.

He stared at Rick. The man had a name, a home, and a family, all dead save for the two females upstairs. Lincoln was sotiredof all this, the deaths, the struggles, the hungry nights and cold beds. A perpetual winter had fallen over the world. It reminded him of the stories by C. S. Lewis where four children stumbled through a wardrobe into a land trapped in winter. There was no evil white witch here to defeat in a glorious battle, just an endless fight against invisible microbes that were armed to destroy humanity forever.

Lincoln squeezed his eyes shut, flashes of the desert heat of Iraq and Afghanistan coming back to him, moments when mortars had shelled his location and he screamed the names of his brothers until he lost his voice. Even in those moments, there had been hope. A world away, he had known that the land of the free,his home, was safe.

But no one had escaped this hell.

He opened his eyes and forced the spiraling dark thoughts into a tiny box inside his head and buried it.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get here in time,” he whispered to the dead man.

He shivered as though an invisible touch had landed upon his shoulder. He’d felt that once before, when he’d lost a man in Kabul. He’d felt the boy, barely twenty-two, die in his arms, heard the death rattle in his chest and saw the distant gaze of his eyes as he’d passed away. He’d felt that same gentle touch then, almost a nudge, and then he’d felt that subtle presence that only his most primal instincts seemed to recognize or understand. Then that presence had faded away like mist before a powerful dawn.

He hoisted Rick’s body up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and took him upstairs. He didn’t look for Caroline, and he was glad she wasn’t in sight.

He took the man outside. They were far enough south that the ground was not frozen now that it was March. He laid the man down on the ground and then picked up a shovel from by the back door. Lincoln dug and dug until his back ached and his palms were raw from the old splintered wooden handle of the shovel. Then he carried Rick over to the shallow grave and buried him.

When he was done, he stood looking down at the four mounds of earth. Caroline’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law were all gone. She might have seen them one last time if he hadn’t gotten shot back in Omaha. He’d cost her the only thing she’d wanted. Her family. She would never forgive him. Hell, he’d never forgive himself.

Lincoln stared at the gun in his hands, unaware of when he had removed it from his shoulder holster. It would be so easy to… There would be nothing left, no more guilt, no more misery. Only a true silence and true darkness, one he wouldn’t mind.

“Lincoln?” The single word shocked him back to himself. He slipped the gun back into his holster with shaking hands and faced her. She was standing half a dozen feet away, her gaze worried and her eyes red-rimmed. She had been crying.

“Sorry. I’m coming back in now,” he promised, his voice rough with emotions he wished he could hide from her.

“Thank you. I know what you did…how hard that was. I can’t even imagine…” There was no hate in her voice, no fury, not even pity. There was only compassion in her too lovely hazel eyes and…a deeper emotion that scared him more than anything else.

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