Page 138 of Everything Under the Sun

“Who’s Miss Mary?” I asked.

“The shotgun,” Atticus answered.

June smiled; a set of yellowed dentures glared back at us.

“You got a name fer yours?” Esra glanced at Atticus’ gun, still clutched in his hand where it had been the whole time.

Atticus shook his head.

“So then why didn’t you shoot us?” Thais asked.

“Well,” June said, “we ain’t in the habit of killin’ good people.”

“And just how do you know we’re good people?” Atticus challenged.

June and Esra looked at one another.

“You ain’t shot neither one of us yet, have yens?” June pointed out.

Atticus and I were armed—neither June nor Esra were, save the pocketknife sticking from the chest pocket of Esra’s overalls. And he willingly left Miss Mary inside the supply cabin.

“So, you just risked your lives to see if we’d shoot you first?” Atticus said, probably finding the explanation illogical.

“Well no,” Esra answered; he reached behind him and scratched his bald head. “Jeffrey is the reason you ain’t down there, dead in a pile o’bones.”

June and Esra escorted us away from the supply cabin. “He’s up in the house,” June explained as we slipped into the woods. “Probably gettin’ ‘imself ready.”

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“To meet you, o’course.”

Atticus and I exchanged a look.

“Why does he care to meet us?” I said.

“Oh, he’s not too much lookin’ forward to meetin’ him,” Esra said about Atticus. “But he’s takin’ quite a likin’ to you.”

I was uncomfortable suddenly. So was Atticus, I could tell right away judging that uneasy look on his face.

“But don’t you worry,” June said, and we stopped near the base of an enormous tree. “My sweet Jeffrey is a gentleman. Ain’t seen too many pretty girls in his lifetime”—she beamed at me—“he thinks yer an angel sent from God.”

I raised a brow.

“Jeffrey! We’re a’comin’ up!” Esra shouted with his hands around his mouth. He looked up in the tree where a treehouse was perched amid the massive, crawling limbs.

It was an impressive sight, made of perfectly-cut logs and a set of skilled hands; a giant porch wrapped around the structure. Like the supply cabin, a portion of the treehouse was blanketed by vines, the summer months helping camouflage it with fully-matured branches with dense, green leaves. The treehouse must have been built before The Fall; it was far too detailed and professional, made with the best materials that could never have been found after The Fall.

There was movement on the porch; a shadow slipped over the cracks in the surface of the porch’s underside, and I heard the padding of shoes going over the planks, and then shortly thereafter what sounded like the cranking and screeching of something that needed to be oiled; the buckling and cracking of wood being separated from an enclosure. A portion of the porch floor opened up a square, breaking apart from the rest of it as an elevator slowly lowered by a thick, strong cable wire.

“Wow,” I said, nearly breaking my craning neck as I looked up, bumping into Atticus behind me. “Did you build this?”

“Years ago,” Esra answered, “before Jeffrey’s daddy died—he was our oldest son.”

“Samuel was just like my Esra,” June said. “Always preparin’ for the end of the world. Was a good carpenter and architect, my Samuel. Died o’prostate cancer couple years before The Sickness.” She shook her head. “I sure do miss ‘im.”

“He also helped build the house we lived in just over the way”—Esra pointed to his left; the roof of a burnt-out structure peeked through the trees—“but them wicked people came through here and burnt it down ‘bout five years ago. Told us we better come down from the treehouse or else they was gonna destroy our house.”

“They was threatenin’ to burn us out o’the treehouse,” June added, “but really they wanted the treehouse for themselves. Was goin’ to move right on in and send us over the bluffs.”

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