Far Cry: Absolution

IV

WHEN WILL WOKE THE SKY WAS A PALE BLUE LIKE THAT seen only within three or four nights of the fullest moon. He had fallen asleep with his head resting against the rear passenger window of the Oldsmobile. He sat up and felt every one of his muscles unhinge like some old rusted bit of metal long forgotten by the light of day. He saw he was alone but for Mary May who, like him, lay with her head against the front passenger window. Jerome was missing from the driver’s seat and so, too, was Drew.

Will looked around now and found at his feet the flak jacket and the shotgun he had taken off the dead man and brought with him into the car. His rifle sat up front with Mary May and he leaned now and looked to where it rested across her knees. There was a dread rising in him that he was alone, that Jerome or Drew might now be taken and Mary May in her unmoving slumber might actually be very dead.

With one hand Will brought a finger across her neck and pressed it to the skin. The warmth he felt was immediate, and there beneath his fingers was the pulsing of the blood within the vein. He brought his hand back and looked out into the blue night. Fields stretched out for some length and the farmhouses among them, some with no lights to see, but others glowing faintly from behind the soft curtain of a window.

He cracked the door and took with him the shotgun then carefully closed the door again and stood upon the grass margin of a dirt road. Jerome had parked the car atop a dike. Will could see to either side the flatness of the fields and the way the moon fell across the land, leaving little left in shadow.

When Will went to the edge of the dike and looked over, he saw how the slope ran away from him to a stream below. The water rolling past in that glimmer of light was itself a reflection of the sky above that he could see would change nightly based upon the weather and the fullness of the moon. He ran his eyes out and saw where Jerome was standing another hundred or so feet upstream, while to his right, down in the vegetation sat Drew.

Will could hear nothing of what they said but he could see them both staring off across the river at a group of four horses there across the way. Will moved down the road then stopped and gave a last look to the Oldsmobile there before heading down the slope toward the water below. When he came within five feet of them they turned and followed his movements until he stood beside Jerome.

“Beautiful creatures,” Jerome said. His eyes were on the horses across the stream. The animals standing four abreast with their heads held outward over the wire fencing. Each bending from time to time to eat from the tall shoots of grass that had been cultivated to gigantic proportion from the water there.

Will looked at the horses, then he looked to Jerome. He bent and leaned out and took in Drew where he sat with his hands still tied behind his back, but, as Will saw now, no cord around his mouth or even around his ankles. “You’re taking chances with him you shouldn’t take,” Will said.

“He worshipped once in my church and I have not forgotten that.”

“Yeah, well I wouldn’t be so sure he remembers it the way you do,” Will said. He ran a hand down his cheek and felt the gouges left there by Drew’s nails. “You really should be careful.”

Jerome flashed the chrome .38 he carried in his off hand then looked to Drew and back to Will. “It’s not hard to forget what we’re dealing with. Especially with the way this one talks.”

“He’s been giving you the gospel?”

“They always seem to,” Jerome said. “It’s like they never read another book or heard another voice than that of The Father or that book of his he calls his bible. They all hide behind it, even Drew.”

“And you?”

“Me?”

“How is your religion any different?”

“I’m not forcing it on anyone,” Jerome said. “I’m here as an interpreter. And sometimes, even to me, the Bible is a foreign text. I’m not the end-all. I’m nothing like that and neither is God. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, whether God is with you or whether God is not. I don’t make excuses otherwise.”

“Sounds like you’ve been down here having some discussion.”

“I wouldn’t call it that.”

“What would you call it then?”

“I’d say we’re at an impasse.”

Will ran his eyes over Drew. He was watching the horses but Will could tell he was listening, too. “What’s he say?” Will asked Jerome.

“He says there’s nowhere we can go that Eden’s Gate can’t follow us, and he says wherever we go, and to whoever we find that might help us, their lives are forfeit. He says John will burn buildings to the ground.”

“John is pleasant that way, isn’t he?”

Jerome was watching the horses, but he turned now and looked at Will. “We can’t take him or Mary May to my church, or to the bar. Both places would be too easy.”

“I know it,” Will said. “I don’t think the cabin they gave me would be any better. I think going back to town is out, too. There are too many eyes there watching.”

“Mary May needs medical attention. We need somewhere to go that she can wash and clean the tattoo John gave her.” Jerome looked to Will. “You need medical attention, too. Drew said you’re sick. He said we shouldn’t put stock in you, that you’re a dead man walking. He said you coughed up blood and nearly passed out right there in front of him. Is that true?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“That doesn’t sound fine to me,” Jerome said.

“I’m a healer. I just need time and I just need space. We need to get out of here and we need to do it now,” Will said.

“I don’t know what to do. Drew says that Eden’s Gate is always watching. And I don’t see any reason to think otherwise.”

“No, I don’t either.” Will looked out on the fields and the houses farther on. He didn’t doubt that even now someone was probably watching. He took a few steps then put a knee down in the grass and placed the shotgun there beside him. He scooped water from the stream and brought it to his face. He washed his cheeks and neck. He dipped his forearm in the water and felt the coolness of the liquid across the broken skin.

He was still thirsty but he knew he had water in his bag. He stood now and looked to Drew. Something about the whole thing was bothering him. Will thought about Lonny. He thought about the surety the man had right up until he went over the edge. Will picked the shotgun up and walked to where Drew sat. He put the barrel to the man’s chest. “You know something we don’t?” Will asked.

“They’re going to burn you, Will. They’re going to gut you and string you up with your own intestines and they’re going to burn you when they’re done.”

“You’re an asshole, Drew.”

Drew tried to spit on him but the spittle missed and fell harmlessly to the grass.

“Asshole,” Will said again, stating it like the fact it was. “You notice they didn’t seem to care that when they shot at me, they also shot at you? You should probably think about that.”

“John is going to find you,” Drew said. “He’s not going to be nice, either. You’re one of us, Will. You’ll always be one of us and there are punishments for those that go against us, for those that accepted The Father and then looked away.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Will said. “But right now we need to clear something up before we get into whatever cluster fuck you seem to think is coming.” He pushed the barrel harder into Drew’s chest and Drew went to the ground. Will now handed the shotgun over to Jerome and told the pastor to hold it on Drew while Will checked him.

Will ran his hands up one leg then down the other. He patted Drew down across both arms, his chest, his back, and every place Will could think to check. When he was done he stood and stared down at the man and shook his head. “I think he might just be plain crazy,” Will said, taking the shotgun back from Jerome.

“What did you think you’d find?”

“A transponder. John was using them in the mountains. He says his eldest brother Jacob uses them to track wolves. I found out the hard way that they also use them to track people.”

“But you didn’t find one?”

“No. I would have thought he’d have one the way he’s talking now.”

“Then we’re okay?” Jerome asked.

“I guess so. But it still doesn’t solve our current problem.”

“Where to go?”

“Yes,” Will said.

“You got nothing?”

“I got something,” Will said. “There’s a little food there, and medical supplies. But it’s not ideal. It’s someplace I’ve been avoiding for a long time now. But it might be the best we have.”

SHE WAS AWAKE WHEN THEY STOPPED BEFORE THE GATE. SHE looked out on the hillside. The driveway went on for another hundred yards or so and at the top of the hill she could see the low roof of the house and the dark windows that looked across the property and down over the land beyond.

“I remember this,” Mary May said.

Will leaned forward from the backseat. “Your dad brought you and Drew here once or twice when you were really young and your mom was working at the bar. We used to barbeque a little and you and Drew would roll down the hill here. But that was a long time ago—twenty years or more.”

She could see it held something still for him. She could see why he hadn’t wanted to come here, but he had. For Will there was more locked away in this place than just rooms. “We’ll be safe here?” she asked.

He looked again on the property. She saw his eyes swim a little in their sockets. The house atop the hill, with its view out across the county road below and the varied patchwork of farmland they could see farther on. “It’s a good place,” he said. “You all see how it backs up to the cliff there and makes it approachable from only one direction.” She watched him look around again, watched his eyes land on the gate and the chain there with the padlock. “It will be good,” he said again. “If they come, we’ll see them before they’re knocking on the doorway.”

Jerome looked around at Will then back out on the gate. “You have a key for that padlock?” he asked.

Will shook his head. “Any claim I ever had on this place has long been lost to me. But we won’t need it. I think you’ve taken us far enough,” Will said. “We can’t ask you for anymore. They don’t know you’re with us at this point and I was thinking it might be better for you if we kept it that way.”

“You’re asking me to leave you here?”

“I’m saying you should keep yourself safe.”

“No,” Jerome said. “That’s not how we’re playing this. In the next few days you’re going to need things: food, water, supplies. That sort of thing. I can do that. We’re going to hole up here and after everything dies down a bit I’m going to get the three of you out of here and we’re going to go for help.”

Mary May looked over at him. “What kind of help?”

“The sheriff would be a start.”

“No,” Mary May said. “I think he means well. I really do. I was there just a few days ago. I asked for his help. I told him what I would do. That I was going to go up to Eden’s Gate to get Drew. I didn’t talk to anyone else but him. You get it?”

“I think I see where this is going,” Will said.

She turned and looked to Will then to her brother. “John was waiting for me. It was like he knew. He even said he knew why I was going up there,” Mary May said. “I don’t think it was the sheriff but someone told John I was coming. I just couldn’t say who.”

She watched Drew shrug. He turned and looked out the window. She wanted to say something more but she could see it would do no good.

The engine was still running and now Jerome reversed the car then brought it down off the drive into a little stand of trees that sat to the side of the gate. “I’m coming with you,” he said, cutting the engine now and taking the keys from the ignition. “When this is done we’ll get out of the county and look for some federal help. I’ve seen enough already to know this place needs it.”

WITH HIS HUNTING KNIFE WILL CUT SLENDER BOUGHS FROM the trees then laid them atop the Oldsmobile. Stepping back he turned and looked the car over. He spoke with Jerome, “It’s the best camouflage I can give.”

“You’d have to be right up on it to know there was a car here,” Jerome said. He looked around him now, looking to Mary May as if for a second opinion.

Mary May looked from the car to the gate. “Do you have bolt cutters in the house?”

Will ran his eyes to the house again. He’d looked up a hundred times at it already, as if he feared it would go away. “I’m not sure what’s up there anymore. We’ll see. There used to be some supplies put away, but I honestly don’t know anymore. I’ll look for a bolt cutter then come back down and cut the lock. Then we can bring the car up away from the road here.”

“Just shoot it off,” Drew said.

Will spun to look at the man. Will had in some way forgotten he’d been with them, staying quiet there on the ground where they’d put him after they took everything from within the car. Will shook his head now. “That seems a sure enough way to get your buddies looking out this way.”

“They’re your buddies, too,” Drew said.

Will ignored him. He bent and picked up the backpack with his water, snares, traps, and remaining .308 cartridges within. He brought it to the gate and tossed it over. Next he slid the rifle in between the metal gate rails, making sure it was out of anyone’s way.

Now, he told them to start climbing. They took with them the flak jacket and the shotgun. Jerome helped Mary May to get up and over the gate. Will and Jerome both noticed how hard it seemed for her to move her arms, each pull of muscle or stretch of skin causing her face to change. From what they’d seen of the tattoo they both knew why, in many places, the letters looked carved upon the bone.

Now, Will bent and lifted Drew up then brought him to the gate. And between the three of them they got him over. Will followed. He looked up at the house again. However it came out in the end, he knew without a doubt that this was where it had all started for him, one way or another, years before.

He was trying to hide what it meant for him to come back here, but he knew in some ways they must have known. He lifted his rifle and bag then turned back to the group and told them it was time to go. They walked two by two up the hill and though Will hoped to find some salvation here, he did not know what they would find, and though he had forgotten about this place for years, he wondered now if that had been true for all.

When they came to the top he could see the rope swing was still there beneath the lone tree like it had been when he’d given the property over. He stopped and stared at the two lengths of rope and the wooden seat below. He knew he was here for a reason, but he wondered now why the fear of death had been the deciding factor in his return. He stared at the swing while the others passed him by. When he was able to break free from the spell it had cast upon him, he turned and saw that Mary May, Jerome, and even Drew, were waiting on him, staring back at him from where they stood next to the house.

“Just taking a trip down memory lane,” Will said. He had said it as a joke but no one laughed and they were all still watching him as he walked up. The single-story house had been left pretty much the same. The paint was chipping and the surrounding land was overgrown. In several places weeds grew out of the gutters, but it was his home still, even now that it wasn’t.

He’d raised his daughter, Cali, here. He’d put that swing up himself, pushed her in it when she’d been little, watched her play on it when she got older. He looked on it now as if it had no reason to be here, though he knew very well that it did. He gave a piece of himself away when he gave this property to the church, and foolishly he thought he’d be rid of it.

Under a stone near the door he found the key. After turning the key in the lock he used his shoulder to push the door the rest of the way. The sound of the wood working against the frame was harsh in the relative silence. Shadows were waiting inside and warm trapped-away air ran out and met them where they stood. The air smelling of old locked-away places and the damp unused hint of dirt and mold.

He stepped in and ran his eyes about the room then took several steps inside, kicking an old beer can that sat there on the floor. He had not seen it and he heard it roll away from him then saw it move into the light of the moon that lay in a square on the living room floor.

“Looks like you had squatters,” Jerome said. He had come into the room leading Drew behind him, Mary May last. She closed the door now and all of them looked about the place.

Will had never thought his drinking was as bad as it was until the morning after he had lost them. Even now, looking around, he could see how wrong he’d been about even that—his drinking had been even worse than he had thought. Empty bottles were everywhere, some from before the death of his wife and child, but many more were from after. He would drink them and toss them and, in one corner of the living room, a pile of shattered glass lay from all the bottles he had thrown. In spray paint on the wall above the broken glass was written the single word, MURDERER. Though Will knew they were all thinking it must have been someone else, Will knew he had written it with his own hand, and that he had meant it at the time.

He wished now that he’d died instead of them. He wished now that he had just pickled himself in alcohol, like he’d tried to do so many days and nights after they’d gone. And though it hurt him to think on it now, he wished they hadn’t loved him as much as they did. Then, he thought, they wouldn’t have been out on that road that night. But even as he thought it he knew it was not the answer. And if he was being truly honest with himself he knew he should have been the one to change.

“There should be some kerosene lanterns in the kitchen,” Will said now. He looked around on the three of them. He could see the careful study they were giving this place, as if they’d stepped unwelcome into the prison of memories Will had made here. “Top shelf on the right. Matches should be there, too. And if the fuel is gone I think there is some more beneath the sink. At least there should be.”

They went out of the room and he heard them rummage around, then find the lamps. First one went on then the other, he saw the warm glow build back in there and he heard their talk. There were cans of food and at the bottom of one shelf they found a twelve pack of soda water.

Will came into the kitchen and saw them laying out the plunder and already he could see that the simple fact of food had put them in a better mood. He tested the faucet but nothing came. Then he tested the stove and there was not a click or spark of any kind. He stepped away and stood trying to figure out what could be done.

After five minutes, he came back in with the old two-burner camp stove he’d used when he was a young man, freshly back from the war. He found fuel for it as well and after dialing up the fuel pressure, he tried the knob then heard the hiss of gas. With a match, he lit the burner and they all stood there in a bit of wonder while it danced then settled.

By the time Will had found the medical kit they had started heating green beans and corn in an ancient pan, and on the other burner they had concocted a kind of soup with diced spam and tomato paste, made fluid with water taken from cans of soda.

“It smells like heaven,” Mary May said. She held the medical kit. “Thank you. I know that it must have been hard to come here.”

“Twelve years is a long time,” Will said. “I should be okay.”

“But you aren’t,” she said. “We can see that and that’s okay, too.”

He looked at her. He had been trying not to meet her eyes. She had lost her mother and her father and maybe even her brother in the span of three weeks and she was the stronger one. He knew that. He could see it just as easily as she could probably see his own pain.

“My brother,” she said, turning now to where Drew was slumped against one wall of the kitchen, his hands still tied behind him and his legs outspread on the kitchen floor. “I want to untie him. His fingers look blue at the ends. I know he’s hurting.” She had turned back to Will and he watched her and thought about what she was asking him to do.

Will went over to Drew then dropped down on his haunches and looked the man over. “Your sister says your hands are tied too tight, that true?”

“You can look at them yourself,” Drew said. He had turned slightly, his eyes cast down to where his arms disappeared behind his back, as if they might share this moment somehow. “I can’t feel anything past the wrists.”

Will looked at the fingers. What Mary May had told Will was true. They looked a little gray in that light. Will bent and pulled them out so that he could better see them. Now, he looked away, running his vision to Mary May first, then to Jerome.

Jerome was standing at the two-burner stove, stirring the tomato soup. When Will’s eyes went to him, the man—slowly and deliberately—shook his head in silent opposition to giving this man any freedom to hurt them.

Will stood now. He went back through the house. When he came back into the kitchen he held a length of climbing rope and some zip ties and a woman’s shirt. He set these on the table just on the other side of the two-burner stove. Jerome was still looking at him, still watching, not saying anything.

Will dragged one of the chairs from the table and set it there in the center of the room. He looked to Mary May. “I know you love him. I know you want to help him. I want to help him, too. It’s why he’s here and not dead back there at Eden’s Gate. But I also need to tell you that he can’t be trusted. He might be family. He might be all you have left, but right now, in this situation, we really can’t treat him that way.”

She looked her brother over then looked back at Will. “Then what?”

Will walked to where the second kerosene lamp sat by the sink. He lifted it up and then, moving back toward her, he picked a can of soda from out of the twelve pack and delivered both to Mary May. “I’m going to untie your brother, but I want you to take that shirt and the supplies and go back there to the bathroom. Start to clean up that tattoo John gave you. I’m going to put Drew in this chair and tie his feet, then his chest, and then I’ll cut his hands free.”

“And you don’t want me to help?” she asked.

“No,” Will said. “I don’t want you to help because if Drew gets loose at any time I don’t want you stopping me. Or stopping Jerome. We mean to keep him safe but neither of us trust him. You understand?”

“I’m on your side,” she said. “I could help.” She looked past him to Drew and Will turned to see Drew watching all of this with amusement.

“I know that,” Will said. “But things change quickly. It’s why John sent Drew away when he started tattooing you. And it’s why I’m sending you away now. Family makes people do strange things. That’s all.”

She looked around at all three of them, then she agreed. They watched her go down the hallway to the bathroom. The light from the lamp, refracted off the walls of the hallway, was the only thing to follow after she had gone. Then, far down, Will heard the sound of the bathroom door closing and afterwards there was no light to be seen at all.

Will brought Drew to his feet then walked him to the chair and set him down again. Jerome had already taken up the shotgun and angled off to the right for a clear shot that would not hit Will if Drew did decide to fight them. Will cut a length of rope away then tied it around the back of the chair, securing it in among the wood. Then he tied Drew’s arms down at the elbows, looped the rope across his chest, and tied it all taut behind. He did the same to his ankles, looping the separate length of rope about the chair legs before securing each ankle to each chair leg. Only afterwards did Will cut the electrical cord from about Drew’s wrists. The rope around his chest and arms was loose enough that he could, with difficulty, bring his arms around and set them on either thigh.

Will tested each rope then stepped back. He looked to Jerome then motioned for Jerome to lower the shotgun.

Drew sat there working his hands open and closed, repeating it over and over again. He looked straight at Will and smiled. “See, you can trust me,” he said.

Will turned away. He found several thick blankets and some nails then tacked the blankets up across the front windows to block what light came from the lamp and the cooking. He was nearly done with this when he looked out the front window on the tree there and the swing moving slightly in the night breeze that came up the hill.

He let that vision pour into him for a time, memories in his head and the knot they created in his throat and in the muscles of his stomach. Then, in only a whisper, he said, “I hope wherever the two of you are you’ve made a life of it better than I ever could.” He let that hang in the air for a while, then he reached up and hammered in the last nail.

IN THE MEDICAL KIT SHE FOUND GAUZE AND ALCOHOL. SHE found things like scissors and bandages, an ACE wrap, and the little metal clips that went along with it. She laid this all out before her on the bathroom counter. The light of the lamp flickering ever so in the stillness of the bathroom, causing each of the items and even the medical kit itself to wax and wane in shadow on the bathroom wall.

She listened for a time but she heard no struggle and she assumed everything had gone okay and even now her brother sat on the chair, his hands free. Mary May did not blame Will for the way he’d talked to her. She knew it was true, she knew when it came down to family, people did irrational things.

“Like crash their pickup truck and run into the mountains for a day or two,” the woman in the mirror said to her, looking at her out of the lamplit gloom.

“John did try to give you an out,” she said to herself. “He tried to tell you not to go up that mountain but then you did anyway and now you have this to deal with for the rest of your life.” She pried one edge of her shirt down and away from her skin. It was stuck in places from either the blood or sweat that had dried there. She looked the word over. It was barely even visible with all the dirt and dust she had on her, and that stuck on her as if she was some fool from yesteryear who had let themselves be tarred and feathered.

She picked up the scissors now and cut the shirt all the way down then shucked it from off her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. She found the can of soda water Will had given her. She cracked the top, poured a little over some of the gauze, and began to wipe it down her chest. She followed the edges of the letters, not wanting to directly touch them yet, the skin beneath the dirt and blood looking red and swollen.

When she was done she brought out a separate swath of gauze, poured alcohol over it and then started in again, wincing with the pain, sometimes crying out as the alcohol touched the raw skin. When she was done she stood unmoving at the mirror, looking at the word there in the lamplight. The tattoo was dark on the skin, she could see in some places how John had gone over it several times, and then in other places she saw how he had used a lighter touch. The effect gave the tattoo a loose and somewhat lopsided appearance, like the drawings of a child.

ENVY. She closed her eyes, hoping in some way it would not be there when she opened them again. But it was there, spanning the skin between her collarbone and the beginnings of her bra, marking her. She thought about what John had said to her as he had put the sin across her chest. She knew she would not forget, but she knew, too, that the way she thought about it and the way John had intended it were two completely different things. She would not forget, and if John had killed her daddy, Mary May was certain she would come for John first.

She slipped one bra strap off, then the other. She kept the back clasped and began to press clean bandages down across the red and swollen skin. If she had lotion or some sort of ointment she would have used it, but everything she turned up was old and had separated within the bottle and certainly could not be trusted. Next, she wrapped the ACE bandage and secured it with the clips. It looked all right. Not professionally done but it worked for what it was.

She put the straps of the bra back over her shoulders then picked up the shirt Will had given her. She put the still-folded garment to her nose. Dust and locked-away places. Mildew, and the faint smell of another woman’s perfume. It was his wife’s and she’d known that since he’d brought it out to her. Now, Mary May let it fall full before her. A gray button-up blouse. She knew he’d picked it out because it would not sit atop the tattoo, but still it was not like the T-shirts she was accustomed to. She put it on and turned and looked herself over. It was almost as if she were someone else. It was almost as if it hadn’t happened, but she knew no shirt could erase the tattoo from her mind, it would always be with her, however she chose to try and hide it.

When she opened the door and came out with the lamp held before her, she could smell the cooking. There was the sound of metal silverware and the low talking of the men. She walked forward but then stopped. In the living room the windows had all been covered with thick blankets, but the lightest of them showed a slight red flicker, like light seen on the bottom of a pool, diffuse and distant. She knew though that this was not light on the bottom of a pool, or anything as pleasant as that.

By the time she reached the window she was sure of it, something was burning. There was a faint smell in the air that had not been there before, rubber or something acrylic. She now had the blanket in hand and she parted it from the window and looked out. The fire lit the night up and the smoke rolled and billowed black into the sky, the flames licking upwards at a height of twenty or thirty feet. All of this was down at the edge of the property. Something had been set afire there at the gate, the flames rising and spreading upward into the trees overhead.

IT WAS JEROME’S CAR. WILL PUT THE SCOPE ON IT AND WATCHED the flames licking upward to the trees above. Many of the branches were now aflame and the thermals were working upward among the tree boughs and causing them to curl inward and dance in cruel fashion, like the last dying moments of some spider clutching at the air in spasm.

Will dropped the scope and moved back from the window. He had seen nothing but the car afire, windows no more than red flame and the dark exterior of the car burned an ashen gray beneath the moon. He had seen no one, but it did not mean they were not out there—they were. If the tattooed skins stapled to the walls had been any indication, it was likely John was there and many, many more.

When Will turned now, they were all waiting on him. Mary May right next to him, Jerome halfway across the room, and even Drew back there in the kitchen, still tied to his chair. “Get your shit,” Will said to all of them.

He watched them staring back at him, seeing in them his own baffled expression. They had thought themselves safe. They had thought themselves free in that moment, but they had not been, and never had been, and it was Drew all the while who had been right. Eden’s Gate would come for them and there was nowhere they could hide.

“Come on,” Will said. “We need to go. There’s no time left.” He moved to where he’d dropped his bag. He brought out the box of rifle cartridges and emptied the contents into his pockets then stood, bringing the bag up with him. He was back at the window in another second. He put the scope out there on the night again, and he had to still the rattle of his nerves that now ran through him like a freight train.

Out there in the night, seen through the scope, was a mass of twenty or thirty people. All armed, all moving up the hill, fanning out around the property from one side to the other. And leading them was John. His dark shape and the dark shapes of those behind all lit by the rising flames, each among them like the Devil’s own hellspawn set forth upon the world, walking ever nearer.

Will turned again and caught sight of Mary May, she was at the other window looking out, watching as Eden’s Gate approached. She had stuck the .38 down the front of her waistband. She let the blanket drop and Will met her halfway across the room and together they found Jerome in the kitchen, standing over Drew with an old kitchen knife held in one hand.

“What should I do?” Jerome asked. “Should I cut him loose? We need to run. We already might be trapped.”

Will looked to Jerome, looked at the knife then turned and looked back at the diffuse light of flame seen everywhere now at the windows, as if the whole of the property were on fire and not just the stand of trees there at the bottom of the drive. “We could let him go,” Will said. “We should. There’s a way to get out of here, but we couldn’t carry him and we couldn’t trust him to move as fast as we need to go.” He turned back to them now. He looked from face to face, he could see the fear in each of them and he wondered if he was the only one who still thought they might live through this.

“I’m not leaving him,” Mary May said.

Will turned sharply. He had little to say to this that he hadn’t already said. Family made people do strange things, and though he thought in that instant she couldn’t be more wrong, he also understood. Will would have fought through hell and back if he thought he could save his wife or daughter and preserve what little he had left.

“Okay,” Will said. He didn’t argue. He just went across the room as fast as he could, picked up the flak jacket and shotgun and shoved them toward Jerome and told the pastor they needed to hustle the fuck on.

Jerome looked wildly at Will but soon he had set the knife down and taken up the flak jacket in one hand and held the shotgun in the other. He looked back at Mary May now. “You should take this,” he said to her, holding up the flak jacket.

“No,” she said. “You should. If they mean to kill me they’ll do it. No vest is going to stop that.”

Will waited a half second, even though there was not a half second to give in this world and each passing moment brought them a little closer to whatever it was that was coming. He looked at Mary May. “Use the zip ties on the table there for his hands and then cut him loose from the chair. Get him outside and in front of John. Don’t let them inside here. You want to be in the open where more eyes are on you. John could have killed you at Eden’s Gate but he didn’t, that might still count for something now.”

That was all the time he had for a good-bye and he went out the back door now with Jerome following. They came out into the night and the rough gravel there and looked about them, somewhat in wonder that they were still alone and no member of Eden’s Gate stood waiting for them.

Grass grew in clumps here and there, but it was patchy at best with the shade of the house on one side and the rock cliff another twenty feet away leaving much of the land in shadow. The property itself was sloped and ran toward the road below. Will knew this. He knew every inch of this land and though it had been years since he had walked it, he still knew which way to go.

He crossed over the barren earth quickly and came to the face of the cliff just as fast. Jerome came shortly after, still carrying the flak jacket in one hand and the shotgun in the other. When he reached Will he glanced back at the house and the red sky farther on that was not daylight or dawn, but the burning of his own car in the darkness of the night. “We shouldn’t have left her there alone,” Jerome said.

Will kept running his hands up and over the rock face, he was looking it over, trying to retrace a path he’d taken years and years before. “I’m not leaving her,” Will said now, finding the first handhold on the rock. “I’m climbing to the top of this thing. If she gets Drew outside I should have a shot on any who try to hurt her.”

Jerome looked up at the cliff.

“My daughter discovered this when she was just eight years old,” Will said. “There’s hand and footholds for the first ten feet, and then we can sort of scramble our way to the top from there.”

“You won’t let anything happen to Mary May?” Jerome asked.

“If it comes down to it I’ll use every bullet I have.” He turned and looked Jerome over. The man had been at war but he looked now more like a civilian than anything Will remembered from his own time. “Give me the shotgun and put that vest on.”

Jerome handed the shotgun over and Will strapped it down on the side of his pack then started up the rock face, using the hand and footholds he knew were there. Jerome tightened the vest down across his chest and soon was following.

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS,” DREW SAID.

He sat in the chair and one at a time she brought his hands forward on his lap, while his arms and chest were still secured beneath the rope. She zip-tied Drew’s hands together at the wrists then sawed the knife back and forth across the ropes until they came loose. He stood now and she took the .38 from her waist, held it on him, and said, “I’m trying to save your life. Can’t you see that?”

Drew smiled at her. “And I’m trying to save yours,” he said.

She didn’t know what to say to that. She thought of the young herder in the mountains. She thought about what he had said to her, “I hope you mean the same to him as he means to you.” She did not know if that was true anymore. But she still wanted it to be.

She motioned toward the living room and the door there and he began to walk. She set the knife down as she passed the little table they had used for cooking. She followed him now with their father’s .38 pointed directly at Drew’s back. He put his bound hands on the doorknob then turned back to her, waiting on her go. “We leave this place and there’s no going back,” he said.

“There was no going back a long time ago,” she said. “We passed that when Daddy died trying to get you off the mountain.” She parted the blanket from the frame and looked out. John was waiting there. They had come nearly all the way up the hill now and they stood fifty feet away, twenty of them, if not more. All of them waiting on her as if they knew already she would come.

She went to Drew and placed the gun to his back and told him to turn the doorknob slow and let them out. They came out of the house linked this way, Drew out front and Mary May behind, holding the gun on Drew and walking after him.

Immediately she felt outside her element, sweat began to stand atop her skin and the feeling now was one of complete and utter terror. The line of people, women and men, constricting now upon her, all with weapons and all moving inward to encircle her as she went.

Mary May kept looking around at all the faces, half were people she knew—or thought she knew. One of her elementary school teachers was there. A couple farm workers she recognized from the bar that had not been in for years. A rancher her father had run cows for once upon a time. Many she knew by name and many more she knew by sight. These were people she might have said hello to on an afternoon, passing down the road like anyone else. She could hardly believe it. Drew had been right, Eden’s Gate was everywhere. It was a virus, attacking any that came in contact with it and like any newly discovered virus it was slowly taking over before the cure could be found. She looked ahead of her now to where John stood, waiting on her and Drew.

“What’s your plan here?” John called to her. He had done nothing but stand there and watch the two of them move toward him as Mary May pushed at Drew. Her nerves laced so tight within her that they might snap just from simply breathing.

“We’re walking out of here,” she said, still moving, but feeling at each step that the faces around her were closing in. She stopped now, seeing no opening in the crowd. She had thought in some way she’d be able to make one, that she’d wave the .38 around and they would part and she and Drew would just walk through. Now she stopped and she felt each and every one of them around her. She spun, holding the gun in her hand, keeping it low, but her eyes reaching out to each. “You know me,” she said. “Some of you knew my parents. My family. You have to see this isn’t right.”

None of them said a thing to her and she spun again, the gun held a little higher. The faces that surrounded her were unchanged, cold as stone and just as unforgiving.

“Careful now,” John said. “We’re not the killers you think we are. We’re farmers, we’re shop owners, loggers, mill workers, delivery drivers, mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. We’re like you. All of us. We’re not killers like you think, so don’t go waving that gun around. You might make someone jump who would rather not. Then where would we be?”

She held to her brother’s shoulder now and kept the gun half raised. “How did you find us?” she asked.

“Finding you would imply we lost you to begin with,” John said. He gave a wide look at the crowd around her. She was cut off now from the house and she could see each of them carried a weapon, from baseball bats to machetes to shotguns and assault rifles, they were armed not like any farmer or logger or anything else Mary May had ever seen. “Our people are always watching,” John continued. “They’re from every walk of life imaginable. Our faith is what unites us and our loyalty to one another is absolute. If someone attacks us, we attack back.”

Mary May spun again, she couldn’t trust them and there was ever the feeling of a spider crawling up her back. “I never attacked you,” she said. “I was attacked.”

“You were shown the way to Eden’s Gate. You were shown the same hospitality that all who come to Eden’s Gate are shown. You think you are different but you are not.” John looked around now, he looked to each face as if he were searching for a specific one from the crowd. “Where’s Will?” he asked now. “I assume he is out there somewhere waiting, probably putting the crosshairs of that rifle scope on me as I speak.” John looked now to the house, then he turned and looked to a far growth of pine at the edge of the property, his eyes still searching.

“You would think that we came for you, wouldn’t you? But you’ve already been marked, Mary May. You’ve already been given the blessing of ink upon your chest. All that’s left is for you to accept it.” When John brought his eyes back to her, he said, “We did not come for you, Mary May. We came for Will. He has broken the bond of faith. He has turned his back on us. On his brothers and his sisters and The Father. We’re not here for you, Mary May, we’re here for him.” John now motioned to two groups, three people in each, and they cut away. Mary May saw one group go into the house, while the other moved out across the property, keeping to the grasslands and slope below.

“Loyalty is important to us,” John said. “I think I made that clear. We live our lives by specific rules, we listen only, and we learn and take our faith in The Father seriously, and any among us that would go against that faith and The Father’s teachings, will find we do not forget and we do not forgive.”

WILL JACKED THE BOLT FORWARD ON THE RIFLE AND ADVANCED the fresh cartridge. He lay atop the rock with a view down over the roof of the house to the group below. He had wondered about the walls of tattooed skins he’d seen and now he knew. Many he recognized but many more he did not know. They were from everywhere, from this county and from places far beyond. Eden’s Gate itself was everywhere, like a disease within the system that waits in silence, dormant until asked to attack every conduit of life, sucking blood from the vein and oxygen from the lungs.

Still winded from the climb, Will had moved up the rock face with the bag on his shoulders while Jerome followed, both men trying to move as fast and silently as possible. Both knowing that any missed step would send them falling over the edge, and any loosened rock would bring the attention of those below, and then in that moment they might wish they had fallen to begin with.

Now Will lay atop the rock trying to still his breath as he looked down at those below through the scope. He could see Mary May down there. He could see Drew before her and about ten feet farther on he saw John. At this distance, it was an easy shot and though Will could not tell what they were talking about, he kept his finger on the trigger, the safety already pushed forward, ready at any hint of danger to take a shot. The chaos this might cause was the only way Will could see now that Mary May might escape. But he hesitated. He could not just pull the trigger. He had done it before but he had done it out of fear and in self-defense. This would be simply killing and he did not want to be that man. He was not that cold-blooded and he didn’t want to be. He ran the scope around the circle of people and watched their every move, and he saw in them his own face and his own former desires.

A group of three was sent into the house and then another three were sent out and away from the larger group. Will moved the scope and followed this second group as they ran perpendicular to the house then into the larger darkness. The fire was still burning down at the base of the property and strange shadows were cast here and there that moved one way or another depending on the height and width of flame.

Will watched this group move and then, when he lost them among the far trees, he was quick to run the scope back to John and Mary May. Will called over his shoulder to Jerome, “Those three that went into the trees will likely come out and around on us in the next few minutes. Be ready with the shotgun. If they find us we might have to run. I’d rather that than get into a gun fight here atop the cliff.”

MARY MAY HELD THE GUN STILL. SHE HAD ONE HAND ON HER brother’s shoulder but she was looking around at John, feeling exposed. “You say you’re not killers,” Mary May said. “But my father went up the mountain and he never came back down. He died up there trying to get Drew and now I’m trying to do the same. That’s what Daddy wanted and that’s what I made my mind up to do.”

“How?” John asked. “You’ve put your brother in front of you like he’s your hostage. You’ve tied his hands like he’s a prisoner. Why would you do that to your kin? Ask yourself that? Ask yourself why none among you, Will or Jerome, would allow this man to go free.”

She looked around the group now, they were waiting on her, but none seemed to have raised their guns or weapons and she turned again and brought her eyes to John. “He’s one of you. The Father or someone got in his head. He’s not the same man he was. He’s not the brother I knew when we were kids.”

“No,” John said. “He’s better than that. His mind is open. His eyes are open. He has been changed. You are right in that.”

“You talk as if it’s a good thing that he turned his back on family.”

John laughed. He looked around at the faces that looked back at all of them, the witnesses to whatever meeting this had become. “You still don’t get it, do you? It was never about Eden’s Gate. It was never a church issue. All The Father does is listen. He supports. That’s something your own father never did. Your own father, and even your own community, turned their backs on Drew a long time before. The Father came to this place and saw what it could be. We had nothing to do with what passed between your own father and his children. That was not a church issue. That was a family one.”

“But you killed him.”

“We welcomed Gary. We knew about his wife, your mother. Our hearts went out to him. But we,” John stopped now and raised his arms to encompass all of them. “We did not kill him. The Father did not kill him. I did not kill him. What your father wanted from Drew was not something we had any say in. Only Drew could answer to your father and his answer was no.”

She felt her hand loosen from her brother’s shoulder. She had known in some way. But it was beyond knowing, it was like an accident seen in the clear bright sunshine of day, but its action was so horrendous that in memory that same moment was as dark as night. Unseen, unwanted, and pushed away.

Drew turned all the way around now, his eyes seemed to her as cold as she had ever seen them. Hardened like two pieces of glass there within the sockets of his skull, unfeeling.

“Daddy made you proud,” Drew said. “He gave you everything like it was your birthright and not mine to share. When we were kids, when we were teens, when we became adults together, he gave to you before he even thought to give to me. He gave you the bar, him and Mamma. And though there was a place there for me it was never mine to have.”

She shook her head. She could not believe what she was hearing, or that their recollections of their life together could be so different in time and place. “No,” she said. “I was just older.”

“Older. Smarter. Funnier. Stronger. Nothing I did could ever measure up. All I tried to do in high school, all I did afterwards. It never was enough.”

“No,” she said. “That’s not true.”

“The truth,” Drew said, “is that they never listened to me. They never tried to understand me. They never wanted me. Do you know what that’s like? To live in a household and a family that doesn’t want you?” He laughed now, the laugh carrying on into the silence. “Of course you don’t.”

“They loved you,” she said. It was the only thing she could think to say. It was the truth and he needed to hear it. She could barely look at him. The hate she saw, the way he had grown taller almost as if talking about the death of their father had given him new life, while taking it from her, causing her to shrink ever farther now within herself. “Daddy loved you,” Mary May said again, wanting him desperately to hear it.

“No. John is right. Daddy never listened to me. He never understood me. But The Father did. Eden’s Gate did. They gave me a new life when they marked me, and baptized me, and then gave me the birth I always should have had, into the family I should have had.” He turned now and looked at all the members of Eden’s Gate who encircled them, and then he brought his eyes back to her. “I was given a new life and when Daddy came to get me I wanted nothing of the old life and I told him that. But it was like nothing had changed. It was the same between us. He did not listen. He insisted that his way was the true way and that I was in the wrong. He put his hands on me, but I was not the little boy he thought me to be. I had grown. My mind had grown. And whatever power he once had over me was gone.”

“But it was a car accident,” she said in a weak voice, not knowing what to say, not wanting to hear what he was telling her.

Drew looked at her like she was nothing. He looked at her like she was stupid. “You know that’s not true,” Drew said. “You’ve said that yourself. You just can’t see it. You just can’t picture how it was between us.” Drew raised his two hands, banded together by zip ties at the wrist. His palms open and his fingers outstretched but tightening. “Picture him coming to me and trying to tear me out of the life I’d made. Picture his hands on me, trying to drag me away. And then picture the fact that I was finally stronger, faster, and quicker than he had ever been. Picture that and then you’ll understand it was not an accident. That he forced my hand and he paid for all the wrong he’d done to me.” He leaned in now, coming closer. “It was nothing to kill him. It was like sticking a knife into something already dead.”

She fired from the waist and the bullet entered beneath her brother’s chin and exited just behind his hairline. She watched his body go loose then fall all at once to the side. She felt like she was not there anymore. The night did not exist. The people. The pressure that had built within her with every one of his words. It all went out of her. It all ceased to exist for that one second as she watched him fall away.

Mary May was sobbing now, she had dropped the gun and she found herself upon the ground, trying to drag his body up to hers. The feel of his weight, the knowledge of what she’d done, of what she had allowed herself to do. She tried to tell herself that he had done this. But she knew he hadn’t. She knew it was her that had pulled the trigger, that it was her and no one else.

She looked around now, they were all staring at her and as she raised her eyes to them they seemed to shrink back from her, to recede in some way. Soon, Mary May heard the shuffling of their movements. She held her brother in her arms. She tried to support his head, to hold him up. But she could do little for him now, she had shot him, hadn’t she? But it did not feel like that. It did not feel as if it was her. It was slowly changing now. The anger she had felt, the rage, the sheer compulsion of her action that seemed to have come from her like lightning from a storm, natural as anything she had ever felt.

“Your father made you proud,” John said. John stood in the same place he had stood before, but his people were filing past now, moving one at a time away from him and down the slope again. “I gave you the sin of envy, but I see now that you were neither the pride your father gave you nor the envy I saw in you. Now I see that I should have given you wrath. Someday when the time is right for you to accept that, I will be waiting for you.”

She looked at him. He was a blur within the lineaments of her vision, tears now streaming down her face. “You didn’t come for Will,” she said. “You came to tell me about Drew. You came to see what I would do. It was not me that pulled the trigger. It was you.” She was fighting back tears now. Her vision was almost gone in the aftermath of it all.

“Drew went against us when he killed your father. And we could not forget or forgive him for his sin, for he had told us his envy was gone and we, foolishly had believed he followed in the true path The Father had set for him.”

She blinked. She tried to understand what was happening. Somehow her brother was dead. Somehow he was laying in her arms, and John stood over them now, telling her it was her brother who had done this to himself, telling her he deserved all that he had received. “You did this to him,” she said again. “It was you and not some other. It was you and The Father that killed him.”

John stood there. He looked her over as if she were his own creation come to life. “Your father made you proud. He made you think you could not be touched, that you were right in all you did. But you were not. We came as witnesses,” John said, now moving his arms to show her he meant all the members of Eden’s Gate who had come with him and now were moving past him down the hill. “We came to witness what you did to your brother—what your family did to him. We did not do this. You did. And we will hold this over you for all time. We will control you in this way. It is important you understand this, Mary May. You were never right and now you have become the sin I did not see in you. You have become wrath, and I will always remember you and be ready to help you, for I too was wrong. I was wrong about you, Mary May. You are wrath and I will be the one to take that sin from you one day.”

WILL COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. THE WORLD THROUGH THE SCOPE always acted in silent pantomime. The characters at such a distance as to be rendered mute, only seen in movements that mirrored those of the real world, but that were somehow not of the real world. The sound of the bullet had made it real.

It had cut through the distance as if through glass dividing one place from another. He watched Drew fall. He watched Mary May move to him, and now, as he watched through the scope, Will saw John standing there, speaking to her in silence once again.

He pulled his eye back from the rifle scope. He had to blink and to wipe the sweat away. Through it all his eyes were on Mary May below and John standing over her. Every member of Eden’s Gate now moved back down the hill, as if Drew’s death had been the point all along. As if this somehow was what they had come for, all of them filing past John after bearing witness to this act.

“Was it her?” Jerome asked now. He stood above Will, and with the shotgun and the vest he looked every part God’s sentinel here on earth.

“I think so,” Will said. “I think she shot him. I think she shot Drew and I feel I know why.”

“What does this mean now?” Jerome asked. “What does this mean for Mary May or for Eden’s Gate?”

Will wiped a finger beneath his eye again. He felt the damp moisture of his sweat. His mind was going a hundred different places, but as he put his eye to the scope again, he watched John there and then after some final word, John was gone, following as the last of his people filed past. The back of John’s head now indistinguishable from all the rest, as if they were him and he was them. “It means they have a secret they can hold over her and though she will try to fight it, there is nothing you or I, or even Mary May can do about it. The sooner we all realize that the better.”

“I don’t accept that,” Jerome said. “No one is beyond help. Not you or me or Mary May.”

Will said nothing. It was a mess. It was all a fucking mess and there was no way he could see his way out of it. But he knew they would try.