Page 49 of Penny for Your Saints

He breaks my fall as we hit the asphalt—his arms loosening before going completely slack as I push to my elbows on top of him—his blood spilling in hot gouts over me as I look upon his face in horror.

“L-ouise?” Tennant croaks—blood pouring from the corner of his mouth, spreading like crimson ink over the edge of his bottom lip.

“Scott?” I gasp—reaching to help him on instinct.

“They said you were dead, that those mad dogs the Saints killed you.” His brows pinch together in confusion, the corners of his mouth turned down, seeping blood and saliva.

“I’m right here Scott,” I assure him, though I’m not certain my being alive is a comfort to him—the way his eyes widen, his mouth working slowly as he tries to force air into his lungs.

A chain of wet coughs sends Scott Tennant’s blood spattering across my face, shock growing in his pale green eyes as I feebly attempt to put pressure on the bullet holes I just put in his abdomen.

“Are y-you the dirty bomb?” Scott asks tremulously, his gaunt face a mask of blood and terror.

“Dirty bomb?” I shake my head, hazarding a glance up to ensure no other agents are on their way to rain hell down upon us; I see only the wall of flaming wreckage and dropped bodies; hear the distant cries of the Saints yelling for me to join them in the getaway car.

“I’m not a bomb, Scott,” I begin to sob—attempting to wipe the blood away from Tennant’s eyes, but only smearing the mess around more—forgetting my hands are soaked. Both of us know he’s going to die. I’ve never been friends with Scott Tennant. Fuck, I don’t even like the bastard—but I’ll be damned if I let another human die alone and confused like this.

“The Zeitnot virus,” he manages before belching up more gore. “Briefing said t-targets had a dirty bomb—made by Margot and Landon Penny?—”

If I weren’t already adrenaline sick, this might have pushed me over the edge. The Fed is now laying the virus at the feet of my dead, ostensibly civilian parents. Within the organization, it’s been communicated that the Saints are in possession of a ‘dirty bomb;’ and according to Scott—I’m already dead. A casualty of the Saints—a martyr for the bureau who no longer needs to be saved or accounted for.

I’ve been erased—struck from the narrative, so that the Windmill and the corruption within the highest levels of federal organization can do whatever they so choose with me once I’ve been found and captured. The only thing standing between me and a lifetime imprisonment as a lab rat for the Feds or the Windmill is the Saints. They are my only hope of getting answers—getting vengeance.

“He didn’t believe it,” Tennant gasps, gripping my wrist with one bloody hand—his eyes searching mine in desperation as he clings to the last vestiges of his life.

“Who didn’t believe it?” I croon, blinking tears from my eyes as I lay my hand over Scott’s scarlet smeared knuckles, a pathetic attempt at tenderness in his last moments.

“Dennis—” Scott pauses, and for a moment—I wonder if McBride’s name will be his last word.

“Dennis didn’t believe what?” I prompt him quietly, as Scott’s eyelids begin to droop closed.

“Didn’t believe you were dead—said he would have been able to feel it, said you wouldn’t?—”

But Scott will never finish whatever it was he had to say. He goes still beneath my hands on the pavement—his eyes unfocused, gone.

The rest of the escape from Beach City is a muted blur.

Hazily, I can remember Quentin snatching me from my place over Tennant’s body—tossing me into the car with Frank and Sébastien in the back seat, watching the flames and smoke around his lifeless form as we tore off down the service tunnel.

Seb and I did our best to temporarily patch Frank up and wipe the blood from our faces as we escaped into the densely populated outer city limits, stopping in an overcrowded block of apartment houses to ditch the station wagon for another vehicle.

I don’t really recall getting into the rusty, old red Jimmy, but when I woke up to the smell of gas station coffee and powdered sugar doughnuts, we were already three quarters of the way to the hunting lodge; our place to lie low and weather the oncoming heat.

None of us spoke much beyond what was strictly necessary. Caz didn’t even insist on playing his horrible dial-up modem music on the radio. It seemed like all of us really needed the silence, a bit of calm between the storms.

It was just before midnight when the snow began to fall, eerie—like white flower petals against the black velvet night in the headlights; a tunnel of naked trees crowded along the narrow back roads; their twisted branches clacking together in the wind of the dark winter night.

“Not far now,” Quentin assures us as we drive deeper and deeper into the wood, even though no one asked.

When we finally come to a stop, it’s in the three-spot-lot of a small ice fishing park.

All of us pour out of the car and set busily to loading ourselves up with supplies to carry on foot to our final destination, except for Frank—who has lost a good amount of blood and needs to take his time.

Frank shuffles over to a metal stand with small slots and a weathered metal shim in the shape of a ‘T’ dangling from a crimped bit of cable wire and jams a ten dollar bill into the slot marked “A”, The snow already nearly erasing the label of our spot from view.

Quentin leads the way, all of us wearing headlamps and trudging through the quickly growing drifts—the blizzardpicking up in earnest; snowflakes like huge wads of cotton balls falling fast in the whistling wind.

We emerge from the dense wood onto a nearly silent crescent of frozen lake, large crags of rock, gnarled juniper and waxy leaved bushes I don’t recognize, almost completely hide the large structure from view—half built into the snowy ground, rising away from the lakebed.

---