Page 52 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“Keith,” the other man says from behind him, still dripping blood. “Let’sgo.”
“I told you to relax.” Keith sounds annoyed now. As he glances back at his partner, Mattie suddenly catapults out of the kitchen, a gallon can of chopped tomatoes held aloft between her hands. With a scream, she hurls it at the man; it hits him in the side of the head, and he staggers back, the guns swinging wildly.
“Run,” I shout, and we all hurtle toward the kitchen. I hear the men swearing behind us, and Kerry slams the door shut as the sound of a gun goes off. They will kill us, I think numbly, if they can.
“There’s a door on the other end,” Kerry chokes out, and I stagger down the length of the kitchen, my shoulder blazing with pain, as Kerry kicks open the fire door. She and Mattie burst out into the back parking lot of the school, and I follow behind, stumbling, my head swimming; I’ve lost more blood than I realized.
“Down to the river,” Kerry gasps, and then we are sprinting and staggering down a steep hillside, half running, half falling,bare branches tearing at my hair, my face. Guttural sounds are coming out of my mouth, and I don’t know whether I’m weeping or screaming or praying, as Kerry leads the way, Mattie behind her. Another gunshot; Mattie staggers.
“Mattie!” I scream, but she keeps going, until we reach the bottom of the hill, where the river rushes by, chunks of ice bobbing in its freezing water. Kerry pulls us along, grabbing my hand then Mattie’s, all of us stumbling along the bank, for another few minutes until I finally fall to my knees, unable to go any farther.
“I can’t,” I gasp out, and then my vision blurs, and I feel myself crumple as the world goes black.
EIGHTEEN
When I come to, I’m lying stretched out on the cold ground, Kerry’s coat over me. I’m shivering, the frozen ground seeping into me, my shoulder throbbing with pain. My vision is blurry even after I blink, and I feel incredibly tired, my head thick, my body leaden.
“You’re awake,” Kerry states, her expression grim as she looms over me. “Good.”
“How…long was I…out?” The words come slowly, like I have to fish them out of the murk. Everything aches.
“An hour, maybe? We bandaged your shoulder. It didn’t break a bone, as far as I can tell, but you did lose a lot of blood.”
“Mattie…?”
“I’m here.” She kneels next to me, taking my cold hand between hers. Her eyes blaze determination. “I’m okay, Mom. I’m fine.”
I press her hand to my cheek, grateful simply to see her face. “I thought you got shot.”
“He nicked me.” She sounds almost proud as she sweeps her hair out of the way to show where a bit of her ear has been bloodied, a chunk now missing.
Another few inches and she would have been killed. I close my eyes against the thought, and tears seep out, trickle coldly down my cheeks. We came so close to dying, and we’ve lost everything. The truck. The gun. The stuff in the school that could have seen us through winter…
“It’s okay, Mom,” Mattie says gently. “We’re okay.”
“We’re not.” I force my eyes open. “How are we going to get back to the cottage? And the gun…” We no longer have a gun. How can we defend ourselves? How are we going to survive? And worst of all, beneath that question is a far more hopeless one—why should we even want to? I don’t like this world. I don’t want this life.
“Well, truth be told,” Kerry says with a smile, “you couldn’t shoot that thing, anyway.” Her tone is wryly upbeat, but her eyes are soft with sympathy. “I’m not sure how much use it was, Alex.”
I can’t match her mood; right now, I feel overcome with hopelessness, with despair. “And the truck,” I say. My dad’s truck. For a second, I’m hit with a wave of the most inconvenient grief. I miss my dad’struck, of all things. Seven years on it no longer had the smell of him, but I can still remember it—cigarettes, his old-fashioned aftershave, leather and soil. Mydad. I close my eyes again, wanting to block out the whole world.
His old baseball cap was kept in the side pocket of the truck, and he had a Bible verse he’d handwritten tucked into the sun visor.The strength of the hills is his also. Psalm 95. My dad said he thought of it every time he looked out at the hill rising above the cottage, thick with pine.
I wish I’d taken that little slip of paper out of the truck, kept it with me. I wish I had it to remember him by. But what does that even matter when we might not survive today? And what about Ruby, back at the cottage with Darlene, waiting for us? A choked sound escapes me. I can see no way through this. No way out.
“Mom.” Mattie pats my good shoulder, like a parent comforting a small child. “Mom, it’s going to be okay.”
I lift my head and blink her and Kerry into focus, standing above me. “How are we going to get back? It’s twenty miles, at least.”
“We can walk twenty miles,” Mattie says staunchly, and I don’t bother to reply because I don’t think my daughter has walked five miles in her life, never mind twenty. This is the girl who had a dozen different excuses for missing gym class. I appreciate she’s become tougher, stronger, and I’mglad, but twenty miles is twenty miles, and I’m not sureIcould walk it, especially in winter, while recovering from a gunshot wound.
“We need a car,” Kerry states, like it’s obvious, which I suppose it is. But she makes it sound like it’s simple.
“Well, yeah.” I manage a laugh-like sound, hollow and utterly humorless. “Let’s head over to the car lot and pick one out, shall we? A nice big SUV? With heated seats and built-in Wi-Fi, perhaps?”
“Well, the Wi-Fi wouldn’t help us much now,” Kerry points out. She purses her lips, unfazed. “It’s too bad there isn’t a car lot in Corville, though. You have to go to Pembroke to buy a car.” I just shake my head. “As it happens,” she continues, “I know someone in Corville who has a car, so we’ll have to make do with that.”
This is news to me. “Who?” I ask.
