Page 59 of The Last Stars in the Sky
I watch him chip away at the hard earth, his shovel clanging against the dirt every time he tries to dig, and yet he continues, his expression set and grim. “Do you think he’ll be able to dig a big enough hole?” I ask Kerry.
She blows out a breath. “Probably not, but who cares? We could chuck her in the woods, let the animals have at her. Why not? We’re all going to end up that way, anyway, and, frankly, that’s if we’re lucky.”
“Kerry!” I sound both stern and shocked, a bit disapproving, because I’ve never heard her talk like that. She’s been irreverent, yes, but she’s also been funny and, in her own way, hopeful. I’ve come to rely on that; I relied on it yesterday, when I felt so dispirited. A day later, with my shoulder bandaged—Kerry decided against stitches, after blanching when she saw the messy wound—and a slug of whiskey to numb the pain, I started to feel more myself. Not hopeful, not exactly, but more determined.
Kerry, however, looks almost lifeless, her expression slack as she watches Kyle dig her mother’s grave.
“I need a cigarette,” she says abruptly. “I’m all out. Have you got one?”
I think of my parents’ crumpled pack from years ago and nod. Silently, I turn from the window and root around for the cigarettes in a drawer. Kerry takes them from me without a word and heads out front, to the deck. After a second’s pause, I follow her, past Mattie and Ruby, who are curled up on the sofa by the fire; Mattie is reading to Ruby from one of my childhood books she found up in the loft, an old Enid Blyton. It’s a touching sight, one I would have given my right arm for just a few months ago, when I couldn’t pry Mattie off her phone or make her interestedin her sister, but now, for some reason, something about them curled up together like that makes me sad.
I close the door quietly behind me as I step out onto the deck. Kerry has already lit up, and she inhales deeply, blowing smoke toward the blue sky as she gazes out at the lake. It’s frozen now, only just, a sheet of rippling glass, lightly dusted with snow. It’s not thick enough to walk on yet, but it took Kerry ten minutes to chop through it this morning to fetch our water.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I tell her. “She was a good woman.”
Kerry twitches her shoulders in something like a shrug. “It’s not that.”
“What is it then?”
“Everything else.” She keeps staring at the frozen lake, her back to me, as she smokes the cigarette with a sort of fervent, desperate determination. The air is still and cold, starting to penetrate through my thick fleece and jeans, and making my shoulder ache. I try not to shiver. “I mean, what are we doing here, Alex?” Kerry asks after a moment. She tosses the cigarette into the snow before turning around to face me. “Really? What are we hoping to achieve?”
“Achieve?” I stare at her, registering the weariness in her face, the indifference, the hopelessness I see even more clearly now. “I don’t know that I would use that word, exactly. We’re trying to survive.”
“But what for?”
I can tell this isn’t a throwaway question; she genuinely wants an answer, and the truth is, I struggle to give her one. “What’s the alternative?” I ask instead, my tone veering between seriousness and levity. “Suicide?”
She eyes me levelly, unfazed. “That might be preferable to getting raped and killed by some backwoods extras fromDeliverance.”
“That was yesterday,” I say, deadpan, and Kerry lets out a huff of admiring laughter before stating flatly,
“And could be tomorrow.”
I feel compelled to admit something that’s been nagging at me since we lost the truck; I haven’t wanted to think about it, but I know I have to. “The truck,” I tell her, and Kerry nods, already understanding.
“There might have been something in it with the cottage’s address. I thought about that.”
“Maybe not?” I offer, not even half-hearted.
She gives another humorless huff of laughter. “Really? Not an old envelope, some junk mail under the seat, anything? What about the truck’s registration, in the glove compartment?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“If they find it…” She presses her lips together. “We can take down the road sign.”
“Camouflage the lane a bit more,” I add. “Remove the gate.”
“Yeah.” She nods slowly. “That might help.”
“It’s not like they have a sat nav,” I offer, and Kerry raises her eyebrows.
“They might have a map.”
She glances back out over the frozen lake. “The thing is,” she says slowly. “Those guys in the school, on the bridge? They’re going to be all over the place. All over the world. And they’ll find this place eventually, no matter how well we disguise it. They’ll find us. And they’ll take whatever they want, and we won’t be able to stop them.”
The image she paints in just a few flatly stated words is chilling. I can practically see those guys roaring up the dirt road in some monster truck, their raucous laughter echoing over the lake, the way they’d swarm the cottage, tipping over tables, grabbing my daughters—no. I can’t let myself think like that.“Okay, then,” I say after a moment, straightening, my shoulders thrown back as best as I can. “We’ll have to prepare.”
“How?” She raises her eyebrows. “We have one rifle left and a couple rounds of ammo. We’re women and children and a useless teenager. How?” The cold challenge in her gaze chills me because it contains so much certainty. For Kerry, there is nohow.
