Page 84 of The Last Stars in the Sky
“They won’t be on the lake side.” Kerry’s voice is sure. “Not yet. We’ll have to go out the front, right down to the lake.”
“It’s too exposed—” Justine protests in a gasp, her face pale with pain. I look at her chest, which is covered in blood. With a frisson of shocked wonder, I realize she’s not going to make it.
She must see the truth of it in my face because she gives me a panicked, blazing look. “Phoebe—”
“Yes,” I say quickly. “Yes.”
I glance at Kerry, who is looking at Justine, her face drawn in sadness. “Bastards,” she whispers, and Justine’s head falls back onto the floor with a thud. For a second, we are all silent; it’s all the time we have for a memorial.
“Sam, you take Phoebe,” Daniel instructs. “Ruby with me. Mattie, go with Mom.” He turns to me in query. “Your mom—”
“She’s dead.” I can’t believe I’d actually forgotten that fact for a few minutes. “In her sleep, last night. I went in this morning—” I stop because already something that happened ten minutes ago feels like a lifetime. It was, and it’s irrelevant now.
Daniel nods, and I don’t miss the relief that passes across his face. I realize I’m relieved too; I would never want my mother to see what is happening now, or to have to deal with her in this chaos.
“All right then,” Daniel says. “We go out the door, down the steps, and straight into the brush by the lake. Stay as low as you can. Move quickly but quietly. I’ll go last, to distract them.”
“No,” I say quickly. “You lead the way. I’ll go last.”
“Alex—”
“I mean it.” I stare him down, and after a second, he nods.
Then, with his arm around Ruby, he starts crawling toward the door. Sam follows with Phoebe. Another bullet hits the far wall, embedding itself in it. I’m frozen with fear, but also with fury; Istilldon’t want to leave. I can’t give up this place I’ve worked so hard for, that’s been so much a part of my life, to be used and destroyed by my enemies.
“Mom,” Mattie whispers, pulling on my arm. “What are you going to do? How will you distract them?”
“I’ll shoot.” I crawl toward the window, rising onto my knees, my palms slick on my gun. I aim, knowing I won’t hit anything; I can’t even see out the window, but hopefully it will be enough to keep their focus. “Go, Mattie!Go.” I shoot once, twice, and duck down when a volley of shots is the reply.
Mattie has crawled toward the door, but Kerry comes to kneel by my side. “We don’t need to end it like this,” she states quietly, and I turn to her.
“What do you mean?”
She nods toward the window, the hill. “Those guys. You know if they get the cottage, they’ll turn it into some kind of citadel. They’ll just become worse and worse, stronger and stronger. They’ll hurt more people. We don’t have to give it to them.”
“How?”
She takes a handful of bullets from her pocket and holds them out. “You put a couple of these in the wood stove, and they’ll have nothing left to fight for.”
My heart leaps with something too raw to be hope, and yet that’s what it feels like. This isn’t the way I wanted it to end, but I’m already sure it is better than the alternative. “But will we have time to get out ourselves?” I ask.
“If you wrap them in a wet dishrag or something, we probably should, but it’s still a risk.” She pauses, her gaze level on me. “Are you willing to take it?”
I gaze back at her, crouched there on the floor, the rifle in my hand, and then I take the bullets from Kerry. They are solid, with copper casings, and as my fingers close around them, feeling their weight, something in me both stills and hardens.
“You go,” I instruct Kerry. “I’ll follow as soon as I can.”
She nods and begins to crawl toward the door; Mattie is still on the threshold.
“Mattie,go,” I hiss, and then I head for the kitchen, keeping low. I grab a dish towel from the counter, jerking in shock when a bullet whistles past me and lodges in the water barrel; a jet of water from the hole it has caused arcs out. I wet the rag in it and then wrap it around the bullets.
My heart is thundering now, and yet I feel calm. I know this is the right thing to do. For a second, no more, I let myself remember—curling up on my dad’s lap by the fire; my mother finishing off the maple syrup on the stove. My brother and sister and me roasting marshmallows, playing cards, running down to the dock, our laughter floating away on the breeze, the sun setting over the lake, turning its surface pink and orange.
I clench my fingers around the bullets tucked inside the wet cloth, and then I open the door to the wood stove and hurl the bundle inside.
I don’t have time to crawl carefully to the door, and so I stand up and sprint. I can hear the gunfire now; they must be closer. Something grazes my arm, but I don’t feel the pain. I throw myself through the front door; Kerry and Mattie are halfway down the steps to the lake. Behind me I hear the explosion of the bullets in the stove, and, impossibly, I smile.
We are going to make it.
