Page 2 of The Midnight Hour
What happens next is a blur of instinct and reaction; I move before I think, and so does Daniel. The guy in the truck moves first, the muzzle of his rifle swinging around to Daniel. The guy by the bumper raises his own gun. And then someone fires.
I don’t know who pulls the trigger first, but as my ears ring from the sound of the shots, and my shoulder pulses with pain from the recoil, I see that the guy by the bumper now has blood blooming across the blue plaid of his shirt. He looks dazed, his eyes wide, his jaw slack as the rifle slides from his hands,and then he falls back against the truck before slipping all the way to the ground.
The guy in the truck is slumped forward, and the windshield is speckled with blood like something out of a horror movie. In the second of electric silence, the man in the truck suddenly lifts his head, blinking blearily at us, before he stumbles out of the truck, clutching his arm. His shirt is covered in blood.
“You…you killed him,” he exclaims in hoarse disbelief, blood trickling between his fingers, while Daniel and I simply stare. Then he starts half running, half stumbling into the woods, and a few seconds later he is gone.
I breathe out slowly and lower my rifle.
“You okay?” Daniel snaps out, and I nod before I find my voice. I’m numb, yet also shaken.
“Yeah,” I croak, “they didn’t get me. You?”
“Yeah, me neither.”
We are silent, absorbing what just happened, although I don’t think I actually can. We just killed a man and seriously injured another, and we are safe. I have to hold those things together, make them work in unity.
Another second passes, and then the back door of Daniel’s car opens, and Sam comes out, his mouth slack, his eyes wide.
“Mom…youshotthat guy.”
I can’t quite judge his tone; he sounds wondering, but also, I think, accusing.
“They were going to kill us,” I state, matter-of-fact. I put my rifle down on the ground; my hands are trembling. I’m not as hardened as I thought I was, I realize, and I don’t know if that fills me with relief or disappointment.
“Is he…dead?” Sam’s voice is hushed as he creeps a little closer.
I don’t reply as Daniel dispassionately inspects the guy on the road. His face is expressionless as he turns back to us. “Yes,”he tells Sam. “He’s dead. As for the other guy…” He glances back at the woods. I know he’s thinking about how injured he was, how far he might make it. “I don’t know,” he tells Sam.
I exhale slowly.
“We need to keep going,” Daniel states. “That guy might be getting some backup. We can take the truck. It fits all of us, and I think we should stick to one vehicle. It’s safer, and we’ll conserve gas.”
I nod, still not trusting myself to speak. What are we meant to do with the body? I have yet to look at him properly, and I realize I don’t want to. Both men were threats we had to eliminate; that’s all I can let them be. I can’t look the dead man in the face, check if he has a wedding ring, family photos crumpled in his front pocket. I can’t let either of them be ordinary men. They were, I remind myself, ready to shoot us.
From behind me, I hear Mattie get out of the car. I turn and see she’s got Phoebe on her hip. Her dark hair is blowing in the breeze, and her eyes are narrowed, her face hard, as hardened as I thought I was. “What do we need to do?” she asks Daniel.
“I’ll deal with the body,” he tells her. “You all unload our cars. Let’s load up again as quickly as we can.”
He glances up and down the road, and I’m reminded of how vulnerable we are. The cottage we left burning under a blue sky is less than ten miles behind us. The gang that took it from us might still be roving the countryside, out for revenge. I might have just shot a man in cold blood, but I do not want to meet those sadistic savages again.
“All right,” I say, and now I sound stronger. “Let’s get going.”
We start unloading our gear—crates of food, bottled water, guns and ammunition, sleeping bags, tarps, backpacks of clothes, a first aid kit, flint and steel. We packed it weeks ago, in case we needed to run. It will last us a little while, but not much longer. But hopefully a little while is all we’ll need.
Our destination is a military base near Buffalo that Daniel believes might be some kind of safe community. He heard rumors of it, when he’d gone to upstate New York to get Sam, but that’s all we’ve got to go on—a whisper of hope. We have no idea if the base is even there, or if the people will be welcoming. We don’t even know how far the radiation might have spread across the country, or if there’s any remnant of government still in place, or how many people are left in this world. There are a lot of unknowns, too many dangers, but the only chance is to keep going, because we can’t go back.
Phoebe clings to Mattie, silently sucking her thumb as we stack everything as quickly as we can. Mattie moves with brisk efficiency, Ruby more slowly, with care. Sam unloads the other car; Kyle was shot in the shoulder by one of the renegades back at the cottage and is lying in the backseat, his face gray with pain and beaded with sweat. Daniel got the bullet out and bandaged him when we first stopped a couple of miles out, but he still looks in bad shape. He’ll need some more medical care, not that anyone is actually qualified to give it, but we’ll do what we can.
No one looks at Daniel, who is dragging the man’s lifeless body to the side of the road. From the corner of my eye, I see a smear of rusty red on the road and I quickly avert my gaze, focus on the box of canned goods—the last we have—that I’m lifting from the trunk.
We’ve nearly finished unpacking the cars when Daniel comes up to me. “I’m going to bury him,” he says quietly. “I know it might take a while, but…I think I should.” He glances at Sam before turning back to me. “There’s a shovel in their truck.”
I’m startled, because somehow it puts a different spin on what happened. Do you bury your fallen opponents in battle? Isn’t thattheirside’s job? Unless those guys really were innocent. Does Daniel think that, even if he won’t say? But even so,we’re vulnerable out here, and we need to put more distance between us and the cottage…and the guys who attacked us there.
I don’t say any of this, however, because I recognize the calm but obdurate look on my husband’s face. He’s going to do this, no matter what. “Keep an eye out,” he tells me, and I nod.
We finish unpacking the cars and load everything up into the truck. I check on Kyle, who is only semi-conscious, his gaze bleary and pain-filled as he looks up at me. Blood has soaked through the bandage on his shoulder.
