Page 9 of Loved to Death

He pushed himself up and put a hand over the spot she’d slapped. It had actually hurt, unlike the bullet going into his chest. He remembered her strength from the night before and glanced at her with worry.

Grabbing his wrist in a crushing grip, she pulled it away from his face and put her free hand on his shoulder. Roughly twisting his arm behind his back, she pushed it up until he grunted in pain.

She leaned toward his ear and spoke in a hushed voice laced with irritation. “Men will be coming for us. They will kill us if they find us and it won’t be hard to do, because sunlight will engulf us in flames. I have a shallow grave dug in the woods. Let’s hope it’s big enough for two, because I willnotlose my life for yours.” She let him go with a shove.

He fell to the ground and stared up at her.Sunlight can catch me on fire? That can’t be true. And how is she so much stronger than me when she is so much smaller?

“Now get the saddlebags and follow me.” She enunciated each word with anger. Without waiting to see if he complied, she turned and went to open the stall door for the horse.

“Go enjoy the sun,” she said to the mare before opening the barn doors for her. Then she turned back to Thomas and said, “Come on,” before running across the property.

Thomas wasn’t sure he believed Polly, but he could tell that arguing with her in this moment wouldn’t get him anywhere. He stood, grabbed the saddlebags, and followed her across the fields at a dead run. His long legs should have given him an advantage, but instead he found it difficult to keep up with her pace. When they reached the big fir trees, his height was a disadvantage, and she got even farther ahead, easily ducking the branches that made him stoop.

“Hurry up!” she urged. “The shade from the trees will help, but we can’t be out much longer.”

Little pinpricks of pain stabbed here and there on his face and hands. He didn’t know if it was his imagination or the effect of the rising sun, but he didn’t like it.

Soon, Polly knelt down and crawled into the thick undergrowth between two tall fir trees and disappeared from his sight. He got on his hands and knees to follow. He came out the other side to a tiny clearing between a line of trees and a steep hillside. There was a hole in the ground roughly five feet long, three feet across, and three feet deep. There was a leather tarp with a large mound of dirt on it beside the hole.

“We won’t both fit in there,” Thomas said.

“It will be tight, but we’ll fit. You’ll need to curl onto your side. Get in.”

He shook his head, but his skin was starting to itch and burn all over.

Her eyes narrowed. “Get in, or I’llputyou in.”

The determination on her face made Thomas climb into the grave.

Once he was curled on his side, she said, “Put one of the saddle bags over your head to protect you from the dirt and lay the other one beside you for my head.”

While he complied with her instructions, she stepped in beside him and sat down. “I’m going to pull the whole tarp over us, dirt and all. There will be a lot of pressure. It’s best not to breathe, which means no talking. Try to sleep.”

“Sleep?” he asked incredulously.

“We’ll wake tomorrow at nightfall and I’ll tell you everything.”

“But—”

She grunted with effort and pulled what had to be a cubic yard of dirt down on top of them.

Total darkness engulfed him, making it impossible to see, and the weight of the soil above him made it difficult to move. Dirt shifted around his body, and soon her hand came to rest on his chest. He found her touch oddly comforting considering she was the reason he was “undead.”

He didn’t think it would be possible to fall asleep after the traumas he’d endured, but perhaps because of them, he faded off within a few seconds of being covered.

Chapter Four

Thomas woke with a start and immediately struggled against whatever was holding him down. A hand circled around his wrist and pulled his upper body out from the heavy dirt pressing on him. He blinked up at Polly, sucked in some unnecessary air, and then got on his feet with her help. He shook dirt out of his hair, dusted himself off as best he could, and climbed out of the grave while she reached into the dirt to pull out the saddlebags and tarp.

“Normally I take my clothes off and put them in the saddlebags before getting into the grave,” she said, wiping repeatedly at the dirty smudges on her dress with a frown.

“Is it nighttime?” Thomas asked, unable to see the sky well enough through the trees.

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Your body will naturally wake the moment the sun sinks below the horizon, no matter where you are or what time that happens.” She shook out her tarp, folded it into a bundle, and held it out to him. “Carry this.”

---