I glimpsed the small metal contraption set one part in the door, the other part in the metal around the door, lined perfectly for a padlock to be used. I nodded and then turned, sprinting toward the stable nearby. Moments later, I came running back with a pair of plyers and put them into Atticus’ hand. He slipped the thickest part of one handle through the holes and then released his boot from the door.
“Let’s go,” he said, grabbed my hand and took off running back toward the house; I could hardly keep up with his long legs.
“What are we doing?” I asked, out of breath.
Atticus swung open the door.
“We’re getting supplies.”
His boots went heavily over the wood floor. I followed closely behind.
“We’re going to rob them?”
Atticus stopped in the hallway and whirled around to face me.
“Yes, we’re going to rob them,” he said with disbelief. “They were going to hand us over to raiders!”
Not giving me time to argue—though I hadn’t planned on it—Atticus resumed down the hallway, swinging open the doors in a fit as he went.
He found a backpack and we stuffed it until it was bursting. And we stuffed a pillowcase half-full of bread and dehydrated meat and crackers and Ramen noodles. We found two more guns hidden in the bathroom closet: a handgun and a rifle. Just before we left the house, Atticus snatched up a pair of cotton pants, and he shoved them into one of the pillow cases.
“How are we going to carry all of this stuff?” I asked as we went toward the mare standing behind the house.
“However we can.”
I reached for the mare’s reins, but Atticus stopped me. “No. Leave her,” he said, hoisting the large backpack onto his free shoulder. “Her shoes are too worn. We’ll take the horses from the stable.” He grabbed the quilt from the mare, tossing it over his arm.
Before we set out for the woods, in the opposite direction of the field beyond the highway, Atticus stopped to look out at the wide-open landscape.
“Do you see anything?” I asked.
Peering into a pair of compact-sized binoculars he’d found inside the house, Atticus scanned the area.
“No, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
The muffled sound of Emily and Shannon screaming and beating on the inside of the storm cellar door could be heard on the air. I wondered about them, if someone would find and rescue them before they died of dehydration. I thought about Rachel, bound by duct tape in the barn, imagining that if she had to, she could roll her way back to the house—but then what could she do to free herself when she got there? And I thought of David, still feeling a pang of guilt for being a party—whether I was there when it happened or not—to his death. I trusted Atticus. That much I knew. But whatever his reasons were for turning on the family, I couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of regret and responsibility. Turn us over to raiders? Maybe so, but no reason could quell the guilt that assailed me.
ATTICUS
I felt anxious; my plan to stay behind and fight the raiders, picking them off their horses with shots from inside the house as they approached, had been wrecked.
When Thais defied my instructions and came back, there was nothing left for me to do but get her as far away from the farm as I could and take as many provisions with us we could carry. But we still had raiders following us. They were close. And some of the soldiers, I recalled, were good at tracking. I could do nothing about the hoof prints in the soil as we set out now in a westerly direction; there wasn’t much I could do about the piles of horse shit left in our wake—I stopped a few times to shuffle leaves over it, but gave that idea up when realizing leaves piled in unnatural formations would only draw the attention I’d intended to deter. All we could do was keep moving. And we did, well into the late afternoon.
30
THAIS
We hadn’t spoken six words to each other the past several hours. I tried talking to him, but he wouldn’t take the bait—he was angry that I’d come back, that I didn’t do what he told me to do. We found a spot to rest just before dusk. And Atticus still wasn’t talking.
I decided I had to change that before it drove me mad.
“I—”
He swung to face me in an instant, cutting me off. “I told you to wait for me in the woods.”
I clamped my jaw and raised my chin.
“I wasn’t going to sit back while you stayed behind risking your life for me.”
He faced forward. “You should’ve waited for me,” he said in an even voice, and then he hopped down from the horse, the sound of his clothes rustling with his movements.
I followed him.
“You could’ve died,” I argued, moving toward him. “There could’ve been twenty or thirty men, all armed to the teeth.”
Atticus took the reins of both horses and walked them to a nearby tree, tethering them to a low branch.
“And I don’t want you getting yourself killed for me,” I added.
Atticus turned, fury twisting his rugged features, and he was in front of me, nearly toe to toe, before I knew what was happening.
Startled, I took two clumsy steps back, nearly tripping over my own feet.
“When I tell you to do something,” he said in a low, tense voice, “you do it not because I’m a man and I think I have some kind of ridiculous control over you—you do it because I’m the only one of us who knows how to get us out of this alive.”
I crossed my arms; my eyes narrowed in my tensed face.
“You know how to get out of this alive,” I enunciated, “but you knew that if you stayed, there was a good chance you’d die there.”
“How and when I die is not your concern,” he said.
He bent to remove the knife from his right boot, and then replaced it in the left.
“Oh, but it is my concern,” I argued. “You die and my chances of making it fifty miles, much less all the way to Shreveport, are slim to none.”
ATTICUS
Was that all she cared about? Of course that’s all she cares about! And I don’t blame her one goddamned bit. She owes me nothing, and I owe her everything, and I can’t keep looking at her in secret the way I do. Stung by her words, I gritted my teeth, and then rummaged inside one of the pillow cases for something to eat. I wasn’t hungry, I just needed any excuse not to look at her.
I felt the softness of her hand touch the back of my arm.
“But I…I want to be honest with you, Atticus.” The sudden shift in her voice from argument to affection was enough to change my mood, too.
I looked down at her hand first, three of her fingers curled in the bend of my arm, and then I looked at her face. It was soft with understanding; she wanted me to listen; she wanted me to believe her.
But I already did.
“I don’t want you to die, Atticus, because I…well, not because I can’t make it on my own, but because I don’t want anything to happen to you. I want us to make it to Shreveport together.”
Her hand fell away from my arm.
“We both deserve a shot at life,” she said. “I’m not the only one of us you should be fighting for.”
I looked away; removed two pieces of bread from an aluminum foil pouch.
“Let’s eat and rest,” I said, putting a piece into her hand. “And then we should get moving.”
I both liked and rejected her feelings. The latter I did with swiftness.