Sprout smiles. The Wrenches resume their dance.
Julie sinks down and sits cross-legged in the scrubby yellow grass. “Did your dad ever tell you about your uncle Perry?”
Sprout nods. “He said he couldn’t find him.”
“I found him. We used to be best friends.”
“He died?”
Julie’s smile trembles. “Yeah. He did. But he was a good man.”
Sprout’s face becomes solemn, an expression her soft features shouldn’t even be capable of.
“He was smart, funny . . .” Julie’s eyes wander off into memory. “He was sad a lot, and seeing other people get hurt made him angry inside, but he was good. He wanted to make the world better. He just stopped believing he could.”
The garage door rattles on its tracks and slams shut in a puff of ash.
Julie stares at the door for a moment, then ruffles Sprout’s hair. “I wish he could’ve met you.”
? ? ?
M and Nora make a few attempts to help with the bikes but Abram rebuffs every offer and keeps the door shut, so we find scraps of shade in the yard and settle in to wait. Julie sets her shotgun in the grass, digs through the supply bag until she finds a knife and some duct tape, then stands up and unbuckles her belt.
M’s eyebrows rise.
Julie unbuttons the plaid shirt that covers her sweat-stained tank top; M sits up straight as if to pay closer attention to a classroom lecture. Julie notices, rolls her eyes, and flips open the knife. She sticks it through a shoulder of the shirt and cuts off a sleeve.
“What the hell are you doing?” Nora says.
Julie stuffs her shotgun into the severed sleeve, then presses one end of her belt onto each end of the sleeve and mummy-wraps the ends in duct tape. She stands up, throws the makeshift holster over her shoulder, and smiles.
“Nice,” Nora says. “But now your pants are gonna fall off.”
“Do you see this thing?” Julie says, giving her rear a slap. “No belt needed.”
Nora juts her chin in measured approval. “It’s not bad for a pale pixie.”
“If you want to have a competition,” M says, “happy to judge.”
Julie glares at him. Nora smirks.
I squirm through this exchange, wondering if it’s my job to shut M’s mouth on the subject of my girlfriend’s body, but my dilemma is drowned out by the roar of an engine starting in the garage. It revs a few times, then drops into idle. This repeats twice more, then two of the engines cut out, leaving the third sputtering softly. We gather in the driveway and watch the garage door, tense and expectant like family members in a surgeon’s waiting room. But Abram doesn’t emerge. Nora steps forward and raps a knuckle against the door. “Abram? Good to go?”
No answer.
She pulls the door open. Two of the motorcycles lie on their sides in the corner. The remaining three are lined up near the door, one of them running. Abram isn’t in the shop. At the top of a short staircase, the door to the first floor is open, creaking in the breeze.
Julie is the first up the stairs. I follow her reluctantly into the charred heart of the Kelvins’ former home. Melted brown carpet crunches under our feet. The walls are black except where the drywall’s paper has peeled away, revealing white patches of plaster like bleached bone. Nothing remains of the Kelvins’ personality. Their choices of furniture, wall hangings, paint colors. All memory of their life in this house has been burned away, and walking through it reminds me of eating a senile brain. Nothing but empty hallways and nameless ghosts.
We find Abram in what must have been the living room. He is standing in front of a brick hearth that’s all set with logs and kindling, abandoned before the match could be struck. They’re the only things in the room that aren’t burned.
“Got three of them running,” Abram says in a flat voice. He stands with his back to us, staring at a framed photo on the mantel. “Other two are shot.”
He has wiped the soot off the frame’s glass, revealing a faded family photo. A father and a mother, a toddler and a teenager, sitting on the porch of a log cabin.
He turns around, looks at us for a moment, then takes Sprout’s hand and heads toward the basement stairs. “I don’t know how you’re planning to save the world from ten thousand years of human decline,” he says as he descends the stairs, “but good luck.”
“Abram?” Julie says, moving toward the staircase.
An engine roars, and through a smoke-darkened window I see a motorcycle surge up the driveway. Abram with his backpack and his rifle, his daughter braced in front of him, her tiny hands gripping the handlebars next to her father’s.
“No,” Julie snarls, springing into motion. “No, no, no, no.” She drops down the basement steps in two leaps and by the time I catch up with her she’s already on one of the remaining two bikes. She kicks the starter and cranks the throttle and launches out of the shop like a warhead, leaving me choking in a cloud of blue smoke.