Black Bird of the Gallows(79)

35-the bus ride


“Angie!” Lacey yells. “Someone’s here!”

Rafette is here.

Reece and I practically fly downstairs. My ankle gives out, and I trip on the last step, but he catches me and swings me to the floor. “Kitchen.”

“Wha—?” My question turns into a yelp as glass shatters somewhere in the house.

He grabs my hand and yanks me forward as the security system screams to life. The alarm is ear-splitting and pointless. The alarm signal won’t reach dispatch with all the communication lines down. Even if it did, no one would come. Not to an evacuated town with a whole bunch of other alarms going off everywhere. Figures make shifting shadows at the windows. I don’t know how many, surrounding the house like a pack of wolves. A swarm of bees.

Surrounded. I stumble after Reece, stomach sinking, into the kitchen. Deno holds open the door for us, and Reece slams it behind us. Lacey trembles, clutching a stuffed backpack to her chest. Roger leans against my leg, looking like a predator. He barks, teeth bared to the gums.

Reece wedges a step stool under the knob. “That won’t be enough,” he calls over the wailing alarm.

There’s pounding at the front door. A slow, relentless thud that sets my teeth on edge.

Reece looks at me. His chin is high, but fear glints in his eyes. “Their patience has run out.”

Lacey slings the backpack over her shoulder. “We need to get out of here.”

Another window breaks. The smell of honey seeps into the kitchen. I grab for something—anything. A butcher knife from the wood block, even though it won’t help me against a Beekeeper.

There’s only one other way out of here. “Follow me!” I dart for our only exit, bursting into the dark garage. “The door locks from the kitchen.”

Reece jams a folding chair under the door. The alarm noise is muffled here, but still loud. The waning sun leaks through the narrow garage windows.

We group in the space where my dad’s car is usually parked.

“What are we waiting for?” Deno opens the door of my car. “Let’s go.”

I stare at my car, mouth dry as a desert. “I don’t have the keys.”

“What?” Deno shrieks. “Where are they?”

“They’re in my backpack, at The Strip Mall.” I yell back at him. “With the rest of my stuff.”

“Why did you leave them there?”

“You were there, Deno.” My fists ball at my side. “You tell me why I wasn’t thinking about keys to a car I wasn’t driving!”

“You don’t have a spare?”

I throw my hands up. “Yes! On my dad’s keychain.”

“What about that?” Reece nods toward my mom’s beautifully restored Volkswagen Bus.

My insides turn to ice. Cold, unmeltable ice. “No way.”

Reece raises a brow. “You said it runs. Are the keys in it?”

“Yes, but no. I-I…can’t.”

The doorknob rattles. All of us jump. Roger’s nails click nervously on the cement floor. The chair Reece put there holds. For now.

Suddenly, Lacey is in my face. Right in my face. Her fingers clamp on my shoulders.

“Angie, sweetie, we’ve fought through hell to make it this far. I know you have personal issues with that vehicle, but we are going to get in it and drive out of here. Right now.” Her voice is mild, but her nails dig painful half-moons into my skin. She doesn’t smile. “Now get in the damn van, or I’m going to use your dad’s nine iron on your hard head and drag you in.”

I back out of her unnerving grip, nodding. “Hell. Okay, fine.”

“I’ll drive it,” Deno offers.

“No!” No one’s sitting in that seat but me. “The gearshift is tricky. I’ll do it.”

The thought of doing this makes me want to curl into the fetal position, but I’m not making up that part about the gearshift.

Reece runs a warm hand down my hair. He cups the back of my head and tilts it up to his dark eyes. “It’s only a van, Angie. Your mother left it a long time ago,” he says, gently. “I can drive if you want.”

“I got this.” The words are sluggish, like I’m underwater, drowning in all the lonely voices in the dark places of my mind that insist I abandoned my mother. That if I had been more, she would have been okay. I know better than that now, but a few revelations can’t overturn a lifetime of thinking a certain way.

The knob is no longer rattling. Something hard smashes against the door.

“Angie!” Lacey’s voice is shrill. “I will use that nine iron!”

Deno and Lacey are already inside the van, Lacey in the back, Deno in the passenger seat.

Seeing them inside punches the breath right out of my chest, but not with that tired, well-worn grief I am so used to. It’s a decision, clear and resolute. A single thought burning in my chest—no one else will die in this vehicle.

I run to the van but the dog stays at the door. “Roger! Come on, boy!”

Reece climbs into the seat behind me, but the dog doesn’t budge. He’s rooted at the door, fur up and snarling, looking as ferocious as I’ve ever seen a yellow Lab.

“I can’t leave Roger!” I yell.

“Just go. The Beekeepers want us, not the dog,” Reece shouts back. “We’ll lead them away from him.”