Bitter Falls (Stillhouse Lake)(104)

Dad. I need to find Dad. But first I have to get everybody in this RV.

“There’s a skylight up top!” I yell, and hand the little boy I’m holding to Rose. I scramble up the ladder at the back, kick at the skylight until the lock gives, and drop down inside to open the door for the rest of them. “I don’t have the keys!” I yell to Vee as she gets aboard at the end of the line and slams the door shut. The kids are screaming and crying, and the women crowd in around the bucket chairs.

“I don’t need ’em!” she shouts back, and shoves her way through the crowd of ladies to get to the driver’s seat. She drops into it, leans over, and starts yanking wires out. I guess she knows what she’s doing, because about thirty seconds later she’s got the engine going, and she flashes me a brilliant grin as she slips into the driver’s seat. “How you like me now?”

“I like you a lot,” I say. “I need to get Dad!”

“Boy, you ain’t going anywhere,” she yells, but I’m already moving back to the locked cabinet where Caleb kept the Tasers. I pry it open and take one of the Tasers that’s sitting in a charging cradle. I put it in my jacket pocket, and then I find what I need in the corner of the cabinet: bolt cutters.

When I turn around, Sister Rose is in my way. “Move!” I tell her. “I need to get Sam!”

She shakes her head and blocks my path to the door. I want to scream at her. Hit her. “You can’t go,” she says.

“Let me out! Vee!” I take the Taser out of my pocket. “I need to let him out of that cell!”

Vee’s got the RV in gear now. “Don’t be stupid, Connor. You get yourself killed for him, how do you think he’d feel? Besides, your momma’s comin’ for him.” She grins. “Wouldn’t want to get in the way of that. You! Can you drive?” She points at Sister Rose. “I need to make sure he doesn’t jump out and do something stupid.”

Sister Rose changes places with Vee in the driver’s seat. Vee grabs my arm as I lunge for the door.

Rose hits the gas. “Everybody hold on!”

I still want to get Sam, and it burns in the pit of my stomach that Vee’s right, that Sam would tell me to stay here. And the RV’s moving now. I grab the Taser from the floor and hold on to it, and brace a girl standing next to me as the RV lurches into a long turn.

Rose accelerates the camper as it straightens up again. I see the church over to our right. The men’s quarters. The Garden’s on the other side, but she doesn’t slow down for it; nobody’s waiting to be picked up outside. Harmony isn’t there.

Rose lays on the horn, and it echoes like a high-pitched scream as she jams the pedal to the floor and heads for the gate.

“Everybody hold on!” I yell, and brace myself.

But we don’t get to ram our way out.

The men shoot our tires out, and Rose loses control and instead of hitting the gates head-on, we slide sideways and slam into them at an angle; the gates sway, but it isn’t a hard-enough impact to force them open.

The jolt knocks me into window glass, and I’m dazed for a second. That’s long enough for someone to yank open Rose’s driver’s-side door and drag her out, screaming. They’ve got the other door open, too, and men are coming on board and pulling the women off, and they’re fighting back with knives and fists and screaming defiance. It’s chaos.

My head aches, and I feel clumsy, but I get over it fast, because we’re going to have to fight now. And I expected to be afraid, to want to run, but I feel a weird peace come sliding down through my body like cool water. There’s nowhere to run. I’m not scared. I’m not mad. I just take the Taser and fire it at the first man I see; I remember I have to keep the trigger down, and I watch him scream and collapse, twitching. I don’t know if I can use it again, and I don’t care. I swing the bolt cutters at the next man who comes on board, and hit him in the guts. He topples backward.

The next one has a gun, and he lunges in and aims it at someone fighting near me. One of the older women. I grab his wrist and shove it up, and his shot goes into the ceiling instead of her face. I can’t use the bolt cutters; there’s no room to swing them. I punch him instead, and it hurts all the way up my arm, like I’m breaking every bone, but I don’t care, I can’t. I just need to stop him, and I don’t care how.

But he’s bigger and stronger than me, and when he punches back, I go down. It doesn’t hurt so much as just make everything white out for a second, and when I blink that away he’s standing over me, pointing the gun at me, and I realize I’m going to die. Now I’m scared, my whole body catching cold with it, and at the same time I bare my teeth and yell and I wish I’d gone for Sam, I wish he were here, I want Mom, but it’s all too late.

Sister Harmony stabs him. She’s bloody, wounded, limping, but he doesn’t see her coming. She screams as she puts her blade in the back of his neck. She twists it, and I see the whole light go out in his eyes. He falls forward on top of me, and I shove him off like he’s on fire. I’m shuddering and clumsy again and gasping, and everything in my chest feels too tight, but I’m already looking past the dead man, looking at the door where the next one’s going to come for us.

Harmony yanks the blade free and snaps, “Get the gun, boy,” and I think about the verses she’s had to stare at every day, for years, written on the walls of her prison.