The Searcher(116)

“Where’s my brother or I’ll kill the fuckin’ lot of ye!”

Somehow Cal manages to get a grip on the bag and pull it off his head. The world tilts and seethes and he can see only one thing clearly: a lighthouse beam of gold spreading across the grass, and at its apex, silhouetted in the bright rectangle of the doorway, Trey aiming the rifle. Trey has come out of that house like a flamethrower, fueled to the brim with a lifetime’s worth of rage, all ready to burn everything for miles to the ground.

“Kid!” Cal yells, and hears it echo out over the shocked dark fields. “Stop! It’s me!” He claws himself to his feet, swaying and lumbering, one leg dragging, snuffling and spitting blood. “Don’t shoot me!”

“Get outa my fuckin’ way!” Trey shouts back. Her accent has turned rougher and wilder, straight down from the mountains on a saw-toothed wind, but her voice is clear and intent.

Behind Cal someone pants through gritted teeth, “My fuckin’ arm,” and someone else snaps, low, “Shut up.” Then there’s utter stillness, as far as he can hear through the pounding and bubbling in his head. The men watching Trey’s every move know better, now, than to take her lightly.

Cal spreads his arms wide and lurches in front of them. “Kid,” he shouts. “No.” He knows there are words he’s used to talk guns out of people’s hands before, promises, soothing things. They’re all gone.

“Get outa my way or I’ll shoot you too!”

All around Cal things are rocking and rippling, but her silhouette in the doorway is steady as a monument; the heavy rifle at her shoulder doesn’t even shake. If these men refuse her, or if they lie to her, or maybe even if they tell her the truth, she’ll blow them all to kingdom come.

“Kid,” he shouts. His voice comes out frayed by dust and blood. “Kid. Send them away.”

“Where’s Brendan?”

“Please, kid,” Cal shouts. His voice cracks open. “Please. Just send them away. I’m begging you.”

There are three breaths’ worth of pure, cold nighttime silence. Then the Henry goes off again. The rooks explode from their tree in a vast black firework of wings and panic. Cal’s head goes back and he roars like an animal up at the night sky.

When he gasps for air, paralyzed between lunging for the rifle and lurching around to see the damage, he hears Trey’s voice shout, “Now get ta fuck!”

“We’re going!” a man shouts back, behind him.

It takes another second for Cal’s jolted brain to catch up. Trey aimed high, into the treetops.

“Get ta fuck offa this land!”

“I’m bleeding, God almighty, look—”

“Come on, come on, come on—”

Rough panting, jumbled voices that Cal can’t make into sense, feet hurrying through grass. When he turns to get a look at the men, his knee gives out and he collapses, gradually and ungracefully, into a sitting position. The men are already vanishing into the dark, three swift black shapes huddled together with their heads ducked down low.

Cal sits where he is and presses his coat sleeve to his streaming nose. Trey stays in the doorway, with the rifle to her shoulder. The rooks whirl, screaming abuse, and then gradually calm down and settle back into their tree to bitch in comfort.

When the muffled voices have faded up the lane, Trey lowers the gun and comes loping down the beam of light to Cal. He takes his sleeve off his nose long enough to say, “The safety. Put the safety on.”

“I did,” Trey says. She hunkers down to peer at him in the darkness. “How bad are you?”

“I’ll live,” Cal says. He starts trying to reorganize his limbs into some arrangement that will let him stand up. “We need to get inside. Before they come back.”

“They won’t come back,” Trey says with satisfaction. “I got one fella goodo.”

“OK,” Cal says. He can’t articulate the fact that, if they do come back, they’ll come with guns of their own. He manages to get to his feet and stands there, wobbling gently and trying to work out whether his knee will carry him.

“Here,” Trey says. She loops her free arm across his back, taking his weight on one skinny shoulder. “Come on.”

“No,” Cal says. He’s thinking of her injuries, which at the moment he can’t picture exactly but which he recalls as horrifying. Trey ignores him and starts towards the house, and Cal finds himself moving with her. They shamble across the grass, weaving in and out of the light, propping each other up like a pair of drunks. Both of them are panting. Cal can feel every inch of the darkness spread out around them, and every inch of their bodies that would make a perfect target. He tries to limp faster.

By the time he slams the door behind them and double-locks it, every muscle in his body is juddering. The sudden brightness smashes him right in the eyes. “Get me a towel,” he says, dropping into a chair at the table. “And that mirror.”

Trey leaves the Henry on the counter and brings him both, and then a bowl of water and his first-aid kit, and stands there hovering while he presses the towel to his nose. “How bad are you?” she asks again.

The tautness in her voice reaches Cal. He takes a long breath and tries to steady himself. “ ’Bout the same as you were the other night,” he says, through the towel. “Pretty banged up, but I’ve taken worse.”