Текст книги "The Release"
Автор книги: Shelbi Wescott
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 16 страниц)
Lucy waited until Darla had moved into the living room before she bent down and picked up the can. She set it on the table gently and looked around.
“This doesn’t feel right,” she said. “This was someone’s home.”
Salem nodded.
From the other room, Darla had found a piano and was plunking out a clunky melody; the strings were in dire need of retuning and the song pealed out its tinny tune through the whole house.
Grant moved past Lucy in the kitchen and made his way to the living room, where he sat down on the couch and picked up a discarded book, left open, mid-page, on the coffee table.
When Darla was finished with her piano playing, she wandered to the front window. She hooked her finger along the floral curtains and parted them and watched for a long moment, then let the curtain fall. The window looked out to the main street, and in front of that, a small corner market.
“We have to travel this way. But I know of a small group that’s been hanging out across the way. Just a group of kids. Once I know the coast is clear, we’ll just cross the street quickly and head up through the park. Lots of tree cover. Nothing to steal in the park,” Darla said.
Above the mantel were pictures of an older couple surrounded by children. One framed photo stood out above all the others. It was a photo of a boy with a chocolate-smeared grin and missing teeth, his face smashed up against the wrinkled cheek of a chuckling loved one. Lucy walked over and took the frame in her hand and then flopped it facedown, the back-stand still sticking straight up in the air. She moved to the next picture, the people were so full of life and clueless about their future. They were smiling and hugging, cherishing moments together and Lucy pushed those downward also until the entire mantel was scrubbed cleaned of the memories of bright futures and happier times.
“Where’d you meet my brother?” Lucy asked, turning to look at Darla, then she sat down next to Grant and watched as he flipped the pages of the book mindlessly.
“The airport.” But Darla shot Lucy a look that implied she wasn’t in a chatty mood.
Threadbare nerves racked her and she wanted to shake Darla and demand all the answers. It had been a long time since she started following Darla’s orders and still she had no idea who this woman was and how she knew Ethan. Lucy’s eyes must have betrayed her agony, because Darla took note and exhaled. She leaned her head against the wall.
“Ethan was there, at the airport, looking for your family,” Darla said. “They had grounded my plane to Seattle. There weren’t any gates available, so they evacuated us out of the emergency exits. Those little slides aren’t as fun as you would think,” she paused, but then took a long look at Lucy and continued. “And when I was in the terminal, I saw Ethan trying to get out to the tarmac to look at the planes. He was convinced that one of the planes might have your family inside.”
“My family made it to the airport?” Lucy asked. She didn’t know what she wanted the answer to be. Was there a chance they made it out alive? Could it have been their plane submerged in the Columbia River? Was it possible the plane never left?
“They weren’t at the airport. Either weren’t there or they weren’t able to be found,” Darla continued without missing a beat. “Security was so diminished that it didn’t take long for Ethan to find his way to the tarmac. He was running like a madman. Going from plane to plane. They had grounded flights by then. Whole planes of people just sitting there, with the infected, waiting to die.”
“But Ethan thought my family was at the airport. So, they weren’t at home?”
Darla waited and then she nodded.
“How many planes did he check? It’s possible that they still left. Right?” Now she didn’t know which version she wanted to be true. If her mom could have left her daughter and son behind or if somehow they had never made it to the airport, both versions seemed awful.
She gave a non-committal shrug. “Nothing was happening smoothly over there. It wasn’t like he could just ask someone about a plane and they could point him in the right direction. But…Ethan believes the plane left. Took off. Escaped Portland.”
She didn’t know what that meant.
“So, you see this guy looking for his family and you decide to help him?” Grant asked.
“Not exactly,” Darla replied. She swatted at an invisible fly, fully aware that she was being vague.
No one said anything. Salem shuffled her feet and stared mournfully at the ground. Grant reached into his bag and pulled out his water; he had only a sip left and he dripped the last few drops on to his tongue.
“Wait, was there a girl with him?” Lucy asked and she couldn’t tell if she was hopeful for survivors or indifferent. Grant went back to reading and he flipped another page in the book.
“He was alone.”
This was not surprising news, but Lucy took a moment to process the implication that Anna was gone too. All those times she had encouraged her brother to end that dead-end relationship, her evil thoughts toward Anna’s idiocy and her false friendship. And now, somewhere between leaving her standing outside the secret door and the airport, Anna and Ethan had been dealt a forced separation.
Lucy was sorry that Anna was dead. But she felt worse for Ethan and she selfishly hoped that he had been spared watching her die in the end. There were too many people to weep for; even if she felt a pang of compassion, she would not shed tears for Anna.
“Tell me about the vials,” Lucy finally asked again. “Where did you get the information you shared with Spencer?”
“What vials?” Salem asked.
But before either of them could answer, Lucy heard the floorboards squeak. It was the familiar groan of a house bearing weight. They all heard it and paused, eyes, ears and heads pointed toward the ceiling. Their bodies shifted and they all went on high alert.
“What was that?” Grant asked and he stood straight up, crossing his arms over his chest. Darla stood up next to him, her gun slipping back into the palm of her hand.
“Nothing,” Lucy said because she wanted that to be the right answer. “Don’t houses just settle, make noises?”
But they heard the creak again, and then the shifting and shuffling and footsteps above them. Unmistakable, distinct.
They had entered an occupied house.
“No way,” Darla said and went to the window, moving the curtain back and peering out. She grumbled and nodded outward. “And there are the other Raiders. Fantastic.”
Lucy darted to the window and stole a peek. A ragtag group of boys and one girl ambled up the street. There were four of them in a line. One held a semi-automatic weapon, another a baseball bat. They were dirty and weathered and none of them was over thirty. A boy on a motorized scooter with a wagon attached to the back was leading the crowd. They stopped in front of the storefront. The girl holding the baseball bat took a whack at one of the neon signs in the window and it cracked upon impact with the sound of breaking glass; she pulled it free, the cord trailing behind, and jumped on it for good measure. The group laughed, encouraging her. She batted at another sign and then took the bat to the hood of a car in the parking lot.
The steps above them had also paused. The movement ceased.
Two of the four people ducked into the store, shouting indecipherable messages to each other. It was just a lot of noise and consonants. Lucy made a move like she was going to back away from the window, but Darla put her hand out, commanding her to stay.
Grant, still standing between them, had no view of the outside, but he watched the ceiling with interest—his ears trained on the movement above.
Outside, with a swift motion, the girl raised her bat in mid-swing and then she stumbled forward. The steel slipped out of her hand and it hit the sidewalk with a clang. She clutched her stomach and slid to the ground. The boys watching guard rushed to her as she sank, then they recoiled. They called out and the looters rushed from the storefront.
Watching wide-eyed, Lucy covered her mouth with her hand as the boys dropped the goods in the wagon and took off. The boy on the scooter pulled ahead and the rest followed quickly on foot. There was a single boy who stayed and he held a gun in his hand. He spun wildly looking for something to shoot. Someone to dare cross his path in his moment of anger and surprise. He sat next to the girl, talking to her.
She doubled over in the street on her hands and knees and her body shook against the heavy burden of the virus. It was crippling her.
“Why?” Lucy croaked and took a tentative step back.
“Why what?” Salem whispered.
“The girl,” she said, but she couldn’t find the words to express her anguish. Lucy spun to Darla, “But I thought…” Lucy ran her fingers through her hair and kept her fingers tangled near her scalp. “You were just lying to Spencer. The stuff you said at the school.” She couldn’t even begin to formulate the words necessary to ask the questions on her mind.
“Day six,” Darla answered as if it pained her too. “It’s real, Lucy.” And then her eyes shifted to Salem and Grant, who stood and sat respectively without comprehension.
Grant raised his hand up toward the ceiling. And then put a finger to his lips.
“On the move,” he said.
The steps were heavy now and labored. A single thud and then another; Lucy’s heart quickened, but her arms hung like lead weights at her sides.
There was no escape.
They could see two slippered feet appear at the top of the landing and they watched as the feet slid to the next step and the next step, with rigid and jerky movements.
“Zombie,” Grant whispered. “It’s finally the zombies.” He yanked the gun out of his waistband and held it up at an angle toward the steps. Lucy noticed that his arm didn’t wobble and he pointed the gun up the stairs with marked self-assuredness. It was as if Grant had never imagined he would have to shoot a person, but shooting a zombie came without effort.
“Don’t you dare shoot me son,” came a rough and steady voice, gravelly from sleep, but unafraid.
“Not zombies,” Lucy said and pushed herself back toward the front door, her eyes trained on the emerging figure of a man in a salmon bath robe, bare, skinny legs, socks rolled down around his ankles and worn-white slippers. His hand gripped the railing and he took each step deliberately. When he had reached a spot where he could see all three of them, he paused and made eye contact with Darla and stared at her without blinking until she lowered her gun. Then he looked to Lucy, his blue eyes striking and bright despite the weathered, wrinkled face.
Outside, they could hear the boy cry out and the pop-pop-pop of rapid gunfire. Each of them ducked, expecting the bullets to rain in their direction. But the man stayed firm and upright, unmoving. As they rose, he cleared his throat.
“Houseguests,” he mumbled. “If you’d have called beforehand, I could have put on pants.”
Leland Pine’s wife was still interned in their upstairs bedroom. After they had heard news that most of their children and grandchildren had perished, she retreated to the room where they had shared a bed for more than fifty years, finished off a bottle of pills, mixed with some clear alcohol from their freezer and drifted off to sleep.
He was planning on burying her in their garden, but arthritis and the constant threat of the Raiders across the street thwarted his attempts. He had given up hope that she would receive a burial and had taken to sleeping on the floor beside their bed for long hours. He’d been unable to take his own life in return and so he just waited for the illness to come claim him. Praying that he’d feel the unmistakable symptoms of the virus, he wished for death, but it never came.
Leland handed Darla a coffee mug with an illustration of an American Eskimo dog on the side filled with sweet tea that they had made with the all their remaining water and heated on Leland’s old gas stove. She placed her lips on the rim then sucked up the hot liquid between her teeth, then raised mug in a cheers after swallowing, and smiled a thin smile, tight and still suspicious.
“I haven’t seen many survivors beside the Raiders…the looters,” Darla corrected. “Especially not anyone…”
“Older?” Leland finished for her.
“No offense,” she shrugged.
“None taken,” he replied. “Virus wiped out most the older population first. And the little ones too, I suppose. When you think about who was dying early on it makes it even more difficult to comprehend that someone could do this to us.”
“Unfathomable,” Darla agreed.
Lucy took a mug next; the sweet tea had an overpowering fruit smell and she gagged it down. She was thirsty, but fruity drinks always reminded her of the long road trips to her grandparents’ house where her mother shoved juice boxes and packages of gummy bears at them to quiet the rivalry and announcements of boredom.
They all stood and sat around, drinking the sticky-sweet mixture out of an assortment of dime store coffee mugs and weighing their words. The clouds had rolled back over the area and everyone paused to listen to the sound of rain running down the gutters. Grant was the first to finish his drink and he set his mug down on the table and mumbled a sincere thank you. Leland raised his glass in reply.
“I never thought I’d have anyone in my kitchen again,” Leland said. “Raiders, as you call them, would come by periodically and I’d watch them and it would just make me sad. Seems like such a shame. I’ve lived this long life, seen so many things. Served my country and raised my kids. And here I am, one of the last ones standing? A waste if you ask me.”
No one said anything. Then Grant turned, “What branch of the military?”
“Navy,” Leland replied, then he chuckled, wiping the corner of his mouth with his finger. “Cook. Oh boy, I was a mean navy cook. When I met my wife, she was this wispy little thing, all eager and excited to go on a date with me. Didn’t take me long to fatten her up. Plump little gal she turned out to be after we got married. She blamed me and I knew it was true.” His eyes were misty, but his smile was wide.
Lucy couldn’t help but realize that maybe the Pines, in their old age, had pondered a life without each other. Mortality had to play an important role in their everyday thoughts; death was certain for everyone, but the closer you neared to the end of your life, you had to prepare your heart for imminent loss. Maybe Leland had hoped he’d go first and here he was, alone, without anyone.
“My dad wanted me to go into the military,” Grant said and he slid his eyes to the table. He played with the edge of a paper napkin. “Threatened to send me to military school if I couldn’t keep my grades up.”
“Military isn’t the same now,” Leland said and he stretched his hands above his head. “Long ago, you didn’t have a choice. You had to serve and you had to give up youth and plans. But now? Young people have all sorts of options. You have choices.”
Leland’s words were fresh in their ears when Darla laughed without missing a beat. It was loud and abrupt, but she cut it short when she saw their expressions. “I’m sorry,” she then said, looking to each of them. “It’s not funny.”
Leland nodded. “I see my mistake. It’s easy to forget.”
“The opposite is true for me,” added Salem from the back of the kitchen. “I can’t forget. Not even for a second.”
Grant looked at Leland with sympathy, bypassing Salem’s comment. “But I guess we’re in a war now though, right?” he asked.
“Oh really son?” Leland shook his head. “No, no. No war.”
“There’s nothing left to fight for,” Lucy said. But Darla disagreed by sighing and shaking her head.
“We have plenty to fight for. It’s just a matter of how to fight for it,” Darla added. She turned to Leland. “You seem like a good man. Honest. And I’m sorry for your losses, I am. We can’t take up too much of your time though. We really were just passing through.”
Leland put his hands on the table. “Don’t rush away on my account. The company is nice.”
But Darla started to stand, taking one more sip of her drink before presumably announcing the group’s departure. Lucy watched as Darla put the chipped mug to her lips. Then her eyes grew wide and her breath quickened. She was looking at something beyond Lucy, something that had caused her to freeze.
Without a word, Lucy turned and looked behind her, where Salem was standing. She had dropped her hand to her side, her fingers still gripped the porcelain of her I-Heart-Grandma mug, but her breathing was labored. Her face had gone an eerie shade of white. Her skin was milky and green and her eyes moved to each of them in turn, shifting, darting, afraid.
“Lucy?” Salem whispered. “Grant?” There was a tremor in her voice and it rose with panic.
“Salem!” Lucy jumped from her chair, knocking it to the ground, and started toward her friend.
She reached her just as Salem slumped forward, her mug hitting the kitchen floor with a crash and shattering into tiny pieces.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In an instant Lucy knew exactly what was going to happen next. She knew because she had seen it many times before and she knew because Salem was not looking at her, but looking past her, like she was on the other side of a two-way mirror. She had never been so close to someone succumbing to the virus before and never watched someone she loved in the act of dying. Lucy wiped her hand across Salem’s brow and her friend’s skin was on fire, clumps of her dark hair stuck to her forehead. A small trickle of blood started dripping from Salem’s left nostril and without thinking, without regard for her own safety, Lucy wiped the blood away with her bare hand; she only succeeded in smearing it down across Salem’s cheek.
“Hey, Sal. Come on…please look at me. Sal?”
Salem was trying to talk and Lucy cradled her head, lifting her up into her nap, but Salem groaned and shook her head. Lucy set her head back down onto Leland’s kitchen floor.
“Give it to me,” Lucy cried over her shoulder. “Give me the vaccine.” She was screaming, but her voice sounded foreign and strange.
For a second, she turned her head from Salem and looked around the room. Leland had pushed himself backward and he stood next to his refrigerator; he still clutched his tea with white knuckles. His wife had not died of the virus and Lucy realized that perhaps this was the first person he had seen succumb to it firsthand. She was sorry that Salem was in his house, sorry that he would never be able to look at this spot without remembering this moment.
Grant had taken a tentative step forward, but he looked lost and confused and he had started to cry. The look on his face made Lucy angry. She read resignation and futility in his eyes and she hated him for it.
Astounded by everyone’s inaction, Lucy turned to Darla with tears dripping down on to her borrowed sweatshirt and she pleaded.
“She needs it now, Darla. I need it quick.” But when she turned to Salem, her breathing had already started to slow. She fought for breath, her chest rattling with fluid with each attempt to draw air into her lungs.
“Please, please, please, please,” Lucy begged. And then, with a voice that was nearly inhuman, she yelled with rage and fear. “Why won’t you help me? Give me the rest of the vaccines!”
“Even if I had it, Lucy,” Darla said, her voice calm and quiet, hovering at normal volume, “it wouldn’t do her any good. It’s too late.”
“I don’t…believe you,” Lucy replied and she took a shaky breath and then screamed. She stopped when she felt Salem’s hand wrap around her wrist and attempt a squeeze. “I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you!”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Darla continued. “She would’ve needed it hours ago. Before it reached this point. I’m sorry, Lucy.” She slunk back to the rear of the kitchen next to Leland and rested her head against the side of the wall.
Lucy seethed and she watched as her tears dripped on to Salem’s shirt creating a little pattern of slow-spreading circles. Then she looked straight at Darla, who didn’t even try to break eye contact, and raised a shaky finger. “You wasted them.”
“Lula, he…saved me,” Salem mumbled, drawing Lucy’s attention back down toward her friend. Turning back to Salem, she slipped her clammy hands into her own and held on to them tightly.
“I don’t understand,” Lucy sniffed. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“That summer. At the beach.”
Then Lucy remembered. She knew what Salem was trying to say.
She remembered this story perfectly.
Her parents had always instilled a healthy fear of the ocean—the Oregon coast riptides were not trivial and insignificant. A King family friend lost his son to a sneaker wave the same summer Salem now remembered—it was a long Indian summer and they all loaded up the car for a day trip to the beach on Labor Day when the weather hit close to one-hundred degrees in Portland.
They were bodysurfing, pushing past the coldness of the water with the sun beating down on them; their bodies shivered, while their hair absorbed the heat from the sun. Her father yelled that they were going too far out, and Lucy dutifully obeyed his command by spinning around, treading water back until her feet could touch, and finding safety on the sand. It was Salem who pushed out further and ignored Lucy’s and the King family’s pleas to paddle back.
“He saved you,” Lucy said now, finishing the story, even as her shoulders heaved. “You were drowning. And he saved you.”
Salem had slipped below the surface and Lucy was terrified. Screams and shouting filled the beach and she remembered the alarm in her own voice, her fear of losing her friend. And Lucy’s father had sprinted from the blanket, waded into the ocean fully dressed and pulled her up, paddling back to shore with a gasping Salem in his arms. He had lost one shoe in the sand; it was absorbed into the muck. Maybe it resurfaced later and was discovered by an early morning jogger. One lone shoe without a partner, bobbing in the surf, resting in the foam, or tangled with seaweed.
“I can’t save you.” Lucy dropped her head on to Salem’s chest. Her forehead dug into the sharp edges of Salem’s gold crucifix. “I’ve never been able to save you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
“But he saved me,” Salem said again. “El me salvo.”
And Lucy curled up beside her best friend, their bodies touching. She kept her hand placed squarely on her heart until the distressed breathing stopped and the rise and fall of her chest slowed to a stop.
Salem was gone.
The room didn’t move.
Then Grant took a tentative step toward them and Lucy, sensing his approach, lifted her head. “No. Stay back.”
“Lucy—”
“I said stay back,” Lucy cried out.
A great and terrible fury passed through her. And in an instant she was on her feet, scrambling across the kitchen to Darla. Her foot slipped in blood that had seeped beneath Salem’s body and she lost her balance, tripping into the table. Her body knocked around the plates and glasses as they clinked together. She ran her hand over the table and threw the items to the floor, where they shattered or bounced, and then gripping the sides she flung herself forward, pressing her weight against Darla’s body and pushing her to the floor.
Darla darted out from under her and rolled to safety and then she lifted herself up and held her hands up in defense. She had the poise of someone who knew how to fight, but Lucy—who had only engaged in mock wrestling matches with her brothers—fought with blind rage. When she lifted a hand to scratch at Darla’s tan face, she felt a firm grip around her wrist, digging into the same spot where she had been handcuffed. And Lucy crumpled to the floor, allowing Darla to stand up straight and catch her breath.
“She let her die,” Lucy gasped. “She let her die! We had everything we needed to save them and you just let Spencer have it. How could you let me believe I was safe?”
“You are safe,” Darla said again. “You are safe. Ethan told me—” she stopped, sighed. “I didn’t know there were other people. I had one task.”
“It’s fine to be angry. It is normal for grief to look like anger,” Leland’s voice said near Lucy’s ear. “But you should not fight with your friends in a time like this,” he elucidated in a parental tone.
“She’s not my friend,” Lucy responded quickly and she yanked her hand away from his grasp. But she did not move from her place in the ground.
No one spoke. Grant wandered over to Salem’s body and stood looking at her—a sliver of sun filtered through the window fell over Salem’s legs. Then he turned back to the group, his skin red and blotchy and his eyes puffy. “What vaccine?” he asked.
Lucy stood by the window and looked out on the street. The boy had gone, run off somewhere, so the girl’s body was alone on the wet concrete. The rain had not lifted and the water ran off her body like tiny streams.
Grant sat at the piano. He ran his fingers over the fake ivory keys, stretching them out, and then settled them into position. He hit a chord and another, running them together into a melody that Lucy had never heard before, even though it had the quality of something familiar, something memorable. Grant finished the song, sustaining the last note throughout the house until he lifted his foot off the pedal suddenly and he spun on the bench and stared at Lucy.
“A Grant Trotter original,” he said in a half-whisper.
“You made that up?” Lucy asked, too tired and sad to even muster an impressed smile. “I didn’t know you could play.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“I should’ve said something.” Lucy turned back to the window. “I should’ve put it all together and realized. I should’ve warned you both.”
Grant stood up and stretched. “No,” he said. “In some ways, it’s better not to know. But I want it stated for the record. I was right. That first morning when I predicted that we were just taking longer to die? I don’t know why I didn’t take bets.”
Lucy began to cry again.
He walked over and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “I feel like you should be consoling me right now. I am the one that just learned I’m going to die sometime today.”
Lucy leaned into his arm.
“I’m not afraid to die,” Grant said.
Pulling back, Lucy looked at him and wiped her tears on her sleeve. “I don’t understand. We’ve been fighting so hard to stay safe and alive…for almost a week…”
“You misunderstood.” He took a step back and placed his hands on Lucy’s shoulders. He was taller than her by almost a whole foot and he had to stoop his shoulders to look in her eyes. “I want to live. But I’m not afraid to die. This new world is much scarier than death, Lucy.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Amen.”
“We have to go back to the school and get one of the vials back from Spencer.” Lucy mentioned this is in a rush of importance, begging him to agree. She had been thinking about the trip back and how they could pull it off. She had a plan. The vaccine in Spencer’s possession was a travesty, especially since Grant was just playing a waiting game.
“No,” was Grant’s swift reply.
“Yes,” Lucy replied. “Yes. We can do this. And if Darla won’t help…I’ll go alone.”
“Lucy—” he shook his head. “I’m not letting you go. I’m not letting you or anyone else risk your life for me. There’s no guarantee that it would work or that…in the time that it took…” he trailed off and she knew what he was going to say. She cringed.
“Please.” She cried harder.
Grant shook his head and squeezed her shoulders tightly. “We’re not talking about it. And you won’t change my mind.”
“What do you want to do then?” Lucy asked and she tried to harden herself, stop the blubbering, and regain control.
Grant laughed. His genuine amusement shocked her and he put a thoughtful finger to his lips. “You mean…on your last day to live? What do you want to do?”
“No,” Lucy stammered. Then, “Maybe.”
Without missing a beat, he replied. “I want to bury Salem. Give her what no one else in our school or our lives got when they died. Something proper.” He then looked at her with a sad smile. “Then I want to see you get home.”
Abigail Pine’s body had already started to decay. Not the rapid decomposition the virus caused, but the normal human rate of putrefaction. In an attempt to mask the smell, Leland had dumped two entire boxes of baking soda over her. Everywhere, except her face. And despite her whiteness and bloat, she still looked peaceful as she lay on top of their floral comforter.
With Leland watching, twisting his hand in his robe nervously, Darla wrapped her in a white flat sheet; her body was stiff, but still moveable. They rolled her onto the sheet in stages and then secured it at the ends. Grant grabbed her upper body, lifting her with a mixture of tenderness and sheer strength, while the girls congregated at her legs and feet. Then they shimmied and shifted, maneuvered and backed their way down the stairs, through the family room, out the kitchen, and into the garden—where Leland met them holding two shovels.
They dug two holes. The rain made them a muddy mess and the further down they got, the harder the earth was, slowing down their digging process. After fifty minutes, they had created large and deep enough holes to fit Leland’s departed wife and Salem.
Grant bent down and picked Salem off the floor on his own and laid her to rest in the earth. Mud splattered on her cheeks and clothes and the sides of the grave started caving in almost immediately. Salem’s golden crucifix peaked out of the earth and, spotting it, Lucy dropped to her knees. She reached down into the grave and she dug her hands under the mud until she was able unclasp the necklace from around Salem’s neck. She held it tightly in her hands, the sharp edges of the cross digging into her palms.
Then Grant covered the bodies as quickly as he could. With Darla’s help, they slung the thick sludge over the bodies until nothing on their bodies remained visible.
“I’ll say some words for my wife,” Leland said and gathered them together, where they huddled and listened to his praises, his prayers.
“My wife was a giving soul. And she had a spirit of fire and passion. And love. She loved. With everything she had. This is not how we imagined our end. But here we are. Here will she rest…with me by her side as long as I am able.” Leland stopped. He turned to the group, “You go,” he instructed and he pointed to Lucy.
