Reapers (31 page)

"La la la!" Ellie said. "I am absolutely not hearing about the sex life of my daughter who damn well better be using condoms!"

"They're all expired." Dee's fingers brushed hers, searching for the pin. "After that, I started practicing. Just in case, and because it was fun. Now hold still."

The tone of her voice made it perfectly clear this was not the first time she'd spoken those words. Ellie forced herself to think about Colorado Rockies games and the cold Snapple she used to drink after a long run. The cuffs twitched against her wrists. With a metal click, the pressure disappeared from her right wrist. Dee moved to the left bracelet and got it off in half the time.

"You have to wiggle the tip past the housing," Dee said. "Push the bar the opposite direction that the cuffs close. Once it pops, spring the main lock like normal."

"Is that all," Ellie said, but when she set to work on Dee's cuffs, they yielded quickly.

Dee shook out her wrists and then gave Hobson's shoulder a nudge. "Sheriff? Mom, do you think he's hurt?"

"Could be concussed." Ellie went to the wall and dragged a heavy plastic bin below the window. It was completely snowed in and so narrow she wasn't sure her head would fit, let alone her butt.

"What are you doing?"

"Oh, I don't know. I was thinking about getting out of here before Mr. Manson and bride return to torture us to death."

Dee sat back next to the sheriff. "What about Mr. Hobson?"

"He won't fit through the window." Ellie heaved another tub atop the first and gave the structure a shake. Wobbled a bit, but it was weighty enough to hold her.

"You want to leave him."

"Pick his locks. If he wakes up, at least he'll have a fighting chance."

"What are you
talking
about?" Dee's voice was as high as the window. "We can't leave him to die! He's the one who knew that body wasn't Quinn."

"I would have figured that out," Ellie said. "The upstairs door is padlocked. He's not our family. If you want to see Quinn again, we have to get out now."

"That's the result I want." Dee glared across the vacant cellar. "But I don't want a damn thing to do with the process. That's what you're always talking about, right? It's not the results, it's the process. Well, in my book, any process that leaves a man who's helped us behind to die is a big fat pile of shit."

Ellie gaped. "It's a better process than the one that gets us
all
killed!"

"Run on outside. The sheriff and I will catch up in a minute." She shook the man's shoulder. He groaned, eyes closed.

Ellie climbed the tubs to the window, measuring its width with her palm. It was single-paned and frosted with ice. She hopped down and put her palm to Hobson's hip.

"Get his cuffs off," she said. "I'll wake him up."

Dee grinned and got the pin from her pocket. While she clicked away, Ellie snapped her fingers in front of the sheriff's eyes, slapped his cheek. The upstairs creaked. Ellie glanced up, then pinched the tender skin right beneath the sheriff's lip. He snorted and smacked her hand, eyes blinking.

"I am on the ground," he said. "Who put me here and for what purpose?"

"To shut you up," Ellie said. "So I doubt this is a new experience for you. Feel okay? What's your name?"

"Oliver Marion Hobson, and I don't know what day it is because we've been traipsing through this dratted snow for so long I've lost count." He sat up, hair askew, and rubbed the back of his head; Dee had only picked one of the locks and the handcuffs dangled from his wrist, smacking the back of his neck.

Dee scowled and bent to pick up the bobby pin. "I'm still working."

"My apologies, young lady." He put his palm on the ground with a clack of steel, waggled his jaw back and forth, then looked surprised. "
You're
the one who's lubricating our escape?"

Dee snickered and pried at the lock. Hobson turned to Ellie. "Did I say something funny?"

Ellie stood. "No. You said something horrible. And unless you want me to knock you right back out, you'll never mention this again."

Hobson looked baffled. "I missed something. But I'm old enough to understand that my ignorance grows by the day and it's best to befriend it. So: where are we and what are we doing?"

"Cellar. Thinking of a way out." Ellie crept up the stairs and pressed her ear to the peeling paint on the door. She tried the door and it jarred against the padlock on the other side.

"Are those windows as small as they look from here?"

"Out of the question. Unless you're willing to cut off half your ass."

He laughed dourly. "I'm far too fond of sitting to part with half of my favorite cushion."

"Door's padlocked." Ellie moved down the steps. "Could try to kick it down, but I expect them back any minute."

Dee sprung the bracelet from Hobson's right hand. He smiled warmly and rubbed his wrists. "A pretty girl who can pick a lock. If you were ten years older, I might be in love."

"Sheriff."

"Old fashioned ambush?" he transitioned. "They'll never expect it. She'll be lucky to get off a shot."

"With that shotgun, one shot might be all she needs." Ellie scanned the basement. The stairs were open underneath. The main drain pipe descended from the ceiling and out the wall. A couple of sinks collected dust against the front wall. Besides that and the tubs of goods, there was no cover. "If he comes down first, we can't get to her. She'll murder us."

"So we set up atop the stairs. Rush them the instant they pull the lock."

"Only room for one of us."

"I volunteer." He waved a hand through the air, dismissing any objections. "Do you know the natural span of the human life? Without modern drugs, treatment, and surgery, it is roughly 64 years. I have lived a full 90% of my allotted span. If it ends now, I won't feel cheated."

Ellie gestured at the bins. "Try to find weapons. We don't have much time."

They popped the lids and pawed through the contents. Many were filled with dried fruit, meat, and grain. The three of them stuffed handfuls into their mouths and chewed as they searched. Many of the others contained enough toiletries to last three generations. Including two dozen cans of hairspray.

Ellie held up her lighter. "What do you think?"

"Crude," Hobson said, "but crude methods are often the most terrifying."

"I'll be right behind you on the stairs. Dee, I want you next to the window. If we don't make it, you run. Find Quinn. Live your lives."

Dee's expression curled in on itself. "You're not going to get shot."

"All we know is we're about to bum rush an armed woman," Ellie said. "Once the door opens, anything can happen."

The look on Dee's face said she was tired of Ellie's ongoing argument that they didn't and couldn't know jack about shit, but Dee showed no interest in poking it further. The girl climbed up the tubs under the window and thumbed open the rusty catch. The window held firm, then opened with a squeak that probably sounded much louder than it actually was. Powdered snow tumbled through the gap.

Hobson flicked the lighter, testing it, then spritzed the hairspray. "If this explodes, at least I'll be blessed with the dramatic exit I've always deserved."

He climbed the stairs and set up an inch from the door. Ellie crouched on the steps behind him. The couple had already been gone longer than she could have hoped. When five more minutes went by, she began to think they might be able to kick open the door without being heard—had the two gone to the neighbors? Fallen off a cliff?—but before she could convince herself to dry, the back door creaked open. Boots stomped repeatedly, knocking off the snow. A key scrabbled into the padlock. The door opened.

Hobson bowled through it. Ellie leapt in behind him. The bearded man stared in shock, a metal toolbox in hand. Behind him, his wife's shotgun dangled from the crook of her arm. Hobson streamed hairspray and flicked his lighter.

It burst with a whoomp of light and heat. The bearded man screamed. The stench of burnt hair filled the small landing. The man fell back, legs kicking, knocking into his wife. Thrown off balance, her shot blasted into the side of the kitchen sink. Ellie knifed past the man and grabbed the gun. The barrel was smoking hot; she slid her grip down, grabbed the stock with her other hand, and twisted. Fingerbones snapped and popped. The woman shrieked. Ellie yanked the gun away and butted the stock into her head.

The man bowled into her knees. She shot him in the back. He slapped to the white linoleum and didn't move. The woman pushed her back against the door, blood gushing from a gash on her forehead down the left half of her face.

Ellie swung the gun's barrel at her chest. "We're not with the Clavans."

"You shot him!"

"You should have listened!"

The woman sneered up at her, unflinching. "I know this land. I'll run you down and gut you in your sleep."

Ellie bulged her lower lip with her tongue. "I believe you."

She fired. The woman's body jerked against the door. Ellie turned away, ears ringing. Downstairs, Dee poked her head out to see, eyes gone wide.

"Start packing food," Ellie said. Dee disappeared. Ellie reached past the body and pushed open the door. "Help me get these outside."

"Are we burying them?" Hobson said.

"I don't want her to see."

He nodded sagely and helped pull the wife and husband into the snow. They rolled the pair into the dead flowerbed beneath the back window, then wiped the blood off in the drifts, streaking it red. Inside, Ellie found dish towels in a drawer to dry their cold hands. She supposed she should feel guilt, but the clatter of Dee from downstairs kept any such feelings far away.

Dee came up one step at a time, bearing a bulky transparent tub with a blue lid. "What happened?"

Ellie shook her head. "They're gone. But they could have neighbors. Let's get that in our packs and move."

Hobson rounded up their snowshoes from the front porch and found their guns while Ellie and Dee transferred plastic bags and jars of canned fruit to their packs. They ate as they worked. Ellie tossed Hobson a bag of venison jerky. He chuckled happily and dug in, a brown twist of meat jutting from his jaws as he strapped on his shoes. And then they were back outside in the bitter cold with the snow gleaming like an exploded star and Ellie quit eating before she'd have to throw up.

It was early afternoon. Ellie thought they could make five or six miles before they'd need to find a house. Night was the time for questions, when everyone could stare at the fire and avoid each other's eyes, but Dee surprised her by speaking up less than a mile down the highway.

"Why did you shoot her?"

"Did you hear what she said?" Ellie said. "Do you think I shouldn't have?"

Behind her on the packed trail, Dee watched her sidelong, squinting against the glare. "I think you have a reason for everything you do."

"I'd just shot her husband," Ellie said. "She meant to hunt us down."

"Which she might have. Or might not. But we couldn't know. That's what you mean when you talk about violence."

"That's what I believe."

Dee shuffled through the snow. "That's pretty bad, isn't it? Doesn't it mean you shoot first and ask questions later? Anyone who bluffs gets shot."

"When someone pulls a gun on me, I tend to take them at their word." Ellie followed the trail Hobson smoothed through the snow. "Maybe that's why I don't like to leave Saranac."

Dee gazed at the powder glittering around their snowshoes, working this over. Ellie believed what she'd just espoused very strongly—though when didn't she—but while she typically pushed hard enough to ensure her words would leave an impression on Dee's young, dense skull, this time, she felt no need. The events of the last hour spoke much louder.

"It's an odd thing," Hobson said. "They must have had a recent run-in with the Clavan gang. Almost certainly lost someone. It left them so alert for the return of the kidnappers that they ensured the cycle continued. Violence is an infection, isn't it? A perverse strain where the more you're exposed to it, the less you're able to fight it off."

"They should have moved after the first time the Clavans came," Dee said. "They were so vulnerable by themselves."

They slept the night in another house. Mechanically, Ellie helped break up chairs to build the fire. She ate but couldn't remember what she'd eaten. She checked the kitchen cabinets. This, too, was mechanical, but when she saw a half-empty bottle of cooking sherry, she poured herself a glass and sat at the dining room table and watched the starry darkness.

"I would have done the same," Hobson said from the doorway, jolting her. "But I suppose the only thing that matters is you're the one who did."

He waited there a moment. When she said nothing, he left. She drank a while and went to sleep and had dreams she couldn't remember. She didn't think she'd had that much, but when morning came, her stomach hurt and there was a thickness to her head like melted sugar. She ate some trail mix from their looted food and walked on.

It snowed two days later. Nothing major. Just enough to layer fresh powder on the sun-crusted snows.

"You said they taught you some hand-to-hand stuff back in the day," Dee said. "How much do you remember?"

Ellie laughed, possibly for the first time since the house. "Do you want to learn?"

"It seems like I ought to."

It had been some time since Ellie had practiced anything more advanced than her stretches, let alone imparted those techniques to an amateur, and she worried she had lost them among the dissolving memories of her twenties. But once upon a time, she'd practiced rigorously. That evening, when they took off their shoes and socks and went to work in a dead stranger's living room, she found her skills dusty, eroded, but present.

She worked up a light sweat showing Dee a few basics. Starting with punching. Dee had worked on the farm long enough that none of her motions was utterly hopeless, but she had a bad habit of letting the tip of her thumb drift past her knuckles. Didn't always keep her wrist straight, either, which was a great way to break it. She showed the girl a straight kick which Dee got right away.