Elton had taken the binoculars from him and was peering out over the destruction. “Goddamned animals is what they are. If there’s no army left to give aid… then we’re all in a for a heap of hard times…. harder, that is.”
“As long as they stay away from here they can blow up and piss on whatever they want.”
The shirtless gunner returned to his tank as if he’d heard Hayden say the words. The others ran back to their trucks. The big machine lurched forward and back in its tracks. It shot forward again as the inexperienced driver found the proper gear, and the tank rolled into the ditch straight toward Elton MacDonald’s farm.
“It’s that horse you rode in on—they can see it from the highway.”
“I think it’s time we went into that cellar of yours.” Hayden could feel Nicholas pressed up to his side. The window had begun to rattle in its frame from the deep rumble of approaching vehicles.
“We’d be better off upstairs,” Elton said quickly. “The bedroom door locks from the inside.”
“They have a tank—locked bedroom doors won’t stop them. We need to hole up somewhere dark. Maybe they won’t even bother looking down there if they find the rest of the house deserted.”
“Please,” MacDonald pleaded. He’d grabbed onto to Hayden’s wide shoulders. “Not the cellar.”
Hayden took one of the boney wrists and forced it down. “We don’t have time to argue. Where is it?”
The old man wagged his head to one side, indicating a hallway off from the stairs leading up. Hayden pulled him along quickly and Nicholas ran ahead both of them. “First door on the left,” he said resignedly.
Nicholas opened the door and an unpleasant smell greeted them from the darkness below. The boy went for the light switch.
“No,” Hayden said. He reached up towards the ceiling and unscrewed the single light bulb from its socket. “If they can’t see what’s down there, maybe they won’t even bother coming down.”
Elton crept down the steep steps first, leading the other two into blackness. “Watch the third step. It’s starting to give in the middle.”
Hayden straddled the stairway, placing each step to the outside. He could feel Nicholas’s fingers dug into the waistband of his pants, using him as a guide. They heard the vehicles pull into the yard—the tank’s rumble, doors slamming shut, men whooping and laughing. Hayden stopped halfway down the stairs and pointed back up at the door. Nicholas scrambled back up in the gloom and pulled it shut. Hayden held his hands out and waited for the boy to find him again.
Gun shots fired when they reached the dirt floor. Multiple rounds.
“Trixie!”
Hayden started up the stairs, but Elton took hold of one of his big shoulders again and spun him around. He was a lot stronger than Hayden suspected. “Don’t be a fool, man. That horse isn’t worth our lives.”
There were more gunshots. Rapid fire. They were unloading entire machine gun magazines. Hayden stumbled into a corner and held Nicholas tightly to him. He was shaking and crying. “It’s okay,” Hayden whispered into the boy’s ear. “It will stop soon.”
The shooting ended a few moments later. Hayden prayed they’d murdered each other. The laughing started up again. Heavy boots thumped up the porch steps, and the front door slammed open against the inside wall. They were in the house, thudding about from room to room. Hayden slid his hand over Nicholas’s mouth. A heavy crash sounded directly over their heads. There goes Elton’s television set.
Something hard tapped Hayden’s shoulder. He reached out, expected to find Elton’s ancient fingers, but his hand wrapped around the barrel of a rifle instead. The old man spoke softly. “Get ready to duck down. As soon as that cellar door opens I’m blowing some fucker’s leg off.”
“Give me the gun,” Hayden urged.
MacDonald pulled it away. “I’m old, son, but I’m still a hell of a shot.”
The cellar door swung in and light flooded down the wooden steps. Hayden saw a long shadow stretch along the wall. Should’ve brought my rifle in the house, he thought. He had seen at least a dozen men surrounding the tank and trucks, and there were probably more judging from all the gunfire they’d heard. At least we could’ve taken a few more of the bastards out along the way.
The shadow above them called out.“Fucking light doesn’t work!”
“Forget it,” someone yelled back. “This place is a fucking dump. It’s already been picked over by some other assholes.”
More laughter. They listened as more commands were yelled out. Something about the approaching storm and getting to the next town before it hit. Boots thumped along the living room floor and thudded down the porch steps. The trucks started up and Hayden heard the tank begin to roll once again.
Hayden lowered Nicholas to the floor and discovered he was shaking almost as badly the five-year old. “I thought you said you were going to fire as soon as the door opened.”
“Can’t shoot what you can’t see. I left my glasses upstairs.”
Nicholas cried out. “Someone’s down here! Their leg’s all cold!”
Elton found him in a far corner and started dragging him towards the stairs. “Get away from her, boy.”
Hayden realized he was still clutching onto the light bulb. He ran up the steps and screwed it back into its socket. He threw the light switch up and Nicholas cried out again. “Her face is gone! Her face is gone!”
It was more than just her face. The top half of the woman’s head was missing. This was why Elton had resisted hiding in the cellar. Her crumpled up body was resting next to a shallow hole in the dirt floor. Elton shoved Nicholas away and knelt before the corpse. “We were supposed to go together… We’d agreed… I end May’s life, and then take my own.”
Hayden picked Nicholas up and placed him back down on the stairs. “Go on to the top and wait at the door.” The boy scrambled up the steps on all fours, whimpering. Hayden went to the farmer. There was a shovel resting on a pile of excavated dirt next to the corpse. “You were going to bury her.”
Elton nodded. “I couldn’t even get that done proper. The ground’s so hard, and I’m old. I figure I’ll get the job done in a few more days.”
“And then what?”
“Then I’ll find some balls and join her.”
“What good is that going to do? We’ve all lost family, people we love.”
“May was the last for me, son. There’s no one else in the world to care for.”
Hayden went back to the stairs and joined Nicholas waiting at the door. His eyes were big and round with big patches of pink on the cheeks below. “It’s started to rain again.”
They went through the living room—stepping around the smashed television set—and peered around the drapes through the window. It was raining hard. A bolt of lightning flashed directly ahead lighting the front yard. Trixie was laying on her side in a growing puddle of water and blood. Her body had been riddled with bullet holes.
“They killed her,” Nicholas moaned. “They shot her dead like Mr. MacDonald shot his wife.”
Hayden couldn’t answer him.
The rain intensified, smashing against the glass. It turned to hail, and the window exploded inwards. Thunder exploded and the house shook. Hayden could smell the electricity in the air. “We have to go back down into the cellar. We can’t stay up here.”
“I don’t wanna go back down there! I don’t wanna see her dead face again!”
“You won’t have to for long.”
Chapter 24
The storm raged on, and Hayden dug. He made the hole wider and longer to accommodate the dead woman’s body. Wind howled in the rooms above them, through the broken windows and open front door. What remained of Elton’s forty-year old home was being thoroughly devastated.
“I could’ve done it myself,” the old man said from the bottom step of the cellar. “I would’ve eventually got the job done.”
Hayden took a rest and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I know you would’ve.” He was three feet down, and the ground was hard. May MacDonald wouldn’t be laid to rest six feet under. She would have to settle for four. “But seeing as we’re staying until the storm passes, I figured I could keep busy.”
Hayden picked the shovel back up and resumed digging. Elton spoke again after a few more minutes. “I’m not going with you.”
“I know.”
“I’m too old to start anything again. I’m too old and I’m too tired.”
“I know.”
They wrapped her body in a plain white bed sheet and lowered it into the hole. The generator died in the storm and Hayden shoveled the dirt back into the grave in the dark. No words were spoken, no prayers whispered. There was a moment when Hayden thought all of his hard work would be for nothing. Something sounding like a freight train leaving its tracks roared above their heads. Another of those monstrous tornadoes was twisting its way through the property, tearing up what remained. It eventually passed, leaving the house and May MacDonald’s final resting place intact.
The wind died down and the rain stopped falling. Elton led them up and out of the cellar to survey the damage. Most of what the old man and his wife had accumulated over the decades had been picked over and stolen in the last week. What was left was strewn about the wet floor, smashed and useless.
Hayden went outside and stood over his dead horse. He prayed she hadn’t suffered. How could she have, he thought? Every square inch of her had been torn to shreds with gunfire. The bastards. He closed his eyes and pictured the one that had exited out from the tank turret. Young, twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. Black hair shaved close to his scalp. No shirt. Dirty blue jeans and big black boots with the laces untied. Sunglasses.
“Are we walking now?”
Hayden opened his eyes and saw Nicholas. “Yeah, I suppose we are.” He searched around Trixie’s corpse for his rifle. It was gone. So was the saddlebag with their few remaining supplies. They couldn’t even leave us that.
“How far are we from the city?”
It was still grey towards the east, as if the sky was threatening to unleash another storm. Or perhaps it was smoke; a low-hanging cloud of ruin settled over what was left of Winnipeg. “Not far. We can reach the outskirts before nightfall on foot.”
Elton MacDonald was leaned up against a cracked porch beam. “You’re welcome to stay.”
Hayden could see that hooded look again in the old man’s eyes—the bottom lip jutting out. They could stay if they wanted, but they wouldn’t be all that welcome. Elton had a job to finish, and he needed to be alone.
“Thanks, but no. We’ll be leaving now. Can I have that rifle of yours?”
“Nope.”
Hayden and Nicholas reached the highway less than five minutes later. They heard a single gunshot behind them. Nicholas spun around and stared at the farmhouse. “Did those bad men in the trucks come back?”
“Nope.” Hayden tightened his hand around the boy’s and started for the city.