“You got ’im good Isaac,” Papa said, though he didn’t sound entirely pleased. “But this ain’t how I wanted it.”
Wellman wasn’t sure what that meant. Had they been bluffing? Had they meant to just scare him into telling them what they wanted to know, or to warn him as they had Jack Lowell all those years ago when he’d stuck his nose in where it wasn’t wanted? No, there was no bluff here. Perhaps if he hadn’t seen the faces of those boys, the cold malevolence in their eyes, he could have told himself that this had all just been some kind of terrible mistake, a rash move perhaps from a boy too young, or too simple, to know what he was doing. But he had seen them, had felt the threat saturating the air the moment they’d arrived. These people had come to kill him, just as they had butchered those poor kids and God only knew how many before them, just as they would murder Claire if he told them where she was.
“You can end this,” he said weakly, his gaze directed at the tallest shadow now dropping to a crouch before him. “Hit the road, clear out of town and never look back. You’ve got time.” He let out a long low breath. Part of him seemed to escape with it. The pain was maddening, a raging itch deep inside his leg he would have to tear himself asunder to reach. His heart ached as it strained to compensate for the amount of blood he was losing. He could smell himself in the air, the urine and feces as his bodily functions gradually started to relax and void themselves, giving up before the rest of him. He could smell them too, their foul breath, the old sweat, the dirt and filth. These were not the scents he imagined would herald his death, but on some level he supposed it was apt. Abby’s death had been no more elegant.
“Ain’t about time, Doc,” said Papa-in-Gray.
“Then what is it about?”
They were closer now, or maybe that was just his own failing vision playing tricks on him, but the light penetrating their semi-circle seemed thinner, as did the air allowed to infiltrate the group. It was getting harder to breathe.
“We’re gonna get that bitch girl, then come back,” Pa continued. “And we’re gonna make it look like you kilt yourself, though that leg wound won’t help us none.”
One of the smaller shadows swallowed audibly and looked away.
“Then we’re gonna put your body right back in that house’a yours, get you all comfortable, maybe with that pretty picture of your wife. Make it look all peaceful.”
Wellman was fading fast, the ground beneath him warmed by his own life’s blood, the flesh above it growing steadily colder.
“Why’s he smilin’?” one of the boys asked.
“I expect he’s acceptin’ his fate.”
Get this one last thing done, Wellman told himself, but his own thoughts sounded distant, a voice heard calling from beyond the hills. Then: “One last…thing,” he said aloud. It was not until he drew in a sudden breath and forced his eyes wide that he realized they’d been shut. His vision wavered, the figures around him blurry and indistinct as if seen through billowing sheets of plastic. He clenched his teeth, and willed his hand to bring the gun up. Miraculously, for it felt as if it existed independently of him, it obeyed, though the gun seemed to have increased in weight and size.
“Well lookit that,” Pa said, and chuckled.
“Best step back, Pa.”
The man’s tone darkened. “And you best watch who you’re advisin’, Aaron.”
Wellman gasped as a bolt of pain shot through him. For a moment he thought he’d been stabbed again, but realized as it ebbed away that it was merely an involuntary spasm, his body protesting the systematic shutdown of its component parts.
Papa-In-Gray’s face was mere inches from his own.
Wellman straightened his arm and aimed the gun point blank at the man’s right eye.
Knives found his throat. The twins, he suspected, on either side of him, their hands small as they brushed his chin.
“Easy boys. He ain’t shootin’ nobody.”
“But Pa—”
“Get in the truck.”
Wellman drew back the hammer. The ratcheting click sounded impossibly loud. The only sound in the world. The boys tensed.
“You heard me, now get movin’ dammit,” Papa commanded.
Wellman felt their reluctance as they moved away, heard their footsteps crunching gravel, the truck doors opening and closing again. Then it was just silence, one shadow, and the gun.
“You change your mind, old man?” Papa asked. “Fixin’ to go out a hero?”
Wellman’s eyes were starting to close, the shades on his evening coming down to usher in endless night. He jerked himself back to consciousness and muttered a curse.
“Go ahead,” Pa told him, leaning in so the gun was pressed beneath his eye. “Pull the trigger. God might forgive you for doin’ what you thought was right while the pain had you addled. And I ain’t scared none. You might say I’m awful curious about what’s waitin’ for me up there.”
“Let her go. Please. She never hurt you.”
“She kilt my boy’s what she did to me.”
“She was… Just… let her go. She’s suffered enough.”
“Only reason you gotta stake in this is ’cuz you got in the way, ol’ man. What happens to her ain’t none of your concern. Shouldn’t’ve wasted your time on her.”
“You’ll burn in Hell,” Wellman whispered, his breath whistling from his mouth. Shuddering, he put as much pressure on the gun as he could muster, digging it into the flesh beneath the other man’s eye. “You’ll burn for what you’ve done. And someday… someone will stop you.”
“Oh?”
“People like you…” He grunted as another bolt of pain shot through him. “Monsters like you…don’t last long. Someone will put an end to this.”
Pa sounded as if he was smiling, but his face was nothing but darkness. “But not you?”
“No.” Wellman drew a breath he was afraid would be his last. He was wracked with pain, every muscle contracting, making it an effort to breathe, to think, to see… “No,” he said. “Not me.”
With the last of his strength, he swung his hand to the left and pulled the trigger. Pa jerked back with a grunt, one hand clamped over his ear as he spun away. The gun kicked in the doctor’s hand, sending a shock of pain up his arm and he almost dropped it. But he brought the weapon up one last time, tightened his quivering grip, and pulled the trigger again, and again, even after he could no longer see, and the sound of the bullets leaving the gun was a distant echo.
The truck bucked and dropped low on the right side, the headlights tilting, sliding away from their father and the dying doctor before coming to a halt at a crooked angle. The windshield shattered, scattering glass, and from the back seat Joshua gasped as a bullet sheared off a piece of his right ear and punched a small hole in the rear window, starring but not breaking it.
“That son of a bitch,” Aaron roared, jerking on the door handle. “He got the goddamn tire.” Then he was out and running, door swinging wide, the knife held at his side in a fist so white it could have been sculpted from limestone.
“You all right?” Luke asked quietly, his eyes on the mirror and his younger brother’s pained expression.
Joshua nodded, one hand cupping his bloody ear.
Isaac shoved the newly vacated driver seat forward and filed out with Joshua at his heels. They slammed the door hard behind them as if they had sensed Luke wasn’t going to follow.
They were right.
Instead he sat still, and watched, absently picking fragments of glass from his hair and brushing them from his clothes. The cuts on his face stung where the shrapnel from the windshield had punctured the skin, but he was only barely aware of them. The tender area on his left cheek hurt more, even though the pain was no more potent than the nicks made by the glass. Shame made his face fill with blood and throb with the impotency of anger. He should have lashed back at the old man, snapped his bones and torn his flesh. There had been time. But he had just stood there in shock, overwhelmed by the dawning of what this new development would mean to his family.