He had his knees holding her lower body in place. And even if she’d had the strength to loosen his hand, she didn’t have the leverage, not in this position.
Her senses were leaving her, as was the air in her lungs as she groped around wildly, reaching for anything that might help her.
She closed her fingers around something solid, didn’t even pause long enough to figure out what it was. Using all the force that she could muster, she swung wildly and crashed the object against his head.
The crack was sickening, the sound of bone breaking something that was both unfamiliar and immediately identifiable.
She didn’t make the same mistake she had before. She didn’t revel in her triumph, didn’t assume that her blow had been sufficient. Instead she swung again, listening for that telltale crack.
Again.
And then again.
The crack was becoming more and more muffled, now more like squishy mush. It reminded her of the sound tomatoes made when she crushed them for sauce.
Some rational part of her knew what that meant, but she swung again.
“It’s done,” Jack said.
At first, she didn’t really process what he’d said and went to swing again but was stopped by his hand on her wrist.
“It’s done,” he repeated, his voice more urgent, but only slightly so, than it had been before. This time, his words penetrated.
She tossed what she now recognized was a rock, threw it away as though it was fire.
She looked at Jack, saw that his breathing was slightly elevated, but he didn’t have any bruises.
Then, she looked beyond him to the older man. He wasn’t moving, and Cassandra knew what that meant.
Then, after what felt like an eternity, she looked down and to her right.
She had scurried away from the younger man, something she didn’t recall doing.
He lay on the ground, still like the other man, and even though she couldn’t quite bring herself to look directly at him, Cassandra could see the blood that pooled around his eye, the concave dent in his skull that was shaped like the rock she had held only moments ago.
The blood and brain and bone that marred that shape.
Cassandra couldn’t hold her reaction back. The vomit spilled from her mouth fast, the force almost overtaking her.
She didn’t try to fight it. She just let the heaves come and gave what little her mostly empty stomach had to offer.
Later—it could have been minutes, it could have been much longer—she thought the heaving had subsided enough that she could move.
She stood, her legs wobbly, but she recovered quickly.
She looked back at the younger man, and then, without looking at Jack, she walked toward the bikes.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“How far do you think it is?” Jack asked.
Cassandra looked at him, then looked toward the horizon where the sun was just beginning to reveal itself.
“I’m not completely sure, but I think eight miles, maybe ten,” she finally said.
She was somewhat ashamed that she couldn’t be more sure. This had been her idea, and they had gone through a lot to get here, but she didn’t know the way as well as should have.
She almost always traveled the interstate and barely had any memory of these back roads. She regretted not paying better attention, but there was no way to fix that now.
“These bikes are on their last legs,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Cassandra said, “we may as well walk. It will probably be harder to pedal anyway.”
There was no way she would risk taking the road, and she suspected Jack felt same. Which meant they’d have to traverse the back roads and paths. And though they were flat, or flatter than a lot of the surrounding area, they were covered with twigs and rocks, all manner of obstructions that could easily upend their balance. Who knew when they’d find get to town, or for that matter, what shape it would be in when they got there. It seemed foolish to risk injury on the bikes if they didn’t have to.
“Let’s ditch them deeper into the woods in case anyone happens to come by,” Jack said.
Cassandra nodded and then began walking. Jack followed behind her, adjusting some of the leaves and underbrush, she assumed to hide their tracks. When he stepped back, he looked at the spot and appeared to be satisfied.
If Cassandra hadn’t known they had been there, she wouldn’t have thought anything was out of place.
“Let’s go,” Jack said.
Cassandra followed him quietly and discarded her bike in the woods.
Then, without word, they began to walk.
As she suspected, they kept off the road, and followed along the wooded path going west.
They walked for an hour, maybe two, in silence. Cassandra still wasn’t used to the disquieting feeling of not knowing precisely what time it was. She’d spent so much of her life watching the clock that doing it now was a reflex, a habit, one that she wasn’t happy to have to involuntarily break.
She knew it was stupid to focus on time when the world had fallen apart, when a person, or what used to be a person could be waiting around the corner ready to attack her. But the enormity of what was happening in the world was too much for her to contemplate.
They passed a pebble that lay atop the gravel path, and Cassandra kicked it, the explosion of frustration one she wasn’t sure the source of.
Or rather didn’t want to acknowledge the source of.
Instead she kicked the pebble down the road once, took a few steps to catch up with it, and kicked it again.
The urge to kick it yet another time, to cry, scream, came over her.
But she couldn’t give into them. What had happened was her fault; she wouldn’t compound the mistake by crying about it.
“You want to talk about it?”
She shifted her gaze over and looked at Jack who walked face forward, his profile showing no emotion.
She scoffed, a feeling of anger bubbling up inside of her, but she did her best to bite it back.
“He speaks,” she said sarcastically.
It wasn’t fair to direct this anger at Jack. He’d tried to warn her, and she hadn’t listened. The consequences of that were her fault and not his, but she couldn’t stop herself from being angry.
Though, she knew she was mostly angry at herself.
Still, it was easier to blame him, easier to hold onto the anger of him asking that question.
“Well…?” Jack said.
“Well what?” she responded tightly.
“You want to talk about it?”
“What the hell do you think?”
She knew she was being unfair, but she hated his question.
She hated everything.
Her feet hurt. She was filthy. And more than anything she wanted to get away from here. She kept hoping she would open her eyes in the morning and she’d realize that this was all some kind of twisted dream.
But that wouldn’t happen. She had to come to grips with fact, and talking to Jack, Jack, of all people, about her feelings was not going to help her do that.
“You don’t want to talk? Fine. Listen,” he said.
She looked over at him again, again feeling that anger surge.
“You did what you had to do. You’ll probably have to do it again. Don’t waste any more time thinking about it. The world as you knew it is gone. So kill or die. Those are your choices.”
He spoke so matter-of-factly that Cassandra found herself looking over at him again and then turning back to the road to maneuver her way around a branch that had pushed through the dirt.
“Is that your version of soothing away a murder?” she said.
“You know full well that wasn’t murder, Cassandra.”