I stood there with my hands on my knees for a while. Ten minutes? Maybe longer. The burbling sounds coming from Mrs. Edmunds had long since ceased. My ankle hurt. I checked it; shotgun pellets had pierced my boot in a couple places, but there was no blood.
I looked at Mrs. Edmunds. There were no more bubbles at her mouth. The pool of blood around her head had stopped spreading. I bent down and put my fingertips against her wrist. No pulse. I felt wooden, like a numb marionette that the real Alex could only observe from a distance.
“Darla?” I whispered. “She’s dead.”
“Mom? Mom, wake up. You’re going to be okay.” Darla pulled her blood-soaked undershirt away from her mother’s neck. No new blood welled out of her wounds. She’d bled out.
Darla put her fingertips alongside her mother’s perforated throat. She bent down so her cheek touched her mother’s ragged lips. She moaned, “No. No. No-”
“She’s dead. I’m sorry.”
Darla leapt up, a motion so sudden it startled me. She yelled, “This is all your fault!” She lashed out, swinging her clenched fist against my chest like a hammer. “You led him here.” Thump, she hit me again. “We were fine until you showed up.” Thump. “He said he knew you.” Thump. “Said he was happy to find you again.” Thump. “It’s your fault!”
I was bruised, sore, and tired beyond words. Hot blood trickled down my side where Target had punched me, reopening the gash in my side. But I let her hit me. Made no move at all to defend myself. What if she was right?
“I hate you.” Thump. “I hate you! I hate you!” Thump thump.
She was crying now. I reached out and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. She kept beating her fists against my chest within the circle of my arms.
Eventually her energy ran down. She quit hitting me, which was a good thing, not only because of my bruised ribs. I’d begun to worry whether Target might have already circled back.
Darla looked about ready to fall over. I took hold of her shoulders and guided her into a chair. I picked up her overshirt and draped it across her shoulders.
I wanted nothing more than to collapse into a chair beside her, to surrender to the despair, to let the world go to hell without me for a while. So what if Target circled back and killed me? Maybe I deserved it.
But Darla didn’t. I walked to the door and peered out, looking for Target.
The sun must have been setting. I couldn’t see it, hadn’t seen it since the eruption, but the western sky glowed a dull, angry red. There wasn’t enough light left to see much. Target could have been standing fifty feet off, and I’d have missed him in the gloom.
I returned to the kitchen and dug a candle out of a drawer. Darla sat where I’d left her, staring at her hands. The shotgun lay beside her on the floor. We didn’t have any shells for it, so I tossed it onto the upper bank of kitchen cabinets where it’d be hidden.
“We’ve got to hide,” I told Darla. “Hole up somewhere overnight.”
No response.
“Come on, Darla. Where’s the best place to hide? Just for tonight.”
Nothing.
Great, like I didn’t have enough problems, now Darla had gone catatonic on me. Not that I blamed her. Much. I wanted to curl up and give in to the tears finally welling behind my eyelids. But Target had said he would come back. I believed him.
I racked my brain, trying to think of someplace safe, hidden, and defendable… the hayloft in the barn where we’d gotten boards for the smokehouse. We’d only ripped up part of the floor. There was still plenty of room to hide. I suggested it to Darla.
She said nothing. She didn’t follow me when I left the kitchen, either. I had to go back and take her hand, leading her outside like a three-year-old. It took some coaxing to get Darla, still silent, into her skis. It might have been easier to walk the short distance to the barn, but I was so tired and sore I wasn’t confident I’d be able to pull my feet free once they’d sunk into the ash.
The aluminum ladder to the hayloft was still where I’d remembered it. We had to squeeze past Darla’s bicycle-powered corn-grinding machine, which gave me an idea. After I’d convinced Darla to climb the ladder, I returned to the machine. I disconnected the drive belt and lifted the heavy runner stone. It weighed a ton, but I ducked and rolled it off the base stone onto my shoulder.
I made my way slowly up to the hayloft with one arm wrapped around the quern on my shoulder and one hand on the ladder. As soon as I could, I dropped the grindstone. It landed with an alarming thunk that shook the floor of the hayloft. I pulled up the ladder behind me and left it resting at the edge of the loft.
I checked the wound on my right side. Target’s punch had reopened a corner of it, but it was already starting to scab over. I’d live-if Target didn’t find me again.
It hurt to take off my boots. I shook out my right sock, and two pellets fell out. The right side of my ankle and foot were blotched with green-and-purple bruises where the edge of the shotgun blast had caught me, but it would heal.
I realized I’d forgotten the baseball bat, left it sitting on the floor in the kitchen. I was too tired to do anything about that now.
Darla sat on a hay bale, staring at her hands. I said goodnight and collapsed into a pile of loose hay.