Windows.
Stamping, falling, getting up, he hugged himself and tried to flex blood back into his stinging fingers. Using his teeth, he managed to pull on woolen mittens from his pack. After working up the courage to explore the gash on his scalp, he pulled off a mitten and touched his fingers to his face. Nothing. Feeling ended at his wrists. He licked at the numbness next to his mouth and tasted blood Popsicles. Burnt steak from the flare.
His concern for Amy, Jolene, and Hank was still relative and dreamy, far removed from the local question of his own survival.
Then, a pair of lights beyond the trees caught his attention. They moved with purpose, slowly getting larger. A vehicle. But was it attracted by the fire?
Broker stamped and staggered and fell down and got up and waited as the headlights poked and lurched through the woods and materialized in the form of a Ford pickup. He hobbled to it as the driver got out and peered at him. They recognized each other.
It was Billie’s neighbor, Annie Lunder, which meant that Earl hadn’t hauled him very far from the lodge. In her late sixties, swaddled in wool and fleece, Annie had not changed one bit and was still edgy and mean as a doubled-bladed axe. She and his Uncle Billie had fallen out of love and hated each other since the Korean War- something about a property-line dispute and Billie marrying her sister, Aunt Marcy, now departed.
Annie winced, seeing his torn face in the firelight. “Philip Broker, you feral child; I swear you were raised by wolves. Look at you out here in tennis shoes in this weather. And playing with matches. What the hell are you trying to do? Burn down my woods?”
“Phone,” Broker croaked. “Life and death.”
“What’s that?” she squinted, cupping one gloved hand to the side of her hat.
“Nine one one. Billie’s lodge.”
Chapter Fifty
She had grabbed Hank’s legs and hauled him unceremoniously off the daybed, through the kitchen, and bumping down the hall into the bedroom. She positioned him with a pillow at his back, tilted against a closet door so he could clearly see her go to Amy on the bed.
“Okay, get a good look. Now you can be happy because we’re all going to die when they get back.” Jolene yanked the IV from Amy’s hand. Christ, his eyes were rolling again. She didn’t even know if he saw it.
Then, not even rolling. Shut. He now lay on the floor truly looking like a corpse. A few feet above him, Amy nodded on the bed, her breathing shallow and labored. A single tendril of blood marked her left wrist where the IV had been inserted. The plastic stent now dangled along her shoulder.
Jolene stood at bay, between them.
She held the scotch bottle in one hand and a shotgun she’d found in the bedroom closet in the other. Except the goddamn gun wasn’t loaded because she couldn’t find any goddamn shells for it. And the room was a shambles from her desperate search.
Fucking gun safety for you.
And looking for those shells may have been a fatal diversion, because she’d neglected to get her cell phone from the living room, and there was no phone in the bedroom and now they were in the house. She’d heard the glass break at the backdoor and heard the shuffle of their footsteps and their voices. Then she saw the doorknob twist. And the voices moved on, into the main room where they’d discover she had moved Hank.
Then they would be back.
Okay, she had to do it.
She raised the bottle, took a drink, and the whiskey surged in her throat, teared in her eyes, and caused her to cough. She set the bottle down on the floor and studied the door which was secured only by an old-fashioned hand slip lock. She picked up a straight-backed chair from next to the dresser and stockaded it at an angle, the backrest wedged under the knob. That would stop Earl for maybe half a second.
There was the window. Nothing but thermal glass and storms. She didn’t see them trying to break in through the window on a night like this.
“Okay, now what?” she said to Hank’s prone form. He’d apparently passed out from fatigue, so he wasn’t even there to witness her one big moment.
“Just like a fucking man, build me all up and then-pfsst-go limp on me.”
He’d never explained how there were no rules for this hero stuff; you kind of made it up as you went along. Being scared shitless was the main thrill so far.
She appreciated the irony; how she had quit drinking to change her life. Now she was drinking to get the courage to really change it.
No, she was drinking because Earl would understand the behavior under stress. And when she drank she always went to him for help. God, if only there was a phone in here.
“Okay, baby,” she said under her breath. “I’m working on it.”
It meant she’d have to open the door enough to show the gun and let Earl smell her breath. Oh, Christ. It all came down to that. Here we go. Bottom of the ninth, two outs and two strikes, and one pitch to decide the World Series.
She reached for the Johnny Walker and took another slug, a big one that flooded her with warmth. And the footsteps were coming back down the hall, no longer cautious shuffling, striding. Angry.
A fist pounded the door.
Earl.
All her adult life she’d had to anticipate and avoid Earl’s anger. She had never manipulated it. Now it was the only way out of this mess.
“Jolene, goddammit, I know you’re in there.”
Earl. Real mad but, judging by his voice, trying to control it.
Good.
She put down the bottle and wracked the slide on the shotgun like they do in the movies because it sounds cool except, Earl always said, if you’re in the shit it’s kind of dumb not to have one in the chamber already and telegraph your position.
Silence after the mechanism. Like they heard.
Jolene blurted, “Earl, I got a gun in here. A shotgun was in the closet. I’ve been thinking, and no way I’m coming out if Allen is there.” The slight slur and wavering control in her voice was real, not faked. Thank you, Johnny Walker.
“Open the door,” Earl said.
“I don’t trust him and the more you’re around him I don’t trust you,” she shouted.
“Open the door, now!”
Jolene took a deep breath, removed the chair, shoved the lock latch, and cracked the door.
The big.45 came up smoothly at the full extension of Earl’s right arm so the business end of the barrel made a cool circle against Allen’s forehead.
Under his breath, Earl said, “Sorry, but you got to go along until I get her calmed down. Jolene management is an art I have spent a lifetime acquiring.”
Allen stared at the door, at the sounds of the chair moving, the latch freeing up. He was not reassured. They were getting tricky on him. They were deviating from his plan, and now there was the wild card of Jolene’s drinking on the play.
The door opened an inch, just enough to see one of Jolene’s eyes over the huge tube of a shotgun that poked out at them. The sour musk of alcohol was unmistakable on her breath.
“Okay, Jolene, see?” Earl wagged the pistol in Allen’s face.
“I’ll only talk to you if we’re alone,” Jolene said.
Allen spoke up. “Jolene, put down the gun. Where’s Hank?”
