She was shot in the back as she ran toward the trees carrying Tori. Bankole didn’t tell me, didn’t want me to know before I had to because, as it turned out, I was wounded myself. I was lucky. My wound was minor. It hurt, but other than that, it didn’t matter much. Jill was unlucky. I found out about her death when I came to and heard Allie’s hoarse screaming grief.
Jill had gotten Tori back to the trees, put her down, then, without a sound, folded to the ground as though taking cover. Emery had grabbed Tori and huddled, crying with her in terror and relief.
Everyone else had been busy, first taking cover, then firing or directing fire. Travis was the first to see the blood pooling around Jill. He shouted for Bankole, then turned Jill onto her back and saw blood welling from what turned out to be an exit wound in her chest. Bankole says she died before he reached her, No last words, no last sight of her sister, not even the assurance that she had saved the little girl. She had. Tori was bruised, but fine.
Everyone was fine except Jill.
My own wound, to be honest, was a big scratch. A bullet had plowed a furrow straight through the flesh of my left side, leaving little damage, a lot of blood, a couple of holes in my shirt, and a lot of pain. The wound throbbed worse than a burn, but it wasn’t disabling.
“Cowboy wound,” Harry said when he and Zahra came to look me over. They looked dirty and miserable, but Harry tried to be upbeat for me. They had just helped to bury Jill. The group had, with hands, sticks, and our hatchet, dug a shallow grave for her while I was unconscious. They put her among the trees’ roots, covered her, and rolled big rocks atop her grave. The trees were to have her, but the dogs and the cannibals were not.
The group had decided to bed down for the night where we were, even though our oak copse should have been rejected as an overnight camp because it was too close to the highway.
“You’re a goddamn fool and too big to carry,” Zahra told me. “So just rest there and let Bankole take care of you. Not that anyone could stop him.”
“You’ve just got a cowboy wound,” Harry repeated.
“In that book I bought, people are always getting shot in the side or the arm or the shoulder, and it’s nothing— although Bankole says a good percentage of them would have died of tetanus or some other infection.”
“Thanks for the encouragement,” I said.
Zahra gave him a look, then patted my arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “No germ will get past that old man.
He’s mad as hell at you for getting yourself shot.
Says if you had any sense, you would have stayed back here with the babies.”
“What?”
“Hey, he’s old,” Harry said. “What do you expect.”
I sighed. “How’s Allie?”
“Crying.” He shook his head. “She won’t let anyone near her except Justin. Even he keeps trying to comfort her. It upsets him that she’s crying.”
“Emery and Tori are kind of beaten up, too,” Zahra said. “They’re the other reason we’re not moving.”
She paused. “Hey, Lauren, you ever notice anything funny about those two— Emery and Tori, I mean?
And about that guy Mora, too.”
“How many times did you die?” Mora asked me.
“Three at least,” I answered, as though this were a sane conversation. “Maybe four. I never did it like that before— over and over. Insane. But you look well enough.”
His expression hardened as though I’d slapped him.
Of course, I had insulted him. I’d said, Where were you, man and fellow sharer, while your woman and your group were in danger. Funny. There I was, speaking a language I hadn’t realized I knew.
“I had to get Doe out of danger,” he said. “I had no gun, anyway.”
“Can you shoot?”
He hesitated. “Never shot before,” he admitted, dropping his voice to a mumble. Again I’d shamed him— this time without meaning to.
“When we teach you to shoot, will you, to protect the
group?”
“Yeah!” Though at that moment, I think he would have preferred to shoot me.
“It hurts like hell,” I warned.
He shrugged. “Most things do.”
I looked into his thin, angry face. Were all slaves so thin— underfed, overworked, and taught that most things hurt? “Are you from this area?”
“Born in Sacramento.”
“Then we need all the information you can give us.
Even without a gun, we need you to help us survive here.”
“My information is to get out of here before those things up the hill throw paint on themselves and start shooting people and setting fires.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “So that’s what they are.”
“What’d you think they were?”
