“Yes. I wanted to check on the pregnant girl, Birdie.”
“She’s not with you?” Wyatt asks, an edge suddenly in his otherwise calm voice.
“Tom called a few minutes ago and told you he was sending her out,” I say and glance around the room. Tom looks up at me from his seat by the window.
“He didn’t call us,” Wyatt says. “You need to get out of there, Ione. Okay? Can you get out?”
I look at Tom, his eyes meet mine.
“I don’t know,” I say. I touch the gun in my waistband.
“Keep him talking to you,” Wyatt says. “If he’s talking to you, we can stall for time.”
“Okay,” I say. I look back down at the desk.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” Wyatt says. “We’re going to get you out of there. Alive.”
“You sure about that?” I ask.
“As sure as I can be,” he says.
His words are no comfort in this bleak landscape. I know that the odds aren’t in my favor at this point. But my mind races to Birdie. Where the hell did Vanessa take her if she hasn’t made it out?
I contemplate telling Tom that she’s still on the compound, but then I think it might only upset him further. Might make him more irrational.
“Thank you, Wy—” the words are on the tip of my tongue when a jaw-rattling thud thunders into the back of my skull. I’m knocked across the desk. The phone goes flying. The world tunnels and dims.
I look up and roll myself over.
Standing above me is Tom holding a leather-bound hardback Bible that’s got to weigh more than ten pounds. He brings it down across my jaw, the leather stinging and the weight of the volume sending stars shooting from behind my eyelids.
I cry out.
I can hear muffled words in the receiver, hanging over the side of the desk. Tom grunts with the effort of striking me. And he brings the book down again. I’m too dizzy to fight him. I bring my arms up, trying to block his strikes.
He stops for a moment.
I regain my composure; my head throbs, and I try to stand. I look around the room for him. And then something slams into the back of my head. And just before the entire room goes dark, I see, at my feet, a gilded replica of a Ford with a name inscribed on the gold plate at the bottom.
I read the words as Tom grabs the gun from my waistband. He steps over me. And as the room dims, I see her name on the plate.
Birdie Hauer.
BIRDIE
As Tom left the room and the door slammed backwards, Birdie looked at the doorknob. The doorknob—so carefully selected by Birdie—chipped a piece of the drywall before vibrating from the force used to throw it open.
Birdie hunches, her hands on her lower abdomen, imagining that’s where she should put them if she were to have a contraction. She tries to remember every movie scene she’s ever had the displeasure of viewing where a woman went into labor. The blood between her thighs has already dried to a chalky consistency. She needs to get out of here. Now.
She throws her head back and yowls. The wounded animal noise comes out of her with great effort. The air from her lungs required to make it sends a shock wave through her shoulder, reminding her of exactly where root tendrils of the infection have hooked themselves. Tears sting her eyes, the pain almost overwhelming.
She bites her cheek until blood pools in the crevices between her teeth, spilling hot iron onto her tongue. She swallows it down, the sharp edge of her bite bringing her back to the moment.
She’s left there with Vanessa, who waits until she hears Tom throw open the doors to his study before speaking.
“We have to go. Now,” Vanessa says.
Relief comes over Birdie. The idea that she’s so close to getting out of this place is almost intoxicating. She has to remind herself that she’s not free yet.
Vanessa slings Birdie’s good arm over her shoulders and allows the girl to lean on her. Birdie lets her absorb the majority of the impact of each step, but each time she places one foot in front of another, the weight of her pregnant belly tugs at the flesh of her shoulder, making it almost impossible to keep moving forward.
They take the stairs one at a time. Birdie puts one foot on each new step and then the other. One by one, they reach the bottom floor of the house. Birdie clutches her pregnant belly with her wounded arm, resting it against the hard knot that is the child in an effort to stabilize her wounded limb.
Vanessa gets the door opened, propping Birdie for a moment on the railing of the staircase. She loops Birdie’s arm back over her head and carries her outside. Birdie does her best to walk, but it takes great effort on her part. Each step is a reminder that she needs medical attention. Immediately.
Birdie groans, hoping that Vanessa will interpret it as a response to a contraction instead of just a reaction to the pain she feels in her aching shoulder. On her cheek she can feel the radiant heat from the growing infection just below. She wonders how deep it’s gone. She wonders how close she is to sepsis. The thought is jarring and helps her quicken her step, matching Vanessa’s pace.
Together they hobble out of the house onto the darkened porch. Birdie’s eyes slowly adjust to the quickly dimming light of the evening. A red cast in the western sky signals the end of another day at Revelation Ranch. Her last, she hopes.
A coyote howls in the distance—not far away enough for her taste—and Vanessa leads her down the steps of the porch, one at a time. Birdie lets her. She takes Vanessa’s hand, steadying herself as she descends, and her feet find the dusty red dirt that makes up the land that she had so carefully selected for Tom
