“And then what?”
“Then I’ll find some balls and join her.”
“What good is that going to do? We’ve all lost family, people we love.”
“May was the last for me, son. There’s no one else in the world to care for.”
Hayden went back to the stairs and joined Nicholas waiting at the door. His eyes were big and round with big patches of pink on the cheeks below. “It’s started to rain again.”
They went through the living room—stepping around the smashed television set—and peered around the drapes through the window. It was raining hard. A bolt of lightning flashed directly ahead lighting the front yard. Trixie was laying on her side in a growing puddle of water and blood. Her body had been riddled with bullet holes.
“They killed her,” Nicholas moaned. “They shot her dead like Mr. MacDonald shot his wife.”
Hayden couldn’t answer him.
The rain intensified, smashing against the glass. It turned to hail, and the window exploded inwards. Thunder exploded, and the house shook. Hayden could smell the electricity in the air. “We have to go back down into the cellar. We can’t stay up here.”
“I don’t wanna go back down there! I don’t wanna see her dead face again!”
“You won’t have to for long.”
Chapter 3
The storm raged on, and Hayden dug. He made the hole wider and longer to accommodate the dead woman’s body. Wind howled in the rooms above them, through the broken windows and open front door. What remained of Elton’s forty-year old home was being thoroughly devastated.
“I could’ve done it myself,” the old man said from the bottom step of the cellar. “I would’ve eventually got the job done.”
Hayden took a rest and wiped the sweat from his brow. “I know you would’ve.” He was three feet down, and the ground was hard. May MacDonald wouldn’t be laid to rest six feet under. She would have to settle for four. “But seeing as we’re staying until the storm passes, I figured I could keep busy.”
Hayden picked the shovel back up and resumed digging. Elton spoke again after a few more minutes. “I’m not going with you.”
“I know.”
“I’m too old to start anything again. I’m too old and I’m too tired.”
“I know.”
They wrapped her body in a plain white bed sheet and lowered it into the hole. The generator died in the storm and Hayden shoveled the dirt back into the grave in the dark. No words were spoken, no prayers whispered. There was a moment when Hayden thought all of his hard work would be for nothing. Something sounding like a freight train leaving its tracks roared above their heads. Another of those monstrous tornadoes was twisting its way through the property, tearing up what remained. It eventually passed, leaving the house and May MacDonald’s final resting place intact.
The wind died down and the rain stopped falling. Elton led them up and out of the cellar to survey the damage. Most of what the old man and his wife had accumulated over the decades had been picked over and stolen in the last week. What was left was strewn about the wet floor, smashed and useless.
Hayden went outside and stood over his dead horse. He prayed she hadn’t suffered. How could she have, he thought? Every square inch of her had been torn to shreds with gunfire. The bastards. He closed his eyes and pictured the one that had exited out from the tank turret. Young, twenty-five, maybe twenty-six. Black hair shaved close to his scalp. No shirt. Dirty blue jeans and big black boots with the laces untied. Sunglasses.
“Are we walking now?”
Hayden opened his eyes and saw Nicholas. “Yeah, I suppose we are.” He searched around Trixie’s corpse for his rifle. It was gone. So was the saddlebag with their few remaining supplies. They couldn’t even leave us that.
“How far are we from the city?”
It was still grey towards the east, as if the sky was threatening to unleash another storm. Or perhaps it was smoke; a low-hanging cloud of ruin settled over what was left of Winnipeg. “Not far. We can reach the outskirts before nightfall on foot.”
Elton MacDonald was leaned up against a cracked porch beam. “You’re welcome to stay.”
Hayden could see that hooded look again in the old man’s eyes—the bottom lip jutting out. They could stay if they wanted, but they wouldn’t be all that welcome. Elton had a job to finish, and he needed to be alone.
“Thanks, but no. We’ll be leaving now. Can I have that rifle of yours?”
“Nope.”
Hayden and Nicholas reached the highway less than five minutes later. They heard a single gunshot behind them. Nicholas spun around and stared at the farmhouse. “Did those bad men in the trucks come back?”
“Nope.” Hayden tightened his hand around the boy’s and started for the city.
Chapter 4
Four hours and ten miles later they came upon the town of Eustache. It was the last small town before the city. It had been more of a rest stop for truckers and travelers heading to and from Winnipeg, a last-minute stop for gas and junk food. Now it was a ghost town, just another abandoned settlement. The ruin of the city beyond was obvious. Hayden could no longer see the skyline of larger buildings that the city’s center once consisted of. In its place was a smoking crater. Above it was one big heavy cloud. The occasional bolt of lightning cracked down from the dull, mustard-colored mass, striking whatever there was left still standing.
“That’s the city?” Nicholas asked.
“It was.”
“What kind of home are we gonna find there?”
Hayden couldn’t answer him. They had traveled
