Stealing Second (The Amendments Book One 1) (13 page)

We remained like that until I was able to think clearly and put a lid on my emotions. There would be plenty of time for crying, but I knew that this wasn’t one of them. I stood up and went into the bathroom to check my wound.
Violet followed and she advised me not to remove the bandage. “I’ve already changed it, twice,” she said. “And I disinfected it with rubbing alcohol. I don’t think you should have to worry about infection. I really dumped it on there. You woke up just as I finished putting on the new bandage.”

I found a bottle of aspirin in the medicine cabi
net and swallowed two of them and stuffed the bottle into my pocket. I stared at my misshapen head in the bathroom mirror. The bullet must have grazed the side of my skull, which was a minor miracle in itself. There was a small spot of blood on my bandage, one of Mom’s hand towels she used for drying dishes, and it looked as if Violet had done an excellent job of applying it. “Thanks,” I said. “You probably saved my life. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You can thank me by getting us back down to the barn,” she whispered. “I don’t like it in here. I don’t think it’s safe.”

I stared at her for a long moment. She was talking about the home I had grown up in; the one place on this earth where I had always felt safe. Sadly, that was no longer true. Violet was right. If the soldiers returned, we would be caught like rats in a trap. And in all likelihood, I would soon be hanging next to Duke. “Okay,” I said. “We should move it. Do you think we’ll be safe out in the barn?”

Violet
shook her head. “We should get as far away from here as we can. Maybe we could go to Canada?”

“Maybe we should,” I said, only half-jokingly.

“I’ve been gathering supplies all afternoon,” she said. “I don’t think I have everything, but I did grab quite a bit. I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve been running them out to the shed. I didn’t want you to think I was trying to steal anything.”

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Oh sweetie, I would never think such a thing about you. That was good thinking. I’m proud of
you; that was really using your head. I know a place not too far from here where we can spend the night. I think it’d be better if we waited until dark; that shouldn’t be very long.”

Violet
nodded and for the first time since I’d regained consciousness, she smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

“No, thank you,” I replied. “Follow me, let’s get out there and see what we have.”

Outside, darkness was beginning to fall. I thought about cutting down the bodies, but that might give us away and I decided not to risk it. My anger was rekindled
at the sight of them. Violet must have sensed that, she took me by the hand and we hurried down to the shed. Spread out across the floor, Violet had arranged our supplies as if they were in a department store window—labels out, evenly spaced. The sight of them brought a smile to my face. She had been a busy girl while I was unconscious.

“I hope you don’t think I was snooping,” she said, meekly. “You’re not mad at me, are you?”

I placed my hand on her skinny shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “I know you weren’t snooping,” I said. “You did exactly what my mom and dad would have wanted you to do. We have to get out of here and we’re going to need supplies if we have any hope of finding them.”

“What do you mean?”

That was when I realized what I planned to do. I had to find and rescue my family. I didn’t care what the odds were against me. The thought hit me so hard that it nearly took my breath away. “I have to find my family,” I said. “I can’t leave them to die in some concentration camp. I won’t do it. My dad would die trying to rescue me, I know he would. I owe it to them.”

Violet
considered that for a moment. She stared up into my eyes, set her jaw and nodded her head. “You’re right,” she said. “My grandma would do everything she could to rescue me. I’m with you, Gary. We’ll find them, you’ll see.”

I smiled at her, trying to hide how disturbed I was that she had compared her grandma to my dad, and not her own mother. She looked so small at that moment. I was all that stood between her and the ugliness that invaded our world. The moment passed and I sat down in front of our supplies. She had obviously given a lot of thought as to what we would need. The problem was that there was just too much of it. She must have sensed that.

“I thought it was better to have too much to choose from,” she said. “I know we can’t take it all.”

We spent the next fifteen minutes sifting through our supplies and stowing them away.
Violet had found my high school backpack. It was roomy and still in fair condition. Carrying the duffel bag was cumbersome and we would be glad to be shed of it. Twilight arrived and was slowly overtaken by darkness. I switched on an electric lantern and adjusted it to its lowest setting. Yellow light spilled to the hay-sprinkled floor. The evening was warm and bursts of gunfire occasionally interrupted the crickets.

“Ye
ars ago, Dad helped Cheryl and me build a playhouse,” I said. “She lost interest in it when we were teenagers, so I took it over. It’s not too far from here, but it’s in the woods and I think we’ll be safe to spend the night out there. I’m warning you, I haven’t been out there in a few years. As far as I know, a tree might have fallen on top of it. We’ll find out when we get there.”

“Sounds good to me,”
Violet said, excitedly. “I hope it’s still there.”

“My old man never did anything halfway
. When he built something, he built it to last. You’ll like this place.”

“Well, I hope we can find it in the dark.”

“Don’t worry. I could find it with my eyes closed. Come on; we should get out of here. I don’t think we should press our luck.”

Violet
stood and slipped on my school backpack and cinched the straps until it fit her snugly. I had been careful not to pack it too heavy. After tightly rolling up her sleeping bag, I tied it to the bottom of her pack with a pair of shoelaces she had salvaged from the house. I strapped on my heavy pack and after I buckled in, I picked up the lantern and nodded to the door.  We hadn’t walked two steps when a blood-curdling scream broke the silence. The scream was high-pitched so I knew it belonged to a woman. We froze and I fumbled with the lantern switch, trying to shut it off.

At first, I imagined the voice to be Cheryl’s. I knew she would scream like that if she stumbled onto Duke. But the voice was too high, so I assumed that it had come from a family member of one of the other men.

“Mom?” asked Violet. She looked up at me with a confused expression.

We moved to the door and stared out into the yard. The security light
bathed the yard in misty-white light and I watched a single shadow darting around at the far edge of it. Whoever it was, was identifying the bodies that hung there like gruesome Halloween decorations.

“That’s her,” whispered
Violet. “I can tell by the way she walks.”

I put my hands on
Violet’s shoulders and held them tight. “We’re not going out there until we’re absolutely sure.”

A moment later, we were sure. “
Violet!” screamed the voice, stretching the name out into an agonized howl.

Violet
shot out the door like a human cannonball. I stayed where I was and watched the scene play out like something out of a movie. “Mom!” cried Violet. “Mom, I’m okay!”

“
Violet?” Cathy replied in a pitiful voice.

“It’s me! I’m okay!”

Cathy began running toward her daughter and they met next to my dad’s pickup. I felt joy for the both of them, but I also felt a pang of jealousy. I wished it had been my family out there. And to be honest, I didn’t think Cathy had the right to be feeling the joy she was now experiencing. She didn’t deserve Violet, at least in my opinion. I watched them embrace, watched Cathy sink to her knees, watched as she smothered her daughter in kisses. I listened as she expressed her undying love for the girl, but deep down I knew that Cathy and I had different thoughts of what undying love meant. Had Violet been my daughter, there was no way on God’s green earth that I would have pawned her off on a stranger.

I was also slightly miffed that Cathy had suspected that I had failed her.
Violet was safe and sound. But Duke still hung from a tree, and the rest of my family was rotting away in a camp somewhere. The longer I thought about that, the angrier I became. If Cathy hadn’t so selfishly remained to fight with Todd, everything would have been different. The odds were that we never would have been spotted by the monster, Bob. Mom and Dad would be sleeping in their beds and Duke, Gunner, and Thor, wouldn’t be dead. I was sure of it.

Cathy rose to her feet and
I could hear her whimpering as she and Violet approached the shed. She had either dropped her duffel bag or had lost it somewhere along the way. I suddenly saw her as a burden, as extra baggage. Still, for Violet’s sake, I knew that I had to act delighted to see her mother. I stepped out into the pale light and waited for them. Cathy broke into a jog and nearly tackled me. “Thank you, Gary,” she moaned, slobbering my cheeks with teary kisses. “I knew you’d take care of her. How can we ever repay you?”

I didn’t even think about it. The words were out of me before I realized I had said them. “You can help us rescue my family,” I said. “They were taken
prisoner by the National Guard this morning.”

Cathy pulled away and gave me a strange look. “What happened to your head?”

“He got shot,” said Violet. “He was out cold all day long.”

“Oh my God, Gary, I’m so sorry. I should have been here.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” I lied. “Look, we have to get moving. Did you bring your duffel bag?”

Cathy shook her head. “No, all I have are the clothes on my back and my gun. Where are we going? I hope it isn’t too far away.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not far from here. We should be safe to spend the night there. Stick behind me and stay on the path.”

Cathy wrapped her arms around me once again and she tried to kiss me on the lips, but I turned away. The memory of how she and Todd had laughed so hysterically with Barbie and Ken was still fresh in my memory. “Aren’t you even going to ask how I got here?”

I pointed to the bodies in the trees. “No,” I said. “I’m more concerned about us ending up like those men, out there. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up. Please, no talking and follow me.”

“He’s right, Mom,” whispered
Violet. “We have to get out of here.”

Cathy pulled away from me and looked down at
Violet. Slowly, she nodded her head. I began walking toward the barn and I veered off to the little path into the woods. Hundreds of little birch trees had sprouted up since Dad had built the playhouse. They grew like leafy weeds among the oaks. I trusted my memory and the pale moonlight to light our way. I stumbled onto the trail, which was nothing more than a memory of a path. We moved blindly into the tangle of limbs and on more than one occasion, I thought I had lost my way. My fort, which was how I thought of it, was only a few hundred yards away from the barn, but in the darkness it seemed like miles.

As a teenager, I had added two rooms to the playhouse and made it my own. My friends would spend summer nights out
there with me. Sometimes our girlfriends would sneak out and join us. Naturally, our parents were unaware of this. I built bunk beds out of scrap lumber and fooled myself into thinking that my dad thought they were meant for my buddies. He knew the truth, had even told me as much. The mattresses were ratty, but in a pinch, they would be better than nothing.

The woods gave way to the tiny yard we had cleared for the playhouse. I could just make it out in the moonlight
, and I was overcome with nostalgia. How I wished I could go back in time and relive those wonderful days of my youth. The grass here was knee high and I was happy to see that my little refuge was still standing. I stopped and pointed up ahead. “That’s where we’ll be spending the night,” I whispered. “What do you think?”

“I love it,”
gushed Violet. “I want one!”

“I love it, too,” said Cathy, who must have sensed my pride. “And we’ll build you one as soon as this thing blows over. Won’t we, Gary?”

“Sure we will,” I replied, except I was shocked that Cathy would make such an assumption. She was acting like she’d never embarrassed me, had never abandoned the two of us to go play soldier. I continued walking and led them to the only door; the door was an actual steel service door that Dad had salvaged. I twisted the doorknob and flung open the door. Light spilled out and a man screamed in terror.

Chapter 10

I leapt back from the door, as if it were covered in poisonous snakes. Violet and Cathy began to run back in the direction we’d come.

“Gary?” called a familiar voice from inside my fort. “Gary! Is that you, man?”

“Wait!” I called to Cathy and Violet. “I know that guy. He’s my buddy! Kyle, is that you?”

“Gary?” Kyle asked again. The door burst open and my school chum, Kyle, ran out the door and straight into my arms. Kyle had always been the toughest of those in our little
clique, so I was confused by his sobbing. He buried his head into my shoulder and cried like a little boy who had lost his mother. I soon learned that he actually had lost his mother, had lost his entire family. They had been captured and hauled away, just as mine had been.