"Alicia, are you ready for instructions, dear?" Martha asked, ignoring Troy's existence. "Because there is a way for you to ensure what you have witnessed there doesn't happen to your brother."
Scowling and enveloped in a tight cocoon of anguish and fear for what she had prepared for his sister, Nick watched her settle on the couch across from him, her stick pointing his way as she smiled.
Troy craved to curse at her, to tell her to fuck right off and go to hell for scaring them like that, but slowly found himself handing Alicia the mic. She hadn't moved from the corpse, his head resting in her lap, her hand upon his forehead as if somehow he connected her to Nick.
"I'm ready," she said, speaking around the tears that had accumulated in her tone and she was unable to shake off.
Something broke inside of Nick as Alicia's voice came through the crackle. It physically hurt him more than the throbbing stab wound and significant tremors running through his body demanding its treatment. Fear crawled through him like a wall of ice covering everything in its wake with frost.
The woman was content. "Travel the roads around until you find a big truck. If it's on the move – follow until it stops. If it's parked, there would be someone leaving a box just like the one you had found on the side of the road. The box will have a writing saying 'Take what you can, leave what you don't'. You have to restrain whoever is driving that truck and bring them to El Corral. When you do, I shall tell you where you find Nick."
She smiled at him; it was a smile of a shark that smelled blood.
"He can't wait. Tell your sister you miss her, Nicky."
Nick realized he wasn't breathing, and drew in an urgent series of inhales, saying nothing. He couldn't bring himself to speak, to tighten the rope around Alicia's neck.
The woman swung the stick and poked his side with its rounded end. He couldn't keep from groaning.
"He's got less time now, honey," the woman told the radio. "You better hurry."
"Alicia, don't do this," Nick pleaded in a shaky voice, unable to keep his pain from it. Her poke renewed the throes, coaxed more blood out. "Please, Alicia, don—"
Nick gave out a strangled groan as the woman poked him again. She got up and strolled to the window.
"Hurry, child. Your brother's getting harder to keep breathing for you. But I try… for now. Call me when you're done."
She turned off the radio and looked at him with condescending patience.
"Naughty, Nick. Naughty has to be paid for."
Alicia was still reeling from the aftermath of having heard her brother's voice across the radio at long last, while Troy was just thankful that he was in fact still alive.
That was a positive. Another mark on her word.
It also meant that whatever they were going to do, they were going to have to do it well.
"Alicia," he said, trying to drag her attention from the body she was still clutching like a lifeline. "Alicia!"
Her head snapped up, eyes glossy, her hands falling away from the rotting corpse as if she only now realized what she'd been doing and couldn't stand it. She inched away from the body, letting his head fall to the floor with a thud that made her flinch.
"You okay?" Troy pressed.
"No," she answered, scrubbing her bloodied hands against her pants as she stood.
"I mean up here." He tapped at the side of his head for emphasis.
She looked considerate, as if she were waging what she wanted to tell him and what she didn't, and then shook her head lightly, brown tresses dancing upon her shoulders.
"Then you wait here."
He turned away from her and into the depth of the diner in search of tools. If he was going to kidnap someone, he was going to need a weapon or something he could at least use as one. He rummaged around through the kitchen stuff, pots clattering as he did, glasses clinking as he moved from spot to spot.
"I'm not waiting here."
"You should," Troy retorted without looking at her, removing the milk bottles that had been left in the fridge. The milk inside had gone bad and looked chunky, plopping into the zinc as he upturned and emptied them. He turned on the taps, thankful that there was still water and rinsed them out.
"I'm going with you, Troy."
He could hear the sadness dissipating, anger creeping back into her voice. He tucked the bottles under his arms, collected the dishtowels, and walked out of the kitchen area and back into the main dining hall.
"It'll be better and quicker if I do this myself."
"What—what exactly are you doing to do?"
Troy gave her a 'do you really want to know' look.
"She didn't say to kill them. She said to restrain them."
He grinned and nodded, gesturing to the corpse. "If Nick is ever going to wear that jacket again you might want to take it off that dude."
Alicia gave the man an apologetic gaze and then followed Troy as he headed outside.
He set the bottles down beside the car, walked around and popped the trunk. He removed a single jerry can, the dishtowels on his shoulder and began to fill them. Alicia watched him intently.
"What's this?"
"You ever heard of a Molotov cocktail?"
Troy could see the question reflected in her eyes.
"It's leverage. No one wants to be burnt alive, okay? It's not as if we have any effective weapon choices. It's knife, knife, tire iron. You have any better ideas?"
"We talk to them, we reason with them, get them to come with us willingly."
"And you think she'll go for that? She's been torturing Nick. You think she wants to have a friendly conversation with these people she wants us to hunt down? It's simple, Alicia. It's them or Nick."
He moved to open the gas tank, pouring the last from the can inside. He pitched the empty container back in the trunk, collected the dishtowels and slowly inserted them into the top of the bottles. He opened the back door, tossed the plastic bottles that had held the sparkling water out onto the driveway. He lifted them, removed everything from beneath it, and steadied them on the chair, and then added the two readymade bombs. He removed his jacket, folding it up, stuffing it into the side of the basket to make sure they stayed upright and wouldn't spill if he was to hit a rocky patch while he drove. Satisfied, Troy shut the door and regarded Alicia. "I need your lighter."
She patted around herself, checked her pockets and removed her empty pack of cigarettes, showing it to him. He reached for it but she yanked it away, moving to climb into the driver's seat. He didn't hesitate to join her.
The room was starting to flutter around Nick when she bent next to him, pulled his sleeve up and stuck the needle in.
"It'll dull the pain," she said, straightening up. She brought the gin and a towel, soaked it in liquor, and pressed it to his side, making him jerk and growl through gritted teeth. The pain was an overwhelming blast of glass shards sinking into every cell of his body.
The light came and went; the room was flickering in and out, like a picture on a TV screen. Nick was starting to lose the thread of thoughts, and it was scary. And then, it wasn't. The high was sneaking in, like drops of ink dissolving in water, slowly but steadily adding color.
"You're losing blood," she said in a matter-of-fact tone, like announcing weather. "It's unfortunate for Alicia who sounded like she really needed to see you again. What are we going to do about it?"
He had no response to that. The pain was so nasty he wanted her to skewer him in the heart and end it. He was starting to feel he'd had a little too much. He could no longer recall how it was to have no pain.
It all became a series of images, like a broken playback. There was no one around him, and then she was back. Nick glimpsed something red in her hand, then she shoved it at him.
His side erupted in thousands of sparks of pain so blinding he got a brief idea he was having a stroke. A nuke went off in his head and the world became white light.
He surfaced later and had a hard time recollecting why he was in so much pain. It traveled through his torso in combers, with every shallow breath he took. When more awareness returned, he glanced around. He saw the chair he'd been sitting on before, the chains lay on it like a ball of snakes. He saw the couch with the coffee table. He was lying on another one that stood at the opposite wall. The painting with the ship hung above him on it. His hands were cuffed behind him, and the arm he was lying on was numb. He wished the rest of his body was, too.
After a while, he opened his eyes and realized he had checked out. She was sitting on the other couch, fiddling with a knife.
"Did you know a blade goes bad after you make it red-hot?" she said, eyeing the knife, turning it in her hands. "My father told me that once. I was fourteen, and I didn't believe him. Now I do."
Nick's mind was working sluggishly, trying to make a connection. It took a small eternity, then he remembered the pain that took him out. She had shoved that red-hot blade, probably found in this kitchen here, in his side.
He had an urge to look at the wound, curious whether it stopped the bleeding, but he knew that every move would hurt like hell. He refrained.
"Why do you want those truckers?" he asked in a hoarse voice he barely recognized.
"They make people weak."
He wanted to ask how they did that, but then remembered what she told Alicia about the boxes. It made little sense to him with his mind in a haze, but he felt he would understand when sober. If he ever got sober again.
He let himself drift off.
Before heading for the highway, Alicia and Troy stopped at the hardware store. This time for rope and thicker cable ties. All of which they managed to get their hands on. But not without a fight.
"Either we're looking in the wrong place or they lied to us and Texas isn't the official gun state of America," he stated, shifting the weight of the axe he'd found from hand to hand.
"What's your fascination with owning a gun?"
"They're handy. You're naïve if you think otherwise."
"They're also easy to use and make most problems worse."
"Tomato, tomatoe."
Troy slipped the axe into the panel of the door and studied the highway. They'd been hunting for thirty minutes and still hadn't come across anyone else. Or, more importantly, a truck.
"We should head deeper down the highway. If whoever is putting boxes out, it wouldn't just be around here, it would probably be every few miles."
They found the trunk and their victim in under less than an hour. A man wearing a chequered shirt, jeans, cowboy boots and a Stetson. If Troy was to estimate, the guy looked like he was pushing early twenties.
Troy figured, that alone might work in his favor.
For a while, they watched as he got out, got into the back of the trunk and emerged a couple of minutes later with a box which he set down against the mile marker sign, taking his time to scribble a message on the flap. And then, he was moving to the next. They followed him as best they could, knowing that the implication of it all was pretty stupid considering there were very limited vehicles on the road and a lot of dead but what choice did they have?
When he stopped the third time and Troy was sure he was alone, he had Alicia pull over, wrestled the lighter from her and retrieved one of the two bottles from the back. He hadn't made it very far when the man turned on him, a pistol in hand that he pointed directly at him.
"You've been following me," he stated, a slight tremor in his tone.
"You noticed that, huh?" Troy asked casually, noting that he hadn't reacted to the bottle that he was holding and had given him a chance to approach the back of the truck.
"Hard not to on these roads," he countered, unsure, raising off his haunches to mimic Troy's step. "Please don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't do whatever it is you're thinking of doing. I don't want to have to shoot you."
Troy raised a single hand in surrender, opening his fingers like a show curtain to reveal his lighter. He flicked the tab and watched the flame immediately spur to life. "I don't suggest you do that unless you want your gift train to go up in flames with me. Put down your weapon."
The man's brows furrowed, his aim tightening, dancing between the things Troy was holding and then Alicia who'd finally crept into the party like a ghoul.
He was taking too long to answer.
Troy directed the flame at the end of the dishcloth now thoroughly soaked and ready to act as a wick, watching it catch flame, the man's eyes widening in response before the gun suddenly disappeared from his hand.
"Alicia!" Troy snapped but she was already charging toward the spot where the man had dropped his gun. Once she had it in her hands, Troy plucked the doused cloth free of the homemade bomb before it could explode and stomped it out on the tarmac. That went smoother than he'd speculated and it was good that she hadn't hesitated either. He set the bottle down on the tar and walked toward him. The man took an involuntary step back, his eyes wide as he tried to decipher what they wanted from him. Troy patted him down in search of other weapons. He found a hunting knife, a small pistol tucked into the top of his boot against his ankle and a set of brace knuckles.
"Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this. Just take anything you want—that's what we're here for," he pleaded, taking a small step back as if to show Troy the contents of the box he'd missed. Alicia looked conflicted but kept the gun up and trained on the man while Troy slipped the man's weapons into his pockets.
"Unfortunately what we need from you we can't get from any of your boxes."
His confusion slowly drifted and his fear became more palpable.
"Get on your knees."
He looked to Alicia again, as if he could see her weakness and was trying to exploit it. Troy glanced at her, saw her mouth open as if to apologize or give into the manipulation, and then Troy punched him. The checkered shirt went down with painful gasp of shock, his hat flying off his head, falling into the brown grass that peppered the highway. Troy crossed the short distance toward her, unconcerned as she briefly turned the weapon on him, and easily removed it from her hands. She was sweating, her hands shaking. "Get the gear, I'll take it from here."
"We shouldn't do this, Troy. Nick wouldn't want this."
"What did you think we were going to do, Alicia? We've been following this guy for the past hour, did you really think all we were going to do was memorize his license plate number?"
The charitable stranger, thinking he had an opportunity, jumped to his feet and attempted to make a run for his truck. Troy didn't hesitate to pull the trigger, hitting the ground an inch from his boots, his momentum sending him staggering back and onto his ass. "Move again and I'll put the next one in your head."
Alicia reared back, face pale and like she might be sick. Troy lowered his voice, angry, aware that this was the exact insubordination that he had wanted to avoid when he suggested she let him do the hunting.
"Get the ropes, Alicia. If not for me, then for your brother. We've wasted enough time."
"It's wrong," she murmured as if Troy didn't know that already, her feet finding a life of their own, carrying her back toward the car and for the restraints. When she returned with them, Troy handed her the gun again, made sure she kept it pointed at the man, and forcibly helped him onto his stomach. After securing his hands behind his back, Troy hoisted him to his feet and pressed the smaller pistol into his lower back to have him walk to the car. He forced him into the back of the trunk, along with the last remaining jerry can and trash, and tied his legs.
"Please, just let me go," he pleaded again.
"No can do," Troy retorted, offering up what could have passed as slightly apologetic smile and then shut the trunk on him. Alicia was still standing beside the car, wavering on her feet as if she might faint. Troy gestured for her to get into the passenger's seat and slipped into the driver's.
When they reached the diner, forty minutes had passed and their victim and his screaming had finally settled down. Maybe he'd passed out? Wouldn't that be lovely?
"Call her," Troy said once he'd killed the ignition.
Alicia peered through a sheen of renewed tears, her cheeks aglow with guilt.
"Do you want to see your brother alive again or not?"
She closed her eyes and swallowed thickly, reaching for the radio again, her finger hesitating on the trigger despite the desperation and want she had to be reunited with her brother again.
"You there? We have what you asked for. I want to speak to my brother."
Nick wasn't doing so well. He fell back into unconsciousness; his brow was warming up with fever taking its hold. But at least, he wasn't bleeding anymore. She knew it could change when she had to move him. She considered her plan again, standing over him, then went out to prepare the cars.
She put all she wanted to keep from the cruiser into a Toyota she had found in the garage along with its former owner she had to put down with her stick. Then she dragged Nick from the house and deposited him in the back of the cruiser. She checked the wound: it oozed a little blood. Martha closed the door, sat behind the wheel, and pulled from the driveway.
She put a couple miles between herself and the house, then parked off the road. Nick was still out cold, which might be the best under the circumstances. She surveyed the cruiser one more time to make sure everything was in place, then locked the horn to blare away and pushed the driver's door closed.
She walked away as fast as she could. She had about two miles to cover.
When she got in the Toyota, she was out of breath. She took a long moment to catch it, then drove off to Eldorado. There was a nice hiding place on one of the roofs. The diner was easy to watch from it, and they wouldn't hear her radio.
She barely settled when the duo rolled up and called.
"You will leave your gift inside first," she told Alicia. "Once you do, you drive out of town, and then I tell you where to head. Better hurry, because your brother doesn't wear his dead repellent right now, and he could surely use it."
Alicia looked at Troy as if trying to gauge his thoughts on the situation. They'd come this far. And so had she and as they'd heard Nick was alive. So far she'd been a woman of her word. Troy was convinced that she'd keep her end of the bargain, otherwise why do all of this to begin with? He guessed an apocalypse didn't account for time anymore and there was nowhere else she needed to be, but he could hope and think that it was more than that. Troy climbed out of the car, pulling the tab for the trunk as he did, removing the small revolver he'd confiscated just in case the man had managed to undo himself and would try to attack them. He opened the trunk and found the man exactly in the same spot he'd put him in, only he was wetter as he'd pissed himself.
Troy guessed forty minutes of driving to the unknown would do that. It was one thing dealing with the dead, they were pretty straightforward over all, and it was another thing entirely dealing with people.
They were worse.
He grabbed his shoulders and hauled him into a sitting position. Alicia had moved to stand beside Troy, the radio in her hand, her finger tap-tap-tapping the talk button gently as if she wanted to press and resisted.
"Maybe we shouldn't just hand him over."
"You're probably right, Alicia, but we've come this far. The truckers mean something to her. I don't care what that is."
"How can you not care?"
Troy considered her question and applied pressure to the man's bicep, helping him out of the back.
"I just don't."
Alicia flinched when the man grimaced as Troy forced him onto his feet. She moved to the side of the car, secured the radio against her waist and reached into the back to retrieve a knife. Without hesitation she cut his feet free—regardless of the smell that clung to him—and slid the knife into his boot, being careful not to cut him. Troy did nothing to stop her, hovering in front of him, the pistol in view so he didn't think to kick her.
He guessed she felt better giving him a means to protect himself.
She picked up the rope, straightened up and looked at Troy, taking a hold of his other arm, the two of them quickly guiding him into the diner. They set him down inside one of the booths, his hands still tied behind his back tightly.
"Please, please, don't this, please don't leave me here. I have a family, I have a wife."
Troy studied the man, wishing he had thought to gag him, trying to conjure up some form of empathy and found himself unable to do so. Alicia didn't have that problem, the conflict swaying upon her expressive face.
"I can't do this," she murmured, her features a reflection of misery. She knew what she was doing, what she'd set in motion by backing out of her choice, and yet she couldn't risk the man's life. She looked at Troy, her eyes stern and cautious as if she expected him to argue, to be outraged and when he didn't, moved to untie him. No sooner than her fingers grazed the man's arm, trying to turn him so she could undo his wrists, did Troy grab the back of her head and slam it into the table.
She went out like a light. That was going to hurt later.
"All the best, bud," Troy uttered, gathering her to him, turning her limp body around in his arms, hoisting her onto his shoulder fireman style. Alicia was going to be pissed when she woke, seething mad, but overall—with time—she'd come to accept what he'd done. She had to. Later she might even thank him for it.
He strode out of the diner, ignoring the man's last plea as he called for Troy to reconsider, and carefully set her down in the passenger seat, putting on her seatbelt. He removed the radio, set it on the dash, retrieved the jerry can and used the last of the gas. After he was done, Troy closed up the trunk and got in at the driver's side, steering them toward the highway a minute later. He pulled over just outside the town, staring at the exit sign for Eldorado. She hadn't spoken to him before but he hoped she would now.
"We've kept our end of the deal. Where is he?"
Careful to not be spotted if either of them decided to look around for a spy, Martha picked the best spot on the roof where they wouldn't notice her and watched eagerly through a field glasses how they delivered their end of the bargain. It was a young man, frightened and probably begging for his life.
What irked Martha was the girl obviously slipping a knife into his boot. That wasn't good. Martha could work around it, perhaps, especially with him needing time to manage his tied up hands, but it still pricked her.
"Leaving him with a weapon wasn't a part of our deal," she stated when Troy spoke from the radio. "I guess Nick will suffer for that silly move. But he'll get stronger, too."
Troy directed a glare at Alicia who was beginning to stir, and turned on the ignition, intending to head back to the diner to kill the man if this crazy bitch decided to negate her promise. "Fuck you. That wasn't in the disclaimer. You said to get, follow and deliver a trucker to the diner and that's precisely what we did. If you're too scared to face a man with a possibility of actually defending himself, that's your business, not mine. I want Nick and I want him now. And if don't tell me where he is, and he dies, I promise you, I'll make it my personal mission to hunt you down like a dog." He released the button and cast a look at Alicia who'd woken up, her index dabbing at the side of her head where he'd split her head slightly, lips drawing back in a snarl as she fought her anger and a headache.
Martha took her time getting off the roof and to the diner when the kids drove off. When she got to her new prisoner, he was sawing at the ropes behind his back with the mercifully offered blade.
He saw her and froze for a moment, assessing the woman with a stick who observed him with some weird kind of fascination.
"Please," he ventured. "Help me. There's a guy and a girl, they attacked me and left me here. Please, help m-"
She swung her stick as quickly as she did with Nick earlier. The young man didn't see it coming.
His eyes rolled up, he slipped down sideways.
Martha smiled affectionately and listened to the radio.
"Alicia, honey, you still there? It was a bad choice to leave him with a weapon. For that I shall not hesitate to invite your brother for another journey if I ever see him again - if he still breathes after today, that is. And it's all thanks to your kind little heart."
Again, the woman had chosen to talk over Troy and call Alicia out, downplaying his threat and everything else they'd done for her. Alicia released the side of her head and wrenched the radio from his grip.
"I'm sorry," she uttered, and Troy knew she didn't really mean it. She'd do it again in a heartbeat, she had no choice as her conscience wouldn't allow her to risk another person's life for her own or her family's.
Not an innocent person.
Madison used to preach as such, that high and mighty proclamation of doing well for others, but it had always come at a price and what she could gain from them emotionally or physically. Alicia was just sickeningly kind and compassionate. Trait that she and her brother shared. You'd think it wouldn't have a place in this world, that it made them weak, but at times Troy felt it made them strong, stronger than even him, and he guessed if he really thought about this entire run-around, that was the lesson this crazy woman had been trying to prove.
Only she hadn't bitten.
"Please tell me where my brother is!" She pleaded, sounding a lot like the man we'd left in the diner.
they'd pulled up outside and got out, cautious now in case she'd arrived, scanning the parking lot as he approached the building again. Alicia had gotten out as well, unsure of what he was doing but unwilling to let him get far on his own.
"Drive up the highway north-east, and keep your ears perked. You will hear where he is. I believe you need to hurry."
She tuned out.
Troy hadn't made it two steps before the woman's voice cut through the receiver again. He hadn't expected it, he thought that was it and she was going to leave them like she did before. She was good at the torment and there was nothing they could have done about it had she decided to go that route again. Alicia stopped in her tracks, her eyes flitting between the device in her hand, Troy, and the door where her conscience sat waiting on his fate. Even with the knock to her noggin she was still tempted.
Troy headed back to the car.
"You want to play lone ranger, go for it, I'll find your brother."
He started up the engine and heard the door open beside him as she got in. There was little to no expression on her features and she refused to meet his eyes. She turned off the radio and practically threw it on the dash, staring at it as if it had suddenly warped into a snake.
Neither of them spoke, habit that was almost comfortable in its tension as they drove, similarly listening and looking out for anything that might alert them to Nick. They hadn't been driving long on the highway when the sound of a blaring horn caught their consideration—and that of the dead—they were segregated around it, rocking the unseen car beneath to reach whomever was inside and practically fused to it.
"Is that him?" Alicia asked, her voice low and tinted with fear.
"I don't believe in coincidences, so there's only one way to find out."
The skin-munchers were so engrossed in their target—and more were coming—that when Troy stopped in the middle of the road, claimed his weapons, took the gun from Alicia that he'd given her earlier and prepped for battle. Alicia attempted to do the same, but given what he'd done to her, the fact that she looked like she was taking strain, it wouldn't help any if she suddenly collapsed. Troy forced her into the driver's seat and pressed a palm to the horn through the open window, replicating the sound as best he could in attempt to steal a few of the dead. It didn't take her long to catch on and to move with him.
A few of the dead sprung free and shuffled toward them, their groans drowned out by the noise being produced by both vehicles, an overload that was almost as vexing to Troy. He took down the first two with little to no ease, breaking the handle of one of his knives off in the woman's head, kicking her rotting body into the one that had approached from behind her. They both tumbled and, like a turtle on its back, struggled, dumbly flailing to reach Troy as he stepped over her and dipped his knife into its brain.
More joined, like ants being redirected, but not enough to make Troy feel at ease with his prior plan.
He took them out, too. They dropped one after the other like dominos.
He crouched, slit open one of the bodies' bellies and dipped a hand inside, quickly smearing their blood over his face and hands, reapplying what had long since dried in a way that would probably make Nick proud.
"Forget it!" he called to Alicia, gesturing that she stop. Another broke from the pack. "Save the battery."
She didn't call it quits immediately, doing her best to do her part in a helpless and pretty shitty situation. He approached them from the back, reaching for their clothing, anything that acted as a handle, and hauled them back, driving a blade into their heads. He repeated this over and over, like a mantra, an action that soon became a muscle memory and left him feeling breathless. Troy hauled one of the dead that had practically crawled into one of the open windows they'd smashed out by his left foot, sending him careening to his ground on his face, stomping on his head a few times to keep him from getting back up.
The other side was cracking, too, and it was only a matter of time.
He shouldered the rest of the dead trying to worm their way in, sending them tumbling on their sides like a four car pileup, removing the pipe he'd tucked into the waistband of his pants to smash the driver's window. It burst open in a way the dead could only dream off. But it was a mistake, as one hand attempted to make a grab for him, sensing past the blood that something was the matter and groping blindly. He tripped, went down painfully and was trying to crawl away to regain his footing and momentum when suddenly a shot rang out and the dead slumped, stopped in his tracks before he even got started.
The rest were paying Troy no mind, still drawn by the lure of the ongoing blare like feeble puppets.
He got up, put an end to the pile up he'd made before they could join the rest of the party again, and leaned in at the driver's side, unmindful of the glass, to free up the lock on the horn. It died at once, leaving nothing but the migrant sound of the dead – at least for a few minutes – and then a horn was blaring again.
Alicia had moved from her post where she'd saved him, and gotten back into the car, repeating their former plan, successfully beginning to lure the dead away and down the highway. They followed her like a dog would a bone. Troy took out the few that were too slow to catch up and felt a sense of relief when he was finally able to give his full attention to the person in the back and was able to make out who it was.
"Nick?" Troy called, reaching in through the window to try and pop the door handle, temporarily forgetting that a police cruiser worked the other way around. He grabbed the bodies, hauling them aside left and right and then freed up the space in front of the door, moving to hover over Nick once it opened, pressing two fingers to the side of his neck in search of a pulse. Thankfully, Troy found one. Nick was also hot, perhaps feverish.
Troy assessed the rest of the damage as best he could, attempting one last time to rouse him, and then as gently as possible, hauled him from inside, cradling him briefly as he lowered him to the ground.
Troy eased away from him, pulling over one of the corpses, cutting into them, and carefully painted Nick's face and body, disguising him among the sea of the dead for the time being so that Troy wouldn't have to worry too much while he tried to help his sister.
She'd stopped with the horn and wasn't too far off now, starting up again when they thought to break away.
Troy picked Nick up and carried him away from the pile to the other side of the road, and then returned to the cruiser, turning the horn and its added siren. The noise gripped them at once and they started making their way back. At first Alicia was confused, trying her best to keep their attention and then she saw Troy on the road, waving to summon her back.
The noise, Troy knew, wouldn't last long and the battery would eventually give in, but then the dead would be someone else's problem. As she rolled back down the road in reverse, he went to retrieve Nick and lifted him into his arms, carrying him toward the car to meet her halfway, no longer worried about being attacked.
She left the car on as she jumped out, helping him clear up the back so they could smooth things out and then set him down on the seat.
With no other choice, they made their way back to Eldorado, stopping at the gas station they'd seen earlier to fill up and to find a drug store where they could stock up on some medical supplies.
There wasn't a lot left but they'd managed to find some plasters, bandages and what they hoped was a disinfectant cream of some kind. They didn't read labels, one of them constantly at Nick's side with a gun in hand.
If that crazy bitch decided to come back for him, there would be no hesitation on either of their part to put a bullet in her head.
They left the town and drove for a while, seeking a place they could hole up for the night, eventually stopping at a motel. The place was abandoned by the living and the few dead that had scurried around like lost strays were taken care of. They broke their way into one room, cleared it, and carried Nick inside, laying him down in the middle of the mattress. While Alicia tried to attend to his wounds, Troy removed the last of their supplies from the car, set them down in the car corner and braced the only chair in the room beneath the door handle as a lock.
"He okay?" Troy asked, moving to lean against the windowsill.
"He will be," she assured, sounding determined.
He helped her strip Nick off his bloody clothes, offering up his help here and there as she needed it, watching as she poked and prodded and began to fuss over a wound on his abdomen that would surely scar. What had she done to him? Burnt him?
Alicia became unmindful of Troy's presence after a while, providing her brother with her sole attention, allowing Troy to excuse himself without a word to make use of the bathroom. Unlike other places, the water here seemed to have dried out to a trickle and then nothing, as if there had been a touch left in the pipes.
Alicia was curled up against Nick's side when he came out, combing her fingers through his hair like she had the corpse in the diner, as if slightly saying a prayer and hoping he'd stir.
"There's no water. He okay?"
She took a while to answer, as if she feared to speak. "I hope so."
So did Troy.
Now that the adrenaline had shut down and seeped out of his system, Troy was beginning to feel exhausted. He grabbed one of the bags they carried, shifted it onto the floor and lay down, letting slumber slowly take him.
Nick woke up shivering, cold one moment and hot the next, and he couldn't tell where he was this time. There was a weird memory of having seen Gloria in the desert, of an eternal walk under a scorching sun with no place to hide from it. There was also a ball of pain in his side, spreading its strings in all directions and making him sick. He heard an unwitting groan escaping him at a throe gripping his innards when he shivered.
Alicia's hand stilled its ministrations as Nick groaned. She'd been unable to fall asleep despite the headache, a combination of sleep deprivation and Troy's none-too-gentle knockout.
"Nick," she murmured, breathing his name as a relief and like it was a prayer. He was coming awake and apparently so was the pain. "Nick, can you hear me? How are you feeling? Are you okay?"
Nick squinted, straining to make out his surroundings, a little scared to believe he was truly seeing and hearing what there was.
Blinding daylight glared between two heavy curtains on the window, right in his face. Alicia was next to him, he could see her eyes wide and attentive. She looked frightened and worn out, her face dusty. A dried gash was on the side of her forehead.
"Alicia," Nick let out in a strained whisper, jerking to sit up, but failing with a groan. "How did you… You didn't let her get you, did you? Where is she?"
"No, no, she didn't touch me," she answered, assured that he'd be okay despite the strain in his voice, smiling slightly to try and put him at ease. "You're safe. We're both safe. Troy is, too. She hurt you," Alicia stated, index finger skimming the spot on his abdomen just above the wound there. "It doesn't look infected but it's too soon to tell. What did she do to you?"
Troy hadn't slept very deeply, pulled from his sleep by their voices, unmoving as he listened to them.
Nick watched her, trying to process all the information at once, his thoughts still jumbled. Combers of hot and cold flashes ran through him, making him wince as they pulled at the pain strings.
"How did you find me? What happened?"
Alicia couldn't tell if his pain stemmed from that one injury alone or if there was more to what was going on that met the eye. She'd tried her best to play nurse, but unfortunately even that was limited.
"I don't know, that's what I'm hoping you can tell me. One minute you were outside the church, cleaning up the dead, and the next you were gone and some crazy lady was sprouting poetry and claiming she had you. Can you remember anything?"
Nick strained his mind. It was hard to focus with all the crap going on in his body at once. Withdrawal was creeping back, the shivers were getting worse. He felt feverish and partially penciled it down to the wound. It was going to make things worse.
None of it seemed to matter, however, before he could put his mind at ease by figuring out what he had missed. It wasn't easy to pull out anything useful from Alicia. She must have been stressed and lacking sleep, and Nick could relate, but he felt the urge to know. His head swam; he closed his eyes for a second, concentrating on staying awake, then looked her in the eye.
"How did you find me, Alicia? What poetry? What… Do you have water? I think I forgot how it tastes."
Alicia drew back and looked apologetic, searching around on the bedside stand, coming back with only a bottle of vodka. They'd used some on his body to try and clean his wound but that was about it. "Unfortunately we only have this. Think you can stomach it?"
Nick looked at the bottle and dropped his head back on the pillow with a groan.
"Oh no, I can't. She fed me gin and so little water I feel I'm dried out. Alcohol dries me out."
He felt sick just thinking about any more alcohol. As he let his eyes close again and linger that way, he felt it was so easy to slip away again. A breath away. So easy. So tempting. Dehydration was doing him in along with other reasons, but he wasn't going to alarm Alicia to that fact. She was pretty rundown herself.
He shivered, grunted at the pain.
"How did you find me?"
Alicia set the bottle of alcohol down on the floor beside the bed, feeling guilty for not having been able to find more. They'd found everything else and water was in short supply. She and Troy hadn't drunk anything since last night.
"She told us where you were."
Nick forced himself to look up at the ceiling to clutch onto reality. He mulled it over; a slow work in the haze wrapped around his brain.
"She told you to pay for it, didn't she?"
He turned and searched Alicia's face, fear squeezing his ribcage.
"What did you do?"
She nodded gently, tears shining in her eyes. She hated the way she felt, she hated the way she knew she would make him feel by admitting to the truth.
"We got you back and that's all that matters," Troy said, speaking from the floor, sitting up so that he could look at the two over the foot of the bed. "If it makes you feel any better your sister was passionately against her plans. She fought it all the way."
He didn't say what. He didn't have to, and neither did she, that was between them. He climbed to his knees and stood.
"I'll see if I can find us some water."
He collected his pipe, unhooked the chair from beneath the knob, and headed out.
Alicia was still focused on her brother. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't get to you sooner."
Nick sucked in a ragged breath, his eyes closing as if to wait out a bout of pain, but the worst pain in him was in his heart. He remembered the same sting when the woman told them what to do. It made this one hurt more. Having known all along that it was going that way for Alicia stung him harder. Her words came through a veil of feverish haze.
"I can't blame you," Nick said, forcing himself to look at her, guilty and ashamed. "I just…" he trailed off, exhaling a torn sigh, searching his tangled mind for the right words. "I didn't want to bring it on you. It's not fair. It's so not fair to you, Alicia. I'm sorry I talked you into going with me, walking away from this shit and drawing you right back into it. I'm so sorry. It's my f—… my… fault…"
The light spilled brighter from the window, enveloped him, and pulled him down.
"None of this was your fault, Nick. None of it. She did this. This is all on her," Alicia insisted, unable to contain her emotion and the grief she felt for hearing and seeing him so broken down.
She could only ever remember seeing him this way when he'd come home and felt the need to apologize for his existence.
She lay down beside him when he passed out, an arm sliding across the top of his head so that she could half hug him. A position their mother had been in many times over the years whenever he'd come back and started to dry out. But this was different, wasn't it?
Troy returned thirty minutes later.
"This was all I could find," he said, tossing two energy drinks, a small packet of peanuts and a tub of generic painkillers onto the edge of the bed. "I found those stashed in the reception. There aren't very many. As for food there's nothing in the kitchen but rotten vegetables and someone already got to the vending machine. How long has he been out?"
"A few minutes," she added, not sounding as angry as he expected she would be talking to him.
He studied Nick as he slept, eyes falling to his chest to make sure it was still rising and falling, and then shifted focus to her face. Despite the caked blood Troy could see the beginnings of a bruise circling the cut.
"You should let me look at that for you," he said, motioning to his head in reflection of her own.
"I'm fine," she mumbled with an edge, her arms tightening around her brother.
"You're strong, Alicia, but you're not a machine. You bleed, you hurt, and you'll get an infection and die. If that happens, Nick will never forgive me."
Alicia's brows furrowed with annoyance, and then slowly, reluctantly, she let Nick go. She hadn't given Troy the go-ahead but she'd reached for the water substitutes and the painkillers. There weren't very many. Just two.
"You should divide it."
Alicia closed the tab on the pills and set them aside, along with one of the bottles. Troy retrieved the medical stuff she'd put on the floor and crouched down in front of her, aware of how relaxed she'd been a minute ago holding her brother and how tense she suddenly was. As if the weight of the world had appeared on her shoulders as soon as Troy entered the room again. He opened the vodka, picked up Nick's discarding clothing, finding a spot on the filthy cloth that he could use as a clean swab and lightly attempted to wipe clean her cut.
"Doesn't look like it's going to need any stitches," he joked as he finished, receiving a wince in response as he added a Tweety Bird plaster to her forehead, a cheap thing meant for a kid and one of the few things they been able to find.
"All done," he announced jovially, feeling her eyes on him as he cleaned up.
She didn't thank him, nor did she look inclined to do so, exhaustion setting in for the both of them.
"Try and get some sleep," Troy suggested, moving to claim his spot at the foot of the bed again, purposely making himself comfortable.