Eighteen
Lazarus carried Evie unconscious into the dusty
building crowded in its mechanical guts with wooden gears and drive shafts.
He took her downstairs and laid her on the fifteen foot wide grindstone,
caressing her dark hair in despair and frustration. This is all he had
ever wanted. This was what the world had denied him.
But he jerked his hand away, frightened by his wild
hunger. If he started now, he’d never be able to stop. Before that
happened, he had to offer her a choice.
He shook her limp body. “Evie, wake up. We gotta
talk.”
She was breathing okay, but the violent truck ride
down the hill had knocked her out cold turkey. When she came too,
she'd be fit to be tied. He looked about the floor
littered with decades of debris blown down the stairs and between the
slats of the walls and found pieces of rusting wire to bind her wrists
and ankles. It hardly mattered if she got noisy when she woke up. The roar of the rapids of the passing river alongside the mill
would drown out the noise.
Lazarus thought it safe enough
to leave her for a time. He drove back up to the highway in the early
morning sun and picked up a bottle of whiskey from the saloon. He went on
foot through the trees to check on the house, but neither Noah nor Abe
were about. He drove back down to the mill and sat in the truck, sipping
whiskey and trying to put his desperation into some semblance of order.
Something had happened to Noah. Abe wouldn’t believe
him if he said that Noah had acted on his own and that Evie had simply
disappeared from the face of the earth. Lazarus sensed dimly that he was
already a dead man regardless of what action he took. He tried to get
drunk enough to obliterate his awareness of that approaching doom. The
pain in his gut had him puking long before he succeeded.
Evie’s first scream sounded above the gentle roar of
the river. Drunk enough to have the courage to face her, he went down to
the grindstone and watched her writhe helplessly. A creaking floorboard
announced his presence. Evie looked around at him in shock, and Lazarus
chuckled grim amusement and sipped from his bottle.
“Abe is going to kill you!” Evie shrieked, writhing
against the wire binding her crossed ankles and wrists.
He took another swig of the harsh liquor to quiet the
butterflies in his stomach. “Whose gonna tell him?”
The implied threat silenced her futile anger. “What
are you talking about, Lazarus Darker? What are you going to do to me?”
“Ain’t decided quite yet.” Lazarus sat on the edge
of the grindstone at her side. “But I suspect you’d better start seeing
things my way, because if you want to cause me any more hurt, you might as
well go the same route as your boyfriend.”
Evie was trembling. “What have you and Noah gone and
done?” she said with ice in her tone of voice.
The accusation startled him. He hadn’t meant to say
anything about that. He set the bottle aside nervously. Not only was it
eating his gut away, it had rendered him a retard to boot. “Nothing,” he
muttered. “Me and Noah done nothing.”
Evie snarled at him with a viciousness that startled
him. “You better not hurt Billy, Lazarus Darker. I’m warning you.”
Her livid hatred sparked anger of his own.
He reached for her, but it was an anger short-circuited by
his own untenable plight, and he sat back down when she shrieked in fright. He didn’t dare touch her,
or he’d never stop.
“You’re not in any position to be warning anyone,
Evie. If things have gone wrong, we’re both in a world of hurt. What
happens to me if I just let you go back and tell Abe about the mess me and
Noah made of things? Do you think I wanna be beaten to death because of
you and that Trevor kid?”
Evie looked suddenly ashen and confused.
“I don’t want no kicking and screaming and
carrying-on from now on,” he said, hoping her silence meant she’d see
things his way. “We gotta talk about this.”
Fat tears rolled down Evie's cheeks. They left
pale streaks in the dust on her skin. Her torn
blouse had fallen away from one shoulder. Lazarus stared in misery at her
bare shoulder. His want for her was worse than the whiskey eating at his
gut. It was going to kill him in the end.
Lazarus held up his bottle. “Want some? It’ll make
it easier. I’ll untie you if you want some.”
Evie shook her head.
Lazarus gathered what was left of his courage. If
Evie behaved herself, they could still salvage their own lives. “Don’t go
running to Abe,” he said. “Don’t shun me no more. Abe said it himself.
We gotta treat each other right. We’re family.”
Evie just stared at him,
sobbing quietly. Lazarus looked
quickly away, feeling a few tears of his own watering his eyes. “God,” he
muttered between clenched teeth. “What am I going to do?” An
overpowering feeling of hopelessness weighed upon him.
He then studied her in abject misery, rushing about in his
thoughts for an escape route. At this point, he had only one
remaining priority. “You’re mine, Evie. You were always mine.
Nobody else is going to have you. I’ll kill you first.”
She tried to roll herself off the massive grindstone
to the floor. Lazarus caught her in his arms. With her body in his
hands, her fate was sealed. He pulled her into his arms, and Evie leaned her
forehead against his chest and wept. Lazarus cradled her, and for a
time, it was peaceful between them, until he could feel her straining
against her bonds. The wire had bitten into the skin of both her ankles
and wrists. The sight of blood and the sudden awareness of the extend of her
silent rage sent his head spinning with cold anger.
He rolled her back onto the
grinding stone and whipped the hunting knife from the sheath on his
belt, laying it across her throat. “You got no call to hate me so bad, Evie. I tried
to be nice to you. I told you how much it was hurting me.
You never cared. All of it was because of you, all the beatings I get
from Abe, everything that’s ever gone wrong. Well, just about
everything’s gone wrong now, and there ain’t no way out of any of it. Not
for me, and I’ll be damned..."
Something gnawed on wood in the shadows. Lazarus
paused to identify the sound. Rats? Wood shavings rained from overhead.
“What the hell. . .”
Lazarus’ eyes widened at the sight of an overhead
hole growing in size faster than any rat could have gnawed. Sawdust fell
like rain and got in his eyes. He swung away and ducked his head,
blinking rapidly to clear a splinter from his eye.
He looked back up in time to see a machine the size
of his fist with flailing legs like a spider drop through. It hit the
ground near his feet with a loud thunk. Little electric motors whined as
it righted itself and swung a single camera lens about in the gloom.
“Billy!” Evie shrieked. “Billy, help me!”
The machine scampered on legs as thin as needles.
Lazarus stomped the creature. It shot evasively to one side, leaving a
tendril of smoke in its wake. Three or four more of the machines bounced
down the stairs like pine cones tossed by the wind. Another fell from
elsewhere overhead.
Lazarus dragged Evie to her feet with a snarl of
frustration. He started up the stairs dragging the girl. Mock disdain
for the stupid toys masked his fear.
Halfway up the stairs, something sharp struck him low
in the back, a pinprick that stung, then numbed the site of the injury.
The numbness spread alarmingly. His legs failed first, and then his
arms. He stumbled back down the stairs, falling face down to the floor.
Evie hopped away from his failing grip.
“Up the stairs! Run, Evie!”
It was Billy’s voice sounding over a radio mounted in
one of the machines. The thought occurred to Lazarus that he should have
checked the wrecked Jag for survivors and finished the job while the
opportunity had availed itself. Now, Evie was going to escape. He’d have
to face Abe’s wrath alone.
One of the little machines got momentarily tangled in
debris not six inches in front of his face. He could smell the heat of
it. Why did it have to be so hot? By the time it escaped, a tiny orange
flame had popped to life and quickly spread along a decade’s worth of dead
leaves and twigs and grass banked against the wall by the wind blowing
through the slats.
He tried to call for Evie to
help him. She would have had he been able to cry out. Despite being tied hand and foot, Evie managed to
scoot her way up the stairs. The little machines scurried after her and
were soon gone as well.
Lazarus flailed about, trying
to get paralyzed limbs to work, using
what presence of mind remained to calculate the extent of the danger to
himself. Enough wood and grass surrounded him to burn him alive.
He rolled away from the flames spreading through the debris, but the
rotting, dehydrated mill was going to burn like a candle and roast him
like a pig.
It was the thought of losing
Abe’s truck that provided the last bit of impetus he needed to pull
himself hand over fist to the stairs. Abe would beat him for sure if
the truck got burned in the fire. He ripped his fingernails
scratching at the floor for purchase. His pants legs caught fire.
He bellowed in rage and pain as both he and the fire reached the ground
floor of the mill at the same time. Floundering across the floor, he
began the torturous race toward the door and the cool darkness that lay
beyond.
He didn’t think he’d make it.
