Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

The father turned but Will was close and he broadsided the man and sent him to the ground. Will took the rifle from his shoulder and held it on the man just as he tried to get back to his feet. The sound of Will moving the bolt forward froze the man in place.

The boy tried to bring his other hand across and take the knife but Lonny bent and punched him hard in the ribs then reached and twisted the knife away. He stood and tossed the knife and backed away a little as the boy wheezed and tried to gather his breath.

“Stop,” Will said, watching all of this, watching Lonny where he stood and watching the boy. “He was only trying to protect what’s his.”

“What’s his?” Lonny asked, his voice elevated in a tone of disbelief. “What’s his?” He took a step away from the boy then he turned and pivoted and brought his boot up fast and kicked the boy so hard he left the ground. The boy was wheezing and rolling on the ground, trying to get his hands and knees beneath him.

“Stop it,” Will said again. He could see the same wild smile come across Lonny’s face.

Lonny kicked the boy twice in the side as the boy tried to get to his feet and he was rolling now away from Lonny and Lonny was going after him, kicking him time after time. Huffing with the effort. “When are they going to learn? When are they all going to fucking learn their lesson?” he was saying. “What’s theirs is mine. They think they know better than me or John. They think they can just close their eyes and look away.” He kicked the boy again. He bent and grabbed the boy at his shirt collar and brought him up and he started punching him now, raising the boy toward him with one hand on his collar and punching him with the other.

Will was on Lonny almost as soon as he’d made up his mind he had to stop it. He dragged Lonny backwards, the rifle underneath Lonny’s chin and Will backing, one hand on the stock and the other on the barrel, choking Lonny and dragging him from the campground. “You were going to kill him,” Will said. “Calm down. Calm the fuck down.”

The father had risen and he had bent over his son and Will could see the son’s slow movements and see that he had been beaten badly but that he was still alive and still conscious. Will dragged Lonny farther and he could feel Lonny start to slacken. He eased the rifle off his throat and asked him if he would calm the fuck down.

When Will let him go, Lonny stood there rubbing at his throat. He looked toward the camp where the father still knelt, trying to help his son. “There’s no one here,” Lonny said.

“That doesn’t mean you can kill them.”

“You saw how they reacted when I talked about the church.”

“I saw how they reacted when you threatened to steal from them. You need to calm down, Lonny. You need to think.”

He was still rubbing at his throat, and he looked to Will. “It’s time they knew. It’s time they all knew what is coming for them.”

“What’s that?” Will said.

“The end is coming and they can help us and be saved or they can go against us and burn with all the rest.”

Will watched Lonny. He didn’t know what to say. “You’re a fucking lunatic,” Will finally got out.

“No,” Lonny said. “I’m a survivor. And all of us are riding in the ark and some of us just don’t know it yet.”

Will looked to Lonny and then he looked to where the father knelt trying to comfort his son. When Will approached, the father turned and held an upraised palm toward Will and said, “Ella fue a la iglesia. Allá.” He moved his hand, pointing past Will to the ridge above.

Will turned and looked. He thought about saying something more, but there was nothing more to say that would make it any better. Something was going on here that he did not understand and he looked to Lonny and then looked up at the ridge.

THE HAWK PASSED AGAIN, THE SHADOW NOW SHOWING IN THEgrass as the bird turned, rising on the thermals. Mary May was halfway across the broad field that ran the bottom of the valley and she turned now to look upward on the sky, trying to see where the hawk had gone.

Though she had known in some way that what she was attempting was beyond any real sense or hope, she had gone ahead anyway. Now she was walking in the direction the boy had shown her, working over and over in her mind the question he had asked.

“Your brother is all you have?”

Drew was three years younger than her and he had been the last, along with the rest of his class, to graduate from the high school before they shut it down. There was a time afterwards where she had just worked. She had worked the bar and she had done her thing as she had always done and she had not thought about him but to share a meal from time to time, or see him in passing at their parents’ place. She had kept her head down and she had saved and tried to help her parents with the bar.

When he came in and told her that he had joined the army and would soon be leaving, she had not known what to say. She realized for a long time, ever since they had been kids together, she had never talked to him, she had never truly thought to ask him anything of any real depth.

She walked on. She thought about what the herder boy had asked her next. She thought about what he’d said to her, he had wondered what she would do when she found him. He had wondered what would happen if she found her brother to be someone other than who she thought he was.

“I hope you mean the same to him as he means to you,” the boy had said. He had turned the horse around right there and with a little nod to her he was gone down the ridge the way he’d come.

WILL CAME UP THE RIDGE WITH LONNY FOLLOWING. THEY USEDthe switchback path that showed the horse tracks in the dirt. But that was mostly covered with sedge and the droppings of many sheep.

When Will looked back down the sheep were still there in the field but he could see nothing of the camp that was beneath the trees. He had said little to Lonny since they’d left, but he could hear Lonny grumbling over it from time to time and complaining that they should have at least taken the horse if they meant to catch up to Mary May.

“Is that how it is?” Will asked. “Us versus them?”

“That’s how it’s always been,” Lonny said.

“When they came to me and offered me a place with them I was grateful for it. They did not force my hand.”

“Simpler times,” Lonny said. “The time is coming when it won’t be that simple anymore and the more we have among us—the more we have that are willing to hear The Father’s words—the better all of us will be.”

“You act like the end of the world will come tomorrow.”

“It might not come tomorrow, or the next day, but that doesn’t mean it is not coming. People like you and me will survive.”

“What kind of people are we?” Will asked.

“We’re people who do what they need to do.”

“Not if it means pushing other people under,” Will said.

“You and me,” Lonny said. “We see the world in different ways, but we are no different.”

“We all have our purpose,” Will said, playing off what Lonny had told him at the empty Kershaw farm.

“That’s right,” Lonny said. “That’s what John says all the time. We all have our purpose. We all must do our duty for the church.”

They came to the top of the ridge and Will could see it was much like the other they had moved over earlier that morning. One side a gradual slope, while the other, the side that they now came to, fell away almost as if it had been scooped from the rock by the hand of some celestial being. Steep and perilous and littered below with rock and talus that had fallen from the very spot they now were standing.