Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

He looked back at Holly where she stood. “The Kershaws? Lonny said they had brought them somewhere. They had a daughter and a son. But I’ve seen no children. In fact, I haven’t seen the Kershaws, either.” He stood with the shoes dangling in his hand and he ran his eyes out across the piles of clothes then back again. He was beginning to see items he recognized. Shirts that advertised the local little league team, or one that showed the emblem of the lumberyard. “What is happening here? Where is everyone?”

“I see where your mind is going, Will. But you don’t need to worry. They are with us. But they are not with us here.”

He held the shoes still. They were like something he’d once had in his own long forgotten life. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“There are other places being set up,” Holly said. “There’s a woman out east who runs our farms. She grows our food, she gives us the produce we need. The eggs. The meat from different livestock. Surely you didn’t think it was just you. The church is everywhere and there are many to feed,” she said.

“And that is where the children are?”

“Yes,” Holly said. “Everyone is safe. Everyone has their purpose. You’ll see one day.”

He dropped the shoes now and he looked around at the piles once again. “There’s so much,” he said.

“Jacob, their oldest brother, has also begun to train women and men in the mountains.”

“The mountains to the north?”

“Yes,” Holly said. “Not far off. There’s much that has changed. And I can see now that Lonny did not keep you up to speed as he should have. We are growing, Will. You and I are some of the first. But many have started to come and ask for our protection.”

“Protection?”

“Yes,” Holly said. “From their own lives, just like you. Just like when you came to Eden’s Gate and gave up the bottle and gave up sin. Others come because they need financial help. Others come because they have lost the faith. But, regardless of how they come to us, they all need our help. Souls do not save themselves,” Holly said.

Will watched her. He looked once more across the piles of clothes, then he turned to her again. “I think I’m ready,” he said. But he could see in her face that she had unsettled something within him, and that she knew it.

“We’re building toward something here,” Holly said.

“I know. I get it. I can see that now.” He grabbed his bag then took the rifle and put the strap over his shoulder.

She led him out of the room and they came out of the small, wooden clapboard house into the morning light. “Throw your bag back there,” she said as they came to the pickup she must have pulled around earlier.

He put the bag into the bed then walked to the door and pulled it open. No one was about and only far down the drive, past the small wooden houses and outbuildings, did he see another soul. Two guards stood at the gate and he watched them for a time and watched the weapons on their shoulders.

When he opened the truck door and climbed inside, she was waiting for him and she turned and cranked the engine. “It’s been good to see you, Will.”

He looked over at her. He still held the rifle and he settled it now between his legs. “It’s been good to see you, too, Holly.”

She pushed down on the pedal and they went on down the gravel road. “You really shouldn’t be a stranger anymore, Will. Even when you’re here once a month you are a stranger. I can see that now. I’m going to make sure I come and see you. John asked me to. He asked me to be the one to keep track of you now that Lonny’s gone. I’ll be coming by.”

“I’d like that,” Will said. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was looking at the houses. Many were painted crudely white, like the church behind them. Others were simply rough wood, stained to keep the weather out. They kept driving and his eyes landed on one and he could not take his eyes away. In big painted letters that had run and dripped down the white siding was the single word, SINNER, written across the front, just beside the door.

His head moved to take the house in even as they passed and he turned in the seat and watched as the house receded behind them. He could not remember the same word being there the day before. He turned back now and looked out the front windshield, but in the side mirror he could still see the house and he watched it and then when he turned to say something to Holly, she instead began to speak.

“It’s been weeks since you’ve been here last,” Holly said. “You should come once a week at least. If you’re with us you should come to the Sunday services, Will. You should hear The Father’s sermons. The way he speaks. The power of his thoughts and the message he gives to us from deep within his soul.”

“I will,” he said. “I have missed too many.”

HOLLY LET HIM OUT IN FRONT OF THE GENERAL STORE IN TOWNand he thanked her and climbed from inside the cab and grabbed his bag. When he came back down along the truck she called out to him through the open window of the cab. “You sure you don’t want me to bring you all the way up to your place?”

“No,” he said. “I need new snares and new traps and I need some more cartridges for the rifle. Most of my snares are probably gone by now, torn up or dragged clear across the fields.”

“Okay,” she said. “And you’ll get a ride with someone going up that way?”

He nodded. “It’s no trouble. Thank you, Holly.”

She looked at him for a time and then leaned to the open window. “I’m trying to help you out here,” she said.

“I get it. I’ll be okay on my own.”

“That’s what I’m getting at,” Holly said. “I’ve been trying to tell you how things are changing. Eden’s Gate, The Father, John, all of it. I see you and I worry about you, Will. You’re going to get left behind or pushed aside if you don’t start making the effort.”

Her talk had riled him up a bit. He didn’t like being told what to do, or to have his actions questioned. “Like you?” Will said.

“Yes, like me, Will. I might not like everything that’s going on up there but I know who butters my bread. I can see you still making your mind up about that.”

Will cracked a smile. “Well I’m not going to start sleeping with John if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Fuck you,” Holly said. She wasn’t smiling about it and she put her hands up on the wheel for a second and looked on down the road. When she turned and met his eyes again, she said, “I might not agree with everything they do but I owe them my life. And you owe them yours. You understand? I might criticize them but I’m on their side always. It’s your choice, Will. I already made mine.”

She opened her mouth to say something more, but instead she simply turned the key and started the engine again.

He stood there for a while, feeling a little dumbfounded, as he watched her pull around in the street then head back the way she’d come. He felt bad about what he’d said to Holly, but there was nothing he could do for it now.

He went inside the general store and bought his cartridges and a couple hundred feet of twenty-four-gauge snare wire. He bought needle-nose pliers and wire cutters because his had started to rust from the use he gave them, working in the open with the rain and snow that saturated the fields every spring and winter. He put everything on the tab that Lonny had set up for him a while back, and he thought now whether Holly would know to pay it for him. He was standing at the counter when he thought about the bear cub and asked the clerk about the beaver traps and the small floats that went along with them. He bought five and he came out of the store with most of it stuffed down inside his bag, and the traps that he could not fit strapped along the side.