Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

She looked at him like she didn’t think any of this was a good idea and Will knew she was right. It wasn’t a good idea. But he knew, too, it was better than anything else they had.

“Go,” he said.

MARY MAY WAS ALONE. SHE HAD COME AROUND THE BACK OFthe church then gone into the trees, running in the direction Will had pointed her. But only about a hundred yards in, with the compound still clearly seen behind her through the tall pines, she began to hear shooting and the yelling of men and women. When she turned, locating first the edge of the compound, then running her eyes across the landscape, she saw the houses farther on. The front of the church was visible as well, with the steeple rising above, and it was there that she saw most of the Eden’s Gate people gathered. And seeing them she dropped and lay in the grass that grew everywhere between the trees.

They were a hundred yards away and though Mary May did not know where they had come from, she could see a great many of them. A few trucks were there, when before there had been none. And many of the people who had arrived carried rifles and guns and were dressed in flak jackets, outfitted as if they meant to go to war.

She watched and saw several turn and move away from her in the direction Will had gone. Soon after she heard gunfire, then farther out the dissonant return of Will’s rifle, quickly firing over and over again. For the fifth or sixth time, she thought to turn and go back toward him, but she knew there was little she might do.

She carried with her the .38 revolver, three shots left within the cylinder. She looked down at her father’s gun. She knew if Will and Drew were to make it out of there and to the road that ran farther up along the bluff, she was going to need to make it first to Jerome. If Will came out on that road and Jerome was not there, or Will even had to wait a minute, it would not take long for Eden’s Gate to surround and quickly overpower him. Like her, Will’s advantage only lasted as long as he kept moving. And if she didn’t move—if she didn’t run, and run now—Mary May, Will, Jerome, and possibly even her brother, Drew, were all as good as dead.

She started running, moving away from the lake in the way Will had told her to go. Any effect of the drug was gone now, either sweated from her system or expunged by her own adrenaline. She was nearly at the dense trees that climbed the bluff when the first bullet round hit the nearest trunk. She turned only briefly and saw the ten or so members of Eden’s Gate advancing toward her, and who had no doubt seen her running straight on toward the bluff and the road above that she hoped to use for her escape.

By the time she came to the incline of the hill and started to climb, the bullets from six or seven guns were digging up the earth all around her and the trees were coming apart in a hail of wood chips and falling branches. But then in an instant all the gunfire and the sound of the bullets digging up the woods completely stopped, and for a half second, she thought the world had been sucked up and away into the vortex of some tornado that had rendered the world mute.

The light of the explosion hit her first, followed closely by the sound and Mary May turned to see the mushroom cloud expanding, and moving ever higher there above the Eden’s Gate compound. She’d been scrambling up the hillside with her hands outstretched on the incline and her feet digging beneath her as she climbed. She looked back down the way she’d come and saw between the thin pines below a new column of smoke rising to the sky. She moved over until she could see what was left of a house. Just a dark black patch in the otherwise brown and green expanse below. Will had told her nothing of a house exploding and for longer than she should have, she stared at the place the house had been and wondered now whether Will and Drew in some way had been within.

She had little time to dwell on any of this. She could not explain what had happened and though she was worried, she had to believe Will and Drew had not doubled back somehow and made a final stand within the house. Looking now, she saw several of the church members had followed her into the forest and while they had turned, taking in this new disaster, Mary May cut across the slope, moving with the swiftness of some mountain animal. And now as she moved up she could see she’d increased her lead as the slope began to round.

The sun was still out, but it had begun to lower toward the horizon and the chill of the place could be felt now against her skin. The shirt John had ripped down the middle hung open and the exposed skin of her chest was covered in a collection of sweat, blood, ink, and the dirt of her own escape. Sometimes she moved fully upright, but mostly she had climbed with her hands outstretched, the gun wedged down the back of her pants as she went.

She chanced one more look back the way she’d come, letting her vision pan across the slope. Nothing could be seen but the wavering flow of wind as it moved through the branches above. No sound of rocks cut loose by those that followed her. No gunshots. No shouts or voices. The place seemed eerily normal to her, and it was this sense of normality among the more current chaos that frightened her most. She took one last look back across the path she’d made, then moved, hands outward on the slope again. All the while she thought that if she’d heard just one shot fired far out there in this landscape of forest and lakeshore, she might have felt some relief for Will or for her brother, but that she had not heard anything at all now scared her more than all that had come before.

SHE CAME OVER THE TOP OF THE HILLSIDE WITH A CHILL SWEATacross her brow and down along her exposed clavicle. Through the trees she saw the road ahead. She pushed herself up and went into a full run. She was midway to the road when she saw Jerome. He was just south of where she’d thought he’d be, closer even than she’d hoped.

Jerome met her halfway and she fell against him and he held her for only a moment before turning her toward the ancient Oldsmobile. “Where’s Will?” he asked. He looked now to the trees and forest she had herself run from. “He isn’t with you?”

They reached the car and she let him help her with the door then help her to sit within. She was breathing hard and the sweat felt cool on her skin now in a way it hadn’t before.

“What about Will? I heard the explosion. I came out to the edge of the hill but I couldn’t see anything but smoke rising up above the trees. Is he okay?”

This was a hard question for her. She hadn’t had time to process it, she hadn’t had much more of a thought in her head than to simply escape. Run. Climb. Get the fuck out of there. But now, with Jerome waiting on her she did not know what to say. She looked back toward the forest. She almost wanted to see Will and her brother there. Will making his own escape, running, trying to find them where they sat. But no one was there. Just the wind through the trees—just the emptiness of the forest as it stared back at her. “I’m not sure Will made it,” Mary May said, her eyes still on the forest.

“He’s dead?”

“I don’t know.” She turned away from the forest. She looked to Jerome. She looked on the road ahead. “We need to go,” she said. “We need to get out of here before we can’t get out of here at all.”

He looked at her, and then he closed the door. He came around the front of the car then pulled his own door open and sat in the driver’s seat. He leaned forward and cranked the engine.

“I told Will to get my brother,” Mary May said. “But we couldn’t all get out together. Will and Drew went one way and I went the other. Will said they’d meet us down the road. But I’m just not sure if they made it.” She could feel her voice beginning to break a little at the edges. This—being in Jerome’s car—was the first time in nearly a day she had had a chance simply to sit and to reflect on her own existence. To realize how very, very dangerous Eden’s Gate had become.