Urban Waite - Far Cry - Absolution

She put the straps of the bra back over her shoulders then picked up the shirt Will had given her. She put the still-folded garment to her nose. Dust and locked-away places. Mildew, and the faint smell of another woman’s perfume. It was his wife’s and she’d known that since he’d brought it out to her. Now, Mary May let it fall full before her. A gray button-up blouse. She knew he’d picked it out because it would not sit atop the tattoo, but still it was not like the T-shirts she was accustomed to. She put it on and turned and looked herself over. It was almost as if she were someone else. It was almost as if it hadn’t happened, but she knew no shirt could erase the tattoo from her mind, it would always be with her, however she chose to try and hide it.

When she opened the door and came out with the lamp held before her, she could smell the cooking. There was the sound of metal silverware and the low talking of the men. She walked forward but then stopped. In the living room the windows had all been covered with thick blankets, but the lightest of them showed a slight red flicker, like light seen on the bottom of a pool, diffuse and distant. She knew though that this was not light on the bottom of a pool, or anything as pleasant as that.

By the time she reached the window she was sure of it, something was burning. There was a faint smell in the air that had not been there before, rubber or something acrylic. She now had the blanket in hand and she parted it from the window and looked out. The fire lit the night up and the smoke rolled and billowed black into the sky, the flames licking upwards at a height of twenty or thirty feet. All of this was down at the edge of the property. Something had been set afire there at the gate, the flames rising and spreading upward into the trees overhead.

IT WAS JEROME’S CAR. WILL PUT THE SCOPE ON IT AND WATCHEDthe flames licking upward to the trees above. Many of the branches were now aflame and the thermals were working upward among the tree boughs and causing them to curl inward and dance in cruel fashion, like the last dying moments of some spider clutching at the air in spasm.

Will dropped the scope and moved back from the window. He had seen nothing but the car afire, windows no more than red flame and the dark exterior of the car burned an ashen gray beneath the moon. He had seen no one, but it did not mean they were not out there—they were. If the tattooed skins stapled to the walls had been any indication, it was likely John was there and many, many more.

When Will turned now, they were all waiting on him. Mary May right next to him, Jerome halfway across the room, and even Drew back there in the kitchen, still tied to his chair. “Get your shit,” Will said to all of them.

He watched them staring back at him, seeing in them his own baffled expression. They had thought themselves safe. They had thought themselves free in that moment, but they had not been, and never had been, and it was Drew all the while who had been right. Eden’s Gate would come for them and there was nowhere they could hide.

“Come on,” Will said. “We need to go. There’s no time left.” He moved to where he’d dropped his bag. He brought out the box of rifle cartridges and emptied the contents into his pockets then stood, bringing the bag up with him. He was back at the window in another second. He put the scope out there on the night again, and he had to still the rattle of his nerves that now ran through him like a freight train.

Out there in the night, seen through the scope, was a mass of twenty or thirty people. All armed, all moving up the hill, fanning out around the property from one side to the other. And leading them was John. His dark shape and the dark shapes of those behind all lit by the rising flames, each among them like the Devil’s own hellspawn set forth upon the world, walking ever nearer.

Will turned again and caught sight of Mary May, she was at the other window looking out, watching as Eden’s Gate approached. She had stuck the .38 down the front of her waistband. She let the blanket drop and Will met her halfway across the room and together they found Jerome in the kitchen, standing over Drew with an old kitchen knife held in one hand.

“What should I do?” Jerome asked. “Should I cut him loose? We need to run. We already might be trapped.”

Will looked to Jerome, looked at the knife then turned and looked back at the diffuse light of flame seen everywhere now at the windows, as if the whole of the property were on fire and not just the stand of trees there at the bottom of the drive. “We could let him go,” Will said. “We should. There’s a way to get out of here, but we couldn’t carry him and we couldn’t trust him to move as fast as we need to go.” He turned back to them now. He looked from face to face, he could see the fear in each of them and he wondered if he was the only one who still thought they might live through this.

“I’m not leaving him,” Mary May said.

Will turned sharply. He had little to say to this that he hadn’t already said. Family made people do strange things, and though he thought in that instant she couldn’t be more wrong, he also understood. Will would have fought through hell and back if he thought he could save his wife or daughter and preserve what little he had left.

“Okay,” Will said. He didn’t argue. He just went across the room as fast as he could, picked up the flak jacket and shotgun and shoved them toward Jerome and told the pastor they needed to hustle the fuck on.

Jerome looked wildly at Will but soon he had set the knife down and taken up the flak jacket in one hand and held the shotgun in the other. He looked back at Mary May now. “You should take this,” he said to her, holding up the flak jacket.

“No,” she said. “You should. If they mean to kill me they’ll do it. No vest is going to stop that.”

Will waited a half second, even though there was not a half second to give in this world and each passing moment brought them a little closer to whatever it was that was coming. He looked at Mary May. “Use the zip ties on the table there for his hands and then cut him loose from the chair. Get him outside and in front of John. Don’t let them inside here. You want to be in the open where more eyes are on you. John could have killed you at Eden’s Gate but he didn’t, that might still count for something now.”

That was all the time he had for a good-bye and he went out the back door now with Jerome following. They came out into the night and the rough gravel there and looked about them, somewhat in wonder that they were still alone and no member of Eden’s Gate stood waiting for them.

Grass grew in clumps here and there, but it was patchy at best with the shade of the house on one side and the rock cliff another twenty feet away leaving much of the land in shadow. The property itself was sloped and ran toward the road below. Will knew this. He knew every inch of this land and though it had been years since he had walked it, he still knew which way to go.

He crossed over the barren earth quickly and came to the face of the cliff just as fast. Jerome came shortly after, still carrying the flak jacket in one hand and the shotgun in the other. When he reached Will he glanced back at the house and the red sky farther on that was not daylight or dawn, but the burning of his own car in the darkness of the night. “We shouldn’t have left her there alone,” Jerome said.

Will kept running his hands up and over the rock face, he was looking it over, trying to retrace a path he’d taken years and years before. “I’m not leaving her,” Will said now, finding the first handhold on the rock. “I’m climbing to the top of this thing. If she gets Drew outside I should have a shot on any who try to hurt her.”