Райан Уэстфилд - Finding Shelter

But he’d been caught in it nonetheless. He’d thought that he could make a difference. He’d thought that he could change the world.

When, in reality, all he could do was keep himself, his family, and his friends alive. Anything more than that was a pipe dream. And he needed to realize that if he wanted to stay alive.

This tangent with Grant had been nothing more than a dangerous delusion.

But had it been a waste of time?

Max didn’t think so.

After all, the demagogue was dead. The man that Max had heard so much about had turned out to be worse than a fraud. And Grant had paid the price.

Who knew what would happen to their organization now?

Max didn’t really care. As long as it didn’t threaten his own camp.

And he didn’t think it would.

The howling of pain was clearly audible. Terry was dying. Probably very soon. A bullet to the gut would do that to a man.

Lilly stepped back into the doorway. She was almost gone, when Sadie spoke, trying to stop her.

“Where are you going, Lilly?”

“I’m going to see my dad. I don’t care if he doesn’t want me around. I want to be there…. he might…”

“…die?” Sadie finished the sentence for her.

“Yeah.”

Sadie didn’t want to still be tied up when Terry died. It might, for all she knew, be disastrous. She needed to do all she could to get out of there.

“Lilly,” said Sadie. “Untie me before you go.”

Lilly said nothing. But she also didn’t leave.

“Come on, Lilly. This isn’t fair. What if it was you? Would you like to be tied up like this?”

“No,” said Lilly, still not sounding convinced.

“Then come on. Enough is enough. Get me out of here.

“OK, fine,” said Lilly, finally giving in. She sounded frustrated. “But how do I do it? The knots are too tight.”

“Don’t you have a knife in the kitchen?”

“Yeah.”

“Go get it. Hurry. Then you can go see your dad, OK?”

“OK.”

In a flash, she was gone.

Sadie waited, listening to the footsteps, hoping that Lilly would return.

Finally, she was back.

“Got it,” she said.

“Now be careful,” said Sadie. “Make sure you’re pulling the knife away from me, towards yourself. OK?”

Sadie found it a little strange that she was more component about all these sorts of everyday things, like using knives. But she didn’t have much time to reflect on it, because a second later, she felt pain where before she’d felt nothing.

“Oops, sorry,” muttered Lilly. “I think it’s bad. You’re bleeding a lot. Should I…”

There was another howl of pain from Lilly’s father, Terry. It sounded bad.

“Just cut the ropes,” said Sadie. “Don’t worry about the cut. It’s fine.”

Lilly kept going, cutting Sadie one more time.

When the ropes were all off, Sadie still couldn’t move. Aside from the pain she felt from the kitchen knife cuts, she couldn’t feel her limbs at all.

Nor could she move them.

It wasn’t just pins and needles, something she was very familiar with. But it was something like that.

Would it go away?

Probably.

Sadie couldn’t see how she would lose the ability to move permanently. She’d never heard of anything like that before in her life.

Then again, she was just a kid. She hadn’t had a very long life to hear about such things.

“Lilly…” Sadie started to say, but Lilly was already gone.

There was another shout of pain from outside where Terry lay. Presumably he was now surrounded by his wife and his daughter.

“Get away!” Sadie heard after a few moments. “Get her out of here!” It was Terry’s voice, screaming, distorted by the intense pain he was going through. He really bellowed it, the volume extremely loud. It seemed as if Sadie could hear the death coming, just from his voice.

Sadie vaguely remembered hearing that the way he was dying was one of the most painful ways to die.

Despite her situation, Sadie cringed. She doubted Lilly would like to hear that. It was a horrible thing to hear from her father.

Why didn’t he want her there?

Ever so slowly, Sadie was starting to regain feeling.

It didn’t feel good, though.

It felt very bad. Very strange.

It was like the worst case of pins and needles she’d ever had. It felt like a burning sensation had run through her entire body.

It was actually painful. Almost like an itch in a way.

It was a very strange sensation.

There was another yell outside. Another scream of pain. Terry’s. Who else’s?

It seemed to take forever, but in the end, Sadie would guess that it took over ten minutes for her to regain the use of her limbs.

She stood up. Finally. Her legs were shaking. It felt like her blood sugar was low.

There were screams of pain coming from the front of the house.

Sadie found her way into the kitchen. There was a large kitchen knife lying on the table. Sadie grabbed it. It was about as big as her forearm.

But she was strong enough to wield it. She was strong enough to swing it, if she had to.

There was a backdoor by the kitchen.

Sadie opened it. Turned the knob. She was half expecting that someone would come from behind and stop her.

But no one did.

As she was halfway through the doorway, she turned around one last time, and she saw that Lilly had come back in.

“You’re leaving?”

Lilly’s face was just sadness. Sadness at losing her father. Maybe sadness at not having a friend.

“I’m leaving,” said Sadie. “Sorry about your dad.”

Lilly just nodded.

Sadie felt an intense sadness as she stepped through the doorway.

But as she got farther and farther away from the house, the knife still in her hand, the sadness disappeared.

It was sad about Lilly. About her dad.

But that was the way things were now.

Sadie wasn’t sad that she’d lived. That she’d survived.

It’d take her a while to get back to camp, but she knew that she’d get back.

She felt foolish, having left at all. She felt even more foolish, having fallen for Terry’s tricks.

She knew that she wouldn’t be fooled again.

If she ran across anyone that she didn’t know on the way back to the camp, she would hack at them with her kitchen knife. She’d give them hell.

Sadie was already pretty far from the house, maybe a quarter of a mile, when she realized that she had made a huge mistake.

Would Max or her mother have wanted her to walk all the way back to the camp without a gun?

No, they wouldn’t. They wanted her to have a gun with her at all times.

A knife was something. But it wasn’t a gun.

She hadn’t gone to get her gun because it would have meant confronting Terry. It would have meant confronting death, and the pain and damage that she’d had to cause in order to survive.

But that was life now. Sadie had learned a lesson. She couldn’t survive without a fight. She couldn’t survive without killing. Without taking life.

And she couldn’t trust strangers.

Sadie made her way back to the house. She needed that gun. She was going to get it.

She made her way around to the part of the yard where she’d shot Terry.

He was lying there, with his wife kneeling over him. His wife was singing to him in a low voice, and Terry was groaning in pain.

For some reason, Sadie knew that the sounds he was making meant that he was close to the end. Very close.

Sadie spotted her gun. It was lying close to Olivia, who had her hands on Terry’s stomach. There was Terry’s blood all over her hands. They were soaked in it, and Terry’s clothes were completely soaked in his blood as well.