Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

Glenda stayed on the roof for close to a minute. Her heart pounded. Maynard didn’t move. She thought of the ramifications. Cop killer. What difference did it make? The cops weren’t cops anymore; they were just a band of desperate men in a land of kill or be killed. She didn’t have to worry. There were no judges. No juries. No penal system at all. And the court was closed.

She at last got up from the roof. She descended the ladder, then shifted it, sliding it over the side of the mudroom eaves. She went down the rungs to the backyard, wondering if it was safe to whistle yet, or if any more men would come, or if she had killed the body by killing the head. The mist thickened and the moonlight brightened. She walked toward Fulton.

She knelt next to him, half believing that he might still be alive. But he was dead, lying on his stomach, his arms straight at his sides, his rifle under him, his finger twisted up under the trigger guard. Her hands started to shake.

“You prize-winning piece of shit,” she said.

Tears flooded her eyes and she sobbed, a choking sound in the thick, stinky air of the dead woods out back.

“Mom?”

She turned.

The nightmare kept getting worse.

Buzz Fulton had a chokehold around her daughter’s throat, and a gun pointed at her head. The two approached out of the woods. As they got closer, Buzz glanced at his brother.

In the gathering moonlight, Glenda saw a strange emotion play over the younger Fulton’s face. His jaw protruded and the unshaven whiskers on his pale chin looked like a gunpowder tattoo. His eyes widened, then narrowed, then moistened, and for a few seconds he looked entirely unsure of the situation. He twisted his head to one side, as if he were wearing a too-tight necktie, then to the other side, and in the moonlight she saw a band of sweat glimmer down his left cheek like a silver ribbon.

Hanna was wheezing and wheezing, like a punctured bagpipe, and looking at her with wide, scared eyes.

“You killed him?” asked Buzz.

How to explain it to him? What lie would he possibly believe?

“Bullets started flying, Buzz, and I—”

“I heard only two bullets. And they both came from the same rifle. Yours. Poor Bren is dying back there. So don’t go lying to me, Glenda.”

She saw that the whole situation was at a bad dead end.

“I didn’t want to, Buzz.” And then she remembered what that guy in the supermarket had said to her during the Stedman’s looting. “But it’s every man for himself.”

“Guess I’m going to have to shoot your daughter, then.”

“Buzz, please…” She threw her weapon down, got to her knees, and clasped her hands in entreaty. “I was only trying to protect my children, like any good mother would. And if you’ve got to shoot someone, shoot me.”

Buzz’s lips stiffened in barely controlled anger. “Does that make sense to you, Glenda? That I should give you the easy way out and shoot you dead right now? While I’ve got to stay alive and suffer like this?” His voice was shaking now, and his eyes had clouded over with tears. “Doesn’t it make better sense that I shoot your daughter so that you can suffer like I’m suffering?”

“Please don’t shoot her, Buzz. I’ll do anything. I swear I’ll do anything. I’ll come and join the girls at headquarters if you want.”

“I don’t hold truck with what the boys are doing with those girls at headquarters.”

“Then I can give you food, Buzz. We’ve got food. All kinds of it.”

This stopped him. Then he said, “Why is it that people like you got food, and I don’t have any?”

“I’ve got some hidden in the forest.”

Buzz nodded, then grinned, even as tears thickened further in his eyes. “We knew you had it.” He seemed to dwell on something for a few moments. He came out of his reverie with a businesslike squaring of his shoulders. “We might have a deal, Glenda. Get Maynard’s flashlight. It’s attached to his belt.”

She knelt beside the dead sheriff and unclipped his police flashlight. Her hands shook so badly she could hardly manage the small task. She wondered if Jake was dead somewhere in the woods.

“You’ve got to promise that you won’t kill us if I give you food.”

“I promise.” He flicked his head toward the woods and said, “Move.”

She spoke to Hanna. “Honey, it’s going to be all right. We’ll just do what Buzz says and this will all be over.”

“You listen to your mama, sweetheart. Uncle Buzz ain’t going to hurt you.” Buzz’s slightly licentious tone reminded Glenda of how Buzz had come on to Hanna at Marblehill when she was twelve years old.

She walked ahead of them into the forest, hating to turn her back on the whole situation, cursing herself for being so stupid. She feared that at any moment she would hear a gunshot behind her, and that would be it; Hanna’s short life would be over. She prayed to God, but she couldn’t sense Him right now.

They walked to the end of the yard out past the shed. As she passed the shed and was heading toward the dead sycamores, she heard a noise—the slide of a foot along the dead grass behind the shed, the soft whisper of shoulders shifting inside a T-shirt—and, turning, saw Jake emerge from the shadows, Leigh’s pistol held up straight in both hands, just like she had taught him, his face so scared in the moonlight that his pale blue eyes bulged.

“You let my sister go or I’ll blow your head off, Buzz.”

Her first instinct was to curse him for being such a fool, and for now endangering his own life; but when Buzz jerked to a stop and flicked his head a fraction to the left, and his eyes narrowed with sudden tension, and fresh sweat popped out of his pores like water out of a newly divined well, she thought that, yes, she had to learn to trust Jake, and that she couldn’t do this by herself, not in a world gone mad with hunger and darkness. She was going to have to count on her children.

“Easy there, son,” said Buzz. “I can’t believe your mama gave you a gun.”

“Let my sister go or you’re a dead man.”

“Son, I guess it comes down to nerve. Who’s got more of it? Me or you?”

Jake fired straight into the air, and Buzz’s nerve crumbled.

“Let my sister go, or the next one’s for you.”

“Easy, boy, you don’t want to have an accident.”

He let Hanna go. Hanna hurried to Glenda. Glenda took her in her arms and stroked her hair.

“Now put the gun on the ground,” said Jake.

“Jake, that’s the only weapon I have. You don’t want to leave a man defenseless with the shroud up there.”

“I said, put the gun on the ground. I’m giving you a chance here, Buzz.”

Buzz hesitated for close to five seconds, and in the light of the Moon Glenda saw the frantic thinking that was going on behind his eyes. Despite this scrutiny of his options, he at last put the gun down and stood up slowly.

“Now beat it,” said Jake.

Buzz lifted both arms into the air and backed away. “It’s okay, son, I’m on my way.”

“Shoot him, Jake,” said Hanna. “Don’t let him get away.”

“Don’t you listen to your sister, Jake. Miss, I apologize for what I done to you.”

“Jake, just shoot him. He’s going to come back.”

“Mom?”

“Let him go.”

“But, Mom,” said Hanna, “he’s going to come back, I know he is.”

“Buzz, I’m real sorry I had to kill your brother.” And the tears came back because she really couldn’t believe she had killed a cop.

“The Lord will make His judgment, ma’am.”

“Shoot him, Jake!”

But Jake didn’t shoot.

And Buzz finally disappeared into the dark woods.

Ten minutes later, as they were carrying food back to the house, they heard his truck out on the highway, its bump and rattle a sound that now terrified Glenda.