Leaves, broken glass, a can of green paint.
Someone put their arm around her, but she didn’t know or care who.
Leaves, broken glass, a can of green paint.
Her body felt disconnected, like a broken limb. She was being pulled into someone; she slumped against them her head falling against their chest. Alex. She could feel him, smell his clean linen-fresh smell as she buried her face into his T-shirt.
She remembered this moment. At the hospital, the bitter smell of disinfectant, red plastic chairs bolted to the wall, waiting to be officially notified of what she already knew, waiting to be told Danny was dead—it had been Alex who had sat through the night with her, his arm tight around her shoulders, holding her up, until she couldn’t bear it any longer. Couldn’t breathe with his gentle care and love.Love she didn’t deserve.
The thought made her snap into focus. This was not the time to remember.
Ana pulled back from her memories, extricating herself, untangling the barbed wire of pain inside her head. She forced herself to her knees, moving away from Alex.
She looked out across the sand, at the lifeless dark outline. Red dust was blowing across Benny’s body, pockets of it accumulating in the folds of his clothes. The bucket was rattling as it wobbled backwards and forward in the wind.
Benny was dead. The clock had reset. And in an hour, someone else would have to cross the line—someone else would have to die. She looked around. Everyone was here. They were all standing on the white line.
“We can’t leave him like that,” Raya whispered.
“How are we going to bury him without getting killed?” Ellis snapped back at her.
“I don’t know.” Raya was shaking. She couldn’t take Ellis’s assault right now. “It’s just…wrong. Leaving him like that.” She turned her face away from the desert, from Benny.
Ana knew Ellis was right, but the thought of Benny lying out there in the dirt, for all to see, as the hours ticked by, was horrifying. Once again, they were helpless. Just like last time. Just like a year ago.
How could this be happening again? How?
She turned to look at Alex. He was bent forward, hands on knees, head down. His hair was covering his face, but she didn’t need to see it to know what he was feeling. He hadn’t been in the gym a year ago. He hadn’t seen, first-hand, the searing flames tearing at the walls, at people, shadows falling over each other, screaming. He hadn’t seen death. This was his first time.
A powerful impulse swept over her. She wanted to walk over to him and hold him, to push his hair back and look him directly in his soft eyes and tell him everything would be okay. Even if she knew it wouldn’t. It couldn’t be. But her feet wouldn’t move. It was as though she was frozen in place. Locked down inside. Useless.
A loud grunt made everyone jump.
Ana had almost forgotten Caden was there. He had been lurking off to one side since the shooting. He was staring into the distance, one hand shading his red eyes.
He grunted again, and raised a hand, pointing towards the horizon. Far away, by the mountains, a cloud of dust was forming, growing larger by the second.
“What the fuck is that?” Ellis muttered to no one in particular.
The dust cloud was blowing to the right, stretching out across the desert. There seemed to be a red dot at the center of it, some kind of car maybe.
“Oh my god. Help us.Help us!” Jade shouted. “Someone’s coming, they’ll rescue us. We’ve got to signal them. Come on.” She started waving her arms in the air. Jax followed her lead, and before long, the others joined them, shouting and waving.
Only Ana and Ellis stood still.
There was something wrong. The red dot wasn’t coming from aroad. It was driving cross-country, barreling at high speed, headed directly for them. Whoever was coming knew exactly where they were going and why.
The dot grew, forming the clear shape of a red truck. They could make out dark outlines behind the windshield. It looked like there were at least two people inside.
One by one, the others fell quiet as they realized that the truck was coming whether they shouted or not, whether they wanted it to or not.
Closer and closer, the trail of dust was forming a mighty cloud above the truck, several stories high. Like an approaching sandstorm. Dangerous.
As the truck neared Benny, it swung around, skidding to an abrupt stop just feet from the body. A fan of dust settled over everything. The doors opened and two men got out, bandanas over their faces. They looked like they were in their twenties, wearing indistinctive flannels and jeans, with matching cowboy hats pulled low.
No one called to them. No one waved. Something about their efficient, businesslike manner warned the group to stay quiet and watch.
Without a glance in the direction of the motel, the men walked over to Benny, one standing at his head, one by his feet. They stared down. There was no surprise or concern in their movements. They had known he was there, and they knew he was already dead.
