Graham's Resolution Trilogy Bundle: Books 1-3 (11 page)

Campos was glad to have the girl here. It meant he would have someone to share the day-to-day workload with. But he worried that the others wouldn’t like her and would try to scare her off. He had to find his meds. If he didn’t, the others might harm the girl.

He opened the fence barrier and noticed her coming out with her backpack and shoes on, ready for the day. She looked a little worried, but he supposed that was to be expected. He would just do his best to make her feel welcome, and maybe she’d want to stay.

Greeting her, Campos showed her the fences that he’d made to keep the wild animals at bay during the night. “It’s not foolproof, but at least it deters them from coming right into town,” he explained. “Let’s walk down this way and I’ll show you the market where I’ve been clearing things out. We have about two more days of work there before we need to move on to the other stores,” he said, pointing farther away.

“I’ve been cleaning everything up so that when nice folks come into town, they’ll have a place to stay. I’m hoping we can have enough people to start a big garden come spring. We really need to plan for seed starting this winter. Things are pretty picked over. We have enough to get through the winter, but spring is going to be a problem.”

As they got closer to the garbage bin attached to the four wheeler, Campos explained how he pulled the incinerator on wheels wherever he went to make the cleanup job easier. “Be careful, because it’s hot. Don’t touch the sides. Give me that gas can over there,” he said.

Marcy did as he asked. He poured some gasoline into the bin, walking from side to side to spread the fuel around. He put the can down by the building door and walked back to remove matches from his back pocket. He tore several out at once, struck them, and tossed them in. The flames went up in a big
whoosh
, and Marcy jumped back with a scream.

“Oh, man, that scared me,” she said. She noticed Campos’s head twitch in an involuntary tic. She didn’t think anything of it until he turned to face her with a twisted smile that didn’t seem like his own.

“Oh, yeah, little darling. You want to get in?” he asked, smiling sadistically.

Marcy started walking backward from his suddenly evil-looking profile, highlighted by the roaring flames behind him. This wasn’t him.
This is the man from last night.
She knew it now. It happened right before her eyes; he changed. There was something really wrong with this guy, and she knew for sure that she was in danger. He started laughing at her retreating form.

“Where do you think you’re going, sweetheart?” he asked her.

Marcy continued to try to put distance between her and this crazed man as she stepped backward. “I think I should g-g-go to my—my dad’s now,” she stuttered, panicked. She turned and ran.

“No you don’t, you little bitch!” this new persona yelled. He reached behind him to retrieve the hatchet he kept there, hidden from Campos. He aimed for the girl and threw it, overhanded, through the air.

Seeing the girl run, Graham knew he would not make it. It’d take him too much time to get there, considering the distance between them. Then he yelled “No!” as Campos reached behind him and threw the hatchet toward the girl with deadly skill. The girl whirled to look in his direction. He ran toward her, but she’d already fallen. Campos reached for his rifle. Graham stopped in his tracks. He aimed and fired before Campos even wrapped his hand around the barrel of his own weapon.

Campos fell as the shot struck home. Graham rushed to the fallen girl. She lay on the asphalt, blood running from her leg. “Marcy?” he asked, hoping she’d respond. Her blond locks were now tinged pink with blood. A quick glance back at Campos showed him down, and still; Graham could disregard him for now.

Graham pulled Marcy’s hair back and saw that she was bleeding from a head wound, a result of hitting the rough pavement, but the worst damage was from the hatchet still embedded squarely in the back of her upper thigh. Blood spread in a radius around the gash.

“Oh, Jesus,” Graham said. “I have to stop the bleeding.” He pulled out the hatchet and pushed on the wound with the palm of his bare hand, trying to stem the flow. “This is really bad,” he said, looking around for something he could use as a compress. Not seeing anything, he took off his jacket and removed his T-shirt, balling it up and pressing it into the red flowing wound. “She’s going to bleed to death right here, dammit. I’ve got to do something!”

Looking over at the grocery store in front of him, he snatched Marcy up and carried her inside, searching for towels or anything he could use to help the girl.

He carefully positioned her on one of the register counters, trying to be careful of her head, and rolled her onto her side so he could see her wound. Grabbing the edges of the blood-soaked denim, he ripped the jeans open to get a better look. Blood seeped out of the wound, but not as much as before.

In the darkened store, a medium-size market by any real standard, Graham read the aisle signs for supplies that might help in treating the girl. He could not really see much, but he did notice a display rack of paper towels; he grabbed several rolls, ripped off their plastic wrapping, and wound a thick bundle of paper around his arm. He jammed the wad of towels onto Marcy’s wound and applied pressure. With one hand holding that, he directed his attention to her head. She was knocked out cold from the impact. The previous day’s injuries didn’t look too good, either, but this new bump swelled up quickly.

“I need ice,” he said, again out loud, looking toward the front of the store where it was usually kept. He wished Bang were here to help him. Noticing the blood seeping through the top of the paper towels already, he took hold of the entire remaining roll and pressed it down on top of the first wad. He slid Marcy onto her belly with her head facing away from him so that he could see the side of her face where most of the recent wounds were.

Looking around, Graham saw nothing that would help hold the pressure on Marcy’s leg so that he would be free to get ice for her head. Giving up, he quickly took off pressure and ran over to the ice cooler and took out a bag, then raced back to her. He applied pressure again on the injury, causing some of the blood to cascade down her leg in streams. It slicked the floor, and he nearly slipped in it.

With the ice in his left hand, he punched his finger into the plastic, ripped it open, and then grabbed a plastic grocery sack off the dispenser at the end of the checkout counter. The counter was now a bloody, smeared mess, and Graham tried not to notice how much of the blood was covering his arms and bare torso. His stomach turned at the iron-like smell. He’d never seen so much blood before; the girl was soaked in it.

After reapplying pressure with his right hand, he used his left to open the bag enough to transfer handfuls of blood-covered ice into the grocery bag. He grabbed the loose ends and swirled the bag around to twist its opening closed. Then he laid the bag, dripping with bloody ice water, gently onto Marcy’s head wound.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he had left the others in the woods. Ten minutes? An hour? Everything had happened so fast. Surely by now they were getting concerned that he’d been gone so long.

He glanced again at Campos’s body. Though he could not see if he still breathed, he certainly did not feel the need to help the man and hoped he was dead;
really
dead.

Next he knew he needed to figure out how to close the girl’s hatchet wound. She was unconscious, and he could take advantage of that to sew up the wound, but he knew next to nothing about first aid. Other than having watched a very competent ER doctor sew up his sliced-open finger a year ago, he’d rarely visited hospitals. He’d watched then as the nurse irrigated his cut with saline solution; the young doc sewed it up, leaving the nurse to apply antibiotic ointment and a bandage. This was followed by a tetanus shot on his way out, along with a prescription for oral antibiotics.

Graham thought there was probably saline solution in the contact lens aisle. Maybe not exactly the same thing, but it should work. He would also need gauze, and maybe a sewing kit could be found somewhere. God, he was not looking forward to that.

He tried to remember the process as he watched the doctor stitch up his finger. He’d nearly fainted, and he was ashamed to admit it. Thinking of the details, he’d also need a cigarette lighter to sterilize a needle. The whole idea made his stomach roll, but he had to do it. He’d failed this girl twice now, and the weight of it was hard to bear.

Graham had liked coming in this store back when things were normal. There were not usually many people in line, and the butcher always smiled and asked what you were in the mood for that day. Too bad he was not here now. Graham knew the guy could probably stitch this girl right up without a second thought.

He had remembered filling a prescription here once and recalled the pharmacy toward the back of the store. Hopefully, the child would not wake up while he gathered the supplies in the dark. Making a mental list of the things he would need and where they were likely found, he checked the wound by lifting his hand. Seeing no increase in flow, Graham carefully left the paper towel roll in place and removed the ice, setting it to the side. He watched the rise and fall of Marcy’s back as she breathed. Then he ran toward the pharmacy department.

He grabbed several boxes of gauze pads, regardless of their sizes, as well as adhesive tape and several very large Band-Aids. There was Bactine, but he knew he needed something to irrigate the cut as well. He turned around in frustration and finally spied the contact saline solution below the pharmacy window. He grabbed a few bottles, complaining, “This stuff is never where you think it should be.” He went a little farther down, found the painkillers, and then had a stupid thought: How old was she? He tried to see the age requirements on the box in the dark. There was a slight bit of ambient light coming from the back door exit sign, but it made little difference.

Graham heard a snap and buzz of electricity and then the lights flickered on, blinding him for a second. He reached for his rifle, only to remember that he’d left it beside the girl. By the time he got to the end of the aisle, he was staring right at the madman, the one he knew as Campos,

“Get away from her!” Graham yelled, rushing at Campos before he had a chance to move. “
You
did this to her!” He grabbed the man by his blood-stained shirt and pushed him toward the open doorway. Campos did not put up much of a fight; he was struggling with what Graham said.

“I would never hurt her,” Campos meekly pleaded. “She’s just a girl. I was going to let her stay here,” he said, and began to cry.

Graham began to doubt himself, but held the man in place. He watched as Campos swung his head back and forth, either out of confusion or pain or both. Graham did not know or care. Only one thing was certain: he’d seen the same man hurt her the night before and had seen him throw the hatchet this morning. Now, faced to face with him, he was convinced the guy was crazy, yet the look in Campos’s pleading eyes showed he cared for the girl. The sentiment appeared genuine.

Then, before he knew it, Campos looked at Graham’s blood-covered chest and smiled the most chilling smile Graham had ever seen. The hairs on Graham’s arms and neck stood on end and he pushed Campos out through the doorway.

Campos jerked him toward the blue firebox, and at once Graham knew his intent. Campos released his arm briefly and slugged him across the jaw, stunning him, but not quite enough; he saw the nut job reach down and grab his own rifle. Graham had just enough time to grab the barrel in an attempt to wrench it from him, but Campos, though shorter, was much stronger. Campos, with his long sinewy muscles developed through hard labor, could easily overwhelm him.

Graham knew fear. He wanted to run away from this crazed man, but he tightened his hold on the rifle now in a tug of war. He knew that if he lost his grip, not only would he die but so would all the children. In a rush of adrenaline, he found what he had always believed he lacked, a capacity he had seen deep within his own father. This nameless thing, more than words could convey, enveloped him.

He can’t win
, Graham thought.
He cannot be permitted to take the lives of the few who remained living.
Graham was not the three children’s father, but their safety, their preservation was a burden he’d accepted. He would see it through to the end and not fail them.

Campos laughed as he pulled Graham sharply toward him. It was as if he relished this fight, exulted in the chance to prove himself superior. He wrapped his left leg behind Graham’s right, so when Graham pulled back with all his might, Campos began to fall and released his grip on the rifle. Graham grabbed him by the shirt collar instead, twisted to the left, and took the bastard down with him.

Having landed on his side, Graham rolled over quickly on top of Campos and struggled once again with the rifle between them as Campos wrestled the business end up toward him. Graham knew the danger, but he pulled strength from somewhere inside himself and pushed the rifle upward, sliding it along Campos’s rib cage as he shifted his position to rest high on the man’s chest so Campos could not buck him off.

Graham pushed the rifle upward, shaking now against the opposing force. Campos kicked and writhed; he tried all his tricks and then, finally, fear appeared in his insane eyes—or perhaps it was resignation.

Graham had not planned it this way. In fact, he had not planned it at all. Now the realization of what must happen fought within him. He knew there was no other way. Graham pushed on, past Campos’s arm strength, past even his own strength. Instead of pushing the weapon away, Campos pulled it downward, desperately knowing where it was headed.

Once Graham had the rifle into the recess between Campos’s chin and collar bone, he pushed onward, trying to make quick work of it, but still the insane man struggled, his face going from beet red to purple as he fought for oxygen. Then, suddenly, the madness seemed to go, leaving only the bewildered eyes of a man who knew he was about to die. Though he saw the madness fade, Graham knew he could not stop and maintained the force, all the while fighting the guilt that tried to overtake him. He pushed even harder when his victim stilled his movements, staring at him with glossy purple resignation. With the choking mostly over now, Graham heard movement beyond the door.

Quickly, he chanced a look up to see Marcy staggering toward him. “Stay back!” he yelled, but she continued.

Marcy held her head with one hand, steadying herself against the metallic doorjamb. With her right hand Marcy pulled around, dragging Graham’s rifle toward him. Graham wanted her to stay away, not for her own safety but because he wanted to kill the man without bearing the guilt of having a witness.

Marcy dragged the weapon even closer and put her hand on Graham’s shoulder. She collapsed by his side, not really knowing Graham but recognizing his sense of duty toward her.

Graham felt Campos’s life lift away. The madness within him could now no longer menace and torture other beings, and death had surely come as a mercy for the kindly portion of him.

Graham pulled the weapon away and checked Campos’s pulse to make sure this time. He wrapped his aching arms around the sobbing girl and lifted her slight weight up, staggered backward. He carried her several steps, and stood still, not willing to take his eyes off the dead man. Marcy’s shudders interrupted him. She needed caring for now.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely, “It’s okay now. You’re safe.” He tried to convince himself to some degree. Marcy just sobbed.

Trying to distract her, he said, “I know your sister, Macy. She’s back there in the woods.” He pointed in that direction, then turned away for a second, still not trusting what his eyes were seeing: Bang and Macy, and their dog companion Sheriff, coming down the hill toward them from their forest haven.

“They’re coming now, you’ll see her soon. It’s all right, he can’t hurt you again,” Graham said, trying to convince himself again along with the girl of the madman’s demise by his own hands.

As if she detected in his voice his own shock that the task was done, even at the innocent’s cost, she patted him with one hand on his chest, as she herself shuddered at the wretched nightmare they’d both endured.

He could hear Bang and Macy’s footsteps on the damp asphalt now, thumping nearer. Graham felt Marcy shift in his arms and noticed the dampness against his hand. Her wound was bleeding freely again.