After the Fall Read online

  “You about ready?” Dunk’s voice comes out of nowhere.

  “Huh?” I fumble, turning to find Dunk standing a few feet away, holding Goldie’s reins. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m coming with you,” Dunk says.

  “Like hell you are,” I snap.

  “Like hell I’m not. You don’t really think we’d let you go by yourself, do you?”

  “You two plan this?” I ask, looking back and forth between Dunk and Kate.

  “It was Buck’s idea, actually,” Dunk says.

  “Well, then he’s a fool, too,” I snarl. There are too many dangers for me to even consider taking anyone with me, let alone Dunk. I cannot, will not, take responsibility for his safety.

  “You’re not going alone,” Kate says, crossing her arms across her chest as if that settles the matter.

  “Not your decision to make,” I bark. One look at her, though, and my anger dissolves. “Kate,” I say more gently, “what if I run into trouble? I can’t be worrying about Dunk the whole time. It could get me killed.”

  I cringe at how melodramatic it all sounds, but these days everything is life and death. I have been on the road before. I know all too well what dangers lurk in the world outside Burninghead Farm.

  “What if you do run into trouble?” Kate asks, her voice barely a whisper. “You need someone to watch your back.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Kate’s right. You can’t go alone.”

  This time, it is Buck’s voice that comes out of nowhere. The irony that I have once again been snuck up on as I am arguing I don’t need anyone to watch my back is not lost on me.

  “Buck—”

  “You’re part of our family now, Taylor, and family members support each other. Duncan’s going.”

  I want to bristle at Buck giving me orders, but I can’t. I know not only that he is right, that they all are, but that I am grateful for it.

  “You don’t have to come, you know,” I say to Dunk, giving him one last chance to back out.

  “I know I don’t have to. I want to. Let me watch your back.”

  I nod, overcome. As Duncan mounts his horse, Buck reaches for my shoulder.

  “If you find them, bring them back.”

  “Are you sure? I mean, we don’t even know how many there are.”

  “It’s like I said when you first arrived, Taylor. Anyone is welcome, as long as they don’t mean us any harm.”

  I nod my understanding, and my gratitude. Then I turn back to Kate.

  “You know why it’s Duncan and not me going with you, right?” Kate asks. I feel her conflict. This is not easy for her. “You’d be panicking the whole time about my safety, and it would only distract you.”

  “I’ll be panicking about Dunk too, you know.”

  “No, you’ll just be worrying about him, and that’s okay. Worry will keep you honest. Panic would get you in trouble.”

  She is right, of course. Still…

  “I’ll never forgive myself if—”

  “Stop,” she says, placing a finger over my lips. “Trust Duncan to take care of himself. Not everything in this world is your fault, you know.”

  I know she is talking about Pennsylvania, that she knows my fear is not just some abstract concept but borne out by experience. “I know that,” I say, almost believing it. “But some things are my responsibility.”

  “Then take responsibility. For Duncan and for yourself. Watch his back. But trust him to do the same for you. Whatever happens after that is no one’s fault.”

  I let her words sink in. There is no more to say, so I turn to mount Stu. Just as quickly as I turn, Kate’s strong arms pull me back around. She kisses me with an urgent passion for which there is no response other than to match it. I pour my heart and soul into the kiss, use it to tell her all the things I cannot yet find the words to say.

  “Come back to me,” she whispers fiercely.

  I memorize her face, every line and curve, and then jump up astride Stu. There are no more words as Dunk and I ride out of the barn and toward the front gate of the farm.

  We don’t get far before I am hit with a need so strong I pull up the reins and turn the big horse around. Kate and Buck have followed us out of the barn and are standing in the doorway, Buck’s arm around Kate’s shoulder.

  “I love you,” I shout, my voice booming across the open field. I don’t wait for her to reply, turning Stu back around and hightailing it out of Burninghead Farm. I am too much a coward to say it to her face.

  Chickenshit.

  But at least I have finally told her, and for now that is enough.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Soon, Burninghead Farm fades to just a speck in the distance, and then to nothing more than a memory somewhere over the horizon. We fly due west across open fields and abandoned farmlands, the grasses and scrub overgrown but not overwhelming, more evidence of the earth’s newfound dominance over what was once occupied territory. We keep off the highway but near enough to follow its lead. The pavement would be too hard on the horses for them to manage for any length of time, especially at our current speed. Not that I had known that, of course, ignorant as I am about all things equine. To me, taking the horses up onto the pavement seemed the most logical thing in the world. Thankfully, Dunk warned me off the highway, preventing me from what would have been a boneheaded mistake that could have ended our little adventure before it had really begun. I am all too aware that for all my protesting, Dunk has already proved his worth by saving my dumb ass.

  We ride the wind, racing against the turning of the planet, and I have never before felt such a sense of freedom. Stu’s powerful legs churn up the ground beneath us, and I swear I can feel him reaching down into his heritage, to the days of his ancestors running wild across the plains. This is what horses used to know, back before man conquered them, when they were allowed to simply run free.

  I have no idea how long we can keep up this pace, although I am certain it cannot go on forever. The horses, despite their power, are not machines. Even I know that much. I have to trust Dunk to set the pace and slow us down when it becomes too much for our rides. Still, selfishly, I dread the coming of that moment.

  Eventually, Dunk slows, pulling back on the reins and easing Goldie into a walk before stopping her altogether. I follow suit, pulling up beside them. Dunk pats Goldie’s thick neck and whispers into her ear. She whinnies slightly and stomps her front hoof. Clearly she wants to keep running.

  “Easy, girl, easy,” Dunk coos, loud enough for Stu and me to both hear. “There’ll be plenty of time for that later. For now we need to give you guys some rest.”

  Stu snorts, as if to say that rest is for beings far less powerful than he and Goldie.

  “Come on, Stu, you know I’m right,” Dunk says with a chuckle.

  It is strange sitting here astride this giant horse, listening to Dunk have a full-on conversation with him. Yet once again, I am taken by how Stu seems to respond to Dunk, how he and Goldie always seem to understand every single word we are saying and answer us back. Finally, the matter appears to be settled enough for Stu and Goldie, and we continue on our way.

  Already the sun is starting to slip lower into the sky, and I know we only have a few hours of riding left, if we are lucky, before night claims the day. We ride on in silence, me lost in my thoughts, Dunk seeming to sense my mood. I’m not purposefully ignoring him, but I feel guilty just the same. Still, we aren’t college freshmen on some glorified road trip, and I push my guilt aside. Besides, Dunk doesn’t really seem to mind the lack of conversation. I notice his head bobbing and weaving in time to some tune I can’t hear, and every now and then a little bit of the melody in his head escapes his lips in a low hum.

  “We probably ought to find a place to stop for the night,” Dunk says after about two hours.

  By my calculations, keeping an eye on the mileage signs that mark the side of the highway, we’ve only made it about twenty-five miles. Truth be told,
I have absolutely no idea how far a horse can go in one day, or how long it will take us to reach Asheville.

  I sigh my frustration.

  “Horses can only be pushed about ten hours a day when we’re traveling like we are,” Dunk says, having picked up on my disappointment. “Otherwise, exhaustion sets in, and these guys won’t be able to make it back.”

  That thought scares me. I haven’t even considered how hard this will be on the horses, and I certainly don’t want to do anything to harm them. I realize that it isn’t just Dunk’s safety I am responsible for.

  “Ten hours a day? How far do you think we can get in that time?” I try to sound only mildly curious.

  “Well, depending on the conditions, maybe thirty to forty miles a day if we’re lucky. We pushed them kind of hard today, but these horses like to run, so we’ll see. We just have to be careful.”

  I quickly figure out that it is going to take us at least another four days to get to Asheville. If stupid were a town, I would easily be its mayor, running unopposed and winning in a landslide. I don’t know what in the hell I was thinking. I had just figured I’d take a horse and be there tomorrow. Clearly that isn’t going to be the case.

  Stupid, stupid.

  “I know you want to get there,” Dunk says, trying to make me feel better. “And we will. But it’s just going to take some time. For now, let’s just find a place to make camp. Get some food and get settled in for the night.”

  We find a small clearing in some woods about a mile farther along, far enough from the highway to hide us. My legs are jelly as I jump down from Stu’s back, and my mind flashes to that day riding with Kate, and how she’d had to catch me to keep me from falling. This time I manage to stay on my feet after I dismount. Kate would be proud that I seem to have gotten my horse legs. Dunk goes to work caring for the horses, getting them fed and tucked away for the night. I gather wood for a fire.

  By the time I get back, Dunk has finished with the horses and has found about a dozen medium-sized stones and made a small circle for a fire pit. It isn’t long before he has a small blaze going, after my own attempts to start the fire fail.

  “What were you, a Boy Scout?”

  “Eagle Scout, actually.”

  “Figures,” I mutter. “Wish I’d had you with me all those months on the road. Lots of cold nights I wished I’d had a fire and could never seem to get one going for long.”

  “Yeah, well if I’d been there, I would have whipped you into shape in no time. Starting fires, tying knots, pitching tents, skinning squirrels—”

  “Skinning squirrels? What in the hell kind of Eagle Scouts were these? Future Serial Killers Troop 101?”

  “Hey, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. Squirrel is good eating.”

  I gag at the thought. A hearty laugh erupts from Dunk’s throat, and I can’t believe how gullible I am.

  “Asshole.”

  “Well,” he says, still chuckling, “thankfully Franny packed us a lovely assortment of cornbread, dried food, and a few canned goods, so no squirrel tonight.” He rummages through one of the supply sacks.

  We fix our dinner, and the scent of the cooking food, wafting over the fire, has my stomach growling. Soon we are digging into hearty helpings of Spam and beans.

  “Mmm, tastes like squirrel.”

  I nearly spit out my dinner, laughing. Dunk keeps his head down, focused on his food, but I see the smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. I laugh again. Dunk can be pretty cheeky when he wants.

  We make quick work of our dinner and the cleanup, burying our refuse and packing away our cookware and supplies. We opt to not unpack our tent, preferring instead to lay out our sleeping bags directly under a blanket of stars. It will be cold overnight, of that I have no doubt, but the temperatures are not yet frigid. Besides, there is something comforting about being stretched out with the sky as our ceiling, seeing stars that have only returned now that the glare of man’s lights are no longer polluting the nighttime sky.

  “Do you think they’re up there watching us?”

  I am nearly asleep, soothed by the rhythmic twinkling of the stars, and it takes me a minute to respond. “Who?”

  “All the people we’ve lost.”

  I look over at him. He is bundled up in his sleeping bag, staring up at the great big sky.

  “You mean Heaven?”

  “Maybe.”

  I finally understand his meaning. I turn back to the stars.

  “When I was a kid, I had this cat. His name was Billy. He wandered into our yard one day, all dirty and scrawny. My dad was worried the cat was feral, but he was just about as sweet as a cat could be. All he ever wanted to do was curl up in your lap. He was my best friend.”

  This many years later, the thought of that cat still tugs at my heart a bit.

  “But even when we took him in, he was pretty sick. We did everything we could for him, but in the end…we just couldn’t let him suffer anymore. I cried for days. One night, my dad took me outside and pointed up at the stars. He told me about the constellations, about the Big Dipper and Orion and the others. Then he searched the sky for a while until he found this one particular star. It wasn’t as bright as the others, but it flashed in the sky like it was winking at me. He told me the star was Billy, keeping an eye on me from Heaven. I asked him why it was twinkling, and he said Billy was trying to let me know he was up there, watching over me. Any time I was missing him, all I had to do was look up at the sky and look for that winking star, and I would know Billy was there.”

  Dunk doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking up at those stars.

  As the silence lingers, I find myself growing embarrassed. “Sorry. That was a really hokey story.”

  “See that one there? Next to that really bright one?” He asks me after a while, pointing up to the sky. “That one’s my mom and dad.”

  I smile, my embarrassment vanishing. “That’s a good star, Dunk.”

  He seems pleased at that, and I watch his eyes fall slowly closed. I lie back, watching the stars, until sleep claims me.

  Early the next morning, we break camp and begin again, heading ever west. We quickly develop a pattern of riding for a few hours and then resting the horses, then beginning again. When we are hungry, we eat. When it gets dark, we make camp. We are blessed with mostly good weather, although it turns noticeably colder by late the second day, and that first night under the stars turns out to be our last. From that point on, Dunk and I share a tent at night.

  The days pass, and I barely even notice when we cross into Illinois. The road is quiet, and I am thankful we do not run into anyone along the way, living or dead. Not a single body litters the roadside, at least as far as I can see. But every now and then, death soaks the air, and I am reminded that things are not always as they appear. We stay south of Chicago, not wanting to take the risk even though it would shave at least thirty miles off our journey.

  On the seventh day, just past noon, we enter the city limits of Asheville, Illinois.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Gray storm clouds lumbered high above, menacing and full of intention. The air was heavy with the threat of rain, as if the skies would open at any moment and wash Duncan and Taylor away, along with any trace they had ever existed. All morning, they had been dogged by thunderheads, yet the rain had not come. As they sat astride their horses, staring up at the front of Taylor’s childhood home, Duncan was grateful for the patience of the rain.

  The house was statuesque in its stillness, its whitewashed siding gleaming against the foreboding sky. Seasons had come and gone from this place, leaving behind an overrun lawn woven with decaying leaves. Heavy drapes were drawn inside the windows, as if someone had tried to fend off death by shutting out the world. On the front porch, a set of wind chimes rang out a tune orchestrated by the wind, a last-ditch attempt to welcome visitors to a place long abandoned. This house, which Duncan could imagine once standing majestic and proud, now stood only in mourning.

&n
bsp; Life had not flourished at the home of Taylor’s parents for a long, long time. Of that, Duncan was sure. Taylor’s parents might not be dead, of course, but Duncan knew they were, just the same. There was an emptiness to this place, a conclusion to be drawn by the absence of the telltale signs of existence. By the set of Taylor’s shoulders, Duncan knew that Taylor knew it, too.

  Taylor dismounted, still staring up at the crest of the roof, lost among the ghosts of her past. Duncan followed silently, not wanting to intrude in any way, wanting simply to be present. Without looking back at him, Taylor offered him Stu’s reins, dropping them into Duncan’s hand on a blind assumption that he would catch them, which he, of course, did. She headed off around the side of the house, so Duncan followed, being sure to keep some distance between himself and Taylor. She disappeared at the back of the house, and Duncan paused. He was unsure of himself and unsure of what Taylor needed of him beyond caring for the horses. Minutes passed and still he waited, wondering where she had gone and even whether she was planning on coming back. That thought, and the uncertainty it created, got his feet moving. He headed toward the back of the house, bringing the horses along behind.

  Duncan rounded the back corner, and there, beneath a large walnut tree scarred from the years, he found Taylor kneeling in the grass, her head bowed before two wooden crosses. He knew without needing to read the names carved into the makeshift grave markers. At long last, Taylor had found her parents.

  Duncan felt the weight of Taylor’s grief descend upon him, as he watched her shoulders shake as she wept upon the graves of her parents. It reminded him of his own grief, which he had thought long buried in the many months since he had dug his own parents’ graves, at least until that first night with Taylor under the stars. He still did not know for sure what had triggered it, what it was about those stars that had brought up memories of his parents or his need to be comforted. But Taylor’s story had comforted him, and that night he had fallen asleep feeling closer to his parents than on any night since their passing.