Darkness upon the Land

“I know who they are.” It wasn’t easy to maintain her composure, but Alexia continued to do so as she set a small bowl of homemade granola in front of Reuben. She’d had no trouble convincing him to come into the dining room so he could have some water to drink and a little food back on his stomach.

His face ashen again, he looked up from the glass he was holding while sitting at the table. She sat across the corner from him.

“Definitely locals?”

She nodded. “If you head back into town, they live in the second house on the left.”

His already troubled expression became more concerned. “So somebody’s gonna come looking for them?”

“Not necessarily. Hooter and Jake are cousins, and they stayed in the same house with Jake’s mom. She’s, well, she’s an alcoholic. She never did pay much attention to what those two did.”

He seemed to contemplate what she had just told him. As she watched his gaze stray down to the top of the table, another tremor of concern rippled through her.

It had been extremely difficult to stand beside the window and watch the conflict in her yard unfold. When she saw Jake manage to pull a pistol from the front of his gear bag, she had to quickly turn away for a few seconds. Although she managed not to break the glass panes, a couple of bottles on her mother’s dresser across the room did fall over.

Reflexively she prayed for Reuben’s safety, and that also helped her to remain calm enough to avoid knocking over anything else. She did see him pursue Hooter down the road. And when he returned and the shooting began again, Alexia considered grabbing the slingshot in order to distract Jake. But then the shooting abruptly ended, and because the men were dead she headed outside to check on him. Seeing him throw up increased her worry he could be injured.

“Hooter,” he muttered. “And I thought we hillbillies had funny names.”

“That’s what everybody called him. I don’t know his given name. But he’d been living with Jake and Katie for the past year or so. After he got out of jail.”

“Those riffraff.” His gaze returned to her face. “Liana called them that. She mentioned them about fourteen months ago. Didn’t like having a jailbird living less than three miles away.” His brow furrowed and a haunted glimmer entered his eyes. “She wouldn’t have trusted them. So how did they get the jump on her?”

She shook her head as much in response to his question as to the latest wave of anxiety to sweep through her. Mѐre was still lying mostly unconscious in the front bedroom. On the one hand her condition had remained stable, but on the other hand Alexia feared the fact her mom wasn’t improving suggested she could take a turn for the worse.

“You’ve done what you had to do,” she replied. “Now we need to get Mѐre some help.”

Reuben’s frown deepened, but at least some of the color was returning to his face as his gaze drifted toward the doorway to the living room. “One of us has to be with her at all times. And quite frankly, as dangerous as the world out there has gotten, I’m better equipped to handle it. So tomorrow morning I’m leaving the rifle with you and I’ll go into town to see what help we can get.”

“You just said it’s dangerous out there. Why would you leave the rifle with me?”

His attention returned to her face. “Because it’s bigger than the slingshot and more accurate than the pistol.”

At first she wondered what pistol he was referring to, but then remembered the gun Jake had used. The only thing she was certain about on the ammunition for that weapon was that they had four fewer rounds than what were originally brought.

“Why not leave for town now?” She asked. “There should be enough hours of daylight for you to get there and back before dark, and whoever you bring might also be able to help with ... them.”

He seemed to get a shade paler again. “There’s no guarantee I’d get back that soon because I don’t know how long I’ll be trying to find some help in town.”

“Go to the church first.”

“That could be useful, but I still don’t know what I’m gonna find. Odds are communities are operating on martial law now. If I run into trouble I’d rather do it in the morning when I’ll have the rest of the day to get out of it. Remember, most of the folks around here will consider me to be an outsider, and therefore worthy of suspicion.”

“In other words, you’re saying you have to watch out for the good guys as much as for the bad guys.”

“Very succinctly put.”

Alexia drew a deep breath. “I don’t like it. A lot could happen overnight with Mѐre.”

“Our two main concerns are blood volume and infection. I doubt the clinic has the equipment for a transfusion.”

“But if they did?”

“We’d have to be certain we matched her blood type because whatever was in storage will have gone bad now. I’m O but I’m also Rh positive, so I can’t claim to be a universal donor. And you, well....”

She was satisfied that he trailed off instead of finishing the statement how her unique biochemistry made her as unfit for donating blood as for receiving it. Even during her gestational development, according to Mѐre, there had been some incompatibility that caused physical trauma for her mother, and Alexia was born six weeks premature. “That makes her more prone to infection, then, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps....” He trailed off again as his gaze strayed back to the living room doorway. “But maybe.... Hold on. I’ll be right back.”

She thought he still looked a little unsteady as he got to his feet and strode into the living room. She heard him rummage around in his gear bag for a few seconds, and upon returning handed her a small orange bottle with a white screw cap.

“What’s that?” he asked.

She turned the bottle in order to read the label. The name of the medication was unfamiliar to her, and she had to sound out its possible pronunciation to herself a couple of times before finally managing to say it. “Ciprofloxacin.”

Reuben’s brow furrowed slightly before he responded. “Sounds like an antibiotic. You can look it up in the medical dictionary, see if it might tackle the bacteria we hope it does. Does it say anything about taking with food?”

“No, just that you should take one pill twice a day with a full glass of water.” She frowned as her gaze returned to him. “Where’d you get this?”

He shrugged. “The logging truck.”

She stared at him. Baldridge wasn’t an Irish name, but presumably he still had enough of those people in his ancestry to claim their kind of luck. With a twinge of guilt she recalled how she chastised him for helping himself to items from the truck. She’d also blamed him for causing them to get here later than they could have. The bottle of medicine she held in her hand was both a possible Godsend and his redemption from her harassment.

Reuben was such an enigma with his strong moral values, and yet he could so effortlessly spin a lie that she always wondered how he got so good at it. But she had to admit that every untruth she’d heard him utter was for her protection – to keep people away from the secret she harbored.

In a way, she was his downfall. He lied because of her. His trip home was delayed because of her. Two men lay dead in the yard because of her. She would get irritated with him because he became a “bodyguard” appointed by her mother, seeming to infringe upon her independence by reminding Alexia of her limitations.

But during those horrible minutes when she feared that he might die because of her, she also realized just how much they needed him right now. Whatever independence she generally coveted was insignificant to the fact they needed a traditional, old fashioned man with the physical strength and visceral fortitude to assume the role of supporter and protector right now.

The very qualities that had irritated her were now as necessary to Alexia as they had been to her mother.

She opened the bottle and counted the pills that were inside. “Sixteen. That’s probably not a full dosage. Would they still do her any good?”

“Instead of water we’ll use green tea when we give them to her. We can start her on them tonight and I’ll see if I can get more in town tomorrow.”

“Assuming they might be what we need to treat her.”

“We might want to dip into the echinacea while we’re at it.”

She returned her gaze to his face. Reuben probably looked as rough as she’d ever seen him with his beard stubble and disheveled hair and stained clothes. His current appearance tugged at her conscience, and again she regretted her anger at him earlier that day.

There was also a glimmer to his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and she knew what it was. When he’d shot that man with the slingshot at Baton Rouge, she knew they’d both harbored a wisp of hope the miscreant would actually survive. But this time there was no denying the result of his actions. She couldn’t fathom what it must be like to take a human life, and she still prayed that she would never know.

“Rube, I don’t know … I mean … God, I’m glad you’re here.”

He gazed at her for a few seconds, and she could have sworn she saw another shimmer of pain ripple in his eyes. He turned his attention back toward the living room doorway.

“I know.” He seemed to sigh. “That’s why I’m gonna stay here until Liana recovers. Until she gets her strength back.”

As she considered the other possible outcome for her mother, a fresh chill tremored through her. And the plate of granola on the table to trembled as well. Both of them shot their attentions to it, and then his gaze locked on hers.

“Don’t you even contemplate it,” he almost growled. “She will get better. She has to get better. We’ll do everything we can to see to that.”

Alexia nodded as she managed to banish her worry by considering another matter. “What are we going to do with those two bodies in the meantime?”

He blanched slightly again. “I’ll take care of that.”