Deep Trek

“We have to keep moving, love.”

“I know it. But there were ten of us only a few weeks ago. Ten of us, all close and loving.”

“We’re still close and loving, Mac.”

“Less than three weeks. And three of our little ones dead. Now Angel torn away.”

“Come inside and rest. Way the snow’s going we could maybe try to move on in another day.”

Mac blew his nose. “Life’s turned upside down for us. Nothing makes sense, you know.”

But he allowed her to lead him back to the RV, where the four surviving children were waiting for them.

ALTHOUGH THEY DIDN’T even know where Angel’s mangled body was buried, early the next morning they held a kind of a service for her. One by one they said a few words about how they remembered her. The good times. The laughter.

Even Sukie, four years old, managed to overcome her sorrow to say farewell to her mother.

Afterward they all hugged, together in a tight circle of grief.

The following morning Mac rose early and stood outside in the pallid glow of the false dawn, looking across the monstrous pile of snow and earth along the valley.

The narrow stream, frozen over when they’d become trapped by the blizzard, was now swollen into a frothing brown torrent. Patches of the highway showed in spots through the melting snow, and it looked as if they could get moving again.

Mac had slept badly. He’d gone through periods of restless turning, eyes open, listening to the steady, sullen drip of water all around the vehicle. The thought of the deaths of the loved members of his family lay more heavily on his mind. Even when he slithered into brief moments of sleep, his mind’s eye was flooded with terrible images of his children and his young wife suffering ghastly deaths while he stood by, unable to do anything to help them.

Before opening the door and going out into the morning, Mac had taken down his shotgun, the blued-steel imported Brazzi 16-gauge weapon, holding five rounds. The stock was cold and damp to the touch.

His breath feathered out around him as he looked at the dark, blighted landscape, clouds gathering toward the west where Jim Hilton and the others might be waiting for them. Mac imagined that he could taste salt, carried on the breeze from the Pacific Ocean.

The gun felt heavy in his hands, and he stared down at it, his mind blanking, unable to remember why he’d brought it out with him. Mac watched as his right thumb eased off the safety and his index finger moved to the trigger.

His brow furrowed, wondering where the enemy was. His gun was ready for an enemy.

“The last enemy is death,” he whispered, without any idea where the words had come from.

The muzzle of the scattergun was huge, seeming to suck him down into it. “No more pain,” he said. The door of the vehicle opened behind him, but Henderson McGill was locked too deep into his own bleak sadness to be aware of it. “Hi, Dad.”

“What?” He responded from somewhere far away, louder than he’d intended, making his youngest child, Sukie, jump and nearly slip off the top step. She was wearing a blue dressing gown, her eyes still heavy with sleep.

“What’re you doing, Dad?” she asked, vaguely curious at the sight of her father cradling the glittering weapon in his lap, the stock between his knees, the end of the barrel pointing toward his face. His finger was white on the trigger.

“Doing, honey?” He felt like a man trapped on the sticky border between waking and darkness.

“That’s real dangerous, Dad.” She moved to stand on the same step where he was sitting and touched the Brazzi. “Never point a gun unless you’re going to use it.”

Mac nodded, eyes misting with tears. Suddenly he was aware of the lonely road that he’d been about to walk, shocked at the realization that if his little girl had woken a couple of minutes later she’d have walked out to find herself covered in blood and brains and splintered bones.

“That’s true, honey. Wasn’t thinking straight.”

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