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  Norma crouched and peered around the corner of the house toward the direction of the voices. The men were facing her, but none appeared to notice her. Their attention was focused on one another.

  There were three men and four horses. The men were standing near the horses. All of them were armed. They wore jeans and boots. One had on a barn jacket that looked too big for him. Another had a long-sleeved T-shirt bunched up at the elbows. The third had his button-down untucked, the cuffs rolled at his forearms.

  All of them were unkempt, their faces streaked with grime and dirt. Their weapons were older. The horses were malnourished. None of them were Appaloosas.

  These weren’t Pop Guard. They were poachers.

  Norma hid again, her back to the front exterior wall of the house. She puffed her cheeks and exhaled. They’d dealt with poachers before. It never ended well. As relieved as she was the Pop Guard hadn’t returned, this was a mixed bag.

  Sometimes poachers were nothing more than good people who’d become desperate. Other times they were bad people taking advantage of the region’s relative lawlessness. Both could be equally as dangerous, equally as unpredictable.

  Norma had no way of knowing with whom she was dealing. She couldn’t take the chance of confronting them, but couldn’t let them steal. She gnashed her teeth and cursed under her breath, tightening her grip on the shotgun.

  She leaned over to take another peek at the men when a loud pop startled her. She nearly lost her balance, but recovered as a second and third pop, in quick succession, cracked the relative silence.

  It took her a moment to realize the pops were gunshots. And they were coming from inside the house.

  Her stomach churned. A knot swelled in her throat. She stood and ran toward the front door. With one hand she flung open the door and bolted into the house. Behind her the screen frame snapped against the house.

  She stumbled as she rounded the corner to climb the stairs. Her heart raced. Blood pumped in her ears, at her temples. Waves of nausea coursed through her body as she stomped up the steps two at a time. Breathlessly, she gripped the shotgun with both hands. At the landing on the second floor, she pumped the weapon and leveled it.

  Marching fast, her eyes wide, a sudden rain of sweat rolling down her face, she kicked open her bedroom door and put her finger on the trigger. Ready to apply pressure, she scanned the room. A man was facedown on the floor next to the bed. Blood pooled around him.

  Norma gasped until her eyes met Rudy’s. He held the handgun Norma kept in the bedside table. It rattled in his hand, still aimed at the dead man on the floor.

  Norma lowered the weapon and rushed to her husband. “What happened?”

  He shook his head and swallowed. The gun waved in his hand. “Are there others?”

  Norma was still trying to process the scene in front of her. Adrenaline surged through her, her lungs and legs burning from the sudden exertion into the house and up the stairs. The stress of the approach had her confused now. She stepped next to the dead man. His head was turned to the side, one eye staring blankly underneath the bed as if searching for a missing sock.

  “What?” she asked, unsure of the question. She hadn’t really heard him.

  “Are there others?” Rudy said; then his eyes jerked past Norma to the door. He lifted the weapon.

  Norma swung around. The sounds of feet pounding up the stairs answered the question. She silently moved across the room toward the closet. From that position, whoever entered the room couldn’t see her until he stepped farther into the space.

  She lifted the shotgun to her shoulder. Finger on the trigger, she nodded at Rudy and then focused on the door. Her husband had the pistol leveled already. He held it with two hands, trying to steady it. She was his only protection. He was a sitting duck.

  Norma exhaled, trying to calm herself as she recognized the sound of steps in the hallway outside the room. They slowed now. There was whispering. Norma sensed hesitation. Her trigger finger was flush against the curve, ready to push. She took a step closer to the door and set her feet shoulder width apart.

  The door pushed wider, creaking on its ungreased hinges. “Marlon?”

  Rudy took his first shot. The man who’d spoken stumbled forward, and Norma fired. A wide blast of shot pounded the target to the floor.

  Norma took another step forward and pumped the shotgun again. The profile of a man moved into her view and she took aim. She and Rudy fired simultaneously. The poacher must have fired too. The bedroom erupted in a hail of gunfire. The smell of gunpowder and the drift of smoke filled the room.

  It felt as if it went on for an hour, but it was seconds. Then it was over.

  Three men lay dead on the floor of their bedroom. The fourth was hurt but alive. Norma heard him grunting his way back down the stairs. She locked eyes with Rudy through the haze.

  “You okay?”

  Rudy nodded. There were three bullet holes drilled into the headboard. He was unscathed. “You?”

  She nodded and then jerked her head toward the hallway. “I got this.”

  Norma stepped over two bodies and the spreading pools of blood to maneuver her way into the hallway, and stopped at the top of the stairs. The injured man was halfway down the staircase, bloody hands on the balustrade to keep him upright. He was unarmed. His balance was uneasy, his breath rasping between grunts.

  Norma racked the gun and leveled the weapon at him.

  He halfway turned and raised one of his hands. “Please! I don’t—”

  The shotgun blast ended his sentence for him. He tumbled backward, headfirst, down the remainder of the stairs, his body crumpling awkwardly at the landing on the first floor. His expression was fixed in a contortion of pain and fear. The jagged edges of a broken bone punctured his forearm beneath the folds of his untucked button-down shirt.

  Norma stared at him, the shotgun still aimed downward, smoke drifting and dissipating in the air in front of her. The adrenaline ebbed and her stomach tightened. Her ears rang from the blast. Tears welled in her eyes.

  She lowered the weapon and walked back to her bedroom, avoiding the pair of bodies at the entrance, and moved to the bed. Rudy was sitting up, the gun on his lap.

  Sinking onto the edge of the bed, she tossed the shotgun onto the other side of it and put her hand on her husband’s leg. Her vision blurred from welling tears and she clenched her jaw to keep from sobbing.

  Rudy grunted and pushed himself forward, leaning toward her. He spoke softly, reassuringly. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

  Norma turned to him, her eyes searching his. She shook her head. A realization washed over her. “It’s not okay,” she said, her voice thick and nasal from the tears. “I shot a man in cold blood. He wasn’t armed. He was leaving, trying to get away. I looked him in the eyes, ignored his cry for mercy, and shot him.”

  Rudy put his hand on hers. “You did what you had to do.”

  The words stuck in her throat. She swallowed and forced them from her lips. “I did what Marcus would have done,” she said. “I did exactly what he would have done, what he’s done countless times.”

  “And we’re alive because of it,” said Rudy.

  He kept talking, uttering reassurances and soothing sentiments intended to make her feel better, to justify what she’d done. Norma didn’t hear him. Her mind drifted to all of the times she’d judged Marcus for his actions, for his brutality and his wanton disregard for the sanctity of life.

  But there, in that moment when she’d had a choice, when she was the one tasked with protecting her home, her belongings, her husband, herself, she’d opted for the one with the absolute solution.

  Had she been too hard on Marcus? Had she failed to see what it was of himself he’d sacrificed for the benefit of those around him? She’d judged him so harshly. Norma sniffed back her tears and used the back of her hand to wipe her cheeks dry. When Rudy was finished consoling her, she thanked him. Then she steeled herself and locked eyes with him. She’d made a decision.r />
  “We can’t stay here,” she said. “We need to leave.”

  CHAPTER 7

  APRIL 20, 2054, 8:30 PM

  SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS

  PURTIS CREEK STATE PARK, TEXAS

  Lou doubled over in pain. Through clenched teeth and between hissing breaths, she confirmed what everyone else suspected.

  “This is it,” she said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Eight minutes,” said Dallas. “Eight minutes apart.”

  “We’ve got time, then,” said Marcus.

  Lou shot him a glare that, even in the darkness, drilled a hole through him. She leaned against a tree, her fingers tearing at the thin bark. Sweat gleamed in the dim bars of moonlight that shone through the thin canopy of branches and dying foliage.

  They’d stopped and dismounted eight minutes earlier, after Lou had almost lost her balance atop her horse. Dallas insisted they stop at the edge of the park. Lou argued at first, and they’d traveled another half mile before she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “I don’t think we have time,” said Dallas. He was next to his wife, his hand on her belly. “We’re going to do this here.”

  Marcus scanned the woods surrounding them. There was no hint of anyone, not even their next conductor, who was supposed to meet them in a half hour in a parking lot somewhere along the western edge of a dried lake bed.

  The woods were eerie in the muted white moonlight. In the relative dark it resembled a forest in the aftermath of a fire. The trunks were barren. They stretched like arms, reaching for the sky, their brittle fingers spread wide and grasping for something ethereal. This was as good a place as any. They were south and west of the meeting place, having left the road miles back. Marcus closed his eyes and listened to his surroundings. Other than Lou’s intense respiration, there was nothing: no breeze, no chirping insects, no croaking reptiles.

  “What can I do?” Marcus asked.

  Dallas had a hand on Lou’s elbow and was lowering her to the ground, inching her down the trunk of the tree. “Get me a saddle blanket,” he said.

  David was standing off to one side, his hands balled into fists and covering the lower half of his face. “Is Momma okay?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Marcus took a step toward the boy, his boots crunching on dead leaves and needles. He held out an arm to David. “Come here,” he said. “Help me get the blanket.”

  David checked with his father. Dallas nodded and smiled weakly at Marcus. The shadow across his face hid some of Dallas’s concern, but not all of it.

  David walked to Marcus, and the two of them walked the short distance to the horses corralled at a cluster of trees twenty yards away.

  Andrea was still on her horse. Javier was leaning against her in the saddle, asleep and snoring loudly for a child his size.

  Marcus moved past her to his horse. He put his hands on the horse and bent down to unlatch the saddle. It would take him a minute to untack the horse so he could reach the heavy wool blanket on the horse’s back.

  He was nearly finished with the task when Andrea cursed under her breath. Then she cursed again in Spanish. The saddle in his hands, Marcus eyed her. She was staring at him, a pained expression on her face.

  “What?” Marcus asked.

  “You’re not going to believe this…”

  “Try me.”

  “My water broke.”

  Marcus didn’t follow at first. He was preoccupied with Lou, and he wasn’t thinking about the fact that their newest companion was also pregnant. “You need another canteen?” he asked. “I’ve got another—”

  “No,” she said, exasperation seeping into her voice. “My. Water. Broke. I’m in labor.”

  Marcus cursed in Spanish. He didn’t even know the word was in his vocabulary. It surprised him as the word escaped his lips. It seemed to surprise Andrea too. Her eyes widened.

  She started speaking in Spanish to him. The words were cascading from her, too fast for Marcus to understand. He might not even have understood her had she been speaking English, her cadence was so rushed.

  Marcus dropped the saddle at his feet and held up his hands to stop her. Then he grabbed the blanket from his Appaloosa and handed it to David. “Take this to your dad,” he said. “Your mom will need it. Then tell your dad I’m going to be busy for a moment, but if he needs anything, you’re the one to come tell me. Okay?”

  David clutched the blanket against his chest and nodded earnestly. The boy spun and ran back the short distance to his parents. Lou’s breathing had subsided. Marcus couldn’t hear it anymore. The contraction had passed.

  He turned his attention to Andrea. He approached her horse as her boy stirred. Javier sat up straight, his eyes still closed, yawned, and stretched.

  “Need help getting down?” asked Marcus. “I can set you up like we’ve got Lou over there. Try to make you as comfortable as possible.”

  She answered him in Spanish.

  Marcus waved his hands. “No hablo Español,” he said. “Only a few words.”

  She frowned. “Oh, okay. So you just cuss in Spanish?”

  Marcus reached up to take Javier, and she helped guide the boy to him. He shifted his weight and gripped the sleepy kid under his arms. Javier was surprisingly dense. Marcus grunted and stepped back from the horse to lower the boy to the ground.

  “I don’t know where that came from,” he said to her. “Didn’t mean to offend.”

  “None taken,” she said and held out her hand for him to help her.

  Javier knuckled his eyes and yawned again. He wobbled in place but kept his balance. “Where are we, Mama?”

  “In a safe place, mijo. We’re okay,” she said, and her hand slid into Marcus’s.

  Andrea gripped his hand tightly and he helped her to the ground. The moment she planted both feet on the thin layer of dead leaves, she let out something between a wheeze and a groan. Letting go of Marcus, she drew her hands to the underside of her belly. Her knees bent as if she was ready to squat.

  Marcus put an arm around her to steady her. She grabbed for his shirt, taking a fistful of fabric into her hand. Shafts of moonlight cut across her face as she bent over, weathering the contraction.

  Behind him, Marcus heard a suppressed wail and a guttural moan. Had it been eight minutes already?

  “Let’s get you comfortable,” Marcus said, trying to focus on Andrea. He lowered her to the ground next to an adjacent tree. Then he waved to Javier. The boy ambled toward him, still hampered by grogginess.

  “I need you to hold your momma’s hand,” he said. “You’re about to be a big brother, and we need you to be a big boy. Okay?”

  Javier glanced at him warily, but checked with his mother. She tried smiling at him through her clenched jaw. She reassured him, sounding like someone counting in the middle of a bench press.

  “It’s okay, mijo. I’m okay. He’s right. You’re going to be un hermano. Sí?”

  Javier took his mother’s outstretched hand. She squeezed it.

  Marcus went to the nearest horse and fumbled with the saddle buckle. His hands were trembling as he worked the strap free. He told himself to calm down. “Of all the things to freak out about,” he muttered. “Childbirth? It’s not even your kid, Marcus. Get it together.”

  He pulled off the saddle and tossed it aside. Then he yanked the wool blanket from the horse and swept it like a cape to open it. It billowed and he laid it on the ground next to Andrea and Javier. “See if you can get onto this. It’ll help.”

  Andrea lifted her hips from the ground and slid onto the blanket. Javier helped her as much as he could and then sat on his heels next to her.

  Andrea was breathing through pursed lips. She glanced up at Marcus, a thin line of light washed across her face. “It passed. Can you count for me? Let me know how long until the next one?”

  “Sure,” said Marcus. He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, planted his hands on his hips, then slid them into his pockets before crossing his arms again. “Wh
at else do you need? Water?”

  Lou groaned loudly behind him, cursing Dallas.

  “I’m okay,” Andrea said. “Just count.”

  Marcus was counting roughly in his head. He was at twenty. He took a couple of steps toward Lou and called out to Dallas, “Was that eight minutes?”

  “Six,” said Dallas. “Give or take.”

  Marcus was at thirty-four or thirty-five. “Six?”

  Lou lifted her head. Light hit her face. A sheen of sweat glistened on her brow and her cheeks. Her olive skin was a shade paler in the moonlight. “Six,” she snarled. “After five. Before—”

  She tossed her head back and spittle sprayed from between her clenched teeth. Dallas held her hand with both of his. He spoke softly to her. Marcus couldn’t hear him above her grunting.

  Marcus counted sixty. One minute. Then seven seconds. Ninety. One hundred twenty.

  Lou’s heavy breathing subsided again. She lifted her head. “Water,” she rasped.

  “Got it,” said Marcus. “David, come here.”

  David jumped up, seemingly happy to leave his mother’s side. He hopped, almost skipped, toward Marcus and the horses. Marcus reached into a pack alongside one of the horses still tacked up and withdrew a large, full canteen. He handed it to David. “Take this to your mom.”

  David did as he was told and Marcus moved to the adjacent horse. As he pulled another canteen from a pack, Lou groaned again. It was so loud he thought it was Andrea. But that couldn’t be. He hadn’t reached three hundred yet.

  The counting stopped when he turned around, the canteen in hand. It was Andrea. She was leaning on her elbows, a pained expression on her face. Then, as if on cue, Lou moaned again.

  Stunned, Marcus limped to Andrea and lowered himself to one knee. He uncapped the canteen and offered her some water. She shook her head and squeezed her eyes closed. Tears, sweat, or both rolled down her cheeks.

  He looked across her to Javier. The boy appeared as lost as Marcus felt.

  His mind drifted again, only for a moment, to Wesson’s birth. It was easy. At least that was what the doctors and nurses had told him. Sylvia was a pro. The labor lasted six hours. The birth itself was textbook.