Aftermath (2/4)

It was Ron. Lying in a pool of blood, the gamekeeper had regained consciousness, though only barely. Chuck, overjoyed but also ashamed of his misjudgment, ran towards the wounded man. He examined the wound. Blood was seeping from it alarmingly fast. Ron kept his hand on the wound, trying to stem the flow, but with little conviction.

Chuck removed his jacket and applied it as a makeshift bandage, carefully turning Ron's limp arm. The sight of the gaping, purple hole filled the trucker with dread.

"It's bad," Chuck announced gravely. "We need to get you to a doctor, fast. It's a miracle you're still here."

Ron laughed uneasily, his gaze drawn towards the policeman who lay dead some distance away, his arm outstretched.

"And a miracle that his bullet saved your life," he remarked, disbelief in his voice. "I saw it, Chuck. You were lucky."

"Yeah…" Chuck replied, his face ashen.

Had things gone just slightly differently Chuck would have been among the pack of corpses, drenching the ground with his blood. His head would have exploded like a watermelon. But the unexpected shot from the cop had made it otherwise... yet his savior had not lived to tell the tale. The two men stared at the policeman's body for a moment, helpless.

"Come on, old man, I'm going to help you! We'll get you out of here and take you to the hospital..."

The grocer's wife watched them without saying a word, as if waiting for them to leave. Julia noticed her empty gaze, how it focused on nothing, as if nothing existed around her. She still held Chery's weapon limply in her hand. But for what purpose, Julia wondered.

This question began to worry her. She too was eager to finish it, to leave this cursed grocery store. Yet this place would forever be etched in her memory, the place she had lost her husband...

Chuck could see Ron was slipping at the edge of consciousness. He groaned as Chuck moved him.

"A hospital..." murmured the injured man. "I hope I'll have a comfortable room with a view and a charming nurse by my side..."

"You mean you don't like your current nurse?" Chuck joked as he lifted him up.

Ron laughed, but it only lasted for a moment: his face contorted in pain as his laugh became a growl.

"Don't worry," said Chuck. "We'll get you out of here, we'll find you some help…"

Julia opened the door for Chuck to leave with Ron on his back. Before closing it, she took one last look at Bryan. It would be the last time she would see him. This realization made her stagger. Suddenly, the full horror of the situation struck her.

She saw the awful scene: the old cowboy riddled with bullets, Jack and Chery clinging to each other, the dead policeman, the grocer slumped behind the counter, Billy's shattered head... And Bryan, her husband, whose body lay on the ground, abandoned.

The two oil lamps burned. In the dim light, the grocer's wife, lethargic, looked at Julia with immeasurable sadness. The young woman responded with a brief nod and closed the door.

Chuck headed for Jack's pickup truck. Ron, stunned by the spectacle outside, by that distant mushroom cloud disintegrating in the air, gasped in amazement.

"Holy shit... What is that?"

"We'll talk about it later," Chuck said.

He placed Ron in the front passenger seat. The gamekeeper winced in pain. Julia looked out at the horizon. She had noticed the intense light from inside the building, but from this position, everything was different: she was frozen, staring at the mass of black smoke rising slowly towards the sky.

She thought of the mushrooms she had seen as a child, like the ones she had seen in the forest near her parents' cabin. Every morning a little larger than the day before. Strangely, this sudden memory of her childhood made her feel tender and warm.

"Oh my god..." she exclaimed.

Eva was in awe of the phenomenon, but remained silent.

"Get in the back, quick!" Chuck shouted.

Julia and Eva snapped out of their daze and rushed to the vehicle and clambered in. Chuck started the engine. The pickup started easily.

Julia looked at him in amazement.

"It's like the old tanker truck," Chuck realised. "An old model… that's reassuring."

Ron groaned. He held the jacket tight over the wound in his belly.

"Like the Peterbilt?" he mumbled.

"Yeah," Chuck confirmed. "Do you know of a nearby hospital?"

"There isn't one around here...we need to go to Lamson, 50 miles from here." The pain stopped talking for a moment. "Take Route 38 south, it should be marked..."

"That's where we're headed! You'll be okay?" Chuck asked, maneuvering the vehicle.

"I hope so…" the injured man muttered.

As Chuck shifted gears, he noticed a small sign hanging from the rearview mirror. A kind of iron plate with a mysterious quote. It read: "Jack the Threat: those who cross me meet their death."

Chuck sneered.

He took out his coffee thermos, the smell of whiskey clinging to it. He stared at it for a few seconds, bewildered, under Julia's perplexed gaze. Then Chuck rolled down the window and threw the container out. He breathed out heavily and hit the accelerator. As they returned to the main road, Julia turned in her seat and looked back. She saw the grocery store slowly fading away in the dark.

A flash illuminated the inside of the store for half a second. A final gunshot…

They had been driving for about five minutes on the dark and deserted road, the headlights struggling to light the way ahead. Ron awkwardly held his stomach, releasing his pain through long, unsettling groans that punctuated the silence. Only the sound of the engine accompanied this terrible litany.

Julia and Eva couldn't help but stare at the luminous mushroom cloud, still relaxing and expanding slowly into the atmosphere. An incandescent giant, rising to touch the clouds.

Julia watched the sky in silence, lost in thought. My Bryan is dead, he'll never come back... Her melancholy resurfaced. She had abandoned her husband's body in that pitiful grocery store.