As if the Earth heard her warning and decided time was up, a foreign, ominous wind began to stir a dustbowl outside the town. The stir of wind and dirt spun up, higher and higher, begging up from the ground and funneling toward the sky in the vacant plot just outside the town. The scattered forest from which she'd come was away from this vacant land, off to the far right distance from the inlet. To the left horizon appeared the entrance of a vast, open flatland, long and suffering under the heat of the sun. But in the vacant plot just outside the town, for all to see, a windstorm was taking shape.
"I can't-" Henri choked, grief-stricken.
A tear formed in the edge of her eye.
"You ASSHOLE!" she finally screamed out, but this was different than her early heeding. Aside from the added infliction of anger - a passionate cross between outright frustration and pain in her voice - her words this time seemed to be directed at the sky, at the gathering clouds, at the darkening blue. This was neither warning nor threat to the town's people but an outright condemnation of God, it seemed.
Anson was behind her. He had come out with his gear, a knapsack and a long, stained guitar case that weighed heavily on his shoulder. She turned behind her to glance at the guitar case and then back at the growing wall of dust forming just outside the town.
"There's...there's nothing we can do."
Anson's voice had the same choke of angst as Henri's.
"What about the horses?" she asked, then turned quickly, pushing Anson out of the way for a good look at the front to the saloon. She pointed, her finger remaining in the air an extra second while her body had already began a sprint to the horses tied at the sheriff's post.
"I'm not riding into that-" Anson began but Henri cut him off.
"Neither am I. We're going through the saloon."
She untied the reins to free a brown quarter horse, which reluctantly turned its' head in Henri's direction. She pulled; it refused a step in any direction. There were other horses, several growing panicked from the growing dark of the sky and the loud swish of the gathering storm.
"Law of Unintended Consequence, sweetie. You're wasting your time?" Anson hollered to be heard over the air as it filled with the sound of rushing wind. She could hear him but, when she called back with an unapologetically graphic act for the man to commit with himself, her words were torn into 1,000 bits of noise and tossed and strewn in every direction.
Anson didn't hear her but could assume the words based on her expression.
Clouds had formed and the sun was gone from sight. The sky had gone blue to grey, and now the grey was worsening, rotting to a rancid black. The single cloud had spread out to a dark blanket, shaking as if filled with anger. That familiar shiver ran down Henri's back, the chill of approaching death. Anson had already retreated back into the saloon, running at full speed. Henri screamed at the quarter horse, then the other horses. As she backed away from the futility, the frustration, she continued screaming obscenities: she screamed at the sky, her face upward and her mouth clearly defined in the curses she spat; then, lower, to the people in the windows, not of curses but with unheard pleading, with promises that fell to naught. The people watched from their windows and Henri, as she finally succumbed to retreat by foot, stopped just shy of the entrance to the saloon. In an upstairs window of Cooper's Saloon, two over from Anson's earlier firing position, there stood a young boy watching helplessly. Tears streaked his face, and even through the darkness and the wind and the glass, she saw a boy in pain.
There were but a few short seconds between Henri's notice of the boy and her mad, rabid dash through the front slats and up the stairs to the locked door where the boy hid only a few feet behind. She kicked the handle twice and it popped off, the lock undone and the door swinging open.
From out of the room burst a child as if expelled from a fiery womb. The top of his matted brown hair stood two feet lower than her chin. His arms flailed wildly, attacking her, trying to hurt her, maim her, kill her, his furious grunts and whispers incomprehensible.
He was no older than nine.
The attack came as a surprise and, after a good swipe by the kid to her cheekbone, she let his second attempt miss, his fist passing her face by the length of a nose, and Henri's reflexes kicked in. Her fist connected with his jaw in a close jab, as the boy was nearly up against her. His body tilted back and she tried to steady him but he was already unconscious. She picked the boy up, expecting gravitas but finding the child to be emaciated, light.
With the boy in her arms, she returned to the first floor.
Before exiting behind the bar, Henri's eyes turned toward the window a moment to find the opposite end of town disintegrating against the enraged storm that had, only moments before, been preparing itself on the outskirts like a bull winding its feet before the charge. Now, the storm was nearly full in its force and only gaining momentum with each passing moment. People had finally emerged from their hiding places, scurrying every which way in every which form?old men and young women and even children hung clutched to the chests of the parents that were to protect them, but there was no protection against this force. Debris was raining and swinging in hunks and jagged blocks, each with enough weight to crush a dozen men and enough force to knock through walls.
It was a massive tornado, and she would get her revenge.
As she ran against the weight of the child in her arms, behind the bar and through the only door leading to the back, a piece of sturdy timber the length and size of two full-grown adults blew in through the upstairs walls and straight through the bedrooms as if they were built of saltines. Henri and the boy were through the door behind the bar but it didn't lead outside, it led to a short corridor with two dark rooms on either side, left and right, while at the end there was an exit, one in the form of a hanging screen door knocked nearly off its hinges by someone in a rush. In the distance, through the screen and in the gap of its sideways slant, Anson could be seen running toward the tree line some thirty paces ahead, running the same path from which Henri had just come - toward Coulson and Nashua.
Goddamn I wish I didn't need him?
More timber crashed in and down, through the front face of Cooper's Saloon, through the bedrooms, tearing out the other side of the upstairs wall as though it were as thin as paper, then driving downward into the center of the bar. There was a thunderous explosion of wood and glass as the timber landed and continued unimpeded, obliterating everything - tables, chairs, foundation beams, the bottom half of the stairs next to the bar, and the entire bar - rolling through the room as if it were twigs against an impetuous oak. The beam thrust back up after its first landing, bouncing into the air and down, into the air and down, into the air and down, a square tire of annihilation.
Henri had nearly crossed the short corridor and its dark rooms as the ceiling began to fall and cave, and she reached the screen as the timber hit, bounced, hit, and chased rampantly after her, tearing into the corridor.
At the screen door she dove with fierce determination, using the added strain of the child as an anchor, and together they fell face first into a patch of yellowing weeds, under the darkness sky, her face down and her body over the child, hugging him, praying for safety, praying?
Let me save just one. Please! Or you take us both.
Utter darkness as her face kept down and braced for the crushing impact while a deafening crunch sound followed her out, hounding her as the building began to crumple and collapse from an infrastructure that was all but decimated. It's going to fall and it's going to fall back and it's going to crush us just let it be quick-GET UP! Stop pitying yourself; you work for your vengeance! Earn it! She lifted her head growling, a feral creature with undying nerve. The back half of Cooper's Saloon did fall, but it fell into itself, slowing the rolling timber to a stop mid-way through the second pair of parallel doors in the corridor.
And then the run began again, though a bit slower as her ankle had taken a nasty turn in the dive through the screen door. She could stil
l move, and quickly, but the dull ache had only begun and she knew the exquisite pain that would follow once the adrenaline subsided. The town was a hurtling mess behind her as she retraced the same boot tracks that had led her there, only in reverse. The town's fa?ade - the exterior facing the forest on one side, the open flatland on the other, and the dead-end back to the saloon and neighboring store - had faired against the weather for some time but now found itself floundering, imploding, bits taken from the whole and jostled, then tossed back at something else or lifted right up into the sky. The front inlet had vanished in the shield of dust.
IV
The boy woke - groggy, dehydrated, and just as near death as he had been mere minutes earlier, when he had been locked in the saloon bedroom screaming blood at the window for the life of his father while his father, the man he loved, the only man he had in his life, was gunned down in the street by a woman and a mysterious shooter two rooms over. His eyes flittered. His first thought was death, that the convulsions and the weightlessness of his body was his ascension to the heavens, hallelujah; as his eyes focused, the image he took in didn't convince him otherwise. His father's shop was being chopped into a thousand sharp pieces. There was a tunnel leading into the sky, one whose start on Earth was tiny (A horse could fit in there, he thought with childish naivet?) but whose end seemed to span the height of the sky, past the clouds whose swirling summit was the length and width of his town three times over, at least.
The final remnants of the town, the saloon and back-end stores were engulfed completely by the time the boy had wiped blood from his eyes. There was a gash on his eyebrow (from landing face-first on the hard ground) but he didn't acknowledge that it hadn't been there before; it didn't yet sting, though his jaw had an excruciating throbbing at the hinge near his left ear, one his mind chose not to focus on just yet. Nope, there was no pain because the boy was busy carefully observing the whirlwind of God, witnessing God as he reached down to take his father up to heaven.
"No?" he half-mumbled, beginning a whine that turned to a whimper and finally a desperate cry, "?no?lemme?lemme go?I have-I have to go back?" and he began to move his limbs individually, only now realizing he wasn't weightless, he wasn't convulsing or dead, he was being carried, carried by a woman. Her hair tickled his face as he arched his back to look at her face. Terror filled him as he recognized the face of the woman that had murdered his father in cold blood only moments before. The boy began an awful struggle in her arms. She held him tight against her, refusing to relax her hold even slightly; but, with thrashing and a bite to her bicep, the boy landed hard on the ground. She bent over him, first to pick him back up but mainly to keep him from running back to the tornado.
"Get off-my daddy's gone to heaven. GEE'OFF! He's gon' leave me!" the boy screamed, crying.
She couldn't get a solid hold of him.
The mile-high whirlwind had finished with the town and, like an insatiable giant, continued its roaming. Remains from the town - signs, doors, tubs, clothes - hurtled up and out, projectiles shot far and wide. The boy struggled harder against the woman's outstretched arms until her fist clenched and her arm dipped back?
And then a flash of light like a star.
V
When the boy woke, the woman that had carried him from town - murderer of his father, one and the same - had her shirt off. There was an odd brassier around her chest, one that hugged and accentuated her breasts, bringing them together. His eyes, upon this discovery, did no further wander, his dry mouth hanging open, his eyes glossy - could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, the boy was unsure. The woman hadn't noticed yet. She had a shred of white clothe in her left hand, wetting the tip in water that simmered in a small pot over a small fire. She dabbed the steaming clothe to a flesh wound on her arm. It was a bite mark from the boy.
"Don't get no ideas," a male voice informed the young boy.
The boy would have jumped out of his skin if it weren't for the fact that his arms were tied to a tree behind him. This he realized in tandem with the several pains burning in his body: there was a nagging ache in his jaw, a pounding in the back of his head, and an awful stinging above his eye. As he grew frantic against the ropes binding him, his breathing swallowed to gasps.
The woman turned to him, an initial look of interest.
The boy's face flushed beat red, then purple; his gasps became short, shallow puffs that sounded like choking.
"Jesus, cut him loose," she ordered the man sitting nearby.
They both crowded the boy as his eyes rolled into the back of his now blue face.
"He's got asthma or something," the man said with equal parts certainty and horror.
Once the ropes were off, the woman pushed the boy forward from the tree and got down behind him, curling her legs around him. She lifted his shirt with one hand (his back was covered in long, semi-healed lacerations) while she removed her brassier with the other hand, gently hugging him against her so that the skin of his back was against the skin of her front.
"Breathe with me?breathe with me?breathe?breathe?"
The woman's voice was soft; it was gentle, caring. The man seemed taken aback more from the gentleness of her tone than the emergence of her bare breasts. She continued saying the same thing, combinations of "breathe" and "breath" and "air" and "feel" until the boy's choking sound stopped and a tiny bit of blue drained from his face. "Feel my skin?feel my heartbeat?feel my heartbeat?breathe?" She caressed his hair with one hand, the other placed under his shirt and over his heart.
The boy slowed, calmed, and drifted off to sleep as Henri sang in dulcet, mournful tones:
I can promise you
You'll stay as beautiful
With dark hair
And soft skin...forever
Forever
Make up your mind
Make up your mind
And I'll promise you
I will treat you well
My sweet angel
So help me, Jesus
VI
"I have?just so many questions-"
"Just ask already."
"?so why'd you take off your shirt? With the boy. Just felt like a moment to be free or?"
"The touch of skin-on-skin contact is soothing to children. The physiological effect was to-"
"I've never seen you care for someone like that. So?maternal. So caring?and the song! When'd you start singing?"
"?fuck off?"
?
"You lose your?" he nodded to the guitar case against a nearby tree.
"Destroyed."
"Uh huh." Anson was disappointed, as he had put a lot of work into the contents of her guitar case. "And what happened in Saintstown that got everyone killed there?"
"I acted when I shouldn't have."
?
"Any more to the story?"
"No."
"Got it."
"It's?" Henri sighed, a look at the kid, "?it's impossible not to act sometimes."
?
"I don't make it this time."
"Sharpe?don't start with that again. I can't-I just can't. Please."
Anson Sharpe was careful around Henri because, unlike most people (usually men but women as well), Henri Ville had a tendency to surprise him. She was often times capable of cold-blooded precision, and she was gifted with the uncanny ability to perform an instant and calculated triage on any situation to survive - after so many years of being cornered, there was nary a situation she couldn't escape. If it weren't for his specific skill set and his specialties (of which there were many), Henri would have long ago left him and/or shot him point blank, especially if he stood in her way. As it was, she had left him once before. He was glad to be rid of her for a while, long enough for him to avoid the wrath of the winds and enjoy his accumulated wealth?though, with free time and all the booze his liver could withstand, he still somehow found his time spent thinking of her. And now, with this boy, watching her act gently, motherly, actually sharing a genuinely tender moment with her
?well, she had once again surprised him.
Henri laid the boy on a blanket Anson spread out. The ground was softer in this particular area of the forest, the grass thick, vibrant green, and flourishing beneath the branches. The boy curled into the fetal position and tucked his hands between his knees. She watched him an extra moment, her eyes scanning him with the same focus they had had when she scanned Anson for his sobriety.
He'll live, she decided firmly enough to move on.
There was an awkward cough and peculiar expression as Anson looked at the grass, then at the fire, at the boy, back to the fire, and again down to the grass.
Henri was standing bare-chested.
"You can look, asshole - I know you want to. They're just breasts. And it's not like you haven't seen 'em before."
Anson welcomed the sight of Henri's naked body, soaking in as much detail as possible, but winced at the extensive damage. Crouching by the fire beside the boiling water, Henri resumed dipping the white cloth that was once her undershirt into the hot water. She dabbed her many wounds: an older gash that ran down her neck to her shoulder, the child's bite marks, and a dozen other scrapes and cuts. Her body looked as though it had been beaten, as well. There was a large bruise that followed the curve of her ribcage and, as she turned, Anson saw several purple splotches on her back. He had seen her naked before, seen every inch of her bare body many times, but it had never looked so trampled. The worse he had seen was this one time where she fell ill while fighting a life-threatening infection. He had tried to nurse her back to health but, like everything else to Henri, it was a battle she wanted to face alone.
"I'm going to need antiseptic. He bit deep," she said, checking the wound on her arm in the light of the fire.
Dusk had arrived in the time between the boy's fit and his move to the blanket but the dark wrap of nightfall was still forty-five minutes out.
"Stitches?" Anson asked.
Henri squeezed the wound, turning it to her face.
"No but I'm sure that kid's mouth is worse than a garbage pile."