Chapter 8: Neon Stitches
The Yukon’s headlights cut a shaky path through the descending twilight. The mountains had reluctantly given way to rolling, snow-blanketed foothills, the road a long, gray scar between fields of white. Julian stared out the window, seeing nothing. His mind kept playing the diner scene on a loop—the shotgun’s roar, the wet sound of the knife, the kid’s whimper. The smell of that stew seemed to have permeated his clothes, his hair.
Every bump sent a dull, sickening throb through his knee, a grounding counterpoint to the floaty detachment in his head.
“We need to stop,” Alistair said, his voice flat. It wasn’t a suggestion. He’d been driving one-handed, his right arm resting stiffly in his lap. The sleeve of his tactical jacket was dark and stiff with dried blood, a rust-brown stain that had spread from the gash.
“No argument here,” Julian mumbled, his own voice strange to his ears.
Ten minutes later, the sign appeared in the gloom. Flickering, half-dead neon tubes spelled out The Starlight Lodge, with a stylized crescent moon missing a chunk. Behind it, a two-story motel stretched in a faded pink ‘L’ shape around a central courtyard. The pool was a black rectangle, half-full of leaf-choked water, a skeletal palm tree lying across it like a fallen giant. Every window was either boarded or dark.
“Charming,” Julian said, the automatic cynicism a worn reflex.
Alistair didn’t answer. He slowed, killed the headlights, and idled at the entrance for a full minute, watching.No movement. No light but the feeble sputter of the sign. He drove around back, parking the Yukon beside a dumpster overflowing with mildewed mattresses.
“Second floor,” Alistair decided, nodding toward a set of concrete stairs at the end of the building. “Fewer access points.”
Getting out was a fresh exercise in agony. Julian used the door frame and the trekking pole to lever himself upright. The cold air was a shock, sharp and clean compared to the metallic blood-smell in the truck. He hobbled after Alistair, who moved with a grim, efficient grace, pistol drawn, despite the useless arm.
The stairs were a nightmare. Julian took them one at a time, dragging his leg, biting down so hard his jaw ached. Alistair waited at the top, scanning the deserted walkway. The doors were a uniform, sun-bleached green, many with numbers missing. Room 214 had a cracked pane of glass in its door, boarded from the inside.
“This one,” Alistair said.He tested the knob. Locked. Without a word, he stepped back, raised his boot, and kicked hard just below the handle. The wood around the lock splintered with a dry snap. A second kick sent the door swinging inward, revealing a cube of profound darkness that smelled of dust and old carpet.
Alistair entered first, a quick sweep left then right. “Clear.”
Julian shuffled in, leaning heavily on the doorframe. Alistair pulled a small tactical flashlight from his belt, its beam cutting a sharp cone through the room. It was a frozen snapshot of decay. Faded floral wallpaper peeling in lank strips. A king-sized bed with a sunken mattress, its once-gold bedspread now a dingy brown. A heavy, dark wood dresser, one drawer hanging open, empty. A velvet-upholstered armchair sprouting stuffing like grey entrails.
But the windows were the main feature. They’d been meticulously boarded over from the inside with thick plywood, nails driven deep into the frames. Someone had fortified this place before leaving… or being taken.
“They did the work for us,” Julian said, limping further inside. The carpet crunched underfoot with ancient grit.
“Check the bathroom,” Alistair ordered, his light darting toward a half-open door. “I’ll secure the entrance.”
Julian pushed the bathroom door open with the tip of his pole. A clawfoot tub, streaked with rust. A cracked pedestal sink. A mirror so clouded with black spots he was just a shadow in it. The small window here was also boarded. He turned on a faucet. A deep groan echoed in the pipes, then nothing.Not a drop.
When he came out, Alistair was single-handedly shoving the heavy dresser across the carpet, grating it into place against the broken door. The effort cost him; his face was pale, a sheen of sweat on his forehead despite the cold.
“Sit down,” Julian said. “Before you pass out and make me drag you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re leaking on the carpet, which, given the state of it, is a genuine improvement. Sit.”
For a moment, Alistair looked like he’d argue. Then a slight tremor went through his arm. He let out a short, sharp breath and lowered himself onto the edge of the sunken mattress, the springs groaning in protest.
Julian rummaged through the pack Alistair had salvaged, finding the hard plastic case of the medical kit. He popped it open on the dresser. Neat rows of supplies winked in the beam of the flashlight, which Alistair had stood upright on the dresser, creating a makeshift lamp.
“Take the jacket off,” Julian instructed, pulling out antiseptic wipes, gauze, and a suture kit.
Alistair shrugged out of the tactical jacket with stiff, pained movements, then used his teeth and his good hand to tear the sleeve of his black thermal shirt from wrist to elbow.The wound was revealed. It was ugly. A deep, four-inch slash along the meat of his forearm, from Riley’s knife. It had stopped bleeding freely, but the edges were ragged and angry, seeping a watery pink. Bruises were already blooming around it, deep purple and black.
“Could be worse,” Julian said, his professional facade clicking into place. He’d had to patch himself up before, after less civilized negotiations in his past life. “Might need stitches. Definitely needs cleaning.”
“Do it,” Alistair said, looking away, his jaw set. He focused on the wall, on a water stain that vaguely resembled a bird.
Julian tore open an antiseptic wipe. The sharp, clinical smell of alcohol cut through the room’s dusty funk. “This is going to sting.”
“Just get it over with.”
Julian pressed the wipe to the wound. Alistair didn’t flinch, but the muscles in his neck corded, and his breathing hitched, just once. Julian worked methodically, clearing away the dried blood and grime. The cut was deep, but clean; the knife had been sharp.
“You saved my ass in there,” Julian said quietly, not looking up, focusing on the task. His hands, for the first time, felt steady.
“You unbalance him with the pole. That was… quick thinking.”
“I was aiming for his balls. The shin was a happy accident.” Julian reached for the suture kit, fiddling with the tiny curved needle. “The kid. The one with the axe.”
“What about him?”
“He helped. At the end.”
Alistair was silent for a beat. “He was dead the moment he hesitated. He just chose the manner of it.”
The coldness of the statement should have chilled him. Instead, Julian felt a surge of frustrated anger. “He was a scared kid.”
“And now he’s a dead kid. Sentiment is a calendar. It tells you what day you’re going to die.” Alistair finally turned his head, his icy blue eyes meeting Julian’s. In the angled light from the flashlight, they looked exhausted, stripped raw. “You think I wanted that? You think I enjoy this?”
“I don’t know what you enjoy, Alistair. I barely know you.”
“You know I’m effective. That’s all that matters now.”
Julian threaded the needle. “Hold still.” He pinched the edges of the wound together. The flesh was warm, firm. He pushed the needle through. Alistair remained a statue, but a fine tremor ran through his arm now. Julian worked swiftly, tying off each stitch with a precise knot. The silence stretched, filled only with their breathing and the soft, slick sound of the sutures being pulled tight.
“Back at the diner,” Julian said, after the fifth stitch.“Before you moved. You were waiting for something.”
“For the dynamic to shift. The leader was solid. The woman was committed. The boy was the fracture point. He broke, so the whole system became unstable. Action before that would have been suicide.”
“You read people.”
“It’s a necessary skill.”
“In boardrooms or butcher shops.”
Alistair’s gaze was unflinching. “They’re the same thing. Different cutlery.”
Julian tied off the last stitch and cut the thread. He taped a clean gauze pad over the wound. “There. Try not to get it infected. Wouldn’t want your impeccable record of being a pain in the ass to be tarnished by something as mundane as sepsis.”
A sound escaped Alistair. It wasn’t quite a laugh, more a sharp exhalation, a release of tension. He looked down at his bandaged arm, then back at Julian. “Your turn.”
“My knee’s just sprained.”
“It’s swollen to twice its size. You can barely walk. That’s not a sprain, it’s a liability.” Alistair reached for the medical kit with his good hand. “Boot off. Now.”
It was an order, but there was no force behind it. Just a blunt, practical demand. Julian, too tired to fight, bent and began the agonizing process of unlacing his designer boot. He had to bite his lip to keep from crying out as he finally pulled it off. His sock was damp with sweat. Rolling up his tailored trouser leg revealed the angry, purple bulge of his knee, the skin stretched taut.
Alistair examined it with a cool, clinical eye, his fingers probing lightly. Julian hissed.
“No major ligament tear, or you wouldn’t be walking at all,” Alistair diagnosed. “Probably a severe strain, possible minor cartilage damage.” He took out a compression bandage—a better one than the last—and a packet of anti-inflammatory pills. He handed Julian a bottle of warm water from the pack. “Take these.”
Julian dry-swallowed the pills. Alistair then began wrapping his knee with a surprising, methodical gentleness. His hands were steady, his focus complete. The contrast with the violence of a few hours ago was jarring.
“Why are you doing this?” Julian asked, the words out before he could stop them.
Alistair didn’t look up from his work. “Doing what?”
“Any of it. Not leaving me behind at the ski house. Patching me up. The diner was a hell of a risk for a ‘liability’.”
The wrapping stopped for a moment. Alistair’s hands rested on Julian’s calf. He finally lifted his head. In the dim light, his arrogant mask was gone. What was left was something harder to define—a stark, unadorned intensity.
“You’re useful,” Alistair said, but the words lacked their usual edge. “You see things I don’t. You talk to people. And back there… you didn’t freeze.” He went back to securing the bandage. “In my experience, most people freeze. Or they run. You moved. It was the wrong move, but you moved.”
“High praise.”
“It’s an observation.” He finished the wrap and sat back. “We have approximately four hundred and seventy miles to go. I can’t drive the whole way with one functioning arm. You can’t walk. We need each other functional. That’s the calculus.”
It was the most honest thing he’d said to him. Not about loyalty, or friendship, but about a mutual, functional need. It was, Julian realized, the only currency left that had any value.
“The calculus,” Julian repeated softly. He leaned back against the dresser, the cool wood against his spine. Exhaustion crashed over him in a thick, heavy wave. The adrenaline was gone, leaving only the deep ache in his leg and a hollowed-out feeling behind his ribs.
Alistair stood, wincing slightly, and retrieved a protein bar from the pack. He tossed it to Julian, then took one for himself. They ate in silence, the sugary, chalky taste a poor substitute for a meal.
Afterwards, Alistair checked the boards on the windows one more time, then killed the flashlight, plunging them into a near-perfect darkness. The only light was a faint, grey seepage around the edges of the plywood. He sat on the floor, his back against the barricaded door, pistol in his lap.
“Get some sleep,” he said, his voice a low murmur in the dark. “I’ll take first watch.”
Julian didn’t argue. He slumped into the musty velvet chair, propping his leg on the overturned wastebasket. The pain in his knee was a low, persistent throb, softened by the pills. He closed his eyes, but the darkness behind his lids was full of flickering images: the blue flame of the camp stove, the gap in Two-Fingers’ teeth, the axe kid’s terrified eyes.
He must have drifted off, because a sound jolted him awake—a sharp, distant crack, like wood breaking. He sat up, heart hammering. The room was pitch black, colder now.
“Alistair?” he whispered.
“I heard it,” came the reply from the door, calm and alert.“North side. Ground floor. Something forced a door.”
A long silence stretched, so complete Julian could hear the blood rushing in his own ears.
Then, a new sound. Not a crack, but a slow, drawn-out scrape. Metal on concrete. Dragging.
It was coming from the courtyard below. And it was getting closer.
The dragging stopped directly beneath their window.
A low voice muttered something unintelligible, followed by the scratch of a match. The faint, acrid smell of a cheap cigarette filtered up through the cracks in the floorboards. Julian held his breath, every muscle locked. He could feel Alistair’s stillness from across the dark room, a predatory quiet.
More voices joined the first, a murmur of rough conversation. A bottle clinked. Someone laughed, a dry, hacking sound. The group was settling in.
“Just passing through,” Julian whispered, the words barely audible. “They’ll loot the ground floor and move on.”
Alistair didn’t respond. He was a darker shadow against the door, listening.
The voices didn’t fade.They multiplied. Footsteps crunched on the frozen gravel of the courtyard, doors below were kicked open, and the sounds of systematic ransacking began—the smash of glass, the splinter of wood, the heavy thud of furniture being overturned. A woman’s voice, sharp with command, barked an order. This wasn’t a scavenger party. This was a platoon.
“They’re taking the whole motel,” Alistair breathed. His hand found Julian’s arm in the dark, grip tight. “Not a sound. Not a cough.”
They sat frozen as the occupation unfolded beneath them. The group sounded large, maybe a dozen or more. Their movements were practiced, efficient, and loud. Julian’s heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat he was sure must be echoing through the floor. He focused on the pain in his knee, using its sharp throb to anchor himself in the silence.
Hours crawled by. The sounds of looting eventually gave way to quieter, domestic noises—the clank of a cookpot, the low hum of conversation, another match striking. They were making camp.
A heavy tread sounded on the concrete walkway outside their room. Julian’s blood went cold. The steps paused right outside their broken door. He could see a sliver of yellow lantern light bleed through the gap where the dresser didn’t quite meet the frame.
A hand rattled the doorknob.
Julian’s eyes met Alistair’s. In the slivered light, he saw Alistair slowly, silently, raise his pistol, aiming at the door. His expression was calm, devoid of anything but cold calculation.
The knob turned uselessly, the broken lock jiggling. A shoulder thudded against the wood once, testing it. The dresser held, but groaned softly in its frame.
“Barricaded,” a man’s voice grunted, just inches away.
“Probably picked clean already,” a second voice replied. “Forget it. We got the south block secured.”
The footsteps receded. Julian let out a breath that shuddered through his entire body. He realized he’d been digging his fingernails into the velvet armrests deep enough to tear the fabric.
Dawn came not with light, but with sound.
The grey seepage around the boards grew stronger, revealing the room in all its squalid detail. The noises from below hadn’t disappeared with the night. They had shifted, solidified. The smell of woodsmoke and something meaty cooking now wove with the smell of mildew. A child cried, was hushed. Someone tuned a radio, found static, and shut it off.
Alistair had not moved from the door. He looked pale, the shadows under his eyes like bruises. “They’re not leaving,” he said, his voice hoarse from disuse.
“We could wait them out,” Julian offered, but the statement felt hollow even to him.
“Listen.”
Julian listened. Beyond the immediate sounds, he heard the distinctive scrape of a heavy object being dragged across the courtyard entrance. Then another. It was the sound of vehicles being moved, of barricades being erected.
“They’re fortifying,” Alistair said. “They’ve claimed this place. We are inside their new walls.”
The reality of it closed in like a vise. They were in a fortified room, inside a fortified position held by an unknown, armed group. Their truck was a hundred yards away, blocked. Julian’s leg was a balloon of pain. Alistair’s shooting arm was bandaged and stiff.
They were stocked with protein bars and water for maybe two days. And they were trapped.
A loud bang erupted from the courtyard below—a gunshot, followed by raucous laughter. A signal, or just cruel amusement. It didn’t matter. The message was received.
The day bled away in a slow torture of muffled voices, echoing laughter, and the smell of woodsmoke that seeped through the floorboards. They took turns dozing fitfully in the chair, muscles stiffening, listening to the strangers below establish a new, brutal order. Every slammed door or raised voice jolted them awake, hearts racing, hands gripping their few weapons tighter.
“They’re drunk,” Julian whispered, as afternoon shadows lengthened in their prison. The celebration below had gotten louder, more chaotic.
Alistair just nodded, his good hand methodically checking the magazine of his pistol for the twentieth time. “Drunk people are unpredictable. Sometimes careless, sometimes more violent. We go at full dark, the moment their noise peaks.”
They shared the last protein bar in silence, forcing down the chalky paste. Julian tested his weight on his wrapped knee, swallowing a gasp. It was a swollen, throbbing anchor, but it would have to hold. Alistair rotated his bandaged arm, his face a mask of controlled pain, the movement clearly limited. They were a pair of broken tools, but they were all they had.
Full dark brought a deeper cold and a different kind of noise from below—raucous singing, the smashing of glass, a few scattered, angry shouts. The chaos was their cover.
“Now,” Alistair mouthed.
They moved the dresser with agonizing slowness, each scrape of wood on carpet sounding like a gunshot to Julian’s ears. The broken door opened onto the empty, second-floor walkway. The cold air was a sharp slap, smelling of snow and cigarette smoke from below. No light came from the courtyard; the group was gathered around fires somewhere out of sight, their noise a blanket over the scene.
Julian led, using the trekking pole and the walkway’s railing for support, his every step a calculated exercise in quiet agony. Alistair followed, pistol in hand, his head on a constant swivel. They reached the concrete stairs. Each descent was a controlled fall, Julian biting into his own knuckle to stifle the sound of his pain.
They made it to the bottom, pressing into the shadow of the staircase. The Yukon was a dark shape thirty yards away, past the open mouth of the courtyard entrance. They could see the glow of firelight dancing on the motel’s pink stucco, hear the clear ring of a bottle breaking.
“Run when I run,” Alistair breathed into his ear. “Don’t stop for anything.”
Julian just nodded, his mouth dry as dust.
Alistair went first, a fast, low silhouette cutting across the packed snow. Julian followed, his bad leg dragging, the pole clicking once against the frozen ground. The truck seemed to stretch farther away with every lurching step.Ten yards. Five.
A loud, metallic clang echoed from the courtyard—a cookpot being dropped. A voice yelled, “Hey! Who’s out there?”
A flashlight beam licked the ground beside Julian’s feet.
“Run!” Alistair hissed, nearing the driver’s side door.
Julian hurled himself the last few feet, his hand grabbing the cold door handle. The flashlight beam found him, pinning him in its stark white circle.
The first gunshot was a deafening crack that split the night. Something hot and sharp seared across the meat of Julian’s left shoulder, spinning him around. It felt like a whip of fire, followed instantly by a wet warmth soaking his sleeve.
“Julian, get in!” Alistair was in the passenger seat, fumbling for the keys in the ignition.Another shot. This one hit metal with a dull spang.
Then a third.
This one didn’t whine off metal. It hit with a wet, heavy thump. Alistair let out a grunt, a punched-out sound of pure shock. He slumped back against the seat, his right hand flying to his left side, just below his ribcage. Dark blood welled instantly between his fingers.
“Oh, fuck,” Julian whispered. He scrambled into the driver’s seat, his own shoulder screaming, key fumbling in his shaking hand. The engine roared to life.More shouts. Figures emerged from the courtyard entrance, silhouetted against the firelight. Julian slammed the truck into reverse, yanked the wheel, and stamped on the gas. The Yukon’s tires spun on the ice then caught, hurling them backward in a wild arc. A fourth shot starred the windshield, a spiderweb of cracks erupting on the passenger side.
He cranked the wheel, found drive, and planted his foot. The truck shot forward, past the dumpsters and onto the main road, away from the flickering neon hell of the Starlight Lodge. In seconds, they were swallowed by the absolute darkness of the plains, the only sound the roar of the engine and Alistair’s ragged, wet breathing.
“Talk to me,” Julian barked, one hand white-knuckled on the wheel, the other pressing against his own burning shoulder. His fingers came away slick with blood. A graze. It was fine.It was nothing.
Alistair didn’t answer. He was tilted against the window, his face bleached of color in the glow of the dashboard lights. Both hands were clamped over his side, but the blood was a relentless seep, already coating his hands and dripping onto the leather seat.
“Alistair! Look at me!”
Alistair’s head lolled toward him. His eyes were wide, the pupils huge with pain and shock. “S-sorry,” he choked out, the word barely audible over the road noise. “The calculus… seems unfavorable.”
“Don’t you dare,” Julian snarled, panic lending his voice a vicious edge. He scanned the black roadside desperately. No structures, no lights. Just endless fields and the ribbon of road. “Where’s the kit? The real medical kit from your pack.”
“Back… back seat,” Alistair managed.
Julian drove one-handed, wrenching the kit from the backseat with his injured arm, pain flaring white-hot in his shoulder. He dumped it on the console between them, flipping it open. “I need light. Tell me where a light is.”
“Pocket… left side,” Alistair whispered, each word an effort.
Julian fumbled in Alistair’s jacket pocket, his fingers closing around a small, cylindrical flashlight. He clicked it on, clenched it in his teeth, and aimed the beam at Alistair’s side.
The wound was a small, dark puncture just below his ribs on the left side. It wasn’t gushing, but it bled with a steady, ominous flow. A through-and-through? He couldn’t tell. He grabbed a wad of thick trauma gauze from the kit. “Move your hands.”
Alistair’s hands fell away, trembling. Julian pressed the gauze pad hard against the entry wound, then another against Alistair’s back where he suspected the exit might be. He used a roll of adhesive tape to bind them in place, working clumsily with one hand and his teeth, the truck swerving slightly as he focused.
“Is it in your lung? Can you breathe?” Julian asked, the flashlight bobbing.
“Hurts… to breathe deep. Not… not bubbling.” Alistair said, his voice tighter. “Spleen. Maybe liver. Not good.”
“It’s fine. You’re fine,” Julian lied, taping the dressing securely. He found a packet of hemostatic granules and tore it open with his teeth, sprinkling the powder around the edges of the bandage before sealing it with more tape. It was the best he could do at seventy miles an hour in the dark.
He needed to stop. He needed to get a proper look, to pack the wound, to check for the exit. But stopping felt like death. The motel group might have vehicles. The open road was a target.
His eyes darted between the bleeding man beside him and the unlit road ahead. The bunker was still hundreds of miles away. Alistair wouldn’t make it that far, not bleeding like this.
A shape materialized on the roadside—a lone, darkened billboard advertising a gas station that no longer existed. Just past it, a gravel service road veered off into a copse of skeletal trees.
“Hang on,” Julian muttered. He swung the wheel hard, bouncing them off the asphalt and onto the rutted gravel track. He drove until the trees swallowed the road from view, then killed the engine and the lights.
The sudden silence was profound, broken only by the ticking of the engine and Alistair’s shallow, hitched breaths.