Chapter 4: Blood in the Riverbed
The cracked earth of the riverbed sucked the sound from the world. Clark moved with a predator’s patience, his boots finding silent purchase on the flat, baked stones. Behind him, Esmeralda guided Amanda by the elbow, her eyes constantly scanning the high, crumbling banks. The sun was a hammer on the back of Clark’s neck.
“We need to go further east,” Esmeralda said, her voice low but clear in the dead air. She pointed toward a break in the bank where rusted rebar stuck out like broken ribs. “The service road hooks back that way. It’s clearer.”
Clark didn’t look back. “First, we regroup with the rest of the unit. Our people are holed up two miles north of here. Once everyone’s together, we head north for your mountains.”
Esmeralda was quiet for a few steps. The only sounds were their footfalls and the distant, papery rustle of a weed. “Okay,” she said finally. It wasn’t a happy agreement, but it was a pragmatic one.
“How long from our rally point to your town?” Clark asked, ducking under a skeletal tree limb that spanned the bank.
“On foot? With clear paths, a week.” She adjusted the strap of her pack. “If nothing slows us down.”
Clark gave a single nod, his eyes never stopping their methodical sweep. A week in the open. Seven days of exposure. He filed the number away with all the other calculated risks.
Brian lost them at the concrete culvert.
One minute he’d seen the flicker of Esmeralda’s dark hair vanishing behind a slope of eroded dirt, the next—nothing. Just the blinding white glare of the sun on bleached stones and the oppressive, silent weight of the dead river.
“Damn it,” he hissed, slamming his fist against the cracked side of an old washing machine half-buried in the sediment. The hollow clang was obscenely loud. He flinched, his head swiveling. Panic, hot and sour, rose in his throat. He’d been so sure. So angry. The sight of her slipping out with that soldier, with Amanda, had been a physical blow. It wasn’t about love. It was about possession. She was his to discard, not someone else’s to steal.
He took a few reckless steps forward, peering into the deep shadows under the far bank. Nothing. He was alone in the oven-heat of the riverbed. A profound frustration, tinged with a creeping fear of returning to Silas empty-handed, rooted him to the spot.
The cold press of steel against the pulse point of his throat was so sudden, so absolute, his brain refused to process it for a full second. His body understood first. It froze, every muscle locking. The breath died in his lungs.
“Hey there,” a voice whispered, warm and amused, right beside his ear.
Brian’s eyes rolled in their sockets. He turned his head, a millimeter at a time, the blade staying in perfect, chilling contact with his skin.
Johnny smiled at him. It was a wide, easy smile that flashed a dimple and didn’t touch his cold, assessing eyes. The mohawk was a stark black line against the pale sky. “Looking for someone?”
Brian’s mouth worked. A dry click. No sound came out.
From his other side, a larger shadow detached itself from the shade of the culvert. James moved without a sound, coming to stand in front of Brian. He looked calm. Bored, even. He held Brian’s own boot knife, turning it over in his hands, examining the poorly honed edge.
“This the one?” James asked, his voice flat. “The one in the right boot? Not a great hiding spot.”
Brian found his voice, a reedy squeak. “She… she belongs with us. You can’t just take—”
James stepped in close. The dry humor was gone, stripped away, leaving something elemental. He didn’t yell. His words were a soft, gravelly monotone that carried further than a scream in the silent basin. “She doesn’t belong to anyone. Especially not you.”
He flipped the knife in his hand, caught it by the blade, and offered the handle to Johnny. Johnny took it, never letting the pressure on Brian’s throat waver. James then drew his own weapon from the sheath on his vest. It was a different beast entirely—a military-issue combat knife, blackened, its edge wickedly sharp. He placed the cold, flat of the blade against the other side of Brian’s throat, mirroring Johnny’s hold.
Brian was pinned between two points of chilling steel. He could smell them—dried sweat, gun oil, the faint scent of Esmeralda’s herbs on James. He began to tremble.
“You followed,” James stated. “That was a choice. Now you get another one.” He leaned in, his lips almost brushing Brian’s ear, just as Esmeralda’s had brushed his hours before. The memory flashed, hot and shameful. “She chose freedom,” James whispered, the words dripping like ice water. “Now you choose: walk back, or float downstream.”
The implication was clear, visceral. The dry riverbed. The endless, baking expanse. A body left here would be a desiccated husk in days.
A warm, spreading wetness soaked through the front of Brian’s pants. The sharp, acrid smell of urine rose, mixing with the dust. He choked on a sob, his legs buckling. Only the knives kept him upright.
Johnny’s nose wrinkled. “Christ. Really?”
In one fluid motion, both blades vanished. Johnny gave Brian a hard, open-handed shove that sent him sprawling face-first into the gritty dirt. He lay there, gasping, weeping, the hot dust sticking to the damp fabric of his jeans.
“Walk,” James commanded, standing over him. “Don’t look back. Don’t ever speak her name again. If you do, I won’t find you. I’ll find Sasha. You understand the transaction?”
Brian understood. He scrambled to his feet, not looking at them, his shoulders hunched. He took one stumbling step back toward the shelter, then another. He didn’t run. Running would imply he had somewhere to go. He just walked, a broken figure shrinking in the vastness of the wasteland.
Johnny watched him go, then spat into the dust. “That’ll fester. He’s the type to nurse a grudge.”
“I know,” James said, cleaning his knife on his thigh before sheathing it. “But a grudge needs a target. We’ll be long gone.” He looked north, toward where Clark would be moving. “Let’s move. I want to put miles between us and that smell.”
They melted back into the landscape, two ghosts leaving no trace in the cracked earth, the only evidence of their passing the dark, shameful stain slowly evaporating in the relentless sun.