The Girl in Red

She had been the one so eager to leave, but that was when they were all leaving together. That was before the leaving meant men who would do Dad and Mama harm while Red and Adam scampered away.

“We can’t,” Red said.

“Don’t you get it?” Adam said, grabbing her arm again and pulling her, but she dug in and wouldn’t let him move her so he had to let go. “You’re the one who’s always watching those movies and reading those books and talking about rules and stupid behavior. They’re giving us a chance to get away. They are trying to save their children and by standing here arguing you’re not letting them do that.”

Red heard a click from the living room, and then a boom, and then Martin Kaye was outside screaming instead of yelling epithets at her parents.

“We love you, Cordelia,” Mama said. “And you, Adam.”

“I love you, Mama,” Adam said, and darted back long enough to kiss her cheek.

“Mama,” Red said, and she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready at all for it to end like this.

“Now, Red!” Adam said, and he opened the back door and he was out in a flash.

“You stay with your brother, Cordelia,” Mama said, and she decided for Red by turning away and entering the living room.

In half a second she was out of sight and Red stood there looking at the afterimage of where Mama used to be.

A second later she heard the report of Dad’s rifle again, and then the responding fire from the men who’d come to kill them all.

She had to leave. She had to leave them or stay and be killed with them. In stories someone would always valiantly sacrifice herself so someone else could live, and that was what Mama and Dad were doing now.

Somehow Red had always thought if there was valiant sacrificing to be done she would be the one to do it. After all, she was the one who knew everything about these kinds of stories.

If this were a movie I would be yelling at the heroine to move before she got killed too.

Red couldn’t really run fast—her prosthetic leg wasn’t one of those made for athletics so the best she could manage was an awkward jog, especially with the heavy pack. She eased out the back door so it wouldn’t slam shut and give her position away, but it didn’t really matter because it sounded like a movie Western out in front of the house and so much louder than she expected.

There was about a quarter mile or so between the back door and the thick stand of trees that would hide her from anyone who came around the house with a gun.

She didn’t see Adam anywhere, and she hoped like hell that he hadn’t just run all out and abandoned her. The last thing Mama told her to do was stay with her brother and Red was going to listen to her mother.

(For a change)

You’ll never have a chance to not listen to her again because she’s gone, Dad’s gone, they’re gone forever, if those men don’t kill them and they surely will there’s still the sickness, the Cough, they are gone gone gone

She felt the toe of her right boot catch in a little rut in the grass and stumbled forward, but she didn’t fall down.

That would be the biggest damn cliché, falling down and flailing helplessly when trying to escape. All those movie heroines twisting their ankle and then turning helplessly to see some Thing bearing down on them instead of just getting the hell up and running some more and I am not going to fall, I am not going to get caught, I am going to make it into the woods and when I find Adam I am going to strangle him for leaving me behind.

She heard the guns and heard someone yelling again but she couldn’t tell what they were saying and she didn’t care. Adam was right (and she was never going to admit to him that she’d thought that for even a half second); their parents were trying to save them and she wasn’t going to waste their sacrifice and she only hoped like hell that Dad would kill as many of those motherfuckers as he could and if he couldn’t kill them then he would kill Mama before those men did something horrible to her. Red didn’t want to think such a thought, that her own father might have to kill her mother out of some kind of mercy but Red would rather that a million times over than any one of those men getting their hands on Mama and making her suffer.