Page 127 of The Bright Lands

A moment later, Mitchell Malacek emerged from the red trailer. He locked eyes with Parter. Kimbra watched Mitchell and Parter engage in a terse, wordless deliberation.

Parter pointed Mitchell toward the blue trailer at the far end of the circle. Mitchell nodded at Luke. Parter made a big gesture and pointed to his chest:“Mine.”

CLARK

“Officer, Luke’s alive,” Kimbra said, hurrying back across the black camper but speaking calmly, logically. Clark was coming to like this competent girl. “I think he’s in trouble though—Coach Parter’s out there. He’s got a gun.”

“What about the others?” Clark said.

Kimbra didn’t hesitate. “Mitchell Malacek has a pistol. Parter told him to go do something in that blue trailer down the other end.”

“I saw Bethany Tanner run in there,” Whiskey said.

“What about Garrett Mason?” Clark said. “He’s the last person armed.”

“I didn’t see him. There’s some other guys hiding but they look too scared to do anything. I—” Kimbra paused. “Joel says the keys aren’t working for the cuffs on his feet.”

“I’ll get Parter.” Jamal touched Clark’s arm. “Do you have another gun?”

Did she ever. “Do you know how to shoot?”

“He can’t be hard to miss.”

With a heavy lurch of apprehension, Clark pulled her father’s revolver from the back of her jeans and passed it to Jamal. “There’s no safety on this.” She tapped the hammer. “You pull this back till it clicks—”

“I can figure it out.”

Jamal disappeared around the other end of the black camper before she could say another word.

Whiskey said, “Let me help Bethany.”

Color was finally coming back into the boy’s cheeks. Clark said, “Can you fire a pistol?”

“My brother’s in the Guard.”

It would have to do. Clark pulled Boone’s fancy Glock from her hip. “Go around the back way,” she said, nodding in the direction she’d just come.

The boy accepted the gun, sighed at the grisly sight of his truck and nodded to Clark over his shoulder. He took off, bent low at the waist like he was prepping for a snap.

“Officer,” Kimbra said. “If they stop Parter and Mitchell I think I can help Luke.”

Clark heard the sound of fabric tearing. She rose onto her tiptoes to peer into the black camper—with a woozy rush of déjà vu she finally recognized that Joel was seated precisely where Clark’s bed had been situated all week in her dreams—and saw Kimbra tying a strip of Joel’s shirt around his bloody shoulder and knotting it tight. The girl was coming in handy.

“Alright,” Clark said. “Wait for my signal.”

A gunshot echoed from the direction of the triple-wide. They froze.

Jamal shouted, “Clear!”

A moment later, Whiskey shouted, “Clear!”

She heard the screech of stone shearing from stone beneath her. Louder now. Closer. The lights above the circle flickered again.

Clark met Joel’s eye through the window. A quick, silent conference—This is fucked/I agree—before Clark nodded to Kimbra. “Remember—wait for my signal,” she said, and headed around the side of the black camper.

BETHANY

Mitchell Malacek collapsed into the blue trailer, falling face-first into the basin of a long metal urinal that ran the length of the trailer’s wall. Whiskey Brazos panted in the open door, the butt of his handgun still raised where he had coldcocked Mitchell a moment before. Bethany was pressed into the trailer’s back corner, grasping a toilet seat over her head like a club, ready to swing. If Whiskey hadn’t knocked Malacek unconscious the moment Mitchell had stepped through the door Bethany supposed she probably would have killed the guy. She was unsurprised to realize this didn’t bother her.