Page 129 of The Bright Lands

Kimbra leaped to the ground outside. The moment she landed she heard a strange chugging noise, saw the lights of the trailer park go dark around her. Before the lights went down she saw it: the truck parked near the side of the black trailer, the truck full of blood, the truck full of bits of the beautiful boy she’d spent far too many years of her life hoping to fix.

Kimbra saw KT’s corpse before the lights went out and hesitated for just a moment before she started running.

There were two pops of gunfire. The sound of glass shattering. She ran faster.

And then a third shot—furious and deafening as a thunderclap—burst over the Bright Lands. A strange, sharp heat seeped across Kimbra’s chest.

The ground swallowed her feet.

The lights kicked on again. Above her, staring out from inside the tall triple-wide, Kimbra saw the long barrel of a high-caliber hunting rifle extended in her direction. She even imagined she saw a trail of smoke rising from the tip.

And above the gun? It was the face that had haunted her all week in her sleep.

Kimbra saw herself—her twin, her mirror image—staring at her through the triple-wide’s window, eyes wide with surprise under a head of perfect brown hair, clad in a tight Bisonette singlet.

But no, not quite an identical twin: Kimbra had never managed hair that pretty.

And when, she wondered, had she grown such a funny mustache?

CLARK

The moment Clark shouted “Clear!” she saw movement in the green trailer. Garrett Mason appeared in the window Clark wasn’t covering and aimed his AR-15 in Kimbra’s direction.

She pivoted, squeezed off two shots at him.

The lights died. The trailer’s windows shattered. Garrett tumbled out of view. And behind Clark there came the sound of a rifle crack—a gunman, there was another gunman here—and Kimbra—

Clark spun around the front of the black camper as the lights came up again. She saw the way Kimbra hit the dirt: you didn’t get up again after falling like that.

Clark saw a flash of metal above her in the window of the triple-wide and let her momentum carry her up the step of the black camper. She leaped across the threshold and threw the door shut behind her. Something in the door’s frame let out a loud, heavyclunk.

“No!”From the direction of the tall triple-wide, Clark heard Mr. Lott let out a scream. “No!How is shehere? Why did no one tell me she washere?”

Joel stared at Clark.No, his eyes said.

She could only nod her head.Yes.

JAMAL

The rifle shot sent Parter running up the steps of the triple-wide before Jamal could think to fire his revolver.

“Shit,” Jamal shouted. He bolted after the big man.

He didn’t make it far. Just past the generator he felt his feet slip out from under him. He barely got his elbow down in time to break the fall.

Pain spiked up Jamal’s arm. Someone was screaming. Jamal was choking. He had landed with a splash in something cool and oily that flew up his nose and down his throat.

Gasoline. The chugging old generator was bleeding gasoline.

BETHANY

“What the fuck just happened?” Whiskey said, the rifle crack still ringing in their ears.

“Don’t take your gun off him.”

Mitchell groaned behind her. Bethany stood in the door of the Water House and watched as Coach Parter seemed to fly up the steps of the tall triple-wide. Mr. Lott—he looked hideous in a wig, God bless him—screamed from inside one of the triple-wide’s windows, wailing like a piece of his soul was being pulled out through his mouth. Bethany’s mind was moving fast. She refused to look at Kimbra’s spangled corpse, clad in a singlet identical to the one Bethany was wearing.

Bethany knew—knew—that that rifle’s bullet had been meant for her own heart.