The Vigilantes (The Superiors) Read Online Free Page A

dirt and snow loomed for a space of six meters or so. He could have dug through it, but it would have taken days. When he tried to push the car over it, the Mert refused, sinking into the snow and catching on rocks instead. He spent the remaining hours of darkness pushing his car about quarter of the way over the blockage. Staying up half the day, he made another few meters of progress. He found it less difficult to stay awake during the day when only a sullen, muddy light came through the thick mass of clouds. The problem wasn’t the light but rather exhaustion, which made him weaker and slower as the hours passed. In the afternoon, he slept a few hours and awakened before dark. A thick layer of new snow covered the car.

     
     
    Chapter 5
     
    Sally hated chopping wood. Gol-darn, did she hate it. And today was even worse because it was cold as the dickens. Angela was supposed to chop the stupid wood, that had been her job back when, but noooo, she never did nothing right. Never had done nothing right, Sally reminded herself. Then she felt bad for thinking ill of the dead, so she thought about all the nights she had lain in bed talking to her sister. Even if Angela couldn’t chop wood worth a dang, she’d been good for talking to in the dark.
    Sally felt better for having a good thought about her sister, and she sighed and hefted the sledge hammer. She brought it down, letting gravity drive the splitting maul into the chunk of wood. The wood split cleanly down the center, each piece falling away from the stump with a decided lack of grace. Sally picked up the two pieces and tossed them crosswise in the wheelbarrow. Maybe four more pieces to go and she’d be done. She wiped her runny nose on her glove and stood another too-big piece of wood on end on the big stump.
    “Sally!” Tom called from the house. She looked up to see her uncle standing on the back porch, hands on hips.
    “Shut up, I’m coming,” she called back.
    “Hurry it up, willya? Fire’s about to die out.”
    “Hold your dang horses, I’m filling the wheelbarrow.”
    She finished the four pieces of wood left in her small stack, piled them into the wheelbarrow, and took off for the back porch. She didn’t pause or even glance at the big tree in the backyard where they’d found her dead sister. Angela was often on her mind, even after all this time, but Sally turned her focus to the task at hand. Getting this dang load of wood into the house, taking off her gloves, and getting a cup of tea off the stove. Well, dang if that weren’t three things.
    “You leave that sledge lying out in the snow again, girl?” her father asked.
    “No, Daddy. Course I ain’t,” she lied.
    “Good deal. Now get you some tea afore the stove goes out.”
    “Let me just take the wheelbarrow back to the shed first,” Sally said, knowing she’d get a good tongue lashing if she left the sledge out again. Making a new handle weren’t so hard, if this one rotted off. She’d made a new handle before. The hard part was making a handle that stayed on the dang piece of iron that formed the head of the tool.
    She went out back and put up the wheelbarrow and the sledgehammer. She would have missed her brother altogether if she hadn’t decided at the last minute to grab a scoop of dog scraps from the shed. “Larry, sheesh, you scared the daylights outta me,” Sally said, covering her heart. “What you doing out here anyway?”
    “What’s it look like, I’m working on the cage.”
    “Yeah, fat lotta good it’s done us so far,” Sally said. “You’d think we’s all safe with this thing in here, then the first one of them bloodsuckers comes by and look what happened.”
    “Yeah, well, next time we’ll do a better job of it. One of them’s bound to slip up one of these days. You know Hankins down the road killed one just last year. You can’t get too comfortable just ‘cause there ain’t been a sighting in a year or so.”
    “I know, I know. Be prepared, right?