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“Antibiotic?” Jackson asks, his eyes searching my frozen face.
I shake my head and hand it to him without a word.
He reads what it is on the label. Oxycodone.
“Shit,” he breathes. “We could be torn limb from limb for this stuff.” He pauses. Then leans over and picks up a bottle of testosterone supplement we’d rejected as unnecessary. He dumps the pills out and puts the hydrocodone into that bottle instead. Then drops it in with the rest.
“Good you thought of coming here,” I say as I try to fit our filled sacks in the storage compartment. “I’d forgotten about it.”
“I had too, until this morning when we were talking. Maybe those antibiotics will help Molly.”
“I hope so.”
I straddle the seat behind him and wrap my arms around him as he starts off.
***
THE TRIP BACK IS ASuneventful as the way there until we turn off the trail and onto the road.
This road is small and out of the way, but it does get some traffic. Mostly harmless travelers trying to pass through the region. Dangerous sorts tend to stick to the interstates, but they don’t always.
Shortly after we turn onto the road, I hear a woman screaming. Then male laughter.
Jackson pulls off the road and drives on the grass near the woods as we pass by the source of the sound.
A group of men in a Jeep and a couple of motorcycles—clearly a Wolf Pack—have attacked a couple who must have been on bikes.
The man is bleeding on the ground. The woman is screaming although I can’t really see her.
Jackson speeds up. One of the guys fires a shot in our direction, but it must have been mostly a warning shot because it doesn’t come close to hitting us.
I make a noise of objection and tighten my arms around him. Those people need help, and we’re just leaving them.
“Jackson,” I rasp.
“No,” he grits out. “We can’t.”
“But they—”
“I know. I know. But we can’t.”
“We could at least have—”
“Have what? Taken down a Wolf Pack? Just me and you without any sort of defense or advantage? The man was already dead, and the woman was about to be. We can’t do anything. We can’t help everyone.”
I know he’s right, but it’s terrible. I’m shaking helplessly behind him, and it’s not from the vibrations from the engine.
Jackson keeps talking even though I haven’t argued anymore. “If we try to take care of everyone, then we won’t be able to take care of our own people. We can’t take care of everyone. We can’t, Faith.”
I don’t say anything else. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.
“I’m sorry,” Jackson adds in a rough murmur.
It’s something.
It’s more than I’ve ever heard from him before.
For no good reason, it makes me feel a little better.
Just a little. The whole way back to the farm, I can still hear that poor woman screaming.
