Chapter 55
The booming explosion shook the entire barn, and Deb practically fell over in shock.
Jimmy was clearly startled by the sudden noise and started to cry in its wake.
Deb reached down and picked up the baby, holding him close against her.
The five injured ranch workers were stirring as well, many of them looking around for the source of the noise.
Those who had the power to sit up were, though it clearly pained them to do so.
Could someone actually be attacking the ranch? Would someone be that foolish? That brazen?
Chainz had an army in place, and the defenses around the property had always seemed to Deb as though they’d be practically impenetrable. What kind of crazed madman would risk his life in an effort to break into this place?
Her heart leaped at the thought. She knew exactly what kind of crazed madman would do such a thing. She looked toward the barricaded barn door as if she were waiting for them to crumble and fall before her. As they came falling down, there he’d be.
Her hero, her love, her Vin. He would be just foolish enough to try something like this. She knew that as long as he had a breath in his body, he would move heaven and Earth to see her and Jimmy again and ensure their safety.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said, hushing Jimmy as he continued to fuss and cry in her arms. “It’s okay. Your daddy is coming. Your real daddy is coming for us.”
“Vin?” one of the wounded ranch hands asked weakly, overhearing what she had said to her son.
“I think so,” Deb said, her voice alight and filled with hope.
A collective murmur passed among the infirmed ranch hands, and Deb could feel their spirits instantly lift. Vin was well-known to everyone who had called this place home before the disaster. The day he had left was one of the darkest days of Deb’s life, but she was not the only one affected by it.
On that day, she had lost a husband, and Jimmy had lost a father.
The various men and women who worked on the ranch also lost a trusted friend, mentor, and member of their extended family.
She realized it wasn’t just her and Jimmy that Vin was coming to save.
It was everyone. And if he succeeded, perhaps they’d have a home once more.
A sound at the barn door drew their collective attention, and Deb felt her heart fly up into her throat with excitement. This was it. He was here. Soon all of this would be some bad dream that she could escape from.
When the door opened, Deb gathered up Jimmy and prepared to run toward Vin the moment she saw his face. But the breath pushed forcefully out of her lungs all at once as those doors pulled out, and it was Jessie standing there, looking at her with a cruel smirk.
Deb instantly stopped short, gasping in horror as her hopes and dreams instantly evaporated.
Jessie noted this instant deflation, and it seemed to bring her even more happiness.
Instantly, Deb’s sadness, hunger, and soreness all came crashing back, as though the universe had reached down and plucked her out of her happy fantasy only to deposit her back into its cruel and unforgiving reality.
“Expecting someone else?” Jessie smirked at her, walking inside while swinging a kerosene lantern in her fingers. “I bet I can guess who you thought was about to run through that door, right, princess?”
Jessie let her words hang in the air, and Deb gritted her teeth in anger and frustration.
It almost sounded as though Jessie wanted Deb to respond, but she was certainly not in the mood to play this disgusting woman’s mind games today.
She felt as though salvation was so close now.
Vin was here, and he was coming for her.
The universe could not be so cruel as to allow her hopes to be snuffed out before he arrived.
Not now. Not when it was all coming together finally.
Deb stared defiantly at Jessie, the taste of that horse steak and the smell of the vomit she’d had her face smeared into still fresh in her mind.
“You know, when you grow up like I did, you learn pretty quickly that fairytale endings where everyone gets to live happily ever after don’t actually exist,” Jessie said.
“Even when you win some, there’s loss, there’s pain, there’s a whole lot of drama that comes along with any ground you think you’re making. ”
“Get away from us,” was all Deb was able to say, her voice quaking with weakness and rage. Her eyes were drawn to the lantern in Jessie’s hand, and Deb started to wonder what the first lady of the Chain Gang was even doing here with them while the ranch was under attack.
“What’s wrong?” Jessie asked, swinging the lantern back and forth like it was a toy as she took a few steps toward Deb.
Clutching Jimmy to her chest as he squirmed and fussed, Deb took an involuntary step back.
Jessie noticed and responded with a cruel, feral smile. “You’re wondering what the fuck I’m doing here, right? Why the fuck I’m not out there trying to put a bullet in your boy toy’s skull with the rest of everyone?”
Deb remained silent, trying to stay strong and show strength at this moment. It was what Vin would do.
“Well, like I said, there’s no such thing as a happy ending,” Jessie said.
“Take your…boyfriend? Husband? I dunno what to even call him—Vin, out there. He’s storming the gates with a bunch of Natives, thinking he’s gonna wipe us out and get his family back.
He’s not going to wipe us out. That’s never going to happen.
He’s still outgunned, and we’ve got a lot of muscle.
But on the off chance that he gets lucky, Chainz wanted to make sure that he still gets a heaping helping of loss on his plate. ”
“What?” Deb asked, horrifying realization dawning in her mind as Jessie held up the lantern and stared into it with wild crazed eyes alight with maniacal glee.
Without another word, Jessie swung the lantern up and smashed it down on the straw-covered floor. Flames instantly erupted along the ground, catching on the dried-out hay and spreading quickly. Jessie jumped back, and soon there was a growing wall of expanding flames separating the two women.
Smoke began to fill the room, making Deb’s eyes water as she choked and gagged in her panicked backtrack. Jessie jumped back as well, drawing a handgun and aiming it at Deb’s chest, where she hugged Jimmy against her.
“You know, leaving you to burn to death slowly feels awesome, I’m not gonna lie,” Jessie said with a smirk.
“But the idea of a kid dying like that…it just doesn’t sit right with me.
So, if you give me the okay, I’ll shoot your baby boy right now, and you can spare him the hell you’re about to go through! ”
Deb gasped in horror. This was sadism of the highest sort, and it turned her stomach to even fathom that such a human being existed in this world.
Though to call this cruel witch a human being might have been pushing it.
She looked down at Jimmy, who had started to cry as the oppressive heat of the flames started to press on their skin.
The sick and injured ranch hands started to panic. Two of them were mobile enough to scoot across the floor, fleeing from the inferno, but the others weren’t ambulatory at all. They would be chewed to death by the blazing fire and die in agony. And eventually, so would she and her son.
“Last chance,” Jessie said, pulling back the hammer on her gun. “Are you gonna be merciful or selfish?”
“Fuck off!” Deb spat over the sound of the flames spreading up one of the wooden support pillars in the barn.
Jessie smiled again, that same cruel, twisted smirk contorting her face until the refractive distortion above the flames made her seem as though she were truly some demon born of Deb’s blackest nightmares.
“Your choice, princess,” she said with a chuckle, holstering her gun again. “But now the last thing you’re ever gonna hear is your baby’s dying cries. Have fun with that.”
Jessie turned and jogged out through the door, taking one last moment to savor her victory as she slowly pushed the doors closed.
Her eyes shining with malevolent glee were the last vision Deb had of the outside world as the doors slammed shut, and the sound of the large wooden plank sealing them in could be heard amidst the raging devastation.