Andrew Kirke (tuned_in) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-04-02 13:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 35, andrew kirke, holland sharpe, michael callahan, thomas galloway |
Week 35: Wednesday Evening
Characters: Holly Sharpe, Andrew Kirke, and Mike Callahan; followed by Drew and Tom Galloway
Location: The farmstead
Summary: Holly returns from the raid. Drew is in a frenzie. Mike tries to console him, and Tom reassures him they will get Ana back.
Rating:
It had been Meg who was on radio duty that afternoon. Drew had been working the fields, his body aching from the labor and the cold. It was really just one more normal day, though Ana had let him know that afternoon that she was going with Holly on a short raid into town. It wouldn’t take long.
He hadn’t even told her he loved her. He’d still been asleep, had felt her kiss him on the forehead as she slipped out first for her guard duty and then to the raid straight after. He’d never said goodbye. The idea of his last words being the ones from the night before, words he couldn’t even fully remember having said, boiled in his blood like fire. Kidnapped, Meg had told him. Holly hadn’t said much in case the line was being listened in on, but he’d said at least that.
Drew was gonna kill him. He stood by the window on a chair with his head in his hands, all but shaking as a few people tried to calm him down, but he hardly heard their voices or saw their faces. The moment he heard the car coming up the drive, though, he was moving and heading out the door.
Holly saw Drew before he got the car parked. He had been wondering about Drew’s reaction the whole way home, but faced with it in the moment still made his stomach churn with both guilt and fear. It took all of his courage to take the key out of the ignition and get out, but he didn’t dare move away from the car and approach the other man. Instead, he took a step back and lifted his hands disarmingly. “Drew, listen,” he began, but faltered.
Drew wasted absolutely no time, curling his right hand into a fist and punching Holly with all the strength he had. Holly’s head snapped to the side from the force of the blow.
Mike saw what was happening through an open window, and immediately ran to the door.
“Hey!” he called out sharply. Drew ignored him, grabbing up Holly by his shirt and laying a second punch into him.
Mike was on Drew in another minute, wrapping his arm around Drew’s chest, his other hand grabbing for Drew’s arm, trying to pull the other man away from the car.
“You’re just not happy unless everyone’s sufferin’, are you!?” Drew shouted at him, his voice so loud he went hoarse. “You fucker! She was my wife! HOW COULD YOU LEAVE HER ON HER OWN!?”
“I didn’t leave her!” Fresh tears hit Holly’s cheeks before he could help it, though they were invisible to the other two because he had his back turned away from Drew in hopes that would ensure he didn’t get hit in the face again. “We were gonna take turns going to the car. I swear, I looked everywhere for her! I’m sorry! I liked Ana, she was my friend, okay?!”
Mike felt Drew pulling against him, and he kept him in check. “You gonna try and hit him again?” he asked Drew, his voice firm. “Cause I’ll stay here as long as I need to.”
Drew’s chest heaved and he tried furtively to yank out of Mike’s grip, but the man was taller and bulkier than he was even after weeks of working on the field. He’d never felt so much hate and anger in his entire life.
“You were supposed to be watching her back!” Drew shouted out again. “You were supposed to watch out for her! What the fuck good are you!? You’re sorry!? FUCK YOUR ‘SORRY’!”
The words felt like they’d gored him through, and in response Holly only curled further in defense, sliding his hands together to cover his face completely. He had no comeback to that except soft, gasping sobs.
“This isn’t helping anyone,” Mike said, his voice still firm and steady. “Holly, you got to get over to Tom and tell him everything you know so we can get our people together and go back there.” He directed his attention to Drew. “And you need to do whatever you gotta do to calm the fuck down, because no way Tom’s gonna let you go out there if you’re like this. Some way that doesn’t involve hitting.” he added for good measure.
Holly finally turned, albeit slowly, and met Mike’s eyes for a brief moment. A dozen words rose in his throat that he could say, but when his gaze lowered to Drew he seemed to think better of it and took off toward the farmhouse, using his sleeves to wipe his face as he went. Drew yanked harder in Mike’s arms as Holly ran off, but the other man refused to let him go. It made him shout out in rage.
“What would you do if it was YOUR wife!?” he shouted over his shoulder at the other man.
“I’d be mad as hell,” Mike replied. “I’d do anything to get her back. And yeah, I’d be spittin’ nails at whoever let her out of their sight, and I wouldn’t be making any sense either. But this? This isn’t gonna get her back. So you gotta get your head around that, man. And I’d hope to hell that if I was goin’ out of my head, I’d have someone around to say the same thing to me.”
“Bullshit,” Drew spat angrily, yanking back yet again, only this time he meant to flip around and shake the man holding him or at the very least shove him. “BULLSHIT! Let me go! I need to find her! LET ME GO!”
Mike grunted as an errant elbow caught him smartly under the ribs, and he wrestled a little with the slighter man, pinning his arm tight. “Now that’s more like it, man. But you goin off half cocked isn’t gonna do shit either. You, me, Tom, n’ Alice? Or Jed? Or Derek? We can get something done. But not...” he huffed again, his feet shifting to get a more even balance. “Not by yourself.”
“I don’t need your goddamn help!” Drew hollered, “It’s all your goddamn help that got her taken! Fuck all of you! Let me GO!”
“No,” Mike replied shortly, his voice showing the strain that it was taking to keep Drew pinned. “I’m sorry, man, but no.”
Drew continued to struggle with increasing fury, but he started to lose steam midway through and before he was really aware of what was happening, he broken down into shakes and dry, screaming sobs.
“I’m sorry,” Mike repeated again, and he knew how hollow it would have sounded if it’d happened to him. He shook his head. “We’re gonna get her back. We’re gonna go there and find her and bring her back.” He felt his own tears sting the corners of his eyes. It was almost as if by saying it enough times out loud, it would become true.
Tom was on his way out the door to find out exactly what was going on with all the shouting when he saw Holly. His lips set into a firm line and he gestured inside. “Come on, I need to talk with you for a few minutes.” His instincts were screaming at him to go now and try to track Ana down, but he needed more information.
Holly obeyed, willingly following Tom inside despite hoping before that he could slip up to his room to be alone for a while to become composed enough to trust himself not to cry anymore, but at least he could get everything out of the way by speaking to Tom right off the bat. He wiped his eyes again, harder, as if that could stop his current flow of tears, but because his face was so tender it only made things worse.
As far as Tom was concerned Holly should be crying. This was the worst incident to happen to them since Jared and it had been Holly’s responsibility to watch Ana’s back, just as it had been Ana’s to watch his.
He lead the younger man to the large wall map of the area that hung in the hall, just by the kitchen. “All right. Where were you two and how long was she out of your sight before you knew something was wrong? Walk me through what happened.”
“We were at Big 5 Sporting Goods,” Holly began, sounding stuffy. “It’s....” He let his finger finish the sentence as he reached up to point to the spot he and Ana had been. They’d stood in front of that very map together plotting out their course before they left, by referencing a stack of newspaper inserts Holly had picked up from the house he’d gone to raid for solar panels. “We had a lot of shit,” he continued, “so Ana said we could take turns running it out to the car. It was heavy, and that way one of us could continue raiding. I know … how stupid that was now.” A few moments of silence went by as Holly forced a rising lump in his throat back down. “... I don’t know how long it was from the time she went outside to when I realized something was wrong, but it seemed like she was taking forever. And I was scared, and … when I went out there all of the stuff she had to put into the car was on the ground, and she was nowhere. This was, like, in the afternoon, and … and I stayed until it was getting too dark trying to look for her. I didn’t want to come back without her.”
Tom said nothing for a moment, working very hard to.keep his temper under control. Yelling at Holly, however satisfying, wouldn’t bring Ana back. The younger man definitely wouldn’t be going on raiding duty again anytime soon. “There wasn’t any blood?” He asked after a moment. “No signs she’d been injured?”
“No.” Holly didn’t know if that was a good thing or bad thing. To his eyes, there hadn’t seemed to be any clues.
“Why didn’t you call us as soon as you saw something?” Tom wanted to shake Holly senseless. He’d cost them hours of search time, and the kidnappers could be all the way in Eugene by now. Searching at night wasn’t going to get them anywhere, either.
“I was freaked out! I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want to tell anyone until I was sure I had to.” Admitting it like that now sounded bad, and Holly knew that, but he’d also been considering driving off into the distance and not even returning to the farm, so at least he’d been semi-responsible. Stop making excuses, he berated himself. You made a bunch of shitty decisions as usual, so deal with it. “Look,” he said, barely giving Tom a chance to speak, “I … if you want me to leave, I will.”
Tom sighed at that. At least Holly was prepared to accept consequences of his actions, that spoke well of him. “You’re not being kicked out Hol,” he told the younger man, meeting his eyes. “I’m not going to pretend I’m not pissed at you right now, or that things might be rough for you here for a while once we get her back.” There wasn’t any other outcome in his mind other than Ana’s recovery. “You’re off raiding detail until further notice, and you’re going to get plenty of the shit jobs around here for a while as punishment, but we’ll talk about that later. Job one is getting Ana back.”
Holly dropped his gaze to the floor, but nodded. Part of him was more relieved than he could remember feeling for a long while, but he was also disappointed. If they’d kicked him out, he thought it might have been easier, somehow. “I’m guessing you’re not gonna let me come with you guys on the rescue mission,” he said, his voice wavering.
Tom eyed him steadily. “If I said you could come along, what could you do to help?” As far as he knew Holly didn’t have the sort of skill set that would lend itself to hostage rescue. Or a firefight for that matter.
Several moments of silence stretched out before Holly shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Then the best thing you can do to help is to stay here.” Tom told him, “I’ll be taking a lot of our firepower out looking for Ana and I’ll need everyone else here that’s capable of defending the farm ready to do so. We’ve got new people here that I don’t have a handle on yet, Bridget’s in no shape to defend herself let alone anybody else, and Meg couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn even if she hears something.”
He stared at the younger man quietly for another minute, then sighed and gestured down the hall. “Go take a few minutes to pull yourself together, I need to go talk to Drew.”
“All right,” Holly replied, sounding drained, before following Tom’s gesture down the hallway. If Tom was asking him to defend their turf, he felt inspired to do it to the best of his ability. It could be a chance to redeem himself, and knowing that’s what he wanted more than anything finally cemented his mental place in that community.
Tom put the younger man out of his mind and went in search of Drew. He found him in his room, the shut door muffling the sounds of his dry sobbing. The veteran hesitated for a moment, then rapped his knuckles lightly on the door. “Drew, it’s Tom. Can I come in?”
The door opened a moment later. Drew’s face was blotchy from crying and anger, and in his hand he was loosely holding a bag. He stared at Tom with a look caught somewhere between accusation and guilt at whatever he had been previously doing.
“Whad’ywant?” he asked in a thick, gritty voice.
“I wanted to talk for a minute about what’s going to happen next.” Tom felt a bit uncomfortable about that whole situation, but he owed it to Drew to be honest with him and not try to bullshit him.
“Don’t need no talk,” Drew said. “I’m gonna go find my wife.”
“Not tonight you’re not,” Tom replied firmly. “You’re staying put if I have to sit on you all night. Going out there in the dark without knowing what we’re up against is suicide. We don’t have any night vision gear and you wouldn’t know how to use it even if we did.” He put a hand on Drew’s shoulder but Drew flinched away from him like he’d been burned, betrayal written all over his face.
“Once we have some lead on where she’s been taken we will get her back, you have my word on it. Even if I have to blow the place to kingdom come.”
“I’m not gonna sit here and just wait, goddammit!” Drew said explosively, his voice cracking. He recoiled, visibly shaking. “Fuck. Fuck. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t lose her again, I can’t--”
“Drew, you need to pull yourself together. Going out there tonight isn’t going to get your lady back.” Tom knew trying to talk to the man rationally probably wouldn’t get through to him, but at the moment it was the best he could do. “We don’t know where she is and going out at night will just waste fuel and get everyone exhausted before the main event. Ana’s going to need you sharp and rested, Drew.”
“She needs me now!” Drew shouted.
“She also doesn’t need you dead in a ravine someplace because you couldn’t see a washed out road in the dark!” Tom snarled back, almost losing his temper. “Goddammit Drew! Think for a minute. You’re no good to her dead, and there’s a damn good chance that’s exactly what you’d be if you go out tonight in the state you’re in.”
Drew made a noise of anger and frustration, turning and throwing the bag across the room before he turned back on Tom. “You don’t know what this is like! None of you do! You’ve got no fucking clue!”
“I know exactly what it’s like to lose someone you love more than life itself and not being able to do a damn thing about it!” Tom moved forward and took hold of the other man’s arms. “The only thing worse than losing your spouse is losing your child, and I’d not wish the pain on anyone. It isn’t quite the same situation as this though: you still have a chance to get Ana back, Tommy never had a prayer.”
Drew twisted hard in Tom’s grip, but this time Tom didn’t let go. He wanted to scream or lash out at the other man, but it would do nothing. He knew Tom was right. And Drew knew deep down that there was no negotiating with him.
“Please find her,” he begged Tom. “And--” he swallowed, feeling poison in his chest where his faith normally rested. “Make them pay for it. Please, I’m begging you.”