All Fall Down: The Chronicles of Altor by Shawn Inmon

Author:Shawn Inmon [Inmon, Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

When Harry Met Nyx

It had been three days since the ill-fated raid to retrieve the water pump for the well.

Rolls had installed it and had the water flowing by late the next day.

It didn’t seem to matter at all.

Having water again seemed like a small consolation for having lost Heyo. A pall had been cast over the Longbaugh Free Prison.

Heyo was a big man, but it was his smile and outsized personality that everyone remembered. With him gone, nothing seemed the same.

Belinda was hit the hardest. She and Heyo were still young. Their kids were still young. She saw nothing but a long road ahead trying to fill his shoes, which she knew she couldn’t do. Belinda was always the practical one, the parent who said no. Heyo had been the fun one, almost a kid himself. She didn’t know how she could make things work without him.

When Jack had first said that Heyo was dead in the back of the pickup, everyone had thought that he was wrong. He wasn’t a doctor, after all. It was possible he was just unconscious.

Harry had driven them back to the prison at unsafe speeds, wanting to get Heyo looked at. They had arrived safely, but when they pulled him from the pickup bed and moved him onto a hospital gurney, they saw the problem. There was so much blood pooled in the bed, it was obvious no one could have lost it and lived.

Heyo had said he had been shot in the leg, but it was actually higher than that. He had been hit between his groin and leg. His femoral artery had been severed. He had bled so much, he had slipped quickly into unconsciousness, then shortly after, death.

The next day, while Rolls worked on the well, Jack and Bob dug a grave under the trees in the side yard.

It had been Harry’s idea to make the raid and he blamed himself for the death of his friend.

“I should have tried to bargain with them for the pump. They might have said no, but at least I should have tried.”

No one would let Harry accept the weight of that blame, but also, no one could really stop him.

Harry seemed to be shrinking by the day. His face was now so thin that he didn’t at all resemble the man who had taken charge the day the prison was shut down.

They buried Heyo on the second day. There were no caskets in the prison—any dead prisoners were sent to town to be cremated or turned over to relatives if they wanted them. Heyo had been the most clever with his hands and might have been able to cobble one together, but no one else even attempted it.

They wrapped him in the best comforter they could find and lowered him into the hole.

It was a hot, sunny day in central Montana. Belinda got wobbly and looked like she was going down before Allison and Harry led her away.

And so it goes.

Life went on, as it inevitably does for those left behind.

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