by T. L. Payne
“He was killed by a drunk driver.”
“That blows.”
“Yep.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Maddie leaned forward. The restraints dug into her wrists, but she needed to sit up straight to catch her breath. She wiggled her way back and pressed herself against the wall. Her shoulder burned. She tried to focus on the pain in her wrist and shoulders, focusing on anything but the pain in her aching heart. She never talked about that day. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She felt bile rise again in her throat. But talking about losing her dad might just save her life.
No pain. No gain.
A single tear dripped from the corner of her eye. In the darkness, her captor could not see it. She made no attempt to wipe it away. She would honor her dad with them. To be weak now in this situation was to be strong.
How ironic.
“He went out to get ice for our cooler. I was going to run my first 50K the next day. He had run with me that morning and helped me get ready for the race. After an hour, when he had not made it home from the convenience store around the block, I knew something had happened.”
“That really sucks. My dad is in prison. He’s never helped me with shit. My grandma and grandpa were the ones to raise me and Carl—until my mom came home, that is. Life went to shit for me after that.”
“But at least you had grandparents who cared for you?”
“My grandma did, but she died. My grandpa did until my mom came home. He judges me because of how my mom and brother act.”
Carl’s groaning increased and grew louder. He rolled from side to side.
“He’s gonna wake up soon. He’ll be really grumpy and mean until he gets his fix. I should go and see if I can score some before he wakes up.”
“Why?”
“Why? He’s my brother, and he is sick. He can’t help that he’s a junkie. He didn’t have much choice with my mom like she was.”
“But you aren’t a junkie and you lived the same life, right?”
“It was different for me.”
“You could just go. You could release me and we could go together. You could get away from all these drugs and violence. You’d have a chance to make a better life for yourself.”
“I can’t leave my brother. We don’t throw away family.”
“Don’t you ever want a family of your own? Do you want to literally be your brother’s keeper the rest of your life?”
“I’m not my brother’s keeper. He takes care of me. He has all my life,” Kelly said, his voice raised.
Maddie knew she was pushing him too hard, but she was desperate. She had to risk it. He may be her only hope to get out of there.
“I don’t deserve this, Kelly. I have done nothing to you or Carl to deserve this. I have a family that loves me, and I love them. I just want to get home to my Mom and my little brother. Can’t you please help me?”
Kelly said nothing.
“Please? Just let me go. You don’t have to worry about the police. I haven’t even seen one since the lights went out. I won’t tell anyone.” Maddie scooted to the end of the mattress and leaned closer to Kelly
“Please, Kelly?”
“I can’t. Carl will kill me if I do. I just can’t. He’s my brother, and I won’t betray him. He’s all I have in the world.”
A sudden rush of anger washed over Maddie. It shocked her. She expected that she would feel sad and defeated by his refusal, but all she felt was rage. These two pieces of shit stood between her and getting home. She could not give up and let the men turn her over to even worse bad guys. She scooted back on the mattress and lay on her side. She needed another plan. She could not let these two win.
She would not.
Chapter 24
Minooka, Illinois
Event + 3 days
When the second man awoke, Maddie’s patience was wearing thin. The man stretched, yawned, and scratched at his groin.
“Kelly, where’s my shit?”
“You used it all yesterday. You've been asleep for over twelve hours.”
“Shit, why the hell did you let me sleep that long?”
“I couldn’t wake you up, Carl. I tried, but you shot too much of that shit. I thought I’d lost you there for a while.”
Standing, the man stretched and then spewed vomit all over the floor. Maddie pulled her feet back just in time.
After laying back down, the man rubbed his head, and rocked back and forth on the sofa. He moaned softly.
“I need you to go see Jimmy again, Kelly. I need a little something so we can get this bitch up to the boss and get paid. I can get some H from Junior after I get paid.”
“You mean when we get paid?”
Kelly stood and walked toward the door.
“Yeah, I mean we. Now just get me some shit, all right? I’m hurting bad here.”
Waving a hand over his shoulder, Kelly shut the door behind him. Maddie began to tremble. She had been left alone with a killer. She had witnessed him kill two people the day before, and she had no doubt that he would kill her if she pissed him off or tried to get away.
Sitting up, the man popped something into his mouth, took a sip from a glass on a side table, and lay back on the sofa. Within minutes, the man was snoring. Maddie had her chance. It was now or never.
Maddie slid to the end of the mattress and pushed herself up. At least Kelly had not put the restraints back on her feet. She needed to find something to cut the ties off her hands, but rummaging around in the dark might wake the man.
Tiptoeing into the kitchen, Maddie looked through the mass of dirty dishes on the counter for something sharp enough to cut through the plastic. There wasn’t anything but butter knives. As she tugged gently on the top drawer, it squeaked loudly. She froze. Maddie turned her head. The man stirred on the sofa.
Maddie crouched down and made her way to the back door. Her whole body shook as she reached up and felt around searching for the handle. Feeling the cold metal in her hand, Maddie turned the knob. She gently pulled on it. The door did not budge. She pulled a little harder and nothing happened.
The door opens out.
She pushed, but the door did not open. She pushed harder. It did not budge. She heard a crash in the living room. The man came barreling through the kitchen. Maddie felt the hard, cold steel of the gun pressed against her cheek.
“I just needed to pee. I’m sorry I woke you. I’m sorry,” Maddie cried.
“Get the fuck back in there and stop whining.”
Pulling her by her hair, Carl led her through the kitchen. With a shove, he threw her onto the smelly mattress.
“You just sit tight there, bitch. When my brother gets back, we are going to take you up to meet some real nice friends of mine. Until then, you just sit there and be quiet, you hear?”
Not much light shined into the room except through a small window in the door. No light at all came through the windows.
After taking a seat back onto the sofa, Carl leaned back, lit a joint, and closed his eyes. The gun lay in his lap. Maddie stared at it. She was trapped. Her hope to escape through the back door now dashed, she laid back on the mattress and wept quietly.
She thought of poor Emma, alone in Darlene’s house. How traumatized she must be after witnessing her parents being brutally killed, then seeing what happened to Darlene and Ray Junior. What hope did she have to survive now, on her own in this crazy world? She could not help her now. She could not protect herself, let alone a ten-year-old girl. Maybe it was better to die at the beginning of the apocalypse than slowly starve to death later, anyway. Maddie was not as afraid of death as she was of living in her present situation. There were some things worse than death and this was one of them.
As scared as she was, Maddie was also totally exhausted and eventually fell asleep. Something ran across her foot, startling her awake. She sat up and pulled her feet under her. The room was pitch black.
It must be night. How long
was I out?
Sitting on the mattress with her back against the wall, Maddie stared in the direction of the man. She heard his snores and moans. He sounded like he was in terrible pain. She hoped he would die. That realization bothered her. What kind of person was she becoming? She’d seen so much violence and death over the last few days.
Had it been days? She wasn’t even sure.
She tried to remember what day it was. She had spent the first night, after the lights went out, hiding behind a shed with the Andrews. The second night, she and Emma had stayed in the cemetery. The next day she and Emma had hit the trail and met Darlene and Ray Junior. That memory brought a flood of tears. Slumping down the wall, Maddie lay on her side in a fetal position and let the river of tears flow. She didn’t even try to stop them.
She cried for Darlene. She cried for poor little Ray Junior walking in and seeing his mother on the floor in a pool of blood only to be shot down in his own back yard. He was supposed to be safe there. But he wasn’t safe in his home. Maybe no one was safe anywhere now.
The world was becoming just what her dad had said it would when the shit hit the fan. And he was not there to save her. No one was coming to save her. She was alone. She was on her own and that scared her more than death.
Morning came and Kelly still had not returned. The light shined brighter and brighter through the window of the door, and the man on the sofa continued to moan and restlessly roll around.
Maddie could tell that the man was sick or something. Sweat dripped off his face and he shook like he was freezing. He clutched his stomach and had vomited several times. The gun still lay next to him. No matter how weak or sick he was, he likely could still shoot her if she tried to get to the door and flee.
Her stomach began growling loudly. She wished she still had her pack. She remembered the wonderful rabbit soup Darlene had given her. She remembered warming soup on her rocket stove on hiking trips with her dad.
When she was younger her dad would load the family up in his Jeep and go to some remote wilderness in southern Missouri. They would hike until dark. When they would complain about the weight of the packs or the pace of the hike, her dad would say that someday they’d be glad to know what they were capable of doing.
When they arrived at a suitable camp site, her dad would teach them a new way to build an emergency shelter. He taught them how to conceal their camp site and how to get away if they were discovered. They purified water using their LifeStraws and even learned to filter water through sand and a sock.
At her dad’s hunting cabin, he had taught them the four rules of gun safety, how to shoot at moving targets, and how to disassemble and clean every gun he owned—and he owned a lot of them. Maddie looked at the man’s gun. It looked to be like the Glock G42 she’d picked up from the man in the street. She doubted that the gangster had cleaned it regularly, and Carl had not cleaned it after he had used it to kill Darlene and Ray Junior.
That memory brought a new round of tears.
Harden the fuck up, Maddie. This shit ain’t gonna get you home.
She stared at the gun lying next to the man. She tried to imagine what her dad would have done in this situation. She regretted that she had not taken his lessons seriously when all he was doing was trying to give her the skills to save her life. She had been an ungrateful brat. She felt such guilt that she had distanced herself from him during the year before the accident. She had let others’ opinions of her dad influence hers. How disappointed he must have been of her.
He had been proud of her accomplishments in school and in her cross-country races. He quit pushing her to go to the cabin and do drills, but it must have pained him for her to pull away from him like she had. She tried to remember the last time she had gone to the cabin with him.
Was it the summer before my freshman year in high school?
Some of her dad’s friends from the military had joined them. Uncle Ryan had been there. He had shown her and Zach how to tie ten different types of knots. He had also shown them how to get out of someone’s grip if grabbed by the arm. Suddenly, a light bulb went on in her head. She could recall, vividly, how he had demonstrated how to break zip ties.
Maddie looked over at the man. She took a deep breath. She had to do this now. She needed to make her move before the other brother came back. Once they were both there, she did not think she could take them both. It was now or never.
Sitting up straight, Maddie raised her hands high in the air above her head. She kept her eyes on the man, looking for any movement. Bringing her hands down in one rapid movement, she chicken winged her elbows, pushing down hard across her waist and using her abdomen as a wedge, simultaneously spreading her hands out as far as possible.
Shit!
It hurt like hell, and her wrists were bleeding now, but she tried again and again. The plastic zip ties refused to break. She had been able to break them every time when she had practiced with Uncle Ryan. Of course, she had not been dehydrated and her wrists hadn’t been already cut up. Maddie took a deep breath and exhaled. She looked over to Carl. He rolled and coughed but did not wake.
She wasn’t going to have the strength to break them. She needed to use a friction saw. She was so glad she had continued to replace all her shoe laces with paracord. Really, swapping them out had been more of a habit. Every time they bought new shoes, her dad would have them remove the shoe laces and use paracord for laces instead.
Maddie reached down and untied her left shoe. She pulled the paracord from the shoe and laid it between her feet. She was out of practice, so tying the first bow line knot took more time than she would have liked. She was sweating profusely now. She had to keep reminding herself to breathe. The man could wake up at any moment or the brother could return. Any number of other bad things could occur that could stop her from getting away. She had to get this right, and she had to be quick about it.
Using her teeth, she pulled the second bow line knot tight. Sliding the loop over the toe of her right shoe, Maddie slid it down to the middle of her foot. She fished the opposite end of the cord through the zip tie, then down to her left shoe. Looping the other end over her shoe, she extended her legs in front of her, pulling the cord tight. Making a bicycle motion with her legs, Maddie moved her legs back and forth. The friction of the paracord on the plastic of the zip tie made a squeaking noise. She stopped and put her feet down, watching for any movement from the man.
When he did not stir, she lifted her legs and continued her bicycle motions for another twenty seconds and the tie broke--her hands were free. Slipping the paracord off, Maddie untied the knots and quickly put the paracord back in her shoes. With her shoes laced tight, she slowly stood from the mattress, never taking her eyes from the man. As she started to take her first step, Carl sat up.
“Where the hell do you think you are going?” Carl said, rising to his feet.
“Maddie sprinted for the door, but tripped on a pile of shoes and fell against the wall. She shot to her feet and tried to reach the door before Carl could grab her but he was on her before she got her hand to the door knob.
Maddie swung around and punched him in the face. He stumbled back a step but did not release his grip on her hair. She kicked sideways, hitting him in the knee. Carl yelped and let go, but was quickly back on her. He pulled on her arm and she pushed into him, causing both of them to crash to the floor. She landed on top of Carl, then rolled off the stunned man and leapt to her feet. She stepped back and her foot hit something hard and metallic.
The gun.
She scrambled for the weapon on the floor, scooped it up, and was bringing it up into a firing position as the front door opened, flooding the room with light. Carl turned to look in the direction of the open door. Without hesitating, Maddie leveled the pistol at him and fired two rounds, both hitting center mass.
“No!” Kelly yelled as he stepped inside.
He raced to his brother’s side, dropping to his knees.
“I’m sorry,” Maddie sa
id, looking down at the two men.
“You bitch. You shot my brother,” Kelly snarled.
Maddie stepped sideways toward the door, the pistol raised and pointed at Kelly.
“I’m sorry. I had no choice. You should have let me go.”
“You fucking bitch. You killed my brother,” Kelly said, standing and taking a step toward Maddie.
“Stop!” Maddie yelled. “Stop. Do not come any closer. I am going to leave now. There is no need for you to die too.”
“He was all I had left in the world, and you took him from me.”
Kelly kept walking.
Pop! Pop!
Two shots hit Kelly center mass, and he fell next to his brother on the floor. His eyes were open—a look of shock was on his face. Maddie froze in place, staring at the two men.
“Run, Maddie!” she heard her dad yell.
And she did.
Still gripping the pistol in her right hand, she ran down the steps and around the trailer house. She did not stop running until she reached a wooded area outside of town. She dropped to her knees on a soft bed of leaves and wept. She rocked back and forth, holding her head in her hands. Her ears were still ringing from the gunshots inside the tiny room. The metal of the gun was pressed against her cheek as she held her head in her hands. The acrid smell of burnt gunpowder emanated from the pistol.
She had shot two men. She had killed two human beings. She had ended their lives to save hers. She knew she would never be the same again.
I’m a killer.
Does that make me no better than them?
Chapter 25
Grundy County, Illinois
Event + 4 days
Maddie lay, curled into a ball, sobbing softly. She did not know how much time had passed. She was jolted out of her crying fit by the shattering of glass. She sat up straight and pulled the gun close to her chest. Standing, she walked over to a clearing. A row of houses butted up to the woods. She couldn’t tell which direction the breaking glass had come from. Crouching next to a tree, she listened, scanning each house for movement. After a moment, she saw a man emerge from a large yellow shed, two houses down from her position.