And I know I’ll make use of it.
I lead the way, running through the bramble and sticks. Klein and I head toward the battlefield.
Two
The closer we get, the more I smell the flames, the blackened buildings, the charred meat, and the more the momentary hope in my chest gets smaller and smaller. I see the husks of old structures, places I was at no less than twenty-four hours ago. The fences are downed in at least five spots that I can see. There’s a flipped SUV about thirty paces from the way I entered with Abby in my arms yesterday. Smoking bodies. People squirming and screaming. Gunfire.
My pace picks up and with it, the hole in my leg from the meat thermometer. Klein is behind me, how far behind I don’t know and I’m not going to look back.
I’m coming up on Mother’s hut. It’s just smoldering remains now. Seeing this almost stops me. All feeling goes out of my legs and feet. I don’t feel the ground beneath my boots or the cold metal of the bloody gun in my hands. I can’t linger though. As much as I want to search through this place for her, I can’t. I have to find my family first. She would understand.
But where do I go? Where the fuck do I go? I can’t hardly see anything. People are running through yards and walkways, some with guns, some screaming, and some burning. Who’s on my side? Who isn’t?
There are bodies at my feet, some are still smoking, all are bleeding. I can’t look down at them because I’m too afraid of who it will be.
God, help me.
I run through the bandstand. The wood and rubble clatter. I’m on a beaten path. Then it comes to me. I know where I’m going. I was always going this way, my brain just finally caught up to my feet.
The med center.
That’s where they would go, that’s where they’d go to get Abby.
If they’re not there, then the armory.
I stop.
There are two bodies strewn on the path. One of them moves. I slow down as my heart revs up.
Not dead. But who is it? Who is —
“Help,” a man says.
It’s not a voice I recognize.
More screams from farther away. Intermittent bursts of gunfire. I risk a glance behind me, see Klein moving in the distance, just now hitting the ruined remains of the bandstand. He clutches that bag to his chest so he can’t pump his arms.
“Help meeee,” the voice again. The man is face down, the back of his head is slick with blood and mud — bloodmud. “Marian,” he says. “Marian.”
I need to keep going, but I can’t. This man has seen me and I’ve seen him. He is hurt and maybe I can help.
The doctor reaches me, breathing hard and fast. His face is red. Sweat droplets stand out on his forehead and gaunt cheeks like pearls.
“Jack,” he says. “Jack, what did you get me into?”
I barely hear him, but I understand. The chaos is just chaos from far away. When you get close, when you get into the heart of the heat and the smell of death and blood flood your nostrils and that screaming pierces your eardrums, it’s so different. It’s not chaos then. No. It’s hell.
“Help him,” I say.
Klein gives me a sobering look. “Help him?” He shakes his head. “Jack, look at him.”
I don’t want to. I don’t want to because if I look back down at the man who is bleeding at my feet, he might change. He might become Norm or Herb or someone I recognize. I don’t want that. I feel like vomiting. I feel like crying.
God, help me.
The man tries to push himself up. He is kind of fat and his arms quiver as he does so. It is now that I see the blade handle sticking out from his solar plexus; a steady stream of goopy blood flows down it. His arms give out just as he says (or shrieks), “Marian!”
I try to catch him, but he drops like a sack of bricks. As he hits the ground, he screams in pain. The blade handle buries itself farther into him. More blood.
“Mari — ”
And he dies right there on the spot.
I blink away tears. I don’t know why. Yes I do. This is my fault. This is all my fault. I look around at the death and destruction and the missing members of my family and I can’t help but think that this is all my fault. Because of Froggy. Because I let him go. I should’ve killed that son of a bitch the moment I saw him.
“Jack,” Klein says. His voice is loud; it has to be, because a building is roaring with flames and caving in on itself and beyond that a child is screaming out for his mother and a man dies shrieking Marian! But when Klein talks I barely hear him. My ears are somewhere else, reaching out across all the destruction, searching for a voice I recognize, or a scream or a whimper.
But deep down I know none of them would scream or whimper, not even Herb. They’re all strong. They’re all alive.
I flip the man at my feet over. His eyes are open, but he’s not seeing anything. This unnerves me. I don’t stop or pull away. I can’t. All I have is a gun with one bullet and a doctor who has the secrets of the universe in his messenger bag. I grab the knife handle. It is slick with the man’s blood. I pull it free, feeling like King Arthur excavating Excalibur from the stone. It’s only after the blade comes out that I realize I am screaming. The man’s blood spurts from his wound, misting my face, making me look like a crazy bastard.
I feel like a crazy bastard, too.
And when I scream louder and hold the bloody blade above my head while I run toward the med center, I prove that I am.
Three
The med center is on fire and seeing this makes me pump my legs harder.
“Stop,” Klein hisses behind me. “You can’t just go at them with no plan.”
The sizzling of the flames, the snapping and cracking of wood and breaking glass are louder than his voice, but his has a way of carrying, or knifing right into my brain.
“Don’t you see?” he asks.
I’m running toward the smoking med center.
All I see is red, and it’s not flames.
“They’re everywhere. Open your eyes, Jack. Open them!” he says.
He’s right. I stop. Men dressed in the ragged garb buzz through the pathways like busy bees. They run into the chaos. These are the enemies. These are the ones I’m after.
I slow down as I really see this and Klein grabs me. He is not a strong man, neither am I. He pulls me behind the ruined husk of a house. Inside the destruction, I see a bed melted to the floor. Pictures curled and singed, barely discernible. It hurts. It hurts to see it, to smell it, to taste it. I can’t look long. I move to go again, but Klein holds me back.
He points to the med center. Outside, in what would be the front yard, three large men in the rags of cannibals drag writhing bodies from the flames. They each have weapons. Not knives, but guns. Big guns. The people they are dragging are putting up a good fight and losing.
Through the smoke, I can’t see who they are, just shadows. Then a fourth figure comes forward and I see a large hump. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s more than one person. They are dragging something as large as an elephant.
My heart flutters. The dread consuming me seems to dissipate if only for just a moment. But it comes back once I hear the big man crying out.
It’s Herb.
I want nothing more than to rush the building, but all I have is a knife and a gun with one bullet. That wouldn’t be smart. I look to Klein, who is pale despite the orange flames bathing his face, then I look beyond him where the armory barely stands in the distance.
“The armory,” I say.
Klein nods. “Now you’re thinking,” he says.
I turn to run and I realize I’m going back the way I came, but I have to. For my family.
Four
The armory is blazing. There are three bodies in the front lawn. I was here less than twenty-four hours ago when the the building looked like an equipment shed, painted a forest green with a red door. And now…now it’s nothing but a blackened husk of wood.
The three people who are dead on the front la
wn might’ve made a last ditch effort to grab the heavy artillery, but they didn’t make it.
Heat engulfs me as I get closer. Over the roar of the flames, I hear Klein’s whimpering. Smoke is thick over here. It stings my eyes, makes my throat feel like it’s closing up. I keep going and I go right to the bodies. I turn them over one by one while gunfire ripples in the distance behind me. I don’t even shudder at the sound.
I exhale each time I turn a corpse over. Here, is a man with a half-burned gray beard; there, is a woman with green streaks in her black hair; and last, is a young kid, more ash than skin. I almost feel like vomiting, but it’s not any of my family.
I turn back to the armory.
The door is open. I stick the gun with one bullet into my waistband. It’s cold against my skin.
A quick glance inside tells me the place has been cleaned out. There’s a few weapons, but nothing for me to really defend myself with.
Damn it.
I get about three feet past the threshold when the roof above starts straining. I have my shirt over my mouth, trying to filter out the black smoke. I’m getting lightheaded. The walls are bare, there’s blood on the floor. A few melee weapons, but nothing that will help me save the day.
I start coughing, really hacking to the point where I think I’m going to cough up a lung. I run back outside, the blade from the dead man back on the path in my hand. I’m about two steps out of the building.
It groans, a real deep, lurching kind of sound. A dying sound. Then the building collapses.
I feel a great breeze of hot fire as it crumbles. I jump forward. Klein is already running for it. The hair on the back of my head singes. I feel trapped in an oven.
Then it passes and I get up because I’m not going to sit around feeling sorry for myself. I’m going to save the fucking day.
“Come on!” I say to Klein who is cowered up against an adjacent building.
“Jack — ” he says, voice cut off. He is frozen, a deer in the headlights. “Oh, no,” he says.
He stares at something behind me. I turn my head to look. It’s a group of men. They run toward us. I back up until I hit the building Klein is against. I’m readying my pistol. Preparing for a fight.
Klein grabs me and I think he’s going for my gun, but he doesn’t. His hands dig into my pocket. “Hey, what the fuck?” I shout.
He pulls the keys to the Hummer free, not saying a word. He is fast, lightning fast. By the time my hands snatches at him, the keys are gone and Klein spins off the building and runs through the labyrinth of fire. This time, he pumps his arms and it makes all the difference.
“Get him!” one of the men shout.
I spin around. It’s too late. The men have closed the gap. I’m no match for the gun that whirls through the air and cracks me on the bridge of the nose. Pain explodes up my face. Something splinters. The warm flow of blood runs from the wound and into my mouth. I fall to my knees.
“Thought you got ‘em all,” a man says.
“Guess not,” another one answers.
“Hey, is that my knife? I was looking for that.”
I’m trying to get up, but I’m feeling the earth’s rotation beneath my feet. It’s like I’m drunk and standing on a waterbed.
“Thank you!” one of the men say. The knife is ripped from my hands. I open my eyes and stare at them through a sheen of blood. My blood.
There’s three of them, the fourth one took off after Klein.
The man who took the blade is a thin fellow, more skeleton than meat. He has a beak for a nose and dirt smeared under his eyes like war paint. “What should we do with this one?” he says.
“Kill him,” another man says. He is heavier, but a lot taller. No joke, if there was still an NBA, this guy would start on a championship team. “Kill him and put him over with the others. He doesn’t have much meat on him, but it’s better than squirrel.”
“Damn right,” the third man says. He has long, dirty hair. Cheekbones that stick out from his face. They all three look like freaks, the type of bastards you’d expect to be cannibals. I’m not surprised this was Froggy’s crowd. Not surprised at all. Froggy was the king asshole, but these guys are a close second.
“How you like dying, pal?” the thin one asks. “This blade looks too clean to me.”
I’m not scared. I left all of my fear in Washington D.C.
The large one grabs me around the collar. The stitching in my t-shirt stretches and twangs. He is rough. He pulls me up to my knees.
And my hand acts on its own as it so often does these days. I only have one bullet left, but at least I get to take one of these bastards down with me. The gun frees from my waistband, index finger presses the safety, and then finds the trigger in one swift motion. This large man already has large eyes, but as he catches the muted gunmetal now glinting with fire, those eyes balloon to the size of this man’s cranium. And that’s pretty damn big.
The gun cracks as loud as ever, but I hardly notice the noise. I’m too invested in seeing the top of the man’s head get blown off.
The thin one screams, drops the knife and fumbles his own gun, which is some kind of rifle. I have no bullets left, but I don’t tell them this.
“Drop it,” I say, pointing the gun at him.
He has the rifle at waist-level.
He studies my face. I can’t imagine I look anything less than menacing right now, covered in blood and black soot.
The skinny one drops the rifle. The other man, the one with the sharp cheekbones, does the same, then he takes off running back the way he came.
He watches his friend go. He looks to me and then down to the ground where his other friend is minus his scalp and bleeding out into the dirt. I see the front of his pants darken. He’s pissed himself.
“Get on your knees,” I say.
He does.
I grab the guns. They’re both rifles. One has a strap and I put it over my shoulder. I spin the pistol on my finger and holster it back in my waistband. I point the other rifle at the skinny man.
“Don’t kill me, please,” he says. His voice is oddly calm.
“Depends,” I say.
“On what?” he asks. He looks me dead in the eyes. I can respect that.
“On whether you comply or not.”
“I dunno what that means,” he says.
I chuckle with no humor. It’s just reactionary. “It means whether you do what I tell you to do or not.”
“Oh, mister, I’ll do whatever you want,” he says.
There’s hope in his eyes and piss in his pants.
“I’m looking for people,” I say. “Survivors.”
“Well, they ain’t gonna be alive much longer.”
“So you know who I’m talking about?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer fast. I put the barrel of the rifle on his forehead and then he answers a lot quicker.
“I know because I know who you is,” he says.
“What?” I say, jamming the gun against his face. He flinches hard once and almost falls.
“They’re with Bea. She’s been waiting for ya.”
“Bea? Who?” I ask.
“Beatrice. She ran the raid. Said she got word from the big guys in — ”
“D.C., yeah, I know,” I say. “I killed the big guys.”
“Getting killed by ya would be an honor,” he says, smiling. “But I hate you, know that?”
“The feeling is mutual,” I say. “I’m not going to kill you, though. Not yet.”
“Why not?” He sounds disappointed.
“Because you’re going to lead me to Beatrice,” I say.
“Anything,” he answers. “But we won’t have to go far.”
I hear their footsteps and then this asshole’s laughter.
I spin around, I’m face to face with an army of cannibals. They have about ten guns pointed at me and in one dirty man’s grasp is Darlene. My heart flips, sinks, dies.
I lower my weapon.
“Greetings,�
� a woman says to me as she walks closer.
I don’t have time to answer. I’m hit from behind. Hard. Very hard.
Darlene is the last thing I see before blackness takes me.
Five
“Jack Jupiter,” a voice says.
A woman. The same woman.
I open my eyes, see the med center. It’s not burning any longer and it’s still standing. Black smoke drifts lazily from the structure. A blemish against the clear, blue sky.
I look to the people last. They surround me, all large and looming and shadowy in the hazy, morning sunlight. They wear their raggedy clothes, hold their guns. Most of them grin.
God, help me.
“Glad you’re awake,” the woman says.
I’m on my knees. My hands are tied behind my back. There’s dried blood in my eyes. Dirt in my nostrils. The smell of fire is still in the air, so is the smell of death.
“I’m B — ”
“Beatrice. I know,” I say. And I really don’t care who she is. I’m going to kill her regardless.
She smiles. She is missing most of her teeth. How she eats human flesh, I don’t know. In the distance is the sound of gunfire. Rotters from the woods come to join the party, I think, and they’re out there defending the ruined village just so the cannibals can put on their little show. Well, I’ve been through it all. Nothing can surprise me anymore.
“And you are Jack Jupiter, slayer of my people,” Beatrice says.
I snarl at her. “You shouldn’t be able to call yourself people because people don’t kill people with no remorse, people don’t eat other people. You’re monsters.”
She just keeps on grinning. “We can call ourselves whatever we want,” she says. “There are no more rules in this world. Surely you are aware of that.”
“Where is my family?” I’m trying not to show it to the grinning monsters all around me, but I’m scared. Scared as hell.
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