by Tom Abrahams
Rudy sucked in a deep breath and hitched. He winced again, grunted, and turned his head away from her, studying the brown haze that hung low in the sky to the east.
Norma studied him as best she could from the perch of her saddle. He wasn’t typically a hard man to read. Being together as long as they had, she could read him like the back of her hand. But from the side, his face almost expressionless, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Her chest tightened.
“Say something,” she said. “Please.”
Rudy rubbed his jaw and raked his fingers along the underside of his chin. He adjusted his hips in the saddle and squinted. While it was only a few seconds, each one was agonizingly drawn out into super slow motion. Norma’s vision blurred. Tears again. She hadn’t cried so much in years.
Her horse loped after the long, warped shadow cast ahead of them. Norma felt as hollow as that gray version of herself. Maybe she shouldn’t have said anything. She’d coped with the guilt of her actions long enough—reflected in Lou’s sad eyes, in David’s tiny hands and toothy grin, in Dallas’s anger for the man who’d abandoned his wife.
Norma thought the confession, an admission of past sin to the one person in the world in whom she could confide without judgment, would lighten her load. It hadn’t done that so far.
Finally, Rudy sighed and spoke. “I can’t say I agree with what you did.”
Norma sensed a “but” coming. That gave her hope.
“But,” he said, “I know you, Norma. In my heart I’m positive that everything you do has good intentions. I don’t think you have a mean bone in your body.”
She dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her index finger and blinked away the sheen of tears.
“Our lives haven’t been easy since the Scourge,” said Rudy. “This world, our world, has deteriorated into a place where people pick and choose their morality to suit their circumstances. You’ve never done that. You’ve always done the best you can to be good, to do good.”
The tears welled again. This time they weren’t from guilt. They were a product of the ridiculous love she felt for her husband.
He held her gaze for a moment before looking ahead. Eyes narrowed, he wiped his brow with his sleeve. The shadows in front of them were shrinking as the sun lifted higher into the sky. The orange hue had given way to a pale blue that was hazy at the edges.
“What you did for Gladys?” he asked rhetorically. “Her sister? Having them live with us for as long as they did? It was so generous. I wouldn’t have done that.”
She smirked. That was a generous lie. He’d been every bit as willing to house the women as she’d been. He’d given them the space to work through what the Llano River Clan had done to them. She’d been less patient, pushing them to engage, to be a part of their extended family.
“Then the way you helped Gladys with the railroad? All of the people you’ve helped get to safety at great risk to yourself? Don’t tell me you’re not the most selfless person you know.”
He was the most selfless person she knew. There was nobody even close except maybe Marcus. The more she thought about Mad Max, the more she understood his sacrifice, his reluctant heroism.
“It’s going to work out,” Rudy said. “I promise. It’s all going to be okay.”
He offered her a twitch of a smile at first. Then it spread into a grin. He clicked his tongue at the horse and maneuvered it closer to Norma. Wincing, he reached out with his hand and touched her leg.
With the reins still wrapped around it, she placed her hand on his and squeezed. She blew him a kiss. He blew one back.
Rudy raised his eyebrows. “Now,” he said, dipping his chin, “as for that other crap? The poacher? Let’s not think about that. What’s done is done. We have to move forward. And I have a feeling there are more people who are going to need killing.”
Norma clenched her jaw. He was right. She knew it.
CHAPTER 19
APRIL 21, 2054, 8:45 AM
SCOURGE +21 YEARS, 7 MONTHS
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sally clutched her chest. Dark blood, her blood, seeped through her fingers, painting the back of her hand bright red.
In front of her, a dark figure aimed the weapon at her. Smoke drifted from its barrel, tendrils swirling before they dissipated into the darkness of the night.
She pulled her hand from her body. The soaked cotton of her shirt stuck to her palm. Looking down, all she could see was a small circular tear in the fabric. She felt nothing. How could so much blood come from something so tiny, so painless? Yet it flowed almost as if someone had sliced her jugular.
Her pulse pounded. Her knees weakened.
“Why?” Sally asked the dark figure. She lifted her gaze from the gushing wound to settle on the dark figure.
The figure laughed. It was a guttural laugh, the kind she expected to hear from a storybook villain, not a real person. The figure stepped from the dark into a light Sally hadn’t previously noticed.
The blood pooled at her feet now. It seeped through her boots and squished between her toes. She tasted it in her mouth, warm and coppery. It was thick in her throat and on her tongue. The air was humid and acrid. The sharp odor of gunpowder stung her nostrils.
Her balance wavered. She was light-headed.
How had this happened? Where was she? The street beneath her feet was cobbled stone. The stones were wet with rain.
Rain?
When had it rained?
The buildings were close on either side of her, their pale brick and mortar aged, moss-covered, and rust-stained. Gutters clanked with the rhythm of dripping water. The sky above, only a sliver of it visible beyond the tight gap between the tall buildings, was milky. There were clouds. Clouds. Rain. Blood. None of it made sense.
She blinked the figure into focus and had to blink again to be sure her eyes weren’t playing tricks. The woman in front of her took another step closer and fired another shot from near point-blank range.
“Gladys!” Sally shouted. “Gladys, no!”
The world went black.
Sally shot up in bed. Soaked in sweat, she tried catching her breath. Her hands grabbed at her chest, searching for the wound, the blood.
The light in her room flicked on, and Gladys stood in the doorway in a pale blue nightgown, the skin under her arms sagging. Her eyes were bleary and appeared smaller. The wrinkles on her face were deeper somehow. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Were you having another nightmare?”
Sally leaned against the wall behind the bed, propped up by the three pillows under her back. Her breathing was ragged. She patted her chest, searching for a wound that wasn’t there.
Gladys glided into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress springs creaked and the bed shifted. “Can I get you something?”
Sally shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m okay. I think.”
“What was it?”
Sally didn’t understand the question. “What?”
“The nightmare,” said Gladys. “What was it about?”
Sally swallowed hard. The explosion of adrenaline, of raw fear, was fading. She sank against the pillows and her spine pressed against the wall. “I don’t know,” she said. The dream, as vivid as it had been moments earlier, was foggy now.
“You called my name,” said Gladys. “But you were asleep. You were dreaming about me?”
Sally searched her mind, digging for snippets of the dream like a word on the tip of her tongue. “I was in an alley,” she said. “It was raining. Or it had rained, I can’t remember. I just know the street was wet. There was the sound of rain in the gutters.”
Gladys flashed a smile. Her crow’s feet deepened. “That sounds more like a dream than a nightmare. Rain? I can’t remember the last time we had real rain. Three months ago? Six, was it? I can’t recall.”
Sally looked through Gladys, into the haze of the dream. Her hand went back to her chest. She clutched the shirt, gripping it in her fist, and tightened her hold on it. “T
here was blood,” she said absently. “Blood was everywhere. I was bleeding, I think. I could taste it.”
“You were hurt?”
Sally nodded. She licked her lips.
“It was only a dream,” said Gladys. “It wasn’t real.”
It still felt so real. There was the faintest taste of copper in her mouth, like the remnant flavor of last night’s dinner. She let go of her shirt and blinked back to the moment. “What time is it?”
“Close to nine o’clock,” said Gladys. “I’ve been up for an hour. Do you want some coffee?”
“Please,” said Sally.
Gladys smiled and slapped Sally’s leg, making Sally jump. “Sorry,” Gladys said. “Didn’t mean to startle you. I just—”
“It’s okay,” said Sally. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”
Gladys got up from the bed. The mattress creaked again. She glided from the room, her nightgown flowing behind her like a cape.
Sally pulled the thin covers back and swung her legs to the side of the bed. Her bare feet touched the cool floor and she sat there to collect herself, her thoughts.
The nightmares were getting worse. They’d started a year earlier. Or was it two years? Sally couldn’t remember the first one. Not exactly. And it wasn’t that the violence was worse or that she was less able to save herself in each subsequent iteration of the dreams, it was that they felt more real. There was a latency when she awoke from them, the sensation that what had happened somehow manifested itself in the real world.
She knew that wasn’t the case. A nightmare was a nightmare was a nightmare. None of it was real, even if the dampness under her arms and her still quickly palpitating heartbeat suggested otherwise.
Sally lifted herself from the bed and stood solidly on the floor. Her nose itched. She scratched it and crossed the room to the door. She glanced back at the unmade bed, thinking about the blood in her dream, and turned out the light.
The strong aroma of coffee greeted her even before she stepped into the kitchen. Gladys liked to make the coffee strong. Every morning she said coffee wasn’t coffee if it didn’t make you feel like you could blast off into space.
Two mugs were steaming. One was cupped in Gladys’s hands. She blew on it with pursed lips. The other mug was on the counter. Sally picked it up by the handle and the steam puffed onto her face. It reminded her of the smoke she’d seen swirling from the barrel of the gun in her dream. A shudder rippled through her body.
Gladys had a book open on the counter. She’d obviously been awake for a while, despite the exhaustion etched on her face.
Sally was eager to forget the nightmare despite its images cementing themselves in her mind. Changing the subject seemed like a good option. She jutted her chin at the book. “What are you reading?”
Gladys set the mug on the counter and picked up the paperback. Using her thumb as a bookmark, she flipped over the book to study the cover. The pages were yellowed and some curled at the edges. To say the book was dog-eared was a dramatic understatement.
“It’s a western,” she said. “Judgment Day by a guy named G. Michael Hopf. It’s an old one. Came out in 2019. What is that? Thirty-five years ago?”
“You read westerns?” asked Sally.
“I guess I’m not the target audience, but coming from Texas, I’ve got an affinity for a good dusty yarn. Good versus evil, that sort of thing. And there’s a lot of revenge in westerns. I like that.”
Gladys winked at Sally. A smile edged onto her face; the parenthetical wrinkles that framed her mouth deepened and widened.
Sally tasted the coffee. It burned the tip of her tongue. She winced, blew on the mug, and tried it again. “What’s Texas like?”
Gladys raised an eyebrow. She folded a corner on a page and closed the book. Running her hand across the cover in the same way she pressed the wrinkles from her dresses, she seemed to consider the question as if to choose the right words. “That’s a complicated answer.”
Sally took another sip of the coffee. The steam dampened her nose and cheeks.
“Texas was the most beautiful place on Earth,” said Gladys. “The ocean, mountains, rivers, wide-open spaces, large cities, friendly people, diverse population…”
“Was?” asked Sally.
Gladys shrugged. “Before the Scourge it was all of those things. Afterward…” Her focus softened. She shook her head and chuckled. “People used to say, only partly in jest, Texas could secede from the rest of the United States and be its own country.”
“It was its own country once, wasn’t it?”
Gladys nodded. “It was a lot of things. On the floor of the rotunda in the state capitol, there used to be the emblems of all of its affiliations. It was a territory of Spain, France, and Mexico. It was part of the United States and the Confederate States of America. And then, of course, after beating back Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto, it became its own republic.”
Sally toasted Gladys with her mug. “You know a lot of history.”
Gladys flashed a smile. “Had to learn it in school when I was little. We even had to learn the Texas Pledge.”
“Texas Pledge? Like the Pledge of Allegiance we used to say?”
Gladys nodded. She lifted her chin and put her hand over her heart. “Honor the Texas flag,” she recited from memory. “I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.”
“Whoa.”
“I know. I loved it. There was a real pride in being a Texan.”
“Was?” Sally asked again.
“Everything changed so rapidly after the Scourge. People got desperate. They did desperate things. Then the government spent a ridiculous amount of money building the wall, which I never really understood. All it did was solidify the Cartel’s grip. Then it was a string of power-hungry groups that took control one after the other. It really was the Wild West. Still is, I think. The cities are now under gang control.”
“The tribes?”
“Yeah,” said Gladys, her gaze distant again. “They’re no different from the Cartel, the dwellers, the Llano River Clan. They subjugate women and children. They murder innocents.”
Both women sipped from the mugs. The steam was gone. Sally relished the hint of sweet in her black coffee. She let it sit in her mouth for a moment, washing over her tongue, before she swallowed.
Gladys put her hand on the book like a witness swearing on a Bible. She blinked and stared at Sally. “That’s why I like westerns,” she said, flattening the warped cover of the paperback. “The good guy always wins in the end, and the bad guys get what’s coming to them. There is no shortage of karma in westerns. That’s not how the real world works.”
“No, it’s not,” Sally said. “I get it. I wish I read more. It would be a good escape, and certainly healthier than a bottle of whatever.”
The women toasted each other. Gladys downed the rest of her coffee, then motioned for Sally to follow her from the kitchen. “Bring your coffee with you.”
Sally took the mug with both hands and tried to match Gladys’s glide through the hallway to a door she hadn’t entered before. Gladys stretched onto her tiptoes, reached up to the doorsill, and pulled down a key. She stuck the key into the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door.
The room was dark and cooler than the rest of the house. Goose bumps pimpled Sally’s skin as they moved into the space, and Gladys shut the door behind them. There was the faint hum and buzz of electronics. Gladys flipped a light switch and Sally’s eyes adjusted.
Along one wall was a desk. A banker’s lamp, the kind with a green glass shade, sat on one corner. It was off, but the main components sitting next to it were powered up. There was a piece of paper taped to the desk containing a list of numbers and letters.
Sally pointed at the collection of boxes and wires. “What are those?”
“My connection to Texas,” said Gladys, “and beyond.”
“Are they radios?”
Gladys rolled back the wheeled
chair at the desk and sat down. Using her heels, she scooted close to the desk and touched a couple of buttons on one of the components. She turned a couple of dials. There was a headset plugged into one of the boxes. Gladys unplugged it, drew a microphone closer to her, and pushed the button at its base. She held it down with her fingers.
“This is GFAGA5,” she said. “Is anyone monitoring this frequency?” She let go of the key and glanced back at Sally. “Questions?”
“Too many to count,” said Sally.
Her eyes danced across the collection of electronics. There were wires that ran along and under the table, snaking up the wall into holes in the ceiling. There were pieces of faded paper with typed letter-number combinations taped to the wall next to the wires, and hastily scribbled notes on the papers in red and blue magic marker. Sally saw the blue marker sitting on its end on the desk next to the banker’s lamp.
Nobody responded on the radio. Gladys repeated the call. Twice.
Sally was dumbstruck. She’d always wondered how the railroad communicated long distances without the Pop Guard monitoring their messages. This was the answer. She had no idea how the radio technology worked, but it made sense this was how they did it. It was relatively anonymous, it was transient, and it could get a message to someone far away almost instantaneously.
The radio crackled. A man’s voice broke through the static.
“Hello, GFAGA5,” he said. “This is HR29BR. We hear you.”
“Copy that, HR29BR,” said Gladys. “Checking status.”
“Who is that?” asked Sally. “Who are you talking to?”
Gladys didn’t answer her before the voice responded in a high-pitched tone.
“Status is good. New arrivals today. More tonight. When is the special delivery?”
“On its way shortly,” said Gladys. “I’ll update. FYI, Texas connection is off-line. Establishing new link soon.”