“I don’t get it,” John asked. “I mean, I know antibiotics aren’t the easiest thing to get your hands on, but can’t you have another trader handle the delivery? Why risk your time or your people’s lives, or our lives for that matter, trying to get them there?”
Father Christmas shook his head. “Look, I’d like to say it’s because I believe in the need to rebuild some semblance of society and all that idealistic crap, but the real reason is that I’ve got a reputation to uphold here, okay? I’ve got a contract with that group in Fulton, and if I fail in my capacity to fulfill that contract, I lose face around here and then I’ve got to start watching my back,” he jiggled the keys again, like an angler baiting a hook. “Do we have a deal, Chia Pet?”
I wanted to say no. I really did. But every fucking decision I’ve made since the late, great planet Earth went belly-up has been made by my stomach, and Father Christmas, damn him, knew it. Just the thought of relaxing on a porch with a big bowl of Coco Puffs made me salivate.
“We’ll do it,” I agreed. Father Christmas smiled again, returning the keys to his desk.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll try to have one of my couriers gather up another shipment of antibiotics and whatever else you and your stud-muffin will need for the trip. How about a gun? I just got a nice .357 in a few days ago. You could pretend you’re Dirty Harriet.”
I pointed to the machete strapped to my leg. “This pig-sticker’s always done me well, and John’s got lousy aim, besides.”
“As you wish,” Father Christmas said. Then, as we were about to leave, he called out to me again. “And just so you know, Chia Pet, if you two attempt to screw me in any way on this, or try to renege on the deal and find the safe house without delivering the goods, or anything like that, I’ll have you killed.”
“Many have tried, Santa Claus, but none have succeeded thus far,” I stamped out the cigarette. “Just make sure you’ve got the welcome mat laid out for us, because I’m already hungry.”
People always ask why John and I ride bicycles instead of, you know, tearing mad shit up with a Harley or sitting tall in Mr. Ed’s saddle. It’s simple logic, really. Bicycling is safe, it’s quiet, it doesn’t require gas or hay, you can go on- or off-road, navigate narrow areas better and plus it tones your calves like a motherfucker. The only real drawbacks are that it can be difficult to haul everything you pillage and it takes forever to get anywhere, mainly because you have to avoid the major highways unless you want to end up a hog-tied sex monkey for some backwoods survivalist encampment.
It was that latter problem that reared its ugly head after the two of us set out from Wall Street the next morning with as many supplies as we could carry and a canvas satchel filled with rattling bottles of medication. According to the raggy road atlas I keep it’s only about thirty miles from Columbia to Fulton. In the old days that would’ve been a half-hour’s drive; now it takes the better part of three days, longer if you run into obstacles like the washed out bridge that forced John and I to detour through a town ten miles and a full day out of our way, or that little rain shower that made the ground too swampy to pedal through.
On the second evening we set up camp in a half-collapsed post office and decided to binge on the rations Father Christmas gave us. To anyone who hasn’t known starvation, Spam and Vienna sausages washed down with a fifth of Smirnoff doesn’t sound like Thanksgiving but it was fucking amazing.
Maybe it was the vodka, or the post-feast friskiness John and I indulged in afterwards, but I ended up sleeping deeper than I usually like and woke up with a bitch of a hangover. The rain had stopped, but it was still sloppy on the back roads, and with the headache I had I was in no mood for a Tour de France. Things went from bad to worse less than a mile from the post office when we came upon the rusted remains of a FedEx truck tipped on its side and sprawled across the road like a beached whale. John, always on the hunt for schwag, smirked when he spotted the wreckage.
“Look at that,” he said, dismounting from his bicycle and walking to the pile-up. “I wonder how many goodies we can strip off this baby?”
At first I just ignored him, wishing that Aspirin, like cockroaches and Twinkies, had been able to survive the apocalypse unscathed, but as I watched John poke around the overturned cab of the truck, I felt my spider-sense tingling like something wasn’t quite right. When I told him so, he glanced back to me, making a face. “Come on, Chia, don’t tell me you think this is some sort of trick.”
I wanted to rattle off the endless number of times we’d encountered booby-trapped houses and vehicles, but all I said was, “Let’s just go, huh?”
John walked around the front of the cab, disappointed. “There’s nothing here, anyway. Maybe we should--”
He never finished his sentence; two steps away from the truck John’s sneaker snagged on a wire neither of us had seen, and a second later he was on his back, sliding across the pavement and up into a tree along the roadside, screaming all the way. Swinging upside down from a branch, one ankle bound in a loop of rope, John’s frantic cries as he flailed were almost funny.
“Chia! Chia get me down!” He shouted, ponytail flopping in his round face. “I’ll never doubt your woman’s intuition again, honest!”
“Sure you won’t,” I grumbled, hopping off my bike and heading towards the weed-clogged ditch. “Not until the next time, right?”
I pulled out my machete, stomping through the grass to where John was strung up; right before I reached him, though, I tripped on something, fell, and soon found myself dangling in the tree right beside him.
Clever, I thought, the blood-rush to my head worsening my headache. Very clever. Whoever set these traps knew that if one person were to get snared, a companion might try to free them and get snagged themselves. And I walked into it like a big, dumb dog.
Hanging upside down with little conception of time fucks with you head; when you’ve got ADHD, it’s like a mental gangbang. I don’t know how long we swayed there in the breeze, but it was enough to clear my hangover and for me to sing the entirety of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane album. Twice.
Around sunset I heard the crunch of leaves in the woods behind us, and hoped to hell it was just Bambi coming out for a snack at dusk. Then I heard the voices and knew we were screwed.
“Why are we always the ones that have to check the traps?” one voice asked.
Another answered, more gruffly, “You’d think you’d like to get out for a little bit.”
There was a pause before the first voice unsteadily spoke again. “What if we run into The Dragon?”
“The Dragon only comes out at night, Molly. If we hurry we’ll be back by then. Now pay attention. We’re almost there.”
Two figures, blobby in the gathering gloom, emerged from the brush and made their way over to us. Upside-down it was hard to get a lock on them, but one was heavier than the other, though neither were really very big. As they neared I realized why. Despite all the crap John and I had been through, all the precautions and rules-of-thumb we’d learned about navigating the smoldering shitheap that passes for civilization, we’d apparently fallen into a trap laid by a couple of mangy-looking Lord of the Flies rejects. One was a girl, maybe sixteen, with short, bobbed blonde hair and wearing an oversized, dirt-stained black jacket and cargo shorts eaten out at the knees; the other, older than her, was black, his hair corn-rowed and dressed in a torn hoodie and jeans.
“Are they alive?” The girl asked. Until that point John and I were mouse-quiet, but nerves got the better of me and I laughed.
“That answer your question, Molly?” The boy said, retrieving the machete from where I’d dropped it, waving the blade in my face. “What’s so funny, lady? I were you, I wouldn’t be laughin’ at nothin’.”
“Oh, it’s silly,” I said. “I just can’t get over the fact that I’m going to be killed by refugees from Sesame Street.”
The girl went to our bicycles, smiling when she uncovered our stash. “Th
ey have medicine, Wolfie, and food, too. Can we eat some? I won’t tell if you don’t,” she asked hopefully. The boy--Wolfie--sighed.
“Not now. We need to head back before it gets too dark,” he pulled zip-ties from his back pocket, binding John’s hands before doing the same to me and cutting us down with the machete. We crashed to the ground and before I could orient myself properly Wolfie yanked me up, motioning to the brush. “Get walking, both of you.”
“I can’t,” I sneered. “My leg’s cramped. Tends to happen when you spend all day as a human piñata.”
Any further glibness in me dissolved when I looked down and saw a small revolver clasped in the youth’s free hand, and I silently chastised myself for so casually refusing Father Christmas’s gun. Wolfie glanced to Molly. “Carry what you can from their bikes. Just make sure to bring the medicine. Mother will appreciate that,” he gestured to John and I again. “You two. March.”
So march we did, as best we could, anyway, given the tangled terrain and the fact that it was getting darker by the minute. When we came to a wrecked trailer park, a loud, dull roar echoed in the distance that caused all of us to stop dead.
“What the hell was that?” John asked. Molly looked back to Wolfie, saucer-eyed.
“It’s the Dragon,” she said nervously.
Wolfie, suddenly skittish, hurried us along. “Keep going.”
A short hike from the trailer park was a dilapidated county jail, a razor-wire chain-link fence surrounding its perimeter, the parking lot a graveyard of rusty, burned-out cars. At the main gate Wolfie tucked the revolver into his pants and rang a small brass bell mounted atop the fence. Dogs began barking, the gate clattered open, and another pair of dirty, malnourished children carrying crude torches came into view with two snapping mutts at their side.
“Go get Miguel,” Wolfie told them, forcing us beyond the gate. One of the kids ran off, returning a few minutes later accompanied by a paunchy, middle-aged Hispanic man with a pitted face in patched-together mechanics’ overalls.
“Who’re they?” The man asked, looking John and I over like we were lepers.
“We found ‘em in the traps near the junk-wreck,” Wolfie handed him my duffel bag. “There’s some antibiotics in here that may be good for Mother’s hand.”
As the man riffled through the satchel, Molly politely cleared her throat and said, “We heard The Dragon, Miguel.”
The man looked at Wolfie. “Is that true?”
Wolfie shrugged. “We heard something.”
Miguel’s expression turned fearful. “Get that gate closed,” he commanded before glancing from John and I to Wolfie and saying, “Take them inside.”
Remember that bit about I mentioned about John being handy in a fight? Yeah, forget that. As Wolfie forced us across the overgrown yard towards the main building I could clearly see John wasn’t going to do squat to improve our captive status, so that’s when I made my move. Looking back with 20/20 goggles, trying to Chuck Norris my way out of a hostage situation with my hands still bound probably wasn’t the sharpest course of action, but suddenly I was a woman transformed, a blur of kicks, my worn-out Doc Martens connecting with Wolfie’s mid-section, crumpling him to the ground.
I pivoted, shouted for John to follow and started for the gate, laughing with every step, not believing I had been so daring, so bold, so brutal. Halfway there, though, my lungs heaved for breath--too many cigarettes, bitch--and I initially didn’t hear the barking dogs or that brass bell ringing again, didn’t see the dozen other children rush from the building carrying old police nightsticks—all I cared about was Chia’s impending freedom.
If I’d been smarter, I would’ve stopped to ask myself how a scraggily group of kids could overpower the fully-armed guards Father Christmas sent to begin with.
You ever see ants swarming over a picnic basket? Yeah, it was kinda like that.
Bam. Lights. Out.
Fuck.
You know, the best part of being unconscious is getting another opportunity to have my favorite recurring dream, the one where I’m working my way through the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at Golden Corral.
I was on my sixteenth plate of syrup-slathered short stacks when I came to, and as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, the phantom taste of Aunt Jemima still on my lips, I realized I was on the lower bunk in a cramped, mildew-covered jail cell. Sitting up my head pounded, dwarfing the hangover I’d suffered earlier. My hands were still zip-tied, but I reached back, feeling the egg-shaped lump on my skull, my fingertips coming away sticky with blood.
Great escape, Chia, I thought. Steve McQueen would’ve been proud.
“I’m glad to see you’re finally awake.” An unfamiliar voice said, startling me. Opposite the cell’s bars a beautifully tan-skinned woman stood smiling at me. She was dressed in dirty military fatigues and combat boots with an old, soiled serape draped from her shoulders, long, black hair streaked with gray trailing down her back in a braided ponytail. Despite her pleasant demeanor I could tell this lady had seen some serious shit in her day--a vicious scar wiggled its way from the left temple down her cheek and across the bridge of the nose, and her left arm hung in a sling, a blood-stained, bandaged stump where the hand should’ve been.
“I’m not,” I replied sarcastically. “You interrupted my breakfast fantasy.”
“Are you hungry?” She paused, correcting herself. “Where are my manners? Of course you are. We all are anymore. There’s plenty of food here. This jail’s not as well-stocked as that National Guard depot my babies and I squatted in near Memphis, but there’s a pretty good supply of canned goods, and a good mother can stretch anything to make it last.”
My stomach growled as I studied her. “I take it you’re the Mother I heard the kids talking about?”
Her smile widened. “It’s what they call me, but my name’s actually Janice. Janice Hubbard.”
“Hubbard?” I smirked. “You mean like Old Mother Hubbard? Well, bang-up job you’ve done with your little Cobra Kai death cult,” I jeered. “A better group of burgeoning sociopathic brats I’ve never seen.”
Janice’s smile disappeared. “You’ve no idea the horrors we’ve endured and no right to ridicule us, any of us. The children may be a bit rough around the edges at times, but they mean you no harm.”
“Not everyone here’s a kid, though.”
“Most, but no, not all. I used to be a kindergarten teacher and was determined to keep as many of my students alive as I could after the end. It hasn’t always been an easy task, but others have helped me build a little community despite everything. We’ve only been settled here a few months. It was just too dangerous in Tennessee anymore. Militia marauders. Nasty fellows. I hope they don’t make it this far north,” she smiled again. “But rest assured, you’re not a prisoner here.”
“Really? My current accommodations would argue otherwise.”
Janice sighed. “And where were we supposed to put you after last night? As it is you injured four of my babies during your outburst. Nothing more than cuts and bruises, but still, we didn’t know if you were dangerous, and if you want to know the truth I’m still not sure,” she leaned in closer to the cell bars. “You talk in your sleep. Caviar spread on Oreos and a front-row seat at the Oscars with Lee Harvey Oswald? The inside of your head must be a terrifying place. No offense.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said. “So your people didn’t kill the other traders who came this way?”
“The ones in SWAT gear? No. But we found what was left of them readily enough. And the traps you and your companion unfortunately stumbled into weren’t set for ambushing innocent travelers, either. They’re for The Dragon.”
“There’s that again.” I said, remembering Wolfie and Molly’s fearful conversation. “What is it with this Dungeons and Dragons baloney?”
Janice’s face grew serious. “The children named it that, and the rest of us followed suit, but in reality we don’t
know what it is.”
“So, wait, you’re telling me there really is some kind of King Ghidorah running around out there?”
“Funny girl,” Janice sniped. “But it’s no joke. Every night something tries to break through the fences, and whatever it is, it’s hungry. We’ve lost half our dogs in the last few weeks, and when that wasn’t enough it decided to snack on something a bit more substantial,” she held up her handless arm. “One night about a month ago there were screams in the woods--one of the traders you mentioned, presumably--and Miguel and I went out to investigate when we were attacked. The Dragon killed our dog and then got hold of me,” Janice’s voice faltered. “I fought with it, stabbed it even, but it took my hand and then took off when Miguel shot at it.”
“And you still don’t know what it was?”
Janice shook her head. “Look, I barely survived after losing my hand. It was dark, a surprise attack, and with the shock from blood loss I didn’t get too good a look, but it was big, strong, and like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Ever since then the situation around here has just gotten worse. That’s why Wolfie zip-tied you--he gets overzealous sometimes, and I guess he thought you and your man were responsible for the attacks. But we’re all on edge. The assaults are constant. Every night.”
“Why don’t you just bug out of here?”
“We can’t,” Janice said, exasperated. “The old school bus we drove here broke down and we’re not familiar enough with the area to scavenge any replacement parts. So it’s hike through unfamiliar, hostile territory or hunker down and weather the storm.”
I’ve had a lifelong aversion to authority figures and being the one in charge Janice represented The Man, but I couldn’t help but feel for the girl. Trying to raise all those kids in a world gone mad, it was admirable in a, you know, fucked-up kinda way, but it didn’t mean I had to hang around for the rousing finale if I didn’t have to.
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