The Post

by Kevin A. Muñoz

  “Go back out to your friends,” I mutter. He doesn’t hesitate, moving away as if I were on fire. Once the man is well out of range, I push open the door.

  Immediately I’m assaulted by the smell of sweat and the gasping of half a dozen unseen people. A gas lamp winks to life and the glow illuminates a horror. Ten mangy-looking futon mattresses are strewn across the room. Six of them are occupied by nude or virtually nude women, all of whom have been shackled by one ankle to heavy rings screwed haphazardly into the walls.

  The oldest of the women could be my age, though she looks like her years have been much longer than mine. The youngest can’t be older than twenty. All of them are emaciated, the worst case showing every single rib like a wind-whitened skeleton in the desert. They are covered in dirt and grime. Three have shaved heads, with the beginnings of new growth; the other three have longer hair, matted and tangled. All of them are blonde and fair-skinned, presumably selected by the men to conform to a racist rejection of color even among the women they choose to victimize.

  I shut the door behind me to keep their captors on the other side, ignoring the stench that I trap inside with us. They’ve been living in it for who knows how long; I can handle a few minutes. I holster my weapon and show my hands. They have no reason to be afraid of me, surely, but I can’t assume that all of them are sane. I don’t know that I would be, in their position.

  A few steps farther in and I can see blood on the mattresses. Two of the captives have bleeding sores and cuts on their arms, legs. The others are covered in bruises, scabs, and scars.

  “You’re safe,” I say. “My name is Sam. No one is going to hurt you.”

  The woman nearest to me, the young one, begins to cry. I kneel down to her. The others react by retracting their bodies a few inches away from me, a couple of them whimpering. I hold my hands out inoffensively in front of the crying woman for a few seconds, then reach for hers. I clutch her fingers firmly. “What’s your name?”

  “She’s Madison,” says the woman I’ve pegged as the eldest. “She won’t talk. She doesn’t talk anymore.”

  I nod, recognizing a shadow of Abigail in the younger woman’s eyes.

  “What’s happening outside?” asks another of the women. She slides closer to me, to the edge of her mattress and the full reach of her chain. “We heard a shot.”

  “We’re going to get you out of here. I’m not alone. I have friends with me.” I speak to soothe them; the words themselves don’t matter. I don’t think about how I’m going to deliver on the implied promise, or what we’re going to do after we’ve taken them away from this hell. I only care that they understand they are safer now.

  “Did Jamie send you?” asks yet another. Her voice is rough and wounded.

  “Jamie’s dead,” says the eldest, sparing no pity. “You remember.” She turns to address me. “Sam. My name is Clara. Forgive me if I’m not being grateful enough, but I have to protect my girls. Don’t give them hope if there isn’t any.”

  The sound of a rifle shot penetrates the walls of the captivity, followed by a long scream and another shot that cuts it short. It doesn’t take much to guess that Barkov first killed Orwell, which must have burst Frankie’s eardrum, then killed Frankie.

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” I repeat, and this time I know it’s true.

  I leave the six women, and the two who were held by Orwell himself, in Marilyn’s care after Barkov and I are certain the remaining men are not going to be any kind of a threat. Kloves gladly stands watch over them, though the robust racism Frankie exhibited seems not to extend so deeply to the rest.

  This leaves Barkov and me to decide their fates, and the fates of the eight women. Quietly we walk to the coffee shop where the tortured bodies are still tied to the fence, and as we take them down and lay them on the cold pavement, we debate what to do with the survivors.

  Barkov doesn’t come right out with his suggestion, but I know from the look in his eye that he wants to scrub this city clean of its infection. When I confront him, he admits, “It would be the safest for us. They have lost their leaders, but they are still dangerous. They had a radio. I destroyed it, but they may have contacted this Ravana. They will surely try now, if they haven’t already.”

  “They may not even make it out of Conyers alive,” I say, looking back to the group of now-timid men corralled outside their Hobby Lobby home. Saying this, I realize that my solution—simply walking away—could be just as much of a death sentence for them. Perhaps my hands would be clean, but I would want to wash them just the same.

  “You may be right,” Barkov responds. “That leaves us with the question of those women. If the ruffians are not going to survive, what do you think will happen to them?”

  “You’re not suggesting—”

  “Sam,” he says, with a breath sounding almost paternal, certainly condescending. “They are in no shape to take care of themselves. If we leave them here, they will only be abused again. We cannot take them with us. The humane—”

  “They aren’t dogs, Mikhail.” I turn away from the bodies.

  Barkov lets me have silence for a time. Then he says, “Your sentimentality puts us in danger.”

  “Is that what you think this is? I know why you’re here. Revenge for your wife’s death. Do you know why I’m here? Why Marilyn is here? If we let these women die—”

  “There is no room in the car for all of them and us.”

  “Then one of us will have to drive back to Atlanta,” I say. “We do not leave them here. This is not a discussion.”

  “I’ll take them,” Marilyn says. I turn at the sound of steel in her voice but see the anguish in her eyes.

  “No,” I say. “If this has shown us anything, it’s that we need you with us. If we find Phoebe like we found these women—”

  “Yes,” Marilyn says. “Of course. But there are doctors back home who can look after them. I won’t have to stay. If it’s really not safe here, you could keep walking north on the highway, and I’ll find you. As long as you stay on the road, I’ll meet up with you in just a few hours. And besides, it can’t be anyone else. The three of you can take care of yourselves out here. I’d just get in the way.”

  Though I am reluctant to leave Marilyn on her own, I remember what she said at the tire shop. It’s not my place to tell her what to do or demand that she let me protect her, no matter how difficult that prospect is.

  “This is not a good idea,” Barkov says. “But if you are insisting—” He shrugs, acceding to the plan without another word. While he and Kloves rearrange the contents of the Volvo, I address the assembled Conyers men.

  “We are leaving. What you do next is up to you. You will tell no one that we’ve been here, or we will be back to finish what we started.” This time, I have no difficulty channeling Barkov’s Russian bluntness. It’s easier than asking myself if I could actually follow through. “If you leave this place, you will not go west. You will not go near Atlanta. And if we meet you again in any place where this is going on—” I gesture toward the women that Marilyn is coaxing toward the car—“we will shoot you like we shot the others. You don’t get a second chance. Not for this.”

  Barkov, Kloves, and I hoist heavier packs, filled with some of the supplies that wouldn’t fit in the station wagon, and head north behind Marilyn toward the interstate. We say our temporary goodbyes, and Marilyn turns left onto the ramp, heading back west toward Atlanta. I expect to see her again before the sun is at its peak, but the crawling sensation in my chest makes it difficult to trust that I will.

  I walk resolutely, aiming for the city of Monroe twenty miles away, letting the others pay closer attention to the scenery and potential threats. We should be halfway there by the time Marilyn returns to us. I spend my time coming to terms with what we’ve done in the last few hours. I didn’t try to stop it. They were monsters.

  But they were also men.

  I don’t want to become the sor
t of person who accepts what we did as necessary, as justifiable. That’s a compromise just like all the others, a compromise I can’t allow. I joined the Coast Guard because I wanted to save people. I’m still that woman. I have to be.

  DAY FOURTEEN, 12:00 P.M.

  When I was younger, still in the Coast Guard, I might have found this long walk with a heavy load bracing, even enjoyable. I had habits back then that I now find unpleasant to contemplate: waking up at dawn and running five miles before breakfast is the one that comes immediately to mind. But I’ve kept fit and capable, owing in part to my post in the Little Five and in larger part to a shame at my own flirtations with bodily slovenliness. I just no longer consider exercise a form of entertainment.

  The long walk offers me the chance to think about better memories and better times. A life filled with courtships and miraculous weddings and expectancies, before births and deaths took away the brighter lights of my world. And then the flicker of new light in Marilyn, who gave me what passes for hope in this unmapped country.

  But she needed someone who didn’t spend every waking moment looking for the wrong kind of closure. I wish that I could turn back and see that the answers glistened in her eyes, but it’s too late. The candle has gone out.

  “Hollow-head,” Kloves announces, and we all halt.

  It’s a man, looking healthier than most of his kind, wearing clothes that haven’t seen more than one winter. He can’t be much “older” than six months. Still, he shuffles slowly across the road with the characteristic gait of a hollow-head, his arms hanging slack at his sides. The lower half of his face is caked with drying blood.

  He is crossing at a broad intersection, moving from one gas station toward another diagonally across the street. There are only sparse trees in all directions except the way we came, with empty parking lots in front of squat convenience stores. No fences anywhere to be seen. One hollow-head in an area familiar to us is nothing to worry about, but none of us have been here before, or at least not recently enough to remember the terrain.

  And sure enough, glancing down past one of the gas stations, I see a gathering of hollow-heads working their way toward us.

  “Shit,” I whisper. “It’s a shrieker.” It has to be: it’s in the lead. Its partner—they always travel in pairs and trios—will be nearby. Hurrying as carefully as we can, we back away, looking to hide behind a low brick T-shaped building on our left. It was once the diminutive Walnut Grove fire station, and has two garage doors, one half-open, that provide us with good cover. One of the truck bays is empty; the other holds a white and red heavy rescue vehicle.

  And then I hear the engine. The Volvo is coming up from Conyers, out in the open, with its early 1990s V-6 groaning like it wants to be heard. I step back out from the garage and wave my arms, trying to get Marilyn’s attention before the shrieker finds its target.

  She either sees me or sees the hollow-head: she swerves left, coming toward the fire station, the barrels of biodiesel strapped to the roof swaying. The garage door is too low: the Volvo, with its payload, won’t fit through. Marilyn crushes the brakes and squeals to a halt just outside.

  “Get in!” she whispers loudly. I glance toward the intersection: the shrieker is moving our way, head swaying left and right, tracking the sound of the engine and the squeal of the tires. The horde following it is coming up to the edge of the gas station, only a few dozen yards from the intersection.

  “No, wait,” I say, holding out my arm to keep Barkov and Kloves from leaving the safety of the dark garage. “We won’t get through in time.”

  There are too many hollow-heads. I’ve seen panicked drivers floor their accelerators like action heroes, believing that they could ram their way through. But bodies don’t react to impacts the way they did in the movies, flying over the windshield and out of the way of the tires. More often than not, struck hollow-heads will fall down in the road. One or two can be crushed under the tires of a heavy car, but more than that and the car won’t have enough clearance. The front axle will run aground on a mound of bodies, and in an instant, the car will become a death trap, and then a coffin.

  I have another option. Before the Coast Guard, I worked a few summers as a volunteer firefighter as a way to get out of my hostile home. I remember how commercial garage doors like these work. I gesture to Marilyn to keep the car running and duck back into the garage. Blinking to make my eyes adjust to the shadows, I look for the double chain to one side of the door.

  “Kloves, pull this down and keep it down.” I hand him a single chain with a wooden ball at the end. When he pulls, the gear at the top of the door locks into place, and I pull hard on the second, looped chain. The panel door begins sliding up.

  It’s noisy. It takes time. Every pull on the loop chain clears maybe an inch, generously. I don’t have the upper body strength for an extended pull; when Barkov takes over, the door moves fractionally more quickly.

  I keep watch on the horde. The shrieker—and now its partner as well, coming up from behind the gas station to join its companion—is shuffling across the street to the sidewalk in front of the fire station. As soon as they see us, they will alert the group, and there’s nothing I can do about that. A glance at the door tells me that we aren’t going to get Marilyn inside and the door shut before the horde learns we’re here.

  I hear the squeak of the Volvo’s brakes and Marilyn slides the car into the station. Barkov lets go of the chain, then Kloves, both of them no doubt assuming that the door will drop when there is no longer any pressure on the gear. But it doesn’t work that way.

  “Reverse!” I hiss to Barkov, and the two men take up positions again. Barkov pulls hard on the loop chain in the opposite direction. The panel door starts to draw down, inch by inch.

  Marilyn jumps out of the car and comes to the door. She grabs the gear lock chain from Kloves, who takes over for Barkov. A little more speed now. Barkov joins me, flexing his oil-stained hands.

  “There is no way to make it go faster?” he asks.

  “There is,” I admit. “Though it will be a lot harder to keep open later.”

  The shriekers make the decision for us. They cry out in unison and the horde turns toward the fire station. I nudge Barkov back inside the station and tell everyone to stay away from the entrance. The panel door still has four more feet to clear before it’s closed: more than enough space for a hollow-head to enter, and they are more than halfway across the intersection now. The shriekers are even closer.

  I tear into my backpack and find the magnetic flashlight. I shake it twice to give it just enough power, then switch it on and sweep the light across the top of the door, near the gear. “That,” I say, pointing at a brake pin on the side of the gear opposite the chains, roughly the shape of an Allen wrench. “We need to pull that out.”

  I tell Marilyn to keep pressure on the gear lock chain while I hunt for something to use to reach the pin. There is a long brush hook attached to the side of the HRV, and I hand it to Kloves, the tallest of us.

  “They’re on the sidewalk,” Barkov informs us. I don’t take the time to look. I shine the light on the brake pin again, and Kloves reaches up with the hook, tapping the pin out of its seating.

  “Let go,” I tell Marilyn, and as soon as she releases the lock chain the panel door slams down. The noise is almost deafening in the enclosed space, but not so loud that we can’t hear the shriekers reacting with a second alert.

  The station is in darkness, except for the weak LED glow of my flashlight. The weight of exhaustion from the long walk and lack of sleep hits me at once, even as adrenaline floods my body. My hands shake. The flashlight’s beam flickers across the garage door. I lean against the Volvo’s rear hatch, steadying myself.

  A minute later, we hear the first rattling thump of bodies against the door. Long fingernails scratch the metal, seeking a way in.

  “What now?” Marilyn asks with a surprisingly controlled voice. “Isn’t this the situation we
teach kids never to let themselves get into? Trapped inside a building surrounded by hollow-heads?”

  “I’ll check the doors,” Kloves says, retrieving his own flashlight. “Let’s hope we’re trapped.”

  He heads off into the darkness. The rest of us look for places to sleep on the floor. Given the choice between dust and grease, we pick dust and bed down in the corners of the garage.

  After Kloves returns with an all clear, Barkov claims first watch and promises to wake me in two hours. But I don’t sleep at first: Marilyn sits close to me and rests her head against my shoulder. The warmth is welcome in this place, which reminds me of the first months after the collapse, when most of us who survived did so by finding what few safe places remained. Warehouses. Schools. Jeannie and I spent three nights in a movie theater with a hundred other people, all of whom are dead now.

  We were refugees in our own land, sharing a solidarity that few of us had experienced before. Whatever else was going on around us, however terrifying and terrible it became, we were comforted. We were not alone.

  Marilyn is not alone. Neither am I. The conflicts that came between us can’t touch the warmth of her body resting against mine. They can’t make me anything other than grateful that she is here.

  My eyes open eight hours later. Barkov never woke me: Kloves spelled him instead, and they took two-hour turns by the doors, listening to the perpetual soft thumping and scratching. I try to build up some indignation, but I am thankful, and I can guess as to why Barkov let me sleep. Marilyn remained at my side the entire time, one arm and one leg curled over me.

  “All right,” I say, dusting myself off once Marilyn stirs and sits up. Three flashlights illuminate the garage, and I can see for the first time the scope of what we have to work with. The Volvo takes up only a small portion of the left bay. The heavy rescue vehicle is in the right bay.

  I stare at it for a long moment, then realize why it’s bothering me. “This shouldn’t be here,” I tell the others. “We’re in Walnut Grove. This HRV comes from Conyers. Someone brought this one here, after the collapse. If it wasn’t too long ago, it might still run.”