“Wrong, that’s not how it worked up until the government abandoned ship and left us all out here to our own devices,” Adam said. “You see any cops out there, anyone to uphold ridiculous laws with arbitrary age limits? Look, I’m not a monster. I’m not going to force myself on you. I’m just offering you a choice! You’re fifteen, plenty old enough to know what you’re choosing if you consent.”
Abby pulled back in disgust. “Fuck you,” she said. She looked over at Ashley and Eve and said, “You actually put up with this asshole?”
Eve laughed and said, “Are you kidding? I love it here! I’m fed, I’m kept warm and safe, and the sex is incredible!”
“Is it because you’re a virgin, sweetie?” Ashley asked, wearing a look of concern on her face. “You needn’t worry, Adam is very sweet and he can be so gentle.”
“And so can we,” Eve added with a wink, then she and Ashley giggled and kissed again.
“I know, it sounds crazy if you’re still thinking in terms of how things used to be,” Adam said, stepping closer to Abby. “But things are different now. There’s nothing wrong with what I’m offering you, so long as you agree to the terms. It’s entirely consensual!”
This time, Abby did not retreat when Adam came closer. She stared back at him in defiance, but her stomach continued to complain loudly. She said nothing, so Adam continued.
“And the girls are telling the truth, I’ll be gentle! I understand, you’re young, probably a virgin. I won’t push you too hard or make you do anything too outlandish. Come on, you don’t really think you’re better off out there, do you?”
Abby looked down at her boots, remembering how cold her feet would get sometimes, trudging through snow and ice. She looked back up at Adam and whispered, “Can’t you just take my rifle for a few meals?”
“Sorry, gorgeous. I don’t need anything you’ve got, except for what’s under those clothes,” Adam replied. “That’s the deal I’m offering. If you don’t consent, just say the word and you’re free to leave.”
She hung her head down again as tears bit at the corners of her eyes. She was feeling so warm, and the thought of going back out into the wind was tearing Abby up inside. She had thought that this man would give her a fair bounty of food in exchange for her rifle, only to find out that she would have to sell herself instead.
“So what do you say?” Adam asked, wearing a dashing smile.
Abby looked up at him, then back over to Eve and Ashley. They smiled back, Eve motioning for her to come join them and Ashley mouthing the words ‘say yes’.
“No. No, no, no!” Abby finally said, fixing her eyes on Adam. “I won’t be your goddamn sex toy, you sick fuck!”
“Alright, alright,” Adam said, throwing up his hands with an offended look. “I heard you the first time! You don’t consent, alright then. I already told you that I won’t force myself on you! You’re free to leave.”
Adam retrieved his empty wine glass and walked back to his desk. He uncorked a dark bottle of wine and filled it up again, leaving Abby to stand there in the doorway. She turned to leave, but her feet refused to listen to her. Part of her just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving this house, as disgusting as Adam was. The sheer warmth of the fireplace was enough to make her want to stay, maybe just for the night. Maybe she could dodge Adam’s advances long enough to at least get fed, but Adam dispelled any such notion when he turned back and saw Abby still standing in the room.
“If you’re gonna stay here, you’re gonna have to start taking off those clothes, kid,” he said in a nonchalant tone as he began to disrobe.
Abby’s shoulders heaved with a heavy sigh, looking away as Adam finished removing his clothes and made his way towards the couch. “Go fuck yourself,” she muttered, and she trudged down the hallway, moving back towards the front door.
“I don’t have to!” he called after her.
Abby retrieved her hat, a little surprised that Adam wasn’t marching her out himself. How easy would it be to go back in there, brandish her rifle, and demand he give her food? She could take anything she wanted, or she could even shoot him for being such a disgusting prick. That’s what he deserved, and it’d be so easy. Abby flicked the ‘safety’ off on her rifle and began to turn.
But she made eye contact with herself in the mirror as her mind wandered for a moment, and she did not like that look she saw reflected back at her. That darkness in her eyes was something she’d never seen there before. The scowl she wore looked familiar, but only on the faces of the evil men she’d encountered in the past year.
Abby shook her head and placed her hat on her head, putting her rifle back on ‘safe’. Already she could hear laughter and soft moans coming from the room behind her, so she pulled the door open and, with a last second of longing for that warmth, stepped out into the wintry night, closing Adam’s door shut behind her.
***
It was a long and bitterly cold night for Abby. It had taken her quite some time to find appropriate shelter for the night, long enough that she had begun to worry about getting frostbite. But she found an unlocked car along the road eventually, and though it provided no warmth it at least got her out of the terrible mountain wind. She hardly slept a wink, her heart too heavy to allow the solace of unconsciousness for longer than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time.
She was up and moving west as soon as the sun crested the horizon. West. Always moving west. Civilization and salvation lay to the west. That’s what she’d been telling herself every sunrise now for weeks, months. Surely she was right on the doorstep of that civilization and salvation now. But another day of walking began to prove just as futile. She may as well have been aiming for the moon, Abby thought.
The sun was well into its westward descent once again, leaving Abby. Mocking her by the speed with which it travelled from east to west. In a couple of hours, Abby would face yet another night alone. Always alone. Her stomach no longer growled at her to remind her that she was hungry, mostly because the pains of hunger bit her at every waking moment. She couldn’t not remember that her last meal had been over a week ago.
And she was tired, so very tired. Tired of it all. Tired of the Henry’s, the Isaiah’s, the Bernie’s, and the Adam’s in this world. Tired of seeing remnants of a civilized world tainted with nightmarish death and otherworldly destruction, like she was trapped in a bizarre painting. Tired of wondering what happened to all the millions of people who had died, like that child who had felt compelled to scribble that macabre portrait on the wall of the Dollar General.
Tired of herself, and her failures. So many failures.
Looking up, Abby saw a small, two-story house up ahead. It looked like a good place to finally get some rest. Some real rest.
The kind of rest that each and every one of us will one day meet.
Abby shivered, and adjusted her ruck on her shoulders. Empty. She brushed the grip of her pistol. Full. She walked towards the house with her eyes fixed straight ahead, no longer scanning the area around her. Wouldn’t be any point to that. She stepped up onto the front porch and tested the door. It was unlocked. She pushed it open with her rifle, and then set the rifle down, leaning it against the house. It was too unwieldy for what she had to do.
Maybe someone else could use it now.
***
Abby’s hand shook as she held her gun, Zach’s old pistol, to her head. “Zach,” she whispered, “if you can hear me, please stop me.”
But she received no answer. No voice in her head, no miraculous sign manifesting itself before her. There was only the hollow howling of the wind, her short, erratic breaths, and her quiet sobs. “You were wrong, Zach,” she whimpered as tears streamed down her soft cheeks, like raindrops from silver clouds. “I’m not strong enough. I just can’t take this anymore.”
She reached into her pocket with her free hand and carefully pulled out a folded-up photograph, the one of her and Zach together in Little America. There was so much hope and joy in this snapshot, but Abby
could hardly even recognize her old, smiling self. She took one last, tearful glance at the face of the man she had failed and then slipped the picture back into her pocket.
She cocked the hammer of her 1911-style pistol back and flicked the safety off. The gun was now ready to fire. She wrapped her cold, shaky finger around the trigger and clamped her eyes shut tightly.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she whispered.
BAM!
Chapter Thirteen
Abby’s eyes snapped open and she jerked her head up at the sudden noise from downstairs. The front door had been kicked in and Abby could hear what sounded like three or four people walking around in heavy boots.
“Whoever is in here, we saw tracks leading into this house!” a male voice called out. “Don’t shoot, we just want to have a talk.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” Abby thought. She grabbed her ruck and tiptoed over towards the window. She could already hear the men walking up the stairs. Despite the fact that moments ago she had decided her life was no longer worth living, Abby’s survival instincts kicked in. She wasn’t about to let someone else kill her.
She slid the window open and tossed her ruck onto the roof of the house’s porch, just below the window. She then crawled out the window, threw her ruck on her shoulders, and walked to the edge of the roof. She looked back just in time to see a man with a rifle appear in the doorway of the room she’d just left. “Stop!” he shouted.
Abby jumped off the roof and hit the ground running. This was not a good place to be, she realized. She was in a wide open field with very little cover or concealment. She didn’t even dare to look back again, she just knew that she had to get away from-
BANG!
The 5.56mm bullet struck Abby in her lower back on her left side, just below the frame of her ruck. The bullet tore into her body, and the red-hot metal sliced through fat and muscle tissue in her torso before exiting out of the front of her.
Abby cried out and dropped to one knee, covering the bloody wound in her stomach with her hand. She opened her coat and looked down to see the red stain on her shirt growing as she bled. The inside of her chest felt like it was on fire. She was already feeling weak and her head was swimming. Shock was setting in. She heard the men running towards her and knew that her time had come. The only question left was would they kill her or leave her to bleed to death?
Abby’s strength gave out and she fell forward into the snow. She was breathing heavily, taking deep shuddering breaths, each one feeling more laborious than the last. On a whim, she grabbed a handful of snow, then let it fall back to the ground, finding a strange, innocent type of peace in this act, almost as if she was a child at play. She noticed that she wasn’t shivering anymore, despite half of her face laying down in the snow. She felt calm. She was about to be reunited with Zach, after all. What was there to worry about?
The men came up behind her and encircled her, but Abby could only see their big, black boots.
“Is she dead?” one of the men asked.
“Not yet,” said the man whose boots Abby was looking at.
Abby was fading fast. She felt tired and could barely keep her eyes open, the edges of her vision became blurry. Snowflakes continued to fall on her cheek and hair, but she didn’t feel them anymore. She heard a noise that sounded like a pistol being pulled out of a plastic holster, the same type of holster she had.
“So this is how it feels to die,” Abby thought, and then everything went black.
Chapter Fourteen
“Why’d you shoot her, huh? Why the hell did you shoot her?!”
“She ran away! She must be hiding something! Maybe she’s bit! We should finish her off!”
“She’s not bit, guys. I already checked.”
“And even if she is, then we’ll pop her as soon as she dies. Keep an eye on her vitals, Bill.”
“Got it, Jack.”
“So what are we gonna tell Captain Tucker?”
“We tell him she shot first. We defended ourselves and, like the moral, upstanding citizens that we are, patched up our enemy and brought her back so that she can face some good old-fashioned American justice.”
“Tucker’ll eat that shit up.”
“Yeah, but you better get that goddamn trigger finger under control, Clay. This is the last time I’m backing you up.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Guys, are we really gonna do this to her? I mean, first we shoot her, then get her thrown in jail?”
“Bill, either she goes down or we do. You said we couldn’t just leave her to die out here, so this is what we gotta do. She’ll be fine. Jail ain’t so bad, trust me.”
“I know, I know, I just… whatever, man. Hey Felix, step on it, would ya? I wanna get back in time for chow.”
***
“Alright, she’s waking up. If you gentlemen have nothing else to say, I’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you awake now, girl? You ready to answer some questions?”
“I… what?” Abby stammered. She looked around and saw that she was lying in a hospital bed in a small room in what appeared to be a legitimate, functioning hospital. The lights were on, the room was warm, and she could hear machines functioning in other rooms and the hallway. Her ruck was in a chair over by the large, rectangular window on the far wall, as well as her hat.
“Are you ready to talk to me?” the man in the camouflage utilities said. He was a tall man with a stern voice, wearing an Army uniform bearing the name ‘Tucker’ with Captain’s rank on it.
“Sure, I— ” Abby started to say as she sat up, but she was pulled back down by something. She looked down and saw that her arm was handcuffed to the bed.
“The hell is this?” she demanded.
“Standard procedure for criminals. The staff here will work on you soon and stitch up your wounds, but until they’re done with you, you remain constrained to your bed.”
“Criminal? What are you talking about?”
“You tried to murder four of my soldiers. You ambushed them in your house while they were on a security patrol.”
Abby couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “No, I didn’t! I was just trying to get away, and they shot me in the back!”
“Yes, you ran away after having shot at them.”
“I didn’t shoot at anyone! Where’s my pistol? Check it! There’s three rounds in the mag and one in the chamber!”
“You mean this pistol?” Captain Tucker asked, holding up Abby’s gun. “We already did. It’s empty and the barrel has fresh carbon residue in it.”
“No. No, those men must have fired it,” Abby protested.
“I doubt that. If you have nothing further to add, then I’ll be going now. I’ll be back in the morning to escort you to our prison facility.”
“Prison? I’m just a kid! I can’t go to prison!”
“You can and you will,” the man replied. “I’m your judge and jury here, but someone in prison will probably end up being your executioner.”
“You can’t be serious,” Abby whispered, her eyes alight with fear. “This is wrong! You can’t do this!” She was starting to panic. This was just like what happened at that Air Force base, except that it was happening to her instead of Zach and she had no one to come to her rescue.
“We’ll see about that,” Captain Tucker said as he rose from his chair. He walked out of the room and closed and locked the door behind him.
As soon as he was gone, Abby jerked at her handcuff, grunting in frustration. She needed to get out of there. She tugged at the handcuff again, harder this time, but the pain from her wound flared up and she laid back down. Looking over towards the door to her room, she could see out the little window. Two men in white coats were talking to each other while one pointed towards Abby.
Time was running out, Abby knew. She needed to escape somehow. She wriggled her hand about in her cuff, trying to slip it. She pulled her sleeve up to her elbow,
giving herself every millimeter of space between her wrist and the cuff that she could. She contorted her hand and tried pulling it through the cuff at different angles. She could feel herself making progress but it was slow and painful. The hard metal was tearing at her skin, causing her to bleed, but she was still making progress, the blood making her skin slick.
She could feel her wrist pulling free from the cuff, and with a final jerk it came out. Next came the heel of her palm, then her thumb and finally she was free.
Abby jumped to her feet, forgetting about the gunshot wound in her abdomen, and immediately collapsed to her knees, almost crying out in pain. After a pause, she slowly got up and limped over to the window. It was dark outside and snowing. Looking down, she saw that she was on the third floor of the hospital. Too high up to jump, especially in her condition. But she could probably rappel down to the ground. She opened her ruck and pulled out a carabiner and some rope, a ten foot coil and a thirty foot coil.
Taking the ten foot coil, she formed a Swiss seat around her hips the way Zach had taught her long ago, cinching it down tight around her waist. She clipped the carabiner to the front of the knot she’d just made, keeping the opening towards her. She then took the other coil of rope and tied one end to the bed, which was bolted to the floor, and threaded the other end through her carabiner. She opened the window and shuddered at the sudden cold. She tossed the end of the rope out the window and saw that it reached most of the way to the ground.
Abby threw her big coat on, put her hat on her head, gloves on her hands, and her ruck on her shoulders. Her pistol and knife were with Captain Tucker, but maybe she’d be able to find new ones. She climbed up onto the window sill and turned around so that her back was facing out. She held the rope in both hands, her left hand in front to control herself and her right hand behind her, at the small of her back, to act as her brake.
“Here I go,” she whispered. She leaned back so that she was almost perpendicular with the side of the building and then stepped off of the window sill. She planted her foot firmly against the wall and began rappelling down, going as fast as she could with a fresh wound just above her waist. A frigid wind whipped through the alleyway, stinging her ears and face. Despite the cold, her hands sweat inside her leather gloves as she carefully controlled her descent. Her neck was craned as she looked down towards the ground, trying to gauge how much rope she had left.
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 13