The Fall of Polite

by Sam Kench

  Mark looked from Maria’s terrified eyes to the back of Buddy’s head. A pathetic squeak slipped from Mark’s lips as he turned his back on his sister and slipped out through the door Buddy had come in through.

  ‘Mark, wait!’ Maria yelled, shocked. She slashed at the air between herself and Buddy. He stopped for a second, cocked his head, and looked at her with a smirk. He smiled out the side of his mouth and pretended to loosen an invisible tie around his neck. Or maybe it was a noose.

  Mark ran into the narrow stairwell and began the descent, leaving his sister behind.

  Maria yelled and, knowing Buddy had the reach advantage with his ax, threw her knife at him. Buddy twisted his body to let the knife sail past him and clatter to the floor. ‘Whoa!’ He said chuckling and continuing his approach toward Maria. He sauntered confidently forward, pausing momentarily to dance to a groove only he could hear.

  Mark’s foot slipped off one of the narrow steps and sent him tumbling down into the pitch blackness. He slammed against the door, half upside-down. The wood cracked against his back and dusted his shirt with paint-chips.

  Maria found herself with her back to the counter and Buddy between her and the door. Buddy hauled the axe above his head, preparing for a heavy chop. Maria ran along the counter toward the kitchen door. Buddy chopped down and Maria dropped to her knees. The blade of the axe embedded itself in the countertop an inch and a half above her head. She screamed and scrambled to her feet as Buddy struggled to yank his weapon free. Maria ran out the door and down the stairs after Mark who stood up and threw open the door at the bottom.

  She failed to catch up to Mark as they both fled Buddy. Mark widened the gap with his longer stride and Maria’s impairment. The glass shard caught in her foot pulsed like a labored heartbeat with each thumping step. It almost felt like she was wearing a single high heel as it clinked with each step and forced its way deeper and deeper into her heel. Buddy trailed a few feet behind her having freed his weapon.

  Mark threw open the basement door, abandoning his plan to block the hall, and running straight down into the dark basement. He banged his head on the low-hanging shelf, but didn't let it slow him down.

  Using the door to fill the hallway behind her, Maria made use of Mark’s plan. She braced herself behind it, but Buddy ran straight into the door and rammed it with his shoulder, pushing her back like she weighed as much as a paperclip. With her brother's added weight, the makeshift blockade might have worked temporarily. She inadvertently dropped to a knee, quickly got back up, and ran into the nearly sightless basement.

  ‘Mark!’ She screamed as she stumbled down the creaky wooden steps. She hit the packed earth floor and turned the corner just in time to see Mark pulling the boiler room door shut behind him and the pipe sinking back into place. ‘Wait!’

  She rushed for the door and got a hand on it before Buddy caught up to her and tackled her to the ground. Maria rolled over onto her back, but before she could make a move to get up, Buddy was pressing the long handle of the axe against her throat, holding her to the dirt floor. She tried to yell but the sound came out broken.

  Buddy straddled her. He pulled the axe away from her throat, letting the tail end of a scream escape. Maria called out to her brother in the room mere inches away, ‘Mark! Help me!’

  Buddy tossed the axe aside, slid backwards, and grabbed onto her waistband.

  ‘No! No! Mark! Help!’

  Buddy stripped Maria from the waist down. The degenerate’s smile grew in the darkness. She tried to fight him off, all the while screaming for Mark. Buddy threw a punch into her face that laid her out. She shook a dazed blur from of her field of vision and kept struggling.

  Inside the boiler room, Mark’s breathing was heavy. He ignored her calls for help and piled up everything in the room in front of the door.

  Buddy dragged her panties to her ankles. Maria thrashed wildly. She landed a solid kick to his face, her bloody foot leaving a red stamp on Buddy’s mouth. The glass embedded in her foot transferred into his lips and knocked two of his teeth out of alignment.

  He let out a snarl as he threw her panties against the craggy wall and forced his way between her legs. Maria twisted and tried to get up but he forced her back down into the dirt with his big arms.

  ‘Mark! Please, help me! Help me!’ Maria reached out to the closed door, she touched the splintery wood with the tips of her two longest fingers.

  Buddy yanked the glass from his lips and spit a glob of phlegm and blood onto her face.

  Her screams continued but they soon stopped being accompanied by words.

  Mark stayed quiet inside the room. He stepped away from the door, his barricade complete. He picked up one of the croquet mallets, and hugged it for defense and comfort. He backed up to the craggy stone wall opposite the door and dropped to the loose dirt floor. He shut his eyes tight, covered his ears, and did everything he could, short of humming, to tune out what was happening on the other side of the scratchy wood.

  Buddy undid his pants and forced himself inside Maria. She screamed and cried and never stopped trying to fight him off. He picked the axe back up and choked her with the handle as he thrust hard into her for what felt like an eternity.

  Maria never stopped screaming for Mark.

  Mark never made a sound.

  3. WHIRLWIND OF TRAUMA

  ‘PHEW, THAT WAS FUN’ Buddy said, out of breath, as he slumped backwards, leaving his axe on the floor. Maria sobbed. She shut her legs tight, rolled onto her side, and curled into the fetal position.

  Buddy zipped up his pants and slowly stood, catching his breath. He turned his back to Maria and stretched, bending down to touch his toes, then reaching up above his head. His knuckles rapped against the overhead pipes. ‘I might have to keep you around.’ Buddy said as he turned around and felt the axe plunge into the side of his shoulder. The wide blade buried halfway through his upper arm bone. With time it would calcify.

  Maria yanked the axe out of his shoulder, a thin spurt of blood hitting the pipe laden ceiling. Her face was tear stained. She stood before him, naked and bloodied from the waist down.

  Buddy screamed in agony and fell against the craggy wall before sliding down to the floor. He put his hands up, afraid of the woman who stood over him. She brought the axe down and lopped off one of Buddy’s hands at the wrist. He howled like a wounded animal. Blood pumped like a jet-stream from the end of his bisected arm.

  ‘Don’t!’ He pleaded, laying on his side, face caked in bloody dirt.

  An angry yell was birthed from deep inside Maria’s heart as she chopped down with the axe. The wide metal split straight through his ear, right under his eye, and came to rest in the bridge of his nose. He was silent, now and forever. His blood looked black on the dirt floor. It didn't spread or pool. Instead it seeped down into the earth.

  She stood, hunched over, breathing short, ragged breaths, gripping the axe as tightly as she could, the palms of her hands red and raw and pricked with splinters from the rough handle.

  Gotta get out of here! Gotta get out of here! Gotta get out of here! Her brain shouted at her repeatedly. Her heart was pounding hard enough to pump blood for three girls her size.

  She pulled her dirty pajama bottoms back on and headed up the stairs as quickly as she could, stopping only to pull the rest of the glass from her foot.

  SHE BURST OUTSIDE, her bare feet landing in two inches of snow. Drugstore, fast! Her animal brain told her. The thought of going back inside for warmer clothes or a second pair of shoes felt impossible to her. That house was a cloud of poison. It wasn’t her home any longer. She had to get far away from it, as quickly as possible. Don’t stop! Don’t slow down!

  There was a CVS a half mile away. That became her goal; the closest place to prevent a potential pregnancy. She started towards it in a mad rush. She hadn’t been outside since things got bad. She felt light-headed, dizzy.

  As she reached the end of her block she felt Buddy running out of her, down her thi
gh. She pressed the leg of her pajama bottoms against it, and it stuck to her skin. She gagged and dropped to her knees dry-heaving.

  She laid her forehead in the snow. Tears fell from her eyes and froze to the ground, snowflakes fell to her bare arms and melted away. She sobbed uncontrollably.

  She was no longer a virgin.

  MARIA STEPPED ONTO THE MAIN ROAD, rubbing her hands along her shoulders, her pajama top doing nothing against the cold. She had already begun to lose feeling in her toes. With her feet numb, it at least stopped the wound on the bottom from hurting as badly.

  A little green car screamed past her around a bend in the road. Maria found herself coated in gray slush from the swerving car.. She shivered like mad, her legs trembling with every step. Can’t stop. Need to keep going, she told herself. She cursed herself for not stopping inside for shoes and a coat, but again, the thought of turning back toward that former home made her retch.

  Rounding the bend, she saw the green car at the back of a long line of vehicles stopped on the two-lane road. The line went on until it rounded a corner and went out of Maria’s sight. Most of the cars idled. Some tried to maneuver their way along the clogged road and others still had been abandoned by their drivers. Many of the cars lacked New Hampshire plates. A large percentage of the state's residents intent on leaving had already done so. The drivers came from all over New England with a few coming from as far as New York and New Jersey. On and on they drove with a shared destination in mind, but not one of geographical tethering. The drivers shared a like-mind; in their terror, their panic, their confusion, and their hope that the next state line would be revealed as a postern into a land unaffected by the societal collapse they had thus far known; an ever advancing finish-line moving in equal and opposite relation to perceived progress; an unobtainable goal powered by a shared refusal to accept the true state of the world. They drove against rationale towards an idea.

  Maria continued forward, past cars bumping into each other at low speeds, car doors opening and their drivers fleeing further down the road on foot.

  She looked into the green car as she passed it. A middle aged woman sat inside alone. She punched the wheel angrily and set off the horn before yelling through the windshield at the traffic ahead of her.

  Pushing forward, Maria looked into the backseat of a hatchback. A young kid in a jacket too big for him sat crying. A muffled yell came from inside the car directed at Maria. She couldn’t make out what was said, but she found a small handgun pointed at her through the closed passenger side window by the kid’s mother, a young brunette with panic in her eyes. The kid’s father sat in the driver’s seat, praying his wife wouldn’t have to fire.

  Maria backed away from the window with her hands raised. The mother tracked her with the gun through the glass. Maria pressed forward along the line of cars up the road, now hesitant to look into any of them. She ran her hands up and down her goosebump covered arms, generating friction. Panicked shouting and muffled sobs floated into her left ear as she made her way along the traffic toward her destination.

  ACROSS A SNOWY GRASS MEDIAN was the entrance of the CVS. The glass atrium had been driven through by a minivan which sat, smoke rising from the engine, against one of the checkout aisles.

  She stepped carefully through the demolished atrium avoiding shards of broken glass and shafts of twisted metal. A busted lighting fixture hung from a thick wire near the entrance. The sounds of looting inside worried Maria.

  She stepped quietly inside and had a look around: a broken register lying in the middle of the floor, it’s money stolen; a man standing by another register with his back to Maria, trying frantically to break it open; a canvas bag at his feet bursting with food and drinks. The coolers at the back of the store were fully looted with large puddles of water on the floor beneath the doors. Cardboard displays of candy and cookies were knocked over and bare. A perfume and makeup section gleamed, untouched.

  Two figures darted across the back of the store. Maria kept her eyes pointed in their direction and stepped to her side. A gunshot went off inside the store; not where she was looking, somewhere else. The sound was flat and heavy, no echo. Maria crouched down behind a shelf in the makeup section. She knew the shot hadn’t been directed at her and tried to think of that knowledge as comforting. A man’s voice cried out in sharp pain.

  Maria remained crouched as she crossed through the makeup section. Peering into the pharmacy, she saw many of the shelves already bare. She looked to where the gunshot originated and saw a man sitting on the floor, his back leant against a shelf of clearance Christmas decorations, his hand clutching a bullet wound in his shoulder. A terrified woman stood over him holding a purse-sized handgun with both hands, bouncing up and down nervously. ‘I’m sorry, I had to. I’m sorry,’ she said on the verge of tears.

  Maria quickly ran across the open floor space and into the pharmacy. She returned to a crouch, and looked over the looted shelves. What she was after lay amidst the bottles and boxes covering the floor. She tore open a package of Plan-B without reading and took a triple dose of the morning after pills. She swallowed them dry and sat on the floor trying not to succumb to tears again. Not here. No. Maria breathed angrily. She tightened her face. Not ever. No more crying, she told herself. You’re done crying. You’ve been through the worst. That has to be worth something. You won’t give up. You won’t cry. She shut her eyes and repeated to herself; You’re done crying. The next time you want to feel sad, feel angry instead. She let out a long breath and opened her eyes.

  She wrapped her cold hands around her colder feet. It did nothing to warm them. She stood back up, staying crouched below shelf height. She couldn't feel the packaging being brushed aside by her numb feet. Cough drops, cold medicine, collapsible umbrellas. No pain medication. She looked for bandages, at first finding none, then finding a single roll on the floor amid various other products and trash. She wrapped up the gash in her foot and tied it off. Crystals of blood had frozen to the underside.

  In the next aisle she found a box of hand-warmers. She searched for the feminine hygiene shelf and found it in the last aisle of the pharmacy, closer to the gunfire, despite her best wishes. She grabbed a package of pads and stuffed them into a plastic bag from the trash-strewn floor along with the handwarmers. She recalled a hazy health-class-memory of her creepy teacher Mr. Lindley saying that Plan B brought on heavy menstruation. He was fired halfway through her sophomore year when he got a student pregnant shortly after a lesson on the various types of contraceptive. His wife stayed by his side. Maria wondered where they were now. She wondered if they had joined the rising population of corpses.

  There was a rack of slippers with a pair in her size, no other shoes in the store. Not unless she pulled a pair off someone who didn't need them any longer. As she slipped on the fuzzy black slippers another gunshot went off from the same part of the store as before.

  Maria dropped flat to the floor and crawled on her hands and knees to the edge of the pharmacy. She peeked out and saw the man with the wounded shoulder now standing over the woman who had shot him. She had a bullet in her gut now, and before she could cry out, he put a second bullet into her heart. Smoke spiraled out through the hole in her chest. Stuffing from her puffy jacket fluttered to the floor.

  Maria pulled back behind the shelf and tried to stay quiet. The killer was nearby. Maria didn’t blink, she didn’t move and she didn’t breathe. She listened to his footsteps as they headed down an aisle away from her. She steadied herself, sat on the floor, and tore open a pack of hand warmers. Her fingers stung at first, then their normal feeling came rushing back. She tore open a second packet and held them to her feet. They took longer to warm but eventually she could feel her toes again. She tucked the hand warmers into the slippers and stood on the chemically heated rectangles.

  She was headed for her aunt’s house now. The only place to go. She had no other family. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t have a brother any longer. She didn’t know how
she would get there, but she knew she wouldn’t let herself be stopped. She thought about food and warmer clothing and about how there might be some of either left inside the store, but didn’t want to risk it. There were at least four other people in the store and at least one of them with a gun who had no qualms about using it. She quietly crossed back to the destroyed atrium and left the store.

  MARIA MADE HER WAY down the side of the road, feeling nauseous again; partly due to her overconsumption of Plan B, partly due to her ongoing whirlwind of trauma. Around the next bend in the road, she saw a thick plume of black smoke with a raging fire at the base. As she grew nearer she saw it came from a mesh of mangled cars where the road opened to four lanes, the speed limit increased, and it became more like a highway.

  She gave the pile-up a wide berth, trudging off the road and into a field that ran for a few hundred feet before it hit the forest, mountains shooting up just beyond that. The traffic loosened up past the pile-up with people driving in wide arcs off the road to get around the mess.

  In the field, the snow was almost up to Maria’s knees and the top was ice capped. Each step she took meant breaking through the top layer of ice and bruising her shins.

  Direct cold thwarted the comfort provided by the hand warmers. Snow tumbled inside her slippers and all of her exposed skin soon went numb. She knew she wouldn’t be able to make it to her aunt’s house like this. Bristol was dead center New Hampshire and her Aunt’s house was to the northern end of Vermont in Brighton. They had made the trip a number of times as a family and it took hours by car in good weather and with no traffic. She thought about how there was no way in hell she’d be able to make it there on foot, then she threw that thought out of her mind. You won’t be stopped. Take it little by little, she told herself. It’s dark, you’re tired, find somewhere to sleep till morning. Warm up, find warmer clothes. Food. You need food and water. Her thoughts ran in front of her mind’s eye like a flickering ticker-tape.