by Sam Kench
The guard raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth and pressed the talk button. He spoke to someone inside the gym, and within a minute, the doors behind them opened. Two men came out with a stretcher and pulled Bug out of the car. Maisey stayed to make sure he got in okay.
She walked beside his stretcher into the gym, ‘You’re gonna be okay, Bug. They’ve got a great doctor here.’
‘Are you sure he can fix this? It doesn’t feel fixable.’
‘Of course he can. Once again, exhibit A:’ she pointed at her scarred face.
Bug started to laugh, but it hurt too much to continue.
‘Oh, you’re back!’ The doctor said to Maisey as Bug was transferred from the stretcher to the cot. ‘I was afraid to ask Charli what happened to you… but honestly I’m afraid to ask Charli anything.’
Bug spoke from the stretcher, ‘She the one who broke my dealer’s head open?’ He turned to the doctor, ‘She scares me too. Samesies.’ Bug held up a bloody, trembling hand for a fist bump, which the doc completed with an awkward chuckle.
Maisey told the doctor what happened and how long ago it had transpired. She told him about bug’s addiction too, and when the doctor didn’t seem too solemn, she felt a bit more at ease.
The doctor got to work, unwrapping bug’s soiled bandages and cleaning the wound. Maisey turned and looked across the gym. She scanned the crowd for Charli, and spotted her at the far end of a semi-circle of people.
Charli stood in front of the cop who she had just learned was directing certain men toward a neo-Nazi camp when they departed the school.
‘No.’ He said to her. He looked over the semi-circle that had trapped him against the bleachers. They were clearly on Charli’s side.
‘Go on, try it.’ Charli said, antagonizing him. She reached down and grabbed his gun, tore it from his hands, and handed it to a member of the semi-circle.
‘Oh, come on!’ He yelled, reaching for his gun back. ‘You can’t do that! I’m a cop!’
‘Take a swing at me!’ Charli taunted him and gave him a shove. ‘I know the fact that I can roll my Rs makes you think I don’t deserve to be listened to. Come on, big boy, do something about it. Take a swing.’ She gave him another shove and knocked him into the bleachers.
He came forward with balled fists and threw a punch. Before the punch could connect, Charli drove both of her forearms into his forearm and his shoulder. His arm stopped in its tracks. From his shoulder she sent a chop into the side of his neck. She gripped onto his wrist, reached over his shoulder onto the back of his jacket, and pulled up and back while at the same time sending a hard kick into his shin. She flipped him over and laid him out on his back, then she drove the heel of her boot down on top of his ankle. There was a muffled crunch inside the leg of his uniform. The cop wailed; a decent enough impression of his old cruiser’s siren.
‘Get up.’ Charli told him. When he did nothing other than shout in pain, Charli kicked him in the stomach. ‘Get up, I said!’
He made an attempt to stand but the pain in his ankle was too severe. ‘You broke it!’ He said spitefully.
‘I know. Back on your feet.’
He leaned against the bleachers and stood with all of his weight on his other foot.
Charli pointed to the exit. ‘Out.’
The cop stammered. ‘I- I- I don’t- No, I’m not going. I won’t. I’m-’
Charlie kicked his good foot and swept it out from under him. His full weight landed on his bad ankle for a moment, before his entire body collapsed in the echo of a wail that bounced around the rafters. All eyes in the gym were on him. Charli hauled him back to his feet and said, ‘You are leaving this place, right now.’
He looked back and forth between her and the semi-circle of onlookers who displayed no sympathy. ‘You can’t expect me to walk out of-’
‘I do,’ Charli said and crossed her arms. ‘Do I really need to kick-start you?’
He shook his head. ‘Fucking bitch.’ He turned toward the exit. The semi-circle parted. He hobbled slowly to the door and left the building.
Maisey procured a child-sized sleeping bag for Tommy and laid him down gently; still asleep despite all the shouting. She crossed the gym to Charli.
‘Hey, you made it!’ Charli said excitedly.
‘Fuckin’ right. Tommy’s safe. He’s asleep.’
‘That’s great. That’s so great.’
‘How’s your mom doing?’
Charli was taken aback by the question; by the concern. She smiled. ‘She’s doing a little better, I think. At least in terms of her mood, now that she’s got the doc’s attention. He’s still struggling to treat her properly though…. Do you want to meet her?’
‘Hell yeah.’
‘She’s right over here.’ They started walking. ‘Try not to swear in front of her though. She knows all the English cuss words and she's old fashioned.’
‘No fucking promises.’
They shared a laugh as they made their way toward the other end of the gym. ‘It’ll be spring soon.’ Charli said with a nod. ‘Things’ll start to get better once the snow’s gone, I think.’
Maisey didn’t voice her opinion, but she doubted things would ever get better. This place is probably as good as things’ll ever get.
‘Maybe when the-’ Charli’s sentence continued but Maisey didn’t hear the rest of it. Another voice had stolen her attention.
‘Maisey! Maisey!’ A small voice shouted from the middle of the large room.
She spun on her heels and sprinted back to Tommy. The boy had sat up inside his sleeping bag and was surrounded by strangers in a room he had never seen before. He had never been inside any high school before.
She sat down on the floor beside him and they shared a hug. ‘It’s okay. You’re safe. You don’t need to be afraid anymore.’ Maybe things can get better, she thought, for him at least. It would be hard for them to get worse.
21. THE SISTER COMES HOME
THE GROUND WAS SLICK. Pavement was beginning to show again through the melting snow. Maria was back in her hometown, though there were parts of it that were hard to recognize. Bodies littered the streets, some rotting and some fresh. Abandoned cars sat in what was at one point traffic. Other cars sat, burned out, on the side of the road. Her hometown seemed even more hostile than some of the others she had left behind.
She decreased speed after getting a clear picture of the level of destruction. Rolling slowly down the wet roads, she saw the backs of three men as they crowbarred open a house and disappeared inside. They seemed to all be wearing the same outfit, a grey or possibly dark blue jumpsuit of some kind.
Maria neared the town square and set the car in park at the top of a hill. There was something in the road that didn’t look like the usual mangled car or corpse.
Through the binoculars, she examined the mystery shape. A deer lay in the road, bullet holes in its body, a slash in its stomach from some kind of blade, its guts spilling out onto the slush covered road, most of its meat intact. She lowered the binoculars and gave the scene a think. It seemed strange to her that nobody had taken the carcass for its meat, then she realized that the deer was the free cheese in a mouse trap.
She turned the car around and drove a different route toward her home. The alternate road didn’t get her all the way to her house, but instead, one street up. She pulled open the garage of an abandoned home, stowed the car inside, and headed out on foot with her guns in tow. The hunting rifle had come with a strap to hang it off her shoulder and she had fastened a similar one for the assault rifle out of one of the Volvo's seatbelts.
She could see into her backyard from the street above. She knelt, brought the hunting rifle to her shoulder, and placed her eye in front of the scope. She saw the back door; the one that led into Buddy’s apartment. She moved her aim up to the second floor and observed her old kitchen windows, one of them broken from when Buddy kicked in the door.
She hoped Mark’s head would bob into view through the window so
she could obliterate it simply and from a distance. She didn’t want to hear his voice if it could be helped. She didn’t see any movement, until she aimed further right and saw past the side of the house and into the street.
She saw two people, a man and a woman, both wearing outfits similar to the other three she had seen. One was a jumpsuit and the other was a pair of coveralls. The colors were slightly different between them. Regardless of the differences, they still had the effect of appearing to be in uniform. She had only seen the other three from behind, but with these two she could see their eyes, even if she still couldn’t see most of their faces. The woman had a medical mask over her mouth and nose; the man: a painter’s mask. Maria wondered if the other three had been wearing similar masks as well.
She guessed whatever gang they belonged to were the same ones who set the trap in the town square. She hadn’t seen anyone else since returning to Bristol, and she was starting to get the feeling that these people were in charge now.
After descending the hill and climbing a tall wooden fence, Maria dropped onto a crusty mound of dirty snow in her old backyard. It was a small yard, one that they had never used much, even when they were much younger. They had always preferred to go down to the playground or the park instead. She stepped beside the entrance to Buddy’s apartment and slid open a window to the downstairs hallway.
She climbed inside, then knelt with the assault rifle at the ready. She listened carefully for any movement. The basement staircase was immediately to her right; a splintery descent into blackness. She tried not to look, then she swore internally and forced herself to look. She didn’t pull her eyes away from the darkness despite the softest parts of her willing a retreat.
When enough time had passed with no sound emanating from anywhere in the house that she could detect, she stood with bent knees and stepped quietly into the basement stairwell.
Mark had made it clear that his plan was to hide in the boiler room for as long as possible. She doubted he would have followed through with that once he came to his senses, and surely he would’ve run out of food a long time ago, but she needed to be thorough and wanted to get her search of the basement over with as quickly as possible.
The air was thick and the stench was nearly unbearable. Stepping as lightly as possible still produced low creaks on the old wooden stairs. The snow in front of the basement window had already melted and once she rounded the first corner, she could see everything clearly. Buddy’s rotting corpse occupied roughly the same position she had left it in, but the ax had been removed from the side of his head. His and her blood had dried into the dirt floor. Mice nibbled at a stump where his arm had been and more chewed away at his exposed rib cage. The sight didn’t sicken Maria as it once might have. Instead she felt gratified. She knew she was stronger now than she had been then, and seeing a family of mice feast on Buddy’s corpse was a fulfilling experience. It had the effect of a nice meal.
She could tell that killing Mark would feel good. There was no doubt left in her mind. She wondered if she would kill him quickly or make him really feel it. She kept going back and forth on the decision.
The boiler room door was open, past the pipe. The room was empty, as were the packages of food that littered the dirt floor. Flies buzzed and maggots festered around a corner that had been used in place of a bathroom.
Maria turned around and ascended the basement steps with her gun barrel leading the way. Moving further down the hallway, she spotted a few faint, bloody footprints clinging to the wood. She surmised they were her own.
The door leading upstairs was open. So was the door into their kitchen. She climbed the narrow steps and aimed the automatic weapon through the kitchen door. She stood in the hall with her arms and head leaning into the kitchen. She stopped to listen again. A breeze played ugly music through the broken window beside her.
The Dubrek sister moved silently into the kitchen. The bathroom, the living room, the bedrooms: all empty, but apparently scavenged by someone or someones. It seemed her search for Mark would extend beyond the house and encompass an expanded area. She took a picture frame off the wall in the living room. Inside was a photo their dad had taken of the siblings on a hike. It was from the year before he died. Mark already had his long hair, Maria hadn’t yet dyed hers blonde. Her natural hair color, a chestnut hue, was starting to overtake the artificial blonde.
Her hair color was of no concern to her anymore, and it seemed like a lifetime ago that something so cosmetic would have been important to her. She couldn’t remember why she had dyed it in the first place. It certainly wasn’t for any element of appeal, but the thought that doing it would have somehow made her feel better about herself seemed like a foreign concept to her now.
She took the photograph out of the frame and tore the picture down the middle, separating the Dubrek siblings. She folded Mark’s half and stuffed it into her pocket, then she dropped her half and the frame to the floor.
She looked toward the corner. Their little white Christmas tree had been knocked over and the presents wrapped by their dad were torn open. She stepped over slowly and knelt beside the blue, snowman wrapping paper. It seemed most of the contents were long gone except for a backscratcher, a David Bowie CD, and a book of poetry by Margaret Atwood: The Circle Game. Maria remembered asking her dad for it on the same morning of the fight that led to Mark’s broken wrist.
As she picked up the book, a tear fell onto the hard cover and slid off, settling in a wrapping paper crease on the floor. She had promised herself that she was through crying... but here, for her dad, she made an exception.
She wasn’t concerned with being quiet any longer. It was clear the house was empty and looked like it had been for some time. She kept the assault rifle in her hands, but no longer let the gun barrel lead the way.
The front door of the house was closed, but the barricade wasn’t in place. She wondered if Mark had ever reassembled it after she left. She pulled open the door and stepped onto the porch. The view ahead was obstructed. Some kind of banner hung from the roof of the porch; long enough to run the entire front edge. It was cream colored.
The side facing her was blank. She ducked under the banner. It was thick and made of a woven, weather-proof material.
She walked along the mostly melted snow that covered the walkway, past the withering corpse in the walkway. She turned around to read the banner: thick, black, block letters painted carefully by hand:
“I’m sorry Maria” The first line of the banner read, “Please forgive me” the sign concluded.
She knew her response immediately: Never.
Apology not accepted.
EPILOGUE
HIS FIST POUNDED THE METAL door in a coded rhythm. The rusty scraping of heavy latches gave way to the silent inward swing of the door. The two outside guards stepped aside, and the one pulling open the door gave a half-wave, half-salute to the returning medic and the new recruit.
The recruit’s stomach was rumbling with a mix of hunger and anxiety as he stepped inside the building. He had a bad feeling that he was walking straight toward his own execution. He wasn’t a big man, in fact, he didn’t even think of himself as a man yet, still a young adult in his mind.
He had feared they wouldn’t accept his request to join their ranks based on his scrawny size alone, but the medic he walked alongside now had shown no apprehension about bringing him in to meet the boss. Most of the medics roaming the area were a lot tougher looking than him, he thought.
The medic led him down a long, carpeted hallway and into a cafeteria where a dozen other medics ate warm meals. Real food. The scent alone was almost enough to knock the new recruit off his feet. His guide didn’t slow down. He craned his neck as they walked to peek into the kitchen over the serving counter. A wide man under a white apron added spices to a tall, bubbling pot of stew.
The medic led him up two flights of stairs and into another long hallway. ‘Almost there. Right up ahead,’ he said, acknowledging the length of th
e journey.
The recruit didn’t say anything. His mouth was dry, and every step closer to the boss filled him with more and more nervous energy. He knew which door they were headed toward now; the red door at the end of the hall, guarded by two seated men armed with shotguns.
‘Got a newbie here for orientation.’ The medic guide said to the guards. One of them rose from his folding chair and knocked on the door in a different coded rhythm.
After a moment of silence, an eye-level slat in the door slid open and a pair of brown peepers peered out.
Is that the boss? The recruit wondered.
‘Newbie here for orientation.’ The guard said.
The slat slammed shut. Muffled voices conversed quietly beyond the door. Following the sounds of multiple locks unlatching, the door swung open to reveal a lavish office.
The new recruit stared through the doorway.
‘Go on.’ His guide said, and gave him a nudge.
The recruit stepped from the thin maroon carpet of the hallway onto the lush burgundy carpet of the large office. The centerpiece of the room was the polished, dark, wooden desk, large enough to serve six men, but only serving one. That must be the boss. The recruit thought, laying eyes on the flat leather exterior of the high-backed desk chair that was turned away from him. He could see one of the boss’s hands on the smooth arm of the chair, a nickel-plated M1911 handgun in his grip. Its shiny surface reflected the overhead lights.
A guard stood to each side of the giant desk, but these two were unlike the other guards the recruit had passed. They were bigger, stronger, and meaner looking. They still wore the regulation medical masks, but they did not wear the regulation dark grey boiler suits. Instead they wore matching pairs of red coveralls, and spray painted onto each of their masks was the symbol of the Fleur De Lis. Purple for the man on the left, gold for the one to the right. The left-hand man carried a military grade M4 assault rifle with an extended magazine and a red dot sight. The right-hand man carried a Saiga-12 semi-automatic shotgun with a foregrip and a laser sight. The new recruit quaked in his boots.