by Schow, Ryan
“Did you doubt me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That made you check. And now that makes you trust me, which is what you need to do to survive. I may be among the men,” Gunderson continued. “When you go on the offensive, wherever I am, I’ll join you, but not a moment more. So please don’t kill me in the process.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Encouraging,” the former enforcer said, turning into the night and hurrying back to Lone Mountain.
Back in the War Room, with the drapes shut and by the light of now a single candle, Rider looked his kill squad in the faces and said, “If Gunderson looks like he’s turning even halfway, he gets shot first, got it?”
“Got it,” they said in unison.
“But if he does what he says, then you must protect him like he’s one of us. We don’t know where he might later be useful.”
“He’s not one of us, though,” Indigo said.
“If he’s right and this saves our lives, then he will be. I made him that promise and I expect you’ll trust my judgment on this matter if I’m forced to keep it.”
“Let’s blow up that bridge when we cross it,” Stanton said.
For the next thirty minutes, they game-planned this scenario, but Rider could see everyone’s respective sphincters tightening. Sometimes you can’t overthink a plan enough. When you’re out of time and enemies are encroaching, you need to rely on your instincts to fill in the blanks when it’s most necessary.
“The first thing they tell you is the plan can go sour inside of a few minutes,” Rider said, changing tact. “Keep your heads together, watch your six and don’t panic. I’ll rally the troops if that happens, and if something happens to me, then Jagger is in command, followed by Rex, Stanton and Indigo. Any questions?”
No one said anything.
The first Molotov Cocktail hit the school fifteen minutes later, which was an hour and a half early. Meaning the plan was already derailed, the building was on fire and everyone was scrambling to get out. Specifically Rider’s kill squad.
Chapter Seventy-Six
After giving Six a proper burial, Nick, Marcus, Bailey and the remaining eight made the short walk from Hwy 92 to Hwy 82 which ran parallel to the 101, but would give them the cleanest route into San Francisco.
They made good time as they headed up through San Mateo and Burlingame, and into Lomita Park. By that time, they were hungry and thirsty, and Marcus felt the kids’ energy waning. They still had plenty of daylight left to cure those ails, especially with four competent adults now rather than one.
By the time the sun was making its slow westerly arc, they’d scavenged up enough food for all of them, and Maria found several acceptable rooms at the squat, two story Ritz Inn. It was the kind of place that looked like maybe once upon a time it rented out rooms by the hour, (It’ll be an extra $5 for plastic sheets and baby wipes), but maybe that was just Nick being cynical.
The Ritz ended up being alright. The food was good, the beds were soft and the carpet didn’t smell like dead people or ass. They slept hard, then met outside just after day break the next morning.
Maria asked how they slept and Bailey said, “Best rest in days.”
“Me, too,” Maria echoed. She took Bailey’s hand, gave it a squeeze and said, “Thank you for what you did. Trying to save us when we needed it.”
Bailey said, “That was mostly Marcus and Nick. I’m not meticulous with my shotgun the way some guys are with their guns, but Nick is a good shot and Marcus can split a mosquito’s poop chute down the middle from a hundred yards out.”
Everyone in ear shot started laughing, but Maria was trying to understand what Bailey just said. Perhaps she’d been a bit too vulgar.
“I’m just saying you should thank Marcus and Nick,” she said.
“Oh, okay.”
She thanked the two men, who somewhat stubbornly accepted her appreciation, then they hit the road as one unit. It was just after they passed the Honda dealership that they noticed someone following them. A vagrant. Well, a worse looking vagrant than normal since, technically they were all vagrants now.
Nick said, “I think we’ve got an admirer. Came out of the Super 8, which looks a hell of a lot nicer than where we stayed.”
“Whiner,” Marcus said.
“Not whining,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Just saying.”
When Nick turned around, the guy was gone. He had that look in his eye, though. That hunger for trouble. Or maybe he was just some dude with scrambled eggs for brains. They’d been seeing this sort of thing all the way there. People wandering around in the streets, fascinated with lint, picking their teeth with broken bottles, crapping on the sidewalks, scratching their nuts while giving a street side sermon to rats.
It was impossible to measure the toll this war had taken on humanity. It used to be about the dead, the loss of power, the devastation in the cities. Then it became about murderous packs of heathens, rogue military installations, and imprisonment. Now Nick saw the mental strain it placed on the normal men, women and children who survived.
By all rights, even though Maria was strange and her kids were a bit unemotional and unresponsive, they were all well behaved. No one was suggesting they eat dinner in a toilet or watch Seinfeld reruns on TV’s that didn’t work.
They spoke very little as they walked, but it was early and everyone was probably tired and irritable. That could be why they missed the guy—the one hiding just around the corner of the Wendy’s restaurant. It was the same guy Nick had seen, but by then it was too late.
A couple of the kids were behind them, dragging pianos as Maria called it, but no one was worried. Not until Nick heard the scuffle behind them. He turned and saw the man running off with one of the girls, Four. He turned and took chase, sprinting like his life depended on it. The man was panicked, waddling fast, fighting with Four and fighting for balance. Nick started yelling. He had his gun out. The transient dropped Four and made a run for it. Nick put two rounds in his back, the brazen son of a—
“You okay?” he asked Four, who was terrified and sobbing. Four was a cute kid, and this was going to screw her up more so than anything else. He hugged her tight and she held on to him like her life depended on it.
A gunshot rang out, and a round shattered the window of the Benjamin Moore building right behind him. Three more shots cut through the air as Marcus shot back. Nick dropped down, pulled Four into his arms, lady-bugged it until Marcus said they were clear.
“Jesus Christ in heaven,” Nick said, startled himself. He’d just seen a kidnapping, partook in a killing, then nearly got shot to death in a gun battle he was sure he would not have won, if not for Marcus.
“You hit?” Marcus asked, standing over him.
Nick nodded his head, then said, “Four? You okay?”
Lots of sniffling, but a nodding head. Maria was there, by Nick’s side, gorgeous, worried eyes trying to get around him to see about her child.
“Four?” she said.
“I’m f-f-fine, Miss Maria,” Four said.
Maria swept the child up, frowned at Nick and Marcus, then said, “I thought you would have kept a better eye on her!”
“Sorry, Miss Maria,” Nick said sarcastically. Marcus just frowned and watched the back of her head as if he wanted to say something.
“Sorry, Miss Maria,” he teased under her breath, then both of them looked at each other and almost started laughing.
“Well the hell is her damage?” Nick asked under his breath and still sitting down on the curb.
“She’s puckering extra tight today,” Bailey practically whispered, giving Nick a hand and pulling him up.
Nick noticed her strength coming back and was grateful for their friends back in Loomis. She would have died if not for them. They all would have. Now that Bailey was restored to near full health, he saw parts of her personality returning. He also felt an incredible pull toward her, one she was starting to reciprocate.
They walked up the 82, also called El Camino Real, then took F Street just after the Woodlawn Memorial. F Street became D Street and then the 280 came into view. The 280 would take them into the city. By midday they reached Hwy 1 which would take them to 19th Ave and from there it was a straight shot into San Francisco.
The scenery was pretty bad, but they made good time. All the way up the streets, there were downed drones, demolished cars and homeless people wandering about. They walked past destroyed homes and packs of dogs (some of them sniffing around the dead), and several huge piles of burnt bodies. They always knew when they were getting near the body piles because the distinct smell of rot hung in the air like a low, burnt fog. Around Sloat Blvd the sun hit the horizon and Maria finally said, “The kids are exhausted. I think we should find a place before the sun goes down.”
“We’re not that far from my home,” Nick said. “If you can make the walk, we can finish today and take tomorrow off.”
“How many blocks?” Maria asked. She had not an ounce of emotion to tell them one way or the other if she thought this was a good idea. Up ahead, One was looking at the bottom of her shoes and seeing the start of holes.
“Ten, fifteen blocks, something like that,” Nick said.
“Which is it, ten or fifteen?” Maria asked.
“More than ten, less than fifteen,” Nick responded. It turned out to be fourteen blocks. The entire trip should have taken them forty minutes, an hour tops, but the kids were wiped out, and it was nearly black outside save for a three quarter moon, which gave them enough light to make out the shadows of cars, bodies and other obstructions.
When they got onto Kirkham and then 24th Street, Nick started to see the destruction in his neighborhood. Fire had torn through it, stilling his already hammering heart. When he saw his house with the roof caved in, half the structure gone, his knees grew weak and something of a moan escaped him. Even worse, there was a slew of dead bodies rotting outside the front door. Nick walked through them, didn’t see his daughter, then moved up toward the porch. Bailey tried to reach for his hand, but he pulled it away, his eyes already starting to water.
All this time, he’d had this vision of coming back to his home, finding Indigo safe and sound, finding it standing the way it had always stood: old, proud, strong.
Alas, this was not the case.
He walked up the porch in a daze, saw the front of the house charred but intact. It was peppered with bullet holes so bad it looked like someone had opened up on it with a Gatling gun. There were more dead bodies up there, none of them Indigo. He put his fingers in the holes, tried to see through flooded eyes. He knew he needed to go inside, try to find his daughter, but how could he do that? What would he find? Would she be burnt to death? Shot to death?
He couldn’t take that.
Marcus was suddenly beside him, as was Bailey. Marcus knelt down, picked up a piece of cardboard, turned it over.
“You got that lighter, Bailey?” he asked.
Bailey produced a small lighter, which he flicked into a bright flame. The rudimentary note said she was alive and headed to the city college on Ashbury and Hayes. Nick’s heart went into overdrive and he felt like he could breathe again.
“She could still be alive,” he said, a huge sigh of relief. “And that’s not far from here.”
“We need a place to sleep,” Maria said, seemingly unconcerned. Most of the kids were sitting down across the street, trying not to look at the bodies. Five and Three were walking around one specific corpse, whispering amongst themselves.
Boys…
“Find the nearest house that’s not burnt down and go from there,” Nick said to Maria, not looking at her, but instead re-reading the note on the cardboard.
“What are you going to do?” Bailey asked Nick.
“You know what he’s going to do,” Marcus told her. Then to Nick: “You want to go there now, right?”
“I do,” he said. Then, clearing his head, he said, “But first let’s help Maria and the kids get settled. We also need to find accommodations for ourselves since Plan A is blown.”
“What was Plan A?” Bailey asked.
“Not having my house practically burnt down,” he said.
The eleven of them walked the rest of the block down to Judah, took a right, then another right on 23rd where they scoured the block. They found quite a few homes that weren’t burnt. They chose one that looked suitable, knocked and waited, and then Marcus kicked in the front door. Marcus and Nick cleared the house while Bailey, Maria and the kids waited outside.
When the house was cleared, Marcus said, “Crack a few windows, we need to air this place out.” The good thing was, no one was dead inside. What stunk was the food in the fridge. They’d clean it out in the morning, but for now they had a place to stay, plenty of blankets and a big couch with a pullout.
Nick ushered them all in and said, “There are two bedrooms, both with Queen beds, and a couch that will hopefully sleep the rest of the kids.”
“What are you going to do?” Maria asked.
“See if we can find another place on the block, then let you know where we’ll be when we get back from helping Nick at the school.”
They managed to find another house three doors down that didn’t have a locked metal screen door and was vacant. The way it felt, though, the whole block was vacant. Nick was sure that wouldn’t be the case, but it still felt good thinking about the potential anonymity. Exposure equaled risk and right now, they’d risked enough.
“You should stay here, get some rest,” Nick told Bailey.
“Hell no, I’m going with you guys,” she said.
“Weapon’s check,” Marcus said. “Just in case.”
Marcus had five rounds and a fresh magazine. Bailey had three rounds in the shotgun, but six more on her person. She loaded her weapon. Nick had two rounds left and two fresh magazines. They also had two bottles of water between them and two cans of navy beans, which they ate for energy.
“You guys ready?” Marcus said.
“I feel like I have to take a crap,” Nick said, suddenly nervous.
“It’s because there’s so much at stake,” Marcus said. “It’s just nerves. Let’s go.”
“What if he really has to go?” Bailey said.
“Don’t nurture him,” Marcus said, irritated, “he’s not a child.”
Marcus wasn’t the only one at the end of his rope. They were all exasperated. Before they left, Nick told them they were about three miles from the school. When they were within a couple of blocks, they heard the start of gunfire. By the time they hit Fell and Ashbury, they saw the glowing light of fire in the sky.
Nick broke into a run, gun out, Marcus hot on his heels, Bailey trying to keep up. At Hayes, they saw the college. The front doors were opening and three men in the street opened fire on the school. Marcus and Nick rolled up on their six, took all three down with four shots. Next thing they knew, the guys pouring out of the school had guns on them.
“We’re friendlies,” Marcus said, hands in the air. “We just put these three down for you.”
The guns came down and a good looking woman who reminded Nick of Sarah Connor from the second Terminator movie got the kids moving.
“Is there an Indigo Platt here?” Nick asked.
“Who’s asking?” the woman said, coming near Nick, Marcus and now Bailey.
“Is she here?” Nick asked again, his breath high in his throat, his eyes starting to water in anticipation of a near breakdown.
“She’s on the other side of the school. If you can’t tell, we’re under attack here.” Nick started to go after her, but she said, “Wait!”
He stopped and turned around, everything inside him pulling him toward his daughter.
“Nick?” a familiar voice said, stopping him. He turned and saw the blonde woman standing in the mix of moonlight and firelight.
“Yes?” he said, his voice trembling now, his hand shaking.
She came closer, saw hi
m, then ran and sucked him into a giant hug and started crying. He didn’t expect this. Not at all. For all the times he’d dreamt of this, for all the times he’d lamented the loss of her, he never expected to see his ex-wife again.
“Margot,” he said, tears standing in his eyes, “I’m so happy you’re alive.”
“She’s going to be so glad to see you,” Margot cried. “She thought you were dead. We both didn’t want to think that, but it’s been so long, we just…we didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s been beyond brutal getting back here,” he said, suddenly concerned about having both Margot and Bailey in the same proximity as each other, not to mention the war going on all around them...
“We need to get to safety,” Margot said. “This was our home, but now…it’s not going to survive the night.”
“We have a place you can go,” Marcus said, stepping up. “Bailey, can you take them back to that park we saw back there? Keep them safe until we can get back?”
“Yeah,” Bailey said, even though it was clear she didn’t want to separate from them. “Let’s go—”
“Margot,” the woman said, “Margot Platt.”
“I’m Bailey James,” she said, knowing exactly who she was. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
More gunfire was erupting from high up on the roof. Nick gave Bailey a quick kiss on the lips, then said, “Stay safe at all costs.”
“Nick, baby, I have a bad feeling,” she said, her voice pleading, her body as rigid as he’d ever seen.
Both of them were ignoring Margot, who stood there in silence and shock. As if she thought she could leave Nick and he wouldn’t find love again. He felt bad for her for a second. But only a tad bit sad.
“I know,” Nick said, holding Bailey’s hand. “I have that same bad feeling.”
He kissed her one last time then put his lips to her ear and said, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said, the tears springing to her eyes. She wiped them one last time before he left then said, “You’d better come back to me.”