Unbound

by A. R. Shaw

  Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t over think. One step at a time. That’s what Wren’s father used to say to her at the kitchen table as he guided her through tough math problems. It became a mantra for Wren before tests. Now, the mantra played on a loop within her mind. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t over think. One step at a time.

  Her hand reached for the hilt. That’s when she literally felt her mother’s life within her hand. She grasped the handle harder.

  “Wait, Wren, maybe…”

  And Wren pulled the knife free with one swift yank.

  Blood pooled up and began soaking the circumference of the wound. “Now, Mae. The towel.”

  “Oh,” Mae said and reached the towel forward, “I can’t.”

  Wren grabbed the cloth from her sister and pushed the layers into her mother’s shoulder. Kneeling up, she pressed down.

  Then nothing. No one said a word, as if it was any other dull day in the living room playing a game or reading a book. But Wren watched her mother’s chest as she held her down. She waited for the rise and ebb of her mother’s breathing. She felt for it, too.

  “It’s getting on the carpet,” Nicole said pointing a finger down at the once beige rug, turned a dark grey after the flooding, and now the damaged fibers were evolving into a shade of maroon.

  “Oh, help me,” Wren said, and the three of them rolled Sloane onto her side, placing a pad of towels underneath her shoulder. Turning her back again, Wren pushed down on the wound.

  After a time, Wren lifted her palm and saw the bloom of bright red blood growing beneath. “Hand me another towel.”

  “Is it stopping? What do we do if it doesn’t stop?”

  “We’ll keep adding towels until it does, Mae.”

  “Won’t that soak up all her blood? I don’t think we have enough towels,” Mae said suddenly startled.

  “Mae, it’s okay. She’s breathing, see?” she said pointing to her mother’s chest. “And her pulse is beating. She’s going to be all right.”

  “Why is she still sleeping then?” Nicole asked.

  Wren hadn’t asked herself that question, yet. Looking down at her mother, the scene replayed in her mind.

  Her mother came out of the house with the knife hilt already stuck inside her. She ran down into the street. She staggered and then fell as she shot Nicole’s father a few times. That’s when Wren remembered seeing her mother’s head hit the pavement. Watched the scene replay in her mind, the sickening thud as the back her mother’s skull slammed down on the road. That was called a concussion, a brain injury. That was bad.

  With her clean hand, Wren slipped it under the back of her mother’s head, massaged her scalp, and felt there. She pulled it away and came back clean.

  “We have to wait and see. We don’t know what’s going to happen yet.”

  19

  Two Weeks Later

  * * *

  “Moooom,” Mae woke her.

  “I swear to God, you’ve got to stop that, Mae! Is there something wrong?”

  “No, I was only joking,” Mae giggled.

  “That is not funny. Is everyone up?”

  “Yeah, Nicole’s on watch and Wren’s fixing breakfast,” Mae said as she helped her mother sit up, though she didn’t need to now. She did it more out of kindness than necessity.

  Her left shoulder was still bandaged. The going was slow in the first few days, but now the wound was healing quickly. She had no idea how much damage there was internally, only that it hurt like hell from time to time.

  “Anything to report, Wren?”

  “Not really. We heard a convoy go by again about an hour ago. It’s happening more and more each day. What do you think that means?” her daughter asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s either a very good thing or a very bad thing. We have plans to stay here, but if it comes to anyone trying to make us leave, we still have a contingency plan to leave. Let’s keep listening for now.”

  “All right, Mom,” Wren said.

  She hadn’t been conscious when the girls slipped out of their hiding places and defied their mother’s orders that night. Wren pulled the knife from her mother’s unconscious body after they brought her inside. They poured peroxide over the stab wound and cleaned it up, but they didn’t attempt to sew up the four-inch long gash. Instead, they closed the wound the best they could with lengths of medical tape from their first-aid kit and kept it as clean as possible. Wren also fished out the stored antibiotics Sloane had stashed in the attic along with the food.

  She’d awoken to Nicole weeping at her side the next morning, expelling tears she didn’t have. She was afraid the girl was going to be angry with her over her father’s death—surprisingly, she wasn’t.

  Although she loved her father, Nicole had agreed that Doug had lost his mind four years ago. She took comfort in knowing he was now with the rest of her deceased family, at peace finally. She was free of him and his torment.

  Sloane officially invited Nicole to live with them after that, and she had accepted. Not that there was anywhere for her to go, but Sloane wanted it to be her choice.

  Over the last two weeks, they’d come up with a better system to maintain their Horseshoe Lane deception. Sloane involved the kids in the planning. The game kept their minds working and was something for them to dream about.

  Each day, someone was responsible for a different yard-scape using items from each of the homes. Trent Carson was often responsible for leaving lawn chairs and beer bottles strewn in different scenic positions of his front yard. They were talking about an intervention. The warning sign he’d created to warn people off was found in his garage and predominantly displayed in all its juvenile arts and crafts glory.

  Larry was starting on front porch repairs. Several two-by-fours lingered alongside cans of paint.

  The Millers were now experimenting with fall crop gardening. Several areas of their front lawn were pulled up and being readied for planting. All of the homes now sported little clear baggies tied to branches of nontoxic leaves. They were collected by different people wearing different hats each evening.

  As Sloane began the day, she watched while Nicole threw the ball down the road. Six of their canine friends leapt after it in unison. She looked down at Sally by her feet. “You don’t fetch balls, do you?” If she could answer, Sloane knew the little dog would say, “No, that is below my station in life.”

  To her left, Ace sat contentedly; he’d kept her company after the injury and never left her side. He’d limped back to the main house after the girls carried her inside. Doug had kicked him terribly as he tried to get away from his attacker. If it hadn’t been for Ace, there was no way Doug would have let her go and, instead, would have sunk the knife into her again. Those thoughts ran through her mind over and over. What would have become of her girls then?

  “You’re a good boy, Ace. The best boy ever,” she said and scratched him behind the neck. He still limped but, like her, he was getting a little better each day.

  The hardest part was dealing with Doug’s body. He’d lain in the road for two days and she couldn’t stand to have Nicole at the window, seeing her own father there as the birds pecked at his flesh. She disposed of him with only Ace as her accomplice. After the younger girls had gone to sleep, she left Wren on watch while she took Ace with her and tipped Doug over onto a wagon they found at the Millers’. It took her a long time, but she had half the night to do it. She tugged and bartered with whoever might be listening from above to give her strength and fortitude.

  She finally made it to what she thought of now as the cemetery in the woods. She dragged him till her shoulder bled though her shirt again, to the same spot Brady’s decomposing corpse still lay. She thought she should say a few words, but nothing came to her. She was empty of words for the dead so she and Ace stood there, listening to the quiet. After a while, they turned and started for home. Then, as before, she heard rustling in the bushes and out came a few more pets to lead home. Ace made sur
e they were worthy, and they followed them back to Horseshoe Lane. Their pack had grown.

  She kept watch this morning as the girls worked on the Bakers’ house. The Carsons’ home had already been remediated of mold. They’d sprayed and scrubbed the walls with a combination of sink water and bleach. The home had been swept out, the furniture replaced, and other than the dining room table screwed to the Carson’s wall, everything looked more or less normal after a wall of water ran through it.

  She’d come to the conclusion, after she surpassed the fear, that everything was going to be okay. This life on her own, without Finn, was hard but she could do it. She’d proven that.

  Now that things were getting back to normal, they waited. The others would return someday, and when they did, their homes would be waiting for them. She had saved them, but more importantly, they had saved her.

  And then it happened one night…

  20

  Stock-Still Terror

  * * *

  Three months later, Sloane whispered, “Don’t…make…a…sound.”

  Sloane’s girls couldn’t see their mother in the darkened bedroom, but they knew to heed her every whispered word metered out with care.

  A funny smell hung in the air, one that caused them to breathe in momentarily, halting their breath in an effort to refuse something. That was what first stirred Sloane from a light, guarded sleep. Then, the sounds of footsteps on the creaky staircase wrought by a saltwater invasion and slowly dried over the months, loosening the screws so that anyone with a feathers weight sounded an orchestrated alarm. This noise brought her around completely, knowing it was more than the wind. When she sat up, through bleary eyes, she saw their bedroom door was locked as always and yet, a lightbeam shone like a laser through the cracks from the other side. There shouldn’t be anyone there, yet there was, and that was an ominous sign since her canine friends had not barked even once or growled an alert.

  With only the light of the moon shining through the window, Sloane reached over Nicole’s stiff form, who was frozen stock-still in terror, and grabbed her Glock off the nightstand. The child’s eyes were widened with fear and her breathing sped with a rapid pace. Sloane knew she had to do something in the next half second or they might all die.

  Barefooted, she moved quickly to the bathroom door and motioned with her arm for the girls to follow and move as silently as possible. They’d planned this before, though this was the first time they had to actually carry out an escape from their house on Horseshoe Lane.

  Her oldest daughter, Wren, ushered the two younger girls into the bathroom and Sloane barred the door behind them.

  They knew not to utter a word or make the slightest sound, though Nicole held her nose to bar the odd smell that seemed stronger by the minute. She’d trained them and they’d practiced night and day for any contingency thought up. She’d made it a game amongst them to stave off boredom and to teach them survival. Sloane prayed her girls would make the short distance to safety. Their lives depended on them performing exactly as she’d taught them.

  By the time the bedroom door burst open with force and yelling commenced, Sloane’s bare feet were lifted high up into the false air vent which she’d previously set into place. Remembering Trent Carson’s recommendation that there should always be at least two ways to escape from each room, she silently thanked him that she’d heeded this advice. Sloane had recovered the air vent before the intruders burst through the blocked doorway to the bathroom in their search for the inhabitants.

  With scurrying noises only noticeable ahead of her, Sloane prayed, Please let them make it.

  She followed them partway and when the cold, moist air hit her face, she took a deep breath to release the odd gas odor as she made her way through the escape route in the crawlspace of the attic and soon she too was at the opening. The girls were gone though. She didn’t hear a word, not one sound from them. No one screamed. The only noise she detected was within her own home as she assumed the man, or more likely men, scavenged through her supplies. Where the heck are my dogs?

  As the freezing air stung her, Sloane peered across the side lawn fifteen feet away to the Lincolns’ abandoned home which now housed their secret basement hideout. As she checked both ways through the moonlit dark for intruders, Mae’s bright face reflected the moonlight in the darkness as she peeked out of the hidden entrance and Sloane was both relieved and angry as hell at the same time. They knew better than to show themselves. That was against the rules and could get them all killed.

  Even though they were scared, she had to make them follow the plan. It meant life or death for them all. Sloane knew she needed to take care of this menace now before it was too late. Though she prepared for every single scenario she could think of, in real time, this was different. In the attic escape route, she’d hidden a bag filled with flares, matches, ammo and a pair of night vision goggles, thanks to her neighbors, the Carsons, Bakers and the Millers, who turned out to have left a plethora of survival equipment at her disposal. The only things she wished she had at the moment were shoes and perhaps a bulletproof vest and most immediately, a gas mask would be nice.

  Sloane swallowed what fear began to rise from her gut and put on the night vision goggles. She heard pounding behind her and feared they were searching for their escape route. It wouldn’t be long before they found her, and she was going to be ready for them when they did.

  She quickly sealed up the exit the girls had taken and with her equipment, she scurried back down the path she’d come and passed the entrance to her bathroom, listening intently as she went. There were at least two of them by the sounds of it.

  “The bed’s still warm. They’re here somewhere,” she heard a muffled voice yell.

  “Where the hell did they go then?”

  “Hell if I know.”

  Sloane made out two separate male voices, muffled by masks, she guessed. They sounded like young men, not over thirty. Then one made a radio call to someone else, possibly on lookout outside and Sloane nearly panicked.

  “Hey Mick, you see anything out there? They’re not in here, over.”

  “What do you mean they’re not there? We saw them in the north bedroom a few hours ago. You check the basement?”

  “We cleared the whole house, man. I’m tellin’ you they’re gone. Did you see anything out there?”

  “No, I’m watchin’ the whole front of the house. Franz, any sign back there?”

  So there’s four of them.

  “Nothing out here,” Franz replied.

  The next conversation really scared the hell out of her.

  “All right man, it’s your rear that’s going to get canned when we go back to base empty-handed and report that we lost a mother and her three daughters.”

  “We’re not empty-handed. Look, we found their rations. We’ll take ‘em. They can’t hold out forever. They’ll come walking into the FEMA camp on their own before long. It’s getting colder every night. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Then suddenly, Sloan knew what caused this.

  That fat jerk! I should have killed him when I had the chance!

  21

  Diversion

  * * *

  For weeks through the cooling autumn the rumbling of tires along the highway came as a looming threat. Sloane worried she wouldn’t have everything in place by the time they discovered her and the girls within their little deception on Horseshoe Lane.

  By now, out of the thirty-three homes in the neighborhood, they’d scavenged through each one and secured the doorways to keep out prowlers. They took just what they needed and ensured that they were in fact alone in the neighborhood. At first, she thought she might discover a holdout somewhere and actually hoped old Mrs. Howard might still be inside her house, but when Sloane checked over the home, she found it abandoned.

  That’s when reality began to hit home. She and the girls were alone and on their own…truly. It was a somber realization as the sky began to gray and snow was on the horizon. She
was the only adult in charge and responsible for their sole survival, and winter seemed more a threat to her than the rumbling sounds of military trucks nearing each day.

  The only news she was able to obtain from the outside world was from the occasional would-be looters who happened through her little place in this new apocalyptic world, and they were lacking more and more in ingenuity as time moved on. Their visits were lessening by the week. At first, there were several a week and then two to three. Now she found the alarms only sounded once every two to three weeks. They were typically very thin examples of their prior selves before all this started, often alone or with two or three members. They traveled on foot, skittish, dirty and malnourished. She almost felt sorry for them as she fired a few warning shots their way while they fled with her dogs chasing them out of what Sloane considered her territory. If niceties were exchanged in conversation, she asked them for the outside news in exchange for a ration. Their eyes would widen in surprise at her lack of information. The answer was always that the military was rounding up what few citizen holdouts were left and forcing them into FEMA camps. They were often surprised that she was still there, so close but apparently unaware of their presence.

  There was also another threat out there, apparently; citizens that had formed a corrupt militia were also out in force and they were almost worse than the dreaded Homeland Security soldiers or whoever they claimed to be. Sloane would then thank them for their information and hasten them on their way in hopes they would go peacefully. If not, she had other methods at her disposal.

  It was times like these she’d hoped that her neighbors might return for real, but now the odds were that they’d found a place to stay and though she wished she and the girls were with them for safety, she was happy for them—scared at times to be on her own but happy for them, all the same.