Unbound

by A. R. Shaw

  “Why did they do this?” Nicole asked.

  Sloane let them take in the scene of destruction, of all their hard work. Senseless was the only way to describe it. “C’est la vie. It doesn’t matter why, girls. It’s done. Quickly, get cleaned up and changed. It’s going to be a long night.”

  As the younger girls were doing as they were told, Ace remained by the open doorway and waited with Wren.

  “Why did they do this, Mom?”

  Sloane shook her head. “Control…they’re trying to force us to their camp.”

  “Why don’t we just go there then? It sounds like it would be better than this.”

  Turning to her daughter, Sloane said, “That’s just it, dear. That’s the way they make it sound so that you’ll go along. Give up all of your rights and soon you’re not a refugee, you’re a prisoner and at their will and whim. No, I’m not submitting my children to that as long as I can help it. That’s not survival, Wren, that’s submission. Promise me you’ll never give in.”

  Wren only nodded.

  “Good girl. Tonight, we’re staying at the house near the entrance to the neighborhood, Old Mr. and Mrs. Bishop’s house. Then in the morning, we’re leaving through the forest.”

  “It’s cold at night, Mom.”

  “I know. We’ve started fires. We have tents. We’ll keep moving until we find somewhere safe to go.” One glance at her daughter told her she was terrified by the idea.

  “We’re no better off than those people who travel through here, are we?”

  Sloane thought about her daughter’s words then shook her head, “No dear, we’re not; we never have been and we’re in even more danger than that. But look at me, Wren, be brave in this world above all else. You must be brave.”

  She nodded and then Sloane led her girls, each with a filled backpack and pulling a wagon apiece, as they walked through the neighborhood until they reached the Bishops’ house that backed up to the graveyard behind their house. Beyond the graveyard awaited the dark, cold, desiccating woods and the unknown.

  25

  Memories

  * * *

  Dark descended early that night. Every creep and sound made them jump. Even Ace was startled by more noises than usual. With only lantern light, they sat on sleeping bags on the den floor of what used to be a very nice home, but was now only a bleak reminder of what remained from better days.

  “Mom, it’s freezing in here. Can we light a fire in the fireplace?”

  Sloane shook her head. “Too risky. We can’t. They might be watching us. We can’t take the chance of putting off a heat signal.”

  “You think they’re watching us?” Nicole asked.

  She nodded. “Yes, they were watching us before and they knew which house we were staying in and knew there were only four of us.”

  “So we didn’t trick them this time?” Mae asked.

  Sloane smiled. “No sweetheart, we didn’t.” Then Mae coughed and Nicole followed suit. Sloane was concerned what damage the gas had on their respiratory systems. She was afraid they would have a lingering effect for days if not weeks, and if they were to catch a cold in the conditions she was forcing them into, it would further weaken their immune systems in time. “You two need to drink more water and catch some sleep, okay. We’re getting up early in the morning to start on our journey.” She opened Nicole’s sleeping bag and helped her snuggle down.

  “Sloane,” Nicole whispered in a voice meek enough for the other two girls not to hear her, “is it okay that I’m…coming with you?”

  Sloane finished tucking the girl in but her statement caused her to pause. Nicole’s eyes were round and glossy. This child, now an orphan, had endured too much. Her concern nearly broke Sloane’s heart.

  “My dear, you are one of mine now. Of course you’re coming; I’d never leave you behind.”

  Nicole’s eyes stared into hers, looking for what Sloane thought was evidence of her conviction. She hoped beyond words that the girl found the solace she sought there.

  Sloane bent down and kissed her forehead lightly. “I love you, Nicole, just like my own. Now please get some sleep.”

  Nicole nodded and turned to her side, closing her eyes.

  “Mom, you should sleep now too; you were up all night. I’ll keep watch,” Wren said.

  “I will, but not yet. I have a few things to do still. I’ll leave Ace here with you. Try to stay awake and Wren, if anything happens, sound the alarm.”

  “Yes Mom.”

  Sloane stood and zipped up her black jacket and pulled on a black knit hat over her brunette hair. She donned her rifle and slung on her backpack.

  “What are you going to do, Mom?” Wren whispered, trying not to disturb the younger girls trying to sleep.

  Sloane knelt down. “I’m concerned they’re going to show up again tonight, so I’m going to set up the contingency we talked about, to give us some time to get away if we need to. I want the girls to rest tonight after what happened this morning. I wish we had another day or two but we don’t. They’re coming back. So I’m going to make it very difficult for them to follow us.”

  “You might kill someone.”

  “Yes, I might. Especially if they are willing to try and harm us like they did today, I’d say they deserve it.”

  “But you’re not them, Mom.”

  Sloane hated conversations like this. “Yes, it’s them or us now, dove,” she said and slipped away into the night back the way she came without engaging in another ethics debate with her idealistic daughter. That was a luxury of times past.

  Months earlier, after they’d scavenged useful items from the abandoned homes, like car batteries, propane tanks and random ammunition or anything that wasn’t adversely affected, they experimented with setting simple explosions. Wren seemed to retain all scientific information like her father had. So they pored over the science manuals he had stored in plastic totes that luckily survived the flood, and she and Wren began running experiments for other possible uses in defense. It was a great use of their down time. What they found was that while you always saw car batteries exploding easily in the movies, it was not so in their experiments and the explosions were easily the tamest, only the size of a closet. Not the worthiest weapon they could summon; however, some of the blue tipped ammunition they’d found in the Millers’ house fit perfectly in the AR-10 she’d scavenged from the Carsons’ home. She’d wondered why they were tipped in blue and when she tried a round, aiming at a concrete retaining wall, it not only hit the wall; it exploded on impact. She supposed these were incendiary rounds and they were supposed to be illegal in some states but perhaps Oregon wasn’t one of them.

  As Sloane walked out into the night, she began taking steps back toward her old home. She’d worked so hard to make them look lived in the past several months, in order to convince anyone who entered the neighborhood that it wasn’t just her and the girls living here alone. Part of her knew her charade was only a temporary solution.

  Now, as she passed each home, she remembered the families that once made their lives here, imagining them waving or playing in their yards as she walked by. Those same people were either dead now, living in a FEMA camp, surviving at a remote location, taken by the pandemic four years ago or from the tsunami wave of water that hit or the various other circumstances surrounding a crumbling society. It was devastating to know she and her girls were the only ones left in the neighborhood and now they too had to go on the run. Each home now sat empty as a cold monument to their deaths and in turn, as Sloane came to her own home and stood outside of it, it would be the same after tonight. Her breath puffed out in front of her as a chill ran through her bones. No time to be weak. I won’t let them just come in and take it all away without a cost, she told herself and headed inside. It would be a long night of preparation.

  Although the explosions wouldn’t destroy everything, she aimed to do as much harm as possible. If placed prudently as a catalyst, the propane tanks would do a good amount of damage an
d that was the effect Sloane was going for when she began pulling the collected propane tanks from her basement to place in several of the homes. In particular, she placed the first full tank on an end table in the living room of the Carsons’ house, right in front of the opened window in clear view. Then she placed a plastic bag filled with gasoline atop the tank. Afterwards, she closed up the house and then pulled the kitchen stove out from against the wall, making a horrible screeching racket by manhandling the door. She pulled a crescent wrench from her back pocket and opened the gas valve and then carefully left the house. It would take hours for the unpredictable gas, leaking from the open valve, to fill the void. She hoped she had enough time. She repeated this procedure in her own home and several others. By now, she figured the neighbors who’d escaped were no longer coming home. She wanted to leave nothing behind for anyone else to take.

  It was a long night of preparations and she hoped it was enough to give her and her girls enough time to escape into the woods when the time came.

  When Sloane finished, she was spent of all energy, filthy and so exhausted she could only imagine the ghosts of those families saying goodbye to her as she passed again, one final time, back the way she came to their last shelter on Horseshoe Lane.

  When she crept inside the house, only Ace was witness to her return. She heard the low growl until he knew it was her and then his head landed back into its position on his paws, relieved. Thankfully, Wren had fallen asleep as well. She couldn’t take her daughter’s brooding looks at the moment.

  Sloane wiped the back of her hand over her tired eyes. She shuffled to the bathroom and used the lantern and a bottle of water they put there to wash by. By the glowing light, she found blood smeared across her face. She washed her hands as best she could, letting some of the water drain down the sink. Then she dampened a towel and cleaned her face. Though they’d learned to go days without a shower, Sloane couldn’t get past at least cleaning this day’s stench from her face and hands. The gas smell lingered on her hands even still.

  After examining her hand more closely in the dim light, she’d found the source of the blood in a cut on the back of her wrist, though the blood had mostly subsided by now and it wasn’t deep. She hadn’t even known about the injury and it didn’t matter now. While holding pressure on the wound with the damp rag, she stared at herself in the mirror in her weakened state, all the lines of a lady and mother, wife and daughter over forty reflected back to her. They were there, but so was the hardness that comes with trauma, an advance in aging since the last time she really looked at her reflection suddenly appeared. What else she saw there besides the lines were doubt and fear…You can do this Sloane, you have to do this.

  She didn’t want to leave Horseshoe Lane. Her husband was here. All the memories of her early happy life happened on this road in the house she’d just left behind. It was their first home as husband and wife. He’d carried her over the threshold there. It was where they brought their daughters home after bringing them into the world. It’s where they fought, made love, and where she still felt him tinkering in the garage with one project or another. She felt him there with her still, whispering to her all the things she must do. It’s why she hadn’t left before when she knew she probably should have taken the girls and run. But she had to go now. She had to take the girls and run, not for her survival but for theirs, because she wanted nothing more than to die there in her home where her best, and despite the worst, her happiest memories remained.

  Sloane rarely allowed herself to cry but she silently let the tears roll down her cheeks then. “I miss you,” she whispered in case he heard her still.

  26

  No Rest

  * * *

  “Sloane,” Nicole whispered.

  Sloane slowly opened her eyelids to dim morning light, feeling as if they were peeling over asphalt, noting immediately that she felt dehydrated and needed water. Her mouth was gummy and she could only imagine how bad her breath was at the moment.

  “What is it, dear?”

  “We…hear…voices,” Nicole’s words came slowly and in an almost inaudible tone.

  Sloane looked to her and then her eyes glanced at both of the other girls staring at her with alarm. Then she listened too because so far, she hadn’t detected any noise. More curiously, Ace wasn’t in the room, nor did she hear him anywhere.

  She mouthed, “Ace?”

  Nicole shook her head as if she didn’t know.

  Then she heard a vehicle’s brakes squeak in the distance.

  “Have you seen anyone?” she asked Nicole, whose face was still plastered into her sleeping bag.

  “No,” Nicole said.

  There was no time to waste. Sloane pushed up on her elbows to her feet and then carefully peeked around the corner to where the noise was coming from through the front bay window of the house. She saw two Humvees out front through the dirty lace curtains. A few men with rifles in uniform were running in and out of the Carsons’ home, only three houses down from where they were now.

  Surely they must have already searched our old house?

  She turned back to the girls, motioning them to hurry. She threw on her boots and grabbed her backpack and weapon and then grabbed Nicole and dragged them to the back door.

  “What about the sleeping bag and the wagon?” Mae asked.

  “Laisse le! Leave them. We don’t have time. Allez, allez, let’s go!” With only enough time to put on their shoes and grab their backpacks, Sloane checked the back yard finding no one there yet, and hand in hand they ran to the wooded area behind the house. Somewhere in her mind, she noted thankfully that it was a gray rainy day, providing them with more cover.

  Once the four of them were in the forest, she checked to see if Wren followed close behind and found her looking back.

  “Allez! Don’t look back.”

  “What about Ace? Don’t you care about him?”

  Sloane grabbed her and pushed her forward. “Move! And keep down. Keep going! Don’t stop until you get to Couthers Farm Road. Wait for me there. Stay hidden. Remember the plan, Wren.”

  Her daughter shot her an annoyed expression but nodded her head.

  Sloane watched them disappear into the thicket until she heard voices getting closer behind her. She turned and headed back alone. When she came to area where she buried the dead, she knew she was in range. She crouched down and pulled the AR-10, already loaded with the blue tipped incendiary .308 rounds, from the sling around her shoulder. She knelt behind the wood stump she’d practiced from before. Its girth was large enough to give her cover and high enough to brace against for a steadier shot. She got into position, tuned out all noise from her hearing, and glassed the area through the scope. She’d practiced this many times but her hands shook nonetheless. Just as a soldier was about to enter the Carsons’ gas-filled home, she sighted the propane tank in the living room window, sucked in a short breath, let it out and pulled the trigger.

  The yellow-white flash knocked her backwards. She was momentarily stunned. The AR-10, she found, had fallen to the side. The soldiers were running everywhere, not knowing what mayhem had fallen upon them. Suddenly, the Bakers’ house exploded before she’d even sighted her next target. It must have caught automatically. She again set up her target, sucked in another quick breath, let it out and pulled the trigger, though this time her ears rang and there was no need to push out extraneous noises; she could hear nothing but the ringing in her head. After another blast, Sloane sighted her own home and the tank sitting in her bedroom window. She wasn’t going to let them have anything; nothing of value would transfer into their hands. Yet a sudden lump formed in her throat. Another shot. As if in slow motion, she flashed on her husband Finn and cringed, waiting for impact. And just when the thought crossed her mind that perhaps she’d missed, the explosion shook the ground, causing her to fall backwards once again. She wasted no time shooting twice more in succession and by the time she was through, the street was engulfed in flames and she backe
d away quietly, without them knowing it was merely her.

  Before she could escape, though, another burst went off and knocked her to her knees. She looked back. Men screamed as debris flew through the air. Somewhere in her mind, she knew the explosions would only get closer to her current position.

  Sloane scrambled to her feet on the muddy ground and turned to run through the woods as fast as she could to catch up with the girls somewhere ahead of her, praying at the same time that they followed the plan safely.

  Behind her, the flames grew and what once was a sanctuary to them, she’d destroyed so that they might flee and live another day.

  27

  A Home

  * * *

  After a while, the foliage became a blur. Her face and hands were scratched all over from carelessly running through the wet thicket in order to get to her children she already feared were lost to her.

  Her legs burned and besides being soaking wet while running from mayhem, somewhere in her mind she worried about Ace, and the fact that she might be having a nervous breakdown while trying to hide herself and her children.

  Then finally her eyes detected a flash of pink ahead through the forest and she began to slow her pace, taking care not to attract attention or scare the armed girls unnecessarily.

  She came to the waiting spot and found them huddled together underneath several bushes hiding and, she suspected, trying to take cover from the rain.

  “Mom!” Mae yelled and jumped up when she spotted her mother.

  “Shhh! It’s okay. I’m here now,” she said.

  “I’m so scared. Did you hear all of that? What’s happening?” Mae asked frightened.

  “Yes, Mae. Keep quiet,” she said to her terrified daughter but ignored her questions and then her eyes swept over the other two terrified girls. “We can’t stay here. We have to keep moving.”