by Ryan Schow
“Are you okay, Mom?” she asks.
“No,” I say, “but yes, too.”
Tonight I needed Stanton to not be his usual brooding self. I needed his body against mine, to remind me I am not alone, that he still cares, that we have a chance not only at falling in love again if this thing ever ends, but living our life to its end as a family.
To his credit, he slides his hands around my waist, curls into my back and says, “It’ll be okay, Sin. I don’t know how, but it will.”
17
Outside, you can’t even see the sky anymore the clouds are that low and it’s that polluted. The air outside is just wet dust and compressed smoke. Also, I’m pretty sure we’re breathing asbestos. This beats the alternative though. People are getting slayed out there. They’re being systematically murdered just for being human and alive.
“Do you think we’ll have to leave today?” Macy asks Stanton.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m starting to think it’s not good to put down roots for this long.”
For some reason—and this started out as a concern, which became a synopsis, which has since been all but confirmed (based on entirely too much evidence)—we are being exterminated as a species. We’re not sure there are any other viable possibilities left to consider.
“If you squint real hard,” Macy tells me, her eyes on a triangle of blown-out window, “it looks like snow falling.”
“That’s great, sweetie,” I say, my mind elsewhere.
“See what I mean?” Macy asks, dragging me out of my thoughts once more. She’s pointing at the raining ash and calling it snow.
Is she losing her mind, or is this a silly game?
I bite my tongue, allow her this fantasy (delusion). She reaches out of the broken window, palm up, catching a few more flakes. She pulls them in, frowning when she sees they aren’t wet or dense like snow. She rubs the flakes into her palm. They flatten into a dry, powdery smear.
“Come away from the window,” I tell her. “Drones have been rocketing through here all morning.”
Macy stays put, shoves her open hand outside again.
Looking at her, at her unwashed hair, I feel like the worst mother ever. She pulls in more ash, rubs it in her palm, then wipes the mess on her shirt. Her button nose and bowtie lips remind me that not too long ago she was a normal, well adjusted child.
“You’re showering today, Macy. No more excuses.”
“Maybe,” she says, preoccupied.
“You’ve never been a dirty child, do you want to start now?”
“I said I would,” she snaps.
Even though she’s well into her teens, and being a bit of a butthole right now, all I see is my little girl. She’s still so fragile my heart aches at the sight of her, of what she’s having to endure. Of whom she must become to survive this impossible existence.
You can’t protect her from this, I remind myself. You can’t protect her from the entire world.
I’ll shelter her and feed her as best as I can, and try to keep her from getting killed, but that’s about all I can do. Standing in the kitchen, I can’t even look at her anymore. Elbows on the counter, I lower my head into my hands, battling tears of exhaustion of frustration, battling tears of dread.
I know what’s coming. How this ends.
I wipe away the start of damp morning eyes and stiffen my resolve against a wildly beating heart. But I can’t seem to soften the lump in my throat, or the constant buzz of paranoia in my head.
“What are you thinking?” Macy asks.
“Nothing,” I answer too quickly. Trying not to go crazy. Then: “Everything.”
What I’m thinking, what needles at my brain, is that if we survive long enough, chances are good that one day we’ll no longer resemble the people we were meant to be. It’s already happening. We’re turning back the years of evolution.
We’re…regressing.
Suddenly I feel so sick to my stomach I can’t help but think that suiciding us all in the dead of night might be the wise alternative. It was happening all over the place.
The suicides.
This couple below us, they were halfway ready for the holocaust, rogue governments, mass coronal ejections from solar flares and EMP blasts that squelched civilized society, but they weren’t ready to be apart. Would they have been ready for this? For a loss of morality? The loss of not just each other, but themselves?
Stanton used to be level headed, a moral beacon, fearless with his money and his job title, undefeated with his silver tongue. I used to be even keel in the worst of situations. The ER prepped me for a lot, but it didn’t prepare me for this. For the killing. For Stanton’s bumpy fall from grace.
We all do it now. We can’t help it. We’re all taking out own little measurements of society. Notching out all those hashes on the wall, like some story we’ll later tell our grandkids. Here is where the bomb went off, here is where we lost our house, here is where the city fell, where we lost our way, where we started killing and stealing and—
Ugh…my world is nothing but dark clouds. This morning I’m struggling to find hope. Will any of this ever get any better? Can we ever bounce back from this as a civilization?
I don’t think so.
That’s why suicide is my safety measure.
Knowing I have the power to spare us this indignity, if things get that bad and there truly is no future for humanity, I remind myself it’s just three bullets and game over. This thought gives me a small degree of peace, although not as much as before. I don’t want to die. And I don’t want to have to kill my family. But I will. If it comes to that.
Ash drifts in through the broken window, settles on the floor. Outside the sounds of carpet bombing start back up.
“Shut the drapes, Macy,” I tell her, my voice taking a stern edge. “And get away from the window.”
Half the street-facing windows broke from a concussion burst a few days ago. We boarded most of them up, but we need a way to see outside, so we’ve left two open. We have only the drapes to shelter us from the elements, from the soot in the air. Most days it’s enough. We lean plywood up against them at night, and it helps some, but the insulation here is poor.
God, those drapes. They’re ugly floral patterned curtains.
I remind myself they serve their general purpose. At least, for now. Rex and Stanton have been talking about moving lately, to a bigger house, one that can accommodate all of us. I think that’s why they’re trying to get me and Macy good with the guns. Just in case…
For a second, I almost forget my fear.
Then there’s a knock at the door—a sharp, authoritative knock that has us all paralyzed where we stand. Stanton rushes into the room, finds us, his flashing eyes telling us a thousand stories about how bad this situation could be.
“Hide!” he hisses.
“San Francisco PD!” the voice on the other side of the door barks. “Open up!”
Oh God, no! The pee-dee.
Macy and I hurry to the hall closet; I grab the Sig Sauer on the way, pull back the slide to make sure it’s loaded. It is. Inside, we move behind the old lady’s coats, our backs against the wall.
“Not a word,” I tell Macy.
It’s just me and my daughter in the dark, sweating, our hearts clamoring, our breath high in our chests and coming fast. Too fast. I pull my daughter’s young body toward me, too forceful, way too fearful.
“He can’t let them in,” Macy is saying, panicked.
I’m thinking the same thing. But Rex said Stanton is in charge and we all agreed. Agreement meant compliance so no one would make the wrong move and get everyone killed.
The rifle stock hits the door again. “Open up or we’ll kick it down and come in anyway.”
Why these thugs still try to pass themselves off as cops seems preposterous. Apparently they’re doing it because people are still complying. So as long as things keep going their way, success will shape their actions and they’ll continue doing the sa
me thing until someone stops them. Can we stop them? Is that what Stanton’s planning?
Out in the living room, at the end of a short hall, we hear the front door open and booted feet tromping in. The mix of authoritative voices has me gripping. The one thing I can’t stop wondering is why the hell Stanton is obliging them. Is he thinking he can do what they want and they’ll just leave us alone and move on? With everything we have, the truth is, we don’t stand a chance against them. If they broke that door down and saw everything we have, they’d look for more and find us, too.
There was no way around letting them in and Stanton knew this.
Unconsciously I squeeze Macy even tighter against me, feeling her skin and bony frame, listening to her every quiet breath. Is she breathing too loud? If she yelps at some point, if she can’t stand the anxiety anymore, one peep and she’ll get us killed.
She’s just a child!
Pressing my face into her hair, suppressing a hard sob, I inhale the scents of her and wonder if this will be our last time together.
Tears flood my eyes. At this point, I’ve stopped trying to contain them. I’m cracking, just like Stanton’s cracking, just like Macy’s maybe cracking inside, but in a different way altogether.
The ruckus going on in the living room is the only thing keeping me from going to pieces. If someone opens this door…oh God, I don’t even want to think about that!
Taking a deep breath, I find my resolve and realize that at some point I’m going to have to start killing, too. I can’t just leave all this on Stanton anymore. It’s time to pull my weight.
“Mom?” Macy says.
“Shhhh,” I tell her.
Rex and Stanton claim to be committed to the task of getting us out of the city, but it’s proven to be more difficult than any of us had imagined. Listening to what’s happening in the living room, I’m starting to realize it was all a big pipe dream.
Speaking of Rex, I wish he were here now. He’s the merciless one. The determined one. The one with the combat experience and a penchant for bloodshed.
“Can’t breathe,” Macy finally whispers.
I don’t realize how tight I’ve been holding her until she fights for that extra deep breath. My grip on her loosens, but I keep her close. If we’re going to die here, it’s not going to happen without one hell of a fight.
Another round of bombing rattles the world from a few blocks away, the walls rumbling, the floor beneath our feet shifting. I press a palm against the wall to steady us. Macy shifts her footing for balance, quickly but quietly. Some powdered drywall from above drops into our hair and lands on our shoulders.
We pay it little mind. I’m more concerned about the floor collapsing.
Heavy voices inside our home bark orders. It’s amazing how authoritative they sound, how…police-like. They’re mimicking even the simplest of details. Working quickly toward the goal of forced compliance. I hear Stanton’s manic, aggravated voice talking back to them and I wince. I can’t help thinking, this isn’t the time to lose it, baby. I can’t help thinking, this isn’t the time to crack.
“What business do you have with us while blocks away we’re getting shelled?” he asks. “We’re nobodies. This whole city is filled with nobodies.” Stanton is pretending that not knowing they’re former gang bangers will save him. That it will save us all.
Will it?
“Get on your knees,” the voice says, now monotone, completely devoid of empathy or humanity, “hands behind your head, lower your face to the floor, slowly.”
“You’re going to have to put a bullet in me before I bend a knee to you,” Stanton finally growls, steadfast before them.
My body pulls in on itself, my muscles squeezing hard against the bones. There’s the shouting of orders, my husband’s crumbling foothold on life, and then that sound.
Their guns.
Their modified shotguns make an horrendous mechanical sound when chambering a round. It’s a hard industrial clacking, that metal-scraping-over-metal sound of something that will easily shell out round after round after round of blazing hot death.
The sound is power.
The sound is lives being ended.
We didn’t expect the first round to blow through the drywall in the living room and end up cutting through the upper corner of the closet, but it did. Macy and I jump, but neither of us make a sound. Breathless, terrified, I check Macy, make sure she isn’t hit. She’s okay. Scared witless by the shaking feel of her, but okay nevertheless.
There’s a scuffle outside and I hear the one in charge saying, “See, that wasn’t so hard,” and I know Stanton is on his knees, complying.
Keep it together, I’m thinking. Please, please, please, Stanton. For us. For your daughter!
Macy’s head is jammed against my heart, which is slamming around in my chest with the fear that they’re going to find us. When they do, there’s no telling what they’ll do. Actually I have an idea, and perhaps this is why I’m so scared.
“Search the house,” the one calling out the orders says.
Things get pulled apart, overturned; drawers are torn from cabinets, flung about, kicked to pieces. I can’t even imagine what they hoped to gain by destroying our things. But if they keep at it, if they tear through this house the way they are, they will find us.
It’s inevitable.
Slowly I move Macy around to my backside as I step to the front of the tiny closet. My arm comes up, the gun goes out as far as it can, and when the door is finally jerked open, I see a man’s face that isn’t my husband’s or Rex’s and I just do it.
I squeeze the trigger, hit him in the chest.
He staggers backwards and I shoot him again, the ferocious jolt of gunfire startling me, unnerving me, damn near deafening me. Only for the slightest second do I realize the guy I shot is in uniform and he’s got no obvious tattoos.
Oh, no! I think.
I hear scuffling and realize now that I’ve played my hand, real cop or not, it’s time to come to the table and up the ante. It’s time to not be the me I’ve always been, but the me I must be in this world to survive.
I move out into the hallway, ready to charge whomever is out there with guns blazing. What I come up to is Stanton on his knees with a gigantic black shotgun pointed at his head. The barrel is pushing down on his skull and the man in the police uniform is grinning.
Beside him is another cop who has a shotgun trained on me. Both these guys have that hard look. Like time-on-the-street hard. Like time-in-the-joint hard.
“You just killed Clive,” he says.
His piercing blue eyes and slicked-back black hair make him look like the Devil. Already I’m thinking of killing him. But Stanton will die if I do, then I’ll have to shoot the other guy, but by then he would’ve already got me and that’ll leave him and Macy.
The word rape runs rampant in my mind. I don’t squeeze the trigger just yet.
“Did you hear me?” he asks, perturbed.
“I didn’t kill him,” I say, swallowing hard, “the bullets did.”
The front door is still open. Can I make it? Get to Rex before Stanton is dead and they get to Macy? No way. Stanton can’t help himself. He’s looking at me and I can see the defeat in his eyes. He’s not wanting to go, but he’s realizing he’s dead and he’s coming to accept it.
“Just shoot him, Sin,” he says.
In a fit of rage, the fake-cop spins his weapon around, cracks Stanton on the head with the stock and from there everything moves fast and slows at the same time. The bullet I fired his way blows through the guy’s jaw, but I’m already rolling for cover (a shotgun is fired, the explosion in this small space deafening). The last fake cop racks another load just as I’m coming up with the gun pointed at his face.
“I have you,” I say. “You’re down two, I’m down one, but I have you.”
“I’m not down two, we’re down two. There were three of us here in here, but there are dozens of us out there.”
“You
mean your brothers in blue?”
“My brothers. Period.”
My arms are trembling right now. This is taking too long. Whatever bravado I started with is melting fast as I’m realizing there’s no way out of this.
He shoots or I shoot; one of us dies.
That’s when I see Macy. She’s creeping out of the hall closet with her assault sock at her side. She’s looking at me, but moving in stealth and I’m thinking, please God, no.
The fake-cop sees me looking at her and he looks and that’s when she steps out, the sock swinging backwards like a soft-ball windup.
“You know why I’m having a hard time shooting you?” he finally says. “Because you’re too pretty to waste. But now that I see her, I’m thinking it’s time for you to go. Because the fun me and her can—”
Just as his eyes are coming back to mine, his entire head explodes in a shower of gore that fans out over a small slice of the entire living room.
The body drops face(less) first to the floor and standing in the open doorway is Rex with a smoking shotgun and Gunner beside him, trying to peek in. Rex is pushing his face away because…damn, the mess that’s been made is…too gory for words.
“If you can believe it, I think we’ve got our ride out of the city. Thank God for Gunner, though,” Rex says. “Kid’s got a pair of legs on him.” Meaning he can run. Meaning he ran and got Rex the second he found a way.
“I had it under control,” I tell him, my body starting with the post trauma shakes.
“What about Stanton?” he asks. “Did he have it under control, too?”
Looking down at him, Stanton’s slumped over, blood rolling down his head. Panic wells in me and I’m on my knees in no time checking for a pulse. It’s strong, thank God.
“Unconscious,” I announce.
Then turning to Macy, my relief short lived, I say, “What were you thinking?!”
She blanches.
“I was thinking I could help. I mean, that’s what Rex and Daddy have been trying to teach us, right? To work together to protect each other?”