by Jim Heskett
She eased across the glass-covered sidewalk section and on to the next block with no incident. When she crossed the next intersection, people down the street took notice of her. Market was close.
It used to be fairgrounds, a giant parking lot with a massive tent held up by poles. Market stretched into the alleyways in the surrounding buildings, but you didn’t venture down those lanes unless you were looking for something you were willing to die for. Cassie knew a man who’d gone into a market alley to find heroin, and he’d never come out. The word was he was sold into some kind of slavery ring in South America, but that seemed crazy. The costs to transport someone to another continent would have to be astronomical. No, more likely they opened his throat and emptied his pockets.
As she approached the edge of the main tent, a child wearing a pink Bell Biv Devoe t-shirt and cargo pants blocked her entrance. He was wearing a pin on his shirt, something she’d seen before: a ring of suns around a pair of shaking hands.
He held up a screwdriver. “Fee to get in today. Candy, or cigarettes, if you got ‘em.”
Cassie frowned. “Scram, kid.”
“I will not scram. You got to pay the toll if you want in.”
He tightened his grip on the screwdriver. Couldn’t be more than ten years old, but he sure looked grave enough. Cassie wondered if she should go around the block and find another entrance.
“I don’t have candy or cigarettes.”
“What you got in the bag, then?”
She pulled the plastic bag close to her chest. “None of your business.”
The child eyed her. A stalemate. She didn’t want to have to walk around to another block. Whoever was guarding the other entrance might have something larger than a screwdriver.
The staring contest continued for another few seconds, when a chubby man emerged from under the tent flap. “Damn it, son, I told you not to come out here. What are you doing?”
The child stashed his weapon. “Nothing, pop. I’m talking with this lady.”
The chubby man glared at Cassie as he put a protective arm around the child. “What do you want?”
“I just want to go inside.”
The man moved the boy to the side and gestured at the flap. “If you need knives, compasses, or camping equipment, come to my stall. It’s two rows to the left and halfway down the main tent. My wife is there now, she can help you. Best supplies in the city. We’re looking to trade for tobacco or dried meat. Any kind of meat is okay, we’re not picky.”
Cassie smiled politely and walked past. She lifted the tent flap, and a wash of curry flooded her nostrils. For some reason, curry was the only spice not in short supply, and you could find it on every street corner.
She hated market. Hated everything about it. Her heart thumped in her chest and her pulse ticked in her neck. During a recent trip here, she’d only left unharmed because of her friend. Some kind of pimp had followed the two of them around, relentlessly trying to recruit them to come work for him.
Beautiful girls like you, I can take care of you. We can make so much bank. I’ll get you everything you need. I can even set you up in an apartment with a generator guaranteed not to fail. How about that? 24/7 electricity.
Her friend cracked a vase over his head, the vase they had been trying to trade for food. They went hungry but slept as free women that night.
They (whoever the mythical “they” was) had set up the main tent of market much like an old-style fair, with rows of wooden booths, one merchant per booth. Market contained about twenty rows in all, each of them hundreds of feet long. Rows–or sometimes sections of rows–were divided into areas of interest… meat, dry goods, clothing, weapons, tools.
Under the tent, something like a thousand people were milling about, haggling, arguing, fighting. This must have been the only place in the city a person could find such a large gathering of people. Without the commerce, they would probably turn this into a bloodbath because people here had an excuse not to kill each other. Didn’t mean it didn’t still happen, though.
After everything happened, gold had been the first and primary unit of exchange. But it became so scarce and expensive, it fell out of favor in a year or so.
Market reminded her of the trading floor of the stock exchange, except instead of people backstabbing each other over oil and gas futures, they backstabbed each other over dehydrated beef and shotgun shells. She could sometimes hardly believe the life she used to have. Seemed like a dream.
Cassie bypassed the first few rows of foodstuffs to reach the clothing section, where she could find the fabric area and hopefully Thomas’ mother. She didn’t have high hopes. When she was a kid, she’d frequent shopping malls with a lighted board at the entrance and a map of the mall inside. Apple store, Abercrombie, food court. Mall cops patrolling for teenage loiterers or anyone dangerous. They seemed so unnecessary at the time, but she had always taken security for granted as a nuisance.
The curry scent mellowed as she moved through the tent, weaving through people left and right. The smell of food became the stink of sweat and body odor, since regular bathing seemed to be another luxury most people no longer cared to maintain.
At the end of one row, a man wearing a bullet-proof vest held up a pair of jeans, shouting about how they’d never been worn, how he had many different sizes and colors. Cassie approached him.
“Are there knitters down this aisle?” she said.
The man stopped shouting and screwed up his face. “Are there what?”
“Knitters. You know… the fabric ladies that come here with the scarves and hats and that kind of stuff.”
“How the hell should I know? Do you want some jeans?”
The pair she was wearing did have slight holes in both knees. Not that she had much of anything to trade for a pair. Had she brought the joint? She couldn’t remember and didn’t want to give anything away by digging a hand into a pocket. “Do you have anything in my size?”
He cocked his head and leered at her. “Pull your shirt up, and let me see your waistband.”
Her hands rushed to her sides. “Not a chance, perv. I don’t need the jeans.”
“You shouldn’t talk to me that way. I’m not a bad guy. I could help you out here, you know. The market can be a dangerous place for a pretty girl like you.”
She felt foolish for having talked to him. The bullet-proof vest should have given away that he wasn’t the safe type. She gripped the St. Jude candle, its cold and slippery surface a comfort in her hand.
She strode away from him, not looking back, not afraid. At least, telling herself she was not afraid.
Down the aisle there were booths selling shirts, pants, overalls, hats and gloves. The lights were dimmer here than in the food section. The lights there were provided by generator-powered banks of light bulbs. Here, mostly Coleman lanterns and candles.
At a booth, a woman covered with a monstrous, hand-knitted shawl eyed her. The woman was sitting cross-legged, on top of a table. She was knitting one end of the shawl she was wearing.
Cassie walked straight toward the shawl woman. “Excuse me.”
Shawl woman looked up and smiled. Her skin was brown and cracked, her teeth half missing. “Hi there. Looking for a hat or gloves? Having a spring sale.”
“No, I’m looking for a woman who comes here sometimes, she had… has a son named Thomas.”
Over in the next booth, a head popped up over the wooden railing. A woman not as worn as the shawl woman, she was pretty, with crows feet around her eyes and a silvery blonde ponytail draped around her shoulders. “Did you say Thomas?”
Cassie nodded. “Are you his mother?”
The ponytailed woman frowned and came into the shawl woman’s booth. “No, dear, I’m not. Why do you want to know?”
“He asked me to give this to his mother,” Cassie said as she took the photo album from the bag. “Do you know where I can find her? Is she at Bregano park?”
The two women shared an uneasy glance. “I�
�m afraid that’s not going to be possible,” said the shawl woman. “She’s… gone.”
Cassie sighed. “I see. How do you know him?”
“Oh, we all know Thomas,” said the ponytail woman. “Not in person, but Heidi never stopped talking about him, her medical school student. She was so proud.”
Heidi. At least now Cassie knew her name.
Ponytail woman reached out and took the photo album, then flipped through the pages. Her eyes lit up at the pictures of a normal life, seemingly so long ago, even though it was only a few years. Shawl woman dragged her knitting off the ground to stand up and look at the pictures with her.
“Why did you walk away from me?” said a low and rumbling voice.
Cassie glared at the man in the bulletproof vest. He was carrying a camping ax, serrated on one edge. The blade glinted in the light of a nearby lantern.
“I don’t want any trouble,” Cassie said.
“Answer my fucking question.”
Ponytail and Shawl stood on either side of Cassie. “Leave her alone. Go back to your booth.”
“You really want to start with me today, huh?” he said to the older ladies, ping-ponging his eyes back and forth between them. “I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning and I’m not in the mood for your shit, you worthless yarn-bitches.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Cassie.
“You say you don’t want any trouble, but you still haven’t answered my question. I was just trying to sell you some jeans, and you walked away from me.”
“I don’t want your damn jeans. I don’t have anything to trade, anyway.”
He looked her up and down. “Then you can give me something else. I accept more forms of payment than the usual stuff, you know. We can work something out.”
Ponytail brushed past Cassie and slapped him. For a split second, he seemed too shocked to do anything. Then he raised the ax into the air.
Without thinking, Cassie slipped St. Jude into her hand and jabbed the end of the glass candle into the man’s stomach. He bent, slightly, took a step back, then recovered.
Cassie swung the candle, smacking him in the jaw. A splatter of blood ejected from the other side of his face.
Swinging so hard, Cassie had knocked herself off balance. She tumbled into the ponytailed woman, knocking them both into the ground.
A scream. Cassie turned her head to see a knitting needle sticking out of the man’s neck, and the shawl woman retrieving the needle to thrust it in again. After three thrusts, the man fell to his knees. He placed a hand on the side of his neck as a waterfall of blood poured out between his fingers.
As the man died on the dirty floor, he looked Cassie in the eye. She saw fear. Anger. And relief.
He slumped into a pile, but unlike her neighbor in the hallway, this man fell face down. A similar pool of blood stretched out from his body, swelling up like groundwater and inching in a circle across the floor.
The noise of market continued around her, hardly anyone noticing or caring about one of their merchants now dead. Someone else would take his spot. Someone would fill the jeans vacuum left by this man, who had died by a knitting needle to the neck.
The pool of blood had reached Cassie’s shoes, threatening to rise above the soles. She jumped back and slipped them off, and found that holes in the sides had let some blood onto her socks. She removed those too, now looking at a set of painted toes staring back at her. Bahama Mama red.
The ponytail woman smiled. “You still paint your toes?”
Cassie shrugged. “I like it. It makes me feel…”
She didn’t finish the sentence, but the shawl woman placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
Shawl woman lit up a cigarette and pointed a half-empty pack at Cassie, as an offer. Cassie took one, lit it, and even though the cigarette tasted stale and made her throat burn, she still relished in the sweet relief of nicotine.
She looked at the two ladies, wrinkled and thin, with dirty faces. “Do you two live in the park?”
They both nodded. “Haven’t seen you there before,” said the shawl woman.
“I know,” said Cassie. “How would you like to come live in an apartment building?”
The Coyote
(BEFORE THE FALL)
As he sipped his beer on an open stretch of grass in the park, Logan thought he’d never seen anything sexier than the gazebo lights glinting off that new revolver holstered at Naomi’s hip. More the hip than the gun, though. The way she used it to add a little bounce to her walk; the way she drummed her fingers across the pistol grip while she talked. He’d had a crush on this deadly goddess forever and was jelly-kneed the first time he saw her packing.
She was in a group of a dozen people partying in the park that night. Each of them wore some kind of firearm on their person, but nobody wore it the way Naomi did.
Everyone had guns, of course, and it’s not as if there weren’t other attractive women sporting impressive machinery. A minimum of one was mandatory, but there weren’t restrictions on the type. Some people walked around with shotguns in giant slings like backpacks, or semi-automatic pistols sticking out of belt loops. One guy Logan knew had a crossbow, but he got a ticket for Failure To Comply and had to buy something traditional.
Logan was sitting to the side of the gazebo with Dan Bryant, talking about football, as usual. Never expecting anything out of the ordinary. Which was why, when Naomi sauntered across the gazebo on a flight path toward him, Logan almost ate his tongue. She knew who he was because they had recently graduated from the same high school. But he had assumed she knew him in the same way you might know a crossing guard.
Her hips shimmied from one side to the other as she locked onto his eyes.
He probably would have gotten the hell out of Tulsa sooner if it weren’t for her. They ran in the same circles, and he kept working up the nerve to ask her out on a date. Aside from that–and he would have never admitted this out loud where anyone could hear it–he wanted to get the hell out of Oklahoma in general. That wasn’t exactly a possibility, though. Ever since that news report about the meteor and all the crazy shit that followed, those kinds of options evaporated quicker than a puddle on a hot day.
“Logan,” she said as she sat in the grass next to him.
The collar of his t-shirt felt like it might strangle him. Felt his pulse thump in his chest.
Be brave. Do it.
“Hey, Naomi,” Logan said, trying to squint and cock his head in such a way as to make himself look mysterious and intriguing.
She grinned, and the dimple on her cheek creased like some beautiful valley between gorgeous flesh-colored mountains. She had blonde hair and blue eyes and the kind of figure that qualified her to be a model, or at least a high-class prostitute. If there was such a thing as teenage perfection, it was her.
“Logan,” she said again, and he sure did love the sound of his name on her lips. “I heard that you got an extension on your Open Carry.”
“Yep.” He couldn’t tell from her expression whether she was happy for him, or mad, or impressed. “It’s an address thing, mostly. We live right outside of Tulsa, with a Broken Arrow address and Bixby telephone, so they’re not sure which DMV I’m supposed to report to. We live in some strange no-man’s land out there.”
“Can you still get a ticket?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not nineteen for another month, anyway. I think the extension’s just in case. Why do you wanna know?”
Naomi looked left and right, then scooted closer. He could smell the Budweiser on her breath. Sweet, sweet Budweiser.
She spoke softly, so Dan would not hear. “I have a friend who’s looking to get out of here. Up to Kansas, at least, but maybe further.”
He flicked his head at Dan, which Dan seemed to understand, so he got up and moseyed off toward the beer stash. When Logan looked back at her, she had lowered her head so she seemed like a sweet little child, so vulnerable in his company. His lungs pushed air faster. “Cr
ossing state lines is illegal,” Logan said. “What makes you think I know anything about that?”
She shrugged. “I thought, since you got that extension, maybe you know people.”
This struck him as so crazy that he had to laugh. Then he almost slapped his forehead when he realized the golden opportunity in front of him, and how he was about to toss it all off the bridge. Connections or not, Logan had The Chosen One Naomi standing within arm’s reach, asking for his help.
“Is it for your boyfriend?” Logan asked.
Still grinning, she shook her head.
“I will do whatever I can, Naomi. I’m your man.”
***
Kansas had no Open Carry requirement, but last Logan had heard then, the rioting in Lawrence was making the state government reconsider their position. That meteor business had put the whole country on the express train to Crazyville. First they said it was real. Then they said it was a hoax, so no one knew what to believe anymore. Citizens were demanding the right to protect themselves, and similar laws in Texas and Louisiana had been effective, or not effective, depending on the person you’d ask.
Based on his own experience, Logan never worried all that much about getting shot or trampled in some riot. He had plenty of friends with big guns and bigger egos, so he stayed close to them. Instead, he was much more concerned about the Harriet Tubman job he was going to try to pull off tonight.
He was to meet Naomi in Skiatook, which was about an hour south of the Kansas border. Sitting in his truck outside the Conoco, Logan streamed some alt-rock station through his headphones and tried not to piss his pants. He kept glancing at the clerk in the Conoco, who looked at him once every couple minutes.
A tapping on his window. There was Naomi, standing there with some girl he’d never seen before. She was small, with dark cropped hair, dark eyes, dark skin. Mexican, maybe, or Indian.
He rolled down the window.
“What’s the plan?” Naomi asked.
He looked at her friend, who seemed uncomfortable being around a stranger.