A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  Hearing vague voices above, only she and Matthew remained in their attempt to save those trapped in an unwinnable scenario. She gazed up at the fireman jumping down from the second floor, through the building’s open expanse. Not only was the first floor engulfed…when she stared up through the staircase encircled interior, the ceiling looked like a portal to hell itself. Fiery clouds roiled above.

  Only the fireman’s heavy impact next to her brought her out of the trance. He was unharmed, took one last fleeting glance…like, why the hell are you still here and then took off out of the inferno.

  She thought about that unuttered question…because he’d saved the one he could, but there were still some unaccounted for.

  “Are there any more?” she called to his fleeting back.

  He stopped at the entrance and shook his head, his respirator wheezing quickly. “If there are…it’s too late for them.”

  “Dane!” She heard Matthew’s call and then felt him tug her belt from behind. “Come on.”

  “Can’t we save it?” She meant the building.

  He didn’t answer the question but did say, “Let’s go,” to her and the other few in her team that were awestricken and still stood by the flames.

  Outside, their team continued to douse the fires and the survivors were whisked away. Chaos was how Dane later described the scene outside.

  “Where’s Tuck?” Dane shouted. “Where’s his team?” What she meant was…where’s Cal? But she couldn’t ask that question. Her intent was too obvious.

  “They’re in that building, over there.”

  “Wait…I don’t see them,” Dane said and that’s when the glass front of the fashion store exploded with a fireball, scattering shards everywhere.

  From her stooped position on the ground, Dane dropped the hose and ran for the broken building beyond the door as her boots slipped on the piles of glass in the torn street as if she were skating on ice instead.

  “Dane!” Matthew shouted, but she didn’t listen to him.

  Calls of retreat from the other teams passed her by. Firemen dropped their gear and ran by her; one even slammed into her shoulder as she continued to make her way against the tide inside the burning building.

  “Tuck!” she yelled.

  There was no sign of the team in the gutted building. Most of the interior was nothing more than glass and tile to begin with. The explosion must have come from the interior store this one was connected to. Dane ran to the right, sidestepping ruined displays and automatically swinging her axe to pull things out of her way. The low stairs that ran against the outer right wall were littered with toppled burning racks of clothes and a pile of mannequins that wore them. She shoved her way through and pushed them out of her way. The acrid smell of burning plastic hit her and for some reason she realized it was the cheap nylon clothing or the shriveling skin of the undignified models igniting fires and releasing acrid fumes.

  “What are you doing?” Matthew yelled from behind.

  She didn’t want him to follow her here. No witnesses. She ignored him and made her way up the stairs.

  “Whatever blew up in there, Dane, could blow again. You won’t make it. There’s no way they made it through that blast. Come on,” he said and tugged on her arm.

  “No!” she said, whipping free. “Go, Matthew. Go if you want.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  Dane rolled her eyes. This is just like Coeur d’Alene. She climbed the next set of stairs and then saw a fireman’s leg hanging over the ledge of the second-floor balcony. The farther she got, she saw that burning debris lay across his back. She ran up the last few steps, trying to avoid falling on the layers of glass.

  “Who is it?” Matthew asked, striking her as odd. Did it matter?

  They doused the flames and turned the fireman over to find that it was young Owen.

  “He’s breathing. His shoulder looks…wrong,” Dane said. “You need to get him out of here. I’ll keep looking for the others.”

  “I’m not leaving you here alone.”

  “You don’t have much choice. He’ll die without his mask if he stays here much longer.”

  Matthew glared at her as he reached for Owen.

  “Wait, go the other way. I think that arm is dislocated.” She helped him pull Owen up and over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

  “Don’t do it, Dane. I know what you’re doing. Wait for me. Okay?”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’m looking for Tuck. Go. I’ll wait. I’ll be right here…I promise,” Dane said and as soon as he was gone, she looked first down one hallway, then the other. The upper floors of the building were made into several spacious condos and she suspected that Tuck’s team had searched there. Going off where they found Owen, she decided he’d been running from the right when the explosion occurred. Dane ran in that direction, down the thick smoky hallway, where in the distance, yells of men tore through her like a knife.

  Dane tightened her respirator and cut through the smoky hallway. “Tu-ck!” she yelled off and on and though she heard distant voices, they weren’t his…or could have been, their desperate pleas marred over the expanse. Still she climbed through the darkened hallway. Through the thickened smoke, bright orange fires illuminated through the veil, enough for her to see where the explosion came from.

  “Da-ane!” a voice said expectantly…not at all alarmed. Not at all concerned they were in a burning building, collapsing around them…the ends of their lives inevitable any second now. But it wasn’t Tuck’s voice. It wasn’t Tuck at all. In fact, the voice was so tranquil, the eased cadence so well placed…she had to give him credit. She never expected Cal to be this calculating. He was just an instinctive rapist…barely human in her book. Someone who needed putting down for the greater good. And this voice, saying her name, changed everything.

  Shame. In the pit of her stomach, Dane felt her guilt. She was complicit in what would happen next. She knew it. Not by her own hand but certainly because she’d not done the deed that needed doing so that Cal lived on to menace more. That night…when she had the chance to end this, she’d drunk to lighten her own madness. She didn’t anticipate that Rebecca would need saving later on. Had she been just a little soberer she would have known Cal was up to something. She could have saved Rebecca from the horrors she knew too well herself. She could have stopped him. At the very least, she could have pounded in his skull with a little more strength, breaking that barrier to the meaty side, had she not succumbed to her own weaknesses. She knew it was true. She’d failed her. Just like the system had failed to put him away. And now this. Like before, he’d waited. Waited for a distraction and now he had her exactly where he wanted her, off guard and vulnerable.

  28

  Kim

  “I heard you!” Kim shouted as she thrust her arm to the right, knocking Jasmine into her brother and instantly causing her daughter to cry out. “But Momma, we’re here. They want us to get off the bus now.”

  Kim looked around at the empty seats. The last few passengers were making their way down the aisle loaded with oversized baggage. The bus driver stood nearby, saying things like, “Have a good evening. Take care now. Watch your step there,” between shooting concerned looks in Kim’s direction.

  Looking out the windows, Kim saw that it was now well past nightfall. Preparing for this trip, she hadn’t slept much in the last few weeks. No one understood the problems she faced. They didn’t get it. “You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long, Jasmine. I told you.”

  Trying to stifle her own cries, Jasmine said, “I tried, Momma. I did.”

  “Stop that now. We gotta get on our way. Your granny will be surprised to see us. And get your thumb outta your mouth, Jasmine. You’re a big girl now. That’s the last time I’m gonna tell you,” she said as she grabbed her son, their bag, and pushed the back of Jasmine’s head out ahead of her down the aisle. Her daughter stumbled, still in an effort to restrain the repetitive sobs.

  Under the driver�
�s hard stare, Kim completely ignored him and said, “I’ll have to chop that off. I’ve told you more than once.”

  Outside the bus, the familiar Chicago wind threatened to take their breaths away.

  “Something’s on fire, Mama,” Jasmine said with a hiccup.

  “Yep, I smell it, too. That’s a lot of smoke. Let’s go.”

  As they waited at the busy crosswalk, Kim looked back and forth. The traffic wasn’t usually this bad at night. Seemed people were getting out of the city. She was running to what remained.

  Jasmine said, “Does Granny know we’re coming, Mama? She wasn’t happy about our visit last time.”

  “No…she doesn’t know but only you two are stayin’ this time. Mama’s got work to do. I’ll visit another time.”

  They crossed the street quickly, before the signs changed again, and cars threatened to run them over even though it was their right of way.

  “You’re leaving us there again?” Jasmine yelled and threatened to stop right in the middle of the street.

  “Stop asking questions you don’t want to the answer to, girl. I have work to do. You know that.”

  The child’s whining was getting on her nerves. “Get moving, Jasmine,” Kim yelled and had to turn back into traffic to prod her despondent daughter on as cars honked. Loaded down with her son and baggage, Kim had to grab her daughter by the hair again with her free hand to pull her out of the street. “I’ll just leave you there next time, girl!”

  Jasmine followed her mother out of arm’s reach just behind her as Kim marched on the last few blocks.

  She cast a few glances back the first two blocks to see if her daughter still followed. “Doesn’t matter…she knows the way to her granny’s house. She’ll find her way just like her momma.”

  29

  Dane

  He dangled there without his mask, like a slow drop of rain. Without heeding her own warnings, Dane threw off her mask and dropped to her belly. She took a firm hold of Tuck, with both her arms underneath his shoulders as Cal’s grip slipped away abruptly, like he meant for her to take his full weight.

  “Do-n’t,” came Tuck’s breathless words to her, his eyes wild, glancing to the inferno below. In a flash, she noticed his face must have met the pavement when he fell over the ledge. With his nose bent the wrong way, blood flowed everywhere.

  Cal yelled over him, “Hold him, Dane. Give me a second, I’ll pull him up.”

  It was the nonchalant way he said the words that caused her initial concern. She couldn’t see what Cal was doing behind her, but whatever it was he was taking too long.

  And Tuck was slipping from her grasp.

  “Noo!” Tuck cried from deep in his belly, his tenuous grip shaking.

  “Cal…now!” was all she could get out as she slipped forward with Tuck’s weight pulling her down over the edge a little more. She wasn’t going to let go of him. He could pull her down with him but she wasn’t going to let go.

  But that’s not what happened. Cal didn’t fall to the ground and help pull the man to safety. The next thing she noticed was the blinking light of Cal’s ankle monitor resting on the ground near the right of her head. And then…the swinging metal end of his Pulaski axe next to his boot, swaying just off the ground. The axe was scratched and marred with deep grooves in the metal, not a foot away from her head.

  Why pick up his axe?

  “Dane…Dane…Dane,” he chanted, “you should have killed me when you had the chance. You weren’t strong enough, babe.”

  She would have glared up at him but then, Tuck’s hold slipped an inch more from hers.

  “Cal. Ple-ase. Cal!” her voice raged again, feeling her hands slip with Tuck’s weight, dragging him closer to death. The toes of her boots skidded against the hot, littered floor as she tried to regain her grip, as if she were playing a game of tug of war with Tuck’s body and her opponent was Death himself. It suddenly occurred to her this was some kind of trap. Something neither she nor Tuck would win in the end.

  “Don’t move, Dane. You might drop him,” Cal said as if warning a little girl her ice cream might melt on a hot summer’s day.

  It was Tuck who said then, “You…have to let me go. Let me go, Dane.”

  Dane screamed, “No!”

  “Now you want me to help you? After you tried to kill me? I don’t think so. You can hold him a while longer; I know you can.”

  She couldn’t speak anymore…it was all she could do to hang on to Tuck, his dead weight increasing by the second.

  Her eyes were on one of the few men she’d come to respect in this world…and she was losing the grip on his life right in front of her. Only she could save him and once that doubt entered her mind, he slipped even more. “No, no, no,” she choked out.

  Then, in the periphery, she saw Cal’s axe disappear suddenly.

  Tuck must have noticed too…because that’s when a sudden calm came over him. No longer the terror of imminent death plaguing him. He’d made the decision himself. She saw it happen. She knew what he was going to do when he locked eyes with her. Deep pools of brown…a hard but kind man.

  “No, Tuck,” she said, scrambling after him in thin air.

  But instead of holding on, Tuck shoved himself away from her grip, falling into the rising flames.

  Without thinking, Dane twisted to the right.

  The pointy end of the axe landed with a strike exactly where the back of her thigh was a second before. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realized Cal meant to make her drop Tuck to his death and then torture her before the killing.

  Dane jumped up before Cal regained the momentum of the axe swing.

  “Oh, you’re going to have to do better than that!”

  Cal’s eyes showed a mere flash of fear. He lifted the axe again. He smiled and swung for her head this time, barely skinning her nose.

  And since he didn’t learn the first time it takes a moment to regain the momentum of a heavy object on the end of a long skinny stick, Dane bolted for his legs.

  30

  Kim

  The smoky smell from downtown lightened a little as she reached her mother’s house. “This place is a mess,” Kim muttered. Her son was asleep on her shoulder; she felt the drool sodden the side of her new-to-her blouse. Her arm ached to put him down somewhere. She’d lost sight of Jasmine along the way. The girl was smart though, not like her brother. She’d find her way.

  With the ambient light from the street, Kim saw a black and white cat dart out from under the porch. “Get outta here. Damn cat.” The boards of the porch screeched as she climbed them and then the porch itself protested her weight. “Whole place is falling apart. She doesn’t take care of nothin’. Worthless,” she said as she quietly put the boy down on the white plastic lawn chair sitting in the corner of the porch. He still slept. His head lolled to the side. She opened the bag and pulled out her purse with the long strap, a hat and sunglasses that she liked, and leaned the bag against the chair.

  Then she backtracked off the porch, making light steps this time, and followed the narrow concrete path back out to the road. She looked back the way she came, past the cars lining the road and even through the smoky night. The lamppost over a block away showed a small figure dragging her feet as she walked her way.

  “Good girl,” Kim said and then she turned in the opposite direction, where light diminished in pools around poles, and put one foot in front of the other into the smoky darkness.

  31

  Dane

  Her right shoulder blade nailed Cal’s middle. The axe clattered somewhere nearby as they rammed against a half wall. Burning debris rained down from above.

  “Dane!”

  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she still held hope Tuck survived the fall against all logic. It was foolish of her…she knew this but couldn’t help hoping. So much bad in the world and so few good. And this man in front of her was the cause of much of her recent regret. That ended now.

  “You think you’re tough,
” came Cal’s aerated voice.

  She tore at his ventilator. “You don’t need that anymore.”

  He crouched and smiled at her, ready to pounce, like a cat with a mouse.

  “Dane!”

  Cal’s eyes darted behind her and he suddenly stood.

  She’d heard Matthew call her name the first time. He was looking for her. She had to take care of Cal before he tried to stop her.

  Cal, on the other hand, still stared behind her. She realized Cal was going to try to play it off to Matthew. He had a foot on Dane and could easily throw her over the side after Tuck, but Matthew’s bare hand could break Cal’s neck like popping a cork.

  Before he did the math, Dane lunged again and forced him against the half-wall. She only saw flames behind him and had no idea the wall was a mere barrier to the fires below, where Tuck had fallen earlier. The heat and sparks whooshed up into her bare face and the wall gave way with the impact.

  Cal grabbed for her but she was just out of reach and saw the abyss peek through from below…one more push.

  “Dane!”

  She felt someone grab her waistband from behind, jerking her backward. And that’s when she realized Cal was falling, taking the half wall with him, the flames reaching higher. In an instant, he was gone from sight.

  She took a step to see for herself where Cal had gone. A tug at her waistband told her Matthew still held her tight.

  “Don’t…ground’s not stable. Let’s go.”

  Later, she wondered if she knew he’d die that day before she ended him. The terror in his eyes. The lost momentum. The point of no return. He’d scrambled at thin ash-filled air, realizing there was nothing for him any longer. Not even a ground to stand upon. Of events of his own making. And in a few dark moments to come, Dane realized she would have gone with him too, had it not been for Matthew.