by Mark Tufo
“Well, sonny,” James started. “It appears it is two to one in favor of letting me in. Hon, come on.” Mrs. Carody had been waiting in the car. Her shivering racked her entire body and she had just begun to mobilize herself to get out of the car when the shot rang out. Mr. Carody slumped over, holding the wound in his belly.
“What are you doing?!” Bob yelled.
“It…it was an accident,” Matt fairly wailed. “H-h-he pushed up against me and the gun just went off.”
“Guns don’t just go off, you idiot! Sarah! Get the first aid kit!” Al yelled inside the store. James was down on his knees. Mrs. Carody had rushed to her husband's side and was attempting to staunch the flow of blood, but it leaked through her fingers like water. Deb was beginning to rise in panic to go to the aid of her father when she was violently yanked down by Beth.
“What are you doing, Beth?! That’s my father!”
“Yeah, and you’re not going to do him any good if you go down there and start yelling at that idiot. He’s liable to shoot you too.” If that happened, Beth thought to herself, she would be all alone. She knew it was selfish, but that was the first thought that ran through her head. Deb was quaking with rage. If she had any type of weapon, she would have used it without a moment’s hesitation on that man.
“Beth! Let me go! I’ve got to go down there!” Deb nearly shouted. Beth didn’t release her death grip on Deb’s waist. “Beth, let me go! I mean it!” Deb struggled a bit before beginning to sob uncontrollably. “What is going on? What is going on?!” she cried into the ground.
Beth watched in horror as the three men began to walk back into the store after just dropping the first aid kit at Deb’s mother’s feet. That was the catalyst that got Mrs. Carody moving. She was chasing after the men, screaming.
“So that’s it! You bastards shoot my husband and then give me some Band-Aids and turn tail!? You fucking cowards!” Deb was too scared and in too much shock to even lift her head to see the macabre scene that was unfolding. Bob, the store manager, tried in vain to calm her mother down.
“Mrs. Carody, we’re all sorry that this happened. It was an accident,” he apologized as he turned his steely gaze towards Matt. Matt merely looked down as he, again, retreated back to the relative refuge of the Safeway.
“Calm down!? My husband’s been shot!” she said as she raised her bloodied hands, as if to reaffirm the fact.
“Then you had better go tend to him,” Al said as he tried to fend off her pursuit of Matt.
“You animals! You’re worse than the aliens attacking us. He’s your neighbor, your friend. Help him!” she pleaded. All will had been drained from her body. She plopped to her knees in almost the same position as her dying husband. The three men returned to the store and shut the door behind them. They even pulled the sunshades in an attempt to try to ignore what was happening.
“Come on, Deb. They went into the store. We have to help your folks.” Deb tried to focus her eyes, her tears left her partially blinded. She stumbled forward before Beth grabbed her by the arm to lead her down the other side of the embankment.
Mrs. Carody had returned to her husband’s side and helped him lie down on the hard pavement of the parking lot. She barely registered the fact that the girls had arrived.
“Mom?” Deb cried. “Are you alright?”
“Your dad’s been shot,” Mrs. Carody mumbled.
“I know, Mom. Let’s try to get him some help.”
“It’s too late, you know,” Mrs. Carody muttered. Deb thought that perhaps her mom was showing the initial signs of shock. Detached indifference was her first clue.
“No, Mom; he’s not dead. He can’t be dead.” Deb’s mom looked up at her daughter as she cradled her husband’s head in her lap.
“Hon, he’s not bleeding anymore.”
“Mom? That’s a good thing, right?” Deb cried.
“He’s not bleeding, Deborah, because his heart has stopped. Don’t you get it?” Mrs. Carody snapped.
“Mom, he can’t be dead. He can’t,” she said as she dropped to the ground to hug her father. God, he feels cold already, she unconsciously thought to herself.
“He’s gone, dear, and you should go too. There’s nothing more left for you here,” Mrs. Carody said tenderly.
“Mom, what about you? I can’t leave without you.” Deb sobbed anew.
“I’m not leaving him. I’ll never leave him.”
“Mom, please, you’re scaring me. You can’t stay here, we’ve got to go. Dad would have wanted that.” Deb tried to grab her mother’s arm, but her mother pulled away violently, the angelic look on her face quickly diminishing. What was left looked old, haggard and tired.
“Beth, take Deborah and get her out of here. I will not leave James. He was my world.”
“No, Mom, please! What about me? You can’t leave me alone. We still have each other.”
“No, you girls are better off on your own. I’ll never survive. I could have never gone through what you did on that ship. I would have just crumpled up and died. There’s no place for me now.”
“Mom! That’s not true!” Deb pleaded. “Please come back with us, we’ll go back to the storm shelter.”
“NO! I’ll never go back there again. That was OUR home. Now there is no OUR; it’s just me. I’ll never go back there.”
“Okay, okay; we’ll go somewhere else, we’ll start somewhere else.”
“Don’t you see? I’m too old to start somewhere else. I don’t even want to try.”
Deb was about to begin her next round of protestations when Bob stuck his head out the door.
“You folks don’t want to stay here. There are gangs that run around here, just looking to start trouble.”
“What are they going to do, Bob?” Mrs. Carody shouted. “Shoot us?!” That stung Bob. He pulled his head back in and relocked the door. Beth was about to say something.
“Deb, please don’t start. You need to leave. I will not watch another person in my family get hurt. I may not be worried for myself but I love you deeply; and if anything happens to you, I just won’t make it,” said Mrs. Carody, with a voice of resignation.
“Mom, I’m not going to leave you,” Deb cried.
“Beth, for the past few days I have considered you family, so please get my daughter out of here. For the sake of your safety.”
“I'll look out for her, Mrs. Carody,” Beth said as she leaned over and gave her a hug. “Deb, let’s go. We’re in the wide open here. We can’t stay.” Deb realized the truth in the words but still felt bitter that Beth was so willing to leave. Beth reached down and grabbed Deb’s shoulder. Deb halfheartedly protested but arose under her own power. Her mother had given up, and she would never forgive her for that, even though she understood why.
She knew she would have given up had Mike died. And again, she felt a pang so deep in her heart, it nearly made her double over in pain. Oh, Mike, where are you? I could use your strength right about now.
Beth led Deb away from her parents’ final resting spot. Deb was completely blinded by the salty tears stinging her eyes. The girls had finally stumbled up the embankment and were just about to head down the other way when Deb heard the familiar roar of the Vista Cruiser come to life.
Hope surged; maybe her mother had come to her senses and was returning to pick them up. She ran to the top of the hill to flag down her mother. As she attempted to wipe the tears from her eyes so that she could better see; what she saw confused her. Her mother wasn’t coming towards the far edge of the parking lot to pick them up at all. She was barreling full steam ahead right towards the grocery store. That can’t be right! She screamed inside of her head.
Shots began to ring out from the grocery store, where the boarded-up plate glass windows had holes cut out for defensive shooting. Deb’s vision had begun to clear up from her fervent ministrations. She wished that she hadn’t looked. Her mother had been hit by multiple rounds but, like a demon possessed, onwards she drove faster and faster, unt
il finally her body slumped over the steering wheel and she sealed her fate as well as those within the store.
Nothing short of a concrete barricades was going to stop the forward momentum of that Vista Cruiser. Deb couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw the startled face of Matt as the car crashed through the window and right into the produce section and over his body, at least she hoped. Glass, wood, and twisted metal lay strewn all over the place. Al, the barber, was screaming on the floor with what looked to be a two-foot section of metal impaled through his thigh.
“Oh Mom!!” Deb wailed.
Beth stood next to Deb, in complete and utter shock, her mouth hanging open, unable to express even the simplest thought. The scene had aroused the attention of one of the rogue gangs that patrolled that section of town. This was an opportunistic time for them, and like vultures, they would not let it pass.
Beth noticed the two pickup trucks heading into the parking lot from the opposite side. She also noticed the men in the backs of those trucks who were holding weapons.
“Deb! Come on! We’ve got to go! We’ve got to go now!” Beth screamed, dragging on Deb's arm.
Deb had begun to stumble back towards the store. Beth smacked Deb as hard as she dared, to try to get her attention. “Deb! Come on! We’ve got to get out of here. Those guys don’t look like local law enforcement. If we don’t get out of here now, we might never get out.”
Deb turned and followed Beth, looking more like a stray sheep being led back to the flock than the tough determined girl Beth had come to know. Hopefully, that other girl would return soon, Beth thought, or neither one of us is going to make it.
“Deb, that biker is motioning towards us!” Beth said with panic rising in her throat. Having been kidnapped once, she had no desire to repeat the performance. And, if Beth was being honest with herself, the animals down in the parking lot looked a lot meaner than the Genogerians.
Deb began to get her legs in motion too. Despite her mourning, she recognized danger when she saw it. Before the girls cleared the hill, they noticed two men peel off from the main group and head their way… fast.
“Deb, we’ll never make it back to the storm shelter in time if you don’t get going. I’m sorry. I know I can’t begin to understand what you’re going through. If you want to try to sort all of it out, we need to get moving faster than this,” Beth pleaded.
Deb looked more like a marionette being manipulated by a drunken, inexperienced puppet master. Her arms were stiff and her legs didn’t look like they had a muscle in them. They looked wooden and unyielding.
“We can’t go to the storm shelter,” Deb said lethargically as she managed to move her rigid body just a smidgeon faster.
“What do you mean? That’s the safest place we can go until we can figure out a better plan,” Beth labored out. She was trying to run and pull Deb at the same time.
“Did you see the guys that are coming after us?”
“Of course, I did! That’s why I want to get the hell out of here!” Beth wanted to add “duh” but somehow, right now didn’t seem the best time to say that.
“The big one on the left with the dirty blond hair? I went to high school with him. He was an asshole then. Doesn’t look like he changed much,” Deb said sardonically.
“What’s that got to do with anything? Come on! Faster!” Beth tugged some more.
“The piece of shit tried to rape me back when I was in the ninth grade,” Deb said with almost no inflection in her voice. Beth almost stopped dead in her tracks. “The bastard was a junior and captain of the high school football team. He asked me out on a date. I was so in love with him. I couldn’t believe he was asking me out, a mere, unworthy freshman. Come to find out, it was a game among the upper classmen football players to see how many freshmen they could nail. He took me out for a great dinner and then a movie. I might have married him right there and then, the way he was acting, so nice. Little did I know, it was just part of some game."
“After the movie, he brought me over to Elm Street, which, at the time, was all new construction and pretty deserted. We were going to park. I was so excited, I was even thinking of letting him get to second base under my shirt. But he had other ideas. When I refused, he became violent. He punched me in the nose. I almost lost consciousness; but I could still feel him ripping off my blouse and pants.” Deb almost seemed to be reciting this from a script; such was the lack of feeling that she put into her words.
“He would have ‘nailed’ me too if it hadn’t been for sheer, dumb luck. He had just gotten my pants off and was about to do it when the cops showed up. Apparently, a lot of people were ripping off building supplies, so the cops were patrolling the area fairly regularly.
“The cops pulled up and shined the light in the car. When they saw it was Gary Higgins, star football player, they almost went about their merry way. It was the blood pouring down my nose that gave the idiots a clue that something wasn’t quite right. They still didn’t DO anything.” That statement seemed to get Deb riled up a little more. “The cops took me home and told Gary to go home and sober up, or something, like it was some big joke. For all I know, those cop bastards probably started the whole ‘game’ when they were in school.”
“So what happened to Gary?” Beth asked as she kept Deb moving.
“Well, my folks put a restraining order on him and pressed charges, but the police cited ‘lack of evidence’. Nothing happened to him. He harassed the hell out of me. He would tape pictures of dicks on my locker. He even taped one on my bedroom window. A week later my cat disappeared. We never found him, but one day there was a piece of fur taped to my locker. The sick fuck killed my cat. It wasn’t until he graduated that he finally left me alone. He made high school miserable for me.”
“Oh Deb, I’m so sorry,” Beth said and she truly meant it, that made her want to speed up even more.
“So you see? That’s why we can’t go back to the storm shelter,” Deb finished.
“He knows where you live. Do you think he recognized you?” Beth worried.
“Even if he didn’t, he would have recognized my parents’ car.” Deb began to cry again.
“You’re right. We have got to get out of here.”
“What’s the point? Where are we going to go? We can’t go home. And the supermarket just proved that we can’t look for help from others.”
“We can’t just give up, Deb. There still have to be some decent people out there, and we’ll find them. If we stay here, we’ll never see Mike again.” Beth hoped that would be the catalyst that got Deb moving, but it had the opposite effect. Deb stopped, just stopped and sobbed.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Deb cried through her hands. It came out muffled, Beth heard it clear enough though.
“You saw him on that ship; I don’t think anything could kill him.”
Deb looked up through her tear-soaked hands. “Do you really think so?”
“I do. If we stay here we’ll never be able to know for sure.” The girls looked back at the hill that led to the supermarket. Their pursuers had just reached the top, and the girls had a mere hundred-yard lead on them, which was fast diminishing. That got both of them in high gear. They knew the shelter wasn’t a safe place, but they were running on instinct and they didn’t know where else to go.
Beth took a quick assessment of the men following them. The Gary guy was huge. He looked like the prototypical football player. Big shoulders, big arms, and a small waist. She could see why Deb would have been enamored by him. He even reminded Beth of her boyfriend at Penn State.
The guy with him wasn’t quite as big, still considerably larger than either one of the girls, and he looked mean. Long, black hair in a ponytail, and a goatee that framed a very severe face. He looked like the kind of man that got whatever he wanted by just taking it.
“How much farther?!” Beth puffed. Her lungs were on fire and her legs were beginning to cramp.
“Just through a couple of more backyards,” Deb
replied. She was equally struggling to catch her breath. “When we get to the house, go upstairs.” Beth was about to ask why but that seemed like entirely too much effort.
“How close are they, Beth?”
“I don’t know. I’m too scared to turn and look.”
The boys had gained some yardage but were frustrated that the girls didn’t just fall over like in the movies. “Fuck this!” Gary said as he slowed to a walk, trying to suck in as much air as possible.
“Come on, Vato! The boss says he wants these girls,” the dark man said as he pulled up alongside the faster ex-football player.
“Don’t worry about it, Jimmy.”
“What do you mean, G? If we don’t bring these new pussies back, Johnny Ray might make us his new bitches.”
“Fuck him, Jimmy! Don’t worry about it. I know the girl on the left. I fucked around with her in high school. I know where she lives and that’s where she’s headed.” Jimmy smiled an evil grin. He didn’t even need to chase his fresh meat this time; and he would have a nice soft bed to do all the wicked things he was planning.
“Ah, Vato! This is going to be fun,” Jimmy said as he grabbed the front of his pants.
“Yes it is, Jimmy. And it’s been a long time coming,” Gary said with a smile that almost matched Jimmy’s evil grin.
“What’s that, Vato?”
“Nothing, man. Let’s go and get us some.” Then they laughed the cruel laugh that only a true bully possesses. “Might makes right” was their credo and they saw no reason to change that now.
***
“Beth, upstairs in my parents’ room is a pull-down staircase that leads to the attic. Get up there and shut the trapdoor behind you,” Deb puffed as she pushed Beth through the front door.
“Wait! Aren’t you coming with me?” Beth asked in horror. The thought of being alone petrified her. “You can’t leave me up there alone. And you sure can’t take them on yourself.”
“I just want to go get some things out of the storm shelter. Hurry! Before they get here!” Deb said forcefully to prevent the argument that was brimming on Beth’s lips. “Listen, if we stay here arguing, we’re finished. Go and shut the door behind you. I’ll tap four quick times on the door to let you know it’s me and then you can let me in.” That calmed Beth down a bit. Being alone for a little while wasn’t so bad as being alone indefinitely, she thought.