by Angela White
“What do I owe you?"
She shook her head, voice sounding more casual than she felt. “Nothing. That world is gone. See ya next week."
Angela shifted into gear and rolled slowly away, mind relieved when the scruffy Preacher returned her short wave without any sign that her quick exit had offended him. She hated to come down here, hated it that one of these times she might really have to fight to get back out, but knew that even if they hadn’t insisted, she would have come anyway. Her doctor’s heart simply wouldn’t let her do anything else. She would help everyone she could, and pay the price later.
Angela breathed a sigh as the tall, brick walls of the weather-beaten dorms fell out of sight in her mirror, but didn’t let her guard down as she drove past reeking slaughterhouses and burnt frames of homes and businesses. There were still other people around here, and they were all a threat to a woman alone.
Her doctor's eyes flicked over body after body as she drove, determining the cause of death; gunshot to the head, knife wound, the sickness, gunshot. Death came in many ways to this place, and it wasn’t only to the humans. Deer and cats were the most common corpses to represent the losses animal populations were taking, but there were also squirrels, dogs, even birds mixed in, and Angela forced her mind away from it all. Maybe it wasn’t as bad wherever Charlie was right now.
Very little in the city where pigs fly had survived the riots, and as she drove, Angela heard no sparrows calling, no engines revving, no lawn mowers rumbling, no pets yapping, no voices shouting, and no horns blaring. There was only the occasional scream or gunshot to break the silence, and destruction that grew worse the closer she got to downtown.
Debris crunched under her tires as she rolled past dark, reeking restaurants full of rotting food, and she winced at the sounds of glass breaking as she neared the library, where shadows moved inside, trying to learn to fend for themselves. If she got a flat tire, she would have to abandon her car for another. There was no way her body could manage to break the lug nuts loose. What she needed was a set of those new tires that would go an extra 50 miles even on a flat. Self-sealing or something, maybe even armor-plated if she could find it.
Her broken heart clenched at the thought, and she felt a tear slide down her cheek. What she needed most was to find the 14-year-old son she’d been apart from for the last months. It was killing her not to be with him, not to be able to hold him, and she wished with all her heart (along with almost everyone else on the planet) that the War had never come.
“Hold on, boy,” she whispered roughly. “I will come for you!”
Angela tried to push the sadness away, flipping on the heater and defrost. She jumped as lightning forked wildly overhead, the glare almost blinding. She drove a little faster around the telephone poles, burnt-out cars, busted furniture, and rotting corpses, feeling awful that so many people would never have the peace of being laid to rest.
She jumped again, as the wind slammed against her car and a barrage of black hail pinged off the hood in nerve-wracking blasts, pulling her attention to the weather. The sky was a dim, grayish-brown, thick with layers of dust and smoke. The storm clouds racing towards her went through it easily, and fat drops of rain began to pelt her hood and windows.
Following her instincts, Angela took refuge under the concrete viaduct as the storm bore down on the riot-ravaged city. It released sheets of black flakes that covered the streets, and torrents of rain that slowly began to wash away another layer of the dirt and blood the end of the world had left behind.
Angela put it in park and lit a smoke as the nearby mill creek’s reek of fishy-shit invaded the car. Her eyes were moving, constantly searching the crumbling, trashy buildings on either side of her, and her hand stayed near the gun in between the seats. Now that she was alone again, her courage had deserted her and she was glad she had disobeyed Kenny - gotten a weapon on the last trip out.
"You disobeyed Kenny? You’re in trouble! You’re in trouble!"
The fear inside screamed it and Angela nodded, blowing out rings of smoke. They all were. These last weeks had been full of things she hoped never tell her man. Kenny wouldn’t understand her having a gun, or helping these people. If he had been here, things would have been different, but she had been alone when the bombs fell, alone when the first desperate survivor had pounded on her door, and she had made her choice alone. The suffering was too great for her to deny them what little help she could give.
Kenny would have turned them away with icy looks and threats, but he was AWOL, and she couldn’t sit by and let people die without at least trying to prevent it. She would face him with the entire list of rules she had broken when he found her, or when she found him, but for now, she wasn’t done adding up crimes to be punished for. The two biggest transgressions, which he might kill her for, were still to come.
The storm flew by quickly, the threat disappearing as quickly as it had come, and Angela eased the car up Queen City’s steep, narrow pavement, trying to avoid the big chunks of debris rolling through the ripples of muddy water. Cars and wrecks had been pulled to the side of this winding hill, looking like lined-up dominoes waiting to be pushed over.
As with the rest of this broken city, she saw no signs of life, no one trying to continue like normal as she drove through her own neighborhood, but she could feel the eyes watching her from the barely cracked blinds. She was disappointed by it. She had hoped people would come together, but these survivors wanted nothing to do with her, only desired her to be gone, and she sped up, more than willing to comply. She understood how they felt. She, too, hated going out; hated leaving the small security of her den, but Warren had cleared this hill so she could make the trip rather than forcing her to live with them. Saying no after that was not an option.
When they called for her on the CB, she always answered. Her Oath hadn’t vanished with the War, but she sighed in relief when her three-story, yellow brick building came into view. Leery eyes swept the nearly identical rows of red brick duplexes surrounding her, their matching mailboxes and light poles beaten up, dented from enduring man and nature’s fury. It all looked the same.
Parking in the back lot, next to the small flower garden, her sad eyes sought out the tiny grave tucked amid rows of purple violets. Grief enveloped her.
Her tiny, premature son had come in the dark, early morning hours after the War, his lungs not ready to work on their own. She had buried him just as an ugly dawn broke, had placed him in the wet ground herself, wrapped in the red, white, and blue quilt she had brought her first son home in. She had never felt more pain than when she began to cover him with the dirty, brown earth. Despite all her abilities, she couldn’t save her own child. Repairing existing damage was possible, but she couldn’t replace what hadn’t been given time to develop.
Barely registering the harsh wind gusts, the woman forced herself to go to the grave, to mourn and keep feeling the awful pain so she could make peace with it. The blackness lurking in her mind wanted to block it out (and everything else), but she knew it would take over completely if she let it, and then she would never see her teenage son again. The darkness was too familiar, too comforting, and consuming. She had just spent a decade in its grip, as her life flew by, unable to change the mistake she had made by saying yes to Kenny.
The wind swelled, but she paid no attention, broken fingernails digging into the pale, cold skin of her palms as she sank to her knees in front of the unmarked grave.
“My baby," she whispered, tears spilling from dark lashes. Four weeks had gone by, but it still felt like yesterday. She had wanted him so much! His father hadn’t, but she had. Pain tearing through her battered heart, Angela let the darkness have its way for a while, her grief unbearable.
2
Bands of pain were clamping down on her stomach when she became aware of her surroundings again an she eased down the thickly-carpeted hallway stairs and unlocked the basement door. She slipped inside the pitch-blackness with a fearlessness that still surpr
ised her. She’d been terrified of the dark as a young girl, but had spent so much time down here since the War that she didn’t even need the penlight anymore.
Listening intently, Angela scanned for intruders, but the Witch was silent. She slowly climbed to her hole-up with the same thought she always had: Hate it here! Can’t wait to roll!
Not reacting fast enough to stop it, the heavy door to the storage area slammed shut behind her, locking automatically. She winced at the noise, even though there was no one left here to tell on her, get her punished.
Angela moved toward the small, wooden room hidden behind plastic-covered mattresses and box springs, sliding inside the warmth with an unconscious sigh of relief. She locked the door and her feet stepped carefully over the bags and boxes littering the 8’ x 6’ storage room she was calling her den.
Her legs were trembling as she lit the lantern on the floor in the back corner. She was almost shivering despite the warmth of her blanket-covered area was and it confirmed her decision. It would be at least three more weeks before she could leave. Her body just wasn’t strong enough to make the trip. Angela tightened her grip on her emotions, heart screaming at how long it was taking. Her eyes went to the circled date of 2/12 on her calendar, and she scowled at it in frustration. Twenty-five more days of not even having a picture on the wall - Warren was watching for her men, and she wouldn’t make it easy for him.
Shivering and hurting, Angela pushed off her muddy shoes and socks, then replaced her wet, dirty clothes with clean ones. She turned on the battery-operated heater at her feet, very glad of the extra propane cylinders she had found with the handy appliance. It, along with a few other useful survivalist items, had come easily enough from the basement room of a Goodwill store, but she was daunted by the size of the list she’d prepared, wasn’t sure she’d be able to find it all.
“At least I’m not starving,” she muttered, thinking of the first few agonizing days after losing her son, when she’d forced herself to use the power and water while they still worked. She had cooked, dehydrated, and frozen large chunks of ice that had lasted for days in her coolers when the utilities finally went off for good on New Year's Eve, the hour-long blackouts before that, warning her to hurry.
Cramps exploded in her belly as Angela bent down to pour the boiling water into her mug, and she clenched her teeth. “Suck it up!” Her mind tossed out one of Kenny’s favorite responses to her discomfort…pain. How she hated him!
Angela settled herself on the stack of knee-high cushions. She had been living down here since burying her baby boy, and had to actually force herself not to clean the plush, two-bedroom apartment above her, knowing it needed to look abandoned to anyone who might wander in.
The doctor swallowed two pills, grimacing as they went down awkwardly. Gun in her robe pocket, she set the portable radio/TV on the pillows next to her. She sipped and flipped, trying not to be disappointed when there was only static. She hadn’t really expected anything else. It was obvious that normal life was gone. For how long was really the only unknown.
The last sad voice she’d heard had been on B105 last week, telling of hundreds of millions dead and dying, advising people to go into the caves and mountains. She had a good plan, but Angela also knew the Witch she had been born with, was right about her needing help. She had very little chance of making it all the way on her own, no matter how many delusion spells she could cast. They didn’t work on everyone, and it was a long trip. Over 1200 miles straight through, and with detours, it would be more like 1500 or even 2000, with no outside energy to feed the power.
Sighing, Angela turned the radio off, switched it to the TV setting. She had hoped to make at least 50 miles a day at first, putting her on base in a month, but after a four hour trip to get to the local store, which had already been cleaned out, she began to understand that making even twenty a day would be hard. It now came to roughly three months on the road, and her mother’s heart cried out again. So long and so many of the odds were against her!
"Gets better when you call the boy’s real daddy," the Witch seduced, sending her memories of cool, Harrison nights and the softest, blackest hair she’d ever felt, until their son was born. Angela closed her eyes as pain filled her heart as if it had happened yesterday. She had never forgotten what it felt like to belong to Marc Brady.
“Call him. He’s restless, adrift. He will come," the Demon insisted, and the woman huddling in the nicely warming storage room gave the thought serious consideration this time, instead of pushing it away like the fear in her mind wanted. Marc was also a Marine, had been for a long time, and she had no doubt he could make the trip. More importantly, he owed her.
"You can’t!" her fear screamed. "Kenny will kill you both!"
She stretched carefully, wincing at a lance of pain. He'd probably try. Kenny would think they had been having an affair all along, even though she hadn’t seen Marc in almost fifteen years. There was a spark, a connection between them that was undeniable, and her man would see it right away. Not that it mattered. She’d made her choice, and she would face the consequences when the time came. Nothing would keep her from her son, not after all that she had lost, and maybe, just maybe, her man could be surprised into making a mistake by not only Brady’s presence, but by how much she had changed. The Demon inside was awake. She was a slave no more, and Kenny would find out very quickly that she wouldn’t go back to her old life of bondage.
First, she had to have time to heal, was scared that even if she managed to leave Ohio without Warren and the others stopping her, she wouldn’t be able to handle the trip west. If just surviving in one place was so hard, how bad would a three-month journey across this broken land be? She needed help, and there was no one else she could call. Marc had to come.
“But not yet,” she told the Witch and the heart that had both jumped eagerly. She would call out to him when she was ready, and that wasn’t today.
Angela lit a cigarette and blew out thick smoke rings that stayed intact until they hit the big brown blanket hanging over the thin, wooden door. She had been an abused animal in a luxury cage, and it had happened fast. Her gifts (curse, Kenny always called it her curse) were the end root of their fights, what he wanted her to do with them. After a while, the Demon inside had gone to sleep, locked behind a thick steel door, to prevent Kenny from using the power to satisfy his own selfish, petty desires.
And Angela had spent a decade in hell because of it. There had only been two things she had kept from him during their long, hard years together - her abilities and the name of her baby’s father. Everything else had been under Kenny’s unforgiving control each waking moment and many of the sleeping ones too.
Until the War.
Being alone while her world was being blown away had ripped off the locks on the Witch and the old Angela. The twisted, slotted cell door was barely standing, and the dark, shifting spirit behind that thin shield whispered almost constantly to her now, guided her. She found it easy to listen, still surprised to look inside and see the courage she had been forced to lock away. She was suddenly allowed to be her own person again, to make her own choices based on what she wanted and needed, including exploring these things that she could do…and of that, there was a lot.
Her gifts had aged well in storage. Most of it was random, coming and going without control, but she was learning to direct it again, to concentrate and get what she needed - to trust the powers inside. When the Demon spoke, she listened.
The Witch said it was fated for a new, more careful world to replace the old, but when Angela asked if her own small family would be a part of that peaceful population, there was only darkness.
Chapter Five
January 28th, 2013
West Virginia
1
“Hell..."
Sergeant Brady knew it was a bad idea as soon as the front tires of his muddy SUV eased out onto the mostly clear suspension bridge. He could feel the way it vibrated in the heavy wind, but the waters h
ad risen while he slept and left only this way out.
The iron grates under the Blazer groaned, their supports completely covered in slushy, menacing debris as he neared halfway…then they gave.
Crack! Rreeennttpp!
The solidness under his wheels tilted suddenly, one of the two foundations slid enough to pull the bars out of the other bank, and it rocked the bridge like a child’s race track.
The Blazer tilted violently and the guardrail began ripping away with horrible grinding noises, cables snapping like string.
Marc hit the gas, aiming for the end now dropping heavily towards the shallow side of the dammed-up Black River. “Semper Fi!”
Dust and debris flying, the Blazer leapt off the bridge’s lowered side and dropped into the foot of rushing water like a lead ball, crushing the front bumper and throwing up a huge spray that drenched the older 4x4.
Pulled along with the swift current, Marc rolled the two front windows all the way down, surprised the engine hadn’t stalled. Slinging his kit over one broad shoulder, the grunt ignored the water rushing inside, and aimed for a steep bank he knew he had no chance of making it up.
Wincing at the cracking sounds of the bridge behind him, the furious yapping of the big animal in the passenger seat confirmed what he already knew. They were in trouble.
“Dog, out!"
Marc shoved his 6’, 225 pound frame through the window an instant after the wolf. They jumped down into the icy water just as the bridge finally collapsed, and the wall of liquid death lunged forward.
Marc scrambled up the slick, muddy bank, taking rope from his kit, working it into a lasso. He threw it as the surging water hit the slowly moving Blazer, and rolled it like a White Castle box in the wind.
The thick rope sailed over a burned, wireless pole, and Marc hoped it went deep enough as he quickly tied it around his waist. Then the water came thundering down like an army, submerging him. Unable to breathe or protect himself from all the debris in the nasty liquid that slammed into him mercilessly, he held in the panic. The light pole trembled under the pressure of the rushing Black River, vibrating against his hip as he used it to shield himself from the bigger chunks.