by J. D. Laird
Pvt. Hillman must have also thought that Madison did not stand a chance against her, just as Madison did, because she is caught unaware when Madison lunges at her. Madison brings her knee up into the Private’s gut. Before the Private can respond, Madison then sends a fist flying and lands it on the Private’s jaw. This is all the benefit of shock that Madison gets. Pvt. Hillman spins away and kicks at Madison while one of her hands wraps around Madison’s arm and threatens to pull her off balance.
But Madison grabs the rifle. The weapon’s strap is still around Pvt. Hillman’s neck. Madison spins, and using the strap as leverage, she pulls the fierce security airman towards her. Both of them nearly fell backwards from the maneuver. Madison pivots on her heel and sends Pvt. Hillman flying past her. The Private crashes into a plastic swivel chair and topples over it.
Madison is free; at least until Pvt. Hillman can regain her composure. Madison bursts out of the hut and down the entryway toward the large double doors. Her muscles scream but she pushes herself with every step to ignore the sensations of aching pain. It is something Madison had learned to do in fitness training years before. The isolated sound of Madison’s footsteps echo off the walls of the cavernous tunnel entrance.
Madison fears looking behind her. She fears to see Pvt. Hillman standing there with the barrel of her rifle aimed at her. She fears that at any moment she would hear the loud repeating sound of bullets flying towards her.
Instead of what is behind, Madison focuses her attention on a red button on is still a ways away. It is the button that will open the doors to the base. Madison pulls her body towards it, getting closer and closer with every fall of her feet.
There is the sound of other footfalls now, these ones from behind. It is Pvt. Hillman and she is shouting. Madison tries to block the words out. She hears words like “stop” and “shoot”, but Madison remains focused on her goal, the red button. It is only thirty feet away now.
Madison wonders what she will find when she opens the door. A Russian Army with tanks and armed soldiers yelling at her in their foreign tongue? Maybe a rescue party, with National Guardsmen carrying bundles of supplies ready to dispense? Or maybe those same Guardsmen with rifles pointed at her head? What she hopes, is that there would be nobody. That the doors will open and there will just be an empty tunnel leading her out of the mountain and into the New Mexico desert.
Madison doesn’t stop to wonder to think if the air outside is breathable. She doesn’t wonder what kind of radiation she might be blindly racing into. All she knows is that she can’t just wait. She can’t just lie down and waste away. No, she has worked too hard for that. She isn’t going to be a skeleton that someone finds huddled in a corner. If she is going to be a corpse at all, she will be the one climbing over the rubble towards her salvation. Her bony arms will be stretched out in front of her.
Stretching out her own living hand now, Madison reaches for the red button. A scattering of bullets strike overhead. Warning shots! Madison ignores them. She pushes her whole weight into the button and feels it give way under her palm. She collapses onto the ground as an orange strobe light overhead begins spinning.
Turning, she sees that Pvt. Hillman looks both furious and panicked all in the same instant. The Private has the end of her rifle pointed at Madison. Madison knows that the Private wants to shoot her, but she hasn’t. In her gut, Madison knows that Pvt. Hillman likely wanted to know what was behind those doors just as much as she did. The Private’s duty had been the only thing holding her back.
As the doors open on an electronic system that luckily is still working, an orange light continues to spin overhead. Madison had remembered that there should have been a siren that sounded the last time the doors had been opened, but figures it probably had shorted-out along with the rest of the base. The doors make a heavy grunting sound as the gears grind under the force of a fading power supply. The lights on the walls that had previously been dimmed are now flickering out one by one. In a short while the only light that is on is that of the orange strobe.
There is a loud moan as the doors slow, losing power. Opening the doors had been the last effort of the base. It was a base which is now more like a sinking ship. On its last legs, using the last of its energy, it has worked to show Madison what lays beyond its confines. The doors to the base creak to a stop, only partially open. The orange light overhead shuts off.
Madison stands to the side of the doors and is unable to look out, but a ray of white light is shining in through the crack of space where the doors lay open. Pvt. Hillman shields her eyes from the bright beams of light. Blinded, she holds her rifle in front of her with one hand and steadies it on her knee. Her face is disgruntled and Madison sees her finger on the trigger. The Private is ready to fire at the slightest shadow, friend or foe.
“Don’t fire, I’m coming out!” Madison shouts, rising to her feet. She puts her hands up over her head. Pvt. Hillman gives a look of complete bewilderment, which is followed by a look of utter disgust. Madison can read the expression, even in the dark. It tells her that that Private thinks surrender is the coward’s way out. Madison doesn’t care. To her any fate is better than the one that had previously been in store for them.
Rounding the corner of the large doors, Madison is defenseless and for the first time unafraid. Madison steps into the light and is absorbed by it.
22 Cassie
As Madison is absorbed by the white light pouring through the door, Pvt. Cassie Hillman keeps the sights of her rifle trained on Madison’s fading form. Shuffling her feet, Cassie kneels down even farther and digs her rifle’s stock into her shoulder. She can’t see anyone on the other side of the light. She can barely see anything at all. The entryway had gone dark when Lt. Hart had punched that damn red button. No one except security personnel were ever supposed to push that button, Cassie reminds herself. She should have shot the Lieutenant. Cassie should have shot her when she had the chance. Now who knows what kind of chaos that damn woman has brought down on both them?
Cassie tries not to think about capture or about torture, but the thoughts come anyway. It is her job, no, her calling to protect people from this kind of crap. Most of all, though, it is her job to protect herself. Cassie knows things. She knows things that could hurt her country if they got out. She tells herself that she won’t let that happen. Her country depends on her, just like it had depended on her brother. Even if her one damn military had betrayed her and lied to her, Cassie was a patriot. She would rather die for her country than let her nation down. She would make her brother proud.
Cassie isn’t like Lt. Hart. The Lieutenant was weak. However, Cassie hadn’t expected the Lieutenant to attack her like that. Cassie thought the Lieutenant was made of softer stuff. She thought she was somebody who just joined the military to get them through college. She thought Lt. Hart was one of those soldiers that didn’t actually want to fight for their country. Lt. Hart was an egghead and she worked with all the other eggheads. They spent their days sitting at their computers, doing god-knows-what. Cassie didn’t care because they didn’t care about her. They didn’t care that Cassie was the one that would keep them all safe should something serious go down.
But now the whole base was gone. The doors were open. Cassie braces herself for the countless assailants that she is certain are bound to come swarming in. Cassie has failed to keep the base secure, but she won’t fail again. She will kill every person that dares to enter into her sanctuary, into the place she has sworn to protect. Cassie tells herself that to cross the threshold of the doors is to die. She will end the lives of everyone who dares come her way with the smoking hot metal of her rifle’s shells. Cassie will fire every round until she herself is riddled with bullets. Her finger will pull the trigger until the last drop of blood flows out of her veins.
Barg! A loud and deep sound comes from the other side of the door. The sound is a voice, not human, but something more threatening. The noise echoes off the walls and fills Cassie with a momentary sense
of fear. But the fear nearly instantly melts into hate, and Cassie’s body turns her feelings of hate into adrenaline.
Barg! Again the sound comes, only this time Cassie replies to it by firing a short burst of three rounds into the blinding light. She listens to the bullets as they splatter against metal, followed by the sound of shattered glass. The light streaming through the crack in the doors dims. Cassie has shot a lightbulb out.
“Hold your fire!” It is Lt. Hart’s voice calling from beyond the door. Cassie can see her. She isn’t even in shadow now. The Lieutenant is kneeling on the ground covering her head. She is cradling something, shielding it with her body.
Cassie squints trying to get a better look. The light she had shot out was a headlight, the metal her bullets had hit was the front end of a truck.
As she struggles to see, Cassie can make out something sticking out between Lt. Hart’s legs. Whatever it is, it is covered in fur the color of rust. The furry object is waving at her with its behind. Lt. Hart shifts as the creature under her rears back its head and shouts, “Bark!” The sound reverberates, making the noise appear more menacing and supernatural to Cassie’s ears then her eyes lead her to believe.
“You can put down your rifle, Private!” Lt. Madison is shouting orders again.
Cassie’s first instinct is to shout for the Lieutenant to get out of the way. She hates the Lieutenant for betraying the base. She hates her for making Cassie feel like a failure. But instead, Cassie drops her rifle down to her side.
The moment Cassie does this, Lt. Hart lets go of the fuzzy creature under her body. The tiny terror comes bolting into the base, crossing into Cassie’s sanctuary. It bounds for the Private, threatening to take her hostage, to kidnap her. When it gets to Cassie the beast leaps up and into her lap. It licks her several times on Cassie’s face. Cassie wraps her arms around the intruder, gives it a hug, and buries her face into its fur.
“So, you’re not a stone-cold soldier after all?” Lt. Hart says as she casually walks towards Cassie. There is someone beside her, another woman. Cassie ignores them both for the moment. She is drying tears that had dared to surface to the brim of her eyelids in the fur of the animal.
Composing herself, Cassie turns to the Lieutenant. Cassie struggles to maintain her mask of stone. “People I hate.” Cassie says, keeping her voice cold. “But dogs-” she pauses as the creature nudges her under the chin with its head. Her body betrays her and Cassie can’t help but smile. “Dogs are ok.”
23 Gabriel
After leaving the school Gabriel finds his bike right where he has left it. It is still leaned up against the wrought iron fence that borders the school grounds. It had not been disturbed all evening. What a different world this was, Gabriel thinks to himself.
Hoping on the bike, Gabriel adjusts his backpack and then checks his pockets. He checks to make sure a crumbled up piece of paper is still inside one of them. On it Jules has written his address, a home that he owns in the mountains. Tayna and he have plans to leave the city. Jules doesn’t think it is safe to stay. There are too many empty buildings and too many people unaccounted for. When Gabriel had pulled a gun on his daughter it had triggered something in him and Jules knew they needed to get somewhere safer. Jules told Gabriel about his cabin in the woods, about how it was deep in the mountains of the Poconos. Jules thought that they could all be safe there, so he gave Gabriel directions and told him to meet them there when he was through with his own business. That is if Gabriel decides he wants to go at all. Depending on what Gabriel finds at his own home he wonders if he’d be willing to go anywhere. Anywhere except- Gabriel pushed a dark thought of the afterlife away and instead focuses on his pedaling.
Gabriel pedals fast and hard through the streets. His home is not that far by bike from his daughters’ school. As he rides, Gabriel passes familiar landmarks. With one brings a wave of memories that flood over him.
The ice cream parlor, in particular, reminds Gabriel of a hot summer night. The type of night where the heat caused by climate change had turned the day into a scorcher. Gabriel had promised his daughters something sweet if they behaved at home. He had promised them a reward if they didn’t complain too much, even though their air conditioning was broken. That night they had gone to the parlor for the first time. Gabriel remembered Isabel had gotten a scoop of cookie dough and Mary had gotten vanilla.
Gabriel remembered how his daughters’ faces lit up every time their tongues grazed the sweet and icy concoction. How they hummed with delight as they filled their mouths with the sweet taste. To see those smiles on their faces was the greatest gift that Gabriel could think to have. To be able to provide moments of pure bliss for his two angels was his greatest joy. Gabriel only wished he could do more for them. He wished he could provide them with everything their tiny hearts desired. But wages were low and Gabriel’s time with them was short. He hoped that they knew how much he cared for them. Gabriel hoped it had been enough.
By the time Gabriel reaches his apartment complex his face is wet. He doesn’t even bother to wipe away the tears. There is no one around to see him cry now.
The complex, a brick building that was seven stories tall, has been carved up just like the other buildings. Holes have been cut into it revealing little pockets into the worlds within the various apartment rooms. Gabriel tries to imagine what Jules had told him about saucers in the sky shooting beams onto the streets and into the buildings. He remembers how Jules had told him about how everything the light had touched was disintegrated before the older man’s eyes.
In his imagination Gabriel sees his neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Havisham. They were an elderly couple who offered to look after his girls for him from time to time. Gabriel sees them in their living room, him reading the paper and her crocheting in her lounge chair. Neither one of them were probably aware when the lights went out because both of them fell still in an instant. A short while later, a light pierces through the walls and then both of them are gone.
As Gabriel approaches the apartment complex’s steps, he can see into the Havisham apartment from the outside. He sees the circular cut-out in the outer wall and knows that there was at least some truth to his imaginings.
The two main doors to the complex are locked, Gabriel uses his key to open them and lets himself inside. On the right-hand side there is a row of mailboxes. Out of habit, perhaps to regain a sense of normalcy, Gabriel opens the mailbox to apartment #402. It is filled with promotional flyers and advertisement circulars. Gabriel folds them under his arm.
Also in the box are two envelopes. One a bill, Gabriel knows by the marking in the corner that is the logo for the Philadelphia Water Authority. The other envelope is addressed to Gabriel’s daughters. The name in the return address corner is one that makes his face wet again. It is from the girls’ grandmother, their mother’s mother. A letter they may never get the opportunity to read.
With the mail pinned to his body under his arm, Gabriel trods up the stairs of the complex. It feels strange for the building to be so empty. Gabriel is rarely at home during the daytime and is used to the sounds of all the busied activities that occur beyond his neighbor’s apartment doors. He was used to the sounds of televisions, a group of college students holding a party, couples arguing or making love, and children running around and screaming. But now there are no sounds, and perhaps even more disconcerting, no smells. No odors of cooking. No roast beef or pizza baking. No smells of enchiladas or beans on toast. Instead, Gabriel’s nostrils are only filled with the stall odor of mildew and dust.
The lights in the stairwell are dead. Gabriel uses his instincts from years of climbing up to his apartment to guide him. The whole building complex is just an empty shell. The only life within it is Gabriel as he winds up the stairwell, one anxious step at a time.
When he arrives at his front door, the door to apartment #402, Gabriel hesitates before opening it. In his heart, Gabriel yearns with an intense hope that when he opens the door that his daughters will be there wa
iting for him. Mary will run to him and hug him around the waist. Isabel will sulk, yell at him, and ask him where he has been. Isabel will then force herself to hug him. Then Gabriel will hold his two daughters in his arms and never let them go.
That is what he hopes in his heart, but Gabriel’s head and his gut are more pragmatic.
Gabriel has traveled through an empty city and had been to an abandoned school. He has seen the holes cut into the apartment complex and heard the stories of strange ships in the sky whose lights obliterated anything they touched. He had even seen his own strange object which was beyond recognition. He had met two people, only two people out of the hundreds of thousands that had once inhabited the city. When Gabriel finally puts the key into the lock and opens the door, the crushing reality of it all comes down on him. His knees buckle and the mail under his arm spills onto the floor.
The hallway of Gabriel’s apartment is empty. The lights are out. There are no sounds of his daughters playing and laughing together in the dark.
“Mary!” Gabriel yells from the doorway as he curls up in a ball. “Isabel!” Gabriel yells his daughters’ names. He yells to their ghosts.
More than anything, Gabriel wants his daughters to come to him. He needs them to give him strength. It is a strength he always feels in their presence. He feels like a warrior who can never lose because he has something to fight for. Now, Gabriel’s chest feels hollow and the energy drains out of his limbs. He feels his fingertips go numb. His breathing becomes rapid and shallow. He struggles for gasps of air between heavy sobs.