by Ryan Schow
“That’s very kind of you,” she says, sugary sweet. “Thank you.”
He nods, starts working his gums like he’s a cow chewing his cud, then says, “You need to go now. Don’t want you attracting them to my house.”
We vacate the porch, but only when Macy’s gobbled down half the bar does she think to ask us if we’re hungry.
“Of course we’re hungry, dummy,” I say, and she reluctantly splits the rest of the bar in half, handing me and Stanton our respective pieces.
“We need to move faster,” Stanton says, chewing his bar. “There’s no cover here.”
He’s right, of course. You only have to insert your entire body up the tailpipe of a Christmas tree once to learn that lesson.
Masonic is starting to look like a poor choice of roads to travel.
On the left, it’s all houses that are built so close together you can’t wedge a slip of paper between them. On the right there’s an elevated parking lot with a beautifully painted, waist-high wall depicting people and activity. It’s all bright colors, ethnic and racial diversity, and a message of the unification of people. I love it already, but it’s not going to offer us anything in the way of safety if we’re attacked again.
We come up on Grove Street and nearly startle ourselves to death as we look left at a hefty man holding the biggest machine gun I’ve ever seen.
He sees us and puts it down immediately.
“Sorry ‘bout that ladies,” he says. He’s got his pickup truck parked on the sidewalk and he’s standing in the bed with enough fire power to turn us all into Swiss cheese. The truck is old, a white and red Chevy that’s seen better days about a hundred years ago and is now just a running heap on balding tires. “Can’t be too careful right now.”
“That’s for sure,” Stanton says.
The man pulls off his hat (which says “I survived Fallujah!”), rubs a buzz cut head, then slides it back on with a slight adjustment.
“Iraq?” Stanton says.
“What gave it away?” he laughs.
Although I’m not mad at the man for finding humor in anything, perhaps he can laugh because he hasn’t see what we’ve seen, or survived what we just did. But then again, if he was in Fallujah, from what I know about that hell hole, it would seem we’ve seen nothing the likes of which he’s seen, suffered and survived.
“Thank you for your service,” I find myself saying to him.
“You’re quite welcome.” Pointing down, he says, “Whatcha got in your pants there?”
“Sig Sauer,” I tell him.
“What caliber you using?” he says. I shrug my shoulders. “You even fired it yet?”
“She took it off a dead cop,” Macy says, which earns her a stern look from Stanton. “What? It’s true?”
“Can I take a look?”
“Will you give it back?” I ask him.
“Do I look like I’m starving for weapons over here?” he asks. Taking a few steps toward him, I take a peek inside the bed of his truck and it looks like the mother of all armories.
“I guess not,” I say, handing him the weapon.
He ejects a round, looks at it then nods his head. He then sights a tree and fires the weapon making me and Macy jump. Stanton doesn’t even budge.
“So he’s been around weapons before, but you two haven’t.”
I nod. His father grew up on a farm.
The stranger clicks on the safety, tosses the gun to Stanton who catches it. He then leans down and tosses him a big box of ammo. It says Elite Performance and shows some up-close pictures of bullets on it.
“There’s fifty rounds of nine millimeter in there. Won’t hold off an army, but maybe if any of these Mexican turds come after you, you can put the fear of God into ‘em.”
“That’s racist,” Macy says.
“No, that’s a fact. The Sureños and the Norteños are loosely related to the Latino gangs of the same name from the late 1960’s. Latino is Mexican. Just like my wife. Born and raised on the streets of Ciudad Juarez.”
“That’s not an easy place to grow up,” Stanton says.
“Near impossible.”
“How’d you two meet?” I ask. I’m a sucker for a good love story.
“She snuck over the border into El Paso one night with friends. We met, spent the whole night talkin’ and kissin’ and in the end she decided to stay.”
“Do her parents know where she’s gone?” Macy asks. “That she’s with you?”
He laughs and there’s enough warmth to it to know he’s a good man. “Her father was beheaded and left for dead in the middle of an intersection and her mother was running drugs for the cartel to make ends meet. Being here is better for her. Telling her mom was her choice, but that didn’t make it easy.”
“How long have you been married?”
“Four years next week,” he says, his eyes still moving, still assessing the streets around us. “Assuming there is a next week.”
“Why are you out here?” Stanton asks. “Shouldn’t you be inside keeping her safe?”
“See that building back there?” he says, hitching a thumb over his shoulder.
All we see is the tall brick building we’re standing in front of and a city road with a slight grade and one blown up car that’s now just a charred skeleton on melted wheels.
“There are a lot of buildings,” Stanton says.
“That’s a city college that’s set up like a fortress, even though it wasn’t intended that way. It’s been evacuated, so last night we moved in. Me, my Army buddies and our wives and their children. You see, it’s fortified. Me being out here is me keeping her safe. Got a buddy up at the end of the street doin’ the same. We served together.”
“The college is a big target,” I say.
Sitting down on an old, turned-over milk crate inside the bed of his truck, he says, “Yeah, but it’s also an empty target if you’re thinking like the enemy. See, the drones don’t want big targets, they want catastrophic loss of life if you’re following the patterns. Now that everyone’s running home, they’re targeting the homes, not so much the buildings where people used to be.”
“So you’re out here…” I say, letting the statement hang.
“Watching out for gang bangers and keeping the skies clear in case the MQ-1’s start sniffing around, or heaven forbid, the RQ-1’s.”
“What are the…MQ—”
“Predator drones. The MQ-1’s are aerial reconnaissance. Strictly observe and report. The RQ-1’s are tactical. Well, so are the MQ-1A’s if you want to get technical.”
“We don’t,” Macy says.
He gives a hearty laugh, then says, “They’re basically the big drones with the big missiles that are hitting everything. Those are Hellfire missiles that were first designed for anti-tank applications. They’re no joke.”
“So the government’s doing this?” Macy asks.
“No,” he says. Looking at me, he says, “I like this little firecracker.”
“So do we, most times.”
“Who do you think is behind these attacks?” Stanton asks.
Just then the former soldier with the stolen Mexican wife stands up, fully alert, and stares straight ahead. We turn and see a threesome of thugs walking down Grove toward us. He puts up his machine gun and they stop and show us their pistols.
Moving so fast I can’t hardly comprehend the speed, the man has the barrel flipped over, the butt of the weapon in his armpit and his sights set on the incoming trio.
They all flip him the bird until he puts a round right at their feet. They turn and run and he says, “Pretty soon they’ll be back with their friends. You don’t want to be here when that happens. Oh, and don’t go down there. Not unless you want your daughter becoming one of their—”
“Underage hookers?” Macy says.
“I, uh…”
“Told you, Dad,” she grins.
“Teach her to shoot when you can,” our new friend says, sitting back down on his old red crate. “That’s what th
e box of ammo is all about.”
“What if this is over in the next few days?”
“It ain’t gonna be,” he says, nonchalant. “It ain’t gonna be over for awhile.”
“Why do you say that?” I ask.
“That’s not the government flying them drones. I’m pretty sure it’s the drones flying them drones. This is Artificial Intelligence. AI. It’s 2017 all over again, but this time those morons in Palo Alto have no way to shut them down. Not unless they set off an EMP, but that’d have to be nuclear and you can damn sure bet they won’t be doing that anytime soon.”
“What’s a nuclear EMP?” I ask.
“Electromagnetic Pulse. Nuclear suggests it’s high altitude, the higher the better. Eighty thousand feet is ideal if you want the widest coverage. A blast like that basically shuts down anything with electronics in it, including the electrical grid. If the charge is enough, if this isn’t an isolated incident—and I suspect it isn’t—then two of these nuclear EMP’s can shut down the entire country. Considering the National Guard ain’t here, and the Air Force ain’t here, I’m thinking we’re going to be in it real quick. And a lot worse than this. But I’m a man of war, and paranoia is my drug of choice so maybe I’ve just seen too much combat.”
“Either way, you’re saying we’re pretty much on our own right now,” Stanton says, swallowing what looks like a hulking lump in his throat.
“Indeed. Unless you want to bunk with us.”
“That’s very nice of you,” I say, “but we’re headed home.”
“Where’s home?” he asks, his eyes alert.
“850 Powell Street, just off Sacramento Street across from The Fairmont in the Financial District.”
He whistles like he knows the place, like he knows how nice it is. Suddenly I’m self-conscious of where we live and scared I sound pompous when I’m anything but that.
“Nice digs over there. Real nice digs. Well, they were nice, but now they’re not. Probably just rubble by now.”
“You can’t know that,” I say.
The guy leans forward, grabs something, then comes up with a huge pair of binoculars and says to Stanton, “Get up here, see for yourself.”
He obliges the man, looks in the direction of our home, then returns the field glasses. His face is bloodless, his expression clearly that of someone shaken by what they’ve seen.
“Stanton?” I ask.
He climbs off the truck, thanks the man, then looks at me and Macy and says, “We should leave him to his post.”
“You have a place to stay if yours ain’t around,” the man calls after us.
“What’s your name?” Macy asks.
“Waylon.”
“Nice to meet you, Waylon,” she says.
Macy and I wave, and Stanton thanks him for the ammo, but judging by the way my husband is moving, there is a pretty good chance he’s thinking our home is no longer standing.
Chapter Nine
We make our way up Masonic, trudging along the sidewalk like a pack of derelicts. At Fulton Street, Stanton decides to keep going straight. Where is he going?! Is he just walking for the sake of walking, or is he actually thinking? Or clearing his head? Perhaps he’s pondering the meaning of life now that it appears human life is being stamped out by rogue technology.
“Do you have a destination, Stanton, or are we just getting in our ten thousand steps?”
“No,” Stanton says. “And yes.”
He keeps moving.
“Then why are we even walking?” Macy asks. “Because my legs hurt, my back hurts, I’m tired and that granola bar didn’t do squat but make me more hungry.”
Stanton stops and turns to face us both. Half manic, he says, “We need a place to stay. We need water, food and shelter, so if anyone has a suggestion, I’m open to it.”
“You look insane,” Macy says.
“Maybe I am!”
“So that’s it then?” Macy grumbles. “We’re going to be squatters?”
Stanton starts walking again.
“What did you see?” I ask. “Is our home there or not?”
He doesn’t say anything. He just keeps walking, so I stop asking questions. Behind me Macy’s shoes are slapping the sidewalk in protest. There’s a bit of an incline past Fulton, but it feels more like we’re walking up the side of a mountain as tired as we are.
“Do you want to sleep in a car again?” I ask her.
“As long as no one died in it, at this point, I don’t care. Then again, if it’s a comfortable car, I don’t care if five people died in it.”
“That’s morbid,” Stanton grumbles.
“This whole situation is morbid,” I tell him. After awhile, to my kind, loving, patient husband (I hope you’re catching my sarcasm at this point), I ask, “Do you ever think things will be normal again?”
“Are you looking in these people’s eyes?” he says, a long, sharp edge to his words. “Half of them look like they’re in shock, like their brains just melted out of their ears the moment all their precious things were destroyed.”
“I feel like that,” I say, my voice rising. “I feel like that and you’re not telling me if all our precious things are destroyed.” Rushing up to him, I grab his arm, haul him around. “Are our things destroyed?”
He shakes off my arm and says, “I don’t know!”
“Stop!” Macy screams.
We all stand together, huffing and puffing, nostrils flared, ready to kill each other, unable to understand each other.
“Are we homeless, Stanton?” I ask, softer now, my vision blurring behind the threat of tears.
“I…I think…I don’t know. But if we can’t make it home today, I can’t sleep in another car someone’s died in. I’m just not doing it.”
Macy folds her arms, looks away.
In the distance, the smoke is billowing again, turning the skies gray. All around us, flakes of ash are falling like the first winter’s snow. We almost don’t even notice, but then it’s hard not to. Glancing around, seeing people mill about, watching them walking aimlessly, absent-mindedly, like they’re complete freaking space cadets, I wonder if this is our end.
“I’m scared, Stanton,” I say, feeling a tear skim my cheek. Wiping it quickly, dragging a finger under my other eye to mop up the puddling of more tears, I say, “Aren’t you?”
Speaking low under his breath, he says, “I feel broken, Sin. It makes me feel weak.”
“You’re not weak,” I whisper back, taking a step towards my husband, the father of my child, my soul mate.
He falls into silence.
As his wife of sixteen years, I know this stillness in him. I know exactly what it means. It means that behind that teetering façade there’s a strong, competent man losing his grip on life. He can handle almost anything, but force him to consider his mortality and he becomes this sweet, fragile thing. Another step forward and I’m in his arms. Holding him. Trying not to cry on his shoulder because his shoulder smells like the downfall of civilization.
“I don’t know what to do, Sin. For the first time in my life, I’m truly at a loss.”
“Me too, baby. We need to figure this out though. If we don’t…if we don’t we’ll die. Macy will die.”
His body stiffens and I can tell he’s biting back the tears. Seconds later another set of arms curls around us both and I feel Macy hugging us and this about breaks my heart.
“Two days ago I would have been so embarrassed about this, but now I could care less,” she says. Stanton and I can’t help laughing. “I love you guys. Thank you for coming to get me.”
Moving out of my arms into hers, he pulls her close, kisses the top of her head and says, “I might not have if I knew you were going to wear those butt-ugly pants.”
Now we’re all laughing, and maybe crying, but the moment isn’t long because we hear the sounds of explosions getting closer.
My eyes find Macy’s face. She’s wiping her eyes, the light of joy leaving them dim once more. She’s
quite a sight. The cuffed fuchsia pants underneath the black skirt with the non matching red sweater and the black (now grey) platforms, my eyes go to the collar of her white blouse (how it’s half smoked and half spattered with Trevor’s blood) and I’m overwhelmed with sadness. She needs to change her shirt, get into something that doesn’t remind us that her friend didn’t make it.
“We have to go,” Stanton says. “We need to find a place to stay. Maybe a vacant building or something.”
“If we find a house, honest to God,” I hear myself saying, “I’m taking the longest, hottest shower ever.”
“I just want something to drink,” Macy says. “My mouth is like the desert right now. I can practically use my saliva as chewing gum.”
“That’s gross,” Stanton says.
“I’m not exactly camera ready,” she replies.
We’re walking up Masonic Street having gone God knows how many blocks uphill and I can’t stop feeling we’re not getting any closer to where we need to go. Which is a house. There are tons to choose from, but not on this street, so I’m not sure what the deal is.
“Are you headed to a neighborhood?” I ask. “Because we’re passing up a lot of beautiful homes.”
“I know you want a house, but the bullets guy, back in the truck, he said people are better off in buildings rather than homes.”
“It’s because the machines expect them to be empty,” Macy says, still dragging her feet, “so that makes them safe.”
“You have to get past the idea that anything’s safe, honey,” I say. “At least for now.”
We’re coming upon an intersection full of abandoned cars. There are normal people rooting through them now. Not people who look like deviants or gang bangers. Should we be going through them, too? We have a weapon, but no food, no water, no shelter. Suddenly I’m feeling very vulnerable.
An anxiety is arising in me, one I have to force down.
It’s when we hear some of these cars still running that we put two and two together. Inside these cars are dead people, shot-to-death-by-drones people.
Logically we know these are the best cars to search because nothing was taken from them (yet). You just have to hope the doors are open, unless you have something solid enough to break the glass. We do. Stanton has the butt end of the pistol.