“Shit,” Robert said, starting a slow jog down the sidewalk.
He saw Richie running down to the intersection a block away. Robert ran back to the car and jumped into the driver’s seat. He backed away from the lamppost and then sped down the street, turning at an intersection down to the block Richie was on.
The street, like the rest of the city, was empty. The only other place Robert had seen such desolation had been in Afghanistan last year. Insurgents would send word that they were going to take a town and cut off the heads of anyone that remained. The town, within a few hours, would be nothing but buildings and trails of animal dung leading out of the city from the livestock the residents took with them. Many times, the insurgents never came. When they did, they held true to their promise and by the time Robert came in there would be heads thrust onto pikes along the roadsides.
Robert saw movement to his left. But when he turned his head there was nothing there. To the side of a building were several dumpsters and trash bins. He stepped out of the car.
“Richie,” he said, in as kind a voice as he could muster, “come on out, Richie. I’m not going to kill you. But if you make me sift through garbage, I am.”
There was no answer, just the breeze blowing bits of debris over the streets. Down the road he could hear a radio playing somewhere but couldn’t make out what it was saying.
“Richie,” he said, walking close to the trash bins, “I’m going to count to three. If you don’t come out I’m going to start firing into the garbage bins. One…two…three.”
There was no response. Robert aimed at the first bin and fired two shots. He aimed at the second and did the same, one shot low, one shot high.
“All right!”
After the sound of trash being displaced, Richie crawled out of one of the bins. His clothes already had stains on them and Robert could smell putrid garbage coming off him in wafts.
“Really? Was that worth it, Richie?”
“You were gonna kill me.”
“I wasn’t going to kill you. If I wanted to kill you I would’ve walked by when you were sitting in your car and put two slugs into your brain. Now I didn’t do that, did I?”
“What’d ya want from me?”
“Information. The man that picked up the package, you said he looked Mexican, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Could he possibly have been Middle Eastern?”
“What’s that?”
“Wow, our education system is going to be the death of us. From the Middle East, dipshit. Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iran. Did he look like he could be Muslim?”
“Oh. Yeah, yeah I think so.”
“Did he have an accent?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he sound like Speedy Gonzalez or Apu?”
“What?”
“Nevermind. What did his accent sound like?”
“Um, I don’t know, just an accent.”
“Richie, you’re not thinking hard enough. And if you’re not thinking hard enough, you’re not helpful to me.”
“You don’t have to get all crazy, man. I’m tryin’. Um, his accent, I don’t know, I guess it didn’t sound Mexican.”
“Good, good. What exactly did he say to you?”
“He just said he was there to pick up the box. That’s what he called it, the box. I gave it to him and he asked if anyone else was with me. I said yes. I said there was two other guys watchin’ us. There wasn’t but I got a creepy feelin’ from this dude and didn’t want him to think we was alone.”
“Oh, so you do have some brains after all. What happened next?”
He just took it and went back to a Jeep that was waitin’ for him. I swear, man. That’s all that happened.”
Robert stared at him a long while, but Richie didn’t look away. “Okay,” Robert said, a smile coming over his lips. “Okay, I believe you.”
“So can I go now?”
“Here’s the problem, my young friend. In the years and years I’ve been doing this, no one’s ever seen my face.”
“Whoa, whoa, dude, look I just—”
Robert raised his weapon, pointed at Richie’s throat. He took a step forward and Richie screamed.
“You sound like a girl. At least try to have some dignity when you die.”
“I’ll give the money back,” he said frantically, taking a few steps back and realizing he’d pinned himself against the garbage bins. “I’ll give all of it back.”
“No, no, not enough. What else you got?”
“My girl, yo, my girl is hot yo. I’ll let you fuck her, man. I’ll let you do it.”
“Sex doesn’t interest me. You’re running out of time.”
“Um,” he said, panicked, “ah, um, I can find the dude that has the box.”
Robert stood frozen, he didn’t move and didn’t speak for what seemed like a long time. Then he lowered the pistol by his side. “Now you’ve got my attention. How do you plan to find him?”
“I got his license plate. Just in case I needed it.”
“If he had any brains it was a rental or a fake plate.”
“No, there was two cars. One of ‘em was parked where they thought I couldn’t see it. I got the plate to that too and they were Hawaii plates.”
Robert smiled. “Richie, you are impressing me more and more every second. Where’s the number?”
“First you gotta promise not to kill me.”
“If I’m the type of person that can kill you, I probably won’t have any problem breaking a promise, but okay, I’ll play along. I promise I will not kill you if you give me the plate number.”
Richie pulled out his phone. He held it in front of him and Robert took it, noticing that Richie’s hands were shaking. Robert memorized the number and letter sequence and then handed the phone back to Richie.
“You’ve been very helpful, Richie. You’re free to go.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Robert turned and began walking away down the sidewalk. He heard footsteps fading in the distance behind him.
Robert stopped, and closed his eyes. He listened intensely to the footfalls. They were far apart; Richie was taking long strides. He wasn’t zig-zagging and he hadn’t run down the alley. He was running directly behind Robert in the opposite direction.
Robert spun, his weapon up, and fired three shots. Two hit their mark and Richie collapsed onto the pavement. If he would’ve zigged and zagged, Robert may not have been able to hit him.
“Maybe you weren’t as smart as I thought,” Robert said aloud, putting his weapon away. He began walking back to his hotel, humming to himself.
CHAPTER 27
Samantha awoke and, for a single, terrifying moment, didn’t know where she was. The hotel room suddenly didn’t look familiar. She had been back in Atlanta only a moment ago, taking care of her mother’s funeral arrangements, staring down into the casket at the face of the woman who had raised her. The face appeared as a mask, like it had been painted on. The spirit that had animated it was no longer there and it was no more different, or beautiful, than a table or a chair.
It took a few moments but the events of the previous weeks flooded back into her mind as she watched the sunlight streaming through the windows of her room. She rose and walked to them, looking down on the streets below.
The first thing that struck her was the growth of the vegetation. Lawns were unmowed and hedges untrimmed. Ralph was right: nature was slowly and steadily taking back what was hers.
She took a quick shower and then filled a few buckets she had gotten from a hardware store with water. It was uncertain how long utilities would remain on since maintenance crews were growing slimmer and slimmer.
She went out to her bike and checked her gas gauge; about half a tank left. She decided to walk instead. The gas stations had all been closed as well. Not because of orders, but because no gas shipments were coming in and they had ran out of reserves within a week. She didn’t know when she would need her bike
and it wasn’t worth the gas to save the mile and a half walk from the hotel.
There were no clouds today and the sun broiled the city as heat waves bounced off the cement and cooked the streets.
The city appeared like a Hollywood movie set. Without people to animate it there was just cement, steel, and wood. The wind rustled through the streets and bits of trash flew with it. She hadn’t noticed it before but the level of trash was increasing every day despite people not being out as much. She couldn’t walk more than a couple of feet without some debris on the sidewalk in front of her. Even a week ago, she had been impressed with how clean Honolulu was compared to other American cities.
There was some commotion behind her. She glanced around to see three young men walking in her direction but on the opposite side of the street. They were dressed in normal clothing; they weren’t military. Since the majority of the police force was either ill or had quit their jobs so as not to become ill, military were the only ones that were out in public.
Sam faced forward again and continued walking. She had tried to call her mother last night but the nurse had let it go to voicemail. Caring for someone full time was exhausting, both mentally and physically. Sam didn’t fault her for sometimes turning the phone off and taking a nap. As long as her mother’s needs were looked after, she didn’t expect her nurse to be superhuman.
The voices she had heard were closer now and she looked behind her again. The men had crossed over to her side of the street. They were now staring at her and walking at a quick pace. The absence of police presence came barreling at her. Wilson’s theory that police simply being in an area would keep crime in check worked for a while, until the mass quitting began. Police officers with families of their own feared infection and so they quit rather than follow orders. There were, as far as she could tell, about fifty police officers left in the entire island of a hundred and thirty-seven square miles, and they were quitting at the pace of about five per day.
She glanced behind her again. The men were closer, their eyes locked on her. She looked forward, pretending not to notice, but her heart was beating as if someone were pounding on her chest. She looked back again. They were closing the distance. She wondered for just a moment if this wasn’t all in her head until she saw the knife strapped to the hip of one of the men.
There was an intersection up ahead. As soon as she could, she turned left around a building, and broke into a sprint. She got nearly a quarter of a block up before she heard shouting behind her and saw the men turning the corner and running after her.
Sam saw a convenience store up ahead and tried the doors: they were locked. She thought about going around back but the men were catching up to her now. They were close enough that she could distinguish their shouting.
“Where you running, bitch!”
She ran back to the sidewalk and was in a full sprint, the purse banging against her with each stride. She took her keys and her cell phone out and threw the purse on the ground. A few cars were lined up on the side of the road and she looked in them in hopes that someone had left their keys, but they hadn’t.
She could just see a shopping mall up ahead and she ran for it, leaving the sidewalk to run on pavement. Her breathing was labored now, her legs burning like they were dipped in acid. She sprinted as hard as she could, hoping she wouldn’t hit a rock or a crack and fly face-first into the pavement.
She got to the parking lot and fell to the ground. She began crawling under the cars. Her knees and elbows quickly scraped and bled but she didn’t stop until she heard the footfalls that surrounded her.
“Where the fuck did she go?” one of them said.
“Into the mall.”
“Nah,” a third one said. “She in one a these cars. Start lookin’.”
She could see their feet from underneath the car. They were going slowly up and down the rows, checking each car.
“Look under ‘em too,” one of the men yelled.
They began glancing underneath the cars as well. They were twenty feet away and on a different row, but they would get to her eventually.
Holding her breath to make as little noise as possible, she began crawling toward the entrance to the mall.
The gravel that was displaced underneath made little scraping noises and to her the sound was as loud as jet engines. She would stop every few seconds and look back to see the sneakers getting closer and closer.
She had moved out from under an SUV when she got to a Prius. It was too low to the ground for her to crawl under and she eased her way back to a different row and underneath a large Toyota truck. She was nearly to the other side when she heard the shoes hit pavement behind her and she froze.
She looked back and saw the sneakers checking the car next to the one she was under. Its door was unlocked and the man opened it and began going through whatever was inside.
Sam, lifting herself off the pavement as far as she could go, which wasn’t more than a half an inch, began to crawl to the other side of the truck. She could feel the sunlight on the back of her hand as she made it across. She cleared the truck. Now she would just need to stand, keep low, and make it around to one of the entrances to the mall. She had heard from someone at the hotel that the mall itself was open but the shops were closed. The owner had wanted to give all the shop owners the option of closing or remaining open.
A sound echoed in her head. It was unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Like something she knew intimately once but had forgotten.
It was her cell phone’s ringtone.
She rolled from under the truck as the man in the car next to her jumped out, standing still a moment to find out where the sound was coming from. Samantha was on her feet and at a full sprint toward the mall.
“Right there, you blind motherfucker!”
She kept running, not looking back, feeling the strain in her legs as she pushed herself as hard as she could. She made it across the parking lot and was near the door when she felt an impact against her back. She flew forward into the glass doors and bounced off and onto her back.
A man stood above her, panting. He pulled the knife out from his hip.
“You run…fast bitch. Now we gonna have some fun you and me.”
He knelt down and Sam thrust out with her hand, jabbing her fingers into his eyes as far as they would go. He yelped in pain and pulled back. She rolled on the ground and got to her feet as the other two men arrived.
She backed up slowly against the glass doors, feeling for the handles. She felt the grating and tugged. They were locked.
“Fucking cunt!” the man yelled as he rose, his hand pressed to his right eye.
He came at her and then stopped. Her heart was pounding so loud she didn’t hear the commotion behind her as two police officers opened the doors. They pushed her out of the way, a shotgun pointed at the man’s head.
“Get the fuck outta here, asshole,” the cop said.
The men looked to each other and then backed away and walked through the parking lot into the street. The cop turned to her. He lowered his weapon as the other cop behind him did the same.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, out of breath, “thank you.”
“Get inside. There’ll be more of ‘em.”
“More of who?”
“Them. Whatever you wanna call ‘em. We been callin’ ‘em huis. Come on, let’s go.”
Sam entered the mall behind the officers and they locked the doors. The mall was empty and the lights were off. The two officers kept walking without looking back and got down the hall and to an elevator. Sam didn’t feel she had any better options, especially considering that those men were probably outside waiting for her, so she got on the elevator too.
They rode to the second floor and walked to the main offices. A few other people were scattered throughout the space. None of the others wore police uniforms. An older man with a potbelly walked up when he saw them enter.
“Who’s this?”
The man gave the two officers an awkward glance, like they had done something wrong, and then stuck out his hand. Sam shook.
“Papale Garrett, how ya doin’? Sorry you had to run into trouble out there. Huis is gettin’ worse by the day. Huis is just what we call them lawless folks that’s out on the streets.”
“Are you the police?”
“Well, I guess so. Now. We found them uniforms at the police station an’ we help out when we can,” he said, looking to one of the men that had helped Samantha. “Well anyway, if you got someone to come get you, you should call them now. Afternoon and night is the worst time to be out, so you should get all your business done in the morning.”
Sam looked around the space. There were clothes, food rations, jugs of water, and gasoline along with dishes piled next to a sink.
“Do you live here?”
“Good a place as any,” Papale said. “Got water, electricity when we need, we got each other. There’s the food court downstairs with enough stock to keep us fed for a year or two. Seemed as good a choice as my own house.”
“Food is being given away at aid stations, along with water and anything else you could need.”
He chuckled. “Young lady, the day the government does somethin’ right is the day I take up ballroom dancin’. There ain’t enough food to feed a preschool at them aid stations. The lines go on for blocks and by the time you get there, they outta everythin’ but flour and sugar. Soon they’ll be outta those too.”
“They get resupplied every other day.”
“If that’s true, I ain’t seen it. Once they run outta food, they close and they leave.”
“That has to be some kind of mistake.”
“Mistake or not, that’s what they’re doin’. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got some work to do thawing some chickens for tonight’s dinner. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like or you can have someone pick you up.”
“Thanks.” Samantha pulled out her cell phone. All the men in the office were staring at her and it became apparent that there were no women in the mall with them. She smiled a friendly smile to them and then walked out the doors to the corridor.
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