The back shook again, drawing Mia’s attention. A gaping hole in the back was filled with Masters’s body. His stripped face and evil eyes stared at her. The “peace” tattoo wept blood from several lacerations.
“Help!” Mia shouted. “Someone help!”
Masters took hold of the ruined rear wall and pulled, tearing a larger opening to accommodate his body. In a moment he would be inside with them.
“I need a gun!” Mia shouted.
Collins slid out of the dining area and pumped his shotgun. He stepped over Mia and just as Master’s opened his mouth to roar, he pulled the trigger. Masters’s head snapped back. But the injury didn’t stop him. A portion of his skull was missing, but the monster didn’t seem to notice. He simply shook his head, scattering blood, and turned his ruined face back toward them.
Mia expected Masters to let out a roar now, but Collins screamed a battle cry and ran toward the back, pulling the trigger seven more times until the weapon was empty and Masters had no head.
The headless body fell limp and dropped backwards onto the road. It tumbled off the road and snapped to a stop against the side of a thick tree.
Looking beyond Masters, Collins and Mia could see that they’d already broken through the chain-locked campground exit. But then the view changed. One moment they were looking back at the campground behind them, the next, they saw the turbulent, heat lightning-filled sky.
“Oh shit!” Garbarino shouted.
Austin’s voice came next, full of dread. “Hold on!”
Mia glanced forward and saw a steep, curvy hill dropping down before them. The RV accelerated rapidly, once again pinning Mia to the floor. She reached out for Liz and found the girl’s hand.
It felt slick with warm, thick liquid. Mia drew her hand back and looked at it, hoping to see anything other than what she saw.
Blood.
39
“Auntie!” Elizabeth shouted before running across the front yard and leaping into Mia’s arms. The first warm air of spring filled them with energy as the pair spun and fell onto the damp lawn. Mia had just announced her engagement to Matt and the six year old Elizabeth, who had always dreamed of being a flower girl, was overjoyed.
“I’m so proud of you, Auntie Mia,” Elizabeth whispered into her ear.
At first Mia laughed, surprised by the girl’s mature reply. But after the words sunk in, Mia found herself tearing up. Her sister had somehow raised an intelligent and sensitive daughter—two attributes she wouldn’t have used to describe her sister—and the girl had said exactly what Mia needed to hear. Mia’s parents never expressed pride in their daughters. Not for graduating college, nor landing a good job, nor getting married. Instead they critiqued and questioned the legitimacy of things. They were glass-half-empty naysayers. Anything good in life was probably too good to be true.
So when Elizabeth said those few words, Mia found the girl had cut deep and exposed a potent mixture of pain and longing.
They lay in the damp grass, ignoring the wetness and looking up at the sky.
“What’s it like?” Elizabeth asked. “To love someone not in our family?”
Mia smiled. “He’ll be in our family soon.”
“I know, but...he wasn’t always. Some people you love because they’re there when you’re born. But even then, not all the time.”
Mia saw what the little girl was getting at. Her father was an asshole. The girl adored Matt, but was probably confused about how he differed from her deadbeat dad. “I think that some people were made to be together.”
“Like made by God? We’re all puzzle pieces that fit together?”
“Something like that, sure.” She turned toward Elizabeth, their faces inches apart. “Like you and me.”
“Puzzle pieces.”
Their hands linked as they smiled at each other.
“We fit together,” Mia said.
“And no one can pull us apart,” Elizabeth added.
“Never.”
“Elizabeth!” Mia screamed. “Elizabeth!” She struggled to reach the girl, but the steep angle of the RV kept her leaning back. If she sat up, she’d fall forward. “God dammit!”
Pushing against the side wall of the center aisle, Mia was able to brace her body and turn to face Liz. She saw her hand first, covered in liquid red. The amount of blood made Mia nauseous. Blood didn’t normally bother her, but the large amount she saw indicated a severe injury.
Each breath came harder than the last as panic constricted her neck. She put her hand down to turn herself the rest of the way around and slipped on the blood soaked rug, hitting her head a second time.
The RV suddenly lurched to the right, slamming her against the opposite side, further dazing her. But through it all, she could smell the blood of her niece turned daughter.
At the front of the vehicle, Garbarino buckled himself in and clutched the handle above his door. “Watch out, watch out!”
“I see it!” Austin shouted, swerving around a fallen tree. The quick turn tilted the large vehicle toward its left side. Austin felt the RV tip. He yanked the wheel in the other direction, leveling them out.
The trees on either side of the road became a blur of brown. Dead leaves covering the road billowed behind the heavy vehicle as it barreled downhill.
“Shit,” Austin said. Several small trees had fallen across the road just before it turned hard to the left. “Hang on!” he shouted just before striking the first tree. The RV shook with each impact.
Each jolt slammed Mia against the floor, pounding the fight out of her. Consciousness began to slip away. “Liz,” she said, fighting to stay awake, struggling to move. But then they reached the left turn. Tires squealed, two of them coming off the ground for a moment, and Mia slammed into the hallway wall, hitting the back of her head. Her beaten body finally succumbed. She fell to the floor and would have no memory of the next five minutes.
Austin looked down at the speedometer. Fifty miles per hour, and climbing.
“Sharp right!” Garbarino shouted.
Austin drifted to the left then cut across the road like a race car driver so that the angle of the sharp turn was reduced. They came out on the other side, skimming the side of the road, kicking up a cloud of dead pine needles and leaves.
“Left!”
“I see it.”
Austin performed the same maneuver and pulled them through the turn, but this time he heard a thump behind him that made him cringe. He couldn’t chance a look back, but he recognized the sound of unconscious bodies thudding and rolling. He instinctively slammed on the brake pedal several times, but without power behind the pump, it was useless. And slamming on the emergency break at this speed could get them all killed. The only way through this was to reach the bottom.
After clearing the left turn, the angle of the road dropped even further—a straight shot to the bottom. The RV hit sixty five and began to shake.
“I think one of the tires is losing air,” Garbarino shouted over the shaking, which had become violent.
The front right of the vehicle dipped forward slowly. Austin gritted his teeth and fought with the RV, keeping it on the road as the ruined tire tugged to the right. They reached the bottom of the hill and started up an incline. The RV quickly slowed and when its momentum finally stopped and began to reverse, Austin threw the vehicle into park.
He and Garbarino leaned back in their seats, exhausted from the rollercoaster ride, but elated to be alive.
“Holy shit,” Garbarino said.
Austin chuckled. “I didn’t think we were going to make it.” He smiled and sighed, unbuckling his seatbelt. Then he remembered the thumping and turned around. The first thing he saw was the hole in the back. He could see the road descending behind them. Then he saw Collins, sitting up in the hallway, but unconscious. In front of him was Mia, twisted at an odd angle, but breathing. He saw the blood next, tracing it from Mia’s hand to Elizabeth’s.
“Oh my God,” he said when he saw her small bod
y. “Elizabeth.”
Garbarino saw her, too. “Fuck!” he shouted, unbuckling himself and launching over the seat.
“It’s too late,” Austin said quietly.
“Fuck it is!” Garbarino said as he knelt down beside the girl, ignoring the blood that soaked into his pants. But when he inspected her body, he saw Austin was right. A large chunk of shrapnel was buried in the girl’s neck. Several smaller pieces dotted her body. “How long?”
“What?”
“How long do you think she’s been dead?”
Austin understood the real question. Is she coming back? “If the initial impact didn’t kill her, it looks like she would have bled out in under a minute. Maybe less.”
It had been at least two since Henry Masters tore a hole in the back of the RV. Garbarino’s body sagged as he sighed. “Then she’s not coming back,” he said. “Thank God.”
Austin moved past Garbarino. “Let’s get these two outside and wake them up. We need to move.”
Garbarino looked down at Elizabeth’s pale body. “What about her?”
“We left the others,” Austin replied. “And we don’t have time.”
“She’s a kid.”
Austin gripped Mia beneath the arms and hoisted her up. “She’s dead.” He dragged Mia to the door, kicked it open and pulled her outside.
Garbarino looked back down to Liz. He brushed her hair away from her face. “You’re in a better place,” he said in a hushed voice. He thought about the effect her death would have on the others. Austin seemed unfazed, focused on the living as usual. Collins might not care at all. That she didn’t come back gave Garbarino hope, because it meant the things he’d been thinking about, the hope he now clung to, might be real. But Mia...it would tear her apart. “Be seeing you, kid.”
Garbarino pulled Collins from the RV and sat him down, leaning his body against the back tire. He woke when his head leaned back. “We made it?”
“Not all of us,” Garbarino replied.
Collins held his head and looked around. There were trees, dead like the rest. A paved, double yellow-lined road. Austin knelt over Mia a few feet away. She had blood on her hand and a small wound on her head. He saw her chest rising and falling, which left, “The girl?”
Garbarino offered a grim nod.
“How?”
“Shrapnel.Bled out.”
“Is she—”
“One of them? No.”
Collins struggled to his feet. Garbarino helped him.
“You sure?” Collins asked.
“Let me ask you a question, pres, you seen any other kids around? This whole time, since we dropped from the heavens, have you seen a single child?”
Collins leaned against the RV, replaying the past few days in his head. Garbarino was right. They hadn’t come across any children. Not one.
Before he could answer, Mia woke with a scream. She thrashed, reaching out as though still in the RV.
Austin held her arms. “Mia. Mia! You’re safe. We’re stopped.”
She fought against him, kicking and pulling her arms. He pinned her arms against her body and straddled her kicking legs. “Mia! We’re okay!” Her fighting slowed. She looked Austin in the eyes. “We’re okay,” he repeated.
He lied. She saw it in his eyes as soon as her senses returned. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
Austin’s grip loosened. He rolled away and sat beside her. She looked to Garbarino, then to Collins. “Where is she!”
For all the bravery, training and public speaking experience shared between the three men, none of them could bring themselves to tell her. But their silence spoke for them.
Mia’s bottom lip quivered. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “She’s dead?”
Garbarino gave her a slight nod. The small gesture unstopped the dam and Mia’s emotions flooded out of her. She groaned like a woman in labor, curling in on herself. The last thing she held precious in this world was gone. And she had died without saying goodbye. Without the comfort of looking into her aunt’s eyes as life faded. She had died violently. And alone. Mia’s body shook as she wept.
Garbarino, moved to tears by Mia’s anguish, knelt beside her and pulled her to him. She cried into his chest while he held her.
When Mia’s sobs abated, Austin said, “We need to go.”
“Her niece just died, man,” Garbarino said. “Give her some time.”
Austin stared at him, unsympathetic. “And we’ll be next if we don’t move. It won’t be long before they catch up again. We’ll stop to rest, and mourn, when we find a defensible position.”
Mia sniffed and sat up. Red splotches covered the skin around her bloodshot eyes. “He’s right.”
“You sure?” Garbarino asked.
Mia stood. “I just need to see her first.”
Garbarino caught her arm as she headed for the RV door. He didn’t need to say what he thought.
“I can handle it,” she said. She pulled her arm away, opened the door and climbed inside.
A fresh wave of grief surged over Mia when she saw Elizabeth’s small body, covered in wounds and blood. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I failed you.”
“You didn’t,” Garbarino said softly as he entered.
Mia wiped her arm across her nose. “How do you figure that?”
“She didn’t come back.”
Mia sniffed, fighting back tears. “That’s a good thing?”
“Seems to be the only real escape,” he said. “Better than being here.”
Mia’s lips twitched, a fraction of a smile, grateful for the comforting words. “Thanks.”
He reached his hand out to her. “C’mon,” he said. “We better go before Austin leaves us here.”
She knelt down and kissed Elizabeth’s forehead. “Love you, Lizard.” She returned to her feet and stepped toward the door. Her anguish had been replaced by something else, something Garbarino didn’t recognize until it was too late.
“Just one more thing,” she said. “Then we can go.”
40
“Mia, wait!” Garbarino said when he saw her fist clench.
But she was already in motion—an unstoppable force of rage directed at a single person—former president Collins. Her fist collided with his cheek and sent him reeling to the side.
“This is your fault, you son-of-a-bitch!”
He covered his face, feeling blood.
She kicked him next, a solid shot to the stomach. He coughed and held his stomach.
“You did this!” Mia shouted and then hammered him with a second shot to the face.
“Wait,” Collins said, staggering. “Please.”
“Elizabeth is dead!”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
This slowed her assault, but she wasn’t done. As she stepped toward him, he backed away. He glanced to Garbarino and Austin, his former protectors, but they seemed to understand this had to happen. They knew the same thing he did. The state of the world was his fault. He had ordered the assassination. He had denied the problem. Dodged diplomatic solutions. He had driven the world to the brink.
“I did it, okay?”
She shoved him. He fell back into the brush on the side of the road. He stood again.
“This is all my fault. Everything! I destroyed the world. The blood of billions is on my hands. I know that!”
“You killed her,” Mia said.
“I know.”
She grabbed hold of his shirt and shook him. He had more than fifty pounds on her and despite being older, probably out-muscled her, too. He could have broken free. Could have fought back. But he didn’t.
“How can you live with yourself?” she asked. “How can you stand the sight of your own face, the sound of your own voice?”
“I wanted to live long enough,” he said.
“For what?”
He looked into her eyes. They burned with hatred. Nothing he said would change her heart or bring the girl back to life. So he was honest. “Redemption.”
Mia glared at him as the word permeated her anger. When it did, she cocked her fist back and brought it into his soft stomach. Collins doubled over with a wheeze. He struggled to catch a breath.
“Get up!” she shouted, kicking dirt at him. “Get up.” She positioned herself to kick him in the gut, when she saw him clutching at his chest instead of his stomach. Her eyes went wide with realization. She shoved him onto his back.
Collins’s face was twisted with pain. His body rigid. He took a frantic breath and whispered, “Forgive me.” His voice trailed off with a moan as the last air in his lungs seeped out. The President of the United States was dead.
“No!” Mia shouted. She turned to Austin. “He can’t get off this easy! Bring him back!”
Austin just watched.
She punched his chest twice. “Come back!”
Garbarino stepped forward. “Mia.”
“Bring him back, Joe,” she said. “He can’t. He doesn’t deserve this.”
Garbarino drew his weapon. “You might yet get your chance.”
Mia stood and jumped away from Collins’s body.
Visions of White, Vanderwarf, Paul and Chang filled her thoughts. She reached out to Garbarino, “Give me your gun.”
He did, and drew a second. “You can hang on to that. Five rounds left. Use them well.”
She took aim at Collins’s head, waiting for him to return so she could kill him again, and again, and again. “I intend to,” she said.
“Thirty seconds,” Austin said, standing to his feet. He walked up next to them, waiting for Collins to come back. “One shot.”
“What?” Mia asked.
“I’ll give you one shot.”
“He deserves worse.”
Austin’s voice was grim. “If you insist on ringing the dinner bell, we’re not going to wait around and see who comes running.”
They stared at each other, each waiting for the other’s will to break.
“Forty-five,” Garbarino said.
Austin’s stare intensified. “One shot.”
“Fine,” Mia said. “One shot.”
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