Fifty Falling Stars

by Wesley Higginbotham

  “How far is it to your house from here?” Leesha asked as they hobbled down the street.

  “I’m not sure.” He said. “Ten, maybe eleven, miles.”

  “Oh…Clay, I don’t think I can make that. I’m so tired and so weak.”

  “I know. Me too. Shit, we spent two nights in the sewer and haven’t eaten in three days.”

  Clay limped along the street in central Chicago. The Thursday morning daylight played into strange shapes and colors as it filtered through the smoke coming from the burning cars and buildings. The smoke stung his eyes and burned his lungs. He adjusted Leesha’s weight on his shoulder. She didn’t weigh much, but he had to stoop over to allow her to get her arm over his shoulders for support. They walked for several blocks. The city resembled a ghost town. They caught fleeting glimpses of other people. Some saw them from the windows of the few remaining buildings and hid. They had gotten within a block of a group of three or four teenagers before the group noticed them and ran off. “Where is everyone?” Clay asked to himself.

  “They probably left or are hiding.” Leesha said.

  “That’s what I would have done if we hadn’t been in the middle of the protests.” Clay said.

  “I’m so sorry that I got you into it, Clay. I didn’t understand what you were worried about, but I would have never thought that it would have turned into this. I am glad you were there though. You saved my life.”

  Clay smiled at her. “I’m just glad you are ok.”

  She glanced to her left. “Look! There’s a cab!”

  “Holy shit!” Clay said. Until now, every car they had seen on the street had been either gutted or burned. The car sat half a block away. Clay led Leesha over to the edge of a burned house to take cover. “You stay here and I’ll go check it out and see if there’s anything we can use.”

  Leesha nodded, and Clay walked toward the cab. The front left tire of the cab rested on the sidewalk in front of a burned out convenience store. The cab looked sound. All of the windows had been broken and there were several large dents in it; but it looked like it might run. Clay circled around the back and saw some fire damage on the front driver’s side. He slowly approached and opened the driver’s side door. Everything inside looked serviceable. He brushed the broken glass off of the driver’s seat, climbed in, and searched for the keys. He checked in the ignition with no luck. He looked in the glove compartment, the ashtray, and on the floor. Disappointment set in when he checked the visor and came up empty. He scanned the rest of the car and found nothing of useful.

  He got out of the car and was turning to go back to Leesha when he noticed the bodies on the floor of the burned shop. He could see five. The fire had all but destroyed the four deeper in the shop and the head, shoulder, and left arm of the one by the door. The dead man lay face down. Clay saw the bullet wound in the man’s lower back. The man wore foreign clothes like those favored by Middle Eastern cabbies. Clay felt bad for stereotyping the man, but who gave a shit anymore? He had to get Leesha to safety and get back to check on his family; and he could tell that he wouldn’t be able to do that on foot.

  Clay walked over to the man and reached down to touch him. The smell of burnt flesh and hair turned his stomach. The man had started to bloat in the warm spring weather. Ants covered the exit wound in the man’s back, making the wound into a teaming mass of bugs and gore. He grabbed the man’s right arm and turned him over as gently as he could, trying to ignore the stench of gas the body released in protest to being disturbed. Clay reached into the man’s front left pocket and found only a money clip and a wallet. He stuffed those into his own pocket and reached into the man’s other pocket. He found the keys. He got away from the body and back into the cab. He prayed his hunch was right, and this man owned the cab. He found one of the keys that looked like an ignition key. It didn’t fit. He thumbed through the keys one more time and found another ignition key on the ring. He held his breath as he inserted the key and turned it. The cab puttered to life. “Thank you, Jesus.” He said as he put the car into reverse and backed over to Leesha.

  Clay was helping Leesha into the car when he saw two men emerge from the burned out remains of a building across the street. They must have been hiding in the structure and heard the car. Clay thought as he rushed to get Leesha into the car. The two men walked toward the car. One held a tire iron in his left hand, similar to the one Clay had tucked into the back of his pants. The other man drug a baseball bat in his right hand.

  When the strangers came within fifty feet of the cab, one man called out in an Eastern European accent. “Hey, man! Can you give a couple of guys a lift?”

  Clay ignored the men and brushed aside the broken window glass from the passenger side of the cab. “Aren’t you going got answer them?” Leesha asked as he pushed her into the car.

  “Look at these two. I make it rule not to give anyone a ride who comes asking with weapons out.” He rushed around the front of the car to get into the driver’s seat.

  “Hey asshole!” The other man shouted as they began to run toward the car. Clay slammed the car in gear and lurched forward as the men descended on the car. The one with the baseball bat swung at Leesha, but the windshield support blocked the blow. Fresh fragments of glass sprayed into her lap. The cab clipped the other man mid-swing. He bounced on the hood and rolled under the car. The sound and feel of the wheel crushing the man’s chest sickened Clay as the cab accelerated down the street.

  “Oh my God, Clay! You just killed that guy!”

  “I know…” Clay said in a low voice. “That’s the second one this week.”

  Leesha began to protest but hesitated, really looking at Clay. His hands trembled and his eyes were wet. She realized the fragile state her man must be in. She just looked at him and said. “It’s ok, baby. He would have killed us. They both would have, for no better reason than to take the cab. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was self-defense.”

  Tears streamed down Clay’s cheeks. He tried to respond, but his voice would not cooperate. He just nodded, eyes focused on dodging the burned out cars in their way, and drove.

  Clay composed himself by the time they reached his neighborhood. They hadn’t seen very many people on the streets and only a couple of other running cars. Every store they passed looked like it had been looted and burned. Clay’s heart beat faster as they turned on to his street. He prayed that the violence hadn’t made it this far. He prayed that they would stop seeing burned cars and houses as they got closer to home. The scene never changed. News tears sprang to his eyes when he pulled up to his house. Only the garage remained standing, the rest a smoldering pile of burnt support beams and ashes.

  Leesha put her hand on his as he gazed out to the wreckage. “Maybe they got out of here. Just because the house burned, doesn’t mean they did.” Clay nodded and opened the car door.

  He walked through the remains of his home. He didn’t recognize the place at first. Rooms, hallways, and corners of his house, so familiar to him only a few days ago, seemed an alien landscape. He walked back to where Mama D’s room should have been. He felt relief to see the burned wheelchair crumpled and sitting empty by what used to be the back wall of the house. Maybe they did get out. He thought to himself. Mama D practically lived in that chair. Maybe mom and dad picked her up and moved her out of the house at the last minute. A sinkhole of despair opened in his heart when he saw the little charred body under some rubble behind the wheelchair. Mama D. had not made it out. As Clay cleared some of the charred timbers from the pile covering the body, he saw another burned hand sticking out from the pile. He recognized the topaz ring his father had given his mother. It was her favorite piece of jewelry. She never took it off. Clay stepped away from Mama D. and reached down to the burned hand. He squeezed his mother’s hand. Sobs took him. After long minutes of despair, he slid the deformed ring from her hand and tucked it into his shirt pocket. There might not be anything else left to remember her by. He didn’t think she would mind.

&nb
sp; A fierce battle raged in Clay’s mind as he knelt at his mother’s body. He knew that if she and Mama D. were here, his dad was too. All of his family…dead. These people had been his rock. They had nurtured him as child, taught him right from wrong, and developed him into the man he became. Through thick and thin, through girlfriends, divorce, and financial turmoil, these shriveled, burned things under the rubble had always been there for him, had always caught him when he stumbled and fell. The weight of their loss pressed down through his physical weaknesses of hunger, exhaustion, and dehydration. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to lie down with them in the rubble and die. As he began to collapse to the side and curl up next to them, his right arm caught him, an involuntary action that wouldn’t let him just lie there and die. Cold ice began creaking up his spine, coming from somewhere deep inside him. Determination spread through his core and enveloped the remainder of his mind. The fuzziness of the last few days faded as a singular thought replaced it. Survive! His mind threw doubts at him. How? You have no idea what to do? The stronger, primal part of him responded. It doesn’t matter. You will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. I will survive!

  He turned for the area of the house still standing, the garage. The cold determination turned into a fiery hate by the time he entered the garage. He hated what he had been through the last few days, hated the way his parents had died, hated what the world had turned into, hated what he must and endure in the future. The anger sharpened his thoughts as he rummaged through the garage. Although it looked better than the rest of the house from the outside, the garage had not escaped damage on the inside. He walked to the back wall and found a box of medical supplies left over when his father had a knee replaced several years ago. Inside he found a couple of ace bandages and some medical tape. He shoved these into his pocket. Behind the box, he found his dad’s old crutches. He gathered a few more things that he thought might be of some use, including the pellet gun and a couple of boxes of pellets he had given his nephew David when he turned twelve. He thought of David and prayed that he was ok. If things didn’t get better soon, he doubted he would ever see David again. He was half a world away on a ship in the Persian Gulf. Clay said a silent prayer asking God to watch over his nephew and give him the best life that he could.

  Clay handed the ace bandages and the tape to Leesha when he got back to the car. He loaded the rest of the gear into the back seat of the cab. Leesha looked up at him. Even from a distance, she had seen enough to know that Clay’s family hadn’t survived. “I’m so sorry, Clay.” She said as she hugged him. Clay just nodded. She could tell that it was too early for him to discuss. “Where do we go now?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think we have to get the hell out of the city. My friend JJ lives a little further out of the city. Maybe things weren’t so bad out that way. I think we should go by his place and see what’s left. If there’s nothing there, we’ll just drive out of the city and hope we come across somewhere that hasn’t been hit by riots. Maybe they’ll have some food.”

  Things looked a little better as they got further away from the city, but not much. They passed other cars on the road and saw people on the streets. Some walked out of town with suitcases or shopping carts filled with their possessions. They passed a few stores where crowds of people looted whatever they could find. Occasionally they passed by pockets of people still engaged in battle with the remaining police and National Guard. Clay stayed clear of those areas.

  Burned-out cars and debris blocked off several of the streets, forcing them to travel slowly and take several detours. Over an hour later, they pulled into JJ’s neighborhood. The roadblock surprised Clay when they turned onto JJ’s street. Two rows of cars had been positioned end to end to form a barrier across the street and stretching into people’s lawns to connect to the houses. Clay stopped the car fifty feet in front of the barricade. He saw several nervous men stand up from behind the cars. Some had guns, others improvised weapons like baseball bats or yard tools. Clay started to get out of the car when an old man yelled at him to keep his hands on the wheel.

  The old man, in his late sixties or early seventies, walked out toward the car. He held a golf club in his left hand. The old timer looked like he was in pretty good shape despite his age. He would have no trouble swinging the club. The man stood a tad under six foot tall, sporting gray hair sprinkled with a few back ones that wouldn’t surrender to old age. He looked like a man whose age had taken away most of his fat and exposed the knotty muscles beneath. Clay noticed the bandage on the man’s forehead and met his cold blue eyes as he came within just feet of the car door. “You live here?”

  “No.” Clay admitted. “I just came to….” The old man cut him off.

  “Neighborhoods closed. No one’s coming in.” The man said as he slid the small, black pistol out of his pocket and held it close his hip. “If you don’t live here then keep moving. We don’t want any trouble and don’t want anyone stealing or looting our neighborhood. You and the lady just keep on driving.”

  “You don’t understand…” Clay began.

  “No! You don’t understand!” The man said. He tightened his grip on the small pistol, ready to use it if Clay didn’t leave.

  “My friend, Jan Jenkins lives in this neighborho….”

  “I don’t care!....” The old man trailed off. “How do you know Jan?”

  Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Clay thought to himself. “We’re friends. I work at the bank with him.”

  The tension in the old man’s arm relaxed as he slid the little pistol back into his pocket “Jimmy!” The man yelled as he turned back toward the blockade. Clay saw JJ’s son stand up from behind one of the cars. “Go get your dad and tell him to get his ass out here, now! He has visitors.”

  The boy took off running. Clay felt relieved that at least his friend and his family had made it through the riots. The old man looked back to Clay. “As soon as Jan comes out and vouches for you, we’ll let you in. I think I’ve heard him mention you before.” The man said as he extended his right hand to Clay. “I’m Scott Reed. Jan’s father-in-law.”

  “Clayton!” Sherry said as she ran a hug him as JJ led him and Leesha into the house. “It’s so good to see you! We weren’t expecting you to show up here. Oh my god, what happened to your face?” She asked all at once.

  “Good to see you too, Sherry. It’s been a long time.” Clay said. “This is my girlfriend, Leesha.”

  “I guess it has been almost a year since you and your folks had us over for dinner. Where’s Mama D. and your parents? Are they ok?” Sherry asked.

  The tension in his body at the mention of their names and the sadness in his face told Sherry all she needed to know. “Oh, Clay, I’m so sorry.”

  “Come on in and let’s get you cleaned up. You two look like hell.” The woman Clay didn’t know said to them.

  “That’d be my wife, Tara” Scott said coming in behind the group.

  “Lucy!” Tara called upstairs. “I need you to down the street and get Mrs. Gray. Tell her we have some newcomers to the neighborhood who need some first aid.”

  Lucy came downstairs, hugged Clay, introduced herself to Leesha, and ran off to fetch Mrs. Gray. “Mrs. Gray?” Clay asked after Lucy left and JJ had guided them to the kitchen to sit at the table.

  “She’s a retired nurse practitioner in the neighborhood. We’ll have her look at your wounds and probably give you a couple of stitches on the cheek. What the hell happened man? You two look like you’ve been through hell. Last time I talked to you, you were going with Leesha down to the protests. Were you guys there where it all blew up?”

  “Yeah.” Clay said as he looked over at Leesha.

  “Oh my God.” Sherry said. “It looked horrible on the news, at least until we lost power. What’s going on out there? We just keep seeing the fires light up the sky at night and the smoke during the day. Several hundred people have passed through and tried to get in the neighborhood. We haven’t left the ne
ighborhood since Tuesday morning. How bad is it?”

  “First let’s get some food and water into these two.” Scott said. “They look like they are about to pass out.”

  Sherry and Tara prepared some canned soup and instant lemonade for the two. When Clay had eaten almost all of his, JJ asked him again. “What’s it like out there buddy?”

  “It’s worse than anything you could imagine.” Clay began. They told JJ and his family about all they had seen and been through since Tuesday night. Tara, Sherry, and Leesha openly cried by the time Clay finished telling his family’s fate. Everyone sat in the silence, absorbing the news. Their world had fallen apart. What would they do with the pieces that were left?

  Lucy broke the silence when she opened the door and led Mrs. Gray into the kitchen. Mrs. Gray was a pudgy Hispanic lady in her early sixties. Scott introduced her to Clay and Leesha. She looked them over and asked Scott and JJ to move Leesha to the couch and have her lay down. She got to work cleaning Clay’s cheek. “How did you get this?” She asked, a slight accent in her soft voice. Clay told her the story about escaping into the manhole and the man who had hit him with the piece of wood. He omitted the part where he killed the man. “You are very lucky, Mr. Clayton. He didn’t break the bone; however, your cut is infected. Here.” She said as she reached into her purse and retrieved a tube of Neosporin. She applied the ointment into the wound. “This should take care of it. You seem pretty healthy and able to fight it off. I would like to give you some antibiotics, but all I have is this ointment. When I get done, try to change the bandage once a day or as often as you can. You can keep the ointment. I have a couple of others. Be careful with it. We may not get any more for some time.”

  She pulled at the wound and pushed it back together. “You need stitches, and I’m sorry to say that all I have for the pain is this topical spray. It’ll probably burn more than the stitches will hurt.”