City of Savages

by Lee Kelly

  “Backup, two rows of backup,” Rolladin whispers, and the whorelords start pushing me out of the way, getting ready to move like a pack on the hunt. I try to elbow my way to the front, but I can’t move. It’s wall-to-wall whorelord, and as soon as Rolladin kicks the door down and enters the small apartment, I’m almost trampled.

  We move to the kitchen. Nothing. The living room, nothing. Rolladin looks hungrily into the small glass box of a bedroom, nothing. Mom’s not here, Wren’s not here—

  “Over here, hag,” I hear from the other side of the breakfast bar.

  Wren’s leaning against the glass wall of the dining room, a small box off the main living space. His forearm’s wrapped around Mom’s shoulder, and his other hand holds a gun to her head. The gun’s the size of Wren’s palm. It’s old and red, with a rubbed-away handle. And the floor of the suite nearly drops out from under me, sends me crashing to the lobby. ’Cause even from this far away, I know it’s my gun.

  The thing’s only carrying one bullet.

  But now it’s cocked and ready to fire its last shot.

  “No!” I run towards Mom, but Lory catches me.

  “Let Rolladin handle it,” she whispers.

  Mom’s eyes dart fearfully up to Wren, back to Rolladin, and settle on me. She looks horrible, strung out. Her usually solid body, thin and drawn. She looks older, much older, and it takes everything I’ve got not to run over to Wren and bash his face in. I hate him. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone. He’s worse than a liar.

  He’s a soul-sucking parasite.

  “Let her go!” I yell at him.

  “Phee,” Mom answers. Thank God, she’s kind of lucid. She knows it’s me. But she just gives me a little shake of her head. Don’t move, her looks says. Don’t do anything.

  “You have someone who belongs to me,” Rolladin says evenly.

  Wren laughs, long and deep. “Belongs to you? You’re worse than the Red Allies were, Rolladin. So now you own the prisoners?”

  “No.” Rolladin’s voice stays even and measured. “But they are mine to keep safe.”

  “You’re delusional,” Wren says. “This family ran from you. When they came to me, they were broken. Just like your broken brother. I’ve given them salvation. A chance for a new life. This is what’s meant to be.”

  “It’s over, you hear me?” Rolladin’s voice is starting to crack. “Now let her go.”

  “Oh, it’s far from over.” Wren pulls my mom back into the far corner of the dining room, like there’s some secret trapdoor or escape route we can’t see. Please, Mom. I will her to hear me. Elbow him and run. But she looks like she can barely move. “See, when you sided with the Red Allies, you vicious bitch, you lost all perspective on what’s going on. What it’s like to live day and night in fear. This city needs me, just like this family needs me. We need each other.”

  Rolladin takes a step towards Wren. She doesn’t raise her gun, but I watch her fingers twitch anxiously around it. Wren just grips my mother tighter, pulls her even closer to him. I jump forward instinctively to reach for her, but Lory holds me back.

  “I don’t negotiate with psychopaths,” Rolladin says. “Last chance. Let her go.”

  Wren shakes his head violently. “No. This one’s mine. I made a promise to God that I intend on keeping. Take the problem child, and the boys. But not this one.”

  Lory drops my hand and reaches carefully for her gun. The movement’s so small and contained that I barely catch it, but her gun keeps rising, slowly, inch by inch.

  “This woman is my family, you understand?” Rolladin barks at Wren. “I will not walk out of here without her.”

  Wren starts waving his gun. “No, she’s part of my family,” he spits, then points his gun at Mom’s belly. What? Wait—did he—has he been with Mom? Is he talking about a baby? I’ll kill him.

  I leap forward. I’ll kill him.

  “My future. Leave us. Leave all of us!” Wren screams.

  And then I don’t know what comes first, next, or last.

  I hear a gunshot, Lory’s gunshot, her bullet cutting Wren’s face in two. But not before Mom doubles over, not before she collapses to the ground, and Wren’s gun—my gun, now empty, clangs to the floor.

  Mom. Oh God. Mom.

  I run to her.

  Rolladin’s now beside us, wailing. “Sarah. Oh my darling, Sarah.”

  “Mom!”

  But Mom’s eyes are closed, and her stomach’s nothing but a red, angry hollow.

  No.

  No. No. No.

  No. No. No. No. No.

  “We need to get this wound wrapped!” Rolladin’s screaming at her guards, pushing them around, barking. “We need to get her downstairs, now!”

  “Rolladin—,” Lory begins, but Rolladin’s already pushed her aside, has my mom propped up on her shoulder. “Help me,” Rolladin pleads with me.

  I rush to Mom’s other side, finally given something to do, a way to help. I can’t think about what’s happened. This can’t be real. If I do what I’m supposed to do—if I get Mom downstairs, one step at a time—this is all going to be okay.

  This has to be okay.

  We burst out of the hotel, into the white light. I can’t feel my legs. I can’t feel my heart. I think I threw up two times on the way down the stairs.

  “Sarah, darling Sarah,” Rolladin just says it, over and over, until it becomes a mantra. Until I start saying it. If we both say it, maybe it unleashes a miracle. A miracle that will put Mom together again. A miracle that will give us all a second chance.

  Sky, Ryder, Trevor—they’re now beside me, asking what’s happened, but I don’t have any words. I can’t bring myself to speak. It’s as if the gunshot carved me out, has made me nothing more than a red, angry hollow.

  Rolladin lays my mom down on a small tuft of grass on the High Line, a few steps from the hotel. Mom’s sputtering, coughing, but she’s alive. I roll the mantra over and over in my head, thinking it’s working. Sarah, darling Sarah.

  I don’t remember Sam sidling up to me. I don’t remember collapsing into him, crying and wailing like I’m some infant. I just find myself there, with his shaky arms and shakier words wrapped around me—Just breathe, it’s not your fault, desperado. Just breathe—

  “Oh my God, Phee,” Sky’s whimpering next to me.

  Finally Mom moves, just rolls over to cough, and I rush to her side. A sea of blood parts from her lips. “Mary,” she says.

  “Don’t you dare die on me. You can’t. I can’t.” Rolladin angles herself on the ground beside Mom, so that their faces are inches apart. Mom looks up at me and Sky, and she reaches for us, pulls our hands close to her, right over her heart. “Give me this, Mary. Let them go.”

  Rolladin just reaches out and strokes Mom’s bloodstained face. “I won’t have it,” she tells her. “You’ve got to fight. You’ve survived worse. Much worse. You’ve got to fight.”

  “Mary, it’s time,” my mother whispers. “Let us go. Girls.” She pulls us closer. She’s digging for something underneath her clothes, and Rolladin starts arguing with her not to pick at her wound, not to touch it. But she keeps digging. I want to tell her to just focus on fighting for every breath. But I can’t remember how to speak.

  Sarah, darling Sarah, Sarah, darling Sarah, Sarah . . .

  “I only saw what I wanted to see with Robert. I’m so sorry,” she tells us. She starts to cry, and I wish to God she would stop. “I just wanted so badly to give you more.”

  “Mom.” I finally find my voice. “You’ve given us everything.”

  She looks up at me and Sky, and I think, I think she smiles.

  Out of the wet magenta folds of her clothes, Mom pulls out a small pouch. “I found this in Wren’s suite. This belongs with you two.” Then she peels back the flap. Inside, there’s a blue book. The book. The o
ne that’s always been the Property of Sarah Walker Miller. “It should have belonged to you a long time ago.”

  With that one last look, I see everything Mom’s ever been to us—a friend, a guardian, a protector. A chance. But I can’t watch her go.

  I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready.

  “You two gave me meaning,” Mom says as she passes us the journal. Her last words: “You make me proud.”

  50 SARAH

  April 5—Betrayal. It rumbled out of my core and flooded my throat, made me taste bile.

  When I heard about the E-train summit, it was as if the sound was pulled from the room. I couldn’t hear the man’s voice as he mouthed, Are you okay?

  I couldn’t hear Sky’s cries as she pulled on my sleeve, scared since I’d gone so still.

  I got up quickly and gave the babies to Lauren. I ran down the torch-lit library stairs of the Carlyle, rounded the sharp, chair-railed corners of the halls. My limbs were still thin and weak from the months on bed rest, but I welcomed the pain. Tom, how could I have trusted her? What had I done?

  Mary’s room door was locked, unlike any other room in the hotel. I screamed at her to open up, and didn’t waste any time. I railed at her, question after question, about the E-train summit.

  She gave me some line, like, “The E-train summit? You mean back in the summer? What has you asking about it?”

  I got up real close to her face, saw the small rings of wrinkles around her eyes that weren’t there a year ago. “You never went, did you? Tell me. Tell me now or I swear I’ll run back down to the lobby and let everyone know you’re a liar.”

  That got her motivated. She pushed me against the textured walls with her forearm, pinned me next to the window. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You hear me? There’s more going on in this city than you could ever imagine. And people were, are, counting on me to keep them safe.”

  “We were counting on you to find our loved ones!”

  Then she admitted she needed to tell me something. Something important. Something, I’m sure, in typical Mary fashion, that would wipe away all her lies and bullshit and make the world right again.

  But a knock interrupted us. As always, there was someone else with needs more immediate, and my panic attack was forgotten as Mary answered the door for one of her new groupies, Samantha. Mary has her own squadron of “warlords” now, since she’s sold her soul to play Red Allies henchman, and the Red general lets her handle the smaller matters concerning us Carlyle prisoners.

  The young guard immediately started stuttering, asking what to do about Bronwyn Trevor, the pregnant Red whore who tried to kill herself. She wondered if solitary confinement made sense until Bronwyn birthed, or if she should just be lumped in with the rest of the prisoners.

  Bronwyn.

  Poor, lonely, broken Bronwyn.

  My heart seized for my beautiful charge, the lost girl of the 6 train . . . but I knew I couldn’t risk giving my concern a voice. My own family’s future was on the line, my babies’ father, their freedom. And this child of a guard Samantha had gifted me a sliver of time.

  So I grabbed Mary’s red-marked gun—a little toy from the Red Allies, like a spiked collar on some kept dog—and the box of ammo that rested on her nightstand. I slipped them into my pocket and excused myself. Just glided out the door without saying good-bye.

  I knew Mary would visit me later and try to explain everything away. Somehow weave the truth with inventive lies. Lies I’ve even asked for, lies I’ve come to need, to survive. But they’ve cost me too much, a second chance at my life back, with Tom. And Mary can’t fix that.

  When she comes knocking, I won’t be there.

  I’m taking the girls, and we’re leaving tonight. Uptown, downtown—anywhere but here. We’ll take the subways. We’ll find Tom on our own.

  April 15—I know you want to know what happened, but I still can’t talk about it. It will break me.

  I’m already broken.

  April 20—I’m sorry. The words still won’t come. I thought they would but they won’t. I’m just empty.

  I wonder if from now on I’ll always be empty. If they stole everything that used to be inside.

  April 25—After I left Rolladin’s room, I packed up the girls and ran to Lauren’s quarters. I told her about Bronwyn, and her poor cursed baby. I begged her to take care of them, just like I begged her to help me, to hide me and the girls until we could sneak out the fire escape. Until the newest night guards were on rotation, the ones who would believe me when I lied and said Mary was sending me on official business or some crap like that. I wasn’t thinking. If I could go back, if I could do it all differently—

  May 5—Some days I can’t shake the memories. They haunt me and tell me that I’ll never be right again. That it would be better for all of us, to end it.

  I think about jumping. I think about dropping the three of us, like deadweights, down five stories below.

  June 15—Summer’s here. I feel it, in the hot midnight musk draping the city when I scavenge corner stores, and in the garden I’ve started to work in on our rooftop. I feel real gratitude these days, for my two little guardians padding around in the grass. Sometimes it hurts to watch them, like my heart’s growing right along with them. Just expanding, pushing hard against my ribs, threatening that one day I won’t be able to contain it.

  My girls have made the world feel new again.

  Maybe I can be new. Maybe there’s a way to start over.

  July—That night, when I left the Park. I’ve wanted to bury it. I’ve wanted to sink it so deep that it would disappear. But it forces its way to the top, bubbles to the surface in the middle of the night. Comes out in nightmares. Through screams.

  But I need to tell someone, and you’re better than anyone else. After all, you never tell. You just take my words at face value, never judge. Never share.

  I snuck down to the 6 line on Madison. Without a word, just packed up my bag, gun in pocket and torch in hand, and ran with Sky and Phee, one on each shoulder, underground. It’s ironic to think about it now, but I was hopeful. As if returning to the dark we’d escaped from somehow wiped everything clean. It gave me the feeling that I was starting over, being reborn.

  I crossed over at 42nd Street, eager to get to the West Side. Inner voices taunted me that Tom was dead somewhere, that I was too late to find him, but I didn’t listen. I kept plowing through the dark with my torch, with my sleepy babies.

  I saw the group coming towards me on the tracks around Houston. It might have been because of the children, the constant low wail Sky and Phee started when we reached downtown, sonar that bounced around the subways and coaxed all the trash out of the shadows.

  There were about ten of them, a mixed crowd. Men, women, old and young. They reminded me a bit of our ragtag family, Rolladin’s crew at the beginning, when we were fending for ourselves, feeding on nothing but hope and canned goods scoured from the surface.

  I should have picked up on the warning signs. The smell of old garbage and rotting meat. The fading torchlight painting the thinnest coat of dried blood around their mouths. I should have seen, I should have known, but I was electrified with hope.

  “Hello.” I took the offensive. “Thank God I’ve found you. I’m looking for someone. Someone who was on the 1 line when the city was first hit.”

  No one answered me. They started to circle us, a crowd of vultures, taking their time.

  I told them about Tom. I described him. I told them the story of the E-train summit, how Tom and I were ships passing in the constant night of this damned city.

  Finally one of the larger men, my age, told me that they didn’t know any Tom.

  “We’d heard about the summit,” he said. “But we’re not out for more politics and pleasantries. This is war, you know.”

  I asked if he might have any idea
where I could find my husband. That it was important. That my kids’ lives depended on it. I begged him.

  “He could be with the crazies, the ones who think this is all part of some master plan,” he said. “Sending missionaries into the tunnels like fucking end-of-the-world Jehovahs. Suppose they think God’s going to put a bubble around them when the bombs start dropping again.” Then the man smiled. “Or, of course, this Tom could be dead.”

  Then he walked even closer to me, so close that I couldn’t see anything but his magenta lips, couldn’t feel anything but his arms gripping around me. Then he whispered words to the others that have kept me up every night since, words I think I hear outside my door, on the roof, behind every corner: “Take the kids.”

  I begged. Moans and blubbers and desperate cries. Me for them.

  I can still feel their hands on me. I can still see Sky and Phee’s eyes as they watch me—

  They grabbed me and start ripping my clothes off. The women were cheering:

  Your babies will feed us for a week. After we fuck you senseless we’ll eat these things for a week—

  Phee and Sky could see everything.

  The women were holding them, measuring them, as if they were weighing them.

  I found the gun. Somehow I broke out of the cage of limbs and tongues and found that small pistol in my pocket.

  The bullet shocked, and everything stopped for a second. I’d managed to hit the leader, and as he fell over, I rolled away, then aimed and fired at the women in the corner. Then I grabbed my children and ran.

  They followed, I heard them, I still hear them on my tracks. I just kept firing. One, two, three bullets behind us, Sky weighing my arm down. Me carrying both babies like two tons of bricks. Adrenaline gave me the strength of an army. Adrenaline saved our lives.

  I took the next set of stairs. I reloaded. I fired. I ran until my back was breaking, until my feet were scabbed and sore, until Sky and Phee stopped crying. I holed up in an abandoned apartment building, and I have truly never crawled out.