Innocence Ends

by Robinson, Nikolas P.

  The stresses and strains of impending middle age, of schedules and deadlines, have been shed temporarily and he feels like a kid again. He, like most adults, had forgotten how free and comfortable life was when he was younger. As a child, everything had seemed so important and permanent, but there was so much freedom and so few demands compared to life in the real world. It was a part of his life he could never truly get back, but this vacation with his friends was feeling pretty close to providing just that.

  Being surrounded by his best friends is making Kateb happier and more content than he’s been in a long time.

  So lost in reverie and the cloudy haze produced by the alcohol, he only marginally takes notice of the couple standing in the alcove almost directly across from him. With his limited attention being mostly focused internally, he suspects they are doing the same thing he is and that they’re simply trying to stay relatively dry. He pays it no more mind.

  Had he been less distracted, he might have noticed the way they don’t stop staring at him for even a second. Across the distance and through the rain, he might even be able to pick out the twisted expressions on their two faces, an almost familiar combination of fear and contempt. Like Miles, he would probably chalk that up to latent racism and an overall lack of familiarity with non-whites as a whole. Certain things had gotten better over the years, but being associated with Islam hadn’t made life particularly easy since the towers fell and the war that never ends had kicked off all those years back.

  If he did notice them, he would have written them off as harmless, small-town bigots, but he didn’t even notice them enough to reach that conclusion.

  Kateb does pay some mind to the drunk woman staggering and stumbling his direction along the sidewalk to his right. He is almost finished with the cigarette and is preparing to go back inside to the warmth and camaraderie. She has clearly had more to drink than he has, which says a bit, he thinks to himself as she gets closer.

  The single-minded focus of her gaze makes him suspect that she’s heading his way to ask him for a cigarette. It’s familiar bar territory and he’s happy to share in most cases, this occasion being no different.

  He taps out a new cigarette from the pack and extends it toward the woman as she comes within only a few feet of him. With his left hand, he begins fishing around in his pocket for the lighter he knows is there.

  He is looking down at his jacket, in search of the elusive lighter and doesn’t see the vacant, hungry look in her eyes or the blood that hasn’t fully been rinsed away from her lips and teeth by the rain.

  Kateb doesn’t know he’s being attacked until it happens. The woman’s claw-like hands take hold of his outstretched arm, pulling him roughly toward her and crushing his mostly finished cigarette between their bodies. In the time it takes for him to wonder what’s happening her teeth have already torn through his jacket and gouged their way into the flesh of his right arm.

  The broken cigarette falls from his hand to the sidewalk and he simultaneously jerks away his injured arm and shoves with his left hand pressed hard against the woman’s forehead.

  Her jaws remain locked in place and a mouthful of flesh, muscle, and fabric go with her as he violently drives her away. She falls to the sidewalk without even trying to catch herself, still chewing vigorously as she raises herself from the ground, her lunatic eyes still focused on Kateb.

  The pain that flares through his nerves at the location of the bite is worse than anything he’s felt before. He stumbles away from the woman picking herself up from the awning-covered sidewalk, hardly willing to accept that he just hit her or that he was forced into that action by the sheer animalistic manner with which she had assaulted him. She didn’t even seem human, he tells himself; hoping to relieve some of the guilt over what he’s just done, desperately wishing to reconcile the facts within him, to rationalize and perhaps justify what happened. He has no way of knowing how badly he might have injured her, nor how much of the blood on the ground might be hers and how much is his own.

  The wound needs to be disinfected, his mind is clear enough to recognize the importance of that no matter how shocked and confused he is, there’s no telling just what sort of bacteria might have been colonizing in the mad woman’s saliva. From where she hit the ground, now in a seated position, she begins to pull herself up the rest of the way, her movements jerking and peculiar enough to maintain his attention even while he bleeds profusely from his wound.

  Confused and in pain, he presses his hand against the wound, applying as much pressure as he can manage. He turns and stumbles his way to the door hoping to get back into what he thinks of as the safety of the bar interior, wanting to put some distance and obstacles between himself and the crazy woman who’d just bit him.

  He clumsily forces his way through the door of the bar, back inside to where his friends are still chatting away, shouldering into it with his good arm. It takes a moment for his friends to notice that something is wrong, but almost as one they register the blood and his unsteady movements.

  He has no idea that the deranged woman has managed to follow him inside until the looks of shock in his friends’ eyes turn to horror and by the time he registers the change, it’s far too late.

  He feels the weight of her dragging him backward, fingers hooked like claws and tugging at him.

  Her mouth meets his throat and the teeth force their way through the resistance of his skin after only a moment. He struggles to push her away with all of the force he can manage and when she finally draws away, she takes a mouthful of flesh and muscle with her, sinew snapping as it’s yanked past the breaking point. In some place at the back of Kateb’s mind, he hears the tearing as it happens and knows that the damage is horrible.

  The next thing he’s aware of is Miles leaping forward with his thick pint glass in the process of being swung. For a moment he worries that Miles is planning to attack him too.

  Miles connects with all of his force and the glass hits the woman in the left temple hard enough to whip her head back but the glass doesn’t break. He can’t tell, but he almost suspects that her neck may have.

  As Kateb slips to the floor, Miles attempting to help him down gently, all around is chaos and screaming. His friends rush to where Miles and Kateb are on the floor while everyone else in the bar simply stares without any perceptible reaction.

  18

  Darkness.

  All is black, followed seconds later by the unpromising orange light cast by the backup system.

  The grid had finally taken enough abuse and a transformer was down.

  The emergency services building is quiet enough that all Deputy Weber can hear is the rain and sporadic thunder.

  He’d sent his solitary prisoner home earlier in the day. The man had calmed down finally and he’d seemed confused and may not have been feeling well. He figured it was better to have sent the guy home than keep him locked up overnight.

  If power is out here, he figures, it’s out all over town. Some of the homes and businesses had generators installed, but judging by the severity of the storm they are likely to be out of fuel by the time the power can be restored. That leaves only the intermittent lights throughout the downtown area and the medical clinic as still being in the same semi-powered state as the emergency services building, drawing power from the backup system that had never gotten established with the whole town. It had been in the works for years, there had always been talk of getting the backup lines upgraded to handle the larger draw and replacing the vulnerable lines that followed the road into town, but funding never seemed to be there. Things were going to be interesting, for sure.

  This is precisely the sort of scenario that leads to panic if it isn’t addressed quickly. No escape with no relief on the horizon, no phones or connections to the outside world, and now there is no power. He figures it’s going to be up to him to smooth things out.

  Thank goodness for a full tank of gas and plenty of reserves, he was going to be doing a great deal of driving
over the next however many days, delivering fuel where needed to keep generators running and helping people if homes began to flood. Besides, he knows, sometimes it takes no more than the presence of an authority figure to diffuse tension in situations like these.

  “There’ll be no rest for me now,” he mutters to himself, chuckling as he gears up to head back out into the torrent.

  The cruiser SUV and its flashing lights will be a beacon, he figures. The sort of thing people will be looking to for stability in stressful moments.

  He’s the closest there is to someone being in charge.

  19

  Kateb has hardly stopped breathing before the lights go out.

  The bar has an old gas generator but it isn’t quick to start and in those seconds an eternity seems to pass and the darkness lends itself to the confusion and panic the friends are experiencing.

  The only light slips through the windows from the small number of streetlights connected to an emergency power backup. In an area with routine blizzards throughout the winter, those sorts of preparations had saved countless lives in the years since they were added.

  Right now those lights illuminate the panic and terror in the eyes of Kateb’s friends, and the tears freely streaming from Miles’ eyes as he watches his closest friend leave him behind.

  The handful of patrons who had watched the attack with passive indifference slowly make their way outside, casually ignoring the horror.

  The waitress who had seemed to be giving them a bit of a cold shoulder the whole evening glares at them where they are huddled around Kateb for the next minute before lunging at them, frenzied.

  Mariah is the closest to the waitress, her back turned to the assault but Miles catches the movement from the corner of his eye and reacts before anyone else even has time to process what’s happening.

  From where he’d been squatting on the floor he drops to a knee and his size-15 boot on the free foot connects with the waitress where her abdomen meets her chest. There is an audible crack that can be heard over the thump of the contact itself.

  The woman flies back and the middle of her spine hits a nearby table with enough force to send it sliding another foot in the direction the woman was traveling when she made impact.

  She slumps to the floor, unconscious and quite possibly injured enough to be dying.

  Miles doesn’t care one way or another. He takes a moment to think about what he’s just done and realizes he feels nothing at all.

  There is only fury and despair, no room for anything else at the moment.

  He looks back down to where Kateb lays on the floor right in front of him, bleeding out on the floor of a dive bar in the middle of some nowhere town.

  The two of them had been through experiences that most people couldn’t imagine, in places that they often joked would make Hell seem favorable. They had been as close as two people could ever hope to be, as close as Miles could imagine being with anyone.

  “God damn!” Hewitt finally says, the first actual words spoken by any of their group since Kateb had stumbled through the door.

  “Thank you,” Mariah says, only realizing the danger she’d been in after Miles had taken care of it.

  Abraham glances out the window and can make out people standing out there, shuffling around in the rain, their furtive movements visible to him in the light cast by the streetlights. From where he’s positioned, they appear to be expectantly watching the front of the bar.

  He’s sure that they can’t see inside, through the limited light available and the gaps in the advertisements on the windows are few and far between. The way they are congregating and talking to each other, heedless of the rain and fixated on the door of the bar begins to make him exceptionally uncomfortable.

  Something is going on that he doesn’t understand, that he’s sure none of them do.

  Ben sits petrified in the chair where he remained through everything that happened and his father is grateful to know that he was on the opposite side of the group from where the waitress had attacked them.

  “We need to start thinking about getting the hell out of here,” Abraham says, gesturing outside.

  The others look up at him and their eyes follow the way he’s pointing.

  A chill travels down Hewitt’s spine as he watches the strangers waiting for them outside. That’s precisely what they’re doing, he knows it without any question, waiting for them to step outside. What comes next, he has no idea, but he doesn’t relish the thought of discovering their intentions.

  While the group peers through the windows another couple of locals shows up, making a total of seven people standing around out there and the odds are things just going to get worse.

  The evening that had started so relaxed and jovial is steadily transforming into a nightmare.

  It takes them a few more seconds to notice that the tires are flat on Gale’s van, which is parked right there next to the curb. They all seem to notice this fact at the same time and they all assume that the same will be true for Abraham’s truck, which is parked just a little bit further down the block.

  Zombie attacks, hostile small-town waitresses, all following a storm that knocked out transportation, communication, and now the majority of the power.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Hewitt asks out loud, directed less at his friends than at the universe itself.

  “Miles,” Gale says calmly, “we need to leave Kateb here and get away from this place quickly.”

  Miles shakes his head, tears in his eyes, not disagreeing with his friend’s suggestion but unable to imagine leaving him there on that floor.

  “It’s ok,” Mariah says as she gently touches his shoulder. “He would want you to get out of here too. You know he would.”

  Hewitt glances out the window. No one has come any closer to the bar. “We’re heading back to your place, Gale. And then we are finding some way out of this fucked up little town.”

  There are no new arrivals outdoors, but each of them knows that this won’t remain the case.

  The friends all find their way to their feet, Abraham nudging Ben to stand as well.

  As they approach the door Gale turns, “We should probably split up and spread them out a bit.”

  “As much as I hate that you just went there,” Hewitt replies, “I have to agree.”

  They quickly pair off with one another; Mariah and Gale together, Abraham and Ben sticking with one another, leaving Miles and Hewitt to go their own way. They inhale deeply, trying to calm their nerves before they open the door and bolt.

  None of the strangers immediately take off after Mariah and Gale, a couple begins racing after Abraham and Ben, but the five of the remaining number follow Miles and Hewitt.

  “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?” Miles shouts back over his shoulder, managing to joke and he sprints off into the dark space between the intermittent street lamps.

  Hewitt’s too focused on his speed and avoiding tripping over anything to laugh, but he appreciates the humor just the same.

  Risking a quick look back, Hewitt feels his amusement immediately fade and his stomach churn. Two of the five pursuers are noticeably closer and gaining ground quickly. An old joke comes to mind and he thinks, Miles doesn’t need to run faster than the townsfolk, he just needs to run faster than me.

  “We’re going to need to split up too, I think,” Hewitt spits out breathlessly after weighing the odds.

  Miles grunts in affirmation as he takes a quick look behind them as well.

  “At the corner,” he says.

  The two of them pick up their speed, sprinting as fast as they can, and as they reach the corner they each turn down the cross street in opposite directions. The townsfolk split off to follow them after a brief moment conferring amongst themselves, three of them continuing to chase Miles and the other two resuming their pursuit of Hewitt.

  Both of them hope the delay while the locals decided what to do will be enough to give them a chance, but neither of them
is optimistic.

  20

  Terror is the only reasonable response to what is happening. Terror is what Miles is experiencing now, overshadowing even the devastating sense of loss.

  Even his experiences on the battlefield are insufficient to insulate Miles from the sheer horror he feels as he races down the darkened streets, dodging from one pool of shadow to the next. Combat never came as a surprise when he was deployed to one hell hole or another, as much as he and his brothers and sisters might try to relax and occasionally let loose, they always knew where they were and that hostile territory could, at any time, present hostile situations. This was something else entirely, being attacked and hunted in some small American town felt like something his grandfather or great-grandfather would have dealt with, but nothing he should have been prepared for.

  If this is something racially motivated, it is far and above anything he had ever prepared himself for.

  He’s lost the men who were following him after he and Hewitt separated, but they can’t be too far behind. Dodging into an empty yard and cutting through to a dark alley seemed like a good idea when he’d done it but he now begins to question the wisdom of avoiding his immediate threat by opening himself up to far more unknowns.

  A noise ahead of him sets his nerves on edge and he slips further off the center of the alley and into what appears to be an empty backyard.

  The lack of light penetrating through the windows is fucking meaningless, the only operational electricity seeming to be dedicated to the occasional street lamp. Something seems off about that, he muses, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. The back door is locked and he doesn’t want to risk drawing any attention to himself by breaking the glass or attempting to bust the door down. Through the window, he sees nothing, no signs of movement, but he can’t make out much detail and doesn’t trust that he’s seeing everything he might need to see.