by Lee Hayton
“I’m Robert, and this is Becca and Frankie. We need to shelter for a bit. It’s madness out there. Do you have any weapons in the house?” The man turned and must have clocked her shocked expression because he lowered his own weapon. “This is empty. You’ll need something to protect yourself with. A handgun or something.”
Annie opened her mouth to talk, but it had dried so much she had to take a second to work through the gum with her tongue. She tried again. “There was a gun in the car. My husband took it.”
“Is he coming back?”
She fought back the tears that wanted to well forth.
“He took the car and drove off. Started shooting at people down the road. He’s got my son with him, but Greg didn’t seem to care.” Annie put her hands up to her face, pressing on her burning hot cheeks. “I don’t understand what’s happening. We just went shopping, like usual. Greg’s on the late shift at work today.”
Gunfire exploded in the small room, and Annie screamed and ducked behind the couch, crowding the teenage girls.
“It’s not here,” Robert said.
When her brain functioned well enough to register meaning, Annie poked her head up over the back of the couch. He nodded at the TV.
On the screen, the blond newsreader slumped forward over her desk. The display behind her was dark, the monitor shattered. After a moment, it flickered into life again, then vomited a shower of sparks before dying again into blackness.
Another burst of bullets left the camera staring uselessly into the tangle of wires that formed the sound stage ceiling. A minute later, and the entire screen danced into snow. Harsh crackles replaced the ambient noise of a dead studio.
Annie grabbed the remote from the sofa arm and clicked through the channels. Snowy static displayed on half of the presets. Where CNN should have been broadcasting, a message saying “Stand By” filled up the screen.
Robert left the window to join her, taking the remote from her hand. He flicked through the channels and found one broadcasting a list: a headache, fever, confusion, anger.
“If anyone you know is displaying any of these symptoms,” the voiceover said, “take them to an emergency department immediately. If you can’t reach a hospital, then secure the patient with ropes or bindings so they can’t get free.”
“I repeat, this is an emergency message broadcast by the World Health Organization. There is an outbreak of a neurological virus—”
The screen blanked out into the hiss of static.
Ropes and bindings? That’s not health information!
As Robert walked back to the window, Annie flicked through the channels again. This time, none of them were broadcasting.
“Get down!” he shouted. Annie turned and saw Robert wince as though in pain. He leaned forward for a moment, face almost pressed to the glass, hair tangling with the lace curtain, then stepped back. “It’s okay. There was another one, but a car hit him at the corner.”
Annie sank to her knees on the floor behind the couch. She saw Mikey’s face. Hands reaching for her. One second quicker and she’d have had the door open. “What’s going on?”
“Have you been out there today?” Frankie spoke this time, sitting up from her protective huddle, head tilted to one side. She stared at Annie from red-rimmed eyes, her face flat with shock.
“Greg and I went shopping this morning.”
“And did things look normal to you?” Becca spoke this time, her features crawling with empathy.
“Everything looked fine. We got home. I started to put the groceries away.” Her throat closed, and she took a moment. Swallowed hard. Coughed into her hand. “Greg suddenly sped off in the car with Mikey—he’s my son—in the back seat.”
She closed her eyes. The room felt too bright, the sun too hot. It wasn’t even fully spring yet. Imagine what it would be like in the height of summer.
“There was a close call at the corner, him and another car. Greg—my husband—started to shoot at the other man. Mikey was screaming in the back seat. I tried to reach him . . .” Annie’s voice cut off, her throat closed. She tried to clear it a few times then didn’t bother. There was nothing left to say.
“My dad stayed home sick from work today.” Annie turned to Becca and saw tears dripping down her face. “He’s had a headache off and on for the past week, just keeps getting worse and worse. He snapped at me, so I left for school early. When we dropped by there . . .”
Like Annie, she trailed off. Her eyes focused on something only she could see. Frankie picked up her story. “We chose Becca’s house because it’s closest. Her mom was lying out front, on the lawn. Shot dead.”
Frankie stroked Becca’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Her dad is gone. There’s blood everywhere. On Twitter, people are tweeting bad things happening from all over the place. Worldwide.”
Annie pressed her fingers to her bra, searching for her mobile, then remembered she’d left it in the car. She felt like she should be drawing some conclusions, saying something hopeful. Instead, her mind seemed to be emptying of anything remotely useful. “I’m Annie,” she managed after a minute’s pause.
The talk died. Tears continued to roll down Becca’s cheeks, and Annie felt her heart breaking. The poor girl. Her mom was dead. She reached out an arm and gave the girl a lopsided hug.
It didn’t make anything better.
“We need to get out of here,” Robert said abruptly. “There’s still family some of us need to check on. After that, we need to get out of the city. We should head somewhere rural, low population. If it’s a virus like they’re saying, then the fewer people, the better.”
“I can’t go anywhere,” Annie said. “I need to stay here and wait for my husband and son to come home.”
The pity on Robert’s face made Annie choke with anger. How dare he? Mikey had just been here. He’d just been right here alive and well.
“We have a floor safe,” she said, picking up the trail from an earlier question. “It should have my handgun stored in it. I’ll check.”
Annie’s voice was clipped, but she didn’t care. She escaped from the room, unleashing a buzz of conversation behind her.
What rude people. Barge into her house and look at her as though she’d lost her family already. They should be sparing their sympathy for Becca. She was the one with a dead mother and a sick father.
A headache that just seemed to get worse and worse. Wasn’t that what Becca said about her father? So similar to Greg.
But then, a spring cold seemed to be making the rounds. Mikey’s favorite teacher at preschool was off sick yesterday. Annie had been deciding whether to let Mikey talk her into keeping him home today because of it. Poor boy didn’t enjoy things when only the female teachers were there. Only just turned three and already such a flirt.
The checkout operator at the supermarket had been feeling off color. She’d stopped swiping their groceries twice to hold a shaking hand to her forehead. Annie had dismissed it as a hangover and just hoped she didn’t throw up on their food.
And the supervisor had been different, too. A young man, barely out of his teens.
Well, so what? Despite Greg’s protestations about man-flu, no one ever died of a spring cold.
In the bedroom, Annie opened Greg’s bedside cabinet drawer. The keys to the safe were on the SUV keyring, but he kept a spare. She fished them out from beneath a suspiciously crumpled tissue atop a mountain of loose change.
He needed to go in and top up Mikey’s mechanical piggy bank again. The accumulated pennies, nickels, and dimes provided their son with a wealth—literally—of entertainment.
Greg’s work ID and pass were in the drawer as well. Annie picked up the plastic tag and looked at the photo of her husband, taken four years ago. His hair stood up in spikes, and a shy smile curled the corners of his mouth. He didn’t look old enough to work for the government in any capacity.
Annie slipped the lanyard over her neck and dropped the ID down the front of her blouse to keep him
close. The office would know where his vehicle was. If they could get there, Annie could track down her husband and son.
Moving to the wardrobe, Annie knelt on the floor and pushed aside Greg’s shoe collection to pull up the carpet base. The small Remington handgun was in the safe—the “lady gun” as Greg put it. There was also a box of ammunition sitting next to it, but there was a gap where the spare magazine for the Glock in the glove compartment should have been.
Annie rocked back on her heels, frowning. Yes, they kept the gun loaded in the glove compartment. As a concealed-carry weapon, they could, and Greg had argued her to the toss about the uselessness of it otherwise. But they didn’t carry it in the car to start a war.
When had Greg moved the spare magazine, loaded with ammo? Had he known what he was going to do today? Known, and not told her or let her take Mikey to a place of safety beforehand?
She slammed the door back into place. The Remington was unloaded—if an intruder gave them time to unlock the floor safe they had time to load it.
Annie clicked seven bullets into the magazine and slotted it into place, unlocking the safety to move the first round into the chamber then sliding it back into the locked position. Annie loaded up the spare magazine and slipped it into her jeans pocket.
If they wanted her along for the ride, as well as her gun, then Annie would do it on one condition: a visit to her husband’s workplace to try to track the car, to save Mikey—that was her best bet.
She’d already waited half a day for her husband and son to return under their own steam. It was about time she acted and got them back herself.
“I’m coming for you, hun,” she whispered then walked out to rejoin the others.
Blain
Blain coughed himself awake. The moon shone down from the sky above him, full and round. Beautiful. The concrete under his back was cold.
His head lay tilted down into the gutter, while his legs lay on bark, his right foot poking between the metal hind legs of a sculpted horse. A playground of animals stood frozen in mid-cavort. Their limbs polished to a high shine by the children who’d clambered over them, reflected the brilliant blue sheen of light. They now looked as magnificent as the wild creatures they were modeled on.
The parking lot lay still and soundless as Blain’s ears heard the echoing memory of gunfire. His eyes saw the bright flash from long-discarded muzzles, the crimson spill of blood in the sunlight. Memories cascaded through his head—random images, scents, movements, and sounds—like a shower of confetti thrown at a wedding: colorful but meaningless.
This morning his headache felt as though it would literally kill him. He’d dragged himself here to the mall for painkillers and suffered through a gunfight—or a series of them.
Now, as his blood leaked from a dozen open wounds, Blain felt marvelous, each cell in his body celebrating life. Despite the pull and strain of wounds, he was closer to being pain-free than he’d been in days. A week, even.
He coughed again, the sound a rough bark in the still of the night. No traffic. No people. If Blain hadn’t been able to see the surrounding parking lot, the blank-eyed windows of the strip mall, he’d think he was back in the countryside. Someplace where dogs retired to run free. But he could see the highway behind him. See the tangle of shops laid out before him. The place should be crowded with noise. Not empty.
The burning in his right side delved deeper, and Blain groaned. He rolled to his left-hand side to try to ease the burden. Instead, a wound there ignited in sympathy, turning him back.
Where was the ambulance?
He was hurt. Badly. Maybe fatally. Shouldn’t someone be attending to him? The sense of well-being dropped away to be replaced with petulance.
Don’t I deserve medical attention just as much as the next guy?
Although his conscience screamed no, his empty soul agreed with the concept. There should be men in white coats and nurses in funny hats making sure he got all better.
Blain coughed again, this time unable to stop. Even when the motion tore at the fabric of his lungs, he continued, bent into convulsions with each paroxysmal breath.
When he thought he’d pass out from the effort, he felt something cough out into his mouth and spat it into his hand. A tiny pellet, squashed in its passage through his body, lay in his palm. The metal casing reflected the moonlight where it wasn’t matted with dark clots of his blood.
One bullet out.
Breathing more easily, Blain dragged himself from the play area and propped himself against the tire of a parked vehicle. The parking lot was still half full. The drivers had dropped where the gunfire had caught them or were still sheltering inside, afraid to exit. He thought of the chained pharmacy. The empty shops. Something had been happening long before he’d arrived here.
He ran his hands across his chest, fingertips seeking out wounds. There was one near his collarbone—he presumed it was the culprit for the one bullet already expelled. A graze ran along his side, under his arm. From when he’d raised it to fire the gun.
No, no. Don’t think about that.
Although sore to the touch, it was no longer bleeding, and the bullet had scraped him rather than lodged inside. His fingers found another point of entry near his hip, a wound to the front and back. The bullet had passed through him and away.
That wound still wept a sludge of blood. Blain’s shirt was wet through around the burned hole that marked the spot. His jacket soaked up even more, growing tacky as the blood started to dry.
Another graze marked his left thigh, this one biting deeper but finding only a reservoir of fat to burrow its way through.
His right leg was the issue, a point of entry opened in the center with no corresponding exit. The bullet was still lodged deep inside. Blood flowed freely from the hole, even though Blain must’ve received the injury hours before.
The little girl did it.
A memory flashed up, overwhelming Blain’s vision. A girl, probably aged less than six by her height. He’d already been on the ground, having taken fire.
She’d run toward him, and he’d used the last of his ammo taking out the redneck who had lined her up in his sights from the flatbed of his pickup truck. Feeling good, feeling noble, Blain had opened his arms to give her something to run into.
She'd shot him in the leg and dodged away.
That was the last thing he recalled—the fading afternoon light and his fading consciousness.
He shivered even inside his thick jacket. Some of it was because the coat was soaked through and more because it was soaked through with his blood. Blain’s nerves were deadened in that same numb way he got after participating in a blood drive. Things seemed farther away than they were. The pain wasn’t absent but just didn’t matter as much.
When his hands burrowed into his coat pockets, they were rewarded with a cell phone. The screen was cracked, the casing matted with his blood. When he pushed the button at the bottom, though, it still lit up. Emergency calls only. No bars.
Blain dialed 9-1-1 and waited while a recorded voice told him to call back later.
Later? What, when I’m dead?
There was almost no battery left. Blain couldn’t remember the last time he’d charged it. The last time he’d done anything normal.
Digging his elbows into the concrete, Blain maneuvered backward by inches. Gradually pulling near to a vehicle parked at angles to the painted lines, he stretched up to pull at the back door handle of the car.
It was locked. Of course. Even on this strange day, who’d leave their car door open in a busy mall parking lot? Blain propped his back against the door while he surveyed his immediate area.
A Colt pistol lay on the ground within reach. Not his—Blain didn’t know where it had come from. He leaned forward to hook the grip with his fingertips and pulled it close. The butt of the gun looked weighty enough to do the job he intended.
Sheltering his eyes with his arm, Blain hefted the gun back over his shoulder, aiming at the window. The gun
struck the window and bounced back, sending a ricochet of pain down his arm. He was at the wrong angle, with no leverage.
He twisted his body into a kneeling position then stopped and panted for a few minutes. The effort sapped his energy, and Blain rested his forehead against the side panel of the car.
His lungs were on fire, another coughing fit walking into the wings and waiting its turn. The blood in his mouth tainted his taste buds copper. Even spitting didn’t ease the flavor.
If you don’t do it now, you’ll never get it done.
The night was young; it would grow a lot colder yet. If he couldn’t get inside, get shelter, then he’d spend his last night on earth shivering and shaking until the meager blood his body retained stopped pumping altogether.
Blain pulled his arm back and joined his hands together over the gun, this time swinging with his full body weight. The glass shattered, holding together in a hardened cobweb.
With the threat of cutting glass edges removed, Blain pulled at the web until it broke open enough for him to slot his arm through. The move to stand to unlock the car door required what little strength he had left. When the door opened, he fell onto the back seat, igniting small fires in his wounds, and crawled inside.
The former owners had left a travel blanket.
Blain sent a blessing to whatever family this gift originated from and tucked himself under the itchy shroud. The strong scent of dog tickled his nose. He stretched out his foot to hook the door and pull it closed, ignoring the burn down his side and the faint screams from his damaged toes.
Even with a dozen different open wounds, compared to recent nights, he was practically pain-free.
Within minutes, he fell into a deep sleep. Even when his lungs convulsed in another bout of coughing, he didn’t wake.
Robert
“I’ll go alone,” Robert said. As he moved to the front door, Annie blocked his passage.
“I’m the one who knows the neighbors,” she said. “I’ll go. You stay here with the girls.”
They needed a vehicle. Robert’s own car was a ten-minute walk away under normal circumstances. That was twice the distance they’d crossed between the school and Becca’s home. But that recent trek had taken them an hour and had nearly cost them their lives. If they could grab a vehicle closer to hand, they’d minimize the risk.