by Lee Hayton
Annie
With the specter of a cold night on the way, Annie stuffed the fireplace grate with kindling and newspaper. When she first woke from her broken sleep, the electricity still worked. She and Becca had wiped the kitchen floor using water boiled in the jug, a job Annie wished she hadn’t postponed overnight.
An hour later, nothing turned on.
Annie had nervously checked the main power board, coated with dust and webs. All the switches were on, and no fuses were blown. The cause wasn’t local.
The wood stacked inside would last them through the night. Outside, a pile of felled logs and branches was awaiting an ax to transform it into fuel.
If they stayed, by tomorrow they should get to work on that as a priority. Not only for heat but the need to cook made the fire essential. The cupboards were full of food, but the bulk of it was dried. Without the ability to heat water and render oats into porridge and cook rice, they’d soon go hungry.
She struck a match, and the flame greedily ate the newspapers. Bright sparking embers cascaded up the fibrous edges of the kindling. After a second’s hesitation, the flame pounced on the richer fuel.
The squatting position by the fire triggered painful twinges from Annie’s spine. She’d twisted her back helping Robert clean out the house. The urge to remedy the aches with Tylenol was tempting but outweighed by the need to ration. If they didn’t think of these things now, later could be full of bad surprises.
When Annie had first walked inside, Becca explained how they’d helped Blain. Pride in their achievement tangled with the guilt she’d left them to do it alone.
A log went onto the fire next. After pushing down the burning kindling with its weight, Annie thought she might have moved too quickly. Then the fire spurted, ran along the separating bark, and resumed its bright dance.
Annie walked to the window and stared outside. Water still ran from the taps, but if it stopped, she could see a well near the corner of the barn.
She vaguely recalled if you tip water into the toilet manually, you could get it to flush. Of septic tanks and capacities, she neither knew nor wanted to learn. With three women in the house, Annie felt sure they could vote in concert to designate that as a man’s job.
If they stayed.
Movement in the corner of the field caught her eye. Not the horse—he happily grazed in the paddock on the other side of the windbreak. Something closer to the house, near the edge of the tree line.
Becca had set herself up as nursemaid next to Blain’s bed. With the man sleeping, it seemed harmless enough. Frankie was out with Robert, tracking the full extent of the property and its features. Her Remington had gone with them.
Wind shook through the trees, sending the fresh spring leaves flapping. Maybe that was the motion she’d seen.
Or an animal? Her foot had managed to find a few old rabbit burrows on the trip between the house and the barn. Fresh rabbit could be another reason for staying if they could work out how to trap them.
She sighed and turned back toward the fire before catching another rush of motion from the corner of her eye. Heartbeat rising, Annie pushed open the door and ran out toward the field.
“Who’s there?” Her first attempt was snapped up by the wind and swallowed whole. Straining her vocal cords, Annie yelled louder. “Who’s out there?”
A blur of movement whizzed beside her, and Annie turned to see a woman running for the barn. Next minute, a thump on her back sent her sprawling forward on the ground. A human weight piled on top of her. The air was driven out of her lungs.
Annie struggled and tried to turn over. Unsuccessful, she punched backward. Her fist connected, but without leverage, the blow did no harm.
Bucking and arching her back, Annie tried to roll over. This time she unbalanced the person on her back. Feeling the shift of weight, Annie followed it through, pushing farther to land upside down on top of her attacker.
For a moment, her arms waved like the legs of an overturned turtle, unable to connect with anything. Then she twisted enough to dig her shoulder into the person on the ground.
Putting one hand down for balance, Annie drove forward, pushing her shoulder further into her attacker. A rain of blows against the side of her head indicated her success.
Then the first woman returned and snatched up a handful of Annie’s hair. Annie placed her palm flat over the face of the woman on the ground and twisted her own head down, ignorant of pain. She moved a knee up to pinion her supine victim, then threw a roundhouse punch with all the force she could muster.
A crunch of skin and cartilage resounded, and Annie howled in triumph, though pain traveled up her arms as the skin on her knuckles split. She switched knees and kicked out with her leg.
The standing woman staggered backward, and Annie got to one foot, using the other to kick the woman’s ankles, hooking them out from under her. As the woman fell, Annie backed away, eyes darting from one to the other, looking for the next point of attack.
“Please, stop.” The breathless voice emanated from the first woman who had struck her. She propped herself up on one elbow and held her palms toward Annie. “I’m sorry I attacked you.”
The other woman cradled her face in her hands, a spill of blood running over her fingers and onto the ground. Hyped on adrenaline, Annie crouched in a boxer’s stance, every nerve in her body still on high alert.
“Who are you?”
“We’re from Redchester,” the woman said. “We tried to get into the city the day before yesterday. Some men took us hostage. Look.”
She extended her arms out toward Annie. Purple bruises colored her wrists, a line of raw redness marking rope burns. “They were holding us a few farms over. We were able to escape and came here to hide.”
“Gray Harrison’s our vet,” the second woman said. At Annie’s raised eyebrows, she explained. “This is his farm.”
Annie nodded. “In that case, we came here with his son. Blain.”
“Blain’s alive?”
Annie’s head whipped back to the first woman. Her tone was too high. Shocked. “He’s inside. Why?”
The woman ignored Annie and shook her head at her friend, jerked her shoulder.
Annie moved between them. “Why shouldn’t Blain be alive?” she asked, looking from one to the other.
Woman One answered. “Gray told us a week ago his son was off work sick. With a migraine.”
Annie screwed up her nose and shook her head. “So?” She shrugged.
“The shooters.” The woman squinted at Annie.
Annie let out a puff of air and raised her voice. “What about the shooters?”
The woman leaned back to exchange a glance across Annie’s body. A shrug from one, a nod from the other. “We need to get inside,” Woman One said. “They’ll be looking for us. We need to get out of sight.”
Woman Two got to her feet and extended a hand. Long, tapering fingers above widespread knuckles. Piano player hands. “My name’s Elle. This is Raewyn. We’ll tell you everything we know, but we need to get inside.”
Becca was in the bedroom with Blain. These women thought Blain should be dead.
“Okay.” Annie led them inside. Walking, jogging, running.
Frankie
For some time, Frankie sat in shock. Hands bound, her eyes still teared up and flashed from the contrast as the hood was removed to expose light seconds before she was plunged into the darkness of the cellar.
In the dimness, her mind kept rebroadcasting the moment Robert had fallen. The blood blooming on his blue shirt. The way his face slackened into a death mask.
Her knees rested on an old dirt floor. The sweet smell of fresh sawdust was at odds with the faint aura of despair. All the women around her were silent except for the quiet pulse of someone sobbing.
“Can someone tell me where we are?” Frankie spoke in a whisper, but the effect was loud. Four women hushed her while another started to rock to and fro, babbling in a foreign language. Or maybe in tongues.
Staccato footsteps clipped overhead. Frankie waited for the sound to fade away, then tried again.
“Has anyone tried to get out?”
No one answered.
In the dim light provided by gaps in the flooring, Frankie could count fourteen women. Fifteen if she included herself. She didn’t want to do that.
The footsteps clipped across the floor again.
When they had forced her down here, Frankie had been in too much turmoil to keep track of what her senses told her. A missed opportunity, maybe. Hopefully not the only one she’d have.
The sack over her head, wrists tied behind her. Since she had no means to protect herself, they’d tossed Frankie into the back of the truck and driven away.
Powerless. So helpless that the gang hadn’t bothered to search Frankie.
If they had, they would have found the scissors she’d used to cut Blain’s jeans in her right-side cargo pocket. In her left, they would have found the gun.
Annie
“I don’t know where some of the other women came from,” Elle said. She was standing at the window overlooking the back fields, a corner of the lace sash pulled forward for a clearer view. “I know Tash was from Weaton, but that’s all. We didn’t get much chance to talk.”
Elle looked over to Raewyn, standing at a window overlooking the front of the property. She nodded.
Annie sat on the edge of the sofa, midway between them. Her ear was tuned for any sound emanating from Blain’s room. She’d popped her head in earlier—after the three of them had piled through the door and slammed it closed—Becca seemed content. Blain was asleep. When she’d turned to exit, Elle had been standing right behind her.
“And they were holding you at Redchester?” Annie looked one way then the other.
“We’re part of the commune there. The gang arrived and took it over.” Raewyn left her post to pick up a cup of water from the table. Moisture beaded and ran down the side. After taking two sips, she put it down and walked back to the window.
She’d told Annie they’d been locked up with no food or water for two days. Thirsty, she was also sensible enough to be cautious, pacing her sips in case her stomach rebelled.
“They were armed up to the teeth,” Elle continued. “Women—not just from the commune—strung in a row, hands tied together. They chucked us down in the cellar and closed the hatch.”
Annie clasped her hands together, resting them lightly on her knees. “Did they hurt you?” she asked, frowning down at the floorboards in front of her.
“Yes.” Raewyn spoke the word firmly, her meaning clear. No follow-up questions accepted.
“Where did you run into Blain?” Elle asked. She moved from her window to drink then returned to sentry duty. The similarity in their movements began to freak Annie out a tiny bit. “Did you know him before?”
Annie shook her head. “Some nutbag in the city was trying to set him on fire. We rescued him.” She looked up in time to see Elle and Raewyn exchanging a glance. Elle’s eyebrows rose, and Raewyn nodded.
Annie’s pulse increased, and she rubbed her palms against her shorts to dry them before intertwining her fingers again. “Why? What do you know?”
Elle gave a shrug. “Not much. Most of the stuff that came through in the morning sounded like rumors or wild speculation.”
“Came through? On the news?”
Raewyn shook her head. “We don’t have television. On the radio, mainly. Quite a few of our group are—were—from overseas. We listen to the Internet radio from a lot of different places.”
Elle took over. “Talkback had calls coming in from all over. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters. All going crazy and grabbing up guns. Mass shootings were reported in from overseas for an hour before the first US one hit.”
Annie nodded; what she’d seen on the TV seemed much the same. “What does that have to do with migraines?”
“We don’t know for sure.” Elle dropped the curtain back into place and walked to the sofa, perching next to Annie. “The Talkback callers kept saying their loved ones had been sick. For days. Some for as long as a week. Terrible headaches that incapacitated them.”
“Gray has been telling us for the past week about his son. He tried him at his work, and he was off sick. They said he’d been sick for over a week with a migraine.”
Annie looked from one to the other, her pulse slowing back to normal. “Didn’t he talk to Blain himself?”
Elle shrugged. “Last time we spoke, no. Said he’d tried but couldn’t get through.”
“He was arranging to drive up and visit him.”
The city would have been an hour’s drive, maybe less. In normal conditions, anyway. Annie frowned. “If he was concerned, wouldn’t he just go?”
Raewyn turned back to the window, her back straightening. “He’s on call for this community, and his arthritis is crippling,” she explained. “Driving that distance and taking that time is a problem for Gray.”
Elle added, “Especially considering he and Blain didn’t get along.”
Annie shrugged and shook her head. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. Blain isn’t one of the infected.” She thought of Lisa, holding her head as though it were about to explode. “Blain is fine.” Apart from the multiple gunshot wounds. “Mentally,” she added.
“That’s good,” Elle said firmly. “Gray must be ecstatic.”
Annie rubbed at her eyebrow, twisting her head from side to side until her neck popped. “Gray’s dead. They were both dead when we came here.” She bit at a hangnail on the side of her thumb.
Elle held a hand to her mouth, and Annie felt a weary surprise that something could still shock her.
“Not murdered.” She hugged her shaky arms tight across her chest. “They killed themselves.”
A moment’s silence. Elle wiped a tear away with the back of her hand.
“We need to get out of here,” Raewyn said, leaving the window to move and stand in front of Annie. “They’ll check this place out. We found it easy enough—they will too.”
“Go on, then,” Annie said. “We’re staying. Blain’s in no condition to move.”
Raewyn and Elle exchanged a glance. “Perhaps you could consider leaving him here,” Elle said.
Annie thought. In less than a second, she shook her head. “You’ll have to go on your own.” She shrugged. “We can’t all fit in the same car, anyway.”
Elle moved to stand beside Raewyn. “If you’re staying, you don’t need a car.”
Her voice drilled into Annie’s head. Not enough sleep. Too much happening. “We need to be able to get supplies,” she said, standing as well in a three-way face-off. “We need transport.”
“You don’t understand. There're at least half a dozen men.” Elle started ticking off her fingers. “They’re bigger, they’re stronger, they’re armed. What do you have? A teenage girl and a sick man?”
“And Robert. And Frankie.” She didn’t bother to tell them Frankie was also a teenage girl. “We also have weapons.”
Annie thought of the gun case she’d seen in the barn. After a day more of the occupants’ decomposition, she now wished she’d insisted on bringing the weapons inside.
Inside, Annie yearned for them to have passed by and run to the next farm. She didn’t want Elle and Raewyn’s portent of doom. “I can drive you to the nearest town and leave you there,” she offered. “But you’re not getting the car.”
Elle gave a tight nod. “Fine.”
She walked toward the door, Raewyn following. Annie walked through to Blain’s room, catching Becca listening by the door. “I won’t be long.”
Becca caught her hand and pulled her close. “Where is the gun? I don’t want to stay here unprotected.”
With all the talk of gangs and abuse, Annie couldn’t blame her. But she couldn’t help. “Robert took the gun out with him. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”
Becca managed a tight smile and nodded. When she put her hands back on Blain’s coverlet
, Annie could see her nervous trembling. But Becca didn’t complain. Even at her age, she knew the score.
The women waited on the front porch. Backs flat against the wall, they hid in the shadows of the verandah eaves. Annie didn’t bother to acknowledge them. Just walked to the car and got in, waiting for them to clamber in behind her.
When the car started, Annie saw the gas tank was down to a quarter full. She needed to reconnoiter the barn and see what supplies it held. A gas supply must be hidden somewhere.
Rather than head down the driveway, Annie drove into the back yard and exited through a smaller side road. From the drive in, she remembered that it fed into the adjacent road a few hundred yards along from the main entrance. It was a bumpy ride, but a line of trees down the last paddock would shelter them long enough to skedaddle if someone were coming.
As they neared the main road, Annie using all her concentration to remember the route back to the last town, Elle leaned forward. Elle’s hand clutched the seat back near Annie’s head, and she jerked away from the near contact. “It’s not too late to change your mind. Come with us, be safe.”
“Don’t bother,” Raewyn said. “We can’t force her.”
Elle snorted as she sat back. “She doesn’t need to worry about me forcing her.”
The jibe hit home, and Annie felt her stomach turn over. Not so much for herself, but Becca and Frankie wouldn’t survive that level of degeneracy on top of everything else.
As if sensing her words were getting through, Elle leaned across to her again. “In two days, this gang managed to form their own harem of hostage women. If they’ve already got a basement full of captives, what do you think they’ll be capable of in a week, a month?”
A basement full of captives. The words propelled Annie’s stomach into a headlong roll.
“How many of you were there?” Annie whispered, not wanting to hear.
Elle leaned forward, clutching at Annie’s headrest again. “Twenty of us total, including the boy.”
“What the fuck is that?” Raewyn said, her voice shrill.