by D. Gideon
“Those aren’t kids,” Corey said, peering over the steering wheel. “What are they doing? They’re not carrying anything-”
A whoomp blew the rest of Petsmart’s windows out, and orange flames blossomed inside the store. The group on the sidewalk cheered wildly.
I cursed and slammed my fist on the dash. If we’d been here just ten minutes sooner…
“Get up there,” I said, stuffing the towel onto the dash and dropping the ICOE booklet onto the floorboard. “Maybe the fire’s not by the fish tanks. I can run in and-”
“I don’t freaking think so,” Corey said. He turned the wheel and hit the gas. “We’ll find them somewhere else. There’s still Cambridge and Salisbury to go through. Hell, the med center’s probably got tons of antibiotics at home.”
“But it’s right there,” I said, gesturing behind us.
“You haven’t even seen yourself, Ripley!” Corey yelled, startling me. He pulled the truck through an intersection, making the engine cough again. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, and what’s not covered in blood is purple! I am not letting you go running into some burning building to get pills that they’ve probably got at home!”
I stared at him in silence for a minute, fuming, then leaned out of the window and turned the big side mirror to face me.
“Holy shit,” I said. It was as bad as he said; it was hard to even recognize myself. My face was a bloody map where the pellets had torn across my skin. There were two long gouges over my eye, one about mid-way up on my forehead and one skimming the top of my eyebrow. There were two more across my cheek bone, and another along my jaw line. I had been damn lucky one hadn’t hit my eye. Everything was bruised from the impact. The hair on the right side of my head was a blood-soaked mat pressed flat against my head. I pinched a section and tried to lift it; the whole mass lifted up. It was stuck together. What had started as a few dribbles of blood on my shoulder had turned into the shirt being mostly red from my shoulder down to my breast.
I pushed the mirror back out to where I thought it had been and pulled the towel down, covering my face back up.
“I look as bad as I feel,” I admitted. Corey gave me a side glance and his jaw tensed.
“I’m heading for that gas station we always stop at. It’s on the edge of town, so maybe those firebugs haven’t gotten to it yet,” he said.
“Sure,” I said, nodding. I noticed the way his hands were clenched on the steering wheel, the way he was glaring at the windshield. He wasn’t just angry. He was scared shitless.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize I looked so scary. I’m okay, Corey. Really. I’m not gonna die.” I held out a hand and he took it, squeezing hard. He glanced at me again, looked forward, and blew out a breath.
“You’re the only sister I’ve got,” he said. “You’re not allowed to die.”
I almost smiled at that. Almost. If the day kept going like it had been, we might put that to the test.
From your lips to God’s ears, I thought.
Chapter 11
Tuesday, September 4th
Easton, Maryland
Mel dropped the wet towel back into the bucket and huffed.
“It’s not coming out, Rip. I think even if we had shampoo it still wouldn’t come out.”
I was sitting in a strip of gravel that ran around what was left of a Royal Farms store. The arsonists hadn’t gotten here—yet, anyway—but the store had been raided and sat empty. It looked like someone had taken bats to the gas pumps. The plastic facing on them was busted out, and the metal parts of the pumps were full of dents. A car full of teenagers had pulled in just as we’d gotten settled on the grass with my first-aid kit open and ready. I’m not sure if it was me covered in blood or Marco’s new shotgun that convinced them we weren’t worth messing with, but they’d taken a good look at us and high-tailed it out of the parking lot. Maybe it had been King, staring at them like he was looking at his next meal. Either way, I was glad they’d left us alone.
In this position, the silcock was just above my head, perfect for letting the open spigot pour water onto my matted hair. My blood-soaked shirt lay in the grass past my feet. Corey squatted in front of me, shaking a small handful of pellets in his big palm. My bra was stained red too, and had been starting to get stiff by the time we peeled my shirt off. We’d filled the bucket halfway with water and used the towel to get the blood off of my skin. The water in the bucket was a lovely rose pink now, and the holes in my shoulder were bleeding again. There was no use bandaging them when we were still pouring water over my head. We’d tried wiping the blood out of my hair with the towel, we’d tried running water over it and gently scrubbing it, but it wasn’t working. The hair on that side of my head was almost like sticky plastic now.
“We need to cut the matted part out, and shave around the wounds,” Marco said from above me.
“Lovely,” I growled. I knew the Band-Aids wouldn’t stick without the hair being shaved, but I’d been purposely avoiding thinking about that. Marco had been the one to get the pellets out of my shoulder, squeezing with a quick, sure, efficiency that said he’d done this before. I was still pissed at him, but ten seconds of Mel’s shaking, unsure fingers pushing a pellet around under my skin was torture enough to let him take over. He’d gotten them all out in less than two minutes, even with pauses in between to let me catch my breath.
Corey pulled a small pair of scissors from the first-aid kit and handed them to Mel. She took them, and looked at me with one eyebrow raised.
“Promise you won’t kill me?” she said.
“Do it,” I said, sighing. “It’ll grow back.”
“Get it as close to the skin as you can,” Marco said. “Then I’ll shave it the rest of the way.”
“I can shave a damn head,” Mel said, and I heard the scissors start snipping. “I’ve done it to myself plenty of times.”
“Have you ever shaved around an open wound?” Marco asked, crossing his arms. Next to him, King huffed and laid down, putting his head on his paws.
“I have, on dogs,” I said, lifting a hand. They ignored me.
“Fine, you shave it, but you shave where I tell you to,” Mel said. She tossed a chunk of matted hair at Corey’s feet.
Corey snorted. “She’s been shot and you’re worried about how she’ll look?”
“Just because it’s the end of the freaking world doesn’t mean she can’t look hot,” Mel said. She tossed out another chunk of hair, this one about two feet long. It was nasty.
It took her a few minutes to cut all of the mats out of my hair and then trim what was left down close to the skin. Marco squatted next to me, and when I nodded, he started pushing the pellets out. They hurt worse than the ones from my shoulder did, and by the time he was done, I was feeling faint. I think there had been four up there; I had lost count when the entire side of my head had felt like it was on fire.
Marco unfolded one of the Victorinox Swiss army knives he’d gotten and held it up, then paused.
“Try to relax, love. You’re shaking. I need you to be still,” he said.
“Stop calling me that,” I said, not looking up at him. I stared down at my hands, watching them tremble. The diamond ring on my left hand glittered and sparkled with the movement, and all I wanted to do right now was throw it as far as I could. It didn’t matter that our “engagement” wasn’t real. It didn’t matter that he didn’t give it to me. I just wanted it gone. I wanted this whole thing, everything that had happened today, to go away.
There must have been some silent communication that went on above me, because there was a shuffling of feet and then Corey’s big hands wrapped around the left side of my head and my jaw. I saw Mel’s boots move closer.
“Start at the bottom and work your way up,” she said. “But don’t go past here. I want a line curving right along here, like this.”
“I’m gonna end up looking like Furiosa from Mad Max,” I grumbled, barely able to speak past Corey’s hold on my jaw.
“Honey, when we’re done with you, you’re gonna look fucking fierce,” Mel said. “Hell, I might shave mine to match.”
“Oreo…Bobbsey…Twins.” I squeezed the words out past my gritted teeth. Mel snickered, and Marco started shaving.
There’s something really unsettling about being held down while someone takes a razor-sharp knife to your skull. I tried to ignore it, tried to think of something fun and distracting. It didn’t work. My thoughts kept circling around to the heinous things that had happened today.
Like someone just flipped a switch, Corey had said. He was right. Barring the idiots who had chased us down thinking we might have pot they could steal on the night we’d left campus, we hadn’t had people actively being aggressive towards us until mid-morning. Even the people in Target last night had mostly ignored us; we’d only had a problem when we got in their way.
Something was different. Maybe something had happened to make people realize how long this was going to last. That didn’t explain the aggression, though…the anger. Whatever had happened, it had them burning down stores on purpose, when the number of stores available to loot had already been reduced by fires from the CME overloading the power lines. They were burning up limited resources. It didn’t make sense for desperate, hungry people to do that.
It’s more like they’re rioting, I thought. But people didn’t riot out of desperation; they didn’t attack targets of opportunity like a lone black man or an isolated woman out of desperation.
They did those things out of rage.
So what set them off?
Maybe the Governor had made another announcement, and we’d missed it. I discarded that thought. The officers at the bridge would have told us. There wasn’t anything else I could think of.
“How much further until we get there?” Mel said, jerking me out of my thoughts.
“Not quite seventy miles,” Corey said. “We could get there in about two hours, if the truck keeps running.”
“What do you mean, if?” she asked.
“If I don’t get that fuel filter cleaned out some, I don’t think the truck’s going to make it much further,” Corey said.
“We should have thought to look for a small generator at the building supply,” Marco said. “We could have rigged up a pump and pulled some fuel out of the tanks here.” While he talked, the blade kept moving. Scrape, scrape, scrape.
“Yeah, well, we were a little distracted there,” Mel said.
“We could go back,” Marco suggested.
“No,” I ground out. Corey still had a vice grip on my head.
“That’s almost five miles back,” Corey said. “If we make it back there and the truck dies, that’s five miles we’ll have to walk; and through that mess we just drove through. I don’t think it’s worth it on the possibility they’ll have one.”
“You mean that truck’s only got five more miles in it?” Mel said, her voice a little high.
“I honestly don’t know. Haven’t you heard it choking out and trying to stall whenever we slow down?” Corey said. “We’ve done about sixty miles on that cut fuel…we should actually be grateful we’ve made it this far.”
“I’ve gotten everything around the wounds,” Marco said. “Melanie, if you could take over, we could look at the truck.”
“You do that,” she said. “And while you’re at it, look around for a car we can steal.”
I growled, and she snorted. “Fine. A car we can borrow,” she said.
“You good for me to let go, Rip?” Corey asked. I held up my hands. Most of the trembling had gone away. He let go of my head.
“Cool. As soon as she’s done we’ll rinse you off and get some Band-Aids on you, okay?" he asked. He took one of my hands for a second, and when he pulled away I was holding the pellets they’d squeezed out of me.
“I’ve got a few more of those if you want ‘em,” Mel said, pulling up the rest of my hair and twisting it into a long, wet rope. “They’re the ones from your head. Here, hold this.”
I took the length of hair and felt her start scraping again. “Keep them. Souvenirs,” I said.
“Hey look, everyone…here’s the bullets that were inside my best friend’s head,” she joked. “That’s warped, girl. Even for you.”
“They’re not bullets. It’s just lead shot,” I said. I saw Marco and Corey pushing up the hood of the truck and closed my eyes. I was exhausted. I didn’t even want to think about the truck not being able to get us home.
“Whatever,” Mel said. “If it comes out of a gun, that makes it a bullet in my book.”
“I’ve got to get you more familiar with guns. I guess you’re gonna need it.”
“Only if it’s rifles and shit,” Mel said. “I can shoot pretty good with a handgun.”
I raised my eyebrows in surprise and winced. That would probably make the cuts on my forehead start bleeding again. “How do you know how to use a handgun?”
“I wasn’t always the pampered daughter of a Congresswoman,” Mel said. “I’ve done a lot of time on the streets. Still did, even after Mom got elected. But before that, we were hand-to-mouth, baby.”
“You learned to shoot on the streets?” I asked. “You? Melanie Rhodes?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Dated a couple of gangbangers to piss off Mom. Plus there was this overbearing old fart in a suit that dragged me out to the shooting range every few weeks.”
“Perkins,” I guessed, remembering the Secret Service agent that had “detained” us at the University while pretending to look for Mel.
“Mmhmm. He said every young lady should know how to defend herself,” she said, and I could hear her smiling. “Thought he was gonna bust a vein the first time I picked up that gun and put four holes in the target.”
“Why would he be mad? That’s less he has to teach you,” I said.
Mel snickered and demonstrated with the knife. “Because I was holding it sideways, like this.”
We both chuckled, and she handed the knife to me.
“Brace yourself. Gonna rinse you off.”
The water was cold compared to the heat of the day. Mel rubbed me gently, getting off the little bits of hair and new blood. It stung, but it sure felt better than when the pellets had been under my skin.
“Be right back,” she said. She jogged to the truck and returned a minute later with a couple of shirts.
“This one’s to dry off with,” she tossed one at me and laid the other down next to the first-aid kit. “And that one’s for when I get you covered in Band-Aids. You can change your pants out yourself.”
“You mean I finally get to cover up?” I said. “I was beginning to like my new style. Bloody Bras In Public.”
She waved me over onto the dry grass and I obliged, laying down on my left side to make it easier for her. King crawled over and stretched out beside me with a big sigh, pushing his back right up against mine. I didn’t know how he could stand it out here in the warm sun, being as coal black as he was. He seemed perfectly content, though.
Mel started dabbing antibiotic ointment on all the holes, and I was asleep before the first Band-Aid went on.
Chapter 12
Tuesday, September 4th
Snow Hill, Maryland
Sheriff Simon Kane stood near the back corner of an open stage where he could hop down quickly if he needed to. He knew the townspeople of Snow Hill wouldn’t like the news they were about to receive. Being told their power was going to be out for another five to six weeks when the food in their refrigerators had already spoiled wouldn’t go over well. He looked down at Miss Dotty, crouching a bit with one shoulder under the edge of the stage, and wished he’d been more insistent on her going home.
At the front of the stage, Mayor Kenny Wilhelm introduced the District Regional Manager for Dominion Power, and the crowd went silent. Sharon Stapleton walked forward, her face grim. Simon tensed. The Mayor should ha
ve given the crowd more time to be calm before hitting them with the bad news.
Idiot should have taken the time to find out what the news was himself, Simon thought. Too busy trying to be the hero and secure his re-election.
“Excuse me, Mayor, but I realize there are a lot of hungry people out here tonight, so if I could have just a minute?” Father Bill stepped forward, right in front of Ms. Stapleton, causing her to draw up short.
Not very smooth, Father, but it’ll work, Simon thought. Normally Father Bill would never have done something so rude, even by accident. He did know how to work a crowd, though, and must have come to the same conclusion Simon had. Ms. Stapleton stepped back, and Cindy Stalls, the Lieutenant Mayor, pulled her to the side.
“Where’s the National Guard?” someone in the crowd shouted. “Where’s the food and water trucks?”
“Yeah, shouldn’t they be helping?” another voice called out. Others joined in.
“Ladies and gentlemen, to our knowledge there hasn’t been a State of Emergency declared yet,” Father Bill said, raising his voice. “Until there is and those trucks do come, the church will be serving dinners. Every night at six. We’re right on the corner of Washington and Market, and you don’t have to be a member of the congregation to attend. If you’re hungry, come in and we’ll feed you.”
“One meal a day? That’s it? That’s all we get?” a woman called out. “My kids need to eat more than that!”
“The prisoners down the street get three hots a day!” a gruff voice shouted. The crowd murmured in agreement.
Not lately, they don’t, Simon thought. The emergency generators at the Federal prison that he’d been roped into overseeing did power the walk-in refrigerators, but those had gone empty already. The prisoners had been getting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast and lunch ever since.