by D. Gideon
“I’d be more confident with a rifle, but yeah. Dad made sure I knew how to use a handgun,” I said. “Only child, remember? I got to do all the stuff a son would normally do.”
Marco shook his head, but I couldn’t tell if he was acting for the benefit of the people inside the store, or reacting to what I’d said. The girl’s screams had turned rhythmic, and my stomached lurched. If she wasn’t being raped, she was doing a damn good job of faking it. Maybe it wasn’t a trap; maybe she had been given these clothes to wear by her captors, who had somehow taken them from Corey and Mel.
Marco must have been thinking along the same lines. “It’s possible Corey and Mel gave that girl those clothes because she had nothing.”
I turned the idea over in my mind and shook my head. “No. Mel would’ve given her jeans or a full skirt, not just a scarf to cover her butt. Either way, we have to find out.”
“Ripley,” Marco said, looking me in the eye. “I know you killed that man last night, but you were panicked. You had no choice. Are you ready to shoot that woman? Could you do that if you had to?”
I just looked at him, not having words for everything that had gone through my head the night before. I didn’t even have words for how I felt right now, for how different the world felt to me. What he saw in my expression must have convinced him, because after a moment, he blew out a deep breath and nodded.
Chapter 25
Wednesday, September 5th
Mardela Springs, Maryland
I moved along the store’s porch, inching up to the window. As soon as we’d come across the highway and moved into the parking lot, the girl’s screams had gotten more muffled. Marco had suggested they’d moved further back into the building, something they couldn’t do if they were actively assaulting her. I hoped he was right.
I bobbed my head in front of the window, scanning quickly for movement. Seeing nothing, I pressed my hands against the glass to block the glare and took a good look inside. I couldn’t see any people at all. Most of the store looked untouched, but there were some shelves near the cash register whose contents had been swept onto the floor. I looked back over my shoulder and shook my head at Marco.
He was crouched in the shade of a little building with a sales counter attached; the kind of small produce stand you’d see at the edge of a farmer’s property with a little jar labeled “Pay On The Honor System”. He was supposed to try to look like he didn’t know what he was doing, just a regular joe trying to sneak up on someone, but to me he still looked dangerous.
Crossing the porch, I crouched down as much as I could in front of the door’s picture window—no need to give someone an easy shot with a bat when I came in—and gently pushed the door open.
Tingling bells hanging above the door announced my entry, and I grimaced.
The girl’s screaming stopped.
So much for trying to be quiet in case they hadn’t been watching.
I scanned around; there was no one waiting to knock me in the head with anything. Letting the door swing shut behind me, I stepped further in, skirting around a display of handmade quilts and country decor, and started my acting role.
“Hello?” I tried to put as much nervousness as I could into my voice. “I heard someone calling for help…is everything okay?”
“Back here! Come quick-” the girl started, but it was cut off. Her voice came from the back of the store. I moved around a small grouping of rocking chairs made to look like a comfortable sitting room and nearly tripped over a runner. The huge store was full of country-style furniture, all set up just as they’d be in someone’s house. There were no straight lines of passage anywhere; running away would be nearly impossible.
“Are you hurt?” I called out, maneuvering my way past a broad kitchen table complete with place settings. There were head-high dividing walls at the back of the store. I could see into the one at the end a bit; a heavy dresser of dark wood sat with a pretty lamp and a glass bowl of colorful marbles arranged on crocheted doilies. Bedroom displays, it looked like, and I had no idea which one she was in, nor where the owner of the thick arm was. There was no sign of either Corey, Mel, or their belongings.
I made it to the big wall sectioning off the bedroom displays and stopped at a corner, hoping that if someone stuck a gun out of one of the doorways, I’d be able to duck out of the way.
If they’re hiding, force them to come out, Marco had told me. To ambush someone you need the element of surprise, and the longer it takes, the less chance you have of succeeding. Make them think that something’s gone wrong. Make them show you where they are.
“I’m coming,” I called, and keeping an eye on the doorways, lifted a decorative wooden sign off of its nail in the wall and sent it spinning across the store like a Frisbee. It knocked into one of the rocking chairs with a loud crack and set it rocking wildly.
“Crap,” I said, and pulled another little sign off of the wall. Without looking, I sent it spinning off towards the front of the store. The resulting crash was impressive. It must have taken out a lamp.
“Oh! Dangit!” I stage-whispered.
“What the hell is she doing?” a woman whispered. Had I still been at the front of the store, I wouldn’t have heard it.
“Like I’d know?” the woman who had been screaming answered, just as softly. “Look and see.”
“No,” the first woman answered, and there was the soft sound of cloth shifting against the wall. I realized with a start that she was directly on the other side of the divider, inches from my hand. “I have to stand here so I can hit her. Yell for her again.”
That was it, then. It was a trap and they were planning to hurt me. I pulled the pistol from under my shirt and stepped back from the wall.
“Are you there? Help!” the bait woman called. Then, in a low mutter, “You clumsy bitch.”
I flipped the safety off as I raised the pistol, chest-high, and braced myself.
Chapter 26
Wednesday, September 5th
Mardela Springs, Maryland
I fired two shots into the wall and jumped to the side. The woman started screaming again, but there was no return fire. My ears were ringing, but underneath of it I could hear a weird clattering and thumps against the wall. I aimed for the doorway and waited, trying not to notice how the sights on the pistol were steady.
Monster, a little voice whispered in my head. You just shot someone and you’re not even shaking.
There were more thumps, and marbles rolled out of the doorway, rattling across the wooden floor.
Something moved in my peripheral vision and I spun towards it, leading with the muzzle. Marco’s eyes flew wide and he dropped out of sight behind a table. The shooting had been his cue to storm in. I swung back to the bedroom display’s doorway and took a breath.
“You’re clear!” I yelled, hearing my own voice as if it was underwater. Seconds later, Marco’s gun moved even with mine and he motioned for me to relax. I let my arms drop and blew out a breath. He pointed to himself and then to the door. I nodded.
He crept along the wall, gun raised, and then turned into the room in a rush and scanned it. The woman yelped, then went quiet. His face hardened, and he glanced over at me.
“What is it? Are they there?” I asked, and knew I was talking too loud. He shook his head and motioned for me to come see.
I stepped around the doorway, careful of the marbles on the floor, and blinked. It had been a beautiful, cozy little room setup with a four-poster bed covered by a handmade quilt. A wreath made of preserved autumn leaves hung over the headboard. Idyllic paintings of country roads in the fall hung around the room’s mock walls. And on the floor at the foot of the bed, holding up bloody hands, was the woman we’d seen on the porch.
She was covered in splattered blood and gore. The walls were dappled with it. Little chunks of…something…lay on the bed in a mist of red droplets. There was a clean spot in the middle; it must have been where she was sitting when her cohort’s exit wounds sp
rayed the room. A large red streak went down the wall I’d shot through. Sitting slumped at the bottom was a very large woman in a red outfit, two holes in her shirt the size of fifty-cent pieces. Heart shots, it looked like. I’d judged her position on the wall pretty well. Laying on the floor next to her was Marco’s tee-ball bat.
I realized that what was on the bed and covering the trembling woman in front of us was what was left of the dead woman’s heart. I took a breath to speak, and the smell hit me. The taste of the smell hit me.
I spun and slipped on the marbles, heaving bile as my hands and knees hit the floor.
“Where are they?” Marco said, his voice cold and calm compared to her frantic noises. “Where are the people you stole those clothes from?”
“I—I don’t know-”
“Did you kill them? Are they dead?”
“No, no. We didn’t kill nobody, I swear. We just…we just scared ‘em a little, that’s all.”
I wiped spittle from my mouth with the back of my hand and blinked at the small bit of liquid on the floor.
I’m not drinking enough water, I thought, and nearly laughed at how disconnected everything seemed. Maybe it was Franklin’s pain pill screwing with me.
“Where’s the rest of their things?” Marco pressed.
“It’s in the next room over. It’s all there. You gotta understand…they just let us off the bus with nothin’,” she whined. “We needed it.”
“You said us. Is there anyone else here with you?” Marco asked.
“No, it’s just me and Shelly. Everyone else went into town, see? We was tryin’ to get ahead of ‘em,” she said.
I pushed myself up, put the pistol into my waistband, and went into the next room display. Wrappers from homemade candy sticks and empty bags of Amish beef jerky were piled in the corner. Mixed in with the pile was the packaging from our Datrex emergency ration bricks; they’d eaten all that was left of them. Three days of food for two people, and they’d eaten it all. Empty plastic bottles of apple juice and iced tea lined the dresser.
There were the bags; Corey’s, Mel’s, and mine. Corey’s was on the floor with the top open and a few clothes hanging out. A pair of his jeans were in a pile on the floor as if they’d been tried on and discarded. Mel’s bag was dumped out halfway at the head of the bed. What had been in my pack was in a pile at the lower end of the bed with my clothes falling onto the floor, and spread out at the edge was one of my I.C.O.E. booklets. Marco kept questioning the woman, but it was just background noise. My booklet, laying there as if someone had been going through it, had captured my undivided attention. I stepped over to the bed and picked it up. It was open to the two-page spread showing a map of Snow Hill with all of its little notations and boxes.
Melanie had taken my booklet, and Corey had his own. Dropping it back onto the bed, I grabbed Mel’s pack and finished dumping it. No booklet. This one could have been the one she had, then. Turning to Corey’s pack, I started pulling things out and dropping them on the floor. Relief flooded me when I found his booklet flat on the bottom.
No one else has a copy, then, I thought. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that having one of these fall into the wrong hands could be disastrous for my family. The route marked out on the map led straight to my house.
I turned to go back and saw a splash of red peeking out from the floor on the other side of the bed. Stepping over the pile of my clothes, I picked up a pair of red pants just like the ones the dead woman was wearing. Huge black letters were printed down the left leg: SCDC. I dropped the pants and picked up the shirt, turning it over.
Across the shoulders in big black letters: PRISONER.
Beneath that, smaller, on two lines: Somerset County Detention Center.
Worcester County and Somerset County were side-by-side, both being as far South on the Eastern Shore that you could go before crossing into Virginia. Snow Hill was in the very center of Worcester County, and even the furthest spot in Somerset was no more than a 45-minute drive from the town. If there had been a prison break, Snow Hill could be in trouble. It was bad enough that we had our own Federal prison right at the edge of town; we didn’t need criminals from nearby prisons flooding in.
Did the power outage help them break out somehow? If it did, could that happen at the Federal prison too?
I went back to Marco and interrupted him, holding the shirt up.
“They’re prisoners,” I said. “Broke out somehow.” I tossed the shirt at Bait, as I’d started thinking of her, and she clutched it to her, covering her lower parts.
“They let us out,” she said quickly. “Drove us out on the prison bus and made us get off just this side of Salisbury. Said it was Governor’s orders.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“I swear! We was the second cell block to be let go. They took one after breakfast and then took us after lunch yesterday,” she said. “Driver said there’d be another group coming behind us after dinner, so if we had any enemies we’d best get moving.”
“So you attacked the first people you saw,” Marco said, and Bait shook her head.
“No, no, it wasn’t like that. We just kept walking, looking for a car and some clothes. We found this place. People kept walkin’ by but they didn’t have nothing but the clothes on their back, either. Them black folks was the first ones we saw that looked like they might have something we could use.”
She looked back to me, eyes wide and earnest. “You get it, right? Ain’t nobody gonna help a woman in a prison outfit. They didn’t give us nothin’. We needed that stuff. We didn’t hurt nobody. Just took their bags.”
“And then once you got clothes to wear, it still wasn’t enough. You were gonna lure us in here and take our stuff, too,” I said, pointing at the bat.
I saw anger flash across Bait’s face, and she looked down.
“Yeah,” I said. “Taking it because you needed it turned into taking it just because you could.”
“Like I’m gonna wear that shit in there?” she snapped. “Fuckin’ skirts? Khakis? What do I look like, a Norm? And didn’t none of it fit Shelly. Even the guy’s pants was way too tight.”
“How long ago?” Marco asked.
Bait’s expression was part glare and part confusion. “How long ago what?”
“How long ago did you attack them and take their things?” he said.
Bait shrugged. “How the hell would I know? I ain’t got a watch. It was light out. They looked like they were gonna hunker down in that produce stand out there. We jumped ‘em and hid until they woke up and rode off. Like I said, we didn’t hurt ‘em.”
“Rode off?” I said, cocking my head. “In a car?”
“You think if they had a car I’d still be here? They was on bikes,” she said.
Marco and I shared a glance.
“Why didn’t you take the bikes and leave?” I asked. “Too much work, compared to sitting here and baiting people inside?”
She opened her mouth to respond, then snapped it shut and glared at me.
I shook my head in disgust. “I just want you to know something, lady. Those two people were my best friends.” Her glare turned to eyes wide with alarm. “Because of you, they’re out there now with nothing. No food, no tools, no weapons. All because you thought you needed it more than they did, and took it. And you thought you’d just keep taking. Keep leaving people helpless behind you.”
I pulled the pistol from my waistband and Bait scrambled backwards, slipping on the marbles. I pulled the slide back a little and checked that there was a round in the chamber. Suddenly Bait had no attitude, no anger; just fear. She shook her head, claiming she was sorry, asking me not to do this.
“But that’s where you’re wrong,” I said, raising my voice over her frantic begging.
I put two rounds into her chest.
I watched her squirm until she lay still.
“Ripley?” Marco asked, but I turned and pushed past him.
Never again, I thought.
&nbs
p; Chapter 27
Wednesday, September 5th
Newark, Maryland
Sheriff Kane checked his fuel gauge and frowned. He’d need to fill up this afternoon, but he had no idea how much gas was left in the County’s fuel depot. The staff member that kept records of that hadn’t been seen since Monday. He’d need to go out there and check it manually; maybe even change the pin codes on the pumps. Just another thing to put on his growing To Do list. There were too many people that worked for the County or the Sheriff’s department that had county-issued fuel cards, and many of those had gone missing. He wondered if he’d find that they’d taken generators and used the County’s supply to fuel their sudden out-of-town trips. He hoped not. The plan he was hatching was going to require a good amount of fuel.
He’d been at the County offices first thing this morning to confront the Mayor, but Kenny had never showed up. Simon had swung by the Mayor’s house, and Frank’s house, but they’d already left for Annapolis. Maybe they’d left last night, spurred by the crowd chasing them. If that was really where they were going; at this point, Simon figured he couldn’t believe a word out of either Kenny’s or Cindy’s mouths.
He maneuvered his patrol car slowly around an abandoned vehicle. The owners hadn’t bothered to pull onto the shoulder, trying to squeeze out every last inch of forward motion that they could. A week ago, he’d have used the push bar on the front of his car to clear the roadway. Today he didn’t want to waste the gas or the time. He hadn’t seen another moving vehicle on the road, anyway. He had seen a few clusters of people walking; he hoped the roadblocks he’d had the deputies and volunteers set up would keep more stragglers from making it into Snow Hill. The town was already stressed to the breaking point. Last night had proven that.
He turned onto a well-worn country lane that looked more like a fun run for four-wheelers than a driveway. A good distance from the road, he followed a curve through a windbreak of thick scrub brush, gum trees, and oaks, and caught sight of Farmer John hooking up a trailer to his truck. John waved him over as he got out of the car and the two shook hands.