by Ryan Schow
Like a bunch of contortionists, we hide in that tree for a good thirty minutes until the explosions finally stop. When we drop down to our hands and knees and army-crawl out, there’s a weighted stillness that hangs in the smoke filled air. Buildings are burning and people are stumbling around in the streets, not sure what to do, where to go. They’re burnt, dazed and sobbing. They’re plopped down on the curbs, talking to themselves, just standing there with that unblinking, thousand yard stare.
There isn’t an ambulance or police responder in sight, but in the air, the uncomfortable hush that’s befallen us is a weighted emptiness that feels beyond eerie. This is what the old battlefields must have felt like after the enemy had retreated and only the dead and the victorious remained.
“How much more of this can the city withstand?” I hear myself ask.
“Forget about the city for a second,” Stanton says, brushing the needles from his hair and shoulder. “How much more of this can we withstand?”
Macy is in shock. She’s wiping dirt and grass off the knees of her white tights. She’s got that look like she’s thinking of Trevor again and it’s starting to twist up her face.
Did Stanton really think this was all over after we left that church? That all we had to do was just walk home, slip into bed and call it a day? Was I thinking that? Hoping for that?
Not me. I’m really not that naïve.
Then again, neither is he.
“We can’t go home in the dark, Stanton,” I tell him. “We’ll freeze before we make it. Or be killed.”
The falling temperatures usher in the cold, and the cool, damp air is pressing the acrid smells of the neighborhood deep into the city. Our noses burn. Our eyes are rimmed red and constantly watering.
“There are cars everywhere,” Macy says.
“I know, honey,” I say.
“It’s not an observation, Mom. It’s a suggestion. We can sleep in one.”
“Great idea,” Stanton says, thrilled (in an irritated sort of way) to finally have some reasonable input.
The three of us scout out cars, trying the doors of those vehicles we’re certain aren’t going anywhere. Most of the cars are abandoned, their doors locked. Then we find a van with the engine running, the passenger window shot out. It’s a Honda Odyssey with tinted back windows and plenty of space for three.
We didn’t see the problem right away because we came up on it from behind. Inside in the driver’s seat, however, is a mother, her body riddled with bullets, her eyes lifeless and open, staring into another world. Outer space, perhaps.
Macy cuts between us, pulls the door open and drags the woman out like she’s an old piece of luggage. Me and Stanton step back, aghast. Maybe it was her lack of respect for the dead that shocked us. Maybe it was just that she was doing what neither of us could. To our absolute horror, she shoves the woman under the van, then stands up, wipes blood from her hands on her skirt and says, “It’s got gas and heat. So I opt we stay here.”
“Why didn’t you just kick her while you were at it?” Stanton asks without a trace of humor.
“Maybe next time,” she replies.
So I guess she’s not so naïve for fifteen after all.
Chapter Seven
We’re able to fall asleep, but not stay asleep. The attacks seem to have stopped, but sleeping in someone’s van isn’t the same thing as sleeping in my bed and my body is officially protesting. We’re all sleeping off and on, adjusting ourselves, readjusting ourselves, and then sitting up and trying not to cry, or scream.
“This is a nightmare,” I whisper to Stanton when we both happen to be awake enough to fidget and groan at the same time. That’s when the engine sputters out.
“Out of gas,” Macy grumbles.
No kidding.
“What time is it?” I ask.
Stanton checks his watch and says, “Three-thirty.”
“It’s gonna get cold,” I tell him.
“I know.”
It didn’t just get cold. It got freezing. By five a.m. we were huddled together, our teeth chattering, trying to gather enough body warmth between us to ward off an impossible chill.
We manage a few more hours of sleep until we’re pulled from our slumber by the far away declarations of buildings exploding and the super close sounds of glass breaking. Groggy, ill-tempered and feeling a hundred years old, I’m ready to bite people’s heads off.
Reign it in, Sin, I tell myself.
Sitting up, I rub my eyes and yawn, feel my sore body opposing even that.
More glass breaking followed by the sounds of laughter. Great. In the distance, the thunk, thunk, thunk of this morning’s bombing gathers steam and I want to cry thinking I can’t take another day of this.
“Sweet Jesus,” Stanton grouses.
That’s when I see them. Four guys who look like gang bangers busting out car windows with shotgun stocks. They’re going through gloveboxes and center consoles, pulling everything out, looking for something useful.
“We have to go,” I say, but it’s too late. There’s already someone popping his head in the window. A fifth man. Maybe the scout.
“Awe…it’s a Motel 6 on wheels,” the guy says with a creepy, suggestive grin.
The gun is on the floor by my waist, but I can’t get to it without being too obvious. At this point I must look like death crusted over and for that I’m grateful. As a woman being confronted by a man with bad intentions, a shotgun in hand and in the middle of doing no good, the first thing to pop into one’s mind is I’m either going to be killed or raped.
He pulls his head back out of the passenger side window, looks up the street and whistles to his friends. It’s a shrill, piercing sound. That’s when I grab the gun and wait for him to stick his stupid head back in the window. It takes all of five seconds.
Pointing the weapon at him I say, “This Motel 6 isn’t for you, so I suggest your move on.”
He looks amused by my stance. Grinning, his expression full of mocking, he holds my eye until he decides I’m serious. The way I can be, how my DNA defines the translation of my emotions onto my face, my fear can look a lot like rage.
“My shotgun is bigger than your Glock,” he says.
“It’s a Sig Sauer, and I’m pretty sure I can put one right between your eyes before you even have that thing pointed in the right direction.”
He puts up a hand, “Alright, alright lady. Jeez.”
Backing up, he takes aim at the car and pumps a round into the side of the van. Pellets blast through sheet metal and upholstery, but fortunately it isn’t where all of us are. He shot the passenger door, then laughed as he joined his friends. If he wanted to think he got one over on us, fine, I can live with that so long as he goes away.
As we’re all sitting there in the van freezing, listening to the far away symphony of destruction taking place in the direction of our home, I’m thinking about that kid. That disgusting thug I’m sure is a gang banger. For a second, I’m not sure if I want to deal with problems on the ground or problems in the sky.
“He shot the car, Mom.”
“Thanks for keeping me up on current events,” I answer in a clipped voice.
“He just shot our car an no one came out to see what had happened,” Macy says. “Don’t you think that’s strange?”
“Everyone’s scared,” Stanton says.
Well, duh.
“Do you hear any sirens?” she asks. Stanton shakes his head, his eyes showing signs of life.
“Is your phone working?” I ask Stanton.
“Yeah.”
“Can you get an internet connection?”
He plays with it for a bit, then says, “No. What about yours?”
“Screen’s cracked. Even if I can get a connection, I won’t be able to see much of what I’m connected to. What about you Macy?”
She’s somewhere else in her head. It’s like some switch just flipped and suddenly she’s gone Helen Keller. You know, deaf and mute. It’s super insens
itive to think like this, but I’m sorry if my PC is lacking. We’re really in it here.
Looking at her, seeing her face devoid of any pure emotion, I can’t even imagine what’s going through her head and heart right now.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke to the sniffling sounds of her crying. I held her in my arms, grateful for her warmth, but more grateful that she was still alive.
“He couldn’t breathe, Mom,” she’d said. “It’s like he was dying, but taking a long time to do it and there wasn’t anything I could do for him.”
“He was lucky to have you there with him when he went,” I told her. I’d felt her nodding in the dark.
“Do you think I should’ve gone for help? Could I have saved him?”
“No, sweetheart, you couldn’t have saved him.”
“I should have tried, though.”
“If you would’ve left him to go get help, he would’ve died alone. But because you stayed, he didn’t have to. You did the right thing.”
She cried herself back to sleep, and so did I.
Where Macy’s pain was derived from loss, mine sprung from fear. You want so badly to protect those you love most, but when you can’t, fear can darken into something worse, squeezing from your heart a flood of tears. I felt like I’d been holding back ever since this thing began, so releasing them—even in some dead woman’s van in the middle of the night—was the thing my body needed most.
Now a new day is upon us, albeit one with a crappy start. My only prayer is that by the end of it we’ll be home, alive and still together.
“Mom,” Macy says, her sad memories shelved for the moment, “I’m hungry.”
I look at Stanton and Stanton looks at me, and then he looks at her and says, “Well, you’d best get used to that feeling because it’s going to be awhile before we eat.”
Chapter Eight
We get an early start. Well, as early of a start as we can after waiting for those creeps to finish breaking into all the cars up Masonic and leave. It’s still cold outside and Macy is in a skirt with dirty white tights and she can’t stop her teeth from chattering.
She’s already wearing Stanton’s suit jacket, but it’s doing her no good from the waist down. Before we leave, she gets out of the van (ignoring Stanton’s orders for her not to), drags the dead lady out from underneath it and starts pulling off her fuchsia colored pants. The lady is as stiff as a board, so it’s not that tough a task.
Stanton looks at me and mouths the words, “What the hell?”
I shake my head in silence.
When she puts them on they’re a bit too long, but not too big around the waist. She rolls the cuffs tight enough to hold, then looks up and smiles.
“Those are hideous looking,” Stanton says.
I won’t lie, they are.
“I’m not exactly making a fashion statement, Dad. You know that saying, ‘Necessity is the mother of bad fashion?’”
“That’s not a saying.”
“Well it is now,” she says with a quick curtsy.
“In marketing, the color fuchsia is rarely ever seen, do you know why?”
“No,” Macy says with a manufactured frown, “but I’m practically bursting at the seams with curiosity.”
“Because it’s the one color that makes people angry.”
“I’ll get rid of them as soon as I can.”
“Well that’s a relief,” he says, performing a return curtsy that gets both of them laughing.
“Can we maybe do this later,” I ask. “Like when it doesn’t sound like World War III a few blocks over? Those things could come back at any moment.”
“UAV’s,” Macy says.
“Drones,” Stanton replies.
“Aerial assassination squads,” I say as we start walking.
“Mom’s is best,” Macy says.
“Yeah,” Stanton agrees. “Aerial assassination squads.”
The drones do come back, but it’s more like they’re passing by, heading to a destination that isn’t us. We hide anyway. We duck into someone’s stoop and we wait. We don’t even care if anyone is home, that’s how untenable this situation is.
From what we can see, most everyone who was out in the open when the drones attacked has either been killed, collateral damaged, or pushed one step closer to crazy town.
So we play it safe.
Extra safe.
“Should we look and see if we can find something to eat in the cars?” I ask, talking low in case the people who own the home are here.
“You must be reading my mind,” Macy says.
This is the third time I’ve heard her stomach growl and it’s so loud it’s practically deafening. Or is that my own stomach? Who can really tell anymore?
We’re all starving.
“Those clowns probably already found all the food,” Stanton tells us.
“Maybe they weren’t hungry,” Macy replies. “Maybe they were looking for guns or drugs or condoms for their underage hookers.”
“Don’t talk like that,” I say.
“It’s true,” Macy says. “Janine says the Mission Street gangs are pimping out twelve year olds to old geezers with blue pills and wads of cash.”
“Stop with the details,” Stanton says, waving his hand like he’s had enough. “Besides, that’s a bunch of crap and you know it.”
“Is it?” she challenges.
“It is,” I say, regretting that I’m even entertaining this conversation. “The real money is in the drugs.”
That’s when the door opens and an old man with a dusty pistol says, “Get off my porch.”
We all look up at once. Stanton says, “We’re sorry. It’s just—”
“I know what it is,” he says, cocking the hammer but not looking terribly scary doing it.
I think about showing him my gun, but Macy says, “My mom has one of those, too, but hers is bigger, nicer.” She says this and then she just stares up at him, smiling.
“What did I tell you about talking to others?” Stanton says.
“Respect my elders.”
“So is that anyway to talk to this nice man? We’re on his porch after all. Technically we’re trespassing.”
“I was just telling him Mom’s gun is bigger and she’s clearly not afraid to use it.”
Shaking his head, Stanton looks up at the man and says, “I’m sorry, sir. We’ll leave.”
“I’m sure it’s safe,” he says, some of the intensity gone from his watery hound dog eyes. “Well, safe enough anyway.”
“Do you have anything to eat?” Macy asks.
“I do.”
After a long bout of very uncomfortable silence, Macy says, “Are you waiting for my stomach to ask you? Because it’s been talking all morning.”
“Wait here,” he says, shutting the door. He comes back out with a granola bar and Macy is finally acting like a lady.
“That’s very kind of you,” she says, sugary sweet. “Thank you.”
He nods, starts working his gums like he’s a cow chewing his cud, then says, “You need to go now. Don’t want you attracting them to my house.”
We all go and only when Macy’s gobbled down half the bar does she think to ask us if we’re hungry.
“Of course we’re hungry, dummy,” I say, and she reluctantly splits the rest of the bar in half, handing me and Stanton our respective pieces.
“We need to move faster,” Stanton says, chewing his bar. “There’s no cover here.”
He’s right, of course. You only have to insert your entire body up the tailpipe of a Christmas tree once to learn that lesson.
Masonic is starting to look like a poor choice of roads to travel.
On the left, it’s all houses that are built so close together you can’t wedge a slip of paper between them. On the right there’s an elevated parking lot with a beautifully painted, waist-high wall depicting people and activity. It’s all bright colors, ethnic and racial diversity, and a message of the unification of people. I
love it already, but it’s not going to offer us anything in the way of safety if we’re attacked again.
We come up on Grove Street and nearly startle ourselves to death as we look left at a hefty man holding the biggest machine gun I’ve ever seen.
He sees us and puts it down immediately.
“Sorry ‘bout that ladies,” he says. He’s got his pickup truck parked on the sidewalk and he’s standing in the bed with enough fire power to turn us all into Swiss cheese. The truck is old, a white and red Chevy that’s seen better days about a hundred years ago and is now just a running heap on balding tires. “Can’t be too careful right now.”
“That’s for sure,” Stanton says.
The man pulls off his hat (which says “I survived Fallujah!”), rubs a buzz cut head, then slides it back on with a slight adjustment.
“Iraq?” Stanton says.
“What gave it away?” he laughs.
Although I’m not mad at the man for finding humor in anything, perhaps he can laugh because he hasn’t see what we’ve seen, or survived what we just did. But then again, if he was in Fallujah, from what I know about that hell hole, it would seem we’ve seen nothing the likes of which he’s seen, suffered and survived.
“Thank you for your service,” I find myself saying to him.
“You’re quite welcome.” Pointing to my pants, he says, “Whatcha got in your pants there?”
“Sig Sauer.”
“What caliber you using?” he says. I shrug my shoulders. “You even fired it yet?”
“She took it off a dead cop,” Macy says, which earns her a stern look from Stanton. “What? It’s true?”
“Can I take a look?”
“Will you give it back?” I ask him.
“Do I look like I’m starving for weapons over here?” he asks. Taking a few steps toward him, I take a peek inside the bed of his truck and it looks like the mother of all armories.
“I guess not,” I say, handing him the weapon.
He ejects a round, looks at it then nods his head. He then sights a tree and fires the weapon making me and Macy jump. Stanton doesn’t even budge.