by Ryan Schow
If she was anything like Indigo, she wasn’t eating at all. With what happened to Atlanta’s sister, with what happened to all of them, there was no way any of them were going to be starting the day, or even ending it, with a robust appetite.
“I need you to do something for me,” Indigo said to Atlanta.
Right then she could see the slight jump in the girl’s body, how she was quietly crying to herself. Indigo scooted closer, spooned the girl from behind. Atlanta’s hand found her forearm, her delicate fingers curling around it as she wept.
“I’m so sorry, Atlanta.”
After awhile, they both managed to fall back to sleep, waking up around noon. Indigo got out of bed, dressed in all black, then went around to the other side of the bed where Atlanta was awake, but in the same position Indigo had left her in.
Indigo brushed her hair from her eyes, then said, “I need you to protect the house while I’m gone.”
“Where are you going?” Atlanta asked.
“Out.”
“When will you be back?”
“Not sure. I guess it depends on what I find. Or who I find.”
In truth, Indigo was a restless mess. She wasn’t sleeping well and it was taking its toll. All the killing, all this terrible fear that infected her, and now this new family living across the way from her…it was all one gigantic burden.
And Rex.
Freaking Rex. She shook her head, let out her breath and frowned. Then again, he was kind of funny, and pretty cute. Maybe he wasn’t so bad. Had she been too hard on him? Perhaps. Not that it mattered. He looked like he could take it. Except for when he got shot, told her he might be falling in love with her and then passed out. She almost laughed to herself.
“I’m going to get you a water and some crackers,” she said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“I know, sweetheart, but we have to keep our strength. I’m going to get you a banana, too. Or would you prefer an apple?”
“Apple.”
She fetched the girl breakfast, or lunch depending on what time it really was, then she gathered up her guns, her bow and a full quiver of arrows. In the garage, she got in the car, her father’s 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass and prayed it would start. She stuck the key in the ignition, waited, then turned it. The big Detroit motor cranked over, giving her reason to smile.
“Rock solid, even in the apocalypse,” she mumbled as she got out of the rumbling Olds and hoisted open the garage door.
Pulling out, she saw Rex standing in the back yard, his back to her, his legs spread. He was dressed for his afternoon piss, apparently.
He turned and saw her, shook a few times then zipped up. She went through all the things she was going to say to him to smooth over this awkward moment, but nothing came to mind. She thought of turning right into the alley instead of left so she didn’t have to see him. She turned left anyway.
She gave a half-hearted wave as she passed; he dipped his head without a smile.
“Wow,” she said. For whatever reason, she stopped the car. He looked back at the house, then at her. She raised her eyebrows, made a face.
Walking over, he opened the car door, knelt beside it and said, “Who’s car is this?”
“Mine.”
“Looks like it’s EMP proof,” he said without an ounce of emotion. “What year?”
“1970,” she said. “You want to come with me?”
“Where are you going?”
“Here and there, everywhere. I just want to survey the neighborhood. See if I can maybe snag some things for you guys. Or at least find someplace that hasn’t been picked over.”
“Let me get my gun,” he said.
“A bit of advice?” she said. He was starting to stand up, but he knelt back down and looked her in the eyes.
“Sure.”
“Next time you water your lawn, bring a weapon. This neighborhood isn’t any safer than the rest. If you haven’t figured it out yet, some awful things have happened here.”
“Noted,” he said, his face flush.
He went inside, returning a few minutes later with his pistol. He got inside the car, slowly, gingerly, then shut the door and buckled up.
“Arm hurt?” she said, dropping it in gear.
“It’s alright.”
“You playing tough right now?” she teased.
He looked at her and a grin finally broke over his face. “Totally.”
“Well it’s working,” she said, letting her foot off the brake. “I just might like you already.”
Not taking his eyes off her, he said, “This is an interesting turn of events.”
“Let’s not put the cart before the horse,” she replied. “There’s a lot of bad stuff out there, and plenty of bad people to go around. You can’t be puppy-dogging me while we’re out there or you’ll get us both killed.”
“Told you before, I’m a fighter not a lover.”
Laughing, she said, “We’ll see.”
The streets were busy with people. Now that the drones were down and people could no longer nest in their homes with their running water and their refrigerators and their Netflix, everyone seemed to have headed outside.
Packs of them stood around talking, breaking conversation only to watch the coppery gold muscle car with the flat black top rumble by.
They navigated through the cemetery of torched and abandoned cars. She’s made note of them mentally—where they were—for when she needed gas next.
She wasn’t ready just yet.
“Good God,” Rex said.
She saw a pack of women and children getting hassled by two men. One of the women was shielding the children, the other was taking a beating. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Indigo snarled as she rolled down her window. The Olds coasted to a stop.
“What are you doing?” Rex asked.
She pulled out her pistol right about the time one of the deviants was letting the other know they had company.
Indigo squeezed the trigger and the guy hassling the woman dropped dead. The other ran. She tracked him with her pistol, fired twice and he went down, too, both bullets lodged into his back.
She put the gun away, let off the gas and continued on without saying a word. Rex just sat there staring at her, his jaw hanging open in disbelief.
“You leave that mouth of yours open too long,” she said, “and you’re going to start drawing flies.”
He shut his mouth, said nothing. She turned on the radio. Guns ‘n Roses began to play.
“If I play Welcome to the Jungle, will you think more or less of me?” she asked.
Not looking at her, he said, “More, of course.”
She rewound the cassette to the first track, hit PLAY, then let the music seep into her. She glanced over at him, his looks not lost on her.
“You’re pretty good looking,” she said.
“So I’m told,” he replied dispassionately.
“Did that turn you off?” she asked, casual. “Me just shooting those men?”
“Kind of. I don’t know.”
“That’s all you have to say on the matter then?”
“Good shooting?” he mumbled, just barely over the music.
“I thought so.”
“What the hell happened to you?” he asked again.
“Told you, bad things. I mean, for heaven’s sake, did you see my car? Before all this went down, this baby was pristine.”
“So you’re upset about your car?” he asked, looking outside the Olds as they drove by a pile of burning bodies.
“Among other things, yes.”
He turned down the volume on the music, then said, “What else?”
“I can’t use the internet. Can’t flush the toilet or take a shower or brush my teeth with the faucet left running.”
“There must be more,” he pushed.
“Of course there is,” she said. And then she said nothing. But no…that wasn’t true. She finally looked at him and said, “Your little thing, this char
m you exude, I’m impervious.”
“You made that clear,” he said, killing the line of questioning. “Besides, I don’t want you getting the wrong idea about me. I’m into…bigger girls…and you’re a little on the not-big side.”
“If you’re a chubby chaser, in these times, man you’re screwed. And not literally. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.”
She started laughing. He didn’t join her. She turned the music up, he turned it back down the said, “I get it. When everyone’s starving, guys who like healthy girls aren’t going to have much to choose from.”
“You’re not really into bigger girls, are you?”
“You’re kind of a smart ass,” he said. “But not in the cute, ironic way.”
“I get that.”
Just then, something hit the windshield, causing Indigo to yank the wheel left and tap the brakes.
“It’s just a shoe,” Rex said.
She slowed to a stop and both of them looked out Rex’s window where a trio of kids were looking at them and laughing. Two boys and a young girl. Not clean, or cute. Indigo pulled out her gun and pointed it at them and all three squealed then turned and ran like their lives depended on it. On the tape player, It’s so easy finished playing and Nightrain started to play.
Rex whipped around and saw Indigo’s gun stretched out and said, “Good Lord, kid! Are you completely mental?”
“I wasn’t going to shoot,” she said, holstering the weapon.
She turned the music up.
He turned it back down.
“You’d be a complete psycho if you did,” he said with a slightly hostile look.
“Even though your charm doesn’t work on me, your looks are kind of working. But let’s not talk about that yet because you could be a total scumbag for all I know.”
“I am,” he said, turning the music back up.
“Now I’m sure of it,” she joked over the rock music. “By the way, I love this song.”
“What is it?”
“Nightrain,” she said, letting off the brake and moving deeper into the city. “Seriously, stop talking.”
When the song was over, she turned the volume knob off and said, “So what do you think is happening here?”
“We’re getting to know each other, you’re playing hard to get, I’m acting uninterested…”
She rolled her eyes and said, “Not with us dork.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I think it’s obvious,” he said. “High altitude EMP. They sacrificed the power grid to take out the drones.”
“What does that mean for us long term?” she asked. “About the power grid?”
“It means that inside of a year, ninety percent of the population will be dead. That leaves…just under a hundred thousand people. Maybe less depending on how many are already gone.”
“That’s still plenty of survivors left in this city.”
“It gets even worse if you consider this is survival of the fittest and in a year, a lot of those left standing will most likely be the meanest most crafty people,” he said. “They’re going to be some women and children, but it’ll also mean a lot of hardened killers.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, “the hardened killers part.”
“The Ophidian Horde.”
“Yes,” she replied, her face taking on a more somber expression.
“You think they’ll try to take San Francisco over?” he asked. “Make the whole city their turf?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“And you want to stop that before it starts?”
“You’re not as dumb as you look.”
“So you say,” he grumbled, turning the music up further.”
Smiling, saying nothing, she kept her eyes on the road and thought, okay, maybe I’m not so impervious.
Chapter Forty-Seven
When we get up, it’s not to relax and move in to our new home. We need food, water, supplies. I barely even know where we are. And everything we spent weeks collecting back at our stolen home is gone, left behind. Including Gunner.
Poor Gunner.
Thinking of him cripples me. Cuddled under the blankets, wrapped in the sheets of a stranger’s bed, I try not to cry.
Stanton is next to me, asleep. I don’t want to wake him, but I can’t get up either. Gunner was someone’s boy. He was quiet, scared and trusting. He trusted us to keep him safe, to get him out of there. He trusted Rex.
Earlier, when Rex said he was going out for supplies with Indigo, I could see the mixed emotions on his face. He really does like the girl.
What an enigma that one is…
Pulling the covers to my chin to ward off the morning chill, my mind returns to Gunner, the young boy who lived above us in Anza Vista. Right now his body is in the back of an abandoned SUV, shot dead along with the passenger in the front seat. Thinking of him has me thinking of Macy. I can’t protect her. I know that now the same as I’ve known it since this nightmare began.
It’s time for me to let her grow up. It’s time for me to stop fighting this so hard. It’s also time for me to get a grip on this new life and let the old one go. This is the new world and it’s going to be like this for a long time.
Wiping away my tears, gathering up my resolve, I crawl out of bed, bundle up, then mosey downstairs where I find Macy sitting at the table cleaning one of the guns the way Rex taught her.
“I wanted to talk to you,” I say.
“Okay,” Macy says.
“I need to know that you’re okay. With this. With what happened.”
“Me shooting that guy?”
“Yes.”
She sets the gun and Rex’s oil cloth down and looks at me. The look in her eyes…she already looks older, more distant. More…grown up.
“I guess I was thinking about the school. These things, these drones, for some reason they turned on us. They killed my friends, Mom. Destroyed our city. And now these guys grab Uncle Rex, and they want to…to…to rape us? And kill us? What would have happened if Indigo hadn’t come along? She did her part, so I had to do mine. That’s why I shot the guy.”
“Yes, but you didn’t have to do that,” I say.
“Yes I did. Mom, I wanted to do it. I wanted to kill him for putting us in that position, for making us feel scared.”
“And vulnerable…”
At this point I feel my heart shaking in my chest and my emotions welling. You could have laid out a thousand different scenarios of my baby growing up, the problems she might have in school, or life, but never in my wildest imagination would she be sitting across from me at fifteen years old cleaning a gun and telling me she killed someone because she wanted to.
The truth was, I wanted to kill him, too.
We all did.
“These are new times. We have to adjust. There is no more right and wrong, Mom. All there is for us is staying alive and protecting each other.”
“I know that now,” I say.
“People want to hurt us. They want to rape us and kill us. They’re going to want to do the same to Indigo, and that girl she’s with. Atlanta. But we can’t let them.”
“There are a lot of good men still left in this world,” I tell her.
“I know.”
We sit together in silence for a long moment. Finally I reach over and take her hand and force the words out. “I’m going to let you do what you need to do, what you want to do, about…preparing yourself. I won’t stand in your way anymore.”
Now my eyes boil over with tears and this really irritates me because here I am, an ER nurse, unable to control my emotions in front of a young girl better equipped to handle the collapse of civilization than me.
“It’s okay,” she says, getting up and pulling me into a hug.
“I just thought I’d have more time with you,” I say, sobbing into her shirt. “I don’t want this life for you. Any of it.”
“Me neither, but I’ve watched enough Walking Dead to be
prepared for this.”
I look up at her through watery eyes and we both start laughing.
“If I start seeing zombies…” I say.
“You won’t. But in the show, the zombies aren’t really the danger as much as the humans have become the problem. It’s like that now. Everyone’s just trying to survive each other, the conditions, this city. Are we going to try to get out again?”
“I’m not sure what we’re going to do, honey. We’ll try to stabilize things right now, get our little urban homestead together.”
“So you’re saying we don’t have a plan?” she asks, sitting back down.
“Our plans are all short term plans. One-day-at-a-time plans.”
“Where’s dad?”
“Upstairs asleep.”
“Did you guys have sex yesterday?”
My mouth drops open and I don’t know what to say. Somehow I manage to stammer out a weak response. “That’s not…you shouldn’t—”
“It’s about time,” she says with a knowing grin. “For both of you.”
How do you respond to something like that?
“He loves you, you know,” she says. “He loves us both more than he knows how to say.”
Now this little tidbit cradles my heart in warmth. My little princess is so full of wisdom, and stronger and more ready for this than her mom.
Well, that’s going to change. I’m going to change.
“When you get done with your gun, we need to take stock of this place, gather up some water and find a way to purify it without a stove.”
“There’s a fireplace,” she says. “We just boil it the old fashioned way. Under a fire.”
“And toilets?”
Macy grins hard, saying nothing but saying everything.
“Uncle Rex figured it out,” she finally admitted.
“I’m scared to ask,” I say, “but I’m going to ask anyway.”
“He found a bunch of pots and pans in the pantry. He just put one in the toilet so you can do your business on the hoop instead of outside. When you’re done, you cap it off with the lid, we dump it in a hole out back and kick a little dirt on it.”
“So it’s a litter box, but for humans.”
“This way you can honk out a dirt worm in the peace and mostly quiet of your bathroom rather than squatting over a hole in the ground freezing your tits off with no privacy.”