by Ryan Schow
“I’m here to help you,” he finally managed to say.
Tied to the bed, the girl was in light green underwear and a filthy white tank top. Her little body was tarnished by bruises, not just her face. Some of these bruises looked fresh while others bore the greenish-yellow hues of being a few days old. Jagger shut the bedroom door behind him and quickly undid the ropes, blushing at the red welts and scraping that marred her wrists and ankles. He put his finger over his lips, telling her to be quiet. She didn’t say a word. In fact, when he pulled the ropes loose, she didn’t even move.
He marveled at the landscape of abuse upon her. By the look of it, she’d suffered a brutal exploitation far longer than he first imagined, a reality that left him sick to his stomach. When he pulled the last rope off her ankle, he saw a toenail was missing.
“They do this to you?” he asked. She looked away. Refused to meet his eyes. Son of a bitch. “Stay here.”
She didn’t move.
“It’s going to be okay, little girl.”
Still nothing.
He pulled his pistol out of his pants, ejected the magazine, checked the load. It was full. He slapped the magazine home, drew back the slide and checked the chamber. A round slid in place and he knew he had nine rounds left.
He tucked the pistol away.
Shotgun in hand, he opened the door, moved into the hallway. A short walk down the hallway took him to the mouth of an open kitchen and living room. A girl of maybe twenty or twenty-five was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table facing the family room and the black screen of a dead TV. She had her bare feet up on the table and hadn’t heard a thing. He crept up on her and saw she was reading a paperback novel.
On the couch were two other heads, both facing away from him, but at angles. His first thought was that they were playing cards. But on second thought, he was sure they were asleep.
He moved onto the girl, spun the rifle around and cracked her in the back of the head almost hard enough to kill her. She slumped over sideways just as the two heads on the couch turned and jumped to their feet.
He wheeled the gun around and said, “You move you die. Simple as that.” They both stopped fast enough for him to hear movement from upstairs.
Great.
When he looked up, a third head was popping up off the couch. He fired the shotgun, caught the hearty edge of the crown. The red mist told him he was good. He quickly shifted the rifle back to the two standing. Both thought they could get to their weapons—they were wrong. He racked a load, fired, then racked another load and fired again.
Both boys fell.
Gunfire from the stairway sent splinters of wood flying. He scrambled for cover just beside the foot of the stairway as more men came bounding down the stairs. He dropped low and around the corner. The second he saw a body in the stairwell, he spun and aimed for the knees.
The shot was like a cannon in the compressed space. The first load tore through the attacker’s knee and he face-planted straight into the kitchen floor with a yelp and an oof! Then the God-awful screaming started.
He heard more movement from upstairs.
The rush stopped.
Whomever was upstairs was now waiting. For that one long moment, Jagger heard his heart kicking and felt the rush of blood to his ears. Seconds later, what had been a trample of feet on the wrapped side of the stairs turned and scampered back up.
Jagger leaned down and grabbed the screaming man’s handgun just as someone lit up the stairwell with gunfire. The bullets slapped into the fallen man’s body and his screaming stopped. Jagger slipped sideways on a spreading pool of blood and crashed into the cabinets. He scrambled to his feet, grabbed the slumped over girl and pressed the stolen handgun to her head. She was still unconscious, so this made things easy.
“If you don’t come down by the time I’m done counting to ten,” he announced, “I’m going to empty this magazine into your girl’s head.”
He started counting aloud. By the time he hit eight, he saw the first man coming down the stairs with this hands up and an enraged look on his ugly face.
“All of you,” he said, then resumed his count. “Nine.”
“We’re coming,” a second voice in the stairwell said. He heard two more sets of feet moving, and this surprised him.
He didn’t expect all of them to be here.
“Toss your guns to the far wall,” Jagger growled. Four weapons were thrown down, and thankfully none of them discharged. “Slowly come out with your fingers laced and your hands behind your heads. By the time I count to five, all of you had better be in front of me or I start shooting. First the woman, then all of you.”
All four men emerged.
He checked the woman’s pulse, found it, then let her slump back over. He was afraid he’d hit her too hard, but thinking about that little girl beaten and tied down like an animal, he stowed those feelings without an ounce of remorse.
Leaning back on his training as a Marine, thinking about the combat he saw in Afghanistan, he slowed his mind, spurred his senses and realized he didn’t see Rowdy.
“Rowdy, you fat headed cuck! C’mon down here or I start plugging your buddies in all the wrong places!”
He heard movement overhead, and a second later the idiot started shooting through the floorboards blowing out the acoustic ceiling and peppering the hardwood floors with lead.
He scrambled away from the gunfire, used the stolen pistol to fire four rounds into the four men’s thighs. They all screamed and fell down. The gunfire stopped. Eyes still on the four of them, Jagger shot out a bay window and, one by one, starting tossing the confiscated weapons out the window. Two shotguns, two handguns. The gunfire from above started back up.
When Rowdy stopped shooting long enough to reload, Jagger bounded up the stairs, ignoring the merciless protesting of his body. His toe bumped the last stair on the way up and went down hard on his knee. Still, he managed to keep his weapon. Rowdy kicked open a bedroom door looking high for Jagger, not seeing him low until that last moment.
Jagger fired twice, each round finding a knee. The big man toppled into the doorway, growling and cursing. Jagger aimed his weapon at Rowdy’s crotch and said, “You so much as try to lift your weapon in my direction and I turn you into a girl.”
Rowdy’s body heaved a defeated, agonizing sigh. His pistol fell to the hardwood floor in a sharp clatter, and by the look of him, he was too in shock to retrieve it.
Refusing to tear his eyes from the injured man, Jagger seized the fallen weapon. Rowdy reached for it, but Jagger was quicker. He grabbed the mewling Rowdy by the ankle and pulled him screaming into the hallway, every muscle in Jagger’s body protesting.
The big man was laying down curse words like automatic gunfire, and then at the last minute he grabbed a hold of the doorframe and held on tight. Jagger jerked him, but the man didn’t budge. He drew his pistol, shot Rowdy in the hand and ended that struggle.
Now free, Jagger dragged the wailing brute down the wooden stairs and into the living room. The four men he shot earlier tried to escape, but he’d wounded them enough to slow them down. One was halfway out the window. Jagger saw him turn and look up. He shot the guy in the butt cheek, which caused him to flail in pain. He then shot the other cheek before turning his gun on the other three trying to get away.
“Back here boys.”
The remaining guys did as they were told. By now the girl he’d knocked out earlier was coming around. She was scared and mad, but she was too stupid to look around and realize her anger was worth exactly squat.
“Line up with them,” he said to her.
She f-bombed him, then spit in his direction.
“Spit at me again and this thing will spit back,” he said, giving his handgun a small shake.
She lined up with the others.
“On your butts, hands behind your head.” They all complied. “What’s the little girl’s name?”
No one said anything, so he turned to Rowdy who was shoulder
to shoulder with the first corpse, but face up, alive and furious.
Cursing under his breath, the man gave him nothing.
“Rowdy, you freaking doggyknobber, tell me her name or I clip your jaw and shut you up for good.”
“We don’t know her name!” he screamed, his hands on his knee, blood all over them and the floor he was sprawled out on.
Just then the little girl appeared in the hallway. She was still in her underwear and dirty tank top. Her little body was so fragile it hurt to look at her. He remembered when his boys were that young, how delicate they looked, how breakable they were.
“Come here,” he said.
Reluctantly she walked toward him, ending up at his side with her eyes on her former captors. Jagger glanced down at the straight head of dirty hair, then cleared his throat. She looked up, her eyes vacant, but slowly coming to life. If she had trust issues before, she was seeing what Jagger did to the ones abusing her and knew he was the lesser of two evils.
“Which of these people hurt you?” he asked. She looked back down at her feet. “You can tell me. They won’t ever hurt you again.”
“Not only are we going to hurt you,” Rowdy snarled, “we’re going to cut you up in pieces and feed you to the pigs.”
“Shut up,” Jagger growled. He thought of shooting the man, but he was too close to the girl to discharge his weapon.
Jagger knelt down despite his screaming limbs, then gently took her chin and raised her eyes to his. “They can’t hurt you anymore.”
Her little terrified eyes glanced around the room at them. They were bloody and beaten, they were crying and captured and not hurting her.
“What did they do to you?” he asked.
She looked back down at her bare feet, at that one torn off toenail, then she stepped forward and whispered in his ear all the horrors she’d endured. The blood drained from his face and he said, “Get your shoes, your pants, a shirt and a warm jacket and meet me outside.”
The girl turned and padded off without a word. She walked down the hallway, back to where her dead parents were, back to the bed that…those things happened in. The thought of going back filled her belly with sickness and revulsion, but nothing was as bad as the smell her parents’ bodies left behind.
The man who saved her, he said to get dressed, so she’d get dressed. In the corner of the room, she put on her pants, then her shirt, socks and shoes, and finally her jacket. She looked at her mother one last time, at the lifeless shell she’d become. She did not look at her father. There was a hole in his head where they shot him and his face looked slack with shock. Plus those dead eyes wouldn’t stop scaring her.
When she went outside, into the cold, she waited for a few minutes, and then there were the sounds of gunfire coming from inside the house.
Six shots.
She counted them all and knew the man who saved her was telling the truth. That they wouldn’t hurt her anymore. When he came outside with a jug of water and his guns, he was speckled with red but alive and not hurt.
“Do you have a bike?” he asked. Without answering, she went around the side of the house, the returned a few minutes later with a red wagon.
“Do your parents have bikes?”
She nodded.
He went into the garage, unlatched the electric garage door from the motor, then slid it up and looked around. He saw a man’s mountain bike, checked the tire pressure, found it was good. Using a nearby rag, he dusted the cobwebs off it, then tossed the rag aside. He scanned the garage for anything else, his eyes settling on a pile of ropes and bungee cords. He grabbed the rope ball and tossed it into the wagon, then he wheeled the bike out and said, “There any other kids living nearby?”
She nodded her head.
“Where?”
She pointed down the street.
“Get two blankets and a flat pillow from inside, whatever food you can grab, and those short guns outside the broken window. Leave the long guns.”
She did as she was told and he tied the rope and the wagon to the bike. When she came back out, her face was white as a sheet. He’d dragged the bodies behind the couch, but blood smears were all over the floor and the girl must have seen them.
“Did you look at them?” She looked away. Damn. “Just to make sure they were gone?”
She gave a short nod and he felt a bit of relief.
“So you’re going to ride in this wagon over to your friend’s house. We’re going to take her bike so you can ride it and then we’re going to pack as much food and supplies in your wagon as we can fit.”
She didn’t speak, but she was actively listening.
“Do you have any family in town? Maybe a grandma or grandpa?”
She shook her head.
“Aunts or uncles?”
Another shake of the head.
“Do you want to come with me?” he asked.
She looked down, didn’t say anything with her mouth or body language. That must mean yes.
“I will protect you from people like that.”
Now she looked up.
“You okay coming with me?”
She nodded.
“My name is Jagger, by the way. Jagger Justus.”
She didn’t look at him, and she didn’t offer up her own name. He didn’t blame her. After what she survived, after what she told him they’d done to her, he wouldn’t blame her if she never uttered another word again.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Rider shows up for us just after noon. I’m ready. We’re all ready. Macy is on her feet and feeling better, telling Stanton she’s got everything she needs. We all head next door to grab Lenna, who is still wondering why the boys are staying behind with Atlanta, Indigo and Rex.
“Like I said,” Rider answers, seemingly for the second or third time judging by her expression, “you don’t want to move large crowds through unsafe streets. We can move quicker, quieter and hide better if we’re a small unit. Besides, it’s only three miles away.”
Lenna has that panicked look in her eye.
“Rex is active military and Indigo saved our lives,” I say. “The girl is beyond competent, heavily armed and prepared for this.”
“Is Rex going to join us?” Lenna asks. “I mean, he’s your brother, right?”
“Most likely,” I say. “He and Indigo have a thing.”
Hagan and Ballard charge down the staircase and show up in the doorway half out of breath to give their mom a hug and tell her they’ll be okay.
“We survived on our own while you were hurt,” Hagan says, eyeing Macy who is eyeing him back. “We can make it another afternoon.”
I turn in time to see Macy giving him that smile; glancing back at the older boy in the door, I catch him returning the smile. Wow. Looking at my husband, I’m seeing him seeing this and now he’s smiling at me, like I should be optimistic. Should I be optimistic?
Oh, how I want to be…
Lenna pulls both boys close kissing them on the cheeks the way you’d kiss someone you’re never going to see again. Hagan looks up, embarrassed, then smiles sheepishly and waves at Rex who’s walking over from across the street where he’s been staying.
My brother’s hair is getting too long, but then again, all the boys’ hair is getting too long. In another six months, if we don’t do something about it, all these boys are going to look like girls, which can’t happen!
“Hey sis,” he says, hugging me and giving me a kiss on the temple.
My heart leaps thinking of leaving him behind. I want to ask if he’s going to come to the college when Rider returns later that day, but I don’t. I won’t. Last night when we spoke about this, he said he wasn’t sure, that he was going to talk to Indigo, but that she probably wouldn’t leave.
“It’s because of her dad,” he said as we sat together on the back porch looking at a horizon full of fluffy storm clouds.
“I get that,” I said.
“She cries at night,” Rex finally admitted, almost like he did
n’t want to share her secret, but had to so I would understand. “She cries in her sleep at night, then pretends in the morning there’s nothing’s wrong. I can feel it. How sad she is all the time. She gets really quiet and there’s this incredible melancholy that sweeps through her.”
“And that’s when she goes out back and shoots that hay bale with her arrows?”
“Yes,” he said.
Now that we’re standing here, now that he’s come to say good-bye I’m starting to wonder how long this little fling of theirs will last. Will this be his last fling? Will she like him and will they want to keep each other now that things like bars and clubs and dating websites are no longer?
I look at him and it’s like I’m seeing this other person, this other life. Deep down, I know I’m going to lose him. The idea of this has my insides crawling with fear.
Turning into him, I give him a long fierce hug and say, “I don’t care how you do it, you need to find your way back to us. We’re your family. Family sticks together, Rex.”
“I know,” he says.
When we leave, Macy looks back once more at Hagan who gives her the briefest of waves. She waves back then says, “When are they going to join us?”
“Tonight or tomorrow depending on how things go. Just focus on yourself for a second.”
“I’ve been focused on myself all my life,” Macy says.
“Then this should be easy.”
“What’s the big deal anyway?” Macy asks. “He’s my age, we obviously like each other’s looks, plus…it’s not like boys are plentiful anymore.”
Lenna looks over at us and I give her an almost sheepish look followed by a smile that barely reaches my eyes. We’re at the end of Dirt Alley and Rider’s taking us right. He says the college is San Francisco City College, the John Adams campus. I’ve driven by it a couple of times in my former life, but apparently I never really knew what I was looking at. It’s situated just north of the Panhandle on Hayes and Ashbury. A big brick building shaped like a U, which Rider says makes for a good defensive position.