Windburn

by Kenny Soward

  “Thank you so much, young lady,” Rita said to the girl in a slurred voice before she turned her attention to the man again. “What happened? Why am I on the ground?”

  “Because I hit you, dummy.” The man was big and scruffy-looking with untrimmed whiskers on his jaw. His voice sounded raspy in the early evening air. “I hit you, and you hit the ground.”

  Rita sat up all the way with her legs splayed out as a gush of blood ran down her chin and dripped into her lap. She stared down at the blood in amazement before lifting her tear-filled eyes to the man.

  The girl came over to the man and handed him the two bags of Rita’s groceries. She looked as dirty and street-worn as he did, and Rita suspected this was a father and daughter pair.

  The girl’s blue eyes regarded Rita coldly as she handed the man a six-pack carton of eggs with yolk dripping down one side. “She cracked one.”

  The man took the carton from the girl and held it up, making a disgusted face when the yolk got on his fingers. He tossed the six-pack carton at Rita, and she lunged to catch it before it hit the ground and cracked more of the precious eggshells.

  Rita held the egg carton as gently as she would a newborn baby. “Why?”

  The man walked up to her and kicked her boot. “Because you’re a dummy, and we’re not.” He drew something slender from his coat and clicked a button. A short blade snapped out from the slim part, and a razor grin stretched across the man’s lips. “And you know what else happens to dummies out here?”

  “No,” Rita stared up at the man in horror as it dawned on her what he meant. She started to crawl backwards along the cement.

  The man cocked his head to the side and dropped into a crouch, holding up the knife blade in front of Rita’s face and waving it around.

  Rita kept crawling backwards, her palms scraping on the roughly textured cement. Then her back ran up against something, stopping her cold. She looked up to see the girl standing behind her with her foot planted on the ground, halting Rita’s progress. The girl couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and ten pounds, but she was strong enough to keep Rita from moving backwards a single inch.

  Rita lowered her eyes and blinked when the blade made a slashing motion near her face. She sat there for a moment, staring straight ahead as her left cheek slowly began to sting. Something warm trickled down her face, and Rita lowered her eyes to see blood dripping into her lap.

  “Oh no,” she whispered, jerking her attention up as the blade came back for a second slash, this time down her other cheek. The pain came immediately, and tears streaked down her face, mingling with her blood. She tried to say something, anything, that might spare her life, only her mind locked up with cold terror, and she couldn’t make a single croak.

  “What’s going on here?” a stern voice asked.

  The switchblade man froze as he regarded someone in the street behind her. The pressure on Rita’s back released, and Rita rolled over onto her stomach to see two military officers standing there.

  “Hel…hel…hel…” Rita struggled with the words she wanted to say, and then she forced them out with a croak. “Help me, please. Help.”

  The two officers took one look at Rita’s bloody face and drew their pistols, pointing them at the man with the knife.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Rita declared, crawling toward her saviors.

  “Ain’t nothing going on here, fellas.” The switchblade man raised his hands high, although he still held his knife. “Just trying to do us all a favor and rid the world of the weak ones.”

  “Drop the knife,” one of the officers said, stepping past Rita and the girl until he was just a few steps away.

  “Oh, no need for that,” the switchblade man said, giving his knife a little wave, and to Rita it seemed strangely like a signal.

  The second officer stepped past Rita, giving her a glance before moving in on the armed man. “My partner said to drop it, buddy.”

  Rita watched in dumb silence as the girl moved in slowly behind the officers as they argued with the switchblade man. The officers probably didn’t think the girl was much of a threat, being so slight of form. And she wasn’t waving around a switchblade, either.

  No, she had something else in her hand. Rita hadn’t seen the girl draw the seven-inch kitchen knife, hadn’t even realized the girl was holding it until the stainless steel glinted in the light of a nearby streetlamp.

  Rita started to say something, but the girl leapt forward as quick as a snake, ramming the blade into one of the officer’s kidneys. When the officer cried out in pain, his partner glanced over, giving the switchblade man the opening he needed. The switchblade man lunged forward and buried his blade in the second officer’s neck.

  Rita did not stick around to see what happened next. She wasn’t a fighter. She wasn’t even a yeller. She was a caring and gentle mother who had trouble disciplining her own children, and she knew she was too much of a coward, and far too weak, to stop the sort of violence that had been visited upon her.

  So, she ran. She ran as hard and as fast as she could toward home with blood and tears dripping down the front of her jacket.

  “We should have never moved up here,” she sobbed miserably as she gasped for air. “I just…I just want to go home.”

  Chapter 12

  Jake, Providence, Rhode Island | 10:01 p.m., Thursday

  Jake was resting on one of the cots inside their assigned FEMA tent when two soldiers stepped inside. One of them walked straight up to Jake’s cot. “Jake, wake up. Can you come with us?”

  He instantly recognized the soldier as Riley.

  “You could have knocked,” Jake said, raising up on his cot, slightly annoyed. “I mean, I don’t really own this tent, but it’s my temporary home.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Riley replied, taking a step back. “There isn’t really a door to knock on.”

  “Just call inside…oh, never mind.” Jake pulled his boots on and started lacing them up. “What do you boys want?”

  “Captain Sanchez wants to see you.”

  “That’s great,” Jake stood up and grabbed his rain poncho from near the entrance. “I appreciate you telling him about me.”

  “When you said you could fix the SATCOM terminal,” Riley said, “I figured that was a good enough excuse to bug him.”

  “Well, thanks.” Jake stood, then he looked around. “Where’s the rest of my group?”

  “We passed them coming here. They were mingling with the folks at the entertainment tent.”

  “You have an entertainment tent?” Jake raised his eyebrow.

  “Well, not officially,” Riley shrugged. “It’s just a larger tent where some folks play guitar or sing. They had a dance the other day. There was a pretty good turnout for it.”

  “I guess I can understand people wanting to loosen up a bit after everything that’s happened.” Jake nodded. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go see Captain Sanchez.”

  The two soldiers led him out of the tent and directly north through the center of the tent city. They wove between groups of folks talking or keeping busy with games or other projects, and Jake was amazed at the contrast of the mostly clean white tents with the folks living in near squalor inside Boston. The last place on Earth he’d expected to live in was a FEMA tent city, yet there was laughter, smiling faces, and a cautious optimism that ran through the camp.

  “People seem pretty happy here,” Jake called to the first soldier as they wound their way north.

  “For the most part,” the soldier replied over his shoulder. “At least until there’s a terrorist attack, then the place starts to look more like a madhouse. The first one, they blew up some of our fuel supplies and equipment, like that SATCOM terminal you were looking at. We caught on to them quick and repelled everything else since. Still, it scares everyone. The creep factor, you know what I mean?”

  Jake absorbed the information as he smiled down at a little girl much younger than Alice, who stood next to her mother holding a dirty
doll. She took one look at Jake’s grisly appearance and leaned closer to her mother with a look of doubt. Jake shook his head as his smile dropped away, and he continued to address Riley. “It’s hard to believe our own citizens are adding to all this misery.”

  “I assume they don’t really think of themselves as United States citizens anymore. Or maybe they never did. Things were getting bad in the inner cities before the storms even hit. The protests and demands. The police cracking down…”

  “We ran into some of those types inside the city,” Jake confirmed, recalling X-Gang, Tre, and Hawk. “And that’s why my wife and I never had the urge to move to a large city. Just too much trouble for us.”

  They walked in silence across the Home Depot parking lot. A trip that might have taken ten minutes before the tent city had sprung up now took thirty minutes. Eventually they exited the sea of white tents and walked across the street to a series of large, green, military-style buildings nestled in the crook of the off-ramp, and Jake assumed this was to have quick access to the expressway.

  He spotted guards and Humvees all along the ramp and expressway, presumably to thwart anyone from reaching them from that position. Though there was something even larger than the Humvees out on the field that caught Jake’s attention.

  Sitting beneath the bridge was a massive Stryker armed vehicle with a mounted machine gun. Squatting next to the Stryker with a lean, mean posture was an Abrams tank. Jake recognized the vehicles due to his interest in military vehicles, but he never thought he would see either one up close.

  “Wow,” was all he could think of to say as he stared in awe. After his experience driving the excavator, Jake wondered what it would be like driving the massive Abrams around.

  “Pretty awesome, right?” The soldier chuckled and then sobered up as they approached a pair of guards standing at the entrance to one of the buildings equipped with a big gray satellite dish on top. Jake focused his attention on the two guards as well, both of them staring at him with grim expressions.

  “What do you need, Riley?” a square-jawed guard with the nametag of Smith asked.

  “This is the guy Captain Sanchez wants to see,” Riley said, glancing over his shoulder at Jake.

  “Jake Walton?”

  “That’s me,” Jake said with a half wave.

  “One moment.” Smith turned, opened the door, and went inside, returning a moment later and waving Jake ahead. “Come on in. The captain will see you now.”

  Smith stepped aside to let Jake pass, and Jake found himself standing inside a stuffy office that seemed to take up the entire square footage of the building. Crates of military supplies were stacked at the far end beneath a thin window next to a weight bench with a good amount of weight resting on a bar, waiting to be bench-pressed.

  A man of around fifty-five years of age with dark hair graying on the sides sat stiff at a plain green desk, pounding away at a laptop keyboard. He held up his finger to Jake, saying, “One moment,” before he typed a few more things on the keyboard, hit a final key, and then closed the laptop screen with a snap.

  The man’s dark eyes lifted to Jake as he stood and crossed the room, reaching out his hand. “I’m Captain Sanchez.”

  “Jake Walton.” Jake took the proffered hand and shook it, appreciating the man’s firm grip. Judging from Captain Sanchez’s wide shoulders and chiseled jaw, the man worked out quite frequently. “Strong grip you have there, sir.”

  “Despite everything going on out there.” The captain gestured around and then down at a weight bench. “I still manage to run a few miles every morning and do an upper body work out every other day.”

  “That’s amazing you have the time,” Jake said. “What with the disaster you’re dealing with.”

  “It’s necessary.” The captain stood back and placed his hands behind his back. “Exercise is good for your respiratory and pulmonary systems, and it clears the mind, too. If you don’t exercise…well, your body becomes like a car that hasn’t run in years. All the oil sinks to the bottom. Things go bad. I’d be good to no one that way.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Jake said, recalling very similar things Sara had said to him over the years. “Being in shape saved my butt a few times back in Boston.”

  “You say you started in Boston. Whereabouts?”

  “Dead center by the bay when the storms hit. I was downtown for a tech convention, staying at the Westin. We took a direct hit from a tornado and had a heck of a time even getting to the edge of the city. Most of the inner city is destroyed; still, I think a lot of folks are still trying to survive in the rubble and in any subdivisions still standing. We ran into several people…” Jake nearly choked up thinking of Lizzy May and her grand hospitality. “Some were our friends.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the captain said with a sigh, then he bucked up and stuck his chest out. “We’ll certainly get as many folks out as we can. There’s a possibility of another tent city opening up soon, although the terrorists are hindering our efforts considerably.” Captain Sanchez barely shifted his position, remaining perfectly still almost every moment. He squared up to Jake and leaned in. “Tell me something. Are you the same Jake who sent a message from one of the cellular towers inside the city? It came a few days after the storms, and we couldn’t reach the man after that. Thankfully, he gave us some valuable information about some folks being held prisoner by a gang.”

  “That was me.” Jake nodded vigorously, suddenly excited that his message had actually gotten through. “We’d been captured by a group of thugs called X-Gang. My friend Marcy and I watched them kill a woman, a former military woman, in cold blood, so we decided not to stick around. I repaired a downed cell phone tower, sent the message to you guys, and then escaped.”

  “Impressive, Jake. And that explains why you think you can fix the SATCOM terminal.”

  “I don’t think I can, sir.” Jake lifted his chin. “I will fix it, provided you let me leave camp to go home to my family, and preferably with some transportation.”

  Captain Sanchez gave Jake a measured look. “We may put your skills to the test. Before that, you’ll be happy to hear we were able to send in a chopper during a lull in the storms. We took down the X-Gang facility and rescued several of the captives inside. They were some of the first people to arrive at the Worcester camp.”

  Jake’s chest swelled with pride and relief. He recalled talking to Old Man Henry about the shadow—how right he’d been about that—and the others who’d been in the cage with them, finding it ironic that they’d gotten out of the city way before Jake and Marcy. “Well, good for them. And thank you. Believe me when I say it was a relief seeing your troops come around the bend back on Washington Street. I never thought I’d be so excited seeing Old Glory flying high.”

  “It’s a fine sight, isn’t it?” A smile drew thinly across the captain’s lips. “It might sound cheesy and over dramatic to some, but I require the stars and stripes to be displayed on all our vehicles. I want it to inspire friendly folks. At the same time, I want it to send a shiver of fear into the hearts of our enemies.”

  Jake was thankful to hear the news that the people being held by X-Gang had been set free, yet his thoughts grew anxious, and he wanted to get the captain focused on helping him get back home.

  “So, back to what I asked to see you about.” Jake studied the captain, hoping to match his forthright demeanor. “My wife and kids are waiting for me back in Tennessee. We’ve got a cabin on a mountain there, and they need me there.”

  “That’s what Corporal Riley told me,” Captain Sanchez said, appearing sympathetic. “Although, my explicit orders are to keep everyone in camp. It’s growing more dangerous for civilians outside of camp by the day.”

  “With all due respect, Captain. I survived Boston. I think I can manage a fourteen-hour drive to the mountains.”

  “How are you going to get there?”

  “I was hoping you’d allow me to take one of the vehicles your soldiers fo
und us with.”

  “A vehicle that wasn’t yours to begin with.”

  “True,” Jake said, carefully. “However, I don’t think anyone is counting at this point, and if you saw what it looks like in downtown Boston, you wouldn’t be worried about it either. I doubt anyone is going to miss one SUV. And I’ll be happy to return it once things settle down.” When the captain didn’t immediately respond, Jake continued. “Look, sir. I’m assuming the people occupying your tents are mostly from Boston, correct?”

  “And its surrounds,” the captain nodded.

  “Right, and they don’t have a place to go home to, but I do. Keeping me here is a waste of resources. I’d rather just take a few days’ worth of supplies and go south. And I swear I’ll do everything I can to get the vehicle back to its rightful owner when all this is done. Or, maybe you can talk one of the truckers into taking me back west. You’re my only hope here, sir. It’s not like I have any public transportation options. Last I checked, the airports were closed to the public.”

  Jake didn’t know if he could keep the promise to return the vehicle, because he didn’t know what perils the road home would present him with, although he meant what he said. And whether Jake wanted to or not, he’d have to be willing to beg, borrow, or steal whatever he could if he wanted to get back home to his family.

  The captain stared at Jake for a long moment, seeming to make a decision about him with the limited information he had. “You know what? I believe your heart is in the right place. And I don’t see any reason you can’t at least give the repair on the SATCOM terminal a try.”

  “And what if I fix it, sir? Can you get me a lift home?”

  “We’ll see, after you get it fixed.” The captain nodded. Then, seeing Jake’s disappointed look, he added, “You’ve got to understand, Mister Walton. I’ve got a huge facility to run with thousands of people to look after. I’ve been given orders to keep things tight, and that includes making sure people don’t come and go as they please, for the sake of everyone’s safety, of course. It’s not going to be like this forever, but it’s how it needs to be for now.”