A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  “Yes,” I say.

  She struggles to get to her feet. Chase puts his hand on the rifle.

  She pauses. Pushes unsteadily to her feet and looks wildly around.

  “They took the stuff you were looking for. But we—” She stumbles into the conference room, starts rifling through some dirty clothes on the floor. “We’ve got—Riley, where’s that radio, and that chewing gum?”

  The sight of her looking desperately through belongings that wouldn’t even be considered good enough for a thrift store hurts. For an instant, she’s standing not in a conference room at all, but in an ER bay, between the woman shaking in the corner and the man facing the wall in shame.

  “I don’t want that,” I say.

  “Well, what, then?” she says, voice tinged with desperation. “I got a necklace my sister gave me. It’s a butterfly, real pretty—” She gestures to Riley for help like a game show contestant seeking answers from the audience.

  I pull out the baggie of pills from my front pocket. Step over and hand it to her.

  She takes the silver package that’s been freshly sealed with duct tape from the shed. I’ve divided the tablets into two bags: one to trade for the antibiotics . . .

  One to keep as currency.

  “Is—is that all?” she asks, comma brows knitting together, excitement mitigated by disappointment. The fear of pending pain.

  “Yeah, sorry.”

  I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing giving anything to her at all. If it’s wrong, maybe it’s only half a sin.

  • • •

  SIMON VISIBLY JUMPS when we reach the car, having come from the other direction after the woman let us out the front door.

  “Did you get it?” he asks, looking at us. “Did they have it?” But as he looks from the grim set of Chase’s jaw to my empty hands, it’s as though I’m watching his daughter’s life fade from his eyes.

  “Oh, my God,” he says, hands starting to shake. “I have to get her. Take her someplace. But she has to have insulin. I’ll turn myself in—”

  “Stop that,” I say. “Pull yourself together.”

  “What are we going to do?” he cries.

  “It’s time for another plan.”

  10:25 P.M.

  * * *

  Even in sweaty hands, the rifle feels cold.

  Please don’t make me shoot you.

  Movement at last.

  I open my eyes in the darkness of the trunk but they might as well still be closed.

  When we stop, I brace myself. A few seconds later, I hear a muffled voice from outside the car.

  “I was,” I hear Simon say. “Till Josie’s crew brought in a haul off a minivan near Maloney half hour ago. Five cases of moonshine. Warden doesn’t want it sitting around overnight. Said he’d be by before end of shift to put it up.”

  The other man says something and then a car door opens.

  Three seconds later the trunk lid lifts. The guard I saw reading the comic book earlier blinks down at me, uncomprehending.

  But he understands the muzzle pointed at his chest just fine.

  “I will shoot,” I say.

  He slowly raises his hands.

  • • •

  BY THE TIME we arrive on the east side of the building, Chase has the second guard pinned on his back ten feet from his rifle, arms locked around his neck and under an arm. The guard kicks like a half-squashed bug, tries to buck and roll. Chase just pivots with him.

  “Man, just stop,” Chase says. “I told you, I can do this all night.”

  I retrieve the rifle, Comic Book’s weapon slung over my shoulder, his walkie-talkie clipped to my pocket, switched to a different channel.

  “Hey,” I say, peering through the rifle’s sight.

  The guard turns his head and freezes.

  “I’d get up real slow if I were you,” Chase says, as Simon pulls around in the car.

  10:37 P.M.

  * * *

  We follow Simon past a body scanner into the lobby and stop at the front desk. Double doors to my left, hallway to the right.

  “Which way?” I ask, going over to shine my stick-on light through the glass doors. Workstations and conference rooms, their neat order destroyed, chairs and papers strewn in the aisles, cubicle walls toppled, light fixtures dangling from the ceiling.

  “I’ve never actually been in here,” Simon says. “But there’s a lot less windows on this side of the building.”

  The door at the end of the hallway is locked. We move aside, and Chase goes to work with the crowbar, his light stuck to the front of his shirt like Iron Man.

  “So you two . . .” Simon says, glancing between us.

  I raise my brows.

  “You, uh, obviously did this kind of thing before.”

  “What, break into jail?” Chase says.

  “No, I mean . . .” He shifts his weight, as though thinking better about what he’s about to say, unable to help himself from saying it anyway. “Breaking into places. Dealing drugs. Throwing people tied up with duct tape in trunks. I mean, no judgment. Obviously, it comes in handy, having certain skills.”

  Chase pauses to look askance at him.

  I blink, and then realize: he thinks we’re criminals.

  With an insulted chuff I say, “Excuse me? What makes you think—”

  And then stop.

  Eight and a half months ago, the mere thought of seeing, let alone touching, a gun would have been my worst nightmare—second only to reentering a world on the brink of the apocalypse I’d been taught would destroy and renew the Earth for the faithful.

  While heretics like me and unbelievers burned in Hell.

  Eight and a half months ago, I hadn’t taken so much as an aspirin, worn pants, been alone with a man in private, or eaten meat in fifteen years.

  But since then, I have stolen—cars mostly—traded drugs for information, learned how to fire a gun, fight if I have to, swear, evade capture, and lie. I’ve held others at gunpoint, threatened to kill, and blown up a building . . .

  And lived out one of my intrusive OCD thoughts and run over someone.

  On purpose.

  “No,” I say, realizing just how desperate Simon must be to throw his lot in with us, despite all appearances.

  The lock cracks, and five seconds later we’re hurrying past a series of open offices—also trashed, if not as severely as the ones in the front—and stepping through a broken glass door to emerge in some kind of intake area, the walls lined with concrete blocks. Painted booger yellow.

  I step over a toppled computer station. Glance inside a bare, windowed room. The one across from it is full of bins labeled S, M, L, XL, 2XL, sandals, blankets. A few of them still have orange clothing in them.

  “Here,” Chase says, rapping on the window of a metal security door just past the work bay. Simon shines the flashlight through it. The room’s full of tables with attached stools like kids have in kindergarten and surrounded by cells with narrow windows in the doors like I remember from my single year of public school.

  The far tables are loaded with totes and boxes, the barrels and muzzles of weapons sticking out from one of them. Boxes of what I assume to be ammo in another. Bottles crowd the surface of the table below the stairs, a case that says BACARDI LIMÓN perched on the closest stool. I crane to see into one of the cells but can’t.

  “Arms, ammo, and alcohol,” Simon says, echoing what he told us earlier when we asked what Elcannon kept here.

  Chase stands back and studies the door. There’s a singed hole where the handle used to be, another in the cinder-block wall beside it. A length of chain threaded through them both is held in front with a padlock.

  “Not much security,” Chase says, unslinging his rifle.

  “Doesn’t need it,” Simon says. “His deterrent is a group of orderlies who all need something from him. For whom failing Elcannon means failing someone they love. That lock’s just a symbol. None of them are going to let someone break it—”
>
  Chase bashes it once, twice with the butt of the rifle. Plucks the broken lock from the chain and tosses it away.

  “. . . if they can help it,” Simon murmurs.

  Inside, we move from cell to cell, trying doors . . .

  And throwing them wide.

  “Electronic locks,” Chase says, touching the button inside one, glancing out toward the bay like a nurses’ station.

  The first one has more booze than spring break.

  The rest are stockpiled with arms and ammo.

  The place is a veritable armory.

  Ten seconds later Simon’s shoving boxes of cartridges in his pockets and slinging a hunting rifle around his neck as Chase helps himself to a handgun and a handful of ammo.

  I double-check the cells, tugging down bins to peer into rubber totes stacked beneath, tearing open boxes and checking under bunks.

  No meds.

  “They’re not here,” I say, even though Simon said they wouldn’t be, saying there was no way Elcannon would keep something that important out of his sight for long or anywhere but in the hands of his most loyal orderlies.

  Still, I’m disappointed. Had dared to hope we might be speeding down some gravel road out of town five minutes from now.

  “Let’s go,” Chase says, handing me a pistol, which I slip into the front pocket of my overalls.

  At the end of the hall, Chase turns and lifts his rifle. Shots punch through the air. Bottles of booze explode on the table.

  And then we’re running for the entrance.

  We break out the windows in the entrance, Simon and I shoving orange rubber sandals beneath the doors, propping them open as Chase runs around back.

  And then we look at each other over the John Deere green generator hooked up to the bank of lights.

  Knowing that when they go out, we’ll have only minutes.

  “Just tell me you’ll be there,” Simon says. “If not for me, then for my daughter.”

  “We’ll be there,” I say, grabbing one end of the generator by the frame. “And, Simon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re not criminals.” Though these days the line between survival and crime is so thin I’m no longer sure if that’s true.

  “I never did get either of your names,” he says, grabbing the other side.

  “Sylvia,” I say, giving him my mother’s. Because I’m pretty sure knowing mine might send him over the edge. “And Buck.”

  Simon puts the flashlight in his mouth and we lift the generator between us—thing has to weigh a hundred pounds.

  And then I pull the plug.

  The light goes out.

  We rush into the building carrying the generator between us, down the hall to the detention center. Set it heavily on the floor. Push it onto its side. Return to the open office to find Chase lugging the generator from out back to the middle of the room. He drops it with a thud and kicks it over.

  And then we’re piling papers, chairs, artwork around it. Sweating as we dump bins of towels and orange prison outfits from intake into the detention block—followed by seat cushions and armloads of files from a cabinet in the bay.

  Simon comes barreling down the hall with a cart full of books. Rams into the pile of broken booze bottles, books falling to the floor.

  “You better get going,” Chase says to Simon.

  A second later he’s jogging down the hallway.

  Chase glances at me as though to say, Ready?

  I nod, and he leans over and unscrews the gas cap on the generator, then comes back to stand next to me as I pull out the matches we took off the back guard.

  I strike one and send it flying.

  10:58 P.M.

  * * *

  Sixty seconds later, we’re across the street watching the second fire illuminate the office windows.

  Chase lifts his walkie-talkie, still on the original channel. Pushes the button.

  “We got a fire at the sheriff’s department—we need some help here!” he shouts.

  Static, and then: “What the—”

  Chase switches it off, slides the unit in his pocket as a window shatters in the fire, spewing glass onto the concrete. A pop . . . pop-pop-pop sounds from inside, and by the time we turn up Third Street, it’s crackling like the Fourth of July.

  11:25 P.M.

  * * *

  We cross the river west of the bypass, on Buffalo Bill Avenue. Cut east up South River Road, slowing if only because it’s impossible to run anymore, gravel crunching beneath our soles. I can see the light from here, a glaring glow over the horizon turning a line of trees into a stark silhouette.

  Static on the walkie-talkie. “I just saw three pickups take off for town,” Simon says, low.

  I grab my handset and lift it, finger on the button. “Got your daughter?” I ask, breathing heavily. My lungs feel like they’re on fire, my feet so sore from the last two days that pain shoots up my legs with every jarring step.

  “Got her. We’re headed to the rendezvous point.”

  “Good,” I say, as we cut through a field toward I-80. “We’ll be there soon as we can.”

  We dash across the interstate in time to see two more trucks speed across the bypass, into town. Cross the frontage road of the exit. I can see the sign hulking across the single lane in the darkness. Don’t need light to know what it says.

  83 NORTH, DOWNTOWN

  We run down the embankment and I stumble, go sprawling in the overgrown grass, butt of the rifle knocking my cheek. I roll over, seeing stars, hand to my face. My throat so dry I can’t swallow.

  “You okay?” Chase says, taking me by the arm, dragging me upright to my knees. And then bending down to rest his hands on his, head dropped between his shoulders.

  No. I am not okay.

  But I’ve got 134 miles yet to go tonight.

  I nod in the darkness and shove up to my feet. Stagger a step, adjust the rifle, and check for the walkie-talkie. Press the button.

  “Simon,” I say.

  Static. “What’s happening? Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. We’re almost there. Going silent for a bit.”

  “Talk to you on the other side.”

  I turn the unit off as Chase takes a slow breath and straightens.

  We pick our way to the edge of a field, hoist up and over the chain-link fence.

  And take off running, once more, through the weeds.

  11:37 P.M.

  * * *

  The Store-More self-storage facility is lit up like day by two portable towers in opposite corners: three long buildings running east and west, garage-size units around its perimeter. One north-south unit interspersed with so many regular metal doors it looks like a motel.

  Or a compound.

  The facility’s long buildings and barbed wire atop the chain-link fence aren’t so different from the barrows and walls of the enclave I grew up in. The sliding gate not dissimilar to the one that ground open the day I was sent out like a thing returned to the wild. Not to fly free and thrive but to be devoured.

  The fuel tanker sits in a pool of light, fifty feet from several vehicles and a couple campers in the back.

  We crouch against the side of a metal building with a wood beam portico on the opposite corner across the street. It’s got one of those letter signs out front, most of the tiles missing except for those listing service times. It’s the church Simon mentioned when he told us to steer clear of the houses, where Elcannon’s men had rigged the yard with traps.

  From here I can see that some of the garage doors are open, the interiors set up like apartments with bookshelves and beds, sofas and grills sitting out front beneath makeshift awnings that cast eerie shadows in the artificial light like something from the surface of the moon.

  What we can’t see is how many men are inside. There’s a guard coming down the near side past the ends of the east-west buildings as the one at the entrance five seconds ago disappears around the motel.

  Chase glances at his watch. />
  “How long do you think we have?” I murmur.

  He shakes his head. “They gotta know by now there’s nothing they can do about the fire but point fingers.”

  We’re running out of time.

  I study the fence, the mechanics of the gate. I still have scars from my last run-in with barbed wire, including a faint one on my cheek. Am not eager to tangle with it again.

  Chase points to a patch of fence twenty feet from the light tower, near the corner. Or, rather, the ground beneath it, where it’s been washed out and slopes away toward the ditch. The earth is dry enough I know that can’t be from rain. Judging from the smell wafting toward us, I have a pretty good idea what it is.

  Sewer services and that’s the best he can come up with?

  I grimace, but nod as the guard comes around the end of the nearest building.

  The last time I saw one of Elcannon’s inner circle orderlies, he had sunglasses on above his dust mask. This time the shades are gone, the mask pulled down to his neck.

  Still, there’s something familiar about that camouflage bandanna, the dark splotch of a tattoo on his arm that I suddenly know to be a helmeted skull.

  Buckeye.

  Chase leans forward beside me. “Is that—”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want me to shoot him?” he mutters.

  He has no idea how much I want to say yes.

  Instead, I count the seconds as Buckeye rounds the corner and strolls along the south side to stand at the gate, looking out in the direction of the fire.

  Move. Go.

  He rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck. Spits on the ground.

  Chase lowers his head, drawing a slow breath in through his nose as I glance at my watch. What if what Buckeye is looking at isn’t the glow of the blaze, but a caravan of headlights headed back this way?

  Buckeye reaches for his walkie-talkie, adjusts a knob. Staticky chatter fills the air, urgent questions and shouted commands I can’t quite make out over the rattle of the light tower’s generator. He switches the channel as he finally starts back this way, murmuring into the handset.