by Thunboe, Bo
Sean snatched it up. “Do you have any more bullets for it?”
“No.” Dan took the gun from Sean.
“I just hope she waited for you.” Mary’s chin quivered as she fought off tears.
“If she’s left there, I’ll never find—”
“Stay on that bike trail,” Sean said. “She saw the sign for it in downtown Elgin and texted me asking if that was the same bike trail we took that one time. I told her it was. If she comes home, she’ll come the way she knows.”
“Good thinking, Sean. There’s no way we’ll miss each other on a six-foot-wide path.”
“Wear that hat she gave you,” Mary said. Erin always noticed when Dan wore the bright blue knit hat with the Cubs logo.
“Another good idea.”
Mary tried to smile, but when she felt tears coming, she hugged him and buried her face in his chest. “Bring her home.”
48
Erin circled, weight on the balls of her feet, hands ready. Five of them spaced evenly around her, the sixth still down, clutching his chest and breathing hoarsely.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” the fat one said.
Erin said nothing—talk would not get her out of this. A tug on her backpack almost took her off her feet. She spun and kicked, landing a glancing blow to the man’s shoulder that drove him back. He was a gangly beanpole with a thin beard and bad teeth and he stood with his weight on his heels. She glanced at the other men, then shifted her weight to launch a spin kick.
“Boys!”
The men froze.
A woman stepped out of the shadows across the street. “Leave her alone.” She was tall and thick and carried something long.
“She’s got a gun! We should’ve brought ours!”
As Erin stepped toward her savior, an arm slipped around her neck and leveraged her head back. Damn it! She’d let herself get distracted.
“God damn right I have a gun and I’ll use it if you don’t let her go.” The woman crossed the street and stopped less than twenty feet away. She raised the gun and swept its muzzle over them. When the giant black hole of the barrel passed over her, the arm around Erin’s neck yanked tighter, nearly pulling her off her feet. The man closest to the woman ducked as the muzzle passed over him.
“That bitch is from the coffee shop.” Beanpole pointed down the street. “This don’t concern you. You need to go back where you come from and mind your own fucking business.”
“Let her go right now.”
“We ain’t going to—”
Blam! Beanpole spun and fell to the sidewalk.
The arm holding Erin disappeared and she fell backward to the concrete. She stood back up, looking around. All the other men were gone. Beanpole sat up, cradling his right arm in the crook of his other elbow. “You blew my fucking arm off!”
“I warned you first.”
A dark pool began to spread out under Beanpole. “You crazy bitch!”
His arm was still there, but the hand wasn’t. His limb ended in a mangled mass of red flesh and white splintered bone. Blood swelled from it in a pulsing rhythm. Erin’s face got suddenly hot and her vision dimmed. As her stomach started to tighten the woman grabbed her hand and tugged her down the sidewalk. “Let’s go.”
Erin went along, breathing hard, her stomach churning. She should have stayed with the team.
The woman took them left at the next street and within a block Erin’s head had cleared and she yanked her hand free. The woman stopped and faced her.
“Why are you out here alone? Fools like them are all over town doing whatever their crooked hearts ever desired.”
“I need to get home.”
“Where’s home?” The woman had long dreadlocks, dark skin, and beautiful teeth.
“Weston.”
“You’ll never make it. Stay with us.”
“I don’t know…”
“Come inside.” She gestured toward a storefront coffee shop with a black awning. “Have a muffin and we’ll talk about it.”
Erin looked back the way they’d come. The street was empty, but those men were still out there. She followed the woman inside. It was warmer out of the wind.
The woman locked the door behind them and leaned her gun against the wall near the door. It was too dark to see much more than the outline of the tables and counters, but the woman moved around easily. She grabbed a muffin from the glass case, and set it on a table back from the window. “I’m Marla. We own this place, but I guess that’s over.” She patted the table. “Sit.”
Erin dropped her pack to the floor and slid onto a chair. She took a bite, then asked around it. “What do you mean it’s over?”
“The world has changed. At least for now and probably for a long time.”
“I knew this wasn’t just a power outage.”
“It was that, but a lot more.” Marla explained that she thought an Electromagnetic Pulse had done all this. Erin remembered Sean telling her about this exact scenario. They’d even watched a movie where things had turned bad very quickly, like what had happened to her.
And to the man who lost his hand.
“Walking through twenty or thirty miles of guys like that is a bad idea.”
Marla was right. But most of those miles were on the bike path and there was nothing along the path to attract looters. She would only be at risk going through towns, but there was a whole string of them along the trail before she turned east on the Prairie Path in Kirwin. Maybe she should go back to the hotel. But they would ask why she came back and when she told them, there was no way Coach would let any of them leave the hotel again.
Mom needed her at home. And so did Sean.
Especially if Dan didn’t make it home.
And Erin didn’t believe in retreating.
49
Dan held Mary tight. “I will bring her home.”
“I shouldn’t have let her spend the night!”
Mary was always quick to blame herself when something went wrong with one of the kids. “But they were all staying, right? Like a reward for the great year they’d had.”
She shook her head, refusing his effort to soothe her guilt. Dan stood by the fireplace to change into the fresh clothes she’d laid out on the hearth for him. The fire was an inferno, heat pouring into the room, drying his eyes. He blinked a few times and rubbed his face. The motorcycle ride through the night had done him in. Too much time sitting on the narrow saddle, bent over the handlebars. Not enough rest.
Clothes on, he sat and laced up his boots. Mary stood watching him. She couldn’t stand still, hugging herself, rubbing her arms, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
When he was done, he took her in his arms. “Please listen to me. I know how you blame yourself when things go wrong. But you did not make a mistake here. Erin earned our trust to stay the night. End of story.” He looked into her eyes. “I will bring her home. Whatever it takes.”
“I know. I know.”
“With all that’s going on it’s easy to forget about things, especially things built into a routine that’s now disturbed. Like—”
“I’m taking my pills.”
She’d always been smarter than him. “Good. How do you… feel?”
“How do I feel?” She pulled away from him. “I feel like my daughter is in danger. I feel like you’re wasting time.” Her voice was rising and getting sharper with every word. “I feel like you don’t—”
“Mary!” Dan grabbed her shoulders. “I will find her.” He pumped the words with the same confidence he used on juries at trial, and his words penetrated. Her body stilled and her eyes stopped jittering.
“I know you will.”
“Ready?” Sean asked. His gaze went back and forth between Dan and his mom.
“You two go,” Mary said. “I need to finish putting some food together, then I’ll be right out.”
Dan followed Sean. The moment he stepped into the garage he was assaulted by the smell of raw meat. “What happened out here
?”
Sean flicked on a flashlight and shined it on an animal carcass hanging from the garage door rail. “Check it out!”
“Whoa!”
“Me and Ed Fleck got it. I shot it with his bow and he cleaned it.” Sean gave it a meaty slap. “Mom’s going to cut it up to distribute to the people staying on the court.”
“Nice work, Sean.” The flashlight beam made the thick veins of marbling glow. “I hadn’t thought about getting deer out of Radar Grove. You’re doing a great job getting us ready.”
Sean’s smile faltered and he squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them, he asked, “Do you think Erin is okay?”
“Absolutely. You know how tough she is.”
“Tougher than me.” Sean’s shoulders drooped.
“Erin has fighting skills you don’t, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to survive this. Look at all you’ve done since this happened. The deer, getting those supplies. Look at how you handled those three guys who tried to stop you.”
Sean perked up, smiling slightly.
“About your mom. She’s getting… jittery. We need to make sure she stays on her meds, eats right, and gets enough sleep.”
“None of us are eating right or sleeping enough.”
Sean was right and there was no short term solution to that. Once Erin was home, they could regroup. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be gone.” Dan’s hands were cold so he put them in his pockets, encountering the gun. He pulled it out. “Maybe I should leave this with you.”
Sean’s eyebrows went up. “I’ve never shot a real gun.”
“It’s a revolver. Point and shoot.” Dan handed Sean the little gun.
Sean passed it back and forth in his hands then found the button and released the cylinder and looked at bullets. He snapped it close and handed it back. “You might need this out there. You’ll be back before the hordes reach us.”
“What hordes?”
“People in apartments have small pantries and no fireplaces. They won’t stay home once they figure out the power isn’t coming back on. All those people in Chicago apartments will head for the burbs, for the country.”
Dan had not thought that far ahead. He’d been focused on getting home, and now on finding Erin. “I’m glad you’re thinking about these things, but won’t they head south toward warmer weather?”
“Warmer weather is a long way off. Houses with food and fireplaces are a lot closer.”
Sean was absolutely right. He needed to find Erin and get her home. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Good.”
Mary came into the garage holding a soft-sided lunch cooler.
He took it from her and put in in the small rack on the front of the bike, reserving the rack Sean put on the back for Erin. A tear coursed down Mary’s cheek. She held out a three by five school photo of Erin. “To show to people if she isn’t at the hotel,” she said.
He pocketed the photo, but doubted he would need it. He’d find her on the trail or at the hotel.
“And here’s your stash—what’s left of it. Maybe you can use it to, I don’t know, get people to help?”
The money was divided into five packets. He slipped them into the inside pocket of his coat. “If all else fails I can just fling it in the air.”
Sean smiled.
A tear ran down Mary’s cheek. Dan held her tight.
“I know how you like to… do good,” Mary said. “But please remember—”
“Family first,” Dan said.
“Exactly. Bring our girl home.”
Our girl. Dan’s heart swelled. Erin was his daughter. He’d loved her and parented her. But he’d never adopted her. He’d planned to adopt them after their dad died, but the first time Mary left him alone with the kids he’d failed so badly he changed his mind. Fallon men were not dad material. Mary accepted his decision, but not being their legal dad had kept him apart from them—all of them. They were a family and he was just… extra.
Was it too late to fix that?
First, he needed to bring Erin home.
“I will find her. I won’t be back until I do.”
Mary pressed her fists to his chest. “You have to come back, whether…” Twin tears now. “I don’t mean for you to sacrifice yourself.”
He kissed her forehead, clapped Sean on the shoulder, then grabbed the bike’s handlebars and wheeled it out the back door. Sean followed him outside. The night was clear, the air still, but frigid.
“Take the flashlight.” Sean held it out.
“I won’t need it with this full moon.”
“You’ll need it at the hotel and we have more in the laundry room.”
Dan trapped it under the spring-loaded rack on the front of the bike with the cooler.
He pulled on the thick fur-lined leather gloves Mary had found for him, wrapped the scarf around his throat and pulled on the Cubs knit hat with the inner lining. He threw a leg over the bike and put his foot on the pedal.
Sean put his hand on Dan’s shoulder. “Good luck, Dan.”
Dan smiled and pedaled away, his own name echoing in his head. Dan. When the kids moved in, their dad had just died. Steve had been a great dad—world class—involved and patient and goofy. A real dad. Their real dad. Dan had balked at the idea of them calling him dad. He hadn’t…earned it. And he was scared of the label—his birth father had convinced him that Fallon men were not dad material. But asking the kids to call him Dan had started the whole thing off wrong. Calling him by his name had put extra distance between them that he’d never overcome.
Carson sat on a lawn chair in the sun on his driveway, watching the court, wearing the green vest Mary and Sean had mentioned. Dan veered that way, then changed his mind. Sean could handle Carson. If Carson was still a problem when Dan got back, he’d have a talk with him.
As Dan passed Snick’s house, one of the two houses that bracketed the entry to the cul-de-sac off Raymond Drive, he spotted Snick in his living room window. Dan pulled a hand off the handlebar and waved, but Snick just stared at him. The guy had always been a little odd. Too familiar, or stand offish, never anything in between.
“Whatever.” Dan hunched over the handle bars and put his weight into the pedals, legs and buttocks protesting. The bike rode well, smooth and silent but for the whir of the chain and hiss of tires on pavement. After he crossed Raymond, he stopped in the moon shadow of the Arbor’s guard hut and adjusted the scarf, wrapping it tight to cover his face, leaving nothing but a gap for his eyes and a slit under his nose. The wind he created by moving through the air had a hard bite.
He rode on, scanning the scene ahead of him, worried about another ambush. But he saw no one. He crossed over Route 59 and sped up, flying through the Longwood neighborhood, waving back to a large group of people huddled around a fire in the front of the elementary school.
He got back on the Prairie Path, a sense of déjà vu as he retraced his steps from a few hours before, the crushed stone trail bed grinding loudly under his tires. But the path was fairly smooth and he rode fast, slowing to bump up and over the asphalt when the path crossed a road. As he rode his muscles warmed and felt better. This time he didn’t take the short cut on Indian Trail—Erin wouldn’t know about it so wouldn’t take it. Instead he took the path all the way into Kirwin, spotting people away from the path through the winter-bared trees lining the trail. At Hankes Road the path went along the pavement for a few hundred yards until it continued west through a park along the Wolf River. He rode through the park and over the Illinois Avenue bridge and to the Wolf River Trail. It hadn’t even taken an hour.
So far so good.
This trail was wider and paved with smooth asphalt. Dan accelerated until the trees whipped by him, pumping furiously, shifting up through the gears. He had to be going more than ten miles an hour. As sweat broke across his back he realized he was being stupid. He needed to conserve energy for the ride back.
And for whatever surprises lay ahead of him.
50
Erin stood up from the table. “Thanks for the muffin.” She’d eaten it without tasting it, still shaken by what the gun had done to that man’s hand. She ran her tongue around her teeth and found cinnamon and pecans. “And thanks for helping me with those guys. I don’t know what they might have—”
“I wasn’t going to wait to find out.”
That was exactly right. Take the fight to them before they’re ready. Escalate faster and further than they escalate. Especially when the odds were against you. Just like Coach had done against the big guy in the flannel shirt.
She picked up her backpack, shrugged it on over her coat and pulled on her hat.
“Are you sure you won’t stay with us?”
“Who is us?”
“Me and my wife.” Marla pointed to a plaque on the wall.
Wife? Erin went over and examined it. The light was dim but she could see it was a newspaper article behind glass. The photo captioned in the article was of two women, Marla and a tall slender black woman with a tight afro.
“We live above the shop. Julia’s hiding upstairs because she’s pregnant. I don’t know how we’re going to handle that.”
Erin wondered when Marla knew she was gay. And when did Julia? And how did they know—for sure? If she stayed, she could ask them. But she had to get home.
“Thanks, Marla. But—”
“Maybe you should wait till morning. The light of day might send the rats back under cover.”
That might be true, but Mom could be losing it already. “I’ll be more careful. And I’ll be on bike trails nearly the whole way so shouldn’t see many people.”
“At least don’t go back to where they got you. Go south on this street here.” She pointed out the window. “It angles to the river. When it crosses Fulton Street, cut straight west down that sidewalk under the trees to the river. The bike trail is right there. If someone bother you, act fast like you did when you punched that man in the throat.”
“I will. And thank you for saving me. And for the muffin.” Erin zipped up her coat and stepped outside. The wind had died to nothing, but the cold felt deeper. She followed Marla’s directions, staying in close to the buildings in the moon shadow. She saw no one, but heard distant shouts and glass breaking. At the end of the block she darted across the street and hunkered down in the shadows on the other side, shaking. Maybe she should stay with Marla.