by Chris Lowry
I aimed the shotgun at the door and took a step toward the table.
“More than one and you go first,” I said out of the side of my mouth.
“Just one,” Warren advised. “With the key.”
We both watched the door creak open and a single hand push through the slit. It held a simple keyring with one tiny key on it.
The guard finished stepping through and shut the door behind him.
They were doing what Warren asked, and better yet, they weren’t trying to get him killed, or kill me.
That extra step told me something about the way he ran his little walled community. He was careful. His people found him valuable.
The guard took a couple of steps toward me, slow and tentative. I held up my left wrist to be unbound, then switched hands.
The chain jangled to the floor and the guard stepped back.
“Step one,” I said to Warren.
“What’s step two?”
I stared at him then, let the rage bubble up inside my gut, let it reach my face. I had it in control, held in check, but I wanted him to see.
Then I jacked the shotgun to eject three shells onto the floor and held it out to the guard.
“Step two is you walk me to the gate.”
The guard snatched the weapon from me. Warren smiled.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“We’ll stop by the hospital to pick up your children.”
He drove the golf cart, I sat in the passenger seat as his emissaries jogged behind us. It would be tough in riot gear so they must have been rough men, or trained since the end of the world.
Either way, I was impressed.
“Hospital?” I tried not to growl.
He heard it.
“They’re not hurt. I instructed Zach to take them back there.”
We drove through simple streets lined with older homes built in the boom after World War II, abandoned to white flight, reclaimed through gentrification and now being used again with an influx of refugees. There were no yards to speak of.
The spaces between houses held mobile homes, single wide’s shoved in the narrow alleyways. The fronts were given over to garden space, though not much crop had shown yet. Just raised planter beds filled with black soil and stakes in preparation for something in the spring.
He saw me watching.
“The grasshopper and the ants.”
“I know the story.”
“We have taken most of what we can find in the surrounding communities. The Natchez pirates have taken the rest. I don’t plan on fighting them for the scraps left over so we will grow our own instead.”
“What if they come take it?”
“They can try.”
I got a glimpse then of the man under the folds of fat, the man who others followed. There was iron there.
“That’s why you let in the General.”
It wasn’t a statement.
“His numbers and training will add to our own and make us a formidable foe.”
He pulled the cart up to the school building that doubled as a hospital space.
“Your children are inside, but I would like to show you something first.”
I followed him through the door as his men spread around the opening in attempts at being casual observers. I noted they were facing out, small clumps gathered on either side of the walkway to the building.
It gave them four positions to monitor the street, and create intersecting lines of fire if needed.
I wondered why, but didn’t ask.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I stayed two steps behind Warren as he led me to what was once the school office. It was typical of a lot of offices I remembered, though I hadn’t been in one since high school. Never visited my children’s school office, except to pick them up on the occasions where my plane arrived early, or one time with my youngest to buy tickets for a daddy daughter dance.
There were three rooms off the common area, each marked. One said Principal, the other Counselor and the third marked storage.
Four men sat in the common room around a cafeteria table playing a game of Uno.
They stood to attention when Warren knocked lightly and opened the door.
“Gentlemen,” he beamed. “Please don’t let me interrupt.”
They sat back at the table and resumed their game.
I glanced through the open door into the Principal’s office and saw three sets of bunk beds against each wall and tiny hints of living. Postcards or pictures taped to the walls over the beds, a couple of shirts folded on one.
Warren opened the door marked Counselor.
There was a HAM radio on a desk, manned by a fifth man under a headset. He smiled at Warren and doffed the headgear.
“Sir.”
“What’s new today?” Warren inquired.
There was a giant map of the United States on the wall, red and yellow pushpins marked dots on the spaces.
“We connected with Japan last night,” the radio operator gushed.
“What did we learn?”
“They have it too. Got hit pretty bad.”
Warren turned to me to explain.
“We’ve connected with Paris, the Caribbean and now Japan,” he explained. “There are more of us who survived than most realize.”
I stepped past him and stared at the map.
Red pins were shoved into Orlando, Miami, Atlanta, DC. They made a glossy tipped trail through every major population center. I could guess what the red stood for.
“We haven’t contacted any survivors there yet,” he said from my shoulder.
“What do the yellow mean?”
“Albert?”
“Yellow means a refugee center.”
My stomach dropped and my eyes moved over to Jacksonville FL. Red pin. Up the coast. Yellow at Savannah. Wilmington. Charlottesville.
“How do you know this?”
“I was in the National Guard,” said Albert. “All of the radiomen.”
He pointed with his chin to the room full of what I know knew were soldiers. This was a post.
“We were called up to Jackson, but we never made it. Or the dead made it before us.”
Jackson had a red pin in the center. Gulfport.
I let my eyes move over the map.
There was a lot of red. Birmingham. Mobile. Destin.
“Are these confirmed?”
Albert shrugged.
“Did we have eyes on them? No. But you see the world out there. If it’s like Jackson, then yeah, it’s confirmed.”
Orlando too.
It was easy to assume the rest.
“Can I get a copy of this?”
“The map?”
“I want the refugee centers.”
“Why? They were overrun too.”
I don’t have a poker face, I have a stoic’s face. I know I look angry all the time. My kids even made fun of it.
When Albert told me we lost the refugee centers, I needed a poker face. I needed to keep the emotion off it.
I failed.
Warren stepped back and even Albert scooted his chair back.
Then the Krew of Mardi Gras put his hand on my shoulder.
“Did you know someone in them?”
It was a simple act.
So small, just a touch from a man I didn’t know.
He was giving me strength, offering me, a stranger, support. More than a stranger, a man who had just held him at gunpoint.
This was the man that people would follow.
I’d have to tell Brian about him.
I nodded.
Albert didn’t relax, didn’t move back to his position.
“Tell us about Japan,” Warren asked.
Albert swallowed hard and looked at a set of scribbled notes on a pad. A logbook.
“It wasn’t my shift, but looks like we lost Tokyo. Most of the survivors are in the North and South. They got radio communications back faster than we did, and are coordinating a cleanup. They’re working tog
ether.”
He swallowed hard again.
“It’s not like here.”
I leaned against the wall. I didn’t give a crap about Tokyo. I wanted to know about the refugee camps.
“Which ones?”
“One what?”
“Which ones were overrun? It can’t be all of them.”
“We don’t know,” the radio man explained.
He pointed to the green pins.
Vicksburg. Natchez. Knoxville. Hannibal.
“Those are confirmed through radio contact and eyes on,” he said. “Yellow means we’ve heard rumors.”
“White?”
There were two dozen or more white pins scattered across the US.
“Radio contact, no information.”
“What about the government? Army?”
Albert shook his head.
“Nothing? Or all gone?” I growled.
They didn’t back up this time but I could feel the mood in the room behind me shift. A subtle sound of bodies moving, tension in the air.
“Nothing,” Albert answered. “No contact.”
I took a breath in through my nose, let it out through my mouth and watched Warren relax.
I leaned forward and sorted through the pins for one with a green head, then I found Jasper on the map and stuck it in.
“We’re there,” I said. “Twenty or so.”
“That’s not so many,” said Warren. “Soon to be twenty-three.”
He smiled at me then. It touched his eyes. I tried to smile back and he removed his hand.
I hadn’t realized it was still there, still connecting me to being calm like an anchor. I felt a bubble in my stomach as the rage churned, but it remained low.
I knew where to start looking.
That was something.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“When you return to your camp, will you tell them about this place?”
Warren escorted me down the hall.
“I won’t hide it from them.”
“When you raid the coastal cities like a Viking, will you tell them?”
I could hear the grin in his voice.
“I’ll spray paint it on every billboard if you like.”
“I would not,” he said. “But if you run into good people, we can support them.”
He stopped at the door to a room.
“So long as they like catfish and bream.”
His fingers turned the knob and pushed through.
The Boy stood over Zack holding a bloody chair leg. Bem cowered in the corner, her shirt ripped.
“Dad,” the boy sobbed.
Blood spattered his face and arm, sprays and splatters on the wall like a Jackson Pollack painting. He dropped the wooden piece and it clattered on the floor.
“What did you do?” Warren shouted and ran across the floor to the body.
Zack was gone. Or most of his head was.
“Guard!” Warren screamed.
I slammed the door shut and sprinted to him. We slammed together and even though he had me by at least one hundred pounds, I moved him against the wall, my hand across his thick lips.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
His wide eyes watched over me, the wind from his nose blowing tiny flecks of snot and spit across my calloused hand.
“We find out what happened first.”
Warren shook his head.
“Laws,” he said through my hand. “Rules and laws.”
I heard pounding up the hallway, boots from the radiomen and guards from outside.
“He tried…” the Boy started to say.
Tears slid out of Warren’s eyes and dripped across my hand.
The door shattered open and his emissaries spilled through, shotguns held up. I backed away from Warren, grabbed the boy by the sleeve and dragged him with me toward Bem.
Torn shirt, tear streaked bruised cheek.
I felt the bubble burst and put them both behind me.
Eight guards, plus Warren. He wouldn’t fight.
They had guns. I was five feet from the chair leg.
We didn’t stand a chance.
They would shoot the kids, and I’d see it. Or they would shoot me, and the kids would see it.
Either way, I needed time. I needed a distraction.
“He tried to hurt her,” the Boy gasped behind me. “Tell them.”
“You heard him,” I shouted at the guards. “He tried to hurt my daughter.”
Warren pushed off the wall and adjusted his jacket.
“I told you no killing.”
“It was self-defense.”
“You were almost out of here,” he seemed sputtered. “You almost made it.”
“I did it,” I turned to the guards. “It was me. I killed him.”
I used my hands to hold the Boy behind me as we straddled Bem. I tried to cover them both with my body, hide them.
“Do it,” Warren sighed.
The Guards moved in, and clubbed me with a gun. I tried to fight as they dragged the kids away, but fell into darkness instead.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I never really passed out. I’ve been knocked out before, but this was different. It was like a version of tunnel vision where I the light expanded and collapsed in and out, in and out in a blurring tumble of confusion.
I could hear voices, grunts and shouts, shrieks and yells.
Down the hallway, past the radio room, past the golf cart as the emissaries dragged me along the street.
I tried to get my feet under me, but they wouldn’t work right.
We reached an intersection and there was the General in his chair, surrounded by his soldiers.
“Told you,” he said.
He wasn’t talking to me.
He winked at Warren then gave me a sneer.
“I’d say, be seeing you, but I think I’m going to enjoy watching you instead.”
I wish I could say I thought of something glib, some flippant remark to let him know he couldn’t get to me.
Something like, “Stand up for yourself.” Or “Take a hike.”
But while I thought those things in my head, I didn’t say them out loud. I may have mumbled, if you don’t think mumbling is too undignified.
They frog walked me up a series of steps, and into a box overlooking a football field. Warren stood beside me, a look of sadness darkening his brow, a burly man holding each of my arms.
“I wish it wouldn’t have come to this,” he said.
I could see below. It looked like a simple high school in a poor neighborhood. A track ran around a football field, stadiums of bleachers on two sides. All of it surrounded by a ten-foot chain link fence.
It looked reinforced.
I watched emissaries lead the Boy and Bem onto the field. One held him by the opening, the other dragged her to the middle of the fifty-yard line and slammed her to the ground.
“What’s his name?” I blinked away some of the black and white.
“The guard?”
I turned to the man on my left.
“You got a radio?”
He grunted.
“You do have a radio. I can see it on your belt. You know that guy?”
Grunt again. At least he was a consistent conversationalist.
“I’m making you watch this,” said Warren. “I don’t want to do this, but there are laws that govern this society. Murder is met with extreme prejudice.”
“Tell that guard I’m going to knock his head off for throwing her down.”
The grunter gave me a giggle.
“Good luck with that.”
We were making progress. He was talking. It was mono-syllabic. That was an evolutionary step in our communication.
They closed the gate behind the Boy.
I could see his mouth screaming as he beat against the metal.
Then below us Z started lumbering onto the field.
I didn’t scream.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t sh
out.
I’m telling you why.
It would have made them tense up. They would have gripped tighter.
“We don’t do the justice ourselves,” said Warren. “But Justice is served.”
He fooled me.
Son of a bitch.
The Boy ran toward the group of Z, waving his arm and getting their attention to keep it off Bem.
The herd turned toward him, and he led them around the track, a slow jog. Bem waited until the last one was in the enclosure. She ran behind a slow one, tripped it.
It plopped on the ground and she stomped its head in.
I watched her roll it over and strip it’s shirt, then she used her hands to rip open the waxy flesh on its stomach. She threw up as she scooped out guts and put it on the shirt.
“What does she think she’s doing?” the Krew of Mardi Gras said in wonder.
Then she picked up the shirt and ran after another one, one of the last ones. She repeated it. Knocked the Z down, smashed its skull with her hiking boot and spread the guts on a shirt.
The Boy led the group around the far end of the track.
Bem ran back onto the field and cowered under the shirt so she was covered with the gore drenched fabric. She arranged the second shirt beside her.
The Boy darted across the field toward the back of the herd, then crossed back again, creating a milling confusion of Z’s bouncing off each other for a moment. He dashed toward his sister and slide into a tight little ball under the second shirt.
“They think they can hide,” the Grunting Guard beside me grunted.
I dropped to my knees, the weight of me ripped my arms free.
Before they could recover, I jammed my hands into their gibbly bits and squeezed.
Grunter grinned.
They had on cups.
“Seriously?”
He swung his fist at my face. I fell on my back and felt the wind of the haymaker part my hair.
Then I did the only sensible thing to do when one is on their back and surrounded by two enemy combatants who are standing.
I jerked my knees to my chest and did my best imitation of a mule.
Into their knees.
The hinge mechanism is an incredible trait. I have marveled at mine for hours during a long run. The design is more than ninety degrees in one direction, pulled back by the hamstring, forward by the quadricep, the stability of the joint attached to the heel by the long calf muscle.