by Easton, BB
“That’s what the last guy said who was sittin’ in that chair.”
His face hardens. “What the fuck did you say?”
“He was a big fella, too, just like you. In fact, I think that’s his gun you’re holdin’. I know ’cause I used it to shoot your two friends over there.” My eyes cut to the red stain on the cement next to him.
His jaw snaps shut, and his eyes narrow in hatred. “You tellin’ me you killed Skeeter and Lawn Boy?” His voice sounds like a dangerous combination of rage and grief, so I soften my tone.
“Only ’cause they fired first. Like I said, I don’t wanna hurt anybody. But you got what I need in there, and I ain’t leavin’ without it.”
The tattooed testosterone machine’s nostrils flare as he considers my proposition. Then, he stands up and swings the Uzi toward me, biceps flexing as he squeezes the handle in anger. I close my eyes and hold my breath, but the br-r-r-r-r-ap never comes.
“Two hundred,” he finally says with a frustrated growl. “For Skeeter and Lawn Boy.”
I nod solemnly. “Two hundred.”
When the behemoth turns and passes through the sliding tarp door, I exhale in relief and dig a wad of cash out of my back pocket with a shaking hand. It’s everything I had hidden in my sock drawer. Figured I’d better keep it on me now that my house has been overrun by Renshaws.
With knocking knees, I walk over to the blue Toyota and tuck all my twenties under the passenger windshield wiper. Then, I retreat to the F-150 a few parking spaces away.
Visions of an ambush flood my mind while I wait. I picture the guard running out with five, ten, fifteen thugs on his heels, all of them blasting the parking lot with semiautomatic weapons until the dumb girl in the baggy hoodie is just another red stain on the cement.
Maybe that’s the real reason I came here.
Maybe I want them to kill me.
But they don’t. What feels like hours later, the tarp door slides open again, revealing guard number two holding four plastic grocery bags and looking none too pleased about it.
He makes murderous eye contact with me as he lumbers toward the blue sedan. Then, he drops the bags on the hood and snatches the cash out from under the wiper blade. Counting it twice, the leathery redneck spits on the ground in my direction. Then, he turns and walks back to his station.
I wait until he’s back in his lawn chair and as far away from me as he’s going to get before I approach the car. He watches me walk with a predatory stare but doesn’t make a move as I inspect the bags. It’s all here—the vitamins, the soup, the fruits and veggies. This time, I can’t keep my tears at bay as an overwhelming mixture of pride and disbelief swells in my chest.
“Thank you,” I say, my voice cracking as I give the ogre a small, sincere smile.
“Fuck you,” he replies, dropping his eyes back down to the phone in his lap.
Wes
Three hundred fifty-four.
No matter how many times I count the gray cinder blocks lining my six-by-six cell, it always comes out to three hundred and fifty-fucking-four.
It’s so small I can’t even lie down on the cot without bending my knees, which is exactly what I’m doing as I stare at the ceiling with my pillow pressed against my ears, trying to block out the sobs of the guy in the holding cell next to me.
Sad bastard kept me up all night. I’d felt bad for him at first, but now, I wish somebody would come put him out of his misery. I don’t know how much more of this shit I can take.
His guttural wails finally die down—thank God—but before I can roll over and try to get some shut-eye, the fucker decides he wants to chat.
“Hey, neighbor? You doing okay?” He sniffles, blowing his nose on God knows what.
Ugh. Do we really have to do this?
“Yep,” I deadpan.
“I’m sorryyyyy.” His voice breaks on the last syllable, and the tears start up again. “I’m trying to be quiet … I really am.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“It’s cool,” I mutter without an ounce of sincerity. I’m not exactly long on compassion right about now.
“I’m Doug.” He sniffle-snorts like a rusty trumpet.
“Wes.”
“Hi, Wes. What are you in for?”
Oh my God.
I roll my eyes. This guy sounds like a pocket-protector-wearing Trekkie with a comb-over and a degree in Norse mythology. He must have heard that line in a prison movie on Netflix.
“Antibiotics.” Accepting that I’m never going to sleep again, I sit up and stretch my legs out in front of me. It’s weird to see them wrapped in an orange jumpsuit. I wore the same Hawaiian shirt and pair of jeans ever since the fires broke out in Charleston. All I got out of town with were the clothes on my back and my buddy’s dirt bike.
Now, I don’t even have those.
“Antibiotics? Wow. That’s all it takes, huh?”
“Guess so. What about you?” I ask, suddenly curious about what this cubicle-dweller could have possibly done to land himself here.
“I … I stole an incubator from the hospital for m-m-my premature son.” He starts weeping again, and I immediately regret asking the fucking question. “My wife and I, we …”
“Hey, man. You don’t have to—” I interrupt, trying to spare myself a fucking sob story, but Doug just keeps on going.
“We’d been trying to have a baby for years. We did everything—spent our life savings on medical procedures—but nothing worked.” He clears his throat, trying to pull his shit together, and continues, “When the nightmares began, we were almost relieved. There was no point in trying if the world was going to end, you know? But as soon as we gave up, that’s when it happened. My wife finally got pregnant … but the baby wasn’t due until June.”
Fuck. I shake my head, staring at the floor now instead of the ceiling. I think I liked it better when he was crying.
“My wife, she … she lost it. The nightmares, the hormones, the fact that she was growing a child she’d never get to hold—it took its toll. You know how the announcement said that the April 23 hoax was designed to increase the global stress levels until the weakest members of society self-destructed?”
“Yeah,” I rasp.
“My wife was weak, Wes.”
Was. Past tense.
“Doug … fuck, man … I’m—”
“She … she made herself go into labor. I don’t know how she did it, but on April 20, I found her in a bathtub full of blood … holding our s-s-son.”
The sobbing starts again, and I can’t help but think about Rain. I think about the night I found her on the verge of death with a stomach full of pills. I think about the hours I spent with my fingers down her throat, saving her life. I think about her panic attacks and trauma triggers and the days she spent holed up in an abandoned mall because she was too scared to go outside without me. Then, I think about the baby she might be growing, and I realize that my girl and Doug’s girl have a lot in fucking common.
Maybe too much.
“I’m sorry for yer loss,” a third voice mumbles, pulling me away from my spiraling thoughts.
I look up to find Officer Hoyt standing outside our cells, holding a pair of ankle shackles and staring at the floor.
“Oh God. Is it time? I … I’m not ready!”
“Not yet,” Officer Hoyt mutters to my neighbor. “Governor Steele has a sentencin’ to do first.”
Then, he flashes me a remorseful, sidelong glance.
“Mr. Parker, I’m afraid I have to escort you to the courtroom now. Please stand with your back against the bars.”
Regret and panic shoot through my veins as Hoyt gestures for me to step forward.
“Stick your foot out through the bars, please.”
I do as he said and feel a metal shackle clamp down around my ankle.
“Other foot now.”
“Doug,” I ask, suddenly needing to know how his story ends, “if you’re in here, does that mean you saved your son’s life?”
&n
bsp; Hoyt finishes shackling my legs and instructs me to stick my hands out through the bars next.
“Yes.” Doug sniffles as cold steel greets my wrists. “I think he’s going to pull through. My sister has him now.”
My cell door opens with a deafening squeak. As Hoyt leads me out by the elbow, I turn and glance at the man imprisoned beside me. He’s an older guy—maybe forty? Forty-five? His hair is thinning, and his skin is so pale I wouldn’t be surprised if the only light it saw was the glow of a computer screen. He’s wearing a blue button-up shirt with jeans and athletic shoes that have obviously never been used for athletics. He lifts his head as I pass and meets my sympathetic frown with one of his own, despair oozing out of his unshaven pores.
He looks like something I’ve always wanted. Something I’ll never get the chance to become.
He looks like a dad.
A damn good one.
Rain
Twenty-four hundred.
I take the last bottle of prenatal vitamins out of the plastic Huckabee Foods bag and place it on the floor of my tree house next to the others.
Twenty-seven hundred.
I don’t know how far along I am, but I’m guessing that two thousand seven hundred prenatal vitamins is more than enough to get me through.
I slump back in my beanbag chair.
If Wes had seen me, he would have been so proud.
And so pissed.
I smile, remembering how mad he got the last two times we went to Fuckabee Foods. He told me I was “impulsive” and had a “death wish.”
Yeah, and he got shot in the shoulder because of it.
My face falls.
And I let the wound get infected.
I pull my hoodie sleeves over my hands and press my fists against my mouth.
And then he almost died in Carter’s house fire because I rushed back in to get his medicine and he couldn’t find me.
I close my eyes and inhale through my nose. My sweatshirt smells like the vanilla candles I used to burn in my bedroom. The ones he brought with him when he came back to get me from the mall.
It’s all I have left of him now. These memories … this smell …
My stomach churns again, reminding me of one more thing he left me with. Something that, unlike a scent or a memory, will only grow bigger and stronger with time. Something that, God willing, I’ll be able to keep forever and ever.
My gaze drifts over to the spot across the yard where the red dirt is piled up in two neat rows as long and wide as coffins. The spot where the people who made me now lie. I stare at it for what feels like hours, waiting for the panic to come—the grief I’ve been running away from ever since that night—but it doesn’t.
All I feel right now is the still, silent, soul-crushing weight of acceptance.
I climb down the ladder and trudge across my backyard, picking my feet up high as I wade through the knee-high grass. The sun is directly overhead now, but it’s shady under the oak tree where Mama and Daddy are buried. I realize once I get over to them that I don’t know which is which. Wes buried them while I was passed out on the bathroom floor. The mound on the left looks a little bigger, so I decide that that one must be Daddy. I turn away from him and face the mound on the right.
“Hi, Mama.”
A squirrel peeks out at me from behind a branch.
“I don’t know if you know this, but … I’m gonna be a mama too.”
A bird chirps in response.
“I probably won’t be as good of one as you”—I ball up my sleeves in my fists—“but I’m gonna try.”
The wind chimes I made in art class tinkle and twirl.
“I got vitamins today … prenatal ones. And fruits and veggies, too.” I beam through my sudden tears. “Aren’t you proud of me?”
A gentle breeze whips around me, ruffling my hair like one of Daddy’s noogies.
Silent tears stream down my face, but I don’t fall apart. I wipe my runny nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt and tell my parents what I came over here to say, “I love you guys … I’m so sorry they did this to you.”
The moment the words leave my heart, I feel a little bit lighter. Not because the weight of my grief has lessened—I don’t think it ever will—but because I’m carrying it differently now. It used to feel like a ball and chain around my ankle, but now, I’ve picked it up and put it on like a backpack.
I feel a little bit stronger.
A little bit more capable.
And for the first time in days, I feel really, really hungry.
I don’t want to leave them. I don’t want to go back into that house with those people and all that stuff that isn’t mine, but I have to start thinking about more than just myself. Everyone I’ve lost has a chance to live on through this baby. Their blood flows in its tiny veins. If I can bring it into the world safe and sound, I might even get to see them again.
The baby might have my mother’s mischievous smile or my father’s button nose. I might be able to gaze into Wes’s pale green eyes again or run my fingers through his soft brown hair.
My heart skips a beat as I turn and head for the back door.
Water. I need water. And a can opener. And a spoon.
I jiggle the handle and sigh when I realize that it’s locked. Of course. I knock on my own damn door and wait for someone to let me in.
Seconds later, I hear the click-clack of the deadbolt. The door swings open, revealing one squeaky-clean Carter Renshaw wearing nothing but a pair of loose athletic shorts, as shiny and black as his sopping wet curls and bruised eye.
“There you are.” He tries to smile but then hisses as his fat lip splits open again. He dabs the cut with his finger and steps aside to let me in. “We were looking for you everywhere.”
“Really?” I deadpan as I walk past him into my dining room. Their dining room.
The sight of Carter with his shirt off used to instantly turn me on.
Now, it just pisses me off.
“Where were you? My mom made pancakes.”
My mouth waters instantly as I pass through the doorway into the kitchen. The aromas of pancakes and sausage and coffee fill the air. My eyes land on Mrs. Renshaw, drying her hands on a dishtowel as Sophie wipes down the counter.
“Well, good mornin’, sunshine.” She beams, turning to face me.
I’m shocked at how different she looks. She must have found a wig in the wreckage of their old house because her hair is suddenly sleek and shoulder-length, like she used to wear it, and I swear she even has on mascara. Her dress is ironed. Sophie’s, too. And they’re both wearing probably every piece of jewelry they own.
“Rainbow!” Sophie cheers, bouncing over to give me a hug. Her plastic bracelets rattle with every step.
I mechanically wrap my arms around the girl and glare at her mother over her head. It’s the first time I’ve seen Mrs. Renshaw since Wes was taken yesterday, but my urge to stab a utensil in her eye is put on hold when she grins and lifts a plate in my direction. My stomach growls out loud when I see what’s on it.
“How did you—”
“When life gives you a box of Hungry Jack, runnin’ water, and a freezer full of thawed deer sausage, you make breakfast! And lucky for us, y’all had pancake syrup!”
Sophie releases me and skips back over to the counter to get me a fork and knife from the drawer.
“Thank you,” I say to Sophie instead of her mother, accepting the cutlery as Mrs. Renshaw’s sparkling eyes land on her son.
“Carter, why don’t you keep Rainbow company while she eats?”
The intention I see in them makes my stomach turn and my jaw clench but not enough to keep me from devouring this food.
I walk back into the dining room with Carter on my heels and sit down without acknowledging his presence. Not that he even notices. He plops down across from me and begins rambling on about everybody he saw at Burger Palace last night.
“Yo, you remember JJ, right? From the football team? That motherfucker is s
wole now. He was standing right out front, sellin’ steroids and workout videos! Can you believe that shit? And I swear to God, I saw Courtney Lampros blowin’ somebody between two parked cars. I’d know that fake red hair anywhere.”
Yeah, I bet you would.
I swallow my last bite without even tasting it and hear someone begin talking even louder than Carter up in the living room.
“Good morning. This is Michelle Ling, reporting live from inside the Fulton County Courthouse.”
My fork clatters onto my plate as I dart up the five or six stairs to the living room, where Mr. Renshaw is sprawled out on the couch with his poorly splinted leg propped up on the coffee table, messing with the remote control. He points it at the TV, mashing buttons with his knobby thumb in vain.
“Gotdamn it! I was right in the middle of watchin’ Hillbilly Handfishin’! Now I ain’t gonna know what happens!”
“We are hours away from today’s public execution—”
“Then why in the hell are you interruptin’ my show now?” Mr. Renshaw barks, chucking the now-worthless remote onto the coffee table.
“But we are going to start bringing you even more exclusive, behind-the-scenes footage from the capitol as Governor Steele works tirelessly to enforce the new law”—her face is sallow and lifeless, and she sounds as if she’s reading from a script, no doubt prepared by the governor himself—“beginning with the first-ever televised sentencing.”
Michelle Ling sweeps an apathetic hand out beside her and pushes open a massive wooden door. It swings wide, revealing a courtroom as big as a grocery store and as empty as church on Monday.
There’s no jury.
No plaintiffs or defendants.
No witnesses waiting to be called forward.
The pews are all vacant, except for a few uniformed officers.
And there, standing next to the raised wooden judge’s podium, is a tall, slender, bald man I recognize instantly as the bailiff from the executions.
Upon seeing the camera, he adjusts his uniform, lifts both hands as if he’s about to conduct a symphony, and shouts, “All rise! The honorable Governor Beauregard Steele is presiding.”
The two officers in the front row stand as Governor Steele breezes in through the doorway behind the bailiff. He’s wearing a black judge’s robe, but he left it wide open in the front to accommodate his sizable belly, and the sleeves are about three inches too short.