by Schow, Ryan
Bundled up tight in three blankets that smelled like Emily, wondering where she was—if she would make it to her parents’ house okay—he battled back a surge of emotions.
“This is your life, and boy does it suck,” he said to himself over a howling wind. He felt Pete’s arm. The dead man’s skin was chilly to the touch.
Early into the next morning, but still a few hours away from sunrise, the storm finally broke. He should have been asleep at that hour, but he was restless, the ebb and flow of anger and depression having its way with him.
He couldn’t just lay there anymore. He had to get up, do something, ride his rage lest he dissolve into hopelessness. Besides, he knew the Hayseed Rebellion might just take advantage of this break in the weather. Not for the purposes of burning, but because it was easiest at that time of night to loot.
He took stock of his XD9, bundled up, and then set out into the cool night, which somehow felt warmer than being inside his own home.
He started walking the neighborhood, amazed at how quiet it was, how dark things were. Naturally, he intended to go straight to the fire station. To the ground zero of scumbags. Using the ladder he’d stashed earlier, he climbed onto a nearby roof and took in the surroundings.
Thunderstorms to the north kept things interesting, for only from the occasional glow of lightning could he see the sordid state of affairs in Silver Grove.
Around three or four o’clock that morning, by his estimation, a couple of guys came out of the volunteer fire station to take a leak. The lead clown was carrying a crank flashlight based on the fact that he kept cranking it.
While one guy wandered off, the guy with the flashlight pulled down his pants and crunched a grumpy. The fact that he had the light sitting on the ground right next to him was one thing, but wiping his backside with his shirt-tail and standing back up like he was satisfied was another thing entirely.
In the distance, the sky continued to crackle with light, the etch-a-sketch scribbles dancing across the pitch-black backdrop. Hudson saw something in one of those flashes, movement just to the left of the poop maestro.
He finally got a good view of them and thought, you have got to be kidding me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Leighton McDaniel
No sooner had Leighton been sucked out of the brush did she feel herself being ripped up into the sky and sent flying. The terror was instantaneous. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight, barely even understood what this sudden horror meant except that she was probably going to die.
With all the filth and debris churning in the air around her, she couldn’t see anything recognizable, and she was getting pelted with small things and dirty things, her skin slashed raw by the winds. How high up was she? There was no way to tell, for she was cutting through the outer edge of the cone’s debris, heading even farther outside. Instantly she realized she wasn’t caught in the funnel, she was being flung to the outside of it. This was infinitely worse! Tossed and turned about, beaten up by the winds, her eyeballs razed and watery, she finally kicked free of the debris field and saw the world below.
She was officially falling, but everything was too chaotic to measure. If she was too high, it would be instant death on impact, which was her best bet. But if she was too low—and it was looking that way based on how far the trees and brush were below—then she might just end up with a bunch of broken bones, a collapsed lung, punctured everything.
As she raced toward the earth, as she seemed to be gaining speed, she watched the forest floor coming up fast to meet her. Arms out, clawing at the air for stability, her body screaming out sounds she couldn’t hear, Leighton was on a collision course with either a carpet of brush or a barren highway cutting through the trees below.
If she hit the asphalt, she was dead; if she hit the gully running along the road, she was dead. She put her forearms up to protect her face. Fortunately, she struck the treetops first. Time instantly sped up.
The impact with her forearms flung her around in time to smack another tree. The backpack protected her from the full force of the hit, but it was still like getting walloped in the back with a baseball bat.
Blasted and delirious, she crashed through limbs and brush like a cannonball, the leaves and branches tearing apart her already raw and damaged skin.
When she hit the ground, she must have landed on some rocks or branches because the pain doubled and then doubled again. Closing her eyes, unable to do anything with the rest of her body, she took the abuse, skidding through the dirt on her face and side before bursting out of the scrub and into the roadside gully below. There she came to a stop in a puddle of water, unable to draw a breath while the whipping winds continued their torturous plight.
For whatever reason, she wasn’t dead.
I’m not dead!
She wanted to move, but it was no use. As she lay there like a fish out of water trying to suck in a breath, she was acutely aware that everything hurt—her skin, her organs, her bones. Had she broken anything? Probably.
But was everything working?
Her body finally allowed her that first big breath, and it was excruciating. Her second breath was better. On her third breath, she made it big, really trying to expand her lungs. Fortunately, her ribs ached but not like they were bruised or broken.
Crawling out of the puddle, she felt the bruising on her back, on her shins, and on the raw skin on her face and arms where she’d skidded through the dirt.
As she tried to push herself up, she felt what would later be bruising in her forearms where she’d hit that first tree, but this was not fatal as much as it just hurt like a mother. Lacking the strength necessary, she fell back down and started to cry. The pain was that bad. For a long time, she sat in the dirt, unable to get up, unable to stop her sobbing.
She felt terrified, paralyzed, too battered to go on. But when the winds died down and the rain started back up, she slowly managed to get to her feet. Only then did she realize she only had one shoe on. She tried to tie that shoelace, but it wasn’t happening. She started walking, which was really just her dragging both her feet down the dark highway.
Up the road, during a brief but bright flash of lightning, she saw what she suspected was Crowbar Man’s truck. It was blown off the side of the road, halfway tipped over, and laying in the ditch. As she approached it, memories of her earlier attack flashed back, causing her to squirm inside her own skin.
More lightning flashed as she stood by the truck. She looked inside the extra-cab pickup during one such display of light and power, and she saw what looked like a corpse in the back. Whether it was old or fresh, male or female, she couldn’t tell. But for a second, farther down the cab, she also thought she saw a little face looking back at her.
She drew a startled breath as she was pitched back into darkness. Wiping her hair from her face, blinking her eyes to clear them of rainwater, she waited for another streak of lightning. It came quicker than she’d thought.
There was definitely a face looking up at her, a face now tucked into a mound of blankets. She wasn’t sure if the child was alive or dead, if it had survived the cold and the storm, if it was warm or frozen to death.
Based on the brief glance at its hair length and young face, she had to guess the child’s age to be three or four, maybe five-years-old on the outset.
She climbed on the side of the tipped-over truck and wrestled open its heavy door.
“Can you hear me?” she said into the cab. A little hand flicked a small lighter and she saw a face looking back at her in the glow.
She was overcome with a sudden, profound sigh of relief.
Thank God!
She wiggled halfway inside the cab and rested her belly on the doorsill with one arm propping the door open so it wouldn’t fall on her. The effort caused her a tremendous amount of pain, but this was bigger than her. She then reached a hand down to the child. Hands and outstretched arms came out of the dirty blanket, reaching back. Both of the child’s fre
ezing-cold hands gripped her arm.
Lightning flashed again, showing her the face of a young boy.
She pulled him up and out of the cab, then set him on the ground and fell to her butt. Exhausted, hurting all over, and depleted of energy, she looked at the boy who was looking back at her.
When she could, she stood and walked around the tipped-over truck, back toward the bed where, hopefully, some of the contents—if any—had spilled out. At that point, she could use just about anything—tools for weapons, a tarp for a new lean-to, a padlock she could put in a sock and use for self-defense.
What she saw instead were three big rolls of black Glad expandable garbage bags. But they weren’t filled with garbage. She felt the air leave her lungs and not return. The boy was suddenly there, having worked his way down the grassy incline beside her.
“Use that lighter to help me see,” she said.
The boy flicked the lighter.
Kneeling down beside the closest bag, with her knife, she cut the plastic away. She wasn’t surprised to find herself looking at a pale, lifeless face. But when she pulled the plastic back even farther, she found herself looking at a young girl. She was maybe a few years younger than Leighton, dried blood splattered all over her face, the source of the wound a split-open skull.
The flame went out, but she’d seen enough. She turned around and said, “Give me the lighter.” The boy did what she had asked of him.
Sliding down the wet embankment, she went to the two other bodies now lying in a shallow flowing stream. She pulled the first body out of about four inches of water, cut away the plastic, saw another girl of similar age. Moving the third body taxed her strength, but she needed to see, to know. If no one saw the dead girls, then to her—at that moment—it was like they died with neither a voice nor a witness. This was a black girl, her age roughly the same.
The tears that had been building in her finally spilled over.
Crowbar Man was not a regular redneck, or even a questionable hillbilly. This man was sick. Inside the truck, she flicked the lighter, then turned over the body and saw the face of yet another girl. Four bodies. Leighton was to be number five.
All those little boxes of horror she’d buried in her mind flew open once more. Was this really what had been in store for her? Was this the outcome of America’s future? Creatures like Crowbar Men just taking what they wanted?
When she thought about how the rioting in Minneapolis started in 2020, how the nation seemed to devolve into a virtual hell almost overnight, she realized that when society fell, the meek hid in their homes surrounded by all their familiar and pretty things while the truly wicked descended upon the cities, making their points in blood and destruction.
It wasn’t exactly like that at first. The good people protesting the injustices of race and police treatment were largely virtuous people looking to make their voices known, but their hierarchy was well-funded by men of extraordinary power, backed by corporations who had pledged their loyalty to a system that ran in lockstep with systems that favored powerful governments who routinely crushed their own masses underfoot.
Eventually, there was nothing good and virtuous left, only the kind of anarchy that disgusted conservatives and liberals alike—men and women who had once been so vehemently at odds with each other. The part of society that clung to an ideology rooted in politics had since fallen. Everyone was a victim now. So why the EMP? And who in the world set it off?
Such a steep and mighty blow would plunge this already tumultuous world into the second, third, and fourth circles of hell. And demons like Crowbar Man would feast upon the world, out in the open, collecting all his precious treasures. This type of a beast knew only entitlement and self-service, for, in a world drenched in chaos and evil, the Crowbar Men of the world ruled the days and nights, and all the helpless little girls.
Before leaving the truck and the bodies behind, Leighton checked the glovebox. There she hoped to find a gun or bullets, or maybe even matches or a map should she need one or the other.
She found a fat envelope instead.
She took the envelope out of the truck, handed the lighter back to the boy, and said, “I need a light to see.”
He flicked the flint roller a couple of times before a small flame ignited. She pulled out the contents of the envelope, then felt a whimpering escape her slightly-parted lips.
What she saw horrified her. She was looking at pictures of mostly naked girls posing in the woods, their expressions beyond terrified. She dropped the pictures and fought off the urge to puke.
“How did you survive?” she asked the boy. He just looked at her. “Can you speak?”
He didn’t say anything.
Instead, he extinguished the flame and handed her the lighter. Inside the truck, with a little work and some grumbling, she took off the girl’s shoes and tried them on. They mostly fit. She pulled off her running shoe and stuffed it into her pack, just in case, then she took the boy’s hand and started walking up the road.
The shoes began to hurt her feet, causing her to limp, but she didn’t care. It was better than walking to Melbourne barefoot.
A mile down the road, to both her delight and surprise, she found her other shoe. She took off the dead girl’s shoes, tossed them aside, then put on her own.
“Walk a mile in my shoes, said the dead girl,” Leighton said. The joke wasn’t funny. It was sad. Tragic, really.
When she took the boy’s hand again, she felt just how cold he was. She stopped and pulled his body into hers, even though they were both wet, then tried to press some of her warmth into him. He didn’t thank her, nor did he protest.
When later they started passing small buildings, and then a very tall, very long building on the left of them, she knew they were closing in on Silver Grove, which was right before Melbourne, and a short walk (comparatively) to Niles’s folks’ house.
As she neared the intersection of town, she saw buildings had been burned down. Why would they hit Silver Grove? There were barely a thousand people in town!
That didn’t mean there wasn’t trouble to be found. There was. It was when she was walking past the volunteer fire station that she ran into trouble.
She sensed someone watching her, then she felt the boy’s grip tighten. She stopped, turned around, and saw a man approaching her in the darkness. But then his head snapped sideways and the boy jumped.
The man fell dead in the street.
Another man jogged out to his buddy’s side, causing Leighton to let go of the boy’s hand and go for the Glock on her belly-band holster.
He knelt beside his friend, then looked up at her and started to walk her way. A second later, his body bucked and he looked in horror at his torso.
The boy ran to her, hugged her tight, hid behind her back.
When, seconds later, the man’s head jerked sideways and he fell down dead in the street, Leighton grabbed the boy’s hand, and said, “Run!” That’s when they started running. It wasn’t until she was all the way out of town that they stopped, both of them exhausted, both of their chests heaving as they fought for oxygen.
Stepping off to the side of the road, she plopped down into the soil, then laid down on her back, her lungs so taxed and heavy she felt they might collapse. The boy did the same, flopping down beside her.
They were so close to Niles’s place, but Leighton’s body was battered and beaten, everything still hurt, and she was sick and tired of the rain and feeling waterlogged.
“A little ways more,” she said to the boy, who took her hand again.
When they finally reached Niles’s house, she saw the bodies stuffed into the bushes. Instantly, she put her hands up, like she was surrendering to the law. If Niles or Will was inside, or if it was Ramira who killed these people, she didn’t want to be shot on accident. She told the boy to do the same. He complied. But when she got to the house and knocked on the front door, no one answered. She knocked again, then she went and checked the doors and windows. Everythin
g was locked up for the night. She thought of breaking a window, but this would get her a tongue lashing for sure, so she returned to the porch where she lay down next to Buck on the dry porch swing. As the boy curled up into an oversized chair beside her, she told herself everything was going to be okay.
Shivering but not lethally cold, she curled up on the swing and tried to put her many horrors back inside her many boxes. After a while, she felt the boy get on the swing with her, and then the two of them curled up together and eventually fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Hudson Croft
He slid as quietly as he could down the roof, grabbed the ladder, and swung himself around. About halfway down, in his rush to get out to the street, he missed a rung but caught himself, jarring his back only slightly. When he reached the ground, he sprinted off into the night, his XD9 at his side, fear pumping wildly in his heart.
If he had to shoot these idiots, he knew he’d wake the Hayseed maggots. Those circus clowns were packed wall-to-wall inside the nearby fire station and its detached ladder-truck garage. First they tried to burn it down, but then they commandeered it, which was aggravating on all fronts since it was practically the center of town.
Moving through the dark, eyes on the road ahead, he could already see how this thing would play out. He’d shoot the two Muppets, then the others inside the fire department would hurry out and find two of their ranks had died from a rapid overdose of lead poisoning. Word of the attack would spread, feathers would get ruffled, and the degenerates would then stampede out into the town en masse.
What he expected to happen, however, wasn’t what actually happened.
Hudson arrived just as the two men crept up on the girl and her child. Squinting in the darkness with only flashes of lightning to give him reference and perspective, he saw the men withdraw their weapons and move in on the two innocents.