by Ryan Schow
Back with me, he balls up and wets the shirt, then gently dabs at the soft skin under my ear. I’m looking at him and he’s saying, “Can you hear me?”
“A little,” I say too loud.
He glances back to where the girls ran back to the school, like maybe he heard something. To me it sounds like the muffled, far-away sounds of automatic gunfire. Putting myself aside for a minute, I start to worry about the others.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
The boy turns around and says, “Hagan. Hagan Justus.”
“Thank you, Hagan,” I manage to tell him. “I think you saved our lives.”
The second the guy lays down automatic fire, Rex runs through the open door squeezing the trigger. The gun is jammed though, a round sitting wrong in the chamber. He goes with it though, running faster and spinning the gun in his hand. The shooter sees him and turns the weapon on Rex, but it’s too late. Rex slams butt of his weapon into the guy, pistol whipping the hell out of the side of his head.
They both go to the ground, the shooter out cold.
Rex sees four women in a corner, huddling together, a mass of dead bodies—men, women and children alike—and his niece, Macy. She’s laid out on the floor, her blonde hair fanned out behind her.
“Oh, God,” he says, scrambling to his feet and moving through the sea of bodies toward her. He slips twice in ponds of blood, but manages to not fall.
Stanton is right behind him screaming Macy’s name.
His niece has two blooms of red on her: one above her left breast, another on her shoulder, plus her ear is nicked, a chunk of the skin just gone from where the bullet took it.
He checks her pulse.
It’s weak.
“Macy,” he said, holding back the rage, the terror, the tears. “Macy, honey. Wake up for me baby, please. Please just wake up.”
Standing over him, Stanton’s going to pieces.
Rex tapped her face, said her name again, garnered no response. Stanton is suddenly down beside him, touching her, saying “No, no, no,” over and over again an a sad, mewling rush. He finally pushes Rex aside just as Indigo and Atlanta burst through the foyer’s main doors.
This is my fault, Rex was thinking to himself. He shouldn’t have pushed her. If he hadn’t have pushed her, hit her, she might have stayed put instead of coming in here.
What was she thinking?!
Indigo saw Macy, hurried over and knelt down, the concern bare in her eyes. Atlanta saw her, walked over at a slower, more shocked pace, then hovered over them for a second. Stanton was holding Macy. He was sobbing, crying out her name. Rex looked up at Atlanta, saw her eyes taking in the carnage. Then he saw them find the shooter.
Saying nothing, she walked over to him, aimed her pistol at his face and pulled the trigger. The chamber clicked empty. She squeezed the trigger seven more times before Indigo said, “Atlanta, stop.”
She reached down and picked up the man’s AR instead. Looking at the weapon, she aimed it at the man’s head.
“Atlanta, no!” Indigo shouted.
At that point, Rex had no idea why Indigo wanted to stop her. He wanted the girl to empty fifty rounds into that son of a bitch for what he’s done to Macy, to this community.
Atlanta ignored Indigo, so Indigo fired her weapon into the ceiling, jolting Atlanta—and all of us—out of her haze.
She turned and looked back at Indigo.
“We need him alive,” Indigo said. “Alive.”
“He doesn’t deserve life,” she replied, tears standing in her eyes, her cheeks bone white. “Not after this.”
“He’ll deserve what we do to him, that I promise you. Now find me some water and a clean cloth. Macy’s been shot and we need to help her.”
The guy was stirring at her feet, which got me to my feet. Atlanta saw this, though, so she cracked him in the head with the stock of his own weapon. The shooter’s head flopped back down. Atlanta hit him again, harder this time.
Rex expected her to go for a third time, but she didn’t. She headed back to them, side stepping the bodies, then handed Rex the gun.
“Thanks,” he said.
She didn’t say anything.
Instead, she turned and looked around, scanning the bodies until she found what she was looking for. A tipped over bottle of water, the top shot open.
He looked at Indigo and said, “Knife,” to which she handed him one of her knives. He cut away the sleeve of his own shirt, then took it and the bottle of water and handed it to Indigo.
“My sister’s an ER nurse,” Rex said. “She can help. We just need to get her in here.”
“She might have a blown-out ear drum,” Indigo said, not looking at him.
“She’s okay otherwise?”
“Pay attention, Rex.” She glanced up at him with that look, the one of extreme seriousness. “If we don’t help her, she could die.”
“I’m focused,” he said, handing her back her knife.
“Good, because I need you to read her pulse for me. And Stanton, you need to hold her hand and talk to her. She needs to hear your voice.”
Rex moved around Indigo, to the top of Macy’s head, brushed her hair out of the way and sat down where he could take her pulse at her neck. He started counting.
Stanton took her hand and began talking to her, telling her she was going to be alright, that she was terribly brave and needed to be brave just a little bit longer while her friends work on her.
Indigo cut away part of her shirt, pulling it back to her bra. The first wound was obvious, a single crimson-black entry wound just above her breast. There was a blood blossom around it from where blood had seeped into the shirt and bloomed on her ivory white skin.
Indigo watched it for a second, then said, “It’s not a sucking wound. It’s damn close to the lungs, but she lucked out. Rex, what’s the pulse?”
He told her.
It was stronger than he thought, which meant she might not have internal bleeding. She wasn’t out of the woods yet. If the bullet was lodged in there…
“The shoulder wound is clean,” Indigo said, “but it’s high, so depending on the trajectory of the wound, she might have a broken scapula.”
“What makes you think that?” Rex asked, not sure how she knew what she did, but glad she did.
“The close proximity to the spine of the scapula. If we’re lucky, it will have passed through the muscle. We need to turn her over. Stanton, let’s bring her arms in to her side. I need to keep her stabilized in case there’s a neck injury from the fall, but I need to see her back, too.”
On her count, they turned Macy on her side enough for Indigo to pull her shirt off her back and see the exit wounds. Both had come out clean, straight entry and exit points.
“Okay,” she said. Gently, they laid her back down. Looking at Rex, she said, “I need your other sleeve. We need to wash the wounds first, then apply some clean cloth to it. We need the wounds to clot. Your sister can take it from there.” To Atlanta, she said, “I need you to find the infirmary in this place. Locate some bandages and some medical tape—or even sports tape—if you can. And hurry.”
Rex glanced up at Atlanta, then nodded to the shooter’s weapon. Understanding that he wanted her armed, she picked it up, then hurried off.
For the next few minutes, Indigo washed the wounds and dressed them as best as she could with the squares of Rex’s cotton sleeves. To Stanton and Rex, she said, “We need to keep light pressure on these wounds for the next ten minutes.”
“Where are you going?” Rex asked.
Saying nothing, she got up, walked through the dead bodies, past the women grieving over their loved ones, then to the shooter. He wasn’t coming to, so Indigo knelt down over him and slapped his face twice, really hard.
The shooter was a junkie at best. He was too thin, had cold sores on his lip and tats all the way up to his jaw. The tats on display told her he was hard, that he wasn’t aching to get a nine-to-five job. That was no surprise. Neithe
r was the ink he wore. It was similar to the other gang bangers she’d ended.
After being hit, he started to stir.
Good.
Before he could protest, she pulled out her knife, cut the front of his shirt in half and tore it open to a chest painted with tattoos. She didn’t care about them. She only cared about the one. The large black snake coiled over the words, The Ophidian Horde.
“Son of a—”
He opened his eyes, tried to focus them. She straddled his chest, planted her knees on his biceps, pinning him down. He groaned, squirmed, finally came around.
The curse words began to roll, sloppy and weak at first, but then more forceful.
“I kept you alive for a reason,” Indigo said. “See, you’re going to be the messenger.” And with that, she leaned forward, the bulk of her weight pressing down on his arms so hard he snarled and fought her. A second later he stopped fighting. Rather, he was restrained. She snuck a look over her shoulder and two of the four ladies were holding down his legs.
“Hurt him,” one of them said with tear soaked eyes, a red nose and rosy cheeks made flush from a deep, personal agony.
Turning back around, her eyes changing, things going dark along the edges, she used her left hand to pin down his head, then she used her right hand and the knife to carve the word INDIGO across his forehead in large, jagged letters.
The wild screaming bothered her at first, as did the blood; she wouldn’t be deterred though. Clearing her head, she worked to ignore his ruckus, and every so often, she’d swipe away the blood so she could see what she was doing.
When she was done, he’d been reduced to a blubbering mess. Using her sleeve, she wiped away the rest of the blood, studied her handiwork, then said, “You’re free to go. But if I see you again, I’ll kill you on the spot, no questions asked. Got it?”
He nodded.
She got off him, stood up, then sheathed her knife at her side. The woman they’d gotten directions from earlier, the mother of three, she walked up and hugged Indigo. She just grabbed her and pulled her in close, holding her so tight Indigo could feel that ragged clamoring of her heart.
“Thank you,” she said.
And with that, she yanked Indigo’s knife free of its sheath, ran to the shooter as he was getting up, then fell into a screaming/stabbing fit of such fury Indigo dared not get involved. Everyone stopped to watch her, disbelief rocking each of them.
By the time the woman was done, the shooter had been stabbed some fifty or sixty times. He was drenched red from throat to belt. By then, the woman was so exhausted she couldn’t even lift her hand anymore. She could barely even hold the knife.
Indigo went to her, touched her shoulder, causing the woman to flinch ever so slightly.
“It’s okay,” she said. The knife fell from the woman’s hand. Indigo picked it up, sheathed it, pulled her shirt over it so no one else could grab it.
The woman just sat there, sobbing, wailing. The other women came to her, helped her to her feet, held her closely.
Atlanta appeared just then with what looked like a small med kit.
No one said a thing about the woman’s rage, and even though all of them were shocked by the widow’s madness, none of them were surprised in the slightest.
“I got medical tape,” Atlanta said, breaking the silence.
By then, Macy was coming to. Her eyes bobbed open, but they didn’t stay open. Her mouth twitched, then her face contorted in pain and she began to cry. Stanton held her hand, reassured her that she was okay.
Meanwhile they pulled off the blood-soaked patches of cotton, dried the surrounding areas and applied a large bandage. They did this front and back despite Macy’s profuse crying.
Indigo looked up and saw Stanton quietly crying, too. This almost broke Indigo’s heart, but she wouldn’t let it. She couldn’t break down now.
Keep it together, girl. You’re almost there.
“Macy,” she said. “Macy.” The girl’s crying died down a bit and Indigo said, “Can you move your neck without pain?”
“Everything hurts,” she blubbered.
“I know, baby, but I need you to try very, very slowly, and tell me if you feel anything strange.”
The girl moved her head from left to right, then said, “No.”
“Good. Now I’m going to tell you what’s going on because you’re a strong girl, one of the toughest I’ve met. Can you listen to me? Focus on the words I’m saying?”
She stopped crying altogether, then gave a brief nod and tried to open her eyes.
“You’ve been shot, but you must be the luckiest girl in the world because the bullets went through you and it seems they missed your vital organs.”
“I can’t feel my right arm,” she said. “It’s…numb.”
“You have a lot of nerves near your armpit, so it’s going to feel like that for awhile. First though, we have to get you to your mother so she can look at you and take care of you.”
They waited for a second before she said, “Okay.”
With her eyes open, Stanton and Macy helped lift her to her feet, each and every move sending shockwaves of pain through the girl. To her credit, she didn’t cry out or protest, even though fresh tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Can you walk?” Indigo asked.
“I think. It’s just…I can’t feel my right arm.”
“It’s just nerves,” Stanton said again. “You’re going to be okay, pumpkin.”
“It’s a bit of a walk to the car,” Indigo said. “You’ll be going home with your mother in a different car.”
“Why?” she said.
“It’s easier to get into and it’s a lot closer. Plus your mom is there now. She might have a burst ear drum, so she’s not hearing so well. She’ll want to see you, though.”
They walked her to the Jeep where they were met by the Jeep’s driver and a very worried, very unbalanced looking Cincinnati.
When the boy saw Macy, he grew intently focused on her, first her face, then her wounds.
“I need you to take us home,” Indigo said to him. “Can you do that?”
“Yes,” he replied. Then: “But I need something from you.” He was looking down at the medical kit. When he looked up, he said, “Someone blew up our home. The roof collapsed on my mother. She might be dying.”
Indigo’s heart skipped a beat or two. This kid just rescued them and was willing to help while his mother lie dying in a collapsed house.
“We live ten minutes from here,” Indigo told him. “I have medical supplies at my house, so we can get her the help she needs. Are you okay with that?”
He nodded his head.
“Good, let’s go.” When they got in the Jeep, she said, “By the way, who are you?”
“Hagan Justus, son of Lenna and Jagger Justus.”
“Are you famous or something?” she asked.
“I’m just telling you their names in case I die unexpectedly. That way you’ll know who to contact if things are ever right again.”
“Is he here, in the city? Your dad?”
“No. He’s military. He was in Corpus Christi, Texas when all this went down. I think he’s in Camp Pendleton now. But he could be dead, too. He never got home.”
“My dad was in San Diego also,” she said, holding his eye. “He never made it home either.”
24
Back at her house a few minutes later, Indigo unlocked the front door and headed inside, not expecting to see the man she ran into several nights back when she was robbing a home.
“Rider was it?”
“Good memory, little one,” he mused.
Rex and Stanton walked Macy through the door, stopping at the sight of the handsome, older looking gentleman sitting on the couch.
“He’s okay,” Indigo said. “We know each other.”
They walked Macy to the couch. Rider got up to make room for her. They laid Macy down on her back. Cincinnati said she was feeling better, although her hearing was onl
y about fifty percent. Still, that was an improvement from before when she wasn’t hearing much of anything.
Cincinnati knelt down next to her daughter and took her pulse.
Everyone looked at her expectantly.
“It’s strong.”
Still no internal bleeding. Well, most likely no internal bleeding. Cincinnati was the ER nurse, not Indigo. She just remembered what her grandpa taught her about dressing field wounds. He was a hunter and an archer, just like her. May God bless and nourish his soul.
To Rider, she said, “How’d you get in here?”
He produced a house key, which baffled her considering she held the only key to the house. Well, her and her father.
“I see you’re doing alright,” he said. “Lots of food, supplies, ammo. You did good, kid.”
“I’d be doing a lot better if you weren’t in my house right now.”
Atlanta, Stanton and Rex were all looking at the guy, wondering if he was going to be trouble. Hagan stepped inside the house and he, too, set eyes on Rider.
“I told you I’d check up on you, but I’m here for other reasons. There’s a place we’ve been preparing. It’s where people can come and stay. A compound of sorts. There’s a doctor, security detail, some food and plenty of room for all of you. Plus this compound comes with something special,” he said, looking right at Indigo.
“Oh and what’s that?”
“Me,” said a voice from behind her.
She turned and saw her mother standing there and damn near broke into tears.
“Mom?”
Her mother pulled her into a hug. She couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Inside she felt her organs beginning to shake.
This isn’t real, is it?
She drew back from her mother, stared at her and said, “I thought you were dead. I went to your house…”
“You’ve been to the house?” she asked.
“Yes,” she said, so lost in her mother’s eyes, she was sure this was all a dream.
“Did you see Tad?”
Reality set in hard and fast. Indigo couldn’t look into her eyes when she said, “Yes.”
“And?”