From the Ashes

by Chris Kennedy

  After I got over the excitement and really started looking around, I found a couple more items that might be useful—a staff made from a sturdy synthetic fiber composite and a couple of backpacks. I dropped all the boxes of 10mm ammo I could find into one of the backpacks and put a couple braces of throwing knives in the other. I smiled when I found a dozen of the mini-mines.

  Digging around, I found a couple more flashlights and an extendable billy stick, as well as a web vest. There was a straight razor too, but I tossed it on Artie’s desk. I mean, really? What good was a straight razor? I grabbed a first aid kit and a few other items. For some reason, he had several boxes of cherry Pop-Tarts. I guess Arty had a thing for Pop-Tarts. What the hell, beggars can’t be choosers. I tossed them into one of the backpacks.

  Back out in the hallway, I handed one of the Sigs to Lady, but she shook her head. “I wouldn’t know how to use one of those. I would probably be more dangerous to you than anyone I was trying to shoot. Besides, I really have been depending on stealth so far, and I’ve done fairly well.”

  I nodded and gestured back toward the armory. “Here’s a flashlight, take a look around and see if there is anything you might find useful. I don’t think anyone will be back to get any of it.”

  She disappeared into the room, and I sat against the wall with the packs beside me and watched her for a minute. I wondered for the hundredth time why she was helping me. She could have disappeared at any time. I also wondered why I cared that she was, but I did. I felt an overwhelming gratitude for her assistance, and I found myself really wanting to help her. I just had no idea how to do so.

  “What is this called, Momma?” We were just finishing our morning routine before Momma went to work downtown.

  She tossed me a towel and smiled. “This is Tai Chi. It’s a martial art from ancient China. It helps you focus, relax, and breathe.”

  “I like Chai Tea, Momma. It does make me focus, and I feel better after we work out.” I started wiping my face like I had seen her do.

  She chuckled and rubbed my head, “Tai Chi. Chai Tea is something totally different. Hey, if Master Kai is willing, would you like to take some different lessons from him? We’ve been doing this long enough that you have it down pretty well.”

  I liked the older man she worked with. “Sure! Will he teach me to fight?”

  She smiled again and moved toward the shower. “He has all kinds of tricks up his sleeve. We’ll just have to see what he thinks you would be good at.”

  She paused and looked back over her shoulder at me. “You know the difference between right and wrong, Shey. You also know not to bully anyone and to stand up for those who can’t defend themselves. If he is willing, he can teach you a lot, but you have to be patient and learn it the way he teaches it. He is the Master; you are the student.”

  “I will Momma!”

  “Mister, you all right?”

  I looked up and chuckled. Lady had a long, double-edged knife strapped to her hip and a staff similar to mine. She also had a duffel bag and a jacket that was a couple sizes too large. Sticking out of the top of the front right pocket was the end of the folded straight razor. I shook my head and stood up.

  “I think I was actually dreaming that time, but it was also a memory.” I could feel my mood darken, and I pushed it down.

  She started for the stairs. “If we fill this with the water and food we have, we won’t need to wrap it in a sheet to carry it. You being the man and all, I figure we can load you down with this and the heavier of those backpacks. But, me, being all fair-minded and stuff, I’ll take one of the backpacks so you can fight off any bad guys we run into.”

  “Sounds legit...”

  We went back up to our humble abode and crossed to the stairwell going upstairs. I paused as we left the lab for the last time and looked around. Nope, I wasn’t gonna miss it.

  As we came out of the stairwell into the main room, I looked around at the disaster it had become. The place had been ransacked, and from all appearances, whatever couldn’t be taken had been trashed.

  “Let’s take a look upstairs, Lady. There is, or at least there was, more equipment.”

  “Sure, since you know your way around.”

  “Hey, in my defense, you never asked me if I knew my way around. Besides, I was here when you found me.”

  “You do have a point. Please feel free to let me in on anything else I might find useful, though, huh?

  I raised my hand and smiled. “Promise!”

  She followed me closely up the stairwell.

  I scoped out the upper floor. It was as big a mess as the rest. The lockers were tipped over, blocking the door, but it looked like they hadn’t been broken into. I guess the looters had been lazy.

  “Give me a hand with these lockers, will you?”

  We set them back upright. When Lady moved around to the front of the lockers, she gasped. There were two corpses lying on the floor. I stopped and stared for a couple of seconds as my heart filled my throat. Smith and Jones lay on the floor. As far as I knew, those were their real names and what they’d been known by. Both were females, and they hung out together whenever they weren’t on missions.

  I took a breath and pushed down my feelings. As I looked over their bodies, I realized something was wrong. I knew what had taken them out; the kill switches in their heads had been triggered.

  “Will you stand by the stairwell for a second, while I check a few things?” I asked Lady.

  “Sure, what’s up, Mister?”

  “I’ll explain in a minute, I promise.”

  As she went over to stand by the stairwell, I looked more closely at the two women. There was no sign that something had killed them. It looked like they had passed out and fell on the floor.

  I looked around the area, and I saw a pair of feet sticking out of the shower and ran over. It was Wes Stiles, and he was in the same shape as Jones and Smith. Why had their kill switches been activated? And, more importantly, why had mine not? Did the nanites have something to do with it?

  “Mister?”

  It was a problem for another day. Or maybe never. The more I saw, the more I believed there wasn’t anyone left to answer that question.

  “Yeah. Let me bust those lockers open, so we can see if there’s anything useful.”

  We found a pair of boots and a change of clothes for me, and a better sweatshirt for Lady. As we finished digging through the lockers, I heard a soft footstep behind me.

  I threw an arm around Lady as I felt a sharp pain in my right buttock. I spun and saw a young man snarling at me. I launched off my left foot and swung it around in a round house kick that connected with the banger’s right jaw. I felt the satisfying crunch of his jaw and the snap of his neck as I continued on around to land back on that foot. I twisted around the best I could and pulled the dagger from my ass. Lady gasped again.

  “If you’re going to keep doing that, we’re not going to get anywhere fast.”

  She looked at me for a full ten seconds with a totally blank face. I know because I counted. Then she laughed out loud for thirty. I know because I counted.

  “Well, ain’t this just homey?”

  I spun around again and saw five more bangers spreading out at the head of the stairs. The one who had spoken was in the middle and held a partially raised handgun. The two men on his right had machetes; the two on his left had knives.

  “My boys are gonna want to talk to you about the stuff you took from our lockers.” He smiled.

  “Was this one of your ‘boys?’” I asked. “Because, honestly, I’m not impressed. I mean, okay, he made me bleed. That hasn’t happened in several years. But he forgot the most important thing a tough has to learn, if he’s going to survive in this kind of work. I’m sure his boss is to blame for his lack of education. He didn’t learn this vital lesson. Duck.”

  I threw the dagger covered in blood from my right butt cheek underhanded, and it sank to the hilt in the leader’s throat. As he fell, I leaped fo
rward and landed among them. Less than two seconds later, they were all on the floor, dead.

  “I won’t gasp again, but holy shit, Mister!”

  “Let’s do what the store greeter said to all of his customers at closing. Let’s get our shit and get out.”

  She laughed and got to work. She walked widely around the bodies when we went down the steps. At the bottom, she headed straight for the open front door and closed it.

  Turning toward me with a lopsided grin, she said, “Drop your pants and show me your ass.”

  Looking at her for a minute, I did the only thing I could think of. Just what she asked.

  With the first aid kit in her hand, she moved behind me. She used a rag to wipe off the blood and looked at the wound.

  “This isn’t nearly as bad as it looked. You’re lucky that blade just cut the surface. I could have sworn it had sunk in half way to the hilt.”

  “I guess it was all the commotion, with me pushing you down and all,” I said as she put a bandage on and stepped back. “Like you said, lucky.”

  After buttoning my pants and fastening the belt, I picked up the bags and staff and headed for the door. She grabbed her backpack and stuffed the first aid kit back into it, then grabbed her staff and followed along, shaking her head a little.

  * * *

  8

  We were able to follow the route Lady had used the night before without running into anyone else. As we neared the last section of buildings, though, our luck ran out.

  “Looks like a roadblock at the edge of town, and I don’t see any way to get out without them seeing us.”

  “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” she said without taking her eyes off the last obstacle we faced before we were clear of this place.

  “Hmph.”

  It looked as though there were eight semi-awake people out there. All of them were facing the other way, so we had that going for us. But there were still eight of them, and they were all armed with a firearm of some sort.

  “What are your plans for the evening? I mean, we could lounge around here for a while and see if their evening shift is a little less manned, or we could go out there and express our displeasure at their presence.”

  “Just go out there? Express our displeasure, huh?”

  “Yeah, I mean, they are blocking our exit. I don’t know about you, but I am ready to vamoose. There’s nothing left for me in this burg. I got no reason to...”

  “I got it. You want to express some displeasure.”

  “Well, in my defense, I have been stuck for a while in that lab.”

  She gave me a lopsided smile. “I didn’t hear you bitching about it. As a matter of fact, I don’t recall you bitching about anything except the quality of the food I was busting my butt to supply. At great peril to my own safety, I might add.”

  “All I wanted was a piece of real meat,” I muttered under my breath.

  She pretended not to hear that and stepped back behind the building we were using for cover.

  “What do you think about holing up ‘til dark, then seeing what we can do?” she asked.

  “Well, if we have to.”

  “Hey, Spivey! Look what we brought!” The man who called out was from a new crew, coming up from outside of town. From the look of it, they had a few prisoners.

  One of the guards went out to meet them, and my stomach churned as my heart leapt into my throat. The prisoners were young females. They were very young—10-12 years old—and scared to death. I forced the anger and dread down and made myself focus. There were three prisoners, and one was obviously older than the other two. I revised my initial impression. The two younger girls were scared, but the older one was angry. She was probably 13-14, while the other two were more like 10. I turned to look at Lady and saw the anger in her eyes.

  “No rest for the wicked?” I asked, feeling the rage flow from her. Her body was rigid and tense as hell. She was shaking and about to explode.

  She looked at me and said with a cold voice, “What can you do, and what can I do to help?”

  “Let me study this a second,” I said, studying the scene from memory as if it were right in front of me. The eight original guards were focused on the newcomers. There were five new guards and the three young girls. So, thirteen guards with three prisoners to guard. The odds were lopsided, and I almost felt bad for them. Almost.

  “I want you to follow behind me after about five seconds. When you get out there, they will be focused on me. Get to the girls and pull them behind cover. There are going to be a lot of bullets flying. Stay low and get behind something as soon as you can.”

  She looked me in the eyes and nodded. She was fuming, and I could feel it. “I will get them to safety. Do what you have to do.”

  “There is no time like the present, and they are still distracted. Remember, five seconds.” She nodded once as I walked around the corner.

  I set out purposefully and directly, like I was supposed to be there, and got nearly halfway to the blockade before anyone noticed me. The one who did was a tall, gangly guy in a ball cap with a bobbing Adam’s apple. He looked past me, then did a double-take and focused on me. My adrenaline kicked in, and the world slowed down. The bullet from the gun in my right hand took the one I thought of as the leader in the back of the head, and the one from the gun in my left hand got Adam’s Apple.

  I went left to draw their attention away from where I had come from. Five shots later, five more were down, but the others were beginning to react. I felt a tug as a bullet went through my jacket, and I took out the woman who had fired it with a double tap to the chest. Then I was among them and had no more room for gunplay.

  With a quick twist of my wrists, I holstered both Sigs and showed my displeasure to the remaining gang members. In a matter of seconds, the rest were down, and I stood in the middle of the mayhem with cold satisfaction burning through me.

  After taking a minute to make sure none of the gang were going to cause any more trouble, I walked over to the barricade I had seen Lady take the girls behind during the brief hell storm of rage and bullets. Before I could wave for her to bring the girls out, there was a commotion from down the road as a truck filled with men and women came barreling around the corner, headed for the barricade. The older girl jumped up and ran to meet it. I also saw that Lady had been hurt.

  I knelt down beside her as I popped fresh mags into the Sigs. “What happened? Where are you hit?”

  She looked at me with pain in her eyes.

  “Low right,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Okay, look, this is gonna hurt, but I need to check you out and see how bad it is.”

  “Just do what you have to. Are the girls okay?”

  “They are, thanks to you,” I said as I pulled up her sweatshirt to reveal the wound.

  “Thanks to you.” She sounded weak, and my heart stuck in my chest.

  “Let me help. I am a nurse.” I turned toward the new voice, the big auto in my left hand leveled at his right eye.

  He motioned back toward the truck with his chin. “My niece told us what you did. She said your friend shoved them down when the shooting started and took a bullet that would have hit one of them. Let me help her.”

  I nodded and stepped back, out of his way. He got to work on Lady with a first aid kit, and I knelt down to get her attention. “Lady, this man is a nurse. He’s gonna fix you up.”

  “I am right here, you know. I heard what he said.” She gave me a weak, lopsided smile and grimaced.

  “How’s it look?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “We need to get her back to the compound and my lab. I can help her there, but she has a fair amount of internal damage. We need to move her now!”

  “Alright, Lady, you down for a road trip?”

  She nodded weakly and motioned for me to come closer.

  “My name is Makenzie.”

  I nodded slowly and said, “Everyone who has meant anything to me for the last forty years has called me Spec.”<
br />
  She looked questioningly at me for a minute, and with that lopsided smile, asked, “Is that ‘Spec’ with a ‘c,’ or ‘Spek’ with a ‘k?’”

  Then she passed out.

  I stared at her for a long minute, then started laughing. Some of the other folk were gathering around, getting ready to load her into the truck they had come in. There were a number of other vehicles moving up the road toward us as well.

  I kept laughing softly and realized I really hadn’t felt joy in a long time. I was taken by surprise as the oldest of the girls we had rescued walked up to me and gave me a hug. “My name is Sienna. Thank you for saving me and my friends.”

  She let go and looked at me as she stepped back. “We were out collecting berries when those men grabbed us.”

  She nodded toward the bodies without actually looking at them, then she looked at her people as they settled Lady in for the ride back to their compound. “She’ll be OK; Miguel is a great doctor, and you can come stay with us as long as you want.”

  She looked at me expectantly.

  “Gracias, we would love to.”

  I smiled at her, and we started walking toward the truck where Miguel and a couple of others were making Lady comfortable. Or, rather, making Makenzie comfortable. I chuckled again to myself.

  Makenzie. Mak with a ‘k.’

  Things were not always what they seemed in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *