American Blackout (Book 3): Gangster Town

by Tribuzzo, Fred

  Growing up, everyone had referenced movies and TV shows in daily conversations, but in the post-EMP world, daily survival reduced that to a rarity. Cricket’s bitter-sweet smile finally arose. It was for Predator and his love of stories with great endings, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

  What Cricket saw next startled her, and she stopped and slapped Predator’s hand. The light shined on the bars of a cage, some twenty feet long.

  Becca said, “I don’t want to have to explain this to the girls. You see, we kept Boots down here to keep her from being mishandled, even killed at the zoo. Angel had it built after the world went dark. There’s a short hallway that leads to the outside. That’s probably how she escaped.”

  Cricket couldn’t see all the way to the back of the cage.

  “Keeping it pretty for the cat’s return,” Predator said. He went to enter the cage, but Becca stopped him.

  “I’ll let the staff know,” Becca replied. “They’re very industrious. They’ll take it as a compliment.”

  The lantern’s light danced as Becca turned abruptly from the cage, but not before Cricket spotted a toilet in the corner.

  “Boots needed a toilet?”

  “I should have explained,” Becca said. Cricket felt a rage building against the woman who was demanding to read and approve a priest’s homily, but was apologizing for not informing them of a toilet in the basement.

  Cricket stared at Becca as her host continued. “Before the cage was built, a bathroom had been roughed in. We kept the toilet. I believe it’s still used by those working down here.”

  “What work’s that, sharpening axes and pitchforks?” Predator mused.

  Lantern held even with her head, Cricket saw Becca as a jailer peeking in on her captive, surely not an ancient in search of the truth. Presently, Becca faced Predator and gave a long, deliberate eye roll, but its full effect was cut short by a scream from the back of the cage, someone hidden in the shadows. A figure raced out, and everyone peeled away from the door swinging open, making room for the charging man while reaching for their guns. He was swallowed by the darkness, and they heard him running about the basement screaming and yelling something unintelligible.

  “Where’s your flashlight?” Cricket said, her heart pounding.

  “I thought the lantern would be enough,” Becca said nervously.

  They heard him outside the light, circling—to attack? To get back in the cage? To escape?

  “He grabs an axe off the bench, we won’t see him until he’s on top of us,” Predator said. “We got to get him before he goes upstairs.”

  Cricket said, “Quick, put the lantern on the floor and move to the shadows.”

  No one disagreed. Becca set it down, and they followed her to the nearest wall. The wild man started to howl.

  Cricket whispered, “I’ll charge toward the stairs. A few seconds, straight ahead.”

  “Actually, a little to the left,” Becca quietly replied.

  “You’ll get knocked out.” Predator’s voice was lower, rougher, trying to whisper. “There are cement supports—you’ll fly into one of them.”

  They heard an odd sound from the wild man. Cricket thought it was a grunt, but he was actually sniffing the air, taking short, powerful inhalations, animal-like.

  “His eyesight isn’t the greatest,” she said directly into Predator’s ear. Becca was squeezing her hand.

  The intake of air through his nose grew louder, more rhythmic. Everyone stopped talking. But Cricket continued to hear her thoughts and Predator’s worries.

  Becca yanked Cricket closer to the wall. The wild man started running in the darkness, adding a pleasurable squeal, sniffing out his quarry.

  Cricket had seen him briefly: tall, emaciated, dark clothing. But his eyes had briefly burned into hers. She was his prey. She holstered the Colt. In darkness she might easily get confused as to the direction of the stairs and her companions. A shot fired could be a shot that took out Predator or her host.

  She pulled the gravity knife from her boot. A shadow raced past the lantern, and then she heard the padding of bare feet turn into a gallop as the wild man took off and found the workshop. Items were picked off the wall and discarded, until the activity ceased. He had found his weapon.

  Cricket couldn’t wait any longer. The workshop, close to the stairs, led to the first floor. She charged outside the lantern’s circle of light that exposed a cement pillar. There she stopped and listened. The wild man had followed her movements and continued to sniff the air.

  Something metal struck the pillar, and Cricket leapt into the darkness and headed toward the wall. New plan: she’d follow the wall, pass the work area, climb the stairs, and unceremoniously blast away the lunatic if he started up. She knew Predator would hold his ground and protect Becca until the cavalry arrived with flashlights and more guns.

  Darkness protected her just as it did when she hunted alone. She was some distance from the lantern when the form leapt across the light as though performing a ritual dance before its big meal.

  She screamed as cold fingers slid down her face, the way her husband touched her during moments of intimacy. Predator called to her.

  “Stay there,” she answered. “It’s toying with us!”

  The form leapt across the light again, and this time the shape was distinctly female.

  Impossible—two fiends?

  She started to run again and kept the knife out, the gun holstered. She hit the edge of the wooden workbench and grunted from pain.

  Her second scream came from the cut that burned from the shoulder to the elbow. It felt like her skin was on fire. She pushed away from the wall and slashed at the darkness. She resisted pulling out the gun. She was convinced there were two. She wasn’t far from the steps and she started walking, feeling the bench off to her right, and in her mind’s eye placed the last support beam on her left.

  One walked and one ran. The walker was the cutter. Cricket was ready: knife arm out, blade at ninety degrees to her body. The runner drew close as she found the first step and then the second. She took her chances and proceeded backward up the steps. At the top she saw light under the door. Beyond the dark basement was daylight, midafternoon. She was close to the top when the door swung open. Franklin the manservant looked aghast at Cricket, knife out and bleeding.

  A scream like the first came as the wild man charged up the stairs with a hand scythe. Cricket dropped the knife and brought the Colt to bear on the charging maniac. Her first round collapsed his chest like he had always been just a skeleton beneath thin muscle and flesh.

  He kept running and her second, third, and fourth shots tore apart the man’s face and neck, bringing him to a standstill in midrun. He dropped the weapon, swayed, and lost his balance and died on the steps.

  The servant behind her screamed for security, and she ran past the dead maniac, calling to Predator that there was one more fiend in the basement. She used the light to get almost a third of the way across the basement and saw the extinguished lantern.

  “We can see the light,” Predator said grimly.

  “There’s another fiend, a woman.” She grappled with the vision, trying to create a woman from the strange-looking creature.

  Heavy bodies bounded down the steps, flashlights cutting up the darkness, and soon Predator and Becca made it to the steps. Sister Marie stood at the top with Elaine.

  The guards brought several lanterns and lit up the basement, but failed to find another attacker. The back door to the enormous walk-out basement remained locked. Only a single man lay dead, disfigured by the gun blasts, the stairs marked by his blood and some of Cricket’s.

  21

  Pleasing Shape

  Ajax had reached out for his beloved, touched her, and felt her revulsion. He felt hollow in this otherworld of black-on-black landscapes and desired to more than just lightly touch the living, which took a monumental exertion of energy. Did she sense his shape, which was monstrous with its cavities and lumps? He tried
to imagine his actual physical body in this otherworld, visualize that body, but the strange, horrible mass that was now him remained unaltered.

  Perhaps in the everyday world, he really needed to make her fall in love with him. And perhaps she’d overlook the peculiar change in the otherworld, or even fall in love with his power and take pleasure in his horrendous shape. Yet he wished to be Angel in both worlds. That’s what he would strive for: acquiring his pleasing shape and handsome smile for all eternity.

  In this otherworld there was a hole where his mouth should be, and his teeth started at the back of his throat and continued to some stomach-like organ that more than once had feasted on the recently dead. He cried aloud to the masters of this place, almost laughed. “This won’t do! This won’t stand!” he yelled from inside a wind that blew unceasingly.

  He looked at his hands and felt a shiver of nausea. The clawed hands made him cackle in despair, and his laughter, a tiny shriek, was instantly swallowed by the great wind. A beast, through and through, he acknowledged. So in sadness he returned to his body and came awake in stages, finding himself staring out the window and appreciating the loveliness of the snow-covered windowsill. He returned to the everyday world, an angel in breath and shape.

  Music played in the next room. The String ’Em Up Quartet—classical musicians Lucy had hunted and captured for him. A very thoughtful young lady.

  22

  Sibling Nightmares

  The soft tapping on Cricket’s bedroom door sounded like the distant rap of hammers building a house on a summer morning from long ago. Even as she climbed out of bed and Fritz grunted some disapproval about his wife leaving his side, she still saw that summer light and blue sky and wished for it. She touched the bandaged upper arm. Good, no blood. Dressed by Sister Marie, the long, shallow cut had required a dozen stitches.

  She opened the door to Lily and Lee Ann. Both girls in matching flannel sheep pajamas—a gift from Elaine Givens—asked to come in. Fritz was up, and Lily sat next to him on the bed and Lee Ann sat in Cricket’s lap by the window, her legs hanging over the arm of an ancient wingback chair.

  “We both had bad dreams.” Lily spoke first from the position of big sister. Uncharacteristically, Lee Ann remained mute and let Lily tell the story, without interrupting once. This was the girl who had come to her sister’s rescue back at the Holaday ranch, confronting a ghoul who had a knife to her sister’s throat. She had even offered her life for her sister’s. The dream world had opened up some new horror she couldn’t process.

  “I think we both had the same dream.” Lily looked to Lee Ann, looking for support or for her to jump in. Lily was shaking, and Fritz put his arm around her. Lee Ann’s body still hadn’t relaxed. She was tense, sitting upright in Cricket’s lap.

  “Start at the beginning,” Cricket said.

  “It’s kind of crazy. I was back on our old street, but I knew not to expect my parents at home. Not… not because they were dead… but they had something important to do, maybe like boating.”

  “Boating?” Fritz turned to the girl he had circled his arm around.

  “Well, that’s another story, a little joke Lee Ann and I sometimes share.”

  “I could use a joke at this moment in time,” Cricket said, looking to Fritz, who smiled. Even Lee Ann had a big smirk plastered across her sweet face.

  “We had a boat, and our parents took us on it, but sometimes they went out with friends and we didn’t go and stayed home with a babysitter. And then one day the way our parents said they were going boating, on a school day, adults only, made us cry. They said we could go when we were old enough. That made us cry more. Another year passed and that summer we did go boating, so we forgot about not going. And then another year passed and they told us they were going boating again and they weren’t going with friends; they said it was time to go boat. Well, we started to cry, and that’s when we found out they were voting, not boating.

  Both adults laughed, and Lee smiled but said nothing, letting her older sister continue.

  “In my dream I saw my house but didn’t go inside. It looked like no one had ever lived there. Then I spotted Lee Ann, and she looked as real to me as she does now.”

  Lee Ann nodded in agreement.

  “We walked and we were followed. We didn’t know what to do, if we could go into someone’s house. No house looked friendly. There were streetlamps, but they gave off very little light. It was real dark.”

  Lee Ann nodded, staring at the floor. She was with her sister again in the dream.

  “I put my arm around Lee Ann, and she held me by the waist. And then something flew down the middle of the street. It wasn’t an owl or something like that; it was much bigger. We ran into a yard and hid behind the bushes against the house. The thing flying returned, and it kept flying down the street and blocked the light. It had to be very big, because it made everything even darker. We hung on to each other, and we both wanted to cry but we didn’t. We couldn’t move or make any sound, and then we heard wings flapping and this thing landed on the house behind us. And it sounded…” Here she stopped, and Lee Ann whimpered. “It was sliding down the house using its claws. It must have had real big claws, because the sound was very loud. It was terrible.”

  Lee Ann said, “We laid down flat and held hands. The wind started to blow and I…”

  “Like it wanted to help us,” Lily resumed her storyline. “The wind wanted us to stand up and not be afraid.”

  “And we did, and then we woke up,” Lee Ann said sadly.

  “We woke up at the same time and told each other the same dream,” Lily said. “And I lit the kerosene lantern, and that big, tall dresser has scratches down its side.”

  Fritz and Cricket followed the girls to their room and stood in amazement. The scratches on the walnut dresser were nearly two feet long and appeared fresh.

  “Was it the crazy person in the basement?” Lily asked.

  Husband and wife answered that the scratches could have been made weeks ago, before they arrived. Fritz said that the girls were so close that something amazing had happened, and that even though they had been scared, they had teamed up because of the love they had for each other.

  “What is it you heard in the wind?” Cricket followed the girls’ quiet communication.

  “We felt God was nearby,” Lee Ann said. “I felt it immediately.”

  “God was in the wind?”

  “No, just nearby. Looking after us. Sending the wind to protect us.”

  Cricket and Diesel slept in the girls’ room that night, and Fritz went to his and Cricket’s bedroom and mostly paced until the sun rose. Over morning coffee, Cricket told Sister Marie about the girls’ dream and their discovery.

  “You should find out from Becca when those scratches were made.”

  “It looks recent.”

  “Goodness, it was only our first night.” Sister Marie glanced down, weighing everything. “Find out if it was moved recently. Cricket, I believe both girls, without thinking, registered scratches made sometime before our arrival. They registered it in their minds without really thinking about it. Then it popped in their dreams.”

  “Yeah, but the problem remains: they both had the same dream.”

  23

  The Plans of Mice and Men

  Over breakfast, and out of earshot of the children, Cricket informed each adult of Becca’s attack on Father Muslovsky’s sermons.

  “I’d like to meet him,” Sister Marie said.

  “And I’d like you with me,” Cricket replied. “I got a driver. Becca and her mom are gone for the day.”

  Fritz added, “Predator and I can take the girls for the morning. Be back early afternoon, Cricket. We need to go flying. You need to stay current.”

  “Thanks.” She touched her husband’s hand and kissed him on the lips, not a peck but a deep kiss, a sexy smooch, a pact to return to each other no matter what the obstacle.

  Predator said, “I still want to know how that lunatic got
in the basement. When you two go flying, PJ Bob and I are going over this entire place and the grounds. It should be the safest home in Cincy. For a whole bunch of reasons, I think you folks need to move. No room really at the airport, but Sergeant Wills’ niece runs the downtown hotel. Gonna check that out today as well.”

  “The weather is warming up. It feels like spring.” Everyone looked at Sister like she hadn’t been following the conversation. “We’re hopeful people, all of us in our unique ways. Like picking up and moving.” She looked directly at Predator. “We think we can always turn on a dime. But instead of moving, maybe we need to be here, right now, to give Becca options, ideas on how to manage this city. That’s why I want to go today. I want to see Father Muslovsky, and see what we can learn that’ll help persuade Becca not to bully the very people that can help this city.” Sister started screwing the cap on a jar of canned jelly. “It’s January, and even though the snow is melting, spring is a long way off. Let’s not jump into something worse.”

  An hour later, Cricket and Sister Marie were entering the cathedral through its great doors. Passing through the nave, they saw that the solemn space was light-filled from the large stained glass windows. Candles were lit in each alcove, and massive gold candles stood on either side of the altar. Workmen, clergy, worshippers were gathered, circulating, talking in quiet tones. In the choir loft, children and adults stumbled through a melody someone was tapping out on a piano.

  Father Muslovsky came out from the sacristy to greet Sister and Cricket, and escorted them to the rectory and his office.

  “How did you know I’d be here today?” Surprised by and thankful for the surprise visit.