by P D Platt
The man flew backward like he’d been yanked by a rope and slammed against the corridor wall. As his bloodied body slid to the floor, his bandana sank down his brow to permanently mask his eyes.
Skye realized that, in her panic, she’d fired both barrels, leaving her with an empty gun. She expected the other man, who she assumed was Brian, to launch his attack; but instead, there was only silence. Had he run after seeing her kill his partner? Desperate for a clue to the other man’s intentions, she remained still, allowing her ears a chance to clear after the booming gunshot. He’d either left, not wanting to risk being shot himself, or was planning his next move, completely unaware that her gun was now useless.
Skye stood on trembling legs after being awkwardly cramped in the ceiling for so long. But more so, she was overcome with the shock of having taken a man’s life, whether he’d deserved it or not. Ignoring the bloody cuts along her forearms and the burning gashes in her thigh and forehead, she lifted the front of her T-shirt and wiped the sweaty red mix from her face.
Light from outside illuminated the hallway as she stepped closer to the doorway. Skye reached down to touch the ribbed handle of her knife, ensuring she still had a usable weapon handy. Keeping hold of the shotgun, to use as a deterrent or as a club, she stopped just shy of stepping out of the office. Her eyes focused on the revolver still holstered in the dead man’s gun belt: latched snug in its holster, it would be impossible to snatch free quickly.
Spotting the long crowbar her attacker had dropped, she figured it was close enough to grab without exposing her body. She remembered the other man was carrying an assault shotgun. She moved the chair—the one she’d sat in numerous times when meeting with her boss—out of her way and reached for the crowbar, figuring she could use it to hook the gun belt and drag it close enough to grab the revolver.
As she pulled the crowbar toward her, a voice yelled down the hall, “Girl, you’re gonna pay!” It was Brian, his deep voice cracking under the strain of his shout. While he’d appeared more reserved when compared to his squealy partner, now he seemed unhinged. No footsteps followed his threat; it was as if he were waiting for her to emerge. She knew she must take action.
Skye dropped to her knees and extended the hooked end of the crowbar, attempting to snag the dead man’s belt. If she grasped the crowbar at its very end, there should be just enough length to reach it without exposing her hand. Keeping the bar low, she eased its hook to within a foot of her target. The length and heft of the bar made it impossible to hold steady, its trembles matching those of her hand.
As she repositioned to double her grip, the bar shuddered with violent vibrations, flashes of metal bits sparking into the hallway as the building echoed with another thundering gunshot. The impact stole the crowbar from her hands, jolting it into a half-spin six feet farther down the hall, completely out of reach.
Trapped and defenseless, Skye knew she needed to make a move before the man grew bold and attacked. Only two options sprang to mind, neither one without risk. The first was to make a run for it through the swinging door to the service bay, load more shells and shoot the bastard when he gave chase. The other option was to go for the revolver on the dead man’s waist. Although closer, it was also snapped into its holster, which would make it time consuming to free.
For either plan to be a success, she had to make sure she didn’t get shot in the process. A distraction was needed, or a shield. Or maybe both.
Skye looked at the tall bookcase, mentally measuring it against the doorframe.
This could work!
Moving with haste, she dumped the trophies and framed photographs from the shelves and tugged on the bookcase. Although heavy, it was no match for her determination. She inched it toward the door, betting it would be easier to slide once its feet left the carpeted office floor and hit the smooth tiles of the hallway.
Brian was up to something—she heard the sound of racks and chairs being tossed about in the showroom. Shouted rants of cursing sandwiched his violent outburst.
This was her opportunity.
Skye propped her shotgun near the door, lined up her shoulder on the bookcase and heaved, grunting with an explosion of unbridled force. The unit’s base caught on the threshold, and being top-heavy, it toppled to its side and landed squarely across the corridor.
Two shotgun blasts rang out, shattering the little square window in the repair area’s swinging door. The bookcase hadn’t landed exactly as planned, but it would have to suffice. Skye dived behind her wooden shield, reaching for the police revolver with outstretched arms. Another blast smashed into the back of the cabinet, splintering fragments of wood and bits of gypsum off the wall. If Brian moved closer, his next shot could easily penetrate her battered shield.
With focused hands, she snatched the heavy revolver free, adjusting her grip as she rolled to her back. Firing a blind shot over the top of the shelf, she hoped to stop the man’s charge. The large handgun kicked like a mule, forcing her to double grip to regain control.
She peered through the gap between the wall and the shelf, searching for her target. Seeing no one, she decided to retreat to the repair bays, where she would have better cover and he would have only the single door to approach through. After grabbing her shotgun, she slid it down the hall toward the service entrance. She volleyed three more shots down the hall and immediately high-crawled through the stainless-steel door, scooping up her double-barrel on her way past. As the door swung closed behind her, it was peppered with metallic explosions. He was still coming.
Gripping her shotgun, Skye sprinted to her car to retrieve the box of shells off the passenger seat. She dumped the spent shells from the chambers and loaded fresh ones in their place. The forgiving aim of the shotgun provided extra reassurance. To the left of her car, the service pit offered the perfect shooting point—essentially a concrete foxhole. After scrambling down, she positioned herself in the corner and rested the shotgun at floor level, training its barrels on the entrance door.
The door burst open, swinging freely on its heavy hinges. Holding her aim, Skye sank her head low. The door pivoted back and forth until it fell still, but no one entered. Holding her breath, she waited, her heart pounding as she thought about killing for the second time. All went quiet with the settling of the door. She checked left and right to ensure she wasn’t being flanked from the outside, but, confident in the sturdy construction of the roll up doors, she felt safe enough. Beads of sweat itched her forehead. Her chest threatened to explode as she waited in agony for something to happen.
As her arms shook with the fatigue of holding her firearm steady, the door burst open, immediately followed by flashes of blaring gunfire, echoing in the vast openness of the bays. Skye pulled only one trigger this time. Not ducking or flinching, the man was struck with a partial hit. He came straight at her. At close range, the foxhole became a liability. She lined up her final shot. The two duelers fired simultaneously, pellets of metal sparking against the steel grates over her head. Her shot blew out his knee, toppling the screaming man to the concrete, where he writhed in pain. He lifted his shotgun and aimed at her fortress.
Another shot rang out. The man’s face went blank and he lay, unmoving on the oil-stained concrete. Skye peered between the railings—Solomon stood in the doorway, holding a steady aim on the downed man.
Skye scrambled from the mechanic’s pit. “Solomon? What the hell are you doing here? How…how did you know where I was?”
“Are you okay?” he asked without responding to her questions. He stepped forward and embraced her like an old friend before gripping her shoulders and examining her as if to ascertain the source of the blood on her arms and face.
Skye nodded. “I’m fine…just a few scratches. The other two are a lot worse off than me.”
“Karen told me where you were headed. You took longer than I was comfortable with.”
“I had it all under control,” Skye assured him.
“I know you did.” He smiled
at her. “I know all too well.”
They leaned against her old Mustang, saying nothing as their breathing leveled and their trembling hands calmed. Skye broke their silence, eager to get moving and leave this place and its unpleasant recent memories behind.
“Well, since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful,” Skye said, pointing toward the row of new trucks outside. “How about you fetch our new truck?” She tossed him the key fob. “I’ve got a Mustang I need to test drive.”
Chapter 19—Connection
As soon as Karen saw Skye’s wounds, the older woman took control of the situation. “Come with me, dear.” It would have been futile for Skye to protest. Karen whisked her into a treatment room and ordered Solomon to bring hot water from the kitchen. He found a large stainless-steel stockpot and boiled some of their stored water on the large commercial stove.
After cleaning Skye up, Karen dressed every scrape and cut. These days, every injury was potentially life threatening and had to be treated as such. Although not the same as a hot shower, the warm sponge bath still invigorated after such an intense day.
Thanks to Karen’s tender care and her near-death experience, Skye’s emotions threatened to break through her tough shell. As the contrasting emotions swirling inside her converged, tears formed in her eyes. She’d gone from experiencing the violence of evil brutes to the purest compassion of a warm human being.
Noticing her tears, Karen seemed to understand Skye’s inner turmoil. After she’d washed and disinfected and dressed the last scrape, she wrapped her in an encompassing hug. “Everything’s alright now,” Karen assured her. “You’re surrounded by love.”
“Thank you,” Skye said. “But I should really go help Solomon unload the supplies.”
“No, no. He’s had his rest. Now it’s your turn, young woman,” Karen instructed.
Skye was secretly relieved to be given a pass—she felt utterly drained, and understandably so. She’d been through a harrowing ordeal, exhausting her both emotionally and physically. Following orders, she claimed a patient room as her temporary quarters and indulged in a long, uninterrupted sleep.
___
Solomon finished unloading Skye’s multiple chests of tools along with the snacks and bottles of water from the dealership. Their haul had filled the bed of the new truck, supplying them with enough water for another week—two if they made an effort to conserve. Not that conservation was a priority, as there were so few humans left to consume the resources. It was not so much a lack of abundance, but more the logistical burden of constant resupplying, which would take many hours and much effort to sustain. But low population also meant a loss of mass production, and eventually and inevitably, this would become the paramount issue.
When it was time for everyone to sleep, Solomon chose a room close to the dayroom, which the children had claimed as their permanent campsite. After using it for activities by day, they transformed it at bedtime with mattresses and sleeping bags spread across the floor. Sometime during the night, he ended up dragging his mattress out and planting it next to the dayroom’s emergency exit doorway, wishing to remain as close as possible to Emily. He would never get over the terror of nearly losing her; he’d struggled to sleep ever since.
He didn’t see Skye again until early the next morning. Dressed in an oversized sweatshirt, she padded into the dayroom and plopped down on the sofa, tucking her legs underneath her as she sat.
Solomon sat up on the edge of his mattress, his eyes captured by her figure bathed in the soft twilight seeping through the gaps in the drawn curtains. Noticing a marked difference emanating from her presence, he did a double take; and for the first time since meeting her, he truly saw her. She sat there, absent of piercings and makeup, her dark hair flowing outward in enticingly natural disarray, its unrestrained ends drifting in all directions.
Her kindness, courage, and compassion had drawn him to her before, but now, there was something significantly more. An attractiveness surrounded her like an aura of enchantment. Her wholeness was magnetic.
The children were still asleep, taking up their favorite places on the floor. Not wanting to wake them, Solomon pointed down the hall and whispered, “Be right back.” She nodded.
___
When Solomon returned with two steaming mugs of coffee, she couldn’t contain a grateful smile. They headed down the hall and sat in the main lobby to enjoy the coffee they’d both been craving. As Solomon handed her one of the hot cups, he cleared his throat. “Wow. You’ve certainly made a change—you look…radiant.”
Skye faltered, unsure how to respond to Solomon’s unexpected comment. Her desire to alter her appearance had originated from a newfound freedom, one that didn’t include the need for recognition or compliments from others. A release from such expectations: it was an exhilarating epiphany.
She ran her fingers through her untamed hair. “Uh…thanks. You know, all my life I’ve tried to portray my individuality, wanting the world to see me as someone who isn’t afraid to be different. It was an effortless, nonverbal way of making a statement. I achieved this through my tattoos and piercings…and weird hairstyles…so many weird styles.”
Skye turned to look directly at Solomon. “But when I woke up this morning, I realized that if there’s no longer a society to prove myself to, no need to announce, ‘Hey, I’m different and proud of it!’ then the few people that remain can just see me, without any filters or distractions to steer their preconceived notions. I don’t need my appearance to speak for me. Not anymore. Now I can finally be…me.”
She stared at Solomon, waiting for a reaction, a hint that he related on some level. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I absolutely do. We’re all free to be ourselves now. Before, it was something people touted, but now, sadly, we are truly free to be us, without the hindrance of judgment.”
Skye smiled, delighted that he understood her new philosophy. “Freeing, isn’t it?”
It was one of those rare instances where two people consciously see the other for the first time, in an alignment of desire and instinctual attraction. One where time became powerless to move forward, not while their eyes were locked and their thoughts so attuned, speaking longings and truths blazoned with penetrating mesmerism. A moment that could just as easily have passed, departing as an afterthought of what might have been. But their moment did not mist away, didn’t dissolve into nothingness.
Incapable of conveying the depths of attraction that had already been kindled, words no longer mattered. Without speaking, they left their empty cups behind and stole into the nearest room, where they reveled in the lusts of mutual pleasure, far removed from their reality. As passion ousted hopelessness and grief, replacing stress and fear, raw self-indulgence smothered away their unease. Fulfilling their pure, unadulterated emotional and physical desires, they replaced the emptiness of the outside world.
Chapter 20—Need to Know
Sunday Morning, April 5
Solomon thought about the only people he still needed to check on—Marion’s parents. An only child, he had no surviving parents; his mom had passed away more than ten years ago and his dad more than twenty. The rest of his family weren’t close, contact with any cousins, aunts and uncles was almost nonexistent. But Marion’s parents had always been the jewels in their lives. They’d even retired to the low-country coast from Connecticut shortly after Emily—their only grandchild—was born, just to be closer to them. Still in their twenties, Marion’s two brothers hadn’t even begun to think about settling down yet.
Emily’s grandparents, Henry and Elaine Murdin, lived less than three hours away along the coast, but when factoring in the risks involved, it equated to so much more. Although they lived on a relatively sparsely inhabited coastal island, reaching them necessitated crossing more-populated areas, ones that would inherently have saturated problems.
But he had to know if they were okay. And Emily needed to be close to a part of her mother once again
, to receive comfort from the two people who loved her as much as he did. But realism sank his gut; surely if they were alive, they would have made it here by now to check on their family. That they hadn’t shown up yet troubled Solomon. It suggested something was wrong. There was a good chance they hadn’t survived.
Being unable to check on them was deeply frustrating; all the conveniences of modern life had been stripped away. The easy option of an automatic phone call or effortless text to find out the most basic information of ‘Are you okay?’ was no longer available.
Solomon felt powerless and insignificant. Everything he’d spent so much of his life working hard for—finance, loans, and possessions—had now become meaningless. Money had zero value. The power had realigned overnight, taking away all advantages wealth previously held.
Food. Shelter. Safety. These basics were all that mattered now. The ability to adapt, invent, build, and repair—anything that helped one acclimatize to this new world—had become invaluable due to simple necessity. Pure survival creativity was now imperative. The instinctive drives for food and water were powerful motivational forces with the ability to morph normal behavior into a focused ferocity.
The cushioned world all had once taken for granted no longer existed. Accepting this made him realize their current lifestyle wasn’t sustainable, not long term. Maybe a year at best, he figured.
Chapter 21—A Dangerous Journey
Tuesday, April 7
Spring flaunted itself with a morning warmth that previously would have been appreciated. The once-pleasant sunlit breezes that swept through were now ruined, carrying only horrid and ominous odors. The smell of destruction, death, and decay wafted into every crack and crevice, as if its only desire was to be inhaled so it could be experienced and reacted to with revolted responses.
Maintaining distance from large concentrations of people was key but forming a tightknit small group was also necessary for survival.
