by Schow, Ryan
The pastor covered two more children with his body, his robes now on fire. Another guy, a single guy, charged the wall where the guy before him was nothing but flames. When he hit the wall, he broke through several two-by-fours, but it wasn’t enough, and he got stuck in the outer wood-paneling. The flames devoured his body in no time flat.
Looking around—his eyelashes singed, his eyebrows burned, the hair on his arms curled and blackened—he saw only three survivors. A woman and her daughter were holding each other, sobbing. Beyond them, through the smoke-darkened air and embers, was an older man. He burst into flames while Garrity was looking at him.
Garrity wrapped his head in his jacket, then turned to the woman and shouted over the roar of the flames.
“Follow me, I think I can get through!”
He was lying to her, of course, but it was his only chance. If he didn’t try, he’d go down without a fight, and that wasn’t him.
They nearly disappeared in the haze of smoke and flames, but then they were at his side, the mother crying. The girl started smacking her arms where they caught fire, but then she started to cry as well. She was roasting to death. They all were.
He zeroed in on the spot next to the two dead guys stuck in the wall. He picked a fiery hole to the left. The rafters started to fall, flaming lumber dropping like bombs all around them and on the dead.
Without hesitation, Garrity charged the wall. He hit it flush, felt the studs snap. His body broke through the other side. Stumbling onto the dirt and grass, he fell to his face, and started rolling hard and fast.
Gunfire ate up the lawn behind him, forcing him to roll even faster. He grabbed his weapon, came to a stop, then rolled into a firing position. He lined up his shot on the shooters, pumped two rounds into each of the two men.
He was still on fire, though.
The two women shot through the hole after him, both of them on fire. Garrity started throwing dirt on his legs, then managed to get them out. With no time to spare, he scrambled to his feet and ran to the women, ignoring the incredible burns he was feeling.
The mother was on fire, but the daughter managed to put herself out.
He went for the coat he’d used to cover his head when he burst through the outer wall—which was now starting to sag under the weight of the building—snatched it up, then used it to put the woman’s hair out.
“Move!” he warned them both.
The three of them scrambled as far away from the building as they could. It collapsed moments later, but by then, they’d cleared the danger zone.
That’s when he saw the shooters. War-torn and hacking, his lungs burning from the inside out, he walked over to the two guys he’d shot. One of them was dead—the driver who brought him there. The passenger, however, was still alive. Squirming, absolutely writhing in pain, he had blood in his teeth, a hole in his chest, and pain in his eyes.
Garrity checked the chamber on his gun, saw the round seated for action, then let go of the slide and lined up the shot. The man stopped moving. Instead, he looked up at Garrity and smiled. Garrity shot him in the forehead, then collapsed into a raspy fit of coughing that led to him spitting up more than a few black loogies.
When he could properly collect himself, he fished the car keys out of the driver’s pocket, then returned to the women.
“Concentra Urgent Care is two blocks down on Bellair Drive,” he said, not recognizing his own voice. “If we can get you two there, maybe they can help you.”
“What about you?” the mother asked. Her skin was already blistering, much of her hair burned halfway to her scalp.
“I’m fine,” he said, even though he wasn’t.
“No, you’re not,” the daughter said.
“I’ll get myself fixed up when this is over,” he replied, his throat raw, and his voice extra hoarse. “Let’s get you two to the car.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sheriff Lance Garrity
Through clenched teeth, Garrity took a deep breath, glanced at the two crying women, then tried not to feel his own burned skin. The pain was sharp and insistent, like a thousand bee stings concentrated into a few, choice places. Just as bad was the bruising and torn skin where he had charged through the damn wall.
He put the car he’d taken in gear, eased out of the church parking lot, trying not to think about what had just happened. The burned smell of fabric and cooked skin was revolting. Underneath that stench was the rank stink of fried hair. It wasn’t just him. The two women lost a lot of their hair as well. There was no putting this out of his head. It was all a stark reminder that, not only did they barely make it out, dozens of others hadn’t.
The mother started crying again, deep wrenching sobs that triggered in her daughter a similar meltdown. He wasn’t surprised. Yet there was nothing he could say to forestall their pain, and nothing he could do to diminish his own.
Emotionally, however, he refused to break. There was still too much to do. Rightfully, he believed society was destined for collapse. Even though he might not survive long enough to take the much needed moment of silence, he dutifully forced himself to stay calm. He would process all this at some point in the future, when and if it ever became safe. And if he didn’t survive, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Cruising a few miles an hour down Keane, he saw people stepping out of their houses, looking at the church from where he and the women had just come. The burning building was in its final stages of collapse. Looking at the wide streets, the green grass, and the shrubs that were beautiful and lush from another wet winter, he fought back the urge to scream, or to pound the steering wheel in fits of mania.
Those two guys, the ones who had come for him, they had been so calm, perfectly normal. Knowing what they did to the parishioners, how they knew what they were planning when they came for him, he couldn’t comprehend that kind of evil. How could someone barely register a pulse, then burn sixty or seventy people to death?
Flashes of fire, a cacophony of screaming, thrashing bodies being devoured in flames…these were the images crowding into his head. They were stuffed in there like too many animals in a cage, each fighting for attention, each of them merciless and acting against Garrity’s own self-interest.
His body gave an involuntary shudder, but then he settled back into grinding his teeth to stave off the sheer agony of his burned skin and his thoroughly abused body.
Garrity took a left on Bellaire, passed Fairfield Drive, then hung a right into a commercial easement leading him to Concentra Urgent Care.
He knew the area well.
He’d taken his Rottweiler to the nearby animal hospital (Ardent Animal Health) when she was diagnosed with cancer. Several times he thought about heading over to the urgent care center himself, but the pains he was having in his chest were a combination of grief and shock. The grief was for his dog; the shock was over the compiling vet bills. As charitable and as professional as Ardent had been, ultimately, he was not capable of altering the course of life and death. This was the case then, and it would be the case now. But he had tried, and that was all he could do. At least he managed to save two lives.
When they pulled up to Concentra’s building, Garrity got out and helped the women out of the car. He brought them inside where volunteer doctors were working to help other members of the community with their various injuries.
“Oh, my Lord,” a black woman said, looking at the three of them. She had a washcloth over a wound on her arm, but she told the doctor helping her to attend to the women first.
“Are you sure?” the doctor asked.
She nodded aggressively, then looked at the women and said, “You poor things.”
“Lance, is that you?” the doctor asked.
He graced the doctor with a pained smile of acknowledgment. She had helped him with a few workplace injuries before and they were friendly.
“Yeah, in the flesh, albeit I’m a bit cooked this time.”
“You have to stay and let me look at you.”<
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He shook his head. “I can’t now, but I’ll be back because…yeah…I’ll be back.”
“Hang on,” she said. She disappeared in back for a minute, returning moments later with a bag of ointment samples. “These will help the more damaged areas, but you need to get back in here so I can give those burns a closer look.”
He promised to return, then he said good-bye to the women, who thanked him for saving their lives. Outside, he looked at the beater he had commandeered and felt physically sick. Not now, he told himself. He had to head back to the station to see what he could do to help.
Inside the car, he checked his weapon, then he checked underneath the seats and in the glovebox, just in case. In the glovebox, he found a snub-nosed .38 with six rounds in the cylinder. Acting on instinct, he got out of the car and popped the trunk. There he found a shotgun with a box of double ought. There were also two boxes of rounds for the .38, and a brand new speed loader, still in the box.
He carried the gear to the front passenger seat, dumped it on the worn leather, then returned to the driver’s seat. He started the engine, looked both ways, then pulled out.
Garrity threaded his way through the dead and abandoned cars on N. 3rd Street. Several times, he scraped the undercarriage, but only when he was forced to take an alternate route around the obstructions.
When he approached Riddle Street, he felt like he was going to have a problem. A train of cars had just pulled into Stratton Lumber and Hardware, which consisted of the main store and a handful of larger buildings set up in the industrial yard.
He slowed the jalopy, but then one of the cars stopped, backed up, and blocked the road in front of him. By then, he was twenty yards away.
Garrity cut his speed as he approached the car. Even though he was hoping to get around the car without issue, he grabbed the .38. That’s when the man in the car got out and aimed his shotgun right at him.
“Out of the car, old man!” he screamed.
He didn’t know what to do. Shoot him? Try to high-tail it out of there? Instead, he stopped the car, laid the .38 on his thigh, and raised his hands. The skinny white guy came toward the car, then motioned for him to roll down the window. Garrity used the order to conceal his movements. While rolling down the window with his left hand, he carefully picked up the .38 with his right hand.
“Who are you?” the kid asked.
He had four-day-old stubble, crooked teeth, and a head full of bad hair that looked unwashed and unhealthy. He was twenty-five-years-old at best.
“Lance Garrity,” he said.
“You can’t be out here,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Hayseed Rebellion’s orders,” he said. “We control Nicholasville now.”
Garrity couldn’t help laughing. Once he started, he couldn’t stop.
“I don’t see how you find that funny.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes carefully, then suffering the sharp sting where his face had been burned.
The scumbag racked the shotgun and said, “Why are you laughing?”
“It’s something I was thinking of.”
“Enlighten me, or I’ll pump you with so much lead—”
“I was thinking about what one of my buddies once said. He said, ‘If the nerds ever get control of the world, they’ll make everyone pay for every insult they suffered, every time they got their asses kicked, every last genetic imperfection in every last corner of their broken freaking brains.’ And then you come along, flexing your chest, sporting that shotgun, which I might add, you’re not even holding right.”
“I’m holding it just fine.”
Garrity felt the fire rise up inside of him. For everything he’d survived, to be held up by this punk kid in the middle of the street felt unacceptable.
“You’re just a nerd who never got the love you needed,” Garrity barked.
The guy jammed the barrel of the shotgun into Garrity’s cheek, pressed it hard. “Call me a nerd again.”
“Nerd,” he said.
He expected the kid to shoot him. He kind of wanted it, even though, really, he didn’t.
With the barrel of the shotgun smashing his mouth, he said, “You’re a pussy on a power trip, a paper tiger, a rape child that should have been aborted if I’m guessing right.”
“Shut up!” Then, over the roof of the car, he yelled, “I got one here!” Back to Garrity, the guy said, “Might be that my buddies want to ask you some questions.”
He started to turn the .38 toward the kid, but then a few more cars appeared, many of them looking like they were full of stolen goods. It was almost as if they’d spent the whole day grocery shopping. To his surprise, none of the cars were new. They were all EMP-proof cars.
They stopped, a few of the guys got out, all of them with guns on him now. So many things were racing through his mind.
“Whatcha got?” one of the guys asked the kid.
“A nerd with a gun in my face,” Garrity answered.
“I’m not talking to you, faggot.”
“This guy was passing through,” Shotgun Nerd said. “He’s got a smart mouth, but it looks like he’s had a go of it.”
“Get out of the car,” the new guy said. He withdrew a forty-five and pointed it at Garrity. “Now I’m talking to you, funny boy.”
Shoot now? Hold?
“He’s got a gun pointed at me,” Shotgun Nerd said.
“I see it,” the guy replied.
Damn.
“You shoot him, I shoot you,” the new guy said.
“You turn on him and I shoot you,” Shotgun Nerd said.
“Both of you are right,” Garrity added. “The question is, which one of you losers is going down first?”
Shotgun Nerd lanced Garrity’s face with the shotgun and Mr. Forty-Five reached in and grabbed the .38 from him before he could recover.
Two big punches to the face had him sagging in his seat. One of them pulled the car door open, dragged him out, and threw him to the ground.
Feet started kicking him, two sets at least, but then they were joined by two or three more sets of feet.
Each and every shot was like getting hit with a sledgehammer.
Someone started to stomp on his shoulders and head, causing him to waver in and out of consciousness. When he came back around for the third or fourth time—and he’d only been out a second or so each time, from what he could tell—he heard automatic gunfire. Suddenly, the men who had been overpowering him with kicks began to scatter.
Rolling over slowly and painfully, he laid on his back, staring up at the sky, half of it red from where blood was in his eye.
Everything was moving too fast for him at that point. With everything that happened, he didn’t want to get up, he just wanted it over with. Then Gator appeared over the top of him and said, “What are you doing here, Garrity?”
He lifted his head. “Gator?”
The big man dragged Garrity to his feet and said, “Good God, man. They did a number on you!”
More gunfire from nearby. “Is that Colt?”
“Yeah, we gotta go,” he said, half-dragging, half-hustling Garrity to the Jeep, which looked messed up but functional.
“Am I seeing hair in the grill?” he asked.
“You are,” Gator said.
“Is that really Garrity?” Colt asked.
“Yeah,” Gator said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.
“Sightseeing,” Garrity mumbled.
They hoisted him into the Jeep; Colt jumped in the passenger side. Return fire had them all ducking. Colt stood up with a carbine and unloaded a solid burst into the men. Gator slid the Jeep in gear, stepped on the gas, and swung the wheel hard.
“Hang on!”
When they roared off, Garrity saw several dead bodies lying on the ground.
“Now that we know where they are,” Gator said, “we can hit them after dark. We can take everything those scumbags took and more.”
>
“How are you two even here?” Garrity asked.
“These idiots cleaned out the CVS on North Main Street,” Colt explained. “We shot a few of them, but they took off. We followed them here, then saw you getting your shit pushed in.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I still feel virginal.”
“Your face is like shark week,” Gator said. “Did they actually set you on fire?”
He shook his head and said, “A couple of these idiots lured me to a church. When I was inside with the pastor and about seventy parishioners, they locked the doors and set the building on fire.”
Colt and Gator just stared at him.
“For real?” Colt asked.
“I escaped with two women. There were no other survivors.”
Gator pounded the steering wheel and said, “I knew these guys were bad news, but this goes way beyond old-fashioned assholery. This borders on downright evil!”
“They are evil,” Garrity said. “Anyone who would do this with no regard for others, and not a single care in the world for human life, can’t be described as anything but evil.”
“I know you’re the sheriff and all,” Gator said, “but I want to drive a stake into the eyes of every last one of these maggots.”
“You have my permission,” he said, sitting back and closing his eyes.
Everything was throbbing. His head was a ferocious ache, his skin was on fire, and his bones felt bruised for sure, right down to the marrow.
“You want to come with us?” Gator asked.
“If you could take me to the station, I can have Laura fix me up. She’s a retired RN, and we have a basic First-Aid kit there. Plus I have some baggies of ointment from the urgent care center.”
Colt said, “I think we started a war here.”
“Good,” Gator growled.
“How stocked are you at the station?” Colt asked. “Guns and ammo, I mean.”
“Not well enough for all this,” Garrity replied. Blood was leaking out of his nose at a slow trickle, and down the side of his face where his eyebrow was cut open.
Up ahead, there was a small crowd of similar-looking men gathered outside the sheriff station. Colt got the M4 Carbine out of the footwell, then slid out the window as they closed in on what looked like a dissident crowd. They wore the same stupid outfits as the Hayseed Rebellion.
