by T. L. Payne
Maddie turned toward the man. He stared at the sky. She walked back over to him, knelt and felt his pockets. In his left rear pants pocket, she found a full six-round magazine. Standing, Maddie slid the full magazine into the pistol, chambered a round, and ejected the magazine. She loaded the extra round into the magazine before slapping it back into the pistol. Gripping the gun, Maddie extended her arms into a firing position and felt its weight in her hand. It was light and would fit into a pocket, if she had a pocket.
Maddie smiled.
Dad would be so proud of me.
The gun didn’t have a manual safety. She would have to be careful not to touch the trigger or let it catch on anything if she had to draw it in the heat of battle.
The man looked at her as she stood over him with his pistol in her hand. As she returned his gaze, they locked eyes. She knew he was dying, yet she felt no sympathy for the man. She looked up and down the street. Would she have to shoot anyone before she reached home? Could she do it if it came to that?
She was not sure.
Maddie carefully placed the pistol in the Kangaroo pouch on her back. She reached back a few times to check how she would quickly pull it if she needed too. It was likely to slide down into the pouch below her rain jacket and out of reach. In that case, she wouldn’t be able to get to it without taking off her pack. None of the front or side pouches were big enough for the pistol. She would need to find pants with a belt and deep pockets. Her tights and the tank top were a good choice for running, but not for carrying a fully loaded pistol.
The sun was starting to set behind the houses. It would be dark soon. She had hoped to be far from the city by dark. That was not going to happen now. She needed to find a place for her and Emma to hide until daylight. Looking around, all she saw was row after row of houses.
She took Emma’s hand in hers. They sprinted down the street, weaving in and out between cars. Maddie slowed when they passed people in the road.
The two had traveled about ten city blocks before Maddie spotted the perfect place to stay the night. They ran down the block and through the next intersection. Just past the corner was a wrought-iron gate. Above the entrance was a sign that read, “Oakdale Cemetery.”
Emma looked up, wide-eyed. As Maddie tried to walk forward, Emma pulled back, refusing to budge.
“Emma, this is the safest place in the city right now. No one will come into the cemetery and hurt us there.”
Emma looked at the sign above the gate.
“It is just for the night, and I have a gun now,” Maddie said. “Okay?”
Emma nodded. The two ran across the street, through the open gate, and down a paved walkway. At a stand of evergreen trees, Maddie ducked under low branches. After dropping to her knees, she held back the branches for Emma. The girls sat down and leaned against the largest of the trees. Emma laid sideways on the ground and closed her eyes
A rush of relief and then sadness engulfed Maddie. Pulling her knees to her chest, she sobbed quietly. She felt a sense of isolation and fear, unlike anything she had ever known in her life. Even more than the isolation she had felt in the last few years.
Although she came from a family of four, they lived splintered lives. Each tiptoed around, hiding their pain to spare one another. There were no more family camping trips, no game nights, no taco Tuesdays, and no more of dad’s swirly pancakes on Saturday mornings.
Zach had been the one to pick up their father’s mantle. He had tried to be the man of the house. She and Zach had fought a great deal over his newly assumed authority and him thinking he could tell her what to do. He was four years younger than her. If he grieved their dad, Maddie didn’t see it.
But where she felt fragile, broken and abandoned, Zach appeared stoic, older and wiser than his years.
Where is he now?
She tried to remember where he had said his class had stopped. He was at a McDonald’s somewhere, she recalled. He was on his class field trip. Mr. Dean was pretty cool. He would keep Zach safe. He would know what to do. Mom was safe at Grand’s. They’d probably be home when she got there. She comforted herself with those thoughts.
The lights might not even be out anywhere but here. They can’t be off everywhere, or we are all screwed.
She awoke in the night. The exhaustion following the huge adrenaline dump must have put her right to sleep for a few hours. Stars showed through the branches overhead and she was struck by the relative quietness of the night.
Missing were the noises of cars and sirens. Maddie heard nothing but an occasional crashing sound and excited yells of nearby looters. She could hear the occasional pop from gunfire in the distance. She sat still and quietly listened to the beginning of the end of society.
Emma lay curled in a fetal position at the base of her tree. Maddie removed a Mayday bar from her side pouch and ate it. She drank the last of the water in her soft flask and stuffed the flask into her pack. Her hydration bladder was empty. It weighed the most, but the mouth tube made it the easiest to drink from while running. She needed to find a water source quickly or she and Emma would be in trouble. With the cooler temperatures being weeks away, they would quickly dehydrate if they ran without water. The daytime temperature still reached eighty degrees in Chicago this time of year.
Unstrapping her pack and pulling it off, Maddie laid it on her lap. She carefully pulled out the pistol and put it on a rock beside her. From a side pocket, Maddie pulled the Ziploc bag containing her headlamp and water filter. With her water bladder, flask, and filter grasped in one hand and the headlamp in the other, Maddie crawled out from under the trees and stood. She looked around the cemetery.
The moon was half obscured by clouds, but it provided some light. She stepped back onto the paved walkway. Not wanting to risk twisting an ankle stumbling around in the dark in a graveyard, she flipped on her headlamp, shielding its light in her closed fist.
Facing away from the street, Maddie flashed the light in front of her toward the trees she had just come from. From there she shined the light right and left. Not seeing anything interesting, she turned to her left and shined the light in front of her and then to the right and left again. On her left, she spotted a small fountain in the cemetery's center.
“Yes!” she whispered.
Cupping the light in her palm and shining it on the ground, she made her way to the fountain. Using her Sawyer mini filter, Maddie filled her hydration bladder and all four soft flasks, giving her over two liters of water to start their run tomorrow. The mini-filter was slow, but it was lightweight—and a lifesaver.
Returning to where Emma lay under the trees, Maddie put the hydration bladder inside its sleeve, and the sleeve inside its pocket, on the back of her pack. She pulled out her bivvy bag and placed it on the groud. Picking up the pistol from the rock, she shoved it in the kangaroo pouch beside her rain jacket. She removed the small folded emergency blanket from her pack and, after curling up next to Emma, unfolded and pulled at the super lightweight, loudly crinkling mass suspended over top of them, tucking it down and around their bodies. The soft bed of evergreen needles was comfortable but she thought she’d think twice before calling attention to themselves with the loud, reflective emergency blanket unless she really needed it.
As she lay staring up at the stars that peeked between the branches above her, she thought of the camping trips she had been on with her mom, dad, and brother. Her dad had taken them to some exotic places, but never to a cemetery.
Most people, especially the girls she knew, would never spend the night in a graveyard, but Maddie was not superstitious. She had spent a lot of time in them since her dad had passed. Right after he had died, Maddie would sometimes sit at his grave for hours talking to him.
She had never wished harder that her dad was still alive. The first thing she would say to him was that she was sorry for doubting him. The second would be to thank him for all he had done to prepare them for this world. She did not know how she would get home, but she hoped her d
ad would be proud of her for her effort.
Chapter 14
The Oakdale Cemetery
Westchester, Illinois
Event + 2 days
A light rain began falling through the boughs of the trees that Maddie and Emma lay under. At first, she pulled the sleeping bag up over her head, but then sat straight up, remembering where she was and what had happened the previous day. Maddie gently nudged Emma awake.
“Emma, it’s daylight. We need to get moving.”
Emma stirred, stretched, and sat up. Maddie pulled the weatherproof jacket out of her pack’s kangaroo pouch. The pistol slid out and hit the ground. She had forgotten she had it. After wrapping the jacket around Emma, Maddie bent over and picked up the gun from the wet ground. She stared at the damp weapon in her hand. She had left her bandana with the girl back near the dumpster. Bending over, she wiped the gun on her shirt and carefully placed it inside the waistband of her running tights. There would be no way she could walk, let alone run, without the weapon falling out, but it would stay there long enough for her to pack up her bivvy and get her pack on.
Maddie rolled up the bivvy and stuffed it back in its pouch, then shoved it into the pack. Crawling out of the trees, she stood and pulled on the vest pack.
Emma crawled out and looked around the graveyard. After retrieving two Clif Bars and two bags of sports beans from the front pouch of her pack, Maddie threaded the mouth tube under her arm and secured it at her shoulder. Maddie leaned over to Emma and zipped the jacket to her neck. It hung below the girl's knees, and the sleeves dangled at her side. Maddie rolled the sleeves and pulled the drawstring on the hood. Emma would not be able to move very fast with the jacket on.
Maddie removed the pistol from her waistband and placed it in the kangaroo pouch of her pack. She couldn’t easily reach it there, but there was no way it would stay in her waistband.
Maddie bent over and did a few stretches before she and Emma walked off down the path and back onto the street. Hardly anyone was out on the roads now, whether because of the rain or because they had been trying to get home from wherever they had been stranded. Either way, she was glad to be able to travel faster than yesterday.
Maddie had planned to spend some time that morning going over the map. She needed to familiarize herself with various alternate routes but did not want to get the map wet. They needed to get off the street they were on. She was not sure if continuing to wind through residential areas would be wise — too many chances for running into dead end streets and getting lost.
An hour later the rain had let up and the sun was trying to come out. Maddie and Emma stopped at a small playground. Taking a seat on a bench near a slide, Maddie removed the pistol from her pack and laid it between her and Emma. After unzipping the jacket, Maddie pulled on the sleeves to help Emma take it off. She shook it to remove as much moisture as she could. Reaching over her shoulder, Maddie shoved the jacket back into the kangaroo pouch on her back. The great thing about the Salomon vest pack was she did not have to remove it to reach most of the contents. She looked down at the gun on the bench. Reluctantly, she reached over her head and placed the pistol in the pack next to her jacket.
As they sat on the park bench, an old beat-up pickup truck backed out of a garage down the street and sped away. The door stood wide open. Maddie waited to confirm that the house was empty. When no one else exited, Maddie took Emma’s hand. The two crept closer, making sure to stay behind the bushes that lined the street.
Maddie peeked over the top of the foliage. The contents of the house appeared to be strewn across the front lawn, making a path to the street.
The house had already been looted. She hoped the homeowners were not home, for their sake as well as hers. Maddie looked inside the open garage door. On the back wall was a washer and dryer. Maddie and Emma ran to the corner of the house. Maddie leaned around and scanned the garage for the home's occupants. Not seeing anyone, she pointed toward the garage. She and Emma rounded the corner and entered through the open garage door. Crouching beside a silver SUV, they made their way to the back wall. At the front bumper of the vehicle, Maddie stopped and listened. She peered around the car to make sure the space was empty.
Maddie motioned for Emma to stay put. She crept over and slowly pulled on the dryer’s handle. The popping sound it made was loud in the stillness of the garage. Maddie looked over her shoulder toward the door that connected the garage to the house. When no one appeared, she opened the dryer to reveal what seemed to be a mixed load of men’s clothes.
Score!
There were jeans and T-shirts. Maddie grabbed a pair of jeans and looked for the tag. They were not ideal, but she could make them work. She would make a belt from a length of paracord from her pack and cut the legs to her height. Next, she pulled out a large black T-shirt. She didn’t need to look at the tag to know it was a size large. It would do. Maddie had downsized many of her dad's T-shirts by cutting slits on the sides and braiding them. She slid the shirt over her head and pulled it down over her tank top. Reaching into the dryer, Maddie pulled out a hand full of socks.
Yes!
She grabbed six white socks from the dryer. They were larger than her feet—and she knew of no way to make socks smaller—but they were clean and would have to do. Maddie reached back into the dryer. Using her thumb and index finger, she picked up a pair of men’s boxer briefs. She wrinkled her nose.
“Ew. No freakin way,” she said under her breath.
“No freakin way is right,” Emma whispered, wrinkling her nose too as she looked up at Maddie.
She dropped them back into the dryer. Clean panties would be high on her list of must-haves for the next scavenging hunt. Crouching in front of the SUV, she slid off her running tights and pulled on the jeans. They nearly dropped to her knees. She scanned the shelves above the dryer. A basket sat on the top shelf. She pulled it down and dumped its contents on the floor. Under a pile of mismatched socks and items likely emptied from pants pockets lay a small pink belt. The socks were small. She held them up and looked to Emma.
“Will these fit your feet?” Maddie whispered.
Emma shrugged her shoulders. Maddie stuffed them in her pack. She moved a few pieces of ripped-up T-shirt material and spotted what she had been searching for—a woman’s belt. After threading it through the loops of the jeans, she cinched it tight. The fabric of the jeans bunched up in the back. There was nothing she could do about that. She removed the gun from her pack and carefully placed it into her right front pocket. She squatted down a couple of times to make sure it would not get in the way of running. She looked back at the small socks on the floor.
Maddie sprang up and opened the lid to the washer.
Tada! Miracle. Women and children’s clothes.
Women's and a little girl’s underwear and socks filled the washer. Maddie reached in and pulled out a mesh bag filled with bras and panties. Unzipping the bag, she pulled out a pair of Victoria Secret, silky, red lace panties. They were her size too. Emma’s eyes grew large as she glanced between the panties and Maddie.
Maddie smiled at her good fortune. Returning the panties to their mesh bag, Maddie zipped it shut and shoved it into her pack. She reached back into the washer and pulled out a girl’s top. Maddie checked the size.
“Can you wear a medium?” she whispered.
Emma shrugged her shoulders again. Maddie took a few. A large shirt was better than no shirt. Satisfied with her clothing haul, she turned her attention to a shelf of camping gear. She rifled through tents, a camp stove, sleeping bags, and fishing gear. She lifted a badminton racket to reveal what she had been looking for — a small hatchet. A hatchet was a great tool and could be used as a weapon.
Double score!
She opened a large tackle box laying on the floor. It contained the usual lures, bobbins and hooks, and a filet knife. Maddie pulled the knife from its sheath and examined its edge, pleased with what she saw. Sheathing the blade, she placed it in the Molly webbing on
the back of her pack. She now had two sharp weapons and a gun. Maddie looked to the door leading inside the house. She knew the house had been looted already. Weapons would have been the first thing they took—guns and drugs.
She stared at the door one last time.
Should I risk it?
“Stay here,” she mouthed to Emma.
Emma looked like she wanted to protest, but she relaxed back into her position next to the tire of the SUV. Maddie scanned the garage as she walked toward the door. She reached out, turned the knob, and slowly cracked open the door. It opened into what appeared to be a mud room and pantry. Coats hung on hooks on one wall with a shoe rack on the bottom. The shelves lining another wall contained large pots and pans. It appeared the looters before her had not bothered to go through this room.
On the same wall as the door was a shelf with gym bags and backpacks. Not little kid backpacks with cartoon characters either. Maddie opened the door wider and listened. Not hearing any movement inside the house, she pushed open the door. Before stepping inside, she looked over her shoulder and motioned for Emma to stay put. She left the door open in case she needed to make a quick escape. After grabbing a black pack from the shelf, Maddie set it on the bench under the coat hooks and unzipped it. Inside, she found the mother load.
Caffeine!
The pack had been someone’s travel bag. Besides hotel soap and shampoo were bags of single serve coffee and teas. There was even sugar and creamer in the pack. Maddie grabbed the backpack and backed out the door. She would not risk going in further. It just was not worth it. They needed food, but she still had energy gels and sports beans.
Maddie emptied the contents of the backpack into her already overstuffed vest pack and motioned for Emma to follow as she crept around the side of the SUV and exited the garage. Looking around the side of the house, Maddie took Emma by the hand and ran to an abandoned car on the street. They ran across to the other side of the road. At the corner of the street, they turned left toward Mannheim Road again and the commercial district.
