by Schow, Ryan
“When are we going?” Waylon said, suddenly alive.
“Gotta round up a few guys. Guys with good backs and a hearty appetite.”
“I know a few like that,” Waylon said, chipper. “Present company included. By the way, we took in another family while you were gone. Mom and dad, two teenagers. Boys. Hey, you okay?”
“Once I have my ribs wrapped, I’ll be fine. You really want to go? We could use a hand, and some extra security.”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “Getting spelled off in an hour, so after that.”
He found Sarah inside. She saw him, tried not to freak out at the sight of all that blood, then said, “Let’s see what you’ve done to yourself this time.”
“You’re mad,” he said as he followed her to the infirmary.
“More like disappointed.”
“Your ass looks amazing in those jeans,” he said, trying to break the ice.
“Well you’re not going to get any of it if you’re dead,” she said, opening the door and motioning for him to sit down.
Sitting on the makeshift table, he let her cut off his shirt then undo the shoulder straps and the waist straps of his body armor. She drew a sharp breath when she saw his chest and ribs.
“What were they shooting?”
“Nines, mostly. But I think this was a forty-five,” he said, pointing to a spectacular bruise forming on his left pectoral.
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Naw,” he said.
She poked it and he damn near jumped through the ceiling.
“I knew you were a liar.”
Holding his side, he said, “I was just trying to look good in front of you.”
“Perhaps you should stop getting yourself shot then,” she suggested. “Or is that the point with you?”
“I think I might’ve cracked a rib.”
She gave a look, touched them more gently, then said, “You’re fine. They’re probably just bruised.”
“These guys, they were bad news.”
“And now they’re not?”
“We had a talk. I didn’t like the way it went. They drew first, but in the end, that was their last mistake.”
“What was their first mistake?”
“They killed an old man for four cases of water and a grocery bag half full of dried goods. I’m sorry, but I think a man’s life is worth more than that.”
“So other than getting shot, did the rest of it go the way you thought it would?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest and giving him the look.
“Pretty much.”
She frowned; he smiled. Shaking her head, she picked up Rider’s body armor, looked at it, put her finger in the impact points.
“It’s so light,” she said. “How long is it supposed to last?”
He shrugged his shoulders, instantly regretting it because the pain in his arm…oh, the pain!
Collecting himself, he said, “Hopefully longer than I’m hoping for.”
“Got another one of these things in a girl’s size?” she joked.
“If we go out, you can wear that one. It’s adjustable, and lightweight, and it’ll stop most everything these guys are shooting.”
“Well let’s get those ribs wrapped,” she said. He took a shallow breath, then another, and then he nodded. When they were done, Sarah said, “She’s awake.”
“Who’s awake?”
“The woman you saved. She says her name is Margot.”
“Finally a name,” he said, easing off the bed.
Motioning toward the vest, he put out his hand; she frowned again and handed it over.
“Since you cut up my t-shirt, this will have to do.” She smiled, cocked her head sideways and leveled him with the sexiest of smiles. He walked forward and said, “Can I kiss you?”
“I’d be upset if you didn’t,” she replied. “But not with that bloody face.” She wiped his face mostly clean, then he stood and kissed her soft at first, then a little harder, sliding his hand around her waist and pulling her toward him.
When their mouths came apart, she pulled back and took a breath.
“Wow,” she said, grinning.
“Uh-huh.”
They walked into the room where Margot was sitting up and drinking water from a water bottle and a straw.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re the guy, right?”
He knew exactly what she meant. Rider was the guy who saved her.
“I am.”
“That your blood?” she asked, looking him over.
“Not really.”
After a moment, she said, “I think I might have asked you something when I was…delirious.”
“You did.”
“Did you find her?” she asked, nearly breathless.
He nodded.
By now Sarah was looking at him and surely wondering what they were talking about. All Sarah knew was that the woman was trying to find her family. With Margot being closer to Rider’s age, and beautiful, part of him wondered if their interaction this would spark some jealousy in Sarah. He didn’t know her very well to know this. But it was on his mind.
“Will you take me to her?” Margot asked, setting her water aside.
“Is she going to want to see you?” he asked.
He recalled how there were no pictures of the woman in the house, only pictures of her father.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I hope so.”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“Do you know what’s happening yet?” she asked. Looking at Sarah, she said, “She won’t tell me anything.”
His eyes going to Sarah, then back to Margot, he said, “Our city was destroyed by drones, and then something exploded and everything with a computer chip died.”
“Why would they do that? The drones?”
“Silicon Valley has been playing with fire for years now, trying to invent a machine that’s smarter than man. An AI God. Apparently they did it. Surely you read the papers, heard what guys like Elon Musk have been saying. He’s been warning us for years. He basically hinted that if AI takes over, if it goes autonomous, then the machine’s primary objective would be to eliminate humans first. My best guess is that this AI God took control of the drones and executed a strike.”
“Why?”
“Because humans pose the greatest threat to them. If you could kill your gods and take their place, would you do it?”
“Probably not.”
“Well if AI possessed that kind of reasoning, then everything would just be peachy right now.”
She wasn’t sure how to take his misplaced sense of humor. Then again, Sarah was new to it, too. Looking at him, she raised an eyebrow, but not in distaste.
“How long did it go on for?” Margot asked. Then: “How long have I been here?”
“Four or five weeks.” He could see the shock in her face. “Turns out AI’s run for freedom at the cost of human life and civilization was spot on. It almost worked. They would’ve wiped us out if not for the electromagnetic pulse. Unfortunately the blast killed the electrical grid. So now we’re not having to deal with the drones, but things are about to get really difficult. Eventually we’re going to have to leave the city, find a homestead in a less dense region where we can start over and begin making more long term plans.”
“What do you mean ‘start over?’”
“I’m pretty sure most people in the city are dead, Margot. We have no running water, no electricity, and being here, trapped inside this urban nightmare, people are eventually going to turn on each other. It’s already happening. It could reach a fever pitch in a few days or a few weeks. Maybe as long as a month.”
“How can you be sure?” she asked, her eyes full of concern.
“When people run out of food and water, they’ll start stealing, even if they have to kill to do it. In that moment, we’re going to be faced with Darwinism in a way people of this time have never known.”
Margot’s eyes started to tear up.
“That’s enough, Rider,” Sarah said, putting a hand on his arm. “Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?”
“I just want to see my little girl,” Margot said, wiping her eyes. “Can I do that? Will you take me to her?”
“I said I would.”
“Was she with her father when you found her?”
“No,” he said.
“I have to find my husband,” Margot added. Looking hopeful, she said, “He’s probably waiting for me at our home.”
“Is it the same home?”
“No.”
At the mention of a husband, Rider felt Sarah relax. Or was that his overactive imagination feeding him false truths? The big rock on her ring finger said she was married, but that didn’t mean she was in love. It turned out she cared enough about him to want to find him.
“When can we go?” she asked.
“I’m going with you guys,” Sarah said.
Rider turned and said, “They’ll need you here, just in case. Besides, I won’t be gone long. A day or two at most.”
“She’s not ready,” Sarah said, taking a stand.
“I know.”
Finally she said, “Will you be careful please?”
“Naturally,” he grinned.
Margot looked from Rider to Sarah, then back again. “Are you two—”
Rider nodded without thinking. Then it occurred to him he never really discussed this with Sarah, so he didn’t know what she thought.
He’d only assumed they were a couple…
When he looked at her though, she was looking back at him with curious eyes. “I’m not being overly presumptive, am I?” he asked.
Her smile said no.
“Let’s let her sleep, Rider. She doesn’t need any more drama than she’s already had.”
“So are you releasing her?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Good, because we’re having a meat dinner tonight. I just need to gather up some helpful hands, and a new shirt.”
Outside the room, when she asked him what he meant about a meat dinner, he told her what he’d found at the cantina, and though she was worried about him going back out, he told her anyone coming near him needed to do the worrying first.
“And you wonder why I want to go with you guys,” she said.
“To the cantina, or with Margot?”
She slapped his arm lightly, making him jump, then said, “You know what I mean.”
“I do. But tonight, if you want, you can come with us,” he said. “Think of it like a stroll about the neighborhood with your man.”
“Are you my man?” she asked, taking his hand in hers. “For real?”
He leaned down and kissed her again.
“Until you say otherwise.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
There was something sexy about the big Detroit engine. The rumble itself was enchanting. Indigo, however, was a mystery he hadn’t settled yet. He loved how capable she was, but she scared him, too. Which was strange. He’d killed men twice as vicious as her, yet there was still something…unsettling going on here. How was it so easy for her to just kill people like that?
“Why didn’t you fire off a warning shot?” he finally asked. He was referring to the two men she’d killed. The men who were hassling those women and their kids on the street.
“Because it would give them time to draw on me, or kill those people.”
“So you killed them first?”
“You don’t get it, do you?” she said, turning and leveling him with narrowed eyes. “You think I killed those guys, but did you ever ask yourself how many people I saved? You can start with that family they were hassling, or robbing, or beating up.”
He sat back, thought about it. He rolled down the window, smelled the slightest bit of the Olds’ exhaust mixed with the smoke in the air and found it comforting.
When he offered her no reply, she said, “See, in the old days, people would just be quiet, not get involved, turn a blind eye. Those people are going to be dead inside of a month.”
“That’s not necessarily true.”
“If they keep living their lives as pacifists thinking someone’s going to come and save them, then yes they will. You’ve been in a war before, you should know this.”
“A war overseas isn’t the same thing as a war in your backyard.”
“I get it, but it’s still dangerous. Your life is still on the line, ready to be ripped from you at any minute. You want to know what happened to me? It would just go over your head. I’d tell you and you hearing it wouldn’t be the same as me living it.”
“These people, the things they did to you…was it something…I mean, did it last long? Were you…tortured or something…worse?”
“Worse.”
“Since you won’t tell me, I can’t begin to understand. I can only guess at what you went through, what you survived. Me personally, I spent the better part of a month living in a dirt pit, having people piss on me, beat me, starve me.”
“You were captured?”
“We were in a convoy in Afghanistan when we were hit with an IED. It killed most of my unit, but a few of us survived. I was out cold at first. They must’ve thought I was dead. When they discovered I was alive, that’s when they took me.”
“So you having a weak stomach saved you,” she said, sarcastic, but without a smile.
He didn’t take the bait. “The guys like me who were being held, most of them are dead now. I should have died, too, but I didn’t.”
“I thought we ended the Afghan war.”
“Shows what you know,” he muttered, looking away from her, out the window. “The point is, I don’t want to look at you the same way I looked at them. Like senseless killers.”
“When you got back from there,” she said, her body rigid from his last comment, which he knew was a bit low, “how did you feel?”
“Calm, I guess.”
“Why?”
“Because after I healed, after they fixed my broken bones, my cuts, my fractured skull, I got back on the horse and rode.”
“You dug back in.”
“Yes.”
“And what kind of a soldier were you?” she asked, too insistent, too aggressive.
“Stop pushing this,” he warned.
She slammed on the brakes, throwing him into the dash as they came to a stop. She slid the Olds in neutral and practically screamed at him.
“Answer the question!”
“What does it matter?” he shouted back, irritated by this little girl.
“It matters! It all matters!”
“I was half psychotic and should never have been let back in!”
Now everything about her settled back down, like she had the answer she was looking for. For a long moment, all he heard was his rapid breathing and the rumbling of the big motor. Outside, there were a few people on the sidewalk looking at them. She refused to take her eyes off him and this made him nervous.
Now he was sure…he didn’t like her.
“You said you were half psychotic, well that’s how I feel. Except you were able to come home, leave the war behind. It’s here now. I’ve had my time in the dirt pit, so to speak. I’ve lost my friends, my family, my dignity and my way it seems. I wasn’t always like this. I hate that I’m like this! But if I want to survive, if I don’t want to end up dead, or worse—tortured and then killed—then I have to be this person!”
He was about to tell her she had other choices, but then he remembered how he felt, how angry he was, how much he wanted to kill everything in sight, so he kept his mouth shut instead.
“That’s why I shot those two scumbags,” she said. “Because they are not survivors, they’re tormentors and I’m going to stop every single one of them the second I see them.”
Running his hands through his hair, he said, “Jesus Indigo, it doesn’t have to be like this. Not for you. Not for us.”
“There is no us, Rex! You’re a tourist. Someone just pas
sing through, someone just laid over until the next flight arrives.”
“You don’t know that,” he argued.
“See, when you leave here, and you will, it’ll just be me and Atlanta. All the good people will have died by then and it’ll just be us. We’ll be the generals. We’ll be our own platoon. We will be the frontline soldiers and if we’re not careful, we’ll also be the casualties.”
“So kill everything first?”
“You’re damn right!” she hissed. He just stared at her and he could tell this was pissing her off. Finally she said, “I’m going to show you something,” and then she dropped the Olds in gear, revved the engine, dumped the clutch and smoked the wheels.
This was no Sunday drive.
This girl could move!
They charged through the streets, barely avoiding abandoned cars, people, blown out debris, curbs and parking meters. Stuff kicked up under the fenders making a ruckus in the wheel wells, but she didn’t care. She nicked the rear fender on a tipped-over newsstand fishtailing around a corner going too fast, but she didn’t care. She even ran over a body in the road, the sickening thump-thump-thumping of legs and arms hitting the undercarriage making him jostle and squirm, but she didn’t care.
He hung on for dear life.
After more than a few minutes of this, when his heart was about to explode and his fingers were exhausted from gripping, she smashed the brakes and skidded to a stop, the back end sliding around.
“My God,” he said, breathless.
Piled before them, stacked a good thirty feet high, was a massive mound of dead bodies. Horrified, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t blink.
“Who’s doing this?” he somehow managed to ask.
“National Guard has been rolling through here the last few days with their Humvees and their meat wagons, which are basically just trailers with dead bodies loaded on them.”
Rider couldn’t take his eyes off a small boy stuffed in between a pack of adults. It was the saddest thing he’d ever seen. Bodies just discarded like they never had lives, feelings, emotions. It truly was a pile of meat to whomever was doing this.
“I talked to them and ‘they didn’t do conversation,’ as one of them put it. They said I should just be grateful to be alive, and hopeful that they could get the corpses cleaned up before they began to rot and start spreading disease.”
