His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby

by Martuneac, Peter

“Think they gave up?” Abby asked.

  “I think so,” Emma replied. She sat up a bit and looked around. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Cross the river?”

  “Cross the river.”

  The girls got up and jogged over to the edge of the iced-over river. Abby paused to pick up a rock the size of a softball and heaved it out onto the ice. It smacked down and skidded several feet. It sounded solid enough, but not as solid as Abby would have preferred. The warm weather lately must have thawed it out some.

  “Let’s keep some distance between each other,” she said, and Emma murmured in agreement. She walked away to the left as Emma went right until there was a gap between the two of them of about twenty yards. They gave each other a look, and then stepped out onto the ice together. It held firm, and there was only the slightest sound of ice cracking underneath as they walked, but any sign of breaking ice was terrifying in their present predicament.

  Abby couldn’t help but hold her gaze downwards as she shuffled along the ice. She had a slim frame and weighed very little, but the ice still groaned beneath her. Every few steps there would be a soft crack, just enough to give her pause before continuing on in a slightly different direction. She looked over to Emma, who looked equally as disconcerted about walking across a river in the winter.

  She almost didn’t hear the thunk at all. Abby jerked her head up, as if there was any way she could spot the round dropping down, and then it struck. The round landed on the river, far away to the right of Abby, but not so far from Emma, tearing a gigantic hole in the ice. The heat and the sudden release of energy sent enormous cracks like many forks of lightning or a broken window pane across the ice. Emma tried to escape, turning to run back towards the shoreline, but it all happened too quickly.

  The fissures in the ice surrounded Emma, and before she could even cry out she had fallen into the frigid water and was instantly swept along with the flow of the river. The sudden drop in her body temperature shocked her, and she almost blacked out, but she retained enough presence of mind to fight back against the current. It was not overpowering, however with only one good arm and a pack on her back, it took every ounce of effort Emma possessed to not be swept underneath the ice.

  But she was still underwater, and she couldn’t hold her breath for long while also struggling to swim against the river. Desperate, Emma pulled her arms free from the straps of her backpack, and let it be carried away. Now free of that burden, she was finally able to break the surface of the water, and she sucked in a deep breath as she threw her good arm up onto the ice, clawing onto it to stay afloat.

  Emma heard Abby shout her name. She looked up and saw Abby inching towards her, her arms out at her sides as she stepped carefully along the breaking ice.

  “Stop moving!” Emma yelled, and Abby stopped in her tracks. Emma tried to heave herself up, but with only one arm and a river current that was trying to suck her down beneath the ice, she couldn’t do it. She ground her teeth as she tried again in desperation, but she just could not get out of the water.

  Abby saw her struggling and cried out, “Hang on, Emma! I’m coming!”

  “No! Stay back!” Emma yelled. She heaved herself up one more time, but came no closer to safety than her previous attempts had brought her. She sighed, exhausted and bitterly cold. She looked at Abby and accepted her fate.

  “I’m dead, kid,” she said in a calm tone. “Even if I got out of here, hypothermia will kill me. You have to save yourself.”

  “You don’t know that!” Abby said, and she began walking towards Emma again. “We’ll find a way!”

  “No we won’t, now get out of here before they catch up to us!” Emma replied.

  “Just hang on!” Abby said as she continued her slow march forward despite the groaning and cracking ice.

  “Goddamn it, kid! Stop! The ice is too fragile! You have to get out of here!”

  “No I don’t!”

  The ice continued to fracture and break all around them, almost throwing Abby off balance. She teetered on one foot as she regained solid footing.

  “Yes you do! Go!” shouted Emma.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Just let me go!”

  “NO!” Abby screamed. She looked into Emma’s eyes and said, “I can’t just let you die!”

  Emma stared back at Abby. Most of the time the young girl wore a stoic face, portraying herself as the kind of girl who would leave everyone behind in order to survive. But as Emma had guessed back at the gas station, this was a mask. Beneath the lie, Abby was still a compassionate young woman, one that cared deeply for the people around her, and Emma saw that for the first time.

  “There she is,” Emma whispered, her colorless lips drawing into a small smile. “There’s the real Abby.”

  She held Abby’s gaze for a moment longer, and then Emma let go of the ice. The river swept her away in an instant.

  Abby stood as still as a mountain peak, staring at the spot where Emma had been just a moment before. It had happened so fast that she didn’t even cry out as her only friend left in the world slipped into the oblivion of the frozen river, leaving Abby alone again.

  All alone.

  Shouting.

  People were shouting, yelling for the two of them to surrender. They didn’t realize that one was gone forever.

  And the other one was alone.

  All alone.

  Abby straightened up and looked to the other side of the river. She was about halfway across, and the ice around her was no longer breaking apart. She could run and be lost in the trees in a matter of seconds, leaving these people behind for good.

  But they’d still be alive. Emma was dead but they’d be alive.

  That was not justice.

  And that was not how Abby was going to let this end. She wanted justice. She wanted blood.

  She turned around and planted her feet firmly on the ice, shoulder width apart. Her pack she set on the ice, and leaned her rifle up against it. She drew her pistol and held it down at her side, and she waited. Several seconds ticked by, and Abby felt like her chest was going to explode with anticipation. She checked the chamber of her pistol, confirmed that she had seven rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, and licked her lips in impatience.

  Finally, five people appeared from the woods: two men, two women, and Donny. Bernie was not there. He doesn’t have the balls to finish this himself, Abby thought. The five people fanned out in a semi-circle around Abby, each with a weapon trained on her. Abby noted the types of firearms: Donny, one of the men, and one of the women had M16’s, the other woman carried a shotgun, and the last man had only a pistol.

  They were shouting at her to drop her weapon and put her hands up. But Abby didn’t move at all. She stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed forward and slightly down, looking bored despite the danger she faced.

  The people around her exchanged nervous glances. Bernie must have told them to bring her back alive, judging by their hesitation. The two men stayed up on the embankment with one of the women. Donny and the woman with the shotgun advanced towards Abby, stepping gingerly onto the ice.

  Abby allowed her eyes to wander to her left, towards Donny. He had his rifle up, pointed right at Abby’s head as he continued walking towards her, step by step, until he was close enough that she could hear his breathing over the babbling rush of water. She saw a fiery hatred in his eyes as he stared at the person he believed had murdered his father. Abby recognized that look, and she felt a moment of regret that she had not just ran away.

  But only for a moment.

  She glanced at his rifle and shook her head. The poor kid still had it on ‘safe’. He wouldn’t react fast enough. Abby raised her pistol with a coolness that did not mesh with the gravity of her predicament and fired at Donny once, the bullet hitting him square in the face.

  Abby turned to her right to face the woman there, standing about thirty feet away. She fired at Abby, but missed by a wid
e mark. Abby raised her gun again with the same nonchalant expression and fired. The woman died just as Donny had, and Abby began to walk towards the three remaining people.

  One of the men and the woman standing on the embankment both raised their weapons and began to fire at Abby as the last man backed away slowly, one hand holding his rifle up and the other holding a walkie-talkie to his mouth.

  Abby could feel the bullets biting through the air all around her, snapping and hissing in a sordid cacophony of combat. And yet she was unstruck. Perhaps her opponents were not so well trained with their weapons or the iron sights they used had not been properly adjusted. Whatever the reason, it was like Abby was repelling the bullets away from her.

  She raised her gun and pulled the trigger until the slide locked back on an empty magazine. She had shot the woman once in the chest, the man with the pistol twice in the chest, then in the head, another shot to the woman’s chest, and a shot into the pelvis of the man who had been backing away, just as he seemed ready to fire. The first two fell dead, and the last man lay on his back, writhing in agony as his blood stained the snow around him.

  Abby walked up to him as she ejected the empty magazine from her pistol, replaced it with a fresh one, and sent the slide forward, chambering another round. The man saw her coming and he stretched out his hand to grab his dropped weapon. But it had slid down the slick snow, and was just out of reach. He looked up to see Abby stop a few feet away from him and aim her pistol at his head.

  “I’ll see you in He-”

  Abby pulled the trigger and killed him before he could finish the sentence.

  “Save me a seat,” she whispered.

  Abby holstered her pistol and did a quick check of a few pockets of the people she’d killed. She found no ammunition for her pistol or anything else useful, but she did take one of the M16’s and a few magazines, one of which she stuffed in her cargo pocket and the others in her pack. Her other rifle she left behind, since it was almost out of ammo and she couldn’t carry two rifles at once.

  And then she left, moving downriver a bit, away from the broken ice, and crossed over there. She had deliberately avoided looking at Donny’s body as she walked away. He was the only one Abby felt any regret for killing, and she feared that that was a weight she’d be carrying around for a very long time. But she was left with no choice.

  At least, that’s what she told herself over and over.

  Chapter Eleven

  Abby felt lost in a daze again, adrift in endless drifts of snow as she wandered westward towards no specific end. All she knew, believed, was that somewhere out there in the great American west was her salvation, a place where she could finally let her guard down for just one goddamn second and not lose every person she ever cared about. She kicked at a rock as she tried to shove these bitter thoughts out of her mind. She had to stay focused on what was happening here, today.

  She was no longer counting the days, so Abby was actually not sure how long it’d been since Emma died. A month maybe? The scenery never changed as she journeyed, out here in the middle of America. It was all farms and fields, streams and pastures.

  She did know that she was in Colorado, on account all the mountains she could see in the distance, standing between her and her goal. Abby didn’t relish the idea of going through that kind of terrain, but trying to get around them would probably just get her killed, so she continued her western course, facing the mountains with her head held high. Maybe if she looked like she knew what she was doing, she would end up feeling that way too.

  Abby trudged through an open plain, her legs feeling like she had lead in her pockets. There was an old highway to her south that she more or less followed, though she tended to stay well away from the road itself. Occasionally she wandered back over to the blacktop to steal a glance at a sign, and at her last check she had seen she was 10 miles away from a town. That had been a few hours ago.

  Just as the sun was beginning to descend from its highest point in the sky, Abby could see the outer limits of the town ahead. It wasn’t very big at all, and Abby doubted that it ever boasted more than a couple thousand residents. She scanned the horizon, squinting her eyes as she investigated every window of every building that she could see. Nothing looked suspicious. Yet.

  Abby unslung the M16 from where it had been hanging on her shoulder and now carried it like she was a soldier patrolling into a hostile area. She moved quickly, the anticipation of finally finding some food to eat getting the best of her, but she kept the rifle up in her shoulder. If anyone was in that town, Abby would not let them take her by surprise.

  The first building she reached was an old gas station. Abby poked her head in the door and glanced around. Nothing. She moved on down the road where houses began to crop up. She didn’t want to go into each and every one as that would take far too much time, so she decided to just pick random houses to scope.

  Her first stop was a one-story house with a large front porch, an American flag, and a porch swing. She pushed the front door open with the muzzle of her rifle and stepped inside. It was silent save for the sound of Abby’s footfalls on the wooden floor, her boots crunching as she tracked in ice and snow. She went straight ahead, through the front room and into the house’s kitchen. Here Abby held her rifle in her right hand with the muzzle pointed up while she opened up every drawer and cupboard, looking for anything to take. Nothing.

  She poked around the house a bit longer, then checked the garage. Still nothing. So Abby moved on down the street until a few houses down she saw a larger, two-story house with a detached garage. She walked up to the front door but found it locked, so she rounded the corner of the house and headed up the driveway to the garage. The door was open so she walked right in and glanced around. She found several tools, nails and screws, and workbenches. There were some cabinets here, but they were mostly empty.

  Abby left the garage and continued walking down the street. A couple blocks down, she saw a Dollar General store with what looked like improvised barricades of old cars and shopping carts pressed together around the front door. Abby paused, considering her options. She did not want to interact with any more strangers, but her supplies were dangerously low. She decided to at least creep closer and investigate the store before abandoning this town.

  She flicked off the safety on her rifle, keeping her finger off the trigger for now, as she glided down the sidewalk. The rifle was in her shoulder and she looked down the iron sights, keeping both eyes open, just as she’d been trained. She crouched slightly, making herself a smaller target, and walked with a strong yet smooth sense of purpose, keeping the up-and-down motion of her rifle to a minimum. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, she remembered. For perhaps the millionth time in her short life, Abby was grateful for the years of training she’d received from an infantry Marine.

  The Dollar General was about one hundred feet away now. Abby continued to scan the windows, but in the sunlight it was difficult to see inside. She glanced around her surroundings too, watching for an ambush. So far, so good. After another fifty feet, Abby reached the last house before the Dollar General store. She moved to the staircase that led up to the front porch and crouched down beside it, never taking her eyes off the lot in front of her. She sat there motionless for several seconds, watching and listening. There was nothing, not even the chatter of squirrels or songs of birds.

  Abby seized a green glass bottle with a faded label that had been lying in the snow next to her. She looked up at the Dollar General again, set her sight on the concrete base of one of the lamp posts, and then heaved the bottle up into the air. It tumbled end over end, like one of those old German hand grenades Abby had seen in history books, the green glass reflecting sunlight like a fine emerald.

  The bottle smacked into the concrete and shattered, the sound resonating much more loudly than Abby had expected, but a loud sound was what she had wanted. She lifted her rifle and steadied the barrel on the wooden step in front of her, aiming at the door in the fron
t of the store, waiting for someone to come inspect the commotion. Her heart pounded in her chest like a nine-pound hammer beating against a 2x4 faster and faster. She shifted her feet and took a deep breath to steady herself.

  But no one exited the building. After the breaking of the bottle, the oppressive silence returned and weighed on Abby. Maybe this place had been abandoned, she thought. Abby stood up and looked over her shoulders and to her sides, but still saw no one. She moved down the sidewalk again, gliding along at high alert, all the way up to the makeshift barricade in front of the doors. She knelt down in front of the engine block of one of the cars, knowing that this was the only part of the car that might actually stop an incoming bullet.

  Abby popped up over the car, leaning against the hood and aiming her rifle into the doorway. Still no sign of life. She stepped to the side of the car, moved a shopping cart out of her way, then approached the door. Abby slid it open with her left hand, keeping her rifle up in her shoulder with her right, and entered the dim interior. Her eyes adjusted to the change in light after a moment, and what Abby saw brought her spirits down even further than their current residence at rock bottom.

  Over in the near corner there were brightly colored scribbles all along the white wall at about waist level and down, the right height for young children coloring with crayons. Abby lowered her rifle and ambled over to the corner. She ran her hand along the wall as she stared at the drawings. A blue house with big yellow windows and a brown door in front, and standing next to it were two tall stick figures, one with long hair and a triangular dress, and three short stick figures, all three of which had long hair and triangular dresses. Other drawings looked like a brown dog with spots, an orange cat, a black horse, or an enormous giraffe.

  And then there was a section of the wall that looked like it’d been scrubbed clean. Abby knelt down and leaned in to investigate. She could vaguely make out another stick figure, but something was off with the face. Two dark, angular lines on the left and right side. Could be eyebrows, meant to convey an angry face? A big mouth with jagged teeth, and a line sticking out of the mouth, ending in a small oval with five little lines around the top of it. A human hand and arm. Abby finally realized what the picture was, and why it’d been erased.