But then she heard the man unzip the first bag he was inspecting. From the sound of it, he had unzipped the bag all the way to the bottom. A couple seconds later, Abby heard the bag being zipped up again and another being opened. After this one was closed back up, Abby felt the man grab the zipper on her bag and yank it down.
“Ah shit,” the man mumbled as Abby did her best to not move a single muscle in her body. “She can’t be older than eighteen.” The man seemed to ponder this for a moment before zipping Abby back up. “What the hell happened to us all?” the man whispered to himself in a tone that sounded almost remorseful. He checked the last bag before hopping out of the van and slamming the door shut. He yelled something to another man outside and then Abby felt the van slowly drive away.
They stopped again not long after they passed into the city. Abby heard the men get out of the truck and walk towards the back. The doors opened up and one of them climbed up next to Abby. “Stay still, kid. Almost done,” he whispered. He carefully dragged her out of the van, and then laid her down on a gurney. He wheeled her into a building, down a short hallway, and into a dimly lit room.
“Okay, we’re good,” the man said as he unzipped Abby’s bag. Much to her relief, Abby sat up and found herself in an office, and not a room full of bodies, so the deep breath she took filled her lungs with fresh air. “This is where we part ways,” the man continued as he bent down to retrieve Abby’s pack from the bottom of the gurney. “Head on out to the lobby. Someone will take care of you from here.”
“Thanks,” Abby said as she took her pack. The man left the room with the gurney without another word. Abby got up and made her way to the lobby of what apparently was a funeral home. A tall blonde woman wearing dark clothes and a black hoodie was standing by the door, looking outside. She looked at Abby as she approached, noting her ragged clothes and dirty hat.
“You look like hell,” the woman said. Abby only grunted in reply. The woman turned on her heel and motioned for Abby to follow her out of the building, which she did.
The woman led Abby through some back alleys, taking her down a predetermined route to a safe house. They finally came to a small diner, closed for the night. It was her restaurant, the woman explained, and so she unlocked the front door and led Abby inside, into her office. A small cot with a blanket and a pillow were in there.
“Get some sleep,” the woman said. “In a couple hours I’ll be back to open up for the day. An older man, looks to be about sixty, will be one of the first customers, if not the very first. I’ll ask him what he would like, he’ll say ‘surprise me’. That’s your contact.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to walk around after curfew?” Abby asked.
“Don’t worry about me, this ain’t my first rodeo. Just get some rest. From what they told me about you, you could use it,” the woman replied.
“Okay. Thank you… for everything,” Abby said.
The woman gave her a faint smile and then left, leaving Abby alone.
Abby stayed standing for a few moments, trying to sort out everything that had happened this night. But she was tired, so she dropped her ruck in front of the door and took off her coat, hat, boots, and socks. She laid down on the cot and covered herself up with the blanket. She fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.
Part II
The War
Chapter Fifteen
Abby may have fallen asleep soon, but she had a hard time staying asleep. She woke up several times, once in a cold sweat. Not long after dawn, the woman that Abby had met the previous night showed up, followed soon by a few employees who never gave Abby a second glance. She guessed that this was not the first time the woman’s restaurant had been used in this way.
No one paid much attention to Abby, nor did they talk to her, and except for the woman bringing her a plate of food and some coffee, they did not interact with her at all. Abby ate quietly in a corner booth of the restaurant where she could watch both entrances.
A few minutes after 6:00 AM, the door across from Abby’s table opened up and in walked an older looking gentleman wearing a nice pair of khaki slacks and a green sweater. He had a full head of long, jet black hair that seemed to defy the effects of time, standing in stark contrast to his deeply tanned, wrinkled skin. He sat down at a booth near the front of the restaurant and started to read a newspaper he had brought with him. Abby glanced at it and saw the main headline: 61% SUPPORT PRES., ANTI-TERROR LAWS.
“What would you like?” a waitress asked the man as she approached his table.
“I’m feeling lucky today. Surprise me,” the man responded. The woman walked away without writing anything down on her pad.
Abby took a last sip of her coffee, wiped her mouth off with her napkin, and got up from her seat. She sauntered slowly towards the man, still feeling the pain from her gunshot wound. She sat down across from him in the booth and waited for him to say something, but he was quiet for several seconds.
“Do you believe it?” he finally asked without setting his paper down. His voice was deep but soft, bearing the tone of both a hardened commander and a scholar.
“Believe what?” Abby asked.
“The headline.”
“I’m not from around here.”
“That wasn’t what I asked,” he replied slowly.
Abby sighed and said, “I don’t take anything I read or hear at face value anymore.”
“What if I were to tell you that, sadly, it’s true?” the man said, putting the paper down and looking Abby in the eye.
“I’d repeat my previous statement,” Abby replied.
The man narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing Abby. Finally, he allowed a slight smile to crease his face and he chuckled. “I think that’s the best answer I’ve ever heard,” he said.
“I was told you could help me,” Abby said, ignoring the compliment.
“Straight to the point. I like that. Yes, I can help you. But what if I allowed you to help yourself?”
Abby sighed again, rolling her eyes.
“Now, I’m going to help you, but there are two different ways I can do it. I can get you a place to live on your own, set you up with a job, and have you well on your way to a decent, safe, obscure life here. Or… I could give you a chance to do something remarkable. Something that will alter history.”
Abby remained silent, preferring to not ask the questions that the man was so obviously expecting. “Now, you were told that there’s this ‘resistance group’ running around: the ReFounding Fathers,” the man continued. “And it’s true. As you yourself have already seen, we’re not the free society that we used to be. Sure, pre-Crisis America had its problems, but we had no idea how bad it could be. And child, as bad as it is now, it can still get worse. And it will.”
“That is, unless we stop it. The people hold all the power in America, even if they don’t know it. The government may have the strength and the resources to prop themselves up, but their illustrious abode of pelf and power rests upon toothpicks. If all the people resisted and refused to obey any longer, it would come crumbling down, and our Constitutional Republic could be restored.”
“Then why haven’t you done it?” Abby asked in a bored tone.
“Because the people aren’t ready yet. We can only succeed if we have all of the people behind us, and right now that isn’t the case. Sure, most people will talk the talk, but they lack the courage to act. That’s where we come in. We act out against the government to turn the people to our cause, to show them that revolutions aren’t a thing of the past, that there is a fighting chance for them, and that we don’t have to live with the excuse that this is just the way things are now.”
“I’m just a kid. How do you expect me to help?” Abby asked, not even trying to mask the fact that her interest in the conversation was waning with every passing moment.
“Because you’re not a child. You’re a ghost,” the man replied. Abby gave him an inquisitive look, so he continued. “The government doesn’t know
anything about you. They don’t even know that you exist. I can’t even begin to tell you what kind of an asset that would be for any organization that relies on subterfuge and anonymity. You could do great things for us, for the whole country, because you’re untraceable.”
Abby huffed, feeling angry at the blunt reminder of how alone she was, and she was growing tired of this man treating her like a commodity. “I don’t want your war,” she said, “and I don’t want your organization. I’ve spent the last three years on the run, losing everyone who ever meant anything to me. I’m tired of fighting; I just want to live.”
“I see,” the man said. “Well, I understand your decision. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed, but I understand.”
“Good. Best of luck in your affairs, sir,” Abby said as she started to stand but the old man took her hand in his.
“One moment, young lady. Don’t forget that I’m still going to help you get your feet on the ground,” he said as he stood up. “By the way, I never got your name.”
“It’s Abby,” she replied.
“And I am Heammawihio,” the old man said.
“Hea… ” Abby started to say, struggling to pronounce the man’s name correctly.
“That’s my Cheyenne name, but you can call me Hector. Most people do,” the man said with an amused smile.
Heammawihio, or Hector, walked Abby to an apartment complex not too far away, which is where he lived. Along the way, he explained to her in detail what he would be doing for her. A very old friend of his, a woman named Nora, ran the apartment complex they were headed to, and she was very supportive of his resistance efforts. Before Hector came to meet Abby, he had spoken with Nora and told her about Abby’s predicament; she was the one who insisted that he bring her back.
Nora would give Abby an apartment all to herself (off the books, of course) and would not charge her a dime, at least not until Abby was well on her way to being able to support herself. Abby at first protested this kindness, but Hector assured her that Nora would not let her refuse.
He would also ensure that Abby had a job, whenever she felt ready to do so. It would be something obscure, and would probably not pay well, but Hector insisted that this was the way it would have to be to avoid the authorities asking too many questions about her. He warned her against standing out and suggested living a somewhat remote life for a while, a suggestion that Abby readily accepted. A life of silence and solitude may not have appealed to the old Abby, but after the last few months there was nothing this Abby would like more than a quiet, friendless existence.
When they arrived at Hector’s apartment building, Nora was not to be found, but she had left a sealed envelope addressed to Abby. It contained a set of keys for an apartment on the third floor and a note. It said that she had taken the liberty of buying some new clothes for Abby, she apologized in advance if they were the wrong size, and she insisted that they were a house-warming gift and to not worry about paying for them.
“I told you she wouldn’t let you turn her offer down,” Hector said with a chuckle. “Well, I have business that I must attend to, so here I will leave you. My apartment is the one directly above yours. If you need anything, you come and see me. Also, here is one last thing for you.”
He handed Abby a small envelope of his own, and said, “Don’t open this until you get up into your new home. Now, is there anything else I can do for you right now?”
Abby took the envelope, slid it into her back pocket, and asked, “Is there any place to get a gun? I lost all of mine.”
Hector chuckled and said, “You are definitely new here. No, at least not legally. Guns were all banned and confiscated shortly after The Crisis.”
“Why? How?”
“The zombies terrified people. Every day, dozens of people were shot in the head by panicky nitwits, afraid that they were turning. There were also a lot of people who seemed to be murdering for sport or to settle old scores, claiming their victims had been bit. So the government swept up all the guns and made them illegal. It was a bloody affair, but successful. Not nearly enough people resisted this effort.”
“Great, so how am I supposed to defend myself?”
“A just question, my dear,” Hector said, shaking his head. He turned to leave but stopped at the door. “However,” he added in a low voice, “those small, black objects tend to pop up every now and again. Perhaps you’ll stumble upon one.”
The corners of Abby’s mouth turned up into a momentary smile, and Hector winked at her. Then he left, leaving Abby alone in the lobby. With nothing else to do, she found the stairwell and ascended up to the third floor, heading for her apartment.
As soon as Abby was inside her new home, she locked the door behind her. The apartment was already furnished, albeit sparsely. The kitchen, directly across from the front door, had all the basic appliances needed to cook food and clean dishes. The main room in which Abby stood had a small, round table with three chairs around it to the left, and to the right, on the carpeted portion of the room, was a couch, a coffee table, and an old television set sitting on an end table. On the right side of the apartment, down a narrow hallway, was the bathroom, a closet, and the bedroom, in that order.
Walking into the bedroom, Abby found the clothes that Nora had mentioned in her note, all folded neatly and laying on the bed, everything from shoes to underwear. Amazingly, everything was either just the right size or so close that it really did not matter. Abby felt a little embarrassed accepting such kindness, but charity was clearly something Nora thrived on, just as Abby used to.
Next, Abby dropped her ruck in her bedroom, undressed, and washed up with a very long, very hot shower. When she finally turned the shower off, she dried herself with a towel and walked back to her bedroom where she put on a pair of shorts and a tank top. The feeling of clean clothes was magnificent, and Abby actually allowed herself a small smile. She walked back into the living room and sat down on the couch, picking up the envelope that Hector had given her. Opening it, Abby found that it contained a fair amount of money. She slid the cash back into the envelope and hid it underneath one of the couch cushions.
With nothing else to do, Abby stared at the TV, looking at it as if she had never seen one before. She picked up the remote and pressed power. A cartoon that Abby didn’t recognize was playing. Abby went up to the next channel, then the next, and then the next. On this channel, some old black-and-white show was just finishing up. The screen went black for a second before a new show started to play: another black-and-white program showing what appeared to be a young boy and a sheriff walking down an old dirt road and carrying fishing poles.
Abby was about to change the channel when suddenly the show’s theme song started to play. Abby jumped off the couch and stared at the screen. It was that tune, the tune that Zach had whistled in their truck the day their cabin was destroyed! “The Andy Griffith Show!” the TV said. “Starring Andy Griffith!”
Abby smashed the power button on the remote again, killing the image on the screen and silencing that haunting whistling. She hurled the remote at the black screen and it bounced off of the TV and hit the ground, its batteries popping out and flying in different directions.
Abby clasped her hands together as her whole body quivered. Memories that she had locked away came flooding back and her eyes started to tear up, but she refused to let herself cry. She dropped to the ground and started to do push-ups, hoping to vent her frustration that way. But the gunshot wound in her stomach took exception and she collapsed onto the ground, where she lay in silence for several minutes.
Getting up to her feet, Abby went to the closet in the hallway and pulled out a blanket and used this to cover the TV. She then went straight back to her bedroom, shut the door, and drew the curtains over the windows. She fished around inside her ruck, looking for two personal mementos: her slingshot and her picture of Zach. She took these out and sat on the bed with them.
She turned the slingshot over in her hand, looking
at it like she had when Zach had first given it to her. She remembered all the time he had spent teaching her how to use it and how he had praised her skill. She recalled that one time, in Little America, how she had accidentally hit him with a rock, and she laughed quietly.
She set this down and picked up her photograph. This snapshot of time, a beautiful moment being shared by a girl and her father, usually made Abby smile. But not this time. He had been such a wonderful dad, and he didn’t deserve the fate that Abby forced upon him. She sighed, her shoulders heaving under the heavy burden she carried. She got up and placed these two items in one of her drawers, followed by her new clothes.
Abby then collapsed onto her bed, laying face up on top of it with her arms out to her sides. Her spirits had just started to lift after a hot shower and wearing clean clothes, but that whistling had crumpled her. It made her think of Zach, and of that day she had heard him whistle that same tune. For a reason that Abby could not explain, that memory wounded her deeply. Perhaps because that day was the beginning of the end for her and Zach, the twilight of their short-lived family.
Exhausted as she was, Abby fell asleep for several hours, though without meaning to. It wasn’t until later in the day, in the afternoon, that she was woken up by someone knocking on her door.
Abby peeled herself off of her bed and trudged over to the front door. Looking through the peephole, she saw a boy standing in the hallway, a boy who looked a couple years older than Abby. He resembled Hector with his short, black hair and dark eyes set in deeply tanned skin. Making sure the door chain was secure, Abby cracked open the door.
“Hi,” the boy said in a cheerful tone. “I’m Hiamovi, Heammawihio’s grandson! I believe you already met him?”
Abby nodded her head, but said nothing.
“Well, he told me that you’re new here and I figured that you might want to be friends with someone closer to your age than a literal grandpa,” Hiamovi said with a grin. “Mind if I come in?”
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 15
