Abby gasped. “The massacre,” she whispered.
Bob looked at her and nodded solemnly. “You have heard of it?” he asked. Abby nodded her head.
“Then I need not tell you what happened to Huo Yu there, I suppose,” he said.
A tear or two rolled down Bob’s cheeks as he spoke, his voice now trembling. “Huo Yu was killed because he had the courage and the manhood to stand and use his voice for what he knew was right. I lived because I silenced my voice and hid in a closet, like a cowardly boy. I vowed that very day that because I did not use my voice when it was most important, I would never use it again so long as I lived. I did not deserve the same gift of voice as men like Huo Yu.”
“So to answer your question, Abby, yes. I know how it feels for the death of a loved one to hang about your neck. It’s all I’ve thought about for thirty years. If I had gone, perhaps we would have stood in a different spot and lived. Perhaps Huo Yu would have lived and I would have died, or perhaps we simply would both have been killed. But at least then he would have died hand in hand with his brother.”
“And the worst, most shameful part of it? My last words to my brother were an insult, an insult for which I never apologized.”
Bob clapped a hand over his eyes as he now wept openly, his shoulders shuddering.
Abby cried with him, though the tears she now shed were for Bob. She would never have guessed that this silent old man had such tragic secrets and regrets locked away. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him. He returned her embrace, crying still, and they remained standing there together for several seconds before finally parting.
“Forgive me,” Bob said as he began to dry his tears on his sleeve, “but this is my first time sharing this story, and it has opened an old wound.”
As he spoke these words, the first beams of sunlight soared over the horizon, striking the eyes of Bob and Abby. They squinted and turned to the East. Abby had been so engrossed in Bob’s story that she hadn’t realized how light it was becoming. There before them was a beautiful sunrise, painting all within sight in bright colors.
“Well, there is your sunrise,” Bob said, his smile now having reclaimed its position on his face. “I suppose that signals an end to the conversation, and I will leave you alone now, as promised. Thank you for a good conversation, and for listening to the story of an old fool. Do now what you will, and if we do not meet again in this life, then allow me to say I’ve been honored to know you, dear Abby.”
And with that, Bob turned and shuffled away, heading for the door. Abby called after him, “What about your vow of silence, Bob?”
Bob turned around, still smiling like a child. He put a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture, and then continued on his way, leaving Abby alone on the rooftop.
She stayed motionless for several minutes, running their conversation through her head like a re-run. She had fully expected Bob to try and convince her to come down with him. She thought his story was going to segue into a lesson about how she should fight for life or look to a higher power or something. But he kept his promise, and he left without a word of pleading to Abby to not do what she had planned.
With a sigh, Abby returned to the edge of the roof. She stepped up onto the ledge and looked down at the street below. Some would call this a dizzying height, but not Abby. Oh, it was high enough for the fall to kill her, but it didn’t frighten her at all. She turned her gaze up now, towards the rising sun, her grey eyes gleaming in the light. This is it, she told herself. This is the last sunrise she would ever see.
It was time to die now. She’d played her part in this world, Abby thought, and though she might not have played it well, she couldn’t imagine what more she could do. Hector had his turning point in the war, and he would lead his militia to victory. Hiamovi… he would move on. Hell, he may have already moved on. And Bob would always be Bob.
No. No, there was nothing further for Abby in this life. And though she would never have guessed it would end like this, it seemed that this was the ending in store for her anyway. She simply could not carry this guilt for years and years to come.
Abby clamped her eyes shut.
She bent her legs…
…and jumped.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Abby gasped as her feet struck the concrete of the roof behind her. Her chest and shoulders heaved as she breathed deep, shuddering breaths. She had jumped alright, but she jumped backwards, not forwards. How had that happened? She was ready to die. Death did not scare her one bit. Why had she jumped back to the rooftop?
And just like that, Abby knew the answer. It came so suddenly that Abby marveled that she hadn’t realized this earlier. The sunrise before her, her conversation with Bob, holding off on jumping until the sun rose. These all worked together to bring one thought forward in her mind.
She didn’t have to carry on for years and years to come. All she had to do was make it to one more day. Every day would be a victory, if only she survived until the next sunrise.
She pulled the ring box out of her pocket again and opened it, revealing a stunning ring that caught the light of the rising sun and reflected it a million ways. It must have cost a small fortune. Abby sighed and set the open ring box on the ledge.
With a renewed sense of purpose, she marched towards the door that would take her off the roof, but she stopped to glance one more time at the roof’s ledge.
“No,” Abby whispered. “Not today.”
Just a few minutes later, Abby was knocking on a door down below. She could hear the shuffling of feet across bare wooden floors grow louder as the occupant approached and pulled the door open.
“Hi Bob,” Abby said.
Bob looked surprised to see Abby standing in front of him, but then he smiled and Abby continued talking.
“You were right. This is my body, and my life, and I’m the only one who gets to make decisions about them. And I’ve decided that this is not how my story ends. I’ve still got issues to work through and demons to fight, and it’s going to be a long road. But I’m going to take it one day at a time, starting right now.”
Bob nodded his head once and motioned for Abby to come in. She did and he closed the door behind her.
“So, back on that vow of silence?” Abby asked once she was inside.
Bob smiled and nodded his head. He gestured for Abby to go and sit at his kitchen table, which was currently set for breakfast for one, while he went and fetched another plate and fork for Abby. He set these down in front of her and scooped a portion of the heaping of scrambled eggs that had been on his plate.
“That was a lot of eggs for one person, Bob,” Abby said, pointing at his plate. “You didn’t really intend to eat all that yourself, did you?”
Bob sat down and smiled at Abby. Then he sighed and said, “I was hoping you would come back down.”
Abby smiled back and said, “And I was hoping you’d keep talking.”
“Well, after telling Huo Yu’s story, it dawned on me that staying silent as a punishment to myself would be precisely the opposite of what he’d want. I think it is well past the time when I should be using my voice, especially in these days.”
Abby nodded her head, and a pause in the conversation began to stretch. “Thanks, by the way, for what you did up there,” she finally said.
“Did? All I did was have a conversation,” Bob replied. “You made the choice to come back down on your own. You’re the only one who could have saved yourself, and that’s what you did.”
“But you gave me the strength to make that choice,” Abby insisted.
Bob shook his head. “That strength was within you all along, Abby. I just reminded you where to find it.”
Abby smiled. Bob smiled back.
“So what’s your real name?” Abby asked as she stabbed a glob of scrambled eggs with her fork and brought it to her mouth. Now that Bob was talking, she had a cartload of questions she wanted to ask.
“The name of the man who could not
bear to face Huo Yu is unimportant,” replied Bob. “That man is no longer here. You know this man as Bob, and so Bob will suffice.”
“Aright, then tell me about yourself, Bob.”
“Well, you know enough about my childhood and student days,” Bob began. He set his fork down, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and sighed, as if steeling himself for a long, painful story. He rested both arms on his table, looked back down at Abby, and said, “Well, not long after the massacre I managed to escape China forever. I stowed away on a fishing boat headed for Japan. Well, I was not ‘on’ the fishing boat, in fact. I clung to its side.”
***
Several hours later, Abby awoke in Bob’s bed. After eating as many eggs as she felt comfortable accepting from Bob, she asked if she could have a place to sleep. He offered her his bed, and told her to sleep as long as she liked. So Abby had kicked off her shoes before getting in bed, then fell asleep almost before her head hit the pillow, and she slept peacefully for the first time in what felt like years.
Abby checked her watch and saw that it was 3:30 in the afternoon. She had planned on sleeping straight until nightfall, but it seemed like her body was in disagreement. Still very tired, but rejuvenated nonetheless, Abby sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“Bob? Are you here?” she called. There was no answer, so Abby hopped up, made the bed again, and put her shoes back on before heading into the main area of the apartment.
“Bob?” Abby called again, but there came no answer this time either. He must be out, Abby thought. She left his apartment and made her way to the third floor, to her old apartment. The door was still unlocked from last night, so she pushed it open and went inside.
It was strange being back here with a sober mind. Though it had in fact been only a couple years, Abby felt like a lifetime had passed since a scared, broken little girl had found herself inside this apartment by the good graces of strangers. The memories in this little place played in her head as Abby glanced around. There’s the blanket she used to cover the TV after one of the shows had caused her an anxiety attack. And there’s the couch where she and Hiamovi had shared a bottle of rum in celebration of their first successful mission together. And it was also where they’d shared their first kiss.
“Oh, Hiamovi,” Abby sighed. She had really gone and messed that up, hadn’t she? Hiamovi had been kind, thoughtful, and respectful. Most of all, he understood her. He understood her in a way that no one else in this entire world did. And he’d loved her, despite seeing her at her very worst and even despite her best efforts to push him away and sabotage her own happiness.
Abby shook her head and returned to her task at hand. She was here for something. She walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her, just out of habit. Laying down on the carpet, Abby felt under the bottom of the bedframe until she found her old KA-BAR knife, still duct taped to the bottom. She pulled it from its sheath and then jammed the blade into the side of the mattress and began to carve open the side of it.
After cutting a large hole into the mattress, Abby put her knife back where it belonged and then reached into the mattress, finding and pulling free a small backpack she’d hidden there soon after going undercover. She opened the backpack to check its contents: pressure dressings, rubbing alcohol, gauze, tourniquets. The basics for treating battlefield casualties. Hiamovi told her that something big was coming, so Abby wanted to be prepared for a fight.
Setting the backpack down, she opened up one of the smaller pouches on the side and found the photograph of her and Zach. She had not looked at this in over a year, and in the interim she had allowed some very bad thoughts about Zach to take hold in her mind, thoughts that she was determined to vanquish. “I’m sorry I blamed you,” she whispered. “You were a good dad and you did the right thing to save me.”
She slid the picture back into the pouch and gave it a partner: the photograph of David and his family. “Might as well make amends to you too, David. I’m sorry for what I did, and if I survive the next couple days, I’m going to make sure your family is taken care of.”
Abby then retrieved from the mattress the small pistol that Hector had given her when she first arrived. She pulled back on the slide to check the chamber, but in that very instant she felt a flash of memories through her mind. The faces of all the people she’d ever killed, whether justified or not, from Henry down to David, passed before her. At just nineteen years old, Abby had already killed nearly two dozen people, and not all of them deserved it.
Then she remembered what Bob had done when Huo Yu died, and the vow of silence he took. Abby felt like she ought to do something similar.
“Never again,” she whispered as she shoved the gun back into the open mattress. There and then, in the dark confines of an old apartment bedroom, Abby vowed that she would never again take a human life, even if it would be justified. Rather, she would devote herself to the saving of lives, in any way that she could.
Abby left that room a different woman. Kneeling next to the bed there she abandoned the girl who would kill just as soon as lie, and there she would remain. This ‘new’ Abby was really a return to the old one, the honest, kind-hearted, compassionate girl she’d once been. The only difference was that now Abby was a grown woman and had the benefit of a lifetime of wisdom packed into a few short years.
No more killing, no more lying, no more moral shades of grey, and no more relying on a Zach or a Hiamovi or a Derrick to save her.
From now on, Abby saved herself.
***
With her improvised medical kit and the map Hiamovi had drawn for her, Abby made her way towards the rendezvous point to meet up with the rest of the ReFounding Fathers. She didn’t know if they’d still be there, but she wasn’t sure what else to do. She had found the starting point, the video arcade where she and Hiamovi had gone on their first unofficial date so long ago, and was making her way along the given route.
It was about dinner time, and most people should have been at home but Abby noticed that the crowds in the market area of District 2, especially around the few bars and diners, were packed.
Much the same as the other day, many people were carrying on hushed conversations, Abby noticed. Suspicious glances were thrown over shoulders, and more than once Abby caught somebody doing a double-take in her direction, squinting their eyes to look at her. Abby feared they suspected her of being a DAS agent (she definitely wasn’t that, not anymore at least), so eventually she began to avoid all eye contact.
“What exactly did Jay find on those files?” she mused. Hiamovi said it was huge, and it must be if everyone in District 2 was still talking about it.
Finally, Abby couldn’t fight her curiosity any longer, and she stepped into one of the less crowded bars along her way to see if she could eavesdrop on some conversations and learn something. She walked inside and navigated through the several clusters of patrons. Spotting an open stool at the bar, Abby made directly for the spot and sat down, removing her pack and setting it on the ground at her feet as she did so.
The bartender didn’t notice Abby at first, down at the other end of the bar as she was. Abby had to wave her hand a couple of times before one of the other patrons noticed her and made the bartender, a young woman who could not have been older than twenty-five, aware of the waiting customer.
“Sorry about that, hon,” the bartender said as she hurried over to Abby. “What would you like?”
“Bourbon, neat,” Abby replied, but right away she put her hand up to stop the bartender. “Actually… water will do.” As long as she was making changes in her life, she should probably cut back on the drinking, too. And the smoking… and the cursing.
The bartender shrugged and poured Abby a glass of ice water, and Abby handed her a five dollar bill that had been left in her pockets. The water was free but Abby was taking up a spot at the bar so she felt obliged to pay anyway. The woman took the money and stuffed it into her pocket, giving Abby a second glance like those people out on the street, but sh
e returned to the other end of the bar and the conversation over there.
Abby sipped her water and tried to tune into some of the nearby conversations without looking suspicious. But alas, much like Zach, her time working for the government did a number on her hearing and she couldn’t pick up on enough to weave together what was going on.
“…they’ve done similar…”
“…wasn’t fake. She’s dead.”
“…anything! What’s there…”
“This is exactly…it’s been going…”
Abby wondered what the big plan was, and when it was going to happen. People were talking, that much was certain. She wished she could have heard some of the rumors being spread. Hiamovi gave her the gist of it, but these people clearly knew details that she did not. The TV up on the wall wasn’t helping either. Some news report was being played, and even though no one was watching the volume was still turned up.
All at once, just as she was looking at it, the picture on the TV cut to fuzz. The abrupt noise startled everyone in the bar, and now every patron turned to look. After just a moment, the TV signal returned, but there was no news report.
It was Hiamovi, and he was standing next to Hector.
Abby nearly dropped her glass in shock. They were standing in front of a blank wall in what was clearly a dark room, as they were being illuminated by a lamp or some other artificial light source. Their countenance was grave, and then Hector opened his mouth to speak.
“Good evening, America. My name is Heammawihio, descendant of the Cheyenne peoples, leader of the ReFounding Fathers. The time has come to finally show my face, and to incite a rebellion.”
Silence reigned inside the bar, and across the city.
***
Despite his deep-seated loyalty to the DAS and the American government, Derrick did not immediately report Abby to his superiors after learning she was a spy. It wasn’t until the next day that he informed their company commander, and it was nearly dinner time before word made it to the office of President Cyrus Arthur.
His Name Was Zach (Book 2): Her Name Was Abby Page 41
