Lost and Found

by Trish Marie Dawson

  We were only a few yards away when the first bullet took off a chunk of the tree I hid behind. Instantly a startled scream flew out of my mouth, taking a good deal of spit with it. I cursed so hard between my clenched jaws that it actually hurt my front teeth. They vibrated in their sockets like hummingbirds strung out on sugar water. My first coherent thought not related to the pain in my mouth was if the shooter had noticed Drake creeping up the street. Since no bullets were ricocheting off the dead cars or shattering the cloudy windshields, I assumed he was still out of sight.

  "Stay the fuck back!" Someone yelled from the warehouse. The angry and guttural cry sounded like it came from above me, from somewhere up high. I risked a brief glance at the roof and snapped my head back behind the tree trunk after catching the glint of sunlight reflecting off of something shiny.

  Another crack and more splinters flew by me. The tree was barely an inch wider than I was and wouldn't serve to keep me covered for much longer. Something wet trickled down the side of my face, dripping slowly from my jaw. But I couldn't reach up to feel what it was, or my arm would have been exposed, so I waited, trying to ignore the steady dripdripdripdripdrip sound of what had to be blood landing on the canvas shoulder strap of my pack.

  The sun bounced off of a crumpled soda can, causing me to squint against the glare. If it was only a foot closer, I could have kicked it away, toward the gutter. The more I tried to ignore it, the brighter the glare seemed to become and though only seconds had passed with it in my peripheral vision, I was sure I would end up blind. With my cheek pressed firmly against the cool, rough bark, there was nothing to do but ignore it.

  Struggling to fight the compulsion to step out from behind my tree and launch the can as far from me as my spindly leg could propel it, I heard a hiss from the street and turned my head in time to catch Drake's hand signal. With my gun out, I nodded and angled it around the tree, firing toward the warehouse, hoping it was distracting enough to keep the guy on the roof from looking down at us. One, two, three, four, five shots rang through the air - cracking through the silence with a deafening thunder that echoed down the street and bounced back around me like a hug. It was just enough time for Drake to disappear from my view, hopefully making it to the next set of cars before more rifle shots pocked the tree. He didn't hold back. So many rounds had been fired that I was sure half of the tree was blown away. I could feel each bullet as it struck into the trunk, like a knock on the other side. A deceivingly subtle let me in sort of knock.

  "Not by the hair of my chiny-chin-chin," I laughed. The sound was foreign. I immediately swallowed what I could of it, chastising my rapid loss of sanity before firing again, stopping only to reload with a full clip.

  "Come out, come out, wherever you are," I yelled in the most annoying singsong voice I could.

  The answer came in the form of more cursing from the rooftop and another round of bullets into the tree. I started to giggle, that last bit of reason slipping away from my mind. I was in a John Wayne movie, dusty, dirty, and shooting at the bad-guys. John Wayne would have a horse though. I had a horse, but I lost it.

  The image of Sunny's remains came to me. Drake had taken me back to see her when I was able to walk without assistance but not much of Connor's horse was left. The birds and something with canine teeth sharper than mine had made a mess out of the beautiful and sweet palomino. Tearing her flesh away and scattering her ribcage in a twenty-foot radius around her downed body. My eyes filled with hot tears that stung and prickled at my eyeballs like thousands of tiny needles. That was it - the image of Sunny dead on the overgrown golf course that shoved me over the edge of what was left of my reality.

  Brazenly, but still mindful enough to use what little speed I had, I bolted from behind the tree, firing wilding at the rooftop through my blurry vision. I ran up the sidewalk toward the waist high utility box that was nearly twenty-five feet away, pausing only slightly to kick the damn soda can as hard as I could into the street.

  I never did hear it fall.

  ***

  Kneeling behind the utility box, I was finally able to touch my face. Just as I expected, my hand came back sticky with bright red blood. It pissed me off even more, and I popped up to fire the gun, catching just a glimpse of Drake closing in on the side of the building. He was crouched down, running full speed and slammed into the wall with enough force that his feet slid out beneath him and he landed on his ass.

  It was the last time I saw him outside. Ten painfully long minutes of cursing, yelling and name-calling, that reminded me of playground bullies, and random rounds of back and forth gunfire went by until my legs began to cramp from the squatting and kneeling. Plus, by then I was bleeding from more than my head.

  After a long moment of silence, I screamed myself hoarse, letting the wind take my voice up and away from me. "Did you give up already, assholes?!" No one answered. No shots, no attempts to debase my sex or slurs of frustration carried down to the sidewalk. With a quick look above me, the roof seemed momentarily still - vacant. And then the sound of muffled gunshots sang again.

  Drake was inside.

  I believe there are only a handful of reasons to run so fast that your knees come higher than your hips: when you are running from something bigger and meaner than yourself, or when a gold medal is at stake, of course. But there's another reason - when you need to get somewhere so fast that you know your heels can't afford the split second of time it takes for them to roll off the ground. So you sprint with only your toes gripping and moving you forward. That's how I ran the rest of the way down the sidewalk. Not even slowing down, before my shoulder slammed into the door Drake went through.

  The door opened with a bang and inside I flew, but I wasn't expecting my feet to instantly lose traction. After sliding across a puddle of something slippery, I crashed face first into a chain-link wall. Bouncing into it with such force that I was flung backwards like a deployed rubber band into the sticky mess again, my feet failing me, slipping out and to the side. My ass will never forgive me for how hard it hit the ground.

  "Unf," I exhaled, coming to a stop after spinning clockwise on my backside. The pistol was gone, catapulted somewhere away from me during my ungraceful entrance.

  The chain inside the room rattled loudly, taking nearly a full minute before the links stopped jiggling. By then I had mostly caught my breath, the labored sound being the only thing that whispered through the dark room. It was some sort of utility space or a side office - I wasn't sure. But the blood was fresh; it was still warm and uncongealed. An enormous amount. A fatal amount. Enough blood that no one could've walked away and lived more than a mere handful of seconds.

  The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire snapped my head up and to the right, through an open doorway that led into a much larger - and darker room. Crawling in an awkward slipping motion on my hands and knees, I slid to a stop just before the doorframe, my knife in my right hand. Craning my head cautiously into the next room, there was only a shadowy aisle upon aisle of bulky boxes and pallets. And a shoe. My wet, left hand stuck to the linoleum floor as I crawled, using the knuckles of my other hand to balance myself. The shoe was connected to a foot, a leg, a body. It wasn't Drake.

  Not realizing I was holding my breath, a gust of air whistled out between my lips. There was a slash across the man's throat and several bloody holes dotted across his torso. Drake was using his knife, stealthily making his way through the building. Just as planned. The image of him with a bloody bandana tied around his forehead, his face streaked with mud and paint, came back into my mind and before I knew what I was doing, I dragged four of my bloody fingers across both cheeks - one finger down my chin and neck and wiped my hand dry on the thigh of my jeans.

  It was war, damn it. Why not look like a fucking warrior?

  ***

  Two more bodies - both slashed with a blade. Several more bursts of rifle fire, handguns, screams, shouts, lots and lots of cursing. I followed the trail, sneaking glances up and down the aisles, looking f
or a sign of life. Looking for the women. Drake said they were kept there.

  My daughter hated to wear shoes. Everywhere she went she had naked, dirty feet. The sound of her walking across our house would slapslapslapslap against the hard floors. It was an organic sounding step I always recognized as purely hers. So, when a similar slapping of bare feet reverberated in the darkness, I knew whoever was running toward me was barefoot, which was odd.

  I quickly ducked down the nearest aisle with my blade held out in front of me like a flashlight and waited. The slapping sound slowed then stopped completely. Whoever it was, they knew I was close. The blade glinted from the pale reflection of something and I tilted it, struggling to find the source. Peering at the knife with my head down, I almost didn't notice the air change as something long and metallic whooshed over the top of my head and slammed into the metal frame of the aisle. The shelves beside me throbbed loudly from the impact and I scuttled backwards, tripping over a large box and landed on my backside for the second time in five minutes.

  The barefoot slapping resumed, this time running away from me - toward the side door. After scrambling to my feet, I darted around the aisle corner just in time to see the shadow of a young girl with flowing hair dart into the entry room, disappearing into the light. Freedom.

  The warehouse - a behemoth of a structure creaked and groaned as if preparing to swallow me in its gut as I pushed deeper and deeper into the shadows. It never occurred to me to pull out my flashlight. An animal instinct in me took over, bending my spine forward so I crouched, curling my hands so they looked and felt like claws instead of fingers. The smallest refractions of light gave my eyes all they needed to see into the dingy space around me.

  Like a bloodthirsty animal, I hunted. Following the sounds of grunts and moans and discovering nothing but a handful of freshly killed men. Until I found it. In the corner of the warehouse was a walled off room - most likely used once upon a time as a break room. A lamp from within glowed softly but the space seemed quiet - almost too quiet.

  The door was ajar just enough to slip my body silently inside without disturbing it. The narrow room was long - stretching a good hundred feet from the doorway. Lining the furthest corner was a row of twin mattresses. Some with ruffled sheets, some naked so that they exposed the dark stains that spread out along the diamond pattern of the beds. The sharp odor of urine and feces made me gag. And the hot, iron smell of blood. Thin sprays of blood decorated the walls, still dripping downward in places. I gaped in shock at the bottom of the furthest wall where a woman with matted hair, that might or might not have once been blonde, lay in a crumpled heap of chopped up limbs - intestines and brain matter spilling out around her like a gutted fish.

  My stomach lurched but didn't have time to do more than that before gangly arms jumped out from behind the door and slimy fingers coiled around my neck. Creative curses words flew out of my mouth as the knife clattered to the ground and spun across the room. We struggled against one another, falling to the scuffed linoleum and rolling around until we were fused together - a tangled mess of scratched, bleeding and trembling limbs.

  Stringy hair caught in my mouth and I spat out the sour strands in a panic before they became stuck in my throat. One of us kicked at the table that held the battery operated camping lantern. When it crashed to the ground, it rolled away from me, stretching the light in waves over the walls, letting in the shadows. When a pale face came close to mine, I jerked my forehead into it, feeling something crack and my attacker screamed - a high-pitched cry that only a woman can make. Wiggling a knee between us, the greasy hands left my neck. I kicked at the girl's soft midsection, sending her flying into the blood-streaked wall, landing just inches away from a severed hand.

  Scrambling from her, I pushed myself back until my shoulder blades hit a metal filing cabinet. My left shoe had come off and my backpack was lying on its side by the door, one of the straps ripped.

  "Jesus," I muttered, sucking in air, pressing my back as far into the cabinet as my skin would allow.

  She moaned - the crazy lady. When she stirred I flinched as if struck, denting the metal drawer behind me with my head. Instead of getting up for another attack, she curled into a ball and began to sob. It was an eerie sound in a space as large as the warehouse. The cries drifted in and out of the aisles with a strange kind of ebb and flow, like the building itself was breathing her sorrow.

  The smell hit me again. It was the scent of dirty living bodies, shit and urine mingling with fresh and rotten blood. This was where they were kept - the women. In a dungeon, in squalor - left to rot, die, and be used however the men saw fit.

  Raising a shaky and bleeding hand in front of me, and speaking as soothingly as my damaged throat would allow, I said to her, "I'm not here to hurt you." The simple statement was absurd even to me, especially after punching, slapping, scratching and kicking the small yet surprisingly wily woman clear across the room.

  A holler boomed outside, sounding faraway but dangerously close at the same time, and the woman's sobs cut off abruptly. We both stayed frozen like that. The girl curled in a tight ball, hands clamped around her mouth, me with my arm projected in front of my body, fingers splayed open to reveal an empty palm. We waited. Listening to each other's hushed and erratic breathing.

  "Riley!" Drake's voice boomed again.

  "Drake!" I squeaked, causing the woman to jerk. "In here," my voice wavered. "Drake!"

  Every muscle in my body protested as I dragged myself toward the door, flinging it all the way open to look out into the darkness. Something rustled behind me and I braced for the woman's hands on my body again but instead she had retreated deeper into the room, hiding in the shadows.

  "Where are you?" Drake hollered, his voice closer but still not close enough.

  "Here, the far corner…over here!"

  He found me resting on my forearms, my hand freely bleeding from a bite wound, my face bloody and my arm leaking a dark amber color. My clothes were soaked with the blood of the first man Drake had killed.

  "Holy fuck!" he breathed, dropping down to his knees to pull me into his arms. His face was splattered with red droplets, his dark clothes soaked in the same wet sprinkles.

  "Fine," I mumbled, "I'm okay."

  "Like hell," he lifted me to my feet and snaked an arm around my waist to hold me up.

  "My shoe," I said.

  "Huh?"

  "I lost…my shoe."

  He blinked, his eyes watering. And then his chest heaved into mine as he began to laugh. "You lost a fucking shoe? That's it. That's all you have to say?"

  My body swayed in his grasp as I looked down. That's when my mind finally broke, when I took in the pathetic sight of that white, socked foot. Not many people remember that moment - the very second when their reality finally leaves them and the hysteria walks in - loud and proud to be there.

  I laughed so hard it hurt. So hard in fact, that tears flowed down my face, leaving clear tracks through my sticky finger painting. I laughed until the only pain I felt was a sharp stitch in my side that threatened to separate my muscles from my ribs. Drake held onto me as if he feared I would run away and we laughed and bled against each other until a scared voice interrupted from just behind us.

  "Riley…is it really you?"

  CHAPTER twenty-two

  It wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, not really. Finding Mariah was a dream; a fantasy I clutched to in order to stomp some of the survival guilt back down my throat. Yet, there she was standing before me. Battered, used up and broken - but alive.

  We stared at each other in the poor light, recognizing only our voices. Drake's arm was still wrapped tightly around my waist but even with the support, my knees threatened to buckle beneath the weight of my body. It was actually her.

  "Mariah?" I squeaked.

  She looked awful. Her brown and curly hair was longer, the matted clumps showing several small bald spots on her greasy scalp. Part of her left earlobe was missing and she stood before us
practically naked. Only a torn pair of boy shorts and a men's ribbed tank top covered her pallid skin. At one point, her meager clothing might have been white in color, but in the dark employee room, the stretched out material was dirt-grey and bloodied.

  In an attempt to defy gravity by sliding out of Drake's grasp, I stepped toward her with my bleeding hand out in a non-threatening way again. Without another word, she ran into my arms, knocking me into Drake. Hot tears flowed from my eyes as we pressed against each other, the chill of her flesh absorbing what was left of my body heat. I gave it freely, since it was the only thing I had left to give. Her frail and frozen limbs sucked my heated life-force dry, draining me until I was empty.

  ***

  At first, the cool ground was inviting. As I slumped against the concrete wall where Drake leaned me just before passing out, I fingered a crack between the bricks gingerly, as if a story was tucked deep inside the mortar waiting to be discovered by the right set of hands. The only story they told though was one of death - one of immorality and injustice. It was written out in bloodstains along the half-dozen dirty twin mattresses. It was a nightmarish story about lust and desire and pain. It was Mariah's story.

  Her feet stood a few steps away, ash-black heels tucked close together, stubby toes curled down into the linoleum with her arms entwined out before her in a braid. As I blinked in the sight of her, I marveled at how slender her figure had become - almost starved to oblivion. She was all skin and bones, so thin her breasts were barely nubs. Over the last year, my own soul had been gutted again and again, yet life had continued anyway. But Mariah had lost all signs of life. Except for the basics - sleep, eat, breathe and repeat again in the morning. Perhaps we weren't as different as we looked. What was left of either of us?