A. R. Shaw's Apocalyptic Sampler: Stories of hope when humanity is at its worst

by A. R. Shaw

  Paul nodded, ate his cold pasta, and now the wadded napkin in his fist was as hard as a rock.

  50

  Dane

  The rain poured down in sheets. They needed it. That was true if it helped put out the fires, but in Chicago lightning often came with the rain as a malevolent rider bent on more harm than good. More than likely, new flames would erupt by the end of the day.

  Though at the moment, Dane wasn’t living in the present. She stood on the edge of a street lined by trees planted in rows long ago, remembering that fateful night. The tree in front of her old house was long gone, as was the house. The empty lot before her resembled nothing from the mostly happy days of her past, except for the concrete steps that used to lead to her front door but now led to the empty space to nowhere.

  She remembered sitting on those steps. She and her childhood friends kept cool in the hot, humid days of Chicago’s summers by consuming cone after cone of Homer’s Ice Cream. She remembered shoveling blizzard snow off them in winter as a teen as well. Now they were barren except for brush windswept into the corner crevasses. Exposed out in the elements as if they never harbored meaning. But they did. They stood for something. They were the threshold over which her father and then her mother were lifted into their new life on the right side of town. A nice street, a step up, from the bad side of town; only due to her father’s hard work and her mother’s economy were they able to achieve the dream they sought for so many years.

  And then, she came along as an anomaly. Dane Talbot’s parents were childless, and she was never supposed to exist. Her mother wasn’t supposed to conceive but she did, and they never questioned the blessing. Things were good up until her mother died and then her father, to escape his grief, threw himself into his work and into his hobby, one of which became his unwitting downfall.

  She was a part of that downfall. She knew he’d argue with her, absolve her of all the guilt she felt, but it was true in her own mind. Had she only realized, paid more attention to what was going on then, he might still be alive. She knew Paul had a thing for her. He was a dear friend all those years growing up, one of the porch buddies, but in the end,…she knew his crush was a little more than normal. He’d never moved on after high school and she let him into her household. She got him the job with her father. Her father even came to treat Paul like a son. That was until greed set in.

  Now it was all very clear to her. Maybe she liked the attention, knowing that in the end Paul would always love her. But he was never right for her and she didn’t want him. Instead, she went for the college guys. The ones her mother would have wanted her to invest in. Not someone from the other side of the tracks. And Paul was like a brother to her, anyway. He knew too many personal details about her. Things that she didn’t even know herself. When he pointed them out, they made her uncomfortable. If she were tired, hungry, annoyed…whatever it might be, he’d call her on it over the years. He tried to control her with those little attained nuances over the years. And then, one day, he’d waited for her to come home from a date. He’d been sitting on those steps and he was angry. He knew her, and she knew him, too. Right away, from a distance, she knew. She’d found him sitting there with just the porchlight on when Bill pulled up in front of the house to drop her off.

  “You know that guy?” he’d asked. “Do you want me to walk you up?”

  They’d been drinking. She’d laughed when she saw Paul sitting there glaring at them.

  “No. It’s just Paul. He’s harmless.”

  Bill hesitated. “Okay, if you’re sure. Goodnight,” he’d said and pulled her into a kiss. She closed the car door and walked up the center sidewalk. Bill sped away as she kept her eyes on Paul. She’d noticed he was rubbing the back of his fist into the hard concrete steps. There was a smear of blood staining the center.

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “What…what happened to your hand?”

  He’d stopped. “Oh, it’s nothing.” He opened his fist flat and looked down. It was as if he didn’t even realize he was doing it in the first place. “I just hit it on something. I didn’t know it was still bleeding.”

  “Do you wanna go inside and clean up?”

  “No. It’s not a big deal.”

  “Okay,” she said and thought something else might be bothering him at the time. She sat down next to him. “Fireflies! I’ll never get bored watching them flame up and then disappear into nothing.”

  “Dane, how much do you know about that guy you’re dating. Bill, right?”

  “Bill? How do you know his name?”

  “Your dad told me.”

  “I don’t know. He’s a med student. He’s nice.”

  “I did some checking, Dane. He’s got a bad reputation. He’s really hard on the girls. Don’t let him get too far.”

  She chuckled and drew back from him. “What’s gotten into you, Paul? I think I know who to trust. I can deal with my own love life.”

  “Love life?” He said the words as if they tasted bitter.

  She shook her head. “I’m not saying I’m in love with him or that I’m making love to the guy. I’m just saying I can handle my own…stuff. You don’t need to give me advice on guys.”

  He abruptly stood up. “All right, have it your way. But I warned you.”

  “Paul.” She stood too. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I just…I think I can handle my personal business.” She touched his forearm and he pulled away with the excuse of pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and then nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, did you and Dad start packaging today? I know the party for the department is going to love this.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We got the first three designs from the printers today. I just really wish…”

  “What?”

  “I wish he’d reconsider going commercial. This is such a waste, Dane. All he has to do is deal with a few investors and file a few forms. Heck, I’m sure they’d be happy to do it if they got a stake in the business. This is a really big deal…it could be very lucrative.”

  She smiled but shrugged her shoulders. “He’s just that way. He doesn’t want the hassle in his golden years.”

  “Right. That’s what he’s said.”

  They stood there listening to birds that still chirped past the late evening dusk and the insects that took up the rhythm of a summer night. Fireflies lit up little streaks in an instant and then faded into nothing just as quickly, like miniscule Roman candles.

  “Are we okay?” Dane asked finally.

  He’d looked at her, all serious. The young boy she remembered growing up with was no longer there. Only the serious face of a man with the weight of the world on his soul remained. She knew his life was hard. He’d grown up hard. It was only because he’d tested into good schools that she’d even come to encounter and befriend him over the years. She’d never been to his house on the wrong side of town and never would. It wasn’t that her father forbade a visit; Paul did. She’d never met his friends he sometimes talked about from his old neighborhood. The weight of keeping both worlds separate now showed in the way he looked at her. She knew he wanted more from her. She sensed the need, but there never would be more. Not because he came from the east end of town. That didn’t matter to Dane Talbot. She just didn’t think of him that way. He was more a brother than she could ever conceive. A dear friend. Not ever a lover. Those feelings and desires just didn’t exist and she couldn’t fake them. She knew it was wrong to even try. It would never end well, and she’d lose something she’d come to value.

  He nodded even though she was sure he wasn’t okay with the way things were between them. “I’ll be fine,” he offered and turned, walking down the narrow path. He waved with the back of his hand and said, “See ya tomorrow.”

  But the following week everything changed in ways neither of them predicted. She didn’t know Paul as well as she thought she did and now…she realized she could have stopped him that nig
ht. She could have kept her father alive. She could have tried to have a more romantic relationship with him even though the thought nauseated her. She should have been there. Hell, it would have saved her in the end. It would have saved both her and her father from horrific fates that night.

  Dane raised the bottle of water to her mouth and took a long pull. There were more stops to make and places to visit before the day was done. Before driving away in the rental car she’d picked up earlier, she tossed the plastic water bottle she just finished in the backseat and picked up another one out of the case in the passenger side, reached into the grocery bag nearby, pulled out another cocktail packet, and poured the powder inside. Paul was coming out with new flavors now, she noticed. Ones her father had never thought of. This one was an Amaretto Sour. It tasted creamy and smooth. She’d say it was one of her favorites. The last one was fizzy, a Gin and Tonic, and contained bicarbonate, she suspected. “You were always clever, Paul, but not for long.”

  51

  Kim

  It was the way he looked at her and began walking around the table that made her pull the gun she’d concealed in the waistband of her pants and aim in his direction. The loose shirts she wore never revealed the weapon’s outline. Her mother would never notice the gun missing from its hiding place beneath the floorboard at the back of the bathroom sink, because her mother never knew there was a gun hidden there to begin with. What Momma didn’t know didn’t hurt her. Even if it was found by the authorities an 86-year-old granny would likely only have to visit the DA’s office for questioning. They’d never arrest her for a gun she had no knowledge of. It was a felony to have an illegal firearm in the city of Chicago.

  Of course, when they found out that the serial number was attached to a crime, that was a different story. Then, when the DA questioned her mother, if her mother knew what was good for her, she’d say nothing at all about Kim. She’d deny even knowing where she lived and breathed. She knew better. Kim made sure her mother knew what would happen to her if she ever mentioned her name to anyone, especially the authorities.

  To Paul’s credit, he stopped advancing on her.

  “What do you think you’re going to do with that? This works both ways, Kim. You have something I want. I have something you want. If you kill me, you’ll never see a red cent of that money.”

  “Now…you want to talk. You keep saying I won’t anyway. So if that’s the case, there’s no reason for you to exist either, or for that matter, that girl you’ve pined over and created this whole mess for to begin with. Paul, you could have really been something that mattered.” She shook her head in disgust. “You wasted all that. And instead did this. You’re not even livin’. You’re wastin’ away here. Waiting for her. That’s all you’re doin’. She ain’t never coming back to you unless she intends to kill you for the things you did to get what you wanted.”

  “You!” he roared, making her take a tiny step back. “You…caused this. You…did this. If it wasn’t for you…”

  “I didn’t make you do anything you didn’t want to do.” Her chin jutted out at him. “It was your idea to get in there and steal that old man’s formula. You approved the plan, Paul.”

  He shook his head and his words coughed out of him like rusty steel. “Killing him was never a part of that plan.”

  “Neither was going to jail. I wasn’t going to jail for you. And when he walked in…and us there…all that changed right there.”

  “I would’ve…gone.”

  “I saved you, Paul. I saved all of us. I did what had to be done. You weren’t man enough. Sammy damn sure wasn’t man enough. But that can all end now. There’s been enough time passed between then and now. I tried to tell you that before. The girl…she’s moved on with her life. She don’t live here no more. She was never one of us. And don’t think for a second that it ever would have worked out between you and her.”

  She took another step closer. If she could just get him to see things were different now, they could work together. Solve this finally. But that’s where she was wrong.

  Paul slammed his right arm up, knocking the gun from her hand, and grabbed the gun he had hidden inside the box of papers with his left.

  Her eyes widened, and she jumped back. This…was not the Paul she knew.

  “You should have killed me when you had the chance. I should have done this a long time ago. That night, actually. I should have exterminated you,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “You should have died that night, you know? Not him.”

  “Paul…” She raised her hands before her as if she could stop the bullet with her own flesh and shook her head from side to side. She’d never seen him so crazy. Not even that night. “You’ll never find her without me. I’ll never tell you where she is unless you pay me what you owe me.”

  “That’s what you think, Kim. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from you over the years…there’s more than one way to get what you want.”

  That’s when he aimed low and fired. “Go ahead and scream! No one will hear you now.”

  52

  Matthew

  “Investigators Look for Cause of Deadly Chicago House Fire”

  The Chicago Tribune reports fire officials said Friday that the blaze that killed retired Forensic Chemist Daniel Talbot was likely started by an open flame in the house laboratory, but that doesn’t necessarily mean arson. Talbot spent his days of retirement tinkering in his lab on various experiments. Investigators ruled out arson, but they are trying to determine who left behind a burning cigarette found on the back porch of the residence since no one in the home smoked. Neither his daughter, Dane Talbot, nor Paul Torrio, Talbot’s lab assistant, who were not home during the incident, could be reached for comment.

  It was the name Paul that struck him. That name was mentioned, shouted if he was honest, more than once in Dane’s nightmares. This had to be the connection. And her father had died in the house fire? His heart clenched for what Dane had gone through. He knew the pain of losing someone close to you; he had no idea Dane did, too. No wonder she had a hard time coping.

  Matthew drove like hell through the stormy streets, avoiding the highways altogether to get to the small airstrip from where they were taking off to get back to Missoula. He had to make this quick. The only problem was…the streets of Chicago were anything but quick on a good day and with evacuations, they certainly weren’t fast now.

  “Hey, where are we?” Owen asked from the backseat after a while, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Matthew nearly forgot he was even back there.

  “We’re nearly at the airfield. Hey, there they are. Everyone’s lining up to board the plane already. Hey, listen.” He couldn’t believe he was doing this. Was he really doing this? “Tell Skip that I’m going to be late. I’ll catch a commercial flight tomorrow. Let him know that I’ve gotta take care of a few things here.”

  Owen got out of the truck when Matthew skidded to a stop and looked a little confused. Hell, he was confused, too. He wasn’t even sure what he was about to do.

  “What? What do you mean? We gotta load up. Tuck…we gotta bury Tuck.”

  Tuck… “I…I know. And we will. Tell them to wait. I need a few days.”

  “But you just said tomorrow? I don’t…think they can do that. Where’s Dane? Wait, wasn’t she still in the bathroom?”

  “You know, that’s what it is. I forgot she told me to pick her up at the um, store.”

  “Uh, okay, we could probably get them to…hey, where are you going?” Owen looked at him, brows drawn together. But it didn’t matter because Matthew was already pulling away as Owen swung the cab door shut with a slam.

  There was no way they were going to let him take the truck, and he needed that truck. He knew where she was now, or he knew where she might be and what sunken state she was likely in. He had to do something before it was too late. He had to save Dane from herself. Dane was going to get him. She was going to do in this Paul guy for whatever part he played in her father’s de
ath and in doing so…she was going to hurt herself.

  Matthew drove away as the rest of the worn-out smokejumpers stared out after him. He only hoped he wasn’t too late. As he drove, he scrolled through the old incident reports online and found the address of the house that her father died in a few years ago. He had to start there and then he had to find Paul Torrio, whoever the hell he was, before Dane killed him. He only hoped he wasn’t too late.

  53

  Paul

  “Tell me where she is.”

  So much blood and so much screaming. And he didn’t care. He’d spent nearly a lifetime cleaning up the scares she’d inflicted on his own life. He was going to kill her, slowly, but eventually. He had to know what she knew first. He needed to know what link she had to Dane. God forbid she ever came into contact with her. That was only one more reason to end Kim, here and now. There was no way he was going to allow Kim to live after all the pain she’d caused him in life. If it wasn’t for her, he’d likely have Dane as his wife by now. They’d have children and Daniel by their side. They’d be rich because by then he would have convinced Daniel of the value of his experiment.