by Paul Bishop
Fresh out of ideas that didn’t involve mortal injury, I returned to him. “How am I gonna get down?” I asked.
“Too far, huh?”
“Yeah. I need a rope or something.” Why the hell didn’t Sammy have a fire escape? I guessed there was no such thing as a building code anymore.
“I have an idea on that,” he said calmly.
Elon explained while I stood and listened, my mouth agape while my skin drained white. As usual, I had no better ideas.
He made me drag him over to the edge while he helped by pushing with the one arm not holding his guts in and kicking with his legs. My mind grew desperate for a plan B, but none presented itself. The roof structure sagged in the middle. The fire gained in volume and the gentle roar became something more animal. Creaks and splintering wood added to the noise.
I had to go over the edge. Now.
Accepting the inevitable, I looped my crutches over my elbow again, tucked the knife into my belt, and turned to Elon who lay flat on the roof in front of me.
He dug his hand into the wide hole in his abdomen. It swallowed his arm to the wrist like a mouth and I had to look away from what happened next.
I leaned over the edge, afraid I might throw up. When I turned back to him, I didn’t know how he wasn’t screaming or how he was even alive.
Elon held out his hand to me. Clenched in his fist was a length of his own intestine—my rope and my only way to the ground.
As best I could, I wound the slippery organ around my fist and grasped it as tightly as the slick blood would allow.
With all the pain of his ordeal behind it, he bellowed, “Go, now.”
I slipped over the side. My mind locked to keep the reality of what I actually did at bay, I kept my body close against the wall and my toes skidded along the cinderblocks as I dropped fast. Elon shrieked a scream of triumphant pain as his insides unspooled down the side of the building to ease me to safety. His death howl, I thought numbly.
His insides slowed me but not by much. I readjusted my grip and wrapped his intestine around my whole forearm but still plummeted. My knee scraped along the rough wall and began to bleed, and my shoulder struck and lurched me into a spin. I had really begun to worry by the time I landed hard.
My leg buckled under me but didn’t break. One of my crutches bent and the wind was knocked out of me on impact. I lay there, unable to get a breath or move while the long rope of Elon’s insides slithered over me, dripping fluids, and went from warm to cool quickly in the early morning air.
I lay on my back and watched the sky turn from black-blue overhead to a lighter shade closer to the ground before a thin rim of orange split the horizon.
13
There was no way to tell how long I lay there but it couldn’t have been long.
I scrambled onto one knee and threw the rubbery organs off me. My movements were quick and jerky, and I was desperate to not think about the phantom feeling in my hand of Elon’s guts or to notice the smell of bile that had doused my clothes.
The door to Sammy’s car creaked when I opened it. The tires were all partly flat. The seat where he had sat his fat ass for what looked to be many years sagged and the fake leather spider-webbed with cracks.
My hopes were dim when I turned the key. Three slow grinding whirrs seemed to justify my misgivings before the engine caught and sputtered meekly to life. I checked the fuel gauge—a quarter-tank, which was more than I’d expected.
I saw motion at the edge of the building. The rusty rumble of the engine cut out the option of listening closely for anything, but it didn’t take long before I saw a face peek around the corner.
My hand went to the knife in my belt and stayed there.
A girl—maybe ten or maybe a malnourished twelve—stepped around the side of the building. By her clothes and dirt-caked face, I knew she was a part of the tribe. I recognized her as the girl I’d seen—the one I had inexplicably ached for.
We stared at each other. The engine noise filled the early morning in a chorus with the fire sounds.
I waited for her to attack. She stood still, backlit by the intense orange glow of Sammy’s burning club. Her eyes were still a child’s. I saw no madness there, not like there had been with the adults.
For me, it was a poignant moment of choice. I could have driven away and taken Elon’s advice to drive until the tank ran empty. Instead, I held my hand out.
The girl took a tentative step forward. I wiggled my fingers to coax her to come closer. She took another step. Behind her, a section of the building collapsed. The crash of wood and metal rose above the wheezing engine. She sprinted forward, away from the fireball and into my arms.
I braced myself for teeth to sink into my neck, but all I felt was a scared child huddled close to me. “It’s okay,” I said as I drew her face away and brushed the greasy hair from her forehead.
Her teeth weren’t filed down to points and her clothes weren’t stained with blood. She was a frightened girl who’d lost her family—the only family she knew.
So had I.
Left behind by her tribe, the girl seemed more lost than any creature I’d ever seen. I couldn’t tell if she knew that everyone inside was dead, and I didn’t know if her parents were among them or if they had died long before. The only apparent truth was that she came from the makeshift camp in front of Sammy’s and everything in her world was now gone—probably not for the first time.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
She didn’t speak and only looked at me expectantly.
“My name’s Janet.” She set her head against my chest, tightened her arms around me, and almost crawled into the front seat with me. “It’s all right now,” I said.
I tucked my one good crutch behind me in the back and helped her clamber into the seat beside me.
I wanted to ask her the standard question—who have you lost? But I knew the answer.
“So,” I started. “Were those your parents?”
She turned quickly to me like I’d poked her with a needle. She nodded and the movement of her head almost shook the tears loose from her eyes.
“And they made you?”
She looked at the floor mats and nodded. “Two years,” she whispered.
“How old are you?”
“Ten.”
“Is there anyone else? A brother or sister?”
She waited a long time before she said, “Not anymore.”
“So, what’s your name?”
“Samantha.”
I smiled because I couldn’t help it. “Is it okay if I call you Sammy?” I asked. She nodded. “Okay, Sammy.” I closed the door and buckled my seatbelt. “This might not get us very far, but we’ll make it. You and me, we’re survivors.”
She clipped her belt on when I nodded to it. I wiped the tears from her face that had streaked through the dirt and grime to the pale, freckled face below.
“I lost my family too,” I said. “Twice.”
“Is it over now?” she asked, her voice almost like a wisp of smoke it was so quiet.
“This is over. There’s gonna be more. I won’t lie. But we have each other now. It might be all we need.”
I steered the car out of the alley and Sammy and I drove away into the sunrise. The beginning was a little shaky, but thank goodness it was an automatic, not a gear shift, and we managed to move forward in our journey.
One Year Later
Sammy calls me Mom now. I don’t know what she remembers from before or even if I want to know, but we’re settled.
I opened my own place—a club for girls like me. We get a good crowd. The old Sammy was merely on the wrong side of Center City. Out near the old bridge is the place to be. The city is slowly coming back there. We offer entertainment, the sure sign of civilization. Without culture, we’re nothing but animals fighting over a scrap of meat.
Sammy works with me at the club but not as a dancer. No way. I don’t dance anymore, either. We have five girls and one even has more gimps than me. The
boys sure do go for her.
The guy behind the bar, Tito, and I have sorta been seeing each other lately. Yeah, things are looking up. Not bad for the end of the world.
The End
Star Noir Team
Thanks to the JIT Readers
Jeff Goode
Dave Hicks
Jeff Eaton
Dorothy Lloyd
Peter Manis
Nicole Emens
Misty Roa
Jackey Hankard-Brodie
Deb Mader
Micky Cocker
Larry Omans
If I’ve missed anyone, please let us know!
Editor
Skyhunter Editing Team
The stories in Star Noir—A Science Fiction Anthology are © 2019 by the individual authors. These are works of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this anthology are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means without permission.
Cover by Jeff Brown
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The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First US Edition, October 2019
