Red Robin: Post-Apocalyptic America

by R. B. Tetro

  They laughed, but each of them sobered quickly. With Daniel back on the mend, it wouldn’t be long until they were once again on their way to the Keep. No one was kidding themselves as to how things would go once there.

  Daniel saw the look of foreboding on their faces. “You ladies want to stop staring at me and give me a drink!”

  As one, the doomed group came forward, each offering a drink to their captain, their leader, their friend. Daniel took a careful sip and sat down. Although Red Feather’s powers of healing were miraculous, he was still on the mend and would need to take it easy.

  The men sat down around him and were silent, each of them watching Daniel with a concerned look on their faces. “I have some news. We’ve been joined in our mission by Red Feather and his warriors. They will accompany us to the Keep and fight alongside of us.”

  The look of relief on the men’s faces was priceless. It was a look of almost having hope but settling for wishful thinking. “How many are there?” asked Pops.

  “He will only take one hundred with him. He wants his tribe to survive if he does not return.”

  “Juggernaut and Scout took off walking toward Red Feather’s tent. “Where are you two going?” Daniels voice stopped them.

  “To say thank you to our friend,” grunted Juggernaut. Scout pointed at Juggernaut as if to say what he said and started clapping his hands together and dancing around.

  “I wouldn’t go up there, just yet. He and his grandson are having a disagreement.” Scout and Juggernaut looked towards Red Feather’s shelter. As if on cue, the sounds of heated arguing drifted down to them. It wasn’t long before Standing Wolf stormed out with his grandfather hot on his heels. “I have to go. You have to stay. That is the way of things!” Red Feather shouted at his grandson’s back.

  Standing Wolf whirled around facing his grandfather, his face contorted by frustrated anger. He started to shout back but caught himself, taking a deep breath and blowing it out slowly. “Grandfather, you were once an undefeatable warrior but time has taken that away from you and passed it on to me. Please let me go and fight at the Keep. No one can stand against me in battle. I will fight for your honor.”

  Red Feather started to argue, but the weight of his grandson’s words hung heavy on him. For the first time he felt his ancient age. “Because you controlled your anger and presented your thoughts wisely…you will go in my place.”

  Standing Wolf knew better than to voice his triumph. Instead, he nodded solemnly at his grandfather, waiting for him to re-renter his shelter before silently dancing around. The men watched him, his powerful body leaping and whirling effortlessly- his broad face, turned skyward and beaming.

  “What the hell is he so happy about? Doesn’t he know where we’re going?” asked Basher.

  Daniel smiled. “He is a great warrior. Every great warrior deserves to die a great warrior’s death.”

  No one said anything for a while.

  CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

  “When I was a child, my father used to take us hiking and camping so much that when I got older, all I ever wanted to do was to stay home. Now look at me, sleeping outside every night,” the old lady shared.

  “Poet speaks of his time at the Fortress so fondly. I’m a little jealous. I imagine it was something to see…well, for most people,” Angel mused.

  The old lady smiled, reaching out to pat her shoulder, stopping when she saw how sun burned and raw it was. “Fortress was something special all right. The only place in this God forsaken, suck hole that was even close to being home. I guess I kind of took everything for granted…again. Now look at us.” The old lady looked around them as far as she could see. There was only the small compound they were in, surrounded by sand as far as she, or anyone else, could see.

  Angel could feel the sound of defeat in the old lady’s voice. “When I was younger, my captors would always leave me locked in a closet or bathroom or somewhere they wouldn’t have to deal with me. I spent most of my life alone and in the dark. I almost gave up the will to live many times, sometimes many times a day.

  Then, one year at Christmas time, I guess they were feeling guilty because they gave me a book- in Brail. As I learned to read that book and began to study it, I found hope and love and all things good in a world full of nothing but things that are bad. Even now, in the middle of what seems to be purgatory, I still cling to the words in that book and lean on the promises in that book.”

  The old lady nodded, dropping her head down, breathing out heavily. “I too have read that book and love that book. It is a book full of love and hope and most of all grace, but I think that the creator of that book has long since forgotten about this place and all that are in it.”

  Angel started telling her about the time she’d been left in an overturned sewage truck to die, and the rats were eating her, and she’d prayed to the son of man and he heard her desperate prayers and rescued her and joined her with the wolves. And now she was alive and free and in love and all they had to do was to make it across this hell’s furnace hot desert and then everything would be okay, but she didn’t get to finish telling her miraculous story because the air around her seemed to be suffocating her.

  She started to feel dizzy and disoriented. “I don’t feel very well…” she cried out, just before pitching forward face down in the sand. The old lady and Chloe were by her side in an instant, but there was something wrong with them as well. “I don’t feel too well either,” Chloe managed to get out, but her voice sounded strange and far off and before she knew it she was lying face down in the sand beside Angel. She saw everyone else in their group falling down and she knew they’d been set up.

  The last thing the old lady remembered seeing was Buckets prodding them each with a stick. “You’re a son of a bitching, son of a bitch!” she managed to say before he tapped her just hard enough on the head with his stick to put her to sleep.

  CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN

  “Daddy, why do you always root for Mr. Mean?” Darius remembered asking his father.

  “Because son, no matter how bad you beat him up and try to hurt him, he keeps getting stronger and stronger until finally, he’s unstoppable.”

  Darius remembered the last day he saw his father like it was yesterday. He’d woken early so he wouldn’t miss his dad leaving. He’d heard his mom and dad talking and he knew that his father was going on a dangerous mission, more dangerous than usual, which had to be pretty dangerous because his mom and dad had argued about his dad giving up being a soldier and staying home with them and keeping them safe. But his father had answered her like he always answered her. He was a soldier, through and through.

  In the end, Darius had slept in front of the front door so he wouldn’t miss the chance to hug his dad one more time and his father had woken him and hugged him. Darius had noticed the tears in his eyes. He told Darius that he loved him so very much and that he should be brave and strong and to listen to his momma and that his uncle Danny was going to come and help them get to a safe place where his dad would meet them later.

  Darius remembered looking up at his father and thinking how strong and brave he was and thinking he never felt anything like those two things but he’d smiled and nodded anyway and promised his dad that he would do as he was told.

  He told his dad that he loved him and tried very hard not to cry but he’d cried like a baby which he was still very close to being. The last thing his dad had done was to give him a big hug and kiss- and a green plastic hulk figurine that he said would keep him safe.

  “If you get in a jam, he’ll bring me to you,” he’d promised and Darius had actually believed him, which he felt silly for now, but back then he’d believed with all of his heart. Now, as he lay on the stone, piss-covered floor of the dungeon he wished more than anything he hadn’t given the hulk doll to his funny-talking friend. As he drifted off to sleep he could still hear his father teaching him, which he did every chance that he was home. “What are the three things you never do in a fight
?”

  “Sir…the three things you never do in a fight are- never show fear, keep your hands up and never turn your back on an opponent.”

  Darius smiled with his smashed lips and broken teeth at the thought of the pride on his father’s face whenever he answered correctly. Hours and hours his father had shown him how to fight and how to not fight when necessary and how to come back and fight when the odds were more in your favor. “What are the three things that you do if captured?”

  “Sir… the three things you do when captured by the enemy is first of all never let them see your scared, give them only name, rank, and serial number and look for any way of escape at all times.”

  “That’s excellent, son, Darius’ father had said and hugged him and Darius had felt ten-feet-tall and almost like a warrior. But the one thing that Darius wasn’t, was a man like his father. Darius was like his mother. Darius’ father never slighted him for it but he did insist on him training with him every chance they could.

  Darius wanted to be a soldier like his father but his body was fragile, always had been and his natural aversion to violence was something that obviously vexed his father but, after a time as Darius grew older, the fact that Darius would never be a soldier seemed to give him great peace and seemed to make his father love him even more.

  Darius groaned in the dark, forsaken cell he was chained in and curled himself tighter in a ball, trying to gain a modicum of comfort.

  “One of these day when the world’s gone upside down, you might have to fight to keep you and your mother alive. Can you do that, son? Promise me that you’ll fight to stay alive and to keep your mother alive!”

  Darius remembered holding up the hulk doll and putting his hand over his heart. “I promise to be a good soldier and to remember everything you taught me and to always fight for myself and momma…until you can come back to us and take us away to somewhere safe.”

  His father liked that answer and Darius liked that he could see a small glimmer of relief on his father’s face. He watched his father going out the door and he waved goodbye, saluting his father and shouting that he loved him. And his father was proud of him and shouted back that he really wished that he didn’t have to go.

  But then he was gone and he’d been gone when the bombs went off and his uncle Danny had somehow gotten them into one of the underground bunkers and now he, himself, was chained in a dungeon and missed his father so much it was too much to bear along with everything else. Darius would have surely died locked away in the deepest darkest bowels of the Keep if it hadn’t been for his only friend.

  Ordinarily, Candle would have not been able to fit into the cracks leading to the cell, but since Darius had been captured he’d no longer been able to enjoy part of his food so Candle had dwindled down to nothing more than a flicker. He sat beside Darius’ broken, bleeding body, licking his wounds as best as he could, glowing faintly and making a soothing, humming noise.

  Darius began to stir, tossing about fitfully, moaning and crying in his sleep. Candle made a soft clicking noise deep in his throat, trying his best to calm his young friend. Ever so slowly, Darius opened one eye, then another, smiling as wide as his ruined lips could stretch when he saw… “Candle, my old friend!”

  Candle didn’t answer in so many words but he did keep clicking and whirring softly and began to glow a little brighter, bathing the tiny cell in a soft, comforting glow. Darius began to click and whir back to Candle and although it seemed quite mad to think that they could somehow communicate that was exactly what they were doing.

  Later on that night, after Candle told him about Over Watch falling and everything else that had happened while he was locked away, Candle disappeared into a crack in the wall.

  Not long after, Siros returned with two guards, surprising Darius who was bracing himself to be tortured again, but instead they took him to the bath house and then the doctor. And then, as if he were in a dream, they left him in the care of his mother, who looked at him like one would look at a stranger his face was so mis-shaped.

  That night, for the first time in a very long time, Constance held her son and soothed him like the mother she’d forgotten how to be.

  CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT

  The first thing Angel realized when she awoke was that she was hanging upside down. She tried her best to scream, but her throat burned like it was on fire. She gagged and retched and tried to throw up but there was nothing to throw up, so she swallowed the bile to ease the burning in her throat and gasped when she realized that it only made it worse.

  She wondered where her wolf friends were. The last thing she could remember was watering them and making sure everybody else was drinking water, then feeling very weak, then faint, then nothing. Obviously, Buckets wasn’t the Samaritan he’d claimed to be.

  If only she could see. There was a strong pair of hands on her, touching her in ways she didn’t want to be touched. “Just let me go…” she hollered.

  Buckets was laughing so hard he was shaking, causing her to shake as well. “Let you go! You’re the best looking woman I’ve laid eyes on since before the bombs… so no… I will not be letting you go.” He hit her hard with his fist in her empty gut, making her dry heave again while he watched her body twist in pain with a grim smile on his face.

  “My wolves will rip out your beating heart and eat it in front of you,” she moaned.

  Buckets laughed harder this time and started to unfasten his pants but the tent they were in opened suddenly, bathing the interior in heat and light. “I told you, Buckets, this one’s off limits. Take that little goober and go mess with a chicken,” a strong, husky, female voice ordered.

  “Damn it, Ma, why can’t I have a poke? She ain’t no virgin,” Buckets growled and kissed Angel hard, mashing his stench-filled mouth on hers until she thought she might suffocate. There was loud clang and Buckets mysteriously hit the ground.

  Angel could hear him trying to get to his feet, grunting like a stuck pig. “Why’d you have to hit me with a shovel? I was just checking the merchandise!” Buckets hollered, stomping out of the tent like a scolded toddler.

  For moment there was silence. “Thank you…” Angel managed.

  “She felt a calloused hand on her cheek, but it was woman’s touch. “Don’t thank me yet, you pretty little bitch. Its whores like you that make it hard on old women like me. The woman kissed her briefly on the lips and then left, leaving Angel to try and wipe her mouth off as best as she could. Outside, she could hear the two of them arguing over what her fate might hold.

  Buckets was vehemently pleading his case to keep her and breed with her, while the woman was standing her ground on selling her to the highest bidder. The old saying, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody’s happy”, held up and slowly but surely the woman got her way. Buckets left in a huff, swearing a blue streak until he was out of earshot.

  Moments later, the woman come back in the tent with two other men. They untied Angel and chained her leg to the center post of the tent. “Don’t go getting any ideas about escaping. For one your blind…you’d fall into a sand pit and no one would ever find you and two, you have a date at the auction block.”

  That was that. The woman turned and left Angel wondering where her friends were and where they were going to take her, and all sorts of other things.

  CHAPTER NINETY-NINE

  Reverend had always been kind of jealous of the people too young to remember the way things used to be. To them, the world was just the way that it had been since they’d been born. They had no idea how much they’d missed out on, how wonderful things had been.

  Camping with his family was one of the things he missed the most. The serenity he used to feel when he would load up their giant SUV and venture out with his wife and boys on a hiking adventure. He smiled, remembering he used to write his best sermons while sitting all alone, high atop a mountain, hours before his family began to stir. He savored the memory of the closeness with God that he cherished with each and every tr
ip. As time went on, he and his family moved to the mountains so that he could always enjoy that connection. “Lord, I know I ain’t nearly the preacher I used to be. Hell, I mean hec, it’s hard to be Christian- like when people are trying to eat you and torturing your family to death in front of you.”

  Reverend snuck a quick glance up at the sky; as if he might catch a quick glimpse of Jesus, dropping his head down before the relentless sun burned out his already aching eyeballs. He didn’t feel like a Preacher anymore, even though every one of the group called him Reverend and had always called him Reverend and probably always would call him Reverend. “I’m sorry, Lord,” he muttered, wincing at the pain in his cracked and swollen lips.

  The Lord wasn’t answering him. It didn’t matter really. He hadn’t expected him to. In fact, it had been quite some time since the Lord answered him or even bothered to glance at him but somewhere, deep inside of his heart, despite his soul-shredding journey, he needed and wanted to believe that on some cosmic level, God still loved him and more importantly, that he still had his back.

  The wind’s covering the tracks!” Poet shouted.

  Reverend squinted up at him. They’d been trying to catch up to Angel and the rest of the women taken captive by Buckets. “It’s all right…God will show us the way.”

  Poet looked at him doubtfully but was too tired and messed up from the drugged water to argue religion. Not that he didn’t believe in God and love God and worship God. It’s just that he, along with most of the rest of humanity, believed God had left them to sort their own problems out.