by Hunt, James
Kate relaxed on her pillow, careful not to agitate her body any more than needed.
“There was a doctor over on this side, thank god,” Mark said. “Aside from a few bumps and bruises and exhaustion, he said you’re all right. He’s been looking at everyone here.”
Kate frowned, trying to figure out where “here” was, and then the events prior to her slumber flooded back. The boat, the docks, the gunfire, the shooters, the bodies, buried alive under all those corpses. Kate propped herself up, fighting past the pain that wanted to shove her back down. “How many made it back?”
Shadows engulfed Mark’s face as he turned away. “We don’t have to talk about that now.”
But Kate couldn’t stop thinking about it. She tried to recall the number of people that she had seen with the redheaded woman, but every time she tried, a terrible headache descended upon her and sent her back down to the pillow.
“They said they wouldn’t have made it without you,” Mark said. “The people that came back.”
“And what about the kids with parents that didn’t come back?” Kate lifted her head slightly and caught Mark’s glare. “What about our group?”
“Glen and Laura made it,” Mark answered.
The absence of the other names told her their fates. Kate nodded, staring blankly at a pile of blankets in the tent’s corner.
“Holly was asking for you,” Mark said. “Want me to get her?”
“Yes.” Kate’s answer was breathless, and her eyes immediately teared. Mark left and quickly returned with their daughter.
“Hey, Mom.” Holly smiled.
“Hey, baby.” Kate kissed the top of Holly’s head and then squeezed her tight. There was a hunger in her arms, the same hunger that longed for her son, to hold him again like this and to make sure he was okay. “How are you feeling?”
“Still a little tired.” Holly cast her face down but remained snuggled tightly against Kate. “My throat hurts.”
“The medicine will help.” Kate kissed her again and smiled. “I’m so happy to see you.” She wrapped her daughter in a hug and shut her eyes, tears leaking from the corners. “So happy.”
“You two should get some rest,” Mark said. “Rodney wants to leave first thing in the morning. And he wanted to make sure everyone got a clean bill of health before we start the trip.”
“Smart,” Kate said, starting to drift off. Holly was putting off a lot of heat, and Kate yawned. “What time is it now?”
“Almost ten,” Mark answered.
A sleeping bag lay to Kate’s left, and Mark crawled inside it, the sound of his legs swooshing against the fabric as he positioned himself comfortably. Kate closed her eyes and kissed the back of Holly’s head one more time.
During the night, the pain returned in flares and spasms, but they paled in comparison to the nightmares. The events of the day replayed in her head, blood and gore splashed liberally across every scene.
It started with the people on the metro train. When the power had gone out, their first reactions had been anger. It was nothing more than an accidental bump of a shoulder that ignited the whole car into a flurry of fists and boots and teeth.
After that it was the bridge, but instead of escaping safely to the other side, Kate plummeted into the icy waters, where she breathed lungful after lungful of icy river water. Other people fell with her, but while she could still breathe, they clawed for the surface, choking.
Halfway down into the water, Kate suddenly stopped, and there she was suspended, frozen, watching bodies rain all around her and delve deeper into the black abyss of the East River.
One quick yank and she was back at the docks, the gunmen spotting them from the alleyway. And while she hadn’t gotten a very good look at them during the day, in her nightmare, they were wild, twisted things. Fangs jutted from mouths that dripped with saliva the color of blood.
Kate had tried to run from them, but her feet were cemented to the ground, and no matter how many times she tried to lift them, they wouldn’t budge. The group of people that followed her suddenly stopped with her, looking for guidance.
“What do we do?”
“Where do we go?”
“Help us, Kate! Save us!”
But the moment Kate tried to open her mouth, she was choked with silence. She clawed at her lips as the people around her looked on with desperation and confusion. She kept pointing for them to run, but they only repeated the same questions, and then Kate watched each of them die with a bullet to the head, their brains and bones spraying out across the dock.
Once they were all dead, the hungry wolves circled around Kate, drooling at the scent of more carnage. When they lunged, their jaws snapping, Kate was thrust to the final nightmare chamber, a place she hadn’t been to in a very long time.
It was eighteen years ago. Kate lay in her bed in her studio apartment. Luke, barely six months old, lay sound asleep in the crib next to her bed. She was looking at him, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. He had been a great baby. Never fussy, slept through the night, and Kate was young and naïve enough to believe that’s how all babies were. It wasn’t until she’d had Holly that she realized how lucky she was.
She had just turned twenty-one a few months ago, and the crummy apartment was the best she could afford after she was forced to leave the college dorms once Luke was born. How Luke slept through the neighbors’ shouting match every night, Kate didn’t know. But as she watched Luke and listened to Kent and Kara’s (yes, those were their real names) arguments about who Kara was sleeping with when Kent wasn’t around, she had no idea how she could love something so instantly with every fiber of her being.
But then a vicious knock sounded at Kate’s door. It startled her and woke Luke. Three more hits against the door rattled the walls, and Luke belted out a shrieking scream.
“Shhh, it’s okay, baby.” Kate picked Luke out of the crib and rocked him on her way to the door. Her heart pounded just as loud as the door itself, and when she checked the peephole to see who was outside, she quickly stepped back. “Go away, Dennis! You’re not supposed to be here!”
“Open this door, Kate!” The voice was angry and violent, and his words shook louder than the pounding of his fists. “Open it right fucking now!”
“No!” Kate screamed, but at the same time, her face twisted in preparation of tears. Luke continued to scream, and Kate hushed again.
The door buckled as Dennis rammed it repeatedly, and Kate retreated all the way to her bed. She held Luke tight, trying to soothe his tears while her own flowed freely from her eyes. “It’s okay, Luke. Everything’s going to be fine.”
If she could have afforded a phone, she would have called the police, but she was barely making enough money at the diner to afford rent and power and diapers.
The door frame cracked, and one more blow knocked it inward. Kate screamed and trembled on the bed as Dennis stomped toward her. The muscles on his arms bulged from the sleeveless shirt that had a greasy brown stain on the chest. His face was covered in coarse black stubble, and his breath stank of whisky. He had a shotgun in one hand and a bag in the other.
“I told you to open the fucking door!”
Kate didn’t respond, she simply kept her body between him and Luke.
Dennis dropped the bag, and she saw that the zipper was half open. A stack of cash poked out. He aimed the shotgun at Kate and then pumped it. “I want my kid, Kate.”
“He’s not yours.”
“I fucked you, and then nine months later, that little cum stain popped out.” He smiled. “He’s mine all right. You haven’t even been with anyone else.”
It was a harsh truth and a mistake that Kate wished for the rest of her life that she could take back. “The courts said you can’t be around me or him. Now go before I call the police.”
“You don’t have a phone,” Dennis snarled. “I checked.” He lunged an arm for Luke, and Kate fended him off. “Give him to me!”
“NO!” Kate ripp
ed herself free and then sprinted for the door. She was almost there when meaty fingers pulled her back. “Stop it! HELP! HELP ME!”
Dennis backhanded her and drew blood from her lip. The blow was more to keep her quiet than to hurt her, but she still wobbled on two legs after the crack. Then he wrapped his big hand around her throat and squeezed, moving her around the apartment like a ragdoll. “Give me my son!”
Kate used what concentration and strength remained to her to keep Luke in her arms, to protect him, to keep him from the madman that refused to leave her alone.
Dennis finally slugged a fist at Kate’s cheek, and the blow knocked her to the ground. In the same motion, he ripped Luke from her arms, the boy’s little cheeks red as he squealed at the top of his lungs. “There’s my little insurance policy.” He laughed and then reached for the bag with his money.
The ground rolled unevenly as Kate tried to stand. “Stop. You can’t take him. You can’t…” But the blow had knocked the fight from her, and what was meant to sound threatening came out only as a plea. “Let him go.”
Dennis laughed, malice in his dark eyes as he forced Luke’s little hand into a wave as her son screamed at the top of his lungs. “Say bye to Mommy.”
“NO!” Kate forced herself up and tried to follow but crashed back onto the floor. Dennis disappeared with Luke into the darkness down the hallway, his voice echoing playfully amid Luke’s screams. Kate veered into the hallway, and then as she screamed, she jolted awake.
Dawn had broken on the horizon, and Kate found herself covered in sweat. She looked down to Mark and Holly, who had climbed down to sleep with her father in the middle of the night, and she burst into tears.
She knew why that terrible memory had invaded her dreams tonight. It was because of the parole hearing, the one her lawyer had called her about before the EMP. Dennis Smith was Luke’s father and a convicted murderer. It was that same night he came for Luke that he murdered a police officer who found him with the baby at a truck stop.
It took thirty-six hours for authorities to find Dennis and thirty-seven hours before Kate finally had Luke back in her arms. Dennis was sentenced to life but was eligible for parole after ten years. It was Kate’s letter to the parole board that kept him in jail, a piece of information that she was sure Dennis knew.
And so every year around this time, Kate would go and speak to the parole board in upstate New York to make sure that the animal who had abducted her son to use as a hostage after his bank robbery remained behind bars.
Dennis was the culmination of a reckless moment in her youth, and while it had given her one of the best things in her life, Luke, it had also been the source of pain and loss.
After that incident, Kate made a promise to herself, a vow that she would never let her son be in harm’s way again. No matter what, she would always find him. And as she stared at Mark and Holly as they slept, she knew that she wouldn’t be joining them on their trip north to the cabin. She was going to the airfield. She was going to get her son.
While most of the camp slept in a mixture of sleeping bags and cots that had been pilfered from a camping store nearby, Rodney lay awake in his own bag. He had a spot near the river, where he watched the island of Manhattan sit glumly in the dark.
The water carried with it not just the chilling winds of cold but also random gunshots laced with screams. He didn’t know what those people wanted, but he did know they would kill as many people as they could before any type of resistance formed to fight back. He figured that there would be pockets of terrorists scattered around the country, using the exact same guerilla tactics. But he doubted they’d find many in upstate New York. And while they might not find any terrorists wielding AK-47s, there would be other people. People who wanted what Rodney had. And after a while, they’d do anything necessary to have it.
A ripping snore broke through one of the tents, and Rodney turned just as it ended. There was another, but then it stopped. He turned back to the self-destructing city, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to take everyone he’d ferried across the river to his cabin. There were just too many.
He hoped that Kate wouldn’t make a fuss about it when she woke, not that she was in any shape to do much fussing. She would slow them down, but with the old man in their group, he’d already factored in a slow pace. Another gunshot crossed the river. The distance turned it into nothing more than a faint pop of a firecracker, but it didn’t lessen its lethalness.
Another body had fallen. More red slush was mixed up with the dirty grey of New York’s finest pavement of Italian Ice. He rubbed his eyes and lay down, his eyes closed but his mind open and awake. He’d give them another hour. Then they’d have to start moving. It was going to be a long trip, and even when they got to the cabin, there wasn’t a guarantee of survival. Winters had a way of weeding out the herd, and all the forecasts called for a bone-chilling season.
The restless sleep had provided some relief from Kate’s wounds, but not much. Despite Mark’s protest, she hobbled around on her own, collecting their supplies and what they’d need. She still hadn’t told him about her separate mission. He’d be upset, but she knew he’d let her go. It was her son.
“All right, folks, remember to top off your bottles and grab any of those protein bars at the main table,” Rodney said, gesturing over to the “breakfast buffet” that had been set up for those that had stuck around. “We leave in five.”
Rodney turned, and Kate hobbled to him. “Hey, you got a second?”
When he looked at her, Kate noticed that something in his face had changed. The lines that had set on his stoic expression had become defined overnight. He looked older. She expected they’d all be older when this was done.
Kate pulled him away from the others and kept her voice low. “Do you have the coordinates for your cabin?”
“Yeah,” Rodney answered. “Why?”
“I’m not going with you,” Kate said. “I’m going to get my son down in Virginia and then bring him back with me.”
Rodney ran his palm across his face and shook his head like a disappointed father. “Kate, that’s not a good idea. It’ll take too long on foot.”
“I’m not walking,” Kate said. “I’m flying.”
Rodney bellowed laughter, which he quickly reined in. “You plan on flapping your arms really hard? That’s quite the workout.”
“You said yourself that the EMP only affects computer chips, right?”
“Yeah,” Rodney answered.
“There’s an airfield a few miles southwest of here,” Kate said. “They do an airshow every spring, and a lot of old pilots show up there to do tricks and whatnot, show off their planes—shit.” A shot of pain radiated from her hip, and she bit her lip. She massaged the point of pain, and it seemed to help a little. When she lifted her face, Rodney greeted her with a “told you so” grin. “I’m fine.”
“Uh-huh,” Rodney said.
“Listen, a lot of those guys keep their old planes in storage at that airfield,” Kate said. “I might find one old enough to have hydraulic gears. If I do, I can fly it down to get my son and then fly back up to the coordinates of the cabin. Or at least get close.”
“It’s risky, Kate,” Rodney said. “And your family will want to go with you.”
“My family stays with you. That’s nonnegotiable. It’ll be safer away from populated areas.” Without realizing it, she turned her gaze toward the city, which looked dead in the early morning light. Frozen like the icy waters of the river, immune to the warmth of the sun. “I’m going, Rodney. Now give me the damn coordinates.”
Rodney hesitated a moment but eventually acceded to Kate’s request. She folded the paper with the cabin’s coordinates neatly into her pocket, making sure that it was secure behind the zipper, and muttered the numbers in her head to commit them to memory in case she lost the paper.
“Hey,” Mark said, coming over as Rodney left. “What’s going on?”
Spit disappeared from Kate’s mouth, and sh
e found herself just as tongue-tied as in her dream. But she wasn’t going to let any more of her family be in harm’s way, not when she had the ability to do something about it. “I’m going to get Luke.”
“No.” Mark shook his head, his flag firmly planted. “No way in hell you’re going off somewhere alone in the condition you’re in.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Kate said.
“Oh, no?” Mark barely shoved her shoulder, and the bad ankle folded and she started to fall, but Mark caught her. “You can barely walk, Kate.” There was a bite to his tone, and the cold morning only made it worse.
“I’m not leaving him down there,” Kate said, grumbling as Mark helped her up.
“Then we’re coming with you,” Mark said.
“No.”
“Kate, you can’t—”
“I’m not taking Holly back into that!” Kate thrust her arm out toward the city. “Not after what we saw, not after everything we went through to get out.”
“But you’re willing to put yourself back in it?”
“To get my son? Yes.”
Mark spun in frustration. “For Christ’s sakes, Kate, he’s a man. He’s been living on his own for the past year and a half. He can take care of himself, and when this blows over, we’ll be able to call him when the power comes back on.”
“You heard Rodney. That could take months!”
“It’s suicide!”
“He’s my son!” Her scream pierced the camp, and heads turned toward her, and she bowed her head, regaining her composure. When she faced Mark again, she couldn’t hide the tears on her face anymore. “And I thought he was yours too.”
“That’s not fair, Kate.” Mark stepped back. “You know I love him.”
“Like he was your own?” Kate asked, and the moment the words left her lips and she saw the pain etched over his face, the anger deflated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“It’s fine.” Mark waved a dismissive hand. “It’s…” He walked toward her. “I love you. I love Luke. You are both important to me, just as important to me as Holly.” He kissed her forehead. “You don’t have to do this alone.”
