by Angie Morel
“Thanks,” I said as I got off my knees and stood—thigh, shin, and both knees protesting—before taking steps towards the hallway that led to my bedroom.
“You gonna leave him here?” Rolo asked.
Pausing, I looked back at Rolo and shrugged. “Yeah I guess, for now.”
At the bedroom door, I was surprised to find it locked. Smart thinking. Rolo probably told them to lock it behind him when he left to help me. Of course a knob lock along with the slide lock I installed years ago wouldn’t hold against hard kicks or shoulders to the door, but it would at least slow a person down. Anyway, I was glad they were taking precautions.
“Hey, it’s us,” I said, tapping the door twice with my knuckles. There was a click and a scrape and then Mary opened the door wearing a frightened look.
“Is Harvey okay?” she asked, eyes big as she glanced between Rolo and me.
“Yeah, he’s okay, he’s ah…resting right now. I don’t think he knows what he’s doing. He’s sick, or something.” Quite the understatement, I thought.
“Oh My God. What are they doing?” D said from the window, horror lacing his voice. He had the window covering, which was a pastel pink bed sheet, pulled aside. Rolo and I looked at each other, and then walked over to the window to investigate.
To say that the world tilted a bit would be apt, because what I saw outside was beyond anything I could imagine.
The window faced the courtyard, which was located at the center of the housing complex, and what I saw were bodies, infants to old, scattered throughout the entire area like discarded toys. My eyes zeroed in on the body of a toddler dangling from a swing in the skeletal playground on the far right, the pusher of the swing crumpled on the dirt behind. But then my attention immediately shifted from the dead bodies to what the ones in motion were doing.
Below, in two separate spots, two kids were being torn apart by what looked like a groups of older gangbangers. They swarmed around them in an angry mass and were hitting, squeezing, twisting and stomping.
There were three bloody lumps on the ground outside of the mob. It didn’t take a genius to figure out they were recent victims. All of the other bodies looked like they dropped dead where they were, like my mom and D’s mom and aunt, and were blood-free.
Reluctantly, my gaze travelled to the mob closest to the building. Muscles tense, I watched as the kid being attacked tried to break free. He almost made it. The saggy pants he wore were his downfall—they dropped to knee level and tripped him up just as he busted through the outer ring of the group. By the time he was upright again it was too late. One of the attackers had dug a couple fingers into the kid’s eye with one hand and grabbed a fistful of hair with his other. Another attacker took advantage of the kid’s open mouth, hooking it as well as the neckline of his white t-shirt. Both pulled at the same time.
He screamed—a wild, pain-filled sound that had the ability to slice through the air between us. Fat red drops rained down on his shirt. Shaking his head, the boy managed to dislodge the fingers from his mouth and eye. His mouth survived without much injury, but it was clear even from this distance that his eye wasn’t so lucky. The scrabbling fingers had made quick work destroying it, leaving the socket a mangled, bloody mess.
For all his effort, he gained little ground, as there was still a tug of war going on with his shirt (neckline stretched to the point where he could fit his entire body through it) and his hair. We could only watch helplessly as he tried fighting them off as he was yanked back and forth. His lips pulled back from his teeth, giving him a feral look as he attempted to throw a couple punches.
But it was no use. He was outnumbered and completely overwhelmed by the hands reaching to get a piece of him. His shirt finally ripped, the fabric giving way as others latched on and pulled in multiple directions. A section of his shirt landed on the head of one of the attackers, covering half his face. He didn’t notice or remove it. My eyes remained locked on the white scrap of shirt as the boy went down and the mob closed over him, a distant part of my brain wondering why the attacker hadn’t bothered to remove the obstruction.
I let the sheet fall back into place.
Taking a couple of steps away, I turned and then sat on my bed, feeling like I was on autopilot. The others took a step back as well, and stood facing me. We looked at one another, playing hot potato with our eyes a few times before D and Mary finally kept their gaze locked in my direction, like they were expecting me to tell them this was just a bad dream and not really happening…or like they were waiting for some great words of wisdom to come from my mouth.
Neither happened.
Rolo had his hands in his pockets and was staring up at the corner of the room, his face expressionless. He was probably wondering how he got stuck in this nightmare with a girl and two kids. Maybe he was wishing he hadn’t run into us, wishing he’d been able to continue his mad rush down the stairs to the outside and beyond, getting away clean from what was happening here. Nothing was stopping him from doing that at this point, but now he probably felt obligated to stay and help us. I wasn’t going to say anything, one way or the other. It was his choice.
I took a deep breath and released it slowly.
A couple of minutes went by.
No one said a word.
Looking at Mary and D, I attempted a smile.
Their faces grew more alarmed. My smile probably looked more like a grimace of pain—or like I was crazy. Letting the stiff smile drop from my face, I cleared my throat.
What the hell was a smart thing to say after witnessing that? Something had to be said, if only to end the awkward silence.
“Right, so we’re going to remain calm and hang out here for a few hours. Whatever the…whatever the F is going on out there, it’ll get taken care of when the police get here. I’m sure they’re on their way right now.” The words felt odd coming out of my mouth. Rolo even cut his eyes to me when I said that. Yeah. The statement didn’t exactly bring about a feeling of relief.
Or maybe he looked at me because I said F instead of the actual word. I made an effort not to say bad words, particularly the f-bomb, in front of Mary. Hard to completely shelter her from it, though. Around this neighborhood, that word was used in about every sentence—as a noun, adjective, verb, whatever.
“Soooo, we’ll just wait here and…” I trailed off. My eyes drifted around the small room. It seemed very tight with the three of them standing in front of me, as there wasn’t much space between the beds. My hands wanted to push them back.
Mary and I shared a room that had two twin beds, one in each corner, with the window we’d been looking through sandwiched between. Curtains were a foreign concept to our mom, so instead of having a bare window people could see in, I’d stolen a spring rod from a store, jammed it up at the top of the window frame and draped a sheet over it to give us privacy. Butterflies that Mary had carefully colored and cut from construction paper were pinned to the sheet, puckering the fabric in about ten places. A small dresser and closet took up the remaining space at the opposite end of the room.
A previous tenant had gone to the effort of painting the walls a cheerful (actually the color leaned more towards repugnant) mint green and placed a border of monkeys and giraffes around the top, next to the ceiling. It probably didn’t take long for the caring parent or parents to realize what a shithole neighborhood this was and leave as fast as they could, taking the precious baby they’d decorated the room for, with them.
When the crowded feeling became too much, I scooted back on the bed and pulled my legs up, wrapping my arms around them. Mary climbed up beside me and I lifted my arm so she could burrow into my side. After she’d settled in, I draped my arm over her shoulder. D looked a little bewildered as he backed up and sat on Mary’s bed in a stiff manner, like he was an old man. Rolo pulled his hands out of his pockets and sat a few feet away from D. He pushed down on the mattress with his hands, leveraging himself up and back until he was leaning against the wall with his legs b
ent and forearms resting on his knees.
Our eyes met. I was the first to look away.
Catching sight of D’s face, it was obvious that he was close to losing it. His chin was trembling and I could see the huge effort it took for him to control it, trying not to cry. He turned his face away and looked at the far wall, blinking and sniffing. Boys in the hood didn’t cry, a hard fact they learned at an early age.
Everyone in the room became aware of the faint noises outside that were crawling up the four stories, slithering in through the poorly insulated window and assaulting our ears. Muted though they were, the slaughter they signified gave them the ability to amplify. By the sound of it, a couple more people hadn’t checked to see what was going on before they went outside.
We sat in silence, trying hard not to listen.
A sudden movement by Rolo startled me. Lifting his hips, he dug into his pocket and produced a beat up pack of Juicy Fruit. He plucked out a stick and unwrapped it; the crinkle of foil as loud as firecrackers. Everyone in the room watched as he folded the gum into his mouth. As he chewed he held the pack out in offering. There were no takers.
He shrugged before adding another piece to his mouth. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and chewed in a steady rhythm. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study him. The first thing I noticed was that his blue and orange Under Armour shirt clashed horribly with the minty awfulness of the wall, and the second was that he seemed older than his fifteen years as he sat in this room with us, waiting for the world to right itself.
His short black hair was shaved close on the sides and was stiff with gel on the top where it was longer and spikey. There were a few scars decorating his arms, knuckles, and face—noticeable because of their pale and sometimes purple contrast to his brown skin. There was one that looked like a comma beneath his lower lip, probably the end result of a hard punch to the mouth, causing a tooth to make an appearance on the wrong side of the skin.
Sharp cheekbones cradled eyes I knew to be so dark that you couldn’t tell where the pupil ended and iris began. But there was also a darkness to them that had nothing to do with their actual color. It was a place where ghosts and unspeakable things hid.
A while back I’d overheard Harvey talk about him and his brother, just vague bits and pieces of conversation, but it led me to believe his home life was really bad. That’s probably why Rolo’s brother Manny was such a brutal character—bouncing in and out of juvie in his younger years, and jail a couple of times recently—and why Rolo was on his way down that same road.
Last summer I’d come upon a fight at the basketball court down the block. Normally these frequent occurrences were ignored, but for some reason I slowed, watching. It was two against one—Rolo being the one. Even though they were older, he took them both down and didn’t stop until his brother finally pulled him off, slapping him on the back, all proud.
Some people really excelled at focusing their anger appropriately. In fact, with rare praise, Harvey had once said that the Valladolid brothers were as tough as they come.
Rolo popped his gum suddenly, causing D and Mary to jump. I realized I’d been staring at him, or rather through him, lost in thought. Focusing my eyes, I saw that he was looking at me, probably wondering why the hell I’d been staring at him for so long. I quickly made a production of readjusting how I sat, jostling my sister in the process. Mary looked up at me and I smiled, ruffling her crazy hair.
“You doing okay?” I asked her quietly. She nodded.
Leaning back against the wall, I straightened my legs out, offering one as a pillow. After Mary scooted down and rested her head, I went back to watching the mesmerizing sway of D’s ear bud.
The clock on the dresser glared at us, displaying the time of 5:08 p.m. in harsh, red numbers.
Still no sirens.
Chapter 4
We’d been locked inside the apartment for an eternity—or a little less than two days if you counted the hours. And thankfully during that time my immune system had managed to shake off any lingering remains of the flu. My body probably decided it would be best to deal with one crisis at a time and flushed the sickness from my system with all the adrenaline pumped into it earlier.
Harvey, in addition to my mom’s dead body, had been dealt with. It didn’t take long for the bedroom to feel awfully tight with the four of us taking up residence, so Rolo and I decided to move them yesterday morning so we could have the freedom of the rest of the apartment, such as it was. We hauled a glaring and twitching Harvey, as well as my mom’s body, into my mom’s bedroom and shut the door. By silent agreement we decided when I rested, Rolo would keep watch and vice versa. That way we could make sure the apartment stayed secure.
“We need to start thinking about getting out of here, we’re running out of food,” I said.
We were in the living room; D and Mary on the floor playing slap-hands, Rolo and I on the couch.
The fact that we were running out of food was a joke. What household runs out of food within forty-eight hours when hardly anyone was eating? Of course Harvey had taken up residence a few days prior and had inhaled most of our meager supply. Stretching food stamps out to last the entire month wasn’t easy, but I usually did a pretty good job—except when my brother came to stay and messed up all my careful planning.
D was astonished at the lack of food and snacks to be had. I had to hide my amusement every time he went into the kitchen to search the cupboards. He must’ve had it in his mind that food would magically appear if only he’d check again. D came from an apartment filled with big women that loved to cook and eat. Although D was short for his age, to the extent that he could easily be mistaken for a seven or eight-year-old, he followed the family trend of carrying around several extra pounds. Hard not to be overweight when surrounded by fried things, sweets and well-stocked cupboards.
“Get outta here? Um, yeah, no thanks,” D said. “I’ll stay right here, away from all the whacked out gangbangers, thank you very much.” Crossing his arms, he shook his head. His determined look dropped off a bit when he happened to glance at Rolo. Clearing his throat he continued. “Uh, you know, them outside, not you.”
Rolo regarded him with a cocked brow, saying nothing.
“D, we can’t stay here forever. Besides, we need to see if this is happening everywhere or just this part of town. I think our game plan should start with finding some weapons. Something more effective than this bat, and ah, pillowcase,” I paused, quirking my mouth at Rolo. Surprisingly, he gave a slight grin back. “And after that, I say we take our chances and head out. You got stuff you can get from your apartment, right?” I directed the question at Rolo.
“Yeah, I can get my bacon…uh, my gun. And I can get my brother’s gun too, I know where he keeps it,” he said.
“Okay, so what’s the plan?” I stood up and stretched. “Who’s going, you or me?”
“Me. Why would you go?”
I paused. “I don’t know, I’m older I guess.” The second the words came out I realized the absolute stupidity of what I said. Being older by a couple of months (and a girl to boot) wouldn’t make one bit of difference when compared to someone who dealt with gang shit and violence on a daily basis. My only excuse was that I’m so used to being the one to take care of things—it was hard to shut off that kind of thinking.
“Seriously? You gotta be fuckin’ kid—”
“Yeah, yeah. That was a stupid thing to say,” I said immediately, knowing he was offended by my slip-up. “You just…you have to be careful. Be quiet and get back quick, alright? We don’t know who’s all wandering around inside the building. Hey, maybe we should have a word for you to shout, you know, if you’re in trouble or something.”
Rolo blinked slowly at me. “How ‘bout Ahhh, help me,” he said, deadpan.
Well look at that, I thought, shaking my head at him. Serious Rolo made a joke.
“Funny. Just get back quick please. Do you want to take the bat?”
“No
, too clunky. You gotta good knife?”
“Let me check,” I said, getting off the couch. After digging through all the drawers, the only thing I was able to come up with was a dull steak knife, same as the one under my bed. No surprise there. My mom had never been a culinary genius. You didn’t need a sharp knife to make ramen noodles or jelly toast.
“This is as good as it gets, sorry,” I said, holding it out to him. He took it nonetheless and took a step before a thought occurred to me. “Wait! I bet Harvey has a blade on him.”
Rolo shrugged and lingered by the door while I went to check Harvey’s pockets, pretending they were empty shorts left on the floor with nobody in them. Hard to pretend when they kept moving.
I returned with a switchblade and a satisfied look. Passing the weapon to him, I went to the door and looked through the peep hole. “All clear.”
Rolo made quick work of fetching the guns. He said he saw and heard no one on the trip up and back.
Was that good or bad, I wondered?
We laid out the five guns he’d collected on the kitchen counter. I grabbed some towels at Rolo’s request and set them beside the guns.
“Hit pay dirt. There were three in Manny’s closet that I didn’t even know about. He musta lifted ‘em not too long ago. Anyway, these two here are 9 millimeter Glocks. Here,” he handed one over, grip first. Tentatively I took it, feeling the weight in my hand. “It’s loaded so don’t mess around.” He put the other one on the smaller hand towel and rolled it.
“Is the safety on? What do I do?” I held it like it was a foreign thing, which it was. Guns had never interested me.
No, that was incorrect.
They interested me very much, but more in terms of safety, and making sure Harvey never brought one into the apartment. Last year, a four-year-old boy in the complex accidentally shot and killed himself while playing with his brother’s gun, and prior to that a kid paralyzed his infant sister the same way. Based on those types of events, and my own dislike of the weapon, I had refused to take any chances—not when it came to Mary.
