What he was saying was monstrous. He’d just killed her husband. Outright murdered him.
“Looks like they’re having fun,” said the man, in an offhand way, gesturing out to his side of the road.
Caitlin craned her neck in order to be able to see.
On the side of the road were two stopped cars. It looked as if there’d been some kind of accident. A more serious accident than the fender bender she’d just been involved in.
There was shattered glass all over the pavement and the snow.
There were three people standing.
One was lying on the ground. Probably dead. Not moving. She just got a glimpse. It seemed to be a man. Blood all around his mouth, broken teeth everywhere. Shards of glass in his blood-matted hair.
The three people were fighting.
One had a knife, which was pushed up against another’s neck.
She didn’t see much more than that, except that blood was coming from somewhere.
Not much more than a glimpse, a little glimpse of the chaos that was breaking out everywhere. She didn’t understand how people could have gone so crazy, how they could have lost so much of their humanity.
The man driving her car chuckled, as if the sight were the most amusing thing in the world to him.
It seemed to her as if it were all over. She glanced at her kids in the back seat. She didn’t see how her family could survive. Not in this world.
What was she going to do?
Memories of her husband came flooding back to her.
But they were mostly memories of frustration.
Memories in which he hadn’t done the right thing, memories where he’d botched it all yet again, memories where he’d somehow managed to destroy everything with his mental and physical clumsiness.
After all, how many vacations had he managed to completely botch? How many TV shows had he ruined for the family by chattering through the whole thing?
She felt nothing but anger now. Nothing but anger at her now-dead husband.
Had he even died trying to protect the family? No. He hadn’t. He’d died a pointless death. What had he been trying to do? Pay his way out of something? Just like always.
She didn’t really have a choice, did she?
It was either this or go off on her own with her kids. And if she did that, surely they would all die. Just like her husband.
The man was looking at her. He raised one eyebrow. “What’re you thinking?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking down at her lap, her voice shy and quiet.
“Like I was saying, my wife left me. So what do you say?”
“What do I say?”
“You want to shack up or what?”
What choice did she have?
She nodded demurely as her kids cried in the backseat.
She’d never envisioned a life like this. Never one this nightmarish. And where were they headed? South, right back into the nightmare hellscape that her once peaceful world had become.
20
Barb
The fire had engulfed the main room. It was quickly approaching the kitchen where Barb and James were.
There was no chance to put out the flames. The fire had grown massive. It had happened so quickly.
The house she’d come back to year after year was going up in smoke.
“You can’t stand?” she screamed above the noise of the flames.
Thick smoke was pouring into the kitchen.
They were both coughing.
He shook his head, unable to answer due to a fit of coughing.
Barb’s mind was racing. She needed a plan. An answer.
But this was one of those situations where there was no good choice. There was no answer. There was no way to win.
Life wasn’t always simple. It wasn’t always the case that there was a right thing to do, an option that would save you. Often, as Barb had learned through her years and years abroad, there was no path to safety. She’d seen whole families and communities destroyed, completely wiped out when things had turned for the worse. Had there been anything they could have done to save themselves? No. Often, there’d been no hope. But she’d seen people fighting, always reaching for something, despite a situation and circumstances that seemed beyond futile.
Was this one of those times?
Were she and James as good as dead?
Did they only have minutes left to their lives?
Would they die of smoke inhalation? Would they die from the actual flames? Would their charred, blackened bones be discovered by anyone? When the snow fell on them, would anyone find them when spring came, or would most everyone else be dead as well?
The main door was off limits. The fire was too intense. They’d never make it.
The window was the only option.
And she was sure they’d be shot.
What was there to do?
Could she even get James out through the window?
She had James’s gun in hand. The ammo-less shotgun was among the flames in the other room. It was just as useless now as it had been before.
There was no more time to think.
Only time to act.
She may have looked somewhat conventional. People who met her probably thought she was normal.
But Barb was far from normal.
In her time abroad, reporting in the most dangerous areas imaginable, she’d learned a certain trick. And that trick involved unleashing something inside of her, some kind of raw force that just didn’t fit nicely into modern society. Most of the time, she kept it hidden from everyone, and even from herself. That was the way it was, the way it had to be.
But not now.
With her elbow, she began smashing the glass that remained in the window. Some of the shards cut through her clothes. But it didn’t matter.
The smoke was thicker now. She was already coughing.
James was on the floor. And even down there, where the air was clearer, he was coughing intensely. Somehow, the blood from his thigh had gotten everywhere. It was on the floor and smeared all over the rest of his body, as if he’d been wallowing in it like a pig.
The window didn’t go down to the floor. To get over it, she’d have to hoist her leg up.
Most of the glass was out. A few shards, time consuming to remove, hung down like icicles. They’d cut her and James, but there were worse fates.
With her one free hand, she grabbed James by the collar and, gritting her teeth and tensing her muscles, she dragged him across the floor, coughing all the while, until she got him to the window.
The noise from the fire was loud. A dull roar that never went away. Almost like the ocean.
The flames had reached the kitchen. She could feel the heat.
She couldn’t not smell or inhale the smoke.
It was thicker now, very dense and black.
“I’m going through first!” she shouted, getting her face down close to his, so that he could hear her above the roar.
Hopefully, whoever was undoubtedly waiting for them outside couldn’t hear her.
She knew there was someone out there.
She knew she had to go first.
Sending James out there, injured as he was, was sending him on a suicide mission. He’d be too slow. Far too slow.
It was up to her
Better get on with it.
Hoisting her leg up, ignoring the pain of the glass biting through her clothes and into her flesh, she threw herself through the window.
She moved as fast as she could.
It seemed for a moment that her shirt might have gotten caught on something, keeping her stuck in the window frame, totally exposed, totally a target.
But she struggled and she pulled.
Next thing she knew, she was face down in the snow.
Her hands were in the cold. The wind was blowing hard now. She felt it cut right through her clothes. It would only make the fire burn more intensely.
The fire was raging behind
her, in the house, the roar coming from behind her.
James was in there. On the floor. Incapacitated. Unable to escape.
If she died, he would too. He’d die in the fire. There was no question about it.
These facts were ringing in her head.
It was up to her.
Where was the enemy? How many were there?
She hoped just one. Not two. Not three or four, or more.
But she knew better than to hope.
How long did she have?
Maybe a full minute. Maybe a little more before James died.
She was moving, scrambling to her feet. But she didn’t stand up straight. She knew she had to be as small a target as she could. After all, there was nothing protecting her from getting shot.
There was just the wind and the blowing, falling snow. And that wasn’t much use as a protection from bullets.
She was crouching, moving forward, her left hand pushing occasionally down into the cold snow in order to keep herself upright.
She moved through the darkness. The fire in the house was starting to throw off some light into the night.
The moon might have been up. She didn’t know. Some light did filter down through the clouds, she supposed.
But it was all too much to take in, in the brief seconds in which she moved forward. All she knew was that she could see somehow, but not perfectly. There were shadows out there. Shadows that could hide the enemy.
Where were they? The enemy.
She knew they were there, waiting for her. She knew it was a trap. She knew she was walking right into it.
But what choice did she have?
If she went to pull James out the window now, surely they’d both be shot. He wasn’t exactly small. It’d be hard to pull him out and it would take some time, time in which they were both completely exposed.
No. She had to do it this way. It was the only option. Even though with each passing second, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing the right thing.
What if the fire consumed James?
She’d never be able to live with herself, if her own wrong decision caused his death.
It had happened to her before. During a military coup. She’d messed up. Big time. She’d made the wrong decision, costing her friend, a local, his life. She didn’t like to think about it. Even now, the feeling of the edge of the memory coming back up was enough to send shivers down her spine, and a dark feeling that always overtook her.
She couldn’t think about that now.
What was that? There, in the shadow?
Was it a man?
She stopped. She was mostly sideways now, her back against the outer wall of the house.
Could she be seen? Were the flames behind her, illuminating her, making an outline around her shadow, or was she more invisible than she realized?
If she fired, she’d give her position away.
Was the shadow moving?
She thought she saw an arm. Maybe a shoulder. Or maybe not.
Maybe it was nothing.
She’d risk it.
She took aim. She wasn’t a bad shot. She’d shot guns before. Plenty of times. In fact, she felt horribly foolish for not having one on hand herself. But that was what happened when you spent your life traveling internationally. Things fell to the wayside and you forgot about them. Essentials, things you couldn’t have lived without before, become mere afterthoughts.
Barb squeezed the trigger.
The gun kicked.
A noise. A scream or a grunt. Or something in between.
It was definitely a person.
A man in the shadows.
She’d hit him.
Before she could process, she felt something tearing at her arm.
At first, it didn’t hurt much.
Then she heard the gun. Moments later. And she realized she’d been shot. In her upper arm.
The pain was coming on now.
Pretty intense.
She fired again, squeezing the trigger, using all her dwindling powers of concentration to keep the gun steady as it kicked.
There was nothing stopping him from shooting as well.
It was a standoff where they were both injured, both facing each other. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.
She pulled the trigger first though.
Behind her, something exploded. Probably the gas tank. She heard it, and she felt some debris hitting her back. The explosion was loud. Much louder than the roar from the fire. Plenty loud enough to be heard above the ringing in her ears.
What about James?
She couldn’t go back now. She couldn’t even turn around to see the damage.
She’d hit him. The enemy was down.
Was he dead?
Well aware that there might be more men out there, she knew she had to conserve her ammunition. This wasn’t the movies. The gun wouldn’t shoot forever. She didn’t have a spare clip. She had nothing. Just what the gun already had.
She moved forward rapidly, ignoring the pain in her arm, which seemed to hang limply and straight as she moved.
The man was face down in the snow. His arms were outstretched, as if he were trying to make a snow angel.
There was blood on his back, soaking through his black jacket. She’d hit him at least once in the torso. Where was the other wound?
Conscious that time was quickly running out for James, but also conscious of the fact that she needed to know for sure that this man was dead without wasting excess ammo, she knelt down, gun in one hand, the muzzle facing the man on the ground.
There wasn’t a lot of time to waste. Not a lot of time to be as cautious as possible.
She reached out toward his neck, looking for a pulse. Meanwhile, her eyes cast around, looking for other shadows, for other hidden men, for other enemies.
The building burned in the background more intensely than ever.
Not only did the building contain James, as she was acutely aware, but it also contained all their food, their water. All the supplies to survive in this bitter cold, this monstrous winter that had, before the advent of modern civilization, claimed more lives than could be counted.
Her fingers were less than an inch from the man’s neck.
Feel the pulse. Know he’s dead. Then be done with it. Then rescue James.
It happened in a flash.
She wasn’t ready for it.
She would have been embarrassed about her mistake, had she had the time to have any feelings at all.
That was the way things happened. Stress happened. Stress took rationality away. Stress took clear hardheadedness away.
The man moved like lighting, his hand rising up, his body turning in the snow, his face partially turning toward her.
Something smashed into her head.
She saw black for a moment.
Then her vision returned.
But when it did, she was on her side in the snow.
Where was the gun? She pulled her finger, but there was no trigger. She squeezed her grip, but the gun was gone.
The man had scrambled up. There was blood on his face. Blood everywhere. He bared his teeth at her. There was blood in his mouth. Blood on his tongue and covering his teeth. He looked like an animal.
He had her gun.
His hand was pushing her down. She struggled, but he was too strong, and he weighed too much. She was pinned down, the snow high around her head. She could feel the icy coldness all around her. She felt like a dead fish that had been put on ice in a cooler.
He leaned down, blood dripping from his mouth onto her face.
“Where’s the cop?” he sneered.
His words were garbled. Maybe she’d gotten him in a lung. Blood in his throat.
She shook her head ever so slightly.
What could she do?
“I don’t like cops,” he sneered. “And most of all, I don’t like those who help cops. I don’t like those who aid and enable cops, who hide them from prying eyes. I don’t like
people like you, who stick their noses where they ain’t got any business being.”
He paused for a long time. His eyes went slightly up toward the sky, as if he were remembering something. His face pinched up as if it was a painful memory.
“I’m going to make you hurt,” he said. “I’m going to kill you. Just to be clear. And it’s going to hurt. A lot. That’s what you get…”
He tossed the gun off into the snow.
It was far out of her reach.
He fished into his pocket, producing a knife.
“You’ve hurt me bad,” he said. “Shot real good. Twice. Not bad for a friend of the cops… I got to hand it to you…. you have some talent…. and for that, you’re going to get it.”
There was nothing she could do.
She watched the knife coming close to her face.
Then, it went out of sight.
She felt the knife biting the flesh on her cheek.
She felt the blood running down. She tasted it in her mouth.
The man cackled as she struggled, squirming underneath him. But he kept her pinned down.
“I’m going to cut your face up like… it’s going to look like a Jackson Pollock painting when I’m done with you.”
She felt the bite of the blade again. More blood.
The pain was there. But it wasn’t that bad. The knowledge of what was happening to her was much worse than the pain. It was knowing that she was incapacitated, that he had complete power over her. That was the really torturous thought.
She tried to bring her arm up. She tried to headbutt him. She tried to bite him. But nothing worked. He was too strong. Too powerful. He had too much control over her.
He brought the knife down again.
He cackled, his mouth hanging open like a jackal’s.
She saw his face up close. She saw his eyes and the way they stared vacantly at her with such intensity, the way a shark has those dead eyes that just stare and stare and don’t seem to have any thought behind them.
But there was thought behind his actions. There was nothing but malice, anger, and violence.
He just wanted to hurt. He wanted to destroy. He wanted to tear others down. He didn’t even seem like he wanted to survive. Or if he did, it certainly wasn’t his main priority. It was beaten out by revenge, by an intense vindictiveness that wouldn’t ever go away.
Constant Danger (Book 2): Defeat The Anarchy Page 15
