by Ryan Schow
“Now that you know your mother is alive, do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” she said, resolute.
He took her hand and said, “What happened to him?”
Her eyes were vacant, her soul tangled in the past, swept up in a memory she wasn’t anxious to return to.
“Half the house collapsed,” she said, her eyes looking at him but not looking at him at all. She was lost in that memory. “He was crushed to death in the kitchen.”
“You saw it happen?”
“No,” she said, her gaze clearing. “I found him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Be sorry for my mother, not me. And certainly not him. Tad didn’t deserve to die, but the man broke up our family, took my mother from me. There’s no love lost there.”
“It takes two to tango,” he said.
“I know.”
Indigo laid back down, pulled the blankets over her shoulders, then turned on her side away from him. He slid under the covers as well. Scooted close to her. He didn’t touch her though, because she was naked under the covers and this wasn’t the time. He reached out though, placed a noncommittal hand on her waist.
She flinched, but didn’t pull away.
“I want to be mad at her for what she did to me and my father. She broke his heart, which broke my heart. Plus…she was my mom. I needed her and, and…she…”
Rex didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. Besides, he had the feeling there was more she needed to say.
“I thought she was dead,” she finally said. “But then she showed up, and something hard inside of me softened, and I found I wanted to care about her again. I closed off my feelings for her, but now that she’s back, I look at her and think about how much I missed her, how much I love her. But I can’t forgive her for what she did to my dad, especially now that…”
He felt her body jolt and knew the emotions had overcome her. He scooted even closer to her, but not against her. There was still that small bit of distance he sensed she needed. He didn’t want her to feel alone though, so he said, “If you need me to stay with you, I will.”
He heard her sniffling, saw her nod her head ever so slightly because she couldn’t say the words. Not just yet.
Then, in a voice choked with emotion, with a slightly stuffed nose, she said, “Thank you, Rex.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The hitman who now ran The Ophidian Horde was born with the name Emilio Gustavo Francisco De La Fuente, and he now had a target: Indigo. He sat by the light of a candle, sipping brandy and eating a piece of fruit.
“First off,” the hardened killer said as he took yet another bite of an apple full of wrinkled flesh and small bruises, “I need to know what Indigo is, and then I need to kill it.”
“You need to kill it or you need me to kill it?” Gunderson asked. In matters of violence and death, Gunderson learned that clarification was better than consequence when it came to the hitman.
“To answer that question, I will need more information,” De La Fuente said. He’d eaten around most of the apple and was now eating the seeds and the stem.
“Gather your men, find me this Indigo.”
“You want us to go as the National Guard, or as The Ophidian Horde?”
“You decide. Just find them.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
It was time to gather some men and get to the bottom of this Indigo nonsense. Gunderson left De La Fuente’s office, walked down the dark hospital hallway to what was once an employee lounge. Candles were going and the boys were either getting a little shut eye or playing cards and drinking.
He checked in on them, studying the group for a long moment before announcing his presence. He didn’t like this group of guys. In fact, he hated most of them. He said nothing. Mostly what he was trying to do was figure out how to be the way he was in this new world. Then again, he didn’t like who he was in the old world, or this new one. He might hate himself as much as he hated them.
Finally, he stepped inside the room, cleared his throat. Five of them were playing cards and two were asleep on the couch. A couple of the guys looked up.
The two sleeping didn’t even stir.
“I need three volunteers,” he said with more volume.
One of the two clowns on the couch woke up. Three hands shot up fast. It seemed no one wanted to be there, that playing cards and sleeping was what they did to kill the boredom.
Sitting up on the couch, yawning and rubbing his eyes, Antonio said, “What are we doing?” Antonio was an ugly man with an unkempt beard and beady eyes. “Is this about Kenny? Because if we’re going hunting for whoever did that, then count me in.”
“Frank, Jorge and Mario,” Gunderson said, “in the morning you three are coming with me. We’re going to find Indigo.”
“You talking about the Indigo?” one of them said.
“Yes.”
“What about the rest of us?” Antonio asked, standing up, disappointed. “Because if I have to sit around here doing nothing much longer I’m going to force feed myself a bullet.”
“What do you want to do?” Gunderson asked, the full weight of his attention on the man.
“Honestly?” he replied. Gunderson raised a brow, as if to say, yes? “I want to kill something, and then I want to get laid.”
The guys all nodded, then looked at him. Yeah, the boredom was a problem. There were eight of them—his best men—and himself. That made nine. Plus De La Fuente. This was Gunderson’s inner circle. His kill squad. His soldiers spent the day clearing buildings, stock piling food and supplies, rounding up weapons. But his kill squad was doing nothing more than killing time. And yes, the boredom was killing them. Himself included.
“The rest of you find ten women, or girls, or whatever, then bring them back. You each get one, but De La Fuente gets first pick. You hear that? He gets the first pick.”
The guys dropped their cards, looking renewed. Antonio woke his compadre, who was still asleep on the couch and said, “You want to have sex?”
“Not with you, scumbag,” he grumbled, rolling over.
Antonio slapped the back of his head and said, “No, dumbass. We’ve got the green light to go hunting.”
He rolled back over, bleary-eyed and blinking. “For real?”
“Yeah man, for real.”
The man they called Scabs sat up, still a bit wobbly. Gunderson and his three volunteers, however, were already gearing up to leave.
“Ten women only,” Gunderson called out. “None of them under fifteen years old.”
Someone groaned.
“And De La Fuente gets first pick, if that’s what he wants.”
Scabs finger combed his hair in place and was scratching now a larger patch of eczema. He yawned and said, “De La Fuente likes boys.”
Now they all stopped.
“Are you shitting me?” someone asked.
“Nope.”
Gunderson appeared rattled, but only for a second. It didn’t matter. “Get him a boy then, and nine girls for us.”
When Gunderson had gone to hijack one of the National Guard’s Humvee’s, he’d sent a team of men to Balboa Hollow to burn down Frank McCoppin Elementary. He offered to do it himself, but De La Fuente instructed him otherwise. Now dressed in their National Guard garb, Gunderson and his three soldiers piled into the stolen vehicle heading back to Balboa Hollow.
The idea that they were hunting something renewed his purpose, almost righted his mind. But something in him changed. In the past Gunderson slaved over the job, nearly killing himself for both the money and the status—anything to take care of his children. Anything just to prove their mother, Nilda, wasn’t right about him. She told Gunderson he was too brash, too cold and too inhuman to be a good father. Maybe she was right.
In fact, he knew she was right.
But now his daughter, Adeline, was dead. Shot through the head and heart along with Nilda. Adaline was just twelve, not yet a woman. Nilda was a hard
forty and pissed off at the world for it. He missed Adeline, but not Nilda. And his son, Lisandro? The boy was eighteen. Officially a man in the state’s eyes. A young man who wanted nothing to do with his father. Gunderson wasn’t sure where Lisandro was, if he was even alive or not, but ever since the fall of the city, he’d been trying to make himself not care. Men like Gunderson didn’t care. Men like him with dead daughters and estranged boys like Lisandro simply moved on.
Now he had a mission: find Indigo.
As they drove the big Humvee down the littered, destroyed streets, he marveled at the destruction. The breeze still carried with it the tinge of smoke, a smell he’d come to appreciate. As they made their way to the Panhandle, he realized that life was no longer going to be about things, or even people—it was going to be about war and control. Either you had control, or you didn’t. Right now the fight for control of the city was ramping up, and organizations like Indigo (or people, or whatever the hell Indigo was), could not get one over on the Horde.
De La Fuente wouldn’t allow it. Gunderson couldn’t care less, but whatever.
So they made their way down Fulton with the Golden Gate park on the left and the edge of Balboa Hollow on the right. They swung a right on 6th Avenue, went two blocks up to the school and parked the Humvee on the side of the road.
The school sat in smoldering ruin.
All four of them piled out in their National Guard fatigues with their AR’s and their handguns and their knives ready for combat.
“Frank, you head down to 8th Avenue and get both sides of the street from Cabrillo to Balboa,” Gunderson said. “Jorge you take 9th and do the same. I’ll take 5th and Mario will take 4th. Do what you need to do to get answers, and grab what you can if you see suitable food, weapons or supplies. We’ll meet back here in roughly two hours.”
The four of them fanned out, Frank and Jorge heading away from Gunderson and Mario.
“Is this just some wild goose chase or what?” Mario asked. He was close with Gunderson, a friend before all this.
“It’s something to do,” Gunderson said. He turned on 5th Avenue and said, “I’ll see you in a few.”
“Yep.”
Gunderson went from residence to residence on 5th Avenue, pounding on front doors and traveling half the block before a white haired man in two sweaters with a five day beard answered his knock. The air wafting from the house reeked of disinfectant sprayed on top of mold.
“You ‘ere to help?” he grumbled, his jaw creaky and untied, his teeth not bad but not good either. The slight, pungent odor of death was clearly closing in on the old man. His watery eyes were nothing if not suspicious.
“Depends,” Gunderson answered. “Do you know a person or an organization named Indigo?”
The old codger’s mind went halfway around the block then skidded to a stop so fast his eyes cleared in an instant. “No, can’t say I do.”
He grabbed the door, started to close it. Gunderson stuck a foot in its path, stopped it and manufactured a smile.
“Were you at the school the other day?” he asked. “Frank McCoppin Elementary?”
“Why would I be in school?”
Gunderson thought of the massacre there, of what the school had since become: an ash heap that swallowed most of the residents of Balboa Hollow.
“It was a community thing,” Gunderson replied.
The enforcer could see the old man’s eyes traveling the landscape of his face, stopping twice at the small tattoo on his cheek, the tattoos on his neckline creeping out from under his collar, the dark blue eyes and black gentleman’s cut of a hairstyle that reminded so many people of Adolf Hitler.
Gunderson knew his stolen National Guard fatigues were a stark contrast to his look, but he wasn’t trying to fool anyone for long. The minute someone opened their door for him, he got what he wanted. What he did after that was purely the result of his desires and/or intentions.
“Are you people going to get the water and power back on? Because it’s cold as hell and I ain’t gonna last much longer like this.”
Gunderson envisioned all the ways he could end the old man’s life, but he was too fragile to harm, and he’d probably only last another week or so on his own. Did he really need to waste a bullet? Still, Gunderson’s heavily tattooed hand went to his sidearm and he reasoned that he probably wouldn’t lose sleep over one spent round. After all, the man was struggling, and he might appreciate being liberated from the complications and difficulties of this life.
“We’re working on that right now,” Gunderson replied masking his impatience.
“Can you work on it faster?” he asked. “Because I’m running out of food, too. Do you have something to eat? Anything?”
“There’s non-perishable food in some of these other homes, many of which are vacated. And I’m sure you can find some things to burn while you wait if what you need is heat.”
The codger drew a grim look, then a horrified look. He couldn’t believe what Gunderson was suggesting.
“Are you saying I should…steal from these people? From my neighbors?”
Gunderson frowned, his irritation finally beginning to show. “Your neighbors are dead. You’d be stealing from ghosts, which is the same as not stealing at all. But I’m sure you haven’t made it this far leaning on your virtues.”
“None of us have,” he said, almost like he was haunted by what he’d done to survive.
“There you go.”
“I thought you were here to help,” the old man grumbled, eyeballing Gunderson’s blood-stained fatigues. “You’re shot?”
“Yes,” he lied, “but I’m better now.”
“What are you doing about my electricity?” he barked.
Gunderson drew his sidearm, pulled back the slide, aimed the weapon at the old man’s forehead and said, “I can’t offer you much, certainly not heat or food, but I can spare you the indignity of what’s to come. All you need to do is say yes.”
The man froze, wet eyes wide and taken aback.
“You want me…”
“To say yes or no. This is the only way I can help. Say yes and your struggle is over, say no and I’ll leave right now.”
Gunderson’s eyes flicked down at the man’s dark gray trousers, which darkened into a stain in the crotch, then began to spread south until a small pool of urine dampened the hardwood floor.
“No,” he said on a shaky breath.
Gunderson holstered his weapon and said, “The power isn’t coming back on, your neighbors are dead and this city is bound to get worse long before it gets better, so I suggest you steal what you can as soon as you can and find a suitable weapon to defend yourself with.”
“Who’s coming to kill me?” he asked, rattled and ashamed of having wet himself.
“People like me.”
With that Gunderson turned and bounded down the ten or eleven steps back to the sidewalk. 5th Avenue was an elegant neighborhood by comparison to the rest of the city, with clean looking homes, wide sidewalks and a handful of trees yet unspoiled by the magnitudes of war. If he could live someplace, he’d live here.
Maybe he could live here.
Just sneak away from that crappy hospital in the middle of the night, disappear into the city, never think back to the days of lawlessness, and the struggle to climb out of the hell he’d since immersed himself in to.
Gunderson was MS-13. Had been since he was seven. Those who knew him said he was a born killer, a different man to be feared, and revered. Gunderson was quiet though. Smart. He’d already stood out enough.
With an Austrian father and a Hispanic mother, his origins were mixed, his path as a boy uncertain. He was selected for service as a child, swallowed into this world, allowed to see raw power. Allowed to harness that power himself. Until now, the idea of wielding such power carried with it a certain charm. A measure of status.
Things had changed, though…clearly.
For Gunderson, MS-13 was a way to fit in, but the glamor had since worn of
f and he was tired. The things he’d done to terrorize the masses was worse than he ever let on, a thorn in the soft side of his broken, broken brain. This was why he drifted from his family. The only reason he didn’t delve into the deep end of what could be a murderous career in the gang was because of his daughter. Now she was gone.
They were all gone. But so was his gang. So was the life.
As Gunderson went from door to door, he considered the choices he made. How after this blessing of fire, he was no longer trapped in the life. Then again, he wasn’t dreaming of a better life either. Why was that? And what did that mean? His former band of brothers, ruthless and cold hearted as they were, they only let him live because they thought he was dead. When the power went out, when he’d seen members of his faction fall to gunfire and death, he took the opportunity to disappear. Now that he was part of The Ophidian Horde—should his face ever be seen, should he ever be recognized and reported—MS-13 would channel their full resources into mounting his head on a pike.
Deserters and snitches, the outcome was always the same.
Walking this street, his slate wiped clean (for now), Gunderson realized he could go anywhere, be anyone. He could leave this life behind. Did he have to be this? What he was right now? The answer was simple and clear: no.
He knocked on the door at the end of the street, a tan and cream colored home squeezed wall to wall between two other houses under a crisscross canopy of telephone wires.
He waited a moment, then the door inched open and a woman with a pistol stood before him. Her eyes were red from crying. She looked damn near skeletal.
“Ma’am?” he said.
Eyeing the uniform, she asked, “Are you here to help me or hurt me?”
“Neither,” he answered honestly.
“Then why are you here?” she asked. “And why is there blood on your uniform?”
“It’s not my blood,” he said.
“Then whose is it? Because there’s a hole in your jacket, in the center of that blood patch. And if it isn’t yours, then someone died in that uniform and it wasn’t you.”
