by Ryan Schow
“Did Tom have a thermometer?”
The guy shrugged his shoulders and said, “You can check the bathroom.”
“Can you check it for me?” Jagger said, brushing wisps of hair off the girl’s face.
Her pale skin was slicked with moisture, but her lips were as dry and as cracked as ever. He feared she was dehydrated, but he didn’t want to wake her either because she needed her sleep. He laid a gentle hand on her forehead. God, she was burning up. Her eyes slid open a little, the corners dry with a few knobbles of sleep crust.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “How are you feeling.”
She just looked at him with those big blue eyes. They were hurting eyes. Eyes pumped full of desperation. Eyes rattled with discomfort. She looked around, not familiar with her surroundings. When the old man appeared behind him with a temperature gauge, those same eyes flashed with fear.
Jagger said, “It’s okay, he’s a friend of the man who lived her before.”
He handed Jagger the thermometer and said, “I washed it off in the toilet tank, so it should be mostly clean.”
Jagger inspected it, wiped it dry with the bottom sheet, the said, “Open up, I need to take your temperature.”
She put it in her mouth, then Jagger turned to the old man and said, “Can you find a washcloth and dip it in the water, make me a cold compress? She’s burning up.”
“Sure,” he said. “What’s her name?”
“Just go, please.”
He gave a sort of flustered, jumbled nod, then he left the room and came back about the time Jagger was pulling the thermometer out of the girl’s mouth.
“One oh five point one,” he said, reading the results aloud.
The man handed Jagger the washcloth, noticing he didn’t have his gun with him. He thanked the geezer and laid the washcloth on her head and asked if it was okay. Her eyes just about shut on their own, but not before she could answer him with a diminutive nod. Her color was off, her little teeth still gritting together and he couldn’t stop seeing that bruise.
For whatever reason, it still pissed him off.
“I’m going to talk to this nice man, then I’ll be back in to check on you, okay?”
She nodded.
He stood, looked at the man, who suddenly remembered that he did not have his gun and this was a stranger in his friend’s home. Jagger extended a hand and said, “Jagger Justice, First Lieutenant, US Marines.”
The man warmed instantly, then smiled and took his hand.
“Brighton Copley, US Army, retired. Call me Bright though, everyone does.”
“Sounds good, Bright.”
“So…Tom was…he was gone?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he die on the rocker?” Bright asked. Jagger nodded. “I told him he would. He never left that chair but to eat and crap.”
“How did you guys know each other?”
“Ran into him about twelve years back. He wasn’t looking and pulled out right in front of me. We had a wreck, then a fist fight, then we realized we both served and from there, well…we just sort of got along.”
“You live nearby?” Jagger asked.
“Two doors down. Saw the fire yesterday, thought he was burning something, but that didn’t sit right with me last night, so I though I’d stop by.”
“I’m glad you did,” Jagger said, half lying, half wanting to put Bright at ease.
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “Say, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“What brought you here?”
“I pulled this girl out of an…abusive, sadistic situation, and I’m taking her with me back to San Francisco. Needed a place to hold over until she gets better.”
“Well you can stay here as long as you want.”
“Thanks.”
“Another question?” he said.
“Shoot.”
“Are you…trouble?”
“No,” he said.
“You look like you could be.”
“I can. But not unless you deserve it and you don’t deserve it, Bright.”
He nodded his head, smoothed his unruly white hair, then said, “I got some Vitamin D3 and some Zinc chewables, if you’re interested.”
“I am.”
“Got a bit of honey also, and some lemons.”
“Whatever you think will help.”
It turned out Bright was a good and judicious man, all the way up until his death twenty-two days later. Before that fateful day however, without the help of antibiotics, the girl carried on fitfully and in bad shape. She lost a lot of weight and couldn’t seem to keep her temperature down. It was touch-and-go for the better part of a week without antibiotics and both Jagger and Bright were scavenging anywhere and everywhere they could hoping to find something.
When they started going through mailboxes, they found a package with a couple of bottles of colloidal silver. The bottles read Silver Bullet in a blue and white label. Jagger damn near sagged with relief. They all but dumped the first bottle down her throat, which helped pull her out of her delirium, and they kept her body cool with cold compresses and open windows during the day. They took her through the second bottle of colloidal silver and this seemed to do the trick. As the days progressed, she was able to eat a little more, and take in more water at a time.
Meanwhile, Jagger and Bright were going house to house scavenging for the future and for the remainder of Jagger’s trip back home. Two days ago, they used a crowbar to pry open the back door of a vacant home. Bright went in first.
He walked straight into a shotgun blast to the chest.
Jagger tore his pistol loose, dropped and rolled sideways as a second blast went off. He fired on the attacker, hitting him twice before realizing the shooter was a pre-teen boy.
The boy took both shots hard, dropped the rifle, then fell sideways into the wall where he collapsed in a sobbing, dying heap. Jagger drew a sharp breath. The boy expired moments later, his last breath a blood bubble that expanded, then contracted into a small run of saliva.
Standing there, it all hit him at once. Bright was dead, killed by a child, a child he just killed. He cleared the house, returned to the boy.
Running his hands through his hair, groaning at the mess, he paced around the room like a caged animal, and then he stopped and looked down at his friend. At Bright. Inside, something unlocked and the pain flooded in. He stood there, staring at Bright, then at the kid. He was a little blonde haired boy who looked as hungry as everyone else in this damned apocalypse. He was an innocent. Then again, so was Bright.
Jagger felt the outburst coming seconds before he began throwing things around and kicking holes in the walls. The cursing, growling, violent grunting became so bad he snatched up the kid’s shotgun and starting shooting up the place. He pumped load after load into everything he saw. When the chamber fired empty, he hurled the shotgun through the kitchen window and screamed at the top of his lungs. He screamed until his throat was hoarse. It wasn’t because he’d just killed a child, or that he saw his friend die, or even that he missed Camila like crazy and longed to see his family—it was everything!
Now he had this girl. This little mute thing that nearly died. She had no friends or family, but did he either? What if Lenna and the boys were dead? Exhausted, his chest heaving up and down, his eyes glistening from the total meltdown, Jagger sunk to the floor, panting and sad, desperate and feeling all alone in this world, and he wondered how the hell life had come to this.
The next day, he told the girl it was time to go. She said nothing. She just got up, got dressed, and stood beside him, ready.
Chapter Seventy-Seven
Indigo grabbed her bow and arrows, but she was still sluggish from being asleep. Far from fully alert. Rex wanted to tell her to grab a gun, but he didn’t have the time.
Margot just stood there, frazzled, terrified.
Rex grabbed the shotgun, went to the kitchen window, shot it out. He pumped another round outside just as In
digo was backing him up. The man with the flaming Molotov Cocktail fell down dead, his body suddenly in flames.
“Rex?” Margot asked.
“Get down!” he screamed. “Or hide someplace!”
The bitter sounds of gunfire cannoned through the house. Indigo ran to the front, but a glass window exploded, which had her diving down. She scrambled back to the stairway, took cover there.
“Get in the closet, Mom!” she screamed as gunfire ripped apart the front door.
The gunfire stopped, but half the front of the house was burning. Then a booming kick shook the front door. She seated an arrow, positioned herself just right.
“Front door, Indigo!” Rex screamed.
“You cover your end, I got mine!” she shouted back. The second kick flung the door open, revealing the bright light of fire and the shooter. She loosed the arrow, caught the shooter in the neck. He staggered backwards, toppled down the concrete stairs in a heap. The thug’s replacement appeared seconds later, but she was ready for him. She let the arrow go. It found its mark and he went down, same as the last guy.
“Too many of them!” Rex shouted.
“Out front or out back?” Indigo called back. By now, the fire was sneaking into the house through the open front door and all the shot out windows.
“Front!” he said. “Get back here!”
Indigo turned and sprinted for the back kitchen, ripping open the closet door on the way. Her mother yelped.
“Let’s go!” she said.
Her mother made for the back of the house as gunfire blasted apart the front of the house. Suddenly the gunfire stopped. Were they done?
Peeking into the front hallway where dawn was breaking, Indigo saw movement on the other side of the fire. Seating an arrow, lining up the shot, she tracked the movement of a shadow, waited for it to stop, then sunk an arrow in her target.
“Ooof.”
She aimed lower, sent another arrow past the nearly disintegrated front door. The second arrow found its mark as well.
More shouting and gunfire erupted. Inside, the house sprung to life, everything jumping and dancing as it was shot to absolute ruin.
Indigo hit Rex with a look, but he had one eye out the back window and was measuring the storm.
“What the hell are you waiting for?” Indigo growled.
“Something just hit the side of the house and two guys are now coming in hot,” he replied, lining up the shot. Just then, a gas can with the spout wrapped in burning cloth slid through the front door and into the front room.
“Bomb!” Rex cried out. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he ran for the back door, seeing the orange flames even as he pulled it open.
Shotgun at the ready, Rex sprinted through the fiery back door, firing on the other two guys now in the backyard. Three big shots took the two men down, but at that point, Rex was on fire, along with Indigo’s mother.
“Roll!” Indigo screamed by the time she realized she was on fire, too.
While Rex and her mother were dropping on the ground and rolling out their fire, Indigo was shrugging off the bow and arrows and doing the same. Rex jumped on top of her, began patting her down rapidly, roughly, thoroughly.
“Follow me!” he said when Indigo’s fire was sufficiently stamped out. She headed for the garage, opened the door to the Olds, then cranked the motor.
“You want me to drive?” Rex said, realizing his mistake the minute he made it. She could drive just fine and they were wasting time.
“No, get in!” Indigo shouted. Rex dropped into the front seat while Margot situated herself in the backseat. “Buckle up.”
Indigo kicked the motor over. It sprung to life in a mighty roar. She jostled it into reverse, revved the engine, then dumped the clutch and rocketed backwards through the wooden garage door, cranking the wheel hard and to the right.
The muscle car smashed through the door and slid around, bucking and fighting her all the way. They came to a skittering stop in a cloud of dust. When the debris cleared, Rex and Indigo saw five startled men with guns and a sixth with a plastic red gas can.
“Do it,” he said, knowing what she was thinking.
Indigo slapped the tranny into first and stomped on the gas just as Rex slid out the window with his Sig and opened fire. While he was dropping as many as he could, Indigo was aiming for the center of the pack. Bullets peppered the windshield, cracking and spider-webbing it; Indigo ducked low to the left, maintained the trajectory.
At the last minute, she realized the last shooter was going to dive to his right hoping to clear the Olds, so she swerved in that direction, clipping him in the hip as he tried to clear them. The brutal thump on the front of the car told her she probably shattered his pelvis.
Rex pulled himself back inside, spun and said, “Margot?”
“I’m okay,” she said, sitting up.
They roared up the road, Indigo so violently incensed, one look in her eyes told him all she saw was red.
When they burst out of Dirt Alley, Indigo swung the wheel hard to the right and they fishtailed out into the street.
“Get ready,” Indigo warned. Rex was already reloading. “Mom, stay down.”
They swung another hard right, giving her a full view of the conflagration that was her home. She also saw a dozen more men in the street turning their guns on her.
Rex ducked out the window and started shooting, but pulled himself back inside after hitting only three because they were taking heavy fire. Indigo was looking not at the men now scurrying for cover, but at a crappy green Datsun and that son of a bitch scrambling inside. It was the same guy who knocked on her front door. The same clown who threatened her.
Emilio Gustavo Francisco De La Fuente.
The remaining men fired on them as they blazed by, hot on the trail of the green Datsun. Indigo hit the next street where the Datsun turned and took chase, really getting after it.
“Indigo?” her mother said.
By then Rex was gripping the door and bracing for impact. They hammered the Datsun with such savagery, the Olds went airborne and turned sideways with Indigo on the high side and Rex on the low side. The Datsun spun, caught an edge and began to barrel roll behind them.
The Olds hit on Rex’s side and slid hard into a sidewalk planter where it came to a stop under a decorative tree that had seen better days.
Hanging in her seat belt, Indigo said, “Mom?”
Nothing.
She looked at Rex, who had a pretty decent cut on his head, but was otherwise okay. He was on the door in a heap having never buckled his seatbelt. He kicked the windshield until it dropped out then climbed free; Indigo was concerned about the Datsun. More specifically, about De La Fuente and what he might do.
Behind her, her mother was buckled in her belt and hanging against it. She was on the high side of the car and unconscious.
Indigo took a deep breath, let it out, then unbuckled the seatbelt and dropped to the ground in all the broken glass. Her breath was suddenly gone, the wind knocked out of her. It took a moment for her chest to loosen enough for her to breathe, but when she did, she crawled through the glass, out the hole where the windshield used to be and then managed to drag herself to her feet.
She was bruised, but not broken; cut but not defeated. Bleeding, glass stuck in her right arm and shoulder, she zeroed in on the Datsun.
The small sedan was turned upside down and spun one hundred eighty degrees. The underside of the car, now facing skyward, was smoking. All the glass was exploded out of the car and De La Fuente was in his seatbelt, hanging upside down. His face was bloody, his eyes syrupy but cognizant. A smile formed, but upside down, it was just a frown in a river of red.
Rex already had his gun out. She looked at him; he looked at her.
“You okay?” he asked. She nodded, eyes back on the scumbag in the Datsun. In the undercarriage, a small flame burst into existence.
She started toward him, picking up speed the closer she got. By the time she reach
ed him, she wound up and soccer-ball kicked him in the head.
“That’s for destroying my house you bastard!”
He fired off a slew of curses she didn’t understand. It didn’t matter. Kneeling down so they were nearly eye-to-eye, she said nothing, she just grinned a maniacal grin at him and refused to blink, or even to look away.
“Funny how I’m here,” she snarled, “and you’re there. You’re The Ophidian Horde, aren’t you?”
“I am not one, there are many.”
“You’re the head of the snake,” she said.
“Think of this city as Medusa, and me as just the head of one snake in a sea of a dozen snakes. You kill me, there will be seven more to take my place.”
“Seven of you didn’t burn down my house, or have my friend killed. Just you. So I don’t care about the seven of you, or even the seven hundred of you. Just you.”
Rex stepped forward, made his gun available to her. She took it, never removing her eyes from him.
He looked at it and said, “You got the balls to put one through my head, puta, you go right ahead.”
With a sweet grin, an almost playful grin—sort of like the Cheshire cat—she said, “Oh, I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to sit and watch you burn.”
And she would.
His eyes now showed concern. He was thinking of a bullet as the easy way out, but she refused him such a simple solution. Instead, she simply watched the flames as they spread over the undercarriage. She and Rex moved back, their eyes dancing from de La Fuente to the flames and back again.
“You’re one twisted bitch,” he snarled.
“Indeed I am.”
When Rex turned around, he saw Margot crawling out of the Olds. Indigo saw her, too. Made that face. For a second there, she felt ashamed for having been so consumed with rage she’d neglected her own mother. Margot was rolling some pain out of her neck and shoulder, but she seemed to be alright, all things considered.
The three of them stood at a safe distance, watching De La Fuente squirm to get free of the seatbelt that was broken enough to be stuck in place. He was trapped and frantic. Defeated, grinding his teeth and losing his mind, he jerked and fought the seatbelt, tugging mightily on it, pounding a fist on the buckle but to no avail. Finally he gave up. Just sat there, stewing, accepting his fate.
