“Damn it, kid,” he said. “You hit me. What were you thinking?”
“Thinking? We’re thinking that you’re trespassing, and you’re about to get shot. That’s what we’re thinking,” the oldest said.
Rick stood up and pushed through the pain that now surged throughout his body. “I’m gonna kick your little asses if you don’t stop pointing those guns at me. Where are your parents?”
“Don’t tell him shit, Brian,” the oldest one said.
“Now you listen, you little—”
Rick’s ears were now ringing, as the smallest kid fired at him, missing his head by just a few inches.
“Damn, you actually shot at me!”
“No shit. You’re a genius,” the smallest one said, giving Rick his best attempt at a tough-guy look.
“Hey, you need to watch your mouth, son. Here’s the deal. I don’t care where your parents are or if they’re alive or dead. Hey, you…” Rick said, pointing his finger at the smallest one. “You’re gonna die first. Then I think I’ll kill your little dog Toto too.”
“Who the hell is Toto?” the oldest one said, looking confused.
At that point Rick realized the situation was only going to go one way—he wasn’t going to talk his way out. The youngest of the three had walked over to Rick and without expression pointed his pistol at Rick’s head.
That was all it took for Rick to know he had no choice.
As fast as he could, he reached out and grabbed the barrel of the pistol that was pointed at his head, and with as much force as he could muster, he twisted and pulled the gun away, almost pulling the smallest kid off his feet.
With his right arm, Rick reared back his closed fist and punched the kid, who probably weighed no more than 130 pounds, straight in the face. Instantly his face exploded with blood. Rick hit him so hard that he landed nearly three feet away on his back.
With catlike reflexes Rick drew his own revolver, which had an inscription on the handgrip that read, WHO’S THE KING, BABY?
He shot the oldest of the three kids straight in the chest, and before the last one standing could react, he was lying on his back as well after Rick shot him twice.
Shaking his head in disgust, Rick stumbled over to the boy he had punched in the face. He reached down, pulled him off the ground, and held him by the throat. “Look at me, you little shit. Next time a grown-up tells you to do something, you’re gonna do it, right?”
Barely conscious and with a broken nose and fractured jaw, the kid muttered, “Yes, sir.”
Rick took a few moments to sit on the porch steps before he picked up all three handguns. After tossing them into his bag, he headed into the trailer for the night. He was tired, and kids or no kids, he was going to sleep.
THIRTEEN
On the corner of Elm and Wood Park Avenue, Rick sat on a curb next to a bent metal post that no longer held its aluminum stop sign and was half buried in dirt and mud. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, attempting regain his strength, which was fading quickly. The dilapidated homes in what once had been a prominent, desirable neighborhood now sat silently dying, as paint peeled from the walls and the ceilings bowed and buckled from the waterlogged wood.
It had taken only a few weeks from the first signs of a government meltdown for looters to strip the entire neighborhood clean of its granite countertops and copper pipes. As in other neighborhoods, everything of value was gone, leaving only broken windows, which exposed the interiors of the homes to wind and rain.
Within a few years, the foundations cracked, making way for trees, weeds, and vegetation to grow inside the structures. Roofs collapsed, and walls eventually gave way. Only a decade after the beginning of the global collapse, almost every building appeared as though they’d been that way for hundreds of years. The entire neighborhood was a mere shadow of what it had been. Only gloom and depression remained when Rick opened his eyes.
Four blocks from the corner where Rick was sitting, Chris had slept, woken, and drunk, only to repeat the cycle until she had no more liquor to consume. Her mind was clouded, thus ensuring she didn’t have to cope with reality. She was, indeed, in another place—just as she had intended to be.
Sick to her stomach from booze and the lack of food, she was unable to maintain her balance. She had just woken from sleeping for what felt like days. With no release for her pain and unwilling to take her own life, Chris lay on the floor, curled up in a ball, not even bothering to try to make it to the bed. With her clothes stained with her own blood and vomit, she was at the lowest point in her life.
Outside, the clouds began to part, and after days of heavy rain, the sun slowly broke free. Instantly the warm yellow and gold rays illuminated the bedroom, engulfing Chris in what she thought of as a second chance in life. For the first time in a very long time, she actually felt as if someone were with her. Perhaps she wasn’t alone, and maybe today her loneliness would float away for good.
She looked up and smiled. She was weeping, but this time the tears weren’t from hunger, drunkenness, or depression—they were tears of joy. Like a child being born, Chris felt life begin to renew her spirit. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she took a deep breath and stood up, using the wall for balance.
“You stayed?” a familiar voice said.
At once she knew why she felt the way she did. It was because she wasn’t alone. Rick, her friend and companion, had come back to her, and he was standing in the doorway. He stood in his bloodstained clothes, barely able to hold himself up without the aid of his shotgun.
Chris didn’t move or speak. She stood for a time before walking over to Rick and stopping directly in front of him. Then she reared back and slapped him in the face as hard as she could. Rick’s cheek was red with her handprint, but he didn’t move. Chris fell into his arms, and they held each other tightly.
“Don’t ever leave me again,” she whimpered.
Without words they walked to the bed, where Chris helped Rick take off his shirt. After kissing him for a few moments, she stopped upon seeing his wounds. She stepped back and looked at him.
“It’s not as bad as it—” Rick started.
Abruptly Chris moved toward him and kissed him once more before he could finish speaking. Thinking of his wounds, she slowly lowered her body over his on the bed where he lay. Feeling his warm skin on her face, she kissed his chest, which made her want him more. Rick lay on the bed, his hands full of her hair. He felt how careful she was being. He ran his right hand down Chris’s lower back, feeling the weight she had lost since the day he had met her. He then ran his hand over each vertebra with intention.
Rick used the little strength he had left to pull Chris on top of him in order to look her in the eyes as she straddled his body. He held her gaze as she quivered under the touch of his fingers running up her sides, stopping only to gently caress her breasts. His hands slowly moved down to her open jeans as she looked into his eyes with trust. She tried to control her heavy breathing as her heart raced in her chest. With no more hesitation, she pulled her shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor to reveal her naked upper body. Then, for a moment, she held her breasts for him to see. Rick slid the jeans off her. As they felt each other’s soft, warm bodies moving in unison to meet each other, they made love.
FOURTEEN
Before setting off to travel the highway, Chris had aided Rick until he fully healed. While Rick rested, Chris searched home after home, pushing far past the upper-class neighborhood they were in and into surrounding towns. She had looked not only for supplies but also for a certain individual.
She knew that when Brick Creek was attacked, Amber undoubtedly had taken all the food and supplies from the store with her, if she indeed had survived. If Amber were still alive, would she have anything left after more than a year? First, Chris thought, Amber was too much of a bitch to die, and second, she’d never share anything with others.
Chris told Rick she was going to find Amber and bring back supplies. Although he didn�
�t initially agree that she should go alone, he soon gave in to her argument knowing that he wasn’t strong enough to do it himself and that they needed food.
Chris then described Amber in detail to him, explaining that she was their only option. She did leave out a few of her own personal feelings about Amber, not wanting Rick to think she was going because of a vendetta, which of course was exactly the case.
Chris wanted Amber dead, and she wanted to be the one who did it. It wasn’t because of their run-in at the gas station or the fact that Amber was rude to her that last day. It was because of the years of abuse Amber had doled out on her.
Nearly ten years before Chris had met Rick, Amber had been her babysitter. On many occasions, she had locked Chris in her bedroom, not allowing her to leave for any reason, even to go to restroom. After a few times, Chris decided to sneak out of the house through the bedroom window. That resulted in her being strapped to the bed, bound at her hands and feet.
When her foster father came home and saw this, all he had to say was that Chris must have been out of control and that Amber only did what she had to. As time went on, the situation became worse, and each incident was always worse than the last.
An abusive alcoholic, her foster father often left for days at a time. Whatever the arrangement was—money or something else—Amber always moved in while he was away. Then she started bringing her boyfriends to the house. One day Amber left the house to go the store, and one of her asshole boyfriends made a pass at Chris. When she said no, he hit her over the head with a beer bottle, knocking her unconscious and nearly killing her, something that no 14 year old should ever experience.
Chris woke up in the hospital, beaten and raped. She lay in that cold hospital room for four days with a broken rib, bruises, and a skull fracture. Her foster father didn’t even bother to stop by once while she was there. When she did see him, it was only after her release from the hospital, from which she walked back home.
He said only one thing to her that night. He told her it had happened because Chris was a whore, and she would pay for the hospital bill on her own one way or another.
That was when, unable to cope with the stress of school and the bullshit at home, Chris decided to drop out of school. After that she ended up with the wrong crowd. They weren’t all bad people, but they weren’t good for her at the time, and she knew it. It was just too much booze and too much weed.
Chris didn’t explain any of this to Rick. It was too personal and too much to reveal to someone she loved. It was something she would carry with her, and if vengeance were driving her, so be it. Chris wasn’t the little girl Amber remembered, and retribution was coming.
FIFTEEN
Before they had left Brick Creek for the interstate, there was one more thing Chris needed to do. It was to kill Amber, and that was exactly what she intended do.
Chris was wearing black leather pants and an old green army jacket with the sleeves cut off. A ten-inch hunting knife was sheathed on her left hip, and an original army Colt 1911 pistol was holstered on her right hip; she’d found it in a safe when she was scavenging through a garbage dump of all places. She also had the shotgun Rick had used so many times to help him stand; it now had a pistol grip, and the barrel had been sawed down to ten inches.
Her hair was pulled back, and once more the sides of her head were shaved. On her arms she had a few new tattoos she’d done herself with a needle and thread. She had used ink that she’d mixed from old stationery pens.
The first tattoo was simple: a heart with her and Rick’s initials on her wrist. The second was more complex: a barkentine, a wooden sailing vessel with three masts, just above her right hip. In the tattoo the ship was sailing into the wind. The ship represented the journey of her life, always challenging. The last was a small bird looking over the earth. It represented Chris’s freedom to fly away from the bad things in her life. No matter how bad things were, she wanted to think she always had control over the choice to live or die.
After she slipped on her black combat boots, she was ready. The more she thought about what she was about to do, the angrier she grew toward Amber. As she walked through what was left of the town, Chris tried to remember Brick Creek as it had been when she was a child. Back then there were good people with friendly faces, and it was genuinely a nice place to live.
Ever since Rick had returned, Chris had become very active in her daily life. She chopped wood, hunted, fished, and hiked every day. She was unmistakably thinner, but she also was in much better shape than she’d ever been. It served to remind her of how lazy people had become in the life before, which was something she no longer was.
She moved through the street feeling ten feet tall and on a mission. She passed buildings that had burned to the ground and a few that were still standing. When she finally arrived at the town store, she hardly recognized it. The windows were gone, and the inside was black from soot and fire. The thick steel door lay on the ground.
Inside she saw that the register was open, and the shelves, once full of goods, were empty. Garbage littered the floor, and a burned-out fluorescent light bulb hung from the ceiling by a single wire. Inside there was nothing that could be of use to her.
Chris descended the back stairs and stood in the small basement storage room. The only light came from her small flashlight, which she seldom used in order to conserve the batteries. It illuminated the room just enough for her to see there was nothing but trash and a spot where someone had made a fire pit. Squatters, she thought.
The next stop would be Amber’s house, which was three blocks away. So far everything had been excessively easy, and Chris wondered whether she was in fact setting herself up for something.
Outside on the street, she saw that someone most definitely was watching her. There was a man on a rooftop with a rifle, as well as a few people looking at her through cracks in boarded-up windows. One of the windows was in the building where Shawn used live.
She remembered how she had gone to visit him in his apartment one day and spent the entire afternoon playing board games with him. If only she could have known then how things were going to turn out, she thought.
Chris walked down Main Street to Ryan Circle, the last place Amber had lived. It was the third house on the right, and she saw it as soon as she turned down the street. The funny thing was that her house didn’t look much different than it had looked before the world had fallen apart. It was a mess then, and it was still a mess. The fence around her yard had fallen over in a number of places, and there was still a washing machine outside her front door. In the driveway was the same car that hadn’t moved in nearly a decade.
Chris pulled her Colt 1911 from its holster and let it hang in her hand as she moved to look inside the house. The weight of the pistol, how it felt in her hand, and its ability to destroy a person exhilarated her.
Looking through the dirty window, past the tattered curtains, Chris saw no movement, nor did she see anything that indicated that someone had lived there in a very long time. Around the back of the house, however, it was a different story. She knew she had found her mark: a mean-looking dog sleeping near a large tree. It was dark brown and weighed at least eighty pounds. She knew then she was in the right place, because without a doubt the dog was Billy Bob.
Past the dog, on the other side of the large fenced yard, Chris saw the outside of the cellar doors. Down on one knee and examining the ground, she poked at a footprint with a stick. The footprint, which looked to be only a few days old, was pointed in the direction of the house.
The only problem was that damn dog was directly between her and the cellar. Sitting down, Chris tried to think of ways to kill the dog without making too much noise. She didn’t want to shoot it, and she didn’t think making a spear with her hunting knife would do anything but make it mad.
After considering her options, she made her way around the outside of the fence. Moving as silently as she could, she watched every step so as not to draw attention to herself.
At the other side of the fence, directly behind the dog, she saw through the rotten wooden planks. The beast was lying only three feet away.
Chris dropped her coat and set her shotgun on the wet ground, which was moist from last night’s rain. Wearing a sleeveless tank top that revealed her toned body, she slowly and quietly climbed the fence, trying hard not to make a sound. Careful to avoid any loose boards, she grabbed a tree branch and placed her right foot on the fence’s support beam to pull herself up until both feet were resting on a board halfway up the fence.
Now standing and straddling the fence, she looked over to the other side to determine her plan of action. In the end she decided to swing her legs up and over the fence, followed by her body, until she was on the other side.
Standing three feet off the ground on a support beam, she was now directly above the dog. Oh, my God, why did it have to be a Rottweiler? she thought. What the hell am I doing?
Chris took a deep breath and jumped. Her plan was to attempt to stab the dog in the throat with her hunting knife. She’d use her body weight to keeps its muzzle on the ground, and with a little luck, she wouldn’t get bit. The moment she jumped, she did just as planned. She landed on the beast’s back and drove the long knife into its thick neck. Her heart was racing, and she knew this animal was powerful and would put up a hell of a fight. Gripping the knife, she ripped it in and out of its body, stabbing it repeatedly. The weight of the dog was almost too much for her to handle, causing Chris to roll onto her side. As hard as she could, she drove the knife deep into the dog one last time until she was sure it had it stopped moving. Covered in blood and out of breath, she stood up, holding on to the fence, thinking something wasn’t right.
It took a few seconds for her to realize she’d just had what she referred to as a “dumb moment.” Chris looked down at the dog and gave it one good kick to confirm her realization. The entire time she had been stabbing the beast, it had not moved or made a single sound. That moment she knew she had just attacked a Rottweiler that was already dead. Breathing heavily and bent over to catch her breath, she mumbled, “What the fuck? After all I went through, you were already dead?”
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