by Trevor Zaple
He took a step back to lean against the liquor table and saw that Ronnie was getting up from his seat. Callie had her short fingers running up through Annie’s thick hair and was pulling her in greedily. Richard took a large drink of his rye and cola, feeling himself starting to lose the plot. This was so far out of his usual frame of experience that he felt like he was living another man’s life. His idea of a wild night out, before this moment, had been having an extra pint over karaoke; watching Callie and Annie make out (Annie’s bra had come off and her breasts, perfectly curved and sloping just right, were pressing into Callie’s more diminutive frame) was enough to make his heart race away from him. His mouth felt exceedingly dry, and the rye was not helping in this regard. The room seemed to swirl around him, starting at the edges of his vision; if he hadn’t mixed the drink himself, he would have sworn that someone had put something in it.
“Hey, girls,” Ronnie was saying, his pinched voice lewd, “if you need a hard, real man to get in between you, just let me know”. He waggled his eyebrows. “Or don’t”.
Class, Richard thought primly, and glanced back to where Mark was still sitting, his head hunched down over that flip phone again. He turned away and watched the slow, sloppy sex show unfolding before him for another minute before turning his head back to look at Mark more sharply. A shock of sudden fear ran through him.
It was such an innocent act, especially in the situation. In a situation where people drinking, having fun before the plague, a socially awkward penguin typing away on his phone wouldn’t have elicited a second glance. As it was, Richard had been lulled into accepting it for quite a while. He stood, his heart pounding in a more leaden fashion, and listened to his mind race while he watched something that he would have considered a hot, tantalizing mess only two short weeks before.
Who is he texting? he asked himself, his voice booming and hectoring inside of his head. Who’s out there, where are they, and what is he saying? More to the point...
He casually straightened himself up off of the table and pretended to consider the options on the liquor table instead. As he physically waffled between Canadian Club and Crown Royal, he watched Mark out of the corner of his eye. He refilled his drink, not really paying attention to the amounts, and mixed it together. The clinking of the stick and the turning ice on the inner surface of the glass seemed overly loud to him, and he cringed inwardly at it. Outwardly, he was calm, deliriously so.
He stepped away from the liquor table and with an enormous effort at being casual made his way towards the window facing St. Paul Street. After four steps he looked out of the corner of his eye and saw Mark look up quickly and rise. He stiffened his neck and pretended he hadn’t noticed. Just keep walking he told himself, berating himself into calmness. Something is very wrong here and if you want to survive this just keep walking. He picked up his pace a little as he got within a couple of arms lengths of the window, pushing himself like a sprinter.
“Hey fuckface, where do you think you’re going?” Mark shouted, his mouth seeming to bite off each individual word. “Party’s over there, something about two chicks making out offend you, or something?”
Richard was really only barely listening to what he was saying; he was intent on getting as much of a look at the street level as he could. As it was, it didn’t take long to see what was going on down there. A white pickup truck had pulled up haphazardly in front of the Chili Pepper, its tires crunching over the ripened bodies of a few unfortunates. There were two men in the process of getting out of the cab, both of them armed: one of them was carrying some sort of hunting rifle, the other a pistol of some kind. There were three other men in the bed of the truck, armed with a baseball bat, a long piece of copper piping, and machete, respectively. As he watched this he felt Mark walking up behind him.
Richard’s instincts took over. He whirled around with his elbow hooked, and his fist seeking upward for what he hoped was Mark’s face. He leaned into it, almost falling forward, and extended his elbow at the last moment to catch Mark with the full force of his body behind him. It wasn’t until the split second before his hand connected with the lower-right side of Mark’s jawline that Richard noticed the gun being pulled towards his temple. His eyes went wide and pure animal fear drove him forward fiercely. A jagged bit of jabber ran through his thought process, a mindless bit of unfolding gibberish just as he thought that his brains might be blown out of his right temple.
His fist connected painfully with Mark’s jaw and he felt the unkempt stubble on the man’s face prick into his knuckles right before Mark went flying backwards. The blow seemed to have caught him completely by surprise; his eyes rolled back to the whites and he went limp halfway through the arc that took him to crash heavily to the floor. Richard watched the gun leave Mark’s hand and go skittering across the floor to strike the nearby corner of the room. It seemed to go in slow time and he was already trying to steady himself and then leap forward to grab it by the time it came to a complete rest.
He crashed into the corner, scrambling wildly to get a grip on it. He felt it’s cold, businesslike grip enfold into his hand and he clumsily spun around into an unsteady crouching position, holding the gun forward with a white-knuckled grasp. Ronnie stumbled backwards, “holy fuck!” coming out of his mouth in a strangled gasp. Callie had leapt backward when Richard had punched Mark, and she had knocked into one of the pool players. Her expression was shocked. Annie stood topless with her hands in the air, her face pale and fearful; it looked as though she were about to fall over. Richard let her run through his mind for the barest of instants before he decided on his course of action.
There was a window directly opposite him, and he was running towards it before he could even properly think about it. If they were going to come in through the front of the building, they would have to go out through the back. He just hoped that there was something to break his fall on the other side.
“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” Callie screeched but he ignored her existence. He saw Samantha goggle at him as he sped by, and he turned his head to her as he went.
“WITH ME!” he screamed, going hoarse to be heard over the music. Joey Ramone was singing about going on down to Rockaway Beach. Samantha jumped and began loping after him.
Several feet from the window he had a vision of slamming full on into the glass and knocking himself out. He turned as he ran so that his shoulder would be the first thing going through the glass, and he lowered his head so that he was going into his charge. He’d seen the form in an action movie, or was it a football game? He wondered stupidly about the banality of the question for fifteen milliseconds and then hit the window. The glass shattered forward on impact, catching the lowering sun at a perfect angle and causing a thousand points of light to burn themselves into his vision. The window splintered around him in a stretch of time that had the consistency of molasses, and then he was through, into free fall.
TEN
The Chili Pepper was a bar with a rather unsavoury tradition in the city’s lore. It was one of those locations that go through various owners in regular succession. Some young entrepreneur would pick the spot, intent on making the hotspot nightclub of the crowded bar district, and buy the spot off of the beleaguered owner. The place was nice enough inside, if a little tawdry, and anyone with a bright spot for design and a flair for self-promotion could make a go of it. A problem invariably arose, however: an attempt at creating a hip atmosphere for a fashionable young crowd in a blue-collar town always invited cocaine, and the steadily growing cocaine problem would cause worsening offshoot-problems that would inevitably lead to the young entrepreneur becoming the beleaguered owner.
One of these offshoot problems was a lack of availability of funds for maintenance. Once the young entrepreneur was spending a lot of time pulling back lines in the downstairs office with specific patrons, money for things like replacement glasses, dishwasher repair, and pool table re-velveting begins to mysteriously disappear. So, if one of the thick,
older windows were to be broken by a university kid amped up on coke and draft beer throwing chairs, the replacement pane would not be to the same quality as the original. It would likely be much thinner, less resistant to the elements, and more likely to become completely shattered upon the slightest impact.
When Richard threw himself through this cheaply-acquired pane of glass it did not give much resistance. He tumbled through and landed roughly onto his side two feet below on the other side. He lay there, stunned for a moment, and then stumbled his way to his feet. Instinctively he brushed himself off with one hand, gingerly trying to avoid embedding chunks of glass into his hands. He looked inside, trying to look for Samantha. He hefted the gun up and pointed it up to the sky as he peered within; he’d never held or fired a gun in his life, and he didn’t want to accidentally fire off a round when he couldn’t see. The light level outside was still shockingly brighter than it was inside, and he blinked furiously, trying to force his eyes to adjust quickly.
“Samantha!” he yelled. When she did not appear right away he turned his head to look for potential escape routes off of whatever surface he’d landed on. He appeared to be on top of the kitchen, the ceiling of which was two or three feet lower than the part of the building he’d just leaped from. There looked to be a parking lot on the other side, eight or ten feet down. He steeled himself to jump down, and looked behind himself. He was frantic for Samantha to come. He could hear fearful exclamations coming from inside; the party had been rudely, jaggedly interrupted. Ronnie was shouting something down the stairs inside and then, like a bell in the distance, he heard Samantha pleading with one of the women to come with her. Richard gritted his teeth and prepared to jump to the parking lot.
Samantha came leaping through the window and Richard caught her eyes for the briefest of seconds before taking the jump down to the parking lot. He crunched into the ground with a painful creak in his knees and pitched forward, slamming his face into the rough pavement. His face and palms felt as though they were on fire but he forced himself to his knees. Samantha landed beside him, wavering but staying on her feet. She reached down quickly to pull him to his feet and they began to run across the parking lot with urgent speed.
There was an alley leading out of the parking lot to their left and they took it, their feet grinding and crunching on the grit and debris that littered the ground. From behind them there were angry shouts, issuing from near the hole that they’d just come through.
“What the hell is going on?” Samantha panted, resting against the wall of the alley. Richard ground to a halt reluctantly and eyed the other side of the street with some trepidation. There was a furniture store and another parking lot, one that lead back a very long way into some trees. He very badly wanted to be off across the street and into those far-off trees and their life-giving camouflage. His knees were shaking and he felt like he might throw up at any moment. The messenger bag around his neck felt like a millstone, and he seriously fought an urge to rip it off of his arm and throw it against the wall.
“Bunch of guys with guns, Mark was texting them,” Richard replied, panting as well. His heart was heaving and he regretted skipping the gym as much as he had before the plague hit. “They weren’t looking to play friendly, that’s for sure”.
“Mark had a gun to your head,” she noted, sounding confused. Richard hefted the gun again and grinned weakly. The thing was a lot heavier than he had expected. “He was planning on killing you,” she continued. “Just like that. Do you think...”
Richard began to edge towards the mouth of the alley, trying to listen for footsteps coming from nearby. He wondered if they would give chase directly, or if they would try to flank them. There were so many factors he didn’t know, he realized.
“Do I think what?” he asked, distracted.
“Do you think those women are all falling into a trap right now?”
“Probably”
“They’re going to...” she trailed off, not wanting to vocalize her suspicions. Richard nodded impatiently.
“Yes they are,” he said decisively, “and if you don’t want them to do it to you, too, we should go now”.
Samantha shook her head and Richard looked at her incredulously.
“No, we have to go help them”. Her voice was urgent, passionate. Richard felt a sharp upward thrust of fear come out of his stomach.
“No way,” he disagreed, vehemently. He pointed across the street to the line of trees in the middle distance. “We’re going that way. Now”.
Samantha opened her mouth, shocked, but before she could voice her opinion on that another shout came from behind them, louder this time. Richard whirled around and saw that two of the men had come through the broken window. To his dismay, he saw that it was the men with the guns. There was a piercing female scream from inside the building; someone had just realized what was happening.
“GO!” he screamed and sprinted across the street into the parking lot waiting on the other side. He skidded to a halt on the other side to make sure that Samantha was following, and when he ascertained that she was he pushed forward and kept going. They ran for the other side and halfway down the lot they saw another alleyway leading off to the left and took it. They ran across the street into another parking lot, this one paved with rough dirt and featuring a couple of overturned, badly dented black vans. They ducked behind one of these vans and put their backs to it. Neither of them spoke; they were listening intently, trying to listen for their pursuers over the rhythmic thudding of their own hearts.
Richard saw that a street lead out of the parking lot directly across from them; from what he could see the street lead downward towards the ravine that cut through this part of town. He put the gun on the knee and tried to get his breathing under control. There was a stitch growing slowly in his side.
“We make for the ravine,” he panted and Samantha nodded, her face a deep scowl. He looked at her, trying to gauge her, but she refused to look at him. He shrugged internally; there was no time to sort it out now. He pushed himself back to his feet and darted forward, trying to make as much distance as he could out in the open before anyone could catch their position. Samantha followed behind him, glancing back the way they had come with nervous eyes. They hit the slope downward and picked up speed; Richard stumbled here and there as he tried to dodge around debris and felt himself starting to get out of control. They passed by the burned-out remains of a skate shop and the crack of a rifle shattered the air behind them. Richard ducked instinctively as he continued running, although he had no idea where the bullet may have gone. It hadn’t hit either Samantha or himself, and beyond that he didn’t care.
The street they ran on ended in a T-junction. A narrow walking bridge led off of the end, crossing over a wide stretch of highway and then disappearing into a forested area on the other side. They took it without thinking; Samantha merged in behind Richard and they ran across the foot bridge single-file, their footsteps echoing metallically in the still summer air. Halfway through Richard saw the Brock Tower rising at the end of the valley, the only man-made structure he could see over the trees. They plunged into the woods on the other side and stopped to catch their breath.
Richard stared wildly across the bridge they had just crossed, his newfound gun pointed to cover the path. They crouched, panting and heaving, and waited for the inevitable. It didn’t come. When five minutes had passed and no one appeared to be following them, they got up and made their way further into the mass of dense trees.
The going was rough but Richard was thankful for it. As the trees closed in behind his back he felt himself relaxing; it would be very hard for their pursuers to fire into the woods with any accuracy, and if they tried to follow them their passing through the bed of leaves and dried twigs would alert them easily. He let the gun fall to his side and made a mental note to keep an eye out for a holster, or something he could jury-rig to keep it strapped at his side. It was heavy, and he thought that having to carry it like this for an extend
ed period of time would be hellish.
Samantha didn’t say anything as they were picking their way through the woods, and she still avoided looking at him. Richard felt himself beginning to get seriously annoyed by her behaviour; he was sore all over, still covered in tiny fragments of broken glass, and hadn’t he just rescued them from a deadly situation? He thought he had; the last half-hour was coming up as a blur in his recollection, but the fact that they had made it out seemed to speak to something vaguely heroic that he had accomplished. He grimaced at her. It wasn’t like he was asking her to fellate him out of gratitude, or anything. Just a simple conversation would go over just fine. There was nothing, though. She stared straight ahead as they walked and refused to budge from her wall of silence.
Eventually they came out of the dense woods onto an official trail of some kind. It lead away south, so they took it; or, rather, Richard took it and Samantha followed him sullenly. The rush of the nearby river began filling their ears and after another half-hour of walking they began to see it rushing by to their right at a rapid pace. They slowed down along the edge of the river and eventually stopped next to a large rock that had been placed deliberately by the edge of the trail. Richard stretched and took in the area. Besides the rush of the river and the chirping of birds in the trees, they seemed to be surrounded by silence.
“Do you know where we are?” Richard asked. Samantha shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I might have an idea, but we’ll have to keep going this way for a while before I can figure out if I’m right”.
“Well, as long as we’re away from those others”. He chuckled, a little ruefully. “Maybe we should be avoiding other people, instead of trying to find them”.
