by Schow, Ryan
“That’s perfect,” she said. “I have an old tampon if you want. Mostly it was from a light cycle, but I dried it good enough for an extra use.”
Swallowing her revulsion, Constanza shook her head, unable to find the words. The woman then stood her up and gave her a hug which she didn’t return.
“If one of them gets a hold of you, just let them do their thing,” she said into Constanza’s ear. “It’ll be better that way, you know? Most of these guys get it over quickly.”
Speechless, reviled, she wondered, Is she actually talking about rape? The woman let go of her, gently spun her around, and then gave her a slight push. “Go on now, you’ll be okay.”
Across the road, a guy she questioned seemed to know who she was talking about. He pointed to an underpass where there were a few tents.
Breathless, she said, “Are you sure?”
“If you’re talking about Barb, then yeah, I’m sure.”
Barb.
Barb the bitch.
Barb the baby stealer.
She walked over with her head held low and her hands in her pockets. She was horrified and mad, but mostly she was scared she’d never find Rose. Then she heard a baby crying inside a nearby tent.
When Constanza made a beeline for the tent, a few people gave her long stares, but her heart was fluttering with an impossible hope not even they could dispel.
With single-minded focus, she unzipped the tent’s flap, shoved her head inside, saw the woman in low light.
“You,” Barb hissed.
The woman ran at her, tackled her, and punched her in the face. Constanza tried to fight back, but the woman dragged her into the opening by her hair, then kicked her in the stomach. Curled into a ball, hurting and afraid, she fought to get to her feet, but then the woman kicked her in the face so hard she blacked out.
Chapter Sixteen
Rowan McDaniel
The North Korean nightmare blew into the fourth floor office like a hurricane. She was out of breath, smelling like other people’s blood, and absolutely defiant with anyone but Rowan. When she finally got to him, she told him who she was, why she was there, and then she said she wanted to help him hold the building.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Rowan said to the stranger, “there’s a mob surrounding us.”
“I’ve noticed,” Hwa-Young said.
“By the way, was that you killing people out back?”
She nodded, wordless.
“Alright then,” he said. He couldn’t think of anything else to say other than he was glad to have her there, but that was yet to be determined.
“We need to secure the door downstairs,” she said. “They broke the glass, and are now in the building. We might have stopped them, I just don’t know for how long. We should see what we can do to help.”
When they got downstairs, there were dead bodies everywhere, and several of the mortgage brokers had pushed a big couch in front of the open door. Men were banging on the glass windows with tire irons and crowbars, and any other number of items, but they weren’t getting in.
Dave looked up and said, “There’s only a small opening, but we’ve packed it with the dead. Makes it harder to get in, or throw gasoline can bombs inside.”
“This won’t last,” Rowan said.
“No thanks to you,” Dave’s friend replied. “The guys that got in, they hurt some of our guys pretty badly, but…we took care of them.”
“We can help you,” Hwa-Young said.
One of the guys held up a walkie talkie and said, “We’ll SOS if we need you. For now, we’ve got this under control.”
It didn’t feel like it, but Rowan chose to trust them. Back at the office, which was breezy with the occasional gust coming through the shot-out window, Rowan sat up most of the night watching the front of the building. Brian and Dhanishka had fallen asleep on the couch. Tommy and Clair were in the back storeroom, keeping an eye on the groups in the back parking lot, who were making little progress in setting the building on fire or breaking in through the rear door. And Hwa-Young was with him, but fading quickly. When nothing of significance happened, he told Hwa-Young to get some sleep.
“I wish I had a blanket for you,” he said.
“I’ll be fine,” she replied.
She crawled under a desk, curled up, and closed her eyes. An hour later, a huge explosion rattled the glass. The night erupted into a cheering ruckus.
“Unbelievable,” Rowan grumbled.
Hwa-Young crawled out from under the desk and sat next to him. When he stood up, she stood with him.
“You told me you were here to help me, that you had a story to tell me,” Rowan said as he looked out into the night. “I’m imagining it’s a story about the EMP? In case you haven’t noticed, there will be no internet, no mail service…”
“I’m not here to discuss logistics of a collapsed grid with you,” she said.
“Then why are you here?”
“Because of your uncle Walker,” she said, shivering and hugging herself.
“Did she just say ‘Uncle Walker?’” Brian mumbled from where he had been asleep on the office couch.
“Oh, so now you’re awake?” Rowan quipped.
“It’s too cold to sleep,” Dhanishka said, sitting up next to Brian on the couch.
Hwa-Young cleared her throat, then said, “I mentioned your uncle because he is at the center of this.”
“No, he’s not,” Rowan argued.
“Has he ever said the name Diesel Daley?”
“Once, maybe. He’s an old war buddy, if I remember correctly.”
“That’s correct,” Hwa-Young said. “He and Walker did two tours together. Their last two, in fact. After that, they fell off the radar completely.”
“Sounds like Uncle Walker,” he heard Dhanishka say.
“Your uncle and Diesel formed the Hayseed Rebellion,” Hwa-Young said. “This is why I’m here to see you.”
In the storeroom, on the other side of an open door, he heard Clair gasp. Rowan had always held his uncle in high regard, so to try to stain the man’s reputation with lies or even the mere suggestion of impropriety, irritated him. He sensed movement nearby. He suspected this was Tommy and Clair returning to the main office to partake in the gossip.
Great.
By now, everyone had woken up or abandoned their posts to hear this girl’s ghastly smearing of his uncle’s good name.
Clair lit a candle, casting them all in a soft-white glow. The votive flickered from a slight breeze, but then the air fell still again and the candle burned bright.
“Which idiot told you this?” Rowan finally hissed.
“Only the best hacker on the entire West Coast, and most likely the nation. Enigma is his handle, but Brayden James is his name. The guy hacked the NSA before his balls even dropped.”
“Brayden James?” Rowan asked.
“Yeah, he’s a rich kid. His dad’s from Texas, he has two moms, one of them is hot, the other…not so much.”
“Texas, you said?”
“Yeah, but he lives in San Francisco and vacations in Vegas. There’s only one person who understands him better than I do, a girl named Savannah. I can’t get her last name, or any kind of read on her, though. She’s the real enigma, or maybe she’s just a ghost. It’s hard to tell with either of them anymore.”
“But this Brayden guy told you my uncle started the Hayseed Rebellion?”
“That is what I said,” she replied.
She handed him a stack of folded papers, keeping the top one, which bore the heading, The Dissident Weekly.
He sat down before the candle and looked over what appeared to be parts of the financial records of one domestic account and two international accounts. He understood banking transactions and he had no problem reading bank statements, but there was quite a paper trail there, much of it too complicated for him to piece together under the circumstances.
“It says they were paid millions,” Rowan said, looking up at
her. She nodded. “My uncle acted like he wasn’t worth a hundred bucks, let alone millions.”
“I think the millions was operating capital for the Hayseed Rebellion and their other factions. Civil unrest is a very expensive business, one that requires both coordination and funding. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Before this,” he said, flicking the folded papers.
“Your uncle is dead.”
Hwa-Young’s assertion hit Rowan fast and hard. He stood there shell-shocked, stricken from the inside and not wanting to admit it or show it on the outside.
“You’re lying,” he growled.
“I never lie unless I intend to kill you, and Rowan McDaniel, I don’t intend to kill you.”
The slight breeze that felt good earlier now left him with a chill he couldn’t shake. Swallowing hard, he asked, “How did he die?”
“Badly, violently.”
“Are you sure it was him?” he asked.
“I have the police report in my backpack behind the building, safely stashed in a grove of trees. It will be upsetting, but this will give you some measure of truth by which to grieve.”
“What about this Diesel Daley guy?”
“He’s the one who killed him, although I’m not sure why. The best I can tell is that he defected from the group shortly after Amell Benson arrived. Amell was in Diesel’s unit, but he was dishonorably discharged.”
“For what?”
“He told his superior officer they were about to have a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ moment, according to the report. His senior officer was a woman. Anyway, it seemed like things fell apart from there.”
“Why are you tracking them?”
“Because I think they were part of the attack on America.”
“Where are you from?” Rowan asked.
“North Korea, originally.”
“You speak well for a foreigner,” he said.
“I taught myself to speak the language long before I arrived here.”
“And why are you here, exactly?” Clair asked.
“I was granted refugee status many years ago,” she replied.
“You’re not even American?” Dhanishka asked.
The girl shook her head.
“Why do you want to know about these people?” Rowan asked. “What’s your interest in them?”
“I want to make them pay,” she said, her voice teeming with emotion.
“But this isn’t even your country,” Brian said.
“You would not understand.”
“Try us,” Rowan said.
“I have dreamed of this country my entire life. It is the last free country on earth, the promised land to many. Then, when I finally get here, you begin to tear it apart, burn it, trample all over the very constitution that protects it.”
“You’ve read the Constitution?” Tommy challenged.
“Have you?” she retorted.
He looked down, said nothing.
“I know it by heart,” she said. “Isn’t it sad how I want to be here more than you, and that I know more about your country’s most cherished document than you do? Yet you question my loyalty.” She shook her head and said, “Typical.”
“It’s not sad,” Brian said, now sitting with the others for body heat. “It’s just…we’re sort of all from here—”
“I’m not,” Dhanishka turned and said.
“This isn’t sad, it’s a disgrace,” Hwa-Young hissed. “You know nothing of the document that guarantees your many freedoms. But I memorized it for my citizenship test, which is years away. Or was years away. Now, with the EMP and these bandits dancing around like fools, destroying things, this country is becoming just like the country I fought so hard and sacrificed so much to escape.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Rowan asked.
“We need to stop all of this first,” she said, motioning out the window. Down below, the explosion had energized the crowds. They were now chanting, “Death to America, Death to the Whites!”
“This is what is so stupid,” Hwa-Young barked. “If you pull down the hoods of more than half of those troublemakers, you will find they’re almost all white!”
“It’s a stupid anomaly no one really understands,” Rowan said. “As for leaving here, I tried to get out earlier, but there are people blocking the exits.”
“It’s like that in all the buildings on this block,” she confirmed. “They want to either burn or slaughter these people. Every last one of them.”
“Us, too?” Brian asked.
“Of course you too!” Hwa-Young said. Calming herself, she turned to Rowan. “You and I are going to get them out, though.”
“How?” Rowan asked.
“I looked inside your duffle bag,” she said.
“You did?” he asked, taken aback. “How did you have time?”
“Come to the window, tell me what you see,” she said, walking to the opening. She waved her hand out over the masses below. “Tell me!”
“There are hundreds of them out there,” Clair said.
Hwa-Young nodded her head.
“Now look at all the buildings they’re blocking,” Hwa-Young said.
“There are more of us than there are of them,” Rowan replied. “If these buildings are as full of people as I hope they are, then there really are far more of us than there are of them.”
“But you’re all so scared,” Hwa-Young remarked.
No one but Rowan and Hwa-Young wanted to acknowledge this truth. Rowan knew this because he was the only one who didn’t look away when Hwa-Young spoke.
“You have lived this silver-platter life for so long, you forgot what it was like to fight for your freedom. Now you sit here like cowering children, waiting to be saved, hoping the Boogey Men will just go away. No one is coming to save you,” she said, looking at everyone but Rowan. “If you don’t save yourself, you will die. Most of you will die anyway.”
“Not me,” Rowan said. “Not without a fight.”
All he wanted was to get back to Constanza. She had to be freaking out big time. Being eight months pregnant, he figured it had to be ten times worse than even he could imagine.
“If you want to fight, then go get that bullhorn out of your bag and rally the people. You need to tell them about Eichmann.”
“Clause Eichmann?” She nodded. Rowan asked, “What about him?”
“I just killed him,” she said.
“Really?” Brian asked. She nodded. “Cool.”
“So he’s really dead?” Rowan asked. Again, she Hwa-Young nodded. “Will they even know who he is?”
“Who do you think helped finance these monsters?” Hwa-Young asked, giving a quick head nod to the mutants below.
“Are you sure?” Clair asked.
She nodded, then said, “Who do you think suggested the EMP as a measure of escalating this war?”
Now they all stood there, looking at her like she’d grown a second head.
“But why?” Dhanishka asked. “What would he hope to gain by destroying everything?”
“I don’t know yet,” Hwa-Young said, “but we need to find out.” She turned to Rowan and said, “It’s time for that bullhorn. And it’s time they heard from you.”
Rowan nodded in slow agreement, knowing he’d put the emergency survival kit together for a reason. He retrieved the bullhorn from his duffle bag, then he walked to the edge of the broken window and looked out over the streets. It was like staring into the bowels of hell. There were cars on fire, bonfires burning everywhere, bodies dancing around and beating others in the streets.
Taking a big breath, he spoke as loud as he could into the bullhorn. “This message is to all of you who are not with these assholes on the ground burning everything.”
Everyone down on the ground started booing him.
He raised his voice even higher.
“I know you’re in there, scared, wondering when this will all be over, and I’m here to tell you, this will never be over, not u
ntil you stand up to these demons!”
A gun fired, the bullet breaking the glass ten feet away. He hadn’t even had the chance to duck, yet strangely, he neither let it faze him nor stop him.
“They’ve been stepping on our necks for the last two years! Telling us we have to take the knee to them, but I’m here to tell you, that shit has to end and it can end now! Or you can sit there in your buildings, safe for now, until they burn you out. And they will burn you out. Those are their orders, their plan! They take their orders from Senator Clause Eichmann!”
He turned and looked at Hwa-Young, who nodded encouragingly.
“I am here to tell you, Eichmann is dead as a doornail, hanging by a noose outside his second-floor window. Those idiots down there, they need to be reminded of who we are as a people, who we are as a nation! It’s time to get off your asses, get up on your feet, smack yourself in the face and say, ‘I’m awake dammit!’ SO WAKE UP!”
Another shot was fired, this one hitting the glass window right next to him. He didn’t flinch. The goons below began to riot, to try to prove him wrong.
“All around me, people are getting to their feet and saying ‘No more!’ They’re acting like they have a pulse. They are tired of these bullies, and they are tired of being pushed around! DON’T LET THEM PUSH US AROUND ANYMORE! So stand up! Make a fist! Pound your chest and tell yourself you’re a proud American, that you refuse to be pushed around, that a bunch of soulless fucking animals like these won’t be the death of this country! On my count, we’re going to rush downstairs and we’re going to plow through these punks like the sorry un-American pieces of shit they are, and then we’re going to beat them to death, the same as they’ve been doing to us!”
The looks on the faces of his co-workers was encouraging, but there was one face that concerned him: Clair’s face. She looked scared, uncertain.
“Or you can sit there like cowards, stewing in your own weak misery. It’s your life, but it’s our country, our future!”
He took a breath, cast one last look back at his people. Hwa-Young set her jaw, then gave him a sharp nod of approval. He looked at the others, and only about half of them appeared resolute as they considered his message.
