by Schow, Ryan
“We’ll roast them when this is all over,” he laughed. “But for now, yeah…hot dogs.”
As he and Constanza walked outside, Colt heard her walking funny.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. “You’re limping.”
“I had a baby, Colt.”
“I know that,” he said. “I also know what it’s like when a woman walks around after giving birth. Faith had three kids, you know.”
“It’s embarrassing to say,” she said.
“Everything about childbirth is embarrassing,” he replied. “I think that’s part of what gets you prepared for parenthood.”
“I have a perineal tear that’s infected, and I have blood loss, and sore feet.”
“Of the three things you mentioned, two of them concern me.”
“Let’s find Rose first,” she said, “and then you can be concerned about my feet.”
He huffed out a laugh, trying not to be too expressive for fear of tearing open the healing skin on his face. He got on the motorcycle, then said, “Take your time.”
Under the dim light of the moon, he watched her gingerly, painfully, get on the bike.
“You okay?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Just go,” she said.
They drove back to where her car had died, and from there, she was able to take them to the homeless encampment where they found the guy who had helped her, Reuben. He was with a few of the guys around a fire, several of them eating out of cans.
“Thank you for helping me home,” she said when he looked up and saw her.
He nodded, but he was eyeing Colt suspiciously. Colt’s face was in bad shape, but it was better than before. Back at Rowan’s and Constanza’s house, he used the First Aid kit the blond kid had given them to clean his wounds. After that, in the candlelight, Faith applied a gel that she claimed was liquid stitches. It hurt like crazy, and she said he’d probably scar pretty badly for a while, but that maybe it would be alright. Either way, the side of his face was both tight and swollen. And it was bad enough to have drawn Reuben’s attention.
“Why’d you come back?” Reuben asked.
“You know why,” she said.
“Your baby.”
She nodded, holding his eyes. He made a face, like he went really still, then he rolled his eyeballs over and touched his face, just below the downturn of his mouth, on his left side.
“Barb?” Constanza asked under her breath. The homeless woman’s name who took her baby.
He shook his head, then touched that spot again. And then Reuben looked over and tilted his head just so.
Colt followed his gaze where he saw an older man with a huge wart on his face. The guy was by himself in front of a small fire he’d made inside a circle of rocks.
Colt said, “He knows about Barb?”
Reuben nodded.
Colt walked over to the man, who looked up with dead eyes and a face that hadn’t seen a clean washcloth in way too long.
“Hey,” he said.
The guy looked around, then looked back at him, saying nothing. The wart on his face looked like the end of a nipple he’d once seen on this sow flopped over in the mud.
“You know Barb?” Colt asked.
He looked down, then he looked back up, tilted his body to get a better look at the cut along Colt’s face where the bullet cut a line across the flesh. The guy seemed to consider the question, but not enough to answer. Then, he looked back down and took a deep, settling breath.
“I’ll be straight with you, my friend,” Colt said, knowing where this was going. “I know you know where she is and I’m going to get that information out of you in one of two ways. A, you’re going to voluntarily tell me and I’ll be on my way, or B, I’m going to beat it out of you.”
Now he looked up. There wasn’t enough fear in his eyes yet. Colt didn’t want to hurt anyone, but he’d hoped the threat would have worked better. If he had to resort to violence, how many of this man’s buddies would come to his defense? Would it even do any good?
“Of course, there’s always a third option,” Colt continued. “Option C.”
The guy looked back up, listening, perhaps even curious.
“If you hold out long enough, I’ll have to assume you’ll never tell me, in which case all this rage I have built up in me—and it’s a God-like wrath that you can’t even begin to imagine—I’ll let it spill out all over you. I’m talking about making an absolute mess of your body.”
He saw the man’s eyes open a bit wider, so he continued.
“They say things like, ‘When I’m done with you, your own momma won’t recognize you,’ but it won’t be like that. When I’m done with you, no one will ever know you were once human. That’s how livid I am. So what’s it gonna be, friend? Option A, B, or C?”
“What did she do to you?” the man asked. He looked like he was sixty, but he sounded like he was closer to seventy.
“She took my granddaughter straight from his mother’s womb.”
He nodded, worked his mouth a bit, then scratched behind a big, dirty ear. Before speaking, he stuck his hands a little farther over the fire and said, “A’right.”
“Yeah?” Colt asked.
“Yeah.”
The man stood and put his hands in his pockets, then he started walking. Colt turned and waved to Constanza.
They walked under a bridge, around several support pillars near a handful of tents, then up the side of the road. Just when Colt thought they were going on a wild goose chase, the old man crossed the road, skidded down an embankment, and walked into another encampment.
He wasn’t sure how well Constanza’s body was holding up through all of this, being in pain the way she was, but if she was anything like Faith, nothing was going to keep her from her child.
“Almost there,” the old man said.
He took them into a larger tent city, navigated through the middle of it, and then he stopped in front of a large red tent. He gave the nod, indicating that they were there.
Colt said, “Wait here.”
He popped his head inside the tent, found a woman sitting by an oil lamp, reading a story from a book that looked like it had been fished out of a dumpster. Beside her, on a blanket, was a newborn child with part of its umbilical cord gnawed away and still attached to its belly.
The child looked at him, causing his heart to skip a beat. “I’m so sorry,” he said to the woman as he pulled his head back out.
He nodded to the guy, then looked at Constanza, who had her hands to her mouth and tears in her eyes. She looked like she was going to either cry or come out of her skin.
The old guy turned and walked off, but Constanza came forward, anxious for good news. Without another word, he walked back into the tent and looked at the homeless woman.
“Get the hell out of here!” she groused
“Give me the baby,” he said.
“It’s not your baby,” she growled, “it’s mine!”
She moved in front of it, protecting her like a human shield. Colt stared at her for the longest time, and then he said, Go, and became the beast.
The darkness swallowed him instantly.
Without another word, he rushed the woman, punched her in the mouth so hard, she toppled over backward, her eyes rolled back into her head.
He heard Constanza come in behind him. “Rose?” she said.
Colt pushed the darkness back, then leaned down and gently picked up the child. “Hello, Rose,” he said, jittery and still trapped in that in between place. “I’m your grandpa, Colt. Your mother finally found you.”
The baby cooed, but Constanza just stood there, paralyzed, shaking out tears. He grabbed the blanket Rose was on, swaddled her in it, then handed her to Constanza.
“Not yet,” she said, firming up.
The tears stopped for a second and her gaze shifted to the lump that was the woman who had stolen her baby. Colt saw the lump start to move.
Constanza was short enough to be able to
stand in the tent. She walked over, knelt down before the woman and grabbed her by the face. She gave it a good shake, then turned all that pain and relief into anger.
“I trusted you,” she hissed.
The woman shook out of Constanza’s grip, but it looked like she was done with her, like she had said all she needed to say. Then again, there were other ways of getting a point across. That’s why the Latina beauty stood and kicked her in the face as hard as she could. The woman was out cold again. Constanza just stared at her. And then she heard Rose’s cooing, which pulled her out of that trance. She turned and began to melt over her child.
She took the baby, began to cry, and then the two of them left, heading back to the motorcycle.
Constanza talked to the child all the way back, which was a relief for Colt. He was terrified they’d never find Rose, but they did. And now Constanza was a different woman again. She was a mother, not the fighter she needed to be. But the fight was in her, as it would need to be in the future if she hoped to raise Rose in the world now facing them.
The motorcycle ride home was awkward at times because of the balance of bodies, but when they finally got home, Colt opened the door and said, “Hot dogs.”
Faith lit a candle in the dark and breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The two women fawned over the newborn, and then Faith said, “Let’s go clean her up.” All they had was toilet water and toilet-tank water which was enough. They boiled it on the barbecue out back, then mixed it with cooler water for a bath.
When Rose was bathed and cared for, Faith said, “You need to feed her.” This was Colt’s signal to leave. As he was leaving, he heard Constanza say, “When she’s fed, I need to clean myself up and check the stitching.”
He hadn’t quite closed the door when Constanza said, “Thank you for what you did, Colt.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, happy that amid all the things that had gone wrong, there was at least this one good thing.
“You gave her what she deserved,” the new mother said. “And I needed to do what I did as well.”
“We all do what needs to be done to protect the children,” he said. He smiled to himself despite the pull to his skin, and then he quietly closed the door.
Later, when everyone was ready for bed, the topic of Rowan came up. Constanza said he hadn’t come home, nor had he left a note. She was relieved to have Rose back, but the worry she had for Rowan had become more palpable as the night wore on.
“He said they surrounded his building at work,” Constanza told them. “They’ve been really bad here, the Hayseed Rebellion, but we didn’t think they’d get to him.”
“But he was concerned?” Colt asked.
“Yes,” she said, getting more worried by the minute. “He said he might stay the night, but that was…dear God, I’ve lost track of the days.”
“I need directions to his office,” Colt said.
Constanza nodded, then took out a piece of paper and wrote them down. In the candlelight, he read them, memorized them, and then he left there after Faith had fallen asleep.
He pushed the motorcycle up the street and out of the housing complex. He then kick-started it and rode out into the black of night. The motorcycle’s headlight cut through the darkness, but the night was so cold and enveloping, he felt like he wasn’t even on planet earth. It was like he’d slipped into some interdimensional plane between two realities, like that place where the dead go before transitioning to heaven or hell, or somewhere else altogether.
He arrived at Rowan’s work some time later, and to a veritable slaughter of bodies. He got off his bike, left the light on, then started walking through the dead. He found a wooden bat, took the shirt off a kid, then used a lighter he found to turn the items into a viable torch. Out there in total darkness, he walked past each and every dead body, the horrors washing over him at first, and then permeating his defenses.
The old version of him, back in Afghanistan, had walked through a similar field of bodies, but in his field there were women and children, people who should not have been shot. Twice he started to hyperventilate, and twice he nearly threw up. In the end, he collected himself, and somehow managed to pull through to the other side.
He searched every single body, but his son was not among them. He then searched Rowan’s office building, starting a new fire with a new t-shirt wrapped around the bat. The search yielded no results. He was so frustrated with failure at that point that he wanted nothing more than to kick something, or someone. Instead, he bit back on his anger.
“Oh for three, God,” he said, pleading for help from above. “Why would you give me oh for three?”
He stood in the flickering light long enough to know he’d receive no such answer. That meant he was on his own.
Heading downstairs, he walked past the scores of bodies and into the street. Fortunately, his motorcycle was still there. The only explanation for this was that everyone had left the downtown area. They’d vacated the buildings and the streets, finding their way back home, or into another world completely.
Standing up among the carnage, as a final plea, he heard his mouth work, and his heart reach out. “Where are you, son?” he cried. “Where are you?”
He had never felt so alone.
He finally got on the motorcycle and headed back to Constanza’s home. At the gates, he shut off the engine, then pushed the bike home. He quietly slipped inside the house, then crawled into bed next to Faith, his pistol still at his side.
“Where did you go?” he heard her ask, groggy.
“To see about Rowan.”
“And?”
“Blood bath outside his office. Mostly Hayseed Rebellion offshoots. Lots of other dead people, too, but none of them Rowan.”
“What do you want to do?” she asked, trying to stay strong.
“We’ll look for him tomorrow.”
Later that night, just as he drifted off to sleep, he was awakened by a ruckus outside. He got up, slipped out front, saw four guys trying to take the motorcycle.
He leveled the gun on them and said, “Park that bike and take off, or I smoke all four of you cocksuckers and park it myself.”
“I think that’s fine, old man,” one of the thugs said. “But they don’t.”
Looking up the block, he saw a bonfire had been started in the street. Mobs of guys were looting the nearby homes. In the distance, he heard a heavy smashing sound and knew there were bigger problems coming. Someone had breached the gate.
He looked back at the guys and said, “Take that bike and I’ll kill you. You can take your chances with me, but you’re probably dead either way. If not now, in a week, a month, a year.”
One of the guys held up his hand and said, “You kill me, that’s fine. They’re still going to get you and whoever you have inside.”
This gave him pause, enough for one of them to see the concern in his eyes.
“Who’ve you got inside?” one of them asked.
“My wife, my son’s fiancée, and our grandchild. She’s barely two days old.”
The four of them looked at each other, then one of them said, “You have a baby?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A newborn.”
They looked back at the mob, seemed to consider something, and then the guy who had done most of the talking turned back to Colt and said, “You have five minutes. Get everyone out of here, leave any way you can, and whatever you do, don’t let them hear the child cry.”
“Why is that?” Colt asked.
“If you want it to live, you need to leave now.”
“I need the motorcycle to do that.”
“You’re still here…” one of them said, as if he should have already been rounding up the others.
Colt ran inside the house, got everyone up, then hustled them outside where, surprisingly, he saw the guys hadn’t taken the motorcycle.
Low and urgent, he said, “Cross the street and go through those bushes. Hurry!”
They ran through
the bushes while he deftly fought to get the motorcycle out of there without drawing anyone’s attention. The street they ended up on was White Street. He had no idea where it went.
When they were finally free of the neighborhood, they stood back and saw the first light of fires burning inside the gated neighborhood. Then they heard gunfire. A lot of it.
“What now?” Constanza asked, her voice shaky.
“I don’t know,” Colt replied, truthful. “But I can tell you this, I trust Rowan. We raised him well. Which means he’ll know to come home.”
“We’re just leaving him?” Faith asked, astounded.
“We have over a hundred miles to go to get to the Jeep, and it’s not safe out here, not by a mile. It’s even less safe for Constanza and Rose.”
Faith looked at him again. Even in the moonlight, he saw so much pain in her face. He turned to Constanza and Rose knowing there was no easy way to explain to her what lay ahead.
“We came here to get our children,” Faith said. “Now we’re going home empty handed?”
“Not empty handed,” he said, looking at Constanza.
Faith started to cry, only realizing what she’d just said, that she had somehow implied that Constanza was not their child, or Rose their blood.
To Constanza, she said, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know what you meant,” the girl said.
To Faith, he said, “Rowan’s not home, and he’s not at work. We won’t know where to look. This was the same with Leighton. Taking those facts into consideration, it’s my job to protect you, Constanza, and Rose. So, come hell or high water, I’m getting us home. All of us. After that, we just have to put our faith in our kids, and trust that they’ll make it home okay.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Rowan McDaniel
Rowan and Hwa-Young had walked most of the way to Grove City, just outside Columbus. When they got to the block before his house, Rowan saw the burning skyline and tried not to panic. The city had started to burn in many places, so seeing things on fire wasn’t out of the ordinary. But for his neighborhood to burn, too? That was beyond concerning. When he saw the gate had been breached he said, “Oh, no.”
