by Tom Abrahams
Jesse chuckled under his breath. He’d disarm the punk first, then take him down and out. If the guy didn’t put up a fight, Jesse decided he’d let him live and use him to find the others. If the guy resisted, it was over for the dude. No doubt. Jesse didn’t play.
He checked over one shoulder and then the other before advancing quickly on the man. His girth rubbed against his belt and one thigh against the other. Sweat lubricated the raw, thinly calloused skin as he moved.
Despite his size, he was light on his feet. In a matter of seconds, he’d closed the distance between his observation post and the man, whose attention was elsewhere. By the time the man turned, Jesse had barreled into him like he was hitting a tackling dummy.
He heard the rush of air from the man’s lungs as he hit him, driving him toward the ground. They collapsed together in a heap, and Jesse blindly reached for the gun hand. It was empty.
Jesse pushed down on the man, unable to see him clearly because of the ash cloud that had bloomed around them and was again settling onto the ground. The man was as strong as he’d expected. He could feel the muscles straining against him, the kicking and thrashing of his legs.
Grunting and working harder than he would have liked, Jesse sank onto the man, trying to force the last of the air from his lungs. Then he quickly pushed onto him, raising his torso and spreading his legs. He was straddling him now, working to gain better leverage.
The man’s goggles were cockeyed on his face, and the fabric mask, which felt like burlap against the back of Jesse’s hand, had come free. There was ash everywhere, as if they were bathing in it. Jesse could feel it being sucked into his nostrils as he breathed. He tasted it on his teeth and the inside of his thick lips. It was foul and salty.
Jesse grunted and squeezed his legs. He fought off the man’s struggle and pushed his face to the side, smothering half of it in the disturbed layer of ash on the ground. The ash gathered in the corners of his mouth and made him drool. He felt the leakage on his chin and the underside of his jaw. He snorted, trying to clear his throat, and he found his grip, wrapping his thick, pasty hands around the man’s neck. He squeezed. The man’s fight was weakening, the tension in his straining muscles beginning to soften.
Then in the distance he heard gunshots. In the confusion of the moment, he thought somehow the handgun he’d knocked loose was in someone else’s hand. But as his hearing focused, he realized the percussion was distant and echoed like rifle shots.
Jesse snapped his head around while maintaining his grip. He didn’t see anyone close to him. Another shot cracked and rippled through the speckled air. A deeper sound, a heavier caliber, snapped back with a volley of shots. They were farther away, from where he’d left his gang perhaps.
He swung back around and tightened his grip, grunting one final push to put away his opponent, when he felt a thick smack on the side of his head.
Dazed, his vision instantly blurred, Jesse released his grip and swayed. He blinked his eyes, trying to focus, and reached for his head. Warm blood oozed from the wound, already sticky with ash flakes. Still stunned and unable to comprehend what had struck him or how, he dopily pivoted his weight toward the direction of the strike. He was met by the fuzzy image of a woman and a deafening explosion of sound before the world went black and silent.
***
Keri stood with the handgun leveled at the same spot where she’d aimed a second earlier. A thin wisp of smoke curled from the end of its barrel, mixing with the ash and evaporating into the gray that surrounded her. It was the gun she’d insisted on taking from the family that had attacked Dub. She’d kept it in her waistband whenever she traveled outside since that day.
The fat beast of a man wobbled for a moment, his eyes fixed with confusion before his gigantic frame slumped and fell to one side. His legs were still draped awkwardly across Dub’s torso.
As Keri stood there in her goggles, the cold composite grip of the gun squeezed in her hands she was frozen in place. Simultaneously in disbelief that she had killed a man with a shot into the center of his forehead, she was thankful to have saved her boyfriend’s life.
Michael, who’d run up behind her as she pulled the trigger, had slid onto his knees and was at Dub’s head. Keri was only vaguely aware of this as she dispassionately lowered the weapon and stared at the dead man’s eyes.
Are those scabs on his head?
A shudder rippled through Keri’s body before Michael caught her attention and brought her back to the moment. She turned toward his voice and found his eyes targeting hers.
“…breathing,” he said. “He’s alive. You saved him.”
It took a moment for the words to register. When they did, her eyes glazed with tears that pooled in her goggles. She crouched beside Michael, put the gun on the ground beside her, and used all of her strength to heave the dead man’s legs from Dub. She grunted and angrily shoved them free. They flopped onto the ground with a thud and a spray of ash bloomed above his body.
Dub’s still body twitched, and he coughed. He sucked in a deep breath of noxious air and coughed again, gagging. Keri helped Michael move Dub onto his side as he retched. His body convulsed several times before he started breathing normally. He rolled onto his back and wiped his face with his arm.
“Thank you,” he rasped. “Thank you.”
Keri put her hands on his chest, sliding them up toward the sides of his face, and she laid her body on his. He gently pushed her away.
“Hang on,” he said. “Too much.”
She apologized through her tears and running nose and reached for one of his hands with both of hers and squeezed. He squeezed back, his fingertips wrapping around the outside of her hand.
Their moment was interrupted by the crack of rifle blasts farther up the hill. Michael and Keri turned their attention toward the sound. Dub propped himself on his elbows before trying to stand.
“I think that’s Barker,” said Keri. “He’s alone.”
“Let’s go,” Dub said through the scratch in his voice. “He needs us.”
Dub scooted up and Michael helped him to his feet. Keri picked up the handgun and handed it to him. Her eyes flashed to the dead heap at her feet.
“I don’t want this,” she said. “You take it.”
Dub took the gun, brushed the ash from his clothes, and adjusted his goggles on his face. Keri reached over and pulled the burlap mask over his nose. She rubbed the coarse fabric between her fingers next to his nose.
“Burlap was a bad choice,” she said.
“Not like I had a lot of choices,” he said, his voice still mostly husky.
She patted his chest, and the three of them marched up the hill toward the sound of gunfire.
***
Barker brushed the glass from his arm and pulled the rifle tighter to his bruised shoulder. The butt kept slamming against his sore arm. He wasn’t skilled at handling the weapon and certainly wasn’t a marksman. He knew this. His hope was that, by opening fire, he’d draw attention away from his friends lower on the hill.
He’d first noticed the odd pack of men when he’d peeked through his dorm window. He’d delivered the goods and set them on the low chest of drawers beneath the window between his bunk and Dub’s lofted bed. He’d glanced out toward the plaza and seen them. One of them had a radio. He’d thought that maybe they were the rescue team, the people from the Oasis. He’d slid open the window sideways for the first time since the attacks, working hard to crack the stubborn railings on the top and bottom of the sliding mechanism. It had scratched open and he’d started to speak, to call to the men, but stopped himself and instinctively crouched low. His pulse had quickened as he hid, counting in his mind the number of people five stories below.
First, there were more than four people. The rescuers had told them they’d have four people and a dog. He’d counted more than four. He wasn’t sure how many, but it was twice as many. And there was no dog.
Then he’d remembered there was supposed to be a woman too, although he cou
ldn’t remember her name. But she wasn’t there.
Even if he could rationalize the absence of the dog or the woman, there were too many people gathered around the one with the radio. And they didn’t look like healthy, well-supplied trekkers who’d made their way from the coast, either. They looked sick, especially the one with the radio. He was thin and hunched over at his shoulders. His complexion, even from fifty feet above, was as gray as the sky and ground around him.
Barker had sat with his back pressed uncomfortably against the wood chest, his butt on his heels. He’d smelled the pungent odor of his own sweat and felt the thump of his heart against his chest.
He’d reached across his body and picked up the rifle, which he’d laid on his bunk, and gripped it by the forestock. He’d swung it around, and with an empowering exhalation of air from his lungs, he’d thrown himself onto the dresser and aimed down toward the men.
He’d fired a couple of warning shots, hoping they might scatter. But they hadn’t. They’d found cover. Apparently, they’d steeled their resolve and stayed on this part of the hill. The one with the radio hadn’t moved at all.
The radio man had produced his own weapon, a large black pistol that looked like the kind of gun a police officer might use. He’d quickly clipped the radio to his belt and wrapped both hands around the pistol, unleashing a volley of shots aimed at Barker. Those shots had shattered the window glass next to him. There had to be more than one gun. There were too many shots at once. He hadn’t seen the others clearly enough to know, but his ears told him more than Radio Man were armed.
Now Barker needed to take better aim. No impotent warning shots this time. He slid his finger inside the guard and leveled his aim down at Radio Man. He applied pressure to the trigger as another round of percussive shots zinged past his head.
The rifle kicked again, but this time it was tight enough to his shoulder that the recoil didn’t disturb his aim. The .22-caliber round punched through the air straight at the target. And missed. Barker thought the man smiled, his lips stretching wide across his gaunt face.
The man reset his posture and fired again, unleashing a torrent of shots that sent Barker rolling off the chest, crunching shards of glass beneath him and crashing to the floor between the chest and his bed. He lost his grip on the rifle and it fell to the floor, but not before the barrel cracked him in the center of his forehead.
Barker was on the floor, dizzied, and thought he’d been shot. He quickly realized that if he’d taken a bullet to the center of his head, he’d be dead.
He rubbed the sore spot on his brow and scrambled back onto the edge of the bed, picking up the rifle. He scooted back, away from the window, his body trembling in response to the surge of adrenaline that made his senses hyperaware. He smelled the ash as flakes of it drifted in through the window and settled on the shards of glass lying on the chest of drawers.
The men were talking down below. One of the voices carried more than the others in the chilled air, his words clear and understood.
They thought he was dead, that the last barrage of semiautomatic pistol fire had somehow hit him five stories up.
Barker gathered his nerves, now thinking they wouldn’t be looking for him to pop up as a gallery target might in an arcade. They wouldn’t expect it at all.
In one smooth series of actions, he properly gripped the rifle, raised himself onto the glass-covered chest of drawers, and slid forward to aim the barrel down toward the last time he’d seen the men while easing his finger onto the trigger. He quickly drew the butt to his body and pulled.
The rifle recoiled, and its familiar blast exploded from the barrel. He pulled again, aiming in the same direction, and the rifle slammed back against him. A third shot zipped from the .22 long gun before Barker peered through the trail of smoke drifting from the end of the barrel to see what damage he’d done.
No sooner had he caught sight of two men on the ground when a peppering of shots snapped back in his direction. It sounded like firecrackers, but he caught the muzzle flashes in his peripheral vision and rolled over to one side. The shots tore through the air next to him and bored into the ceiling, showering the room in the mineral fiber of the suspended tiles.
The men below were shouting, bellowing in pain. He knew he’d hit at least two of them with his three shots. Neither had been the radio man, apparently.
Barker expected one of two things to happen as he squatted on the floor with his back to the dresser: Radio Man would reload and open fire again, or the other surviving men would figure out where in the building he was holed up and they’d come for him.
His eyes found the door and he scrambled to his feet. He stayed low, crouch running as he bungled his way into the door with his shoulder. He reached up, his hands trembling, and fumbled with the deadbolt until he was certain he’d locked it correctly.
Barker exhaled. His pulse was thumping in his ears. His chest was heavy. He pushed himself from the door and lurched toward the chest of drawers. His ears pricked, listening for the sound of return fire or the pounding of boots in the hallway outside his room.
Neither came. Not yet.
***
Clint held Filter at his side and dispatched his remaining men toward the building in front of them. That meant five were headed to find the lone sniper in the tower.
“Just you and me?” asked Filter, his voice as relaxed and indifferent as ever.
Clint surveyed the dying men at their feet. One of them was clutching his gut. A dark stain stretched from his midsection to his groin. His legs were splayed on the ground, a sheen of sweat coating his forehead. He was barely conscious, mumbling incoherently as the color drained from his face and the life from his body. A semiautomatic pistol was on the ground inches from his hand.
The other was unconscious already with a shot to his upper chest. He was breathing, as far as Clint could tell, but not for long. He was on his side, and the rise and fall of his ribs was less and less visible with each successive breath.
He shrugged. “Yeah.” He reloaded the HK with a full magazine, palming it into the bottom of the semiautomatic’s grip. “Just you and me.”
Clint chambered a round. Filter folded his arms across his chest. The men stood there silently, watching the quintet lumber into the high-rise dormitory. Two of them were armed. Clint motioned toward the gun on the ground and raised an eyebrow. “You gonna grab that?” he asked Filter. “It might be good if I weren’t the only one with a weapon.”
Filter moved to the gun. He squatted and picked it up, holding it away from his body. He rose to his feet and looked down the hill toward the next plaza. Buildings and tangles of dead or dying tree branches blocked his view. He glanced over his shoulder at Clint.
“What do you think happened with Jesse?” he asked, walking back to Clint’s side. “I heard a shot.”
Clint looked past Filter, toward the mangle of trees. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Let’s go see.”
No sooner had they begun their march toward the cluster of trees, beyond which they’d be able to see what had happened to Jesse, or what damage he’d inflicted, than Clint heard the pop of handgun fire from the side. Filter grunted and stumbled backward into him, knocking him to the ground.
“I’m hit, dude!” he cried out in a voice that more resembled a squeaky preteen than a grown man. He whimpered. He was wandering aimlessly, his feet tripping over each other, grabbing a limply dangling arm. His gun was on the ground. So was Clint’s, and he didn’t know where it was.
Clint tried scrambling to his feet but dropped to the ground as a pair of loud pops sent slugs into Filter’s body. He danced like a marionette for a moment, spinning to face Clint with wide, frightened eyes, before they rolled back in his head and he dropped to the ground. The side of his skull cracked sickeningly when it smacked against the unforgiving concrete. Blood was everywhere, and for the first time since the bombs dropped and the fire raged, Clint was afraid of dying.
The anxiety welled in him as
he tried to scramble to his feet. It was as if he were in a dream, and no matter how fast he tried to move, his body responded in slow motion. By the time he’d gathered himself and found the black composite HK dusted in ash, three people stood above him. Two of them had weapons leveled at his head.
The woman crouched beside him and pressed her weapon to his temple. He relaxed and tried spreading his fingers wide, having given up on trying to grab his gun.
She glared at him through goggles, the armed man standing above him. He too wore goggles, but the mask that covered his face was made of some odd material. It was stitched together with wide thread. Was it…burlap?
The third of the group kicked away the HK and then reached onto Clint’s hip and plucked the radio from his side. He shook it in his hand and backed away slowly, his feet dragging across the newly fallen ash.
The woman said something, but Clint didn’t hear it. He was transfixed by the ash. There was always more ash. He felt the press of the handgun’s muzzle against his head.
“I asked you a question,” she said. “Who are you?”
Clint exhaled and leaned on one elbow. He closed his eyes, imagining his mother’s face. He couldn’t truly remember it. Not entirely. Bits and pieces. Her eyes. Her toothy grin. The dimple on one cheek. Or was it two dimples? He couldn’t be sure.
“What are you doing here?” asked the man with the burlap mask.
Clint opened his eyes and looked at him. He was the one Jesse had gone after. Clint chuckled, thinking about how he got his answer about Jesse without having to see for himself.
“I’m a survivor,” he said with as much defiance as he could muster, “no different from you.”
He was right. He’d survived, as they had. In that, they were the same. But they would live longer now. Soon he’d be a casualty of the attacks, of his own hubris, of karma.
He took a ragged breath and coughed. The blood pooled in his mouth, and he spat it at the woman’s feet.
“Are you it?” she asked.
His brow furrowed. He coughed again, unsure of what she meant.
