by Ryan Schow
The look of delight and wonder on her father’s face was priceless. “Really?” he said. She nodded and he swept her up in his arms and hugged her tight. When he set her down, he looked over at Rex and said, “I’m assuming you’re the father?”
“I am,” Rex said. Her father took Rex’s hand, gave it a good shake, then said, “Congratulations you guys, both of you.”
“This changes nothing, though,” Indigo said, “I’m coming with you guys and that’s final.”
“You need to take your people back to our neighborhood, find them places to stay,” Nick said gently. “As I’m sure you know, most of the houses on 24th Street burnt down, but 23rd is intact. So that’s where we’re set up. That’s where we should take everyone for now.”
He gave her the address on 23rd, said a woman named Maria was there, then said, “There’s a woman there with your mom down at the park. Her name is Bailey. She’s with me. Be sure to introduce yourself and tell her you found me, okay? That will be important to her.”
“When you say she’s with you—”
“She’s with me.”
“Did you see Mom?” she asked.
“Yes,” her father said. “So did Bailey.”
“Any fireworks?”
“Not yet,” he replied. “You’re okay doing this?”
“No, but I’m going to anyway. For the record, I’d rather be on the front line with you guys.”
Just then Cincinnati, Macy and Atlanta came trotting up the street. They formally introduced themselves to Marcus and Nick, then Rider said, “Nick, Marcus, this isn’t your fight so we don’t expect—”
“I’m at home in the hysteria of war,” Marcus said.
“Yeah, count me in, too,” Nick said.
“Dad,” Indigo pleaded. “You just got here. Maybe you could come with me.”
“Sweetheart, you can’t imagine the hell we’ve been through and survived. None of us are the same people we started this war as. Including you. That means we’ll be safe. It means we’ll be okay.”
She kissed him, hugged him one last time, then said, “Just promise me you’ll make it back home to us.”
“I promise,” he said, making yet another promise he wasn’t sure he could keep.
By then, Macy and Atlanta were gathering up the guns, checking magazines and chambers, checking the bodies for spare ammo.
“You don’t expect to come with us, do you?” Rider said to the girls.
“You going to stop us?” Cincinnati asked, holding her ground.
“Sin,” Stanton said, “we don’t know what we’re in for up there. From what Gunderson said, they were hundreds of guys up there, and we’ve only got about thirty or forty of them here.”
“All the more reason for us to join you,” she said.
“We could just walk away,” Atlanta said. “Go with everyone away from here and never look back.”
“They burned our house down,” Rider hissed.
No one said anything until Atlanta broke the silence and said, “We’re coming whether you like it or not.”
“No,” he said.
“It was our house, too!” she said.
“No,” he growled. “And that’s final.”
“But this is what we trained for,” Atlanta said. “You need us.”
“We need you alive,” Cincinnati said.
“You’re going with them, Sin,” Stanton said, eliciting a hard stare from the woman. “You and Macy.”
She nodded her head, held her tongue.
“Indigo?” Cincinnati said. “Girls?”
Indigo stood there, looking mightily uncomfortable. She’d taken her pound of flesh, though. She’d left her mark. Now she was coming to terms with the fact that she had a child growing inside her, and if something happened to her, neither Rex nor her father would survive that. So she had to go, trust they would be okay, even if she was downright terrified they wouldn’t be. She kissed Rex, then said good-bye to her father again.
Feeling alone, sick to her stomach leaving them, she tried to hold her emotions. She wasn’t doing a very good job. As she and the girls headed down the street to the park where she would meet up with her mother and her father’s new girlfriend, Bailey, she looked over her shoulder one last time, wondering if that was the last she’d see of one of them, or all of them.
This was a war, she thought. And in war there are always casualties.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Indigo introduced herself to Bailey. The woman seemed overwhelmed to finally be meeting her. Obviously, her father told Bailey a lot about Indigo, to the point that Bailey might feel she knew her. The woman was beautiful and friendly, and she’d already seemed to have hit it off with Margot. Indigo didn’t know what to make of this. Maybe it was a good thing. Margot had changed. She’d been great lately. Her energy was up, her moods were up, and overall she’d been pleasant to be around.
So yeah, maybe it was a good thing.
Now she looked at the scared group of people. People run out of their homes by violence and fire. They were all standing around looking at the dead bodies in front of the school, looking at each other, rubbing their hands together and looking at Indigo.
She was about to take them back to the quiet neighborhood. The neighborhood they thought was empty. Atlanta’s neighborhood.
“How far of a walk is it?” a few of the people were asking.
It should have taken them about forty minutes to get there, but it was a large group of people, so accounting for slower folks, Indigo said, “Maybe an hour or so from here.”
Not too long ago, she remembered hunting down The Ophidian Horde, finding Cincinnati, Macy and Stanton and leading them back to her neighborhood as well.
Looking around, dead people in front of the burning building, the sky glowing with the fire, this was all so surreal.
“Let’s go,” she finally said. “Everyone stay together, and let me know if you need to stop or if there is danger. Don’t be afraid to speak up, okay?”
No one said anything.
“Okay?” she asked, a little louder.
Their voices rose and a low chorus of traumatized “okays” satisfying her.
She couldn’t believe her father was back. She found him, and he went into war, and now she was leaving him behind? This was crazy! How long had she gone on assuming he was gone? As in dead? Long enough to accept it as truth.
But her dad…
To just show up in the middle of a war and start knocking off people like that? Her mind grew fuzz at the mere thought of it! Who had he become since he left? And Bailey. What was up with Bailey?
With an hour to walk, breathe fresh air and think, her memories trailed backward in time, to the place where her father was so lost and shut down over Margot. A dark pall settled over her, dragging her mood down.
She fought hard to shrug it off.
Margot was finally becoming a decent person. And she was back with Indigo. Losing Tad did a lot of things to her. Reuniting with Indigo did more. Or was it the guarantee from doctors that she was losing her life to cancer? The very idea that she could now be in remission—for whatever reason—might have also worked to cement some kind of a positive life change.
They’d all changed.
Even Indigo.
Looking back, seeing Margot and Bailey walking side by side—along with Macy and Atlanta—seeing a long line of people with Cincinnati, Sarah and Rowan pulling up the rear, made her think this was almost too much to take.
Within an hour, they arrived at 23rd and Judah. Bailey showed Indigo where they’d put Maria and the kids. Atlanta was trying to keep it together. Her dead sister was still on the living room floor of their home. She refused to look at the house as she walked by it and she tried not to cry.
Indigo put her arm around the girl and Atlanta said, “Thanks.”
To Rowan, Indigo said, “Stay here for a second.”
According to Bailey, this Maria woman and her seven kids had just settled in, an
d of course there were no plans for such a huge influx of people, so it seemed only right to let her know what was happening.
Indigo knocked on the door, two light taps. A moment later she heard bare feet on the hardwood floor, the deadbolt being released. When the half broken door opened up, Indigo was staring at a gorgeous looking Hispanic woman.
“Yes?” she said, looking past Indigo to see a large gathering of people. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. Bailey was at the foot of the stairs. She gave a wave of acknowledgement to Maria.
“I’m Indigo, Nick’s daughter,” she said. “He sent me here.”
“You’re Indigo?” Maria said, stepping out onto the porch. She nodded, and Maria smiled and said, “I didn’t expect you to be so pretty.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Your father said you were an archer, so I just expected you to be a nerd.”
“Clearly I’m not.”
“Who are all these people?”
She didn’t speak with much warmth which made Indigo wonder what must’ve happened to bring her to this point of near-inhuman behavior. Then again, no one survived anything without their fair share of scars and trauma, so perhaps there was a touch of PTSD at work here.
“Are the kids okay?” Indigo asked. “Everyone got to sleep alright?”
“They’re fine,” she said. “They’re all asleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’m too wired. After Marcus, Nick and Bailey left, I’ve just—”
Not seeing Marcus or Nick, Maria’s eyes fell down on Bailey, who walked up the steps and said, “There’s some bad things happening. I didn’t want to startle you, but these people need a place to stay. Some clan of ex-gamers or freaking basement dwellers or whatever, they attacked the college everyone was living at. It’s burning down as we speak.”
“Yes, but what about Nick and Marcus?”
“You know those two,” Bailey said. “Especially Marcus. I’m okay, though. Thanks for asking.”
“I see you’re okay,” Maria said, coldly. “Why would I need to ask?”
Indigo looked back and forth from one woman to the other. “You guys on good terms or is this just something you do in the middle of the night?”
“We’ve only known them for a few days,” Bailey said, “but we’re on good terms. Maria’s had a long, rough journey. We all have.”
“So they are fighting then?” Maria said. “Is that it?”
“I already told you that,” Bailey replied, stifling an exhausted yawn. “Bad things are happening, that’s why they sent us back here.”
“I’m going back as soon as you get settled,” Indigo told Bailey. “Maybe sooner.”
“I’m going with you, then,” Maria said.
“Sarah and I can watch the kids,” Bailey said, reluctantly. “Cincinnati and Atlanta are locking down a few extra houses since they know the neighborhood, so if you want to go you should go.”
“I don’t exactly know what you know about combat,” Indigo said to the woman, careful with the subject because you never know, “but this is no joke.”
“She’ll be fine,” Bailey said, interrupting Maria. “You’ll be better off with her at your side.”
“Thanks,” Maria said, her appreciation for the comment barely audible.
“So do you have guns, knives, anything you can use in close quarters combat?” Indigo asked.
“I’ve got a few things,” she said. “Give me a few minutes, then we can leave.”
Maria closed the door most of the way, but not all the way. She disappeared into the darkness, moving like she’d been in the house her whole life rather than a few hours.
Bailey said, “I’m going to meet up with Cincinnati, see what I can do. It was really nice to meet you, Indigo. Your dad loves you so much, so I know you being here means the world to him.”
“I just wish we weren’t going through this,” Indigo replied. “That maybe he could’ve broken away and not risked his life getting here only to risk even more.”
“Is that why you’re going back?” Bailey asked. “To try to protect him? Because Marcus is a beast and your dad, he’s no slouch either. He got me out of some very hairy situations, situations where we almost died a couple of times.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
“I want to go because that’s where my dad is, and it’s where Rex is. I’m also going because those idiots damn near destroyed the cornerstone of our existence. That college was our community. It was everything to everyone, myself included. Plus it really pisses me off that this already happened to me once, as I’m sure you know.”
“Yours and your father’s house, yes?”
“Exactly.”
“You’d be safer here, though,” she said, cautiously.
“This world isn’t safe, Bailey. You know that. The minute we stop fighting for what’s ours, the minute we roll over and let someone take what we’ve built, it’s over. We lost almost everything. We’re now homeless. No medical supplies, no food or water, no beds or toys, no roof over our head. It’s all gone. And the idea of having to start over because of these assholes makes me so frothing mad all I see is red. Do you get that? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“I do,” Bailey said.
“You fight for every inch to protect what’s yours, and sometimes you fight because some people just need to die. Right now, I’m going to fight for the latter.”
“I’m just not sure that’s the wisest course,” she said, her voice smaller, the argument nearly settled.
“It’s not,” she said. “Will you do me a favor and tell Rowan what’s happening? He needs to stay and cordon off the street at both ends, plus keep watch until daybreak.”
Bailey didn’t say anything. Instead, she reached forward and gave Indigo a big hug. “I’m so glad Nick found you, and that I like you. Please bring your father back.”
When she stepped back from Bailey, not only did she like the woman more, she liked her enough to be honest with her.
“War is no place for promises,” Indigo said. “Just talk to Rowan.”
Right then Maria came out of the house, looked at her and said, “I’m ready.”
Bailey said good bye to Maria, then headed down to talk to Rowan. Indigo and Maria took off into the darkness. They were four blocks up when Maria said, “Someone’s following us.”
Indigo turned around and she saw the blonde hair.
The gun at her side.
That face.
“Are you kidding me?” Indigo hissed.
Macy stood there, then said, “It’s going to be boring back there. I told Atlanta to tell my mom if she asked, so it’s not like she won’t know where I am.”
“Go home, Macy.”
She broke into a trot, caught up with them and said, “I’m either going with you or on my own, and the only thing that’s stopping me won’t be you, or her.”
“I could stop you if I wanted,” Maria said.
“But you won’t because you know statistically three guns are better than two and we’re going to need every body we can spare.”
“If you get killed,” Indigo said, “your mother will never forgive me.”
“Spare me the lecture, we’re practically the same age. Plus my dad’s there, too, and Uncle Rex, so it’s not like you really have anything to say to me but thank you.”
“I’m not thanking you,” Indigo grumbled, not liking this turn of events.
“Not yet,” she said with a defiant smile.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Six very pissed off men stalked through the night up Masonic Street, veered left on Turk, then walked up to USF Lone Mountain with their guns at their thighs and their eyes on the lookout. They were moving fast but not reckless. Rider, Marcus, Jagger, Stanton, Nick and Rex fanned out, Rider quickly taking out the two guards standing at the base of the long staircase with two well placed shots.
Two more guards appeared
to be racing down the bullet riddled steps toward the echo of gunfire. Marcus stepped in and put both down. Rider collected the guns from the downed soldiers, rifled through their clothes checking for spare ammo.
Rider kept a gun, tossed the other to Jagger who stuffed it in his waistband. Marcus was checking the other two. He pulled two guns, too. Rather than keeping a weapon for himself, he tossed the guns and ammo to Nick and Stanton.
Nick caught the weapon, then handed it back to Marcus. “Here, you keep it.”
Marcus frowned at him, almost like his eyes could do all the scolding, and said, “Get your head in the game or you’re going to get us killed.”
Without hesitation or reply, Nick jammed the weapon in the back of his pants.
The six of them crept up the school’s one hundred and four steps, making the long, cautious trek from the street to the former Jesuit school’s front door. The opened the enormous front door and slipped inside the sprawling building where oil lamps hung from rudimentary spikes pounded crudely into the walls.
The air inside was dry but cold. The sounds of trampling feet heading their way gave them pause.
“Spread out,” Marcus whispered.
Everyone spread out but kept the same line. The instant this “second-wave response team” rounded the corner, these same six pissed off men opened fire.
Bodies started dropping.
The men behind them fell, too, and then they got smart. Their enemies took shelter and started firing back. From there it was the boisterous sounds of a war going on in a veritable echo chamber.
Several of the six were nicked here and there, but nothing lethal. A few of them were cut open by shards of plaster shrapnel and Stanton’s face was powdered with exploding drywall. Nick was holding his own until the wainscoting next to him was hit by gunfire. Splintered wood shrapnel bit into his cheek, the largest being about the size of a toothpick. He said nothing because things were moving fast and there was no time to complain. No one else cried out or stopped what they were doing. They ignored the pain, the surprise, or the disappointment and they kept shooting, ducking, moving, reloading.
“Don’t make yourself a target,” Marcus had said to Nick a week ago when he was trying to help him prepare for combat shooting. “Guys like you, if they get caught in the thick of it and they don’t know what they’re doing, they plant their feet and stay put, shooting, hoping to God they hit their target before their target hits them. If you’re going to do that, just eat a bullet and get it over with.”
