by Ryan Schow
“Well you can stay with us for as long as you want,” she said. “Forever even, if you choose.”
She looked up at Jagger and he gave her a reassuring nod. “You want to go back and play with the kids?”
“Yes, please.”
“Well then,” he said, “off you go.”
She walked down the hallway, leaving Jagger with Lenna. He turned to her and said, “She survived something horrific. I couldn’t leave her alone. And I’m glad I didn’t. That little angel is someone very, very special.”
“You’re too far away from me,” Lenna said. He went to her and she hugged him around the waist. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re even real right now.”
“I am. We are. And now we’re back together.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
My husband is back. My brother is back. Lenna finally has her husband and the boys have their father back. Indigo has her mother, too. She has my brother and the chance to let go of her father, maybe make a new life, one I actually want. Indigo seems to be throwing herself into Rex and he’s been freaking googly-eyed over her. Even Macy is feeling better and hanging out a lot with Hagan, Ballard and Atlanta. And I love, love, LOVE little Elizabeth! She’s such a blessing to our family, one more person to adore, a terrific balance to our family.
And Stanton. Oh my God, Stanton.
Rider told me about the attack across the street because Stanton kept it to himself. So when I heard what he did, I have to say, my attraction to him soared. SOARED! My man has his confidence back, one he’s earned and continues to earn. All of this makes me wonder if we are in bad times, but good times, too.
I know it’s hard to imagine a reality like this being possible. Especially in a world as downtrodden as this one. But with all the craziness of life behind us, we are forced back to each other. Our jobs no longer rule us, nor do school activities or things like consumption and ego. Our families are everything to us. We will do everything to protect them, to take care of them, to grow and expand them. Who would have thought?
Not me.
But now…now for the first time, I’m hopeful, Stanton is hopeful, our families are hopeful. I’m not sure where this will go, and I’m positive there will be new struggles, but now that we are together, we are most certainly stronger as a group than either of us were on our own.
The sun is going down on the horizon and we’ve had a good day of collections. I walk down the hall down and out back where I find the guys. They’re smoking fat cigars and drinking warm brandy. I catch them talking about the best way to defend the college, but also how many people they can take in and what it takes to sustain all of us.
These will most likely be our conversations for awhile, but one day they won’t. One day this abnormal will be every day’s normal. I pray for that day.
And I know in my heart that day will come.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The prisoner sat in a jail cell, unwilling to sleep, fists ready and jaw set. There were four other men in there with him, brutes through and through. One of them was now dead. He was the guy who couldn’t stop snoring, the guy who kept everyone awake. Two of the three guys now asleep, they were the ones who beat this guy to death hours earlier.
Behind him, the prisoner heard rubber soles walking on the polished concrete floors of the jail. He turned around, saw the deranged Mall Cop who had been playing guard.
“C’mere,” his jailer whispered.
The prisoner got up and walked to the bars, using every last ounce of energy he had to not look whipped.
Through the bars, the guard handed him a peach and said, “Eat quietly, toss the pit out here when you’re done.”
He did.
The next night the guard came by and found the prisoner beaten badly. In the center of the cell, one of the remaining survivors was sprawled out on the floor with his skull stomped in.
“What happened?”
The prisoner shrugged his shoulders. He had swollen knuckles and one of his shoes was gone. In the corner was the other man, also looking sufficiently trampled, but not dead. He was holding a shoe. The third man was asleep. He slept all the time.
“He take that?” the guard asked, nodding at the guy with the shoe.
“I’m gonna get it back.”
“Then what?”
The prisoner shrugged his shoulders, narrowed eyes on the guy with his shoe.
“If you could get out of here,” the guard asked, quietly, almost conspiratorially, “where would you go?”
“Home, of course.”
“If you even have one,” the guard challenged.
“Home isn’t a place anymore,” the prisoner replied, “it’s a person.”
“Your wife?”
He shook his head, held the guard’s eye.
“Girlfriend?”
“Daughter,” he replied.
“She got a name?”
“Of course she’s got a name.”
“You want another peach, or am I wasting my time on you?”
“Her name is Indigo.”
“That’s a beautiful name,” he says, un-holstering his weapon and taking out his keys. “It was also my grandmother’s favorite color.”
With that, he pointed the gun inside the cell, but no one moved. He opened the door, stepped aside for the prisoner and said, “Good luck, friend.”
Nickolas Platt stood and looked at the guard, eye to eye to see if he was full of it. Apparently he wasn’t. Nick walked out of the cell and said, “Thanks.” Then: “You got any extra shoes? Size ten maybe?”
“The world is full of dead people, friend,” he said, handing Nick a small peach. “You’ll have no problem finding a pair of shoes. Like I said, good luck.”
“Thanks,” Nick said wondering how the hell he was going to get from San Diego to San Francisco on foot. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to need it.”
END OF BOOK 3
The Next Adventure Begins in May 2018!
Follow Indigo’s father, Nick Platt, as he slogs through the California mires in the second trilogy of this über successful, post-apocalyptic adventure series.
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The Zero Hour: Indigo
1
Some people are always talking about how when you need someone, anyone, that when y
our friends fail you and your family abandons you and humanity sinks into a mire of its own making, at least you have God.
But what if you need Him and all He’s got for you is closed lips and a cold shoulder? Well, the answer becomes simple: you’re on your own.
I tell myself it’s better this way. But it’s a lie. It was a lie when the world was normal and it’s a lie now that it’s not. Every so often, when I think back to the beginning, to just before all this happened, when I think about all the drama that used to breed, gestate and grow legs not only in school but between my parents at home, I think I might actually believe in the high merits of solitude.
At one point I might have even told myself the apocalypse would be a welcomed reprieve from real life. That if civilization fell, I’d no longer feel so alone. That the threat of extinction would bring us all together not as one social group or another, but as human beings.
I allowed myself the indulgence of these grand, foolish thoughts because the unthinkable had happened and I suddenly found myself grappling with a new reality, one with ragged edges and the everyday promise of death.
The pillars of this once cultured world shuddered and disintegrated. Much to my dismay, to my absolute horror, people didn’t turn to each other the way I had hoped, rather they turned on each other with a sort of sick desperation. Now that I’m up to my teeth in it, my perspective has shifted. I am no longer that naïve girl from before. The world is different, I am different, and nothing is guaranteed, not even the survival of our species.
My name is Indigo, and this is my story.
2
My dad is leaving me, and honestly, it feels like the worst time ever. This day was coming, I knew it was, and I knew it would feel like this, but still…
“I won’t be gone long,” he says. “Two days for sure, three tops.”
I give my father my big empty eyes; I show him my most neutral face. This will be my first time at home all alone and though I’m eighteen—certainly no child—a first is a first.
The truth is, when my mother fell for some high society knuckle dragger pitching her the dream life, she left creating a gaping hole in our lives, this big, sad vacuum me and my dad felt swallowed in. It left us raw, but at least we had each other.
Now he’s leaving, too. Unlike my mother, however, he’s coming back. Which is good, because most people have a few someone’s they can lean on, just not me. All I’ve got is him.
“What am I going to do with myself for the next three days?” I ask.
He shrugs his shoulders and gives me a sheepish grin. He knows I don’t really have any friends. He also knows I’m not prone to getting into trouble, so perhaps he’s thinking that leaving me here by myself is a no-brainer. Well, it is for him. But it’s not for me, not at all. I make the face.
“What?” he asks with a laugh.
“I guess sometimes I just wish Mom were here,” I admit, although I know the weight behind this statement is too much to bear right now, for either of us.
His subtle amusement fades.
“Join the crowd, Shooter,” he says, gathering up his things—car keys, cell phone, wallet.
My dad calls me Shooter because it sounds better than archer. Mostly I’m into archery, but I shoot guns, too, therefore, I’m a shooter.
Shooter.
Mom split a few years back. She’s gone now, but not all the way gone. Every so often she calls to see how I am, how school is, how life is treating me.
“It’s amazing, Mom,” I answer, deadpan. “Just amazing.”
She once said she loved my dry humor. I’m still not sure if she was being sarcastic, or if she was for real.
Now when she calls, I say, “Hang on, I’ll get Dad,” to which she says, “You know I’m calling to talk to you.”
Of course she is. She doesn’t talk to my dad. Even though he’s super chill, good looking and usually on his game, she’s avoiding him like the plague. Even I know she doesn’t want to take responsibility for what she’s done, for how badly she hurt us.
When she first went and demolished our family for this promising new beau of hers, after a few weeks passed, she called and I asked how things were. To her, everything was fairy dust and rainbows. She was in love. Now two years later, she’s doing everything she can to hide the remorse in her voice. It’s there, though. I can hear it.
Beneath the reflective surface of those still waters, an undercurrent of discontent is churning. It’s a restless undertow she’s desperately trying to hide. Sometimes I think when she’s done with Tad (yep, the homewrecker has a name and it’s a really dumb one!), I wonder if she’ll come crawling back to my dad. Even worse, I wonder if he’ll take her back. I hope he doesn’t. She doesn’t deserve someone like him.
Anyway, I’m no psychologist and I’m not going to pretend I understand anything that has to do with relationships—especially marriage—but even I can see she’s not where she needs to be in life. The woman has no clue what she wants. If she hadn’t cheated on my dad the way she did, I would almost feel sorry for her. But she did, so I don’t.
So now she lives with her new boo a few miles from here. I’ve been to their home half a dozen times and I swear to Jesus, I don’t like it. It’s too large and too ostentatious and it’s really cold inside. Not cold like the weather, or ice cream—rather it feels cold the way you describe something as empty, something devoid of a soul. That brings me to Tad.
Oh, Lord…Tad.
I don’t like talking about him since he pretty much stole my mom from us, but whatever. He’s a small part of my life whether I like it or not. I’d tell you all about the guy, but I don’t want to waste too much time subject of Tad because teenage angst over your mom’s new squeeze is just a tad too juvenile and annoying, even for me.
After going to my mom’s new place for dinner for the first time, my father asked me how it was. What he was really asking for was intel, gossip, my most judgmental take on what has become enemy territory. Naturally, I embellished.
“Tad is a bit of a douchebag with a tad more hair grease than a man his age should have and he’s a tad bit condescending when he talks to me, acting like I should be more of a girly girl like mom and not some practically flat chested tomboy who likes to shoot things and drive muscle cars.”
The way I said it, honestly, I’ve never seen my dad squirm like that. Was I being a bit too dramatic? A tad too self-deprecating? Perhaps.
“That kind of language is unbecoming of a woman,” my dad said, completely ignoring what I thought was a brilliant play on words.
“Did no one ever tell you? Douchebag isn’t a bad word. It’s an adjective people like me use so we don’t have to say a-hole.”
“Whatever,” he said, half amused. “And don’t say those things about yourself. You’re perfect the way you are.”
The one thing not lost on me was my dad referring to me as a woman. I’m a senior in high school and ready as ever to get out of the cesspool of bullies and narcissistic cliques and over-liberal teachers telling me how I should think rather than how to do math or science or where to properly place a dangling participle. I feel like an angsty teenage girl who doesn’t quit fit into the world around me. What I don’t feel like, however, is a woman.
To me, a woman has a job. She has bills and credit cards and appointments with the salon. She has a place of her own, a few different guys wanting to please her, and she has sex. Lots and lots of mind blowing sex.
So no, I’m not feeling so much like a woman. But if I’ve got to start somewhere, then staying home by myself for a few days will be the next step in the evolution of yours truly. It’ll be like a trial run of growing up. And I’ll tell you this…the first thing I’m going to do is not get up at six a.m. The second thing I’m planning for is more sleep!
Not that I’ll tell my dad any of this. I won’t.
Right now the two of us are standing in the kitchen with a morning chill pressed on our windows and the outside world black and silent. I’m in my
pajamas with bed head and sleep crusted eyes not wanting my dad to leave.
“Will you let me know when you get there?” I ask, folding my arms. “Because San Diego is a long ways away.”
He’s eating toast, skimming his itinerary one last time.
“I will. You have a list on the counter. Alarm code. Emergency credit card. Keys to the gun safe if you need it. Plus there’s a hundred dollars in there for food and gas. And you know where all the emergency numbers are, so…”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
He glances up at me, gives me a look, then opens his arms and says, “Come here.” I go to him, and he pulls me into one of his amazing hugs. I won’t lie, I’m a daddy’s girl. He lets go after a minute or two, tells me he loves me then says, “Will you please, please, please make sure you go to school?”
“I’m going to give it my best,” I say on the tail end of a long yawn, “but I can’t make any promises this early in the morning.”
He frowns at me, but that’s because he knows I love teasing him. And right now I’m only teasing him because I don’t want him going away. I don’t want him leaving me all alone.
“I got you a little something for when I’m gone,” he tells me.
It’s not hard to see how much he cares about me, how much he loves to dote on me. It’s one of my favorite things about him.
“You did?” I ask, feigning surprise.
“It’s in my office, on the desk. I’ll call you when the conference lets out tonight, then again before it starts back up in the morning. Keep your cell phone on, okay?”
“Ten-four,” I tell him with pouty eyes.
Outside, he fires up his new Dodge Challenger. It’s matte black, lowered on beefy custom rims and it’s got some pretty cool headlights, specifically the blood orange halo surrounds. With the shaker hood, the hearty rumble of the Hemi engine and glowing reddish-orange eyes, this beast has a life and personality of its own. The minute we saw it, we both fell in love with it, and that’s how Dad got his new car. Of course, with him getting a new car, I couldn’t help but ask about his old one.
