by Schow, Ryan
His laughter wasn’t so vibrant this time, nor was it confident. In fact, the air dropped a degree or two in temperature, a biting gust whipping past them where before there was barely a breeze.
“I’m offering you a place at my side,” she said. She then turned and addressed the others. “All of you are welcome for now. But if Five Foot Three here decides he wants to try to change that, then I promise you, I will not be so hospitable.”
“Who are you anyway?” one of them asked. A flaming redhead by the look of him, and right and truly ugly.
“I’m the one who brought you all of this,” she said, spreading her arms out, palms up in the kind of display you’d see a gameshow hostess make when revealing the big prize in the grand finale.
“Yeah right,” Five Foot Three said.
“Would you like to test me, half-pint?” she challenged, her voice lower, her tone more serious. “Or do you want to be by my side and keep breathing? It’s your choice.”
Five Foot Three let out a hollow laugh, but there was a distinct nervousness to his tone that gave Maria pause. Men were always such big talkers. This one got his little ego hurt, though, and that was bound to trigger him. True to his nature, he tried to grab her wrist. She stepped away, kept her arms just out of reach.
“Is this how your love life goes?” she asked, playfully. “Are you a Rohypnol on the first date kind of guy?”
“Are you talking about Roofies? Like the date rape drug?”
“Exactly,” she teased.
“I like a woman with a little fight in her,” he said. “Won’t lie about that.”
He stepped forward, a little faster.
She countered him.
“You’re going to like a woman with a lot of fight in her a whole lot less, I can promise you that,” she cautioned.
He grabbed for her again, but she moved just in time; he stumbled from the overreach, catching his balance but looking stupid in the process. Anyone could see this guy was getting frustrated.
“I bet you make a terrible dance partner,” Maria said. “Short and clumsy. Probably bad in bed, too, aren’t you?”
“Actually—” he started to say.
“Ten bucks and a pack of Twinkies says you aren’t more than four inches hard,” she mused, now taunting him overtly, almost like she wanted to provoke him.
She was.
She needed to.
He stepped aggressively, but she ducked him, lightly sweeping his foot the second before it touched the ground. Her timing was perfect. The second he leaned his body weight over that front foot, and it wasn’t there, he dropped straight down to the ground, landing face-first on the dirty asphalt before he even knew what happened. Everyone started to laugh, her included.
“Bad dance partner, embarrassingly small dick, five foot three. So you’re not a fighter and you’re not a lover, tell me Five Foot Three, what good are you?”
Looking up, spitting out a broken tooth (judging by the small clicking sounds of enamel bouncing on asphalt), he both heard and saw his friends in stitches.
This walking cliché, this cautionary tale, he stood up, dusted himself off and said, “That was cute. You got me on that one.” He spit out what looked like a glob of blood (she couldn’t be sure), then hitched up his dirty pants and rolled his neck.
Maria saw the ominous look, then said, “Last chance, short stuff. You and me rule the nation, or you take a dirt nap. Your choice.”
He put up his guard, like he was going to fight and that’s when everyone fell silent. If these mutts were real life dogs, to claim the pack, you’d have to take out the alpha. If Five Foot Three was the alpha, then she was about to claim the pack.
He swung on her and she shifted her head sideways, letting the fist graze her skin. She smiled at him and said, “Add slow to the long and shameful list.”
“C’mon Cletus,” one of the guys warned.
“Shut up!” he barked.
Maria started laughing, then said, “Is your name really Cletus?”
“Yeah, so?” he said, trying to gain position on her.
“That’s the ugliest, stupidest, most backwoods name I’ve ever heard spoken in my life, no offense to all the good and decent Cletus’s of the world.”
“I’m a good Cletus,” he said, taking another swing. She took a slight angle, hands at her sides, her calm playing to his anxious.
“No you aren’t,” one of his buddies said. “You’re trying to beat up a woman!”
This caused the guys to break in to laughter.
“Shut it, Myron,” he said, moving with her, countering her angles. “All a ya just shutcher mouths.”
Cletus finally threw a combination shot she ducked, then she dodged a bum rush with a parry to the left and said, “Any of you cheesedicks want to help the little fella out?”
“Naw, we’re fine,” the bald headed guy said. “He’s got this.”
Growling, Cletus charged her again, but he was too ambitious, to the point where he was stumbling all over himself yet again.
“Cletus, are you going to strike a lady like a real man? Or just exhaust yourself in front of these three fine gentlemen? Because you know what they say, you can either keep the lady’s attention, or she’ll find another fella in your stead. I’m thinking if I want a real fight, I’m going to need to go elsewhere.”
“I don’t hit ladies,” he rumbled, hunched over like a maniac ready to pounce, but out of breath at the same time.
“Well come start,” she said, standing right in front of him.
He charged her one last time, and that’s when she drove a fist into his face so hard, his actual skull caved in. His nose smashed flat, then exploded outward like a poached egg hit by a sledgehammer. The bones beneath the skin mashed in. She could feel it. The corner of his maxilla broke, along with the nasal bone, leaving a crater in his face that was slightly larger than the size of her fist.
She drew back her hand, shook her own blood off and smiled like it didn’t hurt at all when what she registered to anyone else would be a staggering pain.
The man dropped dead in a heap.
One shot.
Turning around, she said, “I never did like short guys. What about you fellas? Looking to take a load off, maybe sleep in my new hotel for winners tonight?”
The three of them looked at each other, dumbstruck.
“C’mon boys, pick up your jaws, you’ve been asked a question.”
“You killed him,” the redhead said.
“Yes, I did,” she replied, cutting the distance between them in half. “If it’s any consolation, he had it coming. Any of you boys ever been taught to respect a lady?” When no one said anything, she said, “I’ll go by a show of hands, please.”
Three hands came up.
“That’s good to see.” Pleased, she said, “You’re not only an affable bunch, you’re quick learners, too.”
“What’s affable?” one of them asked.
“It means genial, pleasant, sociable,” she replied.
Two of them looked at each other, then the other one said, “Um, excuse me ma’am, but that’s not really us.”
“Well then, what are you?”
“Survivors?”
“You’re all survivors, by virtue of you…surviving. Now Cletus the fetus here”—she said, looking at the way he was curled on the sidewalk and oh so still—“he’s not a survivor. But the three of you? Most definitely.”
They all nodded in agreement, looking like chumps, but willing to follow her lead nevertheless.
“Beyond that, tell me about yourselves. Maybe your names, for starters.”
“Well you heard Cletus say Myron’s name already,” one of them said, pointing to a skinny guy with flaming red hair, birdlike facial features and a distended belly. “I’m Aaron and this is Danny.”
“What did you all do before this?” she asked.
“Cletus was a bouncer at Centerfold’s,” Danny said, his baldish head against the dim light of the night
sky looking like it needed a fresh shave.
“I’m assuming Centerfold’s is a titty-bar?” she asked.
“It is,” Danny responded, but with no joy in his voice. “The three of us were regulars. We just got laid off before the attack. Maybe two days prior. They called it ‘downsizing,’ but we called it ‘getting the shaft.’”
“So all of you were with Centerfolds?” she asked, less patient than before. “Keep in mind, Aaron, this is the second time I’ve asked you about your trade.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. No, not the club. The three of us worked for Mission Mobile Generators. We serviced mobile generators for some of the larger companies.”
“How big were these generators?” she asked, intrigued.
“We were new,” Danny said. “We were just learning, but then we got bought out and then they downsized.”
“So you weren’t really that good at what you did then, is that it?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Danny said, running a hand along his scalp.
On closer inspection, Danny looked like the villain on Despicable Me, the cartoon. Small head, hooked nose, big belly, skinny legs. These three guys weren’t fighters, or lovers. Well, maybe Aaron. He wasn’t as bad as the other two. But still…
“I could work on them, but the real genius…he’s not with us,” Aaron said. “He said he didn’t think it was a good idea to leave the city until most of it was dead.”
“He might have been right,” Maria said.
“So why are you here?” Myron asked. She couldn’t stand the way his two front teeth were big, and his overbite was slightly pronounced.
“I bet your parents were exceptionally ugly,” she said, her voice kind, but her words cutting.
He lowered his head and offered no rebuttal.
“I’m here because I have to be here, Myron. Because I’m destined to be here.”
“Have you seen what they’re doing during the day?” Aaron asked. “That’s why we’re making a move to leave. Most of the city is dead. Burning in the stacks. But those who are alive”—he said, shaking his head—“they shouldn’t be. Some of them are…inhuman. Cruel.”
“They’ve got no respect for human life,” Danny said.
“If you want to survive this world, boys, you have to let go of your humanity, your humility, your decency and your respect for yesterday’s laws. Take Cletus for example. Putting him out of our misery was a gift to humanity. Think of all the girls who won’t be manhandled by this clown on account of what I just did. Plus, and maybe it’s me, but he had a rapey vibe about him, and if there’s one thing the apocalypse needs less of, it’s Neanderthals like this guy thinking he can just take what he wants from whomever he wants.”
Aaron said, “I won’t lie, you make a good point.”
A soft wobbling sound from just up the street gave her pause. The four of them looked toward the source of the noise and saw a family moving up the street in the darkness. Maria looked them over—lean man and woman, two skinny kids, mangy dog, the man pushing a grocery cart—and decided to let them go.
“It’s okay,” she said to the family, who seemed startled by them. “No one will bother you as you pass.”
The man nodded his thanks, and wordlessly they passed through, only the dog interested in the four of them and the dead man.
“How’d you do that to Cletus’s face?” Danny asked.
She knew it was coming. If not now, then later. “I’m a trained fighter,” she lied. “Not like the fetus here. Professionally trained.”
“Yeah, but you crushed his entire face in,” he said, thumbing on a dim flashlight and inspecting Cletus’s face.
“I have dense bones,” she said. “That’s what they call a heavy hand. You ever been smacked around by a woman, Danny?”
“No,” he said.
“It puts things in perspective.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Aaron asked. He didn’t ask defensively, or even out of some masculine sense of pride. He just wanted to know.
“You think you’re men, that you’re invincible. You push out your chests, flex your muscles, exert your dominance. But then push comes to shove and the next thing you know, you’re lying in the dirt with dead flies and no pulse and everything else of little consequence.”
“She’s right,” Myron said, running a hand through his coppery mess of hair. “Cletus thought he’d live forever.”
“Can any of you fight?” she asked.
“We’re alright,” Danny said. “More than that, we’re loyal. And we won’t try any funny stuff, even though you’re very good looking.”
“Myron and I can fight reasonably well,” Aaron said. “I’m more patient than Cletus here, but he was always a dog with a hard on anyway. Hopped up on his own toxic brand of masculinity.”
She gave the dead body a kick, causing it to jerk hard. It was heavy under her feet. True dead weight.
“Any of you have anything to eat?” she turned and asked.
Myron snorted, then said, “Hardly, but Cletus’s got a backpack with some stuff in it.”
Looking at all three of them, moving from one face to the next down the line of disappointments, she said, “Where are you of any use to me?”
“We can be useful,” Myron said, looking at Aaron with raised eyebrows and a hopeful nod.
“If you can’t get me food, you could become food. Is that useful?” she asked. “Because I don’t mind eating humans.”
“Lots of folks are doing that now,” Aaron said, clearing his throat. “It’s not healthy though. Causes long term problems.”
“If you can get by with a bite to eat, but not make a habit of it, then really, eating all of you is just a means to an end.”
“I get that,” Danny said, stumbling over his words. “We can find some food, but we can’t stay here. I mean, not in the city during the day. Lots of bad things happening here. You know that burn pile a few blocks down?”
“I missed it,” she said.
“Hard to miss yesterday afternoon,” Aaron said low.
“I can smell it,” she said, sniffing the air. “But no, I didn’t see it. What happened?”
“There must have been eighty or ninety of them there,” Danny said, scratching the scruff under his chin. “Five or six guys did that. Just ransacked the place these people were holed up in. They went in with machetes, bats, knives and guns and killed almost all of them. We saw it, but Cletus said not to help. Anyway, they took everyone’s stuff, a couple of their younger, better looking women and then they burned half the bodies to make a point.”
“What was the point they were trying to make?” she asked.
“That what’s yours is theirs,” Aaron said.
“Is there a head to them?” she asked. “A leader, a few lieutenants? Or are they like you dingbats?”
If there was an alpha, she could take him out, co-opt the rest, then maybe take a few of their women for breeding. Smiling inside, she realized this could be a real first start for her army of foot soldiers.
“I think so. Like I said, though,” Danny added, “there were only five of them, maybe six.”
“Why is any of this important?” Aaron asked. “Shouldn’t you be focused on getting out of here before they come for you?”
“I’m more concerned about going after them. You guys said you worked at a generator shop?” The three of them nodded their heads in acknowledgement. “Did any of these generators happen to be large enough to power a building?”
Danny and Myron looked at each other, a question between them, but Aaron wasn’t worried about the other two. It seemed he knew what she was thinking.
“We had four diesel trucks. Enough to power a building, sure. But you don’t have a power problem. You have an infrastructure problem.”
“What about fuel?” she asked. “I’m assuming you have your own pumps.”
“Yeah,” Aaron replied. “They’re electric, but yeah.”
“You know how brochures are always saying what you w
ant them to say whether it’s true or not?” Myron asked. She nodded. “Well a lot of our equipment was supposed to survive the EMP, but we never really tested that theory until now. Could be all kinds of problems there.”
“What about solar?” she asked.
“Yeah, we’ve got solar, too,” Aaron said. “You got a truck to tow any of this with?”
“Mid-sixties F-150.”
“Has it got a V8?” Myron asked.
“It’s the 428, so yeah,” she said. “The truck should do fine so long as we don’t start on any slick surfaces. The rubber’s not exactly new.”
“You already got a hitch on it?”
“I do.”
“Solar may be your best bet if we can’t get fuel out of the tanks, and that’s not accounting for the rig to pull it. That may be dead as a doornail. But again, you don’t have a gas or power problem, you have an infrastructure problem.”
“You haven’t tried starting them up?” she said.
Aaron shrugged his shoulders, but didn’t say anything more than that.
“Solar trailers are five by nine,” Myron said, “and like Aaron said, if you’ve got the V8 engine, you’ll have the giddy up to pull it. But the big boy? The diesel generator beefy enough for a building? Hell no. You need a rig for that and what we got…I’ll tell you what, I’m sure it’s all fried.”
“How far away are we talking here?” she asked.
“M&F Power is closer,” Aaron said. “It’s on Pinell Street just off Bell.”
“Which is?” she prompted.
“Just off the Del Paso exit on Interstate 80,” Myron said.
“You can generate some power maybe, but what are you going to run when it’s up?” Danny interjected. “You know a lot of these things, they’re run by transistors and little electronic doodads and such. Plus there’s wiring and…those whatchamacallits that you’ll need to flip DC to AC power.”
“An inverter?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.
“Yeah, an inverter.”
“Danny, are you high?” she asked.
“No, why?” he said. “I mean I got some stuff if you need a pick-me-up.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“Well you got issues with the stuff in electronics is all I’m trying to say,” he replied.
