by Schow, Ryan
Skylar grabbed her by the back of her hair, tightened the grip, and pulled her face in, like she was going to kiss her. Instead, she licked a trail up her cheek and said, “War isn’t for the timid, the compliant, the meek. If you don’t snap out of this, you’re going to die like all these other scumbags and nobodies.”
May started to nod her head, then she said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
“Good. Follow me. And get the rock.” May picked up the rock and they snuck inside the house, closing the door behind them.
“Can we just get the keys and go?” May whispered.
“No,” Skylar whispered back. “The second they hear an engine it will wake everyone up.”
“What are we going to do then?” May quickly said in her ear as they tried to assess interior threats.
“Find the keys, make sure no one wakes up.”
They tiptoed through the house, slowing when they heard the snoring on the couch and on a nearby recliner. She covered the flashlight, letting only a small amount of light out. When they were in the living room, they crept toward the men.
She went to the bigger of the two.
Slowly, she removed her hand, letting more light out gently. She then set the flashlight on the floor, the beam facing the ceiling and illuminating the room.
Skylar was standing over the big man, contemplating what was to come. She finally motioned May to go to the other man.
She then raised her hand with the hammer in it, claw aimed right, ready for digging out brains.
May raised the rock in her hand, looking at Skylar, waiting for her signal.
Skylar held up three fingers, then two, then one, and then they both clobbered the sleeping men. The claw sunk into her target’s skull right down to the hammer’s eye. His eyelids shot open, but then they sunk closed, his mouth slowly falling open, a line of drool rolling down his chin.
Beside her, the sick pulping sounds of May at work caught her attention. The woman was in the fight for the first time. She snapped her fingers and May stopped mid swing. There was blood everywhere. Skylar made the finger-across-the-neck sign to stop. May nodded, her face in shock, blood spatter all over the smeary remains of the gore Skylar had wiped on her earlier.
She pointed to the staircase.
May nodded and together they crept up the stairs. There were several offices converted to rooms. Skylar kept her hand over the light, letting it out sparingly.
When they came to the first room, Skylar peeked in, saw six men in six beds. She stole a quick breath, then turned to May. Moving close, she whispered into her ear.
“It’s three a piece,” she said. “You can’t beat them to death one at a time. Move from one to the next, one brutal shot after the other, back and forth over and over again until they’re dead. If one of them starts to scream, smash out their teeth. Don’t stop, don’t pause, just go to work, okay?”
She looked at her and May nodded, terrified, clearly uncertain. Leaning back in, Skylar whispered, “It gets easier. Soon it will be second nature.”
“This is murder,” she said.
“Murder is killing when you don’t have a reason to kill. They are slaughtering us. And if they see us in here, we’re dead. Think about that. Know that.”
She looked up and May’s resolve was better.
In the room, the darkness was complete. The second Skylar set the flashlight down, she saw the dingy walls, the tall ceiling, the big single pane windows and walls that were new a hundred years ago.
Skylar moved quickly, taking the left side while May took the right side. She swung for the Adam’s apple, buried the claw into the soft flesh, ripped it out, moved swiftly to the next one. May was keeping pace with her, as evidenced by the thumping sounds of the big rock smashing down on foreheads.
The instant Skylar tore out the third man’s throat, she turned to help May. That’s when May swung her head around, something in the doorway catching her attention. She reared back to line drive the rock at someone, but it was too late.
From the hallway, six quick shots got May dancing. The rock dropped, causing Skylar to look down. May fell hard beside it. Turning to the doorway, she broke out of her momentary trance. The Chicom now rushing her had his gun out, but the slide was back, the weapon empty.
He dropped the gun and tried to tackle her. She grabbed him by the arms the way she was trained, falling backwards into a body roll and taking him with her. She planted her foot into his gut right away, then thrust her legs on the backside of the roll and launched him with all her might. She heard the smash of breaking glass, scrambled up in spite of her aching back, her bleeding shoulders, and her dead friend.
The man had gone through the single pane window. Skylar went to the broken window, looked down below. Two floors down, he was lying on the pavement. She saw him moving, then decided she needed to go after him. Kicking out the rest of the glass, she was ready to jump when the scuffle of feet startled her.
She spun halfway around in time to get body-slammed right through the two-story window. For a moment she was airborne, then she landed on the Jeep below, right where the hood met the windshield. Blackness crowded out everything. For a long blissful moment, there was only nothingness, a delight so pure and complete it could only mean one thing.
But it didn’t mean that thing.
She was not dead.
Far from it.
Strong hands grabbed her, shook and jerked her body off the hood of the Jeep, dropped her three feet down onto the asphalt. The second she hit, a huge huff and rattle left her gasping for breath.
The man who knocked her out the window rolled her over on her stomach, then lifted her by the seat of her pants and her collar and started bashing her head into the side of the Jeep like some kind of human battering ram.
It was light’s out again.
When she came to, she saw her assailant checking on the man she’d thrown out the window. His neck was at an odd angle.
But he was moving when she saw him, wasn’t he?
She felt the warm flow of blood all over her face, had a hard time seeing straight, the pain trekking across her forehead in bands of bright and ferocious pressure, her vision crowding black and pulsing.
“Pain is nothing,” she told Logan the first time he got the wind knocked out of him in Krav class. “It’s that thing that wants attention. All you have to do is starve it.”
He nodded, not a tear in his eyes. He seemed to understand, maybe even better than she did when she took her first class.
Now on the battlefield and not in class, she started to get up, but the man turned on her, stood over her, put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.
Skylar shrank for the blast, but the hammer clicked. He squeezed the trigger again, but the weapon was misfiring.
“Did you assholes actually try making your own ammo?” she said, looking up, laughing, then getting pissed remembering May was dead.
The soldier said something to her in Chinese, then squeezed again.
“Bad primer,” she said, “or faulty firing pin.”
He cracked her over the head with the barrel, but she was used to the pain. What didn’t knock her out now fueled her. She struck the soldier’s weight bearing knee as hard as she could with both hands. It didn’t buckle backwards and break, like she was hoping for, but it staggered him, the gun dropping from his grip.
Scrambling for position, she hit him again in the same knee and he hobbled backwards, grabbing his leg. She crawled up on him, pulling herself up the front of his body by grabbing onto his clothes.
He hit her relentlessly, but he finally stumbled hard and fell backwards under her forward press.
When she had the full mount, she rose up and drove a knee into his groin, beating those eggs just right. He howled, but she was on it again, kneeing him once more, twice, then three times. By the fourth time, he just laid there, his eyes lost, somewhere else, the veins on his neck standing out under the moonlight.
; She hooked a thumb in his mouth, pressed down, pinning his face to the asphalt. She then drove her knee into his groin over and over again until she was shaking with rage, until something broke—her knee or his pelvic bone—yet still, she continued striking him until she couldn’t lift her knee or hold her body up.
That’s when she felt the tear slide down her face. She didn’t know why she was crying. She hated that she’d been reduced to that, but she tried so hard to save May and now May was gone. Even worse, Skylar was alone in this. If she could get out of there, she’d be going home without Logan, Ryker or May. Part of her wanted to stay, but she wasn’t fighting with Yoav, Paul, Chuck or the others. If she was alone, there was no cause. Resistance wasn’t a battle cry, it was her alone, dying for nothing.
As she laid there, helpless and spent, her body an absolute bloody mess and her soul as wrecked as it had ever been, she wondered if she could handle the solitude of home, the Five Falls silence, all that time to think. Looking around, there was no one left to kill.
She slid off the man, landed on her side.
He was still alive.
She picked up the dead man’s pistol, ejected the round, chambered the next round, then put it to May’s murderer’s left eyeball and said, “If it’s a bad primer, you’ll be dead by the time I’m done talking. If it’s the firing pin, you get to die out here with your busted balls and your broke dick.”
He muttered something in Chinese. She didn’t understand. It didn’t matter. She sat up and pulled the trigger. The weapon fired, blood spraying up in her face and causing her to wince and paw at her eyes. She really thought it was a broken firing pin. She would have placed money on it. Then again, this wasn’t the first time she was wrong.
With no choice but to drag the dead bodies off the road, she muscled them out of the open, then staggered inside. She shut and locked the door, found a place that wasn’t a horror show and laid down. She closed her eyes for a second, let herself drift off.
When she woke up, she let herself stretch, yawning deeply, the feeling painful on her body, but satisfying to her soul.
In the bathroom, she poured rubbing alcohol on her head, took the sting without flinching.
“You’re a badass bitch,” she told herself. She’d said the words, but she certainly wasn’t feeling them.
She found some clean Chicom greens in a dresser drawer upstairs, tried them on. They fit on the body and thighs, but she had to roll the sleeves and cuffs because both were too long. On the vanity was a canvas hat. She slipped it on her head, then pulled the brim over her eyes.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she let the expression drain from her face.
Somewhat refreshed, she found keys, guns, meds, food and water downstairs. She put it all in a black garbage bag then hauled the loot outside looking like the skinniest, most wrecked, most effed up Chicom Santa Claus ever to cut a girl like her a break.
When she got in the Jeep, she went through three sets of keys before finding the one that worked. She tossed the others out the window, then turned on the vehicle and checked the gas gauge. The needle was resting at half a tank.
Groaning, she shut the engine off and got out of the Jeep. In the first light of day, she filled the tank with one of the other Jeep’s gas cans, then loaded a second gas can inside her own Jeep knowing she’d need the reserves for later.
Starting her Jeep once more, she was resigned to going home. This wasn’t her first choice, it was her only choice. Sitting there for a long moment, feeling like a failure, she was so mad at herself. Going home, it was hard not to feel like the dog dragging its tail between its legs.
“You’re not out of town yet, girl.”
Chapter Fifteen
The biggest men from Five Falls walked like a pack of thugs down the center of the freeway with sledgehammers and pickaxes resting on their shoulders. Boone and Clay led the way. One of the kids caught up to Boone, a hammer and rock chisel in his hand.
“Can I help, Mr. Boone?” he asked.
Boone looked down and ruffled the kid’s hair. “Of course you can.”
“I want to fight the Chicoms,” he said, giddy at the prospect.
Clay asked, “What are you going to do to them?”
“Kick them in the nuts,” he said. He mimicked kicking someone in the balls, getting the right height and snap.
“I want this one on my side,” Clay said with a grin.
“This is good right here!” Boone turned and informed the men. “Anyone have any objections?”
When no one said anything, the men started breaking the asphalt open in two specific places. One hole was to be dug in the middle of each lane of the two lane freeway. On either side of the highway were steep gullies. It would be hard to cross.
Not impossible, but hard.
That’s why on either side of the shoulder leading down toward the tree line, they went to work with post-hole tools, digging down deep.
When the two spots of asphalt were sufficiently broken open, more men gathered around and went after the asphalt with pickaxes and sledgehammers, getting down to the gravel base and then the hard pack. They pulled massive chunks of asphalt away, chucked them to the side.
When the gravel pack was fully exposed, they broke apart enough of the base to give the post-hole digger some space. From there, they dug as deep as they could, knowing the deeper they got, the wider the blast.
After a solid two hour’s work, the crew had six very deep holes, the ones in the asphalt stuffed with a three-pack of dynamite, the ones in the surrounding earth holding two sticks a piece.
Otto fused them all up, the strands long and equal in length.
Boone gathered up six men; Otto handed everyone a lighter.
“We’re gonna light ‘em all at the same time,” Otto announced. “After that, we’re gonna run like our lives depend on it, because they do.”
It was a purely amateur endeavor. No one pretended otherwise. When it came time to lighting the fuses, everyone seemed energized, the kids giddy.
“The second I say ‘one’ you touch the fuse to the flame,” Otto instructed. “I’ll count back from three. On the two count, don’t blink. On the one count we light the fuse, make sure it catches, then we lay it down and run. Everyone clear?”
Everyone nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Let’s see those flames.”
Everyone got a flame.
“Grab the fuse and hold it close, but don’t put it in the flame until the one count.”
Everyone followed Otto’s instructions perfectly. “Good. Here we go,” he said. “Three, two, one.”
Everyone timed things close enough, set down their burning fuses then ran. The kids were screaming, running alongside everyone else. When they were far enough away, they dropped down, clapped their hands over their ears and waited.
When the dynamite blew, the explosions were bigger than anyone expected. The crew scrambled back even farther as dust and gravel rained down on them.
When the smoke and debris cleared enough to assess their work, they cheered and high fived each other. Otto sat back, smiling, nodding his head.
He was proud.
“You did this,” Boone said. Otto nodded, his eyes moist. “They can say what they want about you, but they can’t do so without acknowledging that you probably saved the town.”
“This ain’t gonna save shit,” one of the kids said. “It’s just gonna make it easier for us to shoot the Chicom swine.”
Boone, Clay and Otto all laughed together. “Yes it will,” Boone said, patting the kid’s back.
The earth cratered enough for them to at least have the start of a decent trench.
“Alright men,” one of the bigger diggers said, “let’s dig this out and go home.”
“Can we do it in the morning?” one of the kids asked.
“You can when we get back out here tomorrow,” Clay said. “For now we’re just going to get another foot out of it. This will stop anyone on the freeway.”
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His brother looked at the men digging, ready to spell them off, and got a solid nod of approval.
“Tomorrow we’ll paint some canvases the color of the asphalt and lay them out,” Boone told the kid. “You can help us.”
“Won’t the drivers know it’s a trap?” the smaller of the two kids asked.
“At the speeds most of these convoys are going, they won’t have time to stop before they drop down into the ditch and slam into the wall on the other side. That’s when we hit them with everything we’ve got.”
“Then what?” one of the diggers asked from the pit.
“We take their weapons and their vehicles, if we can,” Boone said. “That’s what these commie knobs don’t realize. They think just because they’ve confiscated half the guns out there we can’t get more? Well we can. And we will. We’ll get their guns. And their cars. And their tanks. And with their equipment—when the time is right—we’ll run them the hell over, leaving behind a wake of death and destruction the likes of which this nation has never seen.”
The boys grinned, one of them saying, “I want to dig now.”
“This is the first step to taking back America,” Otto said, sipping from a travel sized Vodka.
“By blowing stuff up?” one of the younger kids turned and asked.
“Hell yes by blowing stuff up!” he said. “Feels good, right?”
The boy smiled and said, “It feels amazing.”
“Before we turn in tonight, Boone,” Clay said, “we’ll have our snipers and spotters out here, right?”
Boone nodded, then said, “Noah made a shift schedule. He’ll be heading that up.”
“How’d he get to be in charge of anything?” Otto interrupted, the bottle in his hand now empty.
“Because this town has two sniper rifles and they’re both his. It’s what I had to agree to in order to get access to those rifles.”
Chapter Sixteen
Longwei Zhou, Quan Li and their people started out into the night, intending to drive through California and up into Oregon. They hoped to reach their destination by nightfall the next day. All of them were dressed as Chicoms, and in their bags were their civilian clothes. Furthermore, each person had a bug-out bag. They were instructed to get set before the EMP hit, but the notice was so short, and their resources so tight, that not everyone had everything. Still, most everyone had what they needed. Quan Li managed to get most of what he needed as well—toiletries, food, survival.
