by Ryan Schow
“Maisie,” he said one last time, less hopeful, his wet, sad voice resigned to this fate, to the fact that she was dead, and soon he would be as well.
Outside, he heard something. Then nothing. Then an explosion. “God, if you want me dead, please,” he begged, “just do it.”
That’s when the missile slammed into the building and the rubble he was trapped in began vibrating and shifting again. Dust fluffed in his eyes and Maisie’s corpse ground over him the smallest bit, but it was enough to almost black out from the pain.
Then the side of the building opened up, a harsh blast of sunlight blinding him.
With that opening came a roar of noise. It was like a thousand cars crashing all at once, but with the deafening sounds of a tsunami rushing into shore. Right before he and Maisie’s corpse dropped out of the side of the building, Rock caught a glimpse of the high-rise across the street collapsing into the building he was trapped in.
It was a waterfall of debris, breaking glass and a hurricane of dust that collapsed in on itself in a race to the ground.
“Rock?” he though the heard just as their building tilted and dumped them both out the side.
He never felt the impact, but he didn’t need to.
It was best he didn’t.
Chapter Twenty
I sleep like crap. Adeline doesn’t fare much better. The good thing is now I’m irritated. Back to being the same old grumpy louse I started this nightmare as.
It’s starting to get light outside and the power is not back on.
Thankfully it’s freezing cold. It’s cold and my nose is numb and Adeline is wrapped around me like a blanket not because I’m amazing and totally irresistible but because I’m the only heat she’s getting.
The knock on the door has me looking up.
“Come in,” I say.
Adeline doesn’t stir. Her mouth is next to my ear though, and her teeth are lightly snapping together.
“There’s a heater in the car,” Ice says, poking his head in the door.
I know what he means.
Stakeout.
“Give me a few,” I say. He shuts the door and the second I make a move to get out of bed, the iron jaws of life clamp down on me.
“Don’t you dare leave,” she says, her voice trembling.
“I can stay here in this cold bed with my warm, beautiful, demanding wife,” I say, letting her know it pains me to leave her, “or I can leave the comforts of this house and try to find our kids.”
The jaws of life go slack. I turn and give her my best good-morning kiss, then bundle up and head downstairs.
A light frost covers the windows, the cold like this pulsing force encroaching on us. When I breathe in, the chill settles into my lungs. When I exhale, I can now see my breath.
“It’s so cold my balls are just under my eyes,” Ice says.
He slept on the first floor couch, which didn’t help him any since heat rises. I hope Eliana and Carolina are at least warm.
“Did you check on the boys?” I ask.
“Both in bed, huddled together like a couple of cold Chihuahuas. Teeth chattering and everything,” he says with no humor in his voice. “I gave them my blanket. Hopefully it will help.”
“How are Eliana and Carolina?”
“Snoring.”
“Do they seem cold to you?”
“This whole city is under a hard freeze,” he says, pulling aside the drapes.
It looks so cold out there an unwanted shiver races up my back, leaving behind the start of an inner chill.
“Grab something to eat and we’ll get the car started.”
“The Audi has heated seats,” I say. He opens his hand and he’s holding the Audi key. “Good man. Although after those enchiladas last night, I can heat my own seats just fine.”
“Why do you think I slept downstairs?”
“Such a gentleman,” I say, wrapping my neck with a scarf and putting on my winter gloves, even though it’s not fully winter.
We head outside and the car starts up right away. There’s only about two inches of snow on the ground, which doesn’t bother me. It’s that it stopped snowing and the temperature plummeted.
After giving the engine (and us) a chance to heat up, I back out into the street and carefully proceed to Diaab’s neighborhood. We park a block away with the house in view. Ice hands me the binoculars and we watch. An hour passes by and I have to shut off the car because I can’t burn this much gas just to keep warm.
“I’m glad that you did that, but man,” Ice says, “it’s going to get cold.”
“This ain’t Mexico, bro.”
After an hour of us being cold despite fresh storm clouds moving in, we see a car pull into the driveway. It’s a Subaru Forrester, older. Much older. Inside, there is an attractive black woman and she’s crying, but clearly trying to keep it together. I hand the field glasses to Ice and he looks through them.
“His daughter, I’d guess.”
“Kamal said he had an older sister,” I tell him, “but that she never came over.”
“What’s her name?”
“Starts with an N, but I can’t remember.”
She gets out of the car, bundled up and sniffling, like she’s been crying. I’m not sure how I feel about this whole family, but by the looks of this young woman, she’s different. She heads to the front door and knocks. She waits, then knocks again. When no one answers, she reaches into her purse and digs out her phone. She makes a call (to Diaab?) but reaches no one. Finally she puts the phone away, then reaches out and opens the door, surprised it was unlocked. When we left with the boys, we went through the front door and didn’t lock it.
“Should we go inside?” Ice asks.
“Let’s leave her alone for a few minutes. I want to know if Diaab is here.”
After about twenty minutes, we get out of the car, jog across the street and split up, doing as effective of a job of recon as we can do knowing the snow will not hide our tracks but will, in fact, highlight them.
We meet around back, look in the sliding glass door and see the girl sitting on the couch, alone, with a blanket pulled over her. She’s shivering. Trying not to cry.
“What do you think she’s going on about?” Ice asks.
I shrug my shoulders.
“Could be a lot of different things,” I say. “Why bother speculating?”
“Let’s go inside,” he says.
“No, let’s wait.”
We head back to the car, start it up and get it warm, then we wait. After about an hour, she comes out of the house, gets in her car and leaves. We follow, but at a distance. About ten minutes later, without seeing a single drone (thank God!), she pulls into a neighborhood that’s been devastated.
She coasts to a stop in front of a smoldering house with a burnt car in the driveway. She gets out of her Forrester, walks a few feet and stops. She begins to cry once more, the tears becoming a deep wailing. Sinking to her knees, her head falls into her hands and her body just kneels there, shaking and completely despondent.
“I feel sick right now,” I say. “I don’t want to watch this.”
“So don’t,” Ice says.
He takes the binoculars and scans the skies. Then he looks at her. I can already see too much, even from this distance. She stands, opens the car door, then pulls out a car seat. She tilts is just enough for a mound of ash to come pouring out. I take a sharp breath, turn away. Ice does the same.
“Dear God,” he says.
“We need to go. I can’t just sit here and be a voyeur to this kind of agony.”
“If we leave now, this will have been a huge waste of time,” Ice says. “I don’t want to think like that, but we have to do something. I can’t just sit back and wait. And I refuse to spend another day in this world thinking about being polite.”
He gets out of the car and starts toward her.
“Jesus, Ice,” I mumble, unbuckling the seat belt and following him.
“Excuse me
!” Ice calls out.
She turns, sets the car seat down and wipes her eyes.
“Don’t come too close,” she says reaching into her purse. “I have a can of mace.”
“We don’t want to hurt you,” I call out. “We have Kamal and Nasr.”
This stops her.
“You have my brothers?” she asks, hand still in her purse. “Are they okay?”
“They are warm, well fed and taken care of, yes,” Ice says. “But we only have them because your father took my brother’s children.”
“Does this have to do with Farhad?” she says, still refusing to take her hand out of her purse.
“It does,” I say.
“Were you the ones who killed him?”
“If I tell you the whole story, and promise you that we will come no further and we have no intention of hurting you or your brothers, will you listen to what we have to say?”
“Yes.”
“Farhad sexually assaulted my daughter after school the other day. He and his friends Eric and Marcello filmed this exchange, beating up my daughter in the process then throwing her out of the car when they were done with her.”
Her entire body stiffens.
“I shot his hands, so he would remember to be aware of where his hands went, that they never just went to a woman on their own, that they needed an invitation. I had no intention of killing him. Unfortunately we were in the wrong place at the wrong time when the drones struck. They are the things that killed him. The same things killing everything else in this city.”
“Why would he hurt your daughter?”
“Because she’s beautiful and she said no to him and his friends. No is a powerful word that can also act as a double edged sword when in the company of the wrong people.”
“He is like my father, I’m afraid,” she says, finally taking her hand out of her purse.
“Your father brought Eric, your brother’s friend, to our house and killed him in front of my wife. He just shot him in the head with a pistol like it was no big deal.”
She visibly startles, her eyes starting to water as she brings a hand to her mouth. She cannot fight the tears.
“I’m sorry for bringing this burden to you,” I say.
“It is a familiar burden, the going’s on of my father,” she admits.
“He left the child on our front porch, then came back for my kids, as he promised. He and his associate beat up our elderly neighbor and her grandson, then came and took my daughter and both my son and his girlfriend. We tried to connect with him last night, but the power went out and my phone died.”
“And you want to know where he is, I assume?” she said, wiping her eyes again, visible tremors in her body, although from the cold or the shock I’m not sure.
“Yes, but first I want to ask you, are you okay?” I ask. “I mean, besides all this?”
“There is no ‘besides this’ anymore. There is only this.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know there is no sensitive way to discuss this, or our predicament.”
“Are my brothers safe with you?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Even Nasr?” she says.
“Even Nasr.”
“If my father hurts your kids, what will happen to my brothers?”
“That’s hard to say.”
“You said they are safe with you,” she says.
“I did.”
“But they are only safe depending on what my father does?” she asks.
I can see her thinking about putting her hand back in her purse. I can see her thinking she is an attractive young woman, the same as Brooklyn. She is, but she is not in danger.
“Emotions can sometimes careen out of control,” Ice says.
“What if I help you with my father?” she asks.
“What happened here?” I reply.
Now her body gives a quick, involuntary jump and tears form in her eyes. “My daughter…my…hus—”
She can’t complete the sentence, but I already know what she’s going to say and it cuts me to the core.
“I’m so sorry,” Ice says.
“As am I,” I say.
She nods her head, but her emotions are getting the best of her and all I want to do is leave her to her grieving. But I can’t. We can’t.
“About your father,” Ice says. “Do you know what he does for a living?”
“Exports,” she says.
“Of what commodity?” I ask.
“We are from Sudan, so there are many things a third world needs that a country such as America can provide.”
“Such as?”
Now she is still. She’s not given this much consideration. The boys know, but have they told her? Did Diaab tell them not to tell her under any conditions?
“Your father kidnaps white girls,” Ice finally says, “usually the pre-teen ones, according to Kamal. He then ships them back to Sudan where they are sold for sex until they can take no more abuse and then they are sold to the highest bidder.”
“Bidder of what?”
“Do you know what a snuff film is?” Ice asks.
“Yes.”
“Now you know,” I say. “And now you understand my concern for my family.”
She nods her head, her eyes drying, and she says, “If this is true, then I will help you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Xavier was looking around at all the girls now in his house and wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself in to. He never wanted to be a babysitter. He wanted to kill a bunch of drug dealers and pedophiles, then go out in some kind of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid firestorm.
Now he was alive. How did this even happen?
He stood in front of the sliding glass door looking at Giselle’s grave and feeling sad. The snow was falling again, covering the grave. After a few minutes he lost focus on everything happening around him and instead gave himself over to the memories.
He closed his eyes, thought about how Giselle smelled, how her hands felt on his skin, how his life was so much better when she laughed.
He felt himself smile, but the weight of it doubled, and then tripled. And then the smile fell from his face entirely. He opened his eyes, let the white noise of everyone talking amongst themselves flood into his awareness. Then he turned and looked around at the girls and realized he couldn’t do this.
Two of the older girls moved through the gathering of pre-teens and made their way over to him. He smiled, but the smile was hollow. All he knew was he was doing this without Giselle and doing anything without her was not anything he wanted to do for long.
“We need gas,” the older girl said. She was sixteen or seventeen years old. The look in her eyes, however, seemed much older than that. He noticed the old scars on her face, the certainty in her words, the lack of any expression.
“What for?” he asked.
“We are going home,” she said. “Gas is for truck. It’s too dangerous to stay here.”
For a second he had to think about this. Not only was it insane to think about traveling across town—worse now that it was snowing—it was even more insane to think these girls who were not from Chicago, or even America, were going to risk heading down through the country and into Mexico.
“Do you know how to drive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you even know what’s going on out there?” he asked. She looked at him, not understanding the question. “Drones? Those things killing everyone? Flying through the sky blowing everything up?”
“Too dangerous,” she said again, her expression more of determination than concern.
He looked at the six other girls standing behind this one. None of them seemed worried. If Eliana was here, or Adeline, they’d try to talk them out of it. They would tell them the dangers of traveling right now and they’d insist the girls wait.
“Do you have a map?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But you need gas?”
She nodded her head.
“Do you have food, blankets, weapons? Because if you think it’s bad here, it’s worse out there. And if you take a wrong turn, or if you have to take different routes, are you able to do that?”
She looked back at the six other girls, each of them meeting her, serious looks in their eyes. When she looked back at Xavier, she said, “We need gas.”
“Do you have a car?”
“Yes.”
She held up a set of car keys. In her hand were the keys to the Tahoe.
“So you want to take the truck?” he asked. Looking around at the other girls, who had now fallen to a hush and were wondering what was going on, he said, “What about everyone else? Or are you just going to leave them here?”
She didn’t say anything; she didn’t even respond, unless you consider blinking a response.
“Gas,” she said.
He drew a stiff breath in through his nose, then said, “Okay. Let’s go get you some gas. But you’re going to need more gas along the way. Which means you’ll need to know how to get it on your own.”
He walked with the girls out to the garage and there were several gas cans waiting. Apparently, instead of sleeping and waking up late, this little pack of independents were out collecting supplies. Maybe they were competent enough to rob a few homes and gather some resources, but would they be stealthy enough to survive the drone assaults? Avoid the coming dangers of the road? Steal gas and maybe rob a few people if their survival depended on it? He hoped so, but in truth, he wasn’t even sure he’d be able to survive this.
Nor do I want to.
Xavier rooted around through the garage, found a claw hammer and some rubber hosing and then told them to follow him. At the first available car (a Mazda 3 that looked abandoned), he showed the girls how to pry open the gas tank with the hammer, feed the hose down into the gas tank and siphon gas. On the next two cars, he made them do it, and they did. They didn’t even complain when they got gas in their mouths and had to spit it out.
Talk about resolute!
After they topped off the Tahoe, while a few of them were out filling the remaining gas cans, the rest of the girls were loading up the SUV with their things. They traveled light, but smart, none of them showing an ounce of emotion. How is that even possible?
