American Blackout (Book 3): Gangster Town

by Tribuzzo, Fred

  His philosophizing ceased when he saw the beautiful young woman plunging into the deep waters.

  47

  Creature at the Shore

  The deep water ahead didn’t scare Cricket, and she dove in, kicking her long legs in a powerful rhythm. When she surfaced she could no longer touch the bottom, but surprisingly, she had no anxiety. The distant horizon glowed faintly. The spark of the day was already lit in the softness of the blue-green sky.

  Turning toward shore to view the sunrise, she saw the strange animal speeding back and forth along the shoreline, looking for its own path into the water and to her. Its movement seemed to propel it from a human shape into increasingly disturbing ones. It had initially beseeched her to leave the water, citing all the dangers, and was soon uttering gibberish and snapping, its large teeth clicking together in frustration. Finally, it simply howled.

  Cricket continued to swim farther from shore, and when panic surfaced, she ignored it and kept swimming. She was at peace, cleansed of the devouring lovemaking. Every part of her was at peace and full of strength. The creature left the shore.

  Her experience was a lot like dreaming when she flew through the air. This was flying through the water. Dreams could always manufacture fear, especially monsters of the deep, and this was a deep lake. But no monster inhabited her mind or the depths below.

  She wasn’t far from land when she felt the bottom with her toes. Cricket stood up and walked in the waist-deep water to shore. When the water shallowed to only a few inches, she paralleled the shore, enjoying the wash over her feet. The experience of the sand, stones, and cool water was as profound as swimming over the deep had been. Healing waters. It was then that she realized she had been in the Lake of the Virgin. All the peace she felt could be attributed to Mary, the Mother of God. She sensed her own mother and the great soul of Sister Marie.

  She awoke by degrees, and it was already morning. In the kitchen Sister Marie was making coffee; a pot sat atop a small woodstove, delivered by the city’s maintenance personnel when the mayor was still alive.

  “Sister, Fritz woke up before I came down. He says he feels a lot better. I told him to stay in bed.”

  “Good advice. We’ll go hunting for mullein this morning. I’ll make a big batch for everybody.”

  “I had such a wonderful dream last night.” Cricket couldn’t contain herself.

  “Did you fly?”

  “No, it was a different kind of adventure. Very disturbing at first and then truly wonderful.”

  “Thank goodness.” Sister lowered her voice. “I didn’t want to see you brooding over Becca’s awful ideas.”

  “We have to figure out if we’re going to stay here much longer. But right now, I’m happy as can be. I went for a swim in the Lake of the Virgin!”

  48

  Scavenging for Medicine

  Cricket knelt in the soft mud and scooped away the melting snow from the plants’ broad leaves.

  “Sister, this is amazing. It’s still green.”

  Diesel rushed between the two women, exhaling loudly, blowing some of the snow away. Sister and Cricket laughed at the dog’s exuberance.

  “And it’s going to help Fritz and those two beautiful girls get better,” Sister Marie said, giving Diesel a playful rub behind the ears with both hands.

  “You think we should take some to the hospital and brew it for Predator?”

  “Let’s wait till he’s home. He needs the doctors right now. His signs are disturbing.”

  Cricket had found out before leaving the hospital that he was passing blood in his urine. Sister made the final decision, telling him to stay for several nights and continue testing.

  Sister slipped the mullein inside the backpack she carried, saying, “The girls have sore throats, no fever, and there’s congestion in Lily’s lungs. I plan on all of us taking tea for the rest of winter. It’s a fine preventative, too.”

  Cricket cut the leaves, and Sister looked for more plants. They were at the bottom of a hill alongside railroad tracks that followed the river. The garbage that people had dumped streaked the landscape, like striations of a peculiar rock formation. If she was ever to fulfill one of her dreams and become a geologist, Cricket could one day joke with her class on her rare finding: clastic sedimentary garbage stone.

  Throughout their morning trek they saw plenty of windmills stuck atop homes and garages. Sister Marie called them wind generators. Facing another day of cloud cover, solar panels dressed the roofs of a few houses and waited for the sun. Cricket thought the electrical lines still standing and the railroad tracks gleaming were the real heroes of the modern world, though they had become mute, like the gray sky above. Ordinary people like herself had relied on these everyday inventions to deliver light and warmth and food, believing they would always provide comfort and safety. Would they be ancient relics by summer?

  Cricket’s backpack was nearly full of mullein, and Sister Marie said the leaves would be stuffed in two muslin bags and steeped in hot water for tea. Elaine had a jar of local honey to add to the golden beverage.

  Sister flexed her shoulders, straightening her back. “That should do it for today. I’m still thinking about your dream.” Cricket had given Sister all the details of her dream while foraging. “I’ll have to research Lake of the Virgin. Of course there’s the Lady of the Lake. From King Arthur’s saga.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “She brings him his sword, and it’s returned to her after the king’s last battle and death. The Lady of the Lake is one of the three women who escort the body of the king to Avalon. Dreams can have such poignant messages. It takes time to uncover their meaning. So always take your experiences with calmness, a grain of salt. Don’t run off into worlds where angels fear to tread.”

  “I thought that was my job—to rush off with irresponsible angels, all of us operating on impulse power.”

  “Ah, good one.” Sister laughed. “Going back to Star Trek. A lovely show when TVs still worked.”

  They were only a mile from Becca’s house when three men came over the hill’s rise. Cricket pulled her gun, as did Sister, while Diesel growled. The men came down sideways to avoid falling. One raised his arm in peace and called out Sergeant Wills’ name.

  “Patriarchs,” Sister said, holstering her weapon, grabbing Diesel’s collar. Cricket lowered hers but kept it in hand.

  “Don’t mean to startle you, but we’ve been watching the mayor’s house.”

  “Don’t trust her?” Cricket said.

  “Except for the sergeant and his officers, everyone’s suspicious.”

  The man talking was the oldest. His white hair stuck out from under his stocking cap, yet his blue eyes burned with the strength of the younger men who flanked him, scanning the land around them.

  “We’re not here to interfere, just to give you a heads-up. The Coyotes mutilated a young man not far from your home. I first heard about it this morning. Not a warning but a feeding.”Cricket looked to Sister, who bowed her head in silent prayer.

  “Is there a leader?”

  “Sure, someone’s getting the word out. From what we’ve learned from a few we’ve captured, they have a spiritual leader: Ajax.”

  Sister looked up, a frown upon her normally smooth forehead. Everyone was interrupted by the roar of the P-51. The fighter was low and couldn’t be seen.

  “Fritz is over the river,” Cricket said excitedly. “If we climb the ridge, we may be able to see him.”

  She turned to Sister, who nodded. “I could use some cardio even if I’m last. You go ahead.”

  One of the men stayed with Sister, who climbed slowly and slipped more than once, each stumble stopped by the young gentleman at her side. At the top of the ridge Cricket watched her husband, less than a mile away, over the river, before banking south into Kentucky. He had gotten out of bed full of energy and decided to get back in the air. Cricket couldn’t fight his enthusiasm, and Sister checked him for fever. That morning he had eaten like a ho
rse.

  “He’s patrolling,” Cricket said, catching her breath. “Wish I was there. He could use another pair of eyes.”

  On the next pass, Fritz flew farther downriver over several fires across the Ohio River, more than likely homes that had gone up in flames from a knocked over candle or lantern. Dirty chimneys easily caught fire too, and many folks tried rigging their furnaces to bypass the dead electronics, which wasn’t possible, and often resulted in an explosion. Cricket wondered if a Covington fire truck was available before the fires spread to other homes and buildings. Cincinnati’s fire department managed to get nearly half the blazes under control and had ample water to prevent fires from spreading. A few neighborhoods in the downtown area had been lost to runaway fires since the EMP attack, before Cricket’s arrival.

  “How do you find this Ajax guy?” Cricket said, keeping her gaze on her husband, who disappeared after banking south again.

  “We don’t,” the older man said with finality.

  “That’s not important?” she asked.

  “Drug lords come and go. We believe a single person isn’t manipulating these weirdos. An idea is. So you can have a lot of leaders and followers simply repeating the refrain. All the Coyotes we’ve captured talk about a man who’s godlike. A drug lord, like this Ajax fellow, can be caught and killed. But not everyone is going to believe that. Especially the deranged. You can’t kill an idea, a thing.”

  “What do you do with the Coyotes?”

  “The prison east of town is secure again. They go there.” The older Patriarch looked down. “We’re doing our best to get them out of the civilian population, but they’ve made the prison a nightmare.”

  “How so?” Sister asked.

  “They’ve been eating other inmates.”

  49

  Snowman

  The two women worked along the ridge after the men left, hunting for more plants. Diesel led until slowed by something exciting beneath the mushy snow. The men had told them to return the way they had come. That it was safe. However, they warned of being out after dark. Anywhere, anytime.

  Both started feeling the cold dampness seeping under their heavy clothing, and looked forward to hot baths, food, and then tea with the girls. The two Bobs had been watching the girls, and Elaine, who never seemed to leave the house, was also good company.

  Cricket made fists with her gloved hands to keep them warm.

  Sister spotted the tip of a leaf pointing out of the snow.

  “Sister Marie, you’re amazing.”

  “Practice. I used to scavenge when I was your age: cattails, milkweed buds, ground nuts. I had gotten the other sisters involved one spring and summer. I even had a dream one night about a stage of the cattail that I kept missing. I either went out too early or too late. It was the time when a corn-like kernel grew on the stalk and you cooked and ate it like sweet corn. I’d glance at the shape of the cattail and keep walking and missed the season for that one vegetable. But that night I dreamt about cattails. Instead of being frustrated and walking past the ‘supermarket of the swamps’—old Euell Gibbons’ term—I walked up to a stand of cattails and peeled the outer husk back and found the corn-like vegetable. I went out the next day and collected a whole bunch with one of my sisters. I was expecting it to be obvious, that particular stage of the plant’s growth.”

  While talking, they both failed to notice a farmhouse on several acres, past a wooden fence and an open field of dead grass and snow. Well-maintained, new paint. Again, the P-51 flew overhead, startling them with its roar.

  “Did Fritz see us?” Sister asked.

  “I doubt it. Just a lucky coincidence.”

  The old farmhouse sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, the old jewel of a new housing development.

  Cricket made a point of looking in every direction. She had gotten lost in Sister’s story and had forgotten the chaos: Coyotes on the streets, prisoners eating each other, a split in the city’s law enforcement. Becca’s side ran kangaroo courts, while the Patriarchs were simply trying to protect the citizenry.

  “I’m sure that street ahead leads to ours.”

  “Cricket, it was safe the way we came. Those men confirmed that.”

  “I didn’t trust them entirely. Sorry, Sister. My hand was never far from my Colt. I trust one man right now, Sergeant Wills, who told me yesterday that this area down to the river was the safest that he had seen it in weeks.”

  “I’ll pray that you don’t see every human face as a mask hiding treachery.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t treachery, just those fellas being overly cautious.”

  In the backyard of the farmhouse was a snowman that had slumped to one side due to the melt. The hat he wore was covering his eyes in gangster-movie fashion. Diesel walked nonchalantly toward the snowman and then halted and stretched his neck, sniffing the air.

  Cricket spotted a thin line of blood down the snowman’s chest, and she stopped Sister with her arm. Diesel whimpered and completed a circle, awaiting Cricket’s instructions.

  “No sense both of us looking at this thing up close.” Cricket kept her arm in front of Sister and told Diesel to sit.

  “I need you watching everything but me,” she said to Sister and Diesel, who continued sitting.

  The blood was leaking from inside the snowman’s chest. The walnut eyes were set deep, and the side of shrinking snow showed bone and blackened skin. Cricket turned back to Sister and Diesel and then to the house and drew her gun. She took the hat off and used it to brush the snow off a cheek, and exposed the black ear of a severed head.

  “Cricket, we should turn around. Maybe we’ll see those kind men and they can come and check out this house and street.”

  Cricket listened and then took the toe of her boot and snap-kicked Mr. Snowman’s side, and partially frozen intestines appeared. The short gasp from Sister motivated Cricket to return to her friend.

  “Let’s move to the side of the house,” Cricket said, and Sister agreed: “Someone could be inside, in real trouble, and need our help.”

  Along the side of the house they sat and listened. Diesel moseyed along the length until quietly called back by Cricket.

  “Sister, I won’t be long,” she whispered. “Please keep your gun out. I’m not asking for you to come charging in.”

  “I know, that’s your thing.”

  “If I don’t come out within minutes, I want you and Diesel to slip away, back the way we came, back to Becca’s. I’ll meet you there.”

  “You’re so sure of everything. Cricket, I’m frightened.”

  “Me too. But I’m not dying here today.”

  Cricket elected for the back door leading to the kitchen. Luckily the handful of steps were sturdy, quiet, perhaps rebuilt in the past five years.

  When she turned the doorknob slowly to the right, she expected it to be open, the way a gambler knows every call he’s made has been the right call in a long night of blackjack and big winnings.

  The interior matched the outside, showing attention to detail and great upkeep. The kitchen had warm yellow walls and a square island with a granite countertop. The crown molding was many decades old and lovely, but the house had new occupants: the sink was full of dirty dishes that hadn’t been cleaned in days. Worse, the granite island had a long blood smear down its middle, rushing over the side where a body had been dragged off. The living room was in twilight, due to the day’s overcast and the windows’ being curtained.

  Before leaving the kitchen, Cricket glanced outside at the backyard and the snowman. She was still alone. She glided up to the sink of filthy dishes, careful to avoid slipping on mud and blood, and gagged at what she smelled and saw: rotten flesh drove up her nose, and she spotted bones among stained plates, strips of blackened flesh, a fragment of hair-covered skull, blood everywhere, wet and drying. A feast.

  She went to the side window, caught Sister’s eye and Diesel’s allegiance—the dog looked preternaturally alert, tail wagging, waiting for his next command. Cricket
made a circular motion with her hand and pointed. She repeated the gesture: an agreed-upon command—it was time for Sister to leave.

  Sister Marie beseeched her with those generous, beautiful eyes that spoke of a greater life beyond the hourly suffering of all peoples; eyes that pleaded with her to leave with her and the dog, to go back to the girls with the mullein and have an afternoon of tea and stories and games and a new song taught.

  Cricket shook her head and again made the circular motion like she was lassoing something. Sister Marie lowered her head, raised it slowly, and nodded in agreement and left with Diesel, who more than once turned his head sideways to catch a glimpse of Cricket as he trotted ahead of Sister.

  Though the Colt was drawn and pointed in front of her, she felt for the knife on one ankle and the .380 on the other. She would have headed into the next room, the living room, but the open door to the cellar got her attention when she heard movement from downstairs.

  She made it to the steps and waited, and the sound replayed, a foot dragging across concrete. It was dark and she used her Maglite halfway down the stairs.

  Beyond the octopus arms of a gravity furnace she spotted a man who was tied and gagged. The air was heavy and warm from the ancient furnace that sprawled over the basement, a monster with many fat arms imprisoning the man. When he saw her he whimpered, a heart full of fear. She neared him and tried to make him understand she wouldn’t hurt him. From his battered face and swollen eye, she saw he had little strength left, and she didn’t think he’d scream loudly enough to alert any others in the house.

  She tried to remove the duct tape carefully, but the man reacted by squeezing his eyes shut and producing tears. Closer, she saw a new horror: the man’s right arm had been severed below the shoulder and the stump was blackened, yet blood still leaked. Finally she pulled quickly, and the man moaned: “They’re all dead… my beautiful family… monsters… help me.”