by Ryan Schow
Blows were exchanged, blood began to spill, and then one guy threw another through the glass window of some privately-owned shop across the street.
The HR poured inside the business, running over normal folk to gain access. Moments later, the mob began pouring back out, this time carrying armloads of loot.
“People don’t just act like this!” Marley growled.
“They do if it’s been planned,” Isaiah said.
“Yeah,” Kennicot added.
Marley turned and looked at Isaiah. She knew she had panic in her eyes; she didn’t try to hide it. She just didn’t understand all of this. Why? Why would people do this? Why would people so indiscriminately hurt other people like this? Why would these monsters want to destroy society with such reckless abandon?
“I hate these assholes with a vengeance,” Isaiah growled as he watched the scene unfold.
“Me, too,” Adi said.
“That makes three of us,” Marley added.
At that moment, Marley was so sick to her stomach over the violence and the developing chaos, she envisioned herself putting a bullet in every last one of them.
She had to turn away from the scene. She didn’t recognize these thoughts she was having. Marley wasn’t a violent person, and she didn’t believe violence was an acceptable solution to anything. These were not normal times, though. She’d already killed a man, the guard in the bus. Turning back to the scene below, drawn to it, she told herself she would need that strong dose of reality if she wanted to survive. But the longer she watched this unfolding nightmare, the more she realized she might be wrong. Violence might not be an acceptable solution, it might be the only solution.
After the attack on normal citizens and the looting began, the rioting was soon to follow. The four of them stood before the apartment window, sickened and appalled by what they were seeing. Kennicot finally pointed to one of the buildings across the street and said, “That guy down there is actually trying to set the building on fire!”
They watched in abject horror. Before the fire could take hold of the building, an older gentleman with a semi-auto shotgun shoved through the building’s front doors and pumped a round into the douchebag with the lighter. The man’s head pulped. The shooter turned and started pumping round after round into the heads and chests of the HR scumbags coming after him. Unfortunately, a few of the HR had guns of their own.
Two guys lit up the shooter with pistols, his body dancing backwards until his legs buckled. When he dropped dead on the sidewalk, the mob cheered and converged on him. A woman and two men dragged his body into the street where they set him on fire.
“What is WRONG with these people?” Marley roared.
Adi looked up at her and said, “Evil.”
This stilled her.
Yes.
These people were most definitely evil. It was almost like they were possessed by something cruel and inhumane, a dark force that ached to create chaos, division, death, and destruction.
Marley realized Adi was still holding her hand.
“Oh, no,” Isaiah said.
Down below, one of the men headed toward the broken glass door leading into the apartment building where they were squatting. The guy called to his buddies, waving several of them his way. Together, they seemed to head inside, causing Marley—and everyone else—to bristle.
“What if they come up here, Isaiah?” Marley asked.
“Those men?” Kennicot asked.
“They’re in the building, Madam President,” Isaiah said, solemn and respectful despite his earlier challenge to her over Adi’s age and size.
“Don’t call me that,” Kennicot grumbled. “They want my head in a bag for God’s sake.”
Isaiah held up his hands in mock surrender. The brief look he gave Marley confirmed her own suspicions—Althea Kennicot was not a stable woman, nor was she predictable. Emotionally, she was all over the place.
Half an hour later, Isaiah heard the door to the stairwell open. He’d left the door to the apartment they occupied opened just a crack.
“This isn’t smart,” Kennicot had said.
“The door was broken anyway,” Isaiah had replied. “It’s best we be prepared while we wait for them rather than be taken by surprise.”
“He’s right,” Marley had said. Now that the enemy was inside the building, the rubber was about to meet the road.
“Hide!” Isaiah said low and forceful. He slipped behind the door, ready to rumble.
Marley and Adi ducked down behind the couch, staying low and preparing for the worst. Marley pulled the boy close, wrapping her arms around him in a protective embrace. She was scared for herself and for Adi, but she trusted Isaiah. And if she needed a silver lining to at least keep her hopeful—which she did, desperately—that silver lining was that most of her hearing had returned.
Aside from a slight ringing, Marley heard someone push the front door open. A scuffle broke out immediately. There was a grunt and then an exchange of blows—the hollow thudding sounds of a fist repeatedly pummeling flesh. A body hit the floor and then she heard the sounds of that body being kicked.
“You’re clear,” Isaiah said, breathing heavy.
Marley felt the tension abate some.
She peeked over the couch and saw the body laid out on the ground. Isaiah stood over him, fists still clenched. Movement caught her eye. Kennicot had come from around the corner where she’d been hiding in a small kitchenette.
The man on the floor was dressed like your typical Marxist/Leninist shitbag. His nose was splotched red and a gash had opened over his left eye, blood leaking from it like a faucet. A moment later he started to move, to groan.
“Wakey, wakey Muppet,” Isaiah said kicking his leg.
When the man’s eyes fluttered open, he looked around, completely unaware of where he was and who they were. His brain was trying to come back online. He touched his head, and his nose, and then it all came rushing back at once—the pain, the awareness, the realization that he was in trouble.
Isaiah stared down at the man but pointed to Kennicot. “Look at her.”
The thug started to squirm, his concern pulled between the blood running from his head and the human problems facing him. Isaiah knelt down, grabbed his face despite the blood and held it tight. “Look at her!”
The man finally complied. “What am I supposed to see?” he growled through clenched teeth.
“She’s the President of the United States,” Adi said.
Marley looked at him and said, “No!” like she was scolding a cat or shaming a disobedient dog. Adi flinched; Isaiah didn’t. That’s when Marley realized Isaiah wanted the man to know.
“If they find her,” Marley reminded Isaiah, “they’ll cut off her head.”
“Then what?” Isaiah asked the thug on the floor. “After you find her and cut off her head, then what?”
“I don’t know, man. I get my fifteen-hundred dollars a month like everyone else.”
“Who wants her head and why?” Isaiah asked. The man looked away. Isaiah punched him three times in the face, enough to burden his senses. “Next time I hit you five times, then seven times, and then—”
“Killian O’Brien,” he answered.
“Explain,” Isaiah said.
“I heard him early this morning, Isaiah,” Marley said. “He was talking to someone, saying something about satellite comms, about millions dead, a year or two of emergency food. I only heard one side of the conversation, but it seems pretty clear what he’d been referring to in retrospect.”
“Every call made or received inside the White House is recorded,” Kennicot said, her cheeks turning beet red.
“I wasn’t at work,” Marley admitted with a bit of embarrassment.
Kennicot looked at her, her jaw dropping. “You were sleeping with your boss?”
Now it was Marley’s turn to get red in the face.
“This is sedition!” Kennicot hissed.
“No kidding,” Marley said gla
ncing up at the woman. “Why do you think I’ve been trying to save your stupid ass?”
“They set off an EMP,” Isaiah replied, almost like he was slowly putting the pieces of this nightmare together. “It makes sense.”
“This is just the start,” the jackass on the floor said. With a slight grin and bloodstained teeth, he added, “We got you with the one-two punch. The EMP is the knockout blow. You’re all dead. It’s just a matter of time before you realize it.”
Isaiah drove a brutal elbow down on the man’s nose, then fired in a big sideways blow in to the man’s temple, knocking him out again.
“He’s going to choke on his own blood,” Kennicot said.
“Good riddance,” Marley added. Then, to Kennicot: “How in the world could they have pulled this off? We have the most intricate defense systems in the world.”
“Space wars,” Kennicot said. “Dozens of our satellites were taken out first thing this morning. Why do you think I was so stoic in my meetings?”
“I just thought you couldn’t have cared less about the people you were meeting with,” Marley said.
“We were getting confirmation on the attacks,” she replied. “I was mentally digesting earlier briefings while preparing to meet with the generals. But then the EMP hit.”
“Who did this?” Marley asked.
“We don’t really know,” Kennicot said. “North Korea, Iran, Russia…one of them.”
“What do they want?” Isaiah asked. “Has anyone claimed responsibility or made any demands?”
“How would they get me that message?” Kennicot asked. “Phone call, text, email? These people want to destroy us, obviously.”
“Yeah, but why?” Marley asked.
“Who knows?” Kennicot asked with a bit of hysteria in her voice. “Overturn the global world order? Cement it in place once and for all? Maybe they wanted to fold us into their system of control. Or maybe it’s something else completely. Why do these monsters do anything they do?”
Looking at Adi, Marley figured his was the right answer. The enemy was evil. How else could they justify doing the things they were doing?
“Do you think they’re doing this to turn the world into a giant planetary prison?” Isaiah asked. “Or do you think it’s just hatred for us and our freedoms? Because…oh, God…what if they never intended to overrun us or try to control us? What if all they wanted was to break us, to lay waste to us, to decimate our entire country and everyone inside it?”
“Bingo,” the blasted mouth on that bloody face of the HR scumbag said.
“That’s it then?” Marley asked the man on the ground.
The heathen gave a slight but satisfied nod, then he coughed up a fountain-spray of blood and started to shake. The shaking was not fear or agony, but a pained laughter. He was enjoying this.
Isaiah glared at the man who defied them all. Laying there, with his cruel words and his snickering, he’d landed the biggest blow of all—a blow to their hope.
“We need food and water,” Marley said, trying to ignore him, or at least not lend an ounce of credence to his words. “This isn’t just an overnight thing. We have to start thinking bigger than just tonight or tomorrow if what this knuckle-dragger says is true.”
“I need more ammo,” Isaiah said.
“What about him?” Kennicot asked, pointing to the laid out scoundrel. “What are going to do with him?”
“Yeah, what are you going to do to me?” he asked.
“Get up,” Isaiah told him.
The man was slow to respond, but they saw he was trying to get up. He wanted to go, but did he think they’d let him go after what he said?
When the goon managed to get to his feet, Isaiah slugged him in the gut, then grabbed the back of his jacket and dragged him into a run. The hurting man was stumbling forward, grunting and protesting, trying to stay on his feet. Isaiah ran him straight toward the window, then—at the last minute—he power-launched him into the glass.
The HR turd broke through the glass, his body draped over the ledge. He started screaming in pain. Isaiah grabbed both legs and heaved them up and out of the broken window. He watched him sail down to the street four floors below.
Marley was close enough to the window to watch it all unfold. The goon landed at an angle, his hands and head hitting the pavement first. She turned away, grimacing at the sight of what looked like an exploded watermelon. She felt Adi start to look, but she turned his face away and said, “No, you can’t.”
“I want to see!” he said.
“No!” She pushed Adi back in the room. Then, to Isaiah, she said, “That’s going to give me nightmares.”
The bones in the goon’s arms had actually broken through the skin, and his back folded in half on impact.
“The White House is gone,” Kennicot said, seemingly unmoved by Isaiah’s version of retribution. Instead, she was in her head about something else. The White House. Homeland Security. Her own well-being. Whatever it was, she looked like she’d been forced into a trauma-induced trance.
“Yes it is,” Isaiah said, shutting the door to the apartment as best as he could for the lock and door casing being broken.
“They really set off an EMP,” Kennicot added.
“What does that mean for the future of the country?” Marley asked.
From what sounded like some faraway place, Kennicot said, “It means that in about a year—of the three-hundred-and-thirty-million people that we know of—three-hundred million of them will be dead.”
“You’re talking about this place being like the Dark Ages,” Isaiah said, stunned.
“Worse,” Kennicot replied, her voice distant but foreboding. “There were a lot less people in the Dark Ages. They buried some of their dead. They burned the rest. But even in the deadliest of wars, their body count will be no match for ours, for this.”
“You’re scaring the kid,” Marley said.
“It’s not just the kid she’s scaring,” Isaiah replied.
Kennicot continued undeterred. “Bodies will litter the streets. Houses will fall into decay as the bodies rot inside, crime will spike so hard you’ll see the fall of businesses, residential neighborhoods, office buildings, big box retailers—”
“Stop!” Marley shouted.
Kennicot seemed shocked, her eyes clearing as if she’d been in some kind of a trance.
“We don’t need this kind of reality,” Marley told her. “We’re scared, it’s dangerous out there, and the freaking White House just blew up.”
“One problem at a time,” Isaiah said.
Marley turned to Isaiah and said, “Are you talking to me?”
“No,” he said. “I’m talking to myself.”
“I’m sorry,” Kennicot said, back in her body it would seem. “If I take this thing to its logical conclusion, it’ll just stress everyone out.”
Isaiah looked at Kennicot. “With all due respect, Madam President,” he said, leaving a long pause on the end of the incomplete sentence, “how did you get into office if this is how you respond under pressure?”
Something passed through her eyes, almost like the question shoved her back down into that dark, useless hole.
Isaiah snapped his fingers in front of her face and said, “If I would have known you were this weird, this rattled under pressure, I would never have voted for you.”
“You voted for me?” she asked.
“Why do they want your head?” Marley asked the president, ignoring Isaiah. Kennicot didn’t answer. “Why do they want your head?!”
“Because she is America,” Isaiah replied.
“The White House is America,” Kennicot said. “Civility is America. Whoever’s doing this is taking down everything that speaks to Americanism.”
“Your head will be the cherry on top of the cake,” Marley said, realizing this was about optics, total control, the cementing of fear right before the fall.
Adi broke free of Marley’s grip, but she was too focused on Kennicot to worry about
him not being right by her side.
“So they…they said they…they really want my head?” Kennicot asked, as if this was the first time she was giving the idea due consideration.
Marley nodded. “You are the power structure of America right now, so you’re going—”
“There is no America anymore!” Isaiah barked. “Don’t you get it, Marley? We’re done! This is all done! The American dream, freedom, civility—it’s all done!”
“Stop it, dammit!” Marley roared.
Adi started to cry. He was standing at the broken window, looking down below where the chaos had gotten out of hand. Marley turned him around and pulled him into her bosom. “You’re okay right now.”
“My parents…” he sobbed.
“I know,” she replied, rubbing his head. “I know, sweetheart.”
Later that night, after they used the two twin-sized box springs from the king-sized bed in the master bedroom to cover up the broken window, Marley felt the constant turning of her emotions as they repeatedly got the best of her. When she started to cry, in the dark, Isaiah said, “That’s a natural response.”
“Shut up,” Marley said, wiping her eyes.
Next to her, Marley heard Kennicot start to cry, too. In the darkness, she turned to the president and said, “For you, it’s not okay.”
“I’m human, too,” Kennicot said, sniffling.
“That’s yet to be determined,” she said with disdain.
Chapter Six
Marley McDaniel
Marley woke up on the couch the morning after the attack and wondered if she had died sometime in the night. Every single bone in her body felt like it had been rattled, beaten with sticks, then put back wrong.
With only a few decent hours of sleep, her eyes had that raw, itchy feel that only a long shower and a good facial cleansing could cure. She yawned, then started to stretch, but her body jolted to a stop, her lower back seizing. Biting down on her lower lip, she tried to keep from crying out. Laying back down, trying to give herself a chance to wake up, she fought to ignore the list of complaints her body was lodging against her.
