by Ryan Schow
“This is all too much, Jane. How am I supposed to handle this?”
“With America out of the way, there would be world control, global dominance,” she said. “We should have killed our leaders long ago, Blondie. We should have cut their stupid heads off and stopped all this from happening. How you handle it is your business.”
“So that’s it? There’s no way out?”
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “This is the new normal, girl. You’d better get your house in order. Or eat a bullet. There’s always that.”
This had Marley thinking about the gun she stole from Farol.
“Good luck,” she said.
“Yeah, you too,” Marley said.
Plain Jane went inside, leaving Marley alone in the alley. Kneeling back, she started to cry. In those moments, she wanted her mother, and wasn’t so proud that she didn’t think about her father and how she wanted him near her as well, protecting her.
It was because she started thinking of them that she thought of her uncle Walker. He wouldn’t look at something like this and just fall apart. This was his life, what he did. Sniffling, pulling herself up, she wiped her eyes and managed to get herself together.
On both sides of the alleyway, she saw people on the street. Soon night would fall and the Hayseed Rebellion would come out. How many of them were out there? Marley and the boy could run and they could hide, but what happened when they ran out of food and water? What would happen if they had no place to stay, or they were overrun?
She had to get out of D.C. now. She needed to get back home to Nicholasville. Instead of waiting for Isaiah, she decided to return to the apartment tower and Adi.
Marley made it most of the way back before running into trouble. It wasn’t the Hayseed Rebellion that presented the threat, rather it was a large group of men with no apparent affiliation to the HR. They didn’t do anything to her, per se, but they didn’t look like they’d just leave her alone and let her pass by, either.
She made her way down an alley, but stopped when she saw yet another group of thugs at the other end of the alley. They were roughing up a couple of older people. She ducked behind one of four abandoned cars. These looked like cars people had been living in.
“You can’t hide from them for long,” a woman said, popping her head out of the backseat window of one of the cars.
“Who?” Marley asked, startled but not showing it.
“The Hayseed Rebellion,” the woman said.
“Where are they?” she asked, glancing around in case she missed them.
The woman nodded her head toward the group hassling the older couple. “They’re all a bunch of chickenshits, but you know about mob rule.”
Marley nodded. She had to get to the apartments. She had to get out of there.
“How many of them are there, do you think?”
The scared woman shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Marley moved forward, creeping low. The woman saw the blood splatter on her face and said, “Are you hurt?”
“My heart is broken,” Marley said.
“Me, too,” the woman replied softly. “There’s a pain there that feels worse than death.”
“What happened?” Marley asked, looking at the woman but keeping an eye on the guys ahead.
She was too clean to be homeless, her eyes alive with fear but haunted with loss. Marley watched her start to shake, her breath full of tremors.
“My husband, and my daughter…”
“Are they…?” she asked.
The woman shook her head, then started to cry.
“Whose blood is that?” Marley asked, realizing it was all over the woman’s hands, shirt, and pants.
She looked down, shook even more. “It’s…my daughter’s blood. And my husband’s.”
“How are you still alive?” Marley asked. And what has this world come to when strangers in the street are covered in the gore of others?
“They said they wanted me to carry the pain, that life was my death, my prison sentence.”
Marley felt sick to her stomach.
“Is that a gun?” the woman asked.
Marley looked down at her hand, forgetting she’d taken the weapon out when she got in the alley.
“Yeah.”
“Does it have bullets in it?”
Marley nodded.
“Save one for yourself, dear.”
“I could never—”
“Yes, you could,” the woman interrupted. “If everything you ever loved was gone, all the people who made your life what it was, if they were taken like…like this, you’d…”
“You’d have to be strong,” Marley said.
“I would do anything to have them back—” she said, looking at the gun. She wiped her eyes and looked up at Marley, her face full of desperation. “Will you put a broken-hearted woman out of her misery?”
“No,” Marley said, horrified. “I’m terrified of using it on someone bad. I sure as hell won’t use it on someone good.”
“I know,” she said. “You have the safety on. You shouldn’t be out here with the safety on. You’ll get yourself killed.”
She looked at the gun and said, “How do you know?”
“Sweetie, everyone knows these things,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
“You’ll use it on me,” Marley said.
“No,” she said, certain. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
She hesitated, but the woman put out her hand and Marley saw a soft shine on the gold band on her ring finger. She felt all around the weapon for a safety switch, something she could flip, but there was nothing.
“Let me show you,” the woman said, still crying but not badly. Wiping her eyes, she said, “You don’t want to suffer what I’m suffering.”
Finally, she turned the gun over to the woman, covertly slipping the punch dagger from its sheath just in case.
The woman thumbed back the hammer and said, “Have you ever shot a revolver?”
“Only semi-automatics. I learned with a Glock and my mom’s Smith & Wesson SHIELD. But I was never really interested in guns.”
“It’s not your fault,” the woman said with a sad smile. “Know that.”
“What’s not my fault?”
“There are no safeties on revolvers that I know of.”
She put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening, the gore horrifying. Unable to breathe, Marley looked down at the woman’s slumped over body. Glancing up, she saw that the mob was looking her way. She reached inside the car and took the gun from the dead woman’s hand. Breaking into a trot, her hands shaking and her head a reeling mess, she headed back toward the street from where she’d come.
Before she reached the street, she glanced back to make sure no one was following her. But when she turned around, she ran right into a swinging board. She lowered her head just enough to take the shot on the forehead rather than the nose.
The hit was brutal and blinding.
Staggering sideways, she fell into one of the many abandoned cars, but somehow managed to stay standing. Someone grabbed her by the coat, swung her around and threw her into the alley wall. The crushing pain to her shoulder nearly matched the pain in her head.
She slid down the wall with a groan, crumbling in a heap. Before she knew what was happening, someone grabbed her, hauled her up, then ran her head into the glass window of a filthy car. The glass shattered and she lost consciousness.
When she woke, the blade and the gun were gone. Even worse, her jacket was open, her shirt had been unbuttoned, and her bra had been tugged down under her breasts. Swallowing her revulsion, she fixed her bra, then checked her pants. The zipper was up, the button untouched. Crying, standing up and nearly falling over, she touched her head, felt the knot.
Stifling a sob, trying to keep it together without realizing she’d been beaten, robbed, and partially violated, she managed to find her way back to the apartment building she had been staying in. Fortunately, no
one bothered her. Then again, she looked like so many other people now: abused, forlorn, mentally wavering. She was pretty beneath the wreckage on her face, but she was not clean enough or put-together enough to have been a target.
A man inside the apartment with a gun said, “Turn around, find somewhere else to stay.”
“I live here,” she said.
“Which apartment?” he asked.
“I just moved in. I live on the fourth floor. Four-twelve.”
“That’s Peter’s place.”
“Peter moved out,” she said. “I just moved in.”
“I saw him last week,” the man challenged.
“He was getting an old coffee can of change he left behind. Give me a break man, I’ve just been beaten up and robbed. Can’t you see?”
The man appraised her, then said, “Alright. It’s dark in the stairwell, though. If you trip and fall, don’t expect anyone to help you.”
She nodded, then said, “It’s pretty clear to me that it’s every man and woman for himself and herself.”
“Yeah,” he said, giving her the once-over one last time. “Seems you found out the hard way.”
She hauled herself up the stairs, her body hurting so badly she had to rest on the third floor for a few minutes. When she gathered up her willpower, her strength, her convictions, she stood and conquered the last flight of stairs. She tapped the door, then said, “It’s me,” to whoever was inside.
Isaiah opened the door and said, “Where did you go?” He hustled her inside before she could answer and said, “My God, what happened to you?”
“I walked into a door,” she said. Adi looked at her, as did Kennicot, but neither of them said anything. She must look psychotic.
“Those guys gave me a med-pack and some food,” Isaiah said. “Why don’t you clean up, then come have a can of pears.”
She drew a deep breath, thought of pears, then said, “That’s about the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
Chapter Eight
Isaiah Wright
Isaiah was pissed off when Marley showed up bloody and shaking after having just killed a man. He was even more pissed off when he came back out for her and found she’d disappeared. Trying to understand what must be going through her head seemed like a waste of time. She could do whatever she wanted to do. He decided to write her off as crazed and distraught, but the more he thought of her and what she’d done, the more curious he’d become. He didn’t think she had it in her to kill up close, but he never thought she’d be the kind to ramble on about some girl on the internet—whatever that was about. Then she showed up looking even worse than before.
He looked over at her in the dying light. He saw a woman tormented, a woman beaten and bested. Marley McDaniel was done. The fight was all out of her. He could see it.
Pretty girls like that, girls who are valued, even appreciated, for how they look over what they’re capable of, would never have the spine for something like this. Marley had more spine than most, he was okay admitting, but she’d reached her limit. This was concerning. Isaiah didn’t want to be too presumptive, but from here on out, if she remained in this state, he figured she’d just slow everyone down.
“I don’t want to sleep in the bedroom alone,” Kennicot said as the last embers of daylight burned off.
This broke Isaiah from his trance. He turned and glared at the president.
“Are you scared?” Adi asked her. “I’m scared.”
“Yes, sort of,” Kennicot said. “But for different reasons. Tactical reasons.”
Isaiah frowned. Tactical reasons, sure, he thought.
Isaiah decided to help Kennicot drag the king-sized mattress into the living room. They flopped the mattress over near the couch but with walking room between them. He couldn’t see squat, though, and the mattress was big and awkward. After knocking over a plant, breaking a glass votive container, and swearing under his breath, his foul mood got the best of him. He finally unloaded on Kennicot.
“Why did you have to wait until it was dark to suggest this?” Isaiah growled.
Kennicot kept her tone even. “I thought I could sleep alone in that room again, but I don’t want to feel so far from everyone. I get very uncomfortable if I’m not sharing the bed with someone.”
“After your husband died,” Marley asked, “you had plenty of nights sleeping by yourself, did you not?”
“Actually, I have one of my secret service agents sleep with me. It wasn’t a relationship thing. I just hated being so alone.”
“You have us,” Adi said, yawning.
“Adi, why don’t you and Marley sleep with me on the bed and Isaiah can sleep on the couch? Surely the floor can’t be comfortable.”
“Okay,” Adi said.
“Are you sure?” Marley asked.
“There’s plenty of room. Besides, Isaiah will appreciate it. He needs his rest if he’s going to put on a smile and act like a gentleman tomorrow.”
Isaiah said nothing. He didn’t care either way. The pain and discomfort kept him active, awake, and one step closer to alert than he’d be if he was getting a good night’s sleep.
He waited for a couple of hours for the three of them to go to sleep, and when they did, he got his pack off the floor and shuffled through the contents. He found the journal quickly, then he found his tactical pen. In the kitchen, he’d left a candle and a lighter out. He grabbed these things, then tiptoed to the bathroom at the back of the hall.
He went inside and quietly shut the door. There, he lit the candle, then opened the journal. Inside the pages, he studied the many thoughts he’d had of late, all things he’d recorded here.
He took out the Gerber Impromptu Tactical Pen, turned to the first blank page and began to write. He had so much on his mind that could not be put into words, so he wrote almost nothing down. But then something came to him, a name that’s been nagging at him too much lately. He wrote it down in the journal. It was, perhaps, the most significant thing he’d written in the journal to date.
Jerica Picklesmeyer.
He sat there, pen hovering over the paper, agitation gnawing at him. God, he thought, what an ugly and unfortunate combination of two names.
Jerica Picklesmeyer.
He thumbed through his journal and he reflected upon his previous writings. There were names and people behind the names; there were dates and the significance of those dates; there were places and the importance of the places.
For a second, he wondered if his unhealthy obsession with this woman would finally come to a swift conclusion. If that day ever came, would he have a chance at internal peace again? He prayed he would, for the roads he’d been traveling were long, dark, and fraught with peril. Even if this fight came to a close, after having lived so long in shadows like these—chasing the ghosts of Jerica and her kind—he felt like he’d lost himself, so much so he’d forgotten who he was before any of this even began.
That’s when he started to think about how all this started. Tunneling down that particular road, knowing he would become a fallen soul, he started to shake first with rage and then with sorrow. Within moments, he leaned forward, lowered his face into his hands, then sat there as his big shoulders started to shake.
“Please, God, forgive me for the things I’ve done,” he said in a choked whisper, “and for the things I’m going to do.”
There were so many fair-weather patriots out there who never saw this coming. He was a patriot who saw it all. He’d seen it coming years ago, a decade at least.
Shaking his head, wiping his eyes, he pulled the picture from the center of his journal. It was of President Kennicot. He’d drawn a bullseye on her forehead. On the page, written in a nearly manic scrawl were two names: Killian O’Brien and Marley McDaniel.
Killian, that shifty prick…
Turning to an empty page, he wrote the name Adelard Schmidt. Beside it, he drew an iron cross with perfect precision. Why in God’s name was he even there? Down the hall, he heard something, a strange
noise. He stood, went to the door, quietly cracked it open.
He listened for a little while, and just when he was about to blow out the candle and call it a night, he heard the kid whimpering in his sleep. Isaiah slid his tac-pen into his pocket, then tiptoed back to the living room with the lit candle to guide him.
He saw the three lumps on the king-sized mattress on the floor. He knelt down beside them, lifting the candle to watch them sleep. The boy was sleeping in between the two women. He was closest to Marley, who was softly snoring. Her face was a beaten mess. There was still blood in her hair and in the creases around her eyes and mouth. At least the swelling on her head had gone down. Not all the way, but certainly not as bad as earlier.
He tiptoed to the other side of the mattress, then knelt down and looked at the creature that was Althea Kennicot. He studied the woman long and hard, trying to see the president in that plain face of hers. Slowly, he began to connect the dots. It’s insane what you can do with makeup these days, he thought. You really can put lipstick on a…well, she wasn’t a pig by any stretch, but you could turn one person into another with the right face paint.
As he watched her, his hand slowly came up, almost on its own, and then it made a finger gun. He pointed it right at her. Bang, he thought.
Kennicot took a deep breath, shifted a bit, then started to move. He pinched out the flame on the candlewick and just sat there.
He heard the president sniff at the smoke from the burning wick, then—in a groggy voice—ask, “Is anyone there?”
He sat still, inches from her, perfectly quiet.
“I smell smoke,” she said.
She sat up, and still he remained inches from her.
“Isaiah?” she asked.
He didn’t speak.
Then she lay back down and within a few minutes, he heard her start to cry. Sob if you want, you soulless witch. It won’t save you.
When she fell back to sleep, he slowly stood and crept to the couch. Lowering himself into the cushions, he stretched out, then pulled the thin blanket to his chin and thought about the next leg of the journey.
