The buildings of the city had begun to close in around her again, the sounds of the fighting growing louder with each step. For a while she hadn’t even heard the gunfire. Or the screams. Or the screeching of tires and rumbling of engines. It had all been background noise, static on the radio dial of reality. Every now and then, however, it had come roaring back into sharp focus as if to remind her that she couldn’t allow anything to become commonplace. She had to consider every aspect of her environment if she wanted to make it out of this alive. So Polly tried to concentrate on the sounds, to use them as her guide. If they seemed to mostly be coming from the North End, then she would head west. If the growl of a motorcycle was steadily growing louder and higher in pitch, she would duck into the shadows until it passed. And this method seemed to be working rather well for her. She’d navigated through several blocks without so much as seeing a soul. Or, more importantly, without a soul seeing her.
Now she’d reached the corner of Bentley and Jefferson. Wasn’t that where that asshole Richard had gone that morning? To get the box of supplies? It had to be. She could just make out what looked to be yellow tape stretching into the distance along Jefferson. Two horizontal bands, spaced just far enough apart for a person to be able to stand comfortably between the two.
Fuckin’ yellow lines, man. If I never see another yellow line in my life, it’ll be too soon.
A sound in the alley to her right caught her attention and her head snapped to the side as her hands formed into tight fists. She didn’t bother calling out “is someone there?” like those ditsy bimbos in movies and books. Of course someone was there. The sound had quite obviously been the scuffling of feet.
From the shadows of the alley a woman emerged. She was wearing a tattered dress smeared with the same soot that darkened her cheeks and forehead. Her hair was a tangled mess, as if she had went to bed with wet hair, woke up, and went about her business without bothering to pass a comb through it. In her hands she carried a small bundle: what looked to be a fuzzy pink blanket with some sort of cartoon characters patterned on it; it was cradled in her arms at an upward angle and, through a gap in the blanket, Polly could just make out a round little forehead and tiny nose. Miraculously, it was sleeping through all of this. Which was probably a blessing, actually. The last thing this woman needed was a crying baby on her hands when she was trying to hide.
As the woman stepped closer, Polly could see streaks in the soot on her face. As if she’d been crying and the tears had cleared swaths of clean skin through the grime and grit.
“They turned you away too, didn’t they? Wouldn’t let you leave?”
Polly nodded her head but remained silent, allowing this stranger to do all the talking.
“I have a baby. A baby for crying out loud. I asked… I asked if I could lay her on the yellow line and walk away. If they could wait ’til I left and take her somewhere safe.”
The woman had a slumped and defeated look which deepened with every step, every word… almost as if the story was the only real substance she had left and the telling of it was slowly deflating her.
“They wouldn’t do it. Why wouldn’t they do it? Why wouldn’t they take my baby?”
Funny. This entire time Polly hadn’t even considered the children. Where were they in all this madness? Where they huddled into basements and closets, hiding from the monsters which rampaged just outside their walls? Were their bodies piled among the faceless dead? Or, God forbid, were they joining in on the mayhem, taking out one another just like their adult role models were doing?
“Why wouldn’t they save my baby?”
Now Jane, she probably would’ve thought of the children first thing. That’s just the way she was. And that’s probably what she’d meant when she kept muttering those poor, poor people as they watched the news. God that seemed like such a long time ago…. It was hard to believe it had only been a matter of hours. That things could deteriorate so quickly once set into motion.
“Will you take my baby?”
Polly finally spoke.
“I don’t want your baby, lady. You should get back in that alley and hide. You don’t want to be out here.”
The woman looked around her, as if taking in the street for the first time before turning back to face Polly, who was now only six or seven feet away.
“Why won’t you take my baby?”
“Look, I’ve got enough to worry about on my own without….”
The woman dropped the baby as if it were nothing more than a sack of potatoes and broke into a run. The lost and confused look had disappeared from her face, replaced with a contorted mask of rage.
“I want your fucking shoes, you blond haired bitch!”
There was something shiny in the woman’s left hand, the one that had been hidden under the baby. Something that looked sharp.
The woman thrust the blade at Polly but she, somehow, was ready for it. She’d never really trusted this lady from the start. Something about how she’d kept saying my baby but never actually mentioning the child by name.
Polly pivoted gracefully on her heel, spinning her body out of the path of the knife as easily as if it were something she did on a daily basis. At the same time, she latched onto the woman’s arm and twisted it backward and down in one steady movement. The blade sank into the woman’s stomach and she gasped as her mouth and eyes formed perfect circles. Her fingers loosened from the hilt just enough for Polly to gain control and yank it free.
With her other hand, Polly pushed the woman’s back hard enough that she stumbled and fell several feet away.
“I swear to God if you’re not on your feet and out of here within the next five seconds, I’m gonna cut a bitch to shreds.”
Not a threat. Just a simple, flat statement.
The woman staggered to her feet and scrambled away, hunched over and gripping her stomach as if she could somehow keep the blood from spilling out of her body.
Shit. The damn baby….
As it turned out, Polly didn’t have much to worry about in that regard. What she hadn’t been able to see in the semi-darkness was that the baby’s face and lips were a subtle shade of blue. What looked to be the terrycloth belt of a bathrobe had been tied so tightly around the infant’s little neck that it had practically burrowed into the skin. The poor thing.
She couldn’t just leave it laying in the middle of the street like some piece of rubbish tossed from a passing car. It was true that she knew there was no place for compassion in her heart, not now at least. But she was still human, damn it. And it was the type of animal who did this that didn’t deserve her mercy; the kind who would murder the perfectly innocent and then use its body as nothing more than a prop in some fucked up ruse.
She could just make out the outline of a carriage in the shadows of the alley. The least she could do, then, was to place the baby back into the pram. It wasn’t a proper burial but in this city it was probably the closest anybody was going to get. So she laid the child’s stiff body down gently, next to a diaper bag overflowing with bottles and rattles and…. cigarettes?