Joey shook his head, his long grey hair moving wildly. He let out a noise, half-scream, half-roar.
“Go!” he shouted.
Dan couldn’t move. He felt frozen with shock and fear.
Another noise at the door. Sounded like they were breaking more glass.
Something was slamming into the door.
Joey dashed over the counter, rushing forward towards the front exit. He charged them, shotgun first.
He fired. The shotgun blast rang through the store.
Dan stood behind the counter now, as if he was a barista working at the café.
Another gunshot. A different sort of sound.
Joey’s head snapped back, blood bursting forth into the air, his hair swinging wildly.
Dan finally broke free from his frozen pose. He needed to move. Now.
The pack was weighing him down, but he couldn’t ditch it. He needed it to survive.
Dan dashed through the back of the store, leaving the counter behind, looking wildly for the exit.
He passed a large industrial sink that was still full of dirty dishes. A broom closet with the door open, a yellow plastic mop bucket still filled with dirty water, the mop lying on the ground.
There was a heavy steel door.
Dan slammed against it, pressing the long horizontal bar that served as a handle.
He didn’t look behind him. He dashed outside into the sunlight that almost blinded his darkness-adjusted eyes.
Dan looked up and down the paved alley, his heart pounding and his head moving jerkily back and forth. There was a dumpster off to his right, full of trash. The smell was intense, almost completely overwhelming.
There was no one there.
Dan dashed down the alley, not knowing which was he was heading.
Behind him, he heard the steel door burst open, slamming against the brick wall.
Dan had no way to fight them. His knife wasn’t a match for their guns.
Maybe they wouldn’t shoot him since he was a kid. Probably not, though.
Dan got around the corner of a brick building just in time.
A burst of gunfire rang out, dispelling any illusions of juvenile safety.
He had to ditch the backpack. Somehow, he got it off his shoulders, throwing it off him with too much force. He needed his energy to run.
Dan ran straight and fast, his arms pumping intensely like pistons, his feet slamming into the pavement, his knees rebounding high towards his chest, towards the sky.
He could probably outrun them. But he was headed right back to Dwight Street.
He reached Dwight.
A large military truck, painted in a camo pattern, sat there, rumbling.
Dan didn’t stop running. As hard as he could. Maybe he could make it to the other side of the road, crossing right in front of the truck.
There was someone there, right in his path.
Dan didn’t think. He didn’t stop.
It was some type of soldier. A rogue one. A big gun.
Flashes of scattered impressions came into Dan’s brain. Fragmented.
Without stopping, he jammed the knife forward, right into the man’s stomach.
The man screamed, swinging his rifle around. It wasn’t in position to fire. But the hard metal of the muzzle collided with Dan’s head.
Pain kicked through him. Hard, harsh pain.
Dan’s vision went blurry.
Someone was grabbing him. Strong arms. Rough hands. Seizing him, pulling him backwards away from the man he’d stabbed, who lay there now on the ground, the kitchen knife jutting up into the air.
The man he’d stabbed wore no military uniform. He had long, wild hair that flowed out from beneath a blue baseball cap.
Whoever these people were, they definitely weren’t the US military. Joey had been right. They were probably just some guys who’d gotten a hold of some military gear, like trucks and guns.
“What do we do with him?” said a voice behind Dan.
“Detention center.”
Dan felt something on his wrists. Plastic.
Were they zip tying him?
The plastic around his wrists tightened. It was extremely tight, to the point of being painful.
Someone kicked him in the back. Hard.
Dan’s arms fastened together behind him, he fell hard face-first onto the pavement. He tried to fall on his shoulder, but it was only partly successful.
His face collided with the pavement. Another blow to the head.
He didn’t black out.
He lay there, pain kicking through him, listening to the gruff adult voices of the men above him.
Dan thought of Joey, and the way he’d looked when he’d been shot. Had he gotten one of them himself?
21
Art woke up. He didn’t know if it was day or night. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t recognize the room.
His life had turned into a nightmare.
His entire body was in pain. He no longer remembered the individual blows he’d received. He no longer remembered how many times he’d been hit in the head.
His memory was fuzzy. He remembered the rebels torturing him, then Sarge marching in.
But all the details were nothing but a hazy cloud that hung over his mind, weighing him down with an impossible depression.
He was beyond wanting to die.
He was beyond everything.
His old life, before the EMP, was nothing but an image that haunted him. It felt like someone else’s life, someone else’s memories.
Art tried to move. But he was tied. His hands were bound. He didn’t even realize it at first. He felt disconnected from his body in some sense. Maybe his mind was trying to protect itself from the horrors of what had happened to the body, retreating within some kind of strange mental space.
But as he tried to move, struggling against the cords that bound him, his mind began reconnecting with his body, and the pain came flooding back like never before.
There wasn’t any point in thinking about the pain. But he couldn’t ignore it.
The light in the room was low. Just a couple flickering candles. They were probably candles that he himself had pilfered on some mission weeks ago. They were some of those large bath candles that gave off a strong scent. The room smelled like a mix of perfumes.
The smell was nauseating.
Art didn’t remember the last time he’d eaten. Or had any water.
He’d probably evacuated his bowels at some point during the beatings. He could smell it even over the scent of the candles.
The door opened softly.
Art looked up.
It was Joe, his one friend in the militia.
Joe closed the door gently.
“What the hell did you get yourself into, Art?”
Art just shook his head.
“You’d better get to talking. You don’t have much time. Sarge is coming soon. I shouldn’t even be here.”
“I don’t know,” said Art, his voice impossibly weak.
Joe took a small plastic water bottle out the cargo pocket of his pants. The bottle wasn’t meant to be reused, but it had been refilled countless time from the large tanks of water that were delivered to the men. No one in Art’s group knew where the water was coming from, only that it was coming. The water delivery functioned like a silent threat. Everyone knew that the water might stop coming, and that they’d be on their own when it came to their basic needs. They were only fed for as long as they were useful to someone.
The plastic water bottle was crumpled, a thousand lines in its thin plastic.
Joe unscrewed the small cap and put the bottle to Art’s lips.
“Drink up, buddy,” he said. “I don’t know the next time you’re going to get something to drink.”
The water flowed through Art’s parched mouth. He drank and he drank, half-choking on the water, trying to get it all down his bone-dry throat.