Commodity

  I roll to the side, choking and gasping. Brett is on my back a second later, and we roll again through the rubble all over the floor. Something hard slams into my shoulder, halting the roll with Brett back on top of me. He doesn’t grab for my throat again, though—he reaches for whatever stopped me.

  The barrel of my Sig is pointed under my jaw.

  Brett’s eyes are wild as he grins maniacally down at me.

  “You never should have come here,” he says.

  The blast rings through my ears. I wait for the pain, but nothing comes.

  Am I dead?

  There’s screaming, but the sound is dulled in my ringing ears. I realize Brett’s weight is no longer holding me down, and I roll to one side.

  Brett is next to me, holding his shoulder and yelling at the top of his voice. I look toward the wall and see Hannah. In her hands is Brett’s gun.

  Holy shit! She shot him!

  I look back to Brett, who is still rolling on the floor in pain. I grab my Sig from where he left it and waste no time shooting two rounds into his chest and another in his head. I stare at the body for a long moment, making sure there is no room for doubt before I clamber back to my feet. I stumble a little—my head is swimming and my ears are ringing—and make my way to Hannah’s side. Slowly, I cover the barrel of the gun with my palm and take it out of her hands.

  Hannah takes a step back, pushing herself against the wall near the broken glass door. She wraps her hands around her stomach, and tears start to run down her face. Her eyes are still blank, but she comes with me when I pull on her arm. Her other hand still reaches around her stomach, cupping the bulge.

  Marco stares at her with wide eyes as I bring her out to the street.

  “Where’s Chuck?” I ask.

  “He told me to come make sure you got out! He’s at the front gate. There were a lot of guys coming out, but I think he was leading them the other way.”

  “They know I’m coming out over here,” I say, shifting Hannah’s weight on my arm. “I need to get her out of here. We all need to get out of here.”

  “Marco and Katrina are at the old Coke place.”

  “You go ahead,” I tell him. “Get them ready to move out. We’ll cover you.”

  Marco rushes off, and another shot rings out. I recognize the sound of the discharge of my rifle. I glance at Christine and then in the direction she’s aiming.

  Chuck appears from around the corner, firing shots as he turns and backs toward the truck.

  “How many?” I yell out at him.

  “Four armed!” he calls back. He fires again. “Make that three!”

  There’s an additional blast from the rifle.

  “Just two!” Christine’s aim is good. “I can see some others coming around!”

  She fires two more shots as Chuck makes his way across the street, and two more men fall. I can hear the shouts of others coming around the bend, and I have no idea how we’re going to get away without being seen.

  “You’re fucking awesome, babe!” Chuck yells as he grins up at his wife. His eyes are full of admiration, and he raises his arm to give her a thumbs-up. A sharp pop from near the building echoes off the wall of rubble. Chuck’s expression changes suddenly, and he drops to his knees.

  “Chuck!” Christine’s scream is followed by her unloading the rest of the rifle's clip into the man at the edge of the street. His body jerks several times before he falls backward to the ground.

  I pull Hannah the rest of the way behind the trailer.

  “We gotta go!” I yell up to Christine.

  “We can’t leave him!”

  “Come get Hannah!”

  Christine drops from the top of the trailer, tripping slightly as she lands but manages to keep herself upright. She runs to my side and takes Hannah from my arms.

  “I’ll get him,” I tell her. “You follow Marco. Get Hannah and yourself out of here.”

  Christine nods. I check the clip of my Sig and then step out from around the trailer, firing. There’s a group coming out of the alleyway between the building and the wall of rubble, mostly holding blunt objects in their hands. Only one has a gun, and I take him out quickly before firing on the rest. They scramble, running back toward the main entrance.

  Chuck is on his face in the street. I crouch down, gun still raised, and roll him over. He blinks at me a few times but doesn’t speak. There’s a trickle of blood at the side of his mouth, and his shirt is soaked in it.

  “Come on, big guy,” I say quietly. I glance up at the building, but all of the men have taken off, presumably to better arm themselves. In the distance, I can hear Caesar’s voice, shouting commands, but I can’t hear the actual words. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  I loop my arms under Chuck’s shoulders and drag him off the street. He’s a big guy, and the dead weight isn’t easy to haul, but I get him behind the trailer and check him out.

  There’s a huge hole in his stomach. He’s losing blood so fast, I don’t know why he’s still conscious.

  “Chuck? Can you hear me?”

  He looks toward the sound of my voice, and I can tell he’s trying to smile. He raises his hand slightly and gives me a thumbs-up. He opens his mouth as if to say something, but a bubble of blood comes out instead. His chest heaves, and I place my hand on his shoulder to try to hold him down.

  There’s nothing I can do.

  “Fuck, man,” I say quietly. “This wasn’t supposed to go down like this.”

  Chuck closes his mouth and his eyes. He raises his arm a little more, thumb still extended, and then it drops back to the ground.

  I close my eyes for a second and then push myself back up onto my feet. I can’t take his body with me. I’ll never be able to carry him and get away fast enough. Caesar and the rest of his crew could be out here at any moment.

  “I’ll try to come back for you,” I whisper. “I swear. Thank you, brother.”

  Chapter 6

  “We can’t stay here.”

  The group looks at me. We’re barely a mile from Caesar’s compound, and we need to move fast. Everyone’s face holds the same expression of shock as we stand one fewer than we were. Christine is actually more composed than any of the rest of them.

  “I should have stayed,” Marco says. “I should have covered him better.”

  “You were exactly where you needed to be.” I step up to him and place a hand on his shoulder. “There is nothing—nothing—you could have done to change this. You can’t go back. You can’t ‘what if,’ and you can’t blame yourself for that bastard getting Chuck. You trust me when I say I am not done with those guys yet.”

  Marco nods and wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.

  “Falk is right,” Christine says. She blinks a few times and dabs at her eyes. “Chuck…well, Chuck always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory like some comic book hero. I think he’s satisfied with that. Now we need to get Hannah and Falk out of here to give Chuck’s actions some meaning.”

  “I’ll make my way back there when I can,” I tell her. “If it’s at all possible, I’ll bring him back to you, make sure he gets a proper burial.”

  “He wouldn’t want you to risk that.” Christine shakes her head. “Go on. Get out of here. There will be a lot of days to talk about the dead. Get Hannah somewhere safe. We’ll lead them off in another direction.”

  “They’re going to come after you, too,” I say.

  “I realize that.”

  “I’ll make sure they follow me and Sam,” Marco says. “Katrina and Christine will head to the house, and we’ll head back to our camp. I can leave a clear trail. They’ll follow us, and the girls can get away.”

  “If they find you, they’re going to kill you.”

  Marco’s throat bobs as he swallows.

  “I know,” he says, “but they’re not going to get Katrina. Christine, either.”

  I look over at Hannah where she sits on a large slab of broken concrete, staring at the ground. I’ve got
a long walk ahead of me, and she’s still practically comatose. I need to get her somewhere where I can make her feel safe again, but I’m not sure how long it will take if I have to carry her the whole way.

  “Will she fit in the cart?” Sam asks quietly.

  “What cart?” I ask, wondering if he’s reading my mind.

  “The one we use behind the bikes,” Sam says. “Would she fit in there? It would be better than carrying her.”

  “She might.” I think about it for a minute. If I head all the way back to the camp for the bike, I’ll have wasted far too much time. I might end up at my destination faster, but I won’t be far enough away from the camp. Surely Caesar and his group are gearing up to come after us. “There’s no time to get it.”

  “I stashed it nearby.”

  “It’s here?”

  “Just behind the pile of cars, where the parking garage used to be.”

  “What made you bring it?” I ask.

  “I thought if someone got hurt, they might need it.” Sam shrugs. “It would be a lot faster than carrying anyone.”

  “Yeah,” I respond with a nod, “let’s get it.”

  I head over to where Hannah is sitting, kneel beside her, and place a hand on her shoulder.

  “Sam’s got some transportation worked out,” I tell her. “I’ve got a safe place where we can hide out until this blows over, okay?”

  She just stares.

  I follow her gaze to a puffy dandelion growing between the cracks in the sidewalk. I can’t get her to look at me or respond to my questions.

  I’ve seen the same look far too many times in the eyes of the men who served under me—men who had seen one too many horrific acts for their minds to process. They were the ones to watch out for back at the base. If they weren’t able to snap out of it quickly, they ended up putting bullets in their own heads.

  Sam retrieves the bike, and we get Hannah loaded into the cart. It’s actually fairly easy to get her to curl up and lay down. She continues to stare at nothing, looking so small despite the protruding belly, and my chest tightens up at the sight.

  “In a week’s time, assuming all is quiet, I’ll head for Katrina’s house,” I tell them all. “If you aren’t there, try to leave me some kind of sign that you’re all right and where I can find you.”

  “My brothers and I had a code for that,” Katrina says. “It’s math-based using coordinates and easy enough if you know what to look for.”

  “Show me.”

  Katrina hands me a map of the city—one that shows the lines of latitude and longitude on it—and writes down the simple equation she and her brothers had used in the past, and I shove it into my backpack.

  “I’ll put it in that same desk where the notebook usually is,” she tells me.

  “Won’t you need the map back?”

  “I have another one back at the house,” she says.

  “Perfect.”

  “We need to move,” Christine says again.

  I make sure Hannah’s all right on the back of the bike before I climb onto the seat. Marco and Sam gather up everything and start heading straight to their camp, leaving signs along the way.

  Katrina and Christine are taking a long route to the house, backtracking a couple of times to hide their trail.

  “Be careful,” I tell them. “Don’t take any chances.”

  “We’ll be good,” Christine says.

  I nod and place my foot on the pedal to get going.

  “Falk?”

  I look back to Christine, and she stares at me with narrowed, serious eyes.

  “You raise that fucking baby like it’s yours.”

  I clench my jaw. It’s not something I’m prepared to think about, but I understand her meaning. Hannah will need me now more than she ever has, and I’ll have to do anything and everything to help her, regardless of how I may actually feel.

  “Yeah,” I finally say with a nod. “I will.”

  “You better.”

  *****

  The bicycle and cart work wonderfully. My legs are killing me by the time I reach my destination, and I’m sure I never would have made it if I had to have carried her the whole time. I ditch the bike and the cart between a collapsed house and detached garage, help Hannah to her feet, and then carry her behind the house and into a small wooded area near a man-made lake. I’ve only been to this shelter once, but I find it again without too much trouble.

  This shelter is far larger and more sophisticated than the one I had claimed as my own early on. It has been designed for nuclear fallout. The hatch drops down to a sloping ramp that ends with an airlock. There are four small rooms inside: a main living area with a food preparation center, a table and two chairs, a bedroom, a storage room, and a generator room. Off the main room there is a small shower, a decent-size washbasin on the floor, and a toilet.

  I seat Hannah on a chair before going around and turning on some battery-powered lamps. There are some supplies in the storage area but not a lot. I think the shelter was never completely finished. There’s no fuel for the generator even if it would start up, which it likely would not. There’s some food and a few bottles of water as well as some toiletry items and extra batteries for the lamps.

  Hannah hasn’t moved from the spot where I put her. She doesn’t even look around the room. I have no fucking idea what I’m supposed to do. She’s completely shut down. I’ve dealt with several guys in similar states but only long enough to get them some actual help. I’m not a therapist.

  Start with the basics.

  I get her to drink a little water, but she doesn’t respond to anything I say to her.

  She doesn’t even look like herself, and it’s not just because of the pregnancy. I don’t know where the dress she is wearing came from, but I don’t think it’s something she ever would have picked out for herself. There are bruises on her arms and her cheekbone. She’s smudged with dirt, and her hair is greasy and unkempt.

  Hannah has always been very neat and orderly. She likes her clothes comfortable and her hair clean and soft.

  I have some of her clothes back in the other bomb shelter, but they don’t do me any good here, and they wouldn’t fit her now anyway. Digging through my own things, I find a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt.

  She doesn’t look at me as I pull the dress off of her, but she does start to shake. It’s just a little but still noticeable. I speak to her quietly, reminding her that it’s me and that I’m not going to hurt her, but I don’t think she comprehends my words. When I finally get the dress over her head, I gasp at the sight of her body.

  She has no undergarments at all, and though I’ve seen her body before, I hardly recognize it. It’s not just her stomach though I have to swallow hard to force myself to look at the bulge and what it represents. I’m reminded of jokes about women swallowing basketballs. That’s exactly what it looks like, and I wonder how far along she is or if she even knows.

  It’s the bruises that alarm me the most.

  There are marks on her shoulders and upper arms. Her thighs are covered with discolorations ranging from dark purple to brownish-yellow. There are additional bruises on her breasts and rope burns around her ankles. She smells of old sweat and semen.

  “Oh, fuck, Hannah.” I look away for a minute. When I look back, there are tears in her eyes. I run my hand over her cheek and whisper to her. “It’s over. They’re never going to touch you again.”

  The tears leave streaks on her dirty face. With no response from her, I decide to get her cleaned up before putting clothes on her. I try to wipe her face off with a wet cloth, but I can tell right away that it isn’t going to be enough. I won’t be able to hold her up in the shower even if the water does work, which it doesn’t.

  I look to the large basin. It’s not bathtub-sized, but she’ll fit in it as long as she’s sitting up. I decide to go that route and quickly warm water on the propane stove to fill the basin.

  Coaxing Hannah to stand and walk over to the basin, I lift
her over the edge and then lower her into the water.

  “It’s warm.” They’re the first words she’s spoken since we got here. I watch her reach down into the water and let it cascade through her fingers.

  “Yeah, it’s warm,” I respond. “I remember how much you complained when the shower water went cold.”

  I grab a cup from the food prep area and use it to rinse her off and wet her hair. I’m pretty sure she isn’t capable of washing herself, so I grab some shampoo from the storage area and start working on her hair. It’s grown much longer since I last saw her, and it’s a tangled mess. I wish I had some kind of conditioner for it to help get the snarls out. I’m pretty sure there are other things that work as a conditioner, but I can’t for the life of me think of what they are.

  Hannah doesn’t even seem to be aware of what’s going on. She just keeps placing her hand in the warm water and watching it run through her fingertips when she raises her hand up again.

  Once her hair is lathered up, I grab the cup and start rinsing the shampoo out. I can get most of it without her help, but I don’t want the suds to run into her eyes.

  “Lean your head back a little for me.” I place my hand at the back of her head, and she tilts her head back against it. I carefully pour the water around her hairline to get the rest of the shampoo out while she stares up at me with the same dull expression.

  “You look like him.” She reaches up and touches the side of my face with her wet fingertips.

  “Hannah,” I say softly. “It’s me. It’s Falk.”

  She shakes her head.

  “He’s dead.”

  I don’t know why I’m surprised to hear the words. Of course they would have told her that. They might have even believed it themselves. I put the cup down and place my hand on her cheek.

  “I’m not dead, Hannah,” I say. “I’m right here.”

  I feel the pressure on my palm as she leans into it. She smiles slightly and then shakes her head.

  “It’s a dream.”

  “It’s not a dream.” I reach up and push some stray hairs off her forehead. “I’m here. Brett’s dead, and you’re safe now.”

  “Safe.” She huffs through her nose. “Simple word.”