Under a Broken Sun (6 page)

I whispered “down!” and the girls shot down to a crouch, looking around for what I saw.  I motioned for them to come over to me, which meant stepping over the dead guy.  Marilyn – no problem.  Ashley?  She took her own sweet time.  The cop stood in front of the shattered door.

“Hello?” he shouted.

I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and duck-walked down the side aisle all the way to the back.  The cop had no flashlight, but it didn't take a lighter to see the body on the floor.  We had to get out, but I couldn’t see an exit.  We ran, still crouching, to the pharmacy.  Up front the cop rushed back to the door and shouted out a name; “Frank” or something.  My eyes had adjusted by now, and I could see a little better in the dark. 

Marilyn tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a swinging door with a small square window in it.  That had to be the back storeroom.  I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and pulled her along.  I assumed she took Ashley’s. 

The light completely disappeared in the storeroom.  I felt a desk in front of me, and I could smell a bathroom, but other than that; nothing.

I thought of our orientation.  The main entry was to my left.  The rear door we saw in the alley then had to be to my right. 

I had to move, but with care.  I had no idea what kind of shit we’d run into back there.  I heard a squeak to my right followed by a scurry of little feet.  A fucking rat.  I’d take the chance of running into something with my forehead over the chance of a rat snuggling up to me.  I stood up and with arms outstretched in front moved slowly to my right.  If someone switched a light on then I’d probably look like Frankenstein.  One wrong turn and I could knock something over, alert the cops, and fuck us all up. 

We made it to the corner near what felt like the emergency exit.  I opened the door a little, spilling a thread of light into the room.  I peeked outside, then turned to make sure the other two were still behind me.  I saw Ashley, but no Marilyn.  I opened the door further and pushed Ashley outside.  “Wait out here,” I said.  “Don’t make a sound.”

I propped the door open a crack with a rock nearby, and went back into the darkness.  “Marilyn,” I whispered.  “Hey, where are you?”  I heard sniffling coming from my left, and went over to her.  Reaching out with my arms I felt my hand brush against her hair.  “I'm ok,” she said, “Give me your hand.”  I felt her shoulder and slid my hand down her arm to find her hand.  My fingers slid over warm and sticky liquid.  I knew blood when I felt it.  She inhaled sharply as I passed over it.

I found her hand.  “C’mon.”  A light tug and she started following me, her hand shaking in mine.  I followed the light to the door and led her outside.

Her left arm showed the mess of red streaks of cuts.

“Oh my God,” Ashley said when she saw the blood.  “What the hell happened?”

She didn’t understand.  She probably would
never
understand.  I dropped the bag to the ground and fished out a roll of gauze, tape and antibiotic cream.  I dabbed off the blood.  “I'm fine,” Marilyn told Ashley.  “I'll be fine.”

“What happened?” Ashley asked me.

“She cut herself. She said she’s fine.”

Ashley looked deeper at the cut.  “She cut herself?  Like on purpose?”

“Relax,” I said, pushing Ashley away.

“What is she, psycho or something?"

I snapped around to Ashley and drew my sleeve up, revealing my own scars.  “Yeah and so am I.  If you don’t like it you’re free to run the fuck away.”

That shut her up, but not without some colorful language under her breath to close it out.  Marilyn stayed silent as she wrapped her arm up.  “Sorry,” I said to Ashley. 

“Forget it,” she replied. 

A quick rip of tape and Marilyn’s arm was an instant long sleeve of white.

I looked into her eyes.  “Marilyn.  Look at me.  You can’t do this.  You could seriously screw yourself up.  We can’t afford to be causing injuries on purpose.  You understand?”

"Don't worry about me, ok?  Just worry about yourself."

“We can't take any chances.  The cutting's gotta stop.  For both of us.”  Finally, a slight nod.  “If you wanna cut, you let me know.  Grab me.  Whatever it takes.  Just keep it pain free, ok?”

She smiled.  I loved that smile.  It’s one of those types of smile that makes you return it just so you can keep it going.  I brushed strands of jet black hair away from her face.  "Promise," she whispered.

“Uh, guys?” Ashley said. 

I turned.  A fight had broken out down the street, a cop and some other guy.  More guys appeared, followed by more cops.  The crowd turned into a mob.  Before we knew it, a throng of people with clubs, baseball bats, crowbars, all matter of destruction devises, marched towards us.  A noise like a crowd roaring at a baseball game grew on the other side of the building.  The throng heading towards us turned the march into a marathon.  Some broke off into other stores.  Some came out of other stores with TV’s, radios, even DVD’s spilling out of their arms.  Electronics.  I had to smile.  Worthless pieces of shit now. 

A pop sound on the other side of the building, something fired from a tin-can.  Then a hiss.  Then the smell.  Tear gas.

The riots had officially begun, and we sat smack dab in the middle of them.

I grabbed Marilyn’s hand and pulled her down the alley away from the crowd to our right.  Shattering glass reverberated from behind and the sickening sound of screaming as billy-clubs bashed rioter’s heads in.  Or maybe it was baseball bats the other way.  I didn’t stop to look.

I wanted to get out of the street but all I could find were locked doors and dark windows.  Every few feet a small crowd of rioters ran to where the action was, but they left us alone.  As we continued up Market Street, the noise shifted to something a little more organized.  I couldn’t make out what they were chanting until we cleared the last street and stepped in front of Independence Hall.  Someone shouted about Hell.  “The Lord has come!”  “We‘re all gonna die!”  “It’s the wrath of God!”

Doomsday shit.  Great.  The last thing we needed.

I tried to pull Marilyn with me up the street away from that mess, but the words of the man at the podium hypnotized her.  She snapped her arm back and shuffled towards the man in the middle of it all. 

Jesse Hill - the Right Reverend dickhead who we unfortunately saved, paraded on some sort of platform in front of the throng.  I followed Marilyn up further as she bumped and jostled her way through the crowd.  What the fuck was it about this clown that fascinated her so much?

“Remember Revelations 3:3," he shouted, raising his right hand.  "‘If therefore thou shalt not watch I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee’” Hill proclaimed.  People had their eyes closed, tears streaming down their face.  Fucking children, no more than ten years old, raising their faces to the burning sun.  One started to quiver and speak gibberish.  Others praised Jesus.  “And Matthew Chapter 24,” he went on, “For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.”  He smiled as he raised his arms again.  "God has pointed out the antichrist to us.  It is not the President, he is merely a puppet.  No, remember Paul's second letter to the Thessolians: '...that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposes and exalteth himself above all that is called god.'" He held up a book, and the crowd roared against it.

My dad's book.

"Dr. Dawson is this man!  He claims to sit on the throne of god, and is worshipped as a god.  He is the antichrist that we have been tasked to destroy."  The crowd roared again.

Marilyn looked at me.  "Holy fuck," I whispered. 

"We gotta get the hell outta here," she said.

She had to pull me along.  That motherfucker just threatened my dad.  My dad may be an asshole, but he's no fucking antichrist.

Hill carried on behind us.  “We have already been raptured and have returned.  That is the speed with which God works.  Now we must fight beside Christ the Lord!” Hill had worked the crowd up in a frenzy.  “We shall have to FIGHT BESIDE THE LORD!”  The crowd went crazy at that line.  Fuckin’ lunatics.

We stopped in the shade of another underpass for a breath.  Our clothes stank from the collected sweat running down our bodies.

Ashley flopped on the ground, sucking in air.  “Oh my God,” she heaved.  “What the hell is going on?”

“We need to get oxygen,” I said, pulling out my father’s list.  “The air's getting thinner.  Like we’re at the top of a mountain.”

“So?”

“So, that means less oxygen.  Less oxygen means your brains could go to mush.  People start acting really whacked out when they get a lack of oxygen.  Hallucinations, that kinda thing.”

“How the hell do you know all this?” Ashley asked.

“Football.  They talked a lot about it at practice.  That and dehydration,” I pulled out a water bottle and took a sip, then passed it around.

“Ew,” Ashley backed away.  “You’ve got germs and stuff.”

“Fine,” I gave it to Marilyn, who gulped it down.  “Easy,” I said, pulling the bottle away.  “We gotta make it last.”

“Can’t I have my own?” Ashley said.

“No.”

She pouted.  Huffed.  Then said, “Fine,” and held out her hand for the bottle.  “So how long before they get the power back on?”  She said with a gulp of water.

“They don’t,” I replied.  “The whole grid’s fried.  It’ll take years for us just to get back to manufacturing levels to produce more generators to produce more power.  If the sun doesn’t bake us first.”  I knew that wasn't true.  The flashlight didn't work.  The magnets fell off.  We won't ever get power back.

Marilyn stayed quiet in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, like she wanted to roll up into a ball and disappear.

“You ok?” I asked.

She looked up at me with her round, deep blue eyes.  “No.  Neither are you.  Or any of us.”

“You’re not buying that Hill’s bullshit, are you?  Cuz I'm not."

She sighed and looked down at the gravel.  “No.” 

So there I sat, with two sad cases, making us a trio of losers riding along the end-of-the-world conveyor belt.  At that moment I couldn't think of a reason to go on.  I began to think about the pills in my bag.  About closing off this door and opening a new one.

A gunshot snapped me out of my suicidal daydreams.  The shot echoed overhead.  The girls scuttled next to me and the three of us huddled together.  More gunshots.  Automatic rifle fire drifted across the city.  An answer from another in the distance.  Screams. 

“Adam,” Marilyn pleaded. 

“Don’t move,” I said, holding her and Ashley tight. 

An explosion and glass shattering.  Grenades?   How the hell did they get grenades?  Another explosion and the bridge over our head started to crumble.  More gunshots, concrete dust drifting down on our head.

The bridge began to collapse.

Marilyn grabbed my shoulder.  “ADAM?” she shouted.

“Right.  Let’s get the hell outta here.”

We hauled out from under the bridge as it moaned and collapsed one major chunk at a time.  People standing on it began to tumble in thin air, the ground suddenly gone from beneath them.  Must've been at least a hundred people who would be in the bottom of that pile.

We ran along the road, trying to stay out of sight.  “Where’s the nearest hospital?” I asked Marilyn.  She pointed ahead.

About a half-mile down the road we turned the corner up to the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania.  It took me a second to absorb the scene: men and women flailing, screaming, kicking as cops dragged them away from the entrance doorway.  Others pounded the door to get in, leaving smears of blood from their own beaten hands.  Cops tried to set up barricades, but people took them down just as fast.  Two women - mothers, probably - kicked a policeman while he floundered on the ground.

We walked up the street, and I jumped at the sound of glass shattering.  Someone had broken a window to get inside.  A row of cops linked arms or hid behind riot shields to block the crowd.

One guy in a white coat shouted from a window above the crowd.  “Please remain calm.  We will let you see your children the minute we’ve restored order.  This is for the safety of our patients.  We have no power at all inside and we must focus on saving the lives of those dependent on machines.  Please!”

But no one listened.

We walked further up past the children’s hospital to the University of Penn hospital.  People covered every inch of the street, patients still in their skimpy robes with their asses hanging out in the breeze, doctors helping the patients wherever they could, some patients, still vegetables - or they may have been corpses by now, I couldn't tell - in their beds. 

“Why are they outside?” Marilyn asked.

“Dunno.  Gas leak?  Lack of AC?  Maybe it's hotter inside than out here.  They’re probably trying to find them cooler shelter.  C’mon.”  I led them through the crowd to the edge of the chaos.  Several bodies lay strewn in the gutter, placed carefully end to end.  I crawled up to a gurney where a lifeless arm dripped over the side.  An oxygen tank hung by the gurney's side.

Crouching low, I unscrewed the tank from a hose and lowered it down.  A nurse shouted at me to stop.

“Move!”  I said.  The nurse who saw us shoved her way through the crowd but couldn’t get close enough.  We ran back down the street, through the other riot, and into a small patch of trees – a mini-forest.

We flopped down on the dirt ground exhausted.  The full oxygen tank weighed a ton; no way could I carry that across the country.  We’d have to think of something.

It fit into my gym bag, but just barely.  I took out a water bottle to make a little room; took a sip and passed it around.

“We’ll stay here the rest of the day.  It’s getting too crazy out there,” I said.  Another explosion emphasized my point. 

“And then what?” Ashley asked.  “Build a home here?”

“Where are you from?” I asked her. 

“Columbus, Ohio.  We were, um, connecting flights to Disneyworld.”

“And you?” I asked Marilyn.