1
“I … I killed them,” I stammered. “They were going to take me and … I shot them.”
I was standing in a parking lot, in the dark, in the middle of the night. Beside me, inside the plane, were the two people I’d shot. The two people I’d killed. That rattled around in my head.
I’d killed them. Shot them dead before they could shoot me.
“Adam … what happened?” my mother demanded.
She, my father, and the twins were there with me. We stood in a huddle, with my family trying to calm and comfort me.
Howie, my mom’s lieutenant, stood nearby.
My whole body had started shaking, as if I were standing out in the freezing cold. But it was actually just a cool late-summer night.
In the lights cast by the several patrol cars that had gathered, the whole scene was now as bright as day. Here I stood in the parking lot of the strip mall—the mall where I used to go to get an ice cream or to run an errand and pick things up for my parents at the grocery store or the drugstore, or the bakery. The place I’d come to get a slice of pizza.
Although the stores were mostly abandoned, the mall looked pretty much the same as it always did. The differences were the nearby high fence that marked one edge of our community, the armed guards at the gate, and of course the airplane with the two bodies inside it.
Those things were more different than anything I could have even imagined a few months ago, before the blackout hit.
I tried to gather myself.
The twins—my younger brother and sister—were holding on to me, crying.
“I didn’t have any choice,” I said. “I shot them. I had to.”
“You shot who?” my father questioned.
“Two of the prisoners, Owen and Tim. They were trying to force me to fly them away.”
“Oh my lord!” he exclaimed.
“They killed the guards and they all escaped and—”
“Brett has escaped?” my mother asked.
I could tell by her expression how shocked she was. More than that, there was fear.
“Yes, all of the prisoners. He and the others are probably already over the walls and gone.”
My mother launched into police-captain mode, barking out orders to Howie, who rushed off to notify the guards on the walls.
She turned her attention back to me. “But why were you even out here to begin with in the middle of the night?”
“It was Brett,” I said. “He was in our house.”
My sister gasped.
“In my room. He had a knife.” Even as I said the words it didn’t seem real, more like a bizarre nightmare. “He told me if I didn’t come along quietly he’d kill me and everybody else in the house. I had to go with him. There was no choice.”
“But why? Why did he want you to go with him?” my father asked.
“He didn’t want me. He wanted the plane. Once we were outside the house, we met up with six others, and he ordered two of them to come along with me. They tried to make me fly it out for them and—”
Then I remembered.
“We have to get to Herb!”
“What?” my mother asked.
“They shot Herb … We have to get help … We have to bring the doctor! He could still be alive!”
I broke free of my family and started running.
I heard them shouting out after me, but I couldn’t stop.
I raced through the parking lot, dodging the abandoned cars, and ran out into the street. I pounded down the hill back toward Herb’s house, where I pictured him lying in a pool of blood, having been shot in his bed by two of Brett’s militiamen.
My feet and legs, which moments before had been so shaky that I could hardly stand, were now pulsing with power, carrying me over the pavement like I was really flying.
Coming up the hill toward me was one of the community go-carts, its converted lawn-mower engine roaring as one of the mobile sentries raced to investigate the gunshots from my battle with the prisoners. I jumped out in front of him, waving my arms in the air, and the driver skidded to a stop, fishtailing as he just avoided hitting me.
“I need your vehicle!” I screamed to the guy, whose name I had forgotten. “Please!”
Before he could react I grabbed him and pulled him right out—the adrenaline giving me superpowers. I jumped into the seat and slammed my foot on the gas pedal, squealing around and tearing down the street.
* * *
There was a slideshow going on in my head—Brett in my room, the knife to my throat, the blood and smoke and explosions in the cabin of the Cessna.
Then I pictured Herb in his bed, bleeding from the assassins’ shots. While he held me hostage out on the street, Brett had sent two men into Herb’s house to kill him, and they’d run out saying they’d shot him while he slept.
There was no chance that he was still alive.
Why hadn’t I done something quicker?
If Herb died, it was as much my fault as that of the prisoners who had fired their automatic weapons stolen from the guards they’d killed.
I swerved onto my street and felt the go-cart tip onto two wheels. Forcing myself to lift my foot off the accelerator, I steadied the vehicle, then bumped up the curb and across the sidewalk, ripping a path through recently harvested soybeans where the front lawn used to be. I slammed on the brakes before I smashed into Herb’s garage.
Leaving the engine on, I leaped out and burst through the front door, which Brett’s men had left slightly ajar as they’d fled.
“Herb!” I yelled.
The house was dark. I hurtled up the stairs, only to trip and fall, but I kept going on all fours, clawing my way up.
“Herb!”
In the dark I could make out a partially open bedroom door. I crashed through it.
I could see him … in the bed … under the covers … not moving … a dark shadow.
And all at once the adrenaline rush disappeared, leaving me shaking.
Slowly I eased forward. Reaching over, I grabbed the covers, afraid of what I knew I was going to find. I’d seen enough dead bodies over the last four months, but not one of somebody I considered family.
I pulled back on the covers and in the dark could make out a lump on the bed. It didn’t move. He didn’t move. My heart skipped a beat, but I had to do more than just stand there. My arm reached out, as if of its own accord, and touched the shape. It was soft, almost like—
A light came on, suddenly blinding me, and I spun around, my hand shielding my eyes.
“Adam.”
It was a voice I knew all too well.
“What are you doing?”
He was standing there, a pistol in his hand, a look of mild surprise on his face.
I blinked, staring at the gun, and then at the man himself.
Herb.
Before he could say anything more, I staggered forward, burst into tears, and collapsed into his arms.
Text copyright © 2016 by Rule of Three, Inc.