Lost and Found (21 page)

Stacked on top of each other in tight rows were thousands of white body bags. Just
iridescent enough that even from beyond the street and across the parking lot, I could
make out the brunette, blonde and occasional redheaded bodies through their milky-colored
plastic wraps. It wasn't the first time I saw a medical quarantine zone but the sheer
volume of people sickened me. The way each body, no matter the size, was piled neatly
on top of the next, meant there was a system in place on how properly to store infected
human remains. Someone with a title wrote up a plan, pointed at a pile and said,
'That one goes over there'
. It was depressing and sad and made me want to puke.

"Sure is something, isn't it?" Drake said in a hushed tone. His eyes were glazed over,
like he was looking through the death across the street, rather than at it.

I glanced between him with his stoic and faraway gaze and the parking lot turned military
base with a numb feeling. It should hurt to see such a thing - thousands of dead people
- hundreds of dead
families
. It should hurt every time, like a knife straight into the heart, seeing a body bag
with a person half my size rotting inside. But it was only a detached and numb feeling.
A feeling of 'been there and seen that'.
A crappy feeling.

Drake cleared his throat to bring my attention back to him. "Warehouse is just over
there," he nodded down the street, beyond the vacant office building.

I stared at the side of his head, wondering what the story was behind the closed hole
in his earlobe. A random thought for a fractured mind, made sense.

"So, when do you want to do this?" I asked, still staring at the tiny hole in his
ear where a piercing used to be.

"No time like the present." He grinned the wide Joker smile that creeped me out.

Sighing, I knelt to the ground in a small patch of brown grass, letting the moisture
from the night before soak into the knee of my jeans. Mudding up my pants wasn't a
concern. Being dirty was a normal part of my new life. Besides, the jeans would be
easy to replace when needed. Stain your clothes and break a shoelace? Pilfer new ones
from the closest mall. Lose your brush and run out of shampoo? Pilfer more from the
closest mall. Of course, that philosophy wouldn't last forever. Eventually even the
malls would dry out just like the bones from the bodies under the dome tent.

My pack was full of weapons, handguns, clips and knives of different shapes and sizes.
Most of them pulled off the dead men from the day before. My own knife was strapped
securely to my leg, just like Drake's was. A gun was tucked into the back of my jeans,
loaded and ready for action. The day before, I didn't even bother to take one of the
long-range rifles. My shoulder wouldn't tolerate the kickback. Drake was the only
one with a rifle draped across his torso like a pageantry ribbon.

All we needed was a little bit of greasy paint to streak our faces and those cool
lace-up combat boots and we would fit right in with the thugs we were conspiring to
kill. Well, maybe the camouflage paint was a bit much, but the idea struck me as a
funny one and I imagined Drake's face covered in hunter green, mine in black. The
image of our thirty-something year old faces in paint was so appealing at that moment
that I almost dragged my fingers through the mud and rubbed them under my eyes.

Instead I sighed, doing it over and over, filling my lungs with air as rapidly as
possible. Sort of like a swimmer would, right before launching their body into the
water for a race. When my head felt efficiently light-headed and cleared of all the
gunk that lingered around in there like the day old smell of skunk, I tightened my
pack straps and nodded at Drake that I was ready. Of course, all he had to do to prepare
was hitch his jeans up half an inch or so. Men were easy that way.

"Ready?" he asked, gun in hand, muscles taut and eager.

"Ready enough," I said with a smile. If we were going to die in five minutes, I wanted
a smile to be the last expression we shared between us.

Only one doubt went through my mind before we edged around the corner of the office
complex and ran down the buckling sidewalk from tree to tree for cover: If I
did
die, will Zoey ever forgive me? I could have turned around right then, leaving my
morbid and stupid curiosity right there on the street corner and fled out of the city,
back south into San Diego. But I didn't. The crazy inside me had been unleashed.

There was no sign of life outside the warehouse - not even the wind wanted to touch
the squatty bushes lined around the building. The little things stood as still as
rocks, rigid and dried out like an old skeleton. They seemed like shrubby versions
of suspicious garden gnomes to me. I almost expected them to shudder and move out
of the corner of my eye and end up five feet away from where I swore I last saw them.
They didn't of course.

We were only a few yards away when the first bullet took off a chunk of the tree I
hid behind. Instantly a startled scream flew out of my mouth, taking a good deal of
spit with it. I cursed so hard between my clenched jaws that it actually hurt my front
teeth. They vibrated in their sockets like hummingbirds strung out on sugar water.
My first coherent thought not related to the pain in my mouth was if the shooter had
noticed Drake creeping up the street. Since no bullets were ricocheting off the dead
cars or shattering the cloudy windshields, I assumed he was still out of sight.

"Stay the fuck back!"
Someone yelled from the warehouse. The angry and guttural cry sounded like it came
from above me, from somewhere up high. I risked a brief glance at the roof and snapped
my head back behind the tree trunk after catching the glint of sunlight reflecting
off of something shiny.

Another crack and more splinters flew by me. The tree was barely an inch wider than
I was and wouldn't serve to keep me covered for much longer. Something wet trickled
down the side of my face, dripping slowly from my jaw. But I couldn't reach up to
feel what it was, or my arm would have been exposed, so I waited, trying to ignore
the steady
dripdripdripdripdrip
sound of what had to be blood landing on the canvas shoulder strap of my pack.

The sun bounced off of a crumpled soda can, causing me to squint against the glare.
If it was only a foot closer, I could have kicked it away, toward the gutter. The
more I tried to ignore it, the brighter the glare seemed to become and though only
seconds had passed with it in my peripheral vision, I was sure I would end up blind.
With my cheek pressed firmly against the cool, rough bark, there was nothing to do
but ignore it.

Struggling to fight the compulsion to step out from behind my tree and launch the
can as far from me as my spindly leg could propel it, I heard a hiss from the street
and turned my head in time to catch Drake's hand signal. With my gun out, I nodded
and angled it around the tree, firing toward the warehouse, hoping it was distracting
enough to keep the guy on the roof from looking down at us. One, two, three, four,
five shots rang through the air - cracking through the silence with a deafening thunder
that echoed down the street and bounced back around me like a hug. It was just enough
time for Drake to disappear from my view, hopefully making it to the next set of cars
before more rifle shots pocked the tree. He didn't hold back. So many rounds had been
fired that I was sure half of the tree was blown away. I could feel each bullet as
it struck into the trunk, like a knock on the other side. A deceivingly subtle
let me in
sort of knock.

"Not by the hair of my chiny-chin-chin," I laughed. The sound was foreign. I immediately
swallowed what I could of it, chastising my rapid loss of sanity before firing again,
stopping only to reload with a full clip.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," I yelled in the most annoying singsong voice
I could.

The answer came in the form of more cursing from the rooftop and another round of
bullets into the tree. I started to giggle, that last bit of reason slipping away
from my mind. I was in a John Wayne movie, dusty, dirty, and shooting at the bad-guys.
John Wayne would have a horse though. I had a horse, but I lost it.

The image of Sunny's remains came to me. Drake had taken me back to see her when I
was able to walk without assistance but not much of Connor's horse was left. The birds
and something with canine teeth sharper than mine had made a mess out of the beautiful
and sweet palomino. Tearing her flesh away and scattering her ribcage in a twenty-foot
radius around her downed body. My eyes filled with hot tears that stung and prickled
at my eyeballs like thousands of tiny needles. That was it - the image of Sunny dead
on the overgrown golf course that shoved me over the edge of what was left of my reality.

Brazenly, but still mindful enough to use what little speed I had, I bolted from behind
the tree, firing wilding at the rooftop through my blurry vision. I ran up the sidewalk
toward the waist high utility box that was nearly twenty-five feet away, pausing only
slightly to kick the damn soda can as hard as I could into the street.

I never
did
hear it fall.

***

Kneeling behind the utility box, I was finally able to touch my face. Just as I expected,
my hand came back sticky with bright red blood. It pissed me off even more, and I
popped up to fire the gun, catching just a glimpse of Drake closing in on the side
of the building. He was crouched down, running full speed and slammed into the wall
with enough force that his feet slid out beneath him and he landed on his ass.

It was the last time I saw him outside. Ten painfully long minutes of cursing, yelling
and name-calling, that reminded me of playground bullies, and random rounds of back
and forth gunfire went by until my legs began to cramp from the squatting and kneeling.
Plus, by then I was bleeding from more than my head.

After a long moment of silence, I screamed myself hoarse, letting the wind take my
voice up and away from me.
"Did you give up already, assholes?!"
No one answered. No shots, no attempts to debase my sex or slurs of frustration carried
down to the sidewalk. With a quick look above me, the roof seemed momentarily still
- vacant. And then the sound of muffled gunshots sang again.

Drake was inside.

I believe there are only a handful of reasons to run so fast that your knees come
higher than your hips: when you are running from something bigger and meaner than
yourself, or when a gold medal is at stake, of course. But there's another reason
- when you need to get somewhere so fast that you know your heels can't afford the
split second of time it takes for them to roll off the ground. So you sprint with
only your toes gripping and moving you forward. That's how I ran the rest of the way
down the sidewalk. Not even slowing down, before my shoulder slammed into the door
Drake went through.

The door opened with a bang and inside I flew, but I wasn't expecting my feet to instantly
lose traction. After sliding across a puddle of something slippery, I crashed face
first into a chain-link wall. Bouncing into it with such force that I was flung backwards
like a deployed rubber band into the sticky mess again, my feet failing me, slipping
out and to the side. My ass will never forgive me for how hard it hit the ground.

"Unf," I exhaled, coming to a stop after spinning clockwise on my backside. The pistol
was gone, catapulted somewhere away from me during my ungraceful entrance.

The chain inside the room rattled loudly, taking nearly a full minute before the links
stopped jiggling. By then I had mostly caught my breath, the labored sound being the
only thing that whispered through the dark room. It was some sort of utility space
or a side office - I wasn't sure. But the blood was fresh; it was still warm and uncongealed.
An enormous amount. A fatal amount. Enough blood that no one could've walked away
and lived more than a mere handful of seconds.

The
rat-a-tat-tat
of gunfire snapped my head up and to the right, through an open doorway that led
into a much larger - and darker room. Crawling in an awkward slipping motion on my
hands and knees, I slid to a stop just before the doorframe, my knife in my right
hand. Craning my head cautiously into the next room, there was only a shadowy aisle
upon aisle of bulky boxes and pallets. And a shoe. My wet, left hand stuck to the
linoleum floor as I crawled, using the knuckles of my other hand to balance myself.
The shoe was connected to a foot, a leg, a body. It wasn't Drake.

Not realizing I was holding my breath, a gust of air whistled out between my lips.
There was a slash across the man's throat and several bloody holes dotted across his
torso. Drake was using his knife, stealthily making his way through the building.
Just as planned. The image of him with a bloody bandana tied around his forehead,
his face streaked with mud and paint, came back into my mind and before I knew what
I was doing, I dragged four of my bloody fingers across both cheeks - one finger down
my chin and neck and wiped my hand dry on the thigh of my jeans.

It was war, damn it. Why not look like a fucking warrior?

***

Two more bodies - both slashed with a blade. Several more bursts of rifle fire, handguns,
screams, shouts, lots and lots of cursing. I followed the trail, sneaking glances
up and down the aisles, looking for a sign of life. Looking for the women. Drake said
they were kept there.

My daughter hated to wear shoes. Everywhere she went she had naked, dirty feet. The
sound of her walking across our house would
slapslapslapslap
against the hard floors. It was an organic sounding step I always recognized as purely
hers. So, when a similar slapping of bare feet reverberated in the darkness, I knew
whoever was running toward me was barefoot, which was odd.

I quickly ducked down the nearest aisle with my blade held out in front of me like
a flashlight and waited. The slapping sound slowed then stopped completely. Whoever
it was, they knew I was close. The blade glinted from the pale reflection of something
and I tilted it, struggling to find the source. Peering at the knife with my head
down, I almost didn't notice the air change as something long and metallic whooshed
over the top of my head and slammed into the metal frame of the aisle. The shelves
beside me throbbed loudly from the impact and I scuttled backwards, tripping over
a large box and landed on my backside for the second time in five minutes.

The barefoot slapping resumed, this time running away from me - toward the side door.
After scrambling to my feet, I darted around the aisle corner just in time to see
the shadow of a young girl with flowing hair dart into the entry room, disappearing
into the light.
Freedom.

The warehouse - a behemoth of a structure creaked and groaned as if preparing to swallow
me in its gut as I pushed deeper and deeper into the shadows. It never occurred to
me to pull out my flashlight. An animal instinct in me took over, bending my spine
forward so I crouched, curling my hands so they looked and felt like claws instead
of fingers. The smallest refractions of light gave my eyes all they needed to see
into the dingy space around me.

Like a bloodthirsty animal, I hunted. Following the sounds of grunts and moans and
discovering nothing but a handful of freshly killed men. Until I found it. In the
corner of the warehouse was a walled off room - most likely used once upon a time
as a break room. A lamp from within glowed softly but the space seemed quiet - almost
too quiet.

The door was ajar just enough to slip my body silently inside without disturbing it.
The narrow room was long - stretching a good hundred feet from the doorway. Lining
the furthest corner was a row of twin mattresses. Some with ruffled sheets, some naked
so that they exposed the dark stains that spread out along the diamond pattern of
the beds. The sharp odor of urine and feces made me gag. And the hot, iron smell of
blood. Thin sprays of blood decorated the walls, still dripping downward in places.
I gaped in shock at the bottom of the furthest wall where a woman with matted hair,
that might or might not have once been blonde, lay in a crumpled heap of chopped up
limbs - intestines and brain matter spilling out around her like a gutted fish.

My stomach lurched but didn't have time to do more than that before gangly arms jumped
out from behind the door and slimy fingers coiled around my neck. Creative curses
words flew out of my mouth as the knife clattered to the ground and spun across the
room. We struggled against one another, falling to the scuffed linoleum and rolling
around until we were fused together - a tangled mess of scratched, bleeding and trembling
limbs.

Stringy hair caught in my mouth and I spat out the sour strands in a panic before
they became stuck in my throat. One of us kicked at the table that held the battery
operated camping lantern. When it crashed to the ground, it rolled away from me, stretching
the light in waves over the walls, letting in the shadows. When a pale face came close
to mine, I jerked my forehead into it, feeling something crack and my attacker screamed
- a high-pitched cry that only a woman can make. Wiggling a knee between us, the greasy
hands left my neck. I kicked at the girl's soft midsection, sending her flying into
the blood-streaked wall, landing just inches away from a severed hand.