Defeat (14 page)

There was talk of shifting winds
and the radioactive clouds returning to wash over Kaiserslautern.
They would have to move, and Wolfgang would not be able to move his
wife on his own. Again he was grateful for Leah.

He looked down at his wife. They
had been married seven years, had a three year old daughter who
hadn’t survived, and they had been happy. Tears came to Wolfgang’s
eyes as he thought of his little angel. How could a man walk
through life, eat food and drink water, talk and laugh, ever again,
when his tiny girl had died?

Leah had told him it was like a
long hike and all he could do was take one step at a
time.

Wolfgang stared at his wife’s face
and he knew something was seriously wrong. It was a slow
realization, but when he finally grasped what his eyes were telling
him, he panicked.

He checked the pulse on her neck,
put the side of his face over his wife’s mouth, and he felt nothing
either way.

“
No!”

Wolfgang opened her mouth, tilting
her head back, and put his mouth on his wife’s and blew. He put his
head on her chest and heard nothing, then put his hands on the
center of her chest and pushed. Nothing happened. He pushed again,
counting with each push, until he got to thirty, then stopped,
listening for her heart.

He breathed into her mouth again,
five quick breaths, then returned to compressions.

He talked to his wife while he
worked. He cajoled her not to leave him. She had to
live.

A rib cracked, but Wolfgang
ignored it, continuing the compressions on her chest, alternating
with breaths into her mouth.

His tears dropped onto the ragged
nightgown she wore, the same thing she had worn all the days of her
radiation induced illness, but he ignored those also and worked
on.

Someone came in and then left, but
Wolfgang didn’t stop what he was doing, crying and talking, begging
and pleading his wife not to leave the entire time.

Images of their life together
passed through his mind. Meeting her at a church dance, too shy to
ask her until one of his friends asked her first, and being
embarrassed that she was taller than him.

He had soon quickly passed her in
height though, and when they were both sixteen they began dating.
She had waited while he spent two years in Russia serving their
church, then waited another year while he finished an
apprenticeship. At least they could see each other on weekends
during the schooling.

Picnics, swimming, vacations to
Italian beaches, watching television together, having a baby,
feeding and taking care of the tiny expression of their love,
loving their child together more than their own lives.

All these memories and more came
to Wolfgang as his hands pumped his wife’s chest and his mouth blew
air between her cold lips.

A gruff American voice, a kindness
behind the firm words, intruded on his thoughts.

“
She’s gone, man.
I’m sorry.”

Wolfgang finished the breaths and
moved back to continue compressions. When he was back into the
rhythm he looked up at the American lieutenant colonel from his
hiking club. The other two American soldiers stood behind him and
Leah stood in front. Her eyes were red and filled with
tears.

“
No,” Wolfgang
shouted in German and continued the compressions. Once started, he
knew he could never stop until professional help
arrived.

As if sensing his thoughts, the
American said, “No one is coming. I’m so sorry.”

Wolfgang shook his head and
yelled, “No,” in English this time. The four just watched
him.

He finished thirty compressions
and bent down beside his wife, tilting her head back again. He
counted five breaths.

A hand rested gently on his
shoulder but he shrugged it off as he moved to begin
compressions.

“
Listen, man.
Wolfgang.” The American pronounced his name wrong, sounding out a
long ‘a’. “Leah, here, told us you did everything you could. We’re
really sorry.”

Leah reached her hand out and
Wolfgang continued compressions until she touched him.

Something in her touch was
final.

Wolfgang knew his wife couldn’t
survive the radiation poisoning. He had known all along, but hadn’t
admitted it to himself. They’d even stopped purifying the water by
boiling it first, because it hadn’t mattered any longer.

He collapsed on his wife, crying,
and he felt arms around him.

7

Jayla stopped in front of her
father’s cabin and dragged her sister out of the car. She set Jada
on the steps leading up to the porch. If the girl wasn’t going to
move for herself, she could just sit there.

She didn’t know how far away to
drive the old man’s car. She wished there were a place where she
could safely ditch it, but then that would even look more
suspicious. The thought of driving the car back to the old man’s
house gave her chills. Despite her precautions, she was sure he was
free of his bonds and would be after her.

She wished again that she’d just
had the courage to shoot him in the head.

But was kidnapping and rape
justification for murder?

She reminded herself that she had
fought the man in self-defense, that he had held a gun on her when
she had hit him, that he had kidnapped and violated her little
sister, and everything she had done was justified.

Would the police believe
her?

Almost one hundred years after her
ancestors were given civil rights and yet the jails still held more
blacks than any other group. And here she, an eighteen year old
black girl, had beaten an old white man and tied him up, then
stolen his car and shotgun. She would go to jail.

Even ditching the car was
problematic. It wouldn’t take much DNA analysis to know she and her
sister had been in the car. If she left it at the cabin, the police
would know immediately to look for her. If she left it by the side
of the road, DNA would point to her pretty quickly. Bringing it
back to the old man’s house was out of the question. What could she
do?

Jayla sat behind the wheel of the
car and cried.

Eventually she thought of her
father’s words. He had taught her to be goal oriented. He said that
those who dwell on past mistakes never succeed. Success comes from
focusing on objectives.

What were Jayla’s
goals?

She wanted to not go to
jail.

Wait, that wasn’t a goal. That was
an anti-goal. Something she didn’t want.

What did she want? What would her
father suggest?

Then it dawned on her. She’d been
thinking about it the whole time, but had thought of it as evidence
against her instead of evidence in her favor.

DNA.

She was worried about the DNA
evidence against her, but what she needed was DNA evidence in her
favor. What she needed was Jada to be tested by a hospital for
rape. The old man would have left plenty of evidence. She needed to
get Jada to a hospital.

The girl was traumatized anyway,
and maybe they could help her there.

What about the car?

What was her goal? It wasn’t that
the authorities couldn’t trace her to it. That was negative
thinking again. She simply wanted to keep the old man from using it
to follow her. If everything she did pointed to that, they would
know she had acted in self-defense.

She started the car and began
driving to the lake. There was a parking area where she could leave
the car. It would be found, but it wouldn’t be as if she were
trying to hide it. She didn’t have to put the car in the lake, or
burn it, to keep the old man from using it. All she had to do was
throw the keys in the water and let all the air out of the tires,
just in case he had a spare set of keys.

It took her an hour to accomplish
her mission, but she returned to the cabin feeling
better.

Jada still sat there, practically
comatose, on the steps. She had to get that girl to a hospital and
pronto.

The SUV packed with food and
water, the loaded shotgun resting between the two front seats, Jada
dressed and buckled in, and Jayla was ready to go. She looked at
her father’s cabin and at her sister and remembered a teacher’s
words about man’s inhumanity to man. How could someone be so cruel
to a little girl? Why were some people so good and others so mean?
It didn’t make sense.

Life isn’t fair, her father always
reminded her. We are always subject to the poor decision making
abilities of others.

She smiled at that memory. Half
the time she never knew what her father was talking about, but now
she thought she understood a little of what he had tried to teach
her. He had taught her to never act like a victim, but to always
try to do what she thought was best. To not let herself be governed
by others and their bad decisions. She had to think and act for
herself.

I’m doing it, Daddy, she thought.
I’m doing it.

She started off, heading south,
away from the cabin in the woods and down the mountain to
civilization and a hospital for her sister.

Eva, after giving up trying to
open the door, sat on the floor next to it, crying again. Her bags
were packed and she was ready. All dressed up and no place to go,
she thought bitterly.

She was going to die in this dark
apartment. Images of her skin turning pale, her hair falling out,
and her eyes growing large came to her and she fell asleep to those
thoughts, her dreams turning into nightmares.

She awoke suddenly to a
click.

She didn’t have time to ponder how
long she’d been asleep. She saw her backpack and pulled the Glock
out of the back pocket and ducked behind a sofa, keeping herself as
close to the wall as possible, but with a line of sight to the
doorway.

She could see.

The lights were back
on!

The door clicked a couple of
times, and then it opened. She held her pistol ready.

“
Honey, I’m
home,” a voice called. She thought she knew that voice. “Are you
holding a gun on me? My hands are up, see?”

A man moved into the doorway,
empty hands extended in the air and slightly in front of
him.

“
Don’t let the
door close!” Eva yelled at him.

“
Relax. I’ll prop
it open.”

Mark Dornbush grinned at her. Eva
rushed forward and jumped into his arms, kissing him fully on the
mouth. She was so happy to see him that she wouldn’t have even
cared if he tried to slip her some tongue again. She wouldn’t even
bite it this time. They had been so drunk that night.

“
I’m happy to see
you too, Gilliam,” he said when she pulled away. He grinned a mile
wide.

“
Even your ugly
mug is worth looking at right now,” she replied, grinning back. She
and Mark had trained together at the Agency’s academy and they were
often sparring partners in the gym. He’d only overtly tried to hit
on her once, at a bar when their class was celebrating graduation,
but after she bit his tongue, he never tried
again.

But she knew she could trust
him.

“
You got wheels?”
she asked.

“
Wait ‘til you
see my wheels.”

“
Alright, let’s
get out of here, then.”

“
Relax. Is there
any good stuff here?”

Eva nodded towards her packed
bags. “I got plenty of good stuff.”

“
The meter’s
running, but I’ve got a minute. Let me look around. These places
are supposed to be loaded.”

He moved to go past Eva and enter
the apartment, letting the door close. Eva caught it first with her
foot.

“
Relax, Gilliam.
The door was only locked because the circuit breaker had
tripped.”

“
What if the
power went out again?”

“
It’s been on for
days. Stupid Agency didn’t move the circuit breaker inside, and
apparently everyone else has left the building. The door wouldn’t
open until I threw the breaker.”

Eva rolled her eyes. She had been
trapped in here for nothing.

“
Besides,” Mark
said with a teasing smirk. “There’s worse things than being trapped
inside this apartment with you.”

“
You’d be trapped
in here with my corpse. I’d shoot myself before I went through that
again.” Eva was serious.

Mark’s face turned sympathetic.
“I’m sorry. I wished I’d known sooner that you were here. We could
have hooked up a generator to the door or something.”

“
I just want to
get out of here as soon as possible.”