Simple (23 page)

My bare feet hit the last step to the bottom floor and I came face to face with Two.  Before I could register what was happening, she picked me up and slung me over her shoulder like a nap sack and began running through the lobby.  My head and upper body bounced up and down and it was painful at the pace she kept to get a breath of air into my lungs.  She pulled the front door open, and the next thing I knew I felt the rain on my back.  It drenched us both.  My vision was limited in the commotion, but I could see the hovcar in the distance.  I could also see that there were countless simps around us.  Several of them were motionless, but there were plenty that were not.  Worst yet, they were coming our way.

Two came to an abrupt stop and lowered me to the ground.  “Get to the hovcar,” she stated flatly.  I wiped my wet hair back and surveyed the surroundings.  It was dark, the only light coming from the flittering neon sign of the hotel.  The hovcar was ten feet in front of us.  An onslaught of simps was visible in the distance and the gap was swiftly closing.   “Go!” she shouted.  I heard the hovcar’s engine running and knew that I needed to go, but my feet wouldn’t move.  I instinctively reached for my gun but remembered it wasn’t loaded.  I had no weapons and no choices.  My double paused long enough to look me in the eyes before she spoke.  “I’m going back for those two.  Get to the hovcar, Lee.”

“No!  Kyle’s dead and Sonya is a traitor! Just leave her!” I shouted, but it was too late.  She was already moving across the parking lot at a pace only the machine that she was could manage.  With no other alternative, I turned and ran to the hovcar.  Giz pulled me in as it simultaneously lifted off the ground.  The inside lights were just bright enough for me to make out the rest of our disheveled group.  Maude, and Ben were in the seats furthest back, and Alice and Deraline were in the front row.  Everyone was wide-eyed and soaked.  Giz slid the door shut and climbed over me to the front.  I pulled myself to the bench seat and buckled in as quickly as I could.  We were now hovering just high enough to be safe.  I could make out a shape in the darkness.  She moved swiftly, her short hair slicked back in the rain.  An uncomfortable sense of melancholy filled me as we climbed higher.  I told myself she wasn’t me. 
She wasn’t even human
.  A part of me wanted to scream out that we couldn’t leave her, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Instead, I placed my bloody hand on the window and silently wished her luck. 

The hovcar moved swiftly through the blackness.  The only markers appearing were brief dots of light below.  Alice was crying quietly, and the others looked equally solemn.  It took me a moment to process the situation.  They weren’t mourning Two.  “Where’s Barb?”  I asked.  No one spoke.  “Jesus.  Where’s Barb?”  I asked again.  “Tell me you didn’t leave her!”

“She didn’t make it, Lee,” said Maude.  Alice turned her head to the window and continued to cry softly.

“I tried,” said Deraline.  I looked away.  I didn’t want to know how Barbara died. It hurt too much to think about that now, and it wasn’t right to have a simp sitting amongst us while our friend wasn’t.  “No, Deraline,” I said, “you don’t get to do that.  You don’t get to act like you feel bad.  You don’t get to talk about Barbara as if she was a friend.”  Thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance as the hovcar hit a patch of turbulence.  The jolt shuffled my nerves just enough to further ignite my temper.  “You are the reason for this shit storm!  They’re looking for you, and if we’d left your synthetic ass back in the Bay, Barbara would still be alive right now.”

“Lee, please.  Control yourself.  This outburst isn’t going to help anyone, and it isn’t going to solve anything.  Micah, tell her to stop,” said Maude.

“I wish that would work Aunt Maude, but you have to know by now that there isn’t anything anyone can tell Lee when it comes to her opinions,” Mic said.  I shot a seething glare at the back of his head.  “That’s right, Mic.  Just like there isn’t anything anyone can tell you about yours.  You left me for dead back there!

“No.  I didn’t leave you for dead.  I sent Two after you as soon as we figured out what was going on and developed a plan.  You stormed out of the room before we got that far because you’re impossibly impatient!”

“And now we’ve lost Two because of your actions,” said Giz as he turned in his seat to face me.

I thought about unbuckling my seat and decking him, but I didn’t have the energy.  “Fuck you Giz, stay out of this!”  He opened his mouth to say something, but changed his mind and turned back around.

“I’m a survivor, Mic!  As usual, you made a piss poor decision!  I wasn’t going to just sit there and wait for those things to come and kill me,” I said evenly.  Apparently that was enough to get Giz fired up again because he turned around and fired back at me.

“Jesus Christ, Lee, can you give it a rest?  It isn’t always about you!  People have died today.  Shit, we all almost died, and you sit there bitching that you’re a survivor?  You’re egocentric bullshit almost killed us!” said Giz.

“Really, Giz, is that what you think?  Do you realize that Sonya and Kyle were working for the simps?”  I asked.  “Do you realize that they were sent to find Mic and Deraline?”

“What are you talking about, Lee?”  Mic asked.

I explained what I had witnessed, including finding Kyle on the stairs.  That’s when I remembered about the note.  I reached into my back pocket and pulled the soggy paper out, trying hard not to tear it.  The ink was running and it was hard to make out everything.  “What does it say?” asked Ben.

“Hold on, hold on.  I’m trying to figure it out, just give me a second.”  The first sentence was no almost illegible, but I was able to make out the rest.  My eyes scanned the page and then I read it out loud for them to hear:

I hope that I am still alive when you read this.  If not, then I will at least go to my grave with a clear conscious.  First, I want you to know that I don’t really have family out here.  Sonya is working for the simps, and they sent her here to find two of the people in your group.  They are after Mic and Deraline.  You guys are all in serious danger, and you need to get the hell out of here!  I know you don’t know me, but I am not like her.  She forces me to do what she says, or she’ll have them kill me.  I’m ashamed of the coward I’ve become, but I’m trying to make it right.

Kyle

“That’s it,” I said, crumpling the letter and dropping it to the floor in disgust.  Now it made sense.  Sonya had taken full advantage of the situation.  I would wager that Kyle wasn’t her first boy toy.

“I can’t believe it.  Poor kid,” said Maude.

“Was Sonya killed too?” asked Alice.

“She was alive when I saw her last, but she was begging for her life and screaming.  I hope they kill her slowly.  That reminds me, she called one of them by name.  The tall one I told you all about.  She called him Aaron.”

“Aaron?” said Giz.  His voice had that familiar high-pitched squeak.

“Does that mean anything to you, Giz?”  I asked.

“No,” he replied.  I wasn’t sure I believed him.  Something about that squeak said otherwise.

“Does it mean anything to you, Mic?”  He didn’t answer me.

“Mic, are you going to answer me?”

“Yeah, it might.”  He didn’t elaborate, and after a few minutes I became more than a little frustrated.

“Are you going to elaborate on that?”

“My former business partner was named Aaron Metchler.  He had some ideas that I didn’t agree with, and ultimately we went separate ways.”

“I’m sure that’s just a coincidence, Micah,” said Maude.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s all it is,” I said, propping my elbow on the window and looking out at the darkness.  How much more was there to learn about Mic Keenan?

“So where are we headed now?” I asked.

“There’s an abandoned mining town about thirty-five miles from here.”

“Thirty-five miles?  That’s not a very safe distance Mic.  What’s there?”

“I don’t know what’s there Lee, or if it’s safe, but that’s where we are headed,” said Mic.  I could tell from the sound of his voice that his thoughts were elsewhere, like the rest of us. My thoughts went to Barb.  She was a gentle woman with a heart as big as the sky, but she’d never quite recovered from the loss of Jacob.  I realized that I’d never truly taken the time to get to know her.  I didn’t know a thing about her life before the war.  It was too late now.  I told myself that it didn’t matter.  The less I knew about her, the easier it was to get over her death.  I hoped that she went quickly and didn’t suffer much.  As for Kyle, I guess he redeemed himself in the end.  At least he tried.  I shook off the thoughts of him lying on the stairs with his guts spilling out…like sausage.

We landed in the middle of a deserted street, which was illuminated by one incandescent light affixed to a bent wooden post.  Before we exited the vehicle, Mic cautioned us all to move quietly.  Since we were unarmed, Deraline would lead the way.  If we did run in to hostiles, she would be able to at least buy us some time.  Giz objected, briefly, before we left the hovcar because, in his mind, she was also “our greatest asset.” But he shut his mouth when I told him that she wouldn’t mean shit if we were all dead.

I observed our surroundings carefully as we moved from the middle of the street to the shadows.  An assortment of wooden store fronts served as antique shops and lined both sides of the uphill road.  It looked like this was the only way in and out of the little town.  I imagined it was once a very quaint location, though I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to visit (let alone live) out to the middle of nowhere.  The miners were long gone, but the theme of the old west remained.  Plank boards served as the sidewalks, and I cursed under my breath as splinters joined the shards of broken glass in the bottoms of my feet.  We passed yet another shop, this one with windchimes hanging out front and bobbing sculptures of road runners made out of metal.  The tinkling sounds added a ghostly effect that rattled my nerves.

I was so focused on this that I bumped into Alice, who had stopped short.  Deraline was signaling for us to stop.  Her agile body was crouched now at the corner of the store.  The rest of us backed up against the wall and waited.  This could be very bad.  We were ridiculously vulnerable and exhausted.  If we were about to face off with more simps, we wouldn’t survive.  Ben put his hand on my back and patted gently.  He was trying to be consoling, or maybe he was trying to say good-bye.  Either way, it had the opposite effect.  I didn’t want to watch any of these people die.  I spotted a wheelbarrow a few feet away with an assortment of metal scraps.  Without further thought, I went for it.  I grabbed a long piece of rebar, and moved swiftly past the others to join Deraline.

Now I could see what she saw.  There was a large water tower in a clearing, surrounded on three sides by houses and the backsides of the stores.  In the center were several people milling around a fire pit.  All of them armed.  We had two choices: get back to the hovcar and leave before we were spotted, or make our presence known and hope for the best.  I guess I was feeling hopeful.  I tightened my grip on the piece of metal I held and stood up tall.  Deraline grabbed my wrist in an attempt to stop me, but I jerked away from her and stepped forward.  Clasping the bar, I raised it over my head and proceeded forward out of the shadows and into direct view.  A woman with long braids spotted me first.

“Dallas!  We got company.”  That was all it took.  A succession of cocking rifles followed as they surrounded me.  “Drop it!” shouted the one called Dallas.  I lowered my arms slowly and dropped the piece of rebar.  I instantly regretted my decision, but it was too late.  “Don’t shoot!  I’m human.”

“We’ll be the judge of that lady.”

“Move forward,” commanded a man wearing a red t-shirt with cut off sleeves.  He got behind me and jammed the barrel of his gun into the center of my back.  I kept my hands up and proceeded forward.  He pushed me toward the fire pit, and for a brief moment I feared he would shove me into it.  “Stop her there, Tommy,” said Dallas.  I prayed the others would stay put as Dallas blinded me with his flashlight.  “I told you I was human,” I said as calmly as I could.

“You alone?” he asked, clicking off the light.  My mind raced.  If I answered no, and they found the others, it could go bad.  If I answered yes, then I was exposing the rest of the group to whatever I was now facing.

“No, she’s not,” said Mic from a distance.  The rest of my group came out in single file with their hands up.  I turned slowly, concerned that they would identify Deraline as a simp and dispose of her quickly.  Thankfully, she was second to last before Ben.  Tommy pressed the barrel of his gun harder into my back causing me to lose my balance and stumble forward.

“Please don’t hurt her, we are unarmed and we don’t mean you any harm.”  I was surprised by the way Giz jumped to my defense.  I would have expected him to be the last person that would give a damn what happened to me, considering our tenuous relationship.  I collected myself and did my best to remain calm.  The glow of the firelight exposed the severity of our situation.  There were more than a dozen of them to our seven.  We were defenseless, exhausted and outnumbered.

“State your business,” said Dallas.  His weapon was pointed directly at Mic’s head, and I had to focus on the sandy ground beneath me to keep my composure.  If anything happened to him, I would be next, because I would do everything in my power to exact revenge on the person or persons that caused him harm.  I would also never forgive myself.  Giz looked like he would buckle at any moment and Maude looked terrified.  The guilt that riddled me at that moment, was almost unbearable.  Once again I regretted my connections with these people.  If I hadn’t joined up with them, they wouldn’t be facing this predicament.

“We’ve come here for refuge.  We were overrun by simps in a hotel about thirty-five miles from here.”

“How’d you get here?” asked Dallas.

“I have a hovcar.  It’s low on hydro.  This was the closest destination I could find,” said Mic.  Now it made sense why he’d brought us here.  Hydrogen Stations were common in the city, but that was a long time ago.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen one in working order.  No wonder he had brought us here.

“How many simps?” asked the woman with the braids.

“More than I could count,” said Mic.

“How’d ya get out alive?” asked Dallas.

“We were fortunate enough to be able to get to the hovcar, but not all of us made it.  We’ve lost some of our people, and our friend Lee there is in need of medical attention, so we’d all appreciate it if you’d have your man take the gun out of her back,” said Mic.  Dallas gave a nod and Tommy backed up —the others seemed to relax a little bit as well.  “We don’t have any hydro here,” said Dallas.

“I understand, and we’re not looking to be a burden to you.  Would it be too much to ask for you folks to put us up for the night, and if you have it to spare, the provisions to look after our friend here?”

“You can’t stay here.  We got enough to worry about just trying to look after our own,” said Dallas.

“You can’t turn them out, Dallas. That would be cruel and inhumane.  That woman’s injured.  Hold your light down and look at the blood all over her feet.  We could at least give them lodging for what’s left of the night,” said an older woman that had appeared from a tent beneath the water tower.  Her back was severely hunched, making her appear frail, but she seemed to have some level of authority because Dallas conceded without further argument.

“All right, you can stay at Shep’s place.  That’s the red one over there,” he pointed to a small house across from us.  “The only way in or out is visible from here, and we’ll be watching,” he warned.

“Thank you, I appreciate your generosity.  We’ll find our own way as soon as we’re rested,” Mic said, as he shook hands with the large man.  The rest of us huddled together and made our way to the red house.  Deraline came to my side and put her arm around my waist.  I put mine over her shoulder and allowed her to assist me as we walked.  I could feel the eyes of every one of those people on us, and I wasn’t entirely confident that we were safe amongst them, but I was out of steam and done throwing my opinions out for the day.  We waited quietly on the porch for Mic to join us and bring the key to let us in.

Once we were inside, we shared a collective sigh of relief.  The space was small and sparsely decorated, but it was clean and warm, and that was enough for me.  There was only one bedroom and we agreed that Maude should take it.  The couch had a fold- out bed, and Giz and Alice claimed it first, so that left a recliner for Ben and the floor for me and Mic.  Mic pulled Deraline aside in the hallway to speak with her while I went into the bathroom to try and clean my hands and feet.  I was happy when I located a bottle of rubbing alcohol, but I really needed a pair of tweezers and that wasn’t happening.  I filled the bath tub with enough water to wash my feet and then carefully pulled out what I could with my stubby fingernails.  Afterwards, I applied the alcohol to the wounds.  It stung like hell but at least I’d stave off any infection.

When I came out, I found Mic had made us a pallet using the cushions from the couch.  He’d even managed to find us a blanket.  I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the way he’d treated me back at the hotel, but I decided to sort that out later.  For now, I just needed to lie down beside him, feel his arms around me, and sleep.  I hobbled across the room and joined him.  He sat up, clicked off the small lamp on the end table, and then adjusted the blankets over the two of us.  We faced each other and I let him kiss my forehead.  It felt so good to feel his body so close to mine.  We were both too tired for anything extra, but it didn’t matter.  I’d missed him more than I wanted to admit to myself.

“I was going to help you, but you didn’t give me the chance.  What happened to you back there?” whispered Mic.

“It’s nothing, just some broken glass.”

“Did you get it all out?”

“Most of it.  It looked worse than it was.”

“I’m relieved to hear that,” he said, brushing my hair from my face.  “I thought I’d lost you, Lee.”  I didn’t want to talk about that.  “Where’s Deraline?” I asked, changing the subject.

“I have her on patrol. Don’t worry, we’re safe.  Get some sleep.”

The first traces of dawn were peeking through the curtains as I drifted off to the sound of Giz’s snoring.  Even in my exhaustion, I couldn’t avoid my nightmares.  I dreamed Sonya was screaming, and Two was ripping her arms and legs off while she begged for her life to be spared.  The worst part of the dream wasn’t the violence being doled out to that bitch, it was the fact that she wouldn’t die.  She just kept screaming that she had rights, that she was a human being, and that she never meant to hurt anyone.  I wanted her to shut up so badly it hurt.  I woke up abruptly and realized that the screaming I’d heard wasn’t in my dream.  Looking around, I realized that I was alone in the small house.  I got to my feet as quickly as I could and went to the door.  There was quite a commotion going on by the time I got to the porch, and it was difficult to see who was in the middle of it because there were several people from the town blocking my view.  I hadn’t noticed Maude was standing near the steps until she called my name.

“Lee!  Oh my goodness, you are not going to believe it!”

“Maude, what the hell is going on?”

“Deraline found Two!”

“What?  Where?”

“Somewhere near the hotel, but that’s not all…”  A gap in the crowd broke and I saw for myself.  Two was dragging Sonya by the hair.  Her dark cotton leggings were now caked with dirt and her feet were flailing wildly.

“She’s a danger to all of us, Maude!  She shouldn’t have brought her here!”  Disregarding my feet, I bounded toward the crowd.  Mic and Dallas were in a shouting match, and it sounded as if Dallas was defending Sonya.  If he only knew what kind of a beast he was defending, I was sure he would feel differently.  I stuck my fingers in my mouth and whistled as loud as I could.  This got the attention I was after.  I seized the opportunity to clear the confusion.  “Before any of you decide to defend her, you should know that she is a simp sympathizer.  She works for them, and she deliberately led them straight to our group, which cost two people their lives last night.”

“That’s not true!” Sonya went on a roll of lying and groveling from there.  “I was with them and they abandoned me!  This one doesn’t like me because she was in love with my boyfriend, so she tells these lies to be rid of me!  Please, you have to help me. She’s turned everyone against me and now she wants me to die!”

“If that’s true, then why would my sister go to so much trouble to bring you here, Sonya?  Why not just leave you back at the hotel with the simps?”

“Something isn’t lining up here,” said Dallas.

“I don’t know why! I tell you I don’t know why!  Sonya digressed from English to Spanish, but regardless of the language, she was clearly full of bullshit.

“Speak English if you expect us to understand you, woman!” said the hunchbacked woman.

“Momma, stay out of this.  Go back to the tent, you don’t need to see any of this,” said Dallas.

“Boy, I was wiping your ass before you knew you had one.  Don’t you tell me what to do!  I’m not going to sit by and let an innocent woman die!”

“She’s by no means an innocent woman,” I said.

“Can you prove it, girl?”  This tough old bird wasn’t going to let this go that easily, and I needed to be careful not to expose Two or Deraline as simps.  I still believed in Mic’s work, and I knew the rest of my group did as well.  Just the same, it was only a matter of time before Sonya would expose them both, because there was no way she didn’t know by now what they were.  Two looked up at me with all of the coolness I’d like to think I have under pressure.  “I could snap her neck right now.  Give me the word and I will,” she said.

“You better tell your sister to calm down right now!  I’m not having this in my town.  You can either prove she’s a sympathizer as you say, or you can leave her here, and the rest of you can pack up and go,” said the old woman.

“I can prove it,” said Deraline softly.  The people around them fanned out to make room, and stood back just enough to see what would happen next.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that there were others coming out of their houses and moving in to get a better view.  It was as if they were expecting a performance.  It occurred to me that these people probably didn’t get many outsiders, so this was either exciting or terrifying to witness.  Deraline looked so innocent.  As long as you didn’t know she was a simp, you’d never expect the brutality she was capable of.  I hoped that her youthful façade would work in our favor now.