Crisis Event: Gray Dawn (6 page)

The Tall Man saw her eyes go hard and knew she’d made up her mind.

“Please,” he said. “My kids. Don’t leave them here to starve.”

Sadie had just registered the man’s request when she heard someone yell “Daddy!”

A young girl in a blinding pink ski jacket and a boy in a green camouflaged hunting jacket came running out of the looted McDonald’s. The girl had long, dirty blonde hair and the boy had hair shaved down close to his head, much like the man he’d called “Daddy.”

The two kids raced toward the Tall Man, both of them wearing white paper dust masks over their faces. Both kids sprinted through the gritty mud and threw their arms around their father’s neck and shoved their masked faces into his chest. The Tall Man wrapped his arms around his kids, and looked up.

“If you’re gonna do me,” he said, “do us all.”

“Who are you” she asked, but the man didn’t reply. “Where’d you come from.”

The man remained silent, clutching his children, who, Sadie noticed, looked like they’d been eating well.

“Why’d you kill him?” she asked, and jutted her chin out toward the dead man.

“Does it matter?” the Tall Man answered.

    The little boy looked up at Sadie. Sadie looked back at him, studying his eyes. He couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, the girl more than eleven.  

Suddenly she felt stupid.

Childish.

She’d let herself get angry over the death of some guy she didn’t even know. A guy who for all she knew might have been a stone cold killer, or rapist, or psychopathic torturer of children.

The dead guy might have raped and killed Sadie if he’d had the chance.

Her moral outrage had put her into a dangerous situation now. She had to get away from these three and keep moving west—but she wasn’t sure how to do that without putting herself in more danger. Sure she could kill the Tall Man, but then she’d be killing the kids by proxy. Then again, if she let him go he could track her down and kill her when she wasn’t ready for him.

“Stay out of other peoples’ business,” her grandfather’s voice echoed. “Whenever you can.”

“Idiot,” she said, and lowered her gun, the decision made.

    She was just about to tell the man and his kids to get lost when she saw the dog—a skinny Doberman mix—come loping down the street toward them, completely unmindful of the smoldering building he was running past.

Then another dog appeared behind him, ten feet off his heels and coming hard.

Before she could react, another pair—a border collie and a Rottweiler mix—came slinking out from behind the gray-crusted McDonald’s. They advanced out to the sidewalk, slowly edging forward, their teeth bared.

Sadie looked at the Tall Man.

“Run,” she said.

The Tall Man didn’t hesitate. In one quick motion he grabbed up his kids and sprinted away from the two snarling dogs on the sidewalk.

Sadie turned and fired two shots, hoping the dog the Rottweiler mix was the alpha dog.

Only one shot hit the Rotty mix, but it was enough to knock him down. The noise startled the other dogs, but they quickly recovered, and seeing their chance to advance upward in the pack, went after the Rotty mix,

Sadie didn’t wait around to see the outcome. She turned and ran straight for the 7-11. She’d covered half the distance when another pair of dogs came running in at her from her right.

Without hesitation she leapt up onto the hood of one of the cars beneath the gas pump canopy, stepped up onto the car roof, then hopped up onto the top of a gas pump. As the dogs changed direction and came around the back of the car she leaped over to the car parked beside the pump on the other side. Then she ran down the hood, leaped forward to the asphalt and sprinted for the corner of the building.

As she turned the corner, slapping a hand against the dusty bricks to steady herself, she spun herself backward and aimed, backpedalling along the side of the building, waiting for the first dog to come around.

She didn’t have to wait long.

A growling German Shepherd came hurtling around the corner at full speed, its toenails scrabbling and scratching, trying to dig its claws into the asphalt beneath the dust to keep its balance. It failed, yelping as his feet went out from under him and he rolled over. In less than a second was back up and charging at her.

Sadie fired off another pair of bullets.

This time both bullets hit the target, a pair of power punches to his chest that put him down on the dusty asphalt.

The dog whimpered and blood flowed heavily from the wounds and dribbled out onto the dust.

Sadie didn’t wait for more dogs to arrive. She turned and sprinted for the back door, hoping none of the pack had circled around her. Seconds later she was inside the store, spinning fast to slam the door closed with both hands.

Almost instantly a dog hit the metal, growling and snapping and scratching at the door like it was going to dig its way through.  

Sadie shot the bolt into the door frame and bent over to gasp for breath. She wouldn’t have much time before the dogs found out all that was keeping them out was a piece of cardboard, so she went to the cold case and grabbed her pack and rifle. She was just stepping through a glass door when she heard the scratching at the cardboard.

“Crap,” she said, and raced for the back of the store. She dropped her pack and rifle and scampered up the roof access ladder she’d seen earlier, just as the unmistakable sound of ripping cardboard and growling dogs came to her from behind the cash register.

“Fool,” she said, remembering how she’d intended to put the cash register against the cardboard but had gotten distracted by the scurrying rats.

At the top of the ladder, Sadie put her shoulder against the roof access panel and shoved hard. It didn’t move, so she stepped down one rung and looked up at the panel, trying to find the latch holding it in place.

She didn’t see it at first, but then she felt along the edges of the panel until she found the raised metal hook and the bracket holding it in place. After sliding the hook free she stepped up and shoved the panel as hard as she could. It popped up and off the square metal frame and a shaft of light reached down into the storage room.

Sadie heard barking.

The scramble of feet on the tiles at the front of the store.

She reversed down the ladder until she was low enough to reach down and grab her pack by one shoulder strap. She jerked up on it and shoved her arm through, shrugging hard to get it up onto her shoulder. She switched hands on the ladder rung then, and snatched up her rifle.

Then she was climbing, racing upward away from the barking dogs that shot through the door and leapt for her feet.

Sadie pushed her rifle up through the hole at the top of the ladder, then slithered through after it, folding forward over the metal lip of the access hole and collapsing onto the thin layer of gravel atop the roof.

Her heart raced.

She gasped for breath.

The gray sky seemed to be turning darker and her vision narrowed, but then she caught her breath and the darkness at the edges of her sight disappeared.

    Downstairs the dogs yelped and barked at each other and scratched at the floor and wall next to the ladder. When Sadie looked down through the hole they growled and barked louder and leapt up at her.  

There were five dogs in all, two mongrels, a black lab, a pit bull mix, and a boxer.

“Now what?” she asked herself. She couldn’t spend all day up on the roof. If someone in one of the nearby buildings had a rifle and the inclination, they could kill her—and they wouldn’t have a hard time doing it.

She pushed herself up to her feet and noticed the mop next to her. Why was it up here on the roof instead of down below with the yellow mop bucket? It was a mystery that would likely never be solved—probably because it wasn’t worth solving.

Sadie turned and surveyed the roof. It was covered in garbage. Hundreds of empty beer bottles, soft drink cans, candy wrappers, and potato chip bags were scattered around, half-buried in gray dust.

Toward the front of the store sat a two empty Igloo coolers partially filled with dust. A faded red backpack leaned against a cooler, and next to it a plastic lawn chair had flipped over backwards. A human body and the clothes it had once worn lay sprawled out, partially on top of the chair. It was coated with a thick layer of gray dust.

The body wasn’t much more than a skeleton at this point—bones and a little soft tissue holding them together. Its arms, sheathed in a faded flannel shirt, stretched away from its ribs like the arms of a swimmer floating in a pool. Its legs were inside a pair of faded blue Levi’s. The skull was angled back so that its empty eye sockets were staring right at Sadie. Partially buried in the gray dust, a sawed-off, double-barreled, .12 gauge shotgun lay between the chair and the coolers.

When she walked over to get a closer look, Sadie saw the back of the skull was blown out. A few thick locks of black hair lay partially submerged in dust.

“Had to be a guy,” she said. “With a shirt that ugly.”

Having seen hundreds of dead bodies in the past year, Sadie wasn’t surprised by this one like she’d been surprised by the kid in the car. She’d seen the remains of murder victims and accident victims and people who’d elected to die rather than face the horrible future.

She gave a half-hearted shrug and picked up the shotgun. Its side-by-side barrels were rusty and corroded, but she didn’t think the weather had ruined them. She ran her palm along the barrels and stock, knocking the crusted dust off, then broke it open.

Two spent shells were there.

Sadie snapped the breech closed. Then she turned to check the line of sight from where the chair had sat before it went over backwards.

Three tall buildings stood a mile or so away, but it would have taken a military sniper to hit the guy in the chair.

“Unlikely,” she said.

The other tall buildings were to her right, so any sniping would have knocked the body sideways.

The body’s backpack was zipped closed, and she hoped its contents might be useful, so she dragged it back and left it next to her own pack. She dropped the shotgun beside it. Then she went back to retrieve the chair. She felt a small twinge of guilt when she spilled the remains onto the dusty roof, but her haste to get out of the 7-Eleven quickly cut her conscience right out of the conversation.

Before checking the dead guy’s pack, she made a circle around the roofline, counting dogs and looking for something to land on if she was forced to jump. There were two little mixed-breeds circling the building, apparently too dumb to find the way inside. Four bigger dogs—a lab, a standard poodle, a golden retriever, and a border collie followed her as she moved around the roof, barking up at her the whole way. The second dog she’d shot was nowhere to be seen, though he’d left huge blood splatters as he’d dragged himself off to die.

Another four dogs were circling the perimeter of the parking lot, sniffing in the direction the Tall Man had gone. Three more were forty yards off, with their noses buried in the long haired guy’s stomach, pulling out pieces of guts and snapping their bloody teeth at each other like a bickering family.

As she watched another pair of dogs ran up—a bulldog and an Irish Setter—to join into the argument over food.

Youngstown’s got a serious animal control problem.

Sadie scanned the direction the Tall Man had gone, but couldn’t see any movement, just a deserted city coated in gray dust. She scanned backward toward the McDonalds and saw two dogs on the ground, injured and writhing in the dust. Next to them were three footprints—two small and one large.

The tall man had saved his kids.

For now.

“And most of the dogs came after me,” she said and walked back to the access hole.

A stabbing pain in her guts reminded Sadie of how hungry she was, so she sat down next to her pack, dug out a Rice Krispie treat, and went after it.

“Maybe I can wait them out,” she said as she chewed.

She was amazed at how good the treat tasted.

That was the funny sad thing about the whole Crisis. It had made her appreciate how easy and fun her life had been before everything went to hell.

Sadie went to work on the faded red pack. Inside the main compartment she found a two pairs of underwear and socks, an unopened bottle of Ozarka, and six twin-cookie packages of Mother’s oatmeal cookies.

Sadie was hit with a simultaneous wave of joy and distaste. Her grandfather had loved oatmeal cookies, though Sadie had never liked them. Sure, she’d eat them if they were the only kind of cookie available, but she sure as heck didn’t go out and buy them.

Beneath the cookies, Sadie found a Bible. King James. She immediately transferred it to her pack with the cookies. Paper would get more and more rare going forward, she suspected, and along with the car manual she’d found earlier, she was getting fairly well stocked up on fire tinder and toilet paper.

Rolling around the bottom of the pack were half a dozen shotgun shells and a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Sadie tossed the shells and the stew into her own pack, and moved onto the side pockets of the dead man’s pack. She found a piece of steel wool, half a tube of toothpaste, and the dead man’s toothbrush.