2020 Hindsight

Waking up in her apartment, Cat Kagami stared at the wall. She could hear heavy rainfall outside and unlike many people, it made her want to get out of bed and go outside rather than stay in bed.

She pulled back the sheets from her king-sized bed and looked at the clock. It was 7PM. She had barely an hour before she had to meet the traitor at Kuriyama's. She swung her legs out of the bed and stood, peeling off the oversized t-shirt she'd been wearing and discarding it on the floor beside her bed. Cat's loft apartment was not large, but she legally owned it and had been living there for the past year. Now she risked losing it all.

She crossed into the small bathroom and turned on the old shower, not waiting for the water to get warm before she stepped. The cold water jolted her system awake. The shower was short and afterward she chose a blue vinyl jacket from her closet, a black PVC tank top, black leather pants, and violet combat boots. When she'd strapped herself into the form-fitting clothing that she'd become accustomed to, she applied the minimal amount of makeup that would accentuate her bright blue eyes, pale skin, and rosy pink lips.

On her way out the door she picked up the camoflauge pink stun gun that looked silly and would have made most attackers laugh when they saw it. In truth, it was one of the few things that Cat had allowed herself to splurge on since moving to Euphyron City. It wasn't the My First Stun Gun that someone would have imagined it to be; she had painted it herself to cover up the brand. It had been recalled in most of the United States for it's power. Cat had never actually used it, but she had a distinct feeling that she was going to need it more than she ever had tonight.

Locking the apartment behind her, she ran down the long stairwell rather than taking the rickety elevator. The rain seemed to be letting up outside and her clothes would do an admirable job of repelling water. She hauled her motorcycle from the bike. Unlike many citizens in Euphyron, she hadn't yet upgraded to hovercycles. They were too costly and the bike she had now needed more work than she'd ever be able to afford; she was almost positive it would be cheaper just to be another one. Cat didn't have money to spend though. Most of her assets had been mysteriously frozen for the past week.

She hopped onto the gunmetal silver and black motorcycle and sped out of the garage door as it opened. The streetlights and digital billboards blurred past her in a flurry of rainbow-colored light. She rarely rode her motorcycle with her helmet and even now getting pulled over by a police officer didn't seem as big of a threat to her as it once had. She had bigger problems that needed solving and most of the solutions made a jail sentence or community service look preferable to her.

It took her less time than she thought it would to reach Kuriyama's. She had chosen the locale because it was the bottom of the barrel and the only place she could afford a shot of liquid courage at anymore. She walked in and bellied up to the bar, rain dripping from her long purple hair and jacket. Depositing her credits on the bar, she forced a smile to the bartender that she'd seen many times before. "Hello, James. A Screaming Redhead Slut, if you don't mind."

The black bartender chuckled at her. "I told you, girl, one of these days you need to switch to the hard stuff."

"And James, you should know by now that mixies are as hard as I get."

His deep voice rumbled in his chest again, another laugh on the rise. "I'll make it a little stronger then. You look like you need something strong tonight. Maybe even more than you look like a drowned rat."

"I bet that soon I'm not going to be the only rat in here."

James gave Cat her drink and winked at her. She slid over the credits necessary and a tip. It was almost the last money to her name. She needed to get paid soon but that wasn't going to happen.

Cat took the first few sips and didn't flinch, simply trying not to look as worried as she was. Her stomach's knotting loosened after the first few sips. Her nervous energy was so bountiful that she felt like a hummingbird. Her heart's pounding was nearly all she could hear in her mind's eye, paying little attention to the cheery pop song sung in Japanese over the loudspeakers. James eyed her for a moment or two, knowing something was wrong, and she forced another smile at him before turning her back against the bar and staring toward the door intensely.

It seemed like at that point that her whole life was leading up to that moment. Raymond walked in through the entrance and perked up once he saw Cat at the bar. He hadn't taken any great lengths to dress up for the evening, wearing his usual otaku t-shirt that accentuated his pudgy belly and a pair of khaki pants with sneakers. He had on a yellow rainslicker that Cat thought made him look a little ridiculous. He was drinking in her appearance and the woman fought to keep a smirk off of her face. Not now, not ever, she thought to her self. There was one point where he might have had a chance with her. She had been trusting of him for a short enough time to have made the mistake that got her into this mess.

"Kagami-chan! Always a pleasure," Ray said as he stepped over to her and took her hand, kissing the back of it. It took everything she had not to jerk away. She kept her expression as neutral as she could.

"Hello, Ray. How was the drive?" She asked.

"Fine, fine. Hey, I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry you got fired from the paper."

She felt her face go red at his condolences. Her stomach churned and she took a long drink of her cocktail, nodding to him as she tried to think of something to say that wouldn't sound how she desperately wanted it to sound. "Yeah, thanks." She paused momentarily. There was no reason she couldn't speed this up. "Do you happen to have that data chip I gave you, Ray?"

His face turned a little white before reddening up considerably. Cat didn't hold the smirk back that time. He moved to sit down next to her, his brown eyes flicking about the room nervously. "No. I lost it. I'm really sorry about that, I just... I got careless with it..."

Cat knew that James was now behind the bar watching. He'd back her up if things got ugly, but deep down she knew that Ray was too much of a coward to do anything. That didn't stop outside forces from intervening though. "Bullshit, Ray. I know what you did with it. Don't even try to play it like some brownbagger found it and sold it for hooch. You were playing me the whole time, you Goddamned choob."

The man whimpered audibly and looked stricken before his face turned purple. "Maybe you shouldn't have said those things about The Queen in the first place. I mean--"

"No, Ray. Shut your fucking mouth. You gave it to Dara, who is no more the Queen of anything than I am the Empress of China." Cat paused, watching him. He had nothing to say for himself. The other patrons were either watching with the shifty eyes that amphetamines produced or cargo'd, totally useless dead weight from drinking. "You were playing me this entire time. This whole time. Do you know what she's done to me? Do you know what you helped her to do? I'm being thrown of a home I legally own, I lost my job, my accounts are frozen, my deck is fried, all I have left in my apartment is dirty power, and I have no one thanks to you two."

Ray started laughing, his stomach jiggling underneath his orange noodle logo shirt. "It wasn't only my fault. You chose to trust someone else. Don't you know anything about living in Euphy yet? You're just a dumb little joygirl who I almost docked and now you're sore that I pledged my allegiance to someone else."

Cat had to laugh too. "In your wildest, Ray. You're nothing more than her toady and it's frankly pathetic considering that the only reason she's doing all of this is that I'm with her ex-boyfriend. She acts like she's still in high school but she plays on a big field. I've lost everything just because I'm with a man who no longer wants anything to do with her. And did I write those things about her? Yes. But they're all true. I want to expose for what she is; a contemptuous snake who uses and abuses people like you."

That seemed to strike a nerve with the chubby man. He reached out and grabbed Cat by the neck. James had been silent until now. He hopped over the bar and pulled Ray apart from the slender young woman, grabbing his wrist forcefully. "Don't you touch her, otaku yono. I will break your hands so badly that you'll never be able to deck again or jerk off without pulling a muscle. Looks like that might already be the case though..." James surveyed the other man's body and sneered.

Ray struggled against him as Cat rubbed her neck. "I hope that you realize that I'm not going to be sidewalk chalk so easily. I'm going to be here for a long time. Tell her that. And tell her that the more she does to hurt me, the more she upsets Ryo." Cat eyed Ray for a long moment before taking her stun gun out of her jacket pocket and pressing it to the man's testicles without turning it on. She wanted to watch him squirm. The bar patrons were all watching now with rapt attention; they loved a good show and it wasn't often that they were treated to one of such a caliber. "And if you ever so much as look at me again, I'll make sure that you're deep fried in a coma."

Cat hadn't intended on giving him a shock to the balls, but her life was already in the gutter. "Kuso shite shinezo!" She said as she turned the tase on just long enough to send him to his knees, James still holding on to his wrists. "Thanks, James." Cat said as she watched Ray convulse on the ground.

The tall, imposing man shook his head at her. "The next time you come in here, you'd better not bring this shit with you. Me and Rayban are going to have a talk here though... a nice up close talk."

She put the deactivated taser back into her coat pocket and rushed out of the bar. The smell of excrement hit her when she got to the doorframe. James was going to be cursing her for the rest of the night. She hopped back onto her motorcycle and started it up. It was time to go find Ryo, say her goodbyes, and leave him to a less complicated life that she wasn't a part of.

Choose Life

It was surprising to Keely that prom hadn't been cancelled considering the strange flu that was ravaging Kingsport. Most of her classmates were sick and from a class of thirty, there had only been ten in attendance yesterday. Most of the teachers were sick too but because of the sub shortage, there'd be no calling out. They couldn't reschedule prom since it got in the way of the State wrestling championship and so the show was to go on.

Keely's own family had succumbed to the odd flu, with the exception of herself. Her mother and stepfather had been laid up in bed for the better part of the week, and her younger sister had just started to get bad within the past few days. She was finding it exhausting to try to take care of all of them, get ready for prom, and keep up with her schoolwork too. She'd never appreciated her mother more.

It seemed like most of the town had been to the hospital and been sent home because the doctors didn't know what to say except for that it was the flu and they couldn't spare the beds. The county health nurse kept saying that it was no cause for alarm and everyone should remain calm. But two people had expired from the flu already -- though they were old and their families admitted they could have gone at any time. Mister Jenkins and Mister Bradford had both been pushing one hundred and that flu was the straw that seemed to break the camel's back.

Keely had more to worry about in the grand scheme of things. Of course she was worried about her family and friends, most of the laid up in bed, but she was sick too.

More accurately, she was pregnant.

Even in a backwoods town like Kingsport, you knew what it meant when you started throwing up and your period hadn't come when it was supposed to. Keely's mother and stepfather had done their best to raise her as a good Christian girl and not to expose her to any of the things they thought were trouble, but even Keely knew that was laughable. They were so busy trying to protect her from the gay agenda and liberals that they'd shoved twenty dollar bills into her hand every time Trace had come a-courtin'. They didn't need the twenty dollar bills to have fun and they sure hadn't bought any condoms with them. You'd have to drive an hour away just to be sure that no one would recognize you when you bought them -- and going to the health nurse for birth control or rubbers was out of the question; it was no secret that the women who ran the joint couldn't keep their mouths shut about who was doing who, who gave Jenny Perkins the bad case of clap they'd treated, and so on and so forth.

They'd done what any curious kids what do and experimented a few times in the back of Trace's pick up in a secluded wheat field. Keely wasn't sure if she liked sex yet. It seemed unnecessary to her at this point in her life, but damn if that didn't stop her from doing it. She thought it would get better with each time (because that's what Trace had told her) but it didn't. The first time hadn't hurt as much as you'd have heard the other girls bleating about during gym class and study hall, all of them so loud about their new achievement, but it wasn't pain free. And like most seventeen-year-old boys, Trace wasn't a seasoned lover and had been more focused on himself than her. He couldn't have cared less whether she'd just laid there or she'd been a hellcat. After those first few times, she'd told him maybe they shouldn't do it anymore. She was getting uneasy about the risk of what had already happened.

Trace wasn't happy about it but in the end he'd laid off and didn't bring it up again for a while. Their relationship had been on a slow and steady decline, but they'd both been looking forward to prom. Even though most of the kids in Kingsport thought it was a joke and an opportunity to blow their parents' money, provided they had any, Keely still thought that it was supposed to be a magical experience. It was something special to her.

Friday morning it had been less special though. It was going on two months without a period and she'd been throwing up with increasing violence. Her parents had assumed that she'd just gotten the flu that was going around and had made her stay home from school one day, marring her perfect attendance record. But they should've known better; she never got sick.

The secret was already festering deep inside of her. She needed badly to tell someone but there was no one she could turn to -- not even her best friend, Reese Hadley. Reese and she had been friends since the second grade, when Keely moved to Kingsport, but she was also as loose-lipped as they came around here. If Keely told her, Reese would no sooner be on the phone with five of her closest friends and then the damage would be irreparable. Keely hadn't even told Trace yet. It was a secret that she intended on keeping as long as she could. Teenage mothers were becoming less uncommon around Kingsport but it was still a thing that just didn't happen to a nice girl like Keely; she was a member of 4-H, she attended Bible camp during the summer, she had a job at the grocery store, and she was a straight A-student with near perfect attendance. It would undoubtedly cause a scandal that Keely didn't feel she wanted to deal with.

Prom didn't start until later the evening and it was Keely's day off. Even though she could hear their phlegm-filled coughing from the other room, Keely merely sat back down on the edge of the bed and let the covers engulf her once more. She loved her family but didn't have the energy to check on them right now and coddle them. She figured that if there was something wrong, someone would holler. Instead of facing them, she slept and dreamed.

It was night and through the fog she saw figures in the distance. Ahead of her were slabs of some sort that she couldn't make out through the pea soup air, squinting as she plodded ahead. The cold night air hit her skin in a violent gust that felt like a slap. She realized that she was wearing her prom dress just as something reached to grab her bare ankle. A hand was sticking up out of the muddy soil and grasping her ankle. She realized that she was smack dab in front of a grave. The combination of dead, putrid skin covered with soil and the sudden rancid smell in the air made her gag. She was frozen for a moment before she kicked at the hand and broke away, running through the fog. It seemed that every steps she was taking, another grave was made to block her path. And then she realized what the other figures were; they were her family members and friends, all of them dead, all of them reaching out to her as if to embrace her.

Keely woke with a start at two-thirty in the afternoon, cold sweat running down her back. She reached instinctively for her phone, which she'd usually had set to vibrate. One missed call, one voice message. When she listened to the voicemail, the gravelly voice of her hairstylist crackled. "Hey Keely, this is Trish. I won't be able to do your hair today." There was a coughing on the recording that sounded all too familiar to Keely. "I had to cancel all my appointments. Guess I finally caught the bug, huh? You girls all have curlin' irons, go have a hair and makeup party. Sorry, hon." The recording stopped there and Keely sighed. She might have known this would happen, but not getting Trish to do her hair for prom was hardly the end of the world.

She stared over at her bedside alarm clock for a moment and then replaced her phone on the nightstand, rising from the bed. She stood and listened to the noises in the house and noticed that there was a disturbing lack of them. Just when she was starting out of the room to go check on her parents and sister, their rattling coughs started almost in unison. She knew they were getting worse and yet hearing them ail was a cold comfort of some sort. Keely went into the adjoining bathroom that she and her sister Hanna shared, peeked around for any signs that the younger girl had been in lately, then shed her clothes and stepped into the shower.

Keely stared down at her washboard thin stomach. She'd always been a beanpole and she somehow had the distinct feeling that she wasn't going to be able to conceal the pregnancy for as long as she'd have liked to.

After washing and drying off, Keely put on a button-down shirt and started to curl her hair for prom, applying liberal amounts of Aquanet. She managed to make it look halfway decent for a girl who didn't often bother with her hair besides pulling it up into a ponytail, then put on a pair of cut-off shorts and finally decided to do what she hadn't wanted to and start checking on her family before she fixed her makeup. She slowly opened the adjoining door to her sister's bedroom, stepping inside.

The shallow breathing at first alarmed her, but her sister was breathing and that was something. Keely crept closer to the bed and stood over it. The pink gingham sheets matched the rest of the room's decor; pink, girly, and yet somehow with the slightest bit of old-fashioned country sensibility. Despite the fact that the girls were actually half-sisters, they resembled each other quite a bit, owing to the fact that they both took after their mother. Hanna had dishwater blonde hair that was now unwashed for days and matted with the sweat of her sickness. Her brown eyes were shut and bore some of the darkest circles underneath them that Keely had ever seen a child with. Her skin had always been fair but now it was rife with an unhealthy pallor. She didn't look like the same girl that Keely knew.

"Han?" Keely asked, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. She reached out to give her sister the same kind of shoulder-shake that she'd have used any day of the school week to rouse the child from her slumber.

"What?" Hanna finally responded, her voice sounding hoarse, but carrying the same edge of irritation it always did when Keely woke her in this manner.

"You should go shower. Do you want me to make you some soup?"

The younger of the sisters started to bustle out of bed. At first Keely had thought Hanna wet herself, but then she realized that it was all sweat. She gently shooed Hanna from the bed and helped her to stand upright before reaching down and stripping the sheets from the girl's bed, balling them up as quickly as she could. She was not eager to touch anything that her sister or parents had.

"Maybe just broth. My stomach still hurts." There was a thoughtful pause from the little girl. "Your hair looks pretty."

"You think so? Thanks. I had to do it myself." Keely almost reached up to touch her hair before stopping herself, half-smiling at her sister. "While you're taking a bath, I'll change your sheets and fix you some soup."

The younger girl nodded and headed off unevenly to the bathroom. She looked like a tiny drunkard to Keely, but figured that her sister was still dizzy. And yet it was a relief to see her sister up and moving around, to be talking to her. Perhaps it wasn't as bad as she'd thought and they would all bounce back after some tender love and care. Keely went back into her sister's bedroom and deposited the dirty sheets into the pink hamper on the far side of the room before finding fresh ones on the top shelf of the small closet. She made the bed quickly and then went downstairs to the kitchen. They had boullion cubes in the fridge and despite wishing that her sister would be eating something more substantial by now, she didn't want to force a larger meal on the poor girl and be changing the sheets again in such short time.

Keely realized that she was hungry too. It was something that she'd experience with more frequency in the months to follow. While stirring the cubes in a pot of hot water on the stove, she shook her head as she considered her options. There really weren't any. Her parents were fairly far-right Christians who after getting over the initial shock that their daughter wasn't a little girl anymore and had succumbed to the temptation of flesh, they would insist that she keep and raise the baby. They'd help, of course, but that didn't mean that they'd necessarily like it. They might even make Trace and she have a shotgun wedding, which was the thing that she'd least wanted in life. Keely had wanted to go to college out of State and now that was a sore improbability that stuck in her side like an ever-present thorn. She still had one year of high school and she might even have to drop out, or just get a GED. Her parents would never let her give the baby up for adoption; they were strongly against the very idea that someone would give their own flesh and blood up to strangers who they didn't know from Adam.

Keely finally got the broth to boil, then emptied the pan into one of their white China bowls with a rooster pattern in the bottom. The first time Trace had seen her dinnerware, he'd later made a crude joke that he thought would turn her on. All it made her was annoyed that she'd ever slept with him in the first place. She grabbed a spoon and a pack of crackers, plopped them onto one of their old-fashioned silver trays and carried the beef broth upstairs to her sister's bedroom, where the girl was smelling of soap and already back in her fresh linens.

Hanna took the tray from her and began to eat at what Keely felt was an acceptable pace. "I'm going to check on mom and dad. Just put the tray aside and I'll pick it up later." Hanna nodded at this, but her mouth was too full for her to respond properly. Keely started out of her bedroom and down the narrow upstairs hallway, knocking first on their parents' bedroom door. There was no response, but behind the door she could hear their rattling breath made hers catch in her throat. Finally she decided to enter the room anyway.

Their dark, dank room smelled of sickness and something akin to decay. She'd smelled it on farm animals who were sick before and the idea of it made her stomach churn. Keely crept into the bedroom slowly, as if the floor creaking underneath her foot would make their state of health even worse. Finally when she beside the bed, she reached out to put her hand against her mother's clammy forehead. Her mother opening her eyes startled her and made her jump backward, nearly knocking the lamp off of the bedside table. 

"Honey? What time is it?" Her mother asked. She coughed after she said it and Keely couldn't help but back up once more.

"Almost four-thirty. You guys have been sleeping since yesterday morning, but I didn't want to wake you... but I think you guys should get up and shower. Do you want something to eat?"

Bryce still hadn't stirred yet. Keely had never thought of her stepfather as her real father, but he'd always been there. Yet even now there was something she couldn't bring herself to fully trust. "No... but we'll get up in a little bit. How's Hanna doing?"

"She's eating some broth and crackers. I changed her sheets. I think she's sweating it out."

"That's good. Thank you so much, honey. I'm so sorry... hey, did Trish do you hair? Looks good."

"No, Trish had to cancel. She's sick too. I did it myself."

"That's too bad... but it does look nice. You make sure to get some pictures taken, okay? You should be able to remember this night forever."

"I will. I'm gonna go get ready now... I've gotta see if Trace is still going to meet me or not."

"Sure." There was a pause from her mother wherein she resisted the urge to have another coughing fit, then resumed. "We'll get up in a little bit, I promise. You just go and concentrate on having fun. Tonight's your night, sweetheart."

"Thanks, mom." Keely didn't argue with her this time. She left them to lie there and went back to her bedroom, pulling open the closet.

Her prom dress had been picked out three months ago and at the time, Keely thought it was the prettiest thing she'd ever seen. They'd gone shopping all the way in Roxborough for it and Keely had thought it was the best thing she'd seen in maybe her entire life. The burnt umber satin affair came to just underneath her knees and the top of it was pulled into a halter style. It didn't show off too much skin and was modest compared to what several of the girls had worn to prom in recent years. The girls working at the boutique had all commented on her size and told her it was a relief to finally be picking out a dress for someone thin.

Now with the dress staring back at her, Keely could hardly find the strength to get it out of the closet. It felt wrong knowing that her family was ailing and she'd be going to what would surely be the most dismal prom in the history of the universe. She stood and stared at it for a moment before finally reaching to take it out of the closet. She shimmied out of her clothes and put the dress on carefully, followed by the gold high heeled sandals she'd chosen. She chose her makeup after that and shook her head. This wasn't how she'd envisioned her prom night. Pregnant and taking her care of sick family hadn't been in tonight's plans.

She remembered then that she still needed to call Trace. She reached for her cell phone and speed-dialed him. He coughed when she answered.

"Hey, babe. I'll meet you in just a little while. I'm getting my tux on right now."

"Hey. Alright. I'll leave in about half an hour. But if you're sick, maybe you shouldn't come..." She was relieved to hear his voice though. A familiar warmth filled her heart and for an instant she thought things might be okay.

"No, don't say that. I know you want me to come and I want to come... so I'll be there. I'll see you, okay?"

"Okay. Love you. Bye."

"Love you too." He hung up the phone and Keely sat, waiting as she considered what she was going to do.

When the time came, she hollered a goodbye to her family and walked out the front door. She slid into her pickup and repositioned the shotgun that was in the passenger's seat, propping it up against the floorboard. It had been her very first, given to her by her real father when she turned thirteen. It was one of her prized possessions.

The country street she lived on was empty as usual, but there was a strange stillness in the air that worried her. She barely heard any birds chirping and it was a reasonably nice day. Instead she heard Garth Brooks singing about his friends on the radio, which she reached over and turned down in order to listen to the eerily still wilderness around her. Keely glanced around for any signs of the animals that usually littered the fields surrounding her home and saw none. The motor of her large red pick up sounded atrociously like metal scraping metal as she sped up, feeling the need to leave her home with an astounding amount of urgency.

Reaching town she realized that things weren't much better. There were no cars cruising up and down the main street. Their one street light town usually had at least a few cars filled with gawkers young and old alike who were simply trying to see who else was out and about. She noticed that several cars parked in front of business had their doors open. Under more normal circumstances she would have shut the doors and tried to find the respective owners of the vehicles, but she sensed deep in the worrisome pit of her stomach that something was seriously wrong.

She deviated from the mainstreet and headed north toward the residential area near where Trace lived with his family in a house that had been built years before, obviously a product of the Germanic architecture that so rampantly littered the area. The house stood three stories and imposing black and white. She divided her attention between the empty road in front of her and looking at the other houses. She glanced to the left side of the street in time to see Ray Kinley stumbling out of his house in what she assumed was another drunk. At least some things never change, Keely thought to herself.

Keely finally reached Winter Street and sped up when she saw two figures in Trace's yard. She knew that one of them was Trace; he was dressed in the tuxedo that they'd picked out together at the local flower shop where they could be rented for a surprisingly modest fee. His white shirt was splattered with crimson blood and the sight of it made Keely's blood run like ice in her veins. Her heart thudded in her chest as she parked in the middle of the street and got out, leaving behind her high heeled sandals. They'd be no use to her if she had to fight. The shotgun was retrieved from the passenger seat. She'd always been taught that you should never shoot anyone unless it were a life or death situation, but no one had ever told her it wasn't right to pistol whip someone in defense.

It took Keely a moment before she could make out who the person was and even then she erred between disbelief and denial. Her former third grade teacher, Mister Banks, had died months earlier but was now standing in a grapple with her boyfriend. He was at least ninety when he'd died from a combination of pneumonia and heart failure. Now he was snapping his teeth at Trace. She remembered that he'd always prided himself on the fact that he'd never needed dentures. Now his pearly white teeth were covered in blood and Keely felt weak in the knees. She didn't make a sound as she watched them, frozen with terror.

As Trace screamed, Keely suddenly sprang from her position and ran across the street and lawn. She could see that Mister Banks had bitten him on the neck; the wound was gushing rapidly out over the rented tux that they wouldn't be returning any time soon. She hefted the shotgun back and nailed the old man in the head three times before he fell, groaning feebly and reaching with arms outstretched toward each of the children. Keely could see now that he was covered in dirt and maggots, his skin still well-preserved from the embalming procedures, but not without a little putrification.

"Oh God, Trace!" Keely cried out as she reached his side and tried to cup one of her hands over his neck, her eyes welling with tears.

He shook his head at her and sunk to his knees on the ground as she tried to pull him back up. She was no pansy but she wasn't strong enough to support his weight. He'd been on the football team since junior high. "Just go, Keely. Go! Please. I love you. Just go. Get out of here. Get as far away from here as you can."

She knew he was dying. She couldn't have gotten help quick enough even if she'd tried. She leaned in to kiss him before pulling away. Mister Banks was getting back on his feet. Keely heard an ambulance in the distance and sobbed quietly before she ran back to the truck and climbed in, starting to speed away. She made the mistake of looking back and saw Trace getting his entrails ripped out by a man whom they'd both mourned just months earlier.

The tears blinding her eyes made it difficult for Keely to drive but since there was no one else on the road, it didn't concern her. She was gripped with a plethora of feelings that she had no idea what to do with. She didn't even realize that she was white-knuckling the barrel of her shotgun with her right hand, the barrel pointed at the door.

Polly Green's grey Convertible that her father had bought her for her birthday last year suddenly careened into her from her right. Keely violently slammed on her breaks as she was pushed against the driver's side door and jostled enough to make her feel the pain from it instantly. She yelped and looked toward the passenger side window. The right side of the car was totaled; she had a feeling she wasn't going to be asking Polly for her insurance information when she the other girl though.

Polly's younger brother David was in the passenger seat beside her, ripping at Polly's face. She had her hands clutched to her face to protect it, but when Polly took them down, Keely saw that she was missing an eye. It looked like it had been gouged out. She could hear Polly's frantic screams and gagged when David succeeded in plucking the other gelatinous orb from her eye socket, stuffing it into his mouth before he started to bite her at. Keely choked back the vomit and put her foot on the gas pedal again.

Keely made a left and turned toward the school. There were a few cars outside, some of them with car doors hanging open as she'd seen earlier on main street. The ambulance sirens were still blaring loudly and were now joined by police sirens. What was considered to be one of the 'safe havens' of the town didn't seem to be safe at all but she couldn't think of anywhere else to go. She reached into the glovebox and loaded the shotgun after all, cocking it a few times with shaking hands before getting out of the pick up and running for the double doors to the entrance.

It was open and the awful sounds that came from inside should have been enough to tell her back. They were coming from the gym, where the prom had just gotten underway. She was suddenly aware that she was bleeding from her cheek, where she'd pinged off of the driver's side door. She ran into the gym and stopped abruptly. The silver and aqua crepe paper they'd strung against the blue gauze curtains seemed out of place. Their theme was 'Under The Sea' and cut-outs of sea creatures hung from the ceiling, dangling in the breeze that wafted through the building. A sappy pop song that had been haunting the music charts for months blared from the DJ booth.

The gym was not devoid of activity though. As if in a macabre dance, Naomi Roberts struggled against her date, Eddie Connor. She was a prom queen nominee -- and a shoe-in in Keely's mind, considering that the other candidates were probably dead by now. In another corner Jeremy Pilchard's body was slumped against a wall and Bryan Jessel was ripping open his chest cavity. There were sounds coming from other parts of the school too.

Keely strode toward Naomi and Eddie, then cocked back her shotgun and aimed it right at Eddie's head. "Move, Naomi!" She cried out before firing away.

Eddie's head exploded in a few pieces, not a billion tiny ones, like so many movies had led Keely to believe. And it hadn't even really exploded at all. There were still pieces of it attached, parts here and there. Eddie fell to the ground, his legs and hands twitching before he lay still. The crack of the shotgun made Keely's ears ring and the recoil had taken her by surprise, making her loose her footing and fire another shot toward the ceiling. Naomi sobbed as she stooped down in front of Eddie's lifeless body and tried to shake him.

"He's not getting up, Naomi. We have to go. Now." Keely was surprised that she'd sounded so tough, but there was still a distinct quiver in her voice.

"You stupid fucking bitch! Why did you do that?!" The other girl cried out in a high-pitched voice. There was blood all over Naomi's seafoam green ballgown and a huge pool of it seeping from the former jock's head.

"He was trying to eat you, stupid!"

"No, he was trying to convince me to leave!"

Keely felt her stomach churn before she shook her head. "I probably did him a favor anyway. Probably be doin' you a favor if I shot you right now. It's either that or you come with me. We have to get out of here. We have to go. No one is coming for us. No one is going to help us but ourselves."

Bryan Jessel suddenly lost interest in eating the other boy's heart. He instead turned toward the two girls who were screaming loud enough to wake the other dead -- the ones who hadn't been awoken. He got to his feet and lurched forward, groaning. "We have to go." Keely repeated as she started to back up toward the entrance again.

Naomi made no movement to stand, simply kneeling over Eddie's body and sobbing. She would have felt worse about abandoning the girl had Naomi not been a thorn in her side since the sixth grade. She felt a twinge of guilt when she heard Naomi scream from the gym a few seconds later. Keely ran back out of the school, her shoulder nearly grabbed by Miss Stenkowski. She butted the woman in the face with the shotgun before getting back into her pick up. In the rear view mirror, she could see two shapes staggering toward the car which was all the incentive she needed to back over them when she started the pick up.

She'd always wanted to make it out of Kingsport one day, but she'd never knew it would be like this. She made her choice in that instant and decided that going home was less of an option that it had been a few hours ago when she'd merely considered telling her folks she was pregnant. Keely didn't look back again as she headed onto the highway.

Nitty Gritty

It had been a long, hot summer. I started out in Texas with my boyfriend Johnny and it hadn't really worked out in that we'd had an argument and he'd thrown me out of his car while it was still rolling. My backpack had followed right after that and he'd sped up, leaving behind only the lingering smell of balding tire on hot asphault. Johnny'd always had a temper and when I told my best girlfriend Shanna that I was going to run away with him, she laughed and shook her head. "Better take a switchblade or five just in case he flies into one of his rages," she'd told me.

She hadn't been wrong. It'd turned sour and dangerous long before he'd kicked me out of the car. We were supposed to be going to California to try to crash at his cousin Georgie's house. Georgie was a good ol' boy from back home that had graduated from high school when I was still in grade school. He'd set out to make a fortune with his 'rapping career' in California right after he'd graduated. Everyone was surprised he'd even made it to the twelfth grade and managed to graduate, let alone move to California by himself. It was more than a lot of us around there could have said. But Johnny and I both knew the truth; Georgie was just a third-rate weed and occasional crack dealer that had made some seriously bad decisions and it would only be a matter of time before he was in jail or worse.

I'd left with Johnny anyway, knowing what I was getting myself into. At the time it'd seemed better than sticking around Bluebell. As soon as we got on the road, Johnny started to get irritable. He would grab me by the wrist and shove me against the passenger side door if I turned the radio station; sometimes he would start screaming if I even asked exactly where we were. I didn't think he really knew where he was going. He just seemed to be driving as fast and far away from Bluebell as he could. He only got worse as time went on. Every time we'd go into some greasy spoon he'd accuse me of flirting with the other diners or the chefs. I hated to admit it to even myself, but I was getting scared.

The day he threw me out of the car, I'd finally voiced my fears that he didn't know where he was going exactly. For a long moment there was nothing said between us, but I could see him white knuckling the steering wheel and gritting his teeth. He finally reached out and grabbed me by the hair, pulling my face close to his.

"I should fucking beat the shit out of you. You know that? I should. You're a dumb fucking cunt who doesn't know shit and I do. How hard is it to drive to California anyway? You just keep going fuckin' west until you see the ocean. You're calling me stupid. If there's one thing Johnny White ain't, it's stupid, you whore."

I winced in pain as the car started to swerve along the desert highway. We were in New Mexico by then and all that we were passing was the brush. I could see the cactuses disappearing past the window in a blur as he sped up. "Johnny, I wasn't saying you were stupid. I just... I just want to make sure. Please stop, you're hurting me."

"Good, I mean to. If you don't like it, why don't you get the fuck out?" He asked. I could see from the look on his face that he meant it.

I started to protest. I don't even remember now what I'd said to him before he was grabbing me with both hands, not watching the road anymore than he had been. I tried to put my weight as firmly on the seat as I could and brace my legs against the door, but he managed to get it open easier than I thought it would have been. The next thing I knew he was pushing me out by the hair as I tried to hang on to any surface I could.

When I finally hit the ground, I rolled a few times before coming to a stop near the ditch. My vision was blurred and the hot ground beneath did little to soothe the friction burns that I'd received, or the dirt in my cuts. My eyes finally found the car speeding away and I saw him throw the backpack out the window. It had everything I really cared about in it. I started crawling toward the backpack slowly after he was well out of view. I hadn't wanted to make too much noise or move too much, afraid that he'd back over me a few times for good measure.

I realized that my arms and chest were bleeding and that my back suddenly felt strangely... open. I knew I was hurt bad but I was in the middle of nowhere without a cell and I wasn't even sure that the arid valley had reception. My vision started to go black around the edges until the darkness seeped inward and I blacked out.

What woke me later was the sensation of moving. I felt like I'd been hit by a car and not thrown out of one, and for a second I got worried that I had been. I opened my eyes and reached into my pocket for my not-so-sharp pocketknife to learn that it was missing. Either someone had disarmed me or it had flown out of my pocket when Johnny had pushed me. The interior of the car was unfamiliar. It was even shittier than Johnny's hunk of junk. This car seemed to be headed right into death trap territory.

The seats were grey and had large hunks missing out of them, and some springs were visible. The floorboard and ceiling itself were black. There was a fine layer of dust and road grit on everything in the car. I experimentally reached out to touch the dashboard, letting my finger run through the dirt. I felt like I'd been drugged but knew that couldn't have been the case since I hurt like a motherfucker.

Finally I looked over to the driver's seat. He wasn't what I'd expected. I thought he'd be older, dirtier. He was around my age with shoulder-length blonde hair and ice blue eyes. I wasn't sure how he'd lifted me into his car; I had to weigh more than he did, but a botched lifting job could have accounted for my unnatural soreness. He had his eyes fixed on the road in determination and for a minute I didn't want to disturb him. Even though he looked harmless to me, who knew if he was going to be another Johnny or not?

I reached for a bottle of water that was sitting beside me in the seat. I didn't care even care that it was water right then. It could have just as easily been piss or Everclear and I wouldn't have minded, but my throat was sandy feeling. I took a long drink of it and my sudden motion made the driver startle. I smiled at him and then reached up to flip his passenger side mirror down.

Even though the mirror had been cracked in several places, I could see that I was good and beaten up. My freckles were hidden underneath splotches of blood on my tanned complexion and my left cheek was scraped to high Hell. I opened my mouth to check and see if I had any teeth missing and was relieved to find out that I hadn't. It was bad enough that I already looked like a lizard lot that some burly truck driver had worked over with a shard of glass and his fists, but missing a tooth or two might have suggested that I was into drugs too. When I thought about it later, I realized how strange it was to have been so concerned with vanity when I had a broken rib and road rash so severe that I couldn't lie down on my stomach for a month.

"How do you feel?" He asked, his voice a little shaky as he looked over at me briefly before turning his eyes back to the road.

"Like someone threw me out of a Goddamned car," I replied to him as I panned the mirror downward to survey my arms and legs. I winced when I saw them and pulled the mirror back into place before shaking my head. I knew it had been a bad idea to pack nothing but tank tops and shorts.

"I wondered what had happened. I don't know how long you were there before I came along. Seems like a pretty lonely stretch of road. We've only passed two people since I picked you up. You've been sleeping since I got you into the car... two hours ago."

"Two?" I asked him in disbelief. I looked to the back of the car and saw that we were in a station wagon. The back of it had been turned into a makeshift sleep area.

"I wanted to make sure you were going to breathe on your own or something I guess. I don't know. You laying around back there and being jostled even more didn't seem like a good idea. I'm Em." He reached up to scratch at the small growth of baby blonde stubble on his chin. I wondered how long it had taken him to grow that much out.

"Em?"

"It's short for Emmett."

"You might make a convincing Emily," I said to him jokingly, then winced in anticipation of being slapped around like Johnny might have done. I was relieved when he simply smirked and looked over to survey me in a way that I didn't feel was entirely born out of concern.

"Did you really get thrown out of a car?" He asked, returning his eyes back to the stretch of road in front of us. It was getting dark.

"Yeah. My boy... well, ex-boyfriend now, I guess... Johnny... he threw me out of a car because I asked him if he knew where he was going. I guess he's one of those men that thinks women have a poor sense of direction." I had to laugh, but it hurt. Even breathing hurt now, but I wasn't going to tell my rescuer that. I didn't want to cause any more trouble for the poor kid than I already had and a hospital visit was not an option.

He sat quietly for a moment, his cheeks coloring with something akin to anger. "That's fucked up. I wish I could find him..." He trailed off there. "He's probably long gone by now. Your backpack is in the back. I don't think anything came out of it. Do you need to go to the hospital? Unlike Johnny, I'm not afraid to admit that I don't know where I'm going right now. My plan is just to drive until I see city lights of some sort."

"No, no hospital. Thanks." I paused. "I'm Carly. It's nice to meet you, Em. And thank you... for everything. I'll get out whenever you want me to."

"You don't have to get out right away if you don't want to. I'm heading to Las Vegas. Where are you going?" He asked, spotting vague lights in the distance. He pushed down on the pedal faster.

"Good question." I hadn't considered yet that I didn't know what I was going to do or where I was going to go from here. Back home wasn't an option since I hadn't even left my parents a note when I'd gone and California wasn't affordable. "We were going to California. Johnny had this cousin that's supposed to be a rapper. I was going to get this job at a hotel doing the cleaning work..." I didn't want to say maid for some reason. I was starting to realize how stupid our plan was to begin with. When Georgie said they could use a 'maid' at his friend's hotel, he probably meant hooker. Hot tears suddenly stung my eyes and I reached up to swipe at them. "Anyway, I don't know. I don't have anywhere to go."

We continued down the road for a while without either of us saying anything. We reached the source of those faint lights about a half an hour later, stumbling upon a small town called Poston. There was a dive bar and grill just off of main street and Emmett pulled into the small parking lot, unbuckling his seat belt.

"Looks like they have food. Are you hungry?" He asked. I didn't want to admit that I barely had any money left. Johnny and I had blown through my savings halfway to New Mexico. After a moment, he lowered his voice. "I went through your wallet. I know you don't have any money. I'm sorry I did it, but I was just trying to see if you had any ID. It's on me."

The tears stung my eyes again and I turned my head away, staring down at the passenger door. I had never been one to cry in front of anyone and had always thought of it as a sign of weakness, but I was weak now. I was hurt, hungry, scared, broke, and clueless. Slowly I nodded, not even noticing that Emmett was out of the car and approaching my door. He popped it open for me and I unbuckled my seatbelt as I choked the tears back.

When I got out of the car I found that my chest hurt worse than I'd thought. The movement made me wince and I had to resist the urge to cry out. He gently wrapped his arm around my waist and started to lead me inside. Normally I would have jerked away but I didn't have the strength to refuse his chivalry. I was suspicious of him even though I had no reason to be. He so far hadn't been a creep but I'd heard too many stories and seen too many things myself to really be able to trust him -- not to mention the fact that I'd just dealt with Johnny.

I could hear an old Creedence Clearwater Revival song blaring from the bar and some rowdy cheering. The last thing I wanted was for a bunch of hicks to stare openmouthed at me when they saw what sort of shape I was in. I groaned inwardly at the thought but let Em lead me into the bar.

As I'd thought, there were a bunch of open mouthed hicks staring at me when I walked in. I averted my gaze to the ground. They seemed to be playing in some sort of amateur pool tourney and soon lost interest in the beat up girl for the most part, save for fleeting glances and some of the pool players' bouffantly-hairdo'd wives and girlfriends whispering amongst themselves.

We sat ourselves at a table and I slid into the booth with some relief. The cool material of the seating felt good underneath my scrapes and the ample air conditioning was a welcome change from Emmett's barely blowing AC unit in the car.

Now Em was staring at me too. He sat across from me and for the first time I could see that he was somewhat pretty for a boy. Back where I was from, he would have had to have fought hard and been a macho man to prove that he was nothing less than a bonafide queer, regardless of whether or not he was. There was something sweet about his boyish looks that he'd obviously tried to cover up with that poor growth of stubble and the long, grungy hair. His grey t-shirt was covered in blood that I'd assumed was mine. Now I knew the folks had reason enough to stare. I looked down at myself and stared at my chest and arms, wondering why there there was so much blood.

A waitress with orange-red hair and tanned leathery skin came up to the table with a small pad, looking at the both of us with a disapproving smirk.

"You two get into a fight with a can of tomato sauce?" She asked half-jokingly. The rest of her was full on catty. I wasn't having it for some reason, perhaps in part due to the fact that I needed painkillers and didn't have any in my system.

"I fell." I simply said to her, wheezing afterward. "Where's the bathroom?"

She pointed toward a dark hallway. "Can I get your order first?"

Emmett spoke up without even having to look at the menu. "I'll have a cheeseburger with everything, fries, and a beer."

"Same." I said before standing up shakily and heading to the bathroom, feeling eyes on my back. I staggered into the women's bathroom and turned on the light. My long black curls were matted with blood and stuck to my back and neck. There was more blood on my chest than I'd thought. I stopped looking at the vast amount of blood and grabbed for the paper towels. The bathroom smelled of floor cleaner and deodorizer, but all I could really smell was the blood I was caked in. I wetted the paper towels underneath the leaky faucet and dabbed at myself. It wasn't long before the dabbing turned into a frenzied sink bath. It hadn't been the first such bath I'd taken since I'd been on the road.

When I stopped I saw that there was a huge gash on my chest. It wasn't nearly as deep as it could have been given the circumstances and the road rash surrounding it made it look even worse than it really was. My dark eyes widened in the mirror as I studied it. I knew I'd have a scar. It might fade with time but it would be a while before I wore the sort of low-cut tank top I was currently wearing. I started looking around the bathroom for a first aid kit and found one underneath the sink. Settling on Bactine and a gauze pad with some white medical tape, I took care of the cut as best I could. I was no trained professional but I would have settled for not getting an infection and not having everyone gawk even more than they already had or would.

There was a rip in my denim skirt that made it even less modest than it had already been, and like my skin, both my top and the skirt itself were covered with blood. I couldn't do much for the clothing or my road rash, so I just headed back out after using the toilet.

Em was still there and suddenly I was filled with an overwhelming relief. I hadn't even known I was worried about him ditching me until I saw him still sitting there. People were staring but I didn't let it bother me so much. I knew that until we drove out of this little pit stain, we'd be a hot topic. Chances are that even after we'd long been gone, people would still be talking about those two wayward kids and how the girl was all beat up. They'd already started drawing their own conclusions as to what had happened. Why correct them?

I slid back into the other side of the booth, the pain in my ribs intensifying as I took a deep breath. "If you went through my things I guess you must know my darkest secret -- my name is really Scarlet." He flashed me a grin and I returned the first smile I'd worn in weeks. "I always thought that the name Scarlet sounded cheap even when I was little, so I told everyone to call me Carly. It helped that my little sister Violet had trouble saying it."

He laughed. "Your sister's name is Violet? Were your parents hippies?"

"Yeah, actually. And if you think that's  bad, you oughta meet my older brother Brown." If he'd seen my ID, he'd know my last name was Johnson. Not only was it an unfortunately choice and double entrende on my mother's part, our dark skin tone did little to help matters.

"No way." When I nodded to him with a serious expression he burst out laughing hard enough that several of the beefy hicks playing pool stopped to look over at us once more. "That's far out."

"Honest to God. Mama was half-Chinese, half-Mexican. Daddy was half-black. They couldn't agree on any Chinese or Spanish names, so they agreed to settle on colors. When I came out, I was so red in the face that they called me Scarlet. When my sister came out, she was purple, so they called her Violet. But when my older brother came out and they saw how brown he was, well..." I trailed off there and started to laugh myself, flinching with tears in my eyes at the pain. I reached up to grab my ribs, eliciting a worried glance from Emmett.

"I think maybe you should reconsider letting me take you to a hospital somewhere. I'm not an expert but after that kind of trauma, with your rib hurting..." He glanced at me and reached out to take my hand, wrapped around my glass of Coke and squeeze it briefly. "I'll take you if you need to go."

I almost flinched away from his hand before I took it and squeezed it back, my palm wet with condensation. "No. I'll be okay, really. I just need to rest. And... thanks again. For everything. It's not every day that I meet someone like you." A sudden fear that he was going to ask for something in return gripped me. He hadn't given me that vibe yet but if there was one thing I'd learned with Johnny, it's that looks could be deceiving. He looked like a clean cut football player but acted like a hardened criminal even at twenty-two. "What's your story, anyway?" I asked as I pulled my hand away, the waitress bringing our plates. The food looked better than I thought it would. My stomach growled loudly; I remembered that I hadn't eaten since the day before, and it had been a pink snack cake out of a rest stop vending machine.

I ate like I'd never even been fed before while Emmett talked about how he was going to visit his mom in Vegas. She'd been sick for a long time and his dad had died the year before. He didn't seem sad about it, just very matter of fact. There was something else in his eyes when he told me about it, something I couldn't place. Without touching much of his food, he talked about how he'd spent a little bit of time in jail for shoplifting. I couldn't imagine a guy as pretty as he was being in jail. He kept his voice low, all too aware that the townspeople were purposely keeping their conversation low so they could overhear.

"What about you?" He eventually asked. My food was long gone and his was more than half-cold by the time he finished telling me his story. I smiled with reluctance, hoping that the subject wouldn't come around to my own sad story.

I told him anyway. As the night grew darker outside, more people packed into the small bar. He picked at his own fries and burger, eating only about half of it all before he pushed the plate away. The waitress came to take our plates and ask us if we needed anything else. Emmett ordered both of us another beer. I didn't protest the fact that he was driving and drinking. He looked like a boy who could hold his own against the demons of alcohol, as the church-goers back home would have called them.

Jeepster by T. Rex came on the jukebox and Em's eyes lit up like a match. I grinned over at him. He watched me for minute in deliberation of something before he stood up and walked over to one of the trashy looking girls that had entered the bar sometime ago with a pack of girls that more resembled wolves to me. They had that hungry look about them and when they smiled, too much tooth showed. They'd all been eyeing Em since they came in. He was fresh meat.

I watched him with interest as he chose a skinny blonde that was only slightly shorter with her and asked her to dance. I knew why he hadn't asked me; I was in pain. But I'd also never seen a guy ask a girl to dance. They moved over near the pool tables and he began to dance better than any straight boy I'd ever seen. I was starting to wonder about him but I did it with a smile on my lips. I sipped at my fresh glass of beer and shook my head, watching as Emmett shook and gyrated with the kind of dance skills that most girls only wished they could achieve. His partner wasn't even close to him. She was dancing poorly next to him and watching him in bewilderment, her pace barely keeping up with the rhythym of the music. Her friends were snickering at her and whispering amongst themselves over the juke.

"Look at that fuckin' fag," one of the hicks said loudly, obviously meaning to catch Emmett's attention. He shook it off and kept dancing as I stood from the booth. Years of scrapping against whoever didn't like Johnny from one week to the next had made me a reliable bar fight back up.

When he didn't respond, the redneck that was heckling him threw his pool cue down and stomped over to him, his yellow workboots thudding against the bar floor. He stopped just beside Emmett. The redneck put his face down into Em's. "Look at me when I'm talkin' to you, boy. You some kinda queer? We don't like queers around these parts. Why don't you go back to San Fran Angeles or wherever the Hell it was you came from."

I watched Emmett as he stopped moving and faced the man, staring up at him. "If you don't allow fags around these parts, why haven't they kicked your dumb ass out yet?" He asked. I ran over to him in a limp and stood beside the two. Intervening was a stupid decision on my part, especially when the man grabbed Emmett by the collar of his t-shirt and lifted him off the ground.

"Fuck you, you little shit. Why don't you take your whore and get the fuck out of here? Was she late payin' so you beat on her?" He asked, chuckling lowly as he slammed Emmett against the wall.

"Yeah, I bet you'd like to fuck me, wouldn't you?" Emmett asked him with a wide grin before he lifted his foot and kicked the other man square in the balls. Just as the others grabbed their pool cues and started to run for us, Em wiggled his way from the man and took my hand. The waitress was screaming about us paying as we fled from the bar. His lithe frame pulled me most of the way and my ribs screamed like fire in my chest. We got into the station wagon as the others followed us out. Emmett's shaking hands couldn't get it started in time.

One of the man's friends pulled him out of the car and threw him to the ground. I hadn't yet made it to the passenger door when I was gripped from behind and held up in the air. I screamed out in pain, my eyes wide with fear as I watched the men started to beat on Em with their pool cues, stomping him with their boots. He was making horrible noises, as was I. The men didn't care I'd been hurt before. They laughed amongst themselves and made comments about 'patronizing my services' while I struggled. The ones who were done beating came up to squeeze my breasts. One of them approached me reeking like chewing tobacco and cheap beer, and stuffed his hand up my skirt. He cupped my sex in his hand and let out a hyuk-hyuk laugh, commenting to the one who held me as I screamed feebly: "Must be a new whore, she's barely worn at all."

Somewhere in the distance I heard a beer bottle breaking and a scream that didn't sound like Emmett's. As I was groped and prodded, I tried to make myself as far away from my body in my mind as I could. I didn't even know that there were tears running down my face anymore. The last man who was beating on Emmett had suddenly recoiled, holding his leg. I opened my eyes and saw that he was gushing blood from his thigh. Emmett stood up slowly, catching his breath as he coughed. The others dropped me and went rushing to their friend. I tugged my skirt back down and let out a choked sob, moving over to Em as the others tried to help their friend back into the bar. I noticed that the crotch of his jeans was covered too. He was hurt badly enough that Emmett was left alone for the moment, and he slid into the driver's seat once more, me sliding into the passenger seat.

The old motor started and as we drove off. Someone threw a beer bottle at his car and hit the front window, cracking it admirably. Emmett was still hacking and in the dim lighting, I couldn't see his wounds but underneath the street lights every now and again. His nose was bleeding and I knew he'd have a shiner in the morning. We drove out of the town and past it, back into the desert. We passed a road sign that said Ianthe Valley, twenty miles, but we stopped in the middle of the desert long before that.

"They'll be looking for us," he said quietly. I reached out and put my hand on his knee.

"We should just sleep here, maybe. Let's park a little further away." Em nodded and started the car again, parking us behind a small rock formation. The front end was sticking out a little bit but I didn't think it would matter much in the end. We both crawled into the back of his station wagon and with the help of a small flashlight I'd had in my backpack, I looked at his wounds. The beating he'd taken wasn't as bad as it could have been but he said his chest hurt. His ribcage was starting to bruise and I worried that like me, he'd broken a rib or two of his own.

We helped each other out of our blood-soaked clothes and then curled up in the pile of blankets he had in the back. I couldn't get comfortable and the wagon bounced gently every time I repositioned, but finally I lie on my side facing him. I reached out to tuck his hair behind his ears and lean in to kiss him. He pulled away from me and stared with wide eyes.

"No... I can't." He paused. "I'm not gay. I want to... with you. But I know what they did to you back there. It wouldn't be right."

"People have done worse, Em." I leaned in and kissed him. This time he didn't resist. When it was all said and done, both of us were too sore to do anything aside from idly fondle each other and make out a little. The level of intimacy was nice though. I never got that sort of thing from Johnny, much less anyone else I'd ever been with. His tenderness stood out against the harsh grain of my life.

I let myself cry in front of him then. He told me it would be okay as he stroked my hair and kissed my brow, but I knew better than that -- and yet I could almost believe it when he said it.

Nothing Lasts Forever

The kids had taken to the mall when the infection had spread. It was now their graffiti-covered paradise. The glass windows and doors to the entrance had suffered minimal damage so far. The oldest person in the mall was twenty-five, and had spent two years there. It always seemed to be hardest on the oldest people. The elderly and middle aged had killed each other, killed their children, their grandchildren, their pets, their neighbors, whoever they could in a fit of frenzy. Their own government had done this to them for some reason, but had not planned well enough. There wasn't a government anymore. Just chaos.

There were no leaders here, but there were those that demanded fear and respect. The girl they called Eve had come to them not-so-early on, and they were at times unforgiving to newcomers. The day that Bugfuck broke out, she and her mother visited her father at his construction site. They were joking about what was for dinner one minute and the next there was another construction worker on top of her father, throwing him against the side of a van. She and her mother had watched in shock as her father tried to shield himself from the blows. Her father was a tough man. He'd been stabbed before, eight times precisely, but he was getting older. Looking back on it, she'd realize that he put an admirable amount of moxie into his fighting and had died like a warrior.

Her mother on the other hand hadn't even had the chance. She was struck from behind with a shovel. The force of the blow made her eyes bug unnaturally, and teeth flew from her mouth the next time it happened. For some reason Eve stooped to pick the teeth up and salvage them, cradling them in her hands -- at least until she'd seen the man drop his trousers and push her dazed mother into the dirt. She put the teeth into her pocket as the man started freeing himself of his boxers and picked up his abandoned shovel, starting to pummel him relentlessly with it.

The first crack had landed atop of his head, but it wasn't hard enough. He asked her if she was next when she brought the shovel down again, still hesitating for some reason. But hearing her mother choking on her own blood soon made the resistance slim to nil. The man's skull was ruined by the time Eve was done with him. Her father was dead and she could tell her mother was dying, but didn't have the heart to even mercy kill her. The puddle of blood from her mother's head was growing greater and greater, but so was the number of men that were beginning to leer at Eve when they'd finished killing one another off. She turned to look at her father and saw that the man who'd attacked him was cutting him open with a switchblade and pulling his intestines out. His eyes were already gone.

It was then that Eve started to run. She'd never told anyone about what would happen in the days after that and was unlikely to. By the time she reached the mall, she was covered in blood, some of it hers, some of it not, and wounded too. It had told most of them everything they needed to know about her -- it was how most of them had arrived to. They let her sleep her hardship off for a few days before they let her know how things would be. When they asked for her name, she told them Eve -- short for Evil. It made some of them laugh, but the others looked at her with dire seriousness, as though they were expecting her to live up to such a claim.

A girl named Trixie had been hellbent on making things difficult from her to begin with. Trixie was tall with long brown hair that several streaks of dye in it; orange, purple, and green. There wasn't something on her face that wasn't pierced and when she talked, she sounded like a snake from her tongue piercing. She wore clothes two sizes too small for her and acted like every boy was her personal fuck slave. Eve had not cowered in front of her and wasn't impressed with her need to reassert whatever status she thought she'd had. Naturally, it pissed the other girl off. Eve kept a cool head every time Trixie would get drunk and try to start something, but finally it took it's toll.

Eve was doing a bit of community laundry in the main strip with a washing board and wooden tub they'd found while doing a bit of scavenging once. She didn't mind and it was good to keep busy around there. It wasn't that she didn't like her fair share of getting into trouble, but she wasn't lazy either -- and a few of the boys were starting to smell a mite ripe. They all were. Trixie staggered over to her, bottle in hand, and kicked the basin full of sudsy water over, splashing Eve's clothes. Eve didn't even bother to look up at Trixie, just shaking her head.

"That was the last of the detergent. You're going to have to find more."

"Shut the fuck up, bitch! You think you're so fucking special, don't you? I know you're just trying to make look bad! You're just a stupid whore who wants Brad! I know you fucked him! I know you did!" Trixie's voice was shrill and her slurred words were carrying on throughout the mall. It was peaceful and quiet, but now everyone was slowly coming out. A few of the bigger boys sped outside to intervene if they had need.

"I never touched him. I would never want to since you've touched him. And I don't need to make you look bad. You do that all by yourself." Eve still wasn't looking at Trixie. She just stared at the wasted water and what had been the last of the laundry soap with some irritation. This meant another scavenging trip.

But suddenly Trixie's hand was in her hair, pulling her to her feet. Then Trixie was cracking her bottle over what had been a stand for a potted plant, but was now used as a communal ashtray. "Fuck off! I won't kill you, I'm just gonna shove this broken bottle right into your cunt so you never forget me! Look at me when I talk to you!"

Eve just started to laugh then. It was so absurd that she had to. Eve knew what fear was, knew what it was to be scared. Trixie just amused her. Before the others could reach them, Trixie was slicing the bottle across Eve's neck and pushing her down face first into the spilled water. Sure enough, she felt her cutoff shorts being pulled down and a piece of glass being mistakenly jabbed into her ass cheek -- but the sensation thankfully stopped abruptly. The world got a little hazy after that and for a while, all Eve saw was the mixture of her blood in the soapy water before she passed out.

When she'd woken up, she touched her neck to make sure that it was no longer gaping wide open. There were stitches over a small patch of her neck. It hadn't been as bad as she'd thought, but she knew she'd have a scar for however long she was going to live. Her eyes were unfocused yet, but finally familiar face came into view.

Chess had taken up residence as their doctor before she'd come along and had transformed the small first aid station into his own little office. He was an egghead and in his former life, had been pre-med at a nearby university. Now he reached down to gently pet her hair. It was probably the most the tender touch she'd received since she'd been there and if she hadn't been high out of her gourd, one she might not have allowed. "You're awake," he finally said, in his crisp voice. For a dork, he wasn't so bad looking. Blue eyes behind thin wired glasses, black hair, and surprisingly tanned skin.

"I'm thirsty." Eve finally said as she tried to pull herself into a sitting position, instead finding her limbs like putty against the cot. She realized too that she had an IV in her arm.

"I'll have someone get an orange julius for you then. I think that would be okay. You didn't lose much blood, which is wonderful, else we'd have been shit out of luck. How's your ass feel?" Chess asked with a joking tone. "You had a few stitches there too. They couldn't pull her off in time before she cut that too. It kind of looks like your ass cheek is smiling now."

"If I could feel my ass, I'd let you know. I'm not going to bother with calling you a pervert since you had to look, but that's the last free one you get." He only chuckled at her before reaching over to rouse the little sleeping Chinese-Anglo girl who he'd been training as his nurse. "Emily, go get her an OJ."

Eve made sure to wait until the pre-teen was out of the room before she hazarded her next question. "Trixie?"

There was a long pause from Chess before followed by a resigning sigh. "Dead. She was executed... it wasn't fast or painless, either. But she attempted murder. Even we have to have some rules and you didn't deserve what she tried to do to you." He paused again. "I'd recommend not looking outside for a while. They've made an example out of her. Her head's on a pike."

She considered it for a moment before finally managing to sit up, the drugs making her limbs feel like they were being weighed down by sand. "They didn't do to her what she said...?" She trailed off.

"The bottle? Oh yeah. That, and more." Chess cut himself short as Emily returned with an orange julius. "Thanks, Emily. You can go now if you want."

The little girl ducked out once more as the two sat in silence for a while longer.

The next day Chess formally released Eve and a party was thrown; any excuse for a party was a good one. It seemed even a little screwed up to Eve, who figured that they hadn't held a funeral of any sort for Trixie either. She was right in that. The only person who didn't celebrate was Brad. Eve had a hard time at first enjoying herself since everyone kept discouraging her from looking outside. She wanted to see what they'd done to Trixie. It was part morbid fascination, part closure.

Several of the boys plied her with liquor and she let them, but made it obvious that she wasn't looking to have any celebratory sex with them just yet. They were better natured about it than they could have been and finally left her to her own devices. The night moved past in a blur until she finally found her way upstairs to her favorite clothing shop where sometimes the owner let her sleep. She found Morgana behind the counter with Grey, where the two of them were browsing the old inventory notes over a bottle half-empty bottle of whiskey.

Eve hadn't had a problem finding things to trade since she'd came to them. Things like doing the laundry was a volunteer service, but people were good about giving her bottle caps, candy, and sometimes spare change. She started to look around in the small basket of odds and ends jewelry that Morgana kept on the counter. The willowy black haired girl nodded to her in lieu of smiling, as did Grey. They had never been happy-looking kids, but most of them weren't with things what they were.

"How much for this?" Eve asked, holding up a bracelet of black twine that held shining blue beads between the rope.

"Nothing. Just take it. Get a new outfit while you're here too. You've made me happier than you could ever know." Coming from Morgana, it was almost laughable. She never sounded happy or looked it. But tonight she carried a scary edge of giddiness to her voice as she spoke.

"Happy because they killed Trixie? That was their doing, not mine. It was her own stupidity that got her killed anyway." And it was something that Eve felt increasingly less good about on the inside though unwilling to admit it. Yet she wasn't going to turn down the offer of free merchandise.

"Please. You know she had it coming. What a hosebeast." Morgana snickered to herself as Eve fastened the bracelet around her wrist and then headed off toward the clothing. She wasn't above picking out something expensive, but not the most expensive thing she could find. Eventually she settled on a black tank top with golden metallic straps and a black skirt that left little in the way of modesty but looked good to run in when her next scavenging trip came. There was little in the way of modest anymore and so Eve wasn't shy about her dropping her clothes in a corner of the store.

"Thanks, Morg."

"Think nothing of it. Hey, I've gotta go check something in the back." Eve simply nodded as she changed into her new outfit, turning to admire herself in one of the full-length mirrors. The party down below raged on. It sounded like Bub was doing some of his famous fire breathing that for some inexplicable reason hadn't yet killed him or landed him at least in Chess's care. The effects of the alcohol were starting to wear off. Eve had never been able to sustain a significant drunk for a prolonged period of time. It made her wonder what kind of painkillers Chess had given her. She'd opted not to take them anymore after he'd released her, but she must not have been reacting to them in an adverse manner -- she was still standing after all.

Eve finally turned to start to head up to the counter and filch something from the bottle if she could, but ran nearly directly into Grey. She'd assumed that he'd followed Morgana into the back. He was just standing there, staring at her, not saying anything. That wasn't unusual for him. Eve hadn't heard him speak more than a few words the whole time she'd been at the mall.

"Hey... Grey. It's nice to see you..." Eve was at a loss for words herself now. His bright grey eyes were boring a hole in her and suddenly she felt as though she should have been carrying a knife with her perhaps. She was more skittish than she would have liked to have admitted after Trixie had nearly slit her throat and crammed a bottle into her nether regions.

Grey fit in just right with the dark decor of the store. He always wore a black leather jacket that was now tattered, as were his tight black jeans. He carried an air of perpetual intensity about him that had made him untouchable. The guys were scared of him and the girls wanted to fuck him, but to the best of Eve's knowledge, none of them ever had. It shocked Eve when Grey reached out to touch a tendril of her purple hair and wrap it around his finger, advancing on her a little more closely.

"What about Morgana?" She asked him. The two were always together. It was feasible that they were an item and the last thing she needed was some other rabid bitch trying to jam glass into her.

"What about her? She's my cousin. And how do you know I'm not just admiring your hair?" Grey asked, his tone laced with the subtle humor of a dyed in the wool smart ass.

"I didn't know that. I thought..." Eve trailed off, suddenly feeling drunker than she had all evening. "If you were just admiring my hair, I doubt you'd have a boner." Eve reached out to daringly cup his erection through his jeans. He let out a gasp and then laughed. His olive skin was suddenly much nicer than Eve had remembered and his cheekbones much more appealing. She was still drunk. She had to be. It was her only logical explanation. She hadn't fucked anyone since she got here, hadn't even turned her head in any man's direction. There was too much else going on to be concerning herself with getting her rocks off. But right now, it felt like a damned good option since  she'd been so close to having her throat slit.

"I've liked you a long time, Eve. When I saw what Trixie did to you... I was pissed off. I thought you were gonna die and I wouldn't have the chance to tell you how I felt. If you don't want me, it's okay. I just needed to tell you..." He was doing his best not to press himself into her hand or make her anymore uncomfortable than she probably already was. He hadn't come onto many girls before.

"Come on, Grey. Who put you up to this? Someone pay you to give me the night of my life or something?" Eve asked, as if it were scarcely believable that anyone should want her. "We've barely even ever spoken. This is the most I've ever gotten out of you." She still hadn't move her hand though and instead of pulling away when she should have, found herself stroking him.

"I know..." He simply said, pinning her against the mirror she'd been looking in before he started to kiss her, his intense gaze disappearing as he closed his lids over his eyes. She didn't pull away, finding instead that one of her arms was wrapped around his neck and she was being lifted up, his arms supporting her. He pushed her skirt up around her waist as she began to struggle against him, pushing him away with enough force that he stopped.

"Not here, Grey."

He didn't bother to her let her down, instead carrying her out of the store and to the sporting goods store where he usually slept. No one else was there. He tugged her down to his mattress and stripped her new clothes off carefully, putting them aside before covering her body with kisses and running his fingers over every inch of her in an exploratory manner. Eve had a hard time relaxing at first, watching the entrance in case anyone could see them. Finally she let him have her undivided attention, seeming to sink into the old mattress with his every touch and kiss.

Their lovemaking started out gentle but soon devolved into something raw and primal. He was every bit the hot blooded young man he was supposed to, seeming not to tire until finally he collapsed beside her and buried his face in her hair. They were silent together and held one another. Evil didn't know whether or not anyone had seen them until the next morning.

Everyone knew by then. It wasn't a secret, not that they made it one; they held hands walking down the strip and until Eve saw Trixie's head on the pike, she remembered what it felt like to be a teenager again.

But nothing lasts forever.