World of Ashes (33 page)

             
Ethan had no idea who fired first, Reynolds or someone in the crowd who hopped over the gazebo’s wooden railing, all he knew was he felt the snap in the air and zing of a round flying close by him. He blinked, and Bass had a gun, the barrel of the compact semi auto as large as the bore of a Battleship between his eyes. Ethan blinked again and watched a .45 caliber casing flip end over end from his weapon in slow motion. Another round, and then another, and then another thundered from his gun. He didn’t remember anything after that until Lee was in front of him, smacking him back to reality while Ethan clutched his empty gun.

             
“Are you okay?”
Lee’s voice was distant and strange, but that was a side effect of multiple gunshots without earplugs. Ethan nodded as Lee picked him up with the help of another Cavalryman in thick black riot gear and hurried him to an ambulance. An arriving Paramedic ripped Ethan’s second chance vest off. He’d been shot three times at almost perfect center mass, a surprise even to him.

             
“Allen…” Ethan tried to stand, but the pain crippled him suddenly.

             
“I’m right here, bro.” Allen appeared from around a corner, his face covered in dirt and blood. “Fuckers shot you man.” That was it, and Ethan was out cold. He didn’t remember anything until he came to again in the hospital, IV’s and other equipment hooked up to him with massive black bruises on his stomach and left pec just above the heart. The room was dimly lit, the windows black and the pain meds groovy. It was night, no visitors in the hospital. Calm and quiet, almost conducive to sleeping, assuming Ethan ever really could sleep without being shot first.

             
He saw Mary sitting in a corner when his eyes adjusted more. She was reading a copy of
Defy Thy Ghosts
that he’d left on the kitchen table earlier. “How long?” He asked, finding it a struggle just to talk. He was extremely thirsty.

             
Rushing to his side Mary hugged him, her perfume arousing and heightened by the meds. The aroma alone made him feel like being shot was nothing at all. “Oh, my God! Nurse!” Mary shouted happily. Before the nurse came back she grabbed Ethan’s face like a parent scolding a child. “You are not allowed to do that again.”

             
“No promises.” He smiled back, smacking his lips and looking side to side for water. Antibiotics and pain killers didn’t taste very good, even through an IV. Paula was actually the first one in, followed by the nurse on duty and Keith. The nurse checked vitals and IV bags while Keith smirked and unceremoniously sat on the bed, leaning against Ethan’s leg.

             
“You were out for almost twenty four hours, man. One of those Old T fuckers hit you in the back of the head with a walking stick, if you can believe that.” Keith made Ethan follow a flashlight with his eyes, “The slugs you took were standard 9mm ball, each stopped by your vest. Other than those, you have some severe bruising on most of your body, and a mild concussion. So, enjoy the meds, mmkay pumpkin?” Keith patted Ethan’s head like he was patronizing a child. Ethan was too stoned to glair at Keith.

             
“How are they?” Ethan tried to sit up. His body hurt something awful despite the medication. “Are Reynolds and-”

             
“They’re all fine.” Keith smiled. He was growing a goatee, seeing as Lee had set lax grooming standards on facial hair. It was for morale, and Lee liked his stubble too, thought it made him look more
debonair
. Keith’s facial hair was scraggly and distorted in Ethan’s vision. He felt sorry for Paula, knowing Keith liked to wrestle her down and blow on her belly to tickle her. The hair must have made that pure torture. “Miss Tammy has a broken collar bone, a broken humerus and a concussion just a little worse than yours. Reynolds too. Sabrina’s fine, but she’s not letting anyone but Paula get close to her girl. Can’t say as I blame her. It would be hard to know who to trust these days.”

             
“Things are a little sketchy for me too.” Ethan admitted, sipping some water. “I’m just glad I have people I can trust surrounding me.”

             
“You need to learn how to stop playing hero.” Mary sat and rested her head on the pillow next to Ethan. “You’re gonna have to be more careful from now on. I can’t do this on my own.” She rubbed her belly, which still wasn’t showing much.

             
“Hopefully you won’t be down for long. We have about sixty Old T’s in the brig right now.” Keith stood. “And another six slated for burial tomorrow morning.”

             
“Six?” Ethan sat up the rest of the way with great effort. “Heads are gonna roll for this. They weren’t zombies… They weren’t-”

             
“A gang?” Keith didn’t agree. “Damn right, they’re a cult. They had no right to attack Sabrina and Tammy, and you know that. No matter what, Kenly and a large majority of the citizens want them run out of town. You’re probably gonna have to drive them out about as far as Rolla with orders to shoot on sight if they come back. We’re gonna leave them out there unarmed too. They’re too great of a threat to leave guns with. They’d undoubtedly use them against us.”

             
Ethan sighed, “Whatever. Just, get me out of here so I can go home.”

             
“Well, if you can stand, you can leave.” Keith offered.

             
Ethan tried, but it didn’t work. He settled for a wheel chair just long enough to make it to the room Tammy was resting in. Sabrina’s eyes lit up when he rolled in. She got off the bed where she’d been reading a book to Tammy, who couldn’t look down because of a neck brace, and almost tackled Ethan off his chair.

             
“It’s good to see you two are okay.” He laughed, hoping the wheelchair didn’t tip backwards. He didn’t want a second concussion.

             
“Fuck yeah we are.” Tammy said, pulling the part of the brace that constricted her jaw down a little. “Those motherfuckers were gonna kill us, Ethan. You and your friends saved us.”

             
“I wonder if Bass’s kids think the same thing.” Ethan rested his head in his hands.

             
“Those kids are a lost cause.” Sabrina sat back in her chair, sorry she had to admit this in public. “My little sister was the same way, an evangelical zealot. She didn’t want to hear there was another way of life, she just wanted everyone to be just like her so she didn’t have to think too hard and consider abstract thought. Some people just can’t accept that love is unconditional.”

             
“Are you two armed? Those Old T’s have supporters almost everywhere.”

             
“Yeah.” Sabrina motioned behind her seat. Ethan could make out the shadow of her M9 under a jacket. “Hospital or no, I don’t think we’ll ever be unarmed again.”

             
After another hug Ethan wheeled back to his room where Mary had fallen asleep reading the book she’d brought, which was understandable. Ethan didn’t figure Mary to be the type to like science fiction. The book was probably terribly boring to her. Setting the breaks on the chair, Ethan hauled himself into the bed. At first he tried to sleep, but found he couldn’t. And why would he be able to?, he’d been asleep for more than twenty four hours. Instead he found himself continuously drawn to the woman who was going to have his child. Watching her sleep was better than if the room’s TV had still worked. She was so peaceful, so beautiful. Absolutely serene when she slept.

             
Ethan had always wanted children. He and Nicole had planned everything from the names to where they would attend college and how to save money for the future. Then Iraq happened, Ethan was lured out of the National Guard to the Regular Army by a massive sign-on bonus for Soldiers dumb enough to get caught up in the Bush Reich’s “Surge” at the end of the fifth year of Halliburton’s plundering of the national treasury. After that Ethan went from potentially a better parent than even his had been to the kind of person kids grow up later hating like so many alcoholics produced by Vietnam. He carried so much weight, kept secret things he didn’t know should be told, harbored hate for men who’d probably been eaten alive long ago. Part of Ethan hoped that before St. Peter pulled the lever and dropped him into Hell, he’d at least get to say his peace and protest the guilty being let into the Kingdom of God.

             
Of course, guilt was an inevitable feeling. Guilt over Nicole mostly, but guilt that not only had he taken away Mary’s life with the Texas Marines, probably the best thing anyone had going for them these days, but now he was helping her to bring an innocent child into the shitty world where no one could expect any more than a short, brutal existence and a hopefully permanent death. As much as Ethan enjoyed his personal freedom, not having to deal with the day to day of a fast paced, uncaring society, he also wished his child could grow up with the plenty he’d taken for granted. Brand new, name brand toys, an endless supply of snacks and model airplanes and entire television channels dedicated to children’s entertainment. Getting up early on Saturday morning to watch cartoons in the days before the airwaves were saturated by Japanese trash-anime shows the Japanese thought were too stupid to be marketable in their own country. After Pokémon made it’s hideous debut getting up early was pointless to say the least. Mary and her child deserved a fraction of the world they knew. He had to defend that hope, and her.

             
A smile crept across Ethan’s face as he thought about his favorite cartoons.
Ren & Stimpy
, a demented creation unfit for children’s television even under the best of circumstances had captured Ethan’s heart from an early age. He’d have to find and horde a DVD player and as many copies of his favorite shows as he could so he wouldn’t have to imagine his child growing up not idolizing
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
, or
Batman & Superman,
and eventually the good stuff like
American Dad, Family Guy
and
Ugly Americans
. For a moment he thought about collecting all the seasons of
King of the Hill
too, but that show had been Nicole’s thing. Personally, Ethan didn’t find the cartoon funny enough to take up a four panel slot in the Sunday Post comic section. It was more an eery reflection of normal Midwestern life than anything outright humorous. Then again, maybe it was the funniest cartoon ever made and Ethan just didn’t have a sense of humor. Either way, the joke was still lost on him.

             
“What are you smiling about?” Mary interrupted Ethan’s trip through memory lane. She opened her eyes all the way.

             
“Just thinking.”

             
“About what?”

             
“Warping our child’s fragile little mind with
Ren & Stimpy
.”

             
Mary’s brow furrowed. “No.”

             
“I’ve heard that before.” There was a moment of silence before Mary seemed to have more to say. Whatever it was, it wasn’t easy for her to ask.

             
“Have you ever killed anyone before?” Mary asked. Marines weren’t known for beating around the bush, or for their compassion to anyone. It was an awkward question out of the blue for sure.

             
“Why? Have you?”

             
Mary nodded silently. “Fifteen, five that were at those storage units. After the first two, a survivor and his girlfriend that thought a lose Marine was a tempting target, what with all of the five MRE crackers and half a canteen I had on me at the time. They charged me with swords. Swords, Ethan. I mean, what the fuck? I shot them both dead before I even thought about giving them a warning.”

             
“They probably wouldn’t have stopped anyhow, and you might be dead.”

             
“That’s how Master Gunny Judge saw it. I might have felt nothing if I didn’t pick their swords up afterwords. They were just those cheap display swords you can get anywhere at a mall or online. One of my rounds shattered the girl’s blade and went right through her. That was when I realized I’d just killed two starving children who probably had no idea the tools that had probably kept them alive this long were just toys. Play things in a fight with a tool of death.”

             
“I always thought I’d kill someone in Iraq.” Ethan rolled to face the sealing. “Never thought I’d shoot another American who wasn’t breaking into my house.” Mary was still silent. She let him go on. “I don’t know for sure if I took anyone’s life before Vincent Bass. I’d rather suspect I didn’t. Zombies yes, some armadillos and a couple opossums for sure, but I don’t think any living people.”

             
“What about the Bloods thing?” Mary asked. She didn’t know the truth for sure, she wasn’t there, and was trying to avoid acting like scuttlebutt was fact.

             
“I guess word gets around.”

             
“It’s one of the first things someone told me when I got dropped off here. Some cook at the truck stop. Said you and Keith and Allen took down some gangbangers.”