Worth Saving (3 page)

Chapter Four

I ran to the store doorway, Claire had waited for me. She’d seen everything, her face remained blank as she led the three of us into the dark building.

“There’s a back way out across the alley to another building.” She kept glancing at me, searching for something, probably trying to figure out if I was crazy or not. I caught her look and she quickly turned her head, pretending like she wasn’t curious.

The three of us ducked from building to building trying to stay ahead of the guys with the guns. A couple of time times we heard the men calling to each other with angry voices. We would duck into a building and Claire would freeze perfectly still, Ellen would do the same, they seemed to be soaking up the environment. Once she felt secure, she would lead us through the building, around display, under counters, and over piles of trash to the other side and an obscure exit door. Gently peering out, she would scan the street for any sign of trouble before running across the street into another building.

I thought we were going to make it, I really did, but as we crossed another street, one of the gunmen came running around a corner and almost tripped over us. I don’t know who was more shocked, him or us. It was the younger of the men, there was enough moon lights to identify him as the one I’d shot in the shoulder. I saw his oily black hair and beady eyes and froze for a second as the scene from the park flashed before my eyes. I have to give Claire credit, she didn’t hesitate. Picking up a brick off the sidewalk she reared back and threw her best pitch. She most definitely didn’t throw like a girl. The brick hit him square in the shoulder, the same one I’d put an arrow into a few minutes before. The brick turned him away from us for a few critical seconds. It was all the time we needed to scoot into the building.

About twenty feet in I slammed on the brakes and slide behind a cashiers checkout stand. I brought my bow up and faced the door, my heart racing, I had trouble steadying my aim. My leg was on fire and every pulse beat sent shooting daggers all the way to the base of my neck.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Claire and Ellen continue on but they stopped at the back door, their bodies gulping in air, both of them looked like terrified rabbits not knowing which way to go. Claire turned back to me, her eyebrows knotted in confusion. “What are you doing? She hissed.

“You guys go on, I’ll hold him off,” I said, trying to sound heroic. My voice betrayed me and cracked a little, making me sounded like I’d swallowed a helium balloon.

Claire stared at me like I had two heads or something, then back to the exit door, and finally back to me. Her shoulders slumped and she walked back shaking her head. “Come on,” she said, gently guiding me to the back door like a lost cat who needed to be put outside.

I was confused, I think she was too. We spent the next hour crawling through buildings, up, down, and over. I swear I think we were traipsing through the sewer at one point. 

We used a loading dock to sneak into a hotel by the back door and made our way through pitch black hallways to the a front lobby and an alcove flooded with silver moon light. I had to rest, my leg wobbled like jelly and I doubted it could hold my weight much longer. “Hold up guys,” I gasped as I plopped into a lobby couch.

Claire turned on me as if I’d poked her with a stick. She was ready to chew me out when she saw me trying to tighten a bloody bandage around my leg. Her face registered shock and maybe a little regret for the previous unkind thoughts, I wasn’t too sure, because she  seemed the type to never regret anything, I mean I had known her for ninety minutes by now.

She knelt beside me and slowly pulled the bandage back to examine the wound. “Can you go a little farther, about a block?” She asked, surprising me with the gentleness of her voice.

I wanted to find a cave and crawl in and pull the ground over me to block out the world. It’d been that kind of day, I nodded my head and stood up. Ignoring the daggers I limped to the front door. Claire pointed up the street; my library was standing there like a welcoming castle, offering peace and sleep.

She led us to a side entrance of the library and waited for me to take over. I checked the street to make sure no one was watching and took them inside and up the dark stairwell to my room where I used my dad’s Zippo lighter to start a candle and a couple of lanterns. 

Claire shrieked when she saw the light. I held my finger to my lips and whispered, “There aren’t any windows in here.” I hung up my bow, praying I wouldn’t need it again. And fell into bed.

Looking around, Claire inspected the room. I’d turned the office into a cozy little living space. A bed made up with sheets and a comforter in the corner, a small table and two chairs in the center of the room, and book cases along the wall filled with canned food and boxes of instant potatoes and bags of rice, the kind of things that don’t spoil. The shelves were also filled with clothes, and other essential stuff.

“A little Spartan, but all the comforts of home,” Claire said, then gasped and covered her mouth when she realized she’d spoken her thought out loud.

I smiled as I got off the bed and limped to a small metal box on one of the shelves. Carrying the box back to the table and chairs, I sat awkwardly, keeping my left leg extended. I slowly un-wrapped the bloody red bandage and used my hunting knife to cut the buckskin trousers half way down my thigh, exposing the bloody bullet wound.

“Here, let me do that,” Claire said, kneeling to look at the wound. Her hands shook as she gently examined the leg, poking and prodding with long graceful fingers that seemed to know the exact spot to cause the most pain.

Grabbing some Hydrogen Peroxide from the box, she said, “This is going to hurt.”

“Unlike what you’ve done already,” I said to sarcastically and instantly regretted my flippant attitude, learning an important lesson - do not upset a woman holding peroxide over your wounded leg. They get too much enjoyment out of the screams.

She looked at me and I knew she could see my face grimacing in pain with beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Taking a deep breath she poured some more into the wound and watched it bubble and fizz as it reacted with all the dirt and blood. I gasped and grabbed the sides of the chair to stop myself from levitating to the ceiling. After several moments of me squirming in my chair, I slowly relaxed until Claire started to poke around again.

“It’s only a flesh wound,” She said, obviously relieved.

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like hell,” I said through tightened lips.

“Well do you want me to fix it or not?” Claire answered hotly, pulling her hands away and looking to me for permission to continue.

“I’m sorry. Please fix it,” I said with a grimace.

Claire reached for her knife but finding the sheath empty she shook her head and took my large hunting knife from its scabbard and cut the rest of my buckskin leggings away from the leg.

“Do you have any idea how long it took me to make these?” I asked.

“Do you know how much I don’t care?” She answered continuing to examine the gash in my leg. “Why anyone would make leather pants when they can walk into any store and pick up jeans. It’s got to be one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of.”

“Yeah, almost as dumb as letting men capture you.” I said.

Gritting her teeth, Claire cleaned the wound using tape to hold the two pieces of flesh together, wrapping it all in a new bandage.  Pulling it tighter than she needed too. I couldn’t stop myself from jumping in my chair a little when she cinched down on it to tie a knot. “There, that should do.” She said with satisfaction and stood to look at me square in the eye. “And you have no idea what you’re talking about, so just shut up.”

Her face was beet red and her hands clenched so tightly that her nails were biting into her palms. “Come on Ellen, let’s go” Claire said, heading for the door.

“Wait, you can’t leave.” I yelled.

“Why not, are we your prisoners now,” she said, glancing at the bow on the wall.

“Well first off, while this room doesn’t have any windows, the hall way does, and the light would be a beacon to anyone within a few miles of this building. On a dark night like tonight you’d be inviting them to join us for dinner,” I said.

Using the chair to stand, I limped to the door and kept my eyes locked with hers the whole way until I covered her hand on the knob and gently removed it. Only then did my shoulders relax. “Second of all, if you don’t move around down there, you can’t leave a trail, exposing yourself or Ellen or me.”

“I hate to tell you this, the world doesn’t revolve around your little room here,” Claire said.

“STOP IT,” Ellen yelled, surprising both of us. The little girl had huge tears threatening to spill down her cheek. “Claire, you’re being unfair, and you know it, if it wasn’t for Kris we would still be tied to those wagons, he saved us and all you do is snarl and spit,” she said with a hiccup. Then it was my turn. “You’re wrong too, it wasn’t Claire’s fault the men got us, it was mine, I wasn’t supposed to go out, I only went to the front stoop, but the men saw me and grabbed me. Claire allowed herself to get caught to try and save me. Both of you stop fighting PLEASE,” Ellen said as she ran to the corner and buried her face in her hands. 

Claire looked shocked; obviously she’d probably never seen Ellen act this way. The shocked look turned to sheepish indignation as she stared at the floor, refusing to meet either Ellen or my eyes.  She hung her head and slumped her shoulders, totally dejected, I can imagine how bad a day she’d had, what with the two of them being kidnapped, tied up and left to lay on the ground all day, dreading their future, only to be snatched away by some stranger and watch him kill a man. Then spend the next several hours scampering about dark, dusty buildings trying to avoid repeating the whole process. And here I was giving her a hard time. What a jerk I could be.

She glanced at me with tears brimming in her eyes, quickly turning her back when she saw me get lost in their glimmer. I didn’t know what to do, what to think or what to say. Those simple glistening eyes melted any anger I might have had about the whole situation and made me feel like a lumbering oaf who’d hurt an innocent bunny. The reversal in feelings was shocking. Maybe I was an unobservant idiot but I don’t think I’d seen a woman cry before, not in school, not since the illnesses, even my mom had not cried in front of me in the hospital, I knew she cried, I could see the smudged makeup, she never did it in front of me though.

I dreaded what was to come next. Claire surprised me, no way was she going to cry, she squared her shoulders and turned back to face Ellen and I, her eyes clear and daring as ever.  She glared at me and smiled at Ellen, “So what now,” she asked.

“I think we should hole up here for a while, I have plenty of food and water. I really believe that if we don’t leave any signs, that they can’t find us. They can’t search every building in the city, and they have no reason to think we’re living above a library,” I said, trying to not sound like I was pleading and very aware that I was breaking every rule my father had taught me.

“Stay here? With you? In this room?” Claire asked, her eyes as wide as dinner plates and no longer in danger of crying, they were more likely to shot fire into my soul at the mere suggestion.

“I think it’s the best move. You and Ellen can have the bed and I’ll build a pallet on the other side of the room. I don’t think it’ll be long before they give up and you guys can take off.”

“But what about …”

“Listen we will work out the details later, right now I’ve got to sit down,” I said as I limped back to my chair, grabbing some water bottles and crackers on the way.

The two girls eventually sat next to each other on the bed and watched me eat. I almost hit my head with my palm as I realized, “You guys thirsty, hungry, anything,” I said, holding out a bottle of water. Ellen jumped down off the bed with the biggest smile and thanked me before taking two bottles and a sleeve of crackers back to the bed. Claire helped her onto the bed and the two of them sat there with their heads together whispering to each other. A smile exploded onto Clair’s face, making me all mushy inside.

We sat there for several hours, telling each other our stories. It took a while to get them to open up and I know dragging information out of me is like pulling a plow through a new field. So it was slow going at first, eventually all the pertinent information got out.

Ellen was five years old - She looked 6 and acted 7 - She’d been born after the Illness; her mother was pregnant but lived thru the sick days only to die giving birth to Ellen.  Claire physically shook as she remembered that day. Claire’s family and Ellen’s were next door neighbors, In fact, Ellen’s mom used to say that Claire would be her baby’s sitter in a few years.  When Claire’s parents died, she’d moved in with Mrs. Grace and staid with her for two months, then the baby came and… Claire stopped talking and her eyes glazed over as she went back to that night, remember every detail. Finally she shook herself out of it and continued the story.

I watched Ellen as Claire told the story, She didn’t seemed to be upset at the mentioned of her mother’s death and I realized that Ellen had never know her mother, all she’d known was Claire.

“Anyway,” Claire continued, “About a year ago we moved out of the suburbs because we were running out of food, I kept having to go out further and further to finds stuff and I didn’t like leaving Ellen alone.” Claire shrugged her shoulders. I could imagine how hard it had been. A thirteen year old girl raising a baby in the middle of the end of the world. How was that possible? To this day I can’t believe the amount of guts, strength, and pure greatness it must have taken. What’s more, I bet Claire didn’t think of it that way, she saw something that need to be done, and did it, pure and simple.