Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Ian slows down as they approach the town itself. To the right is an abandoned gas station with a tipped-over Coke machine lying dead in its parking lot. Civilization felled. Dead grass juts from cracks in the asphalt. Then they pass a grocery store, also abandoned.

‘Jesus,’ Diego says. ‘It’s like a preview of the end of the world.’

Ian nods. ‘Keep a lookout for any sign of them. I don’t like driving into this at-’

Thwack.

For a moment Ian has no idea what happened. Then he sees a small hole in the middle of the windshield. He looks to Diego. Diego looks back.

‘Your ear’s bleeding,’ Diego says.

Ian touches his right ear. It stings sharply and his fingers come away red. He glances to his seat’s headrest. A hole just big enough to stick your pinky finger into.

‘Put your head down,’ he says to Diego as he drops his own. Thwack.

Pieces of the windshield start to fall around them.

Ian puts his foot on the gas, panicking and trying to get them out of the line of fire, but accidentally stalls the engine after only ten or fifteen feet. He reaches out to the driver’s side door-he thinks the gunfire is coming from the school to the northeast and wants the car between him and any bullets flying toward him-and pushes it open.

Then he pushes himself out the car door and onto the road saying, ‘This way, Diego, and keep your fucking head down.’

He hits asphalt and a terrible pain rips through his chest.

He looks down. Red spreads quickly across his shirt. The tube tore out. He forgot about it and it tore out. It lies across his seat and hangs down the outside of the car and drips pink pus-blood onto the dirty asphalt. On the end of it, wrapped around it, is the black string that was once stitched through his skin, making the edges of the wound pucker like a tulip, and a pink triangle of the skin itself. When he breathes he hears that punctured-tire wheeze. He puts his hand over his chest to stop the air from leaking out that way. The last thing he needs right now is a collapsed lung.

Thwack. Thwack.

Two more bullets hit the car.

Diego drops to the road beside him.

‘Are you shot?’

Ian shakes his head.

‘I need plastic,’ he says.

‘Plastic?’

He closes his eyes and grimaces in pain. Then he opens them again. Diego sits on his haunches, ducked behind the Mustang and looking down at him.

‘In the car,’ Ian says. ‘On the floorboard. There should be a small sheet of plastic. Can you get it?’

Diego nods and climbs back into the car.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Silence from within the car.

‘Diego?’

More silence. He’s almost convinced himself that Diego was shot when he emerges with a rectangle of plastic about six inches long and three inches wide. It has two stickers on it. The first sticker marks it as a TUNA FISH AND CHEDDAR SANDWICH and the second has the price, $4.99, and a barcode.

‘This?’ Diego asks.

Ian nods. ‘That’s the one.’

He unbuttons his shirt with his right hand while holding his left over the hole in his chest.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Listen. I’m gonna pull my hand away from my chest. I need you to slap that piece of plastic over the hole.’

‘Okay.’

Ian licks his dry lips. ‘Okay.’

Ian pulls his hand away. He inhales and hears that terrible whistle. Then pressure and it stops. Diego is leaning over him, hand holding the plastic over the wound in his chest.

‘Okay,’ Ian says. ‘I got it.’

He puts his own hand over the piece of plastic.

‘Help me sit up and get this shirt off.’

They get Ian up and then get his right arm out of his shirt; then, after putting his right hand over the wound in his chest, his left arm.

‘Now,’ Ian says. ‘Let’s tie the shirt around me. Use it to hold the plastic in place.’

Diego nods. ‘Okay,’ he says.

He shakes the dust off the shirt, then slings it around Ian’s back.

Ian simply sits with his back against the car’s left front fender and catches his breath. Tears of pain stream down his face and his heart beats irregularly in his chest. He breathes in and out. He closes his eyes and opens them. The pain is tremendous. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out the bottle of tramadol. He thumbs the cap off the bottle and looks inside. Three pills left. He pours them into his mouth and dry swallows, then throws the bottle aside.

‘Are you gonna be okay?’

He shakes his head.

‘No,’ he says. ‘But we’re here and we’re doing this, so let’s finish it.’

‘Let’s.’

‘Get the guns from the back seat.’

Maggie is pulling her hand against the cuff, grimacing, unable to get the metal ring over the meat of her thumb, when she hears the first gunshot. Beatrice jumps at the sound and drops the bag of chips in her hand.

She leaves the chips where they lie and walks to the pistol Henry gave her and picks it up from the floor where she set it. She examines it, a confused look on her face, like she doesn’t know how it got into her hand, sets it down again, and walks to the window. The evening light splashes across her face.

Another gunshot sounds and Beatrice jumps again.

‘What can you see?’

‘Nothing,’ Beatrice says. ‘Just a baseball field.’

‘That’s my daddy,’ Maggie says. ‘Those gunshots mean my daddy’s here.’

‘Henry’s your daddy, Sarah.’

‘Henry will never be my daddy.’

Two more gunshots echo through the hollow school building, the sounds bouncing off the walls and repeating and repeating and repeating, but softer each time.

‘Henry will never be my daddy,’ she says again, ‘and you’ll never be my momma.’

Beatrice looks at her with wide, sad eyes, half her face lit by what is left of the day splashing in through the windows, the other half covered in shadows and seemingly younger as the shadows hide the lines in her face.

‘Why would you say such a thing, Sarah? We’re doing all this for you. To keep our family together. Family’s the most important thing there is and we’re doing this for you.’

‘I don’t want you to. I want to go back to my real family.’

‘We’re your real family now.’

Maggie shakes her head.

‘No,’ she says. ‘My daddy’s here. My real daddy. He’s my family. Him and my momma and Jeffrey. My daddy’s a policeman and he’s going to put you and Henry in jail forever and ever. He’s going to put you in jail and take me home and I’ll never have to see you again.’

‘Don’t talk like that, Sarah.’

Tears stream down Beatrice’s round face, but her eyes are ablaze with anger as well as sadness. Her hands form fists at her sides. She almost looks capable of violence.

Maggie has never spoken to her this way, mostly out of fear that Henry would find out and put her on the punishment hook, but also because she always felt a little bit sorry for her, she has always seemed so sad, but she does not feel sorry for her now, and she is no longer afraid of Henry. No longer so afraid of him that she is willing to remain silent. She simply wants to be home with her real family. That want burns hot within her chest. She thought she would never feel that again. She thought the sun that burns within her had died, but it did not die.

It was only nighttime.

Three more gunshots echo through the air one after the other in quick succession.

‘Henry’s probably dead now,’ Maggie says. ‘You’ll be in jail alone and Henry will be dead. No one will even write you any letters and no one will visit.’

‘Don’t talk like that,’ Beatrice says, pushing Maggie. The desk tilts, holds a moment, precariously balanced on two legs, and then crashes onto its side. Maggie’s elbow slams against the floor and pain vibrates through her body and a strange sensation shoots up her arm and her pinky and ring fingers go numb.