James Knapp - The Silent Army

After the shot went off, when Nico ran out of the restaurant and left me with the others, I started feeling like I couldn’t breathe. It was too much. I had to get out of there. Ai offered to have Penny drive me home, but I didn’t want that. I looked around for Nico, but he hadn’t come back inside the restaurant. I said I had to use the bathroom, and ducked out.

I was still staring at the bottles through the window when a car turned onto the street in front of me, and when its headlights flashed on the brick wall, I saw two shadows there. They were in the shape of people, but there was no one there. The shadows were burned onto the bricks.

“Soon,” a voice whispered.

I turned, and a woman was standing next to me. Her long coat and her clothes were burned black, and when the rain landed on her body, it hissed, throwing up smoke and ash. Her face was covered in soot, and her hair was scorched. When the wind blew, a cherry red glow swelled under the ash of her clothes. Embers scattered and flew up into the air around her.

I looked back toward the burned shadows, but the building was gone, along with everything around it. A big expanse of wet soot and sand sprawled out in front of me, sheets of rain coming down to form gray rivers and pools. Big shadows stood at angles in the distance, and I thought they were the remains of buildings.

I’d seen this before. I’d started seeing it back when I first met Nico. This city, the whole city, was gone.

“How soon?” I asked the burned woman. She turned to me, ash flaking away from her face.

“It had to be done,” she said.

Lightning flashed behind the canopy of gray clouds overhead, and a few seconds later, thunder rolled across the empty field.

“How soon?” I asked again.

“Soon.”

The wind blew, and more ash streamed off of her body until she just disappeared. When I looked back to the empty field, it was gone. The buildings and the neon were back. The lit store window and the rows of bottles behind it were back just like before.

I turned away from the window and the bottles, and headed down the street. At the corner, I turned and began making my way toward the sign for Pleasantview. Up ahead, flashing blues from a police car were lighting up the outside of the building.

Perfect.

As I got closer to my apartment building, I saw there were actually a couple squad cars out there, and an ambulance too.

Passing by the police cars and heading up the main steps, I wondered if I shouldn’t have waited for Nico, but I had to get out of there. So far he hadn’t even called to find out where I’d gone.

Jerk.

I went inside. The elevator was still out, so I had to walk up seven flights of stairs. When I got up to the landing between the fifth and sixth floors, I saw blood on the floor.

“Gross.”

Drops of it were all over the place. In the corner of the stairwell, it was smeared around and I could see part of a bloody handprint. Did someone get stabbed or something?

There were drops on the stairs leading up, and when I looked up the stairwell, I saw the door to the sixth floor was propped open.

What the hell?

I passed by on my way up to my floor when I heard a bunch of people talking down the hall on six. Through the doorway I could see shadows from around the corner, and someone was talking on a radio.

“We’re bringing him down now,” a voice said. Footsteps were coming down the hall. Something was wrong.

“…for the EMT?” a man said over the radio.

“The elevator’s out. They’re coming down via the stairs.”

“It’s six flights,” the voice on the radio said.

“You got a better idea?”

I was still standing there listening when three men came around the corner and almost ran into me. Two of them were cops in uniform. In between them was Ted, his hands behind his back.

“Coming through, ma’am,” one cop said.

Ted had been beaten up bad—real bad. His whole face was covered in bruises, and there was a big cut over one eye. He was missing a tooth, and there was a bandage over his nose that had blood seeping through it. There was dried blood all down the front of his shirt.

When he saw me, I felt a big surge of anger from him.

“There she is, fucking bitch!” he snapped. The cops grabbed his arms.

“Keep moving, asshole!”

“You send that crazy bitch over to fuck with me?”

He got free from one of them and kicked at me. I fell back as his big foot stomped into the wall right next to me.

“This how you planned it, bi—”

He was cut off when one of the cops stuck a stun gun in his side and zapped him. He went down and flopped onto the floor.

“Piece of shit,” the cop said. Ted looked out of it, but he managed to get back up on his hands and knees, glaring at me through his sweaty hair. I’d seen him mad before, but never like that. When I looked, the colors around him were all red, like a fire, a fire that was raging. He wanted to kill me. His eyes were so crazy. I just stood there. I didn’t even try to push him.

“Get up, asshole,” the clean-cut cop said. “You can add that to your list of charges.”

Ted just stared at me from his hands and knees, panting.

“He said, get up!” the other cop yelled. “Now do it, or I swear I’ll use this thing again and ride your sorry ass down to the ground fucking floor! Move it!”

“Happy now, bitch?” Ted muttered. He started to get up, and one of them grabbed him and hauled him up the rest of the way. The big guy shoved him through the door and followed him while the other one checked on me.

“You okay, ma’am?”

I nodded. My legs felt weak.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“Domestic dispute, ma’am. Do you live on this floor?”

“No, but—”

“If you don’t live on this floor, then please move along while we—”

The room got bright as I pushed him, easing him back.

“What happened?” I asked again. This time his eyelids drooped a little and he answered.

“Best we can tell,” he said, “someone beat the shit out of the perp. When his girlfriend came home, it looks like he took it out on her.”

“Let me by,” I said. He didn’t move when I scooted around him.

Down the hall there were more people. They were all in uniform. One was a cop, but the others looked like medics. I started running toward them. They were all standing outside Karen’s apartment.

“Ma’am!” one of them said, holding up one hand. “Ma’am you can’t come down here!”

The medics were moving a stretcher through the door. The person lying on it had a face covered in bandages and blood.

“Karen?”

“Ma’am, step back please. We need to get through now!”

They were all around her. One pushed and one pulled while two stood on each side. One had a mask over her mouth and nose while the other started prep-ping a syringe. Her face was beaten to a pulp. Her body was totally limp. She looked dead. All the strength went out of my legs and I had to lean against the wall as they passed by.

“Try to keep her steady!” one of them yelled.

“Ma’am, do you know Karen Goncalves?” someone asked me. I watched them wheel her away. There was a light above her head, but it was faint.

“Ma’am, do you know her? Are you family, or do you know anyone we should contact?”

I stopped hearing him. I just stood there, frozen, and watched them wheel her away.

The Rescue Mission Clinic sat on a small urban strip, just outside Bullrich. To the left of the place was an Indian grocery and a laundry. The small parking area was empty, and the storefronts were dark. I cruised to a stop in front of the main entrance, then cut the engine and waited, listening to the rain drum on the roof. A rusted chain-link fence ran along its right side, a coil of razor wire running along the top. The wall facing the narrow gap had been spray painted. The blacktop was littered with wet trash.