The Release

“Put down your gun!” Darla called. “I’m a better shot. I can already tell just by looking at you.”

Lucy staggered forward and pulled out of the person’s grasp. Then she turned to see Grant’s sallow face as he stared down Darla. Grant stood there, holding Lucy’s revolver in his hand and his whole arm was shaking.

“Let our friend go,” he commanded, his voice breaking. The threat of using a weapon seemed to be making Grant physically ill. Sweat beads formed on his forehead. Lucy wanted to go over and hug him. Her heart was overjoyed at his act of bravery on her behalf, but she saw the glimmer of agitation on Darla’s face and realized that Grant might be in real danger.

Lucy ran and stood between them with her arms outstretched. She spotted Salem hovering next to another one of the buses and she motioned for Lucy to run to her.

“Stop!” Lucy yelled. “Just stop! Both of you. Grant…it’s okay…this is Darla. Ethan sent her. Darla, these are my friends. Don’t shoot them.”

“You know these kids?” Darla asked and she lifted her hands up in a show of faith and holstered her gun. “You have no idea how close I came to just shooting you. Maybe a warning next time.”

Lucy dropped her hands and placed them on her knees, taking a moment. “How does a wealth manager know so much about guns?” she asked.

“Why shouldn’t a wealth manager know so much about guns?” Darla replied.

“Spencer?” Grant asked, looking relieved to lower his gun too. And the moment the scene settled and everything seemed safe, Salem emerged and rushed over to Lucy, wrapping her arms around Lucy’s shoulders and squeezing her tightly.

“He let me go,” Lucy said, her breath constricted from Salem’s monster embrace.

“We’ve been so worried,” Salem said. “We spent all night trying to get back into the building.”

“Fort Knox that place,” Grant said.

Lucy wanted to believe it was true. She searched their faces and saw their exhaustion and worry and knew that they were being honest. Her rambling daydreams of Grant and Salem leaving her with Spencer so they could kiss unencumbered were unfounded. She let out a relieved sigh.

Darla cleared her throat. A noisy, exaggerated sound of frustration. She motioned for them to wrap up their hellos and hugs and then turned back to her original task at-hand, clearing the bus barn, taking glimpses of the undercarriage, peering into the windowed exit doors. The friends walked together after her and Salem grabbed Lucy’s hand as they walked.

“I’m sorry we left you—”

With a small squeeze, Lucy smiled. “You didn’t have a choice. He would’ve shot you. I’m certain of it.”

Salem noticed the raw cut in Lucy’s right wrist and she brought it up to inspect it. “What did he do to you?”

They heard Darla’s feet speeding toward them across the gravel and when Lucy looked up, she saw the dark haired woman bearing down on them, her face contorted with rage and fear. “Shut up,” she seethed. “Seriously. The chummy reunion dialogue can wait until we’re inside somewhere. Safe.”

Grant stopped walking and tilted his head at Darla, blinking. “Why are you paranoid?”

“Where’ve you been the last week?” Darla asked. “That’s right. Holed up in the school. With water, right? Food? Your basic needs were met that entire time. So whatever perceived hardship you think you might have experienced? No. You don’t know what’s going on out here.”

Salem bristled at Darla’s tone and let go of Lucy’s hand. She took a small step forward and raised her shoulders. “We’ve been outside for twenty-four hours…and if you haven’t noticed…there isn’t ANYONE LEFT.” Salem yelled, her voice echoing down the street and carrying into the abandoned houses and buildings that surrounded them.

No one moved for a long second and then Darla leaned in closer to Salem’s face, she lowered her voice. “This corridor is used for people like me…making a beeline to that school to trade with your former principal. You’re right. There’s hardly anyone left. But those that decided to survive by shooting you, taking your little bag…with your last little bit of water…they’ll be around here. You want to yell? Yell. But when they come, I’m not saving you from them. Not even if you beg me.”

“Fine,” Grant replied, not harshly. He looked at Darla and raised his hands in surrender. “So, you’re the boss.”

“I’m the boss?”

“You’ll get us somewhere safe?”

Darla shook her head. “No. I have one task…to get Lucy back to her own house…back to Ethan. You two,” she pointed to both Salem and then Grant, “have nothing to do with this. But if you’re tagging along? Shut up.”

The walk was serpentine. It might have taken an hour to walk straight from the high school to Lucy’s house, but Darla kept them off the main streets. Without a word, they cut through yards and parks and crouched along abandoned cars in the strip mall. The shop windows were nonexistent, reduced to piles of broken glass and the furniture from the stores had been tossed outward into the parking lot. There were bodies everywhere: Against the steering wheels of cars, across the sidewalks, inside the stores. And everything was quiet. Their footsteps echoed down the covered corridor as they passed by a shoe store, a fabric store, and a clothing boutique. Darla nodded for them to head into a darkened drug store.

“No power,” Darla warned. “From this grid and upward. Most of Oregon is out of power actually. Just a few zones left. I can’t tell you why they’re hanging on.”

“Is there power at my house?” Lucy asked and Darla shook her head no.

“Power has been out there for a few days now.”

The drug store was stripped clean. Shelves emptied of all essential and nonessential items. Even the rack of greeting cards was empty.

“Why would someone steal a congratulations on your bar mitzvah card?” Grant asked.

“To burn,” was Darla’s reply and Lucy’s mind wandered to the book in her backpack. Then she cringed. She had left the backpack in Spencer’s office. It seemed that leaving things at school was becoming a theme. This time, however, she would let it stay there.

They turned down an aisle and stepped over a man’s decimated body. Lucy noticed that his hand was curled in a perfect circle around an imaginary object and she couldn’t help but wonder if someone had actually pried a medicine bottle out of his cold dead hands. It was an expression she never imagined having a literal use and yet there was the evidence that nothing was sacred in the wreckage.

Darla, with the ease and speed of someone familiar with the landscape, pushed her way through two thick double-doors leading into a cavernous and nearly pitch black storage room. The back of the store was windowless and so they might have been blinded by the darkness, but the loading dock had been left open and the entire area was washed in natural light. They made their way down the cement stairs and found themselves on the back part of the strip mall.

Beyond the mall was an open field. A fence warned trespassers that the land was a nature preserve and violators would be prosecuted, but Darla held a flap of cut chain-link back and let the kids climb through one by one before following herself, shutting the small fence back into place with a loud clink. The field was muddy and wet and Lucy’s canvas shoes kept getting stuck. She slurped her way forward, yanking one foot and then the other. When they reached the other end of the field, they were at a wooden fence leading to a soggy backyard.

Darla marched them over the wet grass and through a gently rocking swing set. Lucy let her hand linger on the chain of the swing and then let her fingers slide down. Grant and Salem were trudging along behind; Salem held her hands around her stomach and her eyes watered, Grant kept a hand poised to catch her if she fell. They were out of breath and weak, but they did not complain.