Carol's Price

Carol dropped to the ground as the woman’s body did. Each stared at the other for just a moment, and Carol watched as life seeped away from those gray eyes. Thinking quickly, she saw a small empty barrel and rolled it into the grass away from both herself and the building she believed Emma had been in. It bought her time, but seconds only. As the barrel crashed through the underbrush, she slipped through a crack in the lattice that skirted the porch of the building, which seemed to have been a supply store at one time.

“It’s Alice, someone shot her,” shouted a voice just outside her hiding place. “Whoever did it ran off that way,” it continued. More noise as she saw the shadows of two people chase off in the direction of her improvised distraction.

With deliberate caution, Carol brushed off dirt and cobwebs, careful to make no noise to give away her location. Masking her jumbled nerves and nervous breath proved hard enough, wrapped in her concern for Emma’s safety. Now she had trapped herself, unable for the moment to escape and seek her daughter.

If only she hadn’t gone out that afternoon. Nothing had been the same since Sid had left bearing her gift to her parents. What had she hoped to achieve? Scrounging around an old control room, hunting for she knew not what. Her redemption. Had it been worth the cost of losing Emma like this?

Carol had deliberately misled Sid, letting him believe the data he took with him to deliver to her parents was of the utmost importance. No. Sentimentality had taken over. She’d transferred files of a more personal nature. Mother would understand. But what was the point? Now he was gone, Emma was gone...Who knew if she’d even brought comfort to her parents?

When daylight came, would she be able to face herself in a mirror?

Would she ever see a mirror again?

***

Crouched behind some bushes, Emma watched two men run after something past where she’d seen her mother fall. Another yelled about Alice, then stooped to pick up a body before trudging away under the sad burden. For a moment, Emma felt hope for her mother’s survival, but chose instead to turn away. Best at least one of them should escape. She could come back later and rescue Carol, if need be.

To the east, she could see the Bull, the constellation Taurus just peeking above the treeline, low to the horizon. Emma ran the odds in her mind. She knew this mine to be somewhere due west of the small town they kept their compound. Following the path of the Bull, she might make her way back.

Uncertainty existed that way. The compound had been compromised, violated and laid bare. Emma had no guarantee of safety there, even if she made it back. However, she and Carol had agreed upon it as their rendezvous point, should something separate them. Did she want to risk that danger?

Behind her among the scattered mining buildings, her mother hid, possibly injured. Unmistakable danger hunted there, Scavengers on alert with at least one she knew of dead or dying. Emma rubbed her right wrist where a zip tie remained. She’d managed to saw through them, but that only removed their binding on one hand, and the same applied to her ankles. She laced her boots and tied them properly, not wanting their looseness to impede her escape.

A massive searchlight flicked on, burning away the darkness as it panned across the area. Most of the focus stayed near where she had last seen what she thought was her mother. If they turned that light towards her…

She moved in silence, eyes away from that light, keen to preserve her night vision. Emma could not be sure her mother had come. That scream had sounded like her, but it could as easily have been Alice. Who else could it have been?

***

Carol heard the light snap on, and its blinding illumination swept the ground near her building. She cringed when it lingered near the area she’d slain the two men with her knife, and she looked at that knife now in the dark shelter. These Scavengers had already proven their threat. How many remained? She’d initially counted seven, with three down by her hand. An unknown number could remain holed up in the rest of the mine.

She crawled back under the foundation of the building, testing for weak floorboards above her, prodding with the knife. One finally moved, and she pushed at it, then shoving hard with her feet, bracing her back against the ground. Carol cringed at the noise but pushed enough room aside to crawl up and in.

In the dim light that filtered through the windows from the searchlight outside, Carol made out an empty counter top, a busted cash register, and a rickety chair with a shattered leg and the seat torn out. She ducked behind the counter and popped the clip on the salvaged pistol she’d taken from one of the men. Only four bullets left.

Four bullets for four adversaries. She could buy her daughter time to escape. Time for a calculated risk.

“Luca, in here!” she called, wondering if Luca had been one of the men she’d taken already. Were there any other women among these Scavengers? Or had Alice been it? It didn’t matter if they didn’t recognize her voice anyway.

She hid next to the door. A man busted the door open with a savage kick, and entered with a rifle pointed and ready. She smiled for just a second. Carol’s night vision gave her the advantage as he paused to adjust. She saw he didn’t have the night vision goggles. He’d stepped too far in. One savage slash dropped him, and he clutched at his neck while he died. The searchlight swung directly at the door, bathing the store with light and revealing her. Pops punctuated the night, and wood splintered around her. One bullet caught her right leg, another her left shoulder. Pain drowned out anything else. Carol fell to the floor.

***

Behind her Emma heard rapid gunshots ring out. The staccato blasts ended after only seconds, and she feared the worst. Looking back one last time, she saw an orange glow swelling just above the treetops and could smell smoke now. A forest fire! The wind had shifted as well, carrying a smokey haze that began to obscure the Bull, and obliviate her path.

That stupid V in the sky never resembled an animal to her, but she’d learned all the constellations young. The letter represented everything in her life now. Violence, certainly. No ten year old should be forced to kill to survive, but Emma had. Self defense and self preservation had given her no choice, and both her parents had told her in this new world, it was kill or be killed.

Vagrancy dicated the nomadic life that had drawn her and her parents from place to place. She’d never known a true home in the last four years, ever since the bombs started falling, and didn’t stop falling. The year of catastrophe and the eradication of law, justice, infrastructure, and society had swept away any semblance of life from before.

Finally, volatility as her parents transitioned from a businessman and homemaker to rugged survivalists, taking her with them and training together. Running. Hiding. Hunting. Killing. No, that V represented something else to her now. Like the bull it resembled, she’d become hardened, stubborn. Dangerous. She’d not leave her mother behind.

***

Smoke began to pour into the store in billowing puffs, and Carol groaned in agony. No time! She thought. The light outside tinged orange, and the searchlight went out, leaving only a flaming glow. She heard no one moving, but three distinct voices shouted at each other.

An engine started, and a vehicle slowly rolled past her doorway. A flashlight swept the entrance, lingering only a moment on the two bodies lying on the floor, then it sped off, satisfied. Carol exhaled and then coughed in the dark. She feigned a lifelessness she felt rushing toward her as blood seeped out from her wounds and coated the ground. Already she felt woozy.

Morbid thoughts filled her as she sat in the dark. I’ll be with you soon, Sid! She thought. Flames. What a way to go. She preferred to just go to sleep from the blood loss. For a moment only, she fingered the gun trigger before it too dropped from her hand.

“Run, Emma,” she whispered. “Get far from here. We made our mistakes as parents, but did what we could…” her voice trailed off. From her belt, she unclipped a small radio, the object of the search that had kept her from Emma when she’d been captured. Dead, like she would soon be, its batteries had been scavenged.

She knew its significance, she knew the codeword. Now she’d never contact the resistance, never get her daughter to safety. Never achieve victory.

***

Emma returned back to the small compound, emboldened by the departure of a small Jeep and the silence that followed. Flames now licked above the hilltop into which the mine burrowed its shaft.

She had minutes only before the smoke overcame her, and fear for her mother drove her haste. Only a fool would run toward a raging inferno. The snap and pop of trees splintering in the distance punctuated the stillness of the night, and the gentle roar of flame consuming everything in its path almost seemed subtle in its ferocity.

Emma spied the smallish building, which stood only a few hundred feet from where she’d been held, and saw the door busted open with bullet holes all around. Quickly she ran into it, jacket held above her face to block the smoke. Her eyes stung, irritated by the ash and soot swirling down around her. The speed of the conflagration terrified her.

“Mom!” she yelled. “Where are you?” Emma stumbled over a body and fell down, hands catching her fall in a puddle of congealed blood. A man, judging by his build and haircut. She frisked him and found nothing but a small canteen, so she took that. Just past the man she saw another shape motionless on the ground, just barely breathing.

“Mom!? MOM!” she screamed, her voice breaking in recognition amongst the rising crescendo of flames. All around her, just outside the windows she saw active fire beginning to consume buildings as they spontaneously combusted. Her own clothing smoked.

“Em,” Carol whispered. Her mother had been shot multiple times and had been bleeding profusely. Emma recognized that these were more than just small caliber bullet wounds. Carol pressed the radio into her hands, sticky with blood.

“Take this and...take this and go,” Carol’s voice trembled. “It’s your way to safety.” She took a shuddering breath. “Find...batteries. Two C’s. I think. I couldn’t tell. Station C42, remember. C42. Em…” Her eyes fluttered.

“No, no, no don’t leave me, please!” Emma pleaded with her mother. She tugged and pulled, but knew it to be a useless effort.

“Coraline,” Carol forced out. “Coraline.” That was it, Carol’s last gasp. She fell still.

Emma took her mother’s jacket, losing moments to get that keepsake from her. She took the knife and rifle where it had fallen from the man’s grasp. She couldn’t tolerate the heat any longer, and with one horrified last look at her mother’s body, she ran into the night, searching for a clear patch in the smoke to see Taurus the Bull, a V in the sky guiding her way not to safety, but to vengeance.