It Had a Little Diamond in It

My boots crunch a heart-shaped locket into the once paved suburban road. It barely registers in my brain. I’m worn out. Spent. Shoulda held up in the woods before town for a day or two, but I don’t want to miss Alex.

I told her I’d meet her in the spring. I’d hate to miss her. We planned to head south to explore the mountains for a few months. Maybe a few years. Why not? Don’t have anywhere in particular to be, afterall.

Once, as a young girl, I would have loved such a trinket as that. Gold. Not plated. That would have worn off long ago. That little thing was the real deal. It even had a little diamond in it.

I step over a narrow crevice in the black top.

Gold and diamonds are worthless now. I’d wear it anyway, just ‘cause it’s pretty and reminds me of home, but the reflection could be bad news. Trouble. I don’t need no more damn trouble.

A tree has fallen across the road many moons ago. It takes me a hot minute to find my way to the other side.

It reminds me of the day it all went bad. Feels like it was last week, but that was thirty years ago now. Roughly. Time is funny. Years disappeared along the way. Some days drag on for years. Thirty is my best guesstimate. Huh. I was fifty then.

I used to hide my hair color with shoe polish, when it started showing grey. Grey hair makes you a target. Easy prey.

Now, I just keep it shaved down. No fuss, no muss. No keeping up with the styles anymore. Not that I’d ever been any good at that. I had a sister in law many lifetimes ago who that thought I was worthless and stupid because I still wore my hair up in scrunchies.

Kinda hopes that one never made it through the change. There was no need for her to treat me the way she did. She sure was a great enough person...to everybody else.

The day it all happened, I’d been running food. Delivery service was a thing. Order from your home and have it brought right to ya. Such luxuries we all had. What I wouldn’t give for some greasy fries and a burger delivered right to my...campsite. Good enough. Doesn’t have to be a door.

One day, as I left a drop off, I backed into an empty parking space to turn around. Except it wasn’t empty. I rammed into a car. Oh, it hadn’t been there the three times I looked. In three different directions. The car wasn’t there. Then it was. A gold cruiser.

I’d been lucky, though. Other people didn’t live through it. Cars being melded together in the same space and time. The humans inside them...well, it was a bloody mess to say the least. Houses. Some had two houses together with people cut in half by walls. Some ended up under water. Others were in the air and came careening down.

Turning a corner, I hear a noise too late. Darkness. Something’s over my face. It’s hard to breathe through. Someone takes my knees out from under me. Just before I feel the ground hit, I think, “Damn! If I break something, I’m done for.”

I try to roll into the fall. When the boys were young, I’d taken them to parkour lessons. Thank goodness for those lessons. Without them I would have been seriously injured too many times to count. My heart wrenches a bit at the memory. The hurt of their deaths.

The ground’s rough. Someone’s grinding me into it with a knee. Great. That kind of group.

“Splendid job letting your mind wander, Stace,” I think. “How could ya let that happen in broad daylight? Letting people sneak up on ya. You’re in a dang city. Small, but still a city.”

A couple of arms reach under my armpits and yank me up. Drag me backwards down the road. Feet bumping up from rocks and scraping along gravel and grass and dirt.

At least I’m not talking to myself outloud. Maybe I should carry on a few conversations with an imaginary friend. They might go easier on me if I’m touched. Or maybe they’ll use me as sport. Or kill me. Best not.

I’m ready though. To be done with this life. I couldn’t do it. Commit suicide. Tried. Maybe this crew will do it for me. Put me out of my misery. Doubts it.

The gangs don’t like to kill ya. They like to keep ya. Put ya to work. One way or another. Maybe the head guy will have a hankering for me, and keep me as one of his women. I still look decent enough to be kept.

There’s worse ways to spend enslavement. Pretty sure I’ve experienced every one of those. If there’s worse than I’ve escaped from, I don’t want to know about it.

They stop dragging, stand me up, turn me around, and shove me up some steps. The monsters haven’t drug me far.

Great. I walked right into a nest. How could I have gotten so distracted?

But I hadn’t been that engrossed in my thoughts. Not really. No signs. I’d been watching. This crew is good. Or the head cheese is.

The hood comes off. A rotund woman in oversized men’s clothes is sunk into an oversized stuffed chair. Feet up, relaxed. Sipping tea. Short cropped hair. Who knows what age. We’ve all got our tricks. Younger than me.

In the beforetime, she would have been labeled deragatory names like “Dyke” and “Butch.” These days it’s a safety measure. One of the best ways to keep from getting raped. Guys get labeled gay by doing a woman who looks too much like a man. No such thing as LGBT rights in an uncivilized world. In this world, you go along with the norm, or you get dead. Or worse.

The woman’s weight is enough to tell me she’s in charge. The head honcho gets to eat all the food and not do the work to procure it. The place looks clean. Kept up. Almost as if straight out of the time before. Her house, maybe? Nice change of pace. It’s usually not a home, because people are paranoid about that. Like being in an actual house makes them more at risk if another...one of those incidents hits.

Usually the clans hold up in make do hovels. They're always filthy. Not here. Here, pictures adorn the wall. I examine them, but one of the men smacks me across the face.

“You don’t get to look at the boss’s pictures,” he snarls. But, it’s too late. I saw it. My ticket out of this mess.

The chick isn’t saying anything. Just staring me down. Assessing. Placing me somewhere in her organization, I’m sure.

“So what brings you to my neighborhood?” Finally. The knitty-gritty.

“I’m a walker. You let me leave here, I walk on.”

“Walkers tell other walkers, who tell other walkers, then the next thing you know we're getting raiders in our supply stores. You knew I couldn’t let you go if you told me that, so why’d ya tell me?”

“Because I know where to find something you want.”

“Pssh. I doubt it. I got everything I want. And I know my boys. They searched your stuff thorough. If you had anything they’d of brought it to me.”

“I said I know where to find it.”

She laughs a hearty belly laugh, ending in a snort.

“I like this one,” the lady declares to her crew. “She’s brazen. I think you should take the loser down to my harem.”

I’m pretty certain she didn’t swing that way in the before. Oh, she mighta had leanings towards enjoying the pleasures of another woman, mighta even tried it a time or two. Back in her college days. But I saw her in one of those pics. Hanging on the wall. Woman was a prim and proper suburbanite. Conservative Christian, by the number of crosses and Bibles on the shelves. This new persona of her’s ain’t nothin’ but a survival technique.

“I know where her necklace is,” I say in an even keel. I can barely be heard over the laughter and jeering in the room. But she hears it and freezes.

“What did you say?”

Dead silence.

“I know where her necklace is. You want the necklace, I want to walk on. Give me an escort to the edge of town, and I’ll tell them where the necklace is then. When I’m safe from your goons.”

“You don’t know ‘nothin. You saw the picture and made it up.”

“It had a little diamond in it.”

The woman stands up surprisingly quick. The room gets scary quiet. Everybody steps back, afraid. This woman must be mean as heck, for all these people to fear her. I don’t want to stick around to find out.

She glares at me. Contemplating. I’m not breathing, so I force a nice, normal breath. In and out. Keep breathing, girl, keep breathing. Don’t show fear.

“Fine. But if you double cross me, I’ll keep sending my boys after you till one comes back with your head.”

I knew she'd never be able to pass up retrieving her daughter's locket. Daughter's probably gone. Probably out visiting friends or a boyfriend when it happened.

“Deal.”

“Charlie!” She barks, and nods for the guy who hit me. He shoves the hood back over my head and drags me out.

After a while, he pulls off the hood.

“What’s to keep me from killing your sorry ass and taking your head? I could tell her you tried to make a break.”

He’s taunting me. Hoping for sport.

“I’m guessing she’s gonna be real happy with the guy bringing her that necklace.”

He snorts.

We reach the edge of what was once a highway. It now has homes merged in it along with cars.

He ogles me one last time. I lift up my tied up hands.

“Info first.”

“Back before you guys nabbed me. There’s a fallen tree. One block back, take a right. About half a block in, there’s a house. Dark blue, shutters used to be white. It’s right on the other side of a crevice in the road. In the gravel.”

“If you’re lyin’, I’m the first one comin’”

“Dude, I aim to never see you again.”

I lift my arms again. He pulls a switch blade and slices off the ropes. I walk. And I don’t look back.