The Pedestal (50 page)

“Let’s go,” I whisper, and we retreat back around the corner.

In another lifetime, alleyways were surrounded in taboo, the proverbial playground for misfits and hardened vagrants. Times have changed. Right now, anyway, this one seems like the safest place to be. I haven’t given up on the pawn shop, even if I’ve forfeited the front entrance. It’s dark enough between the buildings that I nearly miss the back door—actually, I do, but Mitzy doesn’t. When she elbows me in the ribs and points to the heavily riveted barrier, I see that we have our work cut out for us. I guess I should’ve expected this—this is Chicago, for crying out loud, and just because crime was at an all-time low not long ago, every right-minded person still locked his or her doors at night—but as I take in the formidable door with its steel panels and industrial-grade deadbolt lock, I feel a wave of helplessness wash over me.

A couple of hours with a grinder and a cold chisel might get me in there—but nothing less. It isn’t until I look up that I realize we’re not completely out of options. A fire escape ladder is suspended just a few feet above our heads, leading up a series of iron switchbacks toward the roof.

It takes a few running tries to get a grip on the ladder, which is cold and slick with morning dew. When my fingertips finally snag a rung, I seize it and allow my body to counterweigh the springs holding it out of reach. The structure groans a loud squeak of protest that echoes through the corridor like a scream. Glancing down at Mitzy, the panic in her eyes gives my heart a pinch of admonishment.

We scurry up the fire escape like our lives depend on it, because we very much believe that they do. At the first switchback, I manage to get a painted window open. I’m peeking in when Mitzy grabs a handful of my shirt and gives it a swift yank.

“Wilson!” she hisses.

I back out and look at her, and even if I didn’t suddenly hear the menacing approach of voices, the look on her face would have explained all. The space behind the window might be a bottomless crypt, but what can we do? I contort my body through the opening and breathe a sigh of relief when my feet clumsily find a floor. Mitzy, who is much smaller and far more limber than me, slips inside with ease. I ease the window shut and squeeze off to one side. From here, I can safely survey the ground through a gouge in the painted glass. In the anonymity of darkness, I feel overwhelmed with sadness for what has come of not only my life, but the lives of us all, that we should all be reduced to surviving at the expense of others. The voices are just audible from in here, like a radio in a tin can. Moments later, bodies join the noise as a horde of miscreants swamps the alleyway.

“Come out, come out wherever you are,” one of them sings.

Mitzy tugs on my sleeve and I shrug it off. “It’s okay,” I whisper.

I see a pale face peering up at me from the ground and I flinch, but I recover quickly, reassured that he can’t see me. Nevertheless, he’s spotted our hiding place. Mitzy takes my hand and gives it a gentle pull, but I’m only marginally aware of it. There’s a screech of metal on metal below as the ladder is deployed, and I know we’re in trouble.

I turn to Mitzy, ready to get her moving while we still have time to escape, but she’s not looking at me. Her eyes are riveted to the darkness behind us. She’s so still—statuesque and afraid.

Outside, the fire escape clangs and rattles. I need no further inspiration to make a run for it, but Mitzy isn’t moving—except for her hand, which has begun to progressively clinch over my own like a tiny vice.

Then I see it. Ahead is an open door, the edge of which is only just illuminated by the light of the window. And just beyond, the highlights of a figure slowly resolve from blackness—and extending from his hands, the barrel of a shotgun is leveled at my chest.

“Please,” Mitzy mutters, and I’m not sure if she’s begging for mercy or for me to do something.

I take a tentative step forward and the gun becomes more rigidly fastened on me.

“Don’t,” says a man’s gravelly voice. “Turn around and go back out the same way you came in.”

I want to cry out that we couldn’t even if we wanted to—and believe me, with that gun trained on me, I want to—yet even as the words are forming on my lips, the window behind me shatters and glass showers into the room. Instinctively, I drape my body across Mitzy, who has instinctively curled into a ball on the floor with her hands protectively latticed over her head. The subsequent shotgun blast is deafening to the point that whatever sound remains in its wake is so quiet by comparison that I can’t hear it. A man topples into me from behind and collapses to the floor, spewing blood from a gaping wound. I can imagine the sounds of his suffering, but all I hear is a single, high-pitched tone that seems to originate inside my own head.

I feel Mitzy heaving breaths and tensing underneath me, and it takes several seconds to realize she’s screaming. The sound grows from a faint ringing in my ears to a shrill, visceral wail of fear. With the painted glass gone, the room is flooded with the morning sun.

Shrouded in sun kisses, the person on the floor is revealed to be a kid—maybe fifteen or sixteen—and his time in this life is counting down to mere seconds. Black, arterial blood is gouting from his mouth in weakening coughs, forming a ghastly puddle on the carpeted floor. Outside, shouts volley up and down the scaffolding as this boy’s peers abandon him to live another day.

Mitzy is no longer screaming; she’s crying softly, seizing with sobs that seem to rattle from the pipes of her wounded soul.

“Please,” I say to the man, to the reaper and his fiery bludgeon of death. “We’re leaving.” I show my empty hands and plead with my eyes. He steps into the room and at once the hellish killer is transformed by light into a short, stout man in his seventies. He pokes the kid on the floor with the barrel of his gun, but the teenager’s gone, his essence pooled around him on the carpet.

The shotgun sags in the old man’s arthritic grasp, and he unleashes a throaty whimper.

“Mother of God, what’s this world coming to?” he whispers. “Just a boy.”

When he looks into my eyes, I notice his are gray, like melted pewter. They strobe between dismay and tired acceptance. He’s a survivor. And like me, he’s not necessarily at peace with the price of living. “What’re you two after?” he asks. I’m tempted to lie, to say we were merely chased up here by those little gangsters. But as simple as this task sounds, as I look into those old eyes that are swishing like an angry sea, I know I’m not capable of deceiving him.

“There’s a pawn shop downstairs,” I say. “We were trying to find a safe way in there.”

“What for?”

“We need to protect ourselves.” Motioning to his shotgun with my chin, I add: “Seemed like a good place to pick up one of those.”

The man sucks at his bottom lip in a toothless grimace of contemplation. “You won’t find any in there,” he says. “People been lootin’ it like crazy for a while, and what little was left got cleared out not a half hour ago.”

Mitzy rises tentatively from the floor, her hair twinkling with bits of broken glass. Her cheeks are wet and splotched with pink, but she’s already recovering. She’s a survivor, too.

“Can you help us?” she asks. Her voice is brittle and childlike, and it pokes at my heart to hear it so vulnerable. “Please?”

His name is Truman, and—first impressions aside—he represents a dying breed of gentleman. He serves us lunch prepared over an old army stove powered by a little propane canister. I can’t even tell you what we’re eating—he’s mixed tablets together in such a way that all the flavors coalesce into a single aftertaste that no person should ever have to experience. With that said, Mitzy and I haven’t eaten since last night and are grateful to have something in our stomachs, however pungent.

“Haven’t seen many of you around,” Truman confesses. “Good people, I mean.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Most folks made a mad dash for the quarantine camps when this all started.”

Quarantine camps? I wonder if there’s any hope to be found in them. Apparently, my expression asks this very question, even if my voice is too reluctant.

“Believe me,” he warns with a bitter cackle. “You don’t want anything to do with those, son.”

“Why not?”

“Word was, they scrubbed you down and burned your clothes. If you survived the next forty-eight hours without one them dang plants sprouting out of your butt, you got to stay.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Yeah, but that ain’t how things went down.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I was there. Me and my wife.”

Mitzy pipes in with, “You have a wife?”

Truman looks at her sharply, then flicks his gaze toward the window. “That place killed her.”

“How?”

“Anytime you get a bunch of people together, sickness gets passed around like a bottle. My wife was so busy trying to help people, she didn’t realize she was sick.” Truman shakes his head and swallows. “She was always like that, my sweet girl. Sometimes I wish she’d been different—because then maybe she might’ve come out of that place alive. That’s the score nowadays, in case you haven’t figured it out yet.” He looks bitterly at me, and then at Mitzy. “You gotta look out for number one, cause ain’t no one else gonna do it for you.”

I’m startled by the appearance of this coldness, yet I understand it completely. “Truman, why are you helping us?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Poking at his half-eaten food, his face is a mask of regret. Finally, he sets his bowl down with a restrained clatter.

“Because that little girl right there,” he says, nodding to Mitzy, “reminds me of my wife as a young lady. And because it’s what my Mildred would’ve wanted.”

“I guess things might’ve gone down pretty differently if I’d left her at home, huh?”

“You can bet your last credit on that.”

After we’ve eaten, Truman takes us downstairs to his store, which has been utterly dismantled. If he’s at all torn up about it, he hides it well. He kicks aside the crumbs of his career as if they meant nothing; I guess that without his wife, it is all truly meaningless now.

Just as he predicted, the last of his arms has been plucked and all that’s left is meaningless memorabilia from a time when people cared about jewelry and musical instruments and antique power tools. He looks at me with a sheepish smile and says, “How about a nice ring for your lady, there?” My eyebrows shoot up.

“A ring?”

“Well, she ain’t wearing one. Might as well make an honest woman out of her. May never get another chance.”

I turn to Mitzy and she’s gone pink, avoiding my eyes. I allow my gaze to linger until she finally relinquishes and returns a look. The corners of her mouth curl slightly, and I have to laugh.

“What’ya say, Mitzy? Wanna get hitched?”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s grinning. “The ring alone doesn’t seal the deal, Romeo.”

“She’s right,” admits Truman.

I turn to him and with a disingenuous frown, demand, “Whose side are you on, old man?”

He laughs. It’s a warm sound that reminds me of Arthur and Stewart, and Tim and every man I’ve ever known enough to care about.

“I ain’t picking sides, son,” he chuckles. Turning to Mitzy, he says, “Seems like you can probably forgo some of the formality, don’t you think? I’m licensed to marry, though, see?” He points at the front door, where painted in pseudo-embossed font are the words
Notary Public.

“Yeah, right. Every girl’s dream wedding, in a ransacked pawn shop with no friends or family or dress or anything.”

“Better than nothing, right?” I offer.

Mitzy looks at me like I’m in real trouble, but there’s a spark in her eyes and a smile that she can’t quite keep on the leash. She taps her foot on the floor and sighs. Her grin softens, losing its edge against some thought that has saddened her.

“Not without Mrs. Grace.”