A Block of Broken Houses

The Search, a Saviour (Part One)

A dull life pulse rippled through the high street, lesser so on the side roads running perpendicular to it, but that was before he had showed his battered face and begun working from building to building in search of them, his gun drawn. The town was already showing clear signs of decay, but his presence, determined and unforgiving, had previously proven proficient in the escalation of violence, and there was no reason to believe that was now going to change.

In a world where ammunition was hard to come by, it was necessary to be efficient; he was nothing but. However, he had ridden for weeks with little sleep, and fatigue causes even the most efficient to slip occasionally. The young woman with the knife he had clipped in the shoulder was the latest of these slips, and it had nearly cost him quite a bit more than merely a wasted shell.

He had entered the tavern, the last building before the adobe wall marking the town line. It was empty and quiet, save for a muffled cough hidden away on the second floor. He had stood in the doorway and waited, heard nothing, and then moved to the stairs, hoping to make quick work of clearing the second floor before returning to make his rounds on the first. The bottom step creaked. He stopped. At the sound of another cough—longer, wetter—from above, he took another step. And that was when she had stepped out from the darkened hallway with a knife as big as her forearm, probably snatched from the establishment's kitchen. She was upon him—had him dead in the water—and then swung wildly. Had she been sober he would have bled out on the dirty planked floor. Instead, the knife slipped past his shoulder. The wink of it passing through the sunlight pouring through the front windows caught his attention and he turned and fired just as the blade fell into the banister with a dull thunk. That had been the sixth cartridge he spent that day. It tore through her shoulder and knocked her sideways, the wall helping to steady her, keeping her on her feet. His seventh spent cartridge had opened a clean hole above her right eye and then another hole—wetter, messier—on the backside of her head, painting the wall behind her a beautiful, lively red that the dry wooden planks eagerly swallowed.

He moved to the second floor, the coughing occupant still on his mind, and discovered it empty except for an old man lying half-covered in a slumped cot behind the floor's only closed door. The feeble figure on the bed was wearing a faded t-shirt and a beard that was matted and filthy. He tightly held a spotted handkerchief in one shaking hand, and somehow found the strength the lift his other, palm open, to the large man standing in the doorway—stop, please, it said—as if that alone would prevent the inevitable.

"The child; where is she?" It was the first question he asked all of them.

After a slightly puzzled look (which the serious gaze of the intruder caused him to quickly abandon) and more coughing, the old man told him the child had been there with a group of others but had moved on, perhaps a week ago that had been, heading east. It may have been as many as two weeks, though; time no longer held meaning, it seemed. The group, he said, had tried to keep quiet and unnoticed, but any group travelling with children—especially in times such as these—was difficult to miss, and even more difficult to forget about. The old guy had said that his memory was foggy, that he had no further information to offer. Lastly, he asked for the man in the doorway to spare his life. It would end soon, he said—he knew that—but that fact did not mean he wanted it to end just then.

He considered the old man's story, eyeing him and then instinctively glancing out the room's only window—east—and when another coughing fit began he holstered his gun, nodded, and moved on.

On the main floor he found no one else, and descended down the porch steps and into the high street, his gun now holstered. It was quiet, and he supposed his sporadic gunfire in the tavern had chased those remaining into hiding. He untethered his horse and began to walk out of town.

When he heard screaming behind him he turned toward it. A young boy of no more than fourteen had run from a darkened alley with a grenade in his hand. (Where the kid had gotten his hands on that was a mystery.) He drew and shot the kid in the throat, a clean shot. The kid staggered backward, his eyes wide and his scream halted, his chest hitching for breath that would not come. The grenade fell from his hand immediately and rolled against his one bare foot, and as the boy retreated into the shadows of the alley from where he had recently appeared, the grenade retreated with him down the slight incline.

Most of the explosion and its aftermath were hidden from view, but what he had seen had been enough. A second explosion—this one much louder—rattled deep in his chest, and he guessed there must have been a stash of gas canisters where the kid had fallen, where the grenade had trailed him.

The once audible (if only slightly) town had quieted considerably. There was nothing now...or as close to nothing as to make very little difference. He was not naive enough to believe he had cleared the small town entirely, but those left would tell his story, one of blood and death. Those same people would claim to have seen much more of him than they actually had, their stories—and thereby his story—would only add to the fear surrounding him. He cared little for any of this, and only cared for finding the child.

He rode past the adobe wall, out of yet another town, still tired, still aching, but he liked to believe a little better off than when he had entered it. He had fed, for one; his supplies had been replenished, for another. Unlike the previous two towns he had come upon, this one had both provisions of use and a small number of living, and there were fewer of both now. He was down nine cartridges, sure, but the supplies and full belly had been well worth the trade.

Apart from the steady rise of smoke behind him there was very little. The breeze was gentle and the sun warm against his face. On the rise, on the road leading from this town to the next, he thought of the old man's claim and wondered who the others were, how it had been arranged that they would be responsible for the child—his child.

Three towns back, one that consisted of a thin main street and too few buildings to be considered a true town, he found her: his wife. She was sprawled—perhaps had been tossed—on the floor, her frail, cold body bent in too unnatural ways for her death to have been humane. The bed beside her had been tipped, the few sheets on it scattered to the far corner. The entire apartment had been in similar shape, and the same could be said for the town. Someone had been there and taken things, but the job was quick and careless and he had found plenty that they had missed.

His wife was dead and a group of strangers now had his daughter—that was both the long and the short of it. He thought of his daughter, withdrew her woolen shawl from his knapsack and raised it to his face. He closed his eyes and absorbed all of it. It was a pleasant mixture of jasmine and vanilla, which to him smelled like...home. Soon he would have his daughter back, the scarf returned to her, and she would be his, and all would be right.

He draped her shawl over the saddle. He tugged the reins and was off to the next town, off to continue his search for them. His daughter he would rescue; the others, well, he had yet to decide.

(CONTINUED IN PART TWO)