Chapter 21

 

 

 

None of the others stirred, and I had no idea if I’d killed CJ or just knocked him out. Frankly, I didn’t really care; I only wanted those keys.

I found them in his left front pocket. I ran into the house and held them out before Mom. “Got ’em.”

“CJ…?”

“I had to hit him.”

I undid the cuff around Mom’s wrist, and she rubbed it painfully as she asked, “Is he…?”

“I don’t know. I just know we have to go—NOW.”

Mom stumbled and winced as she walked; a few days of being kept prisoner, burdened with six feet of chain and no way to sit or stand comfortably, had taken a toll on her. “Are you sure you can you walk?”

“I’ll be okay.”

I picked up the canvas bag and eyed her. “We may have to hike a couple of miles.”

“Won’t they have all the streets blocked?”

“We’re not taking a street.” I nodded out the back. “We’re going through the wash.”

Mom frowned. “The wash…?”

“I figure it might be the only thing they’ve forgotten to block off. There are ladders leading down into it every quarter mile or so. We just have to scale the fence, find one of the ladders, and climb down. Then we should be able to follow the wash south for a few miles to get past the roadblocks.”

She looked pale, but nodded, resolute. “Okay, let’s try it.”

The first part was maybe the scariest for Mom: picking our way through the failed orgy. She wanted to stop and examine CJ, but when Sandy moaned (and I hissed), she gave up and tiptoed as quickly as possible to the back gate. As I opened it, I cursed its squeaky hinges…but none of CJ’s sleeping gang reacted. I held it open as Mom stepped through, closed it as quietly as possible, and led the way along the dirt trail.

In the distance I could see the orange glow of flames, and I knew that one of the houses that backed onto the dirt road was on fire. It would block our way, and we might be in trouble if there was no ladder into the wash between us and the burning house. But there was a (locked) gate in the chain-link fence just ahead, and I hoped there would be a ladder located there.

Mom had a little trouble negotiating the fence. The wound in her thigh slowed her down, especially when it started bleeding again through the bandage I’d wrapped around it; but I finally managed to help her over. Sure enough, there was a ladder right there. I descended first, so I could test it; it was solid, and we both climbed down with no problem.

At that point we switched on the flashlights and started to hike. It hadn’t rained in months, and the wash was bone dry. (At least we didn’t need to worry about being swept away in some sudden rush of water.) Once we heard screaming and shouts overhead, so we switched off our lights and hugged the wall, trying to make ourselves as invisible and small as possible. The voices passed directly over us, and then vanished into the distance. The only words I made out were, “…God damn it, I’m going to kill him when I find him…”

Our flashlight batteries gave out after an hour, and we rested for a while, our backs against concrete, sharing the canteen. I rewound Mom’s thigh bandage, and I knew it hurt when she tried to smile at me. We finally got to our feet and continued on. We heard gunshots once, but they seemed at least a block away. We kept going.

We walked until Mom said she had to stop. At that point we just squatted down and waited for dawn.

When it was light, I told Mom to wait while I checked everything out overhead. We’d camped near a ladder, which I climbed now.

We’d come out near a major intersection—I wasn’t sure where it was, but there was normal traffic, and stores were nearby.

We’d made it.

I went back for Mom, helped her up the ladder and over the fence, and together we found a phone booth. As Mom used it to call a cab, I looked up into the sky and realized:

There was no smog…or at least the smog here was light and pale, none of the canary-colored muck I’d grown accustomed to seeing.

And I could feel it, too. I was worried about CJ again. I felt shame for what I’d done to Turowski. And I wanted nothing so much as to be a million miles away from here.

I’d escaped the smog.