Smog - Baggage of Enternal Night by Lisa Morton and Eric J. Guignard

Nobody was around.
    He’s just
being mean .
    I got on the bike, desperately
hoping that was it, trying to ignore how nervous I was, how much I wanted to
turn around and run back into the house…but that didn’t seem any safer at this
point. So I kept pedaling.
    I’d gone about four blocks when
I noticed something: the air was cleaner here, the smog lighter. The yellow
tint that hovered perpetually over our street was milder here; the sky almost
had a hint of blue to it. My lungs and eyes weren’t burning as badly.
    Then I turned a corner and saw
the roadblock.
    Maybe fifty yards down,
sawhorses had been set up to form a barricade completely across the street.
There were trucks parked just behind the sawhorses, big, camouflage-green troop
carriers. Men with rifles patrolled around the trucks.
    For a second I thought, They’ll
help! Then four rifles lowered and pointed at me. At me .
    “Halt!” somebody yelled. I
didn’t even see which one.
    I coasted to a stop but didn’t
get off the bike. “Can you…” I tried to shout for help, but I felt like I was
about to throw up, and my voice didn’t work. I cleared it and tried again. “Can
you help me?”
    “You’ve got ten seconds to turn
back.”
    What? The soldiers
hefted their weapons, and I tried not to imagine any trigger fingers getting
sweating and slipping. “But I…”
    “…nine…eight…seven…six…”
    “My mom needs help!”
    “…five…four…three…two…one…”
    One of them fired a warning
shot. The asphalt three feet to the left of me spat up little bits and a plume
of dust.
    I turned my bike around and
pedaled harder than I ever had in my life. I fully expected to feel the bullet
hit my back any second—would there be pain, or would I die instantly?
    But they didn’t shoot. They let
me go. And I kept pumping the pedals as fast as I could, until I skidded to a
halt in the garage. I just dropped the bike and ran into the kitchen. “Mom!”
    I ran up and hugged her, and
she comforted me as best she could. “What happened, baby?”
    “I tried, I really tried, but
there were soldiers, over on El Nido, and they shot at me, Mom.”
    “Oh my God. Are you all right?”
She pushed me back to look me over, her movements frantic.
    “I’m okay.”
    We stayed there for a few
seconds, then I said, “What are we going to do?”
    “I don’t know.”
    And at that moment I
realized—maybe for the first time—that my mom was not infallible, that she was
helpless, and that it was entirely up to me.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 16
     
     
     
    CJ came in an hour later. He had a
long chain and a padlock. He undid the handcuff attached to the refrigerator
handle, closed it again, looped the chain through it, and then used the padlock
to secure the chain to the handle. Mom could move around now, maybe ten feet,
but she was still a prisoner.
    As he worked, CJ talked. He
said he wanted to have a party at our place tonight. He wanted Mom to cook
something nice.
    “We don’t have anything,” she told
him.
    He laughed. “I’ll hunt
something up.”
    Fifteen minutes later he was
back. His arms were stained crimson, and he carried a sodden brown paper
grocery bag. “See what you can do with this,” he said, handing the bag over to
Mom.
    She reached out and pulled out
a mottled red filet so fresh it was still dripping blood. “What…?”
    I cut her off. “ Don’t ,
Mom.”
    She looked at me…and she knew.
She knew what the meat was from…or rather who . She stared at it, as the
juice ran down her wrists, and then she dropped it. It hit the floor with a wet splat . “I…I won’t…”
    I leapt forward to cover for
her. “God, Mom, you dropped it.” I picked it up and carried it over to the
sink, talking over my shoulder as I washed it off. “We can let it marinate for
a while in some of that teriyaki sauce we’ve still got, then grill it. I think
we’ve still got some onions…”
    CJ bought it, or at least
decided I was no threat. “Good.