A Town Called America (9 page)

Chris wanted Amber dead, and she wanted to be the one who did it. It wasn’t because of their run-in at the gas station or the fact that Amber was rude to her that last day. It was because of the years of abuse Amber had doled out on her.

Nearly ten years before Chris had met Rick, Amber had been her babysitter. On many occasions, she had locked Chris in her bedroom, not allowing her to leave for any reason, even to go to restroom. After a few times, Chris decided to sneak out of the house through the bedroom window. That resulted in her being strapped to the bed, bound at her hands and feet.

When her foster father came home and saw this, all he had to say was that Chris must have been out of control and that Amber only did what she had to. As time went on, the situation became worse, and each incident was always worse than the last.

An abusive alcoholic, her foster father often left for days at a time. Whatever the arrangement was—money or something else—Amber always moved in while he was away. Then she started bringing her boyfriends to the house. One day Amber left the house to go the store, and one of her asshole boyfriends made a pass at Chris. When she said no, he hit her over the head with a beer bottle, knocking her unconscious and nearly killing her, something that no 14 year old should ever experience.

Chris woke up in the hospital, beaten and raped. She lay in that cold hospital room for four days with a broken rib, bruises, and a skull fracture. Her foster father didn’t even bother to stop by once while she was there. When she did see him, it was only after her release from the hospital, from which she walked back home.

He said only one thing to her that night. He told her it had happened because Chris was a whore, and she would pay for the hospital bill on her own one way or another.

That was when, unable to cope with the stress of school and the bullshit at home, Chris decided to drop out of school. After that she ended up with the wrong crowd. They weren’t all bad people, but they weren’t good for her at the time, and she knew it. It was just too much booze and too much weed.

Chris didn’t explain any of this to Rick. It was too personal and too much to reveal to someone she loved. It was something she would carry with her, and if vengeance were driving her, so be it. Chris wasn’t the little girl Amber remembered, and retribution was coming.

FIFTEEN

B
efore they had left Brick Creek for the interstate, there was one more thing Chris needed to do. It was to kill Amber, and that was exactly what she intended do.

Chris was wearing black leather pants and an old green army jacket with the sleeves cut off. A ten-inch hunting knife was sheathed on her left hip, and an original army Colt 1911 pistol was holstered on her right hip; she’d found it in a safe when she was scavenging through a garbage dump of all places. She also had the shotgun Rick had used so many times to help him stand; it now had a pistol grip, and the barrel had been sawed down to ten inches.

Her hair was pulled back, and once more the sides of her head were shaved. On her arms she had a few new tattoos she’d done herself with a needle and thread. She had used ink that she’d mixed from old stationery pens.

The first tattoo was simple: a heart with her and Rick’s initials on her wrist. The second was more complex: a barkentine, a wooden sailing vessel with three masts, just above her right hip. In the tattoo the ship was sailing into the wind. The ship represented the journey of her life, always challenging. The last was a small bird looking over the earth. It represented Chris’s freedom to fly away from the bad things in her life. No matter how bad things were, she wanted to think she always had control over the choice to live or die.

After she slipped on her black combat boots, she was ready. The more she thought about what she was about to do, the angrier she grew toward Amber. As she walked through what was left of the town, Chris tried to remember Brick Creek as it had been when she was a child. Back then there were good people with friendly faces, and it was genuinely a nice place to live.

Ever since Rick had returned, Chris had become very active in her daily life. She chopped wood, hunted, fished, and hiked every day. She was unmistakably thinner, but she also was in much better shape than she’d ever been. It served to remind her of how lazy people had become in the life before, which was something she no longer was.

She moved through the street feeling ten feet tall and on a mission. She passed buildings that had burned to the ground and a few that were still standing. When she finally arrived at the town store, she hardly recognized it. The windows were gone, and the inside was black from soot and fire. The thick steel door lay on the ground.

Inside she saw that the register was open, and the shelves, once full of goods, were empty. Garbage littered the floor, and a burned-out fluorescent light bulb hung from the ceiling by a single wire. Inside there was nothing that could be of use to her.

Chris descended the back stairs and stood in the small basement storage room. The only light came from her small flashlight, which she seldom used in order to conserve the batteries. It illuminated the room just enough for her to see there was nothing but trash and a spot where someone had made a fire pit.
Squatters
, she thought.

The next stop would be Amber’s house, which was three blocks away. So far everything had been excessively easy, and Chris wondered whether she was in fact setting herself up for something.

Outside on the street, she saw that someone most definitely was watching her. There was a man on a rooftop with a rifle, as well as a few people looking at her through cracks in boarded-up windows. One of the windows was in the building where Shawn used live.

She remembered how she had gone to visit him in his apartment one day and spent the entire afternoon playing board games with him.
If only she could have known then how things were going to turn out, she thought.

Chris walked down Main Street to Ryan Circle, the last place Amber had lived. It was the third house on the right, and she saw it as soon as she turned down the street. The funny thing was that her house didn’t look much different than it had looked before the world had fallen apart. It was a mess then, and it was still a mess. The fence around her yard had fallen over in a number of places, and there was still a washing machine outside her front door. In the driveway was the same car that hadn’t moved in nearly a decade.

Chris pulled her Colt 1911 from its holster and let it hang in her hand as she moved to look inside the house. The weight of the pistol, how it felt in her hand, and its ability to destroy a person exhilarated her.

Looking through the dirty window, past the tattered curtains, Chris saw no movement, nor did she see anything that indicated that someone had lived there in a very long time. Around the back of the house, however, it was a different story. She knew she had found her mark: a mean-looking dog sleeping near a large tree. It was dark brown and weighed at least eighty pounds. She knew then she was in the right place, because without a doubt the dog was Billy Bob.

Past the dog, on the other side of the large fenced yard, Chris saw the outside of the cellar doors. Down on one knee and examining the ground, she poked at a footprint with a stick. The footprint, which looked to be only a few days old, was pointed in the direction of the house.

The only problem was that damn dog was directly between her and the cellar. Sitting down, Chris tried to think of ways to kill the dog without making too much noise. She didn’t want to shoot it, and she didn’t think making a spear with her hunting knife would do anything but make it mad.

After considering her options, she made her way around the outside of the fence. Moving as silently as she could, she watched every step so as not to draw attention to herself. At the other side of the fence, directly behind the dog, she saw through the rotten wooden planks. The beast was lying only three feet away.

Chris dropped her coat and set her shotgun on the wet ground, which was moist from last night’s rain. Wearing a sleeveless tank top that revealed her toned body, she slowly and quietly climbed the fence, trying hard not to make a sound. Careful to avoid any loose boards, she grabbed a tree branch and placed her right foot on the fence’s support beam to pull herself up until both feet were resting on a board halfway up the fence.

Now standing and straddling the fence, she looked over to the other side to determine her plan of action. In the end she decided to swing her legs up and over the fence, followed by her body, until she was on the other side.

Standing three feet off the ground on a support beam, she was now directly above the dog.
Oh, my God, why did it have to be a Rottweiler?
she thought.
What the hell am I doing?

Chris took a deep breath and jumped. Her plan was to attempt to stab the dog in the throat with her hunting knife. She’d use her body weight to keeps its muzzle on the ground, and with a little luck, she wouldn’t get bit. The moment she jumped, she did just as planned. She landed on the beast’s back and drove the long knife into its thick neck. Her heart was racing, and she knew this animal was powerful and would put up a hell of a fight. Gripping the knife, she ripped it in and out of its body, stabbing it repeatedly. The weight of the dog was almost too much for her to handle, causing Chris to roll onto her side. As hard as she could, she drove the knife deep into the dog one last time until she was sure it had it stopped moving. Covered in blood and out of breath, she stood up, holding on to the fence, thinking something wasn’t right.

It took a few seconds for her to realize she’d just had what she referred to as a “dumb moment.” Chris looked down at the dog and gave it one good kick to confirm her realization. The entire time she had been stabbing the beast, it had not moved or made a single sound. That moment she knew she had just attacked a Rottweiler that was already dead. Breathing heavily and bent over to catch her breath, she mumbled, “What the fuck? After all I went through, you were already dead?”

Embarrassed and angry, she leaned down on one knee and pulled the knife from the Rottweiler’s body. Then she bent over and picked the heavy dog up from the ground. She pushed its lifeless body deep onto a wooden fence post. Was it sadistic?
It sure is
, she thought.

The Rottweiler, impaled in front of the cellar door, was intended for Amber and all to see.

The situation with the dog made Chris feel more and more anger toward Amber with each step she took toward the cellar. After retrieving the weapons she’d left on the ground, she walked over to the cellar door and attempted to lift it. It was locked, but she knew it was time for action, as anyone nearby would have already would have heard her scuffle with the dead dog.

Her next move would mean there was no going back. Chris closed her eyes and took another deep breath. Opening her eyes she exhaled then pointed her shotgun at the lock. Within a second a one-foot circle had been blown into the wooden door.

She threw the door open and moved down the stairs into the cellar as fast as she could. At the bottom she saw that it was one large open room with concrete walls. Small black-painted windows were just above ground level. On the far wall, the shelves were loaded with boxes from floor to ceiling. In the center were two couches along with a kerosene lamp that lit the room completely.

Chris stopped near the bottom of the steps and looked at the three women who were standing in the brightly lit room and staring back at her, one of whom was pointing a gun at her.

“Who the hell are you?” the woman to the left of Chris said.

Chris’s shotgun was pointed directly at her.
Boom
. The blast of the shotgun echoed throughout the cellar. The woman had no chance, as half her neck instantaneously erupted, causing her head to tilt grotesquely away from her body and dropping her to the ground, bleeding but not quite dead. Chris threw her shotgun down; it made a clank when it hit the hard floor.

Slowly and intentionally she drew her Colt 1911 and pointed it at the second woman, who stood looking at her in disbelief. Neither
woman was Amber, but that didn’t matter. As far as she was concerned, they were all going to die.

“Now wait a damn minute!” the woman said in an authoritative voice.

Chris asked her one question. “Where’s Amber?”

“I don’t know. I’m telling you the truth!”

Chris pulled the trigger and shot the woman three times in the chest. Her body dropped to the floor and folded into a ball as blood oozed from her wounds. Taking three steps toward the first woman she had shot, Chris pointed her pistol at her head and pulled the trigger once more. She, like the second woman, was no longer alive.

The last woman took a few steps back and sat on the couch. “You screwed up,” she said. “I know you. You’re little Christiana. Yeah, I know who you are.”

Chris walked to the couch and stood in front of the unarmed woman. “Where’s Amber?” she asked her. “And what’s up with the Rottweiler outside?”

“What? Billy Bob? He died this morning, so piss off!”

Taking another deep breath and shaking her head in disappointment, Chris pointed the gun at her head. “It’s your last chance,” she said smugly.

“I really don’t—”

Chris squeezed the trigger and fired a single bullet into her head. She turned to walk away, and when she did, she was face-to-face with Amber.

Amber was standing not five feet from Chris, with no weapon and thinner than she remembered, and with a look of total disbelief on her aged face.

“You know, I don’t give a damn about those three. They’ve been a pain in my ass since day one, but why the hell did you impale my dog?”

Completely covered in blood from the dog and the three women she had slain, Chris stood there looking at Amber for a moment. “You…you let those bastards do all that shit to me,” she finally said. “I had no one—not my foster father and not you. I was alone, and you
tied me up. Your boyfriend tried to rape me and beat the shit out of me, and you didn’t care.”