Rolly | The Broken Mind Sagas

Chapter 2

The woman was unsteady; holding the gun on Rolly took all her effort. Her head swayed back and forth in the blue light. Finally, she spoke.

"Dead or alive?" the woman whisper weakly. "Speak dammit."

Rolly's nerves calmed a bit. It no longer felt like a trap, but a dying woman trying to be smart. She responded and noticed her voice was difficult to find, quiet. She hadn't actually spoken in weeks.

"Look," Rolly whispered. "You're clearly in trouble. No point taking me with you."

The woman let out a labored breath. The gun dropped off Rolly immediately as if holding it on her had been the last mile of a marathon.

Rolly let herself breathe, no longer in the Glock's sites, though she didn't think the woman was wise to let her guard go so easily. She must have known how close to turning she was to be that quick to trust. Rolly was further surprised when the woman placed the gun on the floor and slid it across the concrete to her.

"Take it," the woman said.

Rolly didn't need a gun. The woman was sitting beside a cache of them, hidden under a pile of empty shoe boxes. When Rolly had heard undead Charlie clumsily stumbling around in the building, she'd seen he was alone, and hadn't bothered with the noise makers. Guns were a last resort.

Still, Rolly figured she'd been right from the start. The woman needed someone to dispatch her before she turned, but if she thought Rolly was going to use the pistol then she wasn't thinking straight.

She reached down and pulled out the gun's clip. It had been fired. Not near here, Rolly would have heard that, but the woman had clearly been desperate at some point. Not that this wasn't obvious from the blood pooling beneath her on the floor. Rolly counted the shells remaining, six, and slid the clip back in, clicking the safety on. She tucked the gun into her belt.

"Come closer," the woman said. "So I can see your face."

Keeping her hand on the weapon at her belt, Rolly scanned the darkness around them as she approached, looking for the outlines of others in the shadows. She stepped closer, into the woman's light, letting her face be seen. The woman smiled through her pain, like she had been sure of something and only now confirmed it.

"You have a kind face," the woman said.

Bad judge of character, Rolly thought.

She'd been told this before, and it was repeatedly an advantage over the superficial instincts of others. She kept herself clean, despite the world around her. Her blonde hair stayed in a tight French braid down her back. It would have been wise to cut it off, less likely for the Charlies, or some opportunistic scavenger, to get a hold on her. It was people's first impressions that made her keep it. Sex appeal and a kind gentle facade often proving an asset after the world fell into anarchy. It was a tradeoff, when she was forced to approach the living. Those with good intentions were quicker to trust, while those with bad, quicker to underestimate. Regardless, she never let the hair out of its braid when she was in the dead cities alone.

Rolly knelt down to eye level with the woman. The stranger's face was dirty, bruised in places, bloodied. Tears having made clean streaks down her face. She looked like she'd taken a fall down a flight of stairs. Rolly wondered if it had happened before or after she had been ripped open, before or after she'd had to fire the gun.

"Where are you wounded?" Rolly asked.

"Doesn't matter. I'm gone, soon," the woman said. "I was so scared I wouldn't find someone before I turned."

"Why didn't you just..." Rolly paused. Trying to take the edge from her voice she started again. "Why not use the gun?" 

The woman shuddered, as if recalling a hopeless burden more important than her imminent health problems.

"What's your name?" the woman asked.

Rolly studied the woman. Wondering why people wanted a name when they're about to ask someone to pull their plug.

"Rolly," she said.

"Strange name," the woman said.

Rolly half shrugged, her head tilting to one side as she brought her shoulders up.

"Is what it is," she said. "What should I call you?"

"Sam," the woman said. "But I go by Mom most of the time."

Mom, with some difficulty, turned the light toward a dark corner of the room. The shadows receded, exposing two small shoes. He was huddled in the corner, his knees drawn up again his chest and his eyes shining with tears held back for fear of the noise they might make. He was eight, maybe nine. His hands shivered, holding tightly to Rolly's open can of beans.

Shit, Rolly heard in her head.

"I'm all he has," Mom said. She struggled to get the words out, "I had to find someone. He's gentle, he wouldn't have put me down when I turned. I couldn't leave him, he didn't have a chance alone."

Shit, Shit, Shit.

"It's been the worst night of my life. Knowing I was running out of time. That he would beg me to stop hurting him, killing him, if I didn't have the strength left to end myself," Mom said. "That even if I did, it would be a matter of time until some other monster came for him."

Rolly staggered back clumsily. She hadn't been so graceless in years. She couldn't remember ever being hit so hard, it was dizzying.

No.

She tried to say the word but couldn't get it out, something gripping her jaw like a vise.

"His father is outside the city, to the North East. There is a settlement. You have to take him."

No! The word was becoming angry down inside her. Not my problem.

"Say you'll take him. Say you'll take him, and please," Mom said. "Take me somewhere. Somewhere he can't see."

Why couldn't she speak? Why couldn't she tell the woman that the world was full of selfish shitheads and that she'd picked the wrong sporting goods store? Why couldn't she tell her to go take her problems to someone who gave a damn? Why?

Why was she crying?

"We'll take him," Rolly heard herself say.