Blaze of Glory

but we’re the ones who play the game. He doesn’t. We make our own future.'

MacHenry ambled into the room. He tilted his head towards the bedroom. 'Uh…Gert? Wanna come take a look at this?'

Gert's face reddened.

Sissy's did as well and she giggled nervously.

'Please tell me you don’t have any chocolates,' Gert said.

'Uh…No. Was I supposed to have some?'

Gert got to her feet and leaned into him. She kissed him deeply, a hand gripping his collar. 'No, silly. I hate chocolates.' She flashed a grin at Sissy and Grandma Riggs over his shoulder.

'Then why did you ask?'

Gert laughed. 'You can be so dense sometimes, Travis MacHenry.'

'I-' He looked from one woman to the other trying to figure out what was going on. After half a minute he smiled weakly and grabbed her hand. 'Come on then. Let me show you this.'

She hesitated a moment, and in her best Arnold Swartzenegger quipped, 'I’ll be back,' then allowed herself to be dragged down the hall.

Sissy followed the pair with her eyes. She was happy for Gert, but a little jealous too. She'd never feel what Gert was feeling, neither emotionally nor physically. Sissy had lost her chance when Bennie had been killed. Not that she'd have done anything, but she'd noticed the way he'd looked at her. At first it had made her nervous, but then she'd found herself wondering.

'You still have time, you know.'

'What?'

'I said you still have time.' Grandma Riggs reached out and placed her hand on Sissy's lap, gave her knee a squeeze and let go.

Sissy sighed. 'It doesn’t matter.'

'Oh. It matters all right.' The old woman cackled. 'The stories I could tell you. The stories I shouldn't tell you. My god in heaven, the things I've done in the name of love would make a Bishop blush.'

'But they're just stories.'

'So that's it.'

Sissy remained silent.

'You're afraid you'll never become a woman.'

'Something like that.' The words came no louder than a breath.

'I told you that you still have time, and you do. So stop worrying about things you have no control over.'

Sissy tried to fathom what the women meant by you still have time. Surely she wasn't supposed to take that to mean that she could learn the secrets of womanhood by one of the men left in the apartment. The thought made her queasy. She shuddered. How horrible that would be, to-she refused to finish the thought. Instead she picked up the magazine that Gert had been thumbing through and concentrated on what the Prettiest Women in Hollywood were wearing.

CHAPTER 18

He sounded like Darth Vader.

Bad-assed, motherfucking Darth Vader, ruler of the universe and master of The Force.

Biggest, blackest, baddest motherfucker on the planet, breathing like a telephone stalker.

Buckley had always thought the breathing sounded evil and cool. As kids he and his honchos had gone around the neighborhood harassing everyone too slow to get away, copying the awful sound. Darth Vader Breathing. 'Luke. I'm your father.' More breathing.

So fucking cool. Darth Vader was the hero of his neighborhood. The big, black, galactic pimp telling what for to the white kid with magic, crushing the throats of those who would bring him down, and destroying planets filled with uppity white governments, and sickly-looking white sisters with cinnamon bun hairdos. The folks in his neighborhood especially liked Empire Strikes Back, when Indiana Jones turned stone-cold, carbon pizza slice.

Buckley wished he was there now; somewhere on one of those three-mooned planets sucking down an alien drink through a crazy straw in a funky bar with three-titted bitches instead of here. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but the end of the world in search of a way to escape to a place they've never even heard of.

Buckley breathed.

He sounded like Darth Vader covered in cellophane wrapped in duct tape.

He sounded scared.

He sounded desperate.

He sounded anything but cool.

Now resting against the side of the hotel, he and Samuel had been lowered by sheets, dropping the last few feet, catching themselves before they broke something. Looking out at the devastation on the streets before them, it was a wonder they'd survived. Nowhere was there sign of humanity. Cars had been ripped inside out. Homes had been gnawed upon, the insides scattered about the road until what was left was indecipherable, multi-colored, post-consumer confetti for the dead. The higher floors winked at him from broken windows. Broad swathes of brick and wood had been chewed away.

Cocking his head, the strangest thing of all was that the only thing he was able to hear was his own Darth Vader breathing. The honk and growl of traffic had disappeared. The buzz of the electric grid was gone. Even the birds had fled. Only the occasional thump of a building falling in upon itself broke the silence.

Still he searched, his eyes scanning, his ears desperate to pick up a sound. Where were the herds of maggies everyone talked about? Where were the caddies they'd heard earlier? He ducked and examined the sky. Where were the flyers? The more he looked, the less likely these things seemed to be. He saw nothing other than debris. The whole thing seemed so anticlimactic. The coast couldn't be more clear. Not only wasn't there any maggie sign, but there wasn't any sign of anything.

Signaling Samuel, Buckley dashed across the street only stopping when he crashed his back against the brick wall of the Ben Franklin Store. Hugging it with his shoulder, he peered through the broken front into the dim interior. He knew that some of the things he needed were within the shadowy depths of the department store, and some were half a block away in the dark grotto that had once been the Piggly Wiggly.

Buckley waved his hand. Samuel sprinted diagonally towards the grocery store. Hunched over because of the bindings, he looked like a shrink-wrapped Quasimodo.

They'd created an armor of sorts. Nothing that would protect them from arrows or lances or bullets, but something good enough to protect them from maggies, which was what counted. They'd stripped off their clothes, rolled in salt, then been wrapped from tip of the head to the end of the tow in cellophane. Nine or ten layers of the see-through material used for keeping leftovers fresh felt like hard leather to the touch, and played hell on mobility. Around all of this were several strips of duct tape wrapped in horizontal circles to reinforce the cellophane. Although the material stretched a little, neither the elbows nor the knees had full range of motion.

To protect his eyes and still allow him to see they'd cut holes in the layered material, placed aviator shades atop them, then affixed the glasses in place with a single layer of cellophane. Breathing through a tea strainer half filled with salt, the final touches were work gloves over his hands and boots over his feet.

Buckley didn't feel like Darth Vader anymore. He felt like a fool. He kept reminding himself that in these last days of the world fashion no longer mattered. And every time he did, he shook his head at the sadness of it all. He'd always wanted a tux. He bet he'd have looked great in one. Now he'd never get the chance.

He stepped into the shadows of the Ben Franklin store. Three banks of cash registers stood on the left. On the right were carts resting in ranks. The store went back about a hundred feet. He couldn't make out the back wall. Racks of clothes clogged most of the right side of the store. Some had fallen, some remained upright. Between the clothes on the right and the rows of seven-foot shelves arranged on the left was a scene of pure carnage. The bodies of one-time shoppers lay among the destruction of gift baskets, new shoes, school supplies and cheap cologne. Arms and legs intertwined with upended racks and shelves that seemed to have been crushed by a great