"Here, you drive," Nathan said.
Amanda hopped into the driver seat of the cart, and Nathan went to stand behind the ramp. As she accelerated, she felt the golf cart's engine strain at the weight. Nathan pushed the ramp, and in this way, they moved like molasses across the Nike compound.
As they passed an occupied building, she called out for help. Though she saw some faces at the windows, none of the Nike denizens moved to help. Finally, she stopped yelling, and she started flipping off anyone that she saw. Their shamed faces disappeared from the windows and didn't return.
Behind her, Nathan gasped for air as he pushed to help the ramp along. Wheels, that's what the damn ramp needed, a good set of wheels. After what seemed like hours, they pulled the ramp to the inside of the wall that surrounded the compound. Amanda hopped out of the cart, and though they both knew they weren't strong enough to pick the ramp up on their own, they tried anyway.
For Amanda, the ramp was an unbudging weight that her mind knew should move, even though it refused to. She saw the cords and tendons in Nathan's neck stretch tight as they both strained to lift the ramp.
Nathan stopped lifting with a grunt, and when his hands slid free from under the ramp, they were red from the pressure. "It's useless," he said.
"Fuck that," Amanda said. "Go get someone."
"Who?" Nathan asked, turning back towards the Nike compound as if to spy someone willing to help.
"I don't know!" Amanda shouted. "Anyone!"
Nathan nodded and adjusted his glasses. With his breath still ragged from dragging the ramp to the agreed-upon spot, he headed off to one of the buildings to enlist the help of one of his fellow Nike people.
Amanda stood looking at the ramp, remembering all those stories about moms lifting buses off their children. She was tempted to squat down and try again, but she knew it would be worthless. She held back the urge to kick the ramp.
Instead, she maneuvered the golf cart closer to the wall. Without thinking, she clambered onto the flimsy roof of the vehicle. Standing on the top of the slippery plastic, with snowflakes pelting her in the face, she looked up at the edge of the wall. She had to be up there. She had to see them if they were coming so that they knew that the Nike people had abandoned them.
She raised her arms to grasp the top of the wall, and then she pulled with all of her strength. The metal coping on top of the wall was cold and slick underneath her fingertips, but somehow, she made it to the top. She straddled the slightly icy edge of the wall and peered through the snowfall, trying to find anything moving quicker than the dead. The wall was cold between her legs. She didn't know how long she could sit up there. As long as she had to, she supposed. Maybe the Nike people would come out in a week or two when the snow had thawed and find her frozen to the top of the wall like some sort of modern-day gargoyle. She shuddered in her jacket, rubbing at her fingertips where she had lost some skin in her climb to the top of the barrier.
****
Nathan ran, panic rising up inside him. He needed the soldiers. He needed them to be around. They were probably the only thing keeping him alive. Who knew what Diana and her goons would do if the soldiers weren't around? The threat of their violence had most likely kept him receiving beatings versus being outright murdered.
His life up until that morning had been a life of casual safety, sometimes punctuated by self-destructive tendencies when he couldn't handle the hypocrisy of the people around him. Those self-destructive tendencies had gotten him beaten and ostracized on the Nike campus. He was essentially persona non grata everywhere he went. The soldiers at least let him be around them, and they'd never tossed him a beating at all. He intended to save them.
When he walked through the buildings of the Nike campus, inevitably, people would clam up upon noticing his presence. He blamed this all on Diana. She had engineered his ostracism. He was being cut off socially, not for the first time in his life. He knew the signs of when he'd worn out his welcome from years of experience. But this time, it was different. Usually, when he wore out his welcome, he would get fired, or somebody would give him the cold shoulder. Now, he was catching a beating whenever he opened his mouth.
The fucked-up thing was that Nathan knew the people that were doing it... like really knew them. He had been to some of their houses. He had shared beers with them after work. He didn't know when he had crossed the line with them. Probably when he sided with the soldiers on having Nike kicked out.
He burst through the doors of one of the buildings on the campus and yelled, "Help!" as loud as he could. Inside, there was no one. He should have known better. The main part of the building was dominated by a pool, and though they had drained it, there was still a hole in the ground that was sixteen-feet deep at one end. This was not the world where one would want to end up at the bottom of a fucking well. The medical expertise on the Nike campus was limited
