Chapter 14
Fairfield, Ohio
Elijah successfully kicked the door in on the second try. He quietly walked entered. The apartment had a nasty sewer smell to it. Kind of like rotting protein, or a dead body. The apartment was a mess. The mess was an organized mess. It looked like it was being lived in, not ransacked.
"Rene. You here? it's. . ."
At that instant Elijah felt a sharp pain on his upper back. He had been struck by a blunt object. He kept on his feet. Before he could get turned around to see what he was up against he was hit in the back of the leg. He went down.
He saw a young boy standing over him with a baseball bat. He saw that the boy had the bat raised for another swing.
"Wait!" Elijah held up his hands.
Another young boy pounced on Elijah with a butcher knife. He held the knife to Elijah's throat. Then he found Elijah's pistol and removed it from the holster.
The boy with the bat said, "Can't you read?! Keep out! I am really mad with you. I am going to kill you!"
"No!" Elijah said. "I'm only here looking for my daughter."
"Why?! So you can eat her?! Or did you come in here to eat us?!"
"No, I don't eat people, I never have. It's like I told you, I'm looking for my daughter, Rene."
"The boy with the knife screamed, "How do you know her name?!"
"She's my daughter."
"Yea, right!" He raised the baseball bat.
Elijah held up his hands, "Boys, now you've got this all wrong. I'm only here to find Rene and Matt."
The younger boy with the knife said, "He does kind of look like Rene, but he doesn't look anything like Matt."
"I'm not Matt's father, I'm Rene's father."
"Prove it!" the older boy with the bat said.
"Her name is Rene and she is married to Matt! Now how else would I know that? It's not written on the front door, you know."
The boy with the bat said, "Well you're too late! You should have been here a long time ago!"
"Why!? What did you do to her!?"
"Not us! We had nothing to do with it!"
Elijah grabbed the kid's arm that was holding the knife and twisted it. The kid screamed, and the knife dropped. The boy rolled away, holding his arm in pain.
Elijah sat up. "Okay, now. You mind tellin' me what happened then?"
"Raymond and I, we lived a few apartments down. We came here to Matt for protection. And Rene had a gun that she got from her. . ."
"Me. I gave her the gun. Now go on."
The boy relaxed and sat on the couch. "They tried to get us. There were a lot of them. They broke in and Rene kept shooting at them. They were shooting back." Matt was hitting them with this ball bat.
Elijah looked at the back of the "Keep Out" sign and saw that the sign covered a couple of bullet holes were put into the window.
Rene and Matt fought them and killed them all but they were both hurt. They got shot. They both died.
Elijah hung his head. "No. My baby. My baby. Are you sure? They both. . .are gone? He started crying. "Why!? Why did they want in here so bad?!" He didn't want to think about what happened to their bodies.
"Waaaaa!" a baby cried.
Elijah was confounded by the situation. "What? Who?"
The oldest boy said, "Katy! It's okay! You can come out now!"
Katy, a scared little blonde haired girl slowly came out holding a baby.
The boy on the couch said, "This is your grandbaby."
"What? I got a grandbaby?" Elijah fell flat on the floor and lost it, trying to take this overload of information all in. He held his eyes and let the tears out. Then he got back up.
I. . .I. You boys here. . .and girl, you saved my grandbaby? Let me see. . .her."
"Him," the older boy said, "They never got around to naming him."
Katy pulled the baby away.
"It's okay, Katy," the boy said. "Let him see his grandson."
Katy brought the baby to Elijah. The baby stared at Elijah. He gazed upon the eyes of his grandson. For an instant he had the feeling that he was looking into Rene's eyes.
The baby appeared to be in good health, maybe a little lightweight, probably ready for some solid food. It was so surrealistic. Did all of this really just happen?
Elijah asked the older boy, "What's your name, son?"
"Mitch."
"And you're Raymond?'
Raymond nodded in the affirmative.
"I'll call the baby, Mitchell Raymond Mayweather, after you, men."
"You are naming the baby after me?" Mitch said. "Wowwww."
"And me?" Raymond said, in amazement. "His name is bigger than he is."
"He should be named after you, you men are heroes. You know that, don't you? I guarantee Rene would be so proud of you boys and eternally happy that you saved Mitchell Raymond's little life. And you know what? So am I."
"Wow! 'Mitchell Raymond!' You hear that Mitchell?"
Mitch said, "I didn't really think I was a hero, I just felt like a mommy."
"Mommies are heroes too, you know. How did you do it?"
"Well, Matt went down to the messed up store and there was a couple of crushed cases of powdered baby formula still there so he grabbed it all, along with some regular food that was buried under the mess, and brought it here. We used mirrors and the sun to warm up the baby formula the best we could. We kept the door locked and just lived with what we had."
Elijah asked, "What did you do for water?"
"When things started going bad, Matt filled up the bathtub full of water and started filling up everything he could with water. He knew the power was going to go out and there would be no running water to drink. That lasted quite awhile, but it ran out, so then we would drink dirty water off of the roof. You get used to it."
"Good work, Matt," Elijah mumbled.
Elijah now realized the context of the smell in the place. Just old fashioned dirty diapers. "You boys are amazing. Now we have to get out of here."
"We can't do that," Mitch said.
"Why not?"
"It's not safe. And we got nowhere to go."
"You can't stay here. You will run out of everything, then what? You have been in here so long that you can't imagine anything else. I'll take you all back to Crawfordton with me."
Mitch said, "You can't trust anybody."
"I know, but we'll leave at night so no one can see us. We'll be okay. I wouldn't have come here if I didn't think I would be able to get here and back. Don't you want to get out of here?"
"Yea," Raymond said. "I'll go to Crawfordton. It has to be better than here."
"Atta boy." Elijah could barely move from his battering when he tried to get up.
Mitch said, "Sorry about that. . ."
"Elijah. No no. I understand totally, you were just being protective, but I ain't gonna tell you it doesn't still hurt."
Mitch helped him up. "Here, lay on the couch."
"Oh, great. I haven't had the privilege for a long time. Let's all get some rest for now, then we'll pack up and get out of here."
It was not so impossible to believe that Rene and Matt had perished, but he would have never guessed, that he would be napping on a couch with his grandson when he got to Fairfield.