Free A Town Called America by Andrew Alexander

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