Wipeout | Book 5 | Foul Play

by Richards, E. S.

  “Thank you, son,” Charles murmured graciously as he accepted a bowl of cold, canned soup. It wasn’t much, but he wolfed it down hungrily while Samuel watched on, unable to bring himself to eat just yet. The thought of his mother was still fresh in his mind and he doubted whether his appetite would be returning any time soon.

  “Do you really have nothing left?” Samuel asked, curious about his father’s food situation. “How long has it been like this?”

  “There are a few cans left,” Charles replied between mouthfuls. “But I’ve been rationing. Truth be told I haven’t felt much like eating since your mother…”

  Charles trailed off, unable to finish his sentence as his eyes unwillingly drifted to the kitchen window and the dark garden that lay beyond it. Samuel moved his seat to the left to block his father’s view [MP1]and placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder, practically feeling bone beneath his sweater vest. Even though he couldn’t see the grave, just looking out there and thinking about Addison’s body wasn’t good for him.

  “You need to eat, dad,” Samuel spoke softly. “I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to keep fighting.”

  “I know,” Charles sighed, his head drooping down as he stared into his bowl. “I’ve just never had to do it without your mother.”

  Samuel felt a lump form in his throat and forced himself to swallow it down, determined to be strong for his father. He had never seen Charles like this before; growing up, he had always thought it was his mother who relied on Charles for support, not the other way around. Perhaps it was more of an even pairing, his father simply hiding his emotions better.

  Their family had never really been one for outward displays of emotions. It was one of the reasons why Jessie had been driven away and ended up living half way around the world. Her relationship with their mother, in particular, was always troubled due to Addison’s strict nature and reluctance to comfort or hug. It was just the way she had been and Samuel knew it didn’t mean that she hadn’t loved them any less. Addison had been raised to wear a stiff upper lip and not to show her emotions, a trend she continued throughout her life. But there were always times when she let the cool outer shell slip. She was a mother after all, and Samuel knew she had always taken that role very seriously.

  Watching Charles finish the bowl of soup, Samuel desperately wanted to ask him what had happened to his mother. How had she died? What had been the cause of it? He had only just got his father back, though, and as he sat close to the old man, Samuel could tell Charles wasn’t prepared to talk about it. He wondered how many nights his father had sat here alone, wondering whether he was the last of his family left alive and as that thought crossed Samuel’s mind, he knew he didn’t want to inflict anymore sadness on his father. Not tonight.

  “I went all the way to Poughkeepsie you know,” Samuel spoke instead, granting his father one more night of not talking about what had happened. They had both lost Addison, but they had also found one another again and, if he could, Samuel wanted to give his father some happy memories to reflect on when he closed his eyes later that night. He wanted to distract the old man from his pain as best he could and give him dreams of wild forests and rushing rivers – if the best he could offer his father was a few moments where he forgot his pain and suffering, then that was what Samuel was going to do.

  “What?”

  “Poughkeepsie,” Samuel repeated. “I traveled up there with a friend of mine – a new friend. His husband and little boy were there and my friend, Austin, was so determined to find them that I said I’d help. We made it, in the end. All the way to Poughkeepsie and back. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen, dad.”

  “I doubt I would,” Charles replied with half a smile. “But you can try me.”

  As he recalled his story, Samuel surprised even himself at some of the things he was saying. Even though he had lived through it all, when he repeated some of what had happened, he found it hard to believe. His father echoed the sentiment, questioning whether it was really his son who had run from gang members, been chased by a wild bear and crossed a dangerous river all to get into a city that was doing everything it possibly could to stop people from entering it.

  While the tale of Samuel’s journey was exciting, Charles asked far more questions about what the world was like now. The old man was curious about what had happened to the city, not once leaving his house since the news of Trident broke many weeks ago. Based on what he had seen, Samuel was glad of that fact – the city was no place for an old man now, the streets unsafe and unreliable at every turn. In truth, Samuel didn’t know what had happened to New York since he and Austin had left for Poughkeepsie, seeing very little of it in the last twenty-four hours, but he knew it wasn’t the same. Disaster changed people – Samuel’s time on the road and in Poughkeepsie had taught him that. When you experienced a great loss, there were some people who would never come back from it and this loss was the greatest anyone had ever experienced. It was far more than one’s and zero’s in a bank balance, it was life and death, and Samuel was ever so painfully aware of that reality.

  The hours rolled by between him and his father, the conversation taking a turn from Samuel’s recent journey to fonder, earlier memories they’d shared. Charles recalled moments from Samuel’s childhood that even he didn’t remember and the two of them talked more than Samuel ever remembered them talking before in his adult life. Before long it was well into the night and Charles was almost nodding off between sentences, the day’s events and state of his health taking a toll on his energy levels.

  “Come on, dad,” Samuel coaxed his father. “Let’s get you upstairs to bed.”

  “I think that’s probably for the best,” Charles replied, no strength to argue or resist as Samuel gently pulled him up from his chair and guided him to the stairs. He kept one arm around his father’s frail body the entire way, helping him sit softly down on the bed and removing his shoes for him.

  “She loved you, you know,” Charles whispered just as Samuel was about to leave the room, his father tucked in bed with the sheets under his chin. “Your mother loved you very much.”

  “I know dad,” Samuel whispered back, once again swallowing the lump that formed in his throat. He might have cried over his mother’s grave, but he still didn’t want his father to see his tears.

  “And I love you too,” Charles continued. “Both of you - you and your sister.”

  “We know dad, we know how much you both cared for us.”

  “I know your mother didn’t always show it in the best way, but you kids were everything to her. You were her final thought when she died; she never wanted to leave you behind.”

  With his bottom lip trembling, Samuel made his way back over to his father’s bedside and sat down next to the old man. He didn’t say anything, the words seeming futile in his head in the magnitude of the moment. Instead he just held his father’s hand and comforted him as Charles eventually drifted into sleep. Samuel sat with him a little while longer until he too felt his body demanding to rest, despite how reluctant he was to leave his father’s side. At least they were together now; he would only be moving into the next room and in the morning, he would see his father’s face again. This wasn’t the end for Samuel and Charles, they were going to keep fighting and Samuel knew that they were going to make it.

  Chapter 3

  A thud in the middle of the night startled Addison from her sleep. She had always been a light sleeper and often woke throughout the night, but something about this time felt different. Remaining still with the sheets wrapped around her body and Charles snoring softly to her right, Addison listened for whatever it was that had woken her and strained her ears in the darkness.

  “Charles,” she whispered in her husband’s ear seconds later, terror seeping through her bones as the sound of windows being smashed downstairs carried through the old house. “Charles, wake up. There’s someone downstairs.”

  “What?”

  “Someone’s breaking in.
What do we do?”

  A split-second later Charles heard it, too. The sound of footsteps crunching over broken glass downstairs and low voices murmuring to each other. There were people downstairs and Charles and Addison were trapped.

  “What should we do?” Addison asked again, clutching the sheets against her chest as she shivered in her nightgown. The house felt strangely cold, like the chill of winter had cut through it despite the summer months still not being over.

  Downstairs the sound of several pairs of feet moving around continued, accompanied by cupboard doors being opened and hands rummaging around inside. Charles pulled back the sheets and climbed out of bed as quietly as he could manage, putting a finger over his lips to quiet his panicked wife. He wasn’t going to pretend he knew what he was doing, but Charles was determined to protect his wife throughout whatever was happening.

  In the back of his mind, Charles had wondered when this would happen to them. It came as no surprise that across the city there were break ins taking place as people became more and more desperate for food and resources. The two of them were running low as it was and Charles had already sat and wondered whether the Carter’s down the road had left a full pantry behind when they went away for vacation before the collapse, or if the house opposite which housed a young family of four had anything they could feast on. He and Addison weren’t desperate enough just yet to go and ransack their neighbor’s houses, but clearly the same couldn’t be said for whoever was downstairs.

  “What are you going to do?” Addison whispered as she looked at her husband standing in his cotton pajamas. There was an old baseball bat in the umbrella stand at the bottom of the stairs, or even more threateningly the set of hunting rifles an old friend had gifted Charles some years ago in the downstairs study. However, neither was close enough to use as protection and the last thing Addison wanted was her husband going downstairs.

  “Should we just wait for them to leave?”

  Charles looked back at Addison and considered her suggestion, but found himself shaking his head. This was his house; the food was his food and the rest were his possessions. He couldn’t just stand by and let himself be robbed while he cowered away upstairs. He might be an old man, but he was still a man and he had pride aplenty to keep his chin up in the face of adversity.

  “Stay here,” Charles instructed his wife, sliding his feet into his slippers and edging toward the bedroom door.

  “Charles!” Addison hissed through her teeth, her voice rising as her husband threatened to leave her behind. “Don’t!”

  “I’ll be right back,” Charles replied as reassuringly as he could. “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll get rid of them.”

  “Please don’t go,” Addison pleaded as Charles put his hand on the door handle, slowly turning the knob and letting the door click open. He paused there for a second and listened, his head cocked to one side to make sure it was safe.

  “Don’t worry,” Charles repeated as he pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway. “Stay here.”

  The look on his wife’s face as he left her in the bedroom almost made Charles give up and crawl back into bed with her, but he couldn’t let his house be pillaged while he shrunk away upstairs. Shuffling along the floor, he slowly reached the top of the large staircase, and peered down into the main hallway and the dining room to one side of it. The intruders were nowhere to be seen, but he could hear them in the kitchen. They were probably starving, hunting for scraps of food and anything else they could sell or trade back in the city. Holding his breath, Charles started to make his way down to them.

  “Alright gentlemen. I think you’ve got enough.”

  Standing in the entrance to his kitchen, Charles mustered all the strength and courage he carried and stood up tall. He held the baseball bat in his right hand as he spoke, unable to reach the rifles in the study without crossing the intruders’ path. In his head, Charles had no idea what was going to happen next but he hoped that just finding the house inhabited would startle the robbers and cause them to run. As each of the three men turned in his direction, Charles’ confidence slowly started to fade and he found himself wishing he had stayed upstairs in bed with his wife.

  “Wowwee! Lookie here boys. The old man came to fight!”

  “What’re you going to do with that, old timer? You got a catcher’s mitt lying around so we can all play?”

  Charles’ heart lodged in his throat as he realized what a grave mistake he had made. These men weren’t intimidated by his presence at all, they didn’t look scared or show a morsel of regret over their actions. One of the men just scoffed and turned back to the large cabinet by the door to the study, rummaging through the drawers in search of valuable goods.

  “Isn’t it a bit past your bedtime old man? Why don’t you run along and let us finish our work here, then we’ll get out of your way. If we feel like it.”

  “Yeah,” another spoke up, grinning and flashing a gold tooth at the front of his mouth. “It’s quite a nice house you’ve got here, I might just stick around for the night. Catch a bit of shut eye.”

  “Please,” Charles started to speak, trying to make his voice sound strong and determined despite the fear he was feeling inside. “You’ve got what you came for – the cupboards are stripped bare. There was hardly enough food for us before you got here, you must have enough now.”

  “Us?” The man with the gold tooth picked up quickly on Charles’ slip of the tongue, raising an eyebrow and taking a step closer to him. “You got someone else hiding in here with you?”

  Charles froze as he realized what he had done. His mind whirred as he tried to figure out what to say – there was no point keeping Addison’s presence a secret; if these men wanted to search the house, they would find her without even trying. But before he could open his mouth to confess the truth, the man with the golden tooth had nodded to one of his accomplices who was making his way out of the kitchen.

  “My wife!” Charles called out. “Please don’t hurt her!”

  “Come on now,” Gold-Tooth grinned, flashing his decorated jawline once more. “We’re not animals. We just don’t like surprises, do we, Dev?”

  Dev – who was still rifling through the cabinet – barely looked up from what he was doing. He held a couple of papers in his hand and was staring at them very intently, narrowing his eyes to read the small font in the darkness.

  Charles[MP2] felt his heart hammering in his chest, no longer bothered by what was happening in the kitchen in front of him as his eyes remained glued to the staircase where the third man had disappeared. Addison’s scream pierced the night seconds later, Charles forgetting everything else in the moment and lurching for the stairs as quickly as his body would let him. No sooner had his foot planted on the first step did a hand come crashing down on his shoulder[MP3], knocking the air out of him and almost sending him tumbling to the ground.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Gold-Tooth tutted and shook his head, opening his jacket slightly to reveal a pistol fastened at his waist. “I told you we’re not animals, but that doesn’t mean I won’t play cat and mouse with you, old man. Come on now, back in the kitchen. My friend will bring your lovely wife down when he’s done.”

  Charles gritted his teeth and fought against every natural instinct in his body to jump up and punch the shiny gold tooth right out of the brute’s mouth. But the game was different now: Gold-Tooth had a gun and until Charles could lay eyes on his wife and say for certain that she was safe, he knew it was foolish to try and do anything that might cause any more trouble. Like it or not, he needed to play by the rules now.

  “Charles!”

  Addison’s wail carried down the stairs as she struggled against her attacker, kicking out as he half dragged and half carried her to the top of the staircase.

  “It’s okay, Adi!” Charles shouted back, using a name for his wife which he hadn’t called her in many years. “It’s okay. I’m down here.”

  As soon as he was able, Charles wrapped his arms
around his beloved wife and held her close against his body as she cried, the man who had gone upstairs to collect her finally letting go and allowing her body to sag in the doorway. Charles comforted his wife as best he could in the moment, his arms around her body but his eyes glued to the three men as they now regrouped in the kitchen. Addison was safe at least, now they just had to convince the three men to leave. If he had to, Charles had precious jewels and all sorts of valuables in the safe in his study. He would pay for their departure just as long as he and his wife could have their house back.

  “Hey guys, come and have a look at this.”

  Dev, who was still analyzing letters in the corner of the room, beckoned his two accomplices over to him and handed them both a piece of paper. Charles watched carefully and racked his brain to try and think what he had kept in that cabinet, it was mostly old papers from his work and family picture albums, old trinkets the children had made growing up. There was nothing of value in there that he could remember, but that didn’t seem to be stopping the three men scrutinizing the papers like they held the last written words in existence.

  “Hm,” Gold-Tooth mused out loud, looking from the paper back over to where Charles and the now trembling Addison stood. “You really think it’s them?”

  “Adds up doesn’t it?” Dev replied, picking up a picture frame that sat on the cabinet. “Look.” He handed it to Gold-Tooth who studied the photo, Charles watching on in confusion.

  “What’s your name, old man?”

  “Charles,” he replied, answering Gold-Tooth’s question as he placed the picture frame back on the cabinet.

  “Charles what?”

  “Charles Westchester.”

  “Is that your son, Charles?” Gold-Tooth asked, nodding to the photograph he’d just put down.

  Charles paused for a second and tried to think why these men would have any interest in Samuel. His thoughts ran at a hundred miles an hour through his head, but it still wasn’t quick enough, his silence seeming to irritate Gold-Tooth as the large man walked toward him.