“Sounds good,” said Tim. “Let me know when she’s going to do that, so I can shut the power off. I’m pretty good with wiring if she needs any help.”
“I’ll pass that along,” said Kate.
“That’s it, then,” Tim said, ruffling Abby’s hair. “Sam and I will install the house cameras and replace the motion-activated lights while the IT genius here sets up the surveillance headquarters in the dining room. We’ll need the table for the monitors and the receivers. It’s a good, central location. We can set up an air mattress or one of those cots for whoever pulls the midnight shift.”
“Perfect. Amy’s crew has secured the garage, and they’re starting on the sandbags,” Kate informed him. “They’re going to fill as many as possible before the rain. I told them to dig east of the garage. They can walk the bags through the bulkhead door on the other side of the basement and stack them in the root cellar. We’ll figure out how to build the safe boxes later. Hey, awesome job on this. Everything is coming together nicely.”
Samantha nodded. “And we’re ahead of schedule.”
“Even better. Give us a holler on the radio when lunch is ready. Amy thought we’d eat around one,” said Kate.
“Will do,” replied Tim.
Kate smiled at Abby and walked across the basement, headed out of the “bunker.” The basement was divided into two sides, like the basement in their home on Durham Road. The half beyond the reinforced door contained Tim and Amy Fletcher’s basement storage, with room for seasonal yard furniture, bicycles and whatever else they decided to migrate out of the cold weather. Like Alex, they were particular about organization, which was Kate’s way of politely rephrasing “anal retentive.” The Fletchers’ trademark 50-gallon plastic bins lined the walls, four high, apparently filled with everything that they had ever owned. She couldn’t complain. Much of what they had brought with them when they moved with Ethan and Kevin from Colorado after the 2013 pandemic was too painful to display and sat untouched in the bins.
The bunker resembled an expanded version of Kate and Alex’s Scarborough home. The far western wall, underneath the expanded great room, housed the furnace, hot water tank, oil tanks and electrical system. Sturdy metal shelves lined the rest of the cement foundation, containing enough food and essential supplies to support the Fletchers’ core family for at least five years—well beyond the expiration dates on some of the canned goods rotated through the stockpile.
Supplementing the vast selection of canned, pickled and dry goods, a deep tower of pre-packed plastic buckets, each containing one hundred twenty individually sealed freeze-dried meals, occupied the entire wall next to the door. She knew that the buckets alone contained enough meals to sustain eight adults for an entire year, only requiring water to reconstitute. With a shelf life of twenty-five years, the buckets represented their last option. She shuddered to think how they might feel after eating nothing but freeze-dried food for a year, but it easily beat the alternative.
Beyond food, the shelves housed routine and emergency supplies; extra prescription medications needed by Alex’s parents, along with antibiotics and antivirals purchased online through Canadian pharmacies; vitamins, supplements and protein powders; paper products and toilet paper; hundreds of candles and a wide array of portable lights; rechargeable battery stations and thousands of dollars’ worth of batteries, both rechargeable and disposable; communications equipment, including handheld scanners, walkie-talkies, headsets—much of this gear had already been moved upstairs by Tim.
The shelves’ contents represented anything and everything Alex had discovered on the hundreds of prepper forums and blogs that he frequented and wrote about for a living since the 2013 pandemic. Kate never said a word about the pile-up of gear or the near daily UPS and FEDEX deliveries. As their accountant, she knew exactly how much money he spent annually on prepping, and his website consulting business income far exceeded the expenditures.
Over the past three years, they had turned a substantial profit, in addition to receiving the equivalent of her senior accountant salary in “test” items to review on Alex’s site. Even without the additional income to cover the expenses, they had enough money invested to spend like drunken sailors for the rest of their lives and barely touch the capital.
Of course, the traditional concept of financial security in America and the rest of the world may have taken a long hiatus, unlikely to return in any recognizable form. Despite Washington’s rhetoric, the nation’s economy had barely reached the point of stumbling six years after the Jakarta Pandemic. Stocked shelves, off-the-grid house, vegetable garden and grain field, year-round water access—this was the new face of prosperity.
Chapter 11
EVENT +56:33
Limerick, Maine
Eli Russell sat in the front seat of the York County Sherriff’s Department cruiser with “Deputy Brown,” looking for the entrance described by good folks on the other side of Gelder Pond. Standing in one of their backyards and surveying the eastern shoreline, he’d spotted a lone dock nearly halfway across. Three-quarters of the way down Gelder Pond Lane, he pounded the dashboard.
“Turn the car around, Jeff. We must have missed it. No mailbox. No nothing.”
Jeffrey Brown, recently promoted to squad leader after the public execution of the previous one, had proven to be more than amenable to Eli’s plan for him to impersonate a sheriff’s deputy, never asking a single question about the three bullet holes in the left side of the cruiser or the missing rear driver’s side window. He didn’t even have a problem wearing the officer’s blood-speckled duty belt over jeans and a tan short-sleeve, button-down shirt. In fact, he looked enthused and oddly proud when Eli wiped the blood off the slain deputy’s badge and pinned it to his left pocket.
“There it is,” said Brown, stopping the car.
Eli peered through Brown’s window at the unbroken foliage, finally noticing the faint gravel path beyond a young spruce. He stepped out of the cruiser into the downpour and approached the tree. A four-foot-wide, one-foot-deep band of dirt and forest floor debris had been strewn across the gravel road leaving Gelder Pond Lane, blending one side of the driveway with the other. A common spruce tree, roughly eight feet tall, stood in the middle of the dirt, secured upright by green paracord, extending to stronger trees on each side of the entrance. He kicked at the base, expecting it to give way, but it remained firmly in place. A quick inspection showed that a two by four had been driven at least a foot into the driveway and screwed to the back of the tree base.
Clever. Clever.
He cut the paracord with his knife and pushed the tree toward the side of the driveway, letting the weight and leverage of the spruce snap the two by four. Soaked and fuming with anger, he kicked at the shard of wood sticking up from the faux forest floor until he was satisfied that the splinters couldn’t possibly penetrate the cruiser’s tire.
“Up to the house,” he said, slamming the door shut and wiping his face.
Brown didn’t say a word, which was one of several reasons Eli felt the young man had a promising future in the Maine Liberty Militia. His usual driver would have made some inane comment about the rain or whatever trivial detail suited his need to run his piehole in overdrive. Eli had extended that hole all the way through the back of his head when he kept bringing up the “coincidence” of two of Eli’s men being killed in the same day. “Ain’t that an unbelievable coincidence?” “You’d swear this was Friday the 13th, if you didn’t know it was Tuesday,” and on and on, until he’d told the idiot to pull over so he could take a piss. One bullet later, he had his peace and quiet back. The car halted, shoving Eli forward in his seat.
“What is this place, Fort fucking Knox?” he said, staring at a sturdy metal gate. “Any way around that?”
“Doesn’t look like it, sir. Are we sure this is the right place? This seems more like one of those setups on that Armageddon Preppers show,” said Brown.
Even Brown’s choice of words didn’t piss him off.
He used ‘we,’ instead of ‘you’ to avoid sounding like he was raining an accusation of incompetence down on Eli. He’d caught the innuendo, but it didn’t bother him. And he had to admit, this didn’t seem to fit the mold. Whoever lived here had a nice setup for waiting out “the big one.”
“I agree, but our only witness swears that he recognized one of the kids in my nephew’s silver BMW SUV. Seen them in town at the diner and pizza joint over the past couple summers. Every other house on the pond is a long-standing resident of Limerick. This has to be it. Son of a bitch, I don’t want to walk it in. I can’t even see the damn place.”
Brown lowered his window and pressed a button on the keypad, illuminating the numbers.
“They even have power. Press the intercom button and smile. I’m willing to bet we’re on camera,” said Eli.
***
An electronic chime echoed from the house. Kate dropped the grilled cheese sandwich on her plate and stood up. She pushed her chair back and rushed through the sliding glass door connecting the house to the covered porch, beating Samantha, who sat on the other side of the table.
They made it!
“Is that Dad?” said Emily, as Kate flashed by the teenagers huddled around the kitchen table.
“I think so,” she whispered, creating a discordance of squealing chairs.
Everyone followed her to the digital intercom panel built into the kitchen wall, just outside of the hallway leading to the foyer and stairs. She reached her hand forward to press the green, blinking “Intercom” button. A surprisingly strong hand seized her wrist and yanked it back.
“What the f—”
“Alex knows the code,” hissed her father-in-law, releasing her hand.
She seethed with anger for a moment before the full ramifications of answering the intercom without checking the camera sank in.
“Let’s check the camera feed. Sorry to grab you,” said Tim.
“No. That was my fault,” Kate said, following him to the dining room.
Tim swiped his finger over the track pad on the laptop, conjuring a quad-screen digital feed. The top left image displayed the gate. The EMP had damaged the front gate security system, leaving them without a built-in camera feed or the ability to open the gate remotely. With the voice intercom still functional, they rigged one of the wireless cameras to the gate’s power source and hid it in one of the trees beyond the keypad.
“It’s the cops,” announced one of Linda’s daughters.
“Everyone upstairs. Right now!” said Linda. “Let’s go!”
“Why do you always have to yell, Mom? Jesus,” said Alyssa, her brown-haired, hazel-eyed daughter.
“Watch it, missy! Get moving.”
“We could ignore it and see what they do. If they walk in, we can always say that the system got fried in the house,” said Kate.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” said Samantha. “We need to answer and see what’s up. They might have news about our husbands.”
“I hope not,” said Amy Fletcher.
“Something’s off with these guys. No uniforms and—”
“They have badges,” Samantha cut in.
“Those could be from a gumball machine, for all I can tell,” said Tim.
“A gumball machine? How old are you exactly?” said Kate.
“You know what I mean. I think they’d have uniforms no matter what the situation. Take a look at the passenger. That guy doesn’t look like a sheriff’s deputy. His hair is too long and—look right there! Guy has a tattoo on his neck. You can barely see it above the collar. No way we should buzz them through.”
“It seems like we’re asking for more trouble by not talking to them,” said Samantha.
“Are those bullet holes?” said Kate.
Tim pointed at the image. “Looks like the back window was shot out. Why else would they have it down in the rain? The back seat is empty. I don’t like what I’m seeing.”
“Neither do I,” Kate agreed. “The two crazies that stopped us kept saying they were the law. Who the hell knows what’s going on out there? I say let them sweat it out. If they’re real, and they want to talk to us badly enough, they can walk in.”
“I agree,” said Linda. “We should watch the eastern tree line and keep everyone upstairs for now.”
Samantha nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “Will the motion sensors pick them up in the rain?”
“They should. It’s a passive IR system. We created overlap zones by placing two sensors facing each other at about a hundred and twenty feet apart. Even if they pass through the middle, we should pick them up. Four of these zones cover the eastern approach from the road, placed in a line from one side of the property boundary to the other—maybe three hundred paces into the forest. That should give us enough of a buffer to react,” said Linda.
“And the rest of the property?” asked Samantha.
Linda winced. “We only found thirty-two sensors. The north and south boundaries are roughly two thousand feet each according to Alex’s diagram, four times the length of the eastern approach. The water frontage is…”
“Five hundred forty-two feet,” said Tim.
“We installed five overlap zones on each side, about three hundred paces into the forest, focusing on the areas Alex highlighted. Mainly game trails and natural openings. It’s pretty thick in there, with some ledge, so we’ll get some natural channeling effect. We have two zones covering the center of the pond approach. The perimeter isn’t airtight, but the odds are stacked in our favor. Anyone heading to the house should trigger one of the sensors. We didn’t mess with the trip flares. They looked like World War One relics. I can’t believe Alex stored those in the house.”
“Neither can I,” said Amy.
“I drew up a chart with all of the zones. The transceivers are labeled and arranged on the table in a rough representation of the perimeter for easy reference. Each transceiver simultaneously monitors four sensors. Two zones. You’ll get a visual warning on the digital display and an audible warning, telling you which of the four sensors were triggered. It’s pretty self-explanatory when you see the setup in the dining room.”
“What do we do if one of the alarms goes off?” asked Samantha.
“We sit tight and stay out of sight. If they decide to pay us a visit, the only people they should see are Ma and Pa Fletcher,” Linda explained. “Under no circumstances do we allow them into the house.”
“What if they insist, as in open the door or we’ll open it for you?” asked Tim.
“Then we’ll know they didn’t come here on official business and act accordingly,” said Kate, patting her drop holster.
“If they produce a warrant, you better not produce a gun,” said Samantha.
“If they produce a warrant, I’ll serve as your personal butler for the remainder of the year,” Kate quipped.
***
“What are these people thinking? Flash the lights and hit the siren for a few seconds,” said Eli.
He waited a long minute after the sound and light show.
“I guess they don’t give a shit about the law. All right. Back it up and park us about fifty feet down the road. That way,” he said, pointing north. “I want to take a little look before we call in the cavalry.”
Brown pulled the car along the right side of Gelder Pond Lane and stopped.
“Should I bring the .308?”
“Negative. We’ll map everything out and head back to base. This is strictly a reconnaissance mission.”
“Roger that,” said Brown, opening his car door.
***
“We have company!” yelled Linda. “Zone 2. Single sensor pick-up. If they head straight in, they’ll appear due east of the garden.”
“Shit!” Samantha yelled from the kitchen. “I told you it was the cops!”
“I don’t give a shit who it is. They’re trespassing,” said Kate, slinging her rifle. “I’ll head up to the master bedroom and keep an eye on the tree line.�
�
“I’ll join you,” said Linda. “Sam, I need you to stay here and watch the sensors. Call us on the handheld if any of them are triggered.”
“Got it. What are you going to do if they head toward the house?”
“That all depends on how they approach and what they’re carrying,” said Linda. “I’m sending the kids into the cellar with Amy until this is resolved. Tim, I want you to make sure all of the doors are locked, then keep Sam company.”
“I’ll check the front door on my way upstairs,” said Kate, patting her father-in-law’s shoulder.
He leaned his M-14 rifle against the wall and hurried after Kate, catching her before she turned down the foyer hallway.
“Don’t do anything we’ll all regret. If they’re alone, we’ll talk to them at the door. The last thing we need is the entire Sheriff’s Department pitched in against us. We’ll lose everything.”
“What happened to the ‘I smell a rat’ speech?”
“Let’s sniff them out a little closer. Trust me on this,” said Tim.
***
Eli Russell crept to the edge of the tree line, pushing the underbrush out of the way, until he had reached the point where he couldn’t go any further without breaking concealment. Brown eased into a position behind the thick tree to his left and nodded, staring straight ahead. Dense, unkempt bushes forced the use of a compass to stay on a due-west heading. The Fletcher compound remained obscured by heavy rain until they reached a point roughly fifty feet from the edge of the clearing, reinforcing his assessment that it would be nearly impossible for anyone in the house to detect their arrival. Unslinging a pair of powerful binoculars, he rose on both knees until he had a view of the house and the surrounding area.
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 77
