Chapter 16
As the house came into his view, Jared saw Barry standing with a man near the large mahogany front doors to an even larger house. The residence was surrounded by trees, and Jared doubted any of the man’s neighbors could see the structure through the heavy vegetation. The man was perhaps fifty-five years old with a shock of white hair reminding Jared of Doc Brown from Back to the Future. He wondered humorously to himself if it were a prerequisite to master this look in order to be part of the supersmart club of people who can survive new and unexpected situations. He also wondered if Dwight had a stash of plutonium and a dog named Einstein. Dwight was also carrying a rifle Jared had never seen before. The weapon looked like it belonged in some futuristic science fiction movie.
As John and Jared approached, Dwight shifted uncomfortably, glancing about the property and muttering to Barry in a tone so low that neither Jared nor John could hear what he was saying as they approached.
“No matter what, stay cool,” John murmured, trying not to move his lips.
Cool? Jared thought. This mad scientist with the laser gun had better stay cool. For all of Barry’s intellectual bravado, he seemed more than a little nervous in the presence of this Doc Brown–looking character.
“Hey, guys,” Barry began, “this is Dwight, the guy I’ve told you about.”
Both Jared and John stopped in front of Barry and Dwight and nodded. Jared leaned forward and extended his hand. “I’m Jared and this is John,” he said with a short wag of his head.
Dwight looked right past Jared, scanning the driveway they’d just walked up. Jared wasn’t about to stand there like an idiot with his hand hanging, waiting for Dwight to exercise manners, so he let it hang at his side and straightened his posture.
“And you are alone?” Dwight asked, still searching the driveway.
Jared looked puzzled and questioned Barry. “Didn’t you tell him?”
Barry pumped his head up and down. “I did, yeah, I told him—see, Dwight, it’s just the three of us.”
“Armed—why’d you come up here armed?” Dwight demanded, staring straight at John and Jared.
John took a non-menacing step forward, allowing his rifle to hang by the sling as he turned his palms up. “Look, my man, there’s a lot a bad going on right now as society tries to find its balance. No one has food, and a lot of people probably don’t have water either. Some of those people think it’s okay to take what they need from other people, and most of the time the people who are getting their possessions taken are not armed like we are. We just walked all the way across San Jose to get here, and no one took a thing from us—that’s why we’re armed.”
Dwight stood chewing on the inside of his lip as he mulled over what John had said. When he finished gnawing at whatever loose piece of flesh had ignited his interior mouth-munching session, he spat on the ground and looked back at Barry. “So what do you want, Barry?”
Jared spoke up. “Can we come inside and talk?”
“No, you cannot come inside and talk. I don’t know you, and I hardly know Barry here. Can’t believe he got you all to walk all that way thinking we were chums.”
“To set the record straight,” Jared continued, his voice taking on less of a friendly tone, “Barry never said you two were chums. He said you’re intelligent, shared his belief that what happened was going to happen, and that you’re knowledgeable in the field of batteries and how they might be integrated into a portable or stationary solar system.” Jared looked around the immediate area they were standing in and shrugged. “I don’t know what you did to prepare, but I’m pretty sure whatever it was, it won’t last forever. All of us need to start growing food, and to do that, we need power and land. We have the land, and it’s in a fairly safe place, easy to defend, and has a year-round fresh water source.”
Dwight scratched his cleanly shaved chin and, again, gnashed at the inside of his mouth. “Okay, so I draw you a schematic showing how to put the whole thing together—what do I get in return?”
“No, we don’t want a drawing. We want you to come live with us, help us, be part of our community,” Jared informed him.
Dwight stepped back. “No, no, no, no, I can’t leave my house and Holly. I can’t—”
“Bring Holly,” Barry blurted out.
“She’s buried in the backyard, killed herself in our bedroom,” Dwight stated, staring blankly at Barry.
Barry’s heart sank and his mouth dropped open as Dwight finished his sentence. John was only paying partial attention to the conversation at this point as he studied the house. He was mildly surprised to see the windows and doors were shuttered in steel as if outfitted for a hurricane or an attack. John realized the house was designed in shape to offer a view of all the structure’s openings from different positions inside the residence. John studied the shutters and could see the faint outline of what could only be weapon ports. They were all closed, but every shutter had a port, and every port looked out onto at least one, and sometimes two, other steel-shuttered openings across from it.
Wow, John thought, he built a house with fields of fire in mind. As John stood evaluating Dwight’s thoughtful design, he noticed there were pry marks on several of the shutters, as well as an entire area off to his left that appeared to have been burned. The house had been attacked. The house was made of some sort of stone or brick, and the roof comprised of metal shingles, so the fire hadn’t taken. According to the bullet strike marks he saw on the walls, it was evident that whoever set the fire had been shot or shot at from one of the other ports.
John smiled to himself at Dwight’s astute foresight. Everything from the materials used to build his home, to the actual design of the structure’s shape was very well thought out. John wondered what the contractor must have thought when Dwight laid out the plans.
John turned to Dwight, who was still staring at Barry. “Look here, man, I know you ain’t getting any sleep at night trying to defend this place. I’m truly sorry about your wife, and I’m sure both Jared and Barry are too, but we all have lost a great deal since the solar flare hit. We all need to get back to living, and, well, quite frankly we need you, and from the looks of things here, you could use a little help yourself.” When John was finished, he took a step back and waited.
Dwight turned his head and looked at the outside wall where someone had recently attempted to burn his house down after being unsuccessful in gaining entry through the large front entrance. Someone had actually tried to burn down his home out of frustration that they were unable to get inside, kill him, and take his possessions—things he had because he planned for this event when they hadn’t. His shoulders sagged, then drooped completely, and John could see he was at the end of his rope.
When his wife took her life, Dwight had numbly cleaned up the mess and buried his bride in the yard the two had used to entertain friends before the solar flare. The same yard where the two would sit and enjoy each other’s company from time to time. While the pre-solar-flare world was, at times, an angry and corrupt place full of strive, it still operated under a certain set of rules and a certain code of conduct. The current world was sad, jarring, and lawless.
“I’ll make you all a deal,” Dwight said, turning and walking toward his front doors. “Come inside and we can talk over the details.”
The three men followed the now somewhat forlorn Dwight into his home. Once all four men were inside, Dwight locked the door and pulled down a large metal bar across the inward-opening front doors. The first thing Jared noticed were working lights. He hadn’t seen a functioning light bulb in over three months. All three men stared at the lights in amazement.
Barry laughed out loud and pointed at John. “Told you your list was wrong.”
Dwight looked at John and then back at Barry, question written on his face. “What list?”
John started to shake his head in an effort to stop Barry from explaining but was too late.
“John worked for the government, and they had a list
of people in Silicon Valley the government thought could help get the country’s infrastructure back online.” Barry chuckled. “They didn’t have you on the list, Dwight.”
“Good,” Dwight muttered before turning to John. “You worked with the government?”
John pursed his lips and nodded. “Yeah, I was in the Army, and before that I was a Marine. When this thing happened, I was back east and one of only a few guys from my unit not deployed overseas. Our unit got orders from what seemed to be the remnants of our former government, and I was relocated to California. We were sent out to bring people back who the government thought were useful.”
Dwight’s eyes narrowed. “You forced people?”
John took a deep breath, then shook his head. “No—I never had to.”
Dwight twitched his shoulders in question. “So why’d ya quit?”
“I didn’t exactly. After your chum Barry refused to come with us, his neighbors shot my team up pretty bad, and our helicopter crashed in the hills near where Jared was staying.”
Dwight sat on a large couch and steepled his hands in thought. As Dwight thought, Jared eyed the inside of the mammoth house. The square footage, based on what Jared could see, was probably in the neighborhood of ten thousand square feet, not counting the garage and any outbuildings. Jared had not consciously positioned himself, but he realized John was covering the right side of the residence while Jared was facing the left. Barry sat clueless on a second couch, staring at Dwight as if waiting for him to spew forth something so profound, the event would no longer matter. This did not happen.
Jared tried to remember if it was he or John who’d posted up first, but couldn’t recall. Either way, the two men were covering the two unknowns inside Dwight’s home, and this made him feel more comfortable. The unknowns were a hallway on Jared’s side and possibly a gigantic open kitchen on John’s side.
After several silent moments, Dwight broke the silence. “You’re right,” he said, looking directly at John. “I can’t survive more than two years with the food supplies I have on-site. I do have water from a well and power for now, but the attacks started a week ago, and they’ve come every night since.”
Dwight told the trio his neighborhood was devoid of humans after the first week. Once he realized what happened, Dwight told them he’d closed the gate and refused to allow his wife to leave the house. This was probably what led to her suicide. A week prior, Dwight had been awakened in the middle of the night to the sounds of someone attempting to pry the shutters from their moorings. Dwight explained how he had issued a verbal warning to what turned out to be three men. The men did not leave, but instead demanded he open up.
When he refused, one of the men fired at the shutter Dwight was communicating through. He was not injured and returned fire, killing one of the men and wounding one other. He didn’t sleep the rest of the night. The shooting was the spark that ignited an ongoing feud between Dwight and his unknown assailants. The second evening more men came and began prying at the shutters. This time, Dwight didn’t bother to announce a warning, opting instead to simply shoot as many of the men as he could before they fled.
The third night, they returned with ten men and were much more organized. The ten men broke into groups and worked at covering each other. One group would pry while another would try to suppress Dwight’s efforts to shoot through the ports. Dwight easily thwarted their endeavors by moving about the inside of his house, constantly changing shooting positions. Dwight wasn’t sure how many men he shot since that outing had been a much higher-paced episode than the two previous encounters.
The fourth night, no one came, but on the following night, the men changed their tactics yet again by throwing some sort of flammable liquid against the house in a futile attempt to burn Dwight out of his house. Dwight assured Jared and the other men the house could not be burned down, so he waited inside without firing a shot. Later that same evening after the fire burned itself out, the men returned and fired several shots at the house in what amounted to little more than a child’s temper tantrum when the assailants realized their fire plan had failed miserably.
The previous night marked evening number six, and the men had not disappointed. They returned and began a very methodical probing operation of the property. They located and destroyed many of Dwight’s security cameras before attempting to shoot at the ports in the shutters. Their shots caused minimal damage and resulted in them giving up quickly. Dwight had a hunch the men were short on ammunition, or they would have used more of it in their raid against him and his home.
Once Dwight finished briefing Jared and company on his current problem, he sat back and smiled. “So it seems we can all do each other a favor here.” He sighed through a joyless grin. “My first choice is not to go anywhere with anyone, but I also realize this little situation I have with some neighbors is escalating, and at some point, I won’t be able to handle it on my own. If I just pack up and leave, that problem doesn’t go away, you see. It remains here, and those men do the same thing to other people.”
“What are you saying?” Jared queried.
“I’m saying I will come with you, but only after you help me rid the neighborhood of these men who tried to burn my home down and who have made my wife’s final resting place a very unpeaceful place to be buried.” Dwight gave the group a tiny nod as if he was sure they would agree.
Barry shook his head almost unconsciously as Jared bit his lower lip, thinking about what the man was asking. At first glance, Dwight wanted to exact the revenge he was unable to achieve by himself and was attempting to use Jared, John and Barry to accomplish this task. Then Jared thought about what Dwight actually said, and understood it was more about leaving his neighborhood a better place than seeking revenge or retribution.
John, who until now remained sitting still as a statue, spoke out. “We’ll do it.” He hesitated, swallowed hard, then continued, “At least I will do it, the other two can make up their own minds, but I call all the shots on how it’s done and what happens afterwards.”
“Like what?” Dwight asked.
“Like I will be outside tonight, and I don’t want to get shot, so you’ll do exactly what I ask. Also, after we’re finished and we leave, you leave this place open so anyone who comes in has access to whatever we can’t carry out of here.”
Dwight, Barry and Jared all frowned in unison.
“That’s nonnegotiable,” John warned. “I don’t have a problem killing every single man who comes up and tries to take by force what is not his. The problem is we’ll be killing fathers and husbands tonight. There are probably women and children waiting back wherever they lay their heads, and when these men don’t come home tonight, the womenfolk will search for their men. The least we can do is give them a fighting chance with a few supplies.”
Jared had witnessed firsthand how John unapologetically murdered the two men back in San Jose, bolstering Jared’s familiarity with John’s ability to do bad things to bad people. Now the man was showing an incredible level of humility towards the family and friends of people he planned on killing in a few hours. If Jared thought the world had been a strange place before, it was staggering how much weirder it was becoming with each passing day.
Chapter 17
After the sun gave up on conquering the night, Jared stared out into the blackness surrounding Dwight’s home. John had warned against staring directly through a port for fear of someone catching an unlucky round in the face, so Jared sat off to one side, scanning the darkened yard.
Jared and Barry had agreed to stay and participate as long as their mission lasted one evening and everyone left the following morning. At first, John assigned Jared, Barry and Dwight positions inside the fortress that afforded them good fields of fire. John informed the group that he would be operating outside in the night while the other three held positions inside Dwight’s home. Jared spoke up, asking to be assigned outside the home along with John. He didn’t know why he asked since it would have been m
uch safer inside Dwight’s house, but he asked anyway, and surprisingly, John agreed.
While John reworked their plan of action for the evening, Jared kicked himself internally after asking to go outside for the evening’s festivities. He hated this new need to prove himself to men he couldn’t have cared less about before the solar flare. Now it was like he’d somehow transformed into some kind of frat boy who constantly sought to prove his moxie to a big brother. Secretly, Jared loathed all of the fighting, but he was also filled with self-confidence and pride after he was in a fight and the dust settled. Deep down, Jared knew going out into the night wouldn’t hurt his relationship with John either. His self-identity was changing from what it had been three months ago. Now, things like going outside the safety of Dwight’s home to face dangerous and desperate human beings was just another way of ushering the metamorphosis along.
Before John and Jared slipped out a side door, John turned back to address Barry and Dwight. “No shooting at figures out there. You are only allowed to shoot at someone who is actively trying to enter the house.” John knew there might come a time he fired at the house during the battle because a hostile happened to be standing next to the structure. The last thing he wanted was for Barry or Dwight to start shooting at muzzle flashes.
John checked his magazines, making sure he was topped off, and jerked his chin at Jared to do the same. Once both men were ready, they slipped out the door and headed into the darkness. Jared felt a jolt of adrenaline coursing into his bloodstream as the door clicked shut behind him. Jared reviewed in his mind the gunfights he had participated in since the power went out. The day he’d found Essie was unique in that he hadn’t acted out of anything other than anger and rage. The night two men broke into Bart’s shop, Jared had been a spectator, never firing a shot. Then there was the incident at Calvin’s place, and as far as Jared was concerned, that had amounted to nothing short of a turkey shoot. Jared guessed his first gunfight would probably be the most similar to what was about to happen tonight. He’d be hunting other men with the sole intent of killing them.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 12
