The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos

by Tippins, Rick

  Once John finished with his nighttime tutorial on shooting without modern weapons sights, Jared assigned the night watches, pairing himself with Stephani, and John with Claire. Dwight and Barry were assigned the last watch, and Jared left Devon out of the mix. The kid was alright, but still seemed a little squirrely—like all teens, Jared mused, chuckling to himself at his own joke.

  The night passed without much happening other than the hushed whispers between Jared and Stephani and, later, John and Claire. Jared found that Stephani was an attorney at a firm where she defended large corporations. She’d been raised by her mother and father, who were both attorneys, so it was a given she would attend law school after she finished her undergrad work.

  Stephani had been at the Santa Clara Superior Court when the solar flare struck. She had finished with her day’s work and was doing research in the law library when all the lights went out. She ended up staying the night inside the library, returning to the courthouse the following morning. She lived in Pleasanton, so walking home seemed out of the question at the time. On day two Stephani heard a lot of gunfire when she’d ventured outside the building to see what, if anything, had changed. She quickly returned to the interior of the building after hearing the gunfire and no sirens. There were dozens of people in the courthouse, and soon all the vending machines had been sacked, along with the cafeteria.

  On the fourth day, Stephani said she was so hungry she ventured out walking several blocks to a residential neighborhood. She knocked on several doors and was either nicely turned away or outright threatened with violence if she didn’t vacate the premises. One house she knocked on was empty, and she was able to gain access through the unlocked rear door. She was still wearing the same skirt, blouse and flats she’d been wearing when the power went out, and hadn’t showered in as long.

  Once inside the house, she found a pantry full of food and a closet with women’s clothing, which were close enough to her size to do under the current circumstances. The shirt she was wearing along with the leggings were taken from the residence. Stephani said she remained undetected in the residence for nearly a month before the city began coming literally apart at the seams. Families were leaving by the hundreds, and their homes were being overrun by the looters who remained behind. Finally, a group of people, both men and women, came banging on the doors in her newfound neighborhood.

  Stephani said she escaped out the back and never looked back, wearing only the clothes on her back. She was wearing shoes when she’d fled, and told Jared the bikers took all the women’s shoes so they couldn’t run far if they managed to escape. Stephani said she hid inside a different house every night as she tried to orientate herself with the direction of home. She didn’t eat for nine days at one point, only drinking water she found in pools and ponds.

  At one point Stephani said she was walking up a street and the two bikers came out of nowhere, tackling her and dragging her back to the house she’d been found chained to the wall in. Stephani told Jared she was sure the worst nightmare she could have imagined was about to become her reality, but it never came to fruition. Confusion was the next thing to set in until she’d been at the house for about a week, watching how the two bikers interacted with one another.

  The dead biker at the house’s gate had been a bit emasculated in the relationship, while the other man was definitely the dominant of the two. Stephani finished with her story and sat back, her mind drifting back to the past few months. What happened to my world? she wondered. The place had gone off its rocker in less than a quarter of a year, reverting back to days of slavery. She doubted anyone was organized enough at this point to maintain a large stable of working slaves, but if they were kidnapping women at the two-month juncture, then she was sure organized slave trade was soon to follow.

  Jared looked at his windup watch, stretched, and got to his feet. “Let’s wake up the other two. You can take Dwight’s bag and I’ll grab Barry’s.” He didn’t wait for her to get edgy about the sleeping arrangements before he slipped off to nudge the other two men into wakefulness.

  Without a word, Jared slid into Barry’s still-warm sleeping bag and turned away as Stephani was approaching in the darkness. He could feel the woman hesitate, but he remained turned, his head facing the opposite direction, eyes wide open. After not hearing her slip into the bag, Jared rolled over to see Stephani staring down at him.

  “What?” Jared asked in a voice barely audible.

  Stephani didn’t say anything; instead she crawled into the sleeping bag next to Jared’s, propping her head up on her hand, elbow on the ground, facing him. Their faces were no more than two feet from each other.

  “I was a bitch to your friend John. He didn’t do anything wrong. I think it’s just all that’s happened, and I unloaded, and now I feel bad.”

  Jared smiled in the darkness. “He’s a big boy.”

  “I can tell, and he was a perfect gentleman showing us how all the guns worked. You guys seem like people from the before times, and, well, I met you, you left us with Devon, which is a whole separate story, and now we’ve actually spent a day with you guys, and I think you are all decent guys trying to make it through this, just like Claire and me.”

  “Pretty much sums it up, Stephani,” Jared breathed, feeling his body starting to relax after coming off the night watch.

  She stared at him for a moment longer, smiled, then rolled over and was soon fast asleep, her breathing coming in long breaths as Jared lay wide-awake, wondering how the four new people were going to mesh with Shannon and Calvin. Three women and five men, well, maybe four men, Jared thought. Would Calvin be in the mix when it came to the woman-to-man ratio? To Jared’s knowledge, Calvin had never been a politician, so he conceivably wouldn’t try to bed a twentysomething. Jared chuckled at his second inside joke of the evening. There didn’t seem to be too many elderly men, or women for that matter, left in the new world, so Calvin might have to go without opposite-gender company. While Jared lay awake, working out different relationship scenarios in his head, he put Shannon with John, Claire with Devon, and Stephani with him. Stephani was attractive and seemed wicked smart, so he couldn’t think of a good reason why this wouldn’t work.

  Then he remembered John telling him Shannon and he had nothing going on, so he rearranged the partners again. This went on several more times, with Claire always ending up with Devon. Soon Jared slipped into a deep slumber.

  The following morning the seven people ate a quick breakfast before departing the shop. Jared spoke to Devon at length about coming with them, stressing the importance of surviving as a group. In the end Devon agreed to accompany them back to the ranch, where he was promised an abundance of squirrels and turkey he could prey on for not only himself, but the betterment of the community as a whole.

  Barry and Dwight stayed close to one another, speaking in hushed tones nearly at all times. Neither John nor Jared felt compelled to stop the two since they were almost assuredly scheming about the battery situation. Jared had been part of that tech culture, but as society slipped further and further into the abyss, he felt more and more detached from his former life and culture.

  People who clung to a world that was dying with no indication of a remedy were fools in Jared’s opinion. There was no doubt he could use knowledge from his life before the event in an attempt to make life easier and safer, but change was upon them all. It wasn’t much different than Jared’s former profession in the tech community. If tech failed to evolve, people would have continued carrying around cellular phones the size of paving bricks tethered to dollar-a-minute charges for the service.

  It wasn’t long before they entered a neighborhood, and John began directing people into front yards and out of the street. They used abandoned vehicles, bushes, and trees to mask their movement. Thirty minutes of sneaking along, John called for a halt and pointed to a house, then himself and Jared before making a sweeping circular motion indicating he and Jared were going to the rear of the house. He held up hi
s hand to the rest of the group, telling them to remain in place.

  John moved down the side of the little house without so much as a glance back at Jared. When John reached the back side of the structure, Jared was right on his tail. The men found the back door had already been forcibly opened, making their entry all the easier. Both men moved quickly into the house, searching the common area and kitchen for a phone book. The two men found no phone book and were back out front with the other five in less than four minutes.

  Jared and John repeated this exercise twelve more times before hitting pay dirt inside what held all the indications the home was owned by the elderly. Both men came to the front of the modest house and motioned the other five members of their party to them.

  “Devon, you and the ladies go to the back with Jared,” John said. “Dwight, you take the one-four corner and, Barry, post up on the one-two corner. Make sure no one sneaks up on us.” John was about to turn and sprint back to Jared when he saw the confusion on each man’s face.

  “You, there,” John said to Dwight, pointing to the left side of the residence. He looked at Barry and jerked his head to the right side before running to the backyard.

  Devon was with Jared, leafing through the phone book, looking for the company he’d visited. A few moments later, Devon located the address, which John glanced at briefly before turning to study his map of the city. Another two minutes and Jared, John, Devon and the two women were moving up the side of the house towards the street. Barry glanced over his shoulder as John came alongside him.

  “Let’s roll,” John said tersely. He wasn’t angry, just focused now. They had a mission, and for a while that had been in limbo while they searched, but now they could focus on a single objective.

  John pushed the party hard for two hours, stopping only to allow for water and a small snack intake before pushing on at what amounted to carelessly fast by nowadays standards. Their route took them through a residential neighborhood and then out onto a main road. When John peered around the corner and onto the main road, he slunk back, dropping to the ground. Jared knew immediately John had seen something he hadn’t particularly cared for. Jared had been last in line when John dropped, and now he moved up, making sure everyone stayed put until he and John sorted out what was happening up around the corner.

  John had out his binoculars and was slowly making his way up to a small row of hedges that surrounded the corner house. Jared tapped on John’s foot, halting the man. John looked perturbed, but shimmied back to Jared.

  “At least three guys with rifles up the street about seventy-five yards, maybe a hundred. I only got a quick look before I ducked out,” John informed him in a muffled whisper, his eyes riveted to the front.

  Jared acknowledged John by pursing his lips and scrambling back to brief the rest of the frightened party. John moved forward, carefully parting the hedges in order to obtain a clear view of the men ahead. There were four men up the street, all of whom were armed. The men had positioned two vehicles on either side of the road. Two men sat in each vehicle; both sets of men in each vehicle sat in the front seat, lazily looking up and down the street.

  John kicked himself for moving the group so fast and knew if he’d been moving in a straight line, these guys might have got the drop on them. Only because they were transitioning onto a new and unfamiliar road did John take the time to recon it before blasting around the corner straight into the men’s line of sight and fire. John studied both sets of men for a few moments, then trained his binoculars on the area around the vehicles. His breath caught at the sight of what filled the lenses of his optics.

  There were bicycles, backpacks, clothes and other items thrown haphazardly about the men’s ambush location. Others had not been as fortunate as John and Jared’s party and likely paid with their lives along with all their belongings. The men located a well-traveled choke point and were victimizing people who passed through. John saw the men were armed with a shotgun and three deer rifles. John couldn’t tell a make or model, but knew a long-range battle with four guys, three of whom were sporting high-powered scoped rifles, was a bad idea.

  As John was about to crawl back to Jared and the rest of their party, the hair on the back of his neck stood up as a shrill whistle sounded from somewhere behind John. Making matters worse, the four men in the vehicles immediately whistled in response and began concealing themselves outside the vehicles, where they were more mobile. John suddenly felt very behind the curve as he scrambled back to the very worried group of six.

  “Move!” John barked as he got to his feet and ran past them.

  John didn’t wait to see if his order was being followed; there was no time for that now. They were being maneuvered on by a force of unknown numbers. There could be five or there could be twenty-five. In John’s opinion, it didn’t really matter since he and Jared were the only two in his party he felt were either proven or worth a damn in a gunfight.

  As John raced past, Jared leaped to his feet and followed, only looking back for a split second to ensure the rest were following suit. They were, and the women were in the lead. Devon was directly behind them, with Dwight and Barry being just a tad slower to realize they were all possibly in a life-and-death situation. Nowadays you met people, and some were nice and others would try to kill you for whatever you were carrying on your back or in your pockets.

  Jared knew if someone was whistling from their rear, and John was racing back towards the whistler, the two forces were presumably working together, and John didn’t want to tangle with the four men he’d seen at the cars. Jared also remembered the women’s story of being kidnapped and watching as other women were traded for what amounted to be camping gear much of the time. It occurred to Jared that his little collection of friends probably looked worth a fight to most people left in the city.

  Chapter 25

  As Jared moved along behind John, he stopped; Jared had to ensure everyone was between John and himself. They could not afford to lose anyone during a panic-driven retreat. Jared halted next to a car and ushered everyone past before bringing up the rear. He swept the rifle back and forth, searching for a threat behind, but saw nothing.

  John was up front, moving fast, but not so fast he wasn’t able to digest his surroundings. His rifle was up and scanned for any sign of a person in need of shooting. John figured at this point anyone he saw would be trying to kill him. His plan was to move fast to the next intersection, then turn left, which would take him in the direction they needed to go. This would parallel the street the men in the two vehicles had been on, allowing them access to John and company only through an intersection ahead or by climbing fences and cutting through backyards. This would also take them away from the direction John heard the whistle emanate from.

  John was trying desperately to avoid being herded or maneuvered on. He wanted to keep moving fast and, at some point, turn this mess into a chase. Once a chase was in progress, John felt this would add to his tactical capital, which he felt was deficient at the present time. There was little chance anyone in this hostile party would have much experience in real-life combat situations beyond playing Call of Duty or Battlefield on some gaming platform, but John needed the scales tipped as far his way as he could get them before things went loud.

  If they were not able to shake these men, then John needed to push hard for separation so they could stop and set up an ambush. He would have preferred avoiding the four men back at the vehicles, but somehow, they employed a lookout who’d alerted the would-be ambushers to John’s presence. John was past the point in his combat career of beating himself up when things didn’t go his way; this was just how battles went. Anyone who had ever been a warrior and participated in serious combat operations knew things rarely ever went the way they were drawn up on the whiteboard or sketched out in the sand.

  At the front of the ragtag group fleeing up the street, Jared saw John take a left-hand turn and move parallel to the street with the four men. Once Jared made the left turn, he
glanced over his shoulder in time to see a single figure peeking out from around the side of an abandoned truck not more than seventy-five yards behind him. Jared thought the figure looked like a male, but the fleeting glance he got wasn’t enough to be sure.

  “I have one to our rear, unknown if they’re armed,” Jared hollered up to John, who just gave a thumbs-up without looking back.

  Jared ran along the street, looking over his shoulder nearly every second. It was disconcerting to Jared knowing there was a person behind him who, odds were, carried a rifle or some other firearm with the intent of using it on him. Jared physically shook his head trying to rid it of the fearful thoughts. He didn’t want to be overwhelmed with fear should they run headlong into a firefight.

  During his brief training with Bart, Jared had learned a great deal about how to handle a weapon, but it was the late-night drinking sessions that really stuck with Jared, helping keep his mind in the right place when things seemed to be coming apart like one of those semi tires on the interstate. Life was all a state of mind, and combat now was part of his life, so he had to configure his mindset to deal with it, sans panic and hysteria.

  Jared knew a gunfight even before the solar flare was not an insignificant event. No person wanted to be shot before or after the solar flare. Gunfights seemed less frequent with a higher survival rate before the solar flare than after, making the experience almost like old-school tightrope walkers versus their modern version with all the built-in safety measures. Jared internally likened his situation to those old-time tightrope walkers in that he had no medical net, so to speak, if he were to be shot.

  Jared hadn’t known a single soul who had so much as been shot at before the event. Now he’d actually been in several gunfights, been shot, and seen men shot. If he were forced to compare a gunfight now to some event before the solar flare, he would have to place its equivalence in the category of a noninjury vehicle accident. Something that could definitely get your blood pumping, but after it was over, well, you got back to what you’d been doing before the crisis.