"What about you?"
"I'll be right behind you,” she soothed. “I’m gonna stay here at the corner until I see if the car comes up our street or not. If it does, I promise I'll slip around and get back inside. With all the plywood up on the windows, it's kinda hard to see anything beyond a few feet."
"Why don't we just post somebody at the window upstairs—?”
“We'll figure it out later—just get inside!” Cami snapped. The engine grew exponentially louder as the car turned into the neighborhood. "Here they come!” Cami warned. She pressed her back against the side of the house and raised her pistol into a defensive position that she could adjust into a snap shot if she needed. She held her breath and waited.
After what seemed like an eternity, a familiar sight rounded the bend and chugged slowly toward her house. It was her own car—riddled with bullets and struggling with one flat tire—but the beat-up old Subaru had made it home.
Cami fought the urge to lower her weapon and race around the corner, sure that Mitch was behind the wheel, until she could ascertain whether it was a trap. After the firefight, she wasn't taking anything for granted—even the sight of her own car.
"Mom!" Amber yelled from the deck. "It's our car! It's got to be Mitch!”
“Ssssh!” Cami hissed as she waved her daughter back inside. "It could be a trap! Get by the front door. I'm coming in."
Cami stepped inside the back door and locked it behind her, then sprinted across the ground floor to the front of the house. Amber stood ready next to the door, just inside the living room, with the shotgun already at her shoulder and aimed at the floor. Cami took up position next to the door and raised her hand to indicate Amber should stand ready, but not raise the shotgun yet. She held her breath and waited to hear the car doors slam, one…two…three.
"Three doors?" she whispered over her shoulder. Amber shook her head and frowned, unable to provide an answer.
Cami adjusted the grip on her pistol, stepped across to the opposite side of the door and peered through the peep hole. A shadow darkened the doorway, and Mitch's face materialized as her eye adjusted to the change in light. Gary followed, and another person stepped up behind him. Whoever it was stood in exactly the wrong spot—soot or blood or dirt smeared the viewport, and the person stood right behind it. Cami cursed inwardly. She watched as Gary leaned forward with a smile on his face and rapped his knuckles on the door. "Cami? Amber? I know you guys saw us come up—we…we brought your car back."
"Who's that with you?" Cami yelled.
“Oh, hey, Cami. This—it’s Elizabeth," Gary said triumphantly. He reached back and put his arm around his wife, but only when Elizabeth stepped forward enough for Cami to see her face clearly did she relax and let out the breath she'd been holding. A smile split her face, and her hand trembled as she retracted the deadbolt and pulled the door open.
Before she could step through, Amber brushed past and ran right into Mitch, enveloping him with both arms. The adults stepped aside and let Amber and Mitch have a moment, before Cami did the same and rushed forward to embrace Elizabeth.
She hadn't seen her friend in a few years, but Elizabeth Adams had aged remarkably well. She still had the skin of a 30-year-old, and her face, though a little on the dirty side and streaked with tear tracks, split into a broad smile as she gave a little squeal of joy and hugged Cami. "I'm so happy to see you!" Cami said into Elizabeth's hair as the two friends embraced.
"I never thought I'd see you again," Elizabeth said breathlessly. "I never thought I'd see Gary or Mitch again either—ya’ll, I’m so happy!"
"We'll don't cry, because then I’ll start crying and then—“
"Too late," Elizabeth said as she pulled away, still smiling with glistening eyes.
After several minutes of re-introductions, hugs, slaps on the back, and handshakes all around, Amber went inside the house with Mitch to raise the garage door. Cami's poor Subaru started up fitfully and coughed like a 50-year smoker, but Mitch was able to haul the wounded car into the garage so they could shut the door.
With the vehicle secured—along with all the worldly possessions Mitch, Gary, and Elizabeth were able to bring from their house—Cami gathered everyone in the kitchen and introduced Mia and the boys to Elizabeth.
As Amber and Mia busied themselves with passing out ice cold water, iced tea, and chilled veggie strips from the fridge, Cami pulled the radio off her belt and brought it to her mouth. “Reaper—stand down, stand down, stand down."
"Roger that, I take it the incoming guests are friendlies?”
"They are indeed!” Cami said, a wide smile on her face. “Come on over whenever you're ready."
"Roger that. Reaper out."
Cami took a glass of iced tea from Amber with a smile. "Guys, seriously we didn't think you were coming back—and what happened to my car?" she said to Gary with a mock frown on her face.
"Yeah…about that…” Gary said. “We had a little…trouble getting out of the neighborhood."
"I'll say," Cami laughed. "Seriously, I'm not too worried about the car—I’m just glad none of you are hurt. You aren't hurt, right?" she asked.
Elizabeth shook her head “No, thank God, we’re not. But it was a near thing."
Cami heard the distinctive thump-thump of Marty's cane on the back deck. Amber threw open the porch door. "Marty, look! Gary and Mitch are back!"
Marty stopped in the doorway, took in the scene before him and looked the newcomers up and down. He grunted, accepted the chair Amber provided him, and sat heavily. "Took you long enough."
"So, tell us what happened," Cami said over Marty.
Gary reached out and squeezed Elizabeth's hand. Cami didn’t miss the gesture, and a twinge of jealousy coursed through her body as a result. She would've given anything at that moment for Reese to sit next to her and do the same thing. It was a simple gesture, just a reaffirming human touch, but she saw the relief in Elizabeth's eyes, and the smile that creased Gary's face. Cami turned away and took a drink of iced tea to distract herself.
"There's not much to tell, really," Gary said. He took a deep breath, then looked at Cami and his face turned grave. "When Mitch and I got there, Elizabeth had been hiding."
She nodded, her eyes wide as she looked at Mia, Amber, and Cami. "It'd been almost three days since I went outside at that point. Well, at least in the daylight." She looked down. "I couldn't go to the bathroom inside anymore—I just couldn't. When electricity went out, our water stopped as well. Luckily I was by myself—-we had plenty to get me through the next couple weeks. But I wasn't about to waste drinking water on flushing toilets."
"So what did you do?" asked Amber.
"Well," Elizabeth said with a sigh. "I pretended I was a man and went outside and made the world my bathroom."
They all shared a good laugh for a moment, all except Marty, who sat and watched in silence. "What happened to your neighborhood?" he asked, and his gruff voice cut through the momentary joviality like a hot knife through butter.
Elizabeth swallowed. "Over the course of the first few days, everything was pretty normal. The power was flickering, and a lot of people didn't come home from work or school…” She looked at Cami. “We know a lot of the families around us, and several had school-age children. It was…” She batted her eyes and looked away, then raised a hand to her mouth. "It was hard to bear. All the children…” Gary disentangled his hand from hers and draped his arm over her shoulders.
She looked up at him and smiled, wiped the nascent tears from her eyes, and continued. "Leaving that stuff aside, it was…I don't know, kinda like camping. We've been through hurricanes before," she said and paused when Mia looked down and blushed. "And at first, that's what I treated it like. I made sure to eat the food from the fridge first and tried not to open the fridge or the freezer out in the garage…since it was just me, everything that I made was lasting a good long while. Then the break-ins started happening. It was about a week ago when the first one happened in t
he middle of the night.” She paused to drink some water.
“Did they come near you?” asked Cami.
Elizabeth shook her head. “I was sound asleep, and then I heard some gunshots. At least I think that's what woke me up. But I didn't go back to sleep, because of my neighbor screaming. I'll never forget that sound," she said, and stared at the space between Cami and Amber. "She was screaming, it was so high-pitched, and she was screaming over and over ‘please don't hurt me, please don't hurt me.’ She just kept screaming…then there was a gunshot, and the most awful silence I've ever heard settled on the whole neighborhood. No birds, no crickets, nothing."
Cami shot Amber a glance, and her daughter nodded. "We had a similar experience here—right around the same time," Cami added.
"Yeah, but the next night people started shooting back,” Amber said with a touch of pride in her voice. “What happened in your neighborhood?"
Elizabeth sat back in her chair and crossed her arms as if hugging herself. "Nothing like that, I’m afraid. After that first gunshot, the next night there were more. Then the first house caught on fire. That fire ended up taking out three houses. The next day, I was out walking around to get some exercise and visit with neighbors, and we went over together and looked." She shook her head and clasped her hands together on the table. "Cami, I saw the bodies—they were charred and…”
"It's okay, you don't have to talk about it," Gary said quietly.
"I beg to differ," Marty muttered. "What y'all seen is good intel. Other than my radio, we've been flying blind the last couple days. The sheriff pulled out and said there was some trouble up north—I wouldn't be surprised if it's around your neck of the woods. If that's the case, then we need to know everything that happened up there.”
“You think they're headed south?" asked Gary.
Marty shrugged one shoulder. "Hard to say, these people we’re dealing with are like wild animals—they're liable to do unpredictable things. Whoever thought they'd get together and attack Cami and me?" Marty shook his head. "It's a crying shame what's going on in this country right now, but we have to get through it as best we can. And we can't do that without actionable intelligence."
Elizabeth nodded. "It's okay," she said to Gary, and patted his hand with one of hers. "I need to tell it." She cleared her throat, and took a long drink from her glass, then wiped her lips and continued. "Real quick, everyone figured out not to go outside at night. That was when the bad things happened—all the gunshots and fires, everything started at night. I couldn't shake this feeling that people were watching houses during the day, so I got real scared to go outside. I took garbage and trash out of the house at night. And I made sure not to use a flashlight or anything and slipped out into the backyard. I even dug a hole and tried to bury most of the trash. In the end, I think that's what gave me away."
"What do you mean?" Amber asked. "Sounds like you are doing everything right."
"She was—but I'm guessing that when you buried your trash, you didn't take care to make sure that the ground didn't look disturbed, did you?" asked Marty.
Elizabeth looked at him, her mouth slightly open, and nodded in silence. "How'd you know?"
"It's a common mistake. Anybody who's casing the joint and worth his salt will notice from time to time that some ground gets tore up. If there's nobody home, and there's nothing valuable there, then why would somebody be out digging up the backyard? Crooks think in terms of money—I bet they imagined you were buryin’ the family jewels or stacks of cash or something." Marty grinned. "I tell you what though, I would've paid good money to see the looks on their faces when they dug up your garbage."
Elizabeth smiled, but the expression didn't reach her eyes. "You're probably right," she conceded. "I thought I had them fooled—I thought they'd leave me alone if I just acted like the house didn't have anything valuable inside and there was no one home. Our house isn’t the biggest or the fanciest in our neighborhood, I’m sure that's why they attacked the Robinsons and the Caruso's. Why go after our little place when you can go after those McMansions? Anyway," she said with a sigh. "Couple days ago, I saw someone standing across the street from our house. He just stood there, leaning against the mailbox and smoking cigarette after cigarette. He must've been out there all day. I was so scared, I could barely move. I lay on the floor all day and kept myself below the window on the second floor, in the media room."
"If you were on the floor below the window, how could you keep an eye on them without exposing yourself?" Amber asked.
Elizabeth grinned. “It was the media room. I kept my back to the wall and watched the reflection on the TV. I could see right across the street, clear as day. Whenever that guy moved, or one of the other guys showed up and they talked, I could watch them on the TV." She shrugged and offered a shy smile. "It wasn't the same, but it was kind of like watching TV…back before the wave, you know? At least I was able to keep track of them."
"That's when we showed up and ruined everything,” Mitch said.
Cami looked at him. "Is that when they shot at you?"
Gary scoffed. "Not hardly. Me and Mitch rolled in there like our hair was on fire, and those guys jumped out of the way pretty quick. I was afraid they'd start trouble, so we got car in the garage as fast as possible." Gary took Elizabeth's hand in his again. "They stood out there and watched us the rest of the day while we got reacquainted and loaded everything."
"You decided to come back here so soon?"
Gary shook his head. "No, not exactly. But with those guys watching my house, I didn't want to take any chances.”
“That was smart,” Marty interjected.
Gary nodded. “I figured if we stocked the car with everything we need, if we did have to leave all we had to do was jump in and hit the gas. I just didn't count on them bringing in a freakin’ army."
Marty leaned forward on his cane. "Now we’re getting to the good stuff. Give me the details. How many?"
Gary looked at the ceiling. "I'd say about 25…yeah, 25 men."
"Gimme some descriptions—white, black, Asian? All men? Any kids or women? One big group or lots of little groups?"
Gary nodded. "It was mostly men. I couldn't notice any one ethnicity more than the others—there were white guys with shaved heads, Latino guys, and black guys. They all wore the same kind of clothing: gray overalls or pants with white tank tops."
Marty grunted. “Department of corrections, standard issue.”
"When we saw a big group appear down the end of the street and start working their way toward our house, I knew it was time to get out of there." Gary looked down at his hands. "Might have saved us some trouble if I'd made that decision the night before…when Mitch asked me to."
Mitch blushed, his cheeks pink over the black beard on his face. He looked at Amber. "Well, I kinda had a reason to come back."
Cami smiled. “And we’re glad you came back.” She reached out and squeezed Elizabeth’s hand. “All of you."
"But that's not the whole story, is it?" demanded Marty, always one to cut through any sentimentality.
Gary shook his head. "This group…they were organized. There was a guy in the middle of the street with a clipboard.”
“Yeah,” added Mitch. “When they had everybody together, he sent groups of two or three to every house.”
Gary resumed. “We heard all kinds of shooting and screaming. One house caught on fire—that was when I got everybody in the car, and we took off.”
"I certainly hope you didn’t try to drive through them all?" asked Cami.
Gary nodded. "That was my first thought. Like we'd take ‘em by surprise since they were all occupied with the houses and only a couple of them were left in the street. But the ones in the street carried a lot of long rifles.”
“What kinds?” asked Marty.
“I didn't get that good look, but whatever they had, I didn't want to tangle with ‘em. So, when we backed out into the street, I burned some rubber and headed the other directio
n. We tried to loop around the neighborhood and come out the other side, but they had a couple guys watching the exit!"
"Scariest thing I've ever seen," Mitch muttered.
"Being shot at is never fun, boy," Marty replied.
"I thought for sure they'd kill us all," Gary said, as he looked down at the table. "You could hear the bullets hit the car—it made the most awful ding sound. Every one that hit I thought was going to be the shot that killed the engine. And if we were forced to stop, there was nothing we could do. All we had was the pistols you gave us and the crossbow."
"You took my crossbow?"
"You mean his crossbow?" Amber asked. “If I remember correctly, you gave it to Mitch, Mr. Price."
“I brought it back…” Mitch mumbled.
Marty opened his mouth to rebut her argument, then closed it and smiled. "Right you are.” He cleared his throat. “Then what happened?"
Gary offered an embarrassed smile. "I don't know…I kinda had my eyes closed. I just hit the gas and tried to keep us on the road. They were shooting all over the place, the windows were busted out and they shot holes in the doors. It was a miracle no one got hurt.”
Mitch nodded. “You did great, dad.”
Gary nodded and continued. “Next thing I know, we’re across the street and in a field. Somehow, I managed to get us back onto the road, and we took off. I didn't even know what direction we were going, as long as it was away from our house.”
“We got a flat tire about 20 minutes out from your place,” Elizabeth said.
“Yep,” Gary added. “We had to limp in—I’m pretty sure they got the engine at some point, and I don't think she's going to start again…so I apologize for the car, Cami."
Cami shook her head. "Don't worry about it—I told you we have nowhere to go. The car doesn't have much use to us anymore. Besides," she added, "now that the electricity is out, none of the gas stations are going to get any more fuel. I don't see anybody driving within the next month or so. All the gas will be gone."
"And good riddance, I say," Gary said vehemently. "Groups like the one that took over our neighborhood won't be able to roam around at will with all the gas gone."
Broken Tide | Book 3 | Maelstrom Page 10
