by Harley Tate
Walter nodded. “The bar we were in was a total dive. It had these metal accordion gates the owner could pull shut and lock, so he did that right away. After that, we helped him cover the windows with all the furniture in the place and we spent the rest of the night behind the bar taking turns with the shotgun he kept under the top.”
Drew shook his head. “I remember my parents talking about it and some teachers in school but I didn’t know it was that bad.”
“It was worse. People shooting other people for no reason. Setting fire to buildings. Tipping cars. Looting. You name it, they did it. Eleven thousand people were arrested. And that was over a jury verdict, not the end of the modern world.”
“How did you get out?”
“Eventually the crowds moved on from that area and we left.”
Drew waved his arms about. “Are they really going to barricade this whole area in? It doesn’t look so bad here. Sure these buildings have damage, but I don’t see anyone out on the streets now. Maybe it all died out.”
Walter frowned. “They wouldn’t be setting up a defense if it wasn’t still raging. From the looks of it, this part of the city has already been picked clean. The mob will have moved on to somewhere new.”
Walter motioned around. “When we walked out of the bar in ’92, it looked a lot like this.”
Which meant danger lurked around every corner.
Drew fell silent as the pair trudged down the street. Walter attempted to rein in his impatience while Drew struggled to put weight on his foot. Every block brought them closer to destruction. A burned-out cop car. A mailbox ripped from the ground stuck out a second-floor window. A building with nothing left but scorched beams and blackened rubble.
Five days. The amount of destruction in five days was unbelievable. With the National Guard not coming in to restore order, but merely to barricade the violence in, it would only get worse. People would become desperate.
Deadly.
They neared N Street and an explosion caught Walter off guard. A building several blocks away erupted in a cloud of smoke. “I think we’ve found the edge of the riot.”
Drew’s eyes went wide. “That’s right by my place.”
Walter nodded. They would need to brave the violence to reach his fiancée. “You ready for this?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not if you want to find Anne.”
Drew closed his eyes for a moment. “Listen. If I don’t make it—”
Walter held up his hand. “None of that fatalist bullshit. You’ll make it.” Walter motioned toward the street. “I’ll lead.”
Chapter Eighteen
MADISON
Sloane Residence
7:00 p.m.
An entire day had passed and they were still going around in circles over the man tied up in the master bedroom.
“We need to talk to him and assess the threat.”
Madison wrapped her arms around herself. As soon as the sun set, the temperature inside the house dropped ten degrees. They would get through the summer all right without power, but how would they survive the winter?
The more she thought about the future, the more it scared her. It was easier to focus on getting home or getting supplies. One task to accomplish or mission to complete. When her mind wandered, she shut down.
She glanced up at her mom. “You sound like Dad.”
A week ago, her mom would never have talked about a person as a threat or contemplated the use of force to obtain information. Now she leaned back on the kitchen counter, tactical pants bulging with extra magazines and a pistol shoved in her belt.
Madison missed her old mom. The one who baked muffins and hugged her good morning and never, ever saw the bad in people first.
“Your mom is right.” Brianna pulled her hair into a tight bun on top of her head. “We need to get it done. He needs to eat and drink and go to the bathroom. Now’s a good time to ask him some questions. Starvation’s a good motivator.”
“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”
“You’re the one who tied him up.”
Madison glared at Brianna. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“You could have used Wanda’s gun to finish him off. It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
“That’s enough.” Madison’s mom pushed off the counter. “No one is killing anyone unless it’s in self-defense.”
“He attacked us. He broke in. I’d say anything we do to him is self-defense.”
“Not according to the law, it isn’t.”
Brianna threw up her hands. “Who cares about the law? It’s not like we have a country or a state anymore.”
“Of course we do.”
“Then where is it? I haven’t seen a single aid truck or police car or military vehicle drive by since this whole thing started, have you?”
Peyton spoke up. “There was the one cop we ran into.”
Brianna scoffed. “Mr. Dudley Do-Right? He doesn’t count.” She shook her head. “He’s probably rotting somewhere near that park right now, his corpse half-eaten by—”
“Don’t be gross.”
Brianna turned on Madison. “I’m not being gross, I’m being realistic. While all of you sit around here with your thumbs up your butts trying to drum up the courage to do what needs to be done, someone out there is plotting a way to kill all of us and take our supplies.”
Madison’s temper flared. “You don’t know that.”
“It’s what I would do.” Brianna pointed toward the bedroom where the man was held prisoner. “It’s what he was doing. Don’t be naïve. It’s survival of the fittest now and I’m not weak.”
Madison’s mom held up her hands. “No one is saying you’re weak, Brianna. You’ve demonstrated time and again that you’re more than capable of handling yourself. But we need to be rational about this.”
Brianna scowled, but didn’t respond.
“The more information we can get out of him, the more prepared we will be.” Tracy clapped her hands. “Enough talking. I’m going in. Who wants to cover me?”
Brianna began to speak, but Peyton cut her off. “I’ll do it.”
All the heads in the room turned his way. “Are you sure?”
Peyton nodded. “It’s about time I pulled my own weight. And I’m the biggest. I figure even if I don’t shoot him, I can at least intimidate him.”
Madison’s mom glanced around. “Any objections?” When no one spoke up, she continued. “All right, then. Madison, you and Brianna take up watch in the front and back. Tucker, you stay in the living room with Wanda. If he tries to escape or do something stupid, we’ll need back up.”
Tucker grabbed a shotgun and stood up. “Will do, Mrs. Sloane.”
“Peyton, you’re coming with me.”
Madison watched her mom and her best friend file out of the kitchen and head toward the master bedroom. She wished she could be there as well, but her mom was right. Someone needed to stand guard over not just the house, but Brianna’s fiery temper.
She was a loose cannon at the moment; so charged up over a potential threat and escaping the Walmart that she’d lost all common sense. Madison paused. Unless Brianna was right.
Brianna’s parents had prepared her for this exact situation: the end of the modern world. Whether it came by nuclear war or a cyber attack or their very own sun, Brianna was equipped to handle it.
Madison and her mom and the rest of them were still trying to figure it out. She glanced at the quiet hall and picked up one of the new handguns Brianna had stolen from Walmart.
Hopefully she wouldn’t have to use it.
Chapter Nineteen
TRACY
Sloane Residence
7:30 p.m.
“I hope you’re not squeamish.” Tracy glanced at Peyton as she opened the door to the master bedroom.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Good. Because I’m going to need your help.” She eased inside and took stock of the situation. The man Madison
had tied up groaned and shifted position, tugging on his taped arms.
With his mouth taped shut, all he could do was mumble obscenities, but that was about to change. Tracy didn’t know how her husband did it. He had deployed multiple times over his twenty years on active duty. Every deployment she worried. Would his plane be shot down? Would he be captured?
She pictured him like this, tied to a post, unable to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom until someone let him. Every time, Walter had come home. He’d never been injured, never been shot out of the sky, never taken prisoner.
He would make it home this time, too. She had to have faith. But until then, she was in charge.
Tracy crouched in front of the man. “I’m sorry. This is going to hurt.” She reached for the tape across his mouth and tugged at a little corner. As soon as she gripped enough to do the job, she pulled.
The tape came off with a grunt of pain from the man. “About damn time. How about you get this rope off me, too?”
“Sorry. I can’t do that.” Tracy stood up. “I’m going to need to ask you some questions first.”
The man snorted. “Good luck, lady. I’m not tellin’ you nothin’.”
“How badly do you need to piss?”
The man shifted on the floor.
“Or eat or have some nice, refreshing water?” Tracy held up a brand-new bottle of water. “I bet you’re dying for a sip.”
She unscrewed the cap. “Want some?”
The man wavered. “What do you want?”
“I want to know why you came here, what you hoped to accomplish, and who else is involved.”
“Then you’ll give me some water?”
She smiled. “I might even let you go.”
His shoulders slumped, and the man hung his head. The dried blood from the wound had crusted into his hair in a brown, chunky mess. “Bill is going to kill me.”
Tracy steeled herself. “Bill put you up to this? Bill Donovan?”
The man looked up with a nod. “Yeah. He said you guys had a ton of food and water and that no one was watching the place. All I had to do was sneak in and grab a case or two. You’d never miss it.”
Tracy glanced at Peyton. “That makes no sense. Bill knows we’re armed. I stuck a gun in his face for goodness’ sake.”
The hostage’s eyes went wide. “He told me you didn’t have any weapons. That it was just a bunch of women and kids.”
“That doesn’t mean we aren’t capable of defending ourselves.”
“Obviously.”
Tracy bent down and offered the man some water, holding it while he drank a few sips. “I’m Tracy Sloane.”
“Russell Unders. I’d shake your hand, but I’m kind of tied up.”
Tracy stood up and tried not to laugh. “I hate to tell you this, Russell, but Bill lied to you. About a lot of things.”
“I’m beginning to figure that out.”
Tracy turned to Peyton. “Can you spare a shirt for Russell here? We can let him go and get him cleaned up and something to eat.”
“You really think that’s a good idea?”
Tracy wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but Russell seemed like a good man. If he’d wanted to hurt them when he broke in, he could have. Instead of sneaking into the bedroom, he could have shot at anyone through the window. Or organized a party to come break the door down.
If he told the truth, Tracy needed to worry about Bill Donovan, not Russell Unders. She nodded at Peyton. “I do. Find the scissors too, so we can cut him loose.”
Peyton opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the hall. Before the door shut behind him, she heard Brianna shout.
“We’ve got visitors!”
Tracy glanced at Russell before turning toward the open door. She shouted at Peyton as he ran toward the living room. “Who is it? What’s going on?”
After a moment, Peyton shouted back. “Get ready! I think it’s an ambush.”
Oh, no. Tracy pulled her handgun out of her waistband. They weren’t prepared to defend an attack. She glanced at Russell. “Could these be friends of yours coming to rescue you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. If you let me go, I can help. If it’s someone I know, I can diffuse the situation, maybe get them to stand down.”
Tracy frowned. She had planned on letting him go, but not with a threat looming outside. “I’m sorry, I can’t let you go. Not now.”
He struggled against his ropes. “I can help. I won’t hurt you or anyone in the house.”
Tracy stepped toward the door.
“You can’t leave me here! What if the people breaking in don’t know me? They could be thugs from another part of town. Come on, I’ll be a sitting duck!”
Tracy exhaled. “I’m sorry. But I can’t.” Before Russell could say another word in his defense, Tracy slipped out and shut the door behind her.
She could hear his shouts for help, but she ignored them. If they made it out of this ambush alive, she could reassess the situation. If not, letting him go wouldn’t do any good.
With a deep breath, she hustled into the chaos of the rest of the house.
Chapter Twenty
MADISON
Sloane Residence
8:00 p.m.
“It’s too dark. I can’t see anything.” Madison squinted in an effort to see past the kitchen window and into the backyard. There could have been fifty people all crowded in between the fence and the patio and she would never have known. “We need to throw a glow stick out there or something so we can see!”
“And tell whoever is out there exactly where we are? Not a chance.” Tucker crouched down next to Madison, a rifle from Walmart in his hand. Thanks to Brianna’s quick thinking as she fled the store with Madison’s mom and Tucker, they had a gun for every person in the house and a bit of ammo.
It wasn’t enough for a firefight, but it might make whoever was out there think twice about breaking in.
“We need to stay low and concealed. If someone tries to break in, we shoot. That’s all there is to it.” With a ball cap on backward to keep his shaggy hair out of his face and a black sweatshirt covering his limbs, Tucker could almost pass for a jock instead of a science geek.
“Easy for you to say. A lot harder to do.”
“What other choice do we have? We don’t have enough ammo to engage. What if whoever is out there has guns, too?” Tucker frowned. “Someone could die, Madison.”
“We’re all going to die if we don’t do something.” Brianna crouched down next to Tucker, the butt of her shotgun tight against her shoulder. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the front?”
“Mrs. Sloane and Peyton are there now.”
Madison turned to Tucker. “Did the guy in the bedroom tell them anything? Do they know what’s going on?”
“Supposedly he’s harmless, but your mom won’t let him go with all this going on. She’s got the front covered. We’re supposed to keep anyone from coming in the back.”
“What about the bedrooms?”
Brianna rolled her eyes. “Wanda is standing guard.”
Tucker groaned. “She’ll get us killed. I’m going back there.”
Madison touched his arm. “I can go. You can stay here with Brianna if you want.”
“No. Let me handle Wanda. For some reason she listens to me.”
Brianna leaned in. “It’s the greasy hair and the River Cats hat. They make all the ladies swoon.”
Tucker gave his girlfriend a quick kiss on the cheek. “Be careful.”
“You, too.”
As soon as Tucker was out of earshot, Madison spoke up. “Do you really think Wanda is a liability?”
“One hundred percent. But so is that guy tied up in the bedroom. Between the two of them, they’re liable to ruin everything.”
Madison stared at the sliding glass door, willing her vision to improve. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“So do I.” Brianna slid to the side while still in a crouch, easing past the edge of
the table to get a better view. As she did so, shots rang out in the front of the house. “Shit!” She ducked back where Madison still hid and grabbed the edge of the table.
“What are you doing?”
“Help me flip it! We need cover!” Madison grabbed the table with both hands and pulled. It barely budged.
“It’s too heavy! We can’t lift it.”
Brianna cursed and slung her shotgun over her shoulder. “Grab the edge again. I’m going around to flip it.”
“No! You’ll be exposed.”
“We’ll be dead if I don’t.”
Before Madison could say another word, Brianna raced around the side of the table and crouched beneath it. “Ready? Pull!”
With Madison pulling and Brianna pushing, the heavy wood table lifted and wobbled and finally fell over with a crash. The handful of things sitting on the top fell to the floor as Brianna rushed back around.
Another round of gunfire erupted from the front of the house.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like they’re trying to come in the front.”
“The entertainment center is in the way.”
“Maybe it’s a diversion. We need to be ready.” Brianna set the barrel of her gun up on the edge of the table and Madison did the same. If anyone tried to come in through the kitchen, he or she would be dead as soon as they broke the glass.
Madison’s mom called out from the other room. “Is everyone all right?”
Brianna answered first. “We’re fine in the kitchen.”
“No activity in the hall.” Tucker sounded calm and confident.
Madison asked about her mom. “Are you okay?”
“They shot out the front window, but the entertainment center stopped them. I don’t know where they are, but be ready. They haven’t given up.”
Shifting her position behind the table, Madison counted the shells they had in reserve. All three shotguns in the house—the two Madison and Brianna held and the one Peyton took to the living room—were partially loaded to the max with five each, and based on her hasty count, they had fourteen left in their box. Peyton couldn’t have many more.
