The Perseid Collapse (The Perseid Collapse Series 1)

by Konkoly, Steven

  “Alex, this is Charlie. All targets are down. One in the car; one on the road in front of the roadblock; one over the side.”

  “Roger,” Alex replied. “I’m moving up to clear the SUV. Hold your fire.”

  “Got it.”

  Alex heaved himself over the guardrail and crouched below the hood just as Ed’s voice broke onto the radio net.

  “They’re panicking at the other bridge,” Ed said nervously. “We need to get out of here.”

  “I’m working on that. Bring the Jeep down, and pick up Charlie on the way,” said Alex.

  He edged past the bumper, angling his rifle to examine the driver’s side of the SUV. A body rested against the side of the vehicle, legs sprawled forward in an awkward pose. Blood and broken glass covered the wet pavement around the inert form. Alex fired a single bullet into the man’s head, unwilling to take the chance that he might have one trigger pull left in him as a surprise.

  Moving in a low crouch down the side of the SUV, he glanced upward and noticed a head protruding through the shattered driver’s window, blood dripping steadily from the brim of the boonie hat attached to it. Alex stood up and opened the door, yanking the body to the pavement and spilling the remains of the man’s brains onto his boots. He felt the sudden urge to vomit, which he fought while tossing his rifle inside and jumping into the brain-splattered driver’s seat. The keys were in the ignition, thankfully. He didn’t relish spending any more time than necessary in this mobile charnel house. He started the Toyota Land Cruiser and put it in reverse, creating a gap large enough to fit Ed’s Jeep, which barreled toward the bridge.

  “They’re coming!” was all he heard from the Jeep’s open window.

  Alex turned the wheel right and jammed the Toyota into the guardrail, blocking the road. He removed the keys from the ignition and climbed over the blood-slick center console, opening the passenger door. He hit the pavement running, rifle in one hand and keys in the other. A few seconds later, he reached the Jeep, pocketing the keys and grabbing the roof rack bar. With his feet firmly planted on the passenger side running board, he slapped the front door with this hand.

  “Go! Go!”

  The Jeep lurched forward just as two cars appeared on the far side of the Toyota. Bullets snapped overhead before they reached the SUV on the far side, prompting Alex to release his right hand from the roof rack and swing his rifle over his left arm. Using the crook of his left elbow for stability, Alex fired several rounds in the direction of the cars before Ed eased the Jeep to a halt. He leaned down into the rear passenger window to yell at Charlie, who was halfway out of the rear driver-side window, firing at their pursuers.

  “Charlie! Move the roadblock. I got this!”

  Alex hopped down from the running board and went prone on the pavement, hoping to present the smallest possible target to the men less than one hundred and fifty feet away. Incoming rounds cracked off the asphalt, forcing him to roll against the Jeep’s rear tire. He zeroed in on a man trying to squeeze through the small opening between the rear of the SUV and the guardrail. With the chevron reticle centered on the man’s chest, Alex fired three times, dropping him in place.

  Were they really attempting to take the bridge on foot?

  Staring past his ACOG scope, he saw at least two more men attempting to move forward under covering fire.

  Let’s see what we can do about that.

  A bullet skipped off a puddle less than a foot in front of his head, ricocheting into the Jeep’s rear tire, flattening it with a hiss. He rapid-fired the rest of his magazine at the approaching men, then scrambled to the front of the Jeep to shield himself from the incoming fusillade. He changed magazines and looked up to see Ed peeking over the dashboard, waiting for Charlie to move the roadblock, flinching with each bullet impact.

  The SUV behind him roared to life and jerked forward, clearing the road into Milton Mills. He stood to give Ed the thumbs-up just as the front windshield shattered in place, leaving a one-inch hole in the middle of an opaque, milky blue screen. Alex jumped out of the way, sure that Ed wasn’t about to spend another second in the kill zone. True to his prediction, Ed gunned the Jeep down the road, barely swerving in time to avoid running into the pack of motorcycles parked on the left side of the road.

  Alex tucked behind one of the metal posts holding up the guardrail, and turned his attention to the two men advancing across the bridge. His first salvo yielded at least one hit to the closest militiaman, collapsing him against the guardrail. A few of the bikers lying in the grass on the other side of the road rushed up to grab the rifles dropped by the militiamen Alex had killed at the beginning of the battle. Alex expended his magazine, providing cover fire.

  Within seconds, semiautomatic rifle fire from the Milton Mills side of the river tore into the militiamen stranded in the middle of the bridge and started to obliterate the SUV on the other side. Alex took advantage of the extra rifle fire to deliver well-aimed, single shots at the sparse targets that appeared behind the Toyota. He struck one of them in the head through the half-shattered rear cargo compartment window, which stopped incoming fire from the Maine side of the bridge. Moments later, one of the cars parked behind the SUV spun its tires on the wet road, tearing off north on Foxes Ridge Road, leaving the Salmon River Falls crossing quiet.

  Alex stood slowly, making sure the retreat was genuine. Sensing no movement on the far end of the bridge, he walked over to the dazed bikers, who had just begun to lift themselves out of the gravel next to the road. Halfway across the road, he dropped to one knee and vomited onto the pavement. Charlie jumped down from the SUV a few moments later and braced himself on the guardrail. When he turned around, Alex seriously wondered if Charlie should continue the journey. He wore a pained look across a dark red face, gasping for breath.

  “You all right?” Alex asked.

  “Better than you,” he said, followed by several deep breaths.

  “When you’re feeling better, grab a few extra magazines for each of us. Leave the rest for them.”

  “I’m fine right now,” said Charlie. “Ed’s the one you need to check on.”

  Alex glanced at the Jeep idling past the bridge. Ed sat upright, motionless. Maybe this would be the end of the journey for both of them.

  “Better than shitting your pants,” he heard over the rain.

  A man with a thick gray beard and hair tied back into a ponytail lifted himself off the road and approached with a smirk. Wearing full leather riding gear, sunglasses and a red bandana tied across his forehead, he looked like a Sons of Anarchy recruiting poster. He slung the rifle over his right shoulder and extended a hand, oblivious to the rain beating down on him.

  “I brought a change of pants just in case,” said Alex, stepping forward.

  “I believe a thank you is in order. Jim Koch.”

  Alex gripped his hand and shook it vigorously. “Alex Fletcher, and the thanks is all mine. Not sure how that would have gone without the backup,” he said, coughing.

  “Looked like you had it more or less under control.”

  “I think you’ll need these to move that SUV, if it still works. Hope you didn’t have a big lunch. The front seat’s a little bit messy,” he said, holding up a set of blood-drenched keys.

  Jim swiped the keys out of Alex’s hand. “What the hell are you guys?”

  “Nothing, really,” Alex said. “Just wanted to get across that bridge.”

  “Hate to point this out, but you’re headed in the wrong direction,” said Jim.

  “We have kids in Boston. I dropped my son off at Boston University on Saturday for early orientation.”

  “Dude, Boston got hit hard. Everyone with any sense is getting out of there. We’re headed up to my brother’s place in Standish. Shitheads here wouldn’t let us cross unless we gave up our rides. Not much we could do about it without some serious hardware,” said Jim, patting the AR-15 he had taken off the road.

  “How long have you been here?” asked Alex.

&n
bsp; “Two hours. Figured these idiots would bail when the rain hit. We saw three families take that deal.”

  “There was no deal,” said Alex.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s a church about two miles up the road. They take the cars there and execute the occupants in the forest—as far as we could tell,” Alex informed him.

  “Looks like that’s our next stop,” Jim said, inserting the magazine in the rifle and pulling back the charging handle.

  “We shut it down—hard. Nothing left for you to clean up.”

  “Sounds like you’ve had a long day, man. I’d buy you guys a drink, but under the circumstances…” he said, looking around and shrugging his shoulders.

  “If I see you again, I’ll take you up on that offer,” said Alex. “What route did you take to get up here?”

  “Came up from Woburn. No problems at all until this shit,” said Jim.

  “Any news from Boston?”

  “National Guard units rolled into the areas north of the Charles pretty quickly—almost too quickly. Cambridge, Watertown and the areas closer to the city are pretty stable. South of the river is a clusterfuck. The military isn’t letting anything across the Charles, and nobody north of the river is complaining. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” said Jim.

  “That’s the first real SITREP we’ve received since this whole mess started.”

  “Ex-military, right?” said Jim.

  “Marine Corps. Iraq War. Yourself?”

  “Army. First Gulf War.”

  “An oldtimer,” said Alex.

  “Watch your mouth, Captain Fletcher,” said Jim.

  “What makes you think I was a captain?”

  “Sergeants can smell an officer a mile away—kind of a pungent, toe cheese odor. You handled yourself a little too well to be a boot LT, so that narrowed the field a little.”

  “Well, Sergeant Koch,” said Alex, “welcome to Vacationland. I suggest you avoid Foxes Ridge Road. I suspect your group won’t be happy with what they find at the church.”

  “I bet they won’t,” Jim said, giving his crew the signal to mount up.

  While the motorcycles filled Milton Mills with a deep rumble, Alex jogged over to the Jeep and looked in the driver’s window. With his hands still gripping the steering wheel in a near perfect ten and two o’clock position, Ed stared blankly at the opaque windshield directly in front of him. He slowly turned his head toward Alex.

  “Can you please promise me no more of this SEAL Team Six shit? I think we used up all of our luck with this one,” he said, meeting Alex’s eyes.

  “I used up all of mine back at the church. I borrowed heavily for this one,” said Alex, patting him on the shoulder through the window.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Both,” said Alex, unwilling to make a promise he couldn’t keep.

  “I’m too fucking tired to figure you out right now. Let’s get this Jeep back in working order,” said Ed, “unless the spare is wrecked.”

  “Miraculously, the spare is intact.”

  Ed stared at him for a few seconds, eventually grinning. “You must have borrowed heavily. I hope you left some for Charlie and me.”

  “You’re still alive, right?” said Alex, walking with him to the rear of the Jeep.

  “Somehow,” he mumbled.

  They finished changing the punctured tire while the last of a steady stream of vehicles crossed the bridge. The bikers, who had taken up armed positions at the far end of each bridge, revved their motorcycles and roared away behind the last car. Ed cranked on the last lug nut and raised himself off the gravel, wiping a thick sheen of sweat from his face with his shirt. He surveyed the other side of the bridge and shook his head.

  “I’m worried about our families. What if this group is bigger? They could have shit like this set up all over southern Maine.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Alex. “An operation like this is too visible to run anywhere else. This was their big score. Sam and the crew will be fine. They’re probably in Limerick by now.”

  “Cooking hotdogs and drinking beer—or eating tofu and salad in your case! Gotcha again!” yelled Charlie.

  “You know the saying ‘there’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole?’ Well, there’s no such thing as a vegetarian in an apocalypse,” said Alex.

  “I hope you guys are right. Still nothing on the satphone?” asked Ed.

  Alex shook his head. “The military must have hijacked the system. A low orbital nuke would take out a few of the company’s satellites, but they have over seventy in geosynchronous orbit. Coverage shouldn’t be an issue for a satphone to satphone call. I guarantee the government took over the satcom networks as part of their continuity-of-government plan. We’re limited to receiving their emergency text message broadcasts.”

  “One message twenty-four hours ago. Someone made a ton of money selling this crock-of-shit idea,” Ed muttered. “Maybe there’s a bigger problem out there.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We get the kids and hole up at the farm. That’s our only mission. We can worry about the big picture later,” said Alex.

  “Unless the big picture swallows us up in Boston.”

  Chapter 29

  EVENT +31:46 Hours

  Acton, Maine

  Dave Littner pulled his Honda Civic off the road, craning his head out of the window. He watched the heavily armed biker gang disappear beyond a stand of trees and reappear several hundred yards beyond, cresting one of several rolling hills along Milton Mills Road.

  “Let’s grab the rifles,” he said to Karen Goodsby, one of Campbell’s people.

  “Expecting trouble?” she asked.

  “Something isn’t right. That’s more cars than I’ve seen since this whole thing started.”

  Littner opened the trunk and dug into a long nylon bag, producing a stripped-down AR-15 for Karen. He pulled back the charging handle and locked the bolt carrier back, handing her the cleared weapon.

  “Old school iron sights,” she said, examining the bore.

  “I don’t put any fancy gizmos on my rifles. Let me know if that’s going to be a problem.”

  “As long as it shoots straight, we’re in business,” said Karen.

  “It shoots straight. Front sight is set for one hundred yards,” he said, handing her three magazines.

  Less than a minute later, they were back on Milton Mills Road, heading toward the border. The northern crossing appeared beyond a small, blue-trimmed Cape Cod home, flanked on both sides by wide expanses of calm water. The road extending to the New Hampshire side was clear, except for a small group of young adults loaded down with backpacks and camping gear, pedaling mountain bikes over the bridge.

  “Seems kind of odd that the state police would forget this spot,” said Karen.

  “York County Sheriff’s Department and the state police alternate duty days out here. It’s possible, but unlikely,” said Littner.

  He drove past French Street, which connected the two bridge crossings on the Maine side, and rolled his window down to address the closest cyclist. The group slowed, eyeing each other.

  “Did you see any police on the other side?” he asked.

  “Something happened at the other bridge, but I didn’t see any police,” said one of the men toward the front.

  “They kind of looked military to me,” said the woman next to him.

  “Who looked military?” asked Littner.

  “The dead guys on the bridge.”

  “They weren’t military,” said one of the guys at the back of the group. “Hair was all fucked up, and none of them wore the same gear. They all had those stupid boonie hats on too. Every unit we’ve seen coming up through New Hampshire is geared up for heavy combat. Helmets, body armor—everything.”

  Heavy combat? Littner didn’t like the sound of that.

  “How many are on the bridge?” he asked.

  “I saw maybe six or seven of them. Three on the New Hampshire sid
e. More in the middle. Not sure what was on this side. We didn’t stick around very long,” said the woman.

  “Thanks, everyone. I don’t want to hold you up any further. Looks like you have a little break in the weather. You guys headed anywhere in particular?”

  “Probably try to make it to the Bridgton area. My family used to rent a house on Long Lake every other summer. There’s a private school up there. Should be empty.”

  “Bridgton Academy. It’s in North Bridgton, about five miles past town. When you get to the intersection in Bridgton, across from the Food City, keep going straight. You’ll see the signs. Good luck,” said Littner.

  “You too,” said the cyclist, fixing his eyes on Littner’s hat.

  The cyclists had cleared the intersection by the time he turned around and took a right onto French Street, speeding toward the southern bridge. The first thing he saw beyond the white Baptist church was a blue Volvo SUV parked in the middle of French Street near the bridge. The driver’s-side doors had been left open.

  The scene unfolded slowly as their car crept past the SUV. Several members of Eli’s Maine Liberty Militia, easily recognizable by their boonie caps, lay in a grotesque pile at the foot of the bridge. Two more men lay dead toward the middle of the bridge against the left guardrail. He didn’t see any weapons on the ground, which didn’t surprise him. Whoever had done this would have stripped Eli’s men of anything useful. He parked the car next to the mound of bodies.

  “Shit,” he said, “I guess we better take a closer look.”

  “I don’t see the point. Someone shot up Eli’s people. Probably the bikers we saw,” said Goodsby.

  “Just a quick look and we’re out of here.”

  He pulled the first body halfway out of the pile, disturbing hundreds of flies that had gathered. He turned the corpse on its back.