by Jack Hunt
“Didn’t you kill anyone out there?”
Corey laughed. “He was too busy pissing his pants.”
“Fuck you, fat boy,” Billy replied.
There was a pause.
“I’ll tell you what it was like. It was like that feeling you get after you’ve ejaculated. You know that initial head rush, and then a deep sense of satisfaction. Yeah, that’s what it was like,” Luke said.
“That was someone’s kid,” I said.
All three of them turned and looked at me. “What? Don’t tell me you give a shit about that scumbag’s life? You were a hairline away from him putting a cap in your ass. Hell, if I hadn’t shown up there, who knows what they would have done to you.”
“I’m just saying. Killing them isn’t something to revel in.”
“Oh grow a pair, Frost. Do you think they would have spent even a second thinking about your sorry ass if they had killed you?” He let out a laugh and shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m just saying.”
“Screw you and your self-righteous attitude. We are in a war.”
I could tell he was enjoying it. Were some military personnel like that? I figured it took all kinds. There would always be the ones that signed up for the military just so they could kill people. Even though I imagined they were far and few between, there was bound to be a couple in every intake. I could see Luke being one of them. He would have been the kind of guy that would have killed an entire family and not missed a second of sleep, while others would have been tortured by the horror of what they had done.
“In fact, if I make it out of this, I’m thinking of signing up. I think I’ve found my calling.”
All three of us looked at him like he was insane. Here he was dressed in black, looking like an emo and now he was ready to join the military? I shook my head and walked away.
Murphy hopped down off the table, rolled his shoulder a few times and grimaced.
“Don’t you go pushing yourself, you hear me?” Shaw said as she picked up the rest of the bloodied rags and took them out into another room. I kind of figured that getting shot wasn’t something that he was too bothered by. The guy was as tough as nails. If that had been any one of us, we would have laid out waiting for death to take us.
Officer Hauser came up the stairs carrying one of the duffel bags. He was in the middle of telling Murphy what they had gathered together when a bullet struck him in the neck, and he collapsed into Murphy’s arms.
“Get down!”
What followed next was a series of rounds that shattered all the windows and peppered the walls. I watched as shards of glass rained down covering Luke, Corey and Billy. Brett had gone to the washroom when it happened. Each of us didn’t dare move as the torrent of bullets continued for several minutes. By the time it stopped the station walls were like Swiss cheese. The first to move was McCabe who came up the stairs and slid an AR-15 over to Shaw, he then did the same with me. I looked down at the weapon like it was hot molten metal. I’d never used one before. Another series of rounds erupted and tore through the station. I slid across the ground behind a large desk and backed up against it.
Murphy moved over and in a matter of ten seconds told me how to operate it. I kind of figured they didn’t give it to me because they wanted to, they did it out of necessity. I mean, how hard could it be? I had fired an AK45. Shaw slid over to check on Hauser but he had stopped breathing. Beside him a pool of blood eased out. Only minutes ago I had been talking to him, and now he was dead. The thought that it could have been any one of us laying there made my pulse speed up.
“You guys okay?” Murphy asked.
Luke gave the thumbs-up. The next few minutes were spent arming the other three with semi-automatics. The look on Luke’s face was as if he’d been given a car for his eighteenth. I was starting to wonder if such firepower should have been in any of our hands.
Silence followed the next wave of attack. Up until that point we hadn’t returned fire. I figured Murphy knew what he was doing. He and McCabe moved into different spots around the office area. A glass window that had separated the police office from the general public waiting room was shattered, along with the windows in the front doors. From my position below the desk I could see movement near the doorway. A skinhead approached fast and then tossed in a Molotov cocktail. A sudden burst of flames erupted as the liquid coated the waiting room floor.
“They are trying to smoke us out,” Corey shouted.
“You think?” Billy said getting up from his position and racing across the room even though Murphy was yelling for him to get down. Billy fired towards the front door and then dived into the corridor.
“Cover me.” Officer McCabe rushed over to a fire extinguisher on the wall and ripped it off. He went outside the doors that separated the main office from the waiting room. A series of shots rang out. A few blasts from the extinguishers, white dust filled the room and the floor fire was soon dying down.
“Murphy.”
He crouched down behind a wall and waited for Murphy to arrive. They then tried to heave a large cabinet full of awards and pieces of police history into position by the door to block any further attempts to burn us out. Seeing they were having trouble, I got up and scrambled over there. Brett followed suit while the others provided cover. Once all four of us got our backs into it, we shifted the steel and glass cabinet across the vinyl floor and covered the main entrance. We could hear bullets pinging off the back of it as we collapsed on the floor, exhausted. Shaw came down with another fire extinguisher and finished off what remained of the fire. The vinyl floor was bubbling black and letting off a foul smoke that was beginning to make us choke.
I coughed hard and McCabe led us out back to what was used as a garage for both the police and fire service. It was a fair size. The garage doors were made of steel. With all of us inside, he locked the door and we settled in for the night.
All of us were coughing and spluttering. Corey was snorting snot out of his nose to the disgust of Billy. Luke was fondling the M4 as though it was some new kind of sex toy. Shaw and Murphy sat off to one side with McCabe discussing how we were going to get out of this. Brett looked worried. No doubt he was thinking about Jodi. We had no idea where the others were or if they were even alive. I got up to go look for some water, my throat was parched and I had this hacking cough that made me feel like I was about to chuck up a lung.
“You don’t think they can get in here?”
“If they want to, anything is possible. But it’s not going to be easy. No one would be stupid enough to try and force their way in without giving thought to being shot.”
“How are we going to do this?” Corey asked. “I mean, I’m so friggin’ tired.”
“My daughter is out there, I’m not sleeping until I know where she is.”
McCabe took a hold of Murphy’s arm. “So is my family but we aren’t going to be any good out there if we are tired. I know you think you are still one of the elite, Murphy but it’s been three years since you got out. Even the best get tired.”
Murphy sighed.
“We will rotate in shifts. Shaw and myself will take the first one. The rest of you should get some shut-eye.”
I found a water tap on the far side of the building. I twisted the top and it gushed out clear. I cupped some of it in my hands and tossed it over my head and around my neck. The cold awakened my senses that were beginning to tire. As I took a drink, Brett came up behind me and placed his hand on my back.
“You okay, son?”
I didn’t think I would ever get used to hearing that word — son. It was foreign to me. Though I had heard it many times over the course of seventeen, almost eighteen years it still didn’t sit right with me.
I shrugged. “You?”
He sighed. “I will be when I find Jodi and this is over.”
“You think it will ever be over?”
“There are a lot of military offshore and other countries will try to help.”
“But w
ith the fallout, the grid down and not knowing how many cities they hit. I can’t see anyone risking his or her life to help. Besides, it could be weeks, maybe months before we see anyone up this way.”
“Possibly.”
Brett took a few gulps of water and then took a seat.
As we sat there I turned to him and watched him pull out a photo of Jodi and myself. The people at Children’s Aid had taken it the day they brought me home. I was fifteen at the time. I didn’t realize that he carried it around in his wallet.
“You kept that?”
He nodded. “I hope you know we didn’t send you with Murphy because we didn’t want you around. It’s because we want this to work.”
I nodded.
“Try to get some shut-eye.”
As we tried to get comfortable, it was hard to fall asleep when outside I could hear gunfire. Was it Ally and her mother? Was Jodi still alive? I only hoped they were safe. I pushed the negative thoughts from my mind, if only for a few minutes.
TRIGGER HAPPY
Morning didn’t arrive the way I imagined it would. We didn’t enjoy a full night of rest. I was up before light broke. We maybe got four hours between us all. Several times over the course of the night the skinheads had tried to breach the inside of the station. They had managed to knock over the steel-shelving unit that we had shifted across the front of the door but none of them entered. It was scare tactics. Several times we had to go back out into the office and return fire.
In the early hours, just after five according to my watch, we decided to head out. Our aim was to find the others and then figure out a plan of action from there. Hauling two bags of ammo, we knew it was going to slow us up.
Outside Murphy told us to grab as much as we could carry without it weighing us down and then the rest would be stored in a dumpster down one of the alleys. All of us were wearing bulletproof vests that we had taken from the station. Chances of us surviving were slim at best, but at least this would offer us some form of protection.
Murphy waved us forward and we shuffled in the dark as a deep orange sun began to peek over the horizon. In the town the sound of gunfire had become less frequent. It wouldn’t stay that way. To the north of us was I-90, and to the south residential homes. Unsure of which way they might have gone we separated into two groups. Murphy took myself, Corey and Billy with him while Luke went north with Shaw, Brett and McCabe.
“McCabe, come in,” Murphy spoke into the comms unit.
“We’re here.”
“When this is over, you owe me a beer.”
He chuckled on the other end. “Murphy, I’ll buy you a case.”
We moved quietly as one unit through the streets, only communicating with hand signals or whispers. Our group went down Residence Street and then over to Pearl looking for any signs of life. We entered some of the homes and checked. Some contained the dead bodies of those who had put up a fight and had been shot or hacked to death. Some homes had their front doors sealed shut and we saw mattresses on the other side. We assumed scared survivors barricaded themselves in.
Murphy knocked and moved out of the way expecting the occupants to shoot as there were a few bullet holes in the wood and the glass was shattered.
“Sara,” he hollered through the open glass. When there was no answer we moved on. We worked our way from house to house by climbing over the yard fences and avoiding the main streets.
“You still got that knife on you?”
“No.”
“I’m nearly out of ammo on this handgun.”
I reached into my pocket and handed Billy fifteen bullets. We reached a house where the back door was open. It was dark inside but not nearly as bad as it was at night. The light from the morning sun was beginning to reveal what acts of violence had been committed. I was about to step inside when Murphy pulled me back. In a hushed voice he told me to wait. He crouched down and lifted up what I would have stepped on. Below a layer of towels was a huge slab of wood with nails protruding upwards like upright fingers.
“The owner?”
“That’s my guess.” He looked around nervously. “Let’s leave this one.”
“You think they’re still inside?”
“If they are, they are probably twitchy and liable to shoot first.”
Our town was known for having a few preppers. Like most towns in rural places, we had our fair share of hunting stores. One was owned by Kip Thorne, a grumpy old-timer who always managed to make local news for some new contraption that he’d built in preparation for World War Three. I had to wonder if he was still alive. His store was on the west side of town and to reach it, it would have meant wading our way through a shitload of skinheads. More than likely they had already cleaned the store out of supplies.
“No way, Kip will still be alive. That old bastard would have sealed himself in that vault of his,” Billy said. “My old man took me in there to get some fishing lures this one time. He showed it to us.”
“Oh yeah, what did it look like?”
He screwed up his face as though I was an idiot. “Like a vault. It was down in his basement. At first I thought he was taking us into a safe. You know, one of those big ass vaults you see in banks. It was like that. I think it was a panic room. Inside it had all these monitors and shit, a room connected to it with more canned food and another with an arsenal of guns. If anyone is going to survive this, it will be that fucker.”
Murphy wasn’t paying any attention; he moved with precision keeping his weapon shouldered like he was about to clear a house with a platoon of men.
“So what do you think, Murphy, how are we doing? I bet you didn’t expect us delinquents to survive this far.”
“Stay quiet or this might be your last day alive.”
Billy snorted and we pressed on checking out the next house. This one we entered. Every step we took was made with caution. Our eyes scanned for potential booby traps or an attack by someone who thought we were skinheads. The chances of us being killed by skinheads were high. But realistically it was more likely that a homeowner would shoot us. Everyone in the town would have been living in fear.
Murphy opened the French doors on the next house and we filed in behind him. He would signal for one of us to check one room while he checked another. As we entered the living room he threw up his hand. He mouthed the word wait. I couldn’t see who was in there but he didn’t want us to enter. I peered around the doorframe just in time to see him place the barrel of the M4 against the forehead of a skinhead who was asleep. Two more were sitting in chairs.
“Don’t even breathe,” Murphy said in a hushed voice. It was enough to wake the guy. His eyes opened real wide. Billy filed past me even though I had told him to wait. That guy didn’t listen to anyone. He aimed his gun at the other two.
“Slowly, slide onto the floor with your face down.”
While he was instructing them I had my eyes on the stairs. If they were sleeping in the living room, were the bedrooms full?
“You are fucked,” the skinhead said. I motioned to Corey that I was going to check upstairs. He followed. Now stairs at the best of times were creaky, even in new houses. I don’t know what it was about stairs and me but I always found the one that was faulty. I hugged the wall with my back as I took one step at a time. As I kept my AR-15 raised and steady we ascended the steps. Now there was a strong possibility that we might have reached the top without any issue if it wasn’t for one of the skinheads shouting in the living room. What followed next was a gun going off. I could only assume it was Billy’s as Murphy would have wanted to keep everything quiet.
The next thing heard were multiple boots hitting the floor. I stepped back readying myself for them to come around the corner when Corey just opened fire straight through the ceiling above him. I heard a body thud, and then I found myself engaged as a skinhead rounded the corner with an AK45 in his hand. I unleashed a flurry of rounds while moving backwards. Cory was shooting upwards in a random pattern hoping to take out whoever els
e was trying to get to the stairwell. I was so focused on firing and trying not to be hit that I missed a step and fell backwards crashing into Corey and toppling down the four steps we had climbed. We landed hard but there was no time to get off Corey, I just kept my finger on the trigger until the skinhead collapsed.
Then there was silence.
“You want to get off me?” Corey muttered. For once I was glad that he was large. Had that been Billy I would have probably snapped his small frame. I rolled off and clambered to my feet. Murphy came out of the room forcing Billy forward.
“Hey, if I hadn’t shot him he would have put a bullet in the back of your head. You can thank me later.”
Murphy didn’t reply; he just slid by him to make sure we were okay. He glanced up the stairs and saw the one skinhead hanging over the banister. Blood dripped from his mouth to the ground below.
“Any of you hurt?”
I shook my head.
“Just a little shaken up.”
“This is one hell of a gun,” Corey said admiring it with awe.
“You guys need to listen to me.” He stared at Billy.
“Oh right, blame me.”
“Billy, I’m not dicking around here. You make one mistake and all of us could end up dead.”
Billy’s chin dropped and he cast a glance back into the room where the dead skinheads lay bleeding out.
“Let’s get out of here now. We have probably woken up half the town.”
Corey nudged Billy on the way out the door and chuckled. Billy scowled at him. These two were always looking for a way to one-up the other. Idiots, but they were idiots that I was going to have to rely on if we wanted to survive this.
We pressed out into the warmth of the sun expecting that the day ahead of us would be filled with more surprises and horror.
RETRIEVAL
“Now what?” Corey said. “This place is going to be crawling with skinheads.” Murphy got on the radio to check in with McCabe.
“Any sign of them?”
The radio crackled.
