The police chief’s office looked exactly like Prange had expected it to. Metal desk cluttered by orderly stacks of paper, locking, heavy-duty filing cabinets, and uncomfortable chairs. The walls were covered by plaques and certificates, and most flat surfaces had sports memorabilia or police mementos on them. The only thing that made it different from the other lawmen’s offices he’d been in was that the bricked computer and monitor were shoved over into a corner, and a gas camp lantern hanging from a makeshift hook in the ceiling was the only source of light.
Schuster opened his desk drawer. Prange was not at all surprised when he took out a bottle of Korbel brandy. Seemed every third person up there drank the stuff.
“Actually, I was wondering about your feelings on tequila,” Prange offered, pulling out a hip flask. He really despised brandy.
“Oh, no,” Schuster said. “Señor Cuervo and I have not been on speaking terms for a very long time.”
“That one night in college?” Prange asked, uncapping his flask.
“You got it.”
“For me, it was an unfortunate night with Mr. Beam. I think this might change your mind, though. Humor me.”
Schuster accepted the flask and took a cautious sip. “Not bad,” he said, taking another honest nip before handing it back.
Prange took a drink and set the flask on the desk between them, an open invitation. “You spend any time down in the southwest, you learn there’s way more to tequila than shooters and margaritas.”
“How long were you down that way?” Schuster asked.
“Born and raised, actually. Just moved up this way a few years ago for work. I’d hit the point where if I wanted to move up, I had to move out. Too many people above me in the food chain that still had twenty years to go before retirement.” It was the best kind of lie, the kind that had a solid basis in something that was actually true.
“Quite the adjustment, I’ll bet?”
“You can’t even imagine,” Prange said. “Roughest part was learning the hard lesson that not all emergencies are the same. That first catastrophic blizzard, let me tell you…”
Schuster let out a deep belly laugh. “Rude awakening, wasn’t it?”
“It was, but not as bad as this. Not by a long shot.”
“I hear you,” Schuster said, taking the flask. “I don’t think that any of us were really prepared for this, and it kind of feels like we’re all just making shit up as we go along.”
“Well, if it helps, I learned another thing about emergency management. While each one is different, there are some things they all have in common,” Prange offered.
“Like what?”
“When things go sideways, people look for authority. They desperately need somebody to show them the way forward.”
“Yeah,” Schuster agreed with a big nod of his head.
Prange saw an opening. “Your mayor. He’s not really good at this, is he?”
“He’s a decent guy. Heart’s in the right place, and I can at least understand his thinking. When things are good, he’s the best mayor you could hope for. Most people like him, he’s great at the glad-handing, the making people feel good about themselves and the town, getting them excited about new ideas. He’s been good at getting grants and development funds. But once things step outside of normal…”
“He doesn’t step up and make the hard decisions.”
“Right,” Schuster said. “He doesn’t want to upset people.”
“I’ve seen the type,” Prange said. “It’s fine to be everybody’s buddy at election time, but once you get elected, you’ve got to lead.”
“Small town like this, when nothing’s going wrong, being a friend and being a leader can be pretty much the same thing.”
“And when everything’s gone wrong, you’ve got to be willing to upset people,” Prange said. “Anyway, I’ve taken up enough of your time tonight. Looks like you’ve got a lot to handle yet before you’re off duty.”
“I haven’t been off duty since the Event.”
There was a firm knock at the door.
“Yeah?” Schuster said.
A uniformed deputy—Prange assumed an original member of the town’s police force—peeked his head in. He looked hesitant to speak with somebody else in the room with Schuster.
“Out with it,” the police chief said.
“We picked someone up coming into town, armed and injured. Looks like two gunshot wounds. Not willing to talk about them.”
“Like I said,” Schuster told Prange. “I haven’t been off duty since all this started. Want to come along, see what we’ve got?”
The deputy led them over to the firehouse, where Thorssen was working on a man flanked by one of Prange’s men and somebody in civilian clothes open-carrying a pistol in a belt holster and some zip cuffs.
Coming closer, the guy looked an absolute mess. Sweaty, filthy, his clothes torn and stained. Prange thought he’d have been showing more pain if he weren’t looking so exhausted.
“How’s he looking?” Schuster asked.
Thorssen stood up and got close, speaking quietly. “The wounds aren’t bad. The leg took a load of light bird shot, mostly superficial. The upper arm took a bullet that looks to have gone clean through. Missed the bone and all the big blood vessels.” He checked an IV bag hanging over the man. “Saline. He’s really dehydrated, so I’m topping him up, but I don’t see anything life threatening.”
After Thorssen went back to work, Prange leaned over to Schuster. “Walk me through what happens next. Is he staying up here, you detaining him, or cutting him free?”
“If my man here clears him, I’ll question him, then decide on detention or not. We’re really not set up to watch detainees up here, so if I see a need to hold him, I’d rather do it over on my turf than put a guard on him here.”
“You know him?”
“No,” Schuster said. “Got no idea. Let’s see what kind of hardware he had on him.”
The man had been carrying two shotguns when he’d been picked up, and about a dozen rounds of bird shot. The other deputies confirmed what the first one had said, that he’d given up no information at all. By the time Schuster completed his debriefing of the deputies involved, Thorssen had finished assessing the stranger, cleaned and dressed his wounds, and pulled the IV line.
“He’s all yours,” Thorssen said.
Schuster sat beside the cot. “Got anything you need to tell us about the state you’re in?”
The man gave no response, except to turn his head away.
“If you can let us know what happened, we can help you,” Schuster continued. “If you’re going to be stubborn and silent, I’m going to have to assume that this is because you went out looking for trouble, not that it found you. That means cooling your heels under guard until I can spare some time and people to investigate. So, what do you say? We going to work together on this?”
“I got nothing for you,” the man said.
“You sure about that?” Schuster asked, glancing at his uniformed deputy. The man pulled a pair of handcuffs from a belt holster.
“I’m sure.”
Schuster nodded, and the deputy moved in. Prange looked around. Thorssen had moved onto checking on somebody in a bed shielded from the rest of the room by sheets hung from a frame of PVC pipes. The wounded man didn’t resist as the deputy helped him to a sitting position and cuffed his hands at the front of his waist.
“Where to?” the deputy asked.
“We’re coming with you,” Schuster said.
The walk back over to the town hall was at a moderate pace to accommodate the wounded man. Prange noticed that Schuster and his uniformed deputy went dead silent once they started moving. The other deputy looked like he wanted to break the silence but could tell the chief wouldn’t have any of it. If the wounded man weren’t so clearly worn out, Prange imagined the stone-face routine would have had the desired effect of rattling him.
Once they got down into the basement of the town ha
ll, Schuster pointed to the larger of the two holding rooms, the one with the mayor’s brother and his other ringleaders. As soon as the non-uniformed deputy on guard there unlocked and opened the door, Prange’s nostrils were assailed by the sour/sweet smell of someone with either diarrhea or a distressing case of gas.
“You finally going to take care of this for us?” one of the detainees asked.
Schuster didn’t crinkle his nose at the smell but shot the deputy a disgusted look. The guard dashed in and came out with a tin bucket. Schuster snagged him by the shirt sleeve and hissed, “This better not happen again. We need to be firm, but we’re not animals.”
“I was the only one—”
“You can step away from the door for a few seconds to grab some backup whenever the chamber pot needs to be emptied.”
“Got it.”
“I never would have given myself up if I’d known this was how you were going to treat us,” the white-haired man Prange remembered as Frank Miller said.
“It won’t happen again,” Schuster said. “I’ll put the fear of god into my boys, make sure they start holding to a better standard.”
“We also don’t have room for any more in here.”
“Ease up, Frank,” Jerry Grossman said, looking to the injured man. “Rocky? You didn’t go back to that place we visited before, did you? Where’s Ted?”
“You two know each other?” Prange asked.
“Yeah,” Rocky said. “I’d be home with my family instead of up here if it weren’t for this asshole.”
“Who’s Ted?” Schuster asked.
Jerry looked at Rocky and Prange saw something drain out of him. “Another one of our hunting buddies.”
“Seems there’s quite a bit you didn’t tell me in our conversation earlier,” Prange said.
“I had a difference of opinion with my friends and decided to come into town. They opted to stay up at our hunting cabin.”
“Suppose we send somebody up there to pick your other buddy up?”
“No point. We got shot up in the woods looking for food,” Rocky said. “That changed my mind about roughing it versus coming into town.”
“Where?” Schuster asked.
“Damned if I know,” Rocky said. “I’ve never been up around here before. Couldn’t tell you one guy’s land from another’s.”
Prange saw Schuster calculating. He wondered if the police chief was also suspecting Jerry and Rocky were both lying. With Rocky being injured, tired, and very unwelcome in the room with the others, he’d be the one most likely to buckle under pressure if they wanted to get more information. Schuster looked over at Prange, and with a small hand gesture, asked if they should take Rocky out of the room.
Prange shook his head. Sure, an interrogation could get them some info, but there were also relationships to build. The mayor’s brother seemed like he could be quite useful, so he felt the better option was to not lean hard on his suffering friend.
Prange returned the chief’s gaze. “Why don’t we let these guys get some rest.”
7
Tom Grossman crawled out of bed the next morning, less rested than he’d hoped. Sure, sorting the logistics of hosting Prange and his contingent of National Guard troops had added unexpected tasks to his evening, and had him up later than he’d have liked to have been.
He didn’t get it. He should have been relieved to find out that there was still some sort of functioning government in place. Weak and apparently not in control of much, but there was still something to build on. And they’d made contact, even. Ever since the Event, he’d been operating under the assumption that they were alone and had nothing and nobody they could rely on.
Knowing that the Meier property had been hit after the Event, finding out about other preppers pulling up or moving signs, not knowing what was out there that he didn’t know about—all of those things had been chewing on the back of his mind constantly. Maybe not at the front of his consciousness, but he was never not aware of the big black box that surrounded his town.
Having somebody from the state with a dozen troops to come help should have calmed him down, but it hadn’t.
Grossman looked at his watch. Five in the morning. He knew that breakfast at the school cafeteria wouldn’t be ready for another hour, but he also knew that lying around in bed wouldn’t gain him any more sleep. It would just give the hamster more time to run on its wheel and keep getting him keyed up. Taking a walk wouldn’t solve any of his problems, but it least it would get some blood flowing.
Ten steps out his front door, Grossman was questioning the wisdom of a leisurely stroll as his knee shouted at him. At least the streets were empty at that hour, so he could move as slow as he wanted, walk as awkwardly as he needed, and let his face freely show discomfort.
Surprisingly, ten minutes in, he started feeling not so bad. He was sure he had the same gait as a drunk robot, but it seemed like moving the way his body demanded, instead of trying to walk as “normal” as possible, was lessening the pain that had been accumulating.
If only he didn’t feel a need to look as mayoral as possible, maybe he wouldn’t be messing things up worse than they already had been.
Eventually, even the more relaxed stride started taking its toll, so Grossman picked his most direct route to the school cafeteria. There were already three people in line. To his great relief, they were more in the mood to gossip about the new arrivals in town than to get on his case about one thing or another. He welcomed the distraction from work and let them mostly chat while he made the occasional noncommittal noise. With a little shift to lean against a wall, he was able to get a view of the two trucks parked in front of the town hall. The soldiers were billeted in the school gym, with the exception of a two-man guard detail on the trucks that rotated through the night.
Like many soldiers, they smoked a lot. As soon as they were stood down, most of the guys went straight for a cigarette. He felt bad for them. Tobacco was a finite resource, and it didn’t look like any of them were practicing moderation. There was going to be hell to pay for those kids, and possibly anybody around them, when the supply ran out.
He was in the process of making a mental note to talk to Carter when the cafeteria door unlocked. Where the early shift of “customers” had been content to just talk around Grossman, the people working the cafeteria wanted details and answers and even had fresh complaints they expected him to address.
It was a relief when Schuster came in. The mere presence of the police chief gave Grossman an excuse to claim important business and extract himself. He picked a table and waved.
“Morning,” Schuster said as he set his tray down. “Didn’t see much of you after dinner last night.”
“Prange really bent my ear yesterday afternoon. Had a ton of questions. I pretty much holed up in my office to deal with that and get ready for the hearing today.”
“Right,” Schuster said, with what looked to Grossman like a genuine frustrated expression on his face. “I’d completely forgotten about that.”
“Carter keep you busy, too?”
“Yeah. Dealing with that, and we had another drifter come in, armed with some superficial gunshot wounds, then I had to get on my guys about conditions in detention.” Schuster shook his head and took a drink of coffee. “I was hoping that we could get away with using buckets in the rooms we’d converted. Seems like a safer alternative than constantly shuffling guys in and out for trips to the shitter. Somebody in the records room is getting seriously tore up by something, and my guard simply refused to empty the pail.”
“So what’s the solution?”
“For now, I’ve cut the guard off from the team. He was one of the people that volunteered to round me out. Barely met expectations, so not much loss there. Threatened to take the next guy that pulled something like that out back for an ass whupping.”
“Sticking with chamber pots, then?”
“Look, Tom. I can be a hardass, but c’mon. You know me better than that. If I had
a better option, I’d go with it. I just don’t feel like it’d be safe to either schedule or allow bathroom visits on a regular basis. You had some basic instruction in this kind of stuff when you were in. Transitional spaces are the most dangerous because they’re the least controlled.”
Grossman knew he had a point. He had gotten very barebones training on managing prison populations, just in case his armor unit needed to be pressed into service after combat was over to assist MPs.
He wasn’t just going to let the matter lie, though. “You really think the people we’ve got detained right now are that much of a risk?”
Schuster took a drink of coffee and scowled at the toast and hash browns on his plate. The very last, tiny serving of eggs had been dished out two days earlier. “Most of them, no. I don’t trust Pat Neustadt’s guys any farther than I could kick them up a chimney.”
“I’ve never been keen on them either.”
“Something we can agree on,” Schuster said.
“Look,” Grossman said. “If you’ve got somebody with the runs in a room with people you think you can trust, show it. Let them all take a walk down to the toilets every couple hours, or even just let the guy that’s having a hard time step out as needed.”
“I don’t completely trust any of them. That’s the problem. All of the people we’ve got in detention now showed that they’re willing to get violent or incite violence to get their way. Some of them I worry about a lot less than others, but I honestly wouldn’t put it past any of them to bum rush one of my guys if they saw a chance to escape.”
“They’d have to get through a lot of your guys to get out.”
“They could really hurt somebody in the process. That’s the problem. Besides, I’ve only got three guys working for me that have formal training. The rest? You want to have to explain how a police shooting happened in the basement of the town hall?”
That really took Grossman off guard. Schuster had scored a big point, and he knew it.
“And, uh, no offense,” Schuster added. “Those soldiers with Prange? There’s a reason for the Posse Comitatus act, because soldiers are not even remotely trained for domestic policing. I don’t like having them walking with my guys or pitching in. I really don’t want them downstairs pulling guard on our detainees.”
Age of Survival Series | Book 2 | Age of Panic Page 6
