Age of Survival Series | Book 2 | Age of Panic

by Holden, J. J.

  The first thing Grossman did when he got home was start a pot of water boiling on his camp stove, then he peeled out of his cold, wet clothes. After getting dressed, he was tempted to make a full-strength cup of mud to help warm up the insides. Picking up the can of grounds, he knew that anything more than the quarter-strength he’d been rationing himself would be an inexcusable extravagance, even with the miserable day he was having. As he looked at the word “coffee” written on the list on his useless hulk of a refrigerator, he mentally cursed whoever had attacked the country for hitting it two days before his weekly grocery run.

  After stretching out his cup of weak, brown water as long as he could justify, Grossman grabbed his raincoat and a hat and stepped outside. The strong wind at the leading edge of the storm had stopped and the rain had eased up quite a bit while he’d been inside, but it was still coming down steady. The more direct route to the town hall was along the main highway through town. By cutting parallel to it, he could take two residential blocks with nice, big trees that arched over the sidewalks and street, providing a little more cover from the rain and freeing him from having to wrangle both his cane and the umbrella.

  Knowing that he’d been gone more than the few minutes he’d asked Berkman to cover for him, Grossman stepped it up while he took the longer route. As he rounded the corner onto the main street of Bowman, he stopped dead in his tracks. One of the regular deputies, two of the new ones, and three of Prange’s soldiers were standing outside of the main grocery store, weapons out. Across the street, it looked like a similar party was just walking into a restaurant. Squinting to see into the rainy distance, it looked like another crew was collecting at the pharmacy.

  He looked left and saw camouflaged, armed men right in front of his house.

  Taking a quick survey of his surroundings, Grossman backtracked his route at a fast block and cut through a couple of backyards to Ginger Harlowe’s house. She was the school science teacher, and had been of immeasurable help to both the town and him since the Event. She’d stepped up to organize a messenger network of middle and high school students to help the town communicate. She’d also run a lot of interference for him, personally, setting up a little retreat in the supply closet behind her classroom where he could duck away if he needed a little time alone or some rest where nobody would think to look for him.

  He knocked on her back door, and wasn’t surprised that there was no response. She spent most of her daytime hours at the school managing the messenger service. He didn’t know her well enough to guess where she might hide a spare key, and he didn’t have time to try and puzzle it out, so he used his cane as leverage to force the door as quietly as he could.

  For several tense moments, he waited, watching out the back windows of her house for any sign that anybody might have seen or heard him breaking in. When he was reasonably satisfied, he found pen and paper and wrote a couple of notes, one of which he taped to the wall right inside the back door, one by the front. Both apologized for having busted in, and told her he was hiding out in her basement.

  He spent the next few hours downstairs in Harlowe’s basement. After several minutes of recrimination as he thought more about the “soldiers,” he could see all the little cues he’d missed here and there. All he could do to justify the mistake to himself was consider that having help arrive right after things had gone so wrong had filled him with such a sense of relief that he had taken everything at face value.

  His next task was to look at the past twenty-four hours or so with a more critical eye. Especially things that had happened after the hearing. He did consider that some of the soldiers didn’t pass the sniff test because they were young men who’d been hurriedly recruited, much like Schuster had bulked up the local police department by deputizing citizens after the Event.

  Yet, they all had rank. He couldn’t imagine that the military would be bringing in emergency recruits at E-3 or E-4. And many of them seemed to know each other, like they’d been working together for well over a week. If it were a small cadre of National Guard soldiers reinforced by a sudden influx of untrained conscripts and volunteers, they shouldn’t have seemed so used to each other. Most telling was that both Carter and Prange seemed to be very familiar with them all. If they had all been troops under Carter’s command, maybe all from the same town and that was why they all knew each other, Grossman could see that as plausible. But for somebody that supposedly worked in an office in Madison…he just didn’t buy it that they would seem so used to working together.

  “Nothing about their story holds up,” he said to himself. “So, what are they?”

  By the dim, gray light that came in through one of the basement windows, Grossman started writing down theories, with little pro/con matrices for each. An hour in, he realized that knowing what they were, while helpful, could wait. Knowing what to do next was much more important.

  While he was working on a list of who he felt he could and could not trust, he heard a door upstairs open. He stayed silent, listening intently. The footsteps seemed to have gotten no farther into the house than the front entryway. After a minute, he heard them move deeper inside. He could tell whoever was upstairs was trying to be quiet, but it was an old house with plenty of creaky floorboards.

  Finally, the steps went to the top of the basement stairs. “Tom?”

  He was greatly relieved to hear Harlowe’s voice. “Yeah. It’s me down here.”

  “All right. Come on up.”

  Grossman walked to the stairs and cautiously ascended. He thought of readying the pistol he carried inside his waistband, but wasn’t willing to risk Harlowe’s life. If somebody else were up there with her—maybe somebody had seen him come in and tipped off Schuster or Prange—he didn’t want her getting caught in the crossfire. He’d surrender to whatever his fate was before he’d put her in the middle of a gun fight.

  When he got to the top of the stairs and saw her standing there alone, and not looking furtively off to one side or the other and holding her hand behind her back, he let a breath out. If there had been somebody in the house to arrest him, they certainly wouldn’t have let her have a firearm. She apologized quickly and let down the hammer on a small revolver before putting it back into her purse.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I suspect you realize that a lot has changed since the hearing ended this morning.”

  11

  “Peter!” Sally called out.

  “Yeah?” Peter responded, wiping muddy water from his face. With the day’s effort in camouflaging the driveway done, he was cleaning mud off of the tools they’d used.

  “Sounds like a small motor coming up our road. Maybe a minibike or something.”

  “Right. Get back into position; I’ll grab some backup and meet you.” Peter ran for the house. Normally, he would have kept his rifle close at hand, but with the heavy rain and labor, he’d put it just inside the garage door. “Come on. Company,” he said, seeing Bill at the workbench inside.

  As he and Bill dropped into position behind Sally and Irene, he swore. He was almost certain he knew what that sound was.

  “What?” Sally asked.

  He pointed. The commotion was Chuck Larson, the Bowman High School bully on the go-kart he’d cobbled together from scrap metal and a riding-lawn-mower engine.

  “Good test of how our camouflage does. If somebody that knows the house is here is fooled, we’ll know we did a good job.”

  As the four watched, Chuck seemed to slow, but kept on going. A couple hundred yards down, he turned around and drove back again, slowing once again near where the driveway had been. On the third pass, he stopped and got out of his vehicle to look around.

  “Sorry,” Irene said.

  “Don’t be. He knows we live up here,” Peter said.

  “How?” Larry asked. “I can’t imagine he’d spend much time up here hanging out with you.”

  “Remember that girl he was dating last year? She lived about a half mile down the way,” Peter
said.

  Chuck started walking into the tangle of brush where the driveway used to be but got only a few feet in. “Hey!” he shouted. “Peter. I’ve got news you guys really need to hear.”

  Everybody looked to Peter. “I’ll cut wide and take our foot path out to the road and meet him there. Don’t aim anything at him.”

  The rain made the ground slippery and treacherous. Twice, he almost lost his footing badly while negotiating a slope. Once he made it to the road, Peter crossed it so he could come out of the woods opposite the property. Before calling attention to himself, he gave Chuck a good look. Seeing no obvious weapons, he slung his rifle behind his back. “Over here.” When Chuck looked like he was about to ask something, Peter said, “Squirrel hunting. What brings you up this way?”

  “Told you. I’ve got news from town.”

  Peter saw something in Chuck’s face he’d never seen before. Fear. He decided to approach cautiously. “Something bad, I take it?”

  “I thought I saw you talking to Grossman yesterday morning. So you know about the big riot and then the Army guys showing up, right?”

  “We left not long after,” Peter said.

  “Well, they’ve just taken over the town. Grossman had some sort of pre-trial today for the folks that were leading the riot, and my dad said some pretty big accusations were thrown around. Like an hour later, the soldiers and cops teamed up and just started taking over the town. Went and kicked in the doors at all the shops, some of them were running around demanding to know where the mayor went. I think they hauled in Thorssen, but I have no idea why they’d do that.”

  “Hold on,” Peter said, trying to take the information in. “Kicking in doors and arresting people?”

  “Yeah. From what Dad said, the mayor should have busted a bunch of store owners because it’s actually illegal to be charging the prices they were in an emergency. So the Army and this dude from Madison with them must have decided to just bust them all.”

  “But why nab Thorssen?”

  “I have no idea,” Chuck said. “I even like the guy.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Peter said. “I appreciate you running all the way up here to let us know. Can I run to the house and get you something, some food or water, while you keep on your way?”

  “Actually, this is as far as I was planning on going.”

  Peter couldn’t believe his ears. Chuck’s voice had been soft and almost pleading as he said that. To have him come up to the homestead in the first place just to let them know something was wrong in town was weird enough. But if Peter was reading the situation right, Chuck might have been asking to stay.

  “You’re not just making rounds? I figured you had signed on with the bikenet to deliver messages.”

  “Me?” Chuck asked.

  The idea was absurd that someone who’d always been as self-centered as Chuck would volunteer his time to be helpful. Peter knew there was something more. “What aren’t you telling me, Chuck?”

  “My parents didn’t take kindly to a bunch of cops trying to take over the bar. They didn’t even do anything wrong, other than put a limit on how many drinks anybody could have in a day. They didn’t jack up the prices, though, so those goons had no business coming in to bust them.”

  The Larsons owned one of the bars in Bowman. Peter couldn’t judge whether they’d been fair in their prices, but he’d never heard anybody speak ill of them. “Things get ugly?” he asked, fearing the worst.

  “Dad showed a gun, but gave up right quick. Don’t blame him. A couple of the guys looked like they’ve been through much worse. Nobody got shot, but they still kicked the shit out of him, and hauled him and Mom away.”

  “I’m sorry,” Peter said.

  “Yeah. So, I’m not feeling safe in town, and I know you guys have always set yourself up to tough something like this out.”

  Peter started to speak, but Chuck cut him off. “I get it. I’ve always been a pretty big dick to you, so I have no right at all to come up here looking for help, but I really don’t know what else to do.”

  “Wouldn’t you be better staying near home? If your parents are let out, don’t you think they’d be worried if you weren’t there?”

  “I’m more worried that I’m next on the list,” Chuck said. “Son of somebody that resisted them? Dude riding around town in his go-kart being a jackass to people instead of helping out? If they’re looking to put the boot down and tighten the place up…”

  “Well, you’re right that you have no business asking me to save your ass. The things you said to my mom the other day alone.”

  “I know,” Chuck said. “I just don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

  “Because you know I’m a good guy, that won’t turn somebody in trouble away?”

  Chuck looked sheepish and shrugged. Peter really did want to just tell him to hop on his little buggy and get lost, but he knew the truth in his words. He was a person who’d give somebody else the benefit of the doubt, even if he knew they didn’t deserve it.

  “Listen. Just sit tight here. I’ll honor my first offer and get you some grub. Whether to let you stay or kick your ass down the road isn’t up to me alone.”

  “Thank you,” Chuck said, with surprising sincerity.

  “Just sit tight, okay?”

  Peter backtracked his circuitous route back to the house. By that time, the entire homestead had been looped in.

  “So, what do we do?” Peter asked after giving them the news.

  “For starters,” Bill said, “we give thanks that you and your mother came down to invite us up here.”

  Sally, Irene, and Larry all nodded in agreement.

  Peter scanned the group. “And consider ourselves lucky that none of us got picked up in town when we made our last trip down. Sounds like it’s suddenly gotten real bad down there.”

  “If it were up to me,” Larry said, “I’d tell Chuck ‘too bad, so sad.’ Should have been a better person your entire life.”

  Bill said, “I’m not one to turn my back on someone in need, but it sounds like you guys have never had a good experience with him. Besides, the last people we let stay on the land tried to rip us off.”

  Peter hadn’t forgotten the young couple with the toddler that had wandered onto the property lost and with pretty much just the clothes on their back. They’d been offered a couple meals and a tent for the night, and directions on how to get to Bowman in the morning. Later in the night, they’d been caught in the cellar stealing supplies. The situation with Chuck seemed different. The other folks were strangers passing through an unfamiliar landscape in desperate straits. Chuck wasn’t a stranger. He was a known quantity.

  Unfortunately, that knowledge was not positive, especially in relation to Peter and Larry. Peter felt that taking their voices out of the conversation for a bit might not be a bad idea. If Chuck had any chance of staying, his best bet was to not have the two people that had the most reason to dislike and distrust him step out for a bit. He brought Larry inside to help make up a quick dinner to take out to the road.

  “I’m serious, man,” Larry said. “The dude has not done a single decent thing to either of us in his entire life. This is way more than he deserves from us.” Larry poured water into a bottle while Peter scooped some of the day’s rice out of a pot.

  “There’s something in me that wants to believe he’s been spooked enough to come around.”

  “You know he’s only up here wanting to hide out with us because he doesn’t think the thugs down there will take him in. If he thought for one second the guys that beat his dad up would give him a uniform and a chance to bust some heads, he’d be on it in a heartbeat.”

  The same thoughts had crossed Peter’s mind. He could easily see Chuck as the kind of guy that would go full-on jackboot if he ever got any sort of authority. At the same time, he had seemed haunted when Peter was talking to him out on the road. He wondered if seeing his own parents on the wrong end of the equation had forced a hard look
inward.

  “That’s too much,” Larry said, as Peter absentmindedly scooped another spoonful of rice into the bowl.

  “Ease up a bit. The guy just lost a lot.”

  “Not my fault,” Larry said.

  “I’ll take it out of my share of dinner tonight,” Peter said. “Come on. I want you to talk to him. Promise me you’ll keep an open mind, and I’ll hear you out afterward, all right?”

  “That’s asking a lot,” Larry said.

  “I know. It’s important to me that you give him at least that much of a chance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re in hard times that can make us into hard people. I know we need to be smart and tough and resolved to survive all this. I just don’t want to become too hard.”

  Chuck was still sitting out in the middle of the road when Larry and Peter got back out to him.

  “Ah,” Chuck said, eyeing Larry. “That explains why I haven’t seen you around town much.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been up here,” Larry said.

  “Who else is staying with you?”

  “We’ll keep that to ourselves for now,” Peter said, handing him a couple of bowls and a bottle of water.

  Chuck didn’t push his question. He just thanked them for the food and started to eat.

  “What else has been going on down there? We’ve only made a couple brief visits,” Peter asked. He paid close attention to how Chuck answered him, looking for hints of dishonesty or incomplete answers. That Chuck didn’t protest the unequal exchange of information pushed Peter a little more toward trusting him.

  “Let us have some words with the rest of the folks staying with us,” Peter said, after Chuck had finished eating. “We shouldn’t be long.”

  Back at the house, everybody gathered around for a brief discussion, except for Sally, who had volunteered to keep watch on Chuck out on the road.

  Peter again felt the pressure of his position within the small community that had developed at his home. There was a good amount of discussion about the last people that had been offered brief shelter on the land. After that, it seemed like people mostly wanted him and Larry to give their impressions about Chuck’s sincerity. Peter could understand their feelings—they knew Chuck better than anybody else, and had many years of bad experiences with him. It very quickly became clear that he and Larry were being entrusted with the decision, and that the rest would back them up, whatever it was.