Age of Survival Series | Book 2 | Age of Panic

by Holden, J. J.

  By the time he got a clear look at the treatment plant, it was clear that at least one of the men from the mechanical room had made it out. He didn’t think it was possible for five guys to look like a kicked hornets’ nest, but they were a flurry of activity—pacing, wild gestures, screaming at each other. They looked simultaneously ineffectual and extremely dangerous. Grossman wondered if they were hopped up on anything.

  Without binoculars or any other distance optics in his possession, he couldn’t get any idea of what the situation might be in the parts of Bowman he could see. He didn’t hear gunfire, at least. Keeping to cover, Grossman continued to move away from the treatment plant, trying to find somewhere he could get a better look into town.

  He finally got his chance to get close when he got up to the road that led out to The Duck Blind, which had been his bar of choice. The ditch beside it was steep, with tall cattails growing in it, and ran like that most of the way to the town limits. As he lowered himself down into it, a cloud of mosquitos bloomed up. The ground was spongy and soft still from the heavy rains that had gone through not long earlier, with some ankle-deep puddles still lingering.

  “Predator.”

  Grossman just about jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice from above him. Any other word, and he would have brought his pistol up. But “predator” was the sign, and he only took a moment to conjure up the proper response: “Aliens,” he said, looking up. Two people in hunting camouflage, wearing red bandanas on their right arms and left ankles, were standing over him.

  “Is it go time?” the Duck Blind’s owner asked. His wife was standing beside him.

  “I don’t know yet. Looks like you’re ready, though,” Grossman said.

  “Word got to us about Schuster and then the curfew. We’ve been watching from here, thinking if something was going to happen, tonight might be it. Why don’t you come on inside? We’ve got the Celestrons set up, if you want to take a look-see quick.”

  One of the regular events at The Duck Blind was called “Stars at the Bar.” They owned a couple nice-quality telescopes, and would take advantage of the relative lack of light pollution in the area to host drunken stargazing nights on their rooftop deck.

  After getting a good look from the deck, he had a little more idea of what was happening, but truly useful intelligence still eluded him. He could see that it was only the phony troops moving around and nobody else. The lack of any interaction with townsfolk left a huge gap in his ability to assess the situation. It was one thing to watch how Prange’s men were with each other. Seeing how they treated others would give him so much more.

  “Find the salmon house,” came the bar owner’s low voice.

  Grossman panned the telescope until he hit Irene Williams’s house. Salmon was the best way anybody had ever come up with to describe the weird color somewhere between pink and orange that she’d painted it. “Got it.”

  “Now slide three doors to the left. Peek in their attic window.”

  “We’re not playing Peeping Tom here, are we?” Grossman asked while he located the window. “Oh…” he said, catching sight of a whiteboard inside. Careful fine-tuning of the focus knob brought the words sharply into view.

  6+ ARR

  0 GGH

  -1 BG

  ++

  The two plus signs at the end were written large and in red, where the rest of the text was black.

  “What am I looking at here?” Grossman asked.

  “Six more people arrested, nobody appears to be harmed or moved out of town. One of Prange’s boys has been wounded. The last bit is telling us that they suspect Prange is about to escalate severely.”

  “Hence you asking me if it’s go time?” Grossman asked.

  “Exactly. Thorssen was able to confirm that he got his messages out, so we figured you were here to let us know we’re on at six.”

  “You’ve heard from Thorssen?” It was an unexpected bit of good news.

  “He’s inside hiding out. We figure even out here, it’s best to keep him hid, because he stands out so much.”

  “I think we’re on for six, assuming you can get word out to the rest of our people. With the curfew, I have no idea how you’re going to get the word out.”

  “Still using the same go signal? Three, two, three?”

  “Yes. I confirmed that with Berkman.” Grossman looked at his watch. It was a little bit after three. “All I’ve got is my sidearm, with two mags. Can you kit me out for a more serious fight?”

  20

  Peter glanced at his watch. It was almost five. He was wearing his hunting clothes, and had his SKS slung over his shoulder, his Glock holstered at his waist, and several spare magazines for each in his pockets and the pouches on his equipment belt. Larry, Irene, Bill, and Chuck were with him, all dressed and geared up similarly. Each of them had two strips of red cloth in their pockets, remnants of one of his father’s flannel work shirts.

  His mother and Sally were going to stay home to hold things down. It had been a pretty tough conversation for Peter to have with his mother. He felt she had just begun to accept him actively taking risks for the defense of the household. Going down into Bowman to seek out a fight there was almost a bridge too far. He tried not to leverage it, but he knew that she would never refuse him permission to go down if he felt it was the right thing to do. She had been a soldier’s wife and had endured many separations while his father was overseas. She’d stood by him when he volunteered to go back over, and when he’d reenlisted.

  In her heart, Peter knew that she was as committed as anybody to doing what needed to be done to protect the homes and freedoms of her people. She had found that her role was in caring for those that were willing to get up and take the fight to the enemy. Even though she didn’t say it out loud or show it overtly, he could tell that she was actually proud of him for being willing to take up the mantle and go to where he was needed.

  When she’d taken one of Art’s old red shirts and cut it into strips, solemnly handing two pieces to each of her people that were going down to Bowman, Peter felt it. She was offering what protection and support she could, and she was also passing her husband’s legacy on to a new generation that was going into a different war than the one he’d been in.

  “Are we all ready to do this?” Peter asked. His four companions nodded slowly. “All right. Remember. We’ve got this message from the other folks that are off grid out here that we need to drop off. That’ll bring us into town on Tackhill, which is a bit below Barker Road. It’s higher ground than the direct approach, plus Larry, Chuck, and I have been hitting a vantage point on Barker for the past few days to at least look in on the situation. We should be able to use our scopes and binocs to get a good view of the situation on the ground before we step in. Everybody remember the sign and countersign? We’re past noon on an odd-numbered day.”

  “Predator is the sign. They’ll counter with Aliens if everything is okay, Conan if it isn’t,” Chuck said.

  “Exactly. Great. Let’s roll.”

  As Peter hurried along with his small crew, he steeled himself for the inevitable. The battle for Bowman was about to commence.

  Daniel Prange was on the roof of the town hall, crouched down beside his best marksman. Instead of an M-16 like the rest of the soldiers, he had an older-model military rifle, with a massive scope mounted on it. His man was carefully adjusting a pile of sandbags it was sitting on, periodically looking through the weapon’s optics. “All right, sir. Try to get behind it without disturbing anything. We’re looking at that bar northeast of town. Real far away, so even the slightest motion of the rifle, and your sight is going to be yards off the target.”

  Prange lowered himself to his belly and put his eye up to the scope.

  “Do you see three people and some big telescopes up on a roof?”

  The weapon was aimed at the upper floor of a building. Prange did his best to gently shift the view a tiny bit up. “I’ll be damned.” One of the three men was clear
ly Tom Grossman. “How long have you known they were up there looking back at us?”

  “Just found it a bit ago. I’d been keeping an eye on things in town, until you told me the mayor might be coming up the river. I started looking farther out and caught sight of these guys.”

  “Can you get Grossman from here?”

  “Let me look again.” The man took Prange’s place behind the rifle and peered out. “I’d put my chances at one in four, maybe. I’ve never tried hitting anything at this range before.”

  “What are the chances they’d detect the shot from here if you miss?”

  “They’ll know it came from here.”

  Prange weighed his options. If he gave the go ahead and his man missed, Grossman would be alerted and would go to ground again. The risk was too great. He sent someone downstairs to relay the news and get as many men as possible together.

  Within moments, people were grabbing rifles. Someone was dispatched to roust out the couple guys that were off shift. Carter came up to the roof while his men were assembling.

  “We’ve got eyes on Mayor Gimpy. We really need to nab him this time. Don’t let me down,” Prange told him.

  “Dead or alive?”

  “The deader the better. I’m sick of that wily bastard.”

  “You got it,” Carter said.

  Prange stayed on the roof, tracking the motion of Carter’s squad with binoculars.

  His sharpshooter told him Grossman had left the roof, but the others had stayed up there. “I can’t cover the rooftop and doors both. What’s more important?”

  “What are the folks on the roof doing?”

  “Staring into their telescopes.”

  “Keep an eye on them. If they suddenly stop looking into town, then check the doors to see if Grossman is on the move.”

  Over the next several minutes, Prange had his driver beside him, sending out a series of commands via whistle. He needed to angle the roving patrols that were on shift out toward the bar to provide a layer of backup in case the mayor slipped Carter’s patrol.

  From the northwest, there was a sudden blast of automatic weapons fire, followed by a series of sporadic pops. Prange spun in the direction of the shots, but there were too many buildings intervening.

  “Do you have any signal that says, ‘Quit whatever bullshit you’re up to and get back on task’?” he asked his driver.

  The man looked at his cheat sheet.

  “Never mind,” Prange said. “If you’ve got something that says, ‘Just carry on with the mission,’ send it out.”

  “Nothing like that, sir.”

  Another fresh gunfight broke out, this one also initiated by an automatic weapon.

  “Send out something to tell people to quit jerking around and move in on the damn target!”

  Two more firefights broke out. Prange put his binoculars back up and looked for the street where he’d last seen Carter. He was greatly relieved to find that squad still on track, right up until he heard another series of shots from out near the bar where Grossman was hiding out. This one was a single semi-automatic, firing in what seemed like some sort of pattern. After two more guns opened up in new parts of town, Prange realized they were echoing the first.

  The fight was on.

  Peter and his crew were coming up to the blue barn on Tackhill Road when several shots rang out in the distance, all from the direction of Bowman.

  “Hold on,” Irene said. “You catch that? A bunch of guns seemed to have this three-two-three pattern.”

  “I think I can hear whistles, too,” Larry said. “Remember the night we thought about going into town? The soldiers had whistles.”

  “Do you suppose the patterned shots are the mayor’s crew communicating?” Bill asked.

  “Wastes ammo but might be the best they had for distance comms,” Peter said. “Gut check. As we get close, you think we should do the same? It would let them know which side we’re on.”

  “Friend and foe, both,” Bill said.

  “But only foe would be shooting at us,” Chuck said. “Assuming we’re reading the signal correctly.”

  Peter mulled this over. Chuck was right—it would at least declare them for a side. If they were accidentally declaring themselves for the other team, they could fall back onto the sign and countersign, and the colored cloths. Unless the mayor’s forces would think their signals had been compromised. Peter could feel himself rolling down a rabbit hole of what-ifs that wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “My gut’s changed its mind. Let’s not send any signals we don’t understand. Stay silent and hidden until we are absolutely sure we can enter the fight on the right side.”

  Irene nodded. “Good call. I’ll go with that.”

  Bill reached into his pocket. “Time to put the sashes on, at least?”

  “Yeah. Definitely before we get in range.” Peter pulled his own cloth strips out and tied them on. It took a couple minutes more to make a careful approach up to the barn. There was a cinder block sitting right next to one of the doors. Peter put the note his mother had written up under it.

  The whole time, he felt the hairs at the back of his neck tingling. He wondered if the barn was on the property claimed by the other group that had been in touch, or if they’d selected it because it was a clear landmark well outside of their home ground. Either way, Peter suspected it was being watched, at least periodically.

  As he got back into the ditch beside the road, Larry looked at him with clear concern. “You felt that, too?”

  Bill wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “I started wondering where I’d set up if I wanted to get a clear shot at someone approaching the barn, so I could guess where any threat to you might come from while you were crossing that open ground. I see at least six.”

  “Well, it’s done,” Peter said. “On to mission number two?”

  Irene held a hand up. “Not quite yet.” She pulled out a steel hip flask. “To us all ending this day the way we started it. Side by side, standing on our own two feet.”

  Larry smiled. “Sounds a lot like what you said to me after you and Dad split up.”

  Irene took a sip and handed the flask to Larry. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  Larry nodded, took a nip, and passed the flask on.

  It came to Peter last. He tilted it back, taking just a taste, enough to share in the toast, but not so much as to impair him even a tiny bit. He knew he’d need to be running over a hundred percent for what they were about to go into. “Okay, let’s take it at a jog,” he said. “We need to cover ground, but not wear ourselves out.”

  He listened to the running battle as they moved. The patterned shots had stopped, replaced by sporadic outbursts of furious firing. Whether the newcomers in town were soldiers or something else, it seemed they’d gotten their hands on automatic weapons. The cadence of the exchanges always included the crackle of light weapons firing at a high rate of speed.

  From the information Thorssen had brought up, Grossman’s resistance hadn’t indicated any actual machine guns, just a lot of weapons listed as “AR-15/M-16,” and one “Semi-Automatic Rifle with Large Scope.”

  As the group hit the last bit of concealment before having to cross open ground to get into town, they all halted and crouched down into a little knot.

  “Okay. About those automatics we hear. Unless the bad guys have weapons we don’t know about, those are rifles with thirty-round magazines. They can lay down a serious amount of fire, but they’ll need to reload way more often than we do.” Peter held up his SKS. Larry and Irene were carrying the same, while Chuck had a hunting rifle with a ten-round clip, and Bill, an avid fowler, carried a twelve-gauge loaded with buck shot. “It’s what I was riding your asses about after we got hit the other night. Ammunition is a finite resource. Our best bet whenever we encounter some baddies is to get solid cover and see if we can’t run them out of bullets. Let’s all five stick together; when we get a chance, one moves while the other four cover. We want to put pre
ssure on them, get them shooting wildly.”

  “Sounds like they’re spread all over town, and they’re way outnumbered, even without us being down here,” Bill said. “We have the luxury of being careful and methodical. We don’t need to be stupid. Leave that up to them.”

  Through the conversation, Larry had been keeping his rifle aimed into town, scanning slowly side to side. “I see something happening at the beige house right there. Somebody’s pinned down inside. Don’t know if it’s good guys or bad guys, but it’s the closest fight we can get into.”

  Peter flipped up the dust caps on his scope and found the beige house. There were definitely people inside, but he couldn’t make out what they might be wearing. He also couldn’t tell where the shots hitting the house were coming from. “We’ve all got camo on. Let’s take it easy up along the line here.” He pointed to his left, where the edge of the woods moved parallel to the line of houses they were looking at. “Keep low, but let’s move like we mean it. I think if we can get to that gray house there, we can assess the situation better.”

  The five got up and followed a hint of a trail until they hit the end of the tree cover. Peter pointed to Bill and Chuck. “You two cover us until we signal, then follow.” He led Larry and Irene across the open land to the back of the last house on the street. Once they were settled in, he signaled to Bill and Chuck. While the other two were crossing, he heard a blast of automatic fire from much closer than he’d expected. Both Bill and Chuck went to the ground.

  “Are they hit?” Irene asked.

  Peter had eyes on the direction the shots had come from. “I don’t know, but I think the beige house is good guys.”

  Peter hoped his words ended up being true. It wouldn’t be long before they knew for sure if the house was filled with their allies, and he prayed that all of his people were still alive by the time they found out.