The World Hungers: A Post-Apocalyptic Story (The World Burns Book 3)

by Boyd Craven III

  “What if I told you that the Muslim population in this state supports terrorism against the United States at about 85% of the time?”

  “No, that can’t be right.” Patty said.

  “No, actually that’s an old fact from 2013,” Neal told her. “I have no idea what it is now.”

  “Exactly,” Officer Black said. “What I came here to tell you, is I don’t want to see you two attacked by a large group. Last I heard about the two we arrested, is that they blame the two of you for the deaths of their friends. It’s crazy, but they have quite the following. I think they are coming back here.”

  “I’m not sure I can believe that. It’s only been two weeks since the power went out.”

  “I know. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they’ve known ahead of time about the attack on the USA and have been waiting. You’ve now got a target on your backs.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re organized. They’re starting to execute people in the north end. Convert or die. With their leaders out of jail…” Black’s words trailed off.

  “Convert?” Patty asked.

  “Convert to Islam, or die. Before this happened, it wasn’t all that uncommon in the black population up there to have an equal population of Christian and Muslims. If folks were religious that is.”

  “It can’t just be the black population,” Patty said, horrified at the generalization.

  “It isn’t. Don’t forget the student population. The thousands and thousands of kids in this town alone. Studying abroad. The two that Gary and I arrested were from Iran and Saudi Arabia. The three dead guys were a mixture as well. It’s getting scary out there,” he motioned out the window.

  “What are you going to do?” Neal asked him, pulling a warm Becks from the non functioning refrigerator for him.

  “Go home, pack my wife and daughter up, and leave the city.”

  “Where will you go?” Patty asked.

  “My folks have a place in the country. I should be able to make it in a week’s travel. We’ll go on foot if we need to, bike if things are horrible. I don’t have much left. What will you two do?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have any place to go.” Patty told him.

  “No family?” Neal asked her.

  “No. What about you?”

  “My parents and grandparents are all dead. I’m an only child.”

  “If I didn’t have any place to go…” Officer Black started to say but was interrupted by the sound of a blast, and moments later a rumbling beneath their feet as the building shook. “Oh shit,” he muttered, running to the window.

  A large group was making its way down Court Street. Someone from the mob threw an object that landed near a car far ahead of them and the explosion was tremendous. It lifted the parked car several feet off the ground, only to slam down on the pavement burning. Hoots and cheers were heard over the cacophony of noise.

  “I have to go. I’m going to guess the group throwing grenades isn’t here for me. If you two want to leave, I’ve got my service pistol and shotgun still.”

  “I have to pack.” Neal said, thinking of everything he had ready.

  “Neal, you have no time. If this is the group that’s after you…”

  An explosion rocked the lower levels of the apartment complex.

  “We have to go.” Black shouted, the screams of the folks in the apartments from all levels almost drowning out the sounds.

  For two weeks, the world in the apartment had been silent. Like every tenant had been holding their breath, waiting for things to go back to normal, fearing that it wouldn’t. Now, the lower level was getting attacked and everyone above suddenly realized that above the second story, they had nowhere else to go.

  “Ok, let me get my bike.” Neal said loudly, no one was listening.

  He’d grabbed the backpack that Patty had put together for him for this purpose and pulled his arms through.

  “Take the south stairs. You need a key to get into the first floor door, so it should be clear,” Patty yelled, opening the door to the hallway and rushing out.

  “What are you doing?” Black called to her.

  “I have to grab something,” she was frantically trying to get her key into the lock of her apartment door. “Neal, get the second backpack by the door. I’ll meet you on the stairwell.”

  “I’m not going to leave you behind.” He told her, touching her shoulder.

  “You have to go. Trust me, I’ll catch up to you,” she told him over her shoulder.

  “But my bike…”

  “We don’t have time,” Black told him, grabbing the pack and throwing it at the IT specialist.

  Neal was almost shoved through the steel door face first before he got his footing, and paused half a second, despite Officer Black’s worry. Gunshots made them both flinch, but it became obvious that it was floors below them, and shouts and cries made it up the stairwell.

  “Go,” Black pushed at him, taking the shotgun off the shoulder sling.

  “I’m waiting for Patty,” he said stubbornly, surprising himself.

  In the last two weeks he’d gotten used to her, almost as well has he’d gotten used to Shane at school. Just because he wasn’t comfortable and didn’t like to be around a lot of people didn’t mean he didn’t like to be around her. The truth was, he did and he was wracking his brain to tell her but didn’t know how.

  “You need to move,” Black pushed him again, almost making him trip.

  Neal stumbled, but found his footing, trying to throw the backpack over his shoulder as he rushed to the stairwell. He almost stopped at the thought of all the innocent people but gunfire erupted floors below them, loud in the building. That broke his resolve and he told himself that he’d have to be content to leave his apartment unlocked. He hoped that finding them gone, they would leave the rest of the residents alone. He pushed the stairwell door open and chanced a look back and saw Patty running out of her apartment with a big framed backpack on, her feet slamming down hard. Neal held the door until Black was through, then pushed it closed as Patty ran.

  “Do you want to trade packs?” Neal asked her.

  “No, just go,” she said seeing Black pulling his pistol out and heading down the stairwell.

  “Are you sure the first floor door locks?”

  “Yes, with a key. This is the service stairs or emergency exit.”

  “There’s a fire escape on the second floor,” Neal offered.

  “Let’s go,” Black said, taking the stairs two at a time.

  They met nobody in the stairwell and their pounding footsteps were almost drowned out by the sound of their harsh panting breaths. They stopped at the second story door and Black looked out. The window to the fire escape was straight in front of the door, the hallway stretching to the left and right and out of sight.

  “I’m going to check it out, I’ll let you know if it’s clear.” Black said, pushing the door’s bar unlocking it.

  Officer Black stepped out, looked left, then right and turned to them holding the door open for them.

  “Come on, it’s safe-“ His words were cut off by the chatter of gunfire.

  His vest stopped two of the bullets but the third and fourth impact to him hit the side of his neck and the last one took off his head in a red explosion. His corpse fell forward and both Neal and Patty ducked out of the doorway a moment.

  “That cop. He’s one of them.” A voice called from the hallway.

  “The others must be close by, he was talking to them, I know it.” A deep voice replied.

  Black had fallen into half the doorway and his pistol had fallen when he’d first been shot, but his shotgun was still over his shoulder. Neal grabbed it up and racked the slide quietly, making sure it was loaded. He took the safety off and motioned for Patty to get back into the stairwell behind him. He got back there himself and stepped back onto the third stair and waited. Three men stepped into the open doorway over Black’s body and Neal chambered off two shot
s from the twelve gauge. The noise in the confined space was deafening and the cordite stung their eyes and nostrils. It took a moment for the smoke to clear enough for Neal to see all three forms down, the walls around them torn up from the heavy load of buckshot.

  “One of them is still moving,” Patty whispered, looking over his shoulder.

  One more blast rang out, hurting their senses even more and they moved forward. Patty knelt and grabbed a pistol and an AK from one of the bloody corpses. Neal grabbed some shotgun shells from Black and a satchel the other fallen student had held. They ran into the hallway and to the window. Patty held the sash up for Neal, but he motioned for her to go first. He could hear footsteps running their way and wanted to be able to cover Patty’s escape. He was startled when he was almost tugged through the window by his belt by Patty, but made his way out. He shut the window slowly, hoping that in the confusion, the attacking group would run up the stairs instead.

  “Hurry,” Patty begged.

  They fled, noticing smoke pouring out the casing of the first floor windows. Shouting, gunfire and another explosion rocked the building. A window blew out somewhere above them and it only made them hurry even more. Patty jumped the last couple feet to the ground, her heavy pack pulling her off her feet. Neal descended and helped her up, and they hurried out of there. They fled south and west, resting under an overpass for the expressway and caught their breath.

  “Do you know where we should go?” Patty asked him, wiping a stray hair out of her eyes.

  “I have an idea,” Neal said after a few minutes. “We’re heading to the rail line.”

  Chapter 6 -

  The Homestead, Kentucky

  “Hey Hon, you still want eggs?” Sandra’s voice drifted out of the big barn.

  “Yeah, but I thought the coop was empty,” Blake called back to her, his gun at the ready.

  “They got out. They’re in here with the feed.”

  They had parked the trucks and had made their way onto the property. Once it was determined that things were clear, they were pulled in, and the truck Blake had been driving pulled up tight to the barn. The stench of decay was heavy in the air, and Lisa had found the bodies of the family that had lived here. The man had been shot in the forehead and left where he fell, that much was evident on the body. The woman was harder to tell, or she was hurt worse. No one injury stood out above the others, and she’d been left with her dressed pulled up.

  The body of a teenage boy had been found last, hanging out the window of the farm house. Bullet holes had surrounded the window and inside the room he’d been in. It looked like a terrible gunfight had occurred here, and casings from a 30/.06 littered the floor in the room. It looked as if the boy had taken the fight to the raiders, shooting at them from the cover of his bedroom, but the sheer amount of lead that surrounded the window frame and inside the bedroom almost looked like it had been poured in from all directions.

  “Come help me catch them,” Sandra’s muffled voice floated out from the dark of the barn.

  Opening the door, Blake and Lisa stepped in and looked around the hay filled barn. It took a full minute for their eyes to adjust to the gloom, and they slung their long guns over their backs and entered.

  “Wish we had a flash light,” Lisa muttered, moving close to the homesteader.

  “I know. Where do you think my wife is?” He replied, equally as quiet.

  “Up here guys,” Sandra boomed, right over their heads. They flinched and looked up. “Sorry about that. They got up here where the bulk grain is stored.”

  Sandra was standing on a cross beam, almost fifteen feet above them, smiling.

  “We’ll be right up,” he called back, spotting the ladder.

  Once they reached the level where Sandra was, they immediately heard the soft clucking of hens.

  “There they are,” Lisa smiled, pointing.

  Half a dozen chickens were scratching through the grains that had spilled on the loft’s floor, with a couple of them sitting in piles of loose hay.

  “One of the hens has babies.” Sandra smiled.

  “What about the other one?”

  “I think she’s sitting on some eggs also, but she won’t let me sneak a hand under her.”

  “Because she’s probably ready to hatch them.” Martha told them, pulling herself up the ladder with a pet carrier.

  “What’s that for?” Blake asked her.

  “For these two hens. The rest can go into the big cage, I guess.”

  There is an art to catching chickens, and none of them had it. Two of the squad nervously watched the road and the surrounding area while everyone else took off their equipment and chased the zany birds around the barn. Sandra was about to claim victory and hold a bird up high that she’d just caught, when one foot swept out from under her.

  “Oooof,” the breath went out of her.

  “Sandra, are you ok?” Blake asked, trying to hide his smile.

  “Did that look as silly as it felt?”

  “Feet out from under you, landed flat on your back? Yeah.”

  “Kind of knocked the breath out of me.”

  “What did you slip on?”

  She held her shoe up and looked at it. A thick pungent pile of chicken manure had caused the While-E-Coyote moment, and they all had a chuckle. It wasn’t until Lisa had gone downstairs and found a landing net from somewhere that they were able to catch them. Used for assisting anglers bringing in larger fish, the landing net gave them just enough of a reach to get close and finally round up the chickens.

  “I don’t see any roosters,” Martha muttered.

  “What’s that mean?” Sandra asked.

  “That there may be no more eggs once these guys are gone. Unless…”

  “Some of these baby chicks are roosters!” Lisa held up the pet carrier.

  They decided to leave the broody hen who’s chicks hadn’t hatched yet, planning on coming back on another trip. There were two bulk fuel tanks there, one full of diesel and the other they were unsure of. Both way, there was fuel stalled out alongside the highway everywhere and the trucks hadn’t been topped off in a month, just short trips back and forth into town, or the end of the lane. With their fleet of vehicles slowly growing, it made sense to do something about fuel and if Sandra’s plans for the squad went forward, the ladies would become the forward observers for the group.

  They were soon loaded up and headed back to the homestead, weaving their way through the stalled traffic that had become the norm. Five miles from their turn off the highway, closer to the burned out town they saw two cars pushed nose to nose in the road almost 400 yards ahead of them. Blake almost had to stand on the brake pedal and stalled the truck trying to miss rear ending Sandra’s. The ladies all emptied out of the trucks, looking bewildered.

  “Get in some sort of cover,” Blake’s wife hissed as everybody hustled.

  “What is it?” Blake asked her, running low to the ground, keeping the front end of a nearby car between him and the new blockade.

  “Somebody’s blocked the road.”

  “I can see that…” He said sardonically.

  “Quit stating the obvious, what does it-“ Lisa’s voice was cut off by a gunshot and a hole punched into the sheet metal above Blake’s head. Everybody dropped to the ground.

  “Anybody get a look at where that shot came from?” Sandra asked.

  “North east. Uh… 3 o’clock?” Martha asked.

  “Who’s got a scope?” Blake asked, kicking himself for leaving his deer rifle at home.

  It was what he practiced with, and he’d bought into the common gun, common caliber mindset. He flinched when another bullet whizzed by his head and tried to sink into the asphalt.

  “Why are they shooting at me?” He asked his wife, whose lips were pinched and she was scanning the north side of the highway where the sound of the second shot came from.

  “They don’t want to hurt us women-“ Her eyes looked at him, speaking volumes about the horrors she
imagined.

  “Here’s my gun. Didn’t have a chance to sit through Duncan’s primer on the M4,” Lisa slid a scoped .308 to Blake who belly crawled so he was just behind the driver’s side tire of his vehicle, leaving most of the engine block and front of the truck available to stop the bullet.

  Blake scoped the area, but a third shot parted his hair and he rolled under the truck, swearing at the burning sensation at his scalp.

  “Sniper,” he shouted to his wife, sliding the useless scoped rifle out from the truck.

  No shots had come anywhere near the women, and every shot had tried to be head shots at the only man in the group. Sandra immediately made connections in her head. She knew that there was at least 2-3 men in the group based on the spacing of the shots . One to pin him down, the second shot fired from a different position. Theoretically it was possible that it was one shooter moving, but the third shot came from straight North, not North East like the other two. There was a small group at least in action.

  “You ok Honey?” She asked, her body shielded by the car in front of her.

  “Yeah, that’s too close. We have to zero in on them.”

  Everyone ducked when another shot was heard, but nobody heard the whine of the bullet. For the next forty minutes, the squad would try to move position, but shots would come in, mostly aimed at Blake’s un-reachable position under the truck. Sandra kept trying to keep the ladies under cover, but she was almost eaten alive by worry. Every shot at Blake was a shot at her soul. Whoever was out there, had them pinned down and she thanked god that they didn’t know what they were doing, or they’d be dead already.

  The mistake had been not having a forward observer of some sort, or a squad member with coms to stay back to watch the back trail for them. They never would have driven into the trap and they wouldn’t be pinned down. Part of the problem was the ladies from the squad were literally 2 days freed from the slavers and only had theoretical training on the basics of the basics. They were raw recruits… but none of them were ready to give up and all of them had the gleam of battle and fight in their souls. Every single one of them recognized the significance of the snipers trying to pick off Blake and Blake alone.