Surviving the Collapse Omnibus

by Hunt, James

  The snowfall offered poor visibility, especially from the back of the group. After what happened with Mulls and Jimmy in town, he didn’t want any of these guys with a gun in their hands standing behind him. Who knew what kind of stray bullet would find its way into the base of his skull.

  And when the tear gas was thrown from the only entrance and exit of the building, Dennis was glad to have been in the rear.

  Thick streams of gas left the cylinder canisters, blending with the white of the snowfall. Smoke crawled over the snow, spreading outward, forcing the inmates to retreat. Dennis stepped back, shielding his face with the front of his shirt, which he pulled up from beneath his coat. Three more canisters were flung from the station’s entrance, and the poisonous fog continued to blanket the ground, lingering in the air.

  “Watch the doors!” Dennis barked. “They could be coming out in masks! Be ready! Be ready!” But while a few of the inmates trained their weapons back on the station, most were too busy fending off the effects of the gas.

  A burning sensation filled Dennis’s eyes and throat, his nasal cavity growing thick with phlegm. He hacked with the rest of his men, who continued to backpedal from the gas. But the longer they stood out there in the cold, the more Dennis realized that the officers weren’t coming out. Which meant one of two things: either they had enough supplies inside to wait them out, or they didn’t have the numbers.

  Dennis shielded his nose and mouth from the gas that still lingered, and while he tried to avoid it, he didn’t always succeed. His eyes teared and burned, blurring his vision, but he kept his concentration on the station’s entrance.

  After a while the gas dissipated, and the retreated masses slowly crept back to their original front line. Dennis remained in the back, wiping the freezing snot from his face, flinging it on the snow. The smoke had cleared, but his vision remained blurred from the watery effects of the gas.

  The slope they’d dug to the front doors was steep, and Dennis only saw the very top of the doors. He clenched his fists. He was so close. All of the days and nights where he was locked away in that cell flooded back to him. The endless hours that stretched for eternity. In prison, there was no horizon, no dawn of a new day. It was only the repetition of the same day, over and over and over again. All of the same atrocities and horrors, the monotony, the hopelessness of being locked in a cell where you would rot into nothing for the rest of your life.

  The bug stirred in his mind, then burrowed, tunneling its way deeper into Dennis’s brain, igniting all of the ways he’d like to kill the officers inside. There would be no quarter given to those that dropped their weapons, only torture. It would be slow, methodical. Maybe he would leave them to freeze out in the cold, cutting them open to let the animals in the woods feast while they were still alive. And once every pig inside had been slaughtered, then there was no one left to oppose him.

  Dennis smiled, enjoying that idea as the bug burrowed deeper, deeper… deeper. He marched back to his men, most of whom were sitting on cars or rocks. “Everyone up! We need to move! We need to move now!” When his words didn’t stir them, he fired three shots into the air. “I said up, goddammit!”

  Asses lifted from the snow, the thunder of gunshots enough to stir the people from their hazy stupor.

  “I want thirty men by the entrance! And I want to circle around the back!” Dennis cut the group in half right where they stood. “Shoot anything that moves, and if they surrender themselves, I want them brought to me.” He passed over the squinted faces, making sure everyone understood. “Those aren’t men in that station! They’re pigs! They’re the cowards who hide behind badges. But those badges mean nothing now!” He pointed to the group, the inmates swelling with anger at his words. “This is our world! This is our time! And no one will take that from us!”

  Cheers erupted into the evening sky, and Dennis raised his arms high as his people rattled their fists and weapons. Chants of violence and anger washed over the group, and Dennis smiled as everyone departed toward their assignments. This was a fight that they would win, and Dennis didn’t care how many of his people would die.

  Kate dropped the shovel, her hands frozen and aching, the joints screaming now. She worked her way from the front of the pack, needing a break.

  The front of the station had remained quiet for the past twenty minutes, and while Kate tried to keep her attention on the progress of the tunnel, she found herself looking down the hall, waiting for the inevitable symphony of gunfire.

  “I’m going to check the front,” Kate said. “See how we’re doing.”

  A few grunts of affirmation answered back, and Kate continued to pump her hands into fists, trying to get the blood flowing again.

  Stacy, Harley, and his men still had their guns trained on the bullet-ridden door. The captain noticed her first. “How are we looking?”

  “It’s slow,” Kate answered.

  “How close?”

  Kate shook her head in uncertainty, and Harley nodded in response. She cleared her throat. “Have they sent anyone else down?”

  “No,” Harley answered. “The gas seems to be doing the trick, but it’ll be running its course soon.” He turned back to Kate. “Better keep digging.”

  Urgency was laced in the request, and Kate nodded in response, her hands throbbing again at just the idea having to curl around the handle of a shovel again.

  “Kate!” The voice was breathless, and a silhouette took shape in the darkness. “We’re through! We’ve reached the top!”

  Before Kate turned around, Harley and his men reached for their gear, retreating from their position. When they turned the corner of the hallway toward the back, everyone froze at the sound of an uproar that broke through the howl of wind and snow.

  “What was that?” Luis asked, his worried expression made more ominous by the flickering candlelight in his hand.

  “We need to move,” Harley said. “Now!”

  The captain led the sprinted retreat down the hall, and when they reached the back doors, Kate shoved her people forward and up. Feet and hands slipped on the ice, and the howl of wild men and gunfire forced Kate to turn her gaze backward.

  From the narrow view inside the tunnel, Kate saw Harley and his men, in the hall, firing at the enemy. The small space amplified the gunshots, making them thunder with a fiercer bang.

  The bodies behind Kate propelled her forward. Two people were ahead of her. The first broke the surface and turned around, extending a hand to help the woman in front of Kate. They clasped hands, and another gunshot thundered, striking the man in his shoulder and severing his grip on the woman’s hand. She slid backward, slamming into Kate, who dug the tips of her boots into the compacted snow.

  Time slowed. Any way Kate turned meant certain death. She suddenly felt hands on her and then looked at Stacy. She was screaming something at her, a terrified expression on her face.

  Kate couldn’t make out the words, but they weren’t needed as Harley funneled his men up the icy embankment. They pushed Kate toward the surface. Seconds later, snow whipped the top of Kate’s head as she squinted into the storm.

  Amongst the white were figures hunched over in the snow. The weather had made them faceless, but Kate knew they were Dennis’s men. And when she reached for her pistol, she prayed that Mark made it back safely, and her mind flashed images of her children. Holly and Luke laughed, and as she straightened her arm to fire, Kate wished that she had been given another chance with Luke. She wished that they had been on better terms the last time they spoke. And she hoped that her son wasn’t tormented by the fact he never got to say goodbye. Because she knew she was.

  “Kate, get down!”

  The voice thundered from behind her, and Kate didn’t have time to get a good look at Rodney before hell rained over her head.

  Kate clamped her hands over her ears, but her palms did little to muffle the gunfire above. Each gunshot vibrated her body, and when she lifted her face, she saw bullets flash in brilliant streaks
of light, her cheeks warmed by the heat generated by the constant barrage of gunfire.

  Minutes passed, and still the thunderous roar of whatever weapon Rodney had brought with him continued its assault on the convicts, and it wasn’t until she looked down into the hallway that she realized that Harley and his men had ceased firing as well.

  And then it was suddenly over, the gunfire ended, only their continuous vibrations rattling through Kate’s body as she lifted her head toward the sky. She watched the snow fall, deaf to the world.

  A rush of cold drifted toward her, and then Rodney was near, his lips moving quickly, extending his hand into the tunnel. But she just stared at him as if he were some type of mirage. A shove from behind propelled her body forward, and without thinking, she raised her hand to meet Rodney’s as his firm grip wrapped around her wrist.

  Rodney pulled her from the tunnel, and Kate stumbled blindly through the snow. She turned toward the direction where the prisoners had attacked, but the faceless silhouettes had been transformed into bloody piles in the snow.

  Kate’s jaw dropped at the number of corpses. It looked as if it stretched farther than she could see through the snowfall. Blotches of crimson and black contrasted with the white. And when she turned back around, everyone had already been pulled from the station, and Rodney was gripping her by the shoulders with both hands. Again his lips moved quickly, but she stared past him toward the hulking gun that was planted on a sled, smoke still rising from the weapon’s thick barrel.

  “Kate!” This time Rodney’s voice broke through as he shook her harshly. “Kate, we have to go, now!” He pulled her with him on his retreat, but even as her feet moved, her eyes remained glued to the dead, and then as they passed the weapon that Rodney left behind, her eyes fell to it, and the mountain of bullet casings that rested beside it.

  9

  The snowfall didn’t make the tracks any easier to follow, but Billy had once tracked a deer for six miles through a worse storm than this, and that was in the Rockies. Now, those were real mountains, not the hills he and his brother found himself in now. He missed the mountains of his youth. But if he had to choose between being back in a cell or stuck in these hills, he’d gladly choose the latter.

  Martin brought up the rear, huffing and grumbling louder than he should have. He leaned against a tree trunk, his shoulder eliciting a loud thump against the bark, triggering snowfall from the dead branches. “Find it?” He hacked and then spit a wad of phlegm in the snow.

  “No,” Billy answered, his eyes scanning the endless sea of white, the rolling mounds of snow blurring together for the past dozen miles they’d already chewed up.

  “Let’s head back,” Martin said. “The trail’s cold.”

  Billy placed his gloved hand in the snow. He was tired. He was hungry. But unlike his brother, he wanted to get on Dennis’s good side. Despite his older brother’s apathy, he understood what Dennis was doing, and he wanted to ensure himself a seat at the table.

  “We’re close,” Billy said, continuing his trek through the snow.

  Martin groaned and shoved himself off the tree, continuing his labored breathing.

  The group had done a good job of covering their tracks. Whoever was leading them made a smart move in having them walk in a single-file line, but the real problem was the fresh snowfall. It was like searching for a piece of paper in a sea of white. The trail was nothing more than a subtle break in the pattern of the snow.

  Billy stopped, his eyes catching a hint of that path up to his left. “C’mon.” He waved his brother forward and hastened his pace. He was close. He could feel it in bones like a radar signal.

  Tracking had come second nature to him ever since he was a boy, when his mother used to send him out to fetch his father from the bar. Martin was good, but to Billy, tracking was like breathing. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t find.

  Growing up dirt poor as a kid, Billy turned tracking into a game for himself. He’d time himself, blindfold himself, anything to make it more of a challenge. But he’d always find his target. It was a skill that his brother noticed quickly, and by the time he was sixteen, Billy was already running in a gang with Martin, hunting down men for anyone who’d pay.

  In a way, he was a bounty hunter, though most of the time, the people that paid him wanted them not only found but also dead. Billy had never liked killing. That was Martin’s forte.

  But if they could pull this off, they would have a seat at the table, just like they did when they performed all of those jobs for those mobsters in New York.

  Billy remembered all of the perks that came with working for men in a position of power. The girls, the food, the liquor, the parties, the cars, and all of the shiny stuff he’d seen in magazines and on television as a dirt-poor kid in the mountains were suddenly his. And after six years of being locked up, he was ready to do whatever he could to get those things back.

  He followed the broken trail, losing it once more before finding it again, and as his eyes scanned the endless forest, he stopped cold. Just ahead, between two groups of trees, he saw an unnatural mound of snow. It was pitched downward, lying flat, like snow that had fallen on a roof.

  “What the hell are you stopping for—”

  Billy held up his hand, and his brother froze. Then after a second’s pause, Martin crept as quietly as a mouse—each footfall in the snow was soundless. Billy pointed, and Martin followed his brother’s hand toward the slanted roof.

  “Son of a bitch,” Martin said, whispering to himself in disbelief. “And here I was thinking you’d gotten rusty.” He clapped his brother on the shoulder. “All right, let’s go back and—”

  “No,” Billy said, removing the pistol from his holster. He’d only fired it a couple of times. But ever since his hookup with Dennis, he’d gotten better at killing. Though he still didn’t like it, he didn’t mind it as much anymore. “The place doesn’t look big. Can’t be more than a dozen people inside.” He scanned the area. “And they don’t have any guards set. We can take them by surprise.”

  Martin spun his brother around, shaking his head. “No. You remember what Dennis said. He wants us to come and get him.”

  “By the time we find him, things could have changed. It’s better if we take care of this now. It’ll be less he has to deal with when he gets back from the trooper station.”

  “What the hell’s gotten into you?” Martin asked. “Why do you care so much about what that asshole wants? You think he cares about you?”

  “No,” Billy answered, though his tone was more defensive than he meant it to be. “I just don’t want us to get left behind.” He knew there was safety in numbers. And right now, Dennis had the most. If that changed, then maybe so would Billy’s opinion, but he’d go down that road when he crossed it.

  Martin laughed. “God, you always were worried about shit like that, weren’t you?” He grunted and then removed his pistol. “You sure you can handle this? We’ll be outnumbered.”

  Billy turned back to the cabin, tightening his grip on the pistol. “Not for long.”

  Luke awoke, sweaty and sore and alone in his bed. He blinked away the sleep in his eyes and saw the bandage across his chest. He lifted a hand and gently grazed the fabric. An aching pain throbbed his entire chest, his surroundings foreign.

  He moved his tongue around his lips, which were rough and chapped. He tilted his head to the left on his pillow, finding a glass of water on the nightstand. He reached a shaking hand and curled his fingers around the cool glass. His grip was weak, and he could barely lift his head to drink, but when he tasted the water, he drank thirstily.

  Luke emptied the cup and then weakly set the glass back on the nightstand, nearly dropping it as it hit the wood with a heavy thunk.

  Lines of water ran down the corners of his mouth, and he shut his eyes. Slowly, his memory of events returned. Images from their escape from Fairfax, and then arriving here at the cabin flashed in his mind. And then his anger flared at the remembrance of hi
s conversation with his mother.

  The door opened, the knock that accompanied it more ceremonial than practical. “Luke?”

  He smiled. “Hey, Holly.”

  The door remained cracked, and Holly was only a tiny sliver in the narrow space. “Can I come in with you, or are you still sick?”

  “You can come in, but don’t—”

  Holly burst inside and then catapulted herself onto the bed, landing on Luke’s stomach and sending a bright flash of pain throughout the wound on his chest. He yelped, and Holly’s playful giggle turned to a gasp, and she slinked away, afraid she was in trouble.

  “Jump on the bed,” Luke said through gritted teeth.

  Holly lowered her head sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

  Luke closed his eyes, taking deep breaths until the pain eased. “It’s all right.” He opened his eyes and found her still sulking, and the rest of the anger melted away. “I’m fine. Really.” He forced a cheesy grin. “See?”

  Holly approached, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. She picked up his hand, and started playing with his fingers. “Are you still mad at Mom?”

  Luke frowned. “Who told you I was mad at Mom?”

  She flashed him a teenager-like stare, and for a moment she looked older. He didn’t like that.

  “There’s very thin walls in here,” Holly answered, then she paused. “So are you? Still mad?”

  Luke sighed. “I don’t know, Holls. I guess a little.”

  “You shouldn’t be mad,” Holly said.

  “Says the girl who’s been mad at her for the past year,” Luke replied accusingly. “What’s changed your tune?”

  “I don’t know.” The words matched a genuinely unsure tone as Holly tried to bend Luke’s pinky finger to an unnatural angle. “I like having her around.”