“Yeah. Hopefully, I won't need any of them, anyway. I have a water filter pitcher. The gallons of water are just there in case the tap water comes out all grimy or something. But it seems to be okay so far.”
“Oh, you have a water filter? That's what me and Anna should have gotten a long time ago. But she doesn't drink anything but bottled water.”
Austin went down to the basement and checked the expiration date on the water, before bringing up a gallon. “Here you go. It doesn't expire until late next year, although it's somewhat widely believed that bottled water never expires.”
“Yeah, it's not like it's a dairy product or anything,” Eddie agreed. “I'm hoping this will get us through the next couple of days. Maybe the stores will reopen by then.” He looked over at droning air conditioner. “You got generators running?”
“Yeah. If this was winter, I wouldn't need them as much. I tolerate the cold really well, but I don't like the heat.”
“My wife's the same way,” Eddie said.
Austin looked out the living room window at the army patrolling the streets. “It doesn't look like these troops are gonna clear out of here.”
“Nah,” Eddie said, shaking his head in agreement. “Not anytime soon, anyway. This is martial law we're talking about here.” He turned around and headed for the door.
“How's everything else?” Austin asked.
“Can't complain. All things considered, it could be a lot worse. I actually had my car parked in front of the house last night. I didn't put it in the garage until this morning. I noticed a dent on it that I had never seen before, but that's about it. Gerald got his car stolen.”
“I know. I heard him out there yelling about it.”
Eddie sighed. “It's crazy.” He reached for the door.
“Are you going to stick around? Or are you going to leave town?”
Eddie turned back around to face Austin. “If anybody was gonna leave, last night would have been the time. They've got roadblocks set up all over the place. If you want to go anywhere now, you're gonna have to through a series of security checkpoints. At the checkpoints, they've been telling most people to just go back home. I don't think they want anyone leaving town.”
Austin froze, as a wave of depression crept over him.
“Well, thanks for the water.”
“No problem,” Austin croaked.
The door opened and closed.
Austin looked back out the window in revulsion. Then he looked down at his cellphone. Surprisingly, there had been no calls that day. He assumed that his friends were busy attending to their families. Family always came first in emergencies; friends came second.
With his place of business closed, he was already starting to experience cabin fever. Nothing was open, except for the dire emergency camps and his collection of horrid memories from the night before.
He had read up on stuff like this before in hopes of preparing himself for worst-case-scenarios. But it was nearly impossible to completely prepare for situations that a person had never experienced before. Research was good, but hands-on-training was better. Real knowledge came from painful experience, and he dreaded having to learn the hard way.
Chapter 4
It had been five days since the big attack. The troops were still patrolling the streets, and the businesses were still closed. More and more people were flooding into the emergency camps after they ran out of options for food and water.
The power was still off, and the stores were still closed. Surprisingly, Eddie had not stopped by to ask for another gallon of water. It was likely that he decided to ask someone else, not wanting to sponge too much off of any person in particular.
Austin liked getting out of the house, but every time he did, he would get harassed by the law enforcers. They would always stop him and ask a ridiculous amount of questions. Growing tired of it, he had been staying inside as much as possible.
Since it now became very possible that this was going to be a long-term situation, he had decided to cut down on his food and water intake, being more conservative than he had been the previous few days.
“Hey!” a voice in the street shouted. It was one of the officers.
A twelve year old kid had been throwing stones at the army tanks for the past couple of days, along with several other kids that were throwing bottles. Last time the kid had gotten caught, he had froze, before walking away. This time, he ducked behind a parked car instead of trying to get away.
They began opening fire.
Austin couldn't believe it. They were going to shoot and kill a twelve year old kid for throwing a few stones at an armored tank.
“I told you three times already to stop throwing those rocks over here!” the officer shouted. He fired again, sending a storm of bullets in the twelve year old's direction.
When they finally seized fire, Austin watched in horror as they pulled a disfigured corpse out from behind the car.
The street he lived on was literally a combat zone.
* * *
Later that day, the local residents that used generators saw the news on T.V. It was reported that the kid was a threat and that the officers on duty responded correctly.
Gerald was one of the residents who had caught it on T.V. “That's the kid that lived on the corner of the next street,” he said unsympathetically. “Mike; that was his name. Little Mike. I told you he'd be the first kid in this neighborhood to get himself killed.”
His son Harley sat on the other couch on the opposite side of the living room. “Didn't you say that he was a good kid, though?”
“Yeah, and that's why he's dead,” Gerald scoffed. “People who try to do the right thing always end up dead. He always talked too much. I'm surprised he didn't get himself killed from all the trash he talked.”
“But he spoke the truth,” Harley said.
“Yeah, well. . . and then he took action. Look where that got him.”
* * *
Austin caught a glimpse of the news, staring at it in disbelief. It made him wonder who was next. Himself perhaps?
Although the thought of digging his bug-out bag up from the attic had crossed his mind over the past five days, he finally decided to take action and start packing. It had been sitting in the crawlspace for the past eight years. He had always hoped he would never actually have to use it, and he was still hoping that he never would.
By the time he had finished packing, it was early evening.
To get his mind off of things for a short while, he played a video game. It was a successful escape, and we went on to play for an hour and a half. When he was finished playing the game, he shut down the console, but not the T.V.
Catching a glimpse of the local news, it was reported that residents had been firing upon the military personnel. The motives for firing upon the military were unclear.
Something didn't sound right.
He turned off the T.V.
When he tried to go online, he couldn't get a connection. He retried three times, but he couldn't connect to the web.
He went into the kitchen and had a big meal. After days of being conservative, it simply felt right to eat big for a change.
Screams began to fill the air, similar to the night of the terrorist attack; only this time, the screams sounded more like pure desperation instead of fear. The sounds were jarring enough to interrupt his meal.
From what he could see out the window, people were being forced out of their houses and dragged into military vehicles at gunpoint. They were a block away and working their way down the street, towards Austin's house.
Instead of just running and bugging out, he had to at least warn his neighbors what was happening first. He wouldn't take anyone with him, but he would advise them to leave town.
He picked up his cellphone and tried dialing, but there was no service.
He rushed over to Eddie's house and rang the doorbell. He waited twenty seconds before ringing it again. When Austin opened the screen door to try knocking on the main one, he
realized that the main door was hanging slightly open. He let himself inside the dim hallway.
His racing mind made it difficult to find the right words. Finally, something came to mind. “Eddie? Ed? It's Austin from next door. Your door is open.” Since Austin knew that Eddie had a gun, he didn't want to sneak up on him. “Eddie?”
Austin picked up a flashlight from off the floor and turned it on. There was a trail of broken glass that led him to the living room.
Eddie and his wife were both lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor. Austin shined the light on the bullet holes that had emerged on the corpses.
Was it a double suicide? Was it the soldiers? Either way, why hadn't he heard the gunshots? It was possible that he had his headphones on with the volume turned up real high when it happened. It was also possible that he had fallen into a deep sleep when it happened. It was amazing what he was able to block out sometimes.
On closer inspection, there were no guns lying around in the immediate area. It was not suicide.
The chaotic noise was growing closer.
He needed to hurry. But he didn't want to bug-out without a gun. He hurriedly searched the house, looking in places that people were likely to stash their guns. He thought about how some people duct taped them under their desks, while a friend of his said that he used to keep his in his dresser drawer.
Then he saw a safe inside one of the bedrooms. The door to the safe was open, but nothing was in it.
After a minute of doubt, he convinced himself that the military must have confiscated Eddie's guns. If his guns were registered through federal forms, it would have been easy to track. But guns were illegal in that city. If Eddie owned guns illegally, there was no reason to register them.
Knowing Eddie, it was possible that he tried fighting the military with lethal force after they had forced their way into his house. But why had they entered Eddie's house, but not his own? He was thankful to be alive, but also terrified.
He headed back to his house to grab the bug-out bag. He would go to the underground shelter that his granddad had built on his farm, but it was a long walk away.
His granddad had died fifteen years earlier, but his uncle had taken over the farm and shelter.
Due to the security checkpoints in the major roads, driving was not an option. Fortunately, he was in very good shape. The only thing about the long walk that bothered him was the very real possibility of being attacked or shot and killed.
Thinking about the long distance involved on the journey was intimidating. The important thing was to break the large obstacle down into smaller pieces, focusing on one step at a time. The first objective was to get out of the city as soon as possible.
When he reached the front porch for his house, the military was only a few houses down. He watched them force their way through the door of the Petersen's house and drag out the family members, before loading them into the vehicle.
“We're under orders to clear the area,” one of the soldiers said. “I said you need to clear the area,” the voice said in a slightly more demanding tone.
Three helicopters were circling the area.
“I'm not leaving my own house,” another resident down the street said. “You can't just drag me out of here.”
When they advanced on him, he fought back, and he was gunned down immediately.
Other residents were struck on the head.
Austin saw the whole thing from his front porch. He went inside and chugged as much water as he could comfortably handle.
A loud, forceful knocking sound hammered away at Austin's door. The sound continued for a minute. Then a much louder sound came into play. It was the sound of the door bursting open.
“Search the house,” the voice said. “Let's move.”
Austin was in the basement. His bug-out bag was good to go. But he needed a way out. He looked through the basement window, towards the front of his house. There were at least four soldiers standing out in front.
He headed for the basement door. He would have to surprise them by dipping out through the back. He could hear the heavy combat boots stomping on the floor above him. He unlocked the door and opened it slowly, trying to avoid making any noise.
The trouble would be the screen door. It was locked with a hook-styled latch. Unhooking it always made a certain degree of noise.
It now occurred to him that there might also be some soldiers waiting out back. He would have to take the chance.
He tried to open the latch silently, but it wouldn't budge. After applying more pressure, the door made a rumbling sound. He had no idea how loud or quiet it sounded from upstairs. He stopped thinking about it and just went for it, opening the door all the way.
Assertively, he made his way up the concrete steps and peaked from behind the wall, looking to his left and right. The coast was clear, allowing him to slip out back through the backyard. When he got to the gate, he briefly looked back at the house, perhaps for the last time.
Chapter 5
The emergency camps were filled with people sitting and standing around and not talking; only panicking. More and more panicked people were pouring through the doors every minute.
The people were told when to eat, when to finish eating, how much to eat, when to get up from their cots, not to speak unless spoken to by military personnel, and when to take restroom trips.
It was prison.
Conditions were also abusive. There was a lot of infighting among the camp dwellers. Food would get stolen right off of people's plates, water would get stolen, and others would get assaulted just for fun.
The officers seemed to make things worse, rather than help matters. They would look the other way when fights would break out, but they would assault and harass the dwellers, themselves. They were never there when needed, and they were always there when they were unwanted.
We should have fought while he had the chance, was a thought that crossed many of their minds. Bugging out might have been an option if they were at least somewhat prepared. But now it was too late.
* * *
Although the grim conditions of the emergency camps had gone unreported in the news, Austin knew that whenever someone was forced through intimidation into doing something, that something was always the very same thing that no person in the right mind would want to be a part of. It was a lesson he had picked up through none other than real life experience. Did bullies ever give their targets options? Did tyrants ever give their targets any reasonable alternative? The answer was no.
As Austin stepped out into the alley, he couldn't get past the feeling that he was being watched. The helicopters had gone away, but he still felt vulnerable. This feeling was most likely due to all the extra adrenaline he was experiencing, although he was close to being watched.
He took pains to stay out of sight as much as possible, ducking behind the alley trash cans each time a military vehicle passed through the street at the end of the alley.
When he got to the end of the alley, he looked both ways questioningly, debating about whether he should just hide behind the trash cans until it got fully dark. Staying off the main streets was a given. But the side streets were the only other alternate route, and they were filled with military personnel and hysterical residents.
Regardless, there wasn't a lot of hesitation in his decision to keep moving. He was about to step out from behind the trash cans when Gerald's garage door opened.
“Get out of there!” he shouted from behind Austin. “Hey! Get out of there!”
Austin stood up confusedly. “I'm not trying to rob anyone. I'm just trying to hide from the military. They're dragging people away against their will.”
“They're not dragging anyone away,” Gerald argued. “They're rescuing them. Now get out of there!”
“They're not even your trash cans,” Austin asserted.
“I don't care whose trash cans they are. I highly doubt those people want you hanging around their house.” He drew his 9mm pistol and pointed
it at Austin.
Harley saw a group of soldiers walking in front of their house. “Hey, there's—
“Shut up! Get in the house!”
“And you! What did I just say? Get—
A loud noise interrupted Gerald.
“They just knocked down the front door!” Harley shouted from the backyard.
“What?!” Gerald screamed. He ran back toward the house. But by the time he got to the backyard, a group of soldiers were already out there waiting for him.
“Drop the gun now!” the soldiers all shouted in unison. “Drop it!”
From the alley, Austin observed the scene through a gap in the tall wooden fence.
“You want me to put my gun down? Show me your warrant.” His gun wasn't raised, but it was clearly visible, resting in his hand.
“Put the gun down! The area is under evacuation procedures.”
“Show me your warrant or get out of my yard.”
Harley effortlessly stood by, almost obliviously.
“Stop resisting!”
“Oh, I'm resisting?”
The soldiers cautiously moved closer.
“You might want to back up,” Gerald said, raising the gun.
They opened fire, dropping Gerald to the ground.
He lurched forward. Then he lost his balance and fell backwards. Blood was pouring down his arms from the upper body gunshots. A good deal of blood had also splattered across his neck and face, leaving his complexion soaked in an uneven puddle of gore.
Two soldiers surrounded him, while two more took Harley away.
Austin made a run for it. He crossed the street undetected and walked through the next alley.
His uncle's place was seventy-five miles north. He figured he could average about fifteen miles a day if he didn't run into too much trouble, although the blisters aching through his shoes would be brutal.
The sun was setting. It would be dark soon. He would feel better in the dark, as long as he could still see where he was going.
Warfare Season: An Apocalyptic Thriller Page 2
