Sound of Survival (Book 3): Home Free

by Patten, Sean

  “Stinks,” said Ed. “And I know you’re waiting for your mom, but something about that place just doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I just…need some time to think.”

  Ed took in a slow breath through his nose and let it out, as if trying to calm himself down.

  “Same here,” he said. “And this little trip of ours is probably going to be more dangerous than your average errand. Gotta keep your head in the game.”

  We drove on, soon taking the turnoff for Alban Falls. And as soon as we began approaching the town, I knew the scene there was bad.

  A dark, black smoke hung over the town, swirling above the stretches of houses and shops and office buildings and drifting up and into the cloudless sky. Refugees who appeared to be mostly families, all of them looking haggard and destitute, all with the same faraway expression on their faces, made their way down the sides of the road, off towards God only knew where.

  “We’ve got the gun, right?” Ed asked.

  “We do.”

  “Good. Because I’ve got a feeling we’re gonna need it.”

  12 Amy

  However awful Alban Falls was from a distance, up close it was even worse. It was all the destruction of Dead Air but within a small city. Blackened husks of burned-out cars were strewn along the road, fires raged here and there casting up black smoke, and nearly every window that I could see had been smashed.

  “Damn,” said Ed as we drove slowly down the road from the turnoff. “How the hell did things get this bad after only two damn days?”

  It was a good question. Before the power went out, I would’ve liked to think that, if a disaster were to strike, maybe people would put aside their differences and band together to get through whatever crisis. After all, isn’t that what people did after hurricanes and earthquakes?

  But there was something about what had happened, something different in the air. There was dread that was almost palpable, something that just made you feel like the end was near, that there was no point even pretending things could be salvaged. It was the sort of vibe that I could see driving someone to simply round up their loved ones, grab what they could, and try to survive no matter what the cost.

  “Okay,” said Ed. “Here’s the deal. I want you to stay close. Don’t leave my sight for even a second.”

  “You don’t need to tell me twice,” I said, my eyes locked onto the scenes of destruction that we passed.

  Then I spotted something, a distinctive shape among the wreckage.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “What?” asked Ed. “What is it?”

  It was a body. It was hard to tell, but it appeared to be a middle-aged man, though that was going solely by his dress—his face was too streaked with blood to make out his features. He lay sprawled against a wrecked car, steam still rising from under the hood. There was no way to tell what had happened, but it looked as if he’d been pulled out of his own car and beaten to death.

  “Shit,” said Ed, seeing what I was looking at. “This is bad.”

  Without saying another word, I opened the glove box and took out the pistol, checking the ammo just like Ed had showed me.

  “We locked and loaded?” he asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “Fresh clip.”

  “You remember what I taught you?”

  “Sure do.”

  “And there’s one more thing I forgot to mention,” he said. “Something about…shooting people.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You see someone who’s a threat, someone who looks like they’re coming after you with hostile intentions in mind…”

  “Shoot them,” I finished.

  “Right,” he said. “But not just that. When you see that look in their eyes, the one that lets you know they’ve got violence on the brain, you raise that gun and you fire. Not a moment’s hesitation.”

  “Got it.”

  He turned to me as he drove slowly, his expression as stern as could be.

  “Never hesitate,” he repeated. “A second’s-worth of hesitation could mean the difference between life and death…or whatever God-awful thing someone might have planned.”

  He didn’t need to press the point further, and didn’t.

  “Tell me again how you shoot,” he said.

  “Finger on the trigger,” I said, taking the gun and holding it up. “Take the safety off. Line up the target in the sights, and breath out. Then shoot. Don’t jerk the gun back.”

  “You got it,” he said. “You got it.”

  We made our way through the ruins of the city, weaving around abandoned, useless cars just as we’d done on the way to Sandy Vista. As Ed drove I spotted a few more people, all of them looking like those we’d seen on the way in, dazed and disoriented folk, their hands loaded with whatever supplies they could find.

  “These people look harmless,” he said. “But you never know what could set off that survival instinct. Like this car—they spot these wheels when we’re parked and they might do whatever they can to get these keys.”

  “That just raises the question of where to park this thing while we’re in the pharmacy,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “Somewhere out of sight, that’s for damn sure. You know how close we are?”

  “Really close,” I said. “We’re about in the center of town and…there!”

  I pointed ahead at the main intersection of Alban Falls, towards the big-box pharmacy on the corner. The lights were out and even from where I sat I could tell that the place was a wreck. The front windows had been smashed, the automatic doors ripped off and tossed into the parking lot.

  “I don’t like this,” I said. “It looks like other people beat us to it.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But pharmacies aren’t like other stores. They’ve got their pills locked up tight in the back.”

  “Then how are we going to get to them?” I asked.

  A beat of silence passed.

  “One thing at a time,” said Ed.

  “Good call.”

  Ed drove through the intersection and around the building.

  “We can park in the alley in back,” he said after a moment. “Should be fine there while we run in.”

  “‘Run in’ is right,” I said. “I want to spend as little time here as possible.”

  “You and me both.”

  Once the coast was clear, Ed made a big loop around the block to throw anyone who might’ve been following us off the scent. Then he took a small side street up to the back alley of the pharmacy. The building was on one side and a tall, tree-shrouded fence was on the other—perfect cover.

  Ed parked, killed the engine, and got out after taking the gun. I followed behind.

  “There,” I said, pointing to the side entrance to the alley. “Someone might see the car.”

  “Yeah,” said Ed. “You’re right.”

  He looked around, his eyes settling on a large, blue dumpster.

  “Let’s move this in front of the car. Should keep us out of sight.”

  “Okay.”

  The thing looked heavy, but as soon as I put my hands on the warm steel and gave it a push I realized that between the two of us moving it would be doable. Off in the distance I heard the now-familiar crackle of gunfire, followed by what had to have been one of the most blood-curdling screams I’d ever heard in my life. It was like Dead Air all over again, and I found myself desperately craving the peace of Sandy Vista.

  “Just ignore it,” said Ed, briefly placing his hand on the gun tucked in his waistband, as if making sure it was still there. “We’re doing a smash and grab. In and out.”

  Another round of gunfire broke out, and I did my best to do as Ed said.

  “On three, give it a push,” he said. “One, two—”

  We both shoved the dumpster with all the strength we had, the thing groaning against the concrete. It took a little doing, but we managed to get it where it needed to be.

  “Awesome,” I said.
“Now let’s—”

  A groan coming from Ed cut me off. He was leaning against the wall, an expression of agony on his face as he clenched his chest.

  Something was seriously wrong. It was what happened in the desert all over again.

  “Ed!” I shouted as I ran to his side. “What’s wrong?”

  Unlike in the desert, this didn’t last nearly as long. He opened his eyes as his hand fell back down to his side. He took in slow, steady breath after slow, steady breath, and before too long he was back to normal.

  “Ed,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said in a clipped tone. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “No,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on. You looked like you were about to keel over.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just hungry. Or heartburn from those sandwiches.”

  He was lying. I could tell by how quickly he was ready with the excuses.

  “Seriously,” I said. “If something’s wrong—”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he snapped. “Now, let’s just do this.”

  I wanted to press things, but more than that I wanted to get what we’d come for and leave as fast as possible. Alban Falls wasn’t exactly the best place for a heart-to-heart.

  We approached the door leading to the back of the pharmacy and Ed had it open in seconds with a hard kick. Stale air greeted us as we stepped into the rear storage area.

  “Stay behind me and stay close,” said Ed as he slipped the gun out of his waistband and clicked off the safety. “No idea who’s lurking around.”

  He didn’t need to talk me into it. I stood in Ed’s shadow as he moved quickly from here to there, checking out all the spaces behind the steel shelves where someone could’ve been hiding. I caught sight of a figure in a pharmacist’s lab coat, but realized quickly that he was dead, lying still with dried blood coating his face.

  But there was no one there. The place was clear.

  “Hope the pills weren’t in here,” I said. “Because it looks like people didn’t waste any time robbing this place blind.”

  “Nah,” said Ed. “Anything expensive or narcotic is going to be kept locked up nice and tight. Just a matter of figuring out how to get to it.”

  He nodded towards the main shop floor. “Let’s check it out,” he said. “Same game plan. Stay close.”

  Once again I moved to his side, shadowing him. With one last check back to me, Ed moved through the saloon-style doors and onto the main floor.

  “Holy shit,” he breathed. “What a mess.”

  “Mess” was putting it lightly. The pharmacy was a disaster area. Nearly every shelf had been overturned and picked clean.

  “Jesus,” I said. “They even hit the perfume and makeup section.”

  “People take what they can take while they can take it,” he said. “Then the hunger sets in, or someone gets sick, or the water runs low. Then they realize what’s really important. And that’s when they get desperate.”

  I didn’t even want to think about it.

  I turned away from the mess towards the back of the store, the drug storage area and its cash register protected with a thick layer of glass.

  “There it is,” said Ed as he approached the area. “Like a bank vault you can see through.”

  The two of us stepped up to the door that led to the back and, sure enough, it was locked up tight, an electronic keypad and card reader just above a particularly sturdy-looking handle.

  Ed grabbed the handle and gave it a pull. It sounded locked up tight.

  “Shit,” he hissed under his breath. “How the hell are we supposed to get in there?”

  “Can’t you shoot it?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t work like in the movies,” he said. “You fire a round at lock and you’re more likely to get a bullet ricocheting into your face than you are an open door.”

  He shook his head. “No. We need the key for the door.”

  “But it’s electronic,” I said.

  “True,” said Ed. “But it’s not opening. That means it needs a regular, old-fashioned key to open.”

  I took another look at the lock and, sure enough, there was a space for a key.

  It hit me.

  “Wait,” I said. “I saw something in the back.”

  I took off, Ed calling after me as I disappeared into the storage area that we’d entered from. Once there, I laid eyes on the man that I’d noticed before, the man in the white coat. I approached him and dropped to my knees in front of him. Sure enough, his coat read “Kyle Sampson, Pharmacy Manager” in swooping red cursive.

  “Ugh, sorry Kyle,” I muttered, and began rifling through his pockets.

  “Come on, come on,” I said, my excitement overwhelming my disgust until…

  “Got it!”

  The inside pocket of his jacket had what I was looking for: a keyring with a card and a thick, metal key.

  I got up to run back, just as Ed burst through the doors.

  “What did I say about staying close?” he asked.

  But I didn’t say anything, instead holding the keys up in front of me.

  “We’re in,” I said.

  “Oh, shit,” he said. “Nice!”

  Back at the door, I slipped the key into the lock and gave it a twist, a heavy thunk sounding out as the lock opened up.

  “There we go,” I said.

  Ed nodded, his expression grim.

  “Me first,” he said. “And—”

  “Stay close,” I said. “I know.”

  He stepped in and I was right behind him.

  But neither of us had a chance to say or do anything before I heard the metal click of a gun safety behind my head.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll kill both of you where you stand.”

  13 Amy

  My gut sank and my blood ran cold.

  “Okay,” said Ed. “Now hold on, we’re—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” a woman’s voice said. “Not a single word.”

  Ed and I stood frozen, and I realized that I had no idea what to do. It wasn’t so much that I was paralyzed with fear—which I was—but that this woman wasn’t exactly giving us clear instructions. That either meant she was about to kill us right then and there, or she didn’t have much experience with what she was doing.

  “Wait…what the… How did you get back here?” she asked.

  Neither Ed nor I said anything, the woman’s instructions fresh in my mind.

  “Answer me!” she said.

  “We…we found a key,” I blurted out. “Right here.”

  I held up the keychain, and the woman snatched it out of my hand so quickly that the metal ring snagged my finger and yanked it hard.

  “Ow!” I cried.

  “Quiet!” she hissed back.

  There was silence as she, presumably, looked over the card.

  “Where did you get this?” she said, her tone demanding.

  “There was a guy in the back, in the storage room,” I said. “He…”

  I stopped myself, understanding that to her, the guy who’d I’d taken the key from wasn’t some random man.

  “What?” she asked, less patience in her voice this time. “He what?”

  “The guy, Kyle… He was dead.”

  Silence.

  Then a whimper.

  “No,” she said, the anger gone from her voice and replaced with a bleak sadness. “No, no, no.”

  Then the anger returned. “You killed him!” she shouted, pressing the gun against Ed’s head. “You…you fucking junkies killed him! Is that right?”

  My heart pounded. I realized that Ed and I were dealing with a woman on the edge.

  “No!” said Ed. “We didn’t kill him. Someone else did.”

  “Who?”

  “No idea,” I said. “He was gone when we got there.”

  “And you thought you could just loot his body, huh? Take his wallet while you were at it?”

  “No,” said Ed, trying t
o keep his voice calm. “It’s not like that.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  “We’re from Sandy Vista,” I said. “You know it?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Right,” I went on. “My mom lives there. They sent us to come here and pick up their most recent drug shipment.”

  “They said it’d be in some labeled boxes,” Ed piped up. “David—he’s the guy in charge. I swear, we’re not here to cause trouble. We just want to get our meds for the old folks and get out of here.”

  More silence. For several moments, I worried that the woman was going to snap and end it for both of us in that cramped little room.

  But then I heard a sigh, and out of the corner of my eye I watched as the gun lowered.

  “What’re your names?” she asked.

  “Ed. Ed Mack.”

  “Amy Hendricks.”

  “Turn around. Slowly.”

  Ed and I glanced at one another before doing as she asked. I turned slowly on my feet until I was face-to-face with the woman who’d been holding my life in my hands.

  And she was…tiny.

  The woman—more like a girl, since she looked no older than her early twenties—was brown-haired and as petite as they come. She was slender, with wide, worried blue eyes under straight bangs. She was cute, in a librarian sort of way, and so small it was almost a wonder she’d been able to hold the gun up.

  “Jesus,” said Ed, his eyes going to the silver revolver in her hand. “Where’d you even get that thing?”

  “Bad trigger discipline,” I said, noting that her finger was still wrapped around the trigger, despite the gun being pointed at the ground.

  “Huh?” she asked, jerking the gun up without thinking what she was doing, the barrel pointing at Ed.

  “Give me that!” he said.

  His hand shot out and he effortlessly had the weapon in his hands a few seconds later.

  “Hey!” the girl shouted, her hands flying towards the gun.

  “Hold on a second!” said Ed, holding the gun up high where she couldn’t reach it. “I’m not taking it, but you’re gonna hurt someone with this if you don’t know what you’re doing.”