911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Parker didn’t see any other “patients” at the hospital, either—if that was in fact what the facility was; his wing of the building seemed to have been developed especially for solitary confinement. And so, for all intents and purposes, he seemed to be the only person there who wasn’t either a nurse or a guard. He didn’t even get a visit from a doctor. His treatment plan was carried out entirely by Calhoun and Greaves.

  Besides them, a succession of guards stood sentry duty outside Parker’s room. There was no pattern to who would turn up on what day, and they all looked like they were cut from the same rock. Parker couldn’t imagine the sentries were happy to be babysitting him, standing shoulder to shoulder in the corridor, parting only when Calhoun or Greaves entered the room. Whoever the guards were on any given day, though, they were always armed with Heckler & Koch MP7A1s on shoulder slings. Each gun would be chambered for the H&K 4.6×30 mm cartridge, Parker knew—supremely effective against most next-gen body armor, and utterly lethal against an ex-cop in a cotton nightshirt who was wearing no pants.

  The sentries would unstrap Parker’s legs and, under the watchful muzzles of the H&Ks, allow him to put on prison sweats and replace his prison issue flip-flops with Nike Air Max Torch 4 cross-trainers. While he was still covered by one of the guards, the other would attach ankle chains, cuff Parker’s hands to a waist belt, and march him the 180 paces to the gym. Parker had counted the paces the fourth time they had taken him there.

  In between examining his captors and losing himself to the drugs, Parker thought about Sara. And he thought about his desperate attempt to give her and Ava time to escape the FEMA forces at the roadblock, wondering what had happened to them after that. Sara and Ava were resourceful fighters and also had the necessary skills to avoid engagement with the enemy when they needed to. At least, he thought they did. Parker hoped that his girl had made it, and that Ava had also, and that they were now lying low with the resistance—or, better still, that they’d made it across the border into Canada, away from the fucked-up, near fascist state the U.S. had become.

  That was what he couldn’t really get his mind around. How had they let it happen? How had no one noticed that these forces of evil—the very antithesis of what America stood for—were ready and established, planning to take over immediately as soon as the EMP Event dropped its crushing boot down on all electrical systems in the country? How had nobody done something to curtail their power ahead of time?

  The fact that the government, now based in Chicago, had quickly been able to mobilize forces in vehicles that had been protected from the EMP Event by Faraday shields, and that they had communication systems that still functioned—albeit at a rudimentary level—proved they would be a tenacious and able adversary. The resistance, and people like Parker, might be able to cause minor irritations to the system, but winning the occasional battle wouldn’t win the war. The only way to defeat the government forces would be to find a way to combine all the resistance units and like-minded people into one army that could fight its way into the capital.

  But there was only so much that he could do from where he was now, and he knew it.

  His training and natural survival instincts had kicked in to create an internal map of the facility, to be used in the event of a chance to escape, but the powers holding him had restricted his world to such an extent that, if they hadn’t been turning the lights off at night, Parker wouldn’t have had any idea how long he’d even been out of his hospital room, let alone the building’s internal geography. As it was, the drugs had messed with his timetable enough that only shift changes and lighting changes suggested a rough estimate of time, at best.

  Parker had always felt he was a half-glass-full kinda guy, even when he’d been at his lowest, caught in the grip of addiction, thinking about his collapsed marriage, he’d always been able to find a reservoir of optimism to carry him through. But now—cycling through the room, corridor, gym, room, corridor, and gym on repeat, ad infinitum—all he had to look forward to was Calhoun bringing him that tiny syringe of escape. The liquid that would keep him corralled in these walls better than any chains.

  Nothing changed.

  No one talked to him.

  No one asked him anything.

  Nothing was expected of him; nothing was demanded.

  Even with the attendance of Calhoun and Greaves, and the ministrations of the sentries, Parker had never felt more isolated or alone—before or after the night of the Event. Everything had been shrunken down to a routine.

  Some guys liked the stability of predictability, and Parker himself had, occasionally, been grateful for the discipline of routine, and of knowing the exact parameters needed to keep motoring on through life, relationships, and career. However, this was something wholly different. This life, if it could be called that, was claustrophobic, cloying, and crushing. It was as if he was being tortured by routine. An assault being made on his sensibilities with drudgery, isolation, and the velvet-gloved, iron fist of addiction.

  If he let himself consider the future—his own future—all Parker could imagine was the endless tract of nothingness before him. They could keep him like this forever, wearing him down into a complete slave to the needle, stripping what made Parker Parker from the shell of his body and flushing it away with silence and fake smiles.

  Every day, the rock-hewn sentries would come into the room, unlock his bonds, allow him to get dressed and wash, and without a word indicate that he should walk from the room. The routine was set. Parker would turn right, walk ninety paces along the corridor, make a right, and walk another ninety paces to the doors of the gym. It had gotten to the point where there was no doubt in his mind about what to expect from each and every moment of his existence.

  Until a slab of limestone clunked onto Parker’s shoulder as he began to turn right out of his room. It stopped him dead in his tracks, his routine and protocol irretrievably broken.

  He looked at the guard who had put a hand on his shoulder. With the muzzle of his H&K, the man pointed down the corridor in the opposite direction.

  Today, Parker was going left.

  Considering who was signaling the change in routine, he could only take the change as a sign of what he’d been expecting all along—questioning, or else death. Maybe something in between the two—something worse. So, as the first panic attack since his last serious pill addiction battered Parker with its force of shock, he stumbled to his knees, crashing down with a thud before the surprised guards.

  Parker couldn’t move; instead, he was desperately trying to curl into a fetal clench of protection.

  Above him, the sentries sighed as they hauled him off the floor and wordlessly dragged him along the new and unfamiliar path.

  The burst of anxiety caused by the sudden change had robbed Parker of the ability to count footsteps, let alone draw maps in his head. He didn’t know how far they dragged him or for how long.

  4

  The Forest Glade Public Golf Course & Country Club was a nice enough place. It hadn’t been a truly exclusive haven of the rich in its day, but it had become an enclave of the upper middle class. What was important for the Northern Indiana resistance cell, though, was its location and facilities.

  The clubhouse and outbuildings were positioned on the outskirts of the small community of Billtown, which was nestled five miles north of the old State Patrol barracks housing the FEMA internal defense forces. Situated at the top of a small hill, surrounded by eighteen holes, it gave a commanding view of the area. The official FEMA interface was housed in the old city hall, so the clubhouse was being used as a civilian project liaisons annex in Brazil—mainly as cover, a reason for people to be seen coming and going regularly without drawing unwarranted attention.

  From inside the restaurant, the resistance planned its operations and conducted its intelligence gathering and sabotage missions. In the basement and outbuildings, it hid its weapons and ammunition. It was a hidden dagger poised at the heart of the Indianapolis Consolidate
d Regional Authority.

  Ava and Sara made their way up the drive and passed through a gate that was now covered on either side of the road by rose bushes run riot. Logistical and service people walked the grounds around them, busy with their own business, but the two women could feel eyes of observers following their every step.

  They’d spent two months in Canada, recovering from the ordeal they’d survived, worrying about Parker and mourning the loss of Finn.

  But then things had changed.

  They’d learned how they’d become symbols to a burgeoning American resistance movement, that their escape from New Albany and their hellish journey north was being spread through rumors and mythologized into a rallying cry. They’d learned that former American allies in the UN and NATO had grown terrified of the fascist machine that was morphing America into something new, building it up from the ashes of what many now openly suspected had been an act of premeditated treason.

  Now, however, with the clandestine backing of other nations’ intelligence services, the resistance was thriving, and the country was teetering on the beginnings of open rebellion. Ava and Sara hadn’t needed any time to decide where they stood on the matter.

  As evening set in, they made it to the safe house. The building was a one-story ranch-style leftover from a 1970s housing boom. Set on four acres, it was well off the road, down a winding dirt path that was partially obscured by blackberry brambles on one side and mulberry bushes on the other. There was a man sitting on the porch, apparently doing nothing more than relaxing. He wore logging boots and a beat-up old jean jacket. His beard was wild, a long way from hipster—not that “hipster” meant anything now—and he had his hair tucked into a battered old green John Deere hat. Ava and Sara knew he had a weapon within easy reach, just as they knew that the woods behind the house were patrolled by resistance members.

  Real security for their group lay in flying beneath FEMA’s radar, but they were prepared to shoot their way clear if it came to that.

  The man on the porch said something they didn’t catch, and the front door swung open as they made the front steps. Margret Atkins, the cell leader, stepped out to meet them. She wore a chambray shirt untucked over Carhartt jeans and Adidas hikers. She was in her late forties, and in another lifetime had been a high school principal.

  “Ava, Sara,” Margret said. She smiled. “Good to see the terror twins in one piece.”

  “Good to see you, too, Margie,” Ava said. “Good to be back. Been a hell of a trip.”

  Margret’s face scrunched up with concern. “You had trouble?”

  “Nothing major,” Sara interjected smartly. “We did get spotted, but it was no trouble getting away.” Ava opened her mouth to protest how Sara was downplaying the encounter, but Sara quickly continued: “We found no major changes from the other recon runs. Towers and roof position the same, ditto the foot and K9 patrols. We still haven’t seen any armament heavier than a 7.62 sniper rifle. Mostly just carbines, shotguns, and pistols. They’re armed like a police station, not an army camp. There is a new sign labeling the fencing as electrified, but there’s no current running through it—it’s just for show.”

  Ava couldn’t believe what she was hearing, but she also didn’t want to show open rebellion against Sara. She’d have to question her in private and figure out what the point was to downplay the forces they were up against.

  “Really?” Margret asked. “My other scouts are reporting an increase in foot patrols in the areas around the outside of the prison. As much as a thirty percent increase in manpower.”

  Ava opened her mouth to speak, but again Sara cut her off. She shook her mass of dark, curly hair. “We did see a single woman and dog team outside the site, but nothing to indicate our plan couldn’t work as is.”

  Margret studied Sara for a moment, scrutinizing her face the way she must have examined problem students in her high school. Sara looked back at her, her expression calm.

  “You sure?” the woman asked.

  Sara nodded. “Can’t stress it enough,” she said. “We’re as good as it’s going to get. We want to do this; we need to go as planned.”

  Margret stayed silent, but after a moment, she nodded. “All right then. We proceed as planned.”

  Margret stepped down and hugged Sara, and then Ava, squeezing them tightly. “I’m glad you two are okay. Go, get some dinner and we’ll talk later.” The cell leader turned to the man standing watch on the porch. “Come on, Mitch,” she said. “We need to check on the firetruck.”

  Mitch nodded. As he stood, he caught Ava’s eyes and smiled. “See you later,” he said.

  Ava returned the smile as he walked away with Margret. But when she turned back around and saw Sara was already heading off to eat, she stepped forward and grabbed her friend’s arm.

  “Wait a second there, kemosabe,” she said.

  Sara looked at her. “I’m starving, Ava,” she complained.

  “What the hell was up with that line of bullshit about everything being fine?” Ava demanded. “You saw the executions. And know as well as I do there was a platoon already outside the wire and patrolling the area. They were on us fast. It’s a miracle we didn’t trip over them going in.”

  Sara’s eyes narrowed at her, and Ava had to fight the urge to step back at the coldness she saw there.

  “I know what I’m doing,” Sara said.

  “I think they’ve caught on they’re being probed,” Ava told her, keeping her voice quiet. “Either from us or one of the other scout teams. You don’t think we should mention to people that our target could very well fucking be waiting for us?”

  Sara shook her head. “These guys are serious, but they’re not hardcore yet. They’re nervous and jumpy as it is. You mention a couple of extra guards and it might blow the whole deal,” she said. “Those trucks of people from the Mercy Centers can’t wait any longer. At any time, they could all be executed, simple as that. Do you want that on your conscience? Because I don’t!”

  “These people trusted us to be their eyes and ears,” Ava said. “I don’t want to hear your rationalizations and arguments. You’re playing God here, and you’re going to get people killed.”

  Sara grabbed Ava’s arm, squeezing. “We don’t know how many more there are,” she hissed. “And we really didn’t see any heavier weaponry. The plan is a good one. I don’t want some people who’ve never been in a really tough firefight before getting cold feet now. Those people in that prison deserve better than that.”

  “You’re playing with people’s lives,” Ava repeated, shaking her arm away from Sara’s grip.

  “They’re murdering civilians!”

  Ava stared at her for a moment more. “Fine,” she said, her voice low. It was clear enough that Sara had her mind made up—anything Ava said would be lost in translation. She turned away without another word. Sara simply followed Ava into the clubhouse restaurant, her arms crossed in determination.

  After they’d eaten, Ava sat by herself, not talking, while Sara retired to where their cots and sleeping bags were set up and crashed hard. Her mind was racing with a multitude of thoughts, but she was so exhausted from the exertion of her escape and the adrenaline crash afterwards that she just tucked in, rolled herself into a ball, and fell asleep.

  Sometime the next morning, Jake Spooner woke her up.

  Spooner was in his late sixties, bald as an egg with a bushy Fu Manchu-style mustache and beard. He owned the farmhouse the resistance utilized and, in the short time she’d known him, Sara had come to like him very much.

  “Hey,” Spooner said, “I know you’re tired, but I thought you wouldn’t want to miss lunch.” Sara sat up and he offered her a plate with a massive BLT cut into halves, and a cold beer. Sara took them both with a quick nod and a sincere smile.

  “Thank you, Jake,” she said.

  After her disagreement with Ava, it was nice to interact with someone who wasn’t angry with her. She took several big bites of the sandwich and washed them dow
n with the chilled beer. Being part of an organized force had its perks.

  “How are things?” she asked between bites.

  Jake shrugged, waving his hand in a so-so motion. “Can’t complain. America’s turned into a fascist nightmare and I live in constant fear of my own government, after serving it for twenty years in the Air Force, and now it’s turning on all of us and coming in here like it’s Waco, Texas all over again. But, other than that, my bowels have been real regular, so I don’t like to complain.”

  Sara laughed. “It’s the little things, right?”

  She finished the sandwich as he kept joking, feeling much better. Both the lettuce and tomatoes had been farmer’s market fresh, grown in the patch right behind the house and filled with flavor. She supposed, in the old America, her sandwich would have been a boutique cafe item. She lifted the last half of her beer to Jake.

  “Cheers.”

  Jake nodded as she drank, but she could tell he had something on his mind, something he wanted to say. After two big swallows, she lowered the can and looked at him, taking in the newly serious expression.

  “Jake,” she said. “Shoot. What is it?”

  He smiled, looking suddenly self-conscious. “It’s nothing really. I just wanted to come in and… thank you.”

  “Thank me?” Sara echoed. “For what?” She’d been expecting another shoe to drop—some bad news or warning—not a random thank-you.

  “For what you two are doing, and what you guys and your father did,” Jake said. He sighed, long and hard, and then explained. “Since you guys came, and we learned that most of those escaped convict gangs are orchestrated and armed by this Council, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”

  “Jake, I—” Sara began.

  Spooner held up his hand, stopping her. He went on right away, his voice sounding thick. “No, I need to get this out. We tried to go into town, me and my Amy,” he said. “Married thirty-two years, thirty-two good years, though we had our problems like everyone else, I guess. We wanted to get to our church, to try and help people.” He paused, swallowed, and then pushed on. “But we got caught by a gang from Manville Correctional Facility.” He raised his shirt, showing Sara two bullet wound scars in his torso. “They gave me this; they thought I was dead.” Tears built up on the edges of his eyes, and Sara suddenly realized that even though she’d grown to like this man, she hadn’t spent much time with him without a whole group of others being around; he must have been waiting to tell her all this for days.