by AJ Rose
“Leave or I’ll shoot!” seemed to be the civilians’ favorite threat.
A small child inside the unit the tenants protected screamed “Daddy!” over and over, adding to the confusion. Ness and her team fanned out, weapons trained on the would-be protectors. Her heart pumped and adrenaline dumped into her veins, giving her hyper-focus, which she used to her advantage. Lowering the business end of her M16A4, Ness stayed put but cut through the shouting with as reasonable a voice as she could muster and still be heard.
“Gentlemen, you don’t want to do this,” she warned. “We’re here to help you, take you to shelter, get your families to safety where there’s food and water and a place to sleep.”
The man in the middle, a scrawny black man with a defiant stare, tilted his chin, his eyes wide and darting between all of them. “We got that here, plus freedom to come and go. We don’t need you.”
“What happens when you run out of supplies?” she asked calmly. “Albertsons is closed until further notice.”
The man on the right sneered. “We’ll try King Soopers, then.”
“They’re all dark,” she said, raising a hand and standing up straight to indicate reducing her threat level. Her men stayed on alert. “We’re here to help, not shoot you. Now stand down.”
“I’m not leavin’ my home,” the third man said, quite clearly the most nervous of the three. “Not ’cause of you, or ’cause of the looters, or the gangs. They done killed Robbins, and for what?” His face scrunched up. “For the jewelry downstairs when ain’t no one give a damn about rings and watches right now. Robbins went to protect his store, and he got shot for it.”
“Sir,” Ness tried again, her tone placating. “If those gangs run out of food, where do you think they’re going to look for more supplies? Your building isn’t secure. Let us help you and your families. We don’t want those people to come back any more than you do, but if they do, we want them to find nothing worth taking. Including your lives.”
The man in the middle, clearly the calmest of the three, dipped the muzzle of his gun a couple inches, and as they were trained to do, the man mirroring him, in this case Donnie, lowered his by the same amount.
“We’ll give you plenty of time to pack bags. Take food with you. The more supplies you can carry, the better for everyone. But it’s not safe here.”
“What about being free to come and go?” the middle man asked.
“You’re not a prisoner, sir,” Ness assured. “I wouldn’t recommend leaving the safety of the camp at the Pepsi Center once you get there, but if you wanna take a walk, you assume that risk.” She mentioned nothing about martial law and curfews, and how these men would likely call all those precautions a blight on their freedoms. But that wasn’t her problem. Hers was to get these people to safety in spite of themselves, before more were killed.
They eyed her and her men warily, and the guns lowered more, on both sides. Finally, the middle man nodded, speaking over his shoulder to the family member just inside the door.
“Gather up the kids and get their shit. Food, too. Least if we go with them, someone else can worry about shooting the looters.”
“You’re going to be fine, sir,” Ness said, relaxing her tense shoulders as the danger reduced to a slow simmer. All three men kept their weapons, which the truck team would relieve them of before they’d be transported.
“You promise me that, missy?” Middle Man asked, defiant and untrusting.
“If we can do our jobs, yes,” she answered. “Eventually.”
He smiled and shook his head. “I kinda like you. You got balls.”
She winked at him and gave a curt nod while he turned to oversee the hasty packing inside.
As they escorted the tenants—who had lived in three of the four apartments and banded together when their neighbor had tried and failed to defend his livelihood—down the stairs and to the street, Ness used hand motions to relay orders for Roger and Matt to stay on the door at the ready while Chris and Donnie handled the actual transfer. If the men balked at giving up their handguns or tried to reenter the premises, they would be blocked and overpowered. Luckily, after a token protest, they climbed aboard the truck, grumbling about their second amendment rights.
“Recruiters are looking for men and women to join up, sir, if you really want to get your hands on a gun again,” one of the truck crew quipped, looking over the men. They appeared to be young, their children no more than toddlers and their wives almost girls themselves. Definitely below the age limit to enlist.
“Join the army?” one of them snorted, as if the idea were ludicrous. “What I wanna do that for?”
“So you can put that bravery to good use,” Ness called with a wry twist to her lips. “You just faced down a squad of US soldiers and kept a cool head. We could use you.”
The guy eyed her as if she were putting him on, but she had used up enough time on him, so she offered him one last respectful nod and called her boys to move to the next building. They had a timetable to keep.
* * *
* * *
They made it back to camp at the airport well after the sun had set, relieved of duty by the overnight sweep teams. The best way to clear the streets was to keep moving, keep the population of the city ahead of them, keep pushing until they reached the outskirts of their grid. Roger didn’t envy the night squads. They were equipped with night vision goggles but would still be dealing with a population whose movements would be more on edge as well as potentially more offensive. The danger inherently went up as the sun went down. However, after fourteen solid hours of sweeps, Shockwave was on the truck back to base for grub and sleep.
Sergeant Middler dismissed them to relay the team’s observations to their superiors, so Roger herded the guys into the mess tent and mostly kept them in line as they plated fried chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and slices of bread. The drone of the generators outside was so constant, Roger quickly became deaf to them, merely thankful for the full meal and opportunity to get off his tired feet.
Ness came in shortly after and joined their group with a plate of her own, smiling at Roger as she sat.
“Good first day,” she observed, tearing off her chicken skin and holding it up with a questioning eyebrow.
He didn’t hesitate to snatch the best part of a breast out of her hand and shove it in his mouth before one of the other guys noticed, and they had a fight to the death over it. Ness smirked at him, using a fork to pull meat off the bones of her chicken.
“Yeah,” he agreed, swallowing and forking a bite of squash and carrots into his mouth. “No one died.”
“Yet,” Donnie said, pointing at the sky with his fork as if he were about to start pontificating. “You bet your asses, a few days from now, a few more missed meals from now, a few more lootings from now, those people won’t be so quick to lay down their guns.”
“Course not,” Chris agreed, taking a swig of his iced tea. “Would you? If you didn’t get your three squares courtesy of President Galloway every day, would you be inclined to be herded into a big, overcrowded arena where the smell will get rank and the heat will about fry people in a couple months? Forget safety in numbers. You put a crowd that size in accommodations that large, there’re gonna be problems. And once rumors of those problems get out, those who aren’t there already aren’t gonna wanna go. We’ll be pulling them to the truck by their hair before long.”
“And they’ll be screaming about their civil liberties the whole time,” Roger grumbled.
“I swear, we should teach them the real meaning of martial law,” Donnie said, tearing into his bread like a predator into prey.
“These are Americans, guys,” Matt said, surprising Roger since he rarely argued when Chris and Donnie got going on anything. Mostly, he would sit back, amused, while they insulted each other. Not this time apparently. “They can’t even have a cup of coffee now, unless they’re like those freaky prepared guys with the survival bunkers for basements. Five days ago, they were watching th
e hockey playoffs in the very arena we’re now taking them to live for however long. Cut them some slack, okay?”
Chris and Donnie exchanged a look but didn’t put up too much argument. “If it were me, and I opened my front door to a squad of guys with guns, I don’t think I’d put up a fight, is what I’m saying,” Chris continued. “I mean, disaster relief is supposed to be relief, you know?”
“Bullshit,” Donnie countered. “If we were in this shit, you know you’d be knocking on my door, begging to come in and play fortress with me because you know I got enough guns and bullets to last us until Armageddon, and there ain’t nothing in your fridge but beer, mustard, and Girl Scout cookies.”
“Play fortress? What are you, eight?” Chris pointed a chicken leg at him. “Don’t knock the Thin Mints. I bet you cash money, there are people who would kill for some of those right about now.”
“Yeah,” Ness said, leveling them all with a look. “There probably are.”
They caught her meaning and lowered their heads as the smiles melted off their faces. Beside Roger, Chris grunted in pain as Donnie jerked, which meant the bigger man had delivered justice in the form of a swift kick to the shins for Chris’s insensitivity.
The men from Team Delta came into the mess tent, looking much like Roger felt: tired, hungry, and more than a little shell-shocked at what they’d seen out there. When they sat at the same table as Shockwave, Roger paid attention when Donnie hollered to them.
“How’d it go for you, fellas?”
One of the guys, PFC Grant Cunningham, answered. “Not bad, not bad. Only a couple frustrated people not willing to cooperate. Had a few try to run, but we caught ’em. Denver’s lucky, though, since the power ain’t out everywhere. I got a brother working in Chicago, and it’s chaos. Fucking chaos, after only three days.”
Roger raised a brow. “How do you know?”
“Sat phone,” Cunningham answered through a bite of chicken. “We both check in with our parents every couple days. They say the media isn’t reporting much more than it’s a terrorist attack, the investigation is ongoing, UN support, blah blah. But Louis, my brother, says when some of the rich people in Chicago talked to someone outside the blackout zone—some of them got sat phones, too—they panicked and flew out on choppers before the military could move in and stop ’em. So people there who couldn’t afford to leave knew what was happening before the rest of the country, and by the time Louis’s battalion showed, there were people setting up fortresses and shit. He says they’ve been getting shot at, people are burning down whole neighborhoods to keep from bein’ overrun. High-rises are prime real estate, and they’re all rigged with booby traps. Louis thought they’d be bringing in tanks in the next couple days.”
All of Shockwave listened in stunned silence, and one of the other members of Delta, Corporal Joel Smith, heard the conversation and joined in.
“My sister in Florida got out the first night. She and her husband—plastic surgeon I always thought had more money than common sense—have a yacht. They decided to wait out the outage on the boat, thinking it was just a few days, and she could work on her tan. She called a friend in the Bahamas to see if they could come chill for a bit, and the friend told her what happened. She says people are fleeing Florida for Cuba, instead of the Cubans coming here. It’s like reverse immigration.” Corporal Smith shook his head. “This is some fucked up shit, if you know what I mean.”
Chris groused that yes, they did know. Roger had a feeling before it was all over, they’d know more than they wanted to. Suddenly, he needed to get out of the stifling tent and maybe find a way to focus his restlessness, or he’d never get any shut-eye.
After dinner, the group grabbed a quick shower and hit their racks in preparation for more sweeps the next day. Roger waited in the shadows of the barracks showers for Ness to emerge some time later, and when she did, he hooked her around the waist and pulled her into the dark with him, pushing his lips against hers insistently. Despite her strength, she let him take the lead, opening up to his tongue and not complaining when he squeezed her tight enough to force a gasp from her lungs.
“You okay?” he murmured when they broke apart, touching their foreheads together, her wet hair leaving drips on his shirt.
“Yeah, why?” she asked with an arched brow.
“Because you seem tense, that’s all.”
She shook her head, her expression neutral, giving nothing away. He studied her in the dimness of the base lights that didn’t reach their hiding spot, trying to see something more than calm unflappability in her. There was nothing.
“I’m fine,” she said with a small smile. “Why? You looking for a damsel in distress to save?”
He knew better than to fall for that bait. “Who says I’m not looking for a damsel to save me?”
“If you need saving, Brown, perhaps I need to rethink my second-in-command.” Her eyes flashed with amusement while he huffed indignantly.
“I’ll settle for someone to rub me in all the right places,” he leered. “That’s about the only saving I need right now.”
“You need to be saved from your own right hand?” She tsked. “Sad.”
He held up his left hand, wiggling the fingers and grinning. “Southpaw,” he reminded her. Deliberately lowering that hand to her ass, he squeezed and mouthed at her jawline and down her neck. “I’ve got a few ideas on where we can take this for some privacy,” he murmured against her skin.
“So do I,” she whispered, her hands sliding into his hair and gripping with more force than necessary. He loved it when she got rough with him.
“Show me,” he dared her, then stayed half a step behind her when she led him across one of the open runways to the door of the air traffic control tower, the silhouette of the strange, multi-peaked roof of DIA mimicking the mountains. Their relationship was uncomplicated. She was his NCOIC (Non-commissioned Officer in Charge), and on missions and in front of other soldiers, their team was part of a well-oiled machine. In stolen moments, they were friends with benefits, and Vanessa Middler gave some mighty fine benefits when she found a way to let loose. Given the tower was more private than most of the locations they’d managed to secure when in the field, he was hoping, as they scaled the heights of the building, she’d definitely let loose tonight.
When they reached the top, she paused and looked out over the dark landscape. The moon was waning, just past full, providing enough light for them to see where the airport land ended and the highways circled. Beyond that, there were homes embedded in stands of trees, gradually giving way to mountains which rose, hulking shadows in the distance.
“Strange, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice detached. “How one little thing, something we take for granted every day, could mean so much to our way of life. Electricity. Just another bill we pay. How many days have you spent thinking about it?”
He shrugged and came up behind her, wrapping her in his arms. Trailing his fingers into her waistband, he bunched up the material of her shirt and lifted it free of her pants, flattening his palm on her warm abdomen.
“Hardly at all until four days ago.”
“And now people are going nuts because of it, and we’re responsible for keeping the crazy from spreading, like a disease. It’s one thing to know we’re secure with our battalion, that our equipment is protected and we have access to resources the rest of the country doesn’t, but how fair is that?”
“There’s a reason for that,” he murmured, brushing her hair off her neck and nibbling below her ear. She tilted her head, giving him as much of her skin as he wanted. Almost absentmindedly, she shifted back and forth, like they were dancing, her bubble-butt rubbing enticingly against his crotch. He knew she could feel his hard-on. He made no secret of it. It made it difficult to think, to keep his part of the conversation going. “If we didn’t have the resources we do, we wouldn’t be in a position to help anybody, arrange supply distribution, get people to safety. Resource priorities, Ness,” he reminded her. “
How effective would our protection of the citizens of Denver be if we were deprived of food and water, too?”
She shook her head, and he was grateful she didn’t argue with him. They both knew in wartime situations, if the supply chain was disrupted, conditions for the soldiers on the front lines could deteriorate rapidly. Thankfully, that was not the case in the current situation. Yet. If it became so, they could survive off the land better here than somewhere like the Northeast.
Before he could get maudlin, she turned in his arms and encircled his neck, crossing her wrists behind his head. “Fuck me,” she whispered throatily, then kissed him with a ferocity that surprised him. The question of whether or not she was okay arose again in his head, but his mouth was too busy being invaded by her tongue to form the words. And Ness didn’t take kindly to coddling, anyway.
She pushed him to his back on the surface of a nearby desk. It wasn’t terribly cluttered, so when she pulled down her pants, then his, and rolled a condom on him from the army-issued stash Chris and Donnie had joked she wouldn’t need so she should give her share to them, Roger was able to lie back and enjoy her climbing on without anything digging into his back.
6
CHAPTER SIX
Day 4
Auburn, New York
* * *
Sometimes when you’re overwhelmed by a situation—when you’re in the darkest of darkness—that’s when your priorities are reordered.
—Phoebe Snow
* * *
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT? Ash sat up with a jolt, listening to the silence, hoping the thump that had woken him would sound again so he could pinpoint it. His ears rang with the quiet, and he held his breath. Nothing. But something had woken him.
Maybe it was Charlotte or Russ going back to bed from the bathroom. He was about to lie down again when there came a sound like something smacking flesh. He narrowed his eyes in the darkness, reaching to the nearest pack and grabbing the heavy metal flashlight from one of its outer loops.
