by Justin Bell
At the lead of the convoy was a fantail Harley, rumbling across the dirt, slowing, and then easing to a graceful stop, pulling along the rumble strip at the edge of the highway.
Behind him, the rest of the bikes slowed and stopped as well, each one dialing down their rumbling engines in turn until the night was quiet, only filled with the faintest rebounding echo of chugging motors.
“You see something, chief?” the man on the second motorcycle asked. His was an old Husqvarna off-road model, something you could buy for a thousand bucks if you really wanted a beater, though none of them had paid for any of their vehicles.
Bruce Cavendish swept his leg off the wide, long seat of the fantail and lowered himself towards the ground, tracing fingers along the dirt, scantly illuminated by the headlight of his motorcycle. He reached into a pouch at the side of the seat and removed a flashlight, then shone it up the narrow slope of dirt, following his own light for a short distance, meandering up and left, then right. Once he was about thirty yards from the convoy he stopped, bending down and checking the dirt.
He looked back at the man on the dirt bike. “Cletus, come over here.”
Cletus swung his leg off the bike and made his way towards Bruce, hands stuffed in the pockets of his torn black jeans. “Whatcha got, Bruce?”
Cavendish pointed to markings in the dirt, thick treaded patches running side by side. “Those look like four-wheeler tracks to you?” he asked.
Cletus drew himself down and ran fingers over the markings as well. “Yep. I think they just might.”
Standing back up and looking east, Bruce stepped away from the other man for a bit, taking several steps parallel to I-70, hands on his hip and eyes narrowed in the darkness. He was looking for some kind of lights, tail lights most likely, but he saw nothing in the darkening horizon.
“You think they pulled off somewhere?” Cletus asked, coming up behind him.
Bruce was nodding. “Seems pretty likely.”
"So time for us to make our move or what? We been following ’em all dang day. I mean, we were lucky we saw ‘em taking off from home, and we’ve stayed out of sight as we chased ‘em down, but this is getting a little old, don’t you think?.”
Bruce crossed his arms, looking out towards the dark night, going over their options in his mind. Finally he seemed to come to some kind of internal consensus and turned back towards the convoy, walking at a quick pace.
"I think it’s time boys. Start ’em up, let’s make our move.”
Chapter 5
Agent Liu had almost completely lost track of time. He wasn’t sure if it was because so much pure devastation surrounded him or if it was because he’d been walking and talking non-stop for hours on end. The entire day’s work stacked upon the emotional turmoil of what was happening elsewhere in his home nation, leaving him physically and mentally exhausted. Each street he walked down seemed more pock marked and cratered than the last. Each building he approached was more damaged and run down, with shattered and broken windows at every level and in every structure.
The persistent stench of thick smoke in the air, the occasional drift of pungent chemicals, and the endless horizon of dull, slate gray skies combined to further press him down into a destructive melancholy. His feet shuffled along the litter ridden streets as he walked up towards a concrete stairwell, smashed and broken, leading up to a storm door with no glass and a dent punched in the metal frame.
“Hey, Brandon,” the voice caught him, and Agent Liu turned to see Orosco making his way down the street from the opposite side. He held a folder in his hand and offered it to the Customs agent who withdrew from the door, relieved that he was no longer needing to knock and interview the people within. He’d talked to dozens of so-called witnesses today and no one had offered much in the way of concrete information. There had even been disparity in the time frame of the detonation, with one person thinking it had happened before he went to bed at ten o’clock, while another swore it happened on his way to work at eight in the morning. A scattering of other folks claimed it was the middle of the night, but couldn’t manage to be more specific than that.
Liu took the folder from Orosco’s offered hand and pried it open.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“Got the reports from Houston P.D. finally,” Orosco replied. “Amazing how long this stuff takes when you can’t just email or call, huh?”
“No cell service down here?”
“Nope. Things were spotty enough as it was, but when Galveston and Texas City went up, everything went down the crapper.”
Liu flipped through some call records within the folder. Each piece of paper inside contained a little morsel of information, but nothing valuable until he got about halfway through the small stack.
There was a report from Houston dispatch at around three o’clock in the morning from P46, a patrol car on Galveston Island reporting to a suspicious vehicle call. They had then called in shots fired and were in the middle of calling for an ambulance when the call went silent. It had happened very shortly before the first reports of the bright lights in the sky from west of Houston. Liu flipped the page, and then he saw it. His eyes widened, and he traced his finger down the page, landing it on the information that had him so excited.
The police had called in the license plate number.
“Holy—”
“Yeah. Right? We’ve got a tag number.”
Liu lowered the folder and looked over at Orosco. “Do we know if they had a chance to run the plate?”
Orosco shook his head. “Everything went south just after it got called in. I don’t think they were able to run it against the database before the bomb went off.”
Liu shook his head. “So what do we do? How can we run this now?”
“I know a guy in DMV. Given the nature of what’s going on here, I think I can get him to do me a solid. Of course I’ll have to see him in person to do that.”
“Let’s make it happen.
“I have a few more interviews to wrap up,” Orosco said. “Let me get that done first, and we’ll meet back here in two hours. Does that work?”
Liu’s heart sank. He was mentally and physically exhausted and wanted nothing more than to get in the car and start heading back to Houston. Every person he spoke with carved another emotional gouge in his soul. But it was part of the job.
“Works for me.”
“Two hours, right here,” Orosco said and walked away, taking a right down a side street and disappearing from view.
Liu took a deep breath and looked back up at the shattered storm door, trying to work up the energy to venture back up and knock. Not for the first time since this adventure started, he wondered what effect he could have in the face of this catastrophe. Every single person he’d spoken to today had spoken of a raw and festering sense of loss. The devastation was already evident, if not in material possessions, then in the mental anguish of what had happened to not just their country, but their state. Not just their state, but their neighborhood. Liu looked behind him and could still see the orange glow against the darkened sky, the narrow licks of flame climbing above the broken and shattered buildings between where he was and what remained of Texas City. The air was thick with smoke and ash, and as eager as he was to drive out of here, it occurred to him that he at least had that luxury. This was home to thousands. Thousands of people who would either evacuate or who would learn to live with the constant stink and lingering smog, probably for the rest of their lives.
How long would the rest of their lives even be? Would the gulf winds shift again and send the nuclear particles back inland? Was he tempting fate just by remaining here? His breath and heart quickened at the thought of this, though he remembered that the HazMat team was just over that same row of battered buildings, and he’d hoped they would have come through, warning everyone to evacuate if the winds were indeed shifting.
Liu tried to put that thought out of his mind as he walked back up the stairs and the broke
n storm door.
“Hey!” the voice came from his left, and the agent turned, seeing someone at the edge of a narrow side street. It was a man in a dark t-shirt and cut off jean shorts, and he was pointing at him.
“What do you think you’re doin’ here?” he asked, his voice gruff, angry, and slurred by alcohol.
Liu withdrew back down the steps and turned towards him, taking long, confident strides. “Hey there,” he said. “I’m Agent Liu. I’m with Customs and Border Patrol.”
“Is that a fact?” the man barked back as Liu approached. “Way I heard it, your kind’s the ones that did this to us.”
Liu came up closer to the t-shirt wearing man, confused. “Excuse me? What do you mean?”
“You did this to us!” he shouted. “You and your kind. Blew us all up!”
“Hey, take it easy,” Liu said. “The government isn’t behind this.”
“I don’t mean the government, you moron, I mean your kind. You Koreans! Bringing your bombs in here and trying—”
“Sir, I was born in America just like you,” Liu said, holding up his hands. “My parents were Chinese, not Korean—”
“Shut your mouth!” the other man shouted.
Liu reached for the weapon on his hip but hesitated to draw down on the man who was leering at him from several feet away. The man didn’t appear armed and despite his training, he had no desire to harm someone who had lost so much. His emotional and physical exhaustion didn’t help either, leaving his reaction times shot and his judgment impaired to the point where he didn’t notice the first lunge of the man’s body until it was too late to do anything about it. Lurching in nearly uncontrolled anger, the man extended his arms, sending his hands slamming into Liu’s chest. Liu stumbled backwards, his arms pinwheeling, then fell to the pavement, shoulder-first, pain lacing his arm and running down through his spine.
“Don’t do this!” he shouted as he tried to pick himself up. Glancing over his shoulder he saw two other men join the first, fists clenched and faces squared up into snarls of rage.
“You can’t do this to us!” one of them shouted. “Come to our country, take advantage of our freedom, then try to destroy it!”
“I’m American just like you!” Liu shouted. “I’m trying to stop this!”
“You ain’t fooling us!” The man in the t-shirt kicked out with a heavy boot and Liu tried to roll away, but the steel toe caught him in the ribs and he shouted out in pain. Another man came up next to the first and repeated the motion, his boot striking Liu’s thigh, and a third kick drilled into the small of his back.
“Look what’s happened here!” the first man shouted again. “Wrecked our homes! Wrecked our jobs! We have nothing left.”
“I’m sorry about what’s happened,” Liu mumbled as he tried to pick himself up. “I’m here to help!”
“Only thing that’ll help is sending scum like you back where you came from.” The man stepped forward, reeling his leg back again, but Liu had tried to reason with the men for long enough. He moved first, swinging his hips around and thrusting out his own leg. His combat boot caught the man in his standing leg, sending it shooting backwards, knocking him off balance. He stumbled forward, slamming his chin down on the sidewalk and crumpling into a motionless pile.
“You son of a—!” shouted the second man, but Liu was crawling to his feet and reaching for his mag light in a loop on his belt. The second man swung a swift fist, but Liu parried the strike and sent his metal light crashing against the man’s forearm. A third person moved in and kicked Liu in the back again, sending him scrambling forward. He turned to face them both, but they were both rushing him, a fist pounding into his cheek, then another into his ribs. Blurs of motion caught his eye from the left and he spun that direction, once again using his flashlight to knock aside a punch, then he swung back, sending the fat end splintering against the man’s right temple. He shouted and dropped as the last man lunged forward tackling Liu around the waist and knocking him back to the ground. Several swift punches battered him as he lay there, striking his shoulder, his stomach, and his forehead, and he curled, trying to absorb the blows, his hand roaming his leg for the holster of his weapon.
Another man appeared, but Liu swung his leg around, clipping one of them behind the knees in a sweeping motion, sending him stumbling backwards. He found the clasp of his holster, unsnapped it, and pulled out the P2000 pistol. More impacts rained down on his back and the back of his head, but he rolled away, his eyes seeing stars, the entire night swirling into a tornado of blurred colors. Somehow he managed to pull himself up into a kneeling position and brought his weapon around and aimed it at the last attacker.
“Whoa, whoa!” the man shouted as he spotted the weapon. “Take it easy!”
“Back off!” Liu shouted. “Now!” His head was cloaked in a strange, thick fog, and his only clarity among muddled thoughts were lightning bolts of agony. He couldn’t think, he could barely see, but he knew his life just might be at stake, and the pistol was the only thing standing between him and his attackers.
“All right, all right,” the man barked. He pulled back and turned, running down the street, vanishing around a corner. Liu stumbled, letting his weapon drift down, his vision clouding, then sharpening, then clouding again. He saw three men scattered about the street, mixed with the trash and debris, and he made his way towards an alley about halfway down the dark street. Liu had to get away. He had to get himself far away. His head was aching, and his body was struggling to keep walking forward, a swift stab of dizziness sending him stumbling.
Curling around the corner into the darkened alley, the swirling fog of unconsciousness drowned out all else, and Agent Liu crumpled to the trash-covered ground, shrouded in a deepening shadow.
***
“Are they asleep?” Rhonda asked, looking up from the couch. The duffel bag lay unzipped in front of her, split open like a carcass with its contents strewn about the carpeted floor. As Phil approached, his mind tried to reconcile the image of his wife of over twenty years sitting on the couch with a well-organized and categorized assortment of semi-automatic weaponry laid out on the floor in front of her. His brain still hadn’t adjusted to this abrupt collision of two disparate worlds.
“Yeah. As soon as their heads hit the pillows. I don’t think Winnie’s gone to sleep that quick in ten years.”
Greer emerged from the other hallway. “Did another quick check. Still a bunch of clothes in the closet, all the bathroom supplies are still there. We need to prepare for the fact that someone might be coming back.”
“You really think so?” Phil asked. “Even with the news out of Utah? Couldn’t they have just cut and run really quickly, not worrying about packing their stuff?”
“Possibly,” Greer replied. “Better to err on the side of caution, I’d say.”
The refrigerator slammed from the kitchen and Angel stood from where he had been looking. “Not much for food,” he reported. “Milk, ground coffee, a little bit of meat and a six pack.”
“Six pack, huh?” Rhonda asked, glancing back. “Anything good?”
“Ratio Beerworks,” Angel replied.
“One Great City? Tell me it’s the One Great City.”
Angel chuckled and ducked back into the fridge. There was a clink of glass, then he showed up at the waist high bar and tossed the bottle. Rhonda snapped it out of mid-air, her mouth splitting into a wide, tooth-filled grin.
“You sure about that, Rhonda?” Phil asked. “This is someone’s home still, right?”
Rhonda placed the edge of the bottle top on the squat coffee table and slapped at it, popping the top off. “It’s the apocalypse, Phil, I think they’ll understand.”
She tipped the bottle back and took a long, desperate swallow.
“That’s gotta be warm,” Greer said, chuckling.
Rhonda nodded. “Yep, warm. Nope, don’t care.” She tipped the bottle back again and took another swift gulp.
Angel appeared at the bar ag
ain, his own bottle opened. “Anyone else want one?” he asked.
Phil and Greer glanced at each other. “Go ahead and have one, Phil,” Clancy said. “I’ll take first watch. I want to be on my toes.”
“You really think all that’s necessary?” Phil asked.
Greer nodded without hesitation. “Absolutely. We can’t take any chances.” Greer stood from where he sat on the couch and walked towards the stacked and sorted weapons on the floor. Dropping into a crouch, he retrieved his familiar Glock 17 and ejected the magazine, checking how many rounds were in there.
“Your parents had nine millimeter ammo in their basement storage?” he asked Rhonda.
“Nine mil, .380 caliber, .22 caliber, even some 5.56. They believed in being prepared.”
“Prepared for what exactly?” Greer asked.
Rhonda shot him a look and seemed to be on the verge of saying something but instead just shrugged her shoulders. “I haven’t been to the cabin in twenty years, Clancy. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Greer gave her a curious sideways glance as if he didn’t quite buy her deflection, but he kept his thoughts to himself as he latched the magazine back in place and stuffed the pistol into his holster.
“I’ll take watch for the first four hours,” he said. “Phil you want to take over the second shift?”
Phil nodded, accepting the opened bottle of beer from Angel. “I’ll cut myself off at one, don’t worry.”
Greer shrugged and gave him a smile. “You’re only putting your own family at risk,” he said, then he turned and walked out the door.
Phil took a quick sip of the beer and let a long breath escape through pursed lips.
