She gingerly stepped over bits of charred 2x4s and drywall, working her way around the Tahoe to the front door. She glanced down at Gumbo's revolver and opened the chamber with trembling hands. Moonlight sparkled off two brass casings.
Two shots left. If there's looters inside…
Kate swallowed. She slapped the cylinder home and reached for the doorknob and paused. The front door stood ajar, open enough for her to see shadowy boxes and crates on the floor that looked to have been pushed up against the door from the inside.
Someone forced their way in—but someone else had piled up this stuff from the inside. Jay!
Her heart racing, she tried to make up her mind—charge in through the front door and surprise whoever might be inside, or sneak around to the back and find another way in without being seen?
What if there was some kind of gang or something in there, holding Jay hostage? What if they'd already killed him? What if she surprised them and they shot him?
She stepped inside the door and put her hands to her head. Shut up! Shut up! He's here—at least…someone is. Dammit, there's no time to think this through, I've got to do something!
A voice drifted out of the house and made Kate freeze in her tracks. "…don't know, man…this looks wicked bad, you know?"
Kate swallowed. Who the hell is that?
"Yeah…what do we do now?" replied a second male voice.
Kate stepped back, bringing the revolver up to aim at the door. Oh God…oh God…
Kate looked at the gun in her hand and remembered her run-in with Gumbo and Billy. True to his words, Billy gave her a ten-minute head start, but she never saw him again. Either she’d given him the slip, or he never followed—either way, she couldn't be sure that dealing with the two men in her house would go as easy.
I got lucky with Gumbo…he didn't know I had a knife… She looked around. Now? It's dark, I'm wounded…and I have two shots left.
She peered around the corner to get a lay of the land on the other side of the door, exposing only enough of her head as necessary. One bruised hand flew to her mouth, and she sagged against the wall, trying desperately to see through the tears that flooded down her face.
Her home, everything she had in this world, lay destroyed before her eyes. Instead of looking at the wall next to the staircase leading up to the bedrooms, she peered through a gaping hole.
The whole back half of her house was gone. The kitchen, the living room, the back porch, and the deck Jay had built for her over the previous summer—all of it had been reduced to charred timbers and broken bricks.
A cold wind drifted through, sending invasive gray smoke curling inside the house. She stared at the clouds, slowly moving in that pregnant sky through the open half of her house. The scene was so alien, so bizarre, Kate held her hands up to block the view and turned her head.
I can't deal with this.
The voices returned, closer. "…think we can use any of this?"
"I don't know what to think anymore…"
Kate froze. The voices were back and they pulled her out of her misery like a bucket of cold water to the face. As she listened to the whispered conversation, anger coursed heat through her veins. They had invaded her house, done who knows what with her husband and now sat around talking about staying at her home. While she, the owner, stood on the front porch in the moonlight, afraid to move.
Bullshit. This is my home. I’m taking it back.
Kate poked her head around the doorframe again and took a longer look.
Oddly enough, what she could see of the front room seemed relatively undamaged. She stared in shock at the pictures of her and Leah still hanging from the far wall as if nothing happened.
The longer she looked, the more hope bloomed in her soul. It was time to move. Standing on the front porch, she felt awfully exposed, though if she'd seen old Mrs. Peabody across the street, she might have run over and hugged the old bag.
Kate gripped her knife in her left hand and Gumbo's revolver in the right and picked her way around to the side of the house. The voices had come from the front room, or maybe the top of the stairs—she needed to see what was left of the house before she could make a plan of attack.
She paused at the corner of the garage and peered through the smoke at Mac's house. Maybe she could slip over there and find a spot to hole up until dark, then come back and exact her vengeance…
First things first. What am I dealing with here?
Kate slipped around the corner and stared into the open maw of what used to be her garage. The whole back half of the structure was gone, reduced to rubble where Jay's car used to live. The inner door had been charred to a crispy, bubbly black, but remained closed. Her side remained empty—the Toyota Highlander she drove waited for her at Bloomington Regional Airport where she’d left it over a week ago.
Kate stepped into what shelter the half-garage could offer and relaxed for a moment. A thought struck her like a bolt of lightning as she poked around—maybe Jay had been trapped at work?
She sat down on a pile of debris in the far corner and dried her tears. Staring at the gun shaking in her hand, anger flared to life and her chest tightened.
I'm not giving up—he could be at the library. Maybe he never came home that day? Maybe he went to get Leah…
Hope fueled a new strength through her limbs. Kate took a deep breath and slowed her breathing. Her mission was over, she'd made it home alive. Now she had a new mission. She had to find Jay.
Kate lurched to her feet again, ignoring the nagging thought in the back of her mind that she needed to find out what happened to Leah as well. Though it made her heart ache, she closed the door on that line of thinking—she wasn't in any condition to make it to Indiana.
Yet.
For now, I need more info. How many people are in my house? Are they armed? Are they wounded? What other weapons can I find?
Kate rummaged through the debris in the garage and discovered Jay's tools. The rack he maintained over the workbench at the far wall had partially melted and dropped hundreds of dollars in tools all over the floor.
Not knowing what she might need on top of a gun and a large knife, Kate grabbed the biggest, heaviest wrench she could find and tucked it in her belt. The tool tugged on her pants and forced her to cinch her belt two more notches.
Damn…who knew it only took the end of the world to finally help me lose that last bit around my waist.
Muffled voices from the other side of the wall forced her to retreat. She couldn't be sure, but it sounded like they were searching the house—she heard one call out and another reply, almost right on the other side of the wall where her kitchen used to be.
Shit…gotta move!
Kate scurried through the wreckage and slipped around the corner of the garage into the backyard. As she pressed herself against the partial wall, she heard a horrendous creak as the inner garage door opened.
That was too close.
“How much longer we gonna have to wait?"
"As long as it takes. You think he’s going to skip town?"
"And leave all this shit? Hell no. He’s got kids to worry about now, remember? That’s what she said."
The wind shifted, cutting off the second man's reply as they milled about the doorway.
Who the fuck are these jokers? Kate frowned. They didn't sound like the escaped prisoners or bikers she pictured when she thought of post-apocalyptic looters and pillagers.
Ultimately, it didn't matter. She turned and looked across her scorched backyard—it was surreal to see surrounded by a dusting of snow at the extremities of the yard—and found the blackened cellar doors.
Kate smiled. She'd found her way in.
The smile vanished as she took her first step and broke a piece of glass with a loud snap. She froze.
"What was that?"
"I heard it too," hissed the second voice.
“Shit, there’s somebody out there! Get ‘em!”
Kate ran.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER 12
JAY STARED AT THE steps leading up and out of Mac’s basement. They’d made it back safely from the library and found no one waiting in ambush. The neighborhood lay still as a grave—that alone unnerved Jay more than he’d like to admit. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he paced, unable to calm down.
“Something’s wrong,” he muttered.
“What, Dad? There’s no one here—isn’t that what we wanted?” asked Leah. “There’s a ton of stuff no one took…”
“No…it’s been too long,” Jay whispered. “The boys should be back by now. How long does it take to grab some boxes or bags?”
“Well, I offered to go but you wouldn’t let me.”
Jay waved off his daughter. “No, it’s not that. It’s been…” He checked his watch, wondering how long it would be before the battery died. Then what would he do? Steal a new watch off a corpse? “It’s been almost twenty minutes.”
“Want me to go check on them?” Leah murmured in the dark confines of the basement.
Jay chewed the inside of his cheek. “No. I don’t want you out of my sight. We’ll go together. Just grab a few things—whatever you can carry. I’ll grab…”
He looked down at the pile of survival gear they’d pulled free from the storage lockers hidden under Mac’s house. It took them almost half an hour of quiet digging, but they’d managed to clear enough rubble to expose the basement door. Most of the basement ceiling had collapsed in the fire, but the bookcase had been unharmed. When Jay pulled it aside, he found out why—the books were fake; metal blocks painted to pass as real books from a distance. Behind the panel of “books,” Jay and the kids found several totes of supplies and emergency rations, a backpack labeled “RADIO” and a hard case he thought held a rifle but turned out to be a longbow.
“I’ll take the bow.” He picked up the bow case, loaded the radio bag over his shoulder and grabbed three quivers full of orange and brown arrows.
“I can carry two totes of this freeze dried food, but that’s about it,” Leah advised.
Jay moved through the rubble toward the stairs. “That’s fine. We can come back with the boys for the rest. Let’s get up there—I feel like I’m trapped down here.”
They had only gotten halfway up the stairs when Hunter and Thom scrambled into view, sending down a cascade of charcoal, burnt floor tiles, and bits of Mac’s house.
“Watch it!” hissed Jay, throwing his arms out for balance and to keep the shower of debris from hitting Leah in the face.
“Sorry, dude!” replied Hunter as Thom pulled him back out of the way.
“Mr. C.!”
“Thom,” Jay said, spitting drywall dust from his mouth. “I have told you before to call me Jay.”
Thom swallowed. “There’s someone in your house.”
“More than one, and they were like, in the garage,” added Hunter. “We heard a noise.”
“Could it be the dogs?” asked Jay. Please let it be the dogs.
“I don’t think so,” mused Thom as he took the bow case from Jay. “I saw someone—a shadow, really. But they were bending over a bunch of tools on the floor in the garage. That’s why we took so long getting back,” Thom said.
“Yeah, we didn’t want anyone to see us,” added Hunter.
Jay paused for a moment behind a partial wall in Mac’s kitchen, peering at his own half-destroyed house. “Dammit,” he hissed. “I knew this was going too easy.”
“What do we do?” breathed Leah.
Jay watched her breath dissipate as fog, highlighted by the moon and in stark contrast to the burnt surroundings. “It’s too cold to screw around. We need to get this gear into the car and go. I’ll check it out.”
“What if there’s more of them?” asked Thom.
“Then I’ll use the shotgun.”
“Dad?”
“Leah, you and the boys take this stuff back to the car,” Jay ordered, handing the quivers and radio bag to Hunter.
“But, Dad—”
“No buts! Thom, give me the gun. When you guys are ready, flash the lights. I’ll meet you at the car and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“And if there really is someone in there?” asked Thom.
Jay balanced the shotgun’s heft between his two injured hands. “Then you’ll hear me fire this thing and drive away." He turned to Leah. "You take them to Mac’s place. Do you understand? Just like we talked.”
“Dad…”
“We went through this already, priya. I need you to do this. I need you to be strong.”
It took a long moment, but Leah finally nodded. “I don’t want to be strong any more…” she whispered.
“Leah,” Jay said, cupping his daughter’s face in one bandaged hand. “You can do this.”
She sniffed, then nodded. “Okay. Be careful. Please.”
“Always. Now wait for me to get to the side yard before you go. If someone’s going to get shot, I want it to be me, okay?”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“I’ll protect her, Mr. C.,” Thom said.
“Thank you,” Jay muttered.
“And I’ll protect him,” Hunter added.
Jay moved out into the night with a grin on his face as the two boys bickered in whispers. His feet made far too much noise as he crunched his way across the frozen, snow-crusted grass but there wasn't anything he could do about that. He held the shotgun at his shoulder, hoping to find no one in the garage.
“Who’s there?” he called out. “I’m armed and I don’t want to shoot you, but this is my house. You need to leave.”
He heard a car door open behind him in the driveway and a little pressure faded from his chest. The kids had reached the car. Another thirty seconds or so and they’d be ready to leave. He turned back to the garage and spotted his automotive tools glittering in the moonlight. A set of small footprints trailed out the open garage door, around the house to the back yard.
Shit, Jay thought. None of the kids came out this way…
A light snapped on, blinding Jay in the darkness. “That’s far enough,” a rough voice said.
“Jay?”
Jay froze. “Kate?” he croaked, one hand covering his eyes.
“Jay! They’ve got—” A loud smack silenced his wife.
Jay rushed forward, tripping over something on the ground. “Kate!” he screamed, blinking the stars from his vision.
“He said stop!” roared a familiar voice.
Jay stopped, peering into his garage, squinting at the light. Whoever held the flashlight let it drop a little, and he spotted four figures—two larger ones struggling with a smaller one in the middle and a fourth, shorter one holding the flashlight.
“Maria?” asked Jay.
“Dammit, keep the light pointed at him,” snapped the man who’d ordered him to stop.
“I’m sorry,” Maria whined, adjusting the light to shine in Jay’s eyes again. “He won’t hold still…”
A light turned on over Jay’s shoulder, illuminating the garage. He saw Kate, bloodied and bruised, in little more than rags with both arms held behind her back by a man he vaguely recognized as living on the other side of the neighborhood. Next to him, holding a large knife to her throat, stood José Cortegera. Maria held the flashlight with a mixture of anger and surprise on her face.
“Kate!” gasped Leah.
Jay turned to see all the kids standing behind him. He hadn’t even heard them get out of the car. “No, no—get back to the car!”
“Don’t worry, dude, it’s locked,” said Hunter, grim-faced and holding the keys up in one grimy hand.
“I’m so sorry to do this,” José said. He adjusted the knife so it didn’t rest on Kate’s neck but hovered just half an inch over her exposed skin.
Jay blinked. He’d finally accepted that his wife was dead and here she was, right before him. His heart raced, threatening to tear itself free from his chest. His hands tightened on the shotgun as his eyes flicked from Maria to José. This
isn’t happening.
“Why?” he sputtered.
“Jay…” Kate muttered. A line of red trickled down her face. She tried to smile, but he could tell it hurt—her nose looked broken.
“Oh God,” he said, taking a half step. “Kate…what…”
“I made it home, honey…” She spat a glob of bloody mucus on the ground.
“Stop squirming, bitch,” grunted the man holding her.
“Hey!” Jay snapped.
“Jay, just hand over the keys to that truck.”
Jay turned his wrath on José. “Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sorry, Jay. I really am. But Esteban is sick, you know? I got to take care of my family.” His face hardened. “Hand over the keys and I won’t hurt her.”
Jay’s mind reeled, conflicted and torn between an animal urge to defend the woman he loved and his mother’s teachings on peace, avoiding conflict, respect for all living things, and above all, forgiveness. All his life, Jay adhered to those principles and they had served him well. He’d had his run-ins with people who couldn’t see past his skin color—those who’d given him and Monica trouble when they’d married and again with Kate—but they’d been few and far between. Yet those heated arguments and embarrassing comments were still there, just like the bigots who spewed them, harassing and instigating, goading him into action his very nature rejected.
Now that the world had come to a crashing halt, everything had changed and yet Jay had stubbornly clung to his beliefs, his very essence. In one heartbeat, he realized that had gotten him absolutely nowhere and delivered him nothing but grief.
He’ been taken advantage of, robbed at gunpoint, his house looted and burned, his beloved library ransacked…
And now José and Maria had turned on him. People he had once counted as friends and those to whom he would have trusted his child's life in an emergency, now stood before him, a knife at his wife’s throat.
Jay raised the shotgun to his shoulder. The internal conflict was over.
Maria gasped. The kids shouted, the man holding Kate smirked. José raised his free hand in front of him. “Jay, stop! I mean it, I’ll cut her! I don’t want to, but I will.”
Solar Storm: Season 1 [Aftermath Episodes 1-5] Page 41
