She just kept staring at him, tight-lipped and narrow-eyed.
“Ain’t no room for kindness or feeling sorry for these types. This is war. Plain and simple. And we’re lucky they’re not a trained army. Get that into your head.”
Josie just shook her head slowly. She turned and left without a word, and went to Alex’s room.
Chapter 10
Night had fallen over the homestead. The corpses of the slain still lay scattered across the yard, flesh and clothes still clinging to the bones not yet picked clean by the carrion birds and coyotes. There was no moon, and all lights were out in the house; no noise but an unusually strong wind.
Josie laid in bed, trying to fall asleep. She stared at the ceiling and let the darkness form shapes above her head.
She tried to shake the thoughts of who her husband had become, or was he always this way? Did the war twist him, or did it simply awaken a part of himself that neither of them knew was there? Was this the man she wanted looking after them?
As she wondered, the darkness closed in around her. If she wanted to leave, he wouldn’t let her and even if he did, she wouldn’t survive out there. Especially not with poor Alex in tow, needing medicine and being so fragile already.
She couldn’t call the police, or any of her friends or family for support; Roy was right. They were by themselves, and only had each other. A coldness swelled up inside her, and she clutched the comforter to her face and began to sob uncontrollably, crying to feel so alone. She had never felt so truly alone and helpless in her whole life.
The lowly howling wind masked the sounds of her cries.
Suddenly, a hissing sound followed by a loud pop snapped Josie out of her thoughts. The house became illuminated with a red light. Roy, who had been standing watch in the front room, swore loudly and called for her.
“Josie! JOISE! NOW!” he shouted. His voice had a frantic tone that gave her chills She leapt out of bed and sprinted to his side in the front room. She looked out the window he pointed to, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream:
There they all stood, at least 14 by her count, across the front yard, just outside the outer fence. Every one of them was armed with some kind of club or bludgeon, some had firearms, and a third of them were wearing black riot gear. The red light of the tripwire flares bounced off the clear visors and riot shields of the armored assailants. They all raised their arms and pumped the air, jeering and shouting at the top of their lungs.
Roy fired a shot from his AR-15, and one of the armored assailants went down. They all scattered, some running towards the fence, some running around the perimeter, and a wiry man lifted his hand and gave a signal. Suddenly a series of small fires hurled towards the house; Josie realized what they were as the glass bottles full of alcohol smashed against the walls and roof of the house.
Fluid and fire spilled over the boarded up windows and began licking at the fortifications. Roy recoiled with a shout of frustration as the window next to him shook, struck by a cocktail that then ignited the boards.
“Go get our daughter and make sure she’s safe, then come help me!” he barked, moving to the next window. Josie peered through the same window and saw a pair of bright headlights turn on.
A pickup truck, with some sort of battering ram on the front and a ramshackle metal box covering the bed, roared to life and kicked up a cloud of dust as its back wheels spun and hurled it around the side of the house.
“Is that old Margaret’s truck?!” Josie asked out loud, incredulous. “What happened to it? What does that mean?”
“Nothing good! Now go!” Roy responded, moving to the den. Before he could position himself, a hail of gunfire from the truck peppered the side of the house. Glass and splinters from the windows exploded inward, and Roy turned his head just in time.
He stayed crouched against the wall as the truck moved around the back of the house, the volleys of gunfire continuing to hammer the house.
Josie and Roy both ran to Alex’s room. Josie dove in and picked up her daughter and rushed back into the hallway.
Through the bedroom window, Josie could see the truck tear around the corner of the fence and shoot off up the hill into the darkness.
A moment later, the headlights turned around, the engine roared again, and the truck came charging right for the back fence. Josie ducked through the hallway and ran down the basement stairs to the bunker door.
She returned to Roy’s side just in time to see the truck plow through the first fence like it was made of toothpicks. Suddenly, all four tires exploded, tossing dirt and debris in all directions, as it rolled over the nail pallets.
The truck’s momentum carried it through the second barricade, dragging the first and second fences with it. The lengths of barbed wire coiled into the undercarriage as the truck lurched to a stop.
Roy leveled his AR-15 at the driver’s side, and was blinded as the row of fog lights and front-end high-beams turned on. He jerked his head to the side and swore out loud, putting a gloved hand over his eyes and pulling off his tactical goggles.
“Dammit!” he yelled, when the walls started shaking around them; the occupants of the truck piled out and started shooting round after round at the house.
Roy recovered his vision partially and squinted out the window just in time for a round of buckshot to punch through the glass. Roy’s face was showered in glass slivers, splinters, and steel pellets ripped through soft tissue and teeth on the right side of his face and neck.
He spun around, both hands up at his face and neck, making a shrill nonsensical shriek. His painful swearing was cut short as a rifle round zipped through the shattered window and punched him square in the back.
Roy got knocked to the ground, saved by his solid ceramic back plate, but began writhing in panic, unable to breathe from the impact of the bullet knocking the wind out of him and shattering his left shoulder blade.
Josie dropped to the floor as the barrage started, and crawled to her husband who now lay bleeding through his fingers as they grasped at his face.
“I can’t see! My eyes, I’m blind! I can’t see!” he screamed.
Josie knelt next to him and pulled his hands away from his face. His eyes were swollen shut, the right half of his face was so torn up and bloody it looked like spaghetti, and a tell-tale eyelid was hanging ominously over his right brow.
Josie clenched her teeth and stood up to start hauling him to the basement.
“Hold on, baby!” she shouted over the sound of roaring wind, whooping assailants, and gunfire. Just as she started to pull him by the straps of his tactical vest, she heard the familiar but ungodly sound of a chainsaw revving up.
The sound got closer and closer, accompanied by the heavy thud of enormous feet running towards the back door.
Moments later the door frame shuddered, and the four-foot blade of an industrial chainsaw tore through the top of the door and started dragging its way towards the floor.
Josie shrieked and kept dragging Roy through the hallway as the teeth of the saw chewed through the wooden door and the two-by-four boards holding it shut, spitting splinters into the hallway. Roy, in an enraged panic, fired his assault rifle in front of him.
The saw blade shuddered and jerked upward as the person holding it dropped it. A clicking sound from Roy’s weapon revealed that he’d emptied the magazine.
As he fumbled blindly at his vest for another one, an explosion and mortal shriek erupted from the front yard. Josie dropped Roy and ran to check the front room. The rest of the group were crossing the front yard, closing in on all sides and running towards the house.
Flames began flicking up the insides of the windows, catching the drapes and blackening the ceiling. The front rooms began filling with smoke as the sides of the house burned, and Josie coughed violently into the crook of her arm as the boards on the front windows began to get pulled off by grasping hands and gnashing teeth on filthy faces. A clinking sound bounced across the den floor and Josie instinctive
ly ducked.
A moment later she was blinded by an intense phosphorous light and a deafening explosion; one of the attackers had tossed a flash bang grenade into the den.
Josie’s ears rang. A second bright flash and dull thump of an explosion came from the back, followed by the muffled swearing and screaming of Roy.
She ran back to him and found him writhing on the ground, his ears now bleeding from the percussive force of the second flash bang; a burned out husk of the explosive lay right by his head.
She reached out and grabbed the shoulder straps of his vest again, blinking back tears from the smoke and straining to pull her muscular husband down the hall towards the basement.
A moment later, the saw blade growled back to life and started chewing its way to the floor again.
Josie looked up in time to see the door get kicked open, fall flat on top of Roy, and twist on his body as it was trampled by the silhouette of an enormous man covered head to toe in riot gear.
The words “FUCK THE” were spray painted over the “Police” logo on his black vest. He lunged towards her, straddled her with his feet.
Her scream was drowned out by the snarl of the chainsaw as the big man swung the saw over his right shoulder, but before he could swing down at her, she kicked his left knee as hard as she could.
The chainsaw stuttered as the man wielding it buckled and roared in pain, clutched at his knee and fell to the ground.
As he fell, Josie reached forward to Roy’s belt and struggled to free his Beretta 92FS. Seeing this, the man lurched forward again for his saw, or for her, but too late.
She freed the Beretta and pulled the trigger. Three shots punched into the man, the first two struck his body armor and the third found its way under his plastic riot mask and into his skull.
His head jerked back with the momentum and he slumped lifelessly against the hallway.
Josie held the pistol in one hand and continued to drag Roy to the basement. It was only twenty feet but it felt like a hundred miles.
As she pulled him, she turned to the kitchen just in time to see another attacker wiggling his way through a broken window.
She leveled the pistol and fired at him; once, twice, three times. The man flailed and flexed as the rounds struck his unprotected back, neck, and the top of his skull.
A moment later, he fell limply, hanging by the waist, halfway through the door. Brains and blood dripped in clumps onto the kitchen floor.
“Almost there baby!” she screamed, to her husband and to herself. The front rooms were now completely filled with smoke, the light from the fires illuminated the scene as the corpse in the window got pulled back outside.
Another flashbang dropped through the same window and went off in the kitchen. The front door started shaking and shuddering as someone on the other side started battering it down.
With Heraclean strength, she hauled her husband down the cellar stairs. Her efforts were made easier by the downwards descent.
As soon as she got him to the bottom, she scrambled back up the stairs and locked the basement door behind them just in time to hear the front door crash down and pairs of feet stomping into the house from the back and front doors.
“Let’s go! Take everything! Check the whole house and get everything out!” said a gruff voice with an accent she couldn’t place.
The basement door shuddered and buckled as she dragged Roy into the bunker. She ran back out with his AR-15. She had target practiced with it a few times at the range with Roy, so she knew how to use it even if her experience was limited.
She crouched at the bottom of the basement stairs, ready to make one last stand before retreating into the bunker.
The basement door came crashing off the hinges and flew down the stairs, landing a few feet beside her. From the top of the stairs, they couldn’t see her, and she waited as two pairs of feet stomped down the creeky wooden stairs.
She pulled the trigger on the assault rifle and sprayed at the lower legs of the intruders as they stumbled and jumped back up the stairs.
A second later, two smoke bombs and a flash bang grenade tumbled down into the cellar. She ducked back into the bunker and slammed the heavy metal door shut just as the explosions hit her.
She hit all the latches and ran back down the short flight of metal stairs into the body of the bunker, where the pale emergency lights that lined the floor illuminated her daughter, knelt sobbing and distraught next to her broken and still-writhing father.
Alex looked up at her mother, and Josie stayed standing, without a word, rifle slung.
“Get everything off the shelves!’ came a voice from the other side of the bunker door ‘Watch that door, anybody comes up from there, you shoot ‘em! Come on, let’s go, there’s a lot of food and ammo down here! Let’s get it out before the whole house burns down!”
Josie clenched her eyes shut and tried to breathe. The smell of smoke crept to her nose -- the smell of her home burning down, as these men stole all her years of hard work right off the shelves.
She clutched the rifle to her chest and slowly sank onto the metal staircase, biting back tears and turning her head away from her daughter. Roy moaned and coughed on the floor, bleeding from his wounds and holding his daughter’s hand.
Chapter 11
Ben gripped the polymer of his Glock, the gun felt light and plastic, a toy gun in the midst of a real battle. The men had attacked the house dove in with reckless abandon like some video gun crazy game.
He saw people go down lifeless and others wriggling around, begging for help in that deadly lawn now littered with traps and explosives. It was unwise to try and help Ben had watched detached.
So detached he still hadn’t fired a single round, so detached he didn’t even join in when the Molitovs were thrown on. He only watched as the flames licked the wooden panels and spread across the roof lapping up the house and sending thick smoke into the night sky.
Convicts were jumping about gleefully with deadly intensity in their faces as they dove into the burning husk of a building. Now that the fire had burnt itself out in places and in others raging higher the cupboards and dressers and nightstands had all been raided.
As the looters picked their way back to safety they lost their focus on the house and began comparing trinkets and squirreling away valuables.
Dom was laser-focused on the saferoom door blooming clean and undamaged out of the charcoal and ash that the family had darted into. Maybe nobody will notice, he thought, maybe now is my chance to slip away.
“Benny Boy!” Barked Dom. “Come here.”
He went to him, crumbling up his thought like a used tissue. “What I need is someone smart, someone, like you. We need in that room Ben, all the food and medicine is in there. Here’s my plan homies; me and my guns go hide, one of us goes over to them, surrenders, gets them to lower their guard. Once the time is right the inside man gives the signal and we come outta hiding and get those devils. You’re the only one Ben, counting on you.” Dom plucked the gun from Ben’s limp hands and Ben gave it up far too easily. “Go get em’ homs. Love you brother.”
Ben felt a push and he was thrust three steps towards the house, uncomfortably close the dangerous defenses. The world fell silent, all that could be heard was the blood pounding in his ears.
When he looked back, Dom and everyone else was melting into the darkness of the night. The car battery was failing and the headlights winked and flickered and dimmed weakly.
The only choice was to walk towards the smoldering house, towards the fire. He placed one foot in front of the other.
Slowly, very slowly the metal door to the safehouse came into reach and he still hadn’t been shot or blown up or impaled by spikes.
Pills’ lifeless body blocked the final passage and he had to squeeze past smearing his clothes and hands with blood. Then as if in a dream he was at the metal door and all was left was to knock.
Carefully, so as not to alarm the holdouts inside he lifted his hand and
let it fall against the metal of the door; once, twice, then his hand fell slowly to his side.
“Hello, I-I’m unarmed, alone. I just want to talk.”
Ben waited for the pain, there must be some kind of pain before getting blown sky high.
The sharp clack of the peephole sliding open in its armored shutter nearly made him wet himself. The barrel of a handgun extended out of the slot, it’s deadly chamber aimed at his head.
Fierce feminine eyes regarded him with cold judgment. A moment of laxity on the part of the woman revealed a scared little girl behind the figure of her mother, a girl who looked a lot like the sister.
Our Survival: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller (Grid Down Book 1) Page 6
