by Aman Gupta
“Ouch,” said Joey, when it happened to him.
But nothing else happened. Emma placed her right hand on the scanner and the lights turned on. The scanner read ‘Access Granted: Walker’. The wall with the glass panel split horizontally, top half going up the ceiling and bottom one descending into the floor. They entered a room that went 20 feet deep and 30 feet wide.
The side walls had shelves with weapons, ranging from handguns to missile launchers. Emma, Joey and Eric looked at each other and smiled. In front of them was a small safe, with a thumb scan port. On top of the safe read a message, ‘Only two thumbs in the world can open it, while anything else will destroy it. The one who values the word will make it, the one who’s curious about the safe will break it.’
“Should I put my thumb?” asked Emma.
“It worked before,” said Joey.
“Too big a risk. What if it’s not the one?” said Eric. “It could be Vik’s.”
They heard a pop sound. A screen dropped from the top, to the line of sight of Emma. It played a video that had been recorded by Vik.
“Hi. If you’re seeing this, then you’ve found my room, my safe place. But don’t worry, it’s because I wanted you to find this. It’s in your DNA. I won’t tell how many others can find this, but know this, you aren’t alone even if you feel like it. Maybe I’m alive or have perished like all the others. Either, I got what I wanted or died trying. Don’t mourn my death or hate my existence. You know what they say about me. Ask me once, I’ll tell the truth. Ask me twice, I’ll say what you want to hear. I bet you’re surprised that a place like this could exist. When I created this room, I had one goal in my mind – revenge. I had to right a wrong, I had to fight a war. But I hope you can use it for something better. Don’t use this room to start another. There are more than two secrets out there. But those secrets have costs. If I haven’t told them to you, then I don’t want you to pay that, in tears or blood. If I have, I hope you choose not to pursue them. But know this, while I’ll be out digging graves including my own, I’ll hope that I never stumble upon yours.”
The video ended. The screen went back into the ceiling.
“Did he tell you about this place?” asked Eric.
“Yeah, I think so. He was joking basically, but I guess he wasn’t,” said Emma.
“Is that why my hand didn’t work? Because I don’t have that special DNA,” said Joey.
Emma and Eric smiled.
“What should we do?” asked Emma.
“Take some of the weapons with us. Let’s leave the safe here. He’s not dead yet,” said Eric.
“What about the stuff that those guys want? I say we give them the safe, let them figure it out,” said Joey.
“Vik hid this for a reason. Maybe he didn’t want anyone to open it, we don’t know what they’re looking for,” said Eric.
“Yeah, at least now we can defend ourselves and maybe even push back,” said Emma.
In five round trips, they took almost 70% of the weapons with them, to make a stand. Emma closed the panel, put the shelves back and bolted the closet.
Eric decided to enlist the help of town’s citizens for the defense. Emma and Joey went door to door and asked everyone to spread the word about a gathering at 8 PM at the town square. The residents informed them of retaliation by armed mercenaries if they broke the virtual curfew but they convinced them to attend for the sake of their children’s future.
At 7:55 PM, not one soul had showed up. Eric and the team were losing confidence every time the clock ticked at the top of the Clock Tower. They noticed few groups enter the square, mostly elderly and children. Eric knew he couldn’t enlist either one of those groups. However, as the clock struck 8:05, they saw influx of residents enter the square, one of them led by Emily. As another five minutes passed, almost 5,000 people had gathered at the square and nearby rooftops.
Eric spoke, “A terrible tragedy occurred last week when our fellow community members were killed by armed men, who came out of nowhere. This town and its residents have always been peaceful. We haven’t had a murder case in the two years I’ve been in charge and that speaks a lot about us. Sure, we’ve had disagreements in the past, and we still do, with each other, but now’s the time to unite and fight. We cannot let anyone just roll over us and our families, while we sit in our homes praying for things to be fine. I’m sorry we weren’t here last time. But we’re here now. Today, I won’t ask for volunteers. I don’t want to see how many do or don’t. We have brought with us, enough rifles and handguns for thousands of us. I ask all those who can handle a weapon, please step forward and take one. Last time, they were 30. This time, they could be 300. Let’s show them what we can do. I’m not saying you will live, but because of you, your loved ones might.”
Eric looked, but no one stepped forward. A minute in the noise of silence, Emily walked forward from the crowd and grabbed a weapon from the stash kept in front of the stage where Eric and the team stood. She looked at Emma, and climbed the stage.
She said to the crowd, “All of you know me. And I know you all. I recognize your faces, your voices and your favorite dish when you eat at my place. I never refuse service to anyone who shows up at my doorstep. Even if I hate the person. But this one time, I did. And they killed 4 of my workers, my family. They’re the only family I’ve ever known for so long, but I couldn’t do anything to help them. These past days, I thought my principles got them killed. They followed those principles and didn’t let those bastards in. If they were here, they would tell you that they didn’t do anything that no one else wouldn’t. Now, I look at you, I’m glad they’re dead. No one needs to see this. I’ve never trusted the Sheriff and his boys and girls. But a friend once told me that if I ever need someone to die for me, I should look no further than this man standing next to me. Tomorrow, when I go and face those butchers, I’ll be glad that I’ve someone like him and his team watching my back. Go lock yourself in your homes. Hope the walls save you when the bombs drop tomorrow.”
The crowd came alive. They vowed to obey with alacrity. Hundreds of them stepped forward and claimed the weapons.
Eric came up to Emily, with Emma and Joey, and said, “Thanks.”
“Yeah. I was running out of stories,” said Emily, almost smiling looking back at Eric.
“You mean no employee of yours died?” asked Joey, looking confused.
“Not that part,” said Emily, and walked away to join the crowd.
Joey called Emily a weirdo. But Eric pointed out that their purpose was fulfilled. Once the buzz settled, Eric asked the residents to cover every street in the town, and choose vantage points that allowed them to cover multiple streets or locations at once. He mentioned that he and his team will be covering all the entrance and exit routes that could be taken by the mercenaries, but warned that should the defense line at the entrance fall, it would be up to the residents to ensure that the attack was held off. Joey advised all lights be turned off, so that the residents could use the dark to navigate around safely as they knew the streets better than the invaders. Emma asked Eric if they could ask Sera for his men, but Eric refused to bow down to a national crime lord.
Soon, the square was empty and dark. As Eric and his team drove to the entrance gates of Morrow Town, they saw civilians take positions at every street possible while others grabbed whatever they could find and use it as weapons. Elderly and children were asked to stay indoors in the far end of the town, for their protection. You are the future, the children were told.
The silent night passed and the dawn was upon Morrow, when a loud noise was heard coming from the town’s arterial road that connected the entrance to the square. Each side of the arterial road were buildings that had been evacuated earlier by the residents.
Eric looked up from the rooftop and saw missiles being fired by incoming choppers. He saw heavily armored vehicles with mounted guns rushing towards the entrance gate. Eric ordered everyone to barricade the door with cars. Within 30 seconds, they
lined up 10 cars parallel to the gate. Joey fired two missiles at the choppers, hitting one of them. The chopper came crashing down, but the other circled back towards Joey. Emma was helping with the reload. Joey asked Emma to hurry as the chopper was within the striking distance. Just when the chopper got close, Eric gave them covering fire with his heavily modified machine gun, while the other officers and citizen soldiers fired at the mercenaries outside the gate. With the time bought by Eric, Joey successfully managed to blast away the second chopper which crashed into a nearby building. Joey rejoiced, while Emma hugged him.
Eric ran back towards the entrance, jumping on rooftops to get a better line of sight at the stopped armored vehicles. The mercenaries started firing their high caliber weapons, which began damaging the iconic gate of Morrow. Hearing the sounds, Emma ran back while Joey stayed put with a loaded missile launcher.
The mercenaries threw grenades, injuring several citizens posted near the entrance gate. But they were unable to breach due to preventive line of defense set up by Eric and his team. The other officers made sure that they took out the mercenaries, one column at a time.
A man stepped out of the armored vehicle. He raised his right hand, which led to cease fire from his men. He asked to speak with the sheriff. Eric had reached the structure above the gate, and asked the man to stop moving forward.
The man stopped and introduced himself as Anton.
“What do you want?” asked Eric.
“Something that belongs to me,” said Anton.
“What’s that?” asked Eric.
“If you have to ask, you don’t know about it,” said Anton.
“Turn back, or we’ll blow you all to hell,” said Eric.
Anton smiled and then started laughing hysterically.
“What’s so funny?” asked Eric.
Anton raised his left hand. Eric saw a fighter jet coming from afar and zoomed past him. As Eric turned, he saw the jet drop three containers, which detonated on impact. A huge fire ball engulfed the entire region and destroyed a radius of 4 square miles. Napalm, Eric thought. He looked back at Anton and pointed his machine gun at him.
“Go ahead, shoot me. And we’ll drop a thousand more of these before I hit the ground,” said Anton. He started moving forward.
Eric told him to stop moving but Anton didn’t stop. Within a minute, he was only 10 feet from the gate.
“You let us enter, we don’t hurt anyone, we find what we are looking for, and we leave. You try to stop us, you run out of ammo, we butcher you all, we find what we are looking for and we leave. You choose,” said Anton.
Eric looked around to see several civilians dead from the bullets fired by the mercenaries earlier, while others breathing heavily looking back at Eric.
After a minute of thinking, Eric relented and asked his men to open the gates. It was 6 AM yet it felt like it was the darkest day ever observed by the people of Morrow. As Anton stepped forward, Eric shouted that he changed his mind. Anton ran back as his army opened fire, while Eric and his soldiers retaliated back.
Anton radioed the jet to fire again. The jet entered the Morrow Airspace again, but was destroyed by the missile launcher fired by Joey. Emma took the opposite end from Eric and used their second machine gun to inflict more damage. She started firing at Anton’s vehicle forcing it to retreat and go out of range. Furious, Anton asked his men to blast the door. They rushed their vehicles towards the door but the door didn’t open due to the robust barricade of cars.
Anton’s army again started throwing grenades over the door. Eric shouted at his men to take cover as the grenades exploded. One of the grenades caused a nearby structure to fall, trapping four civilian soldiers. Almost running out of ammo, Eric had started to give in to the raid, when he heard loud noises coming from inside the town. The armed people of the town were rushing through the streets onto the arterial road, with full force.
“Don’t stop. Fire!” Emma shouted to her counterparts who were at the entrance.
Anton fired a missile, through his personal launcher, at the gate which caused the death of his own men but blew open the gate. Rest of his army rushed towards the entrance into the huge ball of dust and smoke. He heard lots of bullets being fired as slowly but steadily, his entire army went into the black hole. When the fire and the dust settled, Anton was shocked to see that all of his people had died. There were countless bodies, hundreds of his men, thousands of the citizens, but he didn’t have any army left. He took out a machine gun and started firing but he wasn’t in range. Furious, he kicked the tire of his vehicle. Thousands of citizen soldiers led by Eric, Emma and Joey ran towards him with their weapons drawn. Anton got in his vehicle and drove out of there.
“Yeah!” roared the crowd.
Within the hour, they all went back inside. Eric asked them to weld the door and add more resistance against high-caliber weapons. When Emma asked, he told her of his intuition of further attacks. The part of the town that blew up was cordoned off from public reach, while they looked for dead bodies. After a survey of the damage in the town and instructing others to bury the dead, they rushed to the police station and again went inside the crawl space to grab rest of the weapons. Joey noticed Emma was distraught ever since they surveyed the town.
“He told us not to start a war with these weapons,” said Joey.
“We’re not starting one. We are ending one,” said Eric.
“We ended one and started another,” said Emma. “He caused this.”
“Who?” asked Joey.
“Vik. With his games and revenge,” said Emma.
She continued, “He allowed Anthony Arnold to set up his roots in this town and everyone else paid for it. How casually he kept these weapons, without understanding the consequences of the war he will start when he’ll use these. If not in Morrow, then somewhere else. Maybe he understood, and just didn’t care. All because he could take revenge from the people responsible for death of his wife and daughter. Here I was, in love with a man willing to destroy countless families just because he couldn’t save his. Thousands have died today, maybe thousands more tomorrow. It won’t stop till everyone is dead.”
“Are you okay?” asked Joey, with a concerned look on his face.
“Yes, I think I am. I wasn’t before, but now I’m fine,” said Emma.
She grabbed the safe and took it upstairs, along with the weapons. They didn’t even close the crawl space. It was empty.
They were joined by Officers Mortan and Trent.
“What’s the casualty?” asked Eric.
“Almost 1800 and counting,” said Mortan.
Adam came running into the station.
“He’s back,” said Adam.
“It’s 12PM. That’s too soon. Did he bring any men?” asked Eric.
“Hundreds,” said Adam.
“It’s time to end this,” said Emma, taking the safe and put it in the car. Eric and Joey followed her.
Emily came over in her car and blocked their exit. She got out of the car and pointed a rifle at them. She forced them to get out of the car with their hands raised.
“What do you want?” asked Emma.
“That safe. Hand it over. It’s not yours to trade with,” said Emily.
Eric pointed a gun at Emily, asking her to drop her weapon.
“Who do you work for?” asked Emma.
“No one. That safe now belongs to a friend,” said Emily.
“Which friend?” asked Joey.
“I’m not here to talk. Hand over the safe and walk away,” said Emily.
“No. They are searching for this, we think. We’ll trade it for our freedom,” said Emma. “Otherwise thousands more will die.”
Emma started moving to her left, away from the car, while Joey started moving towards his right.
“You hand it over to them, millions will die,” said Emily.
“You know that for sure? Because it sounds to me that you’ve been misled by someone you trust,” said Emma.
“I don’t trust anyone, least of all anyone of you,” said Emily.
Emma and Joey were now on the opposite ends with Emily in the middle. Emily moved backwards to get a better angle at both of them. But they moved with her. She asked them to stop moving, but they didn’t. The lapse in concentration allowed Eric to fire a shot at her hands, causing her to drop the weapon. Emma ran forward and kicked away the rifle. They cuffed her and asked the officers to lock her up.
All three of them drove to Morrow’s Gate. Eric asked the welders working on the gate, to open it. They drove the car outside stopping few hundred yards from Anton, who was standing outside his car.
Emma got out of the car with her hands raised, and said, “I believe you’re looking for this.”
Eric and Joey got out of the car with the safe.
“Hand it over,” said Anton.
“Restore our communication lines first,” said Eric.
Anton was seething but didn’t want to slight his employer.
He used his radio device to communicate to someone.
“It’s done,” said Anton. “Now, the safe.”
Eric placed the safe in the middle of the road, and walked away backwards towards Emma and Joey.
Anton pointed to his men to get the safe. He searched in his pocket and took out a small box. He broke the seal and opened it. The box was full of ice and had something protruding out of it, resembling a thumb. He picked the thumb from the box, and placed in the safe’s scanner. The safe unlocked. Emma, Eric and Joey looked at each other, baffled.
He took out a small transparent container from the safe. It had a blue microchip the size of a penny, inside it. He smiled and put the chip back inside the container. The men threw away the safe on the side of the road.
“Now, was this so difficult?” said Anton.
“You got what you were looking for, now leave us in peace,” said Eric.
“I was going to, but you shot down my jets, killed my men. You must pay for that,” said Anton.
