by Hunt, Jack
“You know, I never imagined my career would lead me to this,” Somers said.
“I don’t think any of us did,” Sam replied.
“What did you see last night?” Blake asked.
Somers stared out, lost in thought.
“Two of our officers were shot and killed. Guys I have worked alongside for years. People just turned and went crazy.” Somers sighed. “And the hardest part about it is that I just stood there and watched, frozen by my own fear.”
Both Sam and Blake shot him a glance.
“Like I wanted to do something but there were just too many. I drove away.”
“What?” Sam asked, trying to wrap his head around that.
Somers looked at him, embarrassment made his cheeks go red. “I know I should have stayed but… in all my years in Breckenridge I’ve never had to deal with a riot situation. Sure, we’ve had protesters but they’ve always been peaceful, and the ones that weren’t, well — you arrest a few and the rest disperse but not last night. It was like everyone lost their fucking minds. People thought we were lying to them.”
Sam replied. “Everyone is conditioned to a certain way of living. They have expectations of how things should be, what they should have, their rights and so forth. There is a false sense of security. That’s why they taught us to become comfortable in the uncomfortable because at any minute things can go tits up and you’ve got to be prepared to survive in the worst situations.”
Somers nodded and ran a hand over his face. “I just thought our town would be different.”
“Hey, look at it this way. It lasted a good ten days before it broke. It was going to happen one way or another. It was just a matter of time. Oneida, it was much faster.”
“Tell me something,” Somers asked. “You think there is hope for the country if we stop this?”
He gripped the steering wheel tight. They were driving through a canyon with high rock walls and large pine trees on either side. The landscape spread out before them as the sun rose in a deep blue sky. “Of course there is,” Sam said. “If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
They continued on for several hours, each of them lost in the regrets of days gone by. No one could change the past but what they did now would forever shape the future of not only their lives but the country as a whole.
Chapter 19
All he’d wanted was to strip away at the order Richard had established. Make him suffer for what he’d stolen from him — his livelihood, his reputation, and his home. Had the evening gone as planned, no harm would have come to him or his family but that was before his brother was hurt, and two of his friends killed.
Hours passed before they felt it was safe to enter.
After storming the house, and tearing it apart searching for Carl’s shooter, he’d found the bloody handprint on the attic window, and several prints on the drainage pipe. Although he couldn’t be sure they’d gone to the hospital, Carl needed medical attention so they opted to kill two birds with one stone and find out if anyone had arrived with a wound to the hand.
Leaving their weapons with Paul in the truck, Howard entered the hospital with Carl’s arm draped over his shoulder. The four cops on the door had briefly questioned him but he said they’d been attacked in Breckenridge in a riot. And because they weren’t packing heat, and Carl kept drifting in and out of consciousness, they let them in.
As soon as the doctors took over and wheeled him away, Howard and two of his men approached the front desk.
“Do you know what room they’ll place him in?” Howard asked.
The nursed replied, “We should have an update for you shortly. If you want to take a seat over there I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“All right. Hey by the way, we had a neighbor of ours get shot in the hand. They’re from Breckenridge. We were told they came here. Do you know what room they’re in?”
“What’s the full name?”
He turned to the other two and acted like he couldn’t recall.
“I’m sorry. With my brother’s injury I can’t remember. I believe the last name was Underwood.”
She tapped a name into the computer and shook her head.
“Right. Um. Hold on a second,” she said getting up and going over to one of her co-workers. It was a nurse. She turned and glanced at them and walked back.
“Sir, you don’t know their full name?”
“I’m really sorry. It’s on the tip of my tongue but… I only know the last name is either Underwood or Wade.”
“Just give me a second.”
She looked down at her computer and tapped a few keys. “We did receive in someone three hours ago. Anna Wade?”
He pulled a face and tapped the counter. “Anna. That’s it. Damn, I would lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on,” he said.
The nurse chuckled. “Don’t worry. Trust me, with everything that has happened over the past two weeks, I’m not exactly functioning at 100 percent either. Anyway, she’s on the second floor, room 32. Would you like me to call up?”
“Ah no, we’ll surprise her.”
The ginger-haired lady nodded. “Did you say you were her neighbor?”
“Yeah, good friends with her grandfather.”
“Okay, well, visiting hours are between eight and eight so if you want to go up, you can.”
“I appreciate that, thanks,” he said before turning to Liam and Jacob. “Jacob, tell Paul to bring the truck around to the emergency exit on the west side of the building. I think it’s time we pay Anna a little visit.”
“What about the cops?” Jacob asked.
Howard ran a hand around his neck. “Right, well let’s handle them first.”
Anna rolled her newly bandaged hand over. “They said I would need to stay so they can do surgery on the hand. They want to remove pieces of bone that are shattered. At least they gave me some serious pain medication.”
“Happy juice?” Chase asked. “I could use some of that right about now. It’s crazy out in the halls. People are coming in with all manner of injuries. I overheard two people talking about a riot in Frisco. I’m telling you, Anna. Things are getting out of control. After we get out of here I think we should find your old man and see about leaving Breckenridge and heading to California.”
“It’s won’t be any better there. It’ll probably be worse,” she said.
Chase ran a hand over his face and got up and went over to the window. He looked out and stared at the smoke spreading across the horizon. There was more than before. Even though the hospital was operating, he had to wonder how long it would last before tempers flared and people started lashing out at each other. He’d already seen two people having an argument with a nurse about not receiving treatment for close to seven hours. His mind drifted to his father and he wondered what he’d be doing now. If there were anyone who might have been able to weather an event like this, it would have been him. As he stared down into the parking lot, a stream of vehicles arrived, and people were being carried in with wounds to their faces.
“Holy crap. It’s like a war zone out there,” Chase said.
“I hope my father’s okay.”
“Yeah. I hope no one finds that rifle and handgun,” he said.
“You buried them under those leaves. Relax,” Anna said reaching over to get a glass of water. As Chase scanned the parking lot, he squinted as his eyes focused in on a truck that pulled up near the four police officers. One of the officers stepped up to the passenger side and said something and then pointed to what looked like bullet holes in the windshield.
It wasn’t like it was an abnormal sight.
There were multiple vehicles in the parking lot that were peppered with holes.
But it wasn’t that which caught his attention, it was the winch on the front. He thought back to the house and tried to remember what the color of the truck was. It was so dark last night but he was sure it had a sandy camouflaged appearance; similar to the one he was seeing now.<
br />
“Anna.”
“Yeah?”
He stepped back for a second and observed the interaction with the cop. The truck driver slowly drove off and the officer returned to the group of cops who were milling near two cruisers. He breathed a sigh of relief thinking that he was becoming paranoid. It wasn’t them. No. It couldn’t be.
“Ah it’s okay,” he said. Chase was about to turn when the same truck reappeared tearing in from the west side and going at a high rate of speed directly at the cops.
The cops turned and two of them managed to leap out of the way, the other two weren’t as fortunate. The truck hit them full speed, plowing them down. The other two officers went to open fire when three men walked into view behind them and opened fire. The cops’ bodies flailed before dropping.
Chase’s voice caught in his throat.
“Annnnna!”
He turned and grabbed her by her good hand and pulled her up out of bed. “Get up. Get up. We need to go. It’s them…”
She tugged her arm away, and scowled. “What the hell are you on about?”
He pointed to the window and she crossed the room and looked out. Her jaw went slack. Suddenly, the faint staccato of gunfire could be heard down below followed by screams.
Anna was slipping into her sneakers while Chase kept an eye on the door. They were on the second level close to the east side of the building. Holding the door slightly ajar he glanced down the corridor and saw people exiting rooms, looking confused and distressed. There were two stairwells in the building and an elevator.
“Shit. I knew I should have brought that handgun,” Chase said.
Both weapons were a good distance from the hospital. He’d buried them just inside the tree line in a spot he’d remember for when they got out. “Speed it up, Anna.”
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
“Forget the damn shoes.”
She was struggling to get the second shoe on when he grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the room. They pushed forward through several patients who were heading the opposite way and were moving towards the east stairwell when a tall guy with a thick beard, armed with an AR-15, emerged from the stairwell. A family member of a patient lunged at him to try and wrestle the gun away. It was the worst thing he could have done. Two rounds and the brave individual slumped to the ground reeling in pain and gripping his stomach. The bearded guy stepped over him, only stopping for a second to put one more round in his head. Screams ensued, and the corridor filled up with people sprinting for the west side. Bullets whizzed overhead as people got in his way. Chase dragged Anna into the nearest room and closed the door. His heart was slamming against his chest, and his mind spinning out of control.
He hurried over to the window and looked out. They were too far up to jump. They would break their legs if they dropped and there was nowhere else to go.
“Shit. Shit. Think!” he said slapping his head a few times as if that would in some way clear the brain fog.
Anna was clutching her wrist and crouched down against the wall.
Chase sprinted over to the door and pulled it back ever so slightly. There were now two gunmen either side. A doctor tried to stop one of them and the other gunman unloaded a round from his shotgun blowing him back.
He closed the door. There was no lock to hold them back.
All they could do was wait and hope they didn’t enter.
More gunfire erupted.
The only sound came from the generator, and the air pumping through the vents. Mia and Lieutenant Douglas stood on the metal grated bridge that separated the eight-ton blast door from the next. Strangely enough, Douglas had taken her outburst in stride. Whether it was because he’d encountered his fair share of feisty women or was too stressed out by their situation, he didn’t dwell on her attacking him.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Do we have any other choice?”
“You’re asking me, after last night?”
“Mia, listen, I get it, you were trying to save your ass. I was just doing the same. I thought we had enough food and because they kept turning the air on and off I assumed they were playing head games.”
She looked back at the second blast door.
“It’s a gamble. We have a fifty-fifty chance they’re on the other side.” Mia exhaled hard. “They might be expecting us to come out of the escape hatch in which case they’d be topside but there still could be someone out there.”
Mia walked back into the capsule and looked around. She unlocked the strap that held in their heavy aluminum coffee urn and took it out and handed it to Douglas. “Here, take this.”
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She didn’t answer him but turned and went across the capsule to scoop up the arm-sized shovel. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll open the blast door and if they’re on the other side, well, at least we tried.”
Douglas stared down at the urn.
“You want me to make them coffee?”
She rolled her eyes not even wanting to answer that.
“Mia.”
“Don’t try to convince me not to open it. I’m doing it.”
“I wasn’t. I just wanted to apologize.”
“For?”
“Everything.”
“Shouldn’t it be me apologizing?”
“In theory, yes. However, you probably wouldn’t have lashed out had I listened to you or checked the damn food storage.”
“You know, Douglas, you confuse the hell out of me.”
With that said she went back out of the capsule and began the process of opening the final blast door. Her pulse sped up. She knew there was a very good chance of them being out there but that was a risk they had to take. Food they could last a long time without but water — nope.
“You ready?” she asked.
Douglas nodded, holding the heavy coffee urn.
The machinery clunked into place as the door unlocked and she pushed it open.
No sooner had she got it a few inches apart than the barrel of a gun pushed through the open gap. Mia froze but Douglas didn’t. Out of sight, off to her right, he brought the urn down hard and fast on the tip of the gun. It erupted as a round fired, and the bullet ricocheted off the thick steel.
Mia charged forward without a thought to what lay beyond the door.
It all happened within a matter of seconds.
The barrel going down, the round firing and her assault on the gunman.
“Douglas!” she yelled as she battered the man over the head with such speed and fury he didn’t know what hit him. By the time he dropped, his face was covered in blood. Both of them landed on the man and looked around to see they were alone. It was just him down there.
Mia staggered to her feet, taking the rifle from the dead man.
Panting hard, she cleared the generator room and then looked at the elevator. While they were relieved to have made it out in one piece, it wasn’t over yet. They still had the topside to deal with and if her gut instinct wasn’t wrong, there were more of them up there. How many? That was to be seen.
One thing was for sure, she wasn’t dying here. Not today. Not without taking as many of them with her as she could.
“If we can get up there, we can use the security phone to raise the alert,” Douglas said peering up the elevator shaft then back at her.
She nodded. “I think I have a better idea.”
Mason’s eyes widened as he saw people streaming out of the hospital, some covered in blood. Several vehicles tore past him in a hurry. It was only when he got closer could he see the fallen officers. He slammed on the brakes and got out.
“Stay here,” he said as he retrieved the M4 from the back of the trunk.
“I’m not staying,” Amanda said. “I’m coming with you.”
“Suit yourself but if you hesitate…”
“I know,” she said.
Mason had shown her how to use a gun five days earlier. Out
of their entire group Amanda had been the most gun shy but after all they’d experienced on the journey to Breckenridge she’d soon changed her tune. He’d taken her through some of the basics, helped her to understand that as long as she used it correctly and always treated it as though it was loaded, she’d be fine. Skill came through time, constant use and regular training and if the power grid remained down she’d have plenty of opportunity.
Chapter 20
Sam observed the unassuming missile alert facility through high-powered binoculars. It was out in the middle of nowhere — nothing but flat plains for miles. Besides the barbed wire fencing and several armored vehicles there really wasn’t anything about the building that would have indicated that it was owned by the military. The main living quarters for security was a one-story clapboard structure with brown shingles. It had taken the better part of four hours to reach their destination.
“You sure this is it?” he asked.
“It’s the closest one. There are only three active Minuteman III squadrons commanded by the 90th Operations Group. This one, Malmstrom in Montana and Minot in North Dakota.”
“Not exactly well protected, is it?”
“The Launch Control Center is underground, it’s staffed by two officers, and a six-man security team. Additional backup is only a radio call away. I’d say that’s well protected under normal circumstances.”
“Yeah. Normal. And how many of these assholes did you say there were?”
“Roughly ten? At least that’s what I can remember.”
“You don’t sound very sure,” Sam said lowering the binoculars and looking at him.
“Sorry, I was slightly incapacitated after having endured days of torture. I was disoriented.” He gritted his teeth.
