Kate slowly got up to her feet, hardly daring to breathe, and psyched herself up for what had to be done. And then she charged him.
11
There were bulletproof Humvees parked in defensive formations and concrete barricades that had been erected, most of them on the bridge or near it. Army troops huddled behind the barricades with machine guns and RPGs, firing furiously at other troops and police officers, who were returning fire from behind the cover of the many abandoned vehicles littering the broad street. Other police officers and army troops had taken shelter in nearby buildings entrances and were firing from these positions. The thunder of all this mass gunfire was deafening, and it was loud that it felt as if it was drilling right through Jack’s brain and pulverizing his bones from within.
He dropped to the ground just as a spurt of stray machine gun bullets peppered the wall above him, raining broken pieces of concrete and masonry dust down on his back and head. He could hardly believe what he was seeing; it seemed as if the US Army were fighting against itself and the police. The only thing he could think of was that some sort of attempted coup was taking place. That didn’t matter right now, though—what did matter was getting as far as possible from the battle and finding another way to get across the river to his apartment.
A sharp blade of worry stabbed through Jack’s core; were Kate and Susan okay? Had Kate managed to pick up Susan from dance class and get her back over the bridge before all this chaos had broken out? He could only hope so and pray that they weren’t stuck, like he was, on this side of the river, where all the madness was.
Jack was about to scramble back around the corner he’d just come from when one of the troops on the bridge fired an RPG at a group of police officers who were firing at them from behind a large truck around twenty yards from him. The rocket hit the truck, and the resulting explosion blew up the vehicle and sent the remains tumbling in Jack’s direction. The force of the blast ripped one of the wheels off the truck and sent it bouncing straight at Jack, and he had to run forward to avoid being hit by the heavy, fast-moving projectile. To avoid now being caught right out in the open and being hit by the many stray bullets, he had to sprint across a section of the open road and dive down behind the cover of an abandoned sedan.
His short burst of speed inadvertently took him deeper into the battle zone, and there was no easy escape now. With his heart thundering like a jackhammer in his chest, he pressed his body flat on the ground, keeping himself behind one of the vehicle’s wheels. Just when he thought his heart rate couldn’t get any more frantic, a burst of stray bullets riddled the sedan, bursting through its windows and showering him with chunks of shattered glass.
To make matters worse, reinforcement police troops—these ones dressed in full SWAT gear and carrying M-16 rifles—came barreling around the same corner Jack had just come from, deploying into defensive positions behind cars and other makeshift shelters to join the battle. Jack was now pinned down between the two opposing forces, and bullets were flying over his head from both sides.
Doing his best to stay calm and keeping his body pressed as low and flat as possible, he scanned what he could of his surroundings, trying to find some sort of exit. A few alleys and side streets were leading off this main street, but on every street corner, cops and soldiers were shooting at the army troops, and bullets were relentlessly hammering all of the buildings around these streets and alleys. Jack decided that it would be too risky to attempt to run to one of these exits, and not just because he would be running across a few dozen yards of open ground while bullets were flying in all directions. He knew that most of the men who were fighting, and that went for both sides, had likely only seen minor combat before, and certainly nothing like this. Their emotions would be running high, and if he got up and ran, there was a significant chance that one of them would think him to be an enemy and target him.
No, he couldn’t risk attempting to run, or even crawl across open ground to get to an alley or side street. There had to be another way.
He also knew that he couldn’t simply sit and wait this out; there was no telling how long it would last or which way it would swing. The longer Jack stayed there, the greater the odds that a stray bullet would hit him, or even worse, a rocket or grenade, became.
With a growing sense of urgency, he scanned the nearby structures. Tall buildings lined the entire length of this street, all the way from the bridge to as far back as he could see, and while most of them were office complexes, others were apartments, and many had cafés or stores on the ground level. Most of them had locked their doors at the first signs of trouble, but Jack saw that a clothing outlet nearby had had its storefront windows shattered by gunfire.
It was only two buildings ahead of him, around thirty yards away, and there were two more cars between him and the clothing store that he could use for shelter. It would be risky, and he would have to crawl through a sea of shattered glass on the ground, but it was the only logical escape path from this horrendous battle, which seemed to be growing in ferocious intensity with every passing minute.
He listened to the sounds of the firing. It was easy enough to discern between the shots coming from the soldiers on and around the bridge from those of the police, the other soldiers, and the SWAT team, just because of the differences in volume, since the men on the bridge were farther away. As for the SWAT troops right behind him, the sound was deafening whenever one of them opened fire. Jack was sure that the SWAT troops could see him and quite certain that they wouldn’t shoot at him because it was clear to them that he was a non-combatant. When they fired at the troops on the bridge, those troops would temporarily take cover before returning fire. Jack decided that his best shot at getting out of this situation without being gunned down would be to move while the SWAT troops were shooting.
He dropped his pistol into his backpack—he didn’t want anyone to see him holding a firearm now, lest he be mistaken for a combatant—and slipped the pack over his shoulders, and got up onto his hands and knees, ready to make a break for the clothing store. His pulse was racing, and adrenalin was surging through his veins. He was so focused on his target that he almost had tunnel vision.
As soon as a SWAT troop behind him opened fire, Jack darted out from behind the sedan, racing in a low crouch over to the next car, a minivan, behind which he dove as return fire erupted from the troops on the bridge. Machine-gun bullets slammed through the minivan, and Jack stared in horror at around twenty beams of sunlight shining through the vehicle just above his head and back where the bullets had gone through. Someone on the bridge had obviously considered him a target and had tried to cut him down.
He was closer to the clothing store but felt like getting to it would be even more perilous now. Another burst of machine-gun fire riddled the van, and one of the bullets burst the front tire, mere inches from Jack’s head. He couldn’t stay here for much longer. The SWAT troops behind him opened fire again, and a number of them charged forward under their comrades’ cover fire, so Jack used the opportunity to race out from behind the van, cutting in a few terrifying seconds across the completely open ground before diving behind the final car between him and the clothing store.
This time no machine-gun fire peppered the car he was hiding behind, which was parked next to the sidewalk. The return fire coming from the bridge was mostly aimed at the advancing SWAT troops. Nonetheless, Jack knew that he had to get into the store as quickly as possible; it would only be a matter of time before more bullets smashed into his current section of cover.
With bated breath, he waited until the SWAT troops again opened fire and advanced. He didn’t bother to try to crawl across the glass-strewn sidewalk; he simply jumped up and sprinted full tilt across the sidewalk before diving through the smashed-out storefront into the clothing store.
He landed on a mess of glass shards and rolled through them, feeling a hint of sharp pain as a number of them sliced through his flesh and skin, but adrenalin had taken over. He was up on his fe
et again before he even had time to really register that he’d been injured.
Jack had made it, somehow, but he wasn’t about to celebrate or slow down; all he could think of now was racing through the store to get out via the back entrance and get as far from the horrific battle as possible.
He wasn’t able to get very far, though, for when he was halfway through the store, a burst of gunfire came at him from the rear of the business, and he had to dive to the ground. On the polished floor of the store, he lay panting, fumbling in his backpack for his gun, and that was when he saw it—blood, a lot of it, on the white floor … his own blood.
12
The soldier was so caught up in his ranting that it took a second to register that he was under attack—and that single second made all the difference. He hesitated for a moment, shocked that one of these unarmed civilians would be so bold as to assault him. However, once he’d gotten past this moment of surprise, he swung his rifle in their direction to open fire, but Kate had already launched herself into the air in a desperate flying leap.
In the thick gloom, she could barely see what she was doing and didn’t have much of a target to aim for except for a vague outline of an upper body, a shadow darker than the rest. She was a small woman, but she hit him at full speed with all of her weight, and they both went down, with the soldier squeezing the trigger as he fell. Chattering thunder boomed through the space, and in the strobe-light-like flashes of the muzzle flares, Nick and Susan caught glimpses of the two bodies falling to the ground.
There was a thump as Kate and the soldier crashed down, and then the only sounds were the man’s growls and Kate’s gasps and cries as the two of them struggled for control of the weapon. As soon as the shots went off, spraying the ceiling above Nick and raining down dust on him, he sprang up and sprinted over to the two struggling bodies. He dove on top of them, his hands searching the dark, not for the gun but rather the soldier’s face.
“Mom!” Susan screamed, scrambling to her feet, with adrenalin now racing through her veins.
“Run, baby, run!” Kate screamed desperately, knowing all too well that the next burst of fire could easily kill her daughter.
Someone touched the trigger while they were grappling, and the rifle spat out a burst of fire again, and this time the short strobe-light flashes revealed a more frightening scene. The soldier now had a knife in one hand, while in the other, he still doggedly clung to his M-16. Luckily, Nick caught a glimpse of the blade and slammed a hand onto the soldier’s wrist, immobilizing his arm. But, shortly after that, a surge of terrible pain ripped through the side of his face, and a vicious, animalistic growling resounded nightmarishly in his skull. The soldier—in his brutal desperation to survive this life-or-death struggle—had just bitten into Nick’s ear.
Nick screamed as the man’s teeth began severing a chunk of his ear, but he still gripped the soldier’s arm, refusing to let the man start stabbing them. The soldier, snarling like a rabid dog, bit even deeper into the flesh, ripping off half of Nick’s ear. Nick howled in pain but swiveled his head to counterattack and gave the growling soldier a headbutt in his face.
Both of Kate’s hands were now on the rifle, and she tugged and yanked with all her might, trying to wrest it from her adversary’s grasp. She managed to get up onto her knees, still gripping the butt, and through the gloom, she was able to make out most of the soldier’s writhing form as he struggled against both her and Nick. Kate knew that to get the gun out of his hands, she had to hurt him, and so she put her weight on the weapon, repositioned herself, and then swung her right knee into his crotch as hard as she could.
Her knee connected, and the man grunted with pain but did not let go of the gun, so Kate kneed him between the legs again, and then again, driving her knee in with all the power she could muster each time. Finally, on the third strike, she managed to hit him hard enough that his grip on the stock slackened enough that she was able to rip it out of his hands.
And that was the turning point. Kate fell backward with the rifle in her hands, but recovered almost immediately, swinging it around in a mere second or two and gripping it like a seasoned professional. Kate may have been a city girl, but she had grown up in the mountains shooting, and it was something that she and Jack practiced on a weekly basis; a gun in her hands felt as natural as a pen or pencil.
“Nick, I’ve got the gun!” Kate yelled. “Get up and run!”
“I … can’t,” Nick growled. “He’s got … me in … a lock…”
The tables had turned, and although the soldier had lost his weapon, his superior combat skills and the fact that he was only fighting one opponent now meant that he had quickly gained the upper hand on Nick and had him in a lock. Nick was desperately trying to both prevent himself from being choked unconscious and getting stabbed but was slowly losing the fight on both of these counts—he could feel the blade edging steadily closer to his ribs.
“Let him go, you asshole!” Kate screamed. “I’ve got your gun, and I swear to God, I’ll blow you away with it if you don’t release him!”
“Go ahead and shoot, you crazy bitch!” the soldier snarled back. “You can’t see shit, so you’ll kill your boy as well as me!”
Kate was torn with indecision. The soldier was right; she couldn’t see what was going on, and if she fired, there was as great a chance that she’d shoot the soldier as a chance that she’d hit Nick.
The solution to her dilemma, however, came from Susan. A light flared up in the inky blackness, suddenly illuminating the space with a gentle orange glow. While Kate, Nick, and the soldier had been fighting, Susan had been desperately searching through her bag for the Zippo she always kept in it—another of her father’s suggestions—and finally, she’d found it.
“Now I can see you, you piece of shit,” Kate snarled, aiming at the soldier’s face. “And trust me when I say that over thirty years of shooting penny-sized groupings at fifty yards means that I will not miss your eyeball from this distance. Let him go now.”
The soldier’s eyes were wild in the dim light, but he could see the dangerous look in Kate’s eyes and knew that her threat was sincere. He slowly released Nick from his grip.
“Drop the knife, too,” she said. “Do it.”
The soldier reluctantly released the knife from his grasp. Nick grabbed it and made as if to scramble away from the man, but Kate shook her head. “Look on his hip, Nick, he’s probably got a pistol there.”
When Nick turned around to force the soldier to roll over, both Kate and Susan gasped with shock. The entire left side of his face and neck were dark and wet with blood, and they could plainly see that half of his left ear was missing. Nick was so charged-up on adrenalin from the fight that he hadn’t yet realized the extent of his injuries. When he forced the soldier to roll over, he saw that there was indeed a pistol holstered at his waist. He removed the weapon and then got up and stepped away from the soldier, who was growling wordlessly, like a possessed man, his face a contorted mask of pure rage and hatred.
“You fucking sheep scum are gonna regret this,” he snarled. “My boys will rip you apart.”
“Shut your ugly mouth,” Kate growled. “Nick, is there a way to lock the door?”
“The key’s upstairs,” he said, still amped from the intensity of the fight and unaware of the extent of his injury. “I’ll go get it.”
“Susan, go stand by the door,” Kate said to her daughter, never once taking her eyes off the soldier or lowering the rifle sights from his face.
She slowly backed away, moving toward the door, keeping the gun trained on him the whole time, while Susan, holding the lighter, moved cautiously toward the door. Nick ran upstairs to get the key to the door.
“Who set off the EMP and attacked the city?” Kate asked coldly. “Why have you people done this?”
An evil smile came across the soldier’s face, and a smug glint gleamed in his eyes. “We are many,” he muttered, “many more than you pitiful civilians could ever realize
. And we’re just doing what had to be done, what was long overdue.”
“Drop the bullshit and give me some straight answers,” she demanded. “Who are you people, and what the hell do you think you can possibly achieve with what’s happened? Do you realize how many innocent people are going to die because of this? Do you understand what you’ve done? And the day before a superstorm hits! You people are psychotic; you’re a bunch of cowardly mass murderers!”
“In the natural world, only the strong survive,” he said, smiling malevolently as if he were immensely proud of what he and his associates had accomplished. “But in your world—the weak and the pathetic and the sponges, the parasites—have been allowed to thrive for too long. They’ve corrupted and destroyed everything this country was supposed to stand for. We’re just restoring the natural balance.”
“You’re sick,” Kate hissed. “You’re a sick, demented murderer, and I should pull this trigger. I should. But we’re not like you, and we never will be.”
“And that’s why you’ll die in the next few days, just like all the other weak sheep,” the soldier sneered. “We’re just thinning the herd, culling those who deserve death … like you three.”
“Only God decides who deserves to die and who deserves to live,” Kate said coolly. “Not you, not me. And anyone who thinks they have the right to play God, like you so obviously do, is nothing more than a mass-murdering maniac. And what’s more, you’re wrong about us. We’re not weak. We’re not sheep. We’re going to survive … because good people, honorable people, we do survive, contrary to everything murderous cowards like you believe. We’re going to survive; I promise you that. And you and your murderer friends are going to turn on each other, just like the cannibals you are and slaughter each other like animals … and all for power. That’s why you’re doing this, not because you respect nature or the natural order. Because you, like all greedy, selfish, murderous men, are really after only one thing: power. You can deny it all you want, but it’s the truth, the cold hard truth.”
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 22 | The Coldest Night Page 6
