“Sure,” Nick said. “Just let me know what to do and I’ll do it.”
“This way,” she said, leading him back to the main bedroom. She opened the end closet, but this one didn’t contain any clothes. Instead, inside the closet was a large gun safe.
She opened it, and Nick gasped with surprise. “Damn, you guys like guns, huh? There are enough guns and ammo in there for a small country!”
Kate chuckled. “Jack and I grew up in a tiny town in the mountains, where guns are just part of everyday life. And as you’ve probably guessed, we’re big fans of the second amendment.”
“Are those M-16s in there?” he asked, pointing at three identical rifles.
“AR-15s,” she answered. “And we’ve got plenty of ammo for ‘em.”
“Can you put some of it in the rifle you took from that crazy soldier guy?” he asked. “I remember you saying there were only three or four rounds left in it.”
Kate shook her head. “The ammo is very similar but not perfectly identical, so not exactly interchangeable. It could be done in a pinch, but I’d rather not.”
“Can I take the M-16 then?” he asked. He still had the pistol he’d swiped from the soldier tucked into his pants but had had his eye on the rifle for a while.
“It won’t do you much good with only three rounds left in it,” she answered. “I just took it because it was better than having nothing. But we’ve got more guns than we can carry here anyway. Jack, Susan, and I will carry an AR-15 each and a sidearm. You can take a hunting rifle or a pump-action shotgun. How familiar are you with guns? Be honest now, don’t exaggerate, because lying now could result in disaster in a life or death situation.”
“I’ve shot a gun, uh, maybe a handful of times in my whole life,” Nick admitted.
“That’s okay. There’s no shame in that. Then you should take the shotgun. It’s better for beginners.” Kate showed him how to use the pump-action shotgun, but her worry about Jack’s whereabouts was growing more intense at the back of her mind. Simply keeping busy was no longer enough to keep the thoughts out of her head. Again she found her eyes wandering over to the window, and outside she saw that the weather was getting steadily worse.
“Whoa, are these … grenades?” Nick exclaimed, catching sight of a handful of items that looked rather similar to military-spec hand grenades.
Kate nodded. “They are. Jack made them; he’s very smart and talented when it comes to making things—complex items, I’m talking about—from scratch. These uh, well, they’re not technically legal, and we would have gotten into a bit of legal trouble owning these things in normal times … but these aren’t normal times we’re in now, are they? The old laws have all gone out the window, and now a much more simple and ancient law is in place … survival of the strongest, best prepared, and fittest. And as crazy as it might seem to be, I think that’s going to be the primary law that governs all our lives now for a long while to come.”
“So I guess we’d better take those ‘illegal’ grenades with us, huh?” Nick asked.
“Absolutely.”
He shook his head, smiling with both awe and disbelief. “You guys really were prepared for this, weren’t you? I wouldn’t have thought of half this stuff. Hell, I didn’t even know something like an EMP existed, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have known the first thing about how to prepare for one.”
“Count yourself lucky that you ran into us,” Kate said. “But as well prepared as we are, I don’t feel ready to face the storm without my husband by my side…” She sighed, and tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
Before Nick could say anything in response, Susan walked into the room. “I’m all packed and ready to go, Mom,” she said. “How long are we gonna wait?” she asked warily.
Kate stared out of the window for a while. The snow continued to grow steadily heavier, and each gust of wind seemed stronger than its predecessor. “Things are getting bad out there,” she said. She felt as if she was about to have a panic attack or a heart attack or pass out—or all three at once—but she knew she had to keep herself together and stay in control for the sake of her daughter. And putting her daughter’s survival above everything else would mean making some difficult decisions. “This storm is blowing in faster than anyone thought it would,” she eventually said. “We can’t linger here.”
“But what does that mean, Mom? How long?” Susan demanded. There were tears in her eyes because she already knew what her mother was going to say.
“We have to go … soon,” Kate murmured, her voice cracking. “We’ve already been here an hour, and he hasn’t shown up. We can’t wait much longer. We just … we can’t, honey, we can’t.”
Nick was silent throughout this exchange; he knew it wasn’t his place to comment or say anything. He was also watching the storm come in, though, and knew that things would be getting a lot more intense a lot faster than anyone had thought they could.
Tears rolled down Susan’s cheeks, and her lower lip began to quiver. She couldn’t hold back the flood of tears and an outpouring of emotion any longer. She dropped her bags, turned, ran to her room, and shut the door. Nick and Kate could hear her weeping, and neither one of them knew what to say to the other.
Eventually, though, Nick spoke up. “I’m sorry about your husband, Kate,” he said softly. “I mean, I don’t know, maybe he’s okay, I just…” he trailed off awkwardly, not knowing how to express what he was trying to convey.
“Thank you, Nick,” Kate said, teary-eyed. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” She walked out of the room, and Nick stayed behind, sensing that Kate wanted some space. She sat down in the living room, took out her little waterproof photo album, and looked through her wedding photos and other special moments she’d shared with Jack. Soon enough, tears were splashing onto the album’s plastic sleeves.
Kate breathed in deeply and put the album back into the bag. The sounds of Susan’s weeping had died down, and outside, the wind was starting to howl. The air was thick with snow, and when Kate opened the living room balcony doors, a rush of icy air came barging in. The temperature had plummeted, and she knew it would drop further.
She also knew that they couldn’t waste any more time. If Jack hadn’t come by now, it was unlikely that he would be coming back at all; her heart didn’t want to acknowledge this, but her rational mind understood with crystal clarity that this was the case. Even so, she decided to wait another twenty minutes, just enough time to make a quick meal, which was a valid reason to delay leaving, since they would all benefit from hot, nutritious food, and all the groceries in the fridge would be going to waste anyway.
Kate went to Susan’s room, comforted her for a while, and then asked if she could help whip up a quick meal on some camping stoves. She didn’t tell Susan that they would be leaving after they ate; nonetheless, her daughter understood that this would be the case.
They put together a quick but healthy meal, sat down, and ate it with Nick, who was grateful for the food. The whole time Susan and Kate kept casting glances toward the door, praying they would hear the familiar sound of Jack’s keys in the lock, but it simply never came.
After they finished with the meal, Kate desperately tried to buy just a little more time by insisting on changing the dressing on Nick’s ear, but when had been done and there was still no sign of Jack, she knew that she couldn’t wait a moment longer. It was time to do what had to be done, as heartbreaking and painful as it may be.
Jack had prepared for such an eventuality, and now that the terrible moment had come, Kate opened the bottom drawer of their bedside table, where he’d left a sealed envelope, to be opened only in the event of circumstances like this.
Inside the envelope were handwritten letters—one for Susan and one for Kate—but there was also a set of keys, a roadmap with the route from the city to Arthur’s cabin highlighted, and directions to a nearby storage unit. On the directions to the storage unit, written in Jack’s distinctive handwriting, were instructions to
go straight to the unit before doing anything else. It was strange; Jack had never mentioned the fact that he had rented a storage unit.
Kate realized that this made perfect sense, though; he would often disappear for a few hours every few weekends, with only vague excuses about where he was going. Now she understood; all those years he’d been making preparations for a day like this.
“All right, everyone,” Kate said, her voice cracking with emotion again, “it’s time to go.”
She and Susan took one last sad look at the place they’d called home for most of their lives, and then they walked out into the hallway, shut and locked the door, and melted into the shadowy gloom.
17
“I said drop the gun,” the voice growled as the stranger pressed the muzzle of his rifle more forcefully into the back of Jack’s head. Two more men, dressed in US Army combat gear, rose from behind the shelves, pointing their rifles at Jack’s chest.
“Do it, you son of a bitch!” one of them snapped. “Drop the pistol!”
He noticed that they were wearing black armbands with a red emblem on them on their left arms. Were these men part of the group responsible for the EMP and rocket attacks?
Jack had no choice but to obey. He dropped the pistol and raised his hands. “I don’t know who you think I am,” he said calmly to them, “but I have no interest in who you are or what you’re doing. All I’m trying to do is get home to my wife and daughter.”
“Shut the fuck up and get inside the store,” the man behind him growled. He pulled Jack’s backpack off his shoulders and then slammed the butt of his rifle into his back.
The blow was a hard one, and Jack grunted with pain and staggered forward. The other two soldiers strode over to him and grabbed his arms, yanking them up behind his back before binding his wrists together with a zip-tie. Then one of them hit him with the butt of an M-16 in his solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him.
With Jack doubled over with pain and gasping for breath, they dragged him through the store and into the stock room at the back, where he saw a group of other people who had been captured. They had all been forced to sit, and their wrists were also zip-tied behind their backs, with duct tape over their mouths. Bernie was among them, and he had a swollen, red eye; one of the soldiers had obviously hit him in the face with a rifle butt. He shot Jack a guiltily apologetic look.
One of the soldiers slapped a piece of duct tape over Jack’s mouth, and then they shoved him over to where the others were seated and forced him to sit down with them.
“Don’t try anything stupid,” one soldier growled at him, sticking the barrel of his M-16 right into Jack’s face. “Don’t try anything at all. Just sit there, nice and quiet, like the rest of the hostages, and maybe, just maybe we’ll let you live.”
Two soldiers left, with one staying behind to stand guard over Jack and the others, who were evidently captives. Jack’s mind was a mess of desperate questions: who were these troops with black armbands? Was this some sort of mass mutiny, or a military coup? Were they foreign terrorists who, over many years, had gradually infiltrated the US Army and were now acting on behalf of a hostile foreign government?
Then, of course, there were more urgent questions relating to his present circumstances. Why were they taking civilians as hostages? What were they planning to do with them? How was he going to escape this perilous situation?
He looked around him at the other prisoners. They seemed to come from a number of different walks of life and represented a broad spectrum of society in terms of age and ethnicity. He suspected that the soldiers were simply luring anyone they could into the store and then taking them captive, with no preference for any group. Judging from how harshly they had already been treated, and the fact that dozens of powerful rockets had been fired into the city without any regard for human life, Jack was sure that these men would not hesitate to kill him and the other hostages if it suited them.
There only seemed to be three soldiers here—the guard and the two others in the store capturing people. The stockroom was gloomy since there was no window or any other source of natural light. Instead, the source of illumination in here was a single gas lamp, burning on top of a crate of tinned beans near Jack.
There were nine or ten other hostages in the room, and Jack knew that it would be foolish to count on them to act if he moved against the guard. He was, however, sure that Bernie would help him out. Even though the security detail didn’t possess much in the way of common sense, he had a good heart and was brave.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” the guard snarled. “Don’t fuckin’ look at me, you prick, or I’ll smash your fuckin’ skull in.”
Jack looked up and saw the guard glaring at a muscular young black man, who was staring up at him with defiant eyes. Another potential ally, Jack quietly noted.
As for the other hostages, most were adults in their thirties, forties, or fifties, although there was one nerdy-looking teenage boy and an elderly woman who had to have been in her seventies. All of them looked terrified, and Jack was quite sure he couldn’t count on any of them to help. So, he thought to himself, if he were going to act against the guard, he could only really count on Bernie and maybe the young black man to help him. He would have to act soon, though, while there was only one guard in here, and he would need to strike a vicious and devastating blow.
The shelves in the stock room were all basic steel shelves, and Jack was seated close enough to one of them that he could subtly slide backward along the floor until his hands were touching a section of the steel racks. He slowly began to rub the zip ties around his wrists along the relatively sharp edge of the steel edge, keeping a close eye on the guard as he did this. The zip ties were thick, but the sustained friction began to saw through them after a few minutes.
Jack had to stop when the door burst open and another man, captured by the soldiers, was dragged into the stock room. The new arrival was a guy in his sixties, dressed in a business suit. The soldiers manhandled him, too, and they smashed him in the stomach with the butt of an M-16 before slapping duct tape over his mouth. They forced him to sit near Jack, and then the two soldiers went back into the store, leaving the single guard to watch over the hostages.
The new arrival provided the distraction Jack needed. Once the businessman had gotten over the pain of being hit with the rifle, his eyes bulged with rage and indignation, and he tried to yell through the duct tape. No words could be heard, but the muffled cries coming from his gagged mouth sounded very angry.
“Hey, Grandpa, shut the fuck up, or I’ll break that loudmouth jaw of yours,” the soldier snarled.
The man simply tried to yell even louder, struggling violently against his bonds. With this distraction drawing the soldier’s attention, Jack rubbed the zip ties against the steel with increased speed and pressure.
“Do you wanna be the first hostage to die, motherfucker?” the soldier growled at the enraged businessman.
The man tried to yell something through the duct tape. His face was crimson with wrath, and he looked as if he were so angry he would either explode or pass out. The soldier was losing his cool, too, and he walked over to the businessman, an arrogant swagger in his stride, and stood over him with his gun pointed at the man’s forehead. Holding the firearm in his right hand, he ripped the tape off the man’s mouth with his left. “All right asshole,” he snarled, “go ahead, say what you want to say. But be aware that these are your last fucking words ever, so you’d better make ‘em profound. I’m sick of your shit now, and we’ve got enough hostages without you. After this, we’re stepping out into the alley out back, and you’re gonna have the honor of being the first of these sheep to die. Go on, tough guy, have your say. Last words, though, remember that.”
“Do you know who I am?” the man roared. “You’ve made the biggest mistake of your life, you fucking insect! If you don’t let me go this instant, you and your rat-bastard friends are going to pay very dearly for this. Trust me on that!”
>
With a subdued snap, the zip ties binding Jack’s wrists finally broke. He knew that he had to act now; the man’s yells would attract the other soldiers’ attention, and if they came in here and he didn’t have a gun in his hand, his chance to escape would be gone. The soldier was three feet away from him, and his attention was focused entirely on the ranting businessman. It was now or never.
Jack sprang to his feet, lunged forward, and aimed a vicious right cross at the soldier’s jaw. The soldier saw Jack jumping up and managed to half-turn in his direction but couldn’t swing his gun around in time. Jack’s fist rocketed into the side of his jaw, and the force of the punch whipped his head to the side and sent him stumbling back toward the other victims, but it didn’t quite knock him out.
Jack lunged for the soldier’s weapon and half yanked it out of the man’s hands. As stunned as he was from the sucker punch, though, the soldier managed to retain a grip on the rifle, although his hands were now no longer near the trigger. The soldier was about to scream out for help when a powerful foot came whipping through the air and smashed into the side of his head from behind him.
This time the blow was hard enough to knock the man out cold, and Jack ripped the firearm out of the soldier’s hands as his body went limp and flopped to the ground. Jack saw that it was the young black man who had jumped up delivered the knockout roundhouse kick to the soldier’s head.
“Behind you!” the businessman roared.
Jack spun around just as the two other soldiers burst into the room with their guns at the ready. His response was on the instinctual level, drilled into him by the years of combat-scenario firearms training he’d taken at his shooting club. In a split-second, he sprayed the two of them with bursts of automatic fire from the M-16 in his hands, and the soldiers dropped immediately to the ground before either of them had a chance to process what had just happened in the stock room, let alone squeeze the triggers of their rifles.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 22 | The Coldest Night Page 9
