by Hunt, Jack
It had worked.
That one small gesture caused the crowd to erupt in cheers.
The swell of pride as he walked back to the platform was second to none.
Immediately, he had his council members hand over the boxes to staff for distribution. It was a sign of strength, a message that they had this under control. He felt like a god among men as he watched person after person come up and sign their name to volunteer, listing their experience and skills.
It was like taking candy from a baby.
Later that day, he’d delivered that list to a grateful and wide-eyed chief.
“I don’t know how you did it but it’s much appreciated,” the chief said.
In many ways he felt his job was done. Sure, it was all smoke and mirrors and eventually most of those good folk would die of starvation or be murdered as society returned to their primal instincts, but hey, at least he was going out with a bang.
Once the smoke cleared and society had begun to rebuild, he would reemerge and continue his position as mayor.
It was all going to plan until these assholes showed up on his doorstep.
Truth be told he had no idea where Garcia was.
A thorn in his side, it came as no surprise that he would abandon his post. He was weak. He’d never trusted him. Gang tattoos on the neck and arms. What kind of message did that send to the community?
As one of the gang members drove the truck, he glanced in the side mirror and saw a steady stream of vehicles following.
Would they keep him alive after this?
He had to think and fast.
A revolver was jammed into his rib cage.
“You know I can help you,” Fischer said.
Lopez hadn’t taken his eyes off him. He didn’t reply so Fischer continued. “Sure, you can take what you want by force but if you want these people to listen, and I mean truly listen, I’m your man. I’ve already built up a rapport.”
Lopez said nothing.
He had to dig deeper, try harder, get past that steely gaze.
“So… where you from?”
Nothing.
Time for some reverse psychology.
“You certainly know how to lead these guys. I admire that. Not many can rise to the challenge. I imagine you have more followers back in the city, or wherever you come from? How many?”
“Enough,” Lopez replied.
“And they all listen to you?”
Lopez looked ahead.
Damn it, it wasn’t working.
Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. “You know with La Primera gone, it opens up the way for a new group to step in. Tell me, Mr. Lopez, do you have the support of the mayor where you come from? Or better still, the support of the local police?”
Lopez looked at him.
Ah, he’d got him — hook, line and sinker.
He’d seen that gaze before.
“You report to someone, don’t you? Someone above you?”
“Keep your mouth closed.”
He was pushing it by continuing but he had to try. His life depended on it.
“What if all this was yours? Free rein to run your enterprises, a guarantee that the cops would look the other way. Think about it. The infrastructure of this nation has collapsed, thousands of people have died, it will take months, even years to get back up and running again. Why settle for a sliver of the pie when you can have it all?”
Lopez lashed out, striking him across the face.
Ken leaned forward, blood dripping from his lip.
“That would imply it’s not mine already. Fool!”
They continued for another five minutes before he guided them into the parking lot of the police station. How many armed volunteers were inside was unknown but he had to believe this was his one shot of getting away from these madmen.
Shoved out of the truck, he was led toward the main doors with the gun pressed into the small of his back. The rest of Lopez’s crew followed, guns at the ready.
There was no hesitation on their part, no fear. Then it dawned on him. Keeping a firm grip on Ken, they were using him as a human shield. The second they were inside, gunfire unleashed as they took out those closest.
Three volunteers buckled under the barrage of gunfire before Lopez ordered the rest to lower their weapons or he would execute Ken in front of them.
Damn it, the plan had gone awry.
10
The stockpile was something to behold. It took four of them to unload it from a trailer they’d borrowed from Harry. Fortunately, Liam’s ties to the town of Willits, and his grandfather’s friendship with Harry had earned them some leverage. For a short while after the spat between Garcia and Harry, Elisha figured they wouldn’t receive anything but Liam worked his magic, told him a few stories about Theo and soon had Harry laughing.
Harry agreed to return an equal amount of supplies on one condition, that they swing by every day and help out at the shop. What he meant by that was watching over the business while he went out with Travis to hunt down whoever had killed his wife.
It was a little extreme but after seeing what they were given, she was more than willing. A huge blue tarp crackled in her hands as she folded it up while Liam took the bungee cords and tossed them into the trailer. “Garcia, you got the keys?” he yelled. “I better get this trailer back to Harry before he thinks we’ve stolen it.”
Garcia jogged out of the cabin, dangling them in his hand. “He’s quite the character.”
“He’s got a good heart. His wife meant a lot to him. They’d known each other since they were seventeen. I think you can understand why he is the way he is. Anyway, maybe tonight you can tell us more about your background with the gangs.”
“I don’t know about that,” Garcia said, leaning against the cruiser and regarding Elisha. “Not exactly something I want to remember. Look, I’ll drop this off.”
Liam grimaced. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Neither is letting you take the cruiser.”
He shrugged. “What? I know how to drive.”
“I’m sure you do but for now I don’t want to lose it.”
“So you think I’ll let someone steal it?”
“You heard what Travis said. If Norteños are out there and they’re carjacking people, better it be me they come across than you.”
Liam groaned and gestured to the cruiser. “Go ahead then, just don’t wind Harry up. The last thing we need is to have him on our back.”
Elisha dropped the tarp in the trailer. “You want me to come with you?”
“No, I’ll be there and back before you know it.”
“Don’t stop for anyone, okay?” Elisha said.
“You almost sound worried for me.” Garcia smiled and got in the driver’s side and pulled out.
Elisha stuffed her hands into her pockets and looked at the property. “So what can I do to help?”
Liam motioned with a wave. “A lot. Come, I’ll show you.”
As they walked around the side of the home, the sun shone through the trees spreading its warmth over them. “While I don’t think the same people who broke in will be back, there’s no telling if others will come so we need to focus on security.” He reached for a roll of fishing line.
“What are you doing with that?”
“You’ll sleep better knowing that there is a tripwire alarm system surrounding the perimeter. The last thing we want is someone to shoot us in our sleep.” He held up the line. “You can use this, or paracord, or snare wire. Just make sure if you use fishing wire that it’s heavy-duty, nothing lighter than fifty pounds. There has to be some strength to it, otherwise, it snaps.”
“You learned this from your grandfather?”
“Yep.” Liam paused for a second and she could see him looking toward a weathered play structure in the yard. Was he remembering his childhood? “Theo was the father I should have had,” he said as they walked through a grove of trees. The lake came into view, sunlight reflected off the
surface. A gentle wind made the water lap against the shore. “Back when I was a kid I never really paid too much attention, I just thought he was kind of quirky. My mom would bring me up here and instead of taking me out to the movies, or that kind of stuff, he tried to instill in me the love of the outdoors.”
“Did it work?” she asked.
He smiled. “Somewhat. Anyway, he had all these acronyms for different things. He said it was the best way to remember.”
Leaves and branches crunched beneath their feet, rays of golden light filtered through the canopy of green above. The sound of birds chirping made the whole place seem peaceful.
“Like what?”
“WESS for instance. W stands for water. When he bought this property he purposely chose it for two reasons: privacy but more importantly its proximity to a fresh water source.” He pointed through the trees to Lake Ada Rose. “Not far from there is Willits Creek, and then about a mile east is a freshwater spring. A lot of people don’t even know it exists but he did. He said it was good to know where freshwater springs were just in case the water shut off. Three days without water…”
“Yeah, I remember you saying when we were buried.”
He gave a nod. “Learned it from him.” Liam dropped to a knee and handed her the other end of the fishing line. “Take that for a second.”
She gave a nod as she backed up. “So what’s E stand for?”
“Elevation.”
He pointed toward the cabin. “You don’t need much elevation as you don’t want your place to be silhouetted against the sky but it helps to have a place where you can eye potential threats. And of course there is the upside of being able to use gravity to filter water down from a high elevation into a bunker if you have one.”
“Did he build one?”
“Nope. He had plans. I’ll show you them later. It’s quite something. He never got around to it.”
“And S?”
“Safety. You don’t want your bug-out location, tent or shelter to be in a spot where it could suffer from flash flooding. So canyons aren’t good areas.” He pulled out a pocket tool.
“What is that?”
“The Leatherman 300. Don’t leave home without it, of course unless you’re heading over to a girl’s house to ask her out on a date.”
Elisha stopped walking. “And where were you planning to take me?” She smiled.
“Wherever you wanted to go.”
She continued walking back. He was quick to shift the topic. “The last S stands for security. Your location should have a perimeter — you know, some means of keeping you safe or at least alerting you to intruders. I don’t like sleeping with one eye open, neither should you.”
He used his knife to cut the wire.
“So if your grandfather was so into this, why didn’t he have this all set up already?”
“My grandmother. She was quite a woman. Unless he wanted to sleep on the couch, he abided by her rules. Don’t get me wrong. She was into survival and being prepared but there were some things she didn’t want to have to deal with. Tripwire for instance.” He smiled as he raised a finger at her. “Oh… uh… mind your step.”
It was too late. She landed flat on her ass.
Elisha went red in the face.
“Nature’s tripwire,” he said before chuckling as she looked down to find a large tree root sticking out of the ground.
She summoned an embarrassed smile, shaking her head as she got back up. “I need to watch where I’m walking. Anyway, so how’s this work?”
He stood up. “It’s all about entry and exit points. For you, and anyone coming toward this cabin. You want to cut down the number of entry points for them and make it harder for them to approach without making a noise. There are natural plants, sticks, branches you can place on the ground that will create noise. If you don’t have any palm tree leaves or saw palmetto plants, work with what you have. For us, there is a little trick my grandfather taught me. Stay right here, I’ll be right back.”
He jogged away leaving her basking in the beauty of the area.
A flock of birds landed in the trees just as a steady breeze made the leaves rustle.
A minute or two later he returned with some rolls of cooking foil.
“You planning on cooking?”
He smiled. “No. Look, branches and leaves and such are usually sufficient but if you take some of this and roll it out between trees and cover it with a thin layer of dirt and twigs, you’d be surprised at how much noise it makes in the dead of night. It’s just one thing extra that you can add to your perimeter if you don’t have enough to create what we are making. My grandfather said it was better to place the foil beneath a thin layer of sand or soil closer to the cabin, almost as a second and final means of alerting you to someone’s presence. Of course if you have power, that’s where floodlights come in but if you have no power, then you have to improvise, think outside the box.”
Liam fished into his pocket and pulled out a small black device no bigger than his hand. Awkwardly he looped a plastic zip tie through one end of it, and tied it around a tree branch. Then he took the piece of wire that came from her and looped it through the other side of the alarm and tied that off.
“Damn arm,” he said, struggling.
“You need a hand?”
“No, it’s fine.” He then worked his way back and reached for a stick, and told her to hold it while he grabbed a hatchet. He returned a moment later and made a few notches in the stick and fed the wire down from the tree and through the notches to stabilize it.
He then had her continue back and they tied it off before concealing the stick and the device attached to the tree. “Now someone would be hard-pressed to see that.” Liam walked around it and looked at it from different angles. “Daylight, nighttime, it will do the trick. Now to test it.”
“How’s it work?”
“It’s like a grenade. The wire pulls on the pin.”
He took a stroll through the area, and seconds later, the alarm let out an ear-piercing wail. “Damn, that is loud,” Elisha bellowed.
Liam turned it off.
“A hundred decibels. Been a while since I saw my grandfather test this.” Liam set it up again.
“How many of those alarms do you have?”
“Not enough but that’s okay. We’ll use what we have on the major entry points and then go old school for the rest.”
They crossed through the trees and he pointed to some of the open spaces people could enter through. “We’ll need to cover that area and that one over there. Once we’ve made use of these alarms, we’ll revert to deadfall traps and others.”
They continued to work setting up traps around the perimeter while Andre watched from the porch, smoking a cigarette.
“Anything you guys need a hand with?” he asked.
“You want to dig a few holes?” Liam replied.
“What do you have in mind?”
Liam walked them through the process of creating punji stick traps. “They were made famous back in Vietnam. A horrendous booby trap they used on American soldiers. Pretty straightforward. You create a pit in the ground and fill it with stakes then camouflage it.”
“Sounds lovely,” Elisha said jokingly. “What happens if you forget where you installed them?”
“They won’t be in areas we will enter or exit. But you can be damn sure you’ll appreciate them if they stop someone approaching in the middle of the night.”
“And what if they’re friendlies?” she asked as Andre came lumbering over with a shovel in hand.
“Oops, too bad,” Liam said.
It was hard to imagine that it had come to this but it had. Seven days, that’s all it had taken. Had it just been a simple power outage she didn’t think people would lose their shit like this, but with the bombs destroying key facilities, desperation had taken hold. Whether people were approaching homes because they wanted to rob or worse, hurt someone, it was helpful to know that Liam knew what he was doing. Eli
sha touched the St. Christopher around her neck and thought of her parents again. Were they still alive?
Back in town, Garcia had just finished unhooking the trailer and pushing it back into a garage at the back of the store when gunfire erupted. He spun around, hand on his service weapon. He wasn’t the only one who heard it. Harry appeared on the roof, rifle at the ready, scoping the road. He looked over at him and Garcia gave him the thumbs-up. Harry scowled. He brought the garage door down and locked it then took the key and tossed it up to Harry on the roof. “Much appreciated.”
Another flurry of rounds and Harry spun like a spinning top straight off the roof. He landed hard. Garcia withdrew his weapon and dropped down beside him.
Blood was already blooming in his shirt. He’d taken a round to the back of the shoulder.
“You got the key for the rear door?”
“It’s in my pocket,” Harry said through gritted teeth.
He groaned as Garcia reached in and retrieved a huge set of keys. His first instinct was to protect him but Harry pushed him away. “Get my rifle,” he said pointing to it a few feet away.
Garcia got it. “You’ll be okay. Looks like…”
Harry was quick to cut him off. “Son, I was in Vietnam, you’re damn right it will be okay.” He groaned. He might have been as tough as nails at one time but his age was showing.
“Which key is it?”
“The red one.”
He had them all color-coded with colored plastic around the top. He took it and opened the rear door, then helped Harry to his feet and took him inside. “Shut the door.”
Garcia lowered him to the ground. He was bleeding pretty bad.
Another flurry of rounds, even closer now. Boots pounding the ground.
He quickly slammed the door shut just as he heard voices.
