Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront

by Sisavath, Sam

  Click.

  A panoramic view of a stretch of highway, shot from the belly of a news chopper flying above it. A sea of chrome and metal and slow-moving figures filled up the screen on both sides of traffic. The entire highway had ceased to move as far as the helicopter’s fish-eye could capture. Small dots—people—filled up the frame, but many more hadn’t left their vehicles.

  A reporter’s voice in the background, fighting to be heard over the whup-whup-whup of rotor blades: “—live look at what appears to be a major accident on the highway that stretches for miles. I can’t begin to tell you guys how this started or where. As far as I can tell from up here, it looks like the entire city has just shut down. No emergency vehicles yet, but it’s still very early. We can’t determine”—then, the offscreen voice rising noticeably—“Oh my God, what’s happening? Jack, can you get us closer? I think some kind of confrontation’s broken out on the highway!”

  As the chopper got closer and the camera zoomed in, Emily watched people running around and colliding.

  No, not colliding.

  Fighting.

  People were climbing out of their vehicles and slamming into each other. Others were fleeing on foot, attempting to distance themselves from the spontaneous mayhem, while more tried to drive off. Tried, because they couldn’t get very far with the traffic at a standstill from one side of the camera to the other.

  “This is insane!” the reporter was saying, very close to shouting. “I’ve never seen anything like this. What’s happening? Jack, can we get closer? Jack, get us closer!”

  The helicopter pilot was trying to do just that when Emily stood up and accidentally knocked the remote off the table. It landed on the floor on one of the buttons, and the channel changed again.

  Click.

  The sports channel again, except now the camera had been upended, revealing a grid of lights on the studio ceiling. She couldn’t see what was happening, but she could hear more voices than before.

  And screams.

  Pained screams in the background.

  She snatched the remote from the floor.

  Click.

  The shopping channel, but the camera was capturing an empty room. The woman with too much makeup was gone, leaving behind a table covered in jewelry. There was something that almost looked like blood dripping along one side of the camera.

  Click.

  The local news channel with the older man and his much-younger female colleague, except instead of the two staring back at her, Emily could see the woman lying facedown on the desk while the man plunged a pen repeatedly into the back of her head. Blood arced through the air as people grabbed the distinguished anchor from behind and tried to pull him off. Tried, because the older man didn’t budge. Someone that old shouldn’t have been able to resist two twenty-somethings in the best shape of their lives, but he was.

  How? How was he doing that?

  And there was something pouring out of the older man’s eyes.

  It looked like blood. But why was blood coming from the eyes? Was it the woman’s? Or someone else’s?

  People didn’t bleed from their eyes.

  Emily stood still, the remote in one hand, and stared at the TV.

  There was almost nothing left of the young woman’s head, and during the struggle to stop the older anchor from stabbing her, her body had slipped off the desk and disappeared behind it. It was only then that the older man spun on the two much-younger men trying to pull him off.

  Then he tossed one of the younger men off screen.

  That’s not possible.

  The distinguished anchor whirled on the remaining younger man and stabbed him in the neck with the pen. Someone screamed from off-camera, followed by the klaxon of a fire alarm blaring.

  Click.

  Chaos on the same stretch of highway.

  Pure chaos.

  The chopper had gotten lower, the camera zooming in as people murdered each other on the highway. A man was beating a woman with a tire iron, reducing her head to mush, while another one threw a little girl over the railing. Her small body flailed as it plummeted. Before the killer could do anything, someone else stabbed him in the back with a screwdriver.

  “—my God, my God, are you seeing this? Are you guys in the studio seeing this?” The reporter’s voice, caught somewhere between hysteria and fear. “I don’t know what’s happening. It’s madness. People are killing each other. Oh my God, people are killing each other!”

  The camera widened as the helicopter rocked slightly, taking in even more of the stretch of highway.

  Cars were ramming into one another, into people. Someone was run over. Another one jumped onto a moving vehicle’s hood and began beating the windshield with a long metal object.

  “—what is happening?” the reporter again, shouting in the background now. “Someone tell me. Can someone tell me? Guys? Guys? Are you seeing this? Jesus, someone tell me what’s going on out here!”

  Emily wasn’t sure how long she stood and stared, part-fascinated and part-horrified by what was happening on the TV screen. It wasn’t that she’d never seen blood or death or murder before, but those things were in her past. They weren’t supposed to follow her to this new life.

  She put her hand on her belly as the reporter screamed in the background: “—the police? Emergency personnel? Where is everyone? What’s happening out there? Can someone hear me? Is anyone even watching this back in the studio? Guys? Anyone? Anyone?”

  Emily turned away from the TV and pressed the mute button and tossed the remote to the sofa. She snatched the iPhone off the table and redialed Cole’s number. She took a step back as the call connected, then rang on the other end.

  Once. Twice.

  “Cole, come on, baby, pick up.”

  But he didn’t.

  Three rings.

  Four…

  “Cole, come on.”

  Five…

  There was a click, before she heard Cole’s voice and recognized his recorded voice mail: “You’ve reached Cole. Leave a message.”

  Quick and efficient, the way Cole did everything.

  “Cole,” she said—or started to say—when the line cut off.

  There was a long breeeeep signal, like some living mechanical organism trying to dig its way into her eardrums.

  She pulled the phone away and stared at the screen.

  There was no reception. She had gone from four full bars to zero.

  “What the hell?”

  Emily tried calling anyway.

  But there was no signal. Either her phone had simply stopped working, or the cell towers were down.

  How was it possible the cell towers were down?

  She turned back to the TV and watched, wordlessly, as people killed each other on the screen. Cars were running over civilians, others ramming into parked vehicles. A couple had run into the railing and disappeared over the sides. There was an endless stream of people onscreen, colliding and fighting, and sprays of blood.

  The reporter was shouting incoherently in the background. Or crying. Emily couldn’t tell which. Maybe both. Or mostly crying.

  Then something metallic appeared in the camera’s viewfinder, growing bigger and bigger, just before it crashed into the camera.

  A helicopter. Another helicopter had just collided with the first one.

  The screen went static.

  Then black.

  Chapter 2

  The cracks of gunshots she heard as soon as the backroom door clicked softly open was all the evidence she needed that what she had seen on TV was happening around her in the neighborhood, too. She had already concluded, with some certainty born from years of experience in the field, about how screwed up things were from the highway camera feed, but you could never be too sure when it came to TV. Governments could fake news footage the way college students pirated everything off the Internet these days: breathlessly easy.

  But there was nothing fake about this. She had heard enough gunshots to know tha
t these were very much real. Handguns, from the sounds of it, and close by. Way too close by for comfort. That shouldn’t have been possible in this new life. This safer life.

  And yet she could hear them: the faint but sporadic pops! of gunfire.

  What was that saying, about the more things changed, the more they stayed the same? That flashed through her mind as she walked briskly up the back hallway, past the stairs, and to the front door. She wasn’t running, but it was damn close. Emily tried calling Cole again but couldn’t get through. No wonder. She had no reception.

  How was that even possible? Had every cell tower in the area gone down? What about the backups? The satellites? Phones in the modern era didn’t just go offline without a damn good reason. And she hadn’t seen one—

  Or had she? Was what was happening on TV part of this? And what was this in the first place?

  The steps. Remember the steps.

  It was a mantra from her old profession that had served her well. Whenever she had any doubts, all she had to do was recite it, and her next move was clear. Or, if not completely clear, then clearer.

  She did that now, reverting to the Emily of old.

  Step one: Know your objective.

  Step two: Gather intel.

  Step three: Formulate a plan.

  And finally, step four: Execute that plan.

  Right now, her only objective was her safety and that of her unborn child. To do that, she had to secure the house. As she put the phone away and picked up her pace toward the front door, Emily unconsciously touched her belly.

  Okay, little baby Cole, time to behave while momma gets us locked down until we find out what’s going on.

  When she finally reached the door, Emily locked it, then pushed the deadbolt into place. She was surprised she didn’t feel all that much better even as the bolt slid home, but maybe because she was standing in her pants and shirt and nothing else, while the whole world seemed to be going crazy outside her walls.

  A flash of activity out of the corner of her eye, coming from the window to her right.

  Emily hurried over and looked out.

  Don Taylor was in the street, raining blows on the mailman’s head with a gardening hoe. Don was her neighbor and unemployed, so the man spent most of his time gardening. She and Cole joked that Don spent most of his time in the front and backyard tending to flowers and weeding because it was a great excuse to get away from Nancy, his wife.

  The weapon that kept flashing in the sunlight was no ordinary gardening tool. It was nearly 14 inches of stainless steel that ended in a sharp 4.5-inch blade that curved to one side like the point of a sword. It was a combination hoe and weeder, and looked ridiculously dangerous, especially in the hands of her forty-something unemployed neighbor.

  “That’s more of a kusarigama than a gardening hoe,” Cole once said when he saw Don toiling away in his garden.

  “A what?” she had said.

  “Kusarigama. It’s something a ninja would use. But theirs has a sickle and chain for longer attacks. This one doesn’t.”

  “Maybe he forgot the chain and lost the sickle,” Emily had said, and they’d both had a good chuckle over it.

  She wasn’t laughing now as she watched Don obliterate the mailman’s head with the gardening tool/weapon.

  There were no signs of Nancy, Don’s wife, and maybe that was for the best, because she didn’t have to see her husband striking his victim until there was nothing left but a puddle of broken bones and torn flesh and flowing blood.

  Jesus Christ, Emily thought. He definitely used that hoe like a ninja weapon.

  Then Don stood up and snapped his head left, then right, then left again—and saw her.

  Uh oh.

  Don made a beeline for her front door, blood flicking off the hoe’s sharp metal head as he ran. He wasn’t a big man and he wasn’t exactly the most athletic one, either. And yet, at that very moment, the unemployed CPA looked as if he could give Usain Bolt a run for his money in the 100 meters.

  How the hell was Don running so fast?

  Behind the fleeting form of Don, and across the street, someone burst out of a door and sped down the driveway.

  It was Mrs. Landry. All 250 pounds of her. She was covered in blood, and so was the steak knife in her right hand.

  At first, Emily thought the gray-haired retiree in the cotton one-piece nightgown—it wasn’t surprising to see Mrs. Landry in her nightgown throughout the day—was running away from something.

  But no, she was running after something.

  Namely, Don.

  Except Don didn’t see her because he was too focused on Emily, standing in the window, gawking at him like a useless idiot.

  Emily couldn’t help herself. None of this made any sense. None of it. Not even an iota of it.

  What is happening out there?

  She refocused on Don as he streaked across her front yard.

  On his eyes.

  They were bloody. Bloodshot. Just like the distinguished anchorman’s eyes on TV. Streaks of blood ran down his cheeks as he ran, still moving impossibly fast for someone who was not in the best shape of his life.

  And, for that matter, so was Mrs. Landry. A woman that big shouldn’t have been able to cross her well-manicured lawn and cross the road that fast.

  But they were.

  Both of them.

  How?

  How was any of this possible?

  How?

  Don vanished past the window and out of Emily’s view.

  A second later there was a loud bam! as Don crashed into the front door, flesh meeting unyielding hard wood.

  Emily reflexively took a step back from the window and looked toward the door.

  Bam!

  She glanced around her, looking for a weapon. There were plenty in the kitchen, but the thought of taking her eyes off the door made her rethink that option.

  Bam!

  Instead, she snatched up one of Cole’s golf clubs from the bag leaning in the corner next to the door. He hadn’t touched the clubs in weeks, not since he agreed to sell the company—

  Silence.

  What now?

  Don had stopped trying to break his way in. But it wasn’t completely silent. She could still hear screams and gunshots elsewhere in the neighborhood.

  Gunshots. She hadn’t expected to hear that ever again—

  Crash! as one of the window’s glass panes shattered behind her.

  She jumped, the breaking glass pelting the carpet around her. Emily choked up on the golf club’s grip and rushed back to the window just as Don stuck one arm inside. She thought he was trying to grab her, but no, he was going for the lock so he could slide the window up.

  “Don!” Emily shouted. “Stop it!”

  He didn’t. Instead, his fingers found the lock—

  She swung the golf club. Emily wasn’t a pro or even a decent amateur golfer. She didn’t know how to play the sport and didn’t care to learn. Neither did Cole, but he’d indulged because it was part of doing business. A week with Roger at the country club five miles from their house, and Cole had become a serviceable golfer. That was her Cole. He could adapt. He was always so good at that.

  Emily wasn’t as serviceable as Cole and would never be, but she knew how to swing a weapon with purpose and skill. It could have been a golf club or a skillet, and she’d be able to use it as an instrument of destruction just as well.

  Crack! as the metal head shattered the bones in Don’s forearm, exactly where she’d aimed.

  She expected a cry of pain or at least some kind of acknowledging scream, but Don just jerked his hand back out the window. She prepared to strike again if he should attempt to go for the lock a second time, but Don took a step away from the window and glared at her.

  If she didn’t know better, she would think the man was accusing her.

  “Don, what the fuck are you doing?” Emily asked.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t even seem capable of responding.

&
nbsp; “Are you insane? Where’s Nancy?” she asked. “Where’s Nancy?”

  There was a lot of blood on Don’s shirt and pants, and strips of fleshy things clung to various parts of the fabric. The mailman…and maybe pieces of someone else. Maybe even Nancy, who Emily couldn’t see anywhere out there.

  “Don, what happened to you?”

  He remained quiet, his nostrils flaring, the veins along the sides of his neck pulsating like worms squirming underneath the skin. The bloodied hoe was clutched in his right hand, but all she could focus on were the tendrils of blood dripping from his eyes.

  Up close, she could see her neighbor’s chest heaving as his heart pumped out of control, too much blood being forced through his system. She could see the results: pounding adrenaline charging through his body, powering the forty-something into some kind of…

  What?

  Rage?

  Craze?

  What exactly was she seeing? And was this what had happened to the anchorman on TV? The sports guys? The commuters on the highways that were murdering each other? Images of the little girl being thrown off the elevated road flashed across her mind’s eye.

  “What happened to you?” she asked. “What—”

  A flash of white cotton as Mrs. Landry appeared behind Don and stabbed him in the back with her knife.

  Don let out a loud roar—it sounded more animal than human—and spun around. Mrs. Landry was trying to push the knife in further when Don swung with his hoe. Mrs. Landry stumbled back, choking on blood while the gardening tool stuck out of her neck. Her eyes, like Don’s, were bloodshot.

  Up close, Emily could see more blood on the older lady’s nightgown. Not hers, but someone else’s. A lot of someone else’s. Maybe her husband. Poor Henry was retired, just like his wife, and would have been home.

  Don reached behind him and pulled the knife out of his back. Blood squirted free, not that he seemed to notice. The man dropped, straddling Mrs. Landry’s spasming mound of flesh on the ground, and began plunging the blade into her chest. Mrs. Landry gagged and bled, blood splattering the freshly cut grass of Emily’s front yard.