Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront

by Sisavath, Sam

  “How is that possible?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this is possible.” She paused for a moment, before continuing. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Me neither.”

  She wanted to say, “But you never traveled around the world, visited every country, even the ones with unpronounceable names,” but of course she didn’t.

  Emily said instead, “We can’t be the only ones left. There has to be people hiding inside the other houses, too. Like us, trying not to be noticed. They would have seen that the phones are down and there’s nothing on TV. Anyone with any semblance of intelligence would figure out that things are not good at the moment, and the right move—maybe the only move—is to lay low.”

  “Right. So, don’t turn on the lights.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

  “It’s okay, Greg. That’s why there’s two of us. We’ll make up for where the other lacks.”

  He forced a smile. “Yeah, I guess.”

  He was feeling sorry for himself. She could see it on his face even in the semidarkness of the living room.

  Emily said, “You haven’t seen anything out there?”

  Greg shook his head. “Nothing. Not even a fly.”

  “Can you see a fly?”

  He grinned. “I’m just saying…”

  She smiled back. “I know, Greg. I’m just teasing you.”

  He chuckled softly. “This isn’t the time, Mrs. Ristler.”

  “Emily. Call me Emily.”

  “Okay, Emily.”

  She looked back out the window at the darkening world. If not for the automated lights on the homes, lawns, and streets, they would be slowly drowning in a swath of deep darkness right about now. She knew the electricity was still working because the digital alarm on one of the dressers in the living room continued to display the time in big bright-red letters.

  “Look,” Greg said.

  She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking at and was about to ask him, when she saw it:

  A dog was racing up the street, dragging a leash behind it.

  “What’s it doing?” Greg asked.

  “Looks like it’s making a run for it. Smart dog.”

  “How’s it going to get out of the neighborhood?”

  “I don’t have any idea. Maybe it can squeeze through the fence.”

  They watched the animal continue to jog up the sidewalk. Emily kept expecting Don or George or one of her other neighbors whose names she didn’t know to pop out of the shadows to attack the dog, but nothing happened.

  Eventually, the dog disappeared from their view.

  “I hope it makes it,” Greg said, almost wistfully.

  Emily wanted to say, “I hope I make it, Greg,” but she didn’t.

  She said instead, “Yeah. Me too.”

  She glanced down at her watch. Not even close to 8:00 yet. How long had they been out here? Far from the sanctuary of the backroom—

  Emily stared at the digital clock across the room.

  Or where it was supposed to be, anyway, because it’d gone off.

  There was just a patch of darkness there right now.

  “The lights,” she said softly.

  “What?” Greg said.

  “The lights just went out.”

  “How do you know? The ones outside are still on.”

  “Those are automated. Solar-powered. The power grid just went down across the city.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know, but I just know.”

  She moved along the wall to the nearest light switch.

  “What are you doing?” Greg asked, alarmed.

  “I need to make sure,” Emily said.

  “Emily, don’t—”

  But she flicked the switch up before he could finish.

  And nothing happened.

  They stared across the darkness at each other.

  “The electricity’s down,” Greg said.

  Emily didn’t respond, because she was too busy thinking to herself, First the phones. Then the TV. And now, the power grid.

  Oh yeah, we’re definitely under attack.

  She was sure of it. As sure as she’d been about anything in her life.

  The question was: By who?

  They stood in silence for a moment, with just their shallow breathing (though Greg’s seemed just a tad louder than hers) filling up the emptiness. If Greg had any ideas about how to proceed, he wasn’t sharing it with her. She didn’t know, either. The Army had trained her to do a lot of things, and she’d collected more experiences in the private sector afterward, but how to proceed in cases of days like today had not been one of them. Not even close.

  “What about my van?” Greg finally said.

  “What about it?”

  He held up the nail gun. “The other battery pack’s inside. Charger’s useless without power, but the other battery’s fully charged last time I checked.”

  “You think it’s worth risking it for another battery?”

  “No.”

  “So why did you mention it?”

  “I was thinking more about the van…”

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe we should make a run for it. Try to get out of here?”

  “Won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “You need to open the gate to get out.”

  “You remotely opened it for us from in here. Can’t you do that again?”

  “No. Without electricity, the gate can’t be opened or closed. At least not remotely. If you made it to the gate, you’d have to get out and pry it open.” She shook her head. “I don’t think we want to be doing that, Greg.”

  “The psychos…”

  “Yeah. The psychos. Maybe some of them got out earlier, and maybe not. I don’t know about you, but if we can stay safe in here, I’d like to stay safe in here.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  “But we need to prepare for the worst.”

  “What’s worse than this?”

  Oh, it can always get worse, Greg, she wanted to say.

  She settled for, “If this is as widespread as I think it is, it’s going to be a while before the authorities get a handle on it. We need to outlast this.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “I have nonperishables in the kitchen and other supplies upstairs. I think we should start taking what we can into the backroom. Water, canned goods, anything portable, and all the batteries we can find.”

  “Barnes and I bought a pack of batteries with us. They’re still on the second floor.”

  “I’ll get those. You start with the kitchen.”

  “There’s more stuff in the van…”

  “Maybe tomorrow, when it’s not dark. Let’s not take any unnecessary risks.”

  “You really think it’s that bad? Out there?”

  Bad? No, Greg, I don’t think it’s “that” bad. I think it’s worse.

  A hell of a lot worse.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I just know that right now we need to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”

  Day 2

  Chapter 7

  She opened her eyes to gunshots.

  That wasn’t supposed to happen. She was living in her dream house, with a husband and a baby on the way. They’d gone to a lot of effort to get as far away from the city as possible while still keeping Cole’s business within commuting distance. There shouldn’t have been any gunshots out here. But then again, nothing that had happened yesterday should have been possible, either.

  Some retirement, Emily thought as she sat up on the loveseat.

  Greg was snoring in front of her, oblivious to the shots. She knew it was morning without having to look at her watch. Even without windows, the room had brightened up noticeably, adding to the light provided by the two lamps she’d turned on last night. The lights, currently both set to dim, were LEDs and
ran on batteries that could be recharged with the sun.

  Recharged by the sun, because they didn’t have power anymore.

  Just like they didn’t have phones.

  Or TV.

  Coincidence? Maybe, but she didn’t believe in coincidences. Emily always defaulted to evidence. And right now, everything was pointing to a coordinated attack.

  How do you take down an army? Easy. First, you launch a surprise attack. Then you cut off the enemy’s ability to communicate and choke the supply lines. And then you go in for the kill.

  But none of that mattered right now.

  Right now, it was all about surviving the next 24 hours.

  Then after that, the next 24 hours…

  She got up and hurried over to Greg, and nudged the big man awake. “Greg, wake up. Greg.”

  He opened his eyes and gave her a groggy grunt before starting to sit up. “What’s wrong?”

  “I heard gunshots.”

  His head turned immediately toward the door. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “I heard them.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. The walls are thick, so if I can hear them all the way in here, it means they’re close by.”

  “How close?”

  “I don’t know, but close.”

  “So what should we do?”

  She looked around at the room. They could stay back here for weeks using the nonperishables they’d scavenged from the house last night. There was also a perfectly working bathroom that, even though the power grid had gone down, would still work thanks to the water tower nearby. Or, at least, until that ran dry, but that wouldn’t happen right away.

  “What should we do?” Greg asked again, watching her closely.

  “We should find out what’s happening,” Emily said as she stood up.

  Step two: Gather intel.

  “Maybe that’s a bad idea,” Greg said as he stood up next to her.

  “We’ll have to go outside sooner or later.”

  “Still…”

  “You can stay in here and wait for me.”

  Greg’s eyes widened slightly. “What? And let you go out by yourself?”

  She gave him a pursed smile. Greg was so predictable; like a lot of men, he had a chivalrous streak in him. The fact that she was pregnant probably brought out even more of the knight in shining armor. She should have felt a little guilty about manipulating him emotionally like that, but she didn’t.

  “Come with me, then,” Emily said.

  He nodded reluctantly and picked up the nail gun from the floor where he’d laid it next to him as he slept. “Let me go first.”

  “Of course.”

  They walked across the room, Greg in the lead. He still looked groggy and was shaking his head to get rid of the cobwebs. She should have been too, but her alarm systems were already up to full power. Gunshots had that effect on her.

  “How many shots did you hear?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe three or four—”

  As if on cue, they both heard the faint pop! of another gunshot.

  Then, a few seconds later, pop-pop!

  Those last two, Emily thought, sounded much closer than the first one.

  “I heard that,” Greg said.

  “Me, too.”

  He stopped halfway to the door and looked back at her. “You sure you want to be doing this?”

  “We have to find out what’s going on out there.”

  “Do we?”

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  He didn’t answer right away, and she could see him wrestling with the question. Did he want to know? Or was he smart enough to realize staying in here, where it was safe (okay, so maybe not safe, but safer), was the better option? For that matter, why wasn’t she thinking the same thing?

  “Let’s…just be careful,” Greg finally said.

  She nodded. “Agreed.”

  Emily snatched up her golf club leaning against the wall next to the door.

  They were going to have to manually open the steel door the way they had done it last night after the power went down. Usually the door would have clicked softly open for her as she approached, but the absence of electricity meant no automated motion sensors.

  Greg turned the lock first, then reached for the handle. He didn’t turn the lever right away, but instead glanced back at her one more time.

  She gave him a reassuring look and nod.

  He returned it, then pushed the handle down and pulled the door back. She had never really noticed how heavy the door was until Greg had to pry it open last night. It was two inches of 12-gauge steel, which made it heavy enough that Greg had to use both hands. Not an easy feat, given his injuries. But even hurt, the contractor was still way stronger than her.

  Sunlight was flooding the back hallway on the other side, along the parts of the dining and living room that she could see from back here. Greg went out first, leaving the backroom door open behind them. Emily followed, itching to go on ahead of him to get a better look, but stuck to her role as damsel in distress for Greg’s sake.

  Oh, the things I do for men’s egos.

  They didn’t hear more shooting as they walked the rest of the way out of the back hallway, then across the living room. Morning sunlight washed the carpets in bright pools of glowing white colors, a stark difference from last night.

  They hurried through the rest of the house and over to the front windows. Emily pressed against the wall on the left side of one of the windows—Greg took up position on the other side, the nail gun like a pistol at his side—and looked out.

  The streets were empty and there were no signs of movement. Certainly, no hints of anything that even resembled an ongoing gun battle. So where did the gunshots she’d heard come from? It had to be close by.

  The front door of Mrs. Landry’s house across the street was open, just as the retiree had left it when she charged out and stabbed Don in the back with a knife yesterday. Don’s house, to the right of her, was hidden from view. And so was George Benson’s, farther up the street. Emily couldn’t see much of anything except the buildings in front and across the street from her, and those were as still as could be.

  Too still. She couldn’t help picturing Don Taylor or one of her other neighbors lying in wait. They’d gone crazy, but nothing about what she’d seen told her they’d also gone stupid.

  A slight wind howled through a few of the open windows around her, and blew newspapers along the sidewalk on the other side of her front yard. Arrow Bay Colony was known as a pristine subdivision, so that was a little jarring to see.

  “Look,” Greg said, pointing.

  Emily followed his finger to Carol Miller’s damaged SUV, still parked up the street where she’d crashed it less than 24 hours ago. There were no signs of Carol or any of the psychos that had been converging on her. Emily couldn’t make out very many details from all the way down here and was glad for it.

  “You think she made it?” Greg asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope she made it.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “You said you didn’t know her?”

  “No. It’s a big neighborhood.”

  Flickers of movement, just before two appeared out of nowhere, fleeing down the street past Carol Miller’s smashed vehicle.

  “Whoa, where’d they come from?” Greg said, moving slightly to get a better view outside. “Are they trying to get to the front gate?”

  Emily didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t think so. It was a man and a woman, and if they were trying to make the gate, they were going in the wrong direction.

  “No,” she said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. They’re going in the wrong direction.”

  “Oh.”

  As the pair got closer, their faces became clearer. It was a man and a woman—technically. But even more specifically, it was a boy and a girl. Teenagers.

  And right now, the boy h
ad slowed down just enough to turn slightly and point his hand behind him.

  No, not his hand. There was something at the end of his outstretched arm.

  Sunlight glinted off the steel barrel of a gun.

  I could use that, Emily thought as the kid fired, the gun bucking in his hand.

  She couldn’t see what he was shooting at, but he must not have hit it because he turned around, and still in full stride, shouted at his companion, “Faster! We gotta go faster!”

  The girl didn’t respond, but she didn’t slow down, either. She kept running, long blonde hair streaming behind her. She was wearing jeans and sneakers that squeaked loudly with every harried step she took. Neither her nor the boy appeared very athletic, and they seemed to be already running out of steam.

  “Someone’s chasing them,” Greg said.

  No shit, Greg, Emily thought, but she said, “Yes.”

  “Where do you think they’re going?”

  I don’t know, but I don’t think they’re going to make it, she thought when a third figure appeared behind the teenagers, pursuing them.

  He was a tall man in denim overalls, the steel head of an ax sparkling in the sunlight as it waved up and down in his hand.

  It was the same psycho from yesterday. The one that had tried to stop Carol Miller as she fled in the SUV. He hadn’t succeeded—or maybe he had. Emily would never know, and frankly, she didn’t want to know.

  As the trio got closer, Emily was able to see more of them. Especially the one chasing the teenagers. She’d never seen him before, but there was no mistaking the blood splattered across the front of his clothes. It wasn’t just other people’s blood but some of his own, too. The man was bleeding. He was leaving bright red droplets behind him on the sidewalk as he chased after the duo. The boy hadn’t missed entirely after all, though that didn’t seem to have stopped the psycho.

  And Emily knew he was a psycho, as Greg called them, even if she couldn’t quite make out the mask of blood on his face or dripping from his eyes because he was moving so fast. She could just tell from the way he moved, the way he disregarded however many bullet wounds the boy had put into him with the gun.

  That gun. Dammit, I could use that gun.

  The figures were two houses from her now and getting closer.

  “They’re not going to make it,” Greg said.