Early Warning (Book 1): Martial Law

by McLean, Angus

  ‘Cool,’ she said, ‘let’s go. We’ve got some miles to make.’

  She headed along the footpath, feeling they would be safest staying on the main roads. They quickly hit Great South Road, the main arterial that ran from the fringe of the central city all the way down to the Bombay hills. If they stayed on that the whole way, she knew it would take them where they needed to go. Problem was it ran through built up areas all the way past Papakura, and her gut told her that they were likely to strike trouble the longer this went on.

  Built-up areas might not be safe for very long.

  As if to emphasise her point she heard the roar of a car engine approaching behind them and she spun, seeing a lowered Holden V8 flying towards the Great South Rd intersection at a rate of knots. It was tinted out and had damage to the front right, and a Police patrol car was some way behind it – she could hear the siren now and the flashing red and blues were lighting up the dawn.

  ‘Watch out,’ she called out to Alex, stepping back against the front hedge of the house on the corner.

  The Holden came up fast, slowed marginally as it approached the intersection then threw a right turn, the back of the car fishtailing wildly. It clipped the far kerb outside a new car dealership and bounced, the tyres smoked and it took off again. The Police car took the corner much slower and she she could see two cops in it. The siren was deafeningly loud. The passenger had the radio mic to her mouth and the driver looked tense.

  The Police car barrelled after the Holden and Gemma glanced back to check on Alex. As she did so she heard two sounds simultaneously; the screech of brakes and the crack of gunshots. She whirled and pressed herself back into the hedge.

  The Police car had slid to a stop in the middle of the road, its siren still blaring and the lights still flashing. Thirty or so metres ahead of them the blacked-out Holden had slewed across the road and Gemma could see three guys standing near it. One had a rifle of some sort at the shoulder and the guy beside him had a short-barrelled weapon braced against his hip. The third was watching and yelling something unintelligible.

  The two cops were bailing out and the two gunmen were firing at them. She recognised the throaty boom of a shotgun and realised the short-barrelled weapon was probably a sawn-off shotgun. The rifle had a lighter crack.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Alex appeared beside her, stepping out into the open and staring at the scene unfolding before them. ‘Oh fuck!’

  He threw himself back against the hedge, his eyes wide. The police car was taking rounds even as the two cops were burrowing in the boot, trying to slide open the gun drawer that was there.

  Gemma watched the girl cop grab a holstered pistol and attach it to the clip on her belt then draw the weapon and rack it. The guy got his hands on a Bushmaster M4 and in a couple of seconds was leaning round the back of the car, putting rounds down towards the guys at the Holden.

  ‘What the hell are we going to do?’ Alex panted. His eyes were wide and his face had gone several shades lighter than normal.

  Gemma could feel her heart slamming against her ribcage. Things had taken a sudden turn for the worst and the plan she had worked out only moments ago had just flown out the window. She played for time, taking a moment to glance around the corner. Bullets were flying in both directions and she could hear impacts against both cars.

  As she watched, the male cop leaned out from behind the patrol car with his rifle at the shoulder, trying for a better angle. She saw his body jerk and he fell backwards, flat on his back on the roadway.

  ‘Jesus,’ Gemma whispered to herself, clapping a hand to her mouth. She saw the cop struggle to get up, fall back and push himself up again. He was hit again and this time she saw a spray of blood. He hit the deck again and his legs twitched.

  The female cop began to move, rising up to pop a couple of shots at the guys behind the blacked-out car, then shuffling round the patrol car towards her partner. She reached the end of her cover and was yelling at him. Gemma knew there would be no answer, and the female cop seemed to realise too.

  Holstering her pistol, she lunged forward and grabbed him by the arm, trying to drag him back into cover. A second later she was knocked sideways and hit the deck in an awkward sitting position, screaming blue murder.

  Gemma ducked back around the corner, bumping into Alex. ‘They just shot those cops! OhmyfuckingGod!’

  Alex let out a squeal and his eyes bugged. Gemma grabbed him by the front of his shirt. ‘Shhh! Shut up!’

  ‘What’re we gunna do? Fuck fuck fuck!’

  ‘Shut up!’ Gemma risked another peek around the corner, half expecting to see the bad guys coming towards them. All three of them were standing over the two fallen cops now, their guns pointed at them. The female cop was whimpering, clutching onto her leg with one hand, the other hand raised up defensively.

  The guy with the sawn-off shotgun raised the stubby barrel slightly and blasted her in the chest at point blank range. She flopped backwards and didn’t move. The three guys laughed and the one with the rifle stepped forward, firing a shot into the body of each cop.

  Gemma felt her gut go cold and she desperately needed to pee. She stayed frozen where she was, watching as they picked up the discarded M4 rifle and relieved the girl of her holstered Glock. Without looking back the three thugs turned and trotted back to their Holden. Seconds later they were gone, peeling away in a cloud of tyre smoke.

  She looked around, realising for the first time that the whole neighbourhood had gone suddenly silent. Not a single car or person could be heard.

  ‘They’re gone,’ she heard herself say. ‘We need to go check on them.’

  ‘We can’t go out there!’ Alex squealed, grabbing her arm. ‘What if they come back?’

  Gemma shook him off. ‘And what if those cops are still alive? My husband was a cop – they could be people he knew.’ She looked him in the eye, feeling a rush of determination despite her fear. ‘Stay here if you want, but I’m going to check on them.’

  She didn’t hang around to argue.

  Neither cop was moving when she got to them, both of them lying in a pool of blood. The girl’s chest was an open mass of red and pink flesh and she was staring at the sky, a look of complete terror frozen on her face. The guy was on his side and the pool of blood around him was huge and steadily spreading. He was unmoving.

  Knowing there would be a first aid kit in the car, Gemma moved round to the boot of the patrol car. She first saw two sets of body armour lying in the boot beneath the open gun tray, and realised that neither cop had donned it before they engaged the bad guys. Maybe if they hadn’t been in such an enforced rush they would have survived. Maybe not.

  Her eyes fell to the gun tray and she saw a holstered pistol sitting there in the foam lining. Beside it were two spare magazines in black pouches. She wondered if she should take it. Even though they had guns at home she’d only ever fired a pistol once before, when one of Mark’s mates had come over for a shoot-up. It had been an automatic of some sort, a forty-five they had said, and she remembered it kicking when she fired it.

  She left the pistol where it was for now and grabbed the red first aid kit below the tray. It was a day pack and felt full. As she was lifting it out she heard Alex shouting at her from behind. She turned and saw the blacked-out Holden flying back up Great South Road towards them. She realised she’d been so absorbed in what she was doing that she’d blocked out her surroundings.

  ‘Oh shit.’ Gemma dropped the first aid kit and stared at the approaching car. It was only seconds away from reaching her. Obviously the bad guys had decided to return for some reason; maybe to steal the patrol car, maybe set it on fire. Whatever their reason was it didn’t matter. She was here and she was exposed.

  She knew instinctively they would have no hesitation in killing her.

  Twenty-Seven

  Gemma snatched up the holstered pistol – Mark always called them Glocks – and tried to draw it.

  It was stuck and it took her
a moment to find the thumb catch to unlock it. She pushed the hammer strap forward and the Glock cleared the holster at the same time as the bad guys skidded to a halt a few metres away on the other side of the patrol car.

  She could hear their voices, rough and uneducated, every second word a swear word. She remembered she had to rack the slide on top of the gun and she pulled it back. It clacked forward loudly and one of the thugs gave a shout.

  ‘Whaddafuck?’

  ‘Eh, who the fuck’s ‘at?’

  Gemma had the pistol in both hands now, remembering to keep her finger outside the trigger guard, and she stepped away from the car so they could see her.

  ‘Get back,’ she said as loudly as she could. ‘Get back!’

  ‘Eh, what the fuck cunt?’ The speaker was the one with the sawn-off shotgun, a fat man with bushy hair and shades on despite the early hour. ‘Who the fuck you think you are, bitch? Fuckin’ talk to me like that, cunt, I’ll fuck you up.’

  ‘I said get back.’ Gemma raised the Glock so they could see it clearly, pointing it directly at the speaker.

  ‘Ow, fuck bro!’ The guy with the rifle – not the cop’s M4 – ducked off to the side, bringing his gun around.

  ‘Fuckin’ bitch!’ The guy with the sawn-off raised it and in that instant things changed.

  Gemma knew without a doubt that she was about to get shot; it was no longer an option to run.

  She pulled the trigger without even realising her finger had moved. The pistol bucked in her hand and the guy staggered backwards. His shotgun went off with a roar, blasting out a window on the other side of the patrol car. She had no idea if she’d hit him or not, but she could no longer see him.

  Gemma ducked backwards, jerking off another shot that punched a hole in the sky somewhere. The other two guys were scrambling for cover and she took cover herself, getting behind the patrol car and tucking herself in against the rear wheel. Her ears were ringing from the sound of the shots but still her heart was deafeningly loud.

  Glass exploded over her from above and she realised the bad guys were shooting at her. She knew that she had to do something, otherwise she was dead.

  Peeking up above the door frame brought another shot, the bullet whining off the roof of the patrol car. She ducked back down then immediately up again, bringing the Glock up in both hands at the same time as the guy with the cop’s M4 was coming around the back of his car. He was firing towards the patrol car but she was unaware of where his bullets were going.

  Gemma squeezed the trigger then, the pistol bucking in her grip. The gunman did a double take and she fired a fourth time, and again and again. He turned and ran back behind the car, shouting to his mate. Gemma kept firing, seeing the side windows crack then shatter as the bullets impacted. She heard a shout from somewhere but ignored it and fired two more shots.

  The Holden revved hard and started to move, exposing the guy with the cop’s M4. He loosed off another shot at her which exploded the light bar on the roof of the patrol car then dived into the Holden as it took off. Gemma fired again at it as it raced away then straightened up and watched it go.

  She licked her lips and tried to swallow but her mouth was like sandpaper. She looked at the Glock in her hands. Blue smoke was curling from the barrel and the slide was locked open. She knew that meant she was out of bullets.

  ‘Well that’s lucky,’ she heard herself saying, then laughed. It sounded incongruous to be laughing at a time like this but she couldn’t help it.

  She jumped when she realised Alex was approaching, looking at her as if she were a mad woman.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked tentatively.

  Gemma got herself under control and wiped her face. ‘Yeah, sorry. I’m fine.’

  ‘You just shot that guy,’ Alex told her.

  Gemma nodded, reality coming back with a bang. She had just shot a guy.

  ‘I thought you were going to die,’ Alex said. There was a tremor in his voice. ‘That was…unreal. Bloody unreal, man.’

  Gemma nodded. She didn’t know what to say. She put the Glock on the ground and unslung her daypack. In half a minute she had drained a water bottle. She wiped her mouth and stuffed the bottle back into the bag. Then she picked up the spare magazines in their pouches and shoved them into her bag.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ she heard Alex saying. ‘Oh Jesus.’

  Looking up, she saw the blacked-out Holden flying back up the road towards them.

  ‘Run!’ Gemma rammed the Glock into the daypack and slung it on, grabbed the first aid bag and bolted back across the road the way they had come.

  They reached the corner and she darted into the first driveway, running through somebody’s property to a fence. She hurled the first aid bag over it and climbed onto the rails, hauling herself up.

  ‘Hurry!’ Alex dragged himself over after her as doors slammed out on the road and shouts sounded.

  ‘This way!’ Gemma dropped to her hands and knees and forced herself through a low gap in a hedge to the next property, shoving the red bag ahead of her. Alex was hard on her heels, panting and gasping.

  She was up and running again with the red first aid bag in her hands, the daypack bouncing on her back, and within seconds they were over another fence and gaining distance.

  She didn’t know what else to do but keep running, so that’s what they did.

  Twenty-Eight

  The sun was up by the time I finished my morning tasks.

  I had risen early after a night of tossing and turning, my mind racing and churning over the million things I wanted and needed to do. Top of the list was making sure my family was safe.

  To that end I had walked our property in the dark, checking the fences and outbuildings for any sign of interference and also any sign of a weak point, then had repeated the process in the grey light of dawn. Jethro joined me for the second lap, happy to get out and have a sniff around. I had the lever action Rossi in my hands and the Browning holstered on my hip in case things went wrong.

  Our location was great for what we bought it for, but in the situation the country now found itself I doubted that we were isolated enough for that to be a major strength. To counter that I needed to make sure that our property was both unappealing to any potential intruders and also defensible against those that pushed their luck.

  With just myself and my mother home right now it would be a tough task to defend it against a determined foe. On the flip side of that was the fact that most burglars and thieves tend to be gutless scumbags that prey on the weak. The key was to give the impression of strength without fully showing your hand.

  The intruders of the previous night caused me concern; we had never had such an incident at this house before, and for it to happen so soon after things turned to shit did not bode well for the future. My hand had been forced into confronting the threat head-on, which had revealed the fact that I was armed and prepared to use force. Should the burglars return they would be forewarned of what they were up against, so I needed to have more plays in my gamebook to counter that.

  In normal circumstances I would have said that the likelihood of some shitbag returning to a house where a man stuck a gun in their face was very low, but in the current situation, who knew?

  On top of all that I was worried as hell about Gemma. Cell phone connections were down and I didn’t know if my texts were going through or, if they were, whether her phone was even charged. She was notoriously slack at keeping it juiced up.

  I came back to the house with a plan in mind and a renewed determination. I needed information, and there was only one place to get it.

  Archie was up and about when I got inside, sitting at the breakfast bar eating dry Weetbix and drinking milk. He was wearing his monster dressing gown over his racing cars pyjamas and looked small and vulnerable, but his face lit up when he saw me.

  ‘Daddy!’

  He jumped down and ran to me for a cuddle. I had placed the weapons in the hall cupboard and just had time to kick off my boots
before he got to me. I held him against my chest, his arms wrapped around my neck, cherishing the closeness. He had always been a cuddly kid and Gemma and I were determined to make the most of it before he became a mono-syllabic moody teenager.

  We chatted while I prepared a proper breakfast for both of us. He wanted to know what I had been doing outside and I explained, without mentioning the burglars, that I just needed to make sure the animals were okay. He accepted that and hoed into a bowl of Weetbix, fruit and yoghurt. The power was working again but at low strength, so I fired up the gas BBQ on the deck to boil the jug and make toast.

  Archie was starting on his jam toast when Grandma appeared. She had clearly slept badly and the redness of her eyes told me she had been crying.

  I gave her a hug and when I went to pull away she held on like she had when I was a kid. I knew the feeling now and hugged her back.

  ‘It’ll be okay, Mum,’ I told her. ‘Grab a coffee.’

  I poured her a cup while she gave Archie a kiss on the head and a half hug. He did what he needed to do without tearing himself away from his toast.

  With a mug of coffee in her hand and the sun shining in the kitchen window she cheered up somewhat. I hadn’t told her about the burglars either, knowing she would just stress out, but if I was to leave them at home together, she needed to know. I didn’t want to take them into town without knowing what we were heading into.

  ‘Did you get much sleep?’ my mother asked, and I gave a shrug. ‘She’ll be fine,’ she continued, giving me one of those motherly looks. ‘She’ll be home before you know it.’

  ‘No doubt,’ I agreed, more for Archie’s benefit than my own; I knew that there was little I could do right now to speed up Gemma’s return home.

  I finished off my coffee and put the mug in the sink. Knowing that my mother was no great fan of my wife, and vice versa, made it uncomfortable to discuss one with the other. I wondered momentarily whether my mother would actually really care if Gemma made it home or not. I knew I couldn’t afford to dwell on such negative thoughts, but it was a reality.