by Rick Tippins
“You all good under there?” he asked.
She bobbed her head in the affirmative just as the trussed-up heap of humanity on their hallway floor stirred.
Jared pointed the Glock at the man and waited as the man strained mindlessly against his restraints, not fully conscious and apparently not realizing he was wrapped up like a broken and bloodied pretzel. Jared glanced back at Essie, seeing she had a direct line of sight to the trussed-up man in the hallway.
“I’ll be right out here with that guy. Stay there. Everything’s okay now. There were only two, and we got ’em both.”
She withdrew like a turtle into the dark recess of her hiding spot, leaving him free to step into the hallway and approach the man, who was trying to roll over. As the man rolled onto his side, the look on his face showed he now understood his predicament.
“Shouldn’t have come in this place,” Jared quipped at the man on the floor.
“No shit,” the man groaned.
The tarp rustled, and Jared nearly shit himself as Bart came back in, breathing heavily, sweat glistening off his forehead, and looking more than a little haggard. A small trickle of blood was visible in the corner of Bart’s mouth as he approached Jared.
“You okay?” Jared touched his mouth. “You’re bleeding.”
Bart quickly wiped his mouth with a sleeve, continuing down the hallway, leaving Jared with the impression that now was not the time to ask personal questions about the old son of a bitch’s health.
“Let’s get this piece of shit into my room,” Bart barked, reaching down and cutting the flex cuff that bound the man’s hands to his feet. Bart also cut the man’s feet free. Jared stepped forward, assisting in getting the man to his feet and into Bart’s bedroom. Bart set the room up with three chairs, two facing the last one, and then roughly shoved the man down into the single chair.
He produced two more flex cuffs, cut the man’s hands free, and used the new cuffs to secure the man’s arms to the chair. If the man got up, he would bring the chair with him. Next, Bart used two more flex cuffs to bind the man’s ankles to the two front legs of the chair. He removed the man’s boots, throwing them out into the hallway, and dropped into one of the other two chairs, staring at the man and breathing hard from the effort.
Both men just sat staring at the other, Jared not daring to move in the doorway until Bart slapped the chair next to him.
“Sit, or go tend to Essie. You’re making me nervous standing back there.”
Jared retreated to his bedroom, where he got Essie out from under the cot and was about to tuck her back in bed, when she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed his neck so tight vertebrae popped and crackled, reminding him of trips he’d taken to a chiropractor. He squeezed back, holding Essie for several seconds until she loosened her grip, pulling her face back so they could see each other. Essie pushed her hair back from her eyes, blinking and smiling as Jared broke into his own wide smile.
He slowly shook his head, saying, “You’re safe, and you always will be. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Again, she wiped her hair back and nodded, never uttering a word. Jared hugged her tight again, then laid her in the cot, pulling the sleeping bag up to her chin.
After putting Essie back to bed, Jared re-entered Bart’s room. The two men were still sitting in silence.
Jared’s entrance must have jump-started something, causing the trussed-up man to shift in his chair, asking, “Is this really necessary?”
Bart lowered his chin, glaring down his nose at the man. “Necessary? I think it is very fucking necessary, especially after you and your dead friend come in here, break my front door down, and shoot the place up. We have a seven-year-old girl in here whom you two just happened to scare the holy fuck out of, for Christ’s sake, so yeah, I think it’s necessary.” Bart leaned in menacingly. “And you fuckers broke the glass on my front door and fucked me out of a good night’s sleep.”
The man stopped moving and lowered his gaze. “We weren’t trying to hurt anyone,” he said weakly.
Another two-minute staring contest ensued, Jared trying to act tough by not breaking eye contact with the bound man. When Bart finally broke the silence, Jared was positive with absolute certainty that the last two minutes had been the most uncomfortable in his entire life.
“What’s your name?” Bart asked the man, his voice softening, his shoulders relaxing just a hair.
“Adam,” the man replied suspiciously, not sure of Bart’s change in demeanor.
This was not Bart’s first interrogation, and he knew time was on his side. He wanted to identify what this man knew about the outside world. He wasn’t about to torture the man, the cop in him still controlling his moral compass to a certain degree; plus, Bart considered himself a decent man, one who sought to help people, not a person who took advantage of people, no matter how low society seemed to have stooped.
“Okay, Adam,” Bart started, “what was tonight all about?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Over the next two hours, Jared marveled as Bart prodded, manipulated and, at times, softly cajoled Adam into divulging almost more information than Jared could digest. Adam explained how the city had become so dangerous, not even children were safe. Women were fast becoming a common currency, making it dangerous to have women as part of your group. Most people were hiding in their homes, which wasn’t proving to be very smart since it made it easier for those who sought to victimize them. Gangs were going from neighborhood to neighborhood, searching homes for food, weapons and women.
Adam told Bart he and his dead friend, Erik, were neighbors living across town in a fairly normal suburban neighborhood when the event happened. Both men worked together at a recycling center not far from their homes. He said they had been at work when it happened, and immediately made the walk home, getting in after nightfall. He and his family had treated it like every other power outage they’d been through. Adam said he knew something was different this time.
Adam was married to Mary, and they had a twelve-year-old daughter, Maggie. The following day Erik and Adam got together and went for a walk around the neighborhood, looking for answers regarding what was happening. It seemed everyone they encountered was in the same boat as they were. No one knew a thing, and nothing having to do with electronics worked for anyone.
Adam told Bart not much changed for the first few days, but then they started hearing gunfire at night, along with the even more unnerving sounds of people screaming. In the span of four days, the neighborhood went from a safe place to a place where people huddled inside their homes, peeking fearfully from behind curtained windows, watching as bands of strangers moved through the streets, looking for food and much more. Adam said he and Erik decided to consolidate the families in Adam’s house in order to set up a watch rotation. Erik was married to a woman named Betty, and they had three kids: two teen boys, Erik Jr. and Edward, and Erik’s daughter, Tammy, was the same age as Maggie, and they were best friends.
The families moved all the food from Erik’s house to Adam’s house and set up a watch rotation using the two men, the wives, and the two teen boys. Erik Jr. and Edward stood watch together in order to keep each other awake and for peace of mind for both them and their parents. Erik had a small .38-caliber pistol, the same one he shot at Jared and Bart with, and the families were relying on Erik and the small handgun to keep them safe till the government could get going with some sort of relief.
Close to a week into the event, Erik’s family’s house was ransacked in the middle of the night. The two boys were on watch and woke their father to tell him people were in their house, breaking things.
Adam told Jared and Bart how hard it was for Erik to sit in silence and listen to all his worldly possessions being destroyed next door, not twenty yards from where he and his family sat hidden in their neighbor’s home. His wife had cried all night, even after the people left the house. The following day both Erik and his wife refused to go to their hous
e, saying the house was contaminated and was no longer the home they remembered.
Three days later, their group was without food and water. To make things worse, they were using the toilets and the house smelled like a sewer. Erik and Adam decided they would go out and find food, water, and see if they could contact any police or government personnel.
Adam said they left the pistol with Erik Jr, who was the older of the two boys, giving him explicit instructions to safeguard the women at all costs. The two men left, pulling a red wagon out into the neighboring area in search of supplies. They were not successful in finding a single scrap of food that trip and started their return home, taking a different route in order to scavenge along the way back to the house.
Passing through one of the neighborhoods, the men saw something that shook them to their very core. They had decided to pass through a very upscale neighborhood in order to check a shopping center and then continue home, when they found what appeared to be a half dozen surly men sitting on the porch of a nice house. The men were more than a little out of place, as they were hard men and heavily tattooed. Adam was no gang expert, but he’d seen enough news clips to know a gang member when he saw one, and these guys all fit the bill.
The troubling part about the whole thing was the thirty something-year-old mother, haggard and bruised, sitting on a chair in the midst of the horde. She looked pleadingly at the men as they passed by. It was glaringly apparent she was not there of her own volition.
Adam went on, saying he and Erik were not armed and continued on their way, seeing similar scenes five more times throughout the neighborhood. It was like these gangs had come in, killed the men, and taken over the households, keeping the women for heaven knew what. Adam seemed truly distressed when he described the scene in that neighborhood. Bart stopped the interview, cut the ankle bindings, and sat back down. Adam stretched his legs out in front of him for a long second and then thanked Bart before continuing his story.
When the men reached their neighborhood, they immediately knew something was not right. Smoke rose from several places throughout the vicinity, causing them to abandon the wagon and race to Adam’s house, where they found the front door wide open. Erik found his daughter stabbed to death at the foot of the staircase, alongside Adam’s daughter. Adam did not weep while he recounted the horrific details, but Jared could see it had been a life-altering experience, and the man who sat bound to this chair today was not the same man he’d been two weeks prior.
Adam described the house as he and Erik frantically searched for their remaining family members. They found all four of them in the kitchen near the back door leading out to the yard. From what they could tell, the boys had tried to hold someone off by blocking the back door. Whoever was on the other side of the door had beat on it so fiercely, the door had eventually fallen apart, allowing the assailant to hack the boys to pieces with some sort of heavy edged weapon.
The wives were killed next, obviously coming to the aid of the two boys, and had gone down in much the same manner, cut to ribbons and left lying atop the stricken teens. Their families’ bodies were so badly damaged they couldn’t imagine trying to move them all outside to bury each one, so the men had decided to burn the house along with the bodies in it.
Adam told them he found the revolver still in Erik Jr’s waistband. The boy hadn’t even drawn the weapon in defense of the house and its occupants. None of the adults were prepared for this kind of event, much less the children.
The men spent a few hours inside the house, mourning and holding belongings that had at one time been near and dear to each family member, before pouring gasoline on the carpets, drapes and stairway, trailing the accelerant to the front door, where they pooled it in the foyer. Neither man could bring himself to douse the bodies of their loved ones, so Adam grabbed two flares from the trunk of his wife’s useless car, ignited them, and together both men tossed a flare into the petroleum-saturated home. The fire took off so fast, it blew out the windows, and within twenty seconds, the entire house was ablaze.
They both watched as the home burned everything they had known from their previous world. The fire consumed their mates, their offspring, and all their worldly possessions. No fire trucks came, no sirens sounded, no nothing, just the crackling fire and the occasional crash as part of the house caved in on itself.
Adam knew Erik was close by, but could not say what he’d done that night. Each man had focused on his own misery in his own way that night. He’d thrown the flare and retreated instinctively to Erik’s front yard as the fire erupted. He had sunk to his knees, staying there until the sun came up the following day. By then the fire had burned itself out for the most part, and Adam’s legs had fallen asleep, making it impossible to get up when he finally finished digesting what had happened and what he’d done in the aftermath.
He had flopped over, moaning in both mental and physical agony as the blood returned to his blood-starved limbs. When he was able to walk, he found Erik sitting on the steps of his home, shoulders slumped, cheeks stained from what was most assuredly a night of tears. When Adam got closer to Erik, he saw the blood-covered pistol in his hand and knew immediately what he’d been wrestling with all night. Erik never went through with it, but instead went back inside his house, the only time he ever did after it was ransacked and got a box of fifty .38-caliber cartridges.
The men set out with no particular place in mind to go. They trudged out of their neighborhood, shoulders slumped, two broken souls having lost everything, including their will to live, which felt reduced to a shadow of its previous state.
Funny thing, Adam explained, was how hunger and thirst work in the drive to live. The men were already hungry before their families were slaughtered, but the following day found them not only hungry, but thirsty as well. Thirst is by far worse than hunger and could kill a man in a matter of days. As they walked through their dying neighborhood, they knocked on doors, trying to contact anyone who might have seen who did this terrible thing, but no one would talk to them. It was like they had the plague.
As they scavenged over the next few days, they saw killings, dead and discarded bodies, and sometimes worse. They’d taken to searching cars for people’s lunches or power bars. They were far less successful in this endeavor than they would ever have thought possible, but it had kept them alive.
A few days before they met Bart and Jared, the two went poking around an office building, hoping to get lucky and find snacks in abandoned desk drawers. They’d entered an office full of cubicles and were about to start tearing into the desk drawers when a man wearing full military camouflage stood up in the center of the cubicles. Erik and Adam were blocking the door, but this guy was so obviously part of the government, or what used to be the government, the two men were more curious than threatened. The man turned out to be as frightened as Erik and Adam were, which resulted in the men actually treating each other courteously.
The men spent the next hour talking and searching for food together. Adam said it had felt good to be with a complete stranger who didn’t pose a threat for a change. The guy relayed his story since the event, which was interesting, but far less tragic than Adam and Erik’s story.
The guy’s name was Brad and he’d actually been a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, stationed at Moffett Field, assigned to the Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing. He had been on approach to the base when the event hit, knocking the helicopter’s entire flight system off-line. Brad had dumped the collective and began an autorotation landing, but his lack of forward airspeed combined with his low altitude gave him some problems, and he ended up landing much harder than he would have liked. The landing gear collapsed, the tail boom snapped, and the main rotors struck the ground, causing the aircraft to spin violently before coming to rest on its side.
Brad unstrapped himself, yelling to the other three men aboard, checking for injuries. No one was injured during the unscheduled landing, and Brad said he didn’t think about it until he climbed from the
sixteen-million-dollar paperweight, but not a single emergency vehicle had responded after the crash. At first, he thought maybe it was because the emergency happened so fast that he didn’t have time to make a distress call, and the tower just hadn’t seen him yet.
When, after five minutes, no one drove out to his crash site, he and his crew walked towards the hangars. As they crossed the airfield, they started seeing people running around as if something was going on. Looking back, Brad was even more perplexed, since the wreckage of his aircraft was smoking, which should have stood out on any airfield.
Jogging up to the hangar, they found some guys from their unit and were told all the power was out. One of the men asked them if they were aboard the bird on short and final when the power went out, and asked if everyone onboard was okay. When Brad assured him everyone was fine, the man ran off, and no one else inquired about the loss of a multimillion-dollar asset or the welfare of its crew. It was bewildering to him.
Slowly, things came into focus as more and more they realized not only the power, but everything that used power, was out. Rumors flew like bullets about a terrorist attack, although no one could say for sure what had happened.
Within an hour, the base commander had the base locked down, securing the gates and letting no one in or out. The 129th Rescue Wing had three Black Hawks out at the time of the event and had accounted for only one, and that was the smoldering heap of burning aircraft aluminum out on the tarmac. The other two had been on training missions miles away from the base, and with no way of communicating, no one knew if they had landed safely or not. The base had a large cache of MREs, which were the military’s rations for training and wartime.
After the first week, things got a little crazy, with some of the guards being involved in the shooting of civilians trying to enter the base, demanding assistance from the base commander. He had refused, citing the need to remain ready for orders when Washington got back on their feet and re-established contact. The following morning was a watershed moment for many of the unit’s people as the carnage from the night before was revealed by the rising sun. Fifty-three people were shot and killed at the main gate. Working parties had to be organized to remove the dead.