The Next World (Book 3): Resurgence

by Olah, Jeff

  The man out front, tall and stocky, carried a pistol in each hand, and a shotgun slung over his back. He stopped when he reached the middle of the street, held his right arm in the air, and as the others also slowed to a stop, turned and scanned the long city block.

  “Hold up!” The man’s voice was throaty, like he was fighting a cold or was a pack-a-day smoker. He spat on the street, taking his time looking slowly from one storefront to the next. And turning back to the stalled electric vehicle, he stared through the windshield, and pointed toward the opposite end of the street. “Two hundred, maybe three hundred yards.”

  There was a voice from the car, but it was lost to the distance, definitely a male, but not much else was certain. The man in the street nodded and quickly looked back over his left shoulder.

  He slid toward the middle of the hood, pulled back the rifle, and prayed he hadn’t been spotted. The man fifty yards away craned his neck to the left, to the right, and then took a few steps toward the opposite sidewalk.

  Don’t overreact. Watch and wait, see where this goes. You’ve got an out if you need it, so just relax.

  After a count of three, the man turned and addressed the others. “No,” he said, “we’re going to have to go around.”

  The voice from the car responded, the words coming fast, although still not enough volume to cover half the distance. The man then took one last glance over his shoulder, turned, and started to walk away.

  “Keep your mouths closed and your eyes open gentlemen, we’re close.”

  With that, the group turned away. Now eight men, three leading the small silver vehicle, three trailing, and one on each side. Their paced quickened as they broke into a jog and turned the corner at the intersection a quarter mile on.

  As the last man disappeared behind a pair of delivery vans backed into one another, he moved quickly back to the sidewalk, and knelt beside the curb. Adjusting his pack, the man in the dark hoodie pulled the straps tight, and rolled the stiffness from his neck.

  “Okay Devin, it’s time. Quick and quiet. You’re only gonna get one shot at this.”

  13

  Natalie was standing at the door when he came up the paved walkway. It smelled like rain and although the sun was still putting up a fight, clouds the color of dirty water were rapidly consuming the western skyline. And with what was coming, that may actually be a good thing.

  Owen tried to forget the pain building in his temple as he drew to within twenty feet of the building. He ran his hand through his hair and tried to change the look on his face. She could read him like a book and right now he needed her to believe a different story. He needed her to have confidence in what they were doing.

  “You ready for this?”

  She looked like she was doing the same thing. He could see the tension in the way the sides of her eyes drew tight and how she was pulling in breaths through her nose. She was trying to avoid hyperventilating.

  “The kids.”

  “We went over this. You, the kids, and Harper and Gentry won’t be anywhere around.”

  “I still don’t like it, what if they—”

  “It won’t matter what they do, we’ve got every angle covered.”

  “What if they know, what if Gentry was right?”

  Owen didn’t have the time to convince her that this was going to work, or that his children were going to be safe, or that he even knew what he was doing. Because he didn’t … and he hadn’t. Not in a very long time. He was just taking each new catastrophe as it presented itself and applying the same mantra. Whatever gets his family to the next day, whatever has to be done.

  He stepped to her, pulled her in close and laid his head next to hers. “I’m going to get you through this, the kids too, and our friends. We’re all going to get to the other side, I promise you. Just let me do this.”

  She cupped the sides of his face and kissed his cheek, then moved to his lips and lingered. He could taste her fear. When she pulled back, she looked into his eyes and then kissed him again, this time more gently. “I know you will. Just make sure you’re still you when all this is done. I want Owen Mercer back. The Owen Mercer I married, the Owen Mercer who knows exactly how I like my coffee in the morning and who gives me shit for it. That’s the promise I want from you.”

  He didn’t say anything; it wasn’t necessary. He only kissed her back and motioned into the building. “Make sure you don’t mention anything about what you’re doing, at least not until you’re on the road. Gentry doesn’t need to know and neither does Harper or the kids.”

  She nodded quickly, tears beginning to build in her eyes. “Four hours, and then I’m coming back.”

  Owen held her hand and kissed her once more. “You won’t have to.”

  He watched as she turned and walked away. Natalie, Harper, and Gentry would head out first. They would take Ava and Noah. He asked Lucas to drive and ran through the plan until the teen could repeat it back word for word. It was only a mile, but the former jewelry outlet was secluded and safe. Bars on the doors and windows, two ways in and out, and a straight shot to the interstate if things went sideways. He didn’t like it, although if Gentry was right, if their location had been compromised, his wife and his children would be much safer somewhere else.

  He now needed to focus on what came next.

  At the gates, Kevin gave a thumbs up and glanced back at the red pickup truck Travis had found two days before. The two men they’d taken from the street, Max and Billy, stood in the bed, chained at the waist and arms to the rack behind the cab. Max seemed to be grinning as he stared off toward the parking garage.

  “If I were you,” the smaller man in the green aviator jacket shouted as he tugged at the restraints, “I would just leave now. This isn’t going to go down the way you’re thinking. I can all but promise you that.”

  Owen motioned Kevin and Travis toward the truck. “Let’s go.” He ignored Max, taking a quick look toward the former sanitation plant to the south and then the street beyond. Still clear as far as he could see, the area eerily quiet, even for the end of the world.

  Travis stood at the rear door, waited for Zeus, and then climbed in behind the overly alert German Shepherd. Kevin started around the front of the truck, keys in hand and his eyes roving the street just beyond the gate.

  “Listen man, I’m just trying to help.” Max leaned into the cab of the truck and glared at Owen. His voice was different than before. Shaky, like he was out of breath, only he wasn’t. “You don’t know what you doing here man; it’s gonna be bad. Really bad.”

  Twenty yards from the truck, Owen felt the need to quicken his pace. The voices, which so far he’d been able to keep pushed down, were now telling him that this was wrong. That he shouldn’t be doing this, that he needed to take his family and just run.

  Back across the yard, he took one final glance beyond the southern wall. Lucas’s SUV had rolled to a stop at the last intersection. Owen continued to watch, but pulled the walkie from his front pocket and keyed the mic. “Lucas?”

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  Owen noticed that behind him, Kevin had stopped short of climbing in behind the wheel of the truck. He again keyed the walkie and started back across the lawn. “Lucas, you there?”

  A brief sound of static and then silence.

  “Hey.” Kevin leaned into the hood of the pickup. “They’re probably just hung up with the crowds. Nothing to worry about, but we do need to get going.”

  Owen looked at the two-way radio in his hand. He imagined Lucas’s voice coming through, the teen’s focused tone as the light-colored SUV pulled away from the intersection. He would reassure Owen that he could handle it, that he would keep Natalie, Ava, Noah, and Harper safe. He would tell him that he knew the plan backward and forward, and had driven the route more times than he could remember. He would tell him that he didn’t need to worry.

  But there was still no movement from the beyond the wall. Owen leaned into the walkie as he began to jo
g. “LUCAS?”

  When he was ten paces from the paved walkway there was the familiar static and a voice, but not the one he was expecting.

  “Dad?”

  “Noah, what’s going on?”

  “We got—”

  His son’s voice dropped away and was replaced again by a quick note of static.

  “Noah?”

  Nothing.

  “Noah, are you there?”

  Still only white noise.

  “NOAH!”

  Owen came to a stop, again stared down at the two-way radio, fearing the outcome. There was a moment where it was all he could see, his vision beginning to narrow and the sounds of the devastated city falling away. He was holding his breath and was in the midst of talking himself back, reminding himself where he was, when the sound of a weapon being fired echoed from over his left shoulder.

  It was quick. Like a flash of light you don’t see until it’s already there. A single round that sounded like a crack of lightning.

  “NOOOOOOO …”

  14

  Owen flinched, turning back toward the gates as it all seemed to come at once.

  Max, the man in the green jacket. His body going limp as his head was driven violently back and to the right. The side of his head was opened up and a fine pink mist sprayed out over the bed of the truck and against the left side of Billy’s face.

  Billy, now pulling against his restraints and attempting to duck behind the truck’s cab, was shouting something that sounded like a prayer, but his words were lost to the voices of Travis and Kevin.

  “OWEN, GO BACK! GET INSIDE!”

  Kevin now stood behind the driver’s door. He was looking out toward the four-story concrete parking structure, but waving Owen away.

  Travis had climbed out of the rear cab, pistol in hand, scanning the street as Zeus leapt past him. The massive German Shepherd turned on a dime, rounded the rear of the truck, and was headed toward Kevin when two more rounds were fired.

  The first skipped off the roof of the truck and exploded into Billy’s shoulder, a hailstorm of bone fragments and scorched pieces of flesh sprayed out over the sidewalk. The small man’s blue ball cap flipped backward off his head as he screeched in pain and then slammed into the side of the cab.

  Owen hadn’t noticed before, but Thomas was seated opposite Travis and hadn’t yet moved. His legs were pulled up into his chest and his head pushed forward, tucked behind the driver’s seat headrest. He appeared to be shaking as he slowly turned to look at Owen.

  The third round tore into the door frame, only inches from Kevin’s left elbow. In one fluid motion he slid right, shouldered his rifle, and placed his eye behind the scope. “THIRD LEVEL, JUST RIGHT OF THE STAIRS!”

  Owen stayed low, hunched forward as he covered the last several feet and dipped in behind the passenger door. He quickly glanced into the backseat and motioned for Thomas to stay put. And then back the other way, he looked to where his friend had indicated. “KEVIN, WHATTA WE GOT?”

  Kevin had his finger resting on the trigger guard and was scanning the other three levels when a faint buzzing sound pulled his attention back in the other direction. It was coming from beyond the intersection and somewhere to the left of the garage.

  Owen looked toward the building fifty feet away and then back through the cab, tapping his fingers on the dash and waiting. When Kevin finally leaned his head to the right, Owen said, “Go back? Maybe try to catch the others before they—”

  “No.” Kevin’s voice was low. Just above a whisper, but pointed, like he was rationing his words. “There’s another one, he’s got the rear choked off.”

  Owen was here, but his thoughts were back on that street a few hundred yards away. He took another look, but from his crouched position was unable to see anything above the wall. Had they moved away? Were they still there? Had the older model SUV stalled? Were they now out on the street, carrying what they could and running from the dead? He didn’t like any of those options, but for the moment he needed to figure out how to survive what was right in front of him.

  “Okay,” Owen said, “how many?” He glanced into the rearview mirror and could see Travis near the left corner of the truck’s bed. He was looking in the same general direction as Kevin, but he seemed more interested in the left corner of the intersection.

  “Don’t know.” Kevin pulled away from the scope and cocked his head. “At least five, maybe more.”

  “It’s him, I can feel it.”

  The whirling sound was growing closer, like it was right on top of them. Travis saw it first, but only a fraction of a second before Kevin, and then the sound of the electric vehicle’s horn.

  It was clean. Like it had just rolled away from a car wash on a lazy Saturday afternoon. The immaculate silver paint and black trim throwing an odd contrast to the destroyed world beyond. Tinted windows hid the faces inside, although from this angle it still would have been only a guess.

  But Owen knew exactly what this was.

  Three men walked out into the intersection ahead of the newer model electric vehicle. The first was a large man who carried a pistol in each hand and had the barrel of what looked like a shotgun tight against his right shoulder. He started toward the far sidewalk and motioned for the others to follow.

  Trailing the electric vehicle, another three men moved away and met the others at the sidewalk. They stood in a line as if they had rehearsed it more than once. They turned their heads in unison, staring at the man with the shotgun on his shoulder, and waited.

  The large man placed one hand in front of the other, rested them near his waist, and turned to look through the driver’s window of the plain looking vehicle. He quickly nodded and then turned to face the truck.

  “Owen?” Kevin was looking back at him.

  Owen sucked in a mouthful of air through his teeth and considered the variety of ways this could go. “So what, eleven … maybe more with whoever’s in the car?”

  “Yeah, at least.”

  “Okay then.”

  Kevin tapped the barrel of the rifle against the door. “Owen?”

  He started to rise, look over the door. It was apparent what this was, at least to him. A show of force and nothing more. That man wanted something and this was his way of telling Owen that he needed to listen, that he had no other options.

  “Yeah?”

  “Whatever it is you’re thinking,” Kevin said, “I just want you to be sure you know where it will end. This isn’t just about you and him anymore, and you should know that.”

  “I’m good.”

  “I know you are. And you know that I’m here for you and the others no matter where it takes us, but we have to be smart about this. Let’s see what they want and try to work a deal. We don’t really have the numbers for anything else.”

  “Yeah,” Owen said. “But we have something else. There’s a reason why he just fired on two of his own and not on us. And I bet I know why.”

  “Don’t do this man.”

  Owen stepped out away from the door and stood just to the right. He rolled his shoulders, narrowed his eyes, and looked through the windshield of the electric vehicle. “Alright, let’s do this.”

  Kevin leaned into the cab. “Owen, this isn’t the play.”

  Travis had taken notice and was now at the passenger side of the tailgate looking more concerned than curious. He opened his mouth to speak, but then just ducked back behind the bed.

  Owen clutched the Glock in his left hand, slowly stepping toward the silver vehicle. “DECLAN!”

  Before he’d gotten more than a few feet from the truck there was whoosh of air as all four doors of the mysterious vehicle were opened. The driver stepped out first. He held a semi-automatic rifle and wore dark sunglasses that seemed oddly out of place for the time and season. The man behind the driver and the front passenger were next, almost in unison. They exited quickly, turning toward Owen and holding their weapons down at their sides.

  From behind the rear pa
ssenger door, there was movement. It was slow and the door appeared to quiver as the shadowed figure emerged. He looked smaller than before, frail, like he’d lost a solid fifty pounds, maybe more. Hard to tell from this distance. But he also looked sick, infected, as much like the dead as anything he’d seen in weeks, maybe worse.

  Jerome Declan looked like he’d had the skin along his face and neck turned inside out and although he wore clothes that hung like they were made for someone at least four sizes bigger, Owen had the sense that his body couldn’t have looked any better.

  From behind, Kevin continued to plead. “Owen, don’t do this. Remember why we’re here. How we’ve made it this long.”

  Kevin was right, but he didn’t understand. Not today.

  Owen stopped ten feet from the truck, tucking the Glock into his waist and holding his hands in the air. “I just want to talk, no one needs to get hurt … on either side.”

  Declan looked like he was laughing. The sound was different, like an exaggerated snicker, but dropped off quickly. “Mr. Mercer …”

  Owen waited. It sounded like there was more, like Declan was using the brief pause for dramatic effect, so he began counting in his head. And before he got to four, he found out he was right.

  Declan leaned into the side of the electric vehicle. “You know what I want, what I’ve always wanted. That hasn’t changed and neither has my resolve. I know you thought you killed me back there on that highway, and let me tell you, there were moments that I wished you’d done a better job. But now, here between the two of us, I think I’m ready to forgive you. That and I’m feeling a bit generous.”

  Owen shook his head and looked back toward the bodies in the back of the pickup. “Two of your own, for what?”

  “You and your friends were leaving. You knew we were coming. Maximillian and William were obviously compromised. And I’d assume that from the restrains you weren’t throwing either of them a surprise party. You were going to use them as leverage. And well, I just eliminated that leverage. Now we can both discuss things on a more level playing field.”