“Three adult, one pre-teen,” he wrote.
The minivan was in good shape, and through the binoculars, the man and woman looked normal; no different than anyone else on the block. The three vehicles that had previously crawled through the neighborhood looked a bit sketchier, and the people in the cars gave him an uneasy feeling.
Short of using force, he didn’t see how they could stop these people from occupying the empty houses on the block. If it was inevitable, maybe they could at least decide who stayed in the houses? Maybe flag down the normal-looking ones, and tell them which houses were empty. He thought about the four carloads of people he’d seen so far and who he’d choose. He decided to scrap this new idea for now.
So far, none of the cars had stopped. He expected the cars to disgorge their occupants for some door-to-door action, but he hadn’t seen any “feet on the ground” yet. He wasn’t looking forward to this, and he hadn’t really come up with a plan to handle the inevitable summons. Even in his coldest, iciest survivalist frame of mind, he couldn’t bear the thought of opening his door to a family with kids, only to send them on their way. Even thinking about it made him cringe.
As he stared pointlessly at the rear gate of the minivan, he detected motion in his peripheral vision. A light blue sedan approached the fork at the top of the street and turned toward an inevitable encounter with the minivan. He wondered if there was any informal nomadic etiquette already established between all of these travelers.
Alex snapped out of the reverie when the blue sedan popped into view around Charlie’s house. He lifted the binoculars and scanned the license plate. “Beat up blue Honda, Mass. 5 poss 6 occup,” he wrote, after scanning the windows, with dread, hoping they did not stop.
The car crawled past the Fletchers’ house, and Alex was spooked by the look of sheer desperation on the driver’s face, which nearly filled his view through the binoculars.
***
The doorbell rang for the eighth time. He peeked through their plantation shutters. After the first group started walking through the neighborhood, Alex ensured that all ground level shades or shutters were shut tight. For the first time in four years, he was happy that Kate had insisted on putting curtains over the small windows on each side of the front door. The doorbell rang again, and Alex started to shake with a combination of rage and anticipation of a fight.
None of the previous three groups had rung the doorbell more than a few times before moving on, giving him hope that they could avoid confrontation. That hope vanished several minutes ago, when a rusted, 80s vintage, wood-paneled station wagon stopped in front of the Todd Perry’s house.
The driver of the car, a rough-looking, no-necked scruff, yanked a young girl out of the back seat. The girl, dressed in a light purple jacket more suitable for early fall, fell onto her knees in the grass and started to pull away. Without taking his eyes off the Perry’s house, the man nearly pulled her emaciated arm out of its socket and forced her to walk with him to the Perry’s, where they spent several minutes.
Alex couldn’t see the interaction on Todd’s mudroom stoop, but he smugly mused over how this idiot had picked the worst starting point in the neighborhood. His smug look faded, as the skuzzy-looking child abuser walked through the Andersons’ yard, picking up speed as he headed in his direction. Alex’s self-assured look morphed into a pained frown, when he realized Todd sent the guy to him.
The doorbell sounded again, but this time it was a triple tap, signaling clearly to Alex that he was not the only one losing his patience with the situation.
Just then, he heard Kate from the top of the stairs. “What is going on?” she yelled.
Alex hopped up from his crouched position and walked swiftly through the doorway leading to the foyer and started up the stairs. He saw Kate at the top in a thick white bathrobe, her wet hair spilling over her shoulders.
Alex cut her off with a wave of his hands and pointed at the door. Through the white curtains, he could see that the man outside was trying to peer through any possible opening in the curtains. Kate was startled by a sudden banging on the door, and Alex walked up the stairs to her.
“He’s been at it for a while. I saw him come straight here from Todd’s house,” he told her.
“That jerk,” she whispered.
“Yeah. Who knows what he’s telling them? But judging from this guy’s persistence, it isn’t good.”
The doorbell rang repeatedly.
“Hon, you’re gonna have to do something, or say something. We need a better plan than ignoring the doorbell,” she said.
“I know,” he said, with no clear plan forming.
“Just get rid of him. What if he thinks we’re not home and tries to break in later tonight?”
“I’m pretty sure he knows we’re home. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I’ll be right back.”
He planned to walk out of the mudroom door and address them from a distance. Reaching behind the small of his back, he checked the USP pistol tucked snugly into his jeans. Alex stepped outside and eased the storm door shut without making a sound, cautiously approaching the front corner of the house.
“Daddy, over there,” she yelled excitedly.
The man let go of the girl and jumped off the granite steps into a sea of evergreen bushes.
“Stop right there,” Alex barked, still keeping most of his body behind the cover of the house.
The man faltered as he struggled to push through the evergreens, but ultimately ignored Alex’s warning. His face pulsed red, and Alex saw a dangerous combination of persistence and vacancy in his bloodshot blue eyes.
“Crap,” Alex mumbled and retreated inside the house.
The man hurled himself around the corner just as Alex finished locking the storm door. If the guy tried to take down the storm door, he would shoot the man dead and leave the body where it fell as a deterrent for the next group.
While he processed this internal dialogue, the man put one hand on the door handle and the other on the glass. Alex quickly shifted his hand behind his back to clear his shirt from the top of his pistol. He could see the worn Red Sox logo on the front of the man’s sweatshirt, which was now pressed against his storm door.
“Whoa! Red Sox! Take it easy!” he yelled.
As if suddenly possessed by a little logic and reason, the man took his hands off the door and backed up a few steps, leaving a fog mark from his breath on the glass.
“Why the hell didn’t you answer the door? I’ve been out here half the morning ringing that damn doorbell. What’s the matter with you?” he yelled out in a thick Boston accent.
“I just woke up, thanks to you. You need to move on. There’s nothing in this neighborhood for you,” Alex said forcefully.
“Bullshit, you just woke up. I saw you moving around in there from the start, and I know you got a ton of food and supplies. Your friend down the street said you’ve been handing out food,” he said, putting both hands on his hips.
The man’s daughter came around the corner, and Alex found himself once again fighting the urge to shoot the man dead on the mudroom stoop. The girl’s hair was matted and her face was filthy. Stark signs of neglect and abuse made it difficult to determine her age, though Alex guessed she was no older than Emily. Dark circles ringed her unfocused blue eyes, frighteningly contrasted by bright red rims. Alex’s eyes were immediately drawn away to a large bruise on her right cheek—another on her neck.
“Stay out of the way, Skyler,” the man said and stepped off the stoop to reach out and grab her. He missed, and Skyler retreated behind the front corner of the house. Not wanting to lose ground, he stepped back onto the stoop under Alex’s murderous gaze.
“There’s nothing for you here. You need to leave now,” Alex said, shifting his gaze between the two of them and becoming more enraged every time he saw the girl’s condition.
“Well, I’m not going anywhere until you dig around…”
“You’ll be leaving right now,” Alex yelled in
a controlled, forceful way.
The man was surprised by Alex’s sudden change, and a flash of genuine concern washed over his face. He paused and backed up a few steps without looking behind him. One more step and he’d topple off the stoop. Alex continued to stare at him with intense hatred. After a few seconds, the man turned around and stepped off the porch.
“Let’s go,” he roared at the girl. The man turned around and grinned, flashing crooked, nicotine-stained teeth. “Well, maybe we’ll be seeing more of each other. We could be neighbors soon.”
The man turned around to leave, and Alex opened the storm door. “Hey, Red Sox!” Alex called and lowered his voice when the man turned back around.
“If I see you around this house again, I’ll blow your brains out of your head. Understand? The same deal goes for my friends’ houses.”
“Which ones are those?” the man said snidely.
“You won’t know until your brains hit the ground,” Alex said and closed the storm door.
He shaped his fingers like a gun and pointed them at the man. “Bang,” he mouthed silently, while the mock pistol in his hand recoiled. The man’s face went slack, and Alex smiled.
Alex continued to grin as the man grabbed his daughter and hurried her back to the station wagon. They piled back in and the car lurched forward, picking up speed and passing the Fletchers’. Alex traced its progress around the block and watched as it left the neighborhood. He closed the door and went back to his post in the family room.
As soon as he slid the shutters open a few inches, he saw two more Massachusetts plated cars enter the neighborhood. He didn’t recognize either of them. They followed each other around Durham Road. One of the cars, came to a halt in front of the McCarthys’ house, and the other, kept cruising down the street, eventually stopping in front of the Fullers’ house.
***
Alex stood in the far left corner of his front yard with a large rubber mallet in his left hand and a makeshift sign in the other. His AR-15 was slung across his back with the barrel pointing toward the ground. A heavy winter coat fought against the bitter wind that followed the clouds.
Right after Red Sox had left, Alex constructed three semi-sturdy signs to post in the front yard. One sign for each end of the sidewalk, and one to be placed in a conspicuous location near the entrance to the driveway. Eventually, someone would stay. The Carters’ house received a lot of traffic. At least two groups walked around to the back of the house, probably trying to confirm that it was empty. It is only a matter of time before someone breaks in and makes a new home for themselves.
Alex looked at the sign in his left hand, which looked like a first grade art project. The kind of sign you’d expect to find marking the entrance to the Little Rascals hideout. He wasn’t known for carpentry detail work, or any woodwork for that matter, and he didn’t feel like trying to get fancy on this job. He wasn’t even sure he could pound the stakes into the ground. It was late November and the ground felt pretty solid under his feet.
He selected a spot right next to the sidewalk and tried to work the stake into the frozen ground. Managing with considerable difficulty, he twisted the stake into the hard grass and drove it in the rest of the way with the mallet.
Ed appeared behind him, holding a coffee mug.
“What’s up, man? It’s been a few days,” Ed asked.
“I was enjoying the peace and quiet until all of this shit started,” Alex replied. Waiving his hand toward the street.
“Yeah, the door’s been ringing all morning. We’ve been ignoring it. Kept a few lights on inside so they know we’re home. Nothing crazy yet,” he said, folding his arms around his chest.
“We’ve been doing the same, but I had one guy about forty minutes ago that wouldn’t give up. I saw him come straight from Todd’s. Guy said that Todd told him I had plenty of food to hand out…or something like that.” Alex shook his head, glaring down the street at Todd’s house. “I figured some signs might help,” he said, testing the sturdiness of the sign with another light shake.
“The kids help you with those? What does it say? Keep away?” Ed asked, staring at the other two rickety signs, then up at Alex with a thin smile.
“They’ll do the job.”
“At least you have signs. I should probably put something together,” Ed said, shivering again.
“Yeah, let me know when you’re ready to post them, so I can come out and take a look at your expert handicraft. I have some tools you can borrow.”
“Tools? I could use my teeth and come up with something better than that,” he said, and Alex broke into an outright laugh. “I mean, is that magic marker, or crayon? I’m surprised you didn’t use finger paints,” Ed continued, and Alex’s laughter intensified.
“That’s it, man. That’s it. You’re killing me,” Alex was barely able to say through continuous laughter.
As they finished laughing, a black SAAB sedan passed the Lewis’s house, quickly moving down the street toward them.
“This is probably the wrong day to be outside yukking it up,” Alex said.
“You better hope they have kids to decipher your Sesame Street project,” Ed said, and Alex stifled another laugh.
“Nice. Let me do the talking if they stop,” he said, a steely grimace washing over his face.
“Jez, you changed your face like a schizophrenic,” Ed commented between his teeth.
“You’re killing me…Connecticut plates,” Alex whispered back as the sedan pulled up to the two of them.
Alex dropped the rubber mallet on the ground and reached back to shift his rifle into a position that he could quickly transition to the offensive if necessary. He didn’t plan to take any chances, especially after Red Sox.
“Yuppies?” whispered Alex.
“That’s probably what they’re thinking about us,” Ed mouthed, as the passenger window rolled down.
An attractive, angular-faced woman with dark brown hair appeared from behind the window. At first glance, Alex could tell she was wearing makeup, which surprised him, given the likelihood that they were pretty far away from their starting point. She didn’t exhibit any of the signs of malnutrition or exhaustion that he’d seen on most of the refugees’ faces over the course of the morning. To Alex, she looked to be in better shape than most of his neighbors.
He peered in further and saw a man with medium-length jet-black hair—wearing thin black rimmed glasses. The woman suddenly put her right arm over the edge of the open window, and Alex tightened. His left hand reacted by swiftly moving across his stomach to grab the hand guard of the rifle, and if necessary, pull it forward into a firing position.
“Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to…sorry,” she said and put her hand back inside the car.
“It’s fine. Everyone’s just a little jumpy around here,” Alex said, easing his hand back to his side.
“We’re really sorry to ask you this, but we’re looking for a place to stay. We left the Hartford area late last night and took back roads all night to get up here. It’s a disaster down there, pretty much everywhere further south. I hate to do this. I’m sure you’ve been dealing with this for days, but we’re just looking for a place that’s safe…”
“I wouldn’t exactly call this neighborhood safe,” Alex said, keeping a completely neutral look on his face.
“Maybe we should move on, honey,” the driver said.
“Did you two bring any food?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, honey, I think we better move on,” he said again, panicky, and starting to fumble with the gear shift.
“We’re not going to take your food. I just want you to know that the stores have been empty for quite a while, and the spirit of sharing has long since left the neighborhood. Maine is not the Shangri-la everyone seems to be expecting.”
“What did you guys see on the way up here?” Ed asked.
The guy leaned across the center console of the SAAB, suddenly enthusiastic. “It was scary. People out of control everywhere. We t
ried to avoid bigger towns, but couldn’t avoid all of them. Some fires. People were out on the streets. We left at midnight, figuring the streets would be clear, but they weren’t.”
“How did you guys get across the state border? We heard that the bridges from Portsmouth might be barricaded,” Alex said, finding himself more at ease with this couple.
“We read the same rumors on the internet, so we eventually caught up with the ninety-three and took that north—then east on side roads across the border, trying to avoid any towns. We eventually made our way to the twenty-five and then here. We rented a place down in Higgins Beach last year…” she trailed off.
“Our neighborhood was a little too close to Hartford and a little too well off, if you know what I mean? We had to leave in a hurry when the looting started, because it sure wasn’t confined to the business districts like the news might have you thinking. They were starting to ransack the suburbs. Sorry to bother you guys, looks like this place is wrapped up pretty tight,” the driver said and started to shift the car out of neutral.
“Hold on. It sounds like you brought food with you, right?” Alex asked.
The woman hesitated to answer and looked at the driver, who also looked skeptical about answering the question.
“Really, we’re not planning on taking your food. I’m just trying to figure out if you’re gonna become a problem if you stay here. We’ve had some problems, and most of them have been related to the food shortage,” Alex said.
Ed looked at him approvingly.
“What have the other problems been related to?” the driver asked.
“Medical supplies. Most of the houses on the block have been hit with the flu. There have been some deaths. I’m not sure how many.”
“Well, we have both. My husband is a surgeon—”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I’m a surgeon. One year into a general surgery fellowship—”
“You’re a surgeon. Anyway, he managed to stockpile some anti-virals and other medical supplies when this whole thing started. We both collected groceries while the stores still had food. We’re set for now. We just need somewhere safe to stay until things cool down enough to head back to Connecticut,” she said, her voice cracking.
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 23