“If you see him again, shoot him,” John yelled over his shoulder.
Claire looked back at Jared, and he could see the girl was literally on the verge of breaking down. Jared smiled at the girl, which he hoped would calm her, but somehow knew would come off seeming absurd under their current conditions. The girl just stared wide eyed at Jared, who turned away from her to look for their pursuer. The person was not to be seen, causing Jared to breathe a sigh of relief.
Ahead, John saw the residential street they were on turned to the right and not the left, which was a Godsend. As John rounded the corner, a third whistle sounded dead ahead. John’s chest tightened as he searched for the source of the third whistler. The man was forty yards up the street, standing behind a sedan in a driveway. As John acquired the man in his sights, the fellow crouched out of sight and out of danger of being riddled with rounds from John’s H&K 416—or so the ole chap errantly thought.
As soon as John saw the man duck out of harm’s way, he dropped to the ground, obtained a fairly decent sight picture, with the man’s legs being his target, and unleashed three rounds in rapid succession. The man screamed and dropped to the ground, giving John what he was really after, the man’s torso and all the vital goodies it housed. Five more rounds and the man fell silent. John gained his feet and visually swept the street for any additional threats.
As Jared rounded the corner, he also heard the third whistle and witnessed John slide to a knee, then roll to his side. At first Jared horrifyingly thought John was shot, but as the Special Missions Unit operator began firing from some weird contorted sideways, lying-on-the-ground position, Jared realized he was engaging someone in front of their position, and suddenly John’s body position began to make sense. John’s success was confirmed by the screams that erupted from up the street as his rounds first tore into the man’s feet and legs, and then his head and body after he fell to the ground.
Jared pushed at Barry and Dwight, trying to get everyone up against the house they were in front of and out of any sort of danger from the person or persons John was engaging. Jared heard another faint whistle off to his left and assumed it was the men from the vehicles. They probably didn’t realize the parallel road didn’t intersect the road they had been set up on, and had moved ahead in order to intercept Jared and his friends.
As John gained his feet, he turned to Jared. “Let’s go. We move up to that third house and set up a hasty ambush on the dude following us. Get everyone into the side yard, and I’ll take care of the shooting.” Finished, John turned and moved out at a dead run.
Jared gestured to the rest of the party, and they all tore after John. Jared watched, thinking to himself how not one of them was taking an active role in furthering their chances of survival. They were all just following like frightened children. For a moment Jared stared at the five people with disdain as he evaluated their worth at this very moment. In a flash, Jared thought of a scenario where he and John simply abandoned these lesser people and returned to the ranch house.
This thought ended with a life much harder than Jared wished to lead, and the result was he realized everyone was adjusting at their own pace based on their own life experiences before and after the event. Not everyone was evolving with the celerity Jared was, and not everyone possessed the same before-event experience John possessed. Heck, as far as Jared was concerned, John was living in the same environment he’d thrived in while in the military.
By the time Jared and the rest of the group reached the third house and Jared had everyone safely in the far side yard, Jared had come to terms with the fact he needed every one of these people in some form or fashion.
John reached the third house and moved towards a brick planter box, which was the reason he’d chosen this residence. As he was settling into his ambush position behind the planter, he was vaguely aware of the other six people as they rushed past him and down the side of the structure. He looked up as the last person approached and saw it was Jared. John was mildly pleased to see the man’s eyes were not filled with terror, but seemed focused and determined.
“Watch my six, bro,” was all John said as Jared scuttled past him.
Jared’s only indication he heard John was when he posted up on the corner of the house next door, rifle trained to John’s rear. John didn’t have long to wait, maybe thirty agonizing seconds, before a lone man poked his head around the corner, searched the street for three or four seconds, then stepped around on the sidewalk. The man’s posture gave the impression he’d been expecting something other than an empty street. John waited impatiently as the man crept up the street, caution winning over slowing the man’s progress.
The deceased whistler was thankfully lying dead behind the vehicle he’d unwisely chosen for cover. The dead man would not be easily seen by his friend unless the man dropped to his hands and knees to search. This man was doing nothing of the sort, which greatly relieved John.
The man to their rear moved to the front of the first house, stopped, and gave a sharp whistle. The dead man was regrettably unable to respond, but the men from the vehicles responded with their faint whistles. The man whistled again, this time giving three piercing bursts from his lips. John studied the approaching man, seeing he was bearded, armed with a shotgun, and wearing jeans along with a flannel shirt. He was darker skinned, but didn’t appear to be Mexican or even Middle Eastern. Maybe South or Central American descent, John couldn’t know without asking the man, and he wasn’t about to do that.
The man could have been the checker at his local Safeway before the event, or he could have worked at a car dealership. He was probably an average guy before the event, and now he was out hunting other humans like some crazed movie character. Well, John thought, he’ll soon be lying facedown in the street if things go as I hope. John’s thoughts were interrupted by another whistle from the four men he’d seen at the vehicles, only this time they were closer. The man in front of John returned their whistle with three of his own.
After the exchange of whistles, the dark-complexioned man moved towards John with an increased confidence. His comrades had changed direction and were closing on his position, giving him a false sense of assurance that reinforcements would soon be arriving. As the man reached the edge of the second house on the block, John squeezed the trigger. John’s rifle bucked slightly as the round left its muzzle, zipped the short distance to its target, and impacted with the poor soul’s chin. The dark-complexioned man’s spinal cord was destroyed, causing his legs to stop in place while the momentum of his body carried him forward and down to the sidewalk, where he landed with a sickening thud.
John would have preferred the man died on the dead lawn, in which case he would have dragged the body out of sight and waited for the other four men to come into his field of fire. That was not going to be an option since the bastard not only dropped on the sidewalk, but he’d bled what appeared to be two or three gallons of blood out and around his body in a scarlet red so vivid, it reminded John of airfield markers he’d seen in the past.
“Plan B, people,” John grunted as he turned and sprinted past Jared. “Bring everyone.”
Jared herded the rest of their party after John, who stopped at the first dead whistler next to the sedan. John dragged the man from the side of the sedan up to the nearest house, depositing the man’s body behind some bushes. Thankfully the unlucky wretch hadn’t experienced much external blood loss and therefore left little indication of his postmortem travels. John hurriedly pulled out the city map he carried, locating his present position. He oriented himself with the map and their surroundings, then pointed up the street away from the four men approaching from the vehicle ambush point.
“We’re going up two blocks, turning left, and setting up another ambush, and I’ll need every single one of you to help. There are at least four guys, and that’s not good odds if only Jared and I are doing the heavy lifting,” John said in clipped sentences. When he was in the moment, John became a man of brevity, his ges
tures, expressions, even his language.
Both Stephani’s and Claire’s mouths dropped in disbelief at what John was asking of them.
“Jared,” John continued, his face a mask of seriousness, “you take Barry, Devon and Dwight. I will take the ladies. It’s a classic L-shaped ambush.”
Using his finger, he drew an imaginary L across the cement, pointing to where he wanted Jared set up at. He’d chosen a street two blocks from their position that suited his needs. The street was a left turn off the street they currently sat on. It ran one single block to a right-hand turn. There were no outlets or cross streets.
“Jared, you and the fellas will set up mid-block while me and the ladies set up at the far end. I want both teams inside a house and shooting through windows or doors or whatever the ambush site offers you. We let these sons of bitches get halfway up the block, and I will initiate the ambush. When you hear me shoot, you start shooting. If all goes well, there should be no return fire. If for some reason we get into a drawn-out fight here, remember, the houses we will be fighting from are not bulletproof. Rounds will penetrate the walls and fuck you up.” John gave the warning with brows raised as if to make sure everyone knew the danger they would be in if they didn’t kill all four men in the first volley of their ambush.
After a second for his brief to sink in, John turned and was about to head up to their ambush site when Jared stopped him.
“I got it, but I think I know how they’re communicating. Three whistles mean come to me. One whistle is kinda a position indicator. I say we three-whistle these guys so they come to us,” Jared suggested, looking at John for support.
“Okay, I think you’re right,” John agreed. “Give ’em three when we get to our ambush street.”
Jared nodded, and John spun on a heel and struck out, leading Jared and company up the street. They moved without interruption to their ambush site, which had recently been a normal San Jose neighborhood. Today Jared hoped it would be the resting place for some men who’d made a decision to live their lives in a dark and sadly distasteful manner. Jared was amped, but oddly he didn’t feel the tug of panic he’d felt so many times before when conflict was impending.
As they rounded the corner, Devon spoke up. “Can I do the three whistles?”
John laughed out loud, shooting Jared a where did that come from? look. “Fuckin A, kid, knock yourself out.”
Devon turned his face back the way they’d come and gave three earsplitting whistles. They waited for a few seconds before a single whistle sounded alarmingly close. John grabbed both women, shoving them in front of him, and ran for the far end of the block while the remaining men and teen ran towards a house mid-block. Jared reached the house he’d visually chosen and entered through a door that was already forced mostly off its hinges. Jared was, for the first time in his life, thankful for looters. They’d saved him valuable time he was beginning to feel was running short.
Chapter 26
Dwight, Barry and Devon burst through the shattered doorway after Jared and assumed positions along the front of the structure where they could assess and engage targets out on the street. Once Jared and the other four settled in, all Jared could hear was the other men’s heavy breathing and a wind chime hanging outside the front door, which swung lazily in a slight breeze caressing its sail and causing the clapper to collide with the tubes. The moment was surreal to Jared, like two worlds occupying the same space. The chime was doing what it had done before and after the solar flare, unchanged by the forces of mother nature and unmolested by humans due to its worth in a burgeoning new world.
Yet here Jared sat, rifle in hand, intent on taking human life, which was an enormous departure from his former life. Jared glanced behind himself at the interior of the smallish home and found more things, human things left by the looters because they no longer held value. A television hung on the wall, staring back at him with its dead black screen, while an electronic pad was wedged between two cushions on a couch, where it was most likely left after its frustrated owner was unable to bring it to life after the solar flare.
Jared turned his attention back to his task at hand, noticing Devon with his .22-caliber rifle, and wondered what the kid’s squirrel gun was going to do to a human.
Jared was no expert in the field of guns or their ballistic capabilities, but he did know enough to understand the weapon the kid was carrying wasn’t designed to incapacitate large game like the ones they intended to engage shortly. Jared glanced out the window in time to see John and the ladies disappear into a small green house at the end of the street. He hoped none of the girls got wild and planted any rounds into the house he was in. He’d never seen them shoot, and as far as he knew, neither woman had fired a weapon.
Inside the house at the far end of the street, John ordered Claire into the kitchen, where he could see her from the front living area. The residence was not large, but its design adhered to a fairly open floor plan. It also smelled of death, which John pushed from his mind. He couldn’t be thinking of a body lying in a bed down the hallway when he needed to be focused on killing the four men trying to do the same to John and his friends. Claire gladly moved into the kitchen and cowered next to the counter.
John motioned for Stephani to saddle up next to him, and pointed up the street to the house Jared was in. “Do not shoot that house. Our boys are inside. We have enough problems without any friendly-fire incidents.”
Stephani nodded, eyes wide, her pupils dilated like she was on a strong stimulant. John smiled and patted her arm reassuringly. As he touched the woman, he wished he hadn’t, waiting for her to lash out. She did nothing of the sort; instead she returned his smile with a nervous one of her own while she crouched next to him, clutching her rifle. John was so relieved with her reaction he almost cracked a joke and laughed out loud. Alternatively, he pumped his head like an idiot, grinning and feeling lucky she hadn’t punched him.
“We’re gonna be good. Trust me, all good,” he said, not knowing what else to say.
John’s giddiness was interrupted by a single whistle that sounded as though it was right around the far corner. John craned his neck towards the open window and gave three whistles in return. A moment later four men rounded the corner and stopped, searching for their fellow marauder. John didn’t know for sure, but it didn’t appear the men had come across their fallen buddies. If they had, John was sure they’d have been maneuvering with far more caution.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Stephani murmured. “There’s four of them. Oh, I don’t know if I can do this,” she bemoaned softly.
John didn’t take his eyes off the men as they advanced. “You got this. If we don’t do this to them, they will do worse to us. No one’s gonna judge any of us for what happens here today,” John cajoled under his breath as he sighted on one of the men who was advancing with a scoped deer rifle. John hoped Jared had the presence of mind to do the same and leave the man with the largely impotent shotgun for last.
John wished he’d brought this up during his ten-second briefing. The men in his old unit prided themselves on giving the most detailed briefings any military unit in the world had ever seen or heard. If you couldn’t give a briefing to their standards, you wouldn’t be accepted into the unit. Now at a crucial time he’d made a mistake and hoped it wouldn’t adversely affect any member of their group.
The four men were now a third of the way down the block, moving in a four-man clump, which was going to make killing them far easier than if they’d been spread out. The four men consisted of three white males and a light-skinned black man. The black man appeared to be in his mid-twenties and was by far the youngest of the advancing party. The three white males all seemed to be forty years or older. They all handled their weapons like they’d learned the art from watching 1980s action films. This at least was comforting to John as he tracked the men’s movement as they approached Jared’s position.
John suddenly became aware of Stephani’s breathing. It was coming
in short quick gasps, telling John she was hyperventilating and might very well panic or simply pass out. John hated to do it, but he diverted his eyes for just a second as he reached out. The last thing he wanted to do was to blindly reach out and end up groping one of Stephani’s lady parts by accident, which would certainly have resulted in a full-blown domestic squabble. If the marauders heard Stephani chewing him out, they would plainly initiate their own ambush, effectually altering what was already a shit sandwich into something worse.
John grabbed the woman’s rifle and gave it a quick shake. “Slow your breathing down. Take your eyes off these guys and get your breathing back to normal,” was all he could think to say.
He waited for the punch to the back of the head that never came. He almost laughed at the thought of being immersed in a firefight while taking a beating from behind from a pissed-off lady whom he’d somehow offended.
The four men continued down the sidewalk closest to the side where Jared and company were waiting inside the house with the wind chimes. When the four would-be robbers, or murderers, or whatever they were, reached the halfway point, John snugged the rifle in his shoulder and leaned forward.
“Fire!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
He snapped off two quick single-fire shots into the man closest to Jared’s position and watched as the man dropped straight down like a pile of sand. The front of the house Jared occupied erupted as Jared and crew joined the ambush. Curtains actually blew out the window openings as the gasses from Jared’s team’s weapons burst through and out into the formerly quiet afternoon air, effectively drowning out the soothing noise of the wind chimes. John tracked to the next man just as the guy fell, mortally wounded by the looks of his crumpled body on the ground.
The Jared Chronicles | Book 2 | Tears of Chaos Page 20