Apokalypsis Book Three

by Kate Morris

  She popped out of her cover and looked down the path that used to be gravel but was now more like mud. They were both shooting in Elijah’s direction. Wren took careful aim and squeezed. She hit the man in the shoulder. He fell forward against his friend, who immediately began firing at her and Elijah both as he spun away from his partner, causing the man to stumble forward. The man was blindly spraying from an automatic weapon. The rounds mostly pinged and popped into the building. She jumped back and hid behind a tipped over barrel. It wasn’t good enough. She was too exposed, so Wren backpedaled the direction she’d come. Then someone shot at her from somewhere else. She squeaked and ducked.

  More shots were fired. She clamored to the livestock fencing and pressed her back against it as she low-crouched and moved forward. She could hear him. The person taking cheap shots at her must’ve also come down those stairs from the offices. Another round went off, and she heard the tell-tale cry of someone in pain. Was it Elijah? Jamie?

  “Wren!” someone called in a whispered tone a few seconds later. Then Elijah rounded the corner and rushed toward her.

  “Elijah, there’s someone else in here,” she said into his ear.

  “I shot her,” he revealed.

  “Wren!” Jamie called.

  His heavy footsteps padded through the lower level toward them.

  “Wren!”

  “Over here,” she returned quietly.

  He grabbed her around the back of the neck with his forearm and pulled her against him.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?” he said fiercely. “I told you to wait upstairs.”

  “I couldn’t…”

  “How many did you two get?”

  Elijah said, “Four. We killed three of them down here, including that woman in the stairwell back there and one upstairs.”

  She only shot the one guy in the shoulder down here. That meant Elijah shot and finished him off and his two friends.

  “I got three, too.”

  “Is that all of them? They said they thought the Greeks sent six,” she questioned. “That makes seven.”

  “Maybe. Let’s just be careful. Stay with me,” he said and led them up the stairs.

  She tried not to look at the woman’s face as they went. Wren didn’t want to remember anything about her. Then they checked the building and the surrounding grounds. Jamie had a lot of experience with tracking people down in their habitats, he’d told her once.

  “I think that was all,” he said as they approached the other men’s truck. He pulled the tarp back to reveal a full load of food supplies. “This was our shipment. I found the two agents we were supposed to be meeting behind the dumpster near the woods.”

  “We can’t trust anyone,” she remarked the obvious.

  “Elijah, drive my vehicle,” he said. “I’ll drive this one.”

  As they drove back toward Elijah’s home in town, the skies turned a muddy gray and threatened more snow, which was dreary and matched her mood. A few miles into the trip, he took her hand. His were so warm while hers felt like ice and were still shaking from shooting those two men. His were a little shaky, too. This was the first time he’d killed someone, she knew. It was hers, too. She just had a lot more practice getting ready for this moment. Elijah had none.

  She was relieved they were going to Elijah’s house. Since she’d been on the run with Jamie for the past four years, it felt the most like a real home.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Off to their right, a grocery store was on fire. People were running out of a restaurant. They were clearly looting it. They were carrying bundles of food and paper items. Smoke was coming from another building in a strip mall.

  Last night after they’d gotten Lila and Hope moved in with them, they had a meeting. Jamie decided it was probably a good idea to go out and forage and collect as much as they could even after the full pickup truck bed of supplies the government left for them and the items Elijah had already bought. Jamie had called in on his secure phone and was also told that two more bodies were found of the agents who had most likely tipped off the mafia family- traitors bought and paid for- shot dead alongside the road. Consequently, first thing, they set out to forage for more items in case they never got another shipment.

  “I’m glad Alex didn’t come,” he admitted to Wren as they drove away from the fire. They were driving behind Jamie’s SUV in the government pickup again and observing the chaos around them. “He seemed tired last night.”

  “I thought so, too,” she agreed. “I’m sure he and Lila will be busy enough setting up your place and getting everything unpacked and organized.”

  “Are you settled in okay in your new room?” he asked.

  “Yes, it’s great,” she said, then looked down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant…”

  “I know what you meant,” he said with a smile. “I’m glad someone’s staying in there. My parents worked so hard on that part of the house. They’d never had a house with their own bathroom before that one. It was a pretty big deal for my mother.”

  “It’s really nice, Elijah,” she said. “Thanks for letting us stay.”

  “Oh, crap!” he blurted and put both hands on the wheel again as he swerved around a person who was running at their SUV. In front of him, Jamie did the same as a second ran towards his truck. Her protector was not as understanding. He hit the man, and he bounced off the front quarter panel and fell to the sidewalk. Jamie didn’t stop the SUV, though. “Jesus! He just hit that person!”

  As they drove toward the more congested shopping centers, the military presence was definitely there. His own town was relatively small, so the main city for miles around was Canton, always known for the Football Hall of Fame, a place Elijah hoped to someday have his own spot in. Their town probably wouldn’t get much of a military presence. Here, roadblocks were set up. Huge military trucks were parked in the road as additional blocking devices. They were herding traffic through much narrower thoroughfares than the normal streets. Soldiers were everywhere. They were all wearing the typical, paper face masks to protect against the virus as most everyone now wore and were carrying guns.

  Elijah waited in a long line of cars behind Jamie, who got out and jogged back to them.

  “They’re letting a few cars in at a time,” he explained. “The store up ahead, that Sam’s Club, has food and water. The soldiers will load it into your vehicle when you get up there. Just follow me.”

  “Got it,” Elijah said.

  They waited for nearly an hour to the constant chorus of some person or another or a few in synch honking their horns impatiently.

  “It seemed like we had enough back at your house.”

  He sighed and turned into the parking lot finally. “Yeah, but with Lila, Hope, you and Jamie, it won’t last long. We have to get more, in case we have to hole up for more than a few weeks.”

  “I guess that’s probably right. Jamie said he made contact with his connections last night. The government is going to send another shipment in two weeks.”

  He snorted and pulled to a stop behind Jamie, next in line. “Hopefully it goes a little better than yesterday.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  Elijah had a hard time sleeping last night. He’d never killed someone before. Yesterday, he’d killed three. He’d finished off the one Wren shot in the shoulder. Then he’d killed his partner. Unfortunately, he shot the woman out of pure reaction. All he thought in that moment was that Wren was in trouble. Before he’d even known it was a woman, he’d fired. She had crawled halfway back up the stairwell and bled out. The only way he could deal with what he did was because it was in the protection of Wren. Still, it had made him wonder what his parents would think of it. When this was all over, would he be tied to the murder of three people and charged?

  He got out of the truck and was immediately shouted at by a soldier to get back in, so he did. Ahead of him, Jamie also was inside his SUV. They were loaded with about a half of a skid each
of bulk food items and bottled water before they were ushered back out of the parking lot. He turned left onto the main street again and followed Jamie at a snail’s pace.

  Beside him, Wren screamed and leaned hard toward him in fright, “Elijah!”

  A quick glance in her direction explained it quite clearly. A person was barreling their car right at them at a high rate of speed. He stomped on the gas, causing the vehicle to lurch forward and graze Jamie’s bumper. The other vehicle still clipped them in the rear and somehow managed to throw the truck a few feet to the left. The heavy vehicle remained on its tires, though. Jamie realized the problem and expertly curbed it onto a sidewalk. Elijah followed right on his tail. Then their leader rammed through a sawhorse and kept going, the SUV bouncing off the curb and tossing items in the hatch into the air. Nothing would spill out, but he wasn’t sure if he and Wren had lost anything from the truck’s bed. Elijah also mimicked his move. He could hear cars behind him crashing and then the telltale pop-pop of gunfire.

  Ten feet in front of them, Jamie swerved hard to his left and went into the wrong lane, hitting more barricades. Elijah wasn’t sure where he was going, but he followed anyway. He obviously had more defensive driving experience at getting out of bad situations. As he flew past a crowd, Wren cried out his name again to draw his attention. There was a group of people that looked like ordinary citizens shooting it out O.K. Corral style. Others were in cars ramming each other. Jamie had successfully avoided them being involved. They sped away from the shopping district and saw more looting taking place near a strip mall full of smaller stores. People were running with name brand gym shoe boxes, armloads of clothing with the hangers still stuck through them, and even big-screen televisions. It was crazy. Elijah had never seen anything like this before. Maybe in the news video his government teacher had shown them as an example of social unrest in other countries during his lecture discussing the breakdown of law and order, but he’d never seen anything like that here in America.

  “Where is he going?” she asked aloud.

  Elijah wasn’t sure, either. This wasn’t the same way they came in, and he wasn’t too confident if her fake uncle knew his way around all that great. They’d only lived in the area for less than two months. But he followed anyway for about ten minutes until the SUV pulled up to the front doors of a sporting goods store. He didn’t turn off the engine.

  “This place isn’t open,” Wren commented.

  Jamie got out and came back to them.

  “What are we doing here?” Elijah asked.

  Jamie’s dark eyes shifted to scan the area around them as he answered without looking at him, “They’re going to have cookstoves, sleeping bags, propane heaters and cylinders, and heavy-duty thermal underwear, hats, gloves.”

  “Why would we want anything like that?” Elijah asked.

  Her guardian answered, “In case we need it. I don’t know how long the natural gas lines are gonna keep pumping gas. We could be in trouble if this goes longer than a few weeks. If America’s infrastructure takes a hit, we could be in big trouble. Wren and I also aren’t equipped for winter yet. One of the reasons I agreed to move her into your house in the first place was because you have fireplaces.”

  “Oh, I see,” Elijah said and paused. “Well, we never really used them much,” Elijah informed him.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ll use them if we have to.”

  “The store looks closed, Jamie,” Wren said, not bothering to hide her accent anymore. Last night, Jamie had sat down at their kitchen table and explained the full situation to Elijah and his brother. Wren had been more thorough when she’d told him by themselves, but Jamie had at least been honest about the reason for her assassination attempt because of a foreign drug-dealing family. He also explained his own connections with the government. He still left out a lot, though, like Wren not really being related to him or the millions of dollars. Alex had been shocked.

  “I know,” he said. “Let’s drive around, find a rear entrance.”

  “And what? Break in?” Elijah asked him, getting a single, curt nod before the man jogged back to the driver’s door of his truck.

  He followed Jamie to a rear entrance that backed up to a boarded-up Chinese food joint and put it in park. Jamie came to them again.

  “Wren, stay with the vehicles,” he ordered and held up a hand to halt her from protesting. “Anyone, I mean anyone including uniformed cops, security guards or anyone you don’t trust comes near you or the vehicles, shoot ‘em. I’ll hear the shots. Call on my phone if you see them in the distance first. If not, shoot to kill, and Elijah and I will be right out to help.”

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “Yeah,” he answered as if Elijah was a dope. “Let’s go. We’re wasting time out here.”

  Jamie got into the hatch of the sleek SUV and produced a sledgehammer, which he carried over and pounded on the doorknob until it broke completely off. They were in. It was that easy.

  “Won’t take long for this place to get looted, probably within a few hours. Don’t dally. Move your ass. I don’t want her out there by herself for too long. And, football star,” he added rudely and then smirked, “this ain’t a fuckin’ fashion show. Grab and go. Run the shit out to Wren and get back in here.”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered. “What about the alarm system?”

  “If it’s set, it’ll go off. If it wasn’t set last night or whenever they left last, it won’t. Either way, cops are too busy chasing down people trying to kill each other to deal with another security alarm going off, especially one that’s a business. They’ll be busy taking care of residential break-in’s now.”

  That thought made Elijah feel a little sick. People’s homes were probably going to be looted like the stores. Maybe homes would be torched, too. He felt like he was about to see the worst that humanity could do to one another. It made him move all that much faster as he remembered his brother at home alone with Lila and little Hope. At least Alex had the shotgun.

  Together, they ran loads back to Wren, who packed and organized them into the back of the truck and the SUV. Elijah could barely concentrate with the alarm bell buzzing in his ears. It wasn’t one of those screamers, though. His friend, Jeremy’s house, had one like that, which was ear-splitting. This was just like a constant ringing bell like a firehouse alarm or their bells at school marking the beginning and end of classes. But, noise or no noise, he ran with heavy armloads of camping blankets, warm sub-z rated parkas, hoodies, sleeping bags, cookstoves, little alcohol burners and actual propane cylinders, and some sturdy-looking hiking boots because he wasn’t sure what people at the house had. He also grabbed thermal underwear, again not sure of sizes. Dozens of pairs of insulted, wool socks and thick stocking caps went with them into the bed of the truck.

  Then a call came to his phone, which he immediately answered.

  “Elijah, get back here! Someone’s coming this way,” she said. “I think it’s the cops.”

  “I’m already moving,” he answered and hung up. “Jamie, let’s go!” he yelled over to her protector who was taking actual tents out along with fishing poles and tackle. Elijah wasn’t sure where he thought he was going to use those at this time of year in Ohio.

  When they got there, the police cruiser was about forty yards away. It spun its lights once and hit a series of beep-beeps through the loud siren system. Elijah threw the items he had in his arms into the truck’s bed, and so did her uncle.

  “Get ready,” Jamie warned and drew his pistol but kept it down behind his thigh. Elijah copied his move.

  The cruiser came close. There was more than one officer in it. They were so screwed.

  “What are ya’ll doin’?” the cop asked after he rolled down his window. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days. His orange-red beard stubble complimented his lack of rest and hygiene.

  “Just getting supplies, officer,” Jamie said, stepping forward. He whispered, “Wren, get in the car.”

/>   “What’d you say?” the cop asked him and sniffed hard, making Elijah wonder if the man was sick with the virus. “Don’t talk to her. I was asking you the questions.”

  “We’re just leaving, officer,” Jamie said.

  “Where ya’ll goin’ with that loot?”

  Jamie flicked off his safety and brought the pistol up with lightning speed. He fired at the cops, striking the side of their car and blowing out the rear passenger window. They jammed it into gear and sped away.

  “What the hell, man? You can’t just go shooting at the freagin’ cops!” Elijah yelled at him.

  “Those weren’t cops,” he said. “Let’s go. They’ll be back in a minute, probably with backup.”

  “Wh…shit,” Elijah started to ask but stopped and ran to the truck where Wren was already waiting behind the wheel. He slammed the tailgate closed and got in as she stamped down on the gas to catch up to Jamie, who just expected them to. “Jesus. Those weren’t cops?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted as she took the corner on what felt like two wheels. He was starting to doubt her driving skills. “Probably not. They looked…sketchy.”

  “Yeah, that’s true,” he said, remembering the driver, who had a toothpick hanging out of his mouth and pretty scraggly looking red hair. “But if they were cops, we could be in some serious shit.”

  “Elijah, relax,” she assured him. “Jamie knows what he’s doing. This isn’t his first brush with bad stuff. Those men probably killed the real cops and took their uniforms and cruiser.”

  “He’s lived in a city that’s been looted and collapsing around him?” he asked, feeling slightly hysterical at their circumstances. He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself. Shooting at cops was a sure way to piss away his scholarship.

  “Here,” she said, handing him a soda after opening the console where they had drinks and snacks stashed. “It’ll help with the nerves. And yes. To answer your question, he’s been in these types of cities. He was in three different cities in Africa during their civil wars less than a decade ago. He was Special Ops. In case you didn’t notice, he doesn’t get too riled up in bad situations.”