Impact Series Box Set | Books 1-6

by Isherwood, E. E.

“No,” she admitted, “but he said other officers are there waiting for us. We should at least go make sure they’re doing okay. Maybe it won’t be a big deal.” Looking around, the small ranch homes of the Billings neighborhood were quiet. Most of her anxiety was tied to the sirens and rushed exit from the church.

  She got the truck started and went in the direction she’d been assigned. They each had a semi-automatic pistol, pepper spray, and a taser. All things considered, they were prepared to deal with unruly citizens. The only thing missing was legitimate training on how to do so.

  The commute started without incident, so she pulled out her phone again. To her surprise, the network symbol was active, meaning she had a signal.

  “Whoa!” she veered toward the curb and stomped on the brake. “I have service.”

  Asher looked at his watch. “Mine is lit, too.”

  She didn’t wait to see who he was going to call. She hit the button to reply to the number where Dad had called her from the day before. It rang a few times before a man answered.

  “Hello?” the man said. It wasn’t Dad.

  “Hi, um, I’m looking for Mr. Anderson. He called from this number yesterday. He’s my dad.”

  “Oh, you mean Ezra?” the guy replied.

  “Yes!” she chirped. “Is he there?”

  The man went quiet for a few seconds. “No, he and his friend left yesterday with my wife and some of the other ladies. They were supposed to go across the lake and meet in Murray. Do you know if they made it?”

  “I don’t know anything. He hasn’t called me since I talked to him on your phone. I was hoping you knew where he was.”

  The man sighed. “My name’s Colby. Who am I talking to?”

  “Grace.”

  “Hi, Grace. Look, I’m getting real worried something happened to your dad and my wife, but I’m not ready to say more than that. The lake has drained down to a small stream, which may be part of the communications issues. I’m going to get the boys together and head out after them, all right?”

  “Will you call me when you know more?” she pleaded, aware how empty her voice sounded.

  “I definitely will. Hang tight, okay? Your dad seemed like he could take care of himself. His buddy seemed just as tough. Keep your fingers crossed they simply haven’t been able to communicate with us.”

  Grace experienced newfound pride the man thought so much of Mom. She had her flaws, for sure, but the calamity out there probably made her a lot tougher. A tickle of uncertainty nagged at the use of the word ‘buddy’ to describe her, but it didn’t seem important in the moment.

  “Thanks, Colby. Be safe. Will talk to you soon, I hope.”

  She hung up the phone at almost the same time as Asher. They shared a look before Asher spoke up about his call attempt. “Still couldn’t get a hold of my sister. She isn’t answering her phone for some reason.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” she said with a smile. “Everyone is out of sorts with all the issues going on out there. This guy Colby said my mom and dad are out of contact right now, too.” It was all she dared say to him. The growing pit of fear at the bottom of her stomach thrived on how little she knew about her parents in that instant. She almost regretted making the call.

  Minutes later, back on the road, the pleasant drive turned into a challenge. Traffic lights were out, and fender-benders became commonplace as the number of cars increased. As they headed deeper into the city, some of the junctions were almost blocked off by damaged and abandoned cars. There were no wreckers or tow trucks within sight to pull them off the road.

  “I guess the fire engines weren’t going to these places last night, huh?” she mused. Hundreds of car crashes would explain all the sirens, though usually the wrecks would be pulled off the road. No one had made much of an effort to move the ones she passed.

  “Makes you wonder where they went that was more important than this, huh?” Asher suggested.

  “I don’t think I want to know,” she admitted. “This town ain’t right.” Her mom’s fears about the city were never concerns she took too seriously. However, seeing all the damaged cars out on the road painted some truth into the picture of danger Mom always conjured up when warning Grace to stay out of the big city. Fear crept into her chest as each intersection became more congested with abandoned cars than the last.

  She didn’t dare stop to check on any of the people milling about at those intersections. Their craned necks and haunted faces bothered her as she drove by; they were clearly hoping to find someone in charge. Yet there was no point in stopping only to explain who she was and why she couldn’t do anything for them.

  Fortunately, her ruined truck afforded them anonymity. No one would suspect she and Asher were in law enforcement unless they really looked at their NPS license plates. The black ashy soot covering the body of her truck made her blend in to the other dirty vehicles still moving on the road.

  “Oh, God. Look.” Grace pointed ahead.

  The mall was there, as promised, directly in their path. More abandoned cars were stacked up at the doors to the inside, hinting that people jumped out and made a run for the interior. The rest of the parking lot was disorderly, filled with moving cars and running people.

  “I think we’ve stumbled into a hornet’s nest,” she deadpanned, pulling to a stop at the entrance to the big parking area.

  “Have we seen enough?” Asher replied.

  While she observed the mall, a pair of male teens ran toward her truck. They each carried a stack of Xbox games in their arms, though a few slid out and cracked on the pavement. The kids didn’t look back at what they’d dropped, and they didn’t slow down as they sprinted by.

  Yep, all this is exactly what Mom warned me about.

  Suddenly, she wasn’t in such a hurry to get inside to check on the other officers.

  Cape Girardeau, MO

  It was about twenty miles from their starting point to the edge of the small city of Cape Girardeau. The town sat on a hillside on the left bank of the river, though much of the lower portion had been washed away in the rush of water that had shot through the day before. He realized immediately what it meant for their effort to fuel up. “If there was ever a marina here in town, it’s long gone, now.”

  “How much fuel do we have?” Butch asked.

  “A little less than half a tank. Say a safe twenty miles. Forty on the high side. But we should really gas up here while we have a town in our sights.” He pointed toward the buildings and homes along the bank. The Illinois side of the river was a broad floodplain, with maybe three or four miles to a distant hill, but the flat land had been scoured clean of every living shrub, tree, or blade of grass.

  A giant suspension bridge remained intact over the Mississippi, though there were no cars on it. The white suspension cables were held up by two structures that looked like the letter H crossing the highway on each end of the bridge. The clean lines of the structure contrasted harshly with the wrecked frontage of the town and the desolation where the bridge came ashore on the far bank.

  “We’ll have to park the boat and walk into town. I’m sure there will be a gas station where we can get five gallons, though if we’re going to make this a habit, we should find more cans and a golf cart for land transport.”

  Butch brightened. “We could make ramps and put it on your boat. It would make our lives a whole lot easier.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, so would a couple of bikes. Remember how that turned out? I think for right now I’ll only deal with what legitimately belongs to me.” He patted Susan’s Grace to hammer home the point.

  The cowboy raised his hands like it was a stick-up. “I leave it to you, though how would you prove she’s your boat? You know, if someone really presses the issue.”

  Ezra hadn’t thought about it. He once owned the paperwork, of course, but it went up in the burning pile of his belongings back at the house. Claiming ownership of anything while out on the road was going to be impossible. “I’ll deal with that if
the time comes.” He hoped it wouldn’t.

  It was easy to find a place to come ashore. The remains of a floodwall ran along the foot of the hill, but it had been mostly scoured away with the rest of the missing town. Ezra parked near a reinforced post remaining from the wall, which made the perfect anchor point to wrap a rope around.

  Later, walking into town with their rifles, the scene almost seemed normal. It only took about ten minutes before they came across a Tikkanen Fuels gas station. It didn’t surprise him to see Pay Before Fueling signs posted on each pump. They walked into the bright blue storefront ready to pay for the gas.

  “Sorry, we’ve got no gas,” a nervous man said from behind the counter.

  “You’re totally out?” Ezra lamented, wondering how a company as large as the one run by the world’s richest man could possibly run out of fuel. “We’re on a boat. We only need five gallons.”

  The fifty-ish-year-old gentleman gave him all his attention. “Sorry, guy. The boss shut down the pumps when the mayor issued his order saying we couldn’t raise our prices above what it was three days ago. He doesn’t want to give away the gas when there are so many people trying to get it.”

  He and Butch shared a bemused look, then he glanced back to the man. “Isn’t that a merchant’s dream? Having an audience ready to buy up his whole inventory?”

  The man shook his head. “I, uh, I mean my boss, wants to sell the gas for what the market demands. If the mayor had let him sell it at an extreme profit, it would offset the loss we’ll undoubtedly take once all the gas runs out. Who knows how long it will be before we get another shipment from Indiana? The town is beat up. The bridge is out. It might take a while.”

  “So you have the gas in the tanks but it’s on lockdown?” he asked, certain it couldn’t be true.

  “Yessir,” he replied with haste. “Sorry I can’t sell it to you.”

  “Why are you still open, then?” Butch asked.

  The man pointed to the aisles and the refrigerated sections along the back wall of the store. “I’m having a sale on beer and all the beverages. Half off.”

  It had been a long time since he’d eaten, but he needed gas more. “I don’t suppose you’d sell me a few gallons if I were willing to pay you whatever you wanted, would you?”

  The clerk shook his head and spoke under his breath. “I would if I could, but I’d lose my license. The mayor said he was going to keep a close eye on all the stations who turned off their pumps. You two might be working with him already, and I want to be a good boy.” Despite where he was, the man spat across the counter onto the floor in a nearby aisle.

  “We aren’t with your mayor, but I know why you’d think that. We’ll take however many sports drinks we can buy for twenty bucks, along with a can of nuts and whatever he wants.” He pointed to Butch.

  “Yeah, I’ll have what he’s having. Nuts should be nutritious.”

  When they placed it all on the counter, the man inspected their goodies. “I can give you the drinks for half price, like I said, but everything else is twice face value, now.”

  Ezra gave the man a pleasant smile, though he wanted to punch the guy for gouging them. Still, he was so hungry he didn’t care. He grabbed a big bag of chips from a nearby rack to add to his pile. “I thought you said the mayor ordered you to keep your prices low?”

  The clerk took his cash and put everything in plastic bags. “The mayor said I couldn’t sell gas for a jacked-up profit, but he said nothing about everything else. I’m sure it was an oversight, but until he corrects it, I’m going to sell things for what the market tells me they’re worth. You two look desperate, like you haven’t eaten for a long time. I figure we’re both coming out of this as happy campers. Am I right?”

  He couldn’t deny it. He was starving.

  “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Ezra lied, grabbing his stuff. “I hope your town gets put back together soon.”

  When he and Butch were at the door, the clerk yelled. “Hey, I’d be willing to unlock one of the pumps and give you as much as you can carry if you trade me one of those rifles. Barter wasn’t mentioned by the mayor…”

  Ezra concluded he was talking to the store owner, not some random clerk. It was the only explanation for his ever-changing limits of capitalism. “We’re not that desperate, but thanks anyway.”

  As he walked out, he swore the man added, “I bet you will be, soon.”

  Chapter 4

  Billings, MT

  After seeing the two boys run by, she spent several minutes driving along the outside edge of the parking lot. From that vantage point, it appeared as if the whole town was rioting at the outer doors of the mall. It made sense why the officer had instructed her and Asher to go to the retail outlet; the defenders obviously needed the assistance. However, the scale and hopelessness of the situation turned her stomach. Asher’s uncertain tone suggested he felt the same.

  “Is the big city always like this?” she asked with a hint of mirth.

  “No, except on Black Friday. It starts a lot like this, only the people drive their cars through the doors of the mall, rather than fighting their way inside on foot.”

  She tilted her head, unsure if he was being serious. It was a bit like what Mom would say about how bad it was in the city, but it couldn’t possibly be true. It took her a few seconds to reason it out. “All right, so the chaos is unusual.”

  “Very,” Asher agreed. “Maybe we should drive around to the other side,” he continued. “We couldn’t enter the mall from this side even if we wanted to.”

  She laughed nervously. “Do we want to?”

  Dark shapes ran on the roof of the mall, hunched over to present the smallest targets. Were the police snipers waiting for backup? Could she use their support to get inside? She came right back to the central question of the moment: did she even want to go in there?

  She drove to the opposite side of the mall, hoping to see some evidence of calm. What she got, instead, was an even more chaotic situation. A big yellow school bus had been rammed into the glass doors of the entryway; its rear end stuck out of the building. A gaggle of citizens struggled to climb into the emergency exit door of the vehicle, which would presumably give them access to the inside of the mall.

  “I was just joking about driving through the doors,” Asher volunteered. “I couldn’t have known it would happen.”

  “Which means things are worse than Black Friday,” she said dryly.

  “Oh yeah,” he replied.

  “Well, we can’t go through that way, either,” she remarked, nervous about what they were in for if they tried.

  Asher tapped his watch. “I hate to say it, but this isn’t really in my skillset. Those people at the doors would probably eat me for lunch.” He looked over to her with eyes full of worry. “And I don’t want to shoot anyone before lunchtime.”

  It became clear with every turn on the parking lot there was no safe way inside. She parked in a spot as far from the mall as possible, near a few abandoned cars, then picked up the radio mic. “Officer McCracken, this is Park Ranger Grace Anderson. We’re unable to—”

  Before she could finish, a young man hopped in through the missing back door. He was winded and hoarse as he spoke. “Please help me! Drive!”

  Grace whipped her head toward the hitchhiker. It was one of the young men who’d run by earlier. It took her a second to regain her composure and speak with a voice of authority. “We saw you with those games in your arms. Were you stealing them?”

  “Yeah, bust me or whatever. Just get me out of this place!” He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was concerned with some men she hadn’t noticed earlier. They stood among parked cars about fifty yards to the rear.

  She connected the dots. “Are those men with the police? Were they trying to stop you from taking those games?”

  The kid was probably fourteen or fifteen. Old enough to know better. However, he wiped sweat from his brow and glanced toward her with watery eyes. “
I don’t want to die for no games. Those men are stopping anyone they see carrying stuff from the mall. They take it…or worse.” He fought a sob. “They hit my bud with a baseball bat. I think he’s dead.”

  “No way,” Asher replied. “We saw you not ten minutes ago. How did they even catch you? You two were pretty fast.”

  The kid puffed up his chest, willing to accept the compliment, but then he deflated again. “They have cars, you know?”

  Asher met her gaze. His eyes said, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  The radio chirped, startling her back into the moment. “This is Officer McCracken. Go ahead, Ms. Anderson. Did you make it to the mall?”

  She let out a fatalistic laugh. “Yeah, we made it. You didn’t tell us it was a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Crowds are fighting to break down the doors. People are, uh, dying in the streets, too.”

  “I’m sorry,” the officer replied, sounding unapologetic. “We’ve lost contact with the force inside. They have orders to get out if things get too bad.”

  She looked up. The people on the roof were gone, perhaps backing up the officer’s statement. If so, it meant she didn’t have to explain why they would not be going inside.

  The voice on the CB continued. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ve got a new assignment for you two federal officers. I need you to rescue one of your own. Stand by a second and I’ll get you the address.”

  “Thank God,” she said under her breath.

  “Who are you people?” the kid asked from the back seat. He leaned forward and seemed to check out their uniforms. The pair of hats sat on the center console. “National Park Service?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “We’re here to back up the Billings police.”

  The kid traded glances back and forth between them and the men out in the parking lot. She noticed in her rearview mirror they were moving as a group toward her truck, probably ten or fifteen of them. There was no doubt in her mind the men had more than a few guns on them.

  “Crap,” she exhaled. “We’re out of time.”