Savannah was about to tell him exactly how she felt about him when he stood up abruptly, his chair flying backwards.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s time to move,” he announced. “Move. We’ve wasted enough time here.”
She knew that if she didn’t move under her own steam, he would drag her. She quickly followed him out of the room before he pushed her in front of him, pointing her back the way they’d come. This time, though, he took her past the closet where she’d been stashed before. As they moved down the hall, she heard voices, and then they moved into a more open area that looked to have been cleared of furniture.
There were men and women everywhere, all of them wearing plain black jumpsuits, milling around the area. Some were talking and laughing while others looked to be hard at work, sitting at desks on the outskirts of the room and hunched over drawings. Her eyes scanned the area as her captor forced her past them and into what was a huge corner office suite.
“Have a seat. This is where you wait for your daddy,” he sneered, pushing her down onto a leather couch.
There was a large desk positioned in front of a bank of windows that overlooked the city below. Artwork covered the walls, and weird sculptures were positioned on shelves built into a wall.
“Where are we?” she asked.
He looked around the room, his lip curled with disdain. “This is the heart of corporate greed. All the crap in here probably cost millions of dollars. Money stolen from hardworking citizens.”
Savannah looked down at the rug between the couch and matching leather chairs and saw a dark stain. Her stomach turned, knowing it was blood.
“Why?” she whispered, staring down at it.
“He was part of the problem. He owned this building because he was a cheater and a liar. Men like him were some of the first eliminated. This is our building now, and I will be using this office for the time being,” he said, plopping down in the massive chair behind the desk and putting his legs up on the corner of the wooden desk.
She shook her head, not understanding what he had planned. “Now what?”
“We wait,” he said with a smile.
34
The city was burning, and Austin couldn’t believe his eyes as they looked at the orange glow filling the night sky. His daughter was in there somewhere. He only prayed she was uninjured. He would kill anyone who hurt her.
“You’re sure you know where we’re going?” Austin asked Nash again as they each climbed into their own kayak.
“I do. I’ll lead. We need to stick to the shadows along the edges of the water.”
Austin folded his big body into a kayak, praying he didn’t tip the thing over. He’d gone kayaking exactly once in his life, and that felt like a hundred years ago. Each of them had slid an AR-15 into their kayak, and they were each carrying a handgun and extra magazines for each of their weapons. They were prepared for a gun battle, no question. The only thing they were missing was Kevlar. He could have really used some Kevlar in this moment.
With nothing more to be said in preparation, they began their slow ride down the river, the paddles barely making a sound. Water lapped against the sides of the kayaks, each person looking left and right as they surveyed the massive destruction beyond the river’s banks. At first, there was nothing to see but abandoned homes, but then came worse—bodies, destruction, and fire. A lot of fire.
The trip felt like it took forever at first, approaching the inner city as silently and calmly as they were, but Austin soon got the hang of kayaking again and began to see the beauty of this approach. Nobody would be expecting gun-toting outsiders to come in via kayak of all things, and their movement was all but silent. Before long, the city loomed up around them, rising from the banks of the river in a way that felt more surreal than anything as they rowed closer to the heart of the city.
“Freeze,” Nash hissed.
Austin struggled to bring his vessel to a stop, sliding close to the bank of the river.
They could hear shouting, and suddenly, shadowy figures emerged from one of the buildings. It was a large group of people, with men, women, and children all huddled together as they moved into the street. It was then Austin saw two men, both of them wearing all black, escorting the crowd out. They had semi-automatic rifles aimed at the huddled group as smoke billowed from the windows in the five-story building. Clearly, it had been lit on fire.
“We told you, leave. Leave or you die,” one of the men in black said.
“We have nowhere to go,” a woman’s voice pleaded.
“You can’t stay here. We warned you,” the man replied.
Austin’s hands tightened on the paddle. Could he stand by and watch these men kill women and children? He turned back to look at his brother in the shadows cast from the orange glow of the fires blazing on either side of the river.
“We can’t,” he whispered.
“I can’t watch this. I have to do something,” he hissed.
“Austin, they’ll kill us,” Amanda said gently from behind him.
“Not if we kill them first,” he replied, pulling his AR-15 from beside him, resting it in his lap as he steered the kayak forward and into the shore.
He could hear the groans of frustration from the others as they all followed suit—from everyone but the kid, Nash, anyway. The river was several feet below the roadway above, giving them a slight advantage. They spread out, all of them flat on their bellies as they slid like alligators up the embankment.
“Please, we’ll leave in the morning,” a man begged.
“We warned you, leave or be killed. This is our city,” one of the men replied, the first flames licking up the side of the building from where the group had just emerged.
Austin watched in horror as the man in a plain black uniform, which looked identical to those of the men in the wrecked Humvee, raised his gun, aiming it at the man begging for his life.
He popped up, not able to watch a man be shot at point-blank range in front of his wife and children. He aimed his weapon and fired, somewhat surprised at himself for the steadiness he felt, and the lack of hesitation. His aim was true, hitting the man in the center of his chest and dropping him like a rock. From his left, he heard the loud crack of a gun. He glanced over and saw Amanda with her Beretta in hand before he looked back at the other man in black where he lay on the ground, his face now missing.
It was then he heard children screaming, and the crowd of people they’d been attempting to save moved away from them. Hysteria and panic made them loud, which was sure to draw unwanted attention.
Austin held up his free hand, his weapon hanging limp and pointing at the ground. “It’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you,” he called out.
Murmurs erupted, some of the children quieting down into sobs, and then a figure stepped forward. “Thank you. You saved my life,” the man who’d been targeted said, stepping up to shake Austin’s hand.
“No problem. What’s going on here?” he asked.
“They came into the city a couple weeks back. They’ve been systematically clearing everyone out. They warned us we would be killed if we stayed, but my little one, she’s been sick. We have nowhere to go,” the man explained.
Austin nodded in understanding. “I think it’s best you try and leave now.”
“We will. We knew we couldn’t stay forever. But why are you here? Are you with the government? Are you here to kill them?” he asked hopefully.
“No. Someone has my daughter. I’m here to get her back.”
The man grimaced. “These are not good people. I hope your daughter is okay,” he said.
“Do you know anything about David Tower?” Nash asked, moving up to stand beside Austin.
The man’s face visibly paled, the orange glow of the fire burning in the building behind them making him look ghostly.
“That’s their building,” he stated.
“Their? Their who?” Amanda questioned.
The man shook his h
ead, suddenly looking as if he wanted to run. “I don’t know. They call themselves the N.W.O., the New World Order. That tower is their headquarters. They come and go out of there all day long. At night, they do their sweeps,” he explained.
“Sweeps?” Ennis asked.
“Anyone trying to hide in the city is killed or run off. They go through every building. They’re well organized.”
Austin felt his heart sinking. “How many of them are there?”
“I don’t know. I would guess a hundred or so, maybe more. They’ve been handing out flyers, trying to get people to turn on each other. I think they want us to kill each other so they don’t have to waste their bullets. My family and I, we’ve been lying low with one of our neighbors. We hoped to ride this out. I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s bad, real bad,” he said, looking towards his family.
“We need to go,” Austin said, feeling an ever-growing sense of urgency to get his daughter as far from the New World Order as possible.
“If you don’t mind, we’re going to take their weapons. We need the protection, and seeing as how you’re already armed, I’m guessing you won’t mind?” the family man asked, if in a way that said he wasn’t asking at all.
“Go for it,” Ennis replied.
“Good luck,” the man called out, and with that he headed off to snatch the rifles before rejoining his family.
“Do we take the kayaks, or should we try and walk?” Ennis asked.
“Water. There’s still a good three miles between us and the tower. I think we need to avoid the sweeps,” Nash advised.
“I agree,” Amanda said.
“Then let’s go,” Austin said, already moving back to the water.
Once again, the group of four moved silently through the water, each of them lost in their own thoughts as they moved deeper into the city and saw the incredible amount of destruction. There were large piles of smoldering rubble where buildings had once stood proudly, and bodies lying limp on the ground near dead vehicles and burned buildings. Whoever the New World Order was, they obviously didn’t care about retaining the existing structures or respecting life. It seemed almost as if they were aiming to wipe out any signs of civilization.
“Here,” Nash whispered from his spot at the front of the line.
They all moved to the side, banking their kayaks under a four-lane bridge that connected the new downtown with the older part of the city. Nash led the way once they disembarked, running across a major thoroughfare dotted with stalled cars.
“Where?” Austin whispered.
“Two blocks south,” Nash replied, pointing in the general direction of the tower.
Austin nodded, looking for another place to shield them from view. Once he made his decision, he raced across the road, the others following behind them.
“Hey! Who’s out there!” a male voice shouted, cutting through the darkness.
“Down,” Ennis hissed, dropping to a low squat.
“We’ll shoot first and ask questions later!” a female voice yelled.
Austin couldn’t help being surprised to hear a woman. He’d come to the silly conclusion that only men would be a part of this movement to destroy the country one city at a time.
“I’ll shoot first and ask questions later,” Amanda snapped back in a whisper, clearly not happy.
“We’ll wait until they come into view, and then we shoot,” Austin instructed them.
“You sure you want to kill them?” Nash asked. “We could wait for them to pass by.”
“No. No survivors. We need to take out as many as we can. We can’t have them reporting back that we’re here. All we have on our side is the element of surprise,” Austin hissed.
“You don’t think the gunfire will alert them to our presence?” Ennis asked.
Austin thought about it for a second. “No. They’re shooting people already. We’ll check the bodies for comms, though, and this time, I want us to take their weapons.”
“Good idea,” Ennis agreed. “Let’s do this.”
“Spread out. If you see one, shoot. Don’t ask questions. Be prepared to get shot at. Stay low,” Austin ordered.
Austin stayed with Amanda while Ennis and Nash moved to hug the side of a building about forty feet away. They could hear voices coming closer, and now Austin realized it was more than two. He was suddenly very nervous about his plan.
Amanda quietly raised her weapon, the butt of the AR resting against her right shoulder as she prepared to take her shot. Austin followed suit, praying he would get lucky a second time and hit his mark.
The glow of a cigarette gave him a place to aim, and he lined the shot up and pulled the trigger. The crack of the rifle made his ears ring, muffling the sound of Amanda’s rapid-fire shooting as the bullets began to fly in their direction. It was a solid twenty seconds of firing as both sides shot blindly in the dark.
Amanda eventually put her hand on his arm, quietly telling his to stop shooting. He did, still holding the rifle up at the ready.
“Did we get them?” he asked, hoping he was whispering but sure he was probably speaking way too loudly.
“I’ll check!” Nash hollered.
“I’ll cover you,” Amanda said, stepping closer to the road where the cigarette butt still glowed red on the ground.
Austin stayed next to the building, prepared to shoot. Then he heard a single shot from a small caliber gun.
“Clear!” Amanda’s voice rang out.
Austin shook his head with amazement. Amanda presented herself as a beautiful, well-mannered woman, but she could be ruthless and deadly. He was glad she was on his side. The four of them quickly searched the six bodies that lay dead in the street, and Austin was surprised to realize there had been so many of them. It had been pure luck that none of their own group had been shot. It buoyed him, helping him believe in the surprise factor.
“These’ll come in handy. Full-automatics,” Ennis said, holding up one of the rifles he’d taken off the men and single woman of the group before beginning to dig for extra magazines along with the rest of them.
“Are they military?” Nash asked, studying the gun he had grabbed.
“Altered,” Amanda said firmly.
“Altered?” Nash questioned.
“Bump stocks,” Ennis clarified. “Make sure to check every pocket, guys—we need the extra magazines.
“Whatever works. Take them and let’s go,” Austin said, anxious to get to Savannah.
They were all weighed down with their proffered weapons now, each of them carrying a semi-auto handgun, their original ARs, and now the soldiers’ modified AR-15s, as well. Austin finally felt confident they had a fighting chance.
They walked through the city streets, sticking to the back alleys and shadows. More burning buildings and fresh dead bodies littered the streets, so that Austin wished he could kill the group that had been responsible for these deaths all over again. People lay everywhere in the streets, some of them killed execution-style with their hands still bound behind them, their bodies half-kneeling and slumped against one another, blood covering the ground.
“This is awful,” Amanda gasped as they passed a family of five who’d been killed in the street in front of an apartment building.
“We need to get Savannah and get the hell out of here.”
“That’s the tower,” Nash announced, pointing to the tall building in front of them. It was easy to pick out, too. It was the only building with lights glowing in the windows.
Austin turned to look at Ennis, Nash, and Amanda. “This is where I go alone. Thank you for all your help. If I don’t see you again, I want you all to know I appreciate all you have done. If Savannah makes it out and I don’t, take care of her,” he said to his brother.
Ennis slapped him on the shoulder. “We’ll see you soon. Hurry up now, so we can get back home before Wendell finds the rest of my stash.”
That earned a smile from Austin as he gave a nod and set out on his own.
&nbs
p; 35
Austin approached the front entrance of the tower from the shadows, seeing eight armed guards standing in front of the four sets of double-doors that opened into a lobby. Each of them had another modified AR-15 slung over their shoulder. Knowing there was no way he could kill all of them without being killed, and also understanding that he was expected—if not now than later—he moved out into the open so that they all had a clear view of him, and began walking slowly up toward the doors.
“Stop!” one of the guards said, stepping forward. “State your business or leave before we shoot.”
The other guards all aimed their weapons at him. It was intimidating, but he’d have walked through fire to get to his daughter.
“I’m here to see Zander,” he said. “He left me a note to come here, for my daughter.”
The guard stepped closer, looking him up and down. “You are?”
“Austin Merryman.”
The guard looked over his shoulder, back to where another man stood near the wall, apparently guarding a door. The tall Hispanic man gave a curt nod. At that, the guard who’d been speaking to him walked forward and met him just beyond the doorway.
“We’ll relieve you of your weapons. This one looks like one of ours,” the guard said, pulling the strap of the rifle down Austin’s left arm before removing the second. Then it was the gun holstered on his thigh before he was given a quick pat-down.
“I’ll take him up,” the Hispanic man called from behind them.
Austin stepped forward, anxious to get it all over with. He highly doubted he was going to be able to walk out with his daughter. There would be some kind of showdown, and he was honestly prepared to die if it even gave her a shot at survival. All he could do was hope Savannah made it out alive and got to Ennis.
“Where are we going?” Austin asked, his eyes scanning the dark lobby.
It appeared that lights were only being used on the upper floors. Everything here lay in shadows. Small glows emanated from what looked to be glow-in-the-dark strips along the halls, but that was about it.
Survive the Chaos (Small Town EMP Book 1) Page 25