* * *
Bill waited for the boy to get out of earshot before creeping in through the open gate in the chain link fence. He’d brought wire-cutters, but why ruin a perfectly good fence if he didn’t have to? He might need it later. Swinging the gate partially shut behind him, he made sure to leave it in exactly the same position that he’d found it. When that boy came back from whatever he’d gone out to do, Bill wanted to be sure he found everything just the way he’d left it. Creeping up to the red door in the base of the tower where he’d seen that kid emerge a few minutes ago, he tried the door handle. To his amazement, it turned and the door popped open. The door was heavy, and obviously custom made. The hinges groaned as Bill swung it open. He winced, and quickly stepped inside. His feet clanged on the metallic landing of a spiral staircase behind the door. Shit. He eased the door shut behind him and worked hard to control his breathing. He froze and listened for any sign that the people inside had heard him. His silenced Beretta felt suddenly cold and heavy in his hand. Stairs leading down revealed what he’d already guessed—this was some kind of bunker. Stairs leading up must give access to the top of the tower. A lookout post. Bill had to hand it to whoever had built this place. It was highly defensible—assuming you keep the doors locked. Bill smirked at that. He was just about to start down the stairs to find his hostage when he heard a door opening, followed by muffled footsteps. Bill thought about dashing outside, but that would be the first place they’d look when they found the door open. Instead, he crept up, making sure to keep his footsteps perfectly quiet. He encountered a locked metal hatch at the top. It was locked from the inside with a series of sliding bolts, so he could definitely open it, but he thought better of that. Opening the hatch would make too much noise.
Relying on the shadows at the top of the stairs to conceal him, Bill sat on the second-highest step and peered through the railing to the landing below. Someone was standing there, at the front door. A yellow bug light revealed that it was Logan, and he had a gun of his own.
Bill tightened his grip on his pistol. If Logan decided to come up the stairs he’d have no choice but to use it.
* * *
Holding my gun in both hands, I peered up the stairwell from the bottom to check for intruders. I couldn’t see anyone, so I stalked quietly up the stairs to the landing. The first thing I did was check the door. It was slightly ajar and unlocked. My heart kicked inside my chest and adrenaline tingled in my fingertips. Feeling watched, I spun around, looking for whoever had broken in.
The stairs were made of two separate spirals spanning three floors, one below and two above to reach the top of the guard tower. I looked up, but I couldn’t see anything at the top of the stairs. It was too dark. I aimed my gun through the center of the stairwell and started up the stairs.
“Hello?” I called. “I have a gun!”
No answer.
If there was someone hiding at the top of the stairwell, they could definitely see me, but I couldn’t see them. That put me at a disadvantage.
“Logan!” Kate yelled up to me. “Alex is not in his room!”
I lowered my gun, and stopped climbing the stairs. “Damn it. He must have sneaked out!”
Footsteps rang on the stairs below. I went back down and met Kate on the landing. Setting the safety on my Smith and Wesson, I slipped the gun into my pajamas pocket. It lay cold and heavy against my thigh. I grabbed my shoes from the rack beside the door and pulled them on. Gesturing to the door, I said, “He left the door open on his way out.” Not that he had a choice. He didn’t have his own key, and there was no way to lock the door behind him without one.
“Where do you think he went?” Kate asked.
I only needed half a second to think about that. “To see that girl again, where else?”
“In the middle of the night? What could they possibly be do...” she trailed off. “You’d better find him. If he gets some girl pregnant we’re going to have a whole new set of problems to worry about.”
“No kidding.” I pushed the door open, and moonlight swept in.
Richard came pounding up the stairs, bare-chested and brandishing his pump-action shotgun. “What’s going on?”
“Mommy?” Rachel asked from below the stairs.
“It’s okay, sweetheart, go back to bed!” Kate called back.
“Well?” Richard intoned. He jerked his chin to the open door. “What’s going on?”
I explained what we’d heard and Alex’s absence from his room.
Richard blew out a sigh. “Fantastic. The world is ending and our biggest threat is a horny teenager.”
“I’ve got to go find him,” I said.
Richard nodded. “Good luck. Hit the buzzer when you come back and I’ll open up for you.”
“Got it,” I said, and then darted out into the night.
Chapter 16
I found the chain link gate unlocked and cracked open, just like the front door, but since Alex did have access to a key for the padlock, he’d left the gate open out of negligence, not necessity.
As I ran through the moonlit field around Richard’s place, my gun bounced in my loose-fitting pajamas pocket. I withdrew the weapon with a grimace, suddenly wishing I’d thought to give it to Kate. Busting up my son’s midnight tryst with a loaded gun in my hand was bound to make its way to the ears of the girl’s parents. If I was lucky maybe she wouldn’t say anything in order to avoid having to explain what she was doing sneaking out in the middle of the night.
As I ran, it dawned on me that Richard’s property was almost five acres, and my son could be literally anywhere on or around it. For all I knew he’d sneaked into the girl’s house. If that was the case, I’d have to go knocking on doors until someone could tell me where she lived. Except that walking down the street of some rural Texan neighborhood in the middle of the night, with a gun, was a good way to get my head blown off.
Besides, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that I wanted to ruin the one good thing my son had found here. Not until I knew more, anyway. Slowing my pace to a brisk walk, I tried to put myself in Alex’s shoes. If I were a horny teenager, where would I go? What would I do?
It didn’t take me long to come up with an answer. The lake. It was a good excuse to get a girl to take off her clothes. I turned down toward the lake and ran.
* * *
Bill waited until the door shut with another rumble of protest. The bare-chested ape pulled a lever on the inside of the door and locking bolts slid into the frame on all sides. He’d gotten lucky. He’d been planning to hide inside the compound until morning, to wait for someone to come outside and then ambush them, but finding the door open had accelerated his plans. Now he was inside, and the occupants of the bunker thought they were safe. It was perfect.
Both the hairy ape and Logan’s hot wife descended the stairs. Bill listened to the woman reassuring her daughter. There was nothing to worry about, she said. They were perfectly safe. Bill heard an interior door click shut, but the voices continued. The ape had gone back to bed. Another door clicked. The voices were muffled now. Bill started down the stairs, being careful to keep his boots from clanging on the metal steps. Different scenarios raced through his head. The safest thing would be to shoot them all now and then finish off Logan and his son when they came back.
But that left no room for more enjoyable pursuits. Logan’s wife would make for good company while the world went to shit. Her daughter looked to be about six years old. She’d be a dead weight, but the thought of shooting a little kid made his insides twist. Besides, the mother needed a reason to behave. Bill nodded to himself. The girl and her mother would live.
He reached the landing at the front door and continued down into the bunker. A hallway with doors on either side came into view. All was silent, and the hall was dimly lit. One of the nearest doors opened, and Bill froze. Logan’s wife hadn’t seen him yet. She was backing out of the room, her eyes still on her daughter.
Don’t turn around, he thought at he
r. Don’t—
But then she did. Their eyes locked for a frozen instant, and then she screamed and darted back inside her daughter’s room. Bill cursed under his breath. Another door opened. Chuk-chuk.
“Kate?” Ape-man’s hairy chest and belly came into view. Instinct took over, and Bill squeezed off two shots in quick succession—plap, plap. The silencer did its job.
Ape-man took a bullet in the shoulder and one in the leg, jerking in time to each. BOOM! He fired the shotgun, but his aim was off, and the slug ricocheted off the stairs behind Bill. His ears rang painfully from the noise. Ape-man collapsed, struggling to reload the shotgun with one hand. Bill grinned as he swept in for the kill. He reached the wounded man’s side. Ape-man’s eyes were squinting from the pain, his chest rising and falling with shuddery breaths. His shotgun lay on the floor beside him. Bill aimed his gun at the man’s head. “Night night.”
“Wait,” the man said.
Bill arched an eyebrow. Then came another deafening BOOM! and his left foot exploded with a searing heat. Bill fell over, howling from the pain.
* * *
When I reached the pebbly excuse for a beach around Calaveras Lake, I had to crawl through the barbed wire fence and ended up scratching my leg. I bit back a curse and went jogging down the beach until I heard laughter and chattering voices. I picked out Alex’s voice, as well as a girl’s. Walking toward the sound, I spied two heads bobbing and splashing in the water. Then I came upon two mounds of clothes. They’d gone skinny dipping. A smile touched my lips as I remembered my own youth. In my experience, skinny dipping in cold water didn’t result in anything else. The cold was a good inhibitor, and I could see even from here that my son and the girl were keeping some distance from each other—probably treading water to stay afloat. I didn’t need to break this up and embarrass Alex. Not yet, anyway. Instead, I walked up the beach and sat down in the shadows of an overhanging tree. My pajamas were dark gray and black, so I doubted they’d see me skulking there.
The laughter and chattering went on for a while. It quieted a few times and I saw the two bobbing heads come together in what I assumed to be a kiss. They broke apart just as quickly, however. It was all quite innocent as far as I could tell—besides the fact that they were naked. I’d have to have a talk with Alex about abstinence, and then give him some protection—because me talking to him wasn’t going to be enough.
After about five more minutes the two of them came swimming in to shore and darted out of the water, yelping and laughing from the cold. I looked away to give them some privacy, even though I couldn’t see more than their silhouettes. This time I heard them kissing. I glanced back in their direction to make sure there wasn’t anything more happening between them. They were both still half-naked. Romeo was at second base, and Juliet showed no signs of stopping him. This was getting into dangerous territory. I was just about to go break them up when Juliet showed some sense and pushed my son’s hands away.
“I have to go home,” she said.
“Are you sure?” Alex asked.
“Yes.” She pulled on what looked like half of a shirt. “But this was fun. Thank you.”
Alex pulled on his shirt next. “I’ll walk you home.” They walked right by me, oblivious, and I saw that they were holding hands. Oddly cutesy after what I’d just seen.
I waited and trailed behind, giving them plenty of space, both to give them some privacy and to make sure they didn’t hear my footsteps. Eventually we came to a cul-de-sac. Massive homes flanked that street on either side. A pang of envy hit me, and I thought about my own big house, sitting empty in Jersey and squatting on all of our cash.
Alex said goodbye and started back across the empty field between Richard’s place and Juliet’s neighborhood. I hurried after him, no longer taking pains to be quiet. He stopped and turned at the sound of my thumping footsteps just as I ran up behind him.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Dad? What the—”
“You left the door open.”
“What are you doing out here? Did you follow me?”
“Not exactly. I went looking for you.”
He spotted the pistol in my hand. “With a gun?” he demanded. “Are you insane?”
I smiled and shook my head. “We heard you leave and we thought it was an intruder. I took the gun with me by mistake.”
Alex snorted. “Nobody wants to break in to Alcatraz, Dad.”
I laughed lightly at that, and we started walking again. “Well, you might have a point there,” I said. “So who’s the girl?”
“Were you watching us?”
“I didn’t really have a choice. It was that or break you two up, and I figured you’d rather I wait.”
Alex made an irritated noise and shook his head. “You could have just gone home.”
“And leave you to impregnate some girl?”
“Seriously? I’m not stupid. And we didn’t do anything.”
“Well, I hope not. But it’s better to be safe—if you know what I mean?”
“Even the frogs know what you mean.”
They were chirping loudly along with the crickets.
I shrugged. “Better to have protection and not use it than need it and not have it. That said, you’re way too young to even think about using it.”
“Dad! Seriously!”
I laughed again, nervously this time. “So who’s the girl?”
“Celine.”
The way that name rolled off Alex’s tongue, I could tell that he was smitten. He might be a dumb, horny teenager, but he wasn’t as cool as he liked to think.
I nodded. “I’m glad you’ve found something down here to keep you going. This hasn’t been easy for any of us, but... it’s going to get better.”
“You mean before it gets worse?” Alex demanded. “That star hasn’t even arrived yet and we’re already hiding underground.”
We reached the barbed wire fence around Richard’s property. “Alex.” I turned to face him, my tone deadly serious. “You saw what they were saying on the news today. World War III is about to start. I can’t think of a better place to be when that happens than an underground bunker with enough supplies to last for a few years. We’re the lucky ones, even if it doesn’t seem like that now.”
“What about Celine? Her family seems to be doing okay. They’re going to put bars on their windows and fill their garage with food. Why couldn’t we get a place like theirs and do the same thing?”
“Because we already have a house, and we won’t make any money if we try to sell it now. And I don’t have a job, so no bank will give us a loan. We don’t have any way to buy a house like theirs. But anyway, Celine’s home needs electricity, and it relies on municipal water. I’d be willing to bet they don’t even have indoor heating. It’s going to be hell for them when the temperature starts to drop.”
“Isn’t Texas supposed to stay warm?” Alex asked.
I nodded. “Warm enough to survive, but that doesn’t mean you won’t get cold. Look, just trust me. It doesn’t get any better than where we are right now.”
Alex snorted and I held the barbed wire fence open for him to climb through. He did the same for me on the other side, and we started across Richard’s property. I wrapped my left arm around Alex’s shoulders—the one not holding the gun. “We’re going to be okay, son.”
He just sighed, resigned to his fate. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for complaining. He was grieving the loss of our old life. Truth be told, so was I.
* * *
Bill cursed violently. His foot was okay, but he’d lost the tip of at least one toe. He could see the white of bone gleaming through his ruined boot. “You dumb fucker!” Bill pushed himself up into a sitting position and grabbed the shotgun barrel to yank the weapon away from Ape-man. It didn’t take much. He was obviously too weak to put up a fight. Unlike Bill, he’d probably never been shot before.
Using the shotgun like a cane, with the barrel facing the floor, Bill got up and hopped ove
r to Ape-man’s side. His squinting eyes widened and flicked to the shotgun.
“Don’t even think about it!”
Leaning against the wall and balancing on the heel of his injured foot, Bill lifted his good foot and stomped on the man’s face. Ape-man’s nose went crunch and more blood gushed. He cried out weakly, but then his head lolled to one side—either unconscious or dead.
Turning around, Bill came face to face with Logan’s wife. She was standing behind him, holding his Beretta.
“Drop the gun!” she said in a trembling voice. Using her free hand she swiped trickling tears from her eyes.
Bill was about to do as she said, but then he noticed how she was holding his gun—one-handed—and she wasn’t even aiming at him, although she probably thought she was. He smiled and shook his head. Leaning against the wall once more, he yanked his shotgun cane up and pumped the action—chuk-chuk. “You first,” he said, and began hobbling toward her.
“Stay away!” She brushed away more tears. “I’ll shoot!”
“No you won’t.” He took a long step toward her, wincing at the blinding burst of pain from his injured foot.
Plap. The woman pulled the trigger. He was surprised she’d had the strength with just one hand on the gun. The bullet nicked Bill’s arm. He hissed and gritted his teeth.
“Mommy?” A little girl’s head popped out into the hallway behind her.
The woman glanced over her shoulder. “Get back in your room, now!”
Taking advantage of her distraction, Bill lunged. Blinding pain erupted in his foot, but he managed to grab the pistol and wrestle it away. Pocketing the weapon, he delivered a roundhouse slap that sent the woman sprawling. The little girl screamed and slammed her door. Bill loomed over the sobbing woman. She began scuttling away, and he hobbled after, using the shotgun as a cane once more. When he grew tired of the chase, he jerked the shotgun up and aimed it at her chest. “Enough.”
The woman froze. “What do you want?”
Bill smiled and produced a roll of duct tape from his cargo pants. Her eyes widened with horror. Funny how the thought of becoming a hostage scares people more than getting killed.
Rogue Star_Frozen Earth_Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller Page 8