by Keith Taylor
She gripped the gun a little tighter. “Are you sure this is worth it? Maybe we should go someplace else. There’s gotta be somewhere further off the map than this, right?”
Shepherd shook his head. “Not in this part of the state, no. Folks around here have fought tooth and nail to keep out the big out of town retailers. We like to shop in mom and pop stores that put their income back into the community, so most electronics stores around here are still in the towns. This here is the only store for fifty miles that isn’t within spitting distance of a residential area. It’s the safest option. Here we only have to deal with folks who have running vehicles.” He turned to Abi and gripped the steering wheel. “You ready?”
Abi nodded. She felt anything but ready, but she knew there was no other way. She knew that Shepherd’s assessment was on the money. They needed information just as much as they needed food and water. Without it they’d be lost, fighting their way through the chaos with one eye blinded and one hand tied behind their backs.
“We’ll be in and out in five minutes. We just get what we came for and get the hell out of Dodge. If we’re lucky everyone will be focused on the Walmart next door.” He took a deep breath, gunned the engine and pointed the truck directly at the chain link fence at the delivery entrance.
Abi closed her eyes and braced herself for the impact, but she barely felt a jolt as the truck burst the flimsy gate open. The Jeep slowed as Shepherd pulled it around to the side of the building, and as he pulled it in to park in the shadow of a dumpster she had to force herself to loosen her grip on the gun. Shepherd looked down and noticed her nervously flexing her fingers.
“Look, you don’t have to carry that if you don’t want to.” He reached down as if to take it from her, but she pulled it quickly away.
“No! No, I… I want it. I’m just nervous. I’ve never used one of these things away from the range, and I’m guessing firing at paper targets doesn’t really prepare you for firing at people.”
“Probably not, no. Just remember that if you point that thing at anyone you have to be prepared to fire. No hesitation. The moment your target knows you’re not willing to squeeze the trigger is the moment your weapon belongs to them, understand? If you’re not willing to put someone down you’re safer without it.”
Abi took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she let it out slowly through her nose. “No, I’ll keep it. Let's just get this over with before I lose my nerve.”
Shepherd gave her a long look, noting her shaking hands, and shook his head. “I think it’s better if you wait outside and guard the truck. This is only a one man job anyway, and I’ll move quicker on my own.”
“Are you sure? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“No, I’m sure. But I need you to put on your game face now. Staying out here might not be the easy option, and I need you on your toes so I don’t come back and find we’ve lost our wheels, understand?”
“Yeah. I can do it.”
“OK, get out of the truck. You have too many blind spots in here, and you’re just asking for someone to sneak up from behind. Go stand behind the dumpster out of sight. If anyone comes within fifty yards of you just jump in the truck, lean on the horn, drive back out the way we came and stop a mile up the road. I’ll find you. And I’ll say it again: if you have to draw your gun, don’t think twice. No warnings. No threats. Just put them on the ground and get out.”
Shepherd reached behind him for the gun bag on the back seat, pulling out his Ruger 10/22. For a moment he wondered if maybe the Mossberg 500 might be better for self defense at close quarters, but he really hadn’t considered the prospect of having to defend himself in a public space when he’d stocked up on ammo. He’d been thinking the Mossberg would come in handy for firing off warning shots from the cabin, so he’d chosen double aught buckshot that would give a good spread and maybe give an unseen intruder cause to think twice. He was sure it’d put any attacker safely on the ground, but he was concerned about anyone who might be standing behind them. Or hell, five feet to either side for that matter. He'd tested the double aught shells down at the range a time or two, and the shot hadn’t been all that picky about where it scattered. The only safe place to stand when that shot came out the barrel was directly behind the trigger, and even then it was touch and go.
No, the Ruger was more suited to the job, even if the .22 LR ammo didn’t pack much of a punch unless it hit something vital. Better to take someone down in two shots than to take them down in one, and bring the innocent kid behind him down at the same time.
He climbed out of the truck and swung the rifle over his shoulder, shifting the strap so he could run comfortably, and as he turned to Abi and saw the fear in her eyes he just prayed that neither of them would need to use their weapons. Killing people hadn’t really figured in Shepherd’s survival plans, and he was sure as shit Abi hadn’t woken up that morning thinking she might end her day guarding a truck from looters with a Glock in her trembling hands.
“OK, let’s get this over with. Stay out of sight, and remember, if someone comes charging just give the horn a blast before you leave. I wanna know the moment you bolt.”
Abi nodded, her face pale and wan, and without another word Shepherd set off along the side of the building. He didn’t want her to see that he was just as nervous as her.
At the corner of the store he paused and poked his head around to the vast parking lot, silently cursing as he saw what was going on. Over by the Walmart around a hundred yards away a half dozen vehicles were parked up at the entrance. A couple of them looked like they’d already been looted, their windows broken and doors hanging open.
Near the front of the store it looked like a brawl had broken out as people tried to steal supplies from a pickup. The driver stood on the bed waving a handgun wildly, each time sending people ducking for cover as the barrel pointed in their direction. It was too far away for Shepherd to consider it a danger, but what worried him was the way people seemed to be acting. They weren’t fleeing from the driver waving the gun, like any sane person would. Instead they seemed to be biding their time. Even though they were up against an armed man they seemed to be waiting for the opportunity to strike, just waiting for him to drop his guard.
Jesus. Things had collapsed even more quickly than he’d feared. He’d always known it would get like this eventually, but he’d hoped there might be a grace period of a few days before people realized exactly what had happened and turned against one another. He knew that hope had always been optimistic, though. People could hold it together pretty well when they knew help was just a few hours or days away. They could stick it out when they knew the authorities were on the move, mobilizing to bring them food and water and get the power back on.
But this was different. When people realized they were truly on their own there was no grace period. There was no polite buffer, no period when folks banded together and helped each other out, sharing what they had to bridge the gap before everything returned to normal. When they knew there would be no normal anytime soon they turned on each other almost instantly, and it was terrifying.
We’re just well dressed animals, at the end of the day.
Shepherd turned his attention to the front doors of the Best Buy a couple dozen yards away. Just two vehicles were parked there, a new truck and a rusty old Jetta, but there was no one to be seen outside. As he started towards the doors he wondered if the vehicles were even owned by looters – the truck looked far too modern to be running – but as his hopes climbed they were immediately dashed when he saw an overweight man in sweats push a cart through the shattered front door.
He felt like facepalming when he saw what was in the cart. An enormous 4K Sony TV set took up most of the space, so big it jutted out of the cart at an angle. The rest of the space was packed out with several games consoles, about three dozen games, a microwave and some kind of fancy coffee machine. Every last thing in the cart was useless. None of this stuff could run on batteries. If
they hadn’t been fried already there’d be no power to even switch them on for months or years, but the man didn’t seem to understand that he was risking his life for worthless plastic and circuitry while the shelves of the Walmart a hundred yards away were being stripped of precious food and water. He shoveled everything into the back of his Jetta with the look of a kid on Christmas morning.
As Shepherd approached the store the man finally noticed him, and he turned and froze like a startled deer. He saw the man’s hand twitch, and he noticed the bulge of a holster hidden beneath his jacket. Shepherd just shook his head and raised a finger, warning the man to stop. He turned a little, swinging the rifle into view without taking it from his shoulder. He met the gaze of the man, holding it for a moment as if sizing him up, and then jutted his chin in the direction of the road. Go.
The looter seemed almost grateful to be given this silent order, as if he was waiting for permission to flee. He ran around the side of the Jetta, clumsily squeezed his bulk into the driver’s seat and tore off away from the building, the trunk of his car still wide open.
“Jackass,” Shepherd whispered under his breath.
He entered through the broken sliding doors of the store, carefully stepping over sheets of splintered safety glass that had been popped out of their frames. A mass of bright yellow plastic shopping carts was scattered just inside the entrance but Shepherd scooped up a discarded basket from the floor. From the look of the mess at the entrance the place had already been raided by quite a crowd, and he just prayed they’d all been dumb enough to focus on the shiny consumer electronics rather than anything that might actually help them survive.
The only light in the building came through the broken doors, and already the sun was dimming as it began to set. The back of the store was cloaked in shadow, and Shepherd cursed himself for not bringing along a torch as he prowled through the unfamiliar aisles, scanning the signs above each one until he found the audiovisual section.
The place looked like a tornado had passed through. The shelves where the TVs were displayed were almost empty, but every ten steps the floor was covered in the shattered, trampled remains of display models that had tumbled to the ground. Shepherd picked carefully through the aisle, shaking his head in dismay at the stupidity of the looters, and as he turned the corner his breath caught in his throat.
A man lay on the floor, curled up in the fetal position. Shepherd didn’t need to look close to know that it was far too late to help. At head height above the body the corner of a shelf was dented and stained with blood, and the floor beneath the man was crimson and sticky.
What a fucking waste of a life, Shepherd thought, but he struggled to muster more than the bare minimum of sympathy. This was a guy whose first impulse on discovering that the power was out was to run straight out and steal himself a nice new TV, and he’d paid for it with his life. There was probably a good argument against greed and rampant consumerism in that sad, broken body lying among the remains of the worthless treasures he craved, but Shepherd didn’t care enough to make it.
He stepped past the body and on to the radio aisle, which looked almost untouched by the looters. He guessed radios weren’t exactly desirable items, even though they were infinitely more useful than a broken TV. Thank God for stupidity.
It only took a few moments to find what he was searching for. There were five brands of shortwave radio on the shelves, and Shepherd dragged three of the cheapest model into his basket. All of the others showed images on their boxes of radios with bright LCD displays and dozens of knobs and buttons, but Shepherd chose the $30 Tecsun analog model with just a couple of simple dials. Fewer bells and whistles meant there was less that could go wrong; not so many sensitive electronics for the pulse to fry.
On the same shelf was another cheap, plasticky radio, and the box caught Shepherd’s eye: NOAA Weather Radio. He quickly grabbed three and dumped them into the basket before jogging back to the registers, where he grabbed a dozen packs of AA batteries that had been scattered across the floor. Beside them a rack of candy bars had gone ignored by the looters, and Shepherd set about shoveling as many into the basket as he—
Oh shit.
The sound of gunfire rang out through the store. Overlapping reports. Multiple weapons fired. Just a few seconds of chaos followed by dead silence.
Shepherd froze for a moment, holding his breath as he waited for more, but the silence remained. It sounded like the shots had come from some distance, maybe over by the Walmart. Abi probably wasn’t involved. Hopefully she was still—
The horn rang out, long and loud.
΅
:::18:::
ABI STOOD NERVOUSLY at the corner of the building, one hand clutching a cigarette and the other buried in the pocket of her sweatpants, her fingers wrapped around the Glock. Across the parking lot she watched what looked to have become a tense stalemate outside the Walmart. The man standing on the bed of the pickup seemed to be waiting for a partner to return from inside the store, but if Abi was understanding the snatches of yelled conversation right the partner was being held to ransom until the man gave up his truck. Nobody seemed in the mood to back down.
She couldn’t understand why he didn’t just give it up. Surely the life of whomever he was with was worth more than the truck, and surely there was someone else in the parking lot who’d be willing to give them a ride back to town. She wanted to scream. None of this was necessary, damn it. The power had been out less than a day and people were already at each other’s throats. It was just all so fucking stupid.
A set of bright headlights appeared about a quarter mile down the road in the direction of Bedford. Abi breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the vehicle turned into the parking lot and she saw it was a large military truck with a camo green canvas awning stretched over the back. Finally, the cavalry had arrived. She watched as it turned towards the Walmart, bearing down on the vehicles at the door, and as it approached the people outside the store didn’t seem to know what to do. A couple turned and bolted across the parking lot but a handful remained, holding their ground as the truck pulled to a stop.
The flap was pulled back at the rear and out poured a dozen or so soldiers, each of them brandishing what looked at this distance like assault rifles. They swarmed towards the store, yelling orders at the civilians as they surrounded them.
A few seconds passed. Maybe five heartbeats. The soldiers fell silent as they waited for the civilians to comply with whatever orders they’d barked.
And then the man on the bed of the pickup raised his gun.
It was all over in just a few seconds. Abi couldn’t tell if the man managed to get off a shot, but one of the soldiers fell. And then everyone else fell, even those who were unarmed. Maybe half a dozen people were put down, and as far as she could tell from this distance only one of them had been holding a gun. The soldiers ignored the bodies and moved on into the store, vanishing through the broken doors with their weapons braced against their shoulders.
Abi turned and ran back to the truck, her heart thumping in her chest. She jumped into the driver’s seat and fumbled at the keys with shaky hands. Please be close, Shepherd, she thought. Please be waiting. She struggled to put the truck in gear – it hadn’t occurred to her that it was a stick shift – and she almost stalled before turning the truck around the corner and pulling to a stop in the lee of the sole remaining truck in front of the Best Buy. She slumped low in her seat, trying to bring her racing heart under control as she prayed for Shepherd to emerge from the doors.
She didn’t want to leave him, but she knew she couldn’t stay. The soldiers would surely reappear at any moment, and if they decided to come to the Best Buy Shepherd would be trapped. He’d have no idea of the danger he faced, and – Abi scolded herself for the selfish thought – she had no idea how to find his cabin. She’d be lost out here on her own, on roads she didn’t know in a state far from home. If even the military couldn’t be trusted she’d be lucky to survive the night.
She came to a decision. The military truck was a hundred yards away, facing in the other direction with the engine switched off. Even assuming the driver was waiting in the cab it would take at least thirty seconds for the heavy truck to start up and lumber over to the Best Buy, and she was almost certain it wouldn’t be able to keep pace with the Jeep if it tried to pursue. She had a little time.
Abi leaned hard on the horn, calling out a low, mournful honk for five seconds. She gripped the steering wheel and watched the military truck for signs of movement, but it remained still.
Ten seconds, Abi. Just sit here for ten seconds and then you can go.
Shepherd emerged from the door after nine.
She almost cried with relief as he stumbled out through the shattered doors. She pushed open the driver’s side door and pulled herself into the passenger seat, taking the basket from Shepherd as he climbed in and tossed it to her.
“What happened? What’s going on?”
“Just drive! Now! Get us the hell out of here!”
Shepherd didn’t need any more details. The terror in Abi’s voice was enough to make him plant his foot on the gas and roar across the parking lot. It was only when the Jeep was halfway to the road that he noticed the military truck.
“What the hell? The Army’s here?”
Abi shook her head emphatically. “I’ll explain when we’re safe. Go go go. Don’t stop.”
The Jeep bounced across the strip of grass that separated the parking lot from the road, screeching back to the asphalt as Shepherd spun the wheel and turned the truck back the way they'd come, back towards the railroad track. Abi twisted in her seat and looked back through the rear window, her heart racing as she saw the soldiers stream out of the store, weapons still drawn.