Brianna was scared shitless. Grandma kept a brave face on for Aidan, but Brianna knew the danger they were in. She sensed it all around. For once, Aidan was silent and just followed Grandma Mandy, obeying every instruction without comment. Brianna loved the little butthead, but, like, he could be real annoying. And she wasn’t too sure about Grandma’s directions. She loved Grandma too, of course, but Mom knew way more than Grandma about this stuff, and Brianna felt like she’d soaked up more knowledge about survival than Grandma ever knew.
Brianna realized with alarm that Mandy was leading them toward a block of houses. There could be people there, probably desperate and scared, maybe with guns. Or, the planes could hit that next and if they were all among those houses when they got bombed, there would be nowhere to hide.
“Grandma,” she said as a rising panic took hold, “we can’t go that way.”
“It’s cover, dearie,” replied Mandy without looking at her. Mandy’s eyes were busy darting all over the place.
Brianna resisted the urge to cluck at Grandma with disapproval. “Mom says to go around residentials if the shit hits the fan, Grandma.” Not entirely true, but it seemed the easiest way to get Mandy to listen to reason. Of course Brianna knew more than Grandma. Of course Grandma wouldn’t listen to a 13-year-old, even one who clearly knew way more than old, frumpy Grandma.
Brianna was relieved when Grandma changed course without another word, leading them a bit south to go around the clusters of houses. Dammit, Brianna thought. If they were baking a turkey, Grandma should be in charge. Trying to survive this crap? Brianna all the way. Stupid adults never listen... Well, she’d figured out how to get Grandma to listen; just bring up Mom. Okay, duly noted.
* * *
Mandy ignored her granddaughter’s profanity for the moment. The Lord knew they had more important things to worry about right now, and she had to admit that Brianna was probably right about what Cassy would say. She felt a surge of fear for her daughter, wherever Cassy might be, but pushed it away. Whatever happened to Cassy, she would want Mandy to save her kids and so by God, she would do so if she could.
They skirted the cluster of residential buildings, and there was an intermittent popping noise from within; people were shooting at one another in there. She was immediately glad she’d listened to Brianna, because truly the Devil was running amok on Earth right now and turning people ugly.
Mandy was distracted from those thoughts when she saw that the terrain opened up. They were leaving the residential area’s outskirts and entering fields with many scattered copses of trees. She supposed they should dart from cover to cover.
In the distance was a lone house, well away from anything or anyone else. Okay, she decided, they would head to that house. Perhaps the Lord was showing her a refuge from the chaos. Surely the planes wouldn’t waste a bomb on one lonely house, and beyond that house lay woods and nature, not more houses. It would be a way out, if they needed one.
“Come on, kids,” she ordered as she changed direction.
* * *
Jaz couldn’t stop glancing at Jed, in between rising up to pop off a shot with her rifle and ducking back down to reload. She wondered why she was so worried about him because, like, he was just some guy. She definitely recognized that look he gave her whenever he thought she and his wife weren’t looking, but he was nice and never said anything that was, like, super improper. Men always looked at her like that because, well, she was hot. Usually her looks brought the kind of attention she didn’t want, like with the rednecks, but it was weirdly different with Jed.
Bang! She fired another round, thoughts torn between Jed and the dudes outside. She was relieved to see Michael slide over to Jed to examine the wound.
Bang! Another shot. She looked over and saw Michael wrapping a shirt around Jed’s arm, and heard him say Jed was “good to go”. Relieved, she refocused entirely on the approaching soldiers.
* * *
Ethan was frustrated. After that first shot, he couldn’t get a clear line of sight on the three remaining soldiers because they were slinking along the ground, moving from cover to cover, staying low and slow. He caught a movement from the corner of his eye, the one not peering down the barrel through his scope. He glanced that way and felt his stomach drop. God damn if there wasn’t another team of soldiers moving up from the tree line a hundred yards away or so. And worse, one had an RPG.
Ethan knew with cold certainty that he was not a good enough shot to hit a target in cover that far away. When they decided to fire that RPG, then his house, his home, would be blown up. In real life, there was no “respawn point”. Dead was dead. Shit, he would have to fall back.
He glanced at the tube opening that led to safety. He could escape. Those men and women weren’t his problem. Nor were those kids... Shit. Kids.
“Fuck me, time to go full-on Die Hard,” he muttered, and bolted for the stairwell. He prayed the people down there wouldn’t shoot his ass off before he could save ‘em. Wouldn’t that be just ironic.
* * *
Frank popped up and let off a round, just as a soldier raised his rifle to fire. He missed, but the soldier ducked down as the round struck the dirt just next to him. As Frank ducked down again to reload, return fire peppered the window next to him.
And then an unknown voice sounded out from the wall opposite him. “Hold fire, hold fire!”
Frank whipped his head toward the noise and saw a man with an M4 standing in an opening in the wall that hadn’t been there seconds ago. M4... Not invader.
“Hold fire,” shouted Frank, and saw that Michael had his rifle aimed at the newcomer, shaking from the effort of stopping his reflexive fire.
“Hold fire,” repeated Michael as he stopped shaking.
The new man wore a green tee shirt with some sort of computer game logo on it, and jeans. He hadn’t shaved in a week or more. The man’s eyes were wide with adrenaline as he said, “Rockets incoming! Come with me if you want to live!” Then he started waving frantically at them to come to him. “Fucking rockets, man!”
Frank nodded, and shouted, “Michael, Amber - get everyone out. Follow that man, but keep your guns handy.”
Then Frank fired as rapidly as he could out the window, heedless of aim. He had to keep the soldiers down in cover while his folks got the hell out of Dodge. He kept at it until he saw Michael standing at the opening, shouting at him that they were through, and then Frank sprinted across the room and through the opening. On the other side, the stranger slid the hatch shut, and Frank realized it was a bookcase that slid aside.
As Frank began climbing down the ladder, he saw the stranger coming down last and closing some sort of secondary door overhead. As it closed with a meaty thunk, the light faded, but then actual, honest-to-god lights flickered on. The light revealed a tunnel that went some 100 yards, then turned out of sight.
* * *
Brianna followed Mandy and Aidan, and her feet started to hurt. They had walked quite a way across uneven ground, and her Sketchers just weren’t up to the task. Still, she didn’t want to complain. Mom wouldn’t have complained. So, she walked on and said nothing about the growing aches in her feet.
Some time ago they heard what sounded like a real firefight, lots of shooting, and then an explosion. She saw that the house Grandma was heading toward was on fire, and a thick smoke column rose into the sky. Mandy had them all take cover, and they sat uncomfortably in some brushes to watch, and wait.
Ahead of them, a small group of what had to be enemy soldiers—they weren’t dressed like American soldiers—approached the burning house slowly, guns ready. They spent twenty minutes or so searching the area, but with the building in full burn mode they couldn’t get inside. No one inside could still be alive, she thought, and the soldiers must have had the same thought because, after surrounding the building and waiting those long twenty minutes, there was the sound of a whistle and the whole group moved off to the north, back toward town.
“C’mon, Gra
ndma. Time for Plan B. Where to now?”
Grandma Mandy didn’t move, and didn’t reply for what seemed like minutes. Finally, she turned to look at Brianna and Aidan, and said, “The Lord has shown us this place. It is a refuge, so that we need fear no evil. Trust in the Lord, little ones. We will go to that burning house, and when we get there the Lord will provide. He will send a sign, that we will know His will for us.”
What the hell? Grandma was losing her mind, Brianna decided. “Listen, Granny, I believe in God and all, but I think the building blowing up was a darn good sign, don’t you? We need to move on and find somewhere safe. Those soldiers will prolly come back when the house isn’t all kablooey. I don’t think we should be there when they come back.”
Mandy wore a peaceful-looking smile on her face, and Brianna would have thought granny was taking her glaucoma “medicine” if her eyes weren’t so clear and alert. “Brianna, we will stay only long enough to receive our sign, God’s sign. We’ll leave if we find nothing, okay? But for right now, the soldiers are gone and there’s no danger. Had the house not been set afire, the soldiers would still be there, standing between us and the refuge God will give us.”
Brianna stared at her grandmother, at a loss for words.
Mandy continued, “I know you think I’m being foolish, but the wisdom of the Lord is foolishness only to the unbeliever. No amount of evidence is enough to prove the Lord to those who refuse to see. We will go there now, while it is still safe, and if we find a sign then you’ll know, you’ll see that the Lord is our shield and our rod.”
“Whatever. Let’s get this over with,” replied Brianna with a dramatic roll of her eyes. Then she stood and stormed off towards the burning building, Mandy and Aidan following in her wake.
It took only a few minutes to cover most of the distance to the house, but Brianna wasn’t at all reassured when they got closer. If anything, the building looked to be burning even worse than she’d thought.
She heard the low roar of jet engines. She was getting to know the sound by heart, adrenaline beginning even before her mind caught up to identify what she heard. Brianna turned to look and saw three planes streaking toward the town. The planes veered slightly, and now headed straight toward the house. Their path would take the planes directly overhead, she realized. Brianna tried to scream a warning, but her throat closed in fear and only a croak escaped.
Mandy saw them too, however, and screamed. “We have to run! This way, kids.” Then she ran as fast as her older legs would carry her, turning to the right to head slightly south of the house toward a line of trees on the far side.
Brianna realized they had to reach those trees before the planes reached them or they’d likely be strafed, or bombed. No one would live through that, and so she grabbed Aidan’s hand and pulled him along, running as fast as Aidan’s shorter legs would allow.
They made good time. They passed by the house, but a glance at the planes told Brianna they weren’t going to make it to the trees. Jets go too fast, thought Brianna angrily. “Come on, Aidan,” she screamed, but her little brother was already going as fast as he could. For a second, in her panic she thought of letting go of him, of sprinting to the safety of the trees without him. But she knew even as the thought hit her that she would never leave her brother or her grandmother behind. All together, or none. And anyway, she probably wasn’t fast enough to get there even without him.
And then, to her left a deep voice shouted. It took a moment for the words to penetrate: “Over here, you damn civilians! Get the fuck over here or die.”
Brianna looked and then stopped mid-stride, almost falling. The source of the voice a medium-sized rock seemingly stuck to a flat panel, which was raised up on one side. Her mind registered that it was a door, a hatch, leading downward.
Grandma Mandy reached the hatch, glanced at the kids, and after a moment’s pause she was through the opening. Brianna and Aidan were only a few steps behind, but behind her the buzz of jet engines had increased to a shrill and terrifying roar. She could almost feel the planes behind her, getting ready to unleash death. She glanced over her shoulder and saw the planes streaking right towards her. She looked forward again, but just then her foot caught on a rock and she slammed face-first into the ground, knocking the wind out of her.
Aidan didn’t realize she was down, and kept running. As Brianna struggled to her feet, gasping for air, she saw with satisfaction that Aidan dove through the opening. He was safe.
Brianna put her head down and charged toward the opening, but it was hard to move with the wind knocked out of her. She felt as though she ran through mud, or molasses. But at least Aidan was safe.
Behind her, she heard the mechanical thump of something detaching, bombs coming off the jets probably, but she couldn’t make her damn legs go faster. She neared the hatch, staggering as she went, then heard a different thump as something heavy struck the ground behind her.
And then Aidan and Mandy both stuck their heads up into the hatch. Nooo! Fuck! Go back down! But she was almost there... God, she had to go faster, had to get through in time, or Aidan might get hit too. The last few feet. Almost there. She leapt into the air, intent on diving through the hatch. Please, Mister, close it in time whether I get there or not, she thought.
And then she was struck by a force unlike any she’d ever felt, a hammer bigger than she was, swatting her like a fly. Her dive transformed into simply being propelled like a leaf in the wind, arms and legs flailing in all directions. The door lid rose up in front of her, and she knew she was going to hit it. She closed her eyes.
Please God, let Aidan be safe.
And then she hit the hatch at a million miles an hour, and everything went dark. Her last thought was for her brother.
- 25 -
2000 HOURS - ZERO DAY +5
CASSY HAD TRAVELED for hours and was near exhaustion, but she was only a mile or two from her mother’s house. She was close enough that she had no intention of camping out for another night.
In addition to being close enough to her family to taste it, she was pretty sure she was being stalked. She’d had a weird sense of foreboding since leaving the encounter with the marauders, or at least it had started a couple hours later and hadn’t left since then. The feeling only grew stronger as the miles passed.
Normally, Cassy wasn’t one to believe in that premonition nonsense. Who actually thought that crap was real? But despite her skepticism, she could not deny the growing sense of dread in her belly. And there were three times since leaving when she could have sworn she heard a horse whinny in the distance. Once could be coincidence, twice was a stretch, but three times? Knowing the marauders used horses? Nope, no sir, Cassy knew she had a tail.
She’d been on high alert since then, and the effort had drained her mentally and emotionally. For the tenth time in an hour she cursed her stupidity at declining SERE training due to the cost. Search, Evasion, Resistance, Escape—that sounded like just what she needed, given her current situation.
Fortunately, both her spirits and her vitality were buoyed by the thought of finally getting to her mom’s and seeing her kids again, so she redoubled her efforts. Put one foot in front of the other; just keep doing that, she told herself, and she’d be having hot cocoa with Brianna and Kippered Snacks with Aidan in no time at all. She allowed herself to smile at that thought, but only for a moment, and then she was all business again. No sense getting killed a mile from home because she couldn’t keep her fool head on straight, right? Damn right.
A whiff of smoke caught her attention. Not wood smoke, this had the pungent nastiness of burning plastic and so on, like a house fire. She looked around as she walked, but with the light fading she didn’t see any source for it. Yet, as she walked onward towards Chesterbrook, the smell became a haze, and then the haze became a choking cloud. She yanked her only cotton bandana out of a cargo pocket and wrapped her mouth and nose with it, but that did little for her eyes. She had to slow down to see through tearing eyes, a
nd began to move in an exhausting half-crouch to get fresher air lower down. It worked, sort of, but her lungs still ached and her eyes still watered.
Ten minutes later, she heard the sure sound of a horse whinnying. “Yeah, you bastards, they don’t like fires, do they?” she asked her nameless pursuers, glad that at least they’d have a rougher time than she did if they intended to keep to their horses, and if they let the horses go then they’d be as slow as she was. Either way, it helped her cause.
She emerged from a tree line close to town, and stopped in her tracks. There ahead of her lay Chesterbrook, and the whole town, it seemed, was burning. She could see craters scattered all over the place. The town had been bombed into oblivion, she knew.
A moan came from a few yards ahead. Cassy rushed toward it, stolen rifle in hand. In a small clearing in an empty lot lay dozens of bodies. Most were blackened. They’d likely been hit while fleeing, by whichever bomb had made the nearest crater.
Then she saw movement, and approached slowly. A man lay there without burns but with both legs blown away. What remained were ragged, bleeding stumps. An ER would have been hard-pressed to staunch that bleeding without serious surgery. The man would be dead very soon, Cassy realized.
“Water,” he groaned, looking at Cassy with wide, pleading eyes. Although she knew it was a waste, she couldn’t help herself. She bent over him and gave him a sip of her water, and then another.
“What happened here,” she asked with new tears in her eyes.
“Bombing. Planes, they bombed us...” His eyes rolled upwards as he let out one last, ragged breath.
Cassy reached down to gently close his eyes, then continued on her way. As she went, she saw more bodies scattered here and there where they had been caught in the open as they fled.
Anger grew within her, pushing out fear and exhaustion alike. She walked faster, then faster still, then finally running. Her lungs ached and burned from breathing in the toxic, smoky air, but she didn’t slow down. She had to get to her kids...
Dark New World (Book 1): Dark New World Page 14