“How much time?” Grace cracked each knuckle one by one.
“No more than five minutes. Last time they traced me in seven and wouldn’t trade us fuel or ammo for a month.” Grace typed methodically and fast when the laptop was turned over to her. It was an old machine with a cracked cover, but the only source for information outside the village gates. Meredith started a timer on her watch. Micah stood behind them and watched the progress over the back of the couch. When the signal was secure Grace opened the browser and waited for it to connect.
“Four minutes.” Grace tapped her fingers against the table until the browser started moving. She typed waiting for screens to load, but she was typing too fast for the old computer.
“Where’d you learn all this?” Meredith asked.
“My parents were professors at MIT; they were always teaching this stuff before the storm. When the storm hit we were in a university computer lab. They taught me, just in case things ever returned normal.” Grace shrugged and resumed typing.
“What’s normal?” Micah scrawled across his whiteboard.
“What’s his name?” Grace asked.
“Pierce.” Meredith answered.
“First name? Grace typed some and pushed her dark hair from her eyes.
“No clue.” Meredith tapped a finger against her head. “He said it--
“Did he say where his grant came from?” Micah shook his head. He eased the curtain open a hair as a gunshot rang out. A fine sheen of sweat broke out on Grace’s forehead. The urgency was affecting her typing.
“Three minutes.” Meredith said.
“John,” Micah scribbled on his whiteboard. “His name is John.”
Grace pounded her fists on the table upsetting a dish of small sculpted wooden fruit. “This is so slow, it’s agonizing.”
Micah rushed around the table to fix the displaced bowl.
“I’m in.” Her fingers danced across the keys and at the four minute mark, the connection went dead. Grace shook her head and fell back into the soft couch cushions. Micah walked around the couch and closed the laptop and sat on the couch next to the girls.
“The signal was too weak, if we were closer I could have gotten more info, any info. “They killed the signal,” Grace said
* * * * *
“Grace, you have to be quick.” Marjorie Edmonds said. “Right now, we still have internet and electricity.” Marjorie looked across the empty lab. Her husband Lyle stood near the door, with a shotgun in one hand and aluminum baseball bat in the other.
“I’m trying, Mom.” Grace answered. She swept black hair from her eyes with thin fingertips and kept typing.
“That’s it sweetie, now quickly, change servers.” Marjorie glanced over to Lyle who was looking through the cracked door up and down the hallway.
“Really, Mom, what good is this going to do? How much tech is going to be left after this is fixed?”
“When it is fixed, Sweetie, you’ll need to do something. And I really don’t see you hunting and gathering.” Grace opened a text box and typed in a new IP address. “There you go. Always hide your trail. Keep private you never know who can be tracing you.”
“I hear something coming,” Lyle whispered. “Hurry up.” Grace closed the browser and pushed back from the desk letting the wheeled chair carry her across the room.
“Where will we go?” Grace said standing.
“We’ll run back to our offices. We’ve been safe there so far.”
“It’s only been a few days.” They stopped and turned at the shuffle-steps coming down the hall. Lyle eased the door shut and ducked down. He stared up at the clouded glass of the door. Several figures shambled past. Marjorie covered Grace’s mouth sensing a scream coming. She looked deep in her eyes and nodded, but still kept her hand covering her mouth. Lyle pressed his ear to the door and listened. He slid away from the door shaking his head.
“They’re still out there,” he whispered. “We need to get out of here.” The only other door in the computer lab was the emergency exit. “We go through there and everything will come after us. It might be a good diversion though. Get them in here while we run.”
“Dad, no. Just sit it out.”
“One hour, then we run.” They sat in silence, holding hands, listening to the re-assuring hum of the computer fans. Lyle checked his watch often. They had no supplies in the lab. All the water and food was in their adjoined offices, across the quad and three parking lots and a ball field away.
A shadowy figure went by the window and then another. The computer Grace had worked on chimed out. The server had crashed. The door window filled with shadows. Marjorie jumped up to close the server window and silence the alarm when the glass broke from on the door.
Grace screamed and ran towards the emergency exit. “Not yet!” Lyle yelled. He grabbed the shotgun and the bat as fresh dead arms ripped and shredded from the glass reached through for him. When they were all at the door, Lyle counted down with his fingers from three. He pushed through the door and the alarm sounded. The street between buildings was clogged with the dead.
“Run!” he screamed and fired into the bodies with the shotgun. He tossed the bat to Marjorie who swung at anything that moved. Grace did her best to stay between them. When the shotgun shells ran out, Lyle used the gun like a club. The sounds of metal against skulls echoed across the street.
“Run, Grace. Now.”
“I won’t leave!” Marjorie grabbed her daughter’s shoulder and shoved her towards the hole they made. They turned at the scream and saw Lyle pulled down into the press of bodies. Marjorie watched Grace running towards the parking lot and turned with the baseball bat.
* * * * *
The midday sun hovered high in the sky. Wisps of clouds flitted by on a sea of blue. Crenshaw sat on his desk chair and over looked the ruins of Boston. The office, in its day, had been the most sought after in the firm. Co-worker versus co-worker, conniving, needling, lying, and bribes had taken place. Before the Night Storm, Crenshaw had helped a young man into an empty elevator shaft. It got him the promotion he wanted and the office he desired, with a firm handshake and plastic smile. Of course he lied about what happened to his co-worker. Said it was stress and he couldn’t open a window to jump from. So instead he jumped down the elevator shaft.
The amount of backstabbing became legendary among the financiers. The day Crenshaw thought he would get murdered or at the very least fired had been delayed by a meteor storm.
Crenshaw reached into his desk drawer and took out a cigar; he smelled the fine aged leaves, snipped off the end, and slid it into his mouth. If you wanted to come into Boston, you needed to pay the piper. And Crenshaw was the biggest piper in the area with a taste for scotch and cigars.
The fire alarms hadn’t worked in years and there was no worry of the sprinklers going off when he lit up. He stood and walked to the corner window and looked down at the city through his brass, boutique telescope. The streets weren’t so bad, not many dead wandering about. The occasional car blew through the city, most of them chased by patrols, his patrols. But Crenshaw and his associates were snug in the office building.
There were other pockets of people through the city, he knew that. He also knew that he still had a functional IT staff and control of a couple of the firm’s old satellites. At least until the orbit decayed and they burnt up in the atmosphere or exploded in space. He knew the day would come when they lost the signal. When that happened there was no getting it back.
He poured a scotch and sat back down at his desk. There were no papers to file or sign. No contracts to negotiate. Life was perfect, well nearly. The large office sported a leather couch which doubled for a bed and 50 inch flat screen, and an array of DVDs. He picked up the remote and turned on the TV. Sometimes the background static was comforting, other times it pissed him off. The back-up generators for power outages still worked and Crenshaw kept a collection of men who knew how to repair them. With his fingers on the fuel trade, his building wou
ldn’t be dark anytime soon. The rest of the city could burn, starve, or freeze.
The first few stations were static. A knock sounded out against the office door. The next few stations were old news rebroadcasts, pirate stations no doubt. He sighed and flipped the power off and sipped his scotch; another round of knocks a bit harder and a bit louder, followed by heated whispers. Crenshaw stood, used the desk for support and strolled across the room to the door. He grasped the cold metal handle and opened the door a crack.
“What is it?” Crenshaw spat, a small speck of tobacco leaf on his chin.
“Our servers were hacked.” Crenshaw opened the door wider. One of his killers, Crowe, stood there; wearing one of the many sets of fatigues he owned or stole. His head was shaved down to stubble as it had been since he first hired him. Crowe’s blue eyes were a dead stare; if his chest didn’t move from time to time, Crenshaw would swear he was one of the undead. Crenshaw looked up at the man who stood an easy six inches above him.
“What was the source?” Crenshaw asked, a twinge of anger caused his nostrils to flare.
“One of the villages.” Crowe’s tone was dry and steady.
“How long were they in?”
“Less than four minutes.”
“Was it an attack?”
“No, they were searching for something.”
Crowe was emotionless and Crenshaw couldn’t decide which pissed him off more, the lack of reaction or that someone hacked him.
“Trace it back. I want to know who it was.” Crenshaw shifted his weight and grimaced. “For fuck’s sake, come in.” Crenshaw limped back to his chair and sat down. He rubbed his knees and gulped down the rest of the glass of scotch. “If it’s the same group as last time, bring them to me.” Crenshaw snapped his fingers like gunshots.
“I don’t think we could bring the lot of them, sir.” Crenshaw glared at Crowe, a gaze that would have made smaller men melt. Crowe stood firm, his hand always near his gun.
“Bring me Williams then.”
Crowe walked from the room barely making a sound. Crenshaw listened for footsteps or breaths and heard nothing. A hand reached in from the hallway and closed the door. He poured another scotch and lit the cigar.
“Nearly perfect,” he said to the empty office. From the center drawer Crenshaw took out a framed picture, of himself from twelve or more years earlier, when his hair was darker, and fuller. On his arm was his second wife Amelia, a flush in her cheek, twinkle in her eye and bright smile. She was pregnant when the Night Storm happened. Crenshaw took a deep pull on the cigar and blew the smoke against the frame. Amelia never suspected his true nature back then. Making sons was all that mattered: heirs to the throne, a creation of someone equally relentless as their father. He stuffed it back in the drawer and closed it. Neither Amelia nor the baby survived the storm.
Through the window, Crenshaw looked at the building across the street. A meteor had slammed into it, sheared off the upper six or seven levels. Sometimes at night he swore he saw the dull glow of exit signs from ruined stairwells or campfires of some poor squatter. During the day it was nothing more than a twelve story stack of debris and garbage. Twisted metal beams and Rebar reaching out like bent and mangled fingers. The damn thing could be full of the dead for all he knew. Since he didn’t go inside it didn’t matter. The few times he sent foraging parties went in they came back with nothing useful.
Williams cleared his throat at the door, the man’s dark skin almost as black as shadow.
“What do you want?”
“You called for me, Mr. Crenshaw.” Williams stood in the doorway, Crowe silent and lethal behind him.
“How long have you and your family lived in my building?”
“At least six years, sir.”
“You can leave now, Crowe. Stay outside and close the door behind you.” Crenshaw turned to Williams. “You like your home here?”
“I do. We’re grateful for the space.” Williams ran his hand along his shaved head. His dark eyes reflected the sun streaming through the windows. “My wife sends her regards.”
“I’m sure she does. I need you to do something for me.” Crenshaw ran his finger along the rim of the glass.
“Anything.”
“A bunch of locals hacked our security. I want you to befriend them, make them take you in and accept you.” Crenshaw snapped his fingers again, miniature gunshots. “What were they looking for Crowe?”
The door opened a few inches. “A researcher named Pierce.”
“There you go, Williams. Find out about Pierce and report back to me. Mr. Crowe will get you equipped to look the part. Close the door on the way out.”
“What do you want me to do about them, boss?” Williams asked.
“Nothing. Crowe, wait for Williams to return.” The red embers of the cigar colored Crenshaw’s eyes for a moment, making him look like the devil.
* * * * *
“So you expect us to endanger our village and our families for water?” Catherine asked.
“That’s not just any water, it’s the cure,” Pierce said clutching his backpack tight. Catherine stared down at Pierce; the crazy in his eyes sparked a little for a moment. She held out her hand and Pierce handed her the canteen. She unscrewed the lid and sniffed it and then handed it back. She fought the urge to slap him, at least for now.
“How does it work? Did the water come from a puddle with a meteor in it? Do you drink it, or wash with it?” Catherine asked.
“Those are answers I don’t know. I know I have research and samples down south. I know it’s a very dangerous trip and I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. Think of it, be the village that helped with the cure.” Pierce held the canteen to his chest and shifted the pack to the ground between his feet, tight and secure. “I know with my bite, I kind of washed with it. I haven’t tried drinking it.”
“You mean to tell me you managed to wander to New England from Florida with a half full canteen and didn’t drink any of it?” Sam said. “Sounds like a load of bull to me. Water is more treasured than ammo.”
“So we do this trip for what? Riches to buy nothing? Fame for,” Catherine paused “for nothing. We would be risking our lives for a cure that may or may not work, with no proof.” Pierce held up is arms and turned to the people gathered; he showed them the scars and walked through them, letting them see the bites.
“That’s my proof. I lived through them, survived the bites back in Florida and on the way back.” Catherine shook her head. “Think about the possibilities.”
“How did you choose our village, Pierce?”
“You were the first to let me in, to be honest. I talked and screamed and ran from town to town from The Glades to Hartford. I got chased out of Boston before I even got close. I was on the bridge and chased by a patrol until far enough away from them.”
“You can’t tell me you’re actually considering his plan, Catherine,” Frank growled.
“Yes, Frank I am.” Catherine looked at the stones that ringed the fire pit like a 3D puzzle, then at the logs and faces gathered. “Yes, I am. We can stay here and live out the rest of our lives in the shadow of that bastard in Boston, or maybe make real lives for ourselves again. I’m tired of living under their, his thumb.” Catherine’s mind raced back to a time long ago, she patted her belly, like a life grew inside, lost in thought.
“It’s madness, we’re safe here, living decent and you want to risk it all?” Frank asked.
“No one has to go that doesn’t want to. You included.”
Frank shrank back at her words’ back into the gathered people, his face red with anger. Stuffing his fists into his pockets, Frank walked off towards his small house. The others in the town stood around Catherine, waiting for her next words. Pierce smiled a crooked little smile at them, knowing he had the hook in place. The time to reel would be soon.
* * * * *
“Frank,” Catherine said after he finally opened his door. He came out to the small porch and didn’t invite
her in, something he’d never done. “I know your upset, probably pissed off.”
“Yeah, I am pretty pissed off. Ten years ago I’d be half way through a 30 pack by now.”
“You have to trust me on this one.”
“Have I said no to you yet?”
She reached up and put her hand on his cheek. She could feel the heat radiating from him, the anger was fueling his inner fire.
“I need you to do something for me and be sort of stealthy.”
“Again, haven’t said no.”
Catherine smiled and looked him square in the eyes.
“I need you to do a check on the ammo. I’m worried we’re running low,” she paused and looked over her shoulder. Tony and Sam were busy putting the fire out; the remaining few people still outside were talking quietly near the fire pit. “I do not want any more trades with Boston. If we’re running low on ammo, we need to scavenge.”
“Let me get my coat on and I’ll tell you in the morning.”
Chapter 4
Williams grimaced at his reflection in the mirror; he looked like a bad excuse for a gang member. Crowe found the best he could in short time. Track pants were changed for blue jeans, ‘edited’ to make then look ragged and lived in. A worn leather jacket with a bullet hole in the side replaced a grey hoodie. Williams knocked on Crenshaw’s door.
“Jesus Christ!” Came from the other side. “Come in.” Williams opened the door slow; Crenshaw was stretched out on the couch, the relaxing hiss of static playing in the background. Williams looked around the office and wondered how much of this stuff he helped procure.
“Sorry to bother you, sir.”
“No, no. It’s fine, come in. Drink?” Williams shook his head and Crenshaw poured three fingers of scotch. The bottle rested on the floor in front of the couch. “What do you do for me, Williams?” Crenshaw asked sitting up.
“I forage.”
“Ah yes.” Crenshaw eased off the couch and walked to the small book case that held more liquor than books and pointed through the clear glass doors. “I have an associate who brings me a case from time to time. The cigars are getting impossible to find.”
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