by Hunt, James
The radio in Wren’s pocket crackled, followed by a faint voice. “Staircase three does not have a level below the first floor.”
The small rock of hope that Wren stood upon fractured slightly at the news, but it refocused her will. She kissed both girls then rose, keeping her daughters behind her as she opened the door, checking the hallway.
With their path clear in all directions, she hurried down the hallway back to the staircase door, leaping over the corpses in the hallway and pulling the girls with her. Their feet scurried down the steps in the staircase. Wren looked up through the narrow shaft between the banisters that circled all the way to the top of the building but saw none of the masked terrorists.
Wren’s heart rate returned to the jackhammer-like pace from before as they neared the bottom of the stairwell, her feet finding the steps faster the closer they moved. Let it be here. Please. When she pivoted left, her heart leapt as the staircase continued, leading down into the utilities level. She fumbled for the radio, pulling the girls down the steps. “I found it. Staircase two.”
Static flooded from the speaker when Wren removed her hand from the talk button, and the acoustics of the staircase bounced the harsh tones around the walls. She quickly lowered the volume, and a quivering voice replaced the harsh static. “Help.”
Wren stopped, listening to the same words repeat over and over like a parrot. “Please. Help. Help me. Please. Someone’s coming.”
Just before the last transmission ended, Wren heard the same foreign tongues from earlier. Turn off the radio. Be quiet. Stay hidden. But Wren’s thoughts fell on deaf ears as the broadcaster continued their bumbling rant, heightening their hysteria with the growing voices of the subversives. “God, no, please, I don’t want to die!”
The transmission ended with the ring of a gunshot, and Wren froze, the staircase echoing with the gunfire. She glanced back up the staircase to the doorway into the ER. The door swung open and was slammed into the wall by three rifle-wielding terrorists in masks, and the moment their eyes found Wren, she sprinted through the utilities staircase door.
Both girls struggled to keep pace with Wren, their tiny legs too short for her long strides. She stopped, lowering herself so they could both wrap their arms around her neck. “Hang on tight!” When she lifted them off the ground, her left arm felt as though it would snap in half, but the growing voices of the terrorists in pursuit offered her the resolve to push on.
Wren pounded her heels into the floor, her arms and legs growing numb from the rush of adrenaline coursing through her veins. The heat from the equipment quickly soaked her in sweat as she weaved in and out of the large water heaters, humming generators, and buzzing electrical boxes.
Gunshots rang out, but the terrorist’s foreign shouts failed to penetrate the raucous noise of the utilities. Emergency signs glowed on the walls, guiding her to salvation. More gunshots ripped through the air, and Wren shuddered with every percussive blast ricocheting off the heavy machinery.
Wren turned a corner, and the exit was in sight, a straight shot from her current location, less than twenty yards. The muscles in her legs burned as she used what energy remained to push herself the final stretch, giving it everything she had, her lungs on fire. Sparks flashed to her left in time with the sound of another gunshot, and she flinched, clutching Chloe tighter. She pivoted her hips, shifting her shoulder into the door’s exit bar.
More bullets peppered the doorframe as sunlight flooded the utility room. Wren squinted from the brightness but refused to let up her pace and stumbled forward blindly. More shouts and bullets thundered behind her as her eyes adjusted to the light outside, the landscape slowly taking shape. She dashed behind cars in a parking lot, and for the first time looked behind her. The masked men had stopped at the door, screamed and fired into the air, then rushed back inside.
Wren collapsed to the pavement, Addison and Chloe falling with her, the flash of strength and stamina depleted. Both girls crawled over her, but Wren’s mind was so fogged with exhaustion that their words were incomprehensible. She rested her head back against the hot metal of a sedan’s door, feeling the heat of the sun beat upon her face. But the quiet was short-lived.
Explosives detonated in the building, splintering steel and concrete and shattering the glass windows, which transformed to shards of deadly rain. Wren grabbed both girls tight once more, feeling the rocking percussions shake the earth as if the very depths of hell had opened up. The explosions erupted quickly, like firecrackers. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
A high-pitched whine filled Wren’s ears as she choked on the thin layer of dust that rained over her and the girls. She wiped her face with her shoulder but only smeared the dust around. She glanced back at the hospital, which was scarred and cracked from the detonations.
Smoke billowed from the broken windows, whose glass reflected the sun from the pavement. Fault lines ran up and down the side of the building like spider webs, some thick enough to lie inside. And then the building moaned, the cry bellowing from its core, and Wren knew it was coming down. “Girls, run!” Like the building, her voice cracked and faltered as the girls sprinted with her through the parking lot.
Thousands of tons of concrete and steel deteriorated to nothing but ash in a matter of seconds, the once-proud structure unleashing a cloud of dust that consumed cars, trees, and bushes. Wren glanced behind her, both Addison’s and Chloe’s arms stretched as she dragged them behind her, their short legs struggling to keep up with her pace. “Cover your mouths, and shut your eyes!” Wren kept her eyes on both girls as the dust cloud consumed them till she saw nothing but darkness. The only confirmation her girls were still with her was the touch of their hands.
Chapter 6
Sirens. Screams. Shattering glass. Crying. Horns. Grinding metal. Confusion. Fear. All of it was too surreal. Whatever thin layer of order that kept the city from slipping into chaos had dissolved. Everywhere Wren looked, people were scrambling, running, hiding, looking for a safe place to wait it out.
Wren shook her hair, bits of dust from the hospital remains swirling from her head and shoulders to the ground. She walked down back streets, avoiding the chaos that was the main roads, her hand still clutching the small surgical knife. She caught a broken reflection of them passing an electronics store that had been looted, the shelves inside bare save for a few cords and smaller items.
She, Addison, Chloe were covered from head to toe in a layer of greyish-brown dust. They stumbled forward like ghosts in a dying city. Both her daughters hung their heads, their feet shuffling against the pavement, their small bodies exhausted and stretched beyond their limits.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” Chloe said.
“I’m tired,” Addison added.
“I know, but we have to keep moving.” But to where? They’d walked ten blocks since the hospital collapsed, and she hadn’t seen anyone resembling authority, only roaming crowds looking for safety they all hoped still existed.
The afternoon sky swarmed with helicopters above, the thump of their blades pestering Wren’s ears like mosquitoes in the summer. She looked up, and their small figures dotted the blue sky like flies on paper.
Wren brought the girls to a stop at a street corner, where remnants of car wrecks littered the roads, some of which still blocked traffic. Everywhere she looked, the power was still out. No street lights, no signs, no televisions—anything that was plugged into the grid was shut down. She checked her phone, praying for a message from either her son or her husband, but the signal on her phone had died. She snapped it shut, cursing under her breath. Think.
Intersection signs rested just above Wren’s head, and she took a step back to get a better look, squinting from the glare of the sun. West Fifteenth and South Throop Street. Less than half a block, and they’d run into South Blue Island Avenue. A fire station was just up that road, where her husband spent his first three years in the department. With everything crumbling around her, she figured that was as safe a place as any to start.
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Wren approached the station wearily. Both bay doors were open, their spaces void of the massive rescue vehicles that usually rested inside. Attached to the bay garages were the living quarters, a two-story brick building with Station No. 18 engraved in gold lettering across the front.
Wren brought the girls inside the bay doors, praying that someone was still here. She reached for the doorknob that led from the garage to the living quarters, but it was locked. She pounded the door with her palm, dust shaking from her sleeve with every strike. “Hello! I need help! Please! Hello!”
Every unanswered smack and scream only heightened Wren’s desperation. It was as though she were slowly being lowered into icy water, paralyzed and unable to swim. The water was inching up her chest, its frozen needles pricking the tender flesh of her neck, now gliding up her chin, touching her lips, freezing her tongue, filling her nose and lungs, the ability to breathe slipping away.
The lock on the other side of the door clicked, and the door swung open, and Wren felt herself pulled from the icy waters. “Wren?” A heavyset, mustached, middle-aged man stood in the width of the doorway. “Is that you?”
Wren fumbled for words, but when they escaped her, she simply flung herself onto Nathan’s chest and squeezed tight. When she finally pulled herself back, the girls were still huddled behind her, staring up at the large man. Wren shook her head, trying to compose herself. “Nathan, I’m sorry, it’s just… I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
Nathan stepped aside. “Are you guys all right?” He gingerly examined the sling on Wren’s arm as Wren trailed dusty footprints into the station.
Wren looked down at her arm, nearly forgetting the sling was there. “Yeah, I was at the hospital.” The events blurred together in her mind. “We had a car accident when the power went out.” The girls stuck close to her legs, and she tried peeling them off, but neither would budge. “My phone hasn’t had any service, and it’s… just been crazy out there.”
Nathan took a seat next to the radio station. The sounds of emergency operators flooded through the speakers, and he turned the volume down. “Yeah, it’s definitely been busy. I had to turn on the generators when the power went out. It’s like that across the entire city, even stretching out into the suburbs.”
So even if I went home, there still wouldn’t be any power. Addison tugged at Wren’s pant leg, more dust falling to the carpet. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Addison gestured for her to bend down then cupped her hand and whispered into Wren’s ear. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
Wren looked around as Nathan barked codes through his receiver, and spotted the stalls down the hallway. “Okay, go on, sweetie.” She pointed Addison in the direction and sat Chloe on the couch, while she went into the kitchen and wet a cluster of paper towels. “Close your eyes, baby.”
The paper towels only smeared the dust around, but after a few minutes Chloe’s cheeks returned to the soft, puffy white flesh that Wren recognized. “There, that’s better.”
“I’m still dirty,” Chloe said, looking down at her clothes and rubbing her hands up and down the front of her shirt. “When can we go home?”
Wren stroked Chloe’s hair back behind her ears, little smears of dust still streaking down her forehead. “Soon, baby.” It was a lie she desperately wanted to be true, but if there were more of whoever assaulted the hospital, she wasn’t sure if there would be a home to return to or not.
Wren found a blanket and tucked both of them on the couch together, their eyelids fluttering open and closed. “You two stay here while I talk to Nathan, okay? I’ll just be right over there.” Two sleepy yawns and nods later, and the girls were passed out on the couch.
Nathan smiled as Wren walked over. “How old are they now?”
“Nine and five.” Wren took a seat in the second chair next to the radio equipment, fiddling with her hands. “I haven’t been able to reach Doug. Can you—”
“I’ve tried.” Nathan twitched his mustache upon answering. He swiveled in his chair, grabbing a notebook out of the drawer next to him. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not okay. It’s been crazy out there, and even the city’s backup generators have been wonky lately. I’m surprised the ones we had here started up.” He flipped through the pages of the notebook, and Wren leaned over to get a closer look.
Hundreds of lines of small-four digit numbers lined the paper in columns, followed by texts explaining what each of them meant. Nathan flushed a bashful grin. “I’m not the normal dispatcher here. I’m still just volunteering. Heck, I haven’t been called in since Doug worked here.”
“Do you know what’s going on out there? Have you heard anything?” Wren’s first-hand experiences had tainted her viewpoint. For all she knew, the masked men who’d destroyed the hospital were the only terrorists left in the city.
“It’s not good.” Nathan’s mustache lowered with his frown. He inched closer, the chair squeaking lightly under his girth. He hunched over and kept his voice down. “I have a friend who lives outside the city, who I met through my CB radio, and he says that whoever is doing this has been planning it for a while.” A grin crept up the side of his cheek, and he pulled a map from behind him. “Here, look. Every circle you see is a report of shootings where paramedics have been sent. Look at the sights.”
The red circles overlapped one another and nearly turned the entire map a shade of crimson. “Christ.” She traced her finger over the wrinkled fold lines, examining each location. “Industrial district. Transformer stations. Water pressure lines.” She looked up. “They’re all public utilities.”
“Exactly.” The fire volunteer poked his pudgy forefinger into the map. “You think this is some ragtag team of gangs and thugs?” He wagged his finger and shook his head. “And whatever they have planned next will be even worse.”
Wren collapsed back into the chair, her shoulders sagging, her mind racing through all of the possibilities. She shifted her gaze to her girls, asleep on the couch. “This is impossible.”
Nathan shrugged, returning to his work at the dispatch. “Oh, it’s entirely possible. And I’d bet my last dollar that all this is just a smokescreen for something bigger.”
Wren jolted, her pocket vibrating from her phone. She fumbled her fingers inside and quickly pulled the mobile out. Texts from her son pinged in, one after another, only one signal bar on her phone. She flipped through them, reading them hurriedly.
“Mom, help.” “I’m stuck.” “Can’t move.” “An explosion.” “Please. Help me.”
Wren covered her mouth, tears cresting at the bottom of her eyes. She answered quickly before her signal was lost again. “Where are you?” She gripped the phone with both hands, her eyes locked on the screen as she waited for any type of reply. The one signal bar on her phone disappeared, and with it, her son. “No.” The cold waters of panic flowed through her once again. She rushed around the station, holding her phone, cursing, praying, thrusting the device in different directions in hopes of finding the signal once more. But after exhausting the area, her hands fell to her sides. My son.
Flashes of atrocities she’d only seen in her nightmares harassed her mind. Had the group that caused all of this taken him? Was he hurt? Stop it. The texts meant he was still alive, and she had to find him. She rushed over to Nathan, who was still busy relaying updated information to units out in the field. “You guys can lock in on cellular signals, right?”
“Um, yeah.” His neck wiggled back and forth in rhythm with his uncertainty. “I mean, it depends if the phone is on and how many of the towers are still operational.”
“I need you to find a phone for me. The number is four, seven, nine, eight, three, nine, one.”
Nathan hesitated, the radio buzzing with chatter. “Wren, I’m sure Doug is fine, and I don’t know if I’m even authorized to do this, and it’s getting pretty busy—”
“Nathan, it’s Zack. He’s in trouble. He’s stuck out there alone in all this.” Wren gripped Nathan’s ar
m. “Please. I have to find him.”
More radio chatter blared from the speakers, and Nathan’s expression softened as he reached for a pen and paper, jotting down the first three digits of her son’s cell. “What was the last part again?”
Wren’s eyes glistened wetly, and she repeated it while she white-knuckled the back of Nathan’s chair, nearly tearing through the cloth with her nails. Once the numbers were punched in his computer system, the screen lit up with pings on a gridded map of the city. “It’ll take a minute to hone in, and like I said, that’s only if all of the towers are still operational.” He smudged a fat fingerprint on the screen. “See there? That one is down. And this one.”
Wren drew in a breath. Let me find him. The computer pinged but then flashed an error message, and Wren’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach. “What happened?” The words escaped her mouth like the final wish of an inmate on death row.
Nathan clicked the message, enlarging a portion of the map. “Well, it looks like we have a general location, but the program is having trouble locking it down.”
A ray of light broke through the wall of cemented fear surrounding Wren’s mind. She pushed Nathan aside, examining the location then finding the area on the map, and her brief moment of hope was crushed by a wave of realization. “Oh god.”
Wren backed away from the screen, the map slipping from her fingers and falling to the floor. Nathan rolled forward, picking up the map, making the connection between the computer’s coordinates and the red circles. Zack was in the industrial district.
Chapter 7
Wren tucked the girls into Nathan’s cot, the two of them still holding on to each other tightly, neither letting the other out of their sight. She kissed their foreheads gently. “I love you. You two will be safe here. I promise.”