Blackout: A Tale Of Survival In A Powerless World- Book 1

by Alexandria Clarke

  “What’s the plan?” I asked as they moved closer to the communications office.

  “You stay here—”

  “Oh, please.”

  “It was worth a shot,” Eirian said. “But I have a better idea.”

  He whispered his plan into my ear, all while the flashlights swept closer and closer to our hiding spot. I nodded to Eirian, mouthing a silent affirmation. Then Eirian pressed himself against the wall behind the door. The intruders were nearly level with the communications office. With a deep breath, I unlocked the door then joined Eirian against the wall.

  A flashlight beam shone directly into the window, illuminating the radios, walkie talkies, and spare parts strewn across the desk. I held my breath and grasped Eirian’s hand. He squeezed tightly.

  “Hey, boss,” a deep voice mumbled outside the door. “I think we got something in here.”

  A second flashlight joined the first, dangerously close to sweeping across the shadows where me and Eirian hid.

  “Looks like solar-powered radios or something,” a second voice said. “We could use those, especially when we run out of battery power.”

  “Try the door.”

  The handle jiggled and turned, setting my heart racing.

  “Get ready,” Eirian whispered.

  “It’s open,” the first voice said.

  “Let’s check it out.”

  The intruders entered slowly, so focused on the radios that they failed to notice us standing stock still behind the door. Each of them carried a duffel bag, presumably full of whatever supplies they had stolen from Camp Haven. They moved farther into the room, their backs to us as they examined the parts on the desk.

  “Jackpot,” the second man muttered, rifling through my things.

  “Hey, boss,” said the first man, nudging the blankets on the floor with his boot. “I don’t think we’re alone.”

  “Now!” Eirian said.

  We leapt into action, attacking the two men from behind. I aimed a swift kick at the back of the first man’s knee, which buckled quickly. He dropped his flashlight as he sank to his knees with a yelp, and I moved into position quickly, locking his head at an uncomfortable angle in the crook of my arm. Eirian disabled the other man just as effectively. He reached into the man’s pocket, drew out the pistol, unloaded it, and threw it across the small room. Then he put his own gun to the man’s head.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” he pleaded, his hands raised in the air.

  “How the hell did you get in here?” Eirian snarled, twisting the man’s arm behind his back. “We have security posted at every entrance.”

  “Your security team isn’t very bright,” the man said. “We set a fire a mile or so away from your front gate, and all but one of them set off to check it out. We snuck past the last guy.”

  “You couldn’t have opened the gate on your own,” Eirian replied.

  “We didn’t. We went over it.”

  “How many of there are you?”

  “Just the two of us, I swear!”

  “Don’t move.” With the gun still aimed at the second man’s head, Eirian rifled through the duffel bags that the intruders had brought with them. He found a length of rope in each and tossed it to the men. “Tie yourselves to those chairs.”

  “Look, we aren’t trying to cause trouble—” the leader started.

  “Shut up!” Eirian ordered, brandishing the gun. “Tie yourselves up!”

  “Okay, okay!”

  The leader slowly reached for the rope, sat in the chair, and began looping the rope around his ankles. I slammed the other man into the opposite chair, twisted his hands behind his back, and started binding him up as well.

  “Check the first one,” Eirian told me. “We can’t let them go.”

  As expected, the leader had left the ropes loose around his wrists so that he could escape as soon as we left the room. I fastened them securely with a tricky knot that I’d learned from my father years ago. Then I picked up the pistol that the leader had brought with him and reloaded it.

  “What now?” I asked Eirian.

  “I don’t believe for a second that the two of them are alone,” he replied. “We’ve been watching Camp Havoc for weeks. They’ve been planning this raid for a while. There have to be more of them.”

  “Look, man,” the leader said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no one else here. Just let us go. We’ll give you your stuff back. No harm, no foul.”

  “Nice try,” I said, kicking the leader’s shins.

  “Let’s find Ludo,” Eirian suggested. “He can alert the rest of the security team. They’ll sweep the camp for anyone else that doesn’t belong here.”

  “And these two?” I asked.

  Eirian dangled his key to the communications office. “We’ll lock them in. Then the tribunal and Sylvester can decide what to do with them.”

  We took their flashlights, then left the intruders in the office, locked up, and crept down the hallway toward the main room of DotCom. The building was empty.

  “Still think they were lying?” I muttered to Eirian, shining the blinding white light around the eerie community room. I had become so accustomed to the soft yellow lights of the camp’s lanterns that the flashlight’s beams made my eyes water.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Keep your eyes peeled for movement. Let’s get to Ludo’s.”

  Ludo and Jax shared a room in another resident building near the dormitories. We turned off the flashlights as we crossed the camp, lest we draw unwanted attention, and knocked softly on the door to Ludo’s room. He answered with bleary eyes and rumpled hair.

  “Didn’t I warn the two of you not to get caught outside your bunks after curfew again?” he growled.

  “There’s been a security breach, sir,” Eirian reported in a low whisper.

  “Yeah, you two,” Ludo shot back. “I’m off duty. Talk to Peters. If Jax wakes up—”

  “Camp Havoc is already inside, sir,” Eirian pressed. “They tricked the security team out front, including Peters. We caught two of their men in DotCom, scouring for supplies.”

  Ludo slammed the door shut in Eirian’s face. We looked at each other in consternation, but the door opened again to reveal Ludo in boots and a fleece jacket to cover his thermal pajamas. He carried a shotgun in hand.

  “Let’s go,” he ordered, joining us in the hallway. “Where are the intruders now?”

  “We locked them in the communications office,” I told him as the three of us headed back outside. “They said they were the only ones here.”

  “What a crock of shit,” Ludo said, visually combing the camp.

  “That’s what I said,” Eirian agreed.

  “Let’s get to the front gate.” Ludo broke into a light jog. “We need to find Peters and assemble the rest of the security team to sweep the camp. When do you plan on distributing those radios, Georgie? They would have come in handy tonight.”

  “We just got them working yesterday, sir,” I told him. “We planned on distributing them to security and the department heads this morning.”

  Ludo shook his head. “Figures.”

  I pulled ahead of Ludo and Eirian, lighter and faster on my feet, but as we passed through the main square of the camp, Ludo yanked on the hood of my jacket and tugged me to a stop.

  “Wait!” he hissed, breathing hard. He jerked the muzzle of the shotgun toward the med bay. “You two see what I see?”

  I watched the building closely. There, in the windows of the left side of the building where the medical supplies were kept in the offices, were a series of silhouettes.

  “They’re robbing first aid,” Eirian muttered.

  “Pippa’s still in there,” I breathed. “And so is Penny. If they hurt them—”

  “Let’s move,” Ludo said.

  “Shouldn’t we get the rest of the security team?” I asked him. “We don’t know how many there are.”

  “There’s no time,” Eirian said as we fell into a
triangle formation behind Ludo. “The camp has lockdown procedures, but we can’t start them without alerting the intruders to our presence. They’d be out of here with our stash before we even had a chance of assembling a team.”

  “Here’s the plan,” Ludo said. “Eirian, you take the back door. Georgie, you’re with me in the front. We’ll corner them in Jax’s office. Don’t let any of them leave, understand?”

  We nodded. As we approached the building, Eirian turned to split off from me and Ludo. I grabbed his hand before he could roam too far. Our eyes met. A few weeks, a month maybe, I’d known him, and yet the thought of losing him was far too painful to consider.

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised, giving me a quick kiss.

  We parted, and he disappeared into the night. I fell into step behind Ludo, and we entered the med bay through the main doors. Immediately, the sounds of the intruders rummaging through the supplies in the back room reached my ears. Pippa was wide awake, her back turned to the offices, the blankets pulled up over her head as if she were pretending to be asleep. The whites of her eyes gleamed in the darkness. When she saw me, she mouthed my name, but I pressed a finger to my lips to keep her quiet. We inched by. A few beds down, Pippa and Jacob’s mother lay still and oblivious, asleep or unconscious.

  In the hallway to the offices, LED lights flashed against the walls. There were way more than two intruders in the med bay. Camp Havoc was obviously more interested in our medical supplies than the random assortment of things we kept in DotCom.

  “Five or six of them, I’d guess,” Ludo whispered to me, his shotgun wedged against his shoulder, aimed outward, as we crept closer. “We’re outnumbered. Try to keep them in the office. Eirian will catch any that get out the back.”

  I raised my borrowed weapon. “Yes, sir.”

  The plan was shot to hell before we could begin to enact it. Without warning, one of the intruders stepped out of the office and into the hallway, shining his light directly into our faces. As my eyes watered, Ludo backed up, stepping on the toe of my boot and causing us both to trip. I lost my grip on the pistol, and it clattered across the floor out of my reach, rupturing the thick silence inside the med bay.

  “We got company!” the intruder roared, and he lifted a rifle.

  Ludo and I dove in opposite directions. He took cover in one of the exam rooms while I hid behind a wall as bullets ripped by and ricocheted off of the metal bed frames in the bay. Pippa shrieked and rolled out of bed. With adrenaline-infused strength, she flipped the metal cot on its side and used it as cover from the rain of gunfire. Penny, on the other hand, was completely exposed, unable to move herself to safety. We had to force the intruders back somehow.

  When the intruder stopped firing to reload, Ludo and I both took advantage. I slid across the floor and grabbed the pistol. Ludo leaned out of the doorway and fired the shotgun. The blast sent the intruder flying backward through the rear exit door of the med bay. Eirian stared at the bloody body then leapt over it to make his way inside. At the same time, Ludo and I converged on the intruders who remained in the office, but we weren’t fast enough. Five more men emerged from the office, each carrying a bag full of medical supplies. Two of them were armed with guns while the others carried hunting knives. They opened fire, once again sending Ludo and I running for cover, and sprinted out through the back exit. One of them fired a handgun at Eirian’s leg, who immediately dropped to the ground and covered his head with his hands. Then the five intruders sprinted out into the night, leaving the body of their comrade for us to deal with.

  “Eirian!” I said, dropping beside him. Blood darkened the leg of his jeans.

  “Go after them!” He shoved me away, encouraging me to follow Ludo as he charged behind the intruders. “Georgie, go!”

  I surged to my feet, grabbed the rifle off of the intruder’s dead body, and ran after Ludo. Lamps and lanterns flickered on as I sprinted through camp. The gunfire had woken many of the residents, and they emerged from the dormitories to see what was happening. Some of the off-duty guys who ran security joined the race once they saw Ludo running by with his gun.

  “What’s happening?” one of them, Kirsch, shouted as he fell in step beside me.

  “Camp Havoc!” I answered. “They stole our medical supplies!”

  Gunfire echoed ahead, near the perimeter of the camp. I slowed down as we drew closer. Other men in black had joined the group from the med bay until there were roughly twenty intruders charging toward the wall that was supposed to keep Camp Haven safe from this exact scenario. Ludo had taken cover behind a nearby building. He fired shot after shot, but it was no use against so many trespassers. But why weren’t the intruders running toward the front gate?

  “Stop!” I yelled, digging my heels in the dirt and flinging my arms out to either side to prevent Camp Haven’s off-duty security team from getting any closer to the trespassers. “Don’t go any closer!”

  As the command left my mouth, a section of the camp wall exploded. The intruders waited just long enough for some of the debris to clear, then escaped through the massive hole. Within seconds, all twenty of them were gone, invisible beneath the shadows of the trees, leaving the rest of us to stare open-mouthed at the wreckage.

  “THEY COMPLETELY CLEANED us out of antibiotics,” Nita reported. She and I had been assigned to assess the damage the intruders had done in the med bay. I tried not to look at the streaks of blood in the hallway. The body had been disposed of, but the remnants of the event remained. “No bandages or wraps. Nothing topical. They took everything. Jesus, there’s nothing left!”

  “Try to calm down,” I said, despite my own panicked pulse. “Some of the campers were wounded in the blast, and we have to find a way to treat them. Let’s think outside the box. What else can we use to wrap injuries?”

  Camp Haven had never faced this kind of disaster before. According to Ludo, the worst challenge they had ever encountered was a particularly nasty winter a few years ago. They had run out of food, and the campers were close to starving. Then, Ludo had been able to send a team into the city to shop for groceries as a last resort. We weren’t so lucky now.

  “I don’t know,” Nita said, slamming a cabinet door shut with unnecessary force. She kicked over a trash can. “I don’t know!”

  “What about the extra cloth napkins that we keep in DotCom?” I asked her. “They’re clean. They should work, right?”

  She combed her fingers through her hair. “Yeah. Yes, that should work. I’ll go get them. Tell Jax I’ll be right back.”

  When she left, I headed back into the bay. There were bullet holes in the concrete block walls. I kicked aside some of the shell casings that littered the floor. A few more beds in the bay were occupied now. Eirian lay in one, Ludo in another. Three of the security guys had caught some shrapnel in the blast, but thankfully we were far enough away from the explosion that their wounds were superficial. Ludo wasn’t so lucky. A bullet had gone right through his shoulder. Nevertheless, he was still giving orders.

  “I want a twenty-four watch on that hole in the wall,” he was yelling to Peters as Jax did her best to stem the flow of blood from his arm with a sheet from one of the empty beds. “Get the miscellaneous crew out there too. We need to rebuild as quickly as possible or we risk them coming back for more.” He spotted me walking toward him. “Georgie! Tell me something good.”

  “Sorry, Ludo,” I said. “It’s bad news. Camp Havoc completely screwed us over. No meds. The Bistro got hit too. They cleaned out the dried meats.”

  Ludo swore, and a fresh wave of blood gushed from the hole in his arm.

  “Lie still,” Jax snapped at her husband, forcing him against the pillow. “Unless you want to die of blood loss.” She tied a makeshift tourniquet around Ludo’s arm as she addressed me. “Would you check on the others? This one came out of it with the worst, and he won’t be happy when I pluck this bullet out of his arm without any painkillers.”

  I wandered away from Ludo’s bed to d
o as asked, stopping by Eirian’s cot next. He was propped up against the pillows, his leg elevated on a cardboard box. The thigh had been crudely covered with a cotton pad that the camp usually kept on hand for menstruating women. He frowned as he surveyed the ruined bay.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked him, lifting the napkin to check the wound. Thankfully, the bullet had grazed the skin rather than going through his leg. It would scab over in a few days, and Eirian would be no worse for wear. Even so, he needed better bandaging if he was going to avoid infection.

  “I hate this,” he said, teeth clenched. “I want to help, but Jax won’t let me get up. There’s still blood in the damn hallway! It needs to be sanitized. What did they do with the body? What about the two intruders that we locked in the communications office? Who’s out there watching the wall—?”

  “Eirian, relax,” I said, resting my palm against his chest. “We’re taking care of it. The security team moved the trespassers to a different room in DotCom until we figure out what to do with them, and Ludo’s assigning the miscellaneous crew to watch and rebuild the wall.”

  “I can help—”

  “Not right now,” I told him. “You need to stay here until we can flush that wound out and bandage it properly.”

  He let out a sigh and rubbed his eyes. “They took everything, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah. The medical stuff at least. And some food.”

  “This is bad,” he muttered. “This is really bad. I don’t know how we’re supposed to make it through the rest of the season.”

  I smoothed his sweaty curls away from his forehead. “I’m sure the department heads are coming up with a solid plan as we speak.”

  “Hey!”

  I jerked my hand away from Eirian as Jacob’s voice echoed through the med bay. He marched through the door, bee lining for us, but his step faltered when he noticed the bloodied security boys.

  “You should be at the wall,” Ludo barked at him from his bed. “Miscellaneous crew members—”

  “My sister and my mother are here,” Jacob said. “And no one bothered to tell me that the freaking med bay got shot up. What the hell, Georgie? I heard you were here when it happened. You couldn’t take five seconds to come get me?”