By the time he reached Byron Middle School, the building stood darkly silhouetted against a distant bank of angry storm clouds. The snow wasn’t letting up and, judging from what he saw on the horizon, might not for a while to come. Nate’s next observation had to do with the cars out front. Many were parked haphazardly, in pretty much the same way their terrified owners had left them earlier in the day. But cars was all he saw. Not a truck among them. At least the folks who had made it to the school realized they wouldn’t get much further. The buses were gone too and Nate couldn’t help feeling a prick of disappointment. Expectation and anticipation were two different, yet related emotions. He’d known they would be gone, but even so, the letdown was hard to deny.
His knee was also starting to act up again, helped in no small amount by the cold. The numbness that had settled back in shortly after parting company with Jessie had gradually crept along each of his appendages. His nose and cheeks had taken most of the beating, buffeted almost constantly by the glacial wind. Little by little, the once simple act of putting one foot in front of the other was becoming harder than passing a breathalyzer on New Year’s Eve.
Nate reached the front door and found it locked.
Really?
Who locked a school in an exclusion zone? Every moment he spent outside was definitely more dangerous than standing between four solid walls. He needed somewhere relatively warm so he could eat, drink and be merry, as they said—if by merry they meant sleep. Knocking on doors in the neighborhood or, worse than that, breaking into someone’s vacant home was the last thing Nate wanted to do. He had recently been on the receiving end of just such an act and had come inches away from killing at least one of the thieves. The idea of turning any further toward that dark side was out of the question. If a window needed to be broken, it would belong to the school district.
He swung around to the side entrance, tried the door and hit another dead end.
Strike two!
For reasons unknown, when the school had been built back in the late eighties, the county architect had laid out the structure in the shape of the letter H. That meant five entry points if you counted the one out front and courtyards on both the east and west sides. So far, he had struck out on the first two. That left three more.
Nate was on his way to the door at the end of the western wing when something in the courtyard caught his eye. The make and model was not clear, but the fact that it was a pickup truck was obvious, even though the thing was covered in about eighteen inches of snow. The driver’s side door was open too, ever so slightly, and the truck seemed to be leaning forward. The hint of tire tracks led from the road to the truck’s location, which immediately lit up the cop part of Nate’s brain. Not because he thought a crime was necessarily in progress. If someone wanted to snatch boxes of number two pencils and reams of lined paper, they could be his guest. It told him the truck had arrived after the storm had already been raging for most of the night. In the few hours since they’d been abandoned, the cars in the parking lot had collected no more than six to eight inches.
This beauty could be his ticket out of here.
He drew closer and noticed the now amorphous shape of several sets of footprints in and around the truck. Nate batted around some of the snow near the driver’s side door and pulled it open. Using the light from his phone, he first noticed the steering wheel, emblazoned with the Chevy symbol. Next to come into view was a charging cord for an iPad, which trailed out from the USB port in the center console. The iPad itself was gone. But he did see something else. In a spot where the upholstery had once been beige now sat a deep crimson bloodstain. The flesh along the back of Nate’s neck was beginning to tingle something fierce. He closed the door and withdrew his pistol as he circled around the vehicle. The fuel cap was dangling by the truck’s side.
Has someone syphoned the gas?
The snow was deep around the truck, enveloping it in a sort of cocoon which, undisturbed, would last through the coldest months. Up near the front, he knocked loose powder from the passenger door and saw holes, bullet holes. Other signs of a gun battle soon came out from hiding: two in the side window and another in the front right tire. The thing was flat now and Nate couldn’t help feeling some of the air go out of him as well. There was no longer any room for doubt, this was Lauren’s truck, the one those thugs had stolen earlier. It had also become clear that more than one of Nate’s rounds had landed, in turn wounding the driver and puncturing the front tire. But how could a man keep driving with a hole in his side and one in his front tire? The answer, he supposed, was easy enough: adrenaline. The miracle drug―technically a hormone―that our bodies produced had the capacity to push us to nearly unbelievable feats of strength and endurance. Maybe other, synthetic drugs had also been at play. As far as Nate was concerned, you had to be morally dead, mentally unhinged or on something to start stealing only hours into a major power outage. Maybe a touch of all three.
The vague outline of foot traffic, only partly filled in, led from the truck to an inner courtroom door Nate hadn’t seen. The door looked like it had been kicked open. On a hunch, he brushed at the snow on the ground next to the boot prints and saw splotches of blood.
With his pistol in one hand and the flashlight from his phone in the other, Nate headed inside.
Chapter 24
Nate’s footfalls echoed on that hard, industrial flooring common to just about every civic building in the country. The school was dark. His hands were in the closest approximation to the Harries technique he could muster. Harries normally meant wrapping the weak hand with the flashlight under the hand holding the gun. It had been around since the 70s, but Nate was sure no one had ever used the technique with a cell phone light.
Pools of shadow vanished as he swung from left to right. He was in a corridor and coming to a t-intersection. Even looking forward, he couldn’t help seeing the trail of blood. Nate drew on his training as he slowly and methodically made his way past classrooms and lockers.
At the end of this blood trail was the thief who had stolen from them. Eagerly, he followed it down a flight of stairs. The droplets were large and bulbous, thickening around the outer edges. A slight film forming over the top. That told him the thug who had come this way had done so more than a few hours ago.
Nate passed more classrooms along with a teacher’s lounge, all of them eerily silent and devoid of life. Planting his feet, he aimed the light at the floor up ahead. The trail of blood led to a nearby room with a set of double doors, both of which stood ajar.
Heel to toe, Nate crept along in that direction, lowering the light as he drew closer. When he was a few feet away, he used a maneuver called cutting the corner. This meant angling into the room while at the same time limiting his own exposure to enemy fire. The blood led into a wide-open space that swallowed up most of the diffuse light from his phone. He noticed painted lines over the wooden floor. This wasn’t a cafeteria. It was a gym.
On the bleachers in the distance lay a figure in a grey winter jacket and dark baggy pants. Pooling beneath him was a dull liquid that looked from here like motor oil, but Nate knew better. The figure moved ever so slightly. This was no corpse he had stumbled upon. Corpses couldn’t shoot back, but even wounded men could be dangerous.
Nate put up his pistol, unslung his shotgun and pushed into the gymnasium’s ink-black darkness. You can’t hold a flashlight and use a shotgun at the same time, so Nate slid the phone into one of the front pockets of his jacket and pulled the zipper as tight as it would go, synching it in place. Where he turned, so too would the light, no matter how feeble it was at illuminating such a wide-open space.
He staggered toward the figure, wincing with every torturous footstep. By now the ache was no longer in his trick knee. Every bone in his body seemed to be crying out in protest, begging for him to find a safe, quiet place where he could lie down and replenish. Swinging to his left, Nate noticed items strewn about the floor. Bags of chips, stacks of canned food and cases o
f Bud Light. It was as though someone had gone on the mother of all shopping sprees only to dump their spoils in a heap. But maybe heap was the wrong word. Scanning the items, it was starting to look less like heaping and more like stockpiling.
A sound came out of the darkness to his right. He turned and froze when he spotted a pair of silvery eyes glaring back at him. The unsettling orbs were housed in a large cage, the kind people used on planes to transport pets. Was it a fox? he wondered. No, it was far too big. A stray dog maybe? There was a feral, menacing look in those eyes.
The two stared at one another, unblinking, for what felt like an eternity.
You don’t belong here, that look said.
And Nate could not have agreed more.
If the dog had surprised him, what he witnessed in a cage barely ten feet from the first truly knocked the breath from his lungs. A girl, no more than fifteen years old, curled into a ball, sleeping. She had black, matted hair tucked under a bright red winter hat.
Each of the cages was secured with a heavy padlock. He swung back to the wounded man on the bench, who was reaching out with a single, bloody hand. Nate racked the shotgun and centered the barrel at his chest. A pistol sat on the floor next to him. It was a Beretta 9mm. Nate bent down, scooped it up and slid it into his jacket pocket.
“I need water,” the wounded guy said in a barely audible whisper.
This guy was beyond caring about warding off intruders. Had Nate put a gun in his hand, he probably wouldn’t have had the strength to pull the trigger.
Ignoring his pleas, Nate shouldered the shotgun and began rifling through his pockets. “Where’s the key, you sick son of a bitch?”
“Water, man. I need water.” His skin was pale. The blood from his wounded abdomen had saturated his clothing. The thugs he might have once called friends had not even bothered to clean or dress the bullet hole, let alone attempt to stop the bleeding. Dead man walking, that was what he was. They were no better than that wild animal they had put in a cage.
“This hole in your gut was my gift to you, for stealing our truck.”
The man’s sallow eyes widened.
Nate found keys in the front pocket of the guy’s jeans at about the same time he caught the raucous sound of people approaching. They were practically around the corner. Nate tossed the keys to the girl, who was now sitting up. They skidded along the laminated gym floor, clanging as they struck the front of her cage. She grabbed and worked them up the bars and toward the padlock.
Nate then swung the shotgun off his shoulder and spun.
“Drop it or you’re dead,” a gruff voice called out.
Standing before him were two men. The first stood with his feet firmly planted, gripping an assault rifle. He was a giant of a man, six four, wearing a duster jacket and heavy work boots. Although most of his face was covered in shadow, Nate could make out just enough detail to tell the guy was an ugly SOB. And judging from his height and confidence, he was probably also the leader of this upstart band of thieves.
Before Nate could get a good look at the other thief, he disappeared into a patch of darkness. Any way you sliced it, Nate was at a serious tactical disadvantage. He was out of the effective kill range of his weapon. With luck, he might pepper one of the thugs, but the other would surely get him before he had time to take a second shot. It also didn’t help the two had split up with one hiding in darkness.
“Gabby, you got sights on this guy?” the tall ugly one asked his buddy.
“Sure do, Jack,” came the disembodied reply.
Ugly grinned. “This is your last chance before my friend here puts you out of your misery.”
“I’ve seen how you take care of your friends.” Nate raised the shotgun in the air with one hand. “If I drop this, I have your word you’ll let me go?”
Ugly held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
Nate knew he was lying, but set the shotgun down. It wouldn’t do him much good anyway.
“We good?”
“He’s got my piece,” the wounded man called out.
“Everything,” Ugly shouted, referring to any weapons Nate was hiding. “Or there’s no deal.”
Nate sighed, removing the 9mm, holding it in the air with two fingers.
“What about now?”
Gabby emerged from the darkness with a Glock 21. He reached to snatch the pistol from Nate’s outstretched hand and that was when Nate dropped the gun and lunged. For a split second, Gabby’s eyes traced the falling weapon. Nate’s focus was squarely on the weapon in Gabby’s other hand. In one motion, he grabbed and twisted it back and out of the man’s grip and into his own. Gabby’s cheeks flared out with anger as he struggled in vain to regain possession.
Seeing what was happening, Ugly leveled his semi-automatic and began firing, following Nate as he rolled out of the way. Ugly’s rounds tore up the wooden bleachers, thudding into the wounded guy and then into Gabby. Nate began firing back while in mid-roll, aiming for center mass as he’d been taught. Head shots were for movies, video games and anyone who had never been in a real firefight.
One of his rounds struck Ugly’s left leg, another tore open his right bicep. The rifle fell from the thief’s grip and clattered to the floor. Nate squeezed the trigger to finish him off and heard a click. He looked at his pistol and saw the slide was all the way back.
Ugly noticed too and pulled back his duster. He was going for a secondary weapon.
Nate had one too, his Sig, tucked into the concealed-carry belt holster. The question was, who would draw first?
Ugly was in the process of raising his pistol when a blur leapt through the air and sank its teeth into his wrist. Ugly screamed in agony, trying desperately to wrench his hand free from the animal’s vicious jaws. Nate took that opportunity to close the distance and put two in Ugly’s chest.
The thief slumped forward dead. The dog disengaged and stood watching Nate, its maw smeared with blood. But this wasn’t a dog, was it? The thing was too large, its grey fur tinged with patches of light and dark. The charcoal-colored pattern around its eyes was particularly striking. It looked like a mask. A family pet this was not. Nate was staring back at a full-fledged wolf and it was coming this way.
To his left was the young girl who also stood staring at him.
“Can you tell your wolf to back down?” Nate said. It was a beautiful, majestic beast, but if it came at him or showed the slightest hint of aggression, he would drop it without hesitation.
The girl smiled nonchalantly, scooping up the 9mm Nate had dropped on the floor. “He isn’t mine.”
The wolf’s attention was suddenly diverted by something Nate could not hear or see. A second later, a fat guy stepped into the gym, pushing a dolly stacked with cases of Coors beer. He stopped so suddenly the top cases rolled off and onto the floor with a loud thud. A handful of cans burst. Foamy beer leaked out from the thin cardboard cases.
“What the…?” he stammered, his enormous jowls quivering with stunned surprise.
The wolf was facing him now, a growl emanating from the back of its throat, low and threatening.
The fat man swore and tore off as fast as his meaty legs could carry him. The wolf gave chase.
And judging by the blood-curdling screams which quickly followed, it was safe to say he didn’t get very far.
Chapter 25
In spite of what had gone down in the school’s gymnasium, Nate was in no hurry to rush back out into all that cold and thigh-deep snow.
Searching the bodies, distasteful as that was, had proven useful. Among the spoils was Ugly’s AR, Gabby’s Glock 21 and a box of rounds for each of them. A couple cans of Bud Light couldn’t hurt either, nor could a bag of Doritos and some canned corn and beans.
He turned to the young girl and tossed a can of tuna her way. She fumbled and nearly missed it in the low light.
“Thanks,” she said, heading over to Ugly’s body and peeling the knapsack off his back. Rather than going through it item by item, the
girl turned it upside down and gave it three or four good shakes. A clump of socks, underwear and porno mags came spilling onto the floor.
“Eww,” she said, kicking them aside. She then began collecting items of her own, stuffing them into her new bag.
Nate set aside the AR, held out his hand and properly introduced himself.
“Dakota,” the girl said, shaking back.
“That’s quite a grip you’ve got.”
She smiled sheepishly. “I get it from my dad, I guess. He was known for his hard shakes.”
“I have to admit,” Nate said, “you’re the first girl I’ve ever rescued from a cage.”
“That’s too bad. How did it feel?”
Nate paused to think. “Pretty necessary. I mean, I felt bad enough finding that wolf locked up. Speaking of which…” He grew quiet and heard nothing, apart from the sound of his own breathing. Had the beast left or was it still around? he wondered.
“If he has any sense,” she said, “he’ll find a way out and head back into the wild where he belongs.”
She was right, but Nate would keep his weapons handy all the same. “Where are your folks?” he asked.
The corner of Dakota’s mouth twisted into an expression somewhere between sadness and anger.
“I see. Well, listen, I need to rest a couple hours. Either way, we should get out of this gym before any more of Ugly’s men come back.”
“The four we killed were the only ones I ever saw.”
For the record, Ugly had killed two of his own men, Nate had got one and the wolf had finished off the last. But what did details like that matter at a time like this, right?
America Offline (Book 1): America Offline [Zero Day] Page 11