The knock came again. Much louder. It had progressed to a real banging.
Barb was looking at him with wide eyes. She seemed to be frozen in place. He didn’t know if she was that way out of fear, or whether she wasn’t moving so as to not make any noise.
He knew that her non-functioning shotgun was still in the other room, leaning against the wall. They’d left it there after briefly examining it.
Finally, James’s eyes found the gun.
It was on the counter in the corner. Just where he’d left it.
He moved, going for it.
But he only made it a single step when a tremendously loud sound came from outside the door.
Whoever was out there had smashed something big and hard into the door.
The racket was deafening.
The sound continued.
They seemed intent on smashing the door down.
James had rarely moved faster.
In a split second, he was across the kitchen and the gun was in his hand.
Now what?
15
Caitlin
“Mommy, what’s Daddy doing?”
Caitlin sat frozen in fear in the passenger seat
Her husband had just gotten out of the car.
She knew that he shouldn’t have done that.
She knew that under no circumstances should he have gotten out of the car.
Caitlin didn’t answer her kids, who were in the backseat. Instead, she pushed the auto lock button on her side. It was an older Volvo, an 850 wagon, five-cylinder, but the Swedes had been ahead of the curve when it came to using automated features in the car.
Fortunately, the auto lock still worked.
The locks clicked down.
The doors were locked.
Caitlin held her breath as she watched her husband pull out his wallet from his back pocket.
“Idiot,” she muttered quietly under her breath. “Don’t…”
The huge muscular man swatted the wallet away.
“Come on, Mark…” she muttered.
“Is that man going to hurt Daddy?”
She couldn’t answer.
All she could do was watch, frozen in fear.
The huge man in the flannel shirt brought his hand up. His massive, muscular body spun expertly as he thrust his arm out.
It was a punch.
A magnificent, perfectly coordinated punch.
His massive fist collided with Mark’s face.
Mark didn’t even have the reflexes to bring his hands up, to step back, or to try to evade the punch in any way.
A second later, Mark was on the ground.
In a way, it was a relief.
Caitlin breathed out, as if her brain suddenly could relax a little. What she’d feared most had finally happened.
This was the worst of it, right?
What could be worse?
Well, what came next was worse.
Later, she’d wish she hadn’t seen it. She’d wish she’d closed her eyes.
Unfortunately, she had a perfect view of the big man reaching down with a massive hand and dragging Mark several more feet away from the car.
Mark was flat on his back in the snow on the road. There was blood on his face and his nose looked deformed, crooked and somewhat flattened.
From the passenger seat, she saw everything.
She couldn’t look away.
She did manage to say, “Kids, close your eyes.”
And when they didn’t, when they protested, she shouted at them.
When she looked back, they had their eyes closed.
So they didn’t see what happened next.
But she did.
It was like her eyes were glued to her husband’s face.
She saw the boot coming toward his face. She saw it smash against his cheek. She saw it withdraw, pulling up for another round.
There was blood in the snow now around her husband.
And Mark wasn’t moving much. His arm was moving strangely, vaguely back and forth, purposefully drifting through the snow as if he were trying to make a snow angel with just one arm.
“You think your money means anything now?” shouted the man, his voice full of rage. His face was red. Bright red. “It’s nothing. Nothing!”
The man wore gloves. He yanked one of them off and dug into his pocket with his bare hand.
When he pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket, he held something that was light blue and made of plastic. Caitlin didn’t know what it was for a moment, until she saw the blade flick out of it.
It was a folding knife with a small oval in the blade, which allowed the thumb to thrust forward, extending it.
“Mommy! What’s happening to Daddy?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
All she could do was watch as the man she’d often been frustrated with, angry with, and at times, in love with, was killed.
He was the father of her children and despite how often she felt annoyed with him, at his constant mishaps, clumsiness, social faux-pas, and embarrassing gaffes, she didn’t want him to die. She’d thought she’d be with him forever.
Never in her wildest dreams, nightmares, or fantasies, had she thought she’d watch his throat get slit.
But there it was, in front of her.
The steel glinted in the next-to-nothing gray sky light. The blade ran across his throat.
It happened so fast. Next thing she knew, the blade was gone, high up in the air on the follow through of the slice.
For a split-second, nothing seemed to happen.
Then a single thin line of red appeared moments later, running across his neck.
There was hardly any blood for several moments, just that line.
Then the blood started gushing, rushing out like lava from a volcano.
Soon, his chest and neck were covered with the slick thick blood.
Blood gurgled out of his half-open mouth like some kind of demonic fountain.
The kids in the back were crying, shrieking.
Caitlin was motionless, frozen in fear.
Her husband was dead.
What would she do now?
She was, unfortunately, reliant on him.
She hardly ever even drove.
What would she do?
And what would she do now with the huge man striding purposefully toward her car?
There was a scowl on his face. His eyes met hers and his frown deepened, his mouth turning down into his thick beard.
His eyes, through the window, were fixed on her.
“Mommy!”
16
Meg
Meg wasn’t doing well.
An hour had passed since she first arrived at her truck and she still hadn’t managed to get the key into the lock.
So far, she’d succeeded in getting the key out of her pocket, getting the key off the ground, and getting the key near the lock.
But she hadn’t yet gotten it into the lock, let alone turned the key.
Time was rapidly running out for her. And she knew it. The night was only growing colder. She was only growing colder.
The situation reminded her of what she’d heard about terrified individuals, like victims of an assault or robbery, trying to call 911. Often, they were so shaken that they lost many of their fine motor skills and simply weren’t able to dial the correct digits.
The colder she got, the more her extremities became numb, and the less chance she had of being able to manipulate the key enough to get it into the lock.
It was pathetic, really.
It was something so simple. So easy. Something she’d done thousands of times before.
How many times had she come back from the store to her truck in the parking lot, putting the key in without so much as a second thought?
It was so easy. Too easy.
But she couldn’t do it.
She just couldn’t.
She’d tried every way she could think of. She’d tried with one hand,
with two hands. She’d tried with gloves on, without them. She’d tried to do it very slowly, or very fast.
Each time, she missed the lock by a good five inches. Which may not sound like much, but it was really an infinite amount of space when it came to the lock.
It should have all been so simple.
And there was the key fob, the remote control that locked and unlocked the truck with a single press of a button. It didn’t work anymore, and it wasn’t because she’d never changed the battery. It was because of the EMP. But even if it had worked, would she have been able to press the button?
Maybe. Maybe not.
She thought of all the people who had keyless cars. They didn’t have metal keys, just little plastic fobs that used batteries and wireless signals to lock, unlock, and start the car. They’d all be useless. Those newer cars, full of electronics, probably wouldn’t have started and functioned anyway. But either way, people would be locked out of their cars. That much was certain.
Here she was. Intelligent. Young. In good health. With a backpack full of good supplies, things she could use to help her.
But nothing was working.
She’d thought of starting a fire to warm her hands too late. Well, that wasn’t quite true. She’d thought of it. But she hadn’t really believed that she wouldn’t be able to open the truck door with her key. She’d thought that surely this was one of those dumb little problems that was soon swiftly overcome.
And now? Now her hands were simply too numb and useless to use the various fire starters she had in her pack. And she had a few of them. She had matches in an orange plastic, waterproof case with a thin piece of rubber sealing the threads.
She also had a BIC lighter, just a standard one. And as a third option, she had a fire starter, which was often called “flint and steel,” but was really a magnesium rod that shot off showers of sparks when it was hit with a steel rod, or the flat back of a knife blade.
They were all great ways to start a fire. She even had dryer lint that her dad had saved in a small plastic container.
But none of it was any good without working hands.
The fire starters all lay there in the snow. She’d managed to get them out of her pack. And she’d tried and tried to start a fire with them, but she just didn’t have the dexterity.
It was awful, to be so close to getting into the truck, and yet so close to dying from hypothermia.
What was left to do?
She’d tried everything she could think of to warm her hands. She’d rubbed them furiously. She’d tucked them under her armpits, and put them between her legs. But nothing had worked. It seemed as if her body simply wasn’t producing enough heat to warm her hands up.
Meg was slumped forward with her back resting against one of her truck’s tires. Her feet were partially buried in the deep snow.
It was a struggle to stay rational. A struggle to stay with it. A massive struggle to keep trying to think of options, of new strategies. Her body seemed to want to give up, to just curl up in the snow and go to sleep forever.
But that wasn’t an option.
She was going to keep fighting.
She was going to do something.
What, she didn’t know.
Suddenly, she forced herself to stand up.
It was difficult, almost impossible. Her muscles felt like lead. It felt like her body had tripled in weight, and at the same time her muscles had become incredibly weak, as if she’d aged many decades in the span of an hour.
She stood unsteadily on her feet, swaying a little back and forth.
There was something wrong with her vision. It was like an extreme tunnel, but also blurry, with things going wavy here and there.
To say it was disconcerting would be an extreme understatement.
The keys, along with the fire starters, lay nearby in the snow. She looked down at them steadily.
If she couldn’t use the fire starters what hope did she have with the key?
Her mind was reeling, searching desperately for other possibilities.
There had to be something she hadn’t yet thought of.
There was no one around. She was somewhere way off the road. And it wasn’t a heavily traveled road.
And even if someone had come by, would she have trusted them? Would she have handed over the key to her truck with all her gear in it? And when she was in an already weakened state?
If she couldn’t use the key, she doubted she could pull the trigger.
“This is pathetic,” she said to herself, the words unintelligible, heavily slurred.
It was difficult to even open her mouth.
She stood there, her heart rate going up as high as it could, which wasn’t much. There was the fatigue and the heavy sleepiness, as the will to live drained out of her. And at the same time, that will to live was rearing its ugly head, making her heart start to pound in some desperate attempt to find the energy she needed to keep living.
But what to do?
Suddenly, she saw something off in the distance, through the trees. It was a deer, standing in the snow, its head bending down, as if trying to find something to eat underneath the snow.
Feeling stupid, she realized that she didn’t know what deer ate in the winter. She’d always imagined them eating greens, various plant leaves. But what about when there was snow and all those plants were dead or leafless?
Maybe they ate bark?
She didn’t know if that was a stupid thing to wonder or not.
Well, what did it matter?
She didn’t have enough energy to hike back to Barb’s place. She could try and she’d probably make it about an hour then die there in the snow.
Actually, she was so cold and weak she doubted she’d make it five minutes in any direction at all.
So what did it matter if she didn’t know what deer ate? She’d be dead soon enough, nothing but a corpse in the snow.
What would happen to her then? The snow would slowly cover her, gradually, through the night. Her muscles would stiffen from rigor mortis as her body became depleted of ATP. The cold would stiffen everything too.
What would happen to her truck and her gear?
It was possible someone else would come along before James made it back here. It’d be a simple matter of taking the key and putting it in the lock.
The wind was picking up now, as the snow fell faster, angling with the wind off to one side.
She no longer felt the bite of the wind on her flesh and she knew that wasn’t a good sign.
Meg found herself falling slowly to the left, against the wind.
Fortunately, she was able to stick out one leg and catch herself messily.
But, it didn’t quite work.
Her leg, numb and weak, wasn’t strong enough to support her full weight. It gave out and she crumpled into the snow.
She lay there on her side. Nothing hurt. She didn’t feel anything.
The key was right in front of her. Only six inches. She could have reached out and touched it, but what would have been the point of that?
Far beyond the key, but still clearly in her field of vision, she could see the deer, digging its head into the snow. It didn’t seem to see her, or if it did, it didn’t consider her a threat.
Suddenly, an idea came into Meg’s head.
The deer was using its mouth. Why couldn’t she?
Why couldn’t she grab the key between her teeth? Her hands had lost their dexterity. Her fingers were numb and completely useless, but her mouth wasn’t.
Sure, she couldn’t talk and if anyone had been there, they wouldn’t have understood her, but that seemed more like a function of her numb tongue than anything else.
Her wrists and arms were shaking violently, but her neck and head weren’t. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t care. Maybe it was because her neck was thicker, more stable, since it had the job of supporting her head, the heaviest body part.
She didn’t waste any time. She lunged forward, her neck
and head moving toward the key.
It was a little difficult to get it between her teeth while also keeping it facing the right direction. She bit against it, craning her eyes downward to try to get a look at it, feeling like she was going cross-eyed. Realizing that the key was facing the wrong direction, pointed toward her tongue rather than toward the world, she dropped it again in the snow, and went to pick it up again.
It took her five tries to get the key situated in the right way, facing out of her mouth.
But once she had it, she had it. She kept her teeth clenched down on it as hard as she could, not wanting to lose its position.
Now, it was only a matter of getting to her feet, bending her knees until her head was level with the door’s keyhole.
It was easier said than done.
She was wobbly, easily losing her balance. When she first got up, her numb legs betrayed her, and she fell back down into the snow. But she kept her teeth clenched down on the plastic key fob, knowing that keeping the key in her mouth was the most important thing. It didn’t matter so much if she injured herself. What she desperately needed to do was get into the truck and crank the heat before she died of exposure.
Finally, she got up again, and got the key level with the lock.
She moved slowly, as though she were a brain surgeon.
That way, she could use her neck and whole body to stabilize the key. It still shook, but not as violently as when she’d tried to use her hand.
It took several tries. But she got it.
She would have yelped or shouted for joy had she not been near death and exhausted, and had doing so not meant that she’d drop the key.
Turning the key was surprisingly easy, but she did have to wrench her body around in order to turn it far enough in the lock to open the door.
It was open!
Finally!
She heard the fateful-sounding click as the mechanism engaged inside and the locks sprang open.
But the door was still closed.
Desperately, she pawed at the handles with her hands.
That part was harder even than using the key. Her hands shook violently. They were useless. They just didn’t work.
Shit.
Shit.
She cursed herself silently.
Constant Danger (Book 2): Defeat The Anarchy Page 12