by Lee Bradford
“Tough to say, but I wouldn’t rule it out entirely. Our biggest problem is the power and communication networks. They’re overloaded, which means we’re hard pressed for a situation report.” Deputy Brant looked over at Paul and then over to Buck. “You two aren’t from around here.”
Paul shook his head and hoped he didn’t look nervous. “We’re friends of Travis Wright. He suggested we pay a visit to old Bill here.”
“Paul and Barv,” Bill said, swinging a skinny arm around each man. “Two stand-up boys, that’s for sure. Well, listen, Deputy, I been hearing talk about radiation and nuclear fallout—”
“The call right now is for everyone to stay inside and keep an eye out for anything unusual,” Brant said. “That’s why I’m making the rounds. So I’d appreciate if you gentlemen finish whatever it is you’re doing and head inside.” And with that Brant got back into his cruiser and slowly drove away.
Bill gripped his head with both hands. “I still can’t hardly believe it,” he said. It was becoming his mantra.
“You live alone, Bill?” Buck asked.
“Well, not if you count my cats I don’t.”
“But no other people, right?”
Bill shook his head.
“The problem we’re facing right now,” Buck began, folding his arms over his burly chest, “is we ain’t got any spare cash on us at the moment.”
“You don’t?” Bill said, almost to himself.
“No, but I’ll tell you what. You give us the car you got that’s in the best condition and when we come back through here on our way home, I’ll bring you to my bunker. It’s nothing fancy, but it has filters to keep the radiation out.”
Bill took a step back. “I can’t ask you to do something like that, Barv.”
Buck bit his lip. “You’d be doing us a great service. I can’t promise we’re gonna make it back in one piece, if at all, but you have my word that if we do, you’re coming with us.”
“What about my cats?”
Paul’s eyes went wide and not just because of his allergies. He couldn’t believe Buck was offering to bring a man who was practically a stranger into his top-secret bunker.
“No cats,” Buck said. “Let ’em go free when the time comes. Least they’ll have a fighting chance.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Bill said, his eyes filling with tears, his thin lips quivering with emotion.
“There’s only one other thing I need,” Buck said.
“You name it, Barv.”
Buck pulled the child’s squirt gun he’d found in Bill’s kitchen from his pocket. “This.”
Chapter 22
Susan, Autumn, and Chet had been putting away the food they brought back from the variety store when the knock came on Autumn’s apartment door. The fridge still had some cool air locked inside, which would be more than enough to keep the meat from going bad over the next couple of days.
“Are you expecting someone?” Chet asked.
Susan thought immediately of her trek down the corridor, knocking on any apartment she could find, looking for someone willing to donate a bit of food. Perhaps one of the people who had been too afraid to open up before had finally found the courage.
Walking briskly to the front door, Susan put her eye to the peephole and peered out. Out in the hallway was a sight which made the blood in her veins run cold. Turning toward the others, she whispered: “It’s them.”
“Who?” Chet asked.
“The men who followed us home. They must have found a way inside.”
The false sense of security Susan had felt the minute they’d locked the front door to the apartment complex behind them was now shattered.
Susan went back to the peephole. One of the men, short, balding, and with a receding hairline, flashed a badge.
“Police, open up,” he ordered them.
“What’s this about?” Susan replied. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”
That was her first mistake. The two men didn’t ask again, but instead began kicking at Autumn’s apartment door. The hinges buckled every time the heels of their feet slammed into the wood. Her daughter screamed and Chet ran over to help Susan buttress the door.
“There’s never a dull moment with you two, is there?” Chet observed. If he was afraid he wasn’t showing it and at least that calmed her nerves a bit.
“The knife set,” Susan whispered to Autumn. “Grab two of them. One for you and Chet.” The third was still tucked under Susan’s waistband. She would pull it out if it looked as though the two men were about to breach the door. She glanced out the peephole again in time to see them continuing to batter away. It was clear by now the two men weren’t cops. They’d only used the ruse as a way to determine if someone was home and possibly con their way inside. In her case a lifetime of being a law-abiding citizen had nearly played right into their hands. If Buck was here, he probably would have run them off with a rack of the shotgun he kept by his front entrance.
“Autumn,” Susan yelled. “Go lock yourself in the bathroom.”
Her daughter shook her head, holding a knife she clearly didn’t know how to use. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The door continued to shudder under the relentless assault and Susan knew for sure in a matter of minutes their attackers would be inside. Once that happened, there was no telling what they would do.
Chapter 23
The growing chaos that Finch and his men found in Kansas City had proved to be the cover they were looking for. With two of their own dead, Finch himself wounded and the cops on their tail, the gang had little choice but to lie low. The abandoned house on 41st Street in the seedier part of town was turning out to be a great choice. Altogether they had commandeered three vehicles—the Hummer they’d ripped off from the men at the Phillips station as well as two sedans they’d jacked along the way.
Although the group had temporarily split up after the gas station debacle, they’d kept in touch via walkie-talkies they’d taken from guards at the prison during their escape.
The instructions to Finch’s men had been clear. Find the two who’d done this and bring them back. A bullet to the head was far too generous a death. These guys would be made to suffer.
The second part of their mission had been to gather some supplies.
With still no word back, Finch was beginning to worry.
He leaned back in the dusty kitchen chair as PJ tended to his wounded eye. The pain was near excruciating, but Finch was careful not to show weakness. Not around this pack of wild dogs. Sometimes your reputation was all that stood between you and a shiv between the ribs.
“How much longer’s it gonna be?” Finch barked, pulling out his silver .38 caliber S&W and placing it on the table.
“Hold still,” PJ said. PJ wasn’t the kid’s real name, of course. It was something like Salvador or Al. Finch didn’t know and didn’t care. What he did know was that PJ had once been an Air Force Pararescue serving in Afghanistan—essentially a helicopter medic who was flown into war zones to retrieve the wounded. Seemed like a far cry from doing time in Leavenworth, but everyone had a sob story and Finch had heard them all.
In PJ’s version, patients under his care kept not making it home. The Air Force had investigated and found the levels of morphine he was administering were far too high. PJ claimed the other medic he worked with must have done it, but when that same medic testified against him during the court martial, the avalanche had proven too strong. He was buried up to his neck by military bureaucracy and shoulda been locked away for the next fifty years.
He still proclaimed his innocence. That part was no shocker, but PJ’s desire to join Finch’s group during their daring escape certainly had been a surprise. PJ had been a model inmate who only wanted to get back to his wife and child. The pair lived in Gainesville, Florida and that would be his final destination.
Finch winced as PJ worked to stitch up what was left of his eye. The real shame would be losing someone with his skillset.
&n
bsp; The front door burst in just then, followed by boisterous voices Finch knew all too well.
“Daryl, Jax, that you?” Finch called out.
“Yeah, Sarge,” Jax responded.
Loaded in Jax’s impossibly skinny arms were several six-packs of beer, junk food, cigarettes and a deck of playing cards. Like PJ, Jax had been given his nickname after a story in which he purportedly killed a man with a jackhammer.
“Glad to see you’re still eating healthy,” Finch observed.
Jax grinned, flashing his signature toothless smile. He and Daryl were still wearing the mechanics’ coveralls they’d taken from the workers at the Phillips 66.
“Eye’s looking better,” Jax lied.
The men had been tiptoeing around the subject ever since Finch had been stabbed by the big guy with the white beard. They knew perfectly well their leader’s penchant for taking revenge on those who wronged him. His background in the Air Force training academy at Lackland was more than ample testament to this fact.
In Finch’s estimation, the military’s major mistake had been hiring female cadets. The next fault belonged to those same female cadets when they chose to rebuff his sexual advances. It didn’t matter so much that they eventually spoke up and got him arrested and charged, because he’d already taught those tramps who was really in charge.
This wasn’t a new story for Finch of course. His psych evaluation had stated that the man had two distinct sides to him. One side was charming, kind, and gregarious. The other was a misogynistic rapist, a dark side that was always there, lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to spring. Even during college, the girls who’d ridiculed his advances had all discovered his dark side firsthand. Likewise in prison, where he’d employed other weapons, the same warning had always been on the lips of those around him. “Don’t mess with Finch.”
“Did you get what I asked you?” Finch asked, his patience wearing as thin as the thread drawing his eyelid shut.
Jax and Daryl both nodded at once. “Sweets and Huckleberry got the rubbing alcohol and painkillers you asked for.” Daryl pulled a stack of bills from his pocket. “We also grabbed some spending money from the pharmacy in case certain needs arose.”
“Did you kill anyone?” Finch asked.
Jax hesitated. “Not exactly kill. The fat old pharmacist—well, she was actually the pharmacist’s assistant. But anyway, she wasn’t what I’d call cooperative, so we had a conversation of sorts.” Jax and Daryl both doubled over in laughter. “I ain’t never took you for a softy, Sarge.”
Finch’s one eye narrowed. “I don’t want you two idiots bringing more heat down on us than we already have. You wanna go back to Leavenworth?” He turned to Daryl. “Do you?”
Both men shook their heads.
PJ couldn’t agree more. “If I get locked away from my family again, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Finch tapped his hand. “Don’t worry, son, we’ll get you there. You just keep focusing on making me pretty again.”
That made Jax and Daryl burst into more fits of giggling. The two men were each opening a beer when Sweets and Huckleberry sauntered in with more junk food, this time peanut M&M’s and candy bars.
Sweets handed Finch the items he’d asked for. “If I’d had to eat one more bag of trail mix, I’d have lost my mind,” Sweets said. He was a black former private who topped three hundred pounds and sported a sweet tooth that would send most grown men to the emergency room for an insulin shot. The trail mix he was referring to had come from the supplies they’d found in the back of the Hummer. Apart from the weapons, they’d found lots of other gear—chemical suits, breathers, a Geiger counter and lots of dried nuts.
Next to Sweets was Huckleberry. Since he stood a little over five feet and was decked out with the reddest hair and freckles this side of the Mississippi, inmates had taken to naming him after the character in Twain’s classic. He’d become something of a kleptomaniac and pickpocket over the years. As far as Finch was concerned, the kid’s only real mistake was plying his trade on a general’s pocketbook and then running the man’s credit card up on prostis and liquor. That had gotten him a solid six years, two of which he’d already served.
“So I’m guessing you couldn’t find….” Finch paused and glanced down at the two driver’s licences he’d plucked from the men’s wallets. “William ‘Buck’ Baker and Paul Edwards.”
Sweets had his hand buried wrist-deep in a forty-two-ounce bag of peanut M&Ms. “No sign of them, Sarge. We spent a real long time looking all over the place. Least until the cops showed up and we decided to book it.”
Jax nodded. “Same here. But unless they know how to hotwire a car, with no wallets, I don’t see ’em getting very far.”
“You might be surprised,” Finch told them. “Never underestimate your opponent’s resourcefulness.”
PJ finished sewing Finch’s eye and leaned back to examine his handiwork. “We do have their home address,” he said. “Maybe we can pay them a visit.”
Finch looked down at the IDs again. “That’s not a horrible idea. Looks like our good ol’ boys are from Greenwood, Nebraska.”
The expression on PJ’s face morphed to concern. “But I’m heading down to Gainesville. That’s in the opposite direction.”
Finch grew quiet, hating the idea of PJ leaving the group.
Just then, the muscles in Jax’s face went limp. He thrust a hand into his pocket and produced a crumpled piece of paper, holding it in the air. “Maybe we don’t need to split up our fine little family after all,” Jax said. “Least not yet.”
“What are you saying?” Finch asked, not liking the little game he was playing.
“Sure, we know where these boys live, but that’s no guarantee they’re gonna be there anytime soon. Fact, I can practically guarantee it. Totally skipped my mind till now, but the one with the big head and the wavy hair had this piece of paper on him.” Jax read it aloud. “‘Autumn’s address: 160 Edgewood, apartment 603. Corner of Edgewood and Piedmont Avenue.’”
“That’s in Atlanta,” PJ said.
Daryl added, “They were headed in the right direction and that Hummer of theirs was packed to the gills.”
Finch was nodding, scanning between them with his one good eye. “So then we know where they’re headed.”
The men around him were smiling now.
“And you know what that means, don’t you?” Finch asked. None of them answered, because they understood the Sarge liked to be the one to say it out loud. “It means we need to get there first.”
Chapter 24
Chet was doing his best to brace the door against the flurry of kicks coming from the two men outside. The hinges were showing signs of giving way and with each boom came the distinct sound of wood cracking. Susan stood nearby, the knife gripped tightly in her hand. When they finally broke through, she would be right there with the blade, swinging with everything she had.
Even Chet, who’d been calm and collected since they’d recently met, was beginning to show signs of fear. His heart was probably pounding because he was pulling in huge lungfuls of air.
“I can’t hold them much longer,” he said, worried.
Then all at once, the pounding stopped. Out in the hallway, Susan caught voices, shouting for the men to get down on the ground. Chet set his eye to the peephole and reported what he was seeing.
“They’re down on the ground.”
“Really?” Autumn said, jubilant.
“It could be another trap,” Susan said, sounding more like her father every day. “They were already pretending to be policemen. Who’s to say they aren’t trying some elaborate ruse to make us open up?”
Chet seemed to agree. Beads of sweat were rolling down his forehead. Susan was sure that if it were up to him, he’d never open that door again.
“What’s happening now?” Autumn asked him.
“Uh, there’s a handful of men around, putting them in handcuffs. Some are cops and others are dressed in military clot
hes.”
“Fatigues?” Susan asked.
“Yeah, and they have rifles.”
Chet craned his head for a better look. “Seems the woman across the hall has opened her door and is ogling.”
Just then a knock came.
“What do we do?” Chet asked.
“We open,” Susan responded without hesitation.
“But what if they’re bad?” Autumn said fearfully.
“If they were, they’d have already used those assault rifles to blast their way in here. Move.” Susan had to nudge Chet out of the way.
The door swung open, revealing a handsome soldier with spiky, dirty blond hair and strong features. He appeared to be in his early twenties and a barely audible gasp escaped Autumn’s lips when she saw him.
“You folks okay in here?”
“We’re fine,” Chet said quickly.
The soldier looked from Chet back to Susan. The name stitched onto his chest read Stephens.
Behind him, the two men were being read their rights. Then they were lifted onto their feet and marched away by a combination of policemen and soldiers.
Over the handsome soldier’s shoulder, Susan could see the late middle-aged neighbor getting an eyeful.
“Name’s Brett,” the soldier said, holding out his hand. Susan shook it. Autumn was next to her. Chet stood a few feet behind them, not saying a word.
“We were making a sweep of this sector when we saw the lobby door to this apartment complex had been kicked in. I’d hate to think what might have happened if we’d missed that.”
Susan flashed her knife as well as a grin. “We girls aren’t as helpless as you might think. My father’s a vet.”
A voice from down the hallway called after Brett.
“Those men said they were cops,” Susan told him. “But we didn’t believe them.”
“It may shock you to hear this, but those men were police officers.”
Susan felt the muscles in her face go limp. “I don’t understand.”