“Are you threatening me?” asked Gary, his temper flaring.
“I’m just telling you how it is now, Gary. The world’s screwed. The sooner you accept that and move on, the better.”
***
Bob signaled to Neil as he spoke with Gary, directing him to a spot on the floor and pointing his AR-15 to indicate Neil should shoot through the floor where he believed Gary stood below.
“Where’s Roger?” asked Gary.
“You can’t help him anymore, and he’s the one that killed the two guys outside.”
“Well, that isn’t quite true, is it?”
“I just finished what he started. Vince’s spine was half blown out, He’d never have survived.”
“So you just put him down?”
“He was suffering. You wouldn’t let a dog suffer, would you?”
Bob held up three fingers.
“Where’s Barbara?”
“No idea. Not here, I don’t think,” said Bob, dropping one of his fingers.
***
Gary looked at his pistol. There were at least two men upstairs with fully automatic rifles. The world was screwed. He’d witnessed that already. The jail would be uninhabitable in two days. They were already letting prisoners go and before long, the murderers were going to have to be let go. Roger was dead and had shot two guys himself. What exactly was Gary going to do if he did capture Bob? Lock him up? He’d be out in two days, at the rate the world was falling apart.
Falling apart, thought Gary. Words Roger had said himself, when the ‘world falls apart, he’d be fine’. He’d been in some sort of group. A bunch of guys who liked to play weekend warrior, but Gary couldn’t be invited. No law enforcement and invitation-only, Roger had told him one Saturday while loading up his jeep. Gary had pushed for more. But the most he’d gotten out of Roger was that it was a tough bunch of guys you don’t mess with, and who you’d want on your side when the brown stuff hit the fan.
***
Bob dropped another finger as he waited for a response from the silent Gary.
“You’re not going to cause any more trouble in Warm Springs, are you?” asked Gary.
“Got what we came for,” shouted Bob, holding his single finger up for Neil.
“And Barbara?”
“If we see her, we’ll tell her that you’re looking for her.”
Gary stepped back, keeping his pistol at the ready as he backed down and out of the house. He walked back towards his house. There’d be no overtime that night. No work anytime soon, at least not until he had some proof the world wasn’t, as Bob obviously believed, falling apart.
***
Neil raced over to the window as they heard the door close below them. He raised his AR-15 and took aim at the sheriff’s deputy walking away from them. He lined up the shot and squeezed the trigger.
“Stop!” shouted Bob, suddenly realizing what Neil was doing.
Chapter 15
“It sounds as though it’s stopped,” said Kate, pausing with a bowl of cooked chicken fillets in her hand. She snapped the lid on top and added it to the pile to be transported down to the coolness of the basement. With the shooting so close, she had kept everyone in the kitchen, which was on the opposite side of the house from where the sound had been coming from. Gunshots also rang from the city below, but at least those were out of harm’s way. The shooting from behind them sounded like it was just a street or two away. It had been over five minutes from the last burst of gunfire.
“I should go check on my parents,” suggested Zach, extracting his hand from Sophie’s.
“Not yet, you’re not. Give it some time for things to calm down, okay? The best thing you can do for your parents is to stay safe,” warned Kate as a single gunshot rang out.
“We should get this down to the basement,” said Harry, eyeing the mound of food that would be their rations for the next few days.
“Let’s just label it first,” said Kate. “Some will keep better than others.” She opened the ‘everything else’ drawer and extracted a roll of sticky labels and a marker pen.
“No problem,” said Harry, knowing it was nothing more than a stalling tactic. The food was stored in clear containers, and everything was visible.
Ten minutes later and with no further shooting, her excuses were dwindling.
“I’d really like to check on my parents,” said Zach, who had become increasingly anxious over the last few minutes.
Kate shook her head. Harry walked over and took her aside. “I’ll take him. You go down and spend a little time on your own down there. By the time I get back, you’ll be ready to move the food down there,” he whispered, squeezing her arm gently to show his support.
Kate looked towards the basement door. “I can feel him down there.”
“Zach, come on. I’ll take you home,” said Harry.
“Will you come back later?” asked Sophie.
Zach looked at Kate. She nodded it was fine. She wasn’t sure she could say another word without breaking down into a blubbering wreck.
Harry guided Zach out, quickly recognizing Kate’s situation. She steadied herself against the kitchen counter and breathed deeply to compose herself. With the front door closing behind them, she moved towards the basement door. She reached into her pocket and extracted a key she’d had on her since the day they had been notified, inserting it into the keyhole. She paused, feeling a presence behind her. She turned and looked back down the hallway to the kitchen. Danny, Ava, and Sophie were lined up, one behind the other, their breaths held. It was a big moment for them as well. Tim had been their father, not just her husband.
“We’ll all do it together,” she said, the three shuffling towards her as one. Kate reached out and turned the key, the lock slipped back easily. Her hand hovered over the handle. Ava reached out and helped Kate take it. They pushed down together. The door pushed inwards and as a waft of stale air blew outwards, they all started to cry at the smell of Tim, perhaps, they all realized, for the last time.
Kate stepped forward and then quickly stepped back. “It’s very dark down there,” she said, bursting into laughter. Such a silly little thing had cut the tension that had been building up for so long.
Danny rushed off and appeared back with his flashlight, flicking the switch with no luck.
“You need batteries?”
“These are new ones, it’s not working.”
Kate walked back to the kitchen and her ‘everything else’ drawer and took out a small penlight torch. It too was dead. She had one last option, one that wouldn’t fail. She went to the garage and retrieved a box of candles and matches from her trusted drawer on the way back through the kitchen.
Ava disappeared as Kate lit the first candle. By the time she had the fourth one ready for Ava, she was back with four rough-cut circles of paper in her hand with two small nicks in the center of each. Ava took her candle and pushed the bottom through the nicks, pushing the paper up the shaft of the candle a few inches. She then held the candle shaft under the circle of paper.
“It’ll stop the candle wax from dripping on our hands,” she smiled.
With all of their hands protected, Kate led the way, down into the depths of the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, she stopped, her three kids adding more light as they joined her. The basement was pristine, not a thing out of place. No mess, not the pit that Tim had warned her about. His desk, normally strewn with papers and mail, sat empty except for four sealed envelopes, one with each of their names on it.
Kate felt a lump form in her stomach.
Chapter 16
Bob rushed over and pushed Neil’s rifle up as it fired. The bullet sailed harmlessly into the sky.
“What the…”
“We have an agreement,” Bob said, pushing Neil roughly away from the window, and waving out towards a very confused and concerned Gary. “Went off by mistake!” he shouted.
Gary waved back half-heartedly, but picked up his pace in his effort to get home.
“Agreement? He’s a cop!” spat Neil.
“We’re going to rule this city, and if we are, we’re going to honor agreements we make, and sure as hell won’t be known as the gang who shoot people in the BACK!”
“Hanging horse thieves and not shooting people in the back? What is this, the Wild frigging West?”
“You’re catching on, son. We’re living in a whole new era! Let’s go find the wife!”
“But you said…”
“Yep, I know what I said, ‘if we see her, we’ll tell her you’re looking for her’.”
Neil smiled. “Ah, I see. That’s why you’re the boss!”
It took two minutes to find her, in the only locked door in the house, the door to the basement. One kick and a quivering wreck of a woman was discovered, tucked away in the corner, hiding. Her teary breaths gave her away in the darkness. Neil pulled her out into the daylight of the kitchen and pushed her into a dining chair. The house stood at the end of the street with the kitchen at the rear. There was nothing but landscape off into the distance behind them.
“Barbara, you know me?”
She nodded her head.
“I’m so sorry about this, but your coward husband ran off and he knew things. I need to know if you know those things too, and whether anyone else does.”
“I don’t know anything,” she said, pleading with her eyes for him to believe her.
“I should be having this conversation with Roger but well, he can’t talk anymore.”
“Anymore?”
“He’s dead. But if he wasn’t, he’d be sitting here instead of you.”
“I swear…I don’t know anything,” she managed between sobs of pain for her lost husband and fear for what was to come.
“Tie her to the chair,” instructed Bob, before opening the kitchen drawers and removing an assortment of utensils and knives.
Barbara struggled wildly against Neil’s bindings as Bob produced implement after implement.
“Barbara, you have the most amazing set of knives,” he said, running his finger along the blade. “Japanese?”
She nodded.
“I’m a ‘Made in America’ type of guy myself, but I do appreciate quality.”
He selected a small paring knife, picked up a paper napkin, and ran the cutting edge across the top. It sliced through the paper with little effort.
“Impressive,” he offered, walking around the island that separated him from the dining table.
“NO!” screamed Barbara, her scream muffled as Neil filled her open mouth with paper napkins.
Bob approached her slowly and began to remove each of the buttons of her blouse with the knife. It flapped open to reveal her bra. He sliced through the bra to expose her chest.
“That’s a nice rack,” appreciated Bob. “It’s a shame to waste the work someone’s put into them.” He placed the knife blade against her nipple. Barbara’s eyes pleaded with him as she stopped moving to protect herself from injuring herself against the razor-sharp blade.
Bob kept the knife in place and instructed Neil to remove the napkins.
“Everything he did with the militia, he kept in a file in his computer. But he kept paper copies in his cabinet. There’s a magnetic key on the back right-hand side if you feel around.”
“And he told you all this?”
“No, he tells me nothing. He hasn’t even noticed these!” she looked down at her new breasts. “But I know everything he does, every sordid little secret he kept. The women he banged,” she spat. “Everything!”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Bob. He withdrew the paring knife from her nipple and slashed it across her neck. Blood spurted over him as her eyes opened wildly in panic. Her mouth moved to scream, but the only sound was the bubbling of blood though her open throat.
Neil looked away, his body convulsing. He hadn’t expected the brutal killing. Watching men die in a gun battle was one thing, a woman tied to a chair having her neck slit, an entirely different matter. How it differed from shooting someone in the back, he didn’t understand.
Bob wiped Barbara’s blood off of himself and the knife with a napkin, replacing the knife in its block.
“Gary’s looking for you,” he called back as he guided Neil towards Roger’s office. “See? Agreement honored,” he smiled.
Chapter 17
Harry returned without Zach, whose parents weren’t for letting him out of sight as darkness loomed. He had taken his dog, Hank, with him and Zach, but dropped him home before returning. He had knocked on the door, and to no reply, had turned the handle. The door was unlocked. Harry’s heart began to race, something he most definitely could do without. With a number of scares under his belt, his doctor’s words rang in his ears, ‘just make sure you take it easy, no stress or excitement and you should be fine’.
“Hello?” he shouted to silence. The house was still.
He walked into the hallway. The twilight was taking its toll on the light in the house. Where he could once see clearly, the shadows cast darkness.
“Hello?” he called, walking in further, hesitantly. The door to the basement lay open, a dim light visible from below.
“Hello?” he called down.
“Harry?” Kate called back through tears.
Harry carefully worked his way down the narrow staircase. The candlelight offered him little visibility until he neared the bottom step. A concentration of light in the far corner led him to the family huddled together, their quiet tears barely audible from across the room.
He rushed across as fast as his eighty-year-old frame would allow.
Kate stood up and hugged him, seeing the angst and worry etched on his face. “It’s okay, nothing to worry about,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “We just each got a letter from Tim.”
Harry’s face turned to confusion.
“He left them here,” she said, pointing to the desk. “In case he didn’t make it back.”
The rush in leaving had resulted in many things being forgotten. One thing he hadn’t forgotten had been personal messages to each of them - touching memories of the best he saw in them all, and the future he hoped for them, were he not able to share it with them. Each letter was personal to each of them, written entirely separately, no sentiments were copied or regurgitated between them.
Kate read through hers three times. Each time touched her more and proved just how extraordinary a husband, a father, and a man, her Tim had been.
While the kids engaged with the last words of their father, Harry decided to make a start, bringing the food down. The temperature, as hoped, was cooler in the basement and would hopefully extend the perishable food by at least an extra day or perhaps more.
As he turned back towards the stairs, his eye caught a door with a wheel in the middle of it. In the dimness of the candlelight, he struggled to make out what it was.
“Previous owners left it behind,” said Kate, startling him.
“Did they leave it full?”
“I wish. No, it’s empty. Tim used it for his guns.”
“I thought you didn’t like guns?”
“I don’t. I hate the things.”
“And Tim?”
“Loved them!”
“Fighter jets and guns, he was a big kid at heart,” she smiled. “Anyway,” she steered him towards the stairs. “Come on, kids, time to get that food down here,” she ordered.
With the food in far more able-bodied hands, Harry bid them goodnight.
“Oh, and don’t forget to lock this door after me, unlike earlier.”
“I did lock it,” said Kate, the joy of finding Tim’s letter dropping in an instant.
“But it was unlocked when I came back from Zach’s,” he said, reaching for the revolver in his pocket.
Kate put her hand over Harry’s to stop him from bringing out the revolver. “Kids, did anyone go outside after Zach left?” she shouted out.
“I went out to get my windbreaker,” shouted Danny.
<
br /> Kate relaxed. “That boy’s never locked a door behind him in his life!”
“Times are different now,” warned Harry, a burst of gunfire from the city below proving his point perfectly.
Chapter 18
DAY 5
Nick lay awake as the sun rose over Boise below him for the fifth morning since the explosion. Ninety-six hours had passed and still not one vehicle had moved anywhere within their field of sight. Nothing, no traffic in or out. He had given up even looking. The first few days he had stared down the highway, willing himself to see a vehicle head towards them, something to prove that the rest of America was functioning normally. Nothing.
Over the previous few days, they had watched the unfolding chaos below. It was a sobering sight and one that had him spending more and more time worrying about his own family, over two thousand miles away. Not knowing whether they were suffering the same fate as the people of Boise was insufferable.
Each night, as darkness fell, they willed the lights to kick on. A population of over 750,000 lay before them, yet as the last chink of dying sunlight faded, the city was enveloped in a darkness unlike anything he had witnessed in the modern world, a true darkness where all that was visible shone in the unpolluted sky and vastness of space – a reminder of just how insignificant one little planet could be.
As the sun had risen each morning, he had hoped things would improve but day after day, the city below had failed to show any sign of life, anything, a vehicle moving, just something to show that the lifeblood of the city had been restored. But as each hour dragged by, his heart sank further. Whatever had happened, things weren’t improving, things weren’t being fixed. More importantly, it didn’t seem like people were even trying. Boise was a great American community, heralded as one of the friendliest, safest, and most welcoming cities in all of America. If this had happened to Boise in four days, God help the rest of the world.
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