Barrel of Monkeys

by Tymber Dalton

  No county busses, either.

  It creeped her out.

  “It always this quiet?” Nick asked.

  “Nope.” She wheeled her marked SUV unit through the city streets toward Saugus, where the county DOT facility was located. “You know what worries me?”

  “What?”

  “That it won’t be this quiet for very much longer.”

  As she’d guessed, the DOT work yard was empty and unguarded. When they pulled up to the chained fence, she threw the SUV into park.

  “How you going to get in there?” Nick asked.

  “I have ways.”

  “Going to ram it?”

  “Nope.” She got out, walked around to the back, opened the tailgate and grabbed something, then returned to the driver’s side door and held them up. “Bolt cutters.”

  After cutting the lock off, she pushed the gate open and drove all the way in to the main door, the other SUV following. There, she shut off the SUV and got out. The facility’s front door was locked, of course.

  As she walked around to the back of the SUV again, Nick grabbed the bolt cutters from where she’d left them laying between the front seats. “Don’t you need these?”

  She smiled. “Nope.” She pulled a battering ram out of the back. “Just this.”

  Walking to the front door, she took one test swing before she stepped up to the door and then swung again, nailing the knob and deadbolt. The cheap metal door caved but didn’t break free immediately. It took two more impacts for it to finally give way.

  “You won’t get in trouble for this?” one of the other guys asked.

  She dropped the ram and pulled the door open. “Seriously?” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “If you haven’t noticed, we are the trouble.”

  They needed the battering ram one more time inside, and the bolt cutters, to get through the door and locked chain link cage where the explosives were stored.

  “So? Is this what you need?” she asked Nick.

  He looked through the cabinets and cases. “Yeah. It’s a little older than the stuff I’m used to working with, but I can use it.”

  “You think we have enough here?”

  He snorted. “Seriously?” His face fell. “Um, I mean, yes, ma’am. We can take down half the side of a mountain with this.”

  “Just the 5 overpass.”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, ma’am.”

  “Deputy Edison,” she said, “don’t worry about the formalities. In a couple of days, hopefully you and your guys will be safe back in Redding.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  * * * *

  There were several DOT vehicles also parked in the yard, including a couple of large trucks, and a front loader on a trailer. They found keys for them in a lock box in the yard manager’s office.

  Gia got the other four guys busy loading them with barricades and traffic barrels. They’d need them for blocking the road.

  Which she wanted to do as soon as possible. They also had programmable traffic signs that ran on solar with diesel backup. She pointed them out. “Figure out how to program those. I want them to say 5 and 14 northbound are closed, that the roads are out, no northern access.”

  One of the soldiers walked over to the closer sign and fingered the padlocked access panel. “I think we’ll need the bolt cutters again.”

  “Look through the keys in that lock box in the office first,” she suggested. “I would like to lock these back up after you program them. Keep anyone from fucking with them too much.”

  Meanwhile, Gia and Nick started loading everything he’d need to blow the 5 into a DOT van.

  “You want to take all of it?” he asked.

  “Yep. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,” she said. “I want to send a discouraging message to anyone who wants to try to make their way to Santa Clarita. I know we won’t stop everyone. I want to divert the majority of them.”

  Her plan was to hopefully blow the road in two places, both at the Y where 5 and 14 split, and just south of there, where the 210 dumped into them. And she wanted to do it as quickly as possible, before traffic got too heavy and her minuscule force would be overwhelmed trying to shut things down.

  By the time they were loaded a little before eight, Gia had gotten on the radio and ordered ten more patrol units down to the junction to help the deputies already there divert traffic before it could build. She sent the four weekend warriors—who were now driving DOT vehicles towing the programmable signs, the front loader, and another loaded trailer—down to barricade the road.

  With Nick Edison following her and driving the van full of explosives, she headed back toward the station. He would need more guys to help him set up the explosives, and they’d definitely need the help with crowd control. Fortunately, all the Guardsmen had been sent with full arms and plenty of ammunition if they needed to do extreme crowd control.

  She hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she wouldn’t discount it as a last resort if things got ugly.

  The officers on the scene at the junction had relayed that traffic was still light, making Gia breathe a sigh of relief.

  “Get it buttoned up tight,” she told the deputy who’d reported in. “You’ve got additional resources on the way.”

  “What about secondary roads?”

  “Can’t worry about those right now. I want to close down the fire hydrant flooding us before I worry about the sprinklers.”

  “Roger, Chief.”

  She hung up the mic in her vehicle, another shiver running through her. She’d never had aspirations to be “in charge.” Accept additional responsibilities as part of her job in the normal course of her duties?

  Sure, no problem.

  Be the head honcho?

  Hadn’t blipped her radar. She just wanted pay, health bennies, and a guaranteed pension.

  Now the irony was she’d advanced to the head of the organizational food chain, and was guaranteed none of those things.

  Before they reached the station, she tried Dave’s cell again. She knew she didn’t need to, but it didn’t hurt. When a terrified-sounding woman answered, it startled Gia.

  “Hello?”

  “Who is this?” Gia asked.

  “Linda.”

  Oh, yeah. The girlfriend. “Is Dave there? This is Gia. His ex-wife.”

  “We’re at the garage. He’s working on a bus with another guy, trying to get it running. There’s a bunch of us here, families, waiting. It’s the only one left and it’s broke down.”

  Shit.

  Gia waited for the station’s automatic outer gate to roll open and admit her and Nick. “You guys aren’t out of the city yet?”

  “We’re trying. As soon as they get it running, we’re all going to leave together.” The poor woman sounded terrified. The cop in Gia felt sorry for her while the wounded ex-wife tried not to gloat.

  “How bad is it where you are?” She drove through and waited for the next gate that would lead them to the safety of the enclosed garage.

  “It’s…” She sobbed. “I saw a woman get eaten yesterday! What the hell is wrong with people?”

  Gia impatiently waited for the gate to open in front of them. “Look, stay away from others. When you guys get on the bus, tell Dave to floor it and do not stop for anyone, understand? Keep moving. And head south or west.”

  “We’re going to Barstow. They’re telling everyone to go to Barstow. We heard they’re using the railroad to send people to safety.”

  “No. Head south. Go to San Diego. Or head out to Oxnard and north, but do not under any circumstances go to Barstow!”

  “Wait,” she sniffled, “tell Dave.”

  There was a moment of silence before her ex came on the line. “Hello?”

  She girded her stomach and plunged in. “Dave, it’s Gia. Look—”

  “I don’t have time for you right now. We’ve got a problem.”

  “I know, she told me. Don’t go to Barstow.”

  “Why not?”
<
br />   “Just…don’t. It’s going to get really bad.”

  He snorted. “It’s already really fucking bad.”

  “Seriously, go south or west, but whatever you do, do not go east.”

  “Look, I think the National Guard knows what the fuck they’re talking about. We got families, women, children we have to take care of. South is a fucking war zone.”

  She couldn’t believe she’d ever loved him, or thought he loved her. “Dave, I’m telling you, Barstow is the worst place to go. The road to Santa Clarita is closed. Well, will be closed. If you can’t go south, head toward the coast, then, and go north from Ventura. Please, don’t take them to Barstow.”

  “They got a tent city set up and everything for people to wait until they’re sent out by rail. It’s supposed to be safe. Why else would they be sending people there?”

  “It won’t be safe for long, they’re—”

  “I don’t have time for this. I gotta go. Have a good life, Gia.”

  The line went dead.

  She stared at the phone before dropping it into the passenger seat.

  Alrighty, then.

  She couldn’t say she didn’t try. If there was one unfortunate truth she’d learned from her years in law enforcement, it was that you couldn’t save everyone, and you shouldn’t waste you resources trying to save the stubborn few who refused to listen to reason and common sense. You had to save the many, as best you could.

  And that was what she’d try her damnedest to do now.

  Chapter Eight

  After they got the van full of explosives safely secured inside the garage, Gia let Nick Edison gather the remainder of his troops and give them the update on the plans to blow the freeway. Meanwhile, Gia needed to log back into the system and see if there were any updates about the situation in the valley basin.

  Nothing, other than individual stations reporting in. Two more had come back online, but it looked like, based on their local situations, that it would only be temporary. They were directing all survivors to evacuate the city and head toward Barstow, as per the National Guard’s orders.

  Gia minimized that screen and pulled up the county’s emergency management handbook for their station, tailored to their needs, as well as listing large-scale incident contingencies.

  After a few minutes of searching, her memory had been proven correct. Nowhere in the plans did she find any mention of large-scale evacs to Barstow. Even when the earthquake that had dropped part of the coastline into the Pacific Ocean hit a few decades earlier, the county had instructed people to shelter in place if safe to do so, and evacuated others to Red Cross shelters set up farther inland, like in Yorba Linda and Ontario.

  But Barstow?

  There weren’t enough services there to support that kind of population. Even at its largest, it never grew past fifty thousand residents, that Gia was aware of, before the various pandemics hit. Its claim to fame was as a rail yard for the valley area. There were maybe three thousand residents now, tops.

  After checking in with her deputies that the highway closure was in effect and seemed to be working, she ordered some of the National Guard guys back to the DOT work yard to load another flatbed trailer there with concrete barriers, and any other barricades, barrels, and other traffic-diversion devices they could grab. Then they were to return to the check point and use them to reinforce the traffic blockade before checking in with the station to get their next orders.

  While they were off doing that, Gia quickly drove over to the medical center and was able to get right in to see the harried chief of staff. After telling him the facts of life and suggesting he evacuate everyone ASAP, she returned to the station just in time to see one of her deputies dragging a drunk guy out of the back of his patrol car.

  When the moaning guy hit the pavement like a downer cow, his hands cuffed behind his back, Gia walked over to help. “Why are we arresting a drunk?”

  The deputy straightened, and she spotted the sweat pouring down his face. “Because he was standing outside his ex-wife’s house with a gun in one hand and a beer in the other and swearing he was going to fucking kill her. I tasered his ass. Like to never got him in the fucking car.”

  “Ah.” She nudged the guy with her foot. “I’m guessing the ex-wife had something to say to the contrary about his plans.”

  “Yeah. She’s in the process of packing up herself, her kids, and her parents, and heading to a relative’s house in Bakersfield. She said they’d be gone by this afternoon. So I told her we’ll keep him locked up until four. If she’s not gone by then, that’s her problem.”

  “He should be sober by then. What’d you do with his gun?”

  “Gave it to his ex-wife. She’s former military. No other weapons on him, just his keys and his wallet.”

  “Good move. Well, grab an arm.”

  Together, the two of them dragged the man into one of the six holding cells, the farthest one down the hall, left him lying facedown on the floor, and uncuffed him.

  “We going to fingerprint him?” the deputy asked.

  “Not on your life.” They walked out and she closed and locked the cell door behind them. “Not even going to take down his name. Far as I’m concerned, he wasn’t here. If he’s not awake and sober by four, we’ll dump him outside the gate in a shady spot and he can keep sleeping it off.”

  “Sounds good to me.” The deputy headed back out on patrol.

  Gia tried calling the mayor’s office, home, cell, and sat-phone numbers, but got no answer. She’d driven by city hall after leaving the hospital, and had found it battened up tight and empty.

  Fuck.

  Even trying to get the city manager and the city’s emergency operations chief on the phone proved useless. Ditto other city officials.

  Must be nice to bail on your constituents.

  Sharon’s daytime counterpart, Louanne, waved Gia over to the main desk when she walked to the lobby to check on things there. “Have you seen this?”

  Louanne pointed to a video playing on her computer. There wasn’t any network logo or other identifying information, just a time and date stamp. It looked like it was shot from a helo, showing thousands of desperate people trying to climb onto a few National Guard trucks. Then the camera panned and in the distance showed a mob heading toward the trucks.

  Only in this mob were people who couldn’t be anything but Kiters, from the way they were attacking people trying to outrun them, and ripping anyone they caught limb from limb. A few National Guardsmen and deputies were trying to shoot them down, but they were also hitting victims, and more Kiters would rush forward and take their places.

  “Where’s that from?” Gia asked, feeling more than a little sick to her stomach.

  “Gardena. Shot late yesterday from a LASD chopper. It was uploaded to the server this morning.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah. No offense, Chief? I’m not coming back tomorrow. My husband’s home right now with the kids and getting them and everything else packed up, but we’re pulling out as soon as I get off shift. Sooo…” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay. I get it. The rest of us won’t be too far behind you. Just remember, head north.”

  “No shit.” She smiled. “Been nice working with you, Gia.”

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  * * * *

  It was a little before eleven in the morning. Gia prepared to rally her group of guardsmen to go blow the 5 when she received a call on the radio from one of her deputies still guarding the highway.

  “Chief, we got a problem. A couple of pickup trucks full of troublemakers headed north on The Old Road. They turned around before they got to us and detoured off the 210 onto land roads. We weren’t about to try to go stop them. They outnumbered us. Maybe twenty of them.”

  Dammit. “Okay, I’ll get people looking for them. Make an announcement, a BOLO, about what they were driving and how many, all that. We’ll see if we can stop their asses before they get too far into town.�
��

  Ordering the two ROTC kids to remain at the garage to stand armed guard over the van full of explosives, Gia led the way in her marked SUV, with two National Guard trucks following her. She also had Nick and a couple of the guardsmen driving marked patrol cars.

  One of her other deputies reported in. “I’m heading south on Sierra. No sign of them heading my way.”

  “Someone head south on the 5, make sure they didn’t break through the fence somewhere and go that way.”

  Another officer responded. “Roger. Unit 29 on it.”

  “Thanks.”

  Adrenaline pumping, she floored it, blowing through dark traffic signals with her lights flashing and siren wailing despite the lack of traffic on the streets of Santa Clarita. Another thought hit her that she should have Nick Edison save enough explosives to blow the 5 overpass that crossed The Old Road. Anyone coming north on The Old Road would be SOL at that point.

  Couldn’t hurt.

  Anything that slowed down people moving into Santa Clarita was a good thing in her book. But right now, she had to focus on the trouble in front of her. If this was the start of their crisis, she had news for the assholes.

  She would be putting a damn stop to it right there.

  Chapter Nine

  The two vehicles made it through Sylmar a little after eleven. Omega wished his unease would let up, since they’d had no troubling incidents during their recon mission so far.

  Hell, they’d barely seen anyone on the land roads.

  “Looks like they’ve closed the 5 north,” Sparky said as he peered through binoculars at a computerized road sign up on the 5. “Routing traffic from the 210 south on the 5.”

  “I wonder if that’s because the road is damaged,” Omega said.

  Sparky snorted. “Not likely. We haven’t seen any overpass damage this far north. It would be weird. My bet is either the city or the military closed it to keep people from stampeding through Santa Clarita.”

  “Which way?” Omega asked him.

  “We’re going to take The Old Road,” Sparky said. “5 parallels it.”