No Sanctuary Box Set: The No Sanctuary Omnibus - Books 1-6

by Mike Kraus

  The alley is dark and hot even though the late afternoon sun is hidden behind the tall buildings. Dust swirls in the air as a warm breeze rushes down between the buildings. The woman pulls her shemagh up to cover her mouth and nose and squints, not wanting to put on sunglasses due to the low light in the alley.

  She steps lightly on the uneven stones, brushing her gloved hand against the side of the nearest building. The first building on her right in the alley is new but the second and third are not. The first is made from steel and concrete but the others are made out of adobe bricks. She stops partway down the alley and pauses with her hand on a wall, staring at the ground. A dumpster that once sat in the alley years ago is no longer there but she remembers the spot nonetheless.

  The pattern of bricks on the wall from when her face was pressed against them. The long scars from where the buckles on her uniform scraped as she took cover behind the dumpster. The smooth spot where she knelt as she waited for death’s embrace.

  Linda traces the line of one of the scars on the brick with a finger before the distant shout of a man talking to someone jolts her back to the present. She moves on, eyes flicking to the left and right as she traces the backward journey of her steps from years past. She walks another twenty meters down the alley and stops to look at a building to her left. The house has been completely renovated. It looks like nothing she remembers but it is the right house.

  “Hello?” Linda speaks in Persian as she knocks on the door and looks through the open window. A child appears at the window and responds with a snaggle-toothed smile.

  “Hello! Who are you?”

  Linda lowers her shemagh and smiles at the child. “I’m a visitor. Is your mother or father home?”

  The child looks behind her as a woman walks into the room. She wears a head covering and long robes and her face is plain with a quizzical expression. She takes her daughter by the shoulders and speaks.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m a visitor. Do you have something to drink?”

  The woman nods and opens the door, looking both ways down the alley before stepping to the side. “Please, come in.” Linda enters the house and the woman beckons for her to follow. “Come. This way.”

  “Thank you.”

  Linda studies the interior of the house carefully as she walks through, noting with grim satisfaction that it is, indeed, the same building she remembers. There have been extensive repairs and renovations and changes to the inside and outside but there is no question about which building it is.

  The woman retrieves a jug of water and pours it into a simple cup on the table. She sits down at the table and holds her daughter in her lap while Linda sits down on the opposite end and drinks deeply of the cool liquid.

  “What are you doing here?” The woman asks, not sure if Linda knows enough of the language to converse fluently.

  “I was here once, years ago, and wanted to visit again. I remember there being a small park near here and I hoped to see it. Do you know the place?”

  The woman nods. “I can take you there if you’d like.”

  Linda smiles. “If you can just tell me the way I’ll find my way there.”

  The woman gives Linda directions and they speak for a few moments longer. Linda remains coy about her reasons for being in the country and the woman does not press her for details. Visitors are rare in the area and the woman is fascinated by every piece of information that Linda provides. When their conversation is done the small girl jumps off of her mother’s lap and runs to open the front door. Linda reaches into her pocket and pulls out a packet of chewing gum she had been saving and hands it to the girl.

  “Thank you for your kindness. Be sure to share these with your mother?”

  The little girl beams at the treat and proudly displays the gum to her mother. The woman smiles and nods in appreciation to Linda. “Thank you!”

  Linda smiles back and speaks to the girl’s mother. “No, thank you. I appreciate your kindness.”

  The woman and her daughter watch as the mysterious stranger leaves as quickly as she arrived. The little girl looks up at her mother with a questioning expression. “Who was she, mama?”

  The girl’s mother watches the stranger disappear down the street and closes the front door. “Someone very sad. Someone very, very sad.”

  Chapter 6

  The four-hour drive under normal conditions stretched into twelve hours due to various delays and it was the late evening before Frank and Linda began nearing the capital. While the cities and towns they passed by were all dark, as they approached Washington Frank could see that there was a glow on the horizon that grew brighter the closer they got.

  “Are those lights?” Frank squinted at the tree line and rubbed one eye.

  “Sure looks that way.” Linda adjusted her grip on the steering wheel as she turned off of the road onto the shoulder. Sitting atop a hill far outside town Linda parked the Humvee and switched off the engine. She got out first, taking her rifle with her, and climbed up on top of the roof of the vehicle for a better view.

  “What can you see?” Frank stood below, watching as she scanned the area with her rifle scope to see what the situation was like.

  “Huh.” Linda muttered to herself as she took in the sight below. From their position north of the Potomac River she could see that most of Washington, Langley and a good portion of Arlington were bathed in the warm yellow glow of artificial lighting. The area aglow was roughly seventy square miles and covered most of the main government buildings as well as huge swaths of residential areas and undeveloped land on both sides of the river.

  As Linda examined the edges of the areas with power compared to those without she realized that electricity wasn’t the only thing that set the area apart. The sections of the cities that had power were mostly ringed by roads and highways that formed natural barriers between the areas. Light armor and foot patrols were clearly visible along the roads, along with the construction of guard towers that stood twenty feet high and were equipped with spotlights and cameras.

  In areas with open fields, residential homes or places where there were no roads to separate the lit from the unlit sections, fifteen-foot high barriers were actively being pushed into place. While the barriers were largely unfinished there were enough boots on the ground from local, state and federal law enforcement—as well as from the Army—that Linda could see what they were doing quite plainly.

  “They’re setting up a survivor city.”

  “What?” Frank scrunched his eyebrows in curiosity and confusion. “What’s a survivor city?”

  Linda didn’t look away from her scope as she replied. “They’re setting up a perimeter around Washington and half of Arlington. It’s a huge area of land they’re cordoning off.”

  “Wait, they’re surrounding the capital? Like with Pittsburgh?”

  So caught up in what she was doing, Linda didn’t hear Frank’s question. After she had examined the edge of the region with power she turned her attention into the heart of the area. As she watched she saw covered vehicles traversing the streets, stopping in front of houses and offloading crates of supplies. Residents of the houses collected the contents of the crates and took them into their homes under the watchful eye of police officers that looked like they were deployed on every street corner.

  In some of the homes that were on the northern side of the river and close enough to see inside Linda could make out the shapes of people milling about. Some looked like they were eating dinner, others were sitting and talking around their tables and some were even watching their televisions.

  “Linda?” Frank climbed up on the Humvee and stood next to her, squinting as he looked out over the city. “Are they doing what they did in Pittsburgh?”

  Linda shook her head. “No, this is different. This is definitely a survivor city.” She lowered her rifle and sat down on the hood of the vehicle.

  Frank sat down next to her and poked her in the arm with a finger. “What’s a
survivor city and why are you so distracted by it?”

  “Hm?” Lost in thought again, Linda turned to Frank as she processed his question. “Oh. Right. Sorry. I learned about them years ago, part of basic training. It was a relatively new concept they were teaching everyone. Biological warfare was on the rise and they figured that it was only a matter of time before something—either man-made or natural—swept across the country. So some egghead in a lab came up with the idea of survivor cities.”

  “So they’re refugee camps?”

  “Sort of. Not really.” Linda raised her rifle again to look at a long line of vehicles waiting at a makeshift gate that had been set up on one of the highways. “There are a couple dozen sites in the country that were designated as survivor cities. If a national disaster ever occurred that shut down the power grid or disrupted our transportation systems the plan was to pull people from other areas of the country into the survivor cities. That would make it easier to take care of people by limiting the distance supplies and such would have to be distributed.”

  “I’m surprised they still have power.”

  Linda shrugged. “Probably part of the emergency protocols. If they have that many vehicles, up, though, then I bet they’re starting to relax the requirements around checking every nut and bolt before they’re allowed out.” Linda frowned as she watched the activity below. “This is really odd, though. It doesn’t look like they were hit by the virus. I’m seeing biological scanning equipment around the perimeter where they’re screening people coming in but that’s it. No body bags, nobody in isolation suits and no signs that anything’s wrong.” She lowered the rifle and cocked her head to the side. “Why the hell would Omar hit a place like Pittsburgh with a virus but not hit the capital?”

  “That does seem weird. Do you think they were supposed to get hit by it but didn’t because something went wrong with the attack?”

  “I have no idea. This would probably make a lot more sense if I knew which cities were targeted and which weren’t.”

  Frank reached for Linda’s rifle and he looked at the area through the scope as well. “So where are we going?”

  “See the curve in the river, over there? That big building’s the CIA headquarters. Just a bit upriver from there is a small complex with a brick building. That’s where we have to go.”

  Frank zeroed in on the area and nodded. “Looks easy enough. It’s close, too. Can we just drive in?”

  Linda chuckled as she hopped off the hood of the car. “No way.”

  “Why not? They’ve got that road open into the city and it looks like they’re letting people through, right?”

  “We’re not going through the checkpoint.”

  “Why not?”

  Linda crossed her arms and shook her head as she looked at Frank. “Look at what you’re sitting on. Do you really think that a couple of random people in a military vehicle are going to just drive through the gate? They’ll be all over us before we get within half a mile of the place wanting to know where we got it, where we’ve been and where we’re going. And—assuming they don’t shoot us on sight for suspicion of stealing military hardware—I somehow doubt they’ll be enamored with us for wanting to visit the Central Intelligence Agency in the middle of a national disaster.”

  Frank’s shoulder’s slumped farther and farther throughout Linda’s rant. When she finished he slid off of the car and handed her rifle back to her. “All right, fine. So what’s your plan?”

  Linda’s eyes sparkled as she grinned. “We sneak in.”

  ***

  “Are you freaking insane?” Frank hissed under his breath to Linda as they crouched together behind a row of hedges. Twenty minutes prior they had parked the Humvee behind a house in a residential neighborhood half a mile from the edge of the perimeter. Linda’s insistence that they sneak into the city past the patrols rather than simply going in with everyone else didn’t sit well with Frank mostly because he figured the consequences for being caught sneaking in would be far worse.

  “Keep quiet and be still!” Linda was at the end of the row, peeking around the corner. A patrol consisting of one LAV and a pair of Humvees was rolling slowly down the street. One soldier was atop the LAV swinging a spotlight back and forth while the Humvees each had a soldier atop them with handheld flashlights.

  “As soon as these guys pass we’ll make a run across the road, okay?”

  Frank closed his eyes and suppressed a groan. “Where are we going after that?”

  “There’s a white two-story house with blue trim. We’ll head around that, through the gate on the side and into the backyard. From there we’ll wait for the patrol to round the next corner before continuing on.”

  Frank crawled up next to Linda and looked out across the street to see the house she was talking about. “Got it. I’ll follow your lead.”

  The next few minutes went by with agonizing slowness as they waited for the patrol to continue on out of sight. During their walk from where they stashed the Humvee down to the neighborhood where they were hiding Linda had assured Frank that sneaking in was the best possible choice they could make.

  Getting caught sneaking in would likely result in them being taken to an intake center where they would be delayed with biological scans before being released with a slap on the wrist. Because they weren’t carrying any heavy weapons or illegal materials on them they would be much less likely to be thrown into a holding cell or—at worst—shot than they would if they drove in. Frank still didn’t buy her explanation but her military experience outweighed his protests so he followed behind, doing his best to help keep them both safe.

  Crouched behind Linda, Frank noticed her shifting uncomfortably as she rubbed her injured leg. He tapped her on the shoulder and whispered to her. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She nodded. “Stop worrying about it.”

  Frank had asked her the question repeatedly as he noticed her having trouble working the pedals in the Humvee and while they were walking but her answer was the same each time. “I’m fine. Stop worrying about it.” The relative severity of the injury was still fresh in his mind and she hadn’t let him take a look at it since they had linked back up together outside of Pittsburgh.

  “You should really let me take a look at it and redress the bandages.” Frank whispered again, pushing back against her protests.

  “Frank.” Linda glared at him. “It’s fine. Drop it, okay?” Frank shook his head and sighed as he sat cross-legged on the ground next to her. A moment later she stood up and motioned at him. “Get ready. They’re almost far enough away.”

  Frank stood next to Linda and watched the patrol as they made the turn at the end of the street. Linda took off without a word, moving across the front yard of the house they had been hiding near. Frank followed her, ready to reach out and help if she looked like she was going to fall. On the other side of the street Frank reached out and opened the gate to the backyard she was going for, then closed it once both of them were inside the wooden fence.

  The house next to them was abandoned like many of the others in the neighborhood as many of the residents had died or gone elsewhere in the first few days after the attacks. Based on looking at the contents of the backyard and house, though, Frank couldn’t tell that anything was amiss. A swing set and small wooden castle sat on freshly mown grass while a patio set with large cushions and a round glass table sat on the back porch.

  Frank peeked inside a window as they walked through the yard, noticing that the interior of the house looked lived in but not damaged in any noticeable way. Linda was at the rear of the yard, standing next to the fence with her head tilted by the time he caught up to her.

  “Hey.” Frank whispered to her as he looked back at the house. “This place looks like there are still people living here.”

  Linda shook her head. “Nope.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There was a sticker on the front door. Green for occupied, purple for unoccupied and red for u
ninhabitable. This one has a purple tag.”

  “I guess we shouldn’t turn on the lights, huh?”

  Linda rolled her eyes. “Not the best idea, no.” She stretched up to see over the fence and immediately grunted in pain before grabbing onto the fence to steady herself.

  “Okay, seriously?” Frank grabbed Linda’s arm. “You need to stop and let me take a look at that leg.”

  “I’m fine, Frank, really.”

  “No you’re not. Stop trying to hide it and let me take a look and help, okay?”

  Linda slid slowly to the ground, gritting her teeth from the pain. Frank took a look at her leg and noticed a dark red stain that hadn’t been there earlier in the day. “Hell’s bells, Linda. It’s bleeding again. When were you going to tell me this?”

  Linda shrugged. “It’s not a big deal. Besides, we have more important things to worry about.”

  “No, actually we don’t. Not right now.”

  “Frank—”

  “No, don’t you try and argue with me. We’ve been going all day. It’s time to stop for a while and gather our strength before we continue. It’s only one in the morning. We can get inside the house, get some food, get your leg cleaned up and have a few hours of rest and leave before sunrise, okay?”

  Linda looked for a moment like she was going to argue with Frank but in the end she sighed and nodded. “Fine. Help me up and let’s get inside. We’ll need to find someplace away from the windows if we’re going to have our lights on, though.” Frank nodded and helped Linda to her feet before the pair headed to the back door of the house. Linda was ready to break the glass when Frank reached out and twisted the knob to find it already unlocked.

  “In we go.” Frank helped Linda inside where she made a beeline for a nearby couch and threw her backpack down before flopping down on it.

  “Can you check the house?” Frank already had his pistol out and was taking off his backpack in preparation to sweep the house when Linda posed the question.