Breakdown: Season One

by Jordon Quattlebaum

  Thom spoke first, confusion painting his face.

  “Guillermo, thank you. I guess I’m just a little confused, though. I didn’t think money would be much good in a situation like the one we’re facing now.”

  Guillermo shared a knowing glance with Herbie, and the old men both smiled.

  “Thom,” Herbie said, “I’m guessing these dimes are older than you are, so your ignorance here is excused. Dimes now are made from a copper and nickel. It wasn’t always the case, though. Used to be they were mostly silver.”

  Guillermo nodded. “These rolls contain dimes that are 90% silver by weight. Under the current circumstances, I’d venture they’re worth about 20 times face value. Maybe more if you’re trading with the right person.” He let that sink in for a minute before he continued. “I’d save them for a while. It will be a bit before people see beyond their face value.”

  He reached into his pocket and fished some keys out, dropping them onto the pile of silver on the table.

  Thom gaped.

  “My old Westfalia may still run. It beats riding that tandem bike halfway across the state.”

  Thom nodded and reached across to take Guillermo’s hand and shake it.

  “Thank you, Guillermo. You have no idea the gift you’ve just given me. The hope of seeing my daughter alive in just a few hours.”

  Guillermo’s eyes seemed to tear up a bit, and his wife arrived just in time to spare him the embarrassment a man of his generation might feel with tears.

  “It’s our pleasure, gentlemen. Rosa and I have seen what situations like this can do. Be one of the good guys, eh? Get our Anna to safety.”

  Thom and Herbie both nodded as they rose from the table. Rosa brought them sandwiches she’d packed into plastic baggies – leftover smoked meat from the party – and kissed them each on the cheek.

  “God bless and God speed, my friends,” Rosa whispered to each man as she bid him farewell.

  “Say hello to Sarah for me, Guillermo,” Thom said, with more than a hint of grief straining his voice.

  “I will, Thomas. I promise I will,” Guillermo replied, turning his back on his guests. A tear had finally betrayed him.

  …

  Thom and Herbie stopped and unfolded the map, Herbie flicking open his Zippo lighter to give them a little light.

  “We’re going to want to avoid going through the city tonight,” Thom said.

  “Absolutely correct. My advice is that we add a little distance to our trip and make an effort to avoid as much of Interstate 70 as possible. That’s going to turn into a bad stretch of road here in the next few days, if it hasn’t already.”

  Thom nodded. “What’s your suggestion, Herbie?”

  “I’d actually go north and east a bit, and then follow this road to Lexington. We cross the river there, take Highway 65 to Marshall, and then get on 70 for the last leg, just before we cross the river again.”

  “I think that’ll work.”

  “Well then, let’s get going,” Herbie said, reaching for the keys.

  “You know how to drive this thing?”

  Herbie laughed. “Son, you forget when I grew up. Yeah, I can drive it. Besides, I just had a nice little catnap on your couch. You still need a rest. You aren’t doing me any good being exhausted. You’ll get sloppy and get one or both of us hurt.”

  “Point taken. Sorry, I just have sort of a…thing with cars.”

  Thom tossed Herbie the keys, and he started the 4-cylinder engine.

  “Off to the races,” he grinned.

  Chapter 5 – Loot, Scoot, and Hope They Don’t Shoot

  Matt, Sephi, and Anna piled into the truck and headed out into the neighborhood. Night had finally started to fall, but Matt insisted on driving with the headlights off.

  “The noise will give us enough unwanted attention without the lights. Trust me, it’s better this way. We’ll just drive slowly.”

  The girls nodded. It made sense.

  Anna made a mental map as they drove. If something happened, she wanted to be able to get them home. She knew how to drive well enough but had never driven a stick shift. The only car they’d had that had a manual transmission was the one her parents were driving when the accident happened. Even if his commuter car had been a stick, she didn’t think her dad would have wanted to spend the time teaching her. She knew driving still freaked him out, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

  It took a couple of minutes, but when they stopped, Anna noted that they were at the elementary school they’d passed earlier in the day.

  Matt parked at the side entrance of the school, against a loading dock, and it was no surprise to Anna that a mischievous grin painted his face.

  He rummaged through the toolbox in the back of his truck and came out with a tire iron/crowbar combo. Seeing that the girls were watching him, he placed a finger to his lips, signaling quiet, and popped the lock on the cargo door.

  Sephi rolled the door open, and Matt lifted his shirt to retrieve a pistol he’d holstered in his waistband. The girls looked at him strangely, and then Sephi spoke up.

  “Why do you have that, Matt? It’s an elementary school!”

  “Matt, what in the heck are we doing breaking in to an elementary school? You need to stock up on pencils and paper or something?” Anna asked, obviously uncomfortable.

  “We need food, Anna. We’ve got maybe a week’s worth. What happens then?”

  Sephi frowned.

  “He’s right, Anna. I don’t like it either, but it’s not like the three or four hundred kids are going to show up tomorrow for class and eat it. It would just sit here until someone else came for it.”

  Anna shook her head. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right.”

  Matt grinned. “My mom used to be a lunch lady at the middle school I went to back home.”

  Sephi laughed. “Bet that made life easy.”

  “Don’t get me started,” Matt warned. “Anyway, they typically get deliveries at the beginning of the week. It’s enough food to feed 400 or so kids for a week. Half of that’s typically canned food and dry goods, depending on how ritzy the neighborhood is. The rest is fresh produce and frozen stuff. Some of the produce will still be all right for a couple more days. Frozen stuff we should just forget about. Not worth getting sick over.”

  Anna nodded and did some quick math. “If they just got the shipment, we’ve got about six months of food here for the seven of us.” She couldn’t help but smile. In this scary new world, they now had one less problem to worry about.

  Matt nodded in agreement. “Between that and the small game I hope to catch, we should be good until our first harvest comes in.”

  “Harvest?” Sephi asked. “You really think this will go on that long?”

  Matt shrugged. “Better that we’re ready if it does.”

  The girls nodded in unison.

  “Now, careful in there. Be quick. I’m giving us 20 minutes here to grab as much as we can before we need to get out,” Matt said.

  “You’re not coming in with us?” Anna asked.

  “Someone needs to watch the truck. Unless one of you would rather stay out here?”

  They shook their heads in response. “We’ll get things loaded. Just cover us,” Anna added.

  “Anna, are you sure we can do this?” Sephi asked tentatively.

  “No other choice right now, Sephi. We do this, or we come back in a week after we’ve run out of food and hope that no one’s looted it before then.”

  They heard something then that sound like distant fireworks.

  “Gunfire,” Matt confirmed. “Tonight’s going to be a doozy. Best we get this show on the road, pretty ladies.”

  The girls harrumphed and headed into the school, leaving Matt ob
livious and confused.

  “All I did was call ’em pretty,” he thought to himself. “I’ll never understand women.”

  …

  Anna and Sephi stepped into the darkness of the elementary school kitchen. The first thing they noticed was the now-familiar smell of rotting food. The smell grew even stronger when Sephi decided it was a good idea to open the walk-in freezer to see if anything was salvageable. The wave of rot hit them and doubled them over. Anna retched into a nearby trashcan.

  “Close the door!” she cried.

  Sephi promptly complied, resting her back against the door, as if to hold the smell at bay. She slid down to sit on the floor.

  “That was nasty.”

  “Beyond nasty,” Anna agreed.

  The girls shared a laugh and grinned before getting up again. There was a freezer unit at the front of the kitchen, the kind used to hold little half-pint milks and juices. Anna decided to take a chance and open it up. A wave of cool air met her, and she smiled once more. She reached in, grabbing a chocolate milk that was still cool to the touch, and popped it open, drinking deeply. After a few frantic gulps, the little cardboard container was empty. She burped loudly, and then put both hands over her mouth in surprise. Sephi laughed uproariously.

  “Chocolate! I want some!”

  Anna tossed her new friend a chocolate milk and opened another one for herself.

  “To surviving the end of the world,” Anna said.

  “To never taking finals again,” Sephi beamed as they clinked cardboard cartons and drank.

  “Last chance we’ll get to have one of these for a while, I’m guessing,” Anna said.

  Sephi nodded. “Should we bring a couple to Matt?”

  “Nah,” Anna grinned. “Maybe on the way out.”

  Anna walked over to lend Sephi a hand in standing up. “Come on,” she said, pulling her friend to her feet, “we need to get started.” She nodded her head toward the last closed door. “Guessing that’s the dry goods storage room where they keep the pasta, rice, flour, and canned goods. You ready?”

  Sephi nodded, opened the door, and screamed.

  Chapter 6 – The Second Night

  Gunshots. John Willis snapped out of a deep sleep and bolted for the door, eager to help. At least, he tried to bolt for the door. In reality, John swung his feet off of the couch to the floor, and a jolt of sharp, electric pain cut through his hip. He fell to the ground, and there was a soft tinkling sound of metal on the hardwood floors. He grit his teeth in an effort not to cry out.

  “Damn,” he said. “Hurts.”

  Sprawling his hands out, he searched for whatever it was that had fallen with him, and after a few minutes of blindly searching, his hand brushed against the cold hard surface of his police badge. He gripped it tightly, for a moment, unable to do much else.

  “I’m still a cop. This is still our city,” he said, voice full of determination.

  “That’s why you’ll do your exercises and get better, John.” It was his wife, Talia. She must have woken up and come downstairs. “Until then, the world can wait. It has to. The others will keep an eye on the neighborhood until you’ve recovered.”

  Talia helped her husband back onto the bed and sat beside him for a long moment before placing her hands gently on his shoulders. She rubbed the tension from his muscles, gently massaging until he finally started to relax. He leaned over and kissed her neck.

  “Mommy?”

  John groaned.

  It was Juliana.

  “Some other night, tiger,” Talia promised.

  Juliana walked down the stairs, stuffed bear thumping unceremoniously behind her. She wrapped her arms around her father.

  “I love you, Daddy.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the knee. “All better,” she said.

  John laughed. “Not yet, sweet pea. But that sure helped my heart feel better.”

  The little girl beamed with pride. “When I get big, I’m going to be a nurse, just like Momma.”

  John smiled and wrapped his daughter in a bear hug. “You can do whatever you put your mind to. Just do it with all of your heart and work hard at it.” He gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek. “Now get back to bed, sweetie. Mommy will be up in a minute to tuck you back in.”

  “I love you, Daddy.”

  “Love you more, baby girl.”

  Juliana marched back upstairs, pausing halfway up.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweet pea?”

  “Nathan wants a cookie.” She grinned, knowing it was a longshot.

  John laughed. “Nathan told you that, did he? Well, Nathan will have to wait until the morning. Your momma will decide if you can have a cookie at breakfast.”

  Juliana grinned, heading upstairs, and Talia gave John a kiss on the forehead, easing him back onto the sofa bed in their living room. It was too hard on him to go up the stairs, so for the time being, the couch this is where he slept.

  He didn’t mind.

  “I need to go see what’s going on, Talia. Those were gunshots.”

  “I know, John. Be careful, and don’t hurt yourself. We need you.”

  John stood, carefully, slowly testing his weight on his injured hip. It held, with only a slight throb when he stepped. Talia had spared some of their prescription pain medication for his injury, and it took the edge off, at the expense of making his reaction time a little slower.

  “Take the cane, John,” Talia said, a warning clear in her voice. It was the tone he’d heard her use with unruly patients, and he wasn’t used to hearing it directed at him. All the same, he knew she was right, so he grabbed a black lacquered cane from a basket near the door that was usually reserved for holding umbrellas. He liked the cane. It had belonged to Talia’s father before he’d passed. The handle was carved into the shape of a dachshund, which always gave John a chuckle.

  He took a moment to buckle on his service holster, and then he headed out into the night.

  The difference between the feeling inside his home and the feeling on the streets was disturbingly clear. The air quality changed. His neighborhood had a plan in place for sewage and garbage, but most of the city didn’t. The smell of soot, sewage, and other refuse wasn’t subtle, but it wasn’t overpowering, thankfully, and after a few minutes of it, John hardly noticed anymore.

  He limped to the nearest guard post, about half a block away, and greeted the watchmen on duty.

  “Bill. Jeff.”

  Jeff, a tall, well-muscled man in his mid-twenties, answered back.

  “John. Come here and take cover. There’s a couple of guys out there at least taking potshots at us.”

  “What’s their game?”

  “Not sure,” Bill said. “Thinking they’re just feeling us out. Could be some looters who just wandered into the wrong part of town. Didn’t expect resistance.”

  “How’d it start?”

  “Well,” Jeff said, “Bill and I were just doing our job. Watching. A guy came up, and we asked him to stop and identify himself. We closed the gate about an hour before sundown, just like you asked, so he couldn’t come in.”

  John nodded. “Uh-huh. Then what?”

  “Well, he just stands there for a minute. We’re yelling at him, telling him to identify himself or turn around and head the other direction. All of the sudden a shot zips by so close the hairs on my neck were standing on end. Must have gone right over my shoulder. Anyway, the guy lifts his shirt at that point, he pulls a gun and starts firing on the run. I’m lucky Bill pulled me down. I was a sitting duck.”

  Bill popped up and fired off a handful of rounds in the direction of the attackers from his AR-15.

  “No problem, kid. Happens a lot the first time you get shot at. If you live, you get faster.”

  “Y
ou got numbers?” John asked

  “Thinking just two of them,” Bill said.

  John stopped to think. He could easily muster enough guns to take these guys out. He needed a plan, though. The last thing he wanted was to get someone killed by rushing into this.

  “Bill, have you got the radio we kept in that homemade faraday cage?”

  Bill laughed. “Faraday cage? You mean the trashcan?” he grinned. “Yeah, got my radio right here.”

  “Does it work?”

  Bill keyed the mic in response. Static greeted them.

  “Good. Who’s on watch on the south side?”

  “Pritchett and Leon.”

  “Call Leon over. Tell him to go back behind the Shipleys’ house. They’ve got a treehouse back there. Tell him to climb up and let us know what he sees.”

  Bill complied, and a few minutes later, Leon radioed.

  “I’ve got eyes on two. One in my crosshair. Go ahead to fire?”

  John sighed. He hated this. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded.

  “Go ahead, granted. Cleared to fire.”

  A single shot reverberated through the neighborhood.

  “Overwatch, this is Outpost 1 requesting a sitrep,” Bill radioed.

  “A what?”

  “Just tell us what happened, Leon.”

  “Oh. One bad guy down. Bad guy number two is running away now. Looks like there’s a third we’d missed. Running into an alley just up the street.”

  They heard the roar of a diesel engine a moment later, then the sound of squealing tires fading into the distance.