“Ooooohhhh, is that Uncle Dick?” I heard somebody say and then the slapping of footsteps.
Jamie backed up, scissors and comb in her hands held high as Mouse launched herself.
“Stop, you’ll get hair all over— “
The wind was almost knocked out of me as she landed in my lap heavily. My arms went out automatically to catch her from bouncing or falling off. Trust. Total unwavering trust. She knew I’d always catch her, even if it hurt. I hugged her tight.
“Uncle Dick, you're squishing my guts out,” she said.
I let her go and looked at her. Her café au lait colored skin was glowing and her eyes no longer looked bloodshot. Her fever had broken a couple days ago, and other than digestive issues from the diet and antibiotics, she was definitely healthier than she’d been a week ago.
“Maybe I just want to squish you one more time,” I told her, giving her one more hug till she pretended to gag, and then I let her go.
“So, you don’t want us crashing your party?” Jeremy asked as I put Mouse down on the floor.
“No, not at all. I’m going to be stirring up a hornet’s nest. Worst case scenario, I’ll have a hundred bad guys hunting me. I can’t do what I want to do if I’m worrying about you guys,” I told him truthfully.
“What about the car?” Danielle asked. “Don’t you need to know where it was?” Her voice was quiet.
“I do, but I don’t know if I’ll need to do that tonight. Here, let me show you what I was thinking,” I said standing and brushing the hair off of me.
I walked over to my spot, the hammock near the mez. I kept my big pack near there. In the front, in a large Ziploc bag, I kept my maps. I pulled out one of them and walked back over to the mez where everyone was waiting. The little kids paid us no mind. They were having battleship battles, rolling dice matching numbers and reading. Their quiet buzz almost drowned out the silence that settled in down here. Almost.
“Here’s the museum,” I said, pointing after I’d spread out the map.
“Yup,” Jeremy said.
“Here’s where you and I were at,” I pointed and they nodded. “You were in this building… so they drove towards the docks, yes?” I asked.
“Yeah…” Danielle said, her words trailing off as the confusion she was feeling became evident.
“Well, if they turned here, there’s only one or two places I think they could be going.”
“Wait, you’re going to that warehouse,” Jeremy said. “I drove by there once as a kid, it’s an industrial section of town. It’s a big open…”
“No, I’m not going there,” I lied. “I’m going to check it out as a potential. There’s also a meat processing plant. Big refrigerated sections, and here,” I said, pointing to another building to the north, “is one of the buildings next to the wharf. All could be potential areas where the big group is working out of.”
“Do they have a name?” Jamie asked. “You just say gang, group, shitheads, or assholes when you talk about them.”
Mel snickered and we all shared a grin.
“They call themselves the ‘Consortium’,” Danielle said, still grinning.
“Sounds scary,” Mel said.
“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like a gang to me.”
"It sounds more like a business than anything else to me," I told her.
"That's what that Larry guy was talking about, he said they were…" Her words trailed off as she was trying to find the right word, "almost like a Russian mob or something like that. It was really weird."
"Like the Russian mob?" I asked her smiling.
“That'll make life interesting," Jeremy said. "Are you sure that you don't want help?"
"No, I got this. I don't even know what the consortium looks like, where they operate exactly, or what all I’m going to be getting myself into tonight. If I get a chance to mess with them, I might, but I don't know. I just have a pretty good idea of what I want to do, where I need to go and how I'm going to accomplish it, and I can give you guys all the details. If you really want to help, can someone move the truck, so I can use it for a getaway?"
"Unless either of these kids knows how to drive a stick," Jamie said, "then I’ll do it if that's what you really need."
"Yeah, let me show you on the map where I want you to put it and take Jeremy with you. Wear some kind of bulky clothing, nothing loose or tight…" I told her.
14
I told them to hold off an hour before they moved the truck. I’d been moving slowly on foot through the tunnels until I was near the office building that we’d hidden out in earlier. I’d come up in an alleyway from a manhole cover not too far from there. My biggest concern during the early part of my plan was getting spotted by a roving patrol. Once I was topside, though, things seemed to get a lot easier for me. The sun was setting on the horizon, and the shadows were getting long and dark. In the distance, I could hear shouts coming from the direction of the museum. I didn't even want to think about what was causing that at this point.
Working my way down the dead, empty streets was something I didn't want to do. I felt very exposed topside, but I was loaded for bear tonight. I had my target .22 pistol and my .45 strapped to my side, along with my shotgun on the drop sling. All the extra weight might not even be needed, but I was hoping I could set things up to the point where I’d get to use a lot of it, get rid of some bad guys, get some details on the enemy they could be facing next, and then freeing some hostages.
My plan was simple. Good guys win, bad guys lose an eye. It almost sounded stupid, like it was really too simple. I kinda hoped it would be really simple. For some stupid reason, the men at the museum called themselves ‘the uptown boys’. When I’d still been working for the transit authority, I don't even think I’d ever heard of that gang. I knew a lot of things change and changed fast, but that was one thing I'd never paid attention to, even in my old life. I'd gotten the idea from the uptown boys, though…
They had a pickup truck parked out front of the museum that was just about the same color and the same year as the pickup truck from the turds at the bank. It was how the uptown boys had handled the other gang that really gave me the idea of doing what I was about to do. The uptown boys wouldn't mess with the consortium people, which made me think that they were either part of law enforcement, or military, or even private contractors. It sounded too professional, and they’d sounded too well armed.
I didn't want to pick a fight with the consortium directly, but maybe I could use one against the other. That was my plan. All I had to do was find the stupid fucks. That was how I found myself moving shadow to shadow, one spot of cover and concealment to the next. One thing that Danielle had explained to me, right before I’d left, was that hiding closer to the gang was actually safer - if you could keep yourself hidden. All the good and decent people moved away from them as fast as they could, as far as they could. So, the buildings I was passing should be rather empty or at least, not be full of people who would want to poke their noses in my business tonight.
That's why I only hesitated when I took shortcuts through the backs of buildings or in crossing a lobby through broken doors or windows, never moving openly or just walking straight down the middle of the street. That would've been inviting disaster. One of the other things I’d noticed about the uptown boys was that at some point, they'd spent some time clearing the streets around them. From a tactical standpoint that made sense, creating a clear field of vision. A clear field of fire, so you could see people coming and going, as long as you could look straight down the road.
It also made it bad because you could see them coming, and I didn't want to attract attention. There was still too much daylight left, and I had to move slower. It took me close to an hour and a half to make my way down to where the silver BMW had made its turn. I headed down that way towards the abandoned warehouse. I knew I’d lied to Jeremy about it, but I figured he knew I was lying, too. I really did not want him to join me on this trip. I knew that he
and Danielle were grown adults, but I hoped they understood that they could get me killed.
Like a lot of things in Chicago, the warehouse was dark, and most of the windows had been broken out. The only thing that stood out to me was the fact that there were lights moving around inside, and I could see a soft glow as if a lantern or a light had been hung near the ground. I was still too far away to make anything out, but I wanted to get a little height in order to see if I could look around and see if that's where the consortium was actually at.
I couldn't make out any vehicles parked around the warehouse, which in itself was suspicious. When the EMP had happened, everything modern and electronic had simply stopped. Sure, people rolled to a stop, but wherever they’d ended up was where their car stayed. Some people had probably tried to push their cars out of the middle of the road, but a lot of folks in Chicago had just left them where they were. Probably thought the government or the city would take care of the mess.
When they’d found out that no one was coming to help, the initial anger reaction had morphed into something more like fear. As if the gunshots and the fires weren't bad enough, then people had started preying on each other. Most people had taken what they wanted out of their stalled vehicles and left them where they were. They’d simply abandoned them. The parking lot of the warehouse was completely empty, and all of the spaces around the outside of the warehouse were empty, too.
It wasn't like the uptown boys’ side where the museum was at. The uptown boys had just pushed the cars off to the side of the road and had left them there, leaving the middle of the roadway open. Here, there was nothing. I got my binoculars out and started watching. A flicker of light, very small and not very bright in the growing darkness, alerted me to someone standing outside near one of the roll-up doors. I trained my binoculars over there and was rewarded with the sight of a glowing ember. The ember moved and I realized it was someone smoking a cigarette. It wasn't fully dark yet, but it would be soon.
When full dark finally did come, I decided I would move over there and get a better look for myself. I watched the guy smoking until the ember was thrown, sparks of illumination crushed out under a boot. Then, the figure started walking. I could just barely make out the movement from six blocks away, but if there’d been one of them, there would be more.
What I'd really hoped was that I’d have enough time to do it tonight. I'd never tried to take fifteen people, let alone two gangs, in one shot. I was about to get up and go when I heard a motor in the distance. I tensed, hoping against all hope that it wasn't the uptown boys making their delivery. That was one thing Danielle had never gotten out of Larry. When did they make their deliveries and where did they meet, exactly?
I listened even harder and then I saw the headlights make a turn far off down the road. It wasn’t car, it wasn’t truck, it was a semi. I couldn’t see the make or model, but it had to have been an old one.
"What the hell is this?" I said to no one quietly.
I'd been laying down so I wouldn't profile myself in the window, but I got to my hands and knees to make my way back out of the building I’d been hiding in. If I wanted information, I’d have to get a little bit closer.
My heart was racing. I had seen the semi-truck pull to a stop in front of the old warehouse and it backed into one of the open roll-up doors. It was almost fully dark and I knew that I wasn't as making as much noise as I thought. With the idling diesel and the noise of the roll-up door, their ears would probably be ringing a little bit in the now-silent world.
I tried to look at the warehouse without silhouetting myself in the semi's headlights. Lanterns had been hung or placed on the ground near the back of the truck, and people were getting in and out unloading things. I couldn't tell what it was, other than the fact that it was a lot of boxes and large paper sacks.
The quiet murmur of voices told me that there were quite a few people there, and I debated going in guns-a-blazing, but in the darkness, I wouldn’t know who was friend or foe. I didn't know what they’d done with the women and the children, so to do that, I could end up walking in and firing on innocents. No, I needed to be sure of my targets. I had to move closer. Then, I heard the crunch of boot steps coming up towards me. I looked to my left just as a figure stepped in front of the headlights of the semi truck and walked directly towards me.
His face looked… No, it wasn't messed up, and he wasn't wearing a mask per se, but as soon as he stepped into the headlights, he pushed the mask up so the NVGs wouldn't blind him.
"Who are you and what you doing here?" a man's voice growled with a slight Russian accent.
I considered using my .22, but it wasn't suppressed. It might be loud enough to be heard over the thrumming sound of the semi truck. Pretend I was one of the boys.
"Hey man, I'm Larry. I just came in to see if I could check out the merchandise."
"Who are you with? You're not one of ours."
“I’m with the crew at the Museum,” I lied. “Like I said, I’m just here to inspect the merchandise. We’ve got fifteen this time, so I want to make sure we’re not getting cheated.”
He moved closer, his gun up on me in an easy position. I tried to play it cool like I was used to having somebody point an automatic carbine at me. It looked like an H&K MP5, and with the calm confidence I could read in the man’s eyes, he wasn’t an amateur.
“Step back to the wall,” he said. “Keep your hands up where I can see them.”
He turned his head to the right to talk into a mic in the same instant that he stepped out of the semi’s lights. My old training kicked in and when he was close enough to me, before he spoke, I closed the last few feet separating us. He was half a heartbeat away from pulling the trigger when my fist connected with his windpipe. I slapped at the H&K with my left hand, expecting gunfire that would bring everybody running, but the man slowly dropped to his knees, clutching at his throat and making gagging sounds.
The H&K was on a drop sling like mine, but he was more worried about getting a breath in. It was unfortunate, only a trach would save him. I finished him off with a vicious twist and dragged his corpse further into the gloom. I wanted to strip his corpse of everything useful and valuable, it had almost become the standard, but I needed to move. I grabbed the NVG’s off his head and tucked them into the backpack I carried, and pulled some loose trash that was filling up the doorway of an adjacent building over him. If I had time, I would come back for the gun and supplies, but things were about to get busy.
A sudden revving of the semi’s motor had me turning. I hadn’t been in the light, but the man I’d killed had. Was this part of a normal patrol? If the truck pulled out the same way it had pulled in, I would be exposed… I had a half a second to decide and I grabbed a loose piece of cardboard and jumped down next to the corpse. The semi revved again and lurched forward, shifting gears as it slowly rolled out. The shouts from the warehouse behind it almost sounded like they were yelling ‘good luck’, but I couldn’t be sure. My blood was pumping too hard and my own heartbeat was deafening to me.
Lights washed over my hiding spot, blinding me and making me lose my night vision, and then they were gone. I tried to take a breath, but the anxiety and adrenaline had me so high and so jacked up that I couldn’t for a moment or two. I finally drew in a gasping breath, having held it previously without thinking about it, and I listened as the roll-up door closed. I sat there, waiting next to the cooling corpse of the man, before deciding to get the NVGs out and use them for what they were intended.
I pulled them back out of my pack and put them on. I noted they were third-generation Russian military surplus, something I’d used when I’d needed to use sanitized gear in the past. I turned them on and the night flickered to life with a green glow. The dim sources of light in the warehouse windows shone brightly, but it was the outside of the warehouse that I wanted to check out before I moved.
“Sergei,” a voice crackled nearby, in the same accent.
I didn’t quite jump out
of my own skin, but it was a close thing. It had sounded loud, but then again, everything did. The voice crackled again, sounding like a bad radio, “Sergei, you taking a shit again?”
It was an earwig. I was so close to the corpse I could make it out. I rolled the corpse on its back, leaned over the left shoulder and touched the mic button.
“Nyet,” I said, hoping to buy some time.
“Get your ass in gear, you didn’t make the south corner checkpoint and I have to piss.”
“Da,” I agreed and then got up.
At least, I had an idea of where the next guy was going to be. Instead of avoiding the area, I pulled out my knife, holding it against the inside of my forearm and got up. In the daylight, nobody would confuse my Keltec KSG for an H&K MP5, but I was roughly the same size and build as the man I’d killed and both of our guns were on drop slings. Sure, I was heavier armed, but I didn’t plan on him seeing me or if he did, for only as long as it took to take him out silently.
I started walking the same direction Sergei had been heading and checked my surroundings. Nothing. I would make the circuit of the building and walk as bold as brass up to his partner and…
Kill him? Knock him out? Question him? I was pretty sure I was going with the first, but I was letting my instincts guide me. I’d had enough training and experience, if I could keep my head straight. The thing that was niggling in the back of my brain was the accent and the name. The guy was obviously either a Russian immigrant or one of the many men who’d grown up in a home of immigrants… or… maybe he was from Russia? The voice on the other end had the same accent, both of them with a little bit of a Moscow sound to them. I decided they must be immigrants and wracked my brain.
A thousand years ago I’d been fluent in many languages, but I’d not used them in so long. I wasn’t able to mimic accents back then, so I never even tried. Still, the guys were talking English and it was just one of a thousand thoughts that were running through my head as I turned the last corner to see a man standing there, the glow of him taking a big drag on a cigarette, bright in the NVGs.
Devil Dog: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Out Of The Dark Book 1) Page 15