The gang had finished raiding Larry's house, and facing no resistance with anyone there, they were in and out quickly. There wasn't much for them to take, beyond some canned food, flour, and bread in the pantry, but they found a nice jewelry box in the bedroom and added it to their score. There were six men, all of varying sizes, and hidden, as they were under all the mismatched gear they had thrown on. They stormed out of the house and went to the next one over, a mere two houses from Greg's place.
The pattern seemed clear, and it would only be a matter of time before they stormed into his yard with the same disregard for the law and other people they had shown all afternoon. Greg watched them from the living room as Veronica stood nearby. He kept a watchful eye on them from the window to track their movements. He didn't know what kind of threat they posed beyond pillaging, but he wasn't ready to take any chances. Greg's rifle was leaning against the wall nearby, and he was ready to use it at the slightest hint of trouble.
He spoke to Veronica while staring out the window.
“They're getting closer. Maybe you should go in your room and lie low. You'd be safer in there. You can take Captain in there.”
She didn't immediately respond and glanced over at his coffee table, where a line of weapons had been placed within reach. There was a Ka-Bar bayonet, a cold steel leatherneck blade, a fully loaded pistol, a shotgun, a box of 9mm rounds, and 5.56mm loaded magazines. She hadn't spent much time around knives and guns, but if she knew one thing about Greg, it was that he rarely took chances with anything. As Greg continued watching, she walked over to the table and picked up the pistol. He turned to see her holding it in the air.
“I've fired a gun before. I used to shoot at my Aunt Tilda's ranch.”
“Just keep it pointed down, please,” Greg said nervously.
Veronica pointed the barrel to the floor. “Relax, Greg, I've shot at plenty of trees before.”
“That’s great for practice, but we’re talking about a gang of men who, at any moment, are going to try to get in here.”
“I'm not going anywhere, certainly not to hide in some room and wait for them to get me,” she said.
“All right, I get it. If you're gonna stay with me, we've got to suit up.”
Veronica gave him a funny look.
“I'm talking full HAZMAT suit. If this house gets compromised, we have to be protected ready.”
She walked forward and looked through the window. The men were in the house next to Larry's. Suddenly they heard a woman's scream, followed by a gunshot blast, which caused Veronica to jump. Another gunshot followed. Captain immediately began to bark loudly in the living room. Greg walked over to Captain and led him off the couch to the bedroom. Greg shut the door, slightly muffling the dog’s barking.
Veronica turned to him as he walked back into the living room. “You don't think they…”
He looked down, concerned. “I had no idea they were even home. That's the Jenkinses’ house. An elderly couple, real nice people.”
“Could we have helped them?”
“I don't know. I told you, contact with others has to be kept to a minimum.”
“I don't care about any of that right now. Your neighbors might be dead.”
“I'm sorry, Veronica. There's little we can do about that right now.”
Veronica shook her head in disbelief and gripped her pistol tightly. She looked scared. Greg could tell that she was trying to muster the strength to face whatever awaited them. He suddenly, and boldly, took her hand in his.
“Just stick with me and stay low. We're going to get through this. Now let's suit up before they get here.”
Inside the Jenkinses’ house, standing over two bodies, were Jake and his rag-tag crew of thieves. Jake was an unusually tall man, with acne scars across his sagging face. His wild eyes seemed to stare through whatever he was looking at. He wore a black hat over his clean-shaven head, and he had an ammo belt slung over his shoulder and across his chest, packed with shotgun shells. He held a shotgun in his hand, but had not yet fired it that day.
Those honors had gone to Pete, an overweight man who had just done ten years for a failed bank robbery. There were .22 casings on the ground at his feet, and the bodies of an elderly man and woman lying face down were surreal even to the group of ex-convicts.
Newly paroled, they had fled their halfway house when things started to get more chaotic because of the epidemic. There were also Josh, Juan, and Fernando. Once the halfway house emptied out in a panic, the group found themselves left behind. They were running out of the basics, but worst of all, the disease had them in a stoked panic, and desperate to grab anything they could get their hands on and try to flee the city.
They had already stolen a truck and broken into countless homes, but these were their first murders since their looting spree started. Jake hadn't told anyone yet, but he hadn't been feeling well. He was looking for medicine and lots of it. He had been wearing glasses to cover the slight redness in his eyes.
“Pete, you fucking idiot, why the hell did you shoot them?” Jake asked.
“They ran at us, didn't you see?”
Josh, a stocky red-haired man with a matching red beard, cut in. “They were trying to run away, dumbass. Don't you know the difference?”
“You can never be too sure sometimes,” Pete said.
Suddenly, Fernando, a darkly tan and sleek Mexican with a goatee, sideburns, and moussed black hair, appeared to admonish Pete with a string of Spanish curse words.
“What the hell's he saying, compadre?” Pete asked Juan.
“He's calling you a stupid son-of-a-bitch,” Juan said. He was a fairly rounded man with a crew cut, a tight-fitting black shirt, and a long gold chain.
“What the fuck did you call me?” Pete said, advancing toward Fernando.
“Break it up!” Jake shouted. He jumped between the two men and pushed them back. He had grown weary of constantly keeping the gang from killing each other. He was also exhausted from his growing illness, even though he played the role of leader.
“Now you shitheads listen to me. We got two corpses on the ground that could have Ebola for all we know. I told you what we need, and we need to search every house until we find it.”
“What's that again?” Josh said sarcastically.
Jake moved over to him and smacked him across the head with his massive hand as if he was a child. “You damn well know what I said. We need medicine, money, weapons, ammo, masks, and suits. This Ebola shit is spreading like wildfire.”
“What do you want me to do with the bodies?” Pete asked, pointing down to his victims.
Jake whipped his head around and gave Pete an intense glare. “Don't fucking touch them! You been listening to a damn word I say? Now let's get what we need and move out. Five minutes is almost up!”
The group complied and stormed the house looking for anything of value. Before long, they were onto the next house, where there was no resistance, since it was vacant. However, there was little worth taking in the previously pilfered house.
Greg and Veronica had just finished suiting up, and their fully covered and masked appearance was sure to baffle anyone who tried to get inside the house. They might even send their unwanted intruders running, though Greg was doubtful of that. He watched the stealth with which they came and went from nearby houses and the small handfuls of supplies they had taken in haste. Their efforts had not yielded a large haul. If they were to get inside Greg's house, they would hit the mother lode. It had to be defended.
Greg wondered about his neighbors. Maybe Veronica was right, that he should have done more to help them. But the current Ebola epidemic was unprecedented. Normal rules no longer applied, and survival was the game. Most of his neighbors had either fled or had been placed under quarantine at the hospital.
Greg grabbed his rifle and shut the TV off. With most of the lights in the house off and plenty of doors and windows sealed and marked with trip wire, he was ready. Veronica had hoped and suggested tha
t the boards on the windows would deter the intruders from wasting their time with the place.
“They might even just move onto the next house,” she said, as they walked into the living room.
“There’s a slight chance of that, but we have to consider the worst-case scenario at all times,” Greg replied.
Veronica clutched Greg’s pistol as he took a deep breath, cracked his window open, and steadied his rifle.
He then called to her. “I want you to get in the corner behind the bookcase.”
Veronica breathed through her mask with a heavy sigh. “I can take care of myself.”
Greg leaned in closer. “Have you ever killed a man before?”
She paused. “No, I haven't. Have you?”
Greg didn't answer and simply pointed to the fortified spot in the corner of the living room. “I need you to have my back if anything goes down. That means watching the back door and kitchen window.”
Veronica reluctantly went to the spot where Greg had pointed and crouched down behind a small bookcase, which had been moved and angled out. They could hear windows being smashed, closer to them, maybe just one house over. It seemed as though the group was getting sloppier with each house. Or perhaps they were just frustrated that so little had been left behind. Greg looked back and scanned the living room.
There was virtually no way to see in from the outside. With any luck, the traps would scare them off, and it wouldn't have to come to anything serious. On instinct, Veronica had suggested calling the police, but without reception there wasn’t much they could do. It was as if the cell towers had simply shut down.
Greg looked back at the window and hunched down, with his rifle pointed out. Everything was quiet. He no longer had eyes on the culprits, but suspected them to be next door. He had trouble seeing the house because the neighbors had put up a privacy fence a while ago. He looked to the middle of the cul-de-sac and saw their truck idling, with nobody inside and a heaping of piled junk practically spilling out from the back.
“How much did these suits cost you?” Veronica asked, noticeably uncomfortable crouching in her fortified position.
Greg turned to her. “I got a pretty good deal on them, five hundred each.”
“I should have listened to you and tried the suit on a few times more over the past week to get used to it. It's hard to breathe in this thing.”
“Just stay calm. It'll all be over soon.” He kept his rifle aimed, and he could feel the belt around his waist that holstered two knives. He looked like some sort of vigilante from a post-apocalyptic time. And maybe he was.
Suddenly, the improvised trip buzzer sounded from its mounted position on the wall. Then came the snapping of the rat traps, followed by the motion lights. The intruders had undoubtedly entered the front yard. Despite her prior gung-ho attitude, Veronica sunk behind the bookcase with the pistol shaking in her hand.
“Make sure you're watching my six!” Greg said, indicating the area behind him. He had seen their tactics with each of the other houses, and knew that they went straight for the door, counting on the sheer element of surprise. The traps so far had startled them, however, and sent them regrouping.
Greg pulled the wire out of the trip-alarm buzzers and went back to the window, crouched and waiting. If the sentry traps were tripped, he knew it meant that they were right on his doorstep. Everything went silent again but for the sounds of footsteps running about in his yard. The dark figures moved quickly. Then suddenly there wasn't a soul in sight. They had vanished.
Jake leaned against the back of Greg's van, carefully out of sight with the rest of his gang, breathing heavily and flustered by the tripwire traps they had encountered.
“What the hell was all that about, Jake?” Josh asked.
“I don't know,” Jake said, coughing. “But I have a good mind to say that there's people in this house.”
“Well, shit, let's keep moving then. It’s too risky.”
Suddenly Jake grabbed Josh by the neck and threw him against the back of the van, practically denting the metal.
“Any house worth defending must have some stuff inside worth taking,” he seethed. “I don't care who's in there, we're going in.” He released his grip, causing Josh to nearly fall to his knees, gasping for air.
“Well they know we're here by now, that's for sure,” Pete said. “Who's gonna lead us in?”
Fernando and Juan looked at each other and muttered in Spanish.
Jake carefully surveyed the house from behind the van. The motion lights were shining down from various angles on the roof, but he couldn't see a single light on inside as most of the windows were boarded. They hadn't encountered a house like this one before. Near the front door were “Beware of Dog” and “Owner is Armed and Dangerous” warning signs. There was also a sign in the front yard that said, “This House is armed with Red Light Security.” Jake noticed that the van they were leaning against was from the same alarm system company.
He turned to his gang. “We're going to have to work together on this one. Fernando and Juan, you hop the fence and go in the back way. Josh, right bedroom window. Pete, you help me at the front door with that crowbar. We'll all meet in the middle. But before that, stay on your toes. Something tells me that this ain't no ordinary run-of-the-mil friendly neighborhood watchman.”
The gang nodded enthusiastically as Josh rubbed his sore neck. Jake gave one last order. “Shoot to kill, okay? Don't take no chances in there. I can assure you they won't take chances with you. Now let's move!”
They immediately dispersed, running in different directions. Jake and Pete hurried to the front door, setting off the sentry trap, resulting in a startling mini-blast like that of a gunshot. The blank .22 rounds had done the trick nicely.
They immediately hit the concrete walkway in a panic. Josh was halfway to the bedroom window when he took a direct shot to the chest from the living room window. The force took him down immediately, and his body went limp before he even hit the grass. Juan and Fernando ran to the backyard fence after hearing the shot, tossing themselves against the wooden pickets in a panic.
Jake and Pete remained on the ground, just slightly out of Greg's line of fire.
“Shit, what do we do?” Pete said, his voice trembling.
“Stay down!” Jake ordered. He could see Juan and Fernando hiding on the side of the house. Josh's body lay in the grass behind them, and it was still hard to find where the shot had come from. In front of them were tall bushes and a living room window concealed by dark curtains. Another window was to its side, completely boarded up and nailed in from the outside. The men were further rattled when another shot rang out, hitting the ground near them. Lying flat on his stomach, Jake called to the men on the side of the house in a hushed but commanding voice.
“Fernando! Juan! Get yer’ asses over that fence. We got a shooter at the front!”
They rose, nodded, and scaled the wooden backyard fence, jumping over with ease. They hit the dry grass of Greg's back yard and continued to the back door. They could hear a dog barking and hesitated for a moment to see if he was anywhere near.
In the house, Greg remained at his position. The motion lights illuminated the yard but allowed Jake and Pete to remain concealed in the shadows. They were a mere five feet from the door, but a single movement would expose them. Greg controlled his breathing and kept his finger steady on the trigger and the barrel pointing out the window. Captain barked from the bedroom, increasing Greg's suspicions. Someone was in the back yard. They had made it over the fence.
Fernando and Juan continued past the boarded-up window of Greg's room and went straight to the back door with their crowbars readied. The kitchen window looked too small to climb through, and they were confident they could bust the door open. Along the way, they unknowingly set off a series of trip flares, sending them scrambling. The flares, attached to the base of several small maple trees, shot out a series of brightly colored bursts, immediately alerting Greg to their presence. They ne
arly stumbled over each other to get to the back door and break it in before it was too late.
Upon seeing the light of the flares, Greg crouched down and ran to the kitchen window and cracked it open just enough to stick his rifle through. He looked to his right and saw two men at the back door as the flares began to die down. He swiftly aimed to his side and fired, taking out Juan in a single shot that split his head open, splattering brain matter over Fernando.
Juan collapsed on the ground as Fernando drew his weapon, still in a state of shock. He was just out of reach at the back door, and Greg couldn't get a shot off. He signaled to Veronica. She looked over at him as he waved.
“Aim above the peephole,” he said with his rifle still pointed outside. He could see Fernando’s moving shadow by the door.
Veronica hesitated.
“Do it!” he shouted.
She aimed steadily at the back door, near the peephole, and fired. A small chunk of wood exploded out of the door as the bullet blasted through and blew apart Fernando's face in jagged fragments. He fell to the ground on his back, dead as Dillinger.
Greg went back to the kitchen window and carefully peeked out with his rifle aimed. He saw no movement in the shadows, only two dead bodies lying the light of his backyard motion detectors. He turned to Veronica and gave her the thumbs-up, knowing, however, that there were more.
Without a moment's notice, a series of kicks erupted onto the thick metal surface of the front door, shaking it from the frame. Greg turned quickly to the living room, dropped to the hardwood floor, and rolled to the coffee table in the middle of living room. Back on his feet, he crouched down near the coffee table, aiming his rifle.
Having little luck with kicking the door in, the intruders resorted to prying it open with a crowbar. Captain continued barking from the other bedroom, clawing at the door. Greg was about to fire, when the door split open at the frame like a cracked watermelon, flying open.
He pulled the trigger and shot at the door, when suddenly Pete burst in, firing his shotgun into the air. The spray of pellets went up into the ceiling, narrowly missing Greg as he rolled to the side. In mid-movement, he lost his grip on his rifle and dropped it.
End Days Super Boxset Page 85