Collapse (Book 1): Perfect Storm

by Riley Flynn

  29

  The house.

  From deep down in the ravine, the sound of the shots echoed overhead. They needed to be back in the house. Familiar. Safe. Secure. An unspoken agreement, Alex and Joan collected together everything while Timmy tried to stand.

  Before, it had been a leisurely ten-minute stroll to the river bed, kicking the first of the autumn leaves and feeling the freshness of the morning pinching the cheeks. Not today. Nearly sunset, strangers nearby, they moved fast.

  Alex carried the guns. Joan and Timmy supported one another, neither one in any condition to charge headlong through the town. This left Alex to scout ahead, pausing every thirty seconds, listening. The Glock nuzzled into his palm, the chamber loaded. The shouts and shooting was still some distance away. But they were moving.

  Trudging through the back alleys of Rockton, they finally saw the steeple of the chapel. The steeple, not as grand as those which loomed over most churches, was a lighthouse, guiding them home. Still stopping on every street corner, still letting the gun lead him around every blind bend, Alex guided the others toward the house.

  The gate at the rear was swinging open, just as they’d left it. Whoever had owned the house, the bottom floor, at least, had seen fit to build a wall, higher than a man. It encircled the garden. Hid the bikes. As Alex watched Timmy and Joan stagger through the gate, he looked up and down the alley.

  Nothing. The shots were still ringing out. The shouting grew louder.

  Sliding the deadbolt into place, he put his finger to his lips and motioned for the other two to get inside. They agreed, moving as fast as they could toward the screen door separating them from the safety of the house. Once inside, they clambered up the stairs and locked themselves into the abandoned home they’d made their own.

  Alex waited.

  The yard was self-contained. From a street level, no one would be able to see in. But he couldn’t see out. Instead, he only had the sounds: the shouts, the gunfire, the mounting rumble of heavy vehicles crawling along a street. Making the sure the lock on the gate held firm, he entered the house.

  Rather than join the others on the second floor, Alex let himself into the ground floor apartment. It was equally as abandoned but far less homely. It had belonged to the man who had owned the building, Joan had told them, who let out the second floor to the family and prowled around downstairs. A shut-in, no one really knew much about his character.

  There wasn’t much to know, Alex thought. He’d already explored the rooms, found them empty. No pictures, no posters, barely any furniture. Not even a body. Devoid of sentimentality.

  It reminded Alex of his own apartment, though he had far fewer piles of old newspapers stacked beside the door. No hint of electronics anywhere inside, the man was devotedly living in the past, left behind by a supposedly paperless society.

  It was dark. The front room, empty and dry and dusty, featured a bay window facing the street. Whoever the owner had been, he had enjoyed his privacy. Net curtains hung under the heavy black drapes. The perfect place to watch over the neighbors’ kids and complain about people on their way to the Sunday service.

  Taking only the pistol, slipping it into the holster, Alex stepped up to the drapes and drew them in. The fading light of the day abandoned the room at once. Standing at the side of the bay, he felt his fingers slip between the drapes and the net curtains, pulling them back. Not knowing who was outside, who was watching, he moved his fingers carefully, slowly, and with the utmost precision.

  “Who is it?” Joan whispered, laying a hand on a shoulder.

  Alex froze. The air in his lungs dropped a hundred degrees, began coating the inside of his throat and turning his breath cold. Icicles hanging from his vocal cords, he could hardly speak.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered through icy teeth. “I can’t quite see.”

  “Police? FEMA?”

  “I don’t think so. They wouldn’t be shooting.”

  “Who else could it be? It has to be the government.”

  Even at a whisper, Alex could hear the hope in her voice, could hear all the misplaced desire for help.

  “Go and help Timmy. Keep him safe. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to check this out.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Mr. Early. I know you.”

  Turning with a smile, Alex considered a wink. Not something he could pull off. Not something which suited the tone of the moment. Instead, he let his smile waver and settled for bland reassurance.

  “I’ll be fine. Go and help him.”

  Pursing her lips, preparing to say something, Joan had the thought catch in her throat. Left it unsaid. With care and quiet, she turned from the window and went back toward the stairs. Alex listened to her leaving, listened to the sound of the door closing above and the locks sliding into place.

  From inside the house, Alex could see up and down the street. The chapel, to his right, sat at one end. At the other, there was movement. The gunfire had died down but the shouting was still audible. A strange SUV was rolling up the street, flanked by men on either side. They buzzed around the vehicle, flitting this way and that, like wasps around a nest.

  The SUV wasn’t like Timmy’s car. That had been a big, blacked-out cloud designed to crawl through city streets. Whatever was crawling up through Rockton lurked, brooded. The bull bars fitted to the front bore dents and scratches; Alex could see them from the other end of the street. The doors had been removed and the tires swapped out for larger, chunkier, grippier versions.

  The men stomping around the car were shouting. Not shouting words or threats, just bellowing from the balls of their feet to the tops of their lungs. Screaming at the sky. Every now and then, one would shoot his gun up in the air. The first shot was met with a volley of approval, his friends echoing the sentiment. What seemed like minutes later, Alex heard the spent bullets falling on the roof of the porch. That heavy kind of rain. Or maybe he only imagined it.

  Once they were close enough, Alex got a better look at the men. All men. They were ready for a fight. Torn shirts, tough boots, and tattoos. They didn’t look like government. But they were tooled up like an army. Even with his spotty knowledge of heavy weapons, Alex knew they were holding enough to take down a small fort.

  The SUV stopped in front of the bar, and was soon joined by another and another. One had blood splattered down the hood. Another was fitted with a machine gun on the roof.

  On either side, dirt bikes buzzed around, the riders yelling and cheering and spinning their back wheels, filling the street with smoke. From the way they held their guns, the men were experienced. From the way they walked, there was no one taking command. Deserters, Alex wondered, or mercenaries? Gang members?

  Some of the tattoos he’d seen on the Discovery Channel. Big bold lettering, covering the spine and the shoulders, the chest and the neck. Some men had ink over their faces. Most of them wore white T-shirts and vests, showing off their flesh. As the men poured out of the vehicles and into the bar, lighting a fire in the middle of the street, Alex tried to read the tattoos.

  Too far away.

  For hours, the night passing, the new arrivals sat in the street in front of Danny Boy’s bar. One of them, larger than the others, seemed to be holding court. He sat his sizeable frame on the blood-splattered hood and had his beer brought to him. They all shared the same haircut: shaved skulls which caught the firelight.

  After watching at the window, Alex returned up the stairs. He knocked three times and was allowed inside. There, he found Timmy and Joan in the child’s bedroom. An IV drip in his arm, popped pill packets by his side, Timmy was drifting off into a dream-filled sleep.

  “Who are they?” asked Joan, keeping her voice as quiet as it could be.

  “I still don’t know. It doesn’t look like anything official. It can’t be. They’re sitting in the street now.”

  “Where does that leave us?”

  “Nowhere near Virgi
nia.”

  Ever since Joan had joined them in the house, Alex had assumed that she would be coming with them to the farm. The entire matter had not even been mentioned. Timmy seemed to like her, seemed to get along well with her. But he got along well with everyone. She’d even warmed to Alex, cutting down on her reproaches and thanking him for his help every now and then.

  “You’re still going?”

  They were whispering together. Pointing at the patient, Joan signaled for them to leave the room. Timmy stirred, though he didn’t wake. He was putting on some of his weight once again, buoyed by the ability to heat up food on the gas stove and not have to live on the readymade meals every day. Soon enough, Alex had thought, they’d be back on the road.

  “We can’t stay here forever,” Alex told Joan, leading her into the hallway and then into the kitchen.

  “Not forever, but… I don’t know.”

  She sat at the table, a small round wooden piece of furniture placed in the corner of the room. The flat-pack chair creaked as she sat, cradling her belly as she eased into the seat.

  “Timmy can’t travel,” she continued, “not yet. Not for a few days. At least. And we’re running low on everything. We need to go back to the store. You can’t get that in Virginia, I’m sure, you can’t be certain. And you won’t have me to administer everything and-”

  “You’re not coming?”

  It was dark in the kitchen and Joan struck a match. Carefully, she guided the burning stick onto the base of a gas lantern. Shaking her wrist, turning the dial on the canister, she filled the room with light and placed the lantern in the middle of the table. It bathed the kitchen in a soft orange glow. Alex moved quickly, noisily, and snapped the curtains closed.

  “What are you doing?” His voice was a low, urgent murmur. “Any light and they could see us from outside.”

  “I… I… I’m sorry.” Joan was glancing around the room, searching for an answer. “I wasn’t thinking. I… I… just. I don’t know. I can turn it off.”

  “The curtains should deal with it. But these people, I don’t know what they want. They don’t look friendly. They don’t look healthy. The last thing I want is them to run in here and…”

  “And what?”

  “You know. I don’t want that.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know that either. I just want us–and you, too, the three of us–to be safe.”

  “We are safe.”

  “Not here. Not now. Look what happened today. Look who’s out in the street. We don’t know these people.”

  “What would you have us do?”

  “Virginia. We had a plan. A good plan. A plan, at least. And now you’re here and now you’re coming.”

  “Alex, I really don’t know. I barely know either of you. This is my home.”

  “You hate it here.”

  “But it’s my home. Just because it’s home, doesn’t mean you can’t hate it. It’s still home…”

  Without warning, Alex’s mind flashed back to the farmhouse. The furniture under white sheets. Everything important packed away in plastic boxes. The clink of the keys as they fell into Eames’s palm. The black ties and veils. The dirt road leading out. Home.

  “It isn’t safe here. It isn’t safe anywhere. But, together, we’ve got a better chance.”

  “A better chance of what?”

  “I don’t know. But something tells me, something in my bones, that we need to get to that farm. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But it’s the one place I know–for sure–that we can be safe.”

  Joan reached for the lantern and dialed down the gas. The orange light fell away, as low as it could go. It was hardly light anymore, just a softer kind of darkness.

  “Okay,” she said. “But we have to wait for Timmy. And we need to take supplies.”

  “We’ll wait out these people, whoever they are. They won’t stay long. When they leave, I’ll get the supplies from the store, and then we ride. We don’t stop till we hit Virginia.”

  It was all that needed to be said. Without another word, Joan rose from the table and returned to Timmy’s room, taking a packet of medicine with her. Alex fashioned some sort of meal, left most of it in the kitchen, and went back downstairs to watch through the gap in the curtains.

  Drinking, shouting, and laughing, the men outside never slept. Alex felt his eyes grow heavy, felt himself being lulled into a slumber. He fell asleep beneath the bay window, the gathered crowd outside the bar still unaware of his presence.

  It would have to stay that way.

  30

  When he woke, Alex was in the dark. In the empty space behind the heavy drapes, the morning had yet to creep into the room. After hours of watching intently, hand hovering over his holster, he had discovered nothing. The men outside drank, shouted, and partied as though they had nothing to lose.

  Standing up and stretching, creasing the hard floorboards out of his aching back, Alex peeked again through the curtains. Soundless, the street seemed calm. But the huge cars were still there. As he looked, Alex saw the men laid across the seats, the road, and anywhere else they’d fallen.

  Sleeping, finally.

  Taking himself back up the stairs, Alex found the door locked. His knock was familiar. Not a code, as such, but something Joan had heard before. A familiar pattern. She let him in. Already, she was up and ready for the day. Not that they could venture outside of the building. Not that she could, anyway.

  “They’re sleeping. I’m going out.” Alex’s words left no space to argue.

  “You stayed down there all night?”

  “How’s Timmy?”

  “Sleeping, I guess. I gave him the last Tramadol tablets we had. He’ll be down for a while.”

  “Good. I’m going out. Give me a list of what we need. Please.”

  “Out of the house? To the drug store? Why? Let them pack up and move on.”

  “They’re not going anywhere. Not soon.”

  Alex had arrived at the conclusion just as his eyes welded shut. The way they moved around the bar, around the cars, around each other: they didn’t care. They’d found something interesting–a bar with booze–and had camped outside.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Same way I know they’re not friendly. My gut, I guess.”

  “So, what happens?”

  “So I go out now, while they sleep, and as soon as Timmy’s ready, we move. We move fast. And we don’t look back. I don’t want to stick around to learn more about these guys.”

  Up and down the small kitchen, Joan was pacing. Occasionally, as she did when thinking, she rubbed her belly. She was worried. Alex barely knew her last name, but it was easy to pick up on tics and tells when spending so much time in a confined space with another person. He knew her well and not at all.

  “You can’t go out with that.” Joan pointed to the pistol. “That’s just asking for trouble.”

  “I’m not going without it.”

  “Obviously. What I mean is, don’t go out there whirling a pistol around. Try a light touch. Hide it somewhere. On your back, perhaps? We have some tape here.”

  “And what good is that when I need it quick?”

  “I saw at least ten people out there, Mr. Early. Do you think they’re just tin cans, sitting on a tree trunk? You think you can hit seven? What about the other three? If they see you with a gun, what do you think their first reaction will be? I’ll tell you: shoot.”

  She was right; he knew that.

  “Fine. Get that tape.”

  Peeling his T-shirt from his back, Alex leaned across the table and un-holstered the gun. It was loaded. Full clip. He began to practice his movement, trying to figure out the reach he had available. It wasn’t much.

  Finally, he settled on the base of the spine. Right in the curve of the back. He held the gun in place while Joan taped it to the skin. The tape wouldn’t stick to the body armor. They made the choice. A good offence beats a good defense, Alex mumbled.
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  “This is going to hurt like hell when I rip it off,” he half-joked.

  “You’ll hurt more if you don’t,” replied Joan, balancing a piece of tape on her lips. “There. Try that.”

  Alex felt behind. The handle of the Glock was ready and waiting for him. Easy to reach.

  “Just make sure it’s not covering the trigger. Or the barrel. Make sure it’s really stuck on there.”

  Muttering to herself, Joan double-checked every piece of tape, strengthening the structure where she could.

  “That should work. What are you going to wear?”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to Alex, who looked down at his familiar T-shirt. Put that back on and it’d cover the gun. No way to grab it in a rush. Same with the leather jacket: too tight in a hurry. Restrictive.

  “Hang on,” said Joan. “I saw a rain coat in the hallway.”

  It was a heavy wax jacket. A Barbour, according to the label. Some kind of kilt pattern on the inside, but it felt comfortable enough. More importantly, Alex could wear it loose and open. Whoever had lived in this house must have been far bigger than him. The coat hung across his bare chest. But it left the gun within easy reach.

  “I look ridiculous,” said Alex, catching sight of himself in a hallway mirror.

  “Hardly our chief concern,” Joan responded. “Besides, if they ask, you’re just lost and wandering through the countryside. Maybe they’ll take pity. You certainly look quite pathetic.”

  “Thanks. Fills me with joy.”

  With her kindly words, Joan watched Alex prepare to leave. The drug store was a few doors down. Not too far. He could exit through the back yard, stick to the alleys. She told him about a window which gave way into the drug store basement. Smash that and he’d be in without having to enter through the front door in the cold light of day.

  Armed with a list of supplies to gather, a flashlight, and the gun taped to his back, Alex considered telling Timmy where he was going. But the man was too deep in his sleep, too content. He’ll hear all about it if I get back, thought Alex, trying to focus his mind into a positive outlook.