by James Hunt
“Then put the guns down.”
Slowly, Kate submitted, and so did her group. She raised her brow in response to the officer’s pistol, and then they lowered their weapons, though he didn’t holster it. Instead it remained at his side as he stepped forward.
“Are any of you hurt?”
Whatever doubts that Kate felt toward the officers ended with those words. “No. How about yours?”
He holstered his weapon. “Hungry, but okay.”
“Good.” Kate stepped close enough to read the name on his uniform. Captain Harley. “Captain, we need to talk.”
“Well,” Captain Harley said. “Might as well talk about it with the doors closed. It’s cold enough in here already.” He gestured to his men, and they shut the doors.
Kate followed the officers toward the back rooms and offices of the station. When they were all together, they totaled only five. It didn’t take long for Kate to tell them what she knew. And she was surprised at how much the officers didn’t know.
After the power had gone out, most of the troopers were sent out to assist stranded motorists. But after the first day, most of his men started disappearing without word. Captain Harley suspected most fled toward home, to be with their families, but he knew some of them probably froze to death in the blizzard that passed through.
The officers that remained included Captain Harley, Lieutenant Benson, Officer Terry, Officer Luis, and Officer Thomas.
“And you think the inmates are going to come here?” Lieutenant Benson asked.
“They had your station marked on a map of theirs we found,” Stacy said.
“And they already have six towns under their control.” Captain Harley looked at no one as he crossed his arms, nodding to himself. When he did meet a pair of eyes, it was Kate’s. “How many men do they have?”
“More than us,” Kate answered. “We weren’t sure we’d get to you before they ambushed. I’m glad we did.”
“Us too.” Captain Harley pushed himself off the desk. He wasn’t a big man, but he held a presence, and it was on display as the rest of his men rose with him. “What do you need from us?”
“Gather as much food, weapons, and ammunition as you can carry. We’ll help, but we need to move quickly. I don’t know how much time we have.”
Captain Harley nodded. “You heard the lady! Let’s move!”
The officers scattered to the various dark corners of the station, Kate sending her people to help, until only she and Captain Harley remained.
Two piles quickly formed near the station’s exit, one of food, and the other of weapons. The weapons pile was nearly twice the size of the food pile.
Lieutenant Benson added two more rifles to the cache and then wiped his hands. “Do you want me to grab it, Captain?”
“No. It hasn’t gotten us anything so far, and we won’t have the connections to—”
“Grab what?” Kate asked.
Captain Harley exhaled, tilting his head to the side as if he were annoyed to answer. “When communications went down after this”—he frowned, looking at Kate for confirmation—“EMP? We didn’t think we could reach anyone. But after the blizzard, we started scouring every nook and cranny of this place to look for food or water. We didn’t find much, but we did find an old Morse code machine. It was used here back in the sixties as a means to contact emergency services if someone was sick on the mountain.”
“Morse code?” Kate asked, a well of hope rising within her despite the captain’s expression. “Were you able to—”
“Yes,” Harley answered. “But we haven’t heard from them since we set it up.”
“Who answered?” Kate asked.
“It was a National Guard unit stationed to the south,” Benson answered. “I told them where we were and that we needed assistance, but we never heard back.”
“National Guard?” The words left Kate’s lips like a balloon of hope, drifting toward the sky. “Have you tried since then?”
“Every day,” Benson answered. “It’s been radio silence.”
Three quick steps brought Kate within inches of the lieutenant. “We need to try again. We need to send another message.”
“Kate, we’ve tried—”
“We can’t beat these guys on our own,” Kate said. “But with the National Guard at our backs, we might have a chance.” She flapped her arms at her sides. “What could it hurt?”
Benson glanced toward Captain Harley, and Kate knew that everything hinged on the thoughts behind that stoic expression. And then Kate’s chest swelled with hope when Harley nodded. “Don’t be long.”
The machine itself was small and surprisingly simple. It was hooked to a string of copper wires that ran up toward the radio tower on the roof, and the sight of the well-worn technology made her smile as she thought of the man who’d given her the old Skyranger Commonwealth that brought her up here. She had a small bit of knowledge of Morse code from her early days as a pilot, but she was on the tail end of the generation that was required to have some proficiency in it.
“Send exactly what I say,” Kate said and then cleared her throat as Lieutenant Benson poised his finger over the brass tab. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Threat to life imminent.” She then provided the longitude and latitude coordinates for Rodney’s cabin, which she still had memorized. “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
The machine produced the series of dits and dahs that were transmitted via radio waves. When it was finished, Kate stood there, praying for a return response through the headphones that Lieutenant Benson wore, but they heard nothing.
“Let’s send it again,” Kate said.
And they did. Three more times. And it would have been more, but Captain Harley found them, and despite her persistence, the captain’s authority won out. Kate lingered behind, looking at the machine, the one piece of equipment that could connect them to the outside world. She wanted to bring it but knew it was useless without the radio tower, and they didn’t have the time or resources to make that happen.
Supplies and people waited at the station’s exit when Kate walked up. She retrieved her gun and flicked the safety off, looking at the still-falling snow outside. The door swung open, and Lieutenant Benson was the first man to step out, and the first one to die.
The gunfire erupted like a thunderstorm, dozens of bullets turning the doors into Swiss cheese. Everyone ducked for cover, leaping behind desks and walls or whatever sturdy material that was close.
Captain Harley was the first to return fire, and Kate fumbled for the rifle she dropped on her hasty retreat. She joined the captain, planting her elbows on the desk as she fired in the direction of the doors, which were closed. But it wasn’t until the captain placed his hand on her shoulder that she stopped.
“Hold your fire!” Harley bellowed.
A high-pitched whine of the wind replaced gunfire, and Kate’s eyes fell to the lieutenant’s body, his legs and arms twisted to the point of breaking. The pool of blood that spread from his right side resembled black tar instead of the flood of life that went through his veins.
“Thomas, Luis, on me,” Harley said, and with their pistols still trained on the door, they moved efficiently through the darkness until they were side by side with the captain. “There’s only one way inside this place, and it’s through those doors. We can dig out way out the back while keeping them distracted out front.”
“My people should go,” Kate said. “Most of them are worse shots than all of you. They’d be better off digging.”
“All right,” Captain Harley said. “Anyone that’s never handled a weapon before leaves.”
A few more bullets hit the door, the enemy outside prodding them. But Kate knew that the convicts’ army would charge. Especially if Dennis was leading them. He had no qualms about killing, least of all if they were cops. But Dennis and his people didn’t know how many officers were inside. It was something they could use toward their advantage.
“No one goes toward the door,” Kate said, l
ooking at Harley when Thomas and Luis returned from showing Kate’s people where to start digging. “So long as they think we’ve got thirty officers down here, they won’t charge.”
Harley nodded. “Terry, did you pack the riot gear?”
“No, I-I didn’t think we’d—”
“Go and grab it,” Harley said. “We’ll shoot enough tear gas outside to blind them. If anything, it’ll buy us some time.”
Terry sprinted off, leaving Kate, Stacy, Captain Harley, Luis, and Thomas to hold the entrance. Despite the cold, sweat poured off Kate in buckets.
Their weapon barrels remained trained on the doors, the wind whistling through the bullet holes. It was the only sound inside, and as Kate’s vision began to grow fuzzy from staring, the doors burst open.
Two men sprinted inside, the flashes from their gun muzzles striking the darkness like lightning. But the spurt of violence was short lived as over a dozen bullets dropped both men to the ground, dead before the double doors swung closed behind them.
Bullet casings clinked on the tile, the heated metal cooling the moment it was ejected from its chamber. Kate trembled, her adrenaline forcing the muscles along her arms to shake. The dead convicts collapsed near Lieutenant Benson, their hands almost touching.
Terry returned with the riot gear, dumping a bag of tear gas, flash grenades, and the appropriate launchers needed to send the convicts outside running away in tears.
“On me,” Captain Harley said, the tear gas launcher in hand, the rest of his men in tow.
Kate hung back, rifle still aimed at the doors, as the troopers filed next to the exit, two on each side. She only saw their silhouettes, and then the quick nod from Harley as they shouldered open the doors, sending four cans of tear gas streaming into the air.
Shouts echoed inside before the doors swung shut, and Harley and his boys retreated toward Kate, Harley nudging her elbow. “Let’s hope that keeps them busy for a little while. Why don’t you go and check on your people?”
Kate nodded and then grabbed a candle to help light her path. The flame wiggled in time with her shaking, the light exposing her fear. But that was what light was for, wasn’t it? To cast out the darkness, to fight against the fear? She forced her hand steady, and by the time she reached her people, it had stopped.
The progress was slow, the snow was thick and compacted. Kate stayed for a while to help but kept one ear toward the front. She kept waiting for a series of screams or cries of terror, ending in a flurry of gunshots.
But with each pile of snow and ice they added to the floor while making their escape tunnel, Kate heard nothing. Maybe they could get out alive. Maybe this would work. She glanced at the small candle to her left, the flame wiggling in defiance of the darkness, holding on to hope.
The snowfall offered poor visibility, especially from the back of the group. After what happened with Mulls and Jimmy in town, he didn’t want any of these guys with a gun in their hands standing behind him. Who knew what kind of stray bullet would find its way into the base of his skull.
And when the tear gas was thrown from the only entrance and exit of the building, Dennis was glad to have been in the rear.
Thick streams of gas left the cylinder canisters, blending with the white of the snowfall. Smoke crawled over the snow, spreading outward, forcing the inmates to retreat. Dennis stepped back, shielding his face with the front of his shirt, which he pulled up from beneath his coat. Three more canisters were flung from the station’s entrance, and the poisonous fog continued to blanket the ground, lingering in the air.
“Watch the doors!” Dennis barked. “They could be coming out in masks! Be ready! Be ready!” But while a few of the inmates trained their weapons back on the station, most were too busy fending off the effects of the gas.
A burning sensation filled Dennis’s eyes and throat, his nasal cavity growing thick with phlegm. He hacked with the rest of his men, who continued to backpedal from the gas. But the longer they stood out there in the cold, the more Dennis realized that the officers weren’t coming out. Which meant one of two things: either they had enough supplies inside to wait them out, or they didn’t have the numbers.
Dennis shielded his nose and mouth from the gas that still lingered, and while he tried to avoid it, he didn’t always succeed. His eyes teared and burned, blurring his vision, but he kept his concentration on the station’s entrance.
After a while the gas dissipated, and the retreated masses slowly crept back to their original front line. Dennis remained in the back, wiping the freezing snot from his face, flinging it on the snow. The smoke had cleared, but his vision remained blurred from the watery effects of the gas.
The slope they’d dug to the front doors was steep, and Dennis only saw the very top of the doors. He clenched his fists. He was so close. All of the days and nights where he was locked away in that cell flooded back to him. The endless hours that stretched for eternity. In prison, there was no horizon, no dawn of a new day. It was only the repetition of the same day, over and over and over again. All of the same atrocities and horrors, the monotony, the hopelessness of being locked in a cell where you would rot into nothing for the rest of your life.
The bug stirred in his mind, then burrowed, tunneling its way deeper into Dennis’s brain, igniting all of the ways he’d like to kill the officers inside. There would be no quarter given to those that dropped their weapons, only torture. It would be slow, methodical. Maybe he would leave them to freeze out in the cold, cutting them open to let the animals in the woods feast while they were still alive. And once every pig inside had been slaughtered, then there was no one left to oppose him.
Dennis smiled, enjoying that idea as the bug burrowed deeper, deeper… deeper. He marched back to his men, most of whom were sitting on cars or rocks. “Everyone up! We need to move! We need to move now!” When his words didn’t stir them, he fired three shots into the air. “I said up, goddammit!”
Asses lifted from the snow, the thunder of gunshots enough to stir the people from their hazy stupor.
“I want thirty men by the entrance! And I want to circle around the back!” Dennis cut the group in half right where they stood. “Shoot anything that moves, and if they surrender themselves, I want them brought to me.” He passed over the squinted faces, making sure everyone understood. “Those aren’t men in that station! They’re pigs! They’re the cowards who hide behind badges. But those badges mean nothing now!” He pointed to the group, the inmates swelling with anger at his words. “This is our world! This is our time! And no one will take that from us!”
Cheers erupted into the evening sky, and Dennis raised his arms high as his people rattled their fists and weapons. Chants of violence and anger washed over the group, and Dennis smiled as everyone departed toward their assignments. This was a fight that they would win, and Dennis didn’t care how many of his people would die.
Kate dropped the shovel, her hands frozen and aching, the joints screaming now. She worked her way from the front of the pack, needing a break.
The front of the station had remained quiet for the past twenty minutes, and while Kate tried to keep her attention on the progress of the tunnel, she found herself looking down the hall, waiting for the inevitable symphony of gunfire.
“I’m going to check the front,” Kate said. “See how we’re doing.”
A few grunts of affirmation answered back, and Kate continued to pump her hands into fists, trying to get the blood flowing again.
Stacy, Harley, and his men still had their guns trained on the bullet-ridden door. The captain noticed her first. “How are we looking?”
“It’s slow,” Kate answered.
“How close?”
Kate shook her head in uncertainty, and Harley nodded in response. She cleared her throat. “Have they sent anyone else down?”
“No,” Harley answered. “The gas seems to be doing the trick, but it’ll be running its course soon.” He turned back to Kate. “Better keep digging.”
Urgency was laced in the request, and Kate nodded in response, her hands throbbing again at just the idea having to curl around the handle of a shovel again.
“Kate!” The voice was breathless, and a silhouette took shape in the darkness. “We’re through! We’ve reached the top!”
Before Kate turned around, Harley and his men reached for their gear, retreating from their position. When they turned the corner of the hallway toward the back, everyone froze at the sound of an uproar that broke through the howl of wind and snow.
“What was that?” Luis asked, his worried expression made more ominous by the flickering candlelight in his hand.
“We need to move,” Harley said. “Now!”
The captain led the sprinted retreat down the hall, and when they reached the back doors, Kate shoved her people forward and up. Feet and hands slipped on the ice, and the howl of wild men and gunfire forced Kate to turn her gaze backward.
From the narrow view inside the tunnel, Kate saw Harley and his men, in the hall, firing at the enemy. The small space amplified the gunshots, making them thunder with a fiercer bang.
The bodies behind Kate propelled her forward. Two people were ahead of her. The first broke the surface and turned around, extending a hand to help the woman in front of Kate. They clasped hands, and another gunshot thundered, striking the man in his shoulder and severing his grip on the woman’s hand. She slid backward, slamming into Kate, who dug the tips of her boots into the compacted snow.
Time slowed. Any way Kate turned meant certain death. She suddenly felt hands on her and then looked at Stacy. She was screaming something at her, a terrified expression on her face.
Kate couldn’t make out the words, but they weren’t needed as Harley funneled his men up the icy embankment. They pushed Kate toward the surface. Seconds later, snow whipped the top of Kate’s head as she squinted into the storm.