NO SAFE PLACE

by Steven M. Roth

  Then Trace stretched gloves over his own hands.

  Trace and Ibrahim methodically worked their way through the house, room by room, closet by closet, looking under every bed and behind every upholstered chair. At last satisfied they were alone, Trace, with Ibrahim trailing close behind, returned to the living room and sat down on the floor. Ibrahim dropped down onto the sofa.

  “Now what?” Ibrahim said. “What if the owners come back while we’re here?”

  “They won’t,” Trace said. “This place is closed up until October or November.”

  “How do you know? It looks lived-in to me.”

  “The hot water heater’s turned off. The air conditioning’s set to 95º. The house is closed for the summer until late fall or early winter. The owners probably are snowbirds from up north.”

  “Then we can stay as long as we want,” Ibrahim said. He swung his legs up onto the sofa, clasped his hands behind his head, and laid back against the armrest.

  “We’ll leave in a few hours, after curfew starts,” Trace said.

  “Why should we leave if no one’s going to be here? Anyway, where will we go? The hotel?”

  “Not the hotel. Not yet. I don’t know where, but we need to keep moving. No telling if a neighbor or a drone saw us come in here.”

  They spent the next forty-five minutes looking through the walk-in pantry, various cabinets, and drawers. They methodically worked their way through the attic and the attached garage, opening boxes and inspecting everything they found. They carried their discovered loot back to the kitchen and set it all on the Formica-covered table.

  Trace ate the uncooked contents of a can of spaghetti he found. Ibrahim ate pickled beets. They shared a box of stale Ritz crackers. This was all the food they found. Then they each took a turn napping while the other kept watch.

  At 9:30 p.m. Trace eased open the back door and listened. There was no sound save the rubbing solicitations of male crickets. He crouched and eased himself through the doorway onto the back porch, still watching and listening for any indication of human presence. Ibrahim followed him, gently closing and latching the door behind him.

  They crept down the three steps to the backyard and walked close to the house, trying to blend into its bulk and darkness, then moved along its side toward the front yard.

  Trace leaned around the corner of the structure, sticking his head out only as far as necessary for his eyes to clear the building and sweep the street in both directions. He didn’t see any sign of life so he pulled back in and put his lips close to Ibrahim’s ear.

  “Let’s go. Stay behind me, keep low.”

  Ibrahim whispered, “Right.”

  Crouching, Trace took a step away from the side yard.

  He’d barely moved when, from the corner of his eyes, he saw a slight movement in the bushes. He abruptly stopped walking, even as his adrenalin began to pump.

  Trace reflexively assumed the T’ai chi juan fighting posture, and waited. He prepared to defend himself or, if appropriate, to attack.

  The bushes moved again.

  Trace peered into the dark, squinting to sharpen his visual penetration of the gloom.

  What he saw froze him in place.

  CHAPTER 79

  Quarantine

  Day 28

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Derek Peterson said. “Here’s this afternoon’s news from the Quarantine Zone.” He glanced at his clipboard.

  “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported today that the number of new cases of the terrorists’ disease remained level this week for the first time since the terrorists’ attack.

  “The CDC cautions, however, that this good news should not be interpreted as an indication that the quarantine is about to end. It is too soon to draw any such inference.”

  He paused and wiped his neck with his red paisley bandana.

  “The CDC also stated that the decreasing number of new cases reported might only be an anomaly. The CDC will continue to monitor the situation and report back to us.

  “Now, on a less positive note,” he said, “the CDC has advised us that the number of deaths resulting from the terrorists’ disease and from secondary causes such as malnutrition and dehydration increased during the same period. Overall, the number of such deaths in the Quarantine Zone continues to rise. The CDC stated that this is not unexpected because there is always a lag time between an actual decrease in the number of new cases reported and the resulting decrease in deaths from those cases previously reported. We’ll have more on this as we receive more information.”

  He lowered his clipboard and nodded at the camera.

  “This is Derek Peterson, CNN, signing off.”

  CHAPTER 80

  Quarantine

  Day 28

  As Trace stared, five shapes, each at least six feet tall and linebacker-wide, each dressed in black from head to toe, stepped from behind the bushes alongside the house and approached Trace and Ibrahim, blocking their way out of the side yard.

  Trace’s adrenalin level continued to spike. He spun around to see the possibilities behind them, and to look for an escape route for him and Ibrahim.

  Four other, similarly large and identically clad figures, one of whom carried an assault-style automatic weapon with a sound suppressor attached, approached them from behind, blocking this potential escape route.

  Trace straightened up and slowly raised his hands in surrender, to show submission, to reduce the tension inherent in the situation. He had not been trained by the SEALs to commit suicide. Nor could he recall anything from his study of the Tao te Ching that argued in favor of suicide in a situation such as this.

  He looked over at Ibrahim and nodded. Ibrahim raised his hands, too. Trace winked at Ibrahim to calm him, suggesting by this gesture that this would likely be no big deal once it was sorted out.

  One dark figure stepped forward and patted them down.

  To Trace’s surprise, since he hadn’t known they were there, two more large, human shapes emerged from the darkness near the house.

  That makes eleven in all, Trace thought. So far.

  One of the shapes carried a large black canvas gym bag. He tossed it to the ground, then leaned over, unzipped the bag, and reached inside. He removed two black overalls, two black T-shirts, two black wool watch caps, and two pairs of black gloves.

  The shape tossed one set of clothing to Trace and lobbed the other at Ibrahim who, crippled by the situation he and Trace found themselves in, watched the garments soar through the air, bounce off his chest, and fall to the grass.

  Ibrahim said, “Sorry,” and hurriedly scooped them up, looking furtively at the large shape with the automatic weapon.

  “Dress yourselves,” the figure said, making it clear to Trace and Ibrahim that they, too, should blend into the night.

  CHAPTER 81

  Quarantine

  Day 28

  Viktor Rutkowska threw his empty vodka bottle to the floor and watched it smash into a shower of shards. He was in a foul mood. He had drained his last bottle of vodka and had no hopes of replacing it.

  Twelve days had passed since Viktor’s gun shop had been padlocked and his inventory taken by the ODMC. Meanwhile, Viktor hadn’t seen a dime of income and had not received any government compensation for the forced taking. He angrily watched as his modest savings (which he secreted at home, not in a bank) drained away as he was forced to raid his savings to purchase increasingly expensive black market food, vodka, and other necessities for survival.

  Viktor rummaged around his home searching for a wayward bottle of vodka, one he might have stashed in more affluent times, but had forgotten about. He found none, which only served to escalate his anger and frustration.

  He decided to take his mind off his situation and do something useful: he would clean and lubricate his private cache of weapons in anticipation of the upcoming mission he’d constructed for himself.

  Viktor carefully laid the weapons out on his kit
chen table. He first cleaned and oiled the Beretta, then reassembled it.

  Next he worked on his favorite among all his weapons, the VSS Vintorez sniper rifle, the one known as the thread cutter. This weapon was issued primarily to Spetsnaz special forces units for undercover operations, but also sometimes to the special shooters units, such as the one Viktor had belonged to in the Afghan and Chechen wars.

  The thread cutter fired a heavy, slow 9x39mm SP-5 cartridge to avoid creating a telltale sonic boom. The rifle had a folding stock, a scope that detached easily for transport, and an integrated silencer and muzzle flash suppressor that wrapped around its barrel. The VSS was sturdy, especially its stock, which had a rubber shoulder pad.

  This weapon had served Viktor well in Chechnya. When fired, the VSS made little noise, and had an accurate range of three hundred meters. It was perfect for urban combat because of its short range, low-velocity, quiet cartridges, and the ease with which it broke down for transport in a specially fitted briefcase.

  Viktor cleaned and lubricated the thread cutter, then reassembled it. Next he stripped down his Dragunov sniper rifle, the long barreled rifle used for long distance kills. Unlike the thread cutter, this weapon was considered too unwieldy for urban combat. Certainly too unwieldy for the Quarantine Zone.

  Or was it?

  Viktor, in both the Afghan and Chechen wars, had found this weapon to be perfectly suited for his occasional urban-based assignments.

  The Dragunov was considered to be a marksman’s weapon, a military unit’s support weapon. In Russia, every infantry unit had at least one person who carried a Dragunov and was proficient with it. The weapon was sturdy, but lightweight, fired a deadly round, and, overall, was extremely reliable.

  Viktor decided that both the thread cutter and the Dragunov would suit him fine for what he had in mind to do in the Quarantine Zone, in this American gulag. He would use one or the other of these weapons once he’d selected his targets and had determined where he would exercise his trained talents to reject this American-made internment camp he now found himself imprisoned in.

  For the first time in many days, as Viktor contemplated becoming a shooter again, he smiled.

  CHAPTER 82

  Quarantine

  Day 28

  Trace, Ibrahim, and their darkly-clad escorts kept close to the shadowed shelter of houses and other buildings as they moved through the streets of Fort Lauderdale.

  The cloud-covered night became their ally.

  All street lights remained dark for curfew, but a small measure of light leaked from houses, traveling up to the dense cloud ceiling and then rebounding to Earth, passing back through air thick with humidity and salt. It seemed to Trace he was seeing neighborhoods through gauzy eyes shrouded with well-developed cataracts.

  After walking a little more than one hour, they arrived at a highway overpass and stood at the side of the road looking down into a culvert.

  Trace and Ibrahim fell into a single-file line with their escorts, and then tentatively side-stepped with them toward the bottom of the hill.

  As Trace’s eyes adjusted to the dim light away from the street, he saw armed guards posted along both slopes, north to south.

  Down in the culvert, again walking single file, the escorts led Trace and Ibrahim along the bottom crease of the culvert, traveling four or five city blocks from the overpass.

  “This should do,” one of the escorts said. “Let’s sit.”

  They arranged themselves on the ground in a circle as if they were a Boy Scout troop sitting around a campfire. The escorts remained masked.

  “We’re Friday’s Progeny,” one black-clad person said, speaking through his mask. His voice was muffled by his mask and difficult to understand.

  Trace and Ibrahim turned and looked at one another, then turned back to the speaker.

  Trace said, “You’re the bandits we heard about on the TV newscast.”

  “We’re not bandits.”

  Trace said, “Do we have to stay in these?” He pointed at his black, wool ski mask. “They’re uncomfortable. You know who we are even if we don’t know you. I’m hot, and I’m going to take this off.” Before anyone could respond, Trace grabbed the bottom of his mask and started to roll it up over his face and head.

  The speaker who had just identified the group as Friday’s Progeny answered Trace by holding up his palm to stop him. Then he lowered his own chin to his chest, temporarily hiding his face. He grabbed the base of his own ski mask and slowly pulled it up until it came all the way off his face and head.

  He raised his face and looked directly at Trace.

  “Remember me?”

  CHAPTER 83

  Quarantine

  Day 28

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Trace said to the unmasked speaker. “Of course, I remember you, but I thought you were just a college jock on a spring break fling.”

  Alex shrugged. “I was, but things changed. We do what we have to do.”

  Trace stared briefly at Alex, then nodded.

  “Where does your cousin fit in? Is Jenna part of this?” he said, sweeping his arm to take in the nearby people in black. “And Ibrahim?” he added, looking over at Ibrahim.

  “We recruited Jenna early on,” Alex said. “I knew I could trust her. I’ve known her all her life. She’s our eyes and ears.”

  Alex paused. “He’s not part of this,” he said, nodding at Ibrahim.

  Trace looked at Ibrahim, who shrugged.

  “Then you came along. Jenna filled us in on you,” Alex said. “And so here we are.”

  “You’re terrorists,” Trace said. “Vigilantes, looters, bandits, black marketers. Whatever you want to call yourselves. Pick the name that suits you.” He paused to collect his thoughts.

  “How did you find us? How’d you know we were at that house?” Trace said.

  “We’ve been watching you ever since we met at the hotel,” Alex said.

  What do you want with us?”

  Alex ignored Trace’s question, and said, “We’re none of those things. We’re ordinary people caught up in circumstances, people who want to survive until the quarantine ends, then go back to our normal lives. Like I told you at the hotel, we can help each other.”

  “What’s the name Friday’s Progeny mean?” Trace asked.

  “Some of us were tourists trapped here, some snow-birds left over from up north for the season. A few of us live here year round. We even have some people who work for the county and city governments.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Trace said.

  Alex nodded. “We’re like the character Friday in Defoe’s robinson Crusoe. We help each other. We share our knowledge and skills to survive on this island now defined by barbed wire.” He paused. “We’re the spiritual children, the progeny so to speak, of Crusoe’s island companion, Friday.”

  “How clever,” Trace said. “I don’t think Crusoe and Friday broke any laws to survive.”

  “Nor do we,” Alex said, “if we can avoid it.”

  “You’re outlaws no matter what you call yourselves,” Trace said. “Dress it up any way you want. It doesn’t change the facts. You represent everything I’ve been trained to oppose.”

  “I don’t think you’re against surviving, are you?” Alex said. “You call us outlaws? Well, doesn’t that depend on your point of view? You’re a fugitive, aren’t you? You assaulted a soldier. Does that make you an outlaw?”

  “Point taken,” Trace answered.

  “We get together after curfew if we can find a safe place and have a specific mission in mind,” Alex said. “During the day we spread out among different hotels, squatting alone or in small groups.”

  “Why’d you bring us here?” Trace said, nodding toward Ibrahim.

  “We don’t talk about Friday’s Progeny during the day when we’re away from encampment. Not at all. Not to anyone. Not even to each other. It’s safer that way.”

  “Answer my question,” Trace said. “
Why’d you bring us here?”

  Alex continued. “I’m getting to that. On any given day when we have a reason for getting together, I’m the only one at first who knows where we’ll meet. I don’t tell anyone until the last minute. Then I send a coded text message to group leaders. If I don’t get back an all clear from every group leader within ten minutes, I know someone’s been compromised or taken. If that happens, I have to decide if we’ll meet anyway or if I should send out another code canceling the meeting, alerting everyone to stay put.”

  Alex paused to let his words sink in. Then he said to Trace, “What was your question?”

  Trace narrowed his eyes. This kid enjoys playing war too much. “Why’d you bring us here?”

  “To have you join us.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning, have you help us and have us help you survive during the occupation. Pretty much what I said to you when we met at the hotel.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “We can talk more about it tomorrow night.”

  “What about my wife? If I decide to stay, I’ll want her with me.”

  “Jenna, too,” Ibrahim said. “She also should be with us. I’ll join if Trace does.”

  “Your wife and Jenna will come from the hotel tonight or tomorrow night. Depends on when Jenna thinks it’s safe to move out after curfew.”

  Trace nodded.

  “I’ll send her a text message,” Alex said, “and let Jenna know you’re both with us. Then we’ll see.”