by Tom Abrahams
Jackie gently placed her hand on Pop’s back. “I think it’s the uncertainty,” she offered as an explanation. “None of us know how long the lights will be out, when we’ll get help, if the stores will reopen. It’s frightening. With a hurricane or flood, we know help is coming. We know the lights will eventually come back on.”
“It doesn’t speak well for humanity,” said Pop. “And this is coming from someone who thought he’d seen man’s worst.” He rubbed the faded tattoo on his arm.
“You’ve had a rough night,” Jackie said. “Why don’t you two get some sleep? I’m guessing you haven’t had any.”
“We haven’t,” Nancy confirmed.
“You can have my room. I changed the sheets. Everyone else is upstairs right now. It’ll be quiet. I’ll keep the door shut. I need to get a couple of things first.”
They thanked her again and Jackie went to her bedroom. From her closet she took a large Sears shopping bag. She whipped it open and then carried it to her bedside. From her nightstand she pulled out a box and slid it into the shopping bag. She didn’t need anyone knowing what she was doing.
She emerged from the bedroom and carried the bag with her back to the kitchen, setting it on the floor next to the island. The Vickers were at the front entry, gathering their bags.
“All done,” she called to them. “The bedroom is yours. When you wake up, you can move the bags into the guest room. Betty won’t mind. Just don’t tell her you have any guns.”
The couple slugged their bags to the bedroom and shut the door behind them. Jackie figured they’d be in there for three or four hours. Everyone else was still asleep, as far as she knew. Now was as good a time as any to do what she should have already done. The Vickers had unwittingly convinced her of what needed to happen now.
She picked up the bag, cradled its weight against her chest, and she went to the garage. She stumbled in the darkness, tripping across the settled, uneven concrete flooring, but found her way to Clayton’s workbench from memory. She fished for a pair of flashlights she knew he kept on its shelf and turned them on to illuminate the bench as best she could.
She reached into the bag and pulled out the heavy gauge steel box. It was a biometric safe. She set the safe on the workbench and slid four fingers into the depressed lid. The safe beeped and clicked and she pulled open the lid.
Inside the felt-lined box was a pair of handguns. One was a Glock 17. The other was a Glock 19. Both were reliable weapons that used the same nine-millimeter cartridges. The 19 had a shorter barrel and grip by comparison and was Jackie’s choice for concealed carry. It could also use the 17’s magazine, which was a bonus, since its capacity was larger than the standard 19. Both were equipped with tritium sights that allowed for effective nighttime use, and given the lack of electricity, she was all the more thankful for having the sights on both weapons.
Next to the two weapons were three additional magazines. All of them were spares for the 17, which meant they’d work in both weapons. Jackie had them loaded with cheap rounds months earlier so she could take them to the range for practice. One by one, she worked the rounds free of the magazines and reloaded them with hollow-point rounds. She’d chosen the hollow points because they tended to stay inside the target instead of firing through and causing unintended damage. Her hollow points were particularly deadly. Upon impact, the tip bloomed like a flower, and eight razor-edged points ripped through whatever it hit. She’d only fired hollow points a few times to see if they fired differently from the full metal jacket rounds with which she’d practice at the range.
Jackie finished loading the clips and then checked the two that were already loaded and in the weapons. She added up the rounds in her head. She had fifteen in one weapon and seventeen in the other. Plus she had another three magazines that could hold seventeen.
“Seventeen, thirty-four, sixty-eight, eighty-three,” she mumbled to herself. “Eighty-three rounds. If I need more than that, I’m in more trouble than I can handle.”
The door to the house creaked open and Jackie snapped the safe shut, took a flashlight, and aimed it toward the door. Nikki squinted against the light and shielded her eyes with her hand.
“What are you doing?” Nikki asked.
Jackie kept the beam aimed at Nikki’s eyes. “What are you doing? I thought you were asleep upstairs.”
Nikki took a step forward and to the left, trying to avoid the light. “Can’t sleep. Too much on my mind.”
Jackie followed Nikki’s movements with the cone of light. “Like what?”
“Could you please move the light?” Nikki asked. “I can’t see.”
Jackie lowered the light. “What’s got you awake?”
Nikki maneuvered her way past the car. “Just hyped. I’m worried about Rick, Mumphrey, and Kenny. Thinking about what’s next. You know, the usual post-apocalyptic stuff.”
“Funny,” Jackie said without laughing.
Nikki approached Jackie, stopping a comfortable distance from her. “So what are you doing?”
Jackie sighed. There was no point in hiding what she was doing. This wasn’t Betty Brown. Nikki was a professional wrestler who Chris had called a “total badass”.
“I’m loading my weapons,” Jackie said. “Making sure we’re prepared.”
Nikki’s face lit up. “Weapons?” she asked. “What do you have?”
“I have a couple of handguns.”
Nikki looked at the safe. “What kind?”
“Glocks.”
“Oooh,” said Nikki. “Nice. Very reliable. Which one? The 42?”
“You know guns?”
Nikki took another step closer, invading Jackie’s space. “My dad was a cop. He made me take self-defense classes and weapons classes. He used to take me to the range.”
“Really?” Jackie said. “Interesting. Your dad was a police officer?”
“Yeah. He was. So, which Glock?”
Jackie slid her fingers into the slots atop the safe. It beeped and clicked. She opened it, revealing the handguns inside. “I have two. One’s a 17. The other, the one I like to carry with me sometimes, is a 19. I’ve got extra mags that fit into both.”
“What ammo are you using?”
“Hollow point,” said Jackie. “It avoids a—”
“Through and through shot,” said Nikki, nodding. “Smart. Also does maximum damage to the intruder.”
Jackie smiled genuinely for the first time since Chris had walked into the house, which felt like a lifetime ago. Nikki was good to have around.
“Tell you what,” Jackie said, offering Nikki the Glock 19. “You hold onto this. It’s not as though Betty’s going to use it. Neither of my kids like handling the weapons, even though they’ve taken safety classes. And Pop Vickers has his own guns.”
Nikki took the weapon. “Who?” she asked, flipping it over in her hand, testing its weight. She raised the Glock to check the sights.
“Pop Vickers,” said Jackie. “He and his wife, Nancy, are our brand-new guests. They live down the street. Their house got broken into. They’re freaked, so they’re staying with us.”
“Okay,” Nikki said. “Tritium sights?”
Jackie nodded. “Yep. No batteries. Just glows green in the dark.”
“Nice.”
“All right,” Jackie said. “I need your help.”
“Shoot.”
Jackie smirked. “Funny. No, really, what should we do with the spare magazines? Should I keep them in the safe in my bedroom? You wanna keep one?”
Nikki shook her head. “No, we need to be more strategic than that. If there are people breaking into houses, we need to be prepared for them to be violent.”
“What do you suggest? “You know, places you might find yourself in a battle.”
“We hide the mags in key places,” said Nikki. “My dad would always put one in places where he thought he’d run to defend us. He kept one in the pantry, one in a mason jar full of popcorn, one under a bathroom sink. Jackie grabbed t
he three extra magazines from the safe and shut the lid. She handed Nikki a flashlight and took the other with her, motioning for the wrestler to follow her back into the house. The two of them spent the next thirty minutes sketching out a defense plan and hiding the ammunition in places they thought they might need it. The magazines were hidden well enough that somebody not looking for them wouldn’t find them, yet accessible enough that the person who knew they were there could have their weapon reloaded with another seventeen rounds of deadly ammunition in seconds.
“Let’s hope we don’t need them,” said Jackie.
“Let’s hope,” Nikki agreed.
CHAPTER 25
MONDAY, JANUARY 27, 2020, 11:00 AM MST
DENVER, COLORADO
Hours earlier, when the train had jerked to a sudden stop at a hidden terminal location, Vihaan Chandra had thought about keeping his grip around the shiny metal railing that held his balance and kept him upright inside the train.
Others had rushed from the car onto the platform, shuffling anxiously to see what lay beyond. Not Chandra. He’d hesitated, his eyes scanning the wide concourse bathed in soft blue light. On the concrete wall at the opposite end of the concourse, the words TRANSFER CORRAL THREE were spray painted in white lettering that must have come from a large stencil.
Transfer Corral?
“It’s okay,” Treadgold had said, trying to calm Chandra. He’d already stepped from the train but had peeked his head back into the cabin to coax his friend from its confines. “C’mon, Vihaan. We gotta go.”
Chandra had reluctantly let his fingers slip from the bar and stepped from the train. No sooner had he cleared the doors than they whooshed shut. There had been a deafening alarm that buzzed, signaling the train’s impending departure. Then the train was gone, accelerating back from where they’d come.
Chandra had scanned the crowded space, trying to spot clues or warnings about what lay ahead. His heart was thumping; his palms were sweating; his legs tingled.
Treadgold had led him through the crowd to the far end of the concourse and a bank of steel-doored elevators. There were three of them, and above the elevator doors were floor indicators. The numbers ranged from one through five. Chandra had looked at his funhouse reflection in the doors and wondered if, in fact, his body was falsely warped at all. This was his new reality.
Van Cleaf had been standing in front of the center elevator, holding her megaphone, her lips moving as she counted heads. Finally, after several suffocating minutes, Chandra was relieved to hear her bark a new set of orders.
“By numbers,” she said, her voice artificially amplified, “I need you to line up. I’d like the first third of you to my right, the second third in front of me, and the last to my left. You’ll board the elevator when the doors open and ride it to your next stop.”
There had been a uniformed man operating the elevator, who’d turned a key and pushed the button marked five. The button lit up and Chandra felt the momentary weightlessness created by the elevator’s initial downward acceleration. Above him was the clanging mechanism of gears, their teeth grinding in revolution to lower the car.
Other than the workings of the elevator’s machinery, the ride had been silent. Not even Treadgold or his new acquaintance, Bert Martin the security expert, had spoken on the brief but uncomfortable ride.
When the elevator doors cranked open, Chandra had found himself at one end of a long, narrow hallway. He’d filed out of the elevator and along the hallway as if in a queue for an amusement park ride. On the cinderblock walls, stamped with the same stencil and in the same white paint, were the words LEVEL 5. The short ceiling and pale blue light were confining enough to induce claustrophobia, but Chandra had moved along despite being overcome with a sense of dread.
He’d reached the end of the hallway, which split to the left and to the right in a standard T intersection. On the wall at the end of the hallway were two words framed by arrows pointing in opposite directions.
Pointing to the right was the word OPEN. To the left was the word INTACT. A uniformed soldier had tapped each new person on the shoulder and directed him or her in one direction or the other. When Treadgold reached the front of the line, the guard said, “Intact. To your left.”
Treadgold had obeyed the command and continued his journey along the corridor marked INTACT, looking over his shoulder at Chandra.
“Intact. To your left.”
Chandra had nodded his understanding of the command and followed his boss along the corridor. It was identical in appearance to the one he’d already traveled and he could not see the end. It was too dark and the blue light didn’t provide illumination enough to see much beyond the five or six men in front of him. Bert Martin was next in line.
“Intact. To your left.”
Chandra had stopped and again checked the line in front of him. Every person, of the ones he could see, was a man. He looked back at the guard, avoiding Bert Martin’s gaze as the security expert drew closer. A woman at the front of the line was ordered toward OPEN, as was the woman behind her.
“You should probably keep moving, mate,” Bert had said. “Seems they like an orderly place.”
Chandra’s eyes had drifted back to the Aussie and he’d nodded blankly, resuming his path along the INTACT corridor until he’d reached its end. On the wall to his right, the word INTACT was repeatedly stenciled every twenty feet or so. An arrow to the left of the word guided travelers in the right direction. On the left wall, the arrow pointed the direction from which he’d come. There were three words. One was OPEN; the other two were UPPER LEVELS.
The hallway had opened to a large concourse similar to the one outside the train. There had been tables manned by uniformed soldiers. They asked questions of each new arrival then handed out identical backpacks and envelopes. The line had stalled and Chandra had stood there, inching his way forward for what felt like hours.
He’d reached the front of the line and a soldier summoned him with a wave of his fingers. His attention had never left the touchscreen tablet in front of him.
“Number?” the soldier had asked.
“Forty-nine.”
“Name?”
“Vihaan Chandra.”
“Age?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Marital status?”
Chandra hesitated.
“Marital status?”
“Widowed.”
“Single, then?”
“Yes.”
“Allergies?”
“None, really.”
“Really?”
“Nothing serious.”
“Smoker?”
“No.”
“Any prescription drugs?”
“No.”
“None?”
“No.”
The soldier had asked another half dozen questions, each seemingly less and less relevant to his daily life, but Chandra had answered them. He’d taken the backpack and the envelope and found his new home. It wasn’t much more than what Chandra imagined a prison cell might be like, save the iron bars. There was a concrete floor with a drain at its center. To one side of the twenty-by-twenty space was a twin-sized bed. A new mattress, still wrapped in Visqueen, was perched atop the bed’s maple frame. Next to the bed was a table topped with a lamp. To the other side was a matching maple desk with three drawers. There was a high-backed wooden chair on casters pushed flush with the desk. Next to the desk was a wardrobe. Beyond the desk, at the end of the room, was a door that led to a bathroom. It had reminded Chandra of a laboratory, with its stainless steel shower enclosure and vanity. The toilet was lidless and a porcelain white that matched the glossy subway tile on the bathroom walls. There was no mirror.
Now, having spent time unpacking his belongings and making the bed with the linens provided in the wardrobe, Chandra sat on the bed and spilled the contents of the backpack onto the thin poly-blend blanket he’d pulled taut and tucked under the mattress.
He spread out the contents and exami
ned each of them individually. There was a package of toiletries: toothbrush and paste, a razor and tin of shaving cream, deodorant, a comb, and a dollar-sized tube of hair gel.
There was also a package of undershirts and underwear roughly in his size. There was a smartwatch and a device that resembled a smartphone. Chandra slid the watch onto his wrist and the screen glowed red.
Hello, Vihaan. Good morning.
The message disappeared and the time and date replaced it on the screen, as did his location.
11:02 AM 1/27/2020
ROOM 49-3 INTACT LEVEL
Chandra picked up the glass tablet that resembled a smartphone and ran his finger across the smooth screen. The device glowed red and the same message appearing on his watch was visible on the handheld mini-tablet.
11:02 AM 1/27/2020
ROOM 49-3 INTACT LEVEL
He pressed the home button at the bottom of the glass screen and a haptic response vibrated against his thumb. The screen immediately changed and revealed a bank of applications that appeared to control functions in his room.
OVERHEAD LIGHTS, LAMP, SHOWER, SINK, TELENET MONITOR
“Telenet?” he said aloud. “What is that?” He looked around his room, seeing nothing that would provide an answer. He touched the application icon and the screen changed again, giving the device the appearance of a remote control.
He pressed the I/O button, felt a vibration in his thumb, and on the wall at the foot of his bed, a sixty-inch rectangular image revealed itself. It looked like a television screen but was different. A welcome message was displayed on what Chandra assumed was a home screen. A tiny translucent infinity icon in the lower right of the screen was flipping and turning as if the computer running the device were thinking.