The world tilted, upward, as though he were on a college drinking binge. He dug his nails in deeper, and struggled to get the offending arm to loosen around his neck, but in only a couple seconds, his arms turned to rubber. His vision grew darker still, and the world began to spin crazily.
“Nooo…” he croaked, but his voice faded away, lacking the strength to protest any further.
A moment later, the blackness overtook him completely.
David awoke spluttering, water streaming over him. He opened his eyes—no, only one eye—and saw Orien and Cobi standing over him. Orien had the bucket, and was grinning, half a step behind Cobi, who was red-faced and glaring.
Cobi’s voice was chilly and low as he hissed, “Where’s the prisoner?”
David reached up and felt his eye. It was swollen shut completely. Damn, Wiley hit harder than he’d expected, that was for sure. He struggled to sit up, but his body wasn’t quite done rebelling, yet.
Orien helped him into a sitting position, and clapped him on the back. “Isn’t it obvious? Wiley’s a hardened killer. We’re damn lucky David’s still alive. I guess Wiley didn’t want a gunshot to alert everyone. By the way, boss, your SUV is gone.” He grinned widely.
Cobi looked back at him, and his face went neutral, fast. When Cobi turned back to David, he said, “I’m asking you. What happened, and where’s the killer? Damn you, I should have let the mob have him.”
David shrugged. Moment by moment, his thoughts grew less cloudy, even as the ache in his face grew more pronounced. “He tripped. I dragged him upright. He must have grabbed a rock, or something, because no man has ever punched me that hard. I was out cold. I imagine he got my keys and uncuffed himself.”
David patted his back pockets, deliberately. “And his pistol is gone. Where’s mine?”
Orien held out a pistol. “Flew away, under a brush. He probably didn’t have time to look for it. He’s definitely gone.”
“Crap.” Cobi rubbed his chin. “What the hell am I going to do, now? My plan is ruined, and we can’t afford that. Not with an army of bandits about to crash into us.”
David staggered to his feet, Orien helping him, and said, “Look, no one knows he ran away. I guarantee you, a killer like that is never going to come back here. He’s long gone, and he’s going to stay that way. So tell the people whatever you feel is best—they’ll never know the difference.”
Standing beside him, Orien’s hand on his shoulder kneaded into the muscle. “Glad to see you made it, boss. That was a close one. Almost lost you.”
David nodded, certain that Orien had a double-meaning behind those words. “Yes. Well, I need ice more than words. Get me some, would you?”
Orien’s smile widened, and he nodded. “Sure.”
Bang. Bang.
Two shots rang out, and David looked reflexively to the southwest, confused. “Wiley would have gone east, not west—”
“Bandits,” Orien said. “To the bridge!”
David followed Orien, running west, as fast as his wobbly legs would carry him. The bandits… If it was the horde, then it was already too late for him to leave this rat-hole of a town. So why was he not more upset by that fact?
It was too late to worry about that, though. He climbed into the patrol car’s passenger seat, in the parking lot, and Orien peeled out and veered the car down the main street, heading for whatever new calamity had shown up.
The first thing Wiley noticed was a sharp, pounding pain covering the whole back half of his head. Second, he couldn’t focus his eyes as he opened them. The room tilted. Something was in his arm, and he reached for it, but after moving only a couple inches, his arm jerked to a halt, and something metal clanged. He focused on his arm. Handcuffs? He was cuffed to something. A bed, one with metal rails—okay, he was cuffed to a hospital bed or gurney, perhaps. From his other arm, a clear plastic tube extended to his right, up to a hanging IV bag.
The effort of lifting his head to look sent violent pain shooting through him, and his stomach threatened to turn itself inside out. “Mpf. Uuuh..”
Why wasn’t his tongue working right?
A familiar grinning face appeared a foot from Wiley’s own.
“Cub-bih,” Wiley managed to say.
Cobi smiled wider. “Welcome back, sleeping beauty. You know, chloroform really should come with a warning label that says ‘caution: does not work.’ In the end, I cut off the blood to your brain, and you were out in seconds—I took wrestling in high school. Then, I quit trying the rag after a couple minutes and just gave you an auto-injector full of ketamine. Great stuff; kept you asleep.”
Distant sounds, faint and muffled, reached Wiley’s ears, the unmistakable reports of gunfire. First one shot, then several. “Whu’s goin’n?”
Even the sound of his own voice caused the pain in his head to spike.
Cobi shrugged. “A raid, no doubt. David was pretty clear that we have more time before the main event. It’ll be fine. He can handle it for me.”
“For you?” Wiley found his tongue worked a bit better, though it still felt thick and sluggish in his mouth, and he had to concentrate on each word. “Or for th’ town?”
“Same difference.” Cobi shrugged. “Oh, he has their attention right now, but the truth is, I didn’t get to be the mayor by kissing hands and shaking babies. I plotted and schemed and fought tooth and nail, driving my competition out of town, one at a time, until only I was left. I am Weldona.”
“I saved your life, though. Why didn’t you just let me go?” Wiley surged into lifting his arms, as hard as he could. But he still felt weak, from the ketamine, no doubt. “You know I’m not a serial killer.”
Cobi’s eyes went out of focus, as though looking off into the distance. But they were in what looked like a storm shelter, something underground at least, and there was no “distance” to stare off into. He said, “I know you saved my life. But this town needs decisive leadership. It needs me, not David. And you’re the ticket to making that possible. I’m sorry it’ll cost you your life, but when I hand you over to a herd of scared sheep, they’re going to demand you get strung up. I’ll take charge of that, too, and by leading from the front, I’ll get them all to forget this silly idea that some outsider cop knows what’s best for them. I know what’s best for Weldona, and by making sure everyone remembers that, you’ll be saving lives. That makes you kind of a martyr, did you know that? So relax and go with the flow, William Johnson. Your death is going to save lives.”
Wiley forced himself to laugh out loud. “You’re like one of those comic book villains, you know that? Justifying the evil things you do so you’ll sleep okay at night—”
“What, like you murdering those animals who killed your sister? Talk about justifying evil deeds to sleep at night. Ain’t that just the pot calling the kettle black.”
“David will do everything he can to stop this. You know that, right?”
Cobi grinned, and it looked anything but forced. “Oh, yes. I’m counting on that. But what can he do against a whole town rising up in a lynch mob? He can get out of the way, and let me lead again, or he can get in the way and try to stop me. Then, you still get strung up, but he loses whatever shitty little influence he has over my people. They’re mine, damn him. He says we need to stand united right now, and he’s right about that, but then he goes and splits us up. Gets between my people and me. That, I cannot abide.”
Cobi grunted as he rose to his feet.
Wiley spotted bandaging on Cobi’s arm, and flashed back to the memory of himself clawing at Cobi’s arm to get it away from his neck. Well, at least he’d gone down fighting.
That wasn’t going to keep him from swinging on the end of a rope, but at the moment, it was the only comfort he had.
60
“What if the horde hasn’t reached the first bridge, yet? Then we can’t just circle north.” Mary looked out the windshield with a rifle scope, which Fran kept in the glove box in lieu of binoculars.
Christ
ine didn’t really want to hear that, and hearing it did nothing to help the situation in any case. She ignored the comment, and said over her shoulder to her children, in back, “Your nana was worried about you. She’s going to be so glad to see you, when we get home.”
Hunter continued looking out the windows, his head scanning back and forth as Christine glanced back at him in the rearview mirror. Darcy leaned against him, as though he could protect her if something bad happened.
Well, whatever made her feel better. The connection those two had, despite their continual petty squabbling, was one of life’s real joys to watch.
“We’ll be glad to see her, too,” Hunter said. “I hope she makes her shepherd’s pie. That stuff is so good.”
Christine said, “We got that all the time at the chicken restaurant.”
Darcy said, “It’s good, but it’s not the same. Nana’s is better.”
They shot past the turnoff for the bridge to circle around to the north side. Christine’s heart rate soared, anxiety rising. But as she craned her neck to confirm it was exactly what she knew it to be, the bridge she’d wanted, she almost swerved at the sight of a dozen people mobbed up in front of the bridge checkpoint. Hopefully, the kids didn’t see it. She sped up.
Hunter said, “Mom, wasn’t that the turnoff?”
“Yeah, sweetie. There’s people there.”
As if to confirm her claim, the air-raid siren at the bridge sounded, low at first but climbing fast in pitch and volume.
“What’s going on?” Darcy craned her neck, but the rearview didn’t permit Christine to see if she saw something scary, like the mob of people…
She leaned forward to peer farther ahead on the road. She got the vague sense of movement, like the road was seething—then she realized what it was. Another small group had crowded the western bridge into town. Before she got clear enough to see individuals in any detail, the sound of that bridge’s air-raid siren reached the vehicle, too. The alarm was spreading, and so were the refugees.
Crap. One chance left.
Christine turned right at the next off-ramp, heading a hundred meters or so south to the surface street that ran parallel to the highway, then headed east along it. “God, I hope we make the south bridge before they do.”
More sirens picked up enough volume for her to hear it over the intervening distance, one after the other.
Mary said, “Praying is good. I’ll join you. Bet you wish Wiley were here now, huh?”
Christine glanced at her friend out of the corner of her eye, and for a moment, she was prepared to get angry. Was Mary insinuating something?
Not the time for second-guessing friends, she decided to just be honest and take it at face value. “No. I wish David were here. His cop uniform ends most problems before they’re problems.”
Surprisingly, she realized, that was indeed the truth. She did wish David were with her, even if only for the reassurance of his badge.
They reached the intersection to head toward the south bridge into Weldona, and veered left. She accelerated, the force pushing her back into her seat a little.
In the back, Hunter said, “Mom, what’s that? To our left, up ahead.”
She leaned forward again, squinting, and immediately spotted what Hunter had noticed. Another group of refugees, this one twice as large as the other two, was moving toward the place where the road north met the south bridge. Their feet moved fast, a blur of speed. They were running…running for the road and the car, and her family in it.
Christine floored the gas pedal. The bridge gate was open, she saw, and frantic men and women on the bridge motioned toward the car, waving it in. Urging her to get there faster. The speedometer crept upward. “Seatbelts?”
“Hells yes,” Hunter said, but Darcy clung to her brother, and Christine couldn’t see whether she had her belt on.
She said, “Sister, too?”
Abruptly, she saw something. It was in the air, hanging like a soap bubble—
No, it wasn’t. It angled downward, rushing toward her side window. A rock, her frantic mind realized half a second before it struck the car. The impact shook the whole car, and the noise was deafening, a crack like a pistol going off. The window spiderwebbed as the rock bounced up into the air and over the car’s rear end, but a second later, Christine realized, it was still intact. It was just hard to see through.
The old, heavy car careened up when it struck the bridge’s lip, and another rock smacked the trunk so loudly that Darcy yelped in fear. They sped past the bridge guards, who were already frantically raising the defenses, or rather, sliding them forward to close off the bridge access. In her mirror, as she slammed the brakes, Christine saw the four-person gate-closing crew huddled behind the sheet metal roadblock, and rocks bounded over it like popcorn bouncing out of the cooking pot.
A face appeared in the driver’s side window, one she didn’t recognize at first. Something was wrong with it.
David’s voice came from it. “Chrissy, get you and the kids to Fran’s, and fortify in place. The townsfolk and I are repelling this. We think this is just a probe, not the real deal, but get inside anyway. You’ll be safer there. Not safe, but safer. Now, go!”
Christine didn’t need to be told twice. She romped the gas pedal, and the car surged forward, pressing her into the seat again. In moments, they were around the corner and away from the chaos of a refugee mob trying to storm a bridge.
Behind her, shots rang out.
She pushed down harder on the gas pedal, and didn’t ease up until Fran’s driveway came into view. A glance in the rearview at her kids showed her what she’d feared to find. Darcy, sobbing, clung to Hunter. His eyes were as wide as saucers, though he kept his arms around his sister, as though daring the world to try to harm her.
Mary, Christine realized, was babbling, had been babbling, and continued to do so. “Thank you, ohmylord, you saved my life bringing me. Thank you so much, Chrissy. I can’t imagine what Denver is like right now. Oh Lord, I hope our boss is okay. I need my tax forms,” she said, voice cracking with hysteria.
“We’re fine, Mary. Deep breaths. Almost there…” Christine didn’t want to imagine what Denver was like at that moment. And yet, the thought wouldn’t leave her alone as they drove way too fast down the driveway.
Out front, the windows were different. Green. They looked like the shingles on a roof—suddenly, she realized what they were. Sandbags. Fran had sandbagged up the windows, save for a firing hole in each. As much as she wanted to ask what the hell was going on, she knew.
Deep in her bones, and in the little lizard part of her brain that predated intelligence, she knew.
Things were now nothing like what they had been before. The CMEs had done a terribly thorough job, and no one had even truly recognized it at the time beyond a few conspiracy nuts.
Things are not the same anymore.
That thought, an epiphany, struck her so hard that she couldn’t see beyond the windshield for the tears welling in her eyes. And that, too, was different. She couldn’t wait to tell Wiley about all this, and to have him tell her they were all going to be okay in the end.
But would they, really?
61
Christine rushed her kids inside, grateful that they had, at least for the moment, stopped crying about their father taking them, or crying about their father going back to Denver. They were as convinced as she was that it was a suicide trip, now, but couldn’t very well say that. So, it was a welcome distraction. Too bad it came at the price of a riot at the gates.
Once they were all inside, Fran slammed the door shut and slid a length of rebar through two u-shaped hooks straddling the door.
Christine looked back and forth between the hooks and her mother. She sent her kids down to the basement, then said to Fran, “Those don’t look strong enough to hold a determined attacker.”
“They don’t have to stop them, just slow them down enough for our rifles to do the stopping. Speaking of which, I’m arming u
s. All of us.”
Before Christine could decide whether she wanted Hunter and Darcy to carry real weapons, Fran bolted, disappearing through the basement door.
She turned to Mary. “Help me check the windows and doors.” She wasted no time to see whether her friend did so, before visually checking the nearest window. Closed and locked. The field of view was limited by the newly arrived sandbagging outside it, which left a shoebox-sized gap for vision and shooting outward from the house.
Together, they verified the windows were all secure, or as secure as glass behind sandbags could get, and the back door in the kitchen was barred like the front.
Fran came up through the basement door as Christine finished rattling the rebar to ensure it was secure, and her arms were full. She carried half a dozen rifles and a satchel over her shoulder. These, she set atop the kitchen island countertop. “Each one, take one. The shottie is already full.”
As Christine grabbed an AR-15 and Mary reached for a long-barreled 12-gauge shotgun, leaving what she thought might be an M1 Garand on the counter—she wasn’t particularly well versed in that stuff—Fran opened the satchel and began pulling magazines out.
Christine counted two magazines per weapon, with the Garand’s being substantially smaller than the AR’s. Of course, the shotgun had no magazine, but Mary did a credible job checking to verify it was loaded. No time to ask where she’d learned that, and Christine probably knew the answer already anyway: Fran, of course.
She loaded one magazine, though she didn’t pull the slide back to chamber a round, and slapped the other magazine into her back pocket, then ran out the door, ignoring Fran’s and Mary’s panicked shouts to stay. She dove into Fran’s car, heedless of the shattered windshield, and peeled out, backing out of the driveway.
In a minute, she was again at the bridge she’d come in through, with only a single thought on her mind: she would best keep her children safe by keeping monsters like the four who’d attacked her in town, out of town. Fran and the others would keep the barricaded house safe from any infiltrators, but maybe not if the horde got in.
Inception of Chaos: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Story Page 37