The bathroom was in the same rear hallway as Cole’s backroom, but the angle was wrong for her to keep an eye on the living room, and, beyond that the front door, while she took care of Greg. She could still hear sporadic gunfire from outside, but it was distant and faded and nowhere near enough to make her nervous. It sounded as if the shooting had moved away from Arrow Bay Colony, but how far exactly, she couldn’t be sure.
There hadn’t been another scream since they retreated to the bathroom, though police sirens came and went at odd intervals, and always from far away. She knew there was a local and understaffed Sheriff’s Department office along the state highway that connected the Bear Lake area with the main thoroughfare. Maybe the other gunshots had come from there.
Not that any of what was going on out there mattered to her in here right now.
The big man stood against the counter, eyes on the open door, too. He had started sweating, and she handed him one of her face towels while she finished wrapping up his hand.
“Your car’s in the garage?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. Why?”
“What kind of car is it?”
“An Audi. I was supposed to trade up for an SUV. Or a minivan. One of those mom cars.”
“Maybe we should take it. Try to get out of here.”
“That woman tried.”
“Maybe she made it.”
“No, I don’t think she did, Greg.”
Greg didn’t answer for a while.
Then, “You didn’t know her?”
“No,” Emily said. It was easier to lie the second time.
“Just ’cause she didn’t make it doesn’t mean we wouldn’t, now that we know they’re out there. We can avoid them. Speed up. Not stop for anything.”
“I don’t think we should.”
“Why not?”
“You know when car accidents occur the most?”
“No…”
“During emergencies. More people die trying to leave the area of an emergency than the people who actually stay put.”
Greg didn’t look convinced. “How do you know that?”
“I don’t have a lot to do these days, so I watch a lot of TV.”
“You got that from TV?”
“Yes.” Then, without missing a beat, “Is Barnes still up there?”
Emily was hoping to take his thoughts away from escaping. She needed him here with her. Not that she thought Greg could ever replace a man like Cole as a protector, but, well, he was better than nothing.
Greg nodded. “His eyes... They were wild. Crazed. Blood was coming out of them.” He shook his head. “He tried to kill me. Why did he try to kill me?”
Just like Don, Mrs. Landry, George, and how many else?
But not Brody. She’d seen that. Brody wasn’t running around out there like someone looking to commit murder. He was fleeing. Scared out of his mind.
Emily wondered if the lanky teenager had made it to wherever he was going…
“What happened after Barnes cut you?” she asked Greg.
“I managed to knock the box cutter out of his hand, but he grabbed a hammer and charged me.” Greg touched his bandaged head and winced. “Got me good, too. But I got the upper hand on him, got him down to the floor. I’m bigger, so it wasn’t really much of a fight, but goddamn was he strong. Way stronger than I remembered.”
It’s the adrenaline, she thought, remembering how fast Don had been earlier and how he’d shaken off Mrs. Landry’s knife as if it was little more than a mosquito bite. Emily had seen people in combat situations act as if nothing had happened even after they’d been shot or stabbed. But adrenaline only lasted for so long before you felt everything.
At least, it used to.
“Barnes’s dead?” she asked Greg.
The big man nodded solemnly. “I killed him. Jesus. I killed him.”
The look on the contractor’s face told Emily that this was the first time he’d actually realized what he’d done.
“We started this business together,” Greg continued, staring out the open door but not really seeing anything beyond it. “Him and me. We always talked about it; then we finally did it, and… Jesus. I killed him. I killed my best friend in the world.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Greg. You had no choice.”
“I…” He paused for a moment. Then, searching out her eyes as if she had the answers, “Do you know what’s happening out there? What’s making people go insane?”
“No, but it’s all over the news.”
“It’s happening everywhere?”
She nodded. “I saw people killing each other on live TV.”
“So it’s not just here? Not just with us?”
“No. I think it’s citywide.” She told him about the live feed from the highway, the drivers climbing out of their wrecked cars and killing each other. “I’ve never seen anything like it. They were mad. Crazed, like you said. I couldn’t see them close enough, but if it’s anything like what was happening on the other channels, I think they were like Barnes. Like my neighbors. Bloodshot eyes.”
He was still staring at her.
“What?” Emily said.
“You’re pretty calm about this.”
“Should I be freaking out?”
“Shouldn’t you?”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t always a stay-at-home housewife, Greg.”
“What did you used to do?”
“I was in the service when I was younger. Army Intelligence.”
“Wow.”
She smiled. That wasn’t quite the reaction she’d expected. “It wasn’t that impressive. I mostly read reports and filed papers in offices around the world. It was pretty boring.”
He gave her a disbelieving look.
“Honest,” she said, and thought, I guess Greg’s smarter than he looks.
She would have told him the truth if she could, but there were things she couldn’t share with people—not even family, never mind random contractors working on her house—and would never be able to. Cole knew all about it because he had even more restraints on what he could say in public than she did. It was one of the reasons why they made such a good couple. No one else understood them—what they were, then and now—than one another.
Thinking about Cole made her remember the phone in her back pocket. She took it out now. “Give me a moment, Greg. I need to see if Cole’s okay.”
He nodded and turned around to splash cold water on himself, then wiped down his face with a towel. He wasn’t going to die on her anytime soon from his wounds, but the rest of him—especially the mental part—was still open to debate.
Emily focused on her phone and typed in her password, then pressed redial. It didn’t take long for the screen to flash “Unable to Connect.”
“Dammit,” she said quietly.
“No luck?” Greg asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t get a connection.”
“How’s that possible?”
“I don’t know,” she said, because it shouldn’t have been.
How was it even remotely possible that every cell tower in the area was down? With today’s technologically advanced infrastructure? If she didn’t know better, she’d think this wasn’t a natural event but an attack of some kind.
A very well-planned one, at that.
But she kept those thoughts to herself mostly because it didn’t help her situation, and it certainly wouldn’t have done Greg any good.
“Maybe he’s on his way here now,” the contractor was saying. He was looking at her with sympathetic eyes, trying to reassure her.
She appreciated that and pursed a smile back. “I know he is,” she said, even as images of the pile-up on TV and people scrambling out of their vehicles to murder one another flashed across her mind’s eye.
She put the mobile away. “Do you have a phone, Greg?”
“Yeah, but it got smashed during the fight. But Barnes had one on him, too, and I didn’t see it anywhere when I left him
upstairs. Why? You want me to go get it? See if it works?”
“No, I’ll get it.”
“You?” he said, sounding very surprised.
“I need you to keep an eye on the doors and windows in case one of them tries to come in again. There’s a golf bag in the living room. You can grab one of the clubs or get a knife from the kitchen.”
“Okay,” he said, still looking strangely at her.
“I’ll be okay.”
“Maybe, but I should go, not you.”
“You said Barnes was dead.”
“Yes, but…”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
She pursed another smile, again appreciating his efforts. She’d done the right thing keeping Greg inside the house with her instead of letting him run out there to get himself killed by Don or George Benson or another one of her crazed neighbors. Greg was fully embracing his protector side now.
“I’ll be okay. You just keep them out,” she said.
Greg nodded, but hesitantly. “Be careful.”
“You too.”
He hurried out the door, through the back hallway, and across the living room. She watched him locate the golf bag next to the door and sifted through the offerings before settling on a big club with a head that was twice the size of the one currently leaning against the counter next to her.
Emily grabbed that club and left the bathroom, then turned left to go up the stairs.
“Be careful,” Greg said from the windows, where he was standing guard.
She nodded. “I will be.”
Emily walked around the drops of blood that Greg had left on the stairs and along the banister as he fled down. The bloody trail led her all the way up to the second floor and stretched into the currently renovated study, two doors from the master bedroom at the very end of the hallway.
She found Barnes with his head literally buried in the open door where Greg had left him. The dead contractor looked as if he were in the midst of praying, with his shoulder sticking out of the door and the rest of his body sagging against the floor. His neck was clearly broken, which had caused his death.
Emily crouched next to the man and got a better look at him.
Step two: Gather intel.
Barnes was a much smaller man than Greg, and at least seventy pounds lighter. He was more her size, and she guessed that physical deficit was how Greg had managed to overcome his friend even though Barnes had gotten the drop on him with the box cutter, and was, if he was anything like Don and the others, hopped up on adrenaline.
The eyes gave it away. They were still bloodshot, the sclera in both eyes swimming in a sea of mesmerizing deep red. She’d spotted the same thing in Don and Mrs. Landry, but to see it up close like this…
She shivered slightly, but pushed the discomfort away and picked up a rag, then used it to turn Barnes’s head to get a better look at his neck. She didn’t want to touch him, just in case whatever had happened to him could infect her by physical contact.
The veins underneath Barnes’s skin were practically throbbing even in death. Whatever had happened to him, and to her neighbors that had turned them crazed, it had affected them from the inside out. What could possibly do something like that?
The possibilities were endless.
A bioweapon, maybe?
A natural phenomenon?
Just about anything was possible. Which was the problem.
Emily couldn’t find Barnes’s phone anywhere, not that she expected it to work even if she could. There was nothing wrong with her phone this morning and nothing wrong with it now. Except, of course, it wasn’t connecting.
Why? How?
Two more questions that she needed to answer.
Two of many.
Two of way, way too many.
The study looked as if a tornado had hit it, and everything that was in one piece this morning when she peeked in at the two contractors at work had been reduced to broken junk during their fight. Barnes hadn’t gone down easy, but neither had Greg. There was blood all over the walls and floor, especially near the wall where the two had grappled for some time. She guessed that was also where Greg’s phone, a silver device, had broken, chunks of it still scattered across the floor.
After some searching, she finally located Barnes’s Android phone in his pocket. She felt a little queasy about patting him down, something that wouldn’t have happened before her “retirement.”
She pulled the phone out, but when she powered it on, it asked for a password.
“Of course. Why would it be that easy?”
Emily stood up and pocketed the phone, looking around the room at the same time.
There.
It was a nail gun. Bright orange in the corner and lying on its side. It wasn’t exactly a gun, but it was a decent substitute.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
Emily picked it up. There was a half-full clip still loaded, the rest of the nails already embedded in the walls. It wasn’t too heavy—just a shade under seven pounds—and the trigger felt right. Best of all, it was portable, with a battery pack at one end to give it all the impact power it needed.
She shot a round into the far wall to get a feel for it.
Pfft!
It sounded like almost a suppressed gunshot but with less recoil. The range wasn’t too bad, either.
Emily glanced around but couldn’t find an extra battery.
Back downstairs, she found Greg camped between the front door and the closest window, clutching the large golf club like a sword. He glanced over as she hurried down the stairs.
“I forgot about that,” Greg said when he saw the nail gun in her hand.
“There’s only one battery,” Emily said.
“The other one’s in the van. Along with the charger.” Then, “You found it? Barnes’s phone?”
She nodded. “Yes.” She took it out to show him. “Do you know his password?”
“Password?”
“For his phone.”
“Oh.” He thought about it for a few seconds before shaking his head. “No.” Then, looking around her living room, “Don’t you have a landline?”
She smiled. “Who has landlines anymore, Greg?”
“I do.”
“You’re a rarity these days, then.”
That made him smile for the first time. “I guess.”
“Anything happen out there while I was upstairs?” she asked, pressing against the wall next to one of the windows and looking out.
Mrs. Landry was still where Don had left her, looking even more bloody now, if that was possible. And yet, strangely peaceful despite her bleeding eyes, which made her appear as if she were wearing a grotesque mask of some sort.
“Nothing,” Greg said. “Why is it so quiet out there? Shouldn’t there be more…chaos?”
“This is Bear Lake. People pay a lot of money for homes in a place like Arrow Bay Colony for a reason. It’s two hours from the city, from all the people and noise and pollution. There’s a police station nearby, but that’s the only one for at least ten miles. If this thing is citywide, like I think it is, then most of the chaos will be concentrated in the city. If I’m right about the timetable, then most people will have been stuck in or around downtown when this happened.”
“You saw it happening on the news?” Greg asked.
“Yes. Live TV was never so…graphic.”
“Must have been some sight.”
“It was something, all right.”
He peered outside. “How many neighbors do you have? How many of them are usually at home during the day?”
It was a good question, and she gave it serious thought before answering.
Arrow Bay was an upper-class community, but also a working one. Most of the homes were empty in the daytime, with only housewives and unemployed men like Don usually hanging around. If you were to rob an entire subdivision like Arrow Bay, you
’d do it in the daytime. Which was why the front gate and the surrounding ten-foot fence was so vital. There were no security guards, but anyone willing to climb the barrier to get inside could probably steal to his heart’s content. Not that anyone had tried.
Besides her own house, there were a few others on her street with people inside during the daytime hours. Don next door was one of them. Mrs. Landry across the street was another. There was Eileen Pang three houses down; the Banners, a retired elderly couple, after her. The Duncans weren’t ready to retire yet, but they both worked overseas the majority of the time, and this was one of their rare “home” weeks, so both should have been sleeping in today. Everyone else, as far as she knew, had working husbands or wives; and like her Cole, those spouses would be on their way home when the chaos began.
She wondered how many of them were currently fighting for their lives on the freeways at this very second.
Or already dead.
Or doing the killing.
She sighed. Morbid thoughts like those weren’t going to do her or her unborn child any good. Cole was out there, and if he wasn’t affected, he would be headed back now. He’d do everything in his power to get home. Which meant she had to stay alive until he did.
Emily glanced up at the skies. Nightfall was still hours away, but there was nothing out here for her now. Certainly nothing that she couldn’t do in Cole’s backroom.
She looked across at Greg. “We should go.”
“Where?” the contractor asked.
“My husband’s room, in the back of the house.”
“What’s in there?”
“Safety. There’s also a TV. Maybe there’s something on the news that we can learn. We can’t do anything standing out here.”
He nodded, liking that idea. Or maybe, like her, he didn’t like standing out here waiting for one of the crazies to come get them.
“Maybe there’s some news about what’s happening out there,” Greg said.
“Let’s hope so,” she said, even if she didn’t fully believe it.
Chapter 5
“What were you doing when Barnes tried to kill you?”
“I was rewiring the wall. He caught me off guard.”
Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront Page 4