Emily continued rummaging and pulled out two extra boxes of 9mm rounds. There were also two TASER guns and a box of cartridges for them. She wasn’t sure why the deputies had been dragging these around when they already had a healthy dose of firepower in the pistols and rifles, not to mention the shotguns.
She also found, to her surprise, four more velvet pouches filled with diamonds. They sparkled even in the semidarkness, and she had to ask herself what the deputies thought they were doing with the jewelry if they believed the world had come crashing down and was never going to rebuild itself again. Maybe the fact they took the time to loot the diamonds (she could think of a couple of jewelry stores in a pair of strip malls nearby where they could have originated) meant, in a strange way, that the deputies weren’t nearly as pessimistic about the condition of the world as they had led on.
Or maybe she was just overthinking it. Were they even real cops to begin with? That was still something she hadn’t settled on. They were familiar with weapons, but you could say the same thing about criminals.
Emily tossed the pouches back into the bag and stacked the boxes of ammo on the table. She made sure the magazine in the SIG716 was completely full before putting it back in and slung the rifle. She got up and headed back over to where Greg was, still sitting next to the door. There were two more bags that she hadn’t checked yet, but she’d go through them tomorrow. Right now, she had everything she needed.
The rifle’s weight felt good on her, and she liked the additional Glock in her back waistband. What she wouldn’t give for a gun belt with pouches to store everything in their proper places, though.
“Find anything good?” Greg asked as she approached.
“Police rifle, ammo, and a couple more Glocks in one of the bags.”
“I guess we can always use more guns and bullets.”
“And more diamonds.”
“More diamonds?”
She nodded.
“Geez,” Greg said. “They really did rob a jewelry store, didn’t they?”
“Or two.”
“So you were right; they might not have been real cops after all.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think it matters anyway.”
“You’re probably right. If the world’s gone to shit, who cares about uniforms?”
“Exactly.” She glanced down at her watch. They were creeping up on nine in the evening, a few hours since they made their escape into the backroom. She looked up at Greg. “Anything happen while I was away?”
He shook his head. “It’s so quiet out there. I don’t hear anything.”
“Let’s take turns. You get some sleep, then I’ll wake you at midnight. We’ll do it in three-hour spurts.”
“What about Savannah?”
Emily looked over at the loveseat, the girl hidden on the other side of the backrest. “Let her get as much sleep as she can. She’s earned it. In the meantime, you should go grab some more guns.”
“I’m not that good with guns.”
“You were pretty good with that shotgun earlier.”
Greg’s face paled noticeably. She’d said it without thinking, not realizing that taking another person’s life was a very big deal for people. It had been for her, too, her first time. But that was a long, long time ago.
“I’ve never killed anyone before,” Greg was saying. “I don’t think I’ve even thought of killing anyone.”
“You killed Barnes.”
“Oh,” Greg said, as if he had forgotten all about that. “Shoot, I mean. I haven’t shot anyone before, I guess is what I’m trying to say.”
“First time for everything.”
“For me,” he said, looking across at her, “but not for you.”
“No.”
“You were in the Army.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you sat behind a desk.”
“I did. But not all the time.”
“You’re an interesting woman, Emily.”
“Am I?”
“Definitely.”
“You should meet my husband.”
“He interesting, too?”
“Very.”
“Then I’m looking forward to meeting him. Because if he’s anything like you, I have a feeling he’s not going to let the end of the world stop him from coming back to you and that baby.”
Emily couldn’t help but smile. “No, I don’t think he will. I don’t think he will…”
Day 3
Chapter 17
Blood.
Thick swaths of it, covering the walls and floor and dripping from sliced and pierced and severed flesh that plastered the back hallway and extended all the way out into the living room beyond.
This was her house. Her dream house.
Right now, it looked more like a butcher shop.
A man with a mustache, his head nearly decapitated but somehow still hanging on by a few stubborn sinewy strands of muscle, had made it halfway to the backroom before he succumbed to his killer. He was covered in thick red blood that appeared more like coagulated black tar in the semidarkness of the corridor.
She kept walking, stepping around the body despite wanting desperately to turn around and head back to the safety of Cole’s room. The only reason she didn’t was because of the heavy weight of the SIG716 rifle in her hands and the need to know what happened last night. She was ready if a psycho decided to stick around all night and lie in wait for her. And it would just be one psycho, because they didn’t cooperate. Put two of them in the same room, and only one would remain standing. That was her advantage.
Emily did her best to pick her way around the puddles of blood but wasn’t entirely successful. The edges of her shoes ended up wet and sticky red anyway as she moved around the man with the mustache.
A woman in a white dress lay on her stomach next to the staircase, a fire ax buried in her back. Something that looked like an ice pick was abandoned near her body. There were two others just behind her. Both might have been men, but all Emily could be sure of was that one was wearing boots and the other was in shorts. Their bodies were badly damaged, torn apart by unknown weapons. A blood-covered steak knife rested between them, next to a machete with a heavily dented blade.
The bodies were unmoving, and had been since last night. The smell of bloodletting filled the air, making her almost gag. She switched to breathing through her mouth as she continued forward, the rifle at the ready.
Come out, come out, wherever you are.
Not that she thought there was a psycho lying in wait inside the house. That would have been a stupid move. Anyone who was still alive would have already gone back into hiding. But it wasn’t just psychos that she was wary of. Troyer was also out there, somewhere. She didn’t think he was still in the garage, though. The man would know better than to push his luck.
Unless, of course, he wasn’t as smart as she’d given him credit for, but Emily didn’t think so.
She kept her senses on high alert, eyes snapping left and right and forward. The only direction she didn’t look was behind her, because she didn’t have to. Greg was back there with the police shotgun. Who knew that one day she’d end up having a home contractor watch her six?
Then again, stranger things had happened. If she had any doubts about that, all she had to do was relive the last three days.
She stepped over the woman in white, careful to avoid what looked like a pair of severed fingers. They were long and delicate, so probably the woman’s, though her right hand was buried underneath her body so Emily couldn’t confirm the theory. Both men next to her still had all their fingers as far as she could tell.
Behind her, Greg’s labored breathing was surprisingly loud as he followed closely behind. Was she breathing that loudly?
No, she didn’t think so.
Probably.
She took another step forward and heard a squishy sound as her shoe came down in a pool of blood. Dammit. Should have watched where she was going. Not that the n
oise would have alerted anyone still in the house—it wasn’t that loud, even if it did appear incredibly so to her ears—but the sight of blood dripping from the sole of her shoe as she lifted it back up made her a little queasy.
Okay, so more than a little.
Finally, they were in the living room. Emily switched up her grip on the SIG716, forefinger sliding tentatively into the trigger guard and against the trigger. If Cole saw that, he would have chastised her.
“That’s not good trigger finger discipline, missy,” he might say, knowing that she hated when he called her missy, but doing it anyway just to annoy her—and get his point across.
And he would be right. Forefinger in the trigger guard, already rubbing against the trigger, when she wasn’t ready to fire was poor trigger finger discipline. But at the moment she didn’t care. She didn’t even want to think about pulling the trigger when she had to. She just wanted to, well, pull the damn thing and kill whatever popped up in front of her.
There were surprisingly few bodies in the living room. Only two, in fact. One was slumped over one of her couches, a knife buried in his right cheek. He’d bled all over the fabric (It had to be a pristine white couch, too, she thought) and was still dripping blood from his wounds. There was no way she was going to clean any of that stuff off. Or was even going to try.
The other one lay crumpled on the floor in an almost fetal-like position on his side. A pole—it looked very much like the same spear she’d seen used on the Blob last night—buried in his gut, the sharp point exiting the back a good foot. The blood around the man glistened almost brilliantly against the morning sunlight coming through the door.
The door… It was still intact and partially closed. Partially, but not entirely. There was nothing keeping it from being blown open. A slight wind, and it might swing to reveal her and Greg to whoever was standing out there.
But there was no one standing out there. She could tell that much because no one had charged into the house yet. While neither she nor Greg was making a ruckus, it wasn’t like they were being ultra-silent, either.
And no psychos outside.
Or in the living room. (At least, not live ones.)
Or the dining room next door. (Again, at least not live ones. She could still make out the Blob’s body, crumpled up on the floor where she’d last seen him.)
What about the kitchen?
And the garage?
What about Troyer?
Greg might be thinking the same thing when he moved up slightly, close enough that he could whisper, and she could hear him easily: “What about Troyer?”
“The garage,” she said, matching his pitch.
“Let me go first.”
“No—” she said, but didn’t get the chance to finish before Greg hurried across the living room, maneuvering around more blood on the carpet.
Her carpet. She’d picked them out herself. Everything from the color to the texture to the pattern.
Emily sighed and chased after Greg.
Greg’s breathing had increased noticeably as he moved forward in front of her. Loud enough that she could hear as she caught up to him, anyway. Again, she wondered how loud she was breathing. It wasn’t that this was her first rodeo, as Cole would say, but it’d been a while since she’d had to go through something like this.
Something like this? she thought. What something like this? You’ve never been in something like this.
Sunlight poured in through the dining room windows, highlighting more of the Blob on the floor. The man lay where she last saw him, small chunks of flesh and strips of muscle and bone splinters linking him to his severed arm nearby.
And there was Barton, lying facedown on the other side of the table.
Greg swallowed—she didn’t see it, but she could hear it—as he passed the deputy by. There was no starker reminder that you’d taken another human being’s life than seeing the body again, long after all the adrenaline of battle had faded away.
She tried to move on ahead of Greg, but he had picked up speed and was already in the kitchen. She followed, the SIG716 at the ready, but now she’d slipped her trigger finger out of the trigger guard.
Happy, Cole? she thought with a slight smile.
Truth was, the only reason she’d even done that was to keep from creating an accidental discharge and shooting Greg, in front of her, in the back. That was, after all, the main reason for trigger finger discipline in the first place: Friendly fire.
The kitchen was in pristine condition compared to the messes in the dining and living rooms. There were bloody shoe prints on the tiles—more than one, she noticed—and evidence of a fight along the counters—a few of the drawers were opened halfway—but other than that, no hints of a psycho hiding anywhere ready to jump out at them.
The door into the garage was on the left and closed. The piece of lumber Greg had put across it and latched into place was on the floor. If she’d let Greg put up a stronger barricade like he’d wanted, Troyer might not have gotten through so fast and easily.
She was still annoyed at herself for that when Greg made a straight line for the door.
Emily reached out and grabbed his elbow. “Wait.”
This time he did, and looked back at her.
Emily slid the rifle behind her and let it hang off its nylon strap, then drew the Glock from her waist. She made a mental note to relieve Barton of his gun belt before they returned to the backroom. The thought of robbing a dead man might have given her some pause three days ago, but not this morning.
“Emily, I should go in first,” Greg said.
She shook her head. “Between you and me, which one of us has extensive close-quarters combat training?”
He opened his mouth to respond but stopped short.
“Between you and me,” she continued, “which one of us has actually been in close-quarters combat?”
“Does last night count?”
She smirked. She’d forgotten about that.
“Yes, it does,” she said.
He smiled. “Then, both of us. So we’re even—”
No, we’re not, she thought even as she pulled open the garage door and stepped through, the Glock swinging up in front of her.
“Watch my back,” she said.
“Dammit, Emily,” Greg hissed from behind her.
She tuned him out and focused on what was in front of her. It was blinding bright inside the garage because the front door was wide open and morning sunlight flooded the room. That realization made her tighten her grip on the pistol, forefinger twitching slightly against the weapon.
Her Audi was where she’d left it, but its trunk was open, and so was the driver-side door. Troyer had taken whatever he could before he left, including the emergency supplies she’d stowed away from the others.
Serves me right, Emily thought.
And Troyer had left. She knew that even before she moved around the vehicle to get a look on the other side, then peeked into the windows. There were no signs of the man, or evidence that the psychos had gotten to him in here. He’d managed to stay out of the chaos of last night, then, most likely, sneaked out later sometime after that.
Clever little cockroach.
“Emily,” Greg said. He’d stayed behind at the kitchen door with the shotgun as ordered, watching her with an obviously worried face.
She hurried toward the light.
“What are you doing now?” Greg hissed.
She didn’t answer. Instead, Emily kept waiting for a psycho to jump out from around the corners and attack.
But none did. Maybe they saw the gun in her hand. Or Greg’s. Or—
She stopped thinking and grabbed the garage door handle with one hand and gave it a hard yank. The rollers did all the rest, the 12-gauge steel slamming shut with a loud clang! Emily quickly slid the lock into place.
Then she turned and all but ran back, around the Audi, and toward Greg. She hated the sensation of moving around in a suddenly dark room, but it couldn’t be he
lped. And it wasn’t like she had very far to go.
She breathed a covert sigh of relief as she stepped back through the kitchen door, and Greg closed it behind her, then put the piece of lumber back where it belonged.
“No Troyer?” he asked.
“No. But I think it’s safe to say he’s still out there.”
“Maybe he made a run for the gate.”
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. That’s the problem: I don’t know. And I hate not knowing.”
She looked past the dining room and into the living room on the other side.
“What?” Greg asked. “What is it?”
“The second floor. I need to see what’s happening out there.”
“Okay, so we’ll do that.”
“No.”
“No? What do you mean, no?”
She went back into the dining room but stopped and crouched next to Barton.
“Emily, what are you doing?” Greg asked. He sounded slightly…what? Disturbed?
She slipped off Barton’s gun belt, then stood up and slipped it around her waist. She put the Glock into the empty holster, then transferred the spare magazines she was carrying into the available pouches. “I need it more than he does.”
“Oh,” Greg said, before swallowing (loudly) again.
She unslung the SIG716 and headed into the living room, where Emily gave the windows a longer look than the first time she’d walked through. Most of the barriers were down, and just about anyone could climb in if they wanted to.
And the front door…
She hurried over to it, stepping over the dead psycho, and pushed it closed. She slid the deadbolt back into place and turned to Greg, waiting behind her.
“I need you to stay down here next to the stairs to cover me with that shotgun. Last thing I want is for one of them to sneak up behind me while I’m up there.”
Fall of Man | Book 2 | Homefront Page 14