“Fucking civilians,” the man growled. “Sticking your stupid noses where they don’t belong. Getting involved in things you have no comprehension of…”
He sounded unhinged. There was an edge to his voice that suggested to Kate that he was just as fearful as they were, although he was doing his best to conceal this and come across as dominant and in control.
“Like I said,” she said calmly as she walked into the pitch-black space with her hands behind her head, “we don’t know anything about what’s going on out there. We don’t want to get involved in it, not at all. We were just trying to hide from the gunfire.”
“Well, now you’ve gotten yourselves involved, whether you like it or not,” the man snarled. “You three know I’m down here, and when they start cutting your fingers and toes off with bolt cutters or pulling your teeth out with pliers, you’ll blab. You’ll tell ‘em where I am. You’re nothing. You’re just soft little civilians without the first fucking clue about what’s just happened. And when they torture you, you’ll talk.”
“We don’t know who you are, why you’re here, or what’s going on,” Nick said, and now there was a confrontational edge to his voice.
Kate knew that was not a wise move on Nick’s part, considering their unknown adversary’s already fragile mental state.
“You sound like you’ve lost your mind, man, you know that? Look, we don’t know who you are, and we don’t care, either. Nobody’s going to torture us and do all that batshit-crazy stuff you just said. I’m walking out of here, and I’m not looking back.”
“You do that, and I’ll blow a hole the size of a fucking grapefruit through your skull,” the man snarled. “You don’t know what I’m capable of, you mouthy little shit.”
“Nick, just do what he says. Don’t do anything stupid,” Kate said.
“No, screw this crazy asshole,” Nick said coldly. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m—”
The loud bang of a gunshot thundered through the dojo, and for a split-second, the muzzle flare of the assault rifle illuminated the space. Kate, Nick, and Susan caught a fleeting glimpse of a burly soldier in full combat gear standing perhaps ten feet from them. The sheer volume of it left their ears ringing, and the unexpected shock of it chilled the blood in their veins.
“Don’t test me!” the man screamed, sounded more unhinged than ever. “You try fuck with me, pretty boy, and the next bullet is going through your head! Do you understand me?”
“Y–yes, we understand,” Nick stammered, suddenly sounding a lot more meek and submissive.
“Get in here!” the man yelled. “Walk to your left, all of you, until you feel the wall, then sit down! And keep your hands behind your heads!”
Kate swallowed a dry mouthful of fear. She wished her instincts about this place had kicked in a little sooner before it had been too late. There was no time to mull over missed opportunities, though; she had to figure out a way to escape this situation with all three of their lives intact. Considering the man’s mental state, she knew that attempting to talk her way out of this would be difficult, but she would have to try. She also wondered how he was able to see them so well down here in the darkness. His eyes may have had longer to adjust, but even so, he surely couldn’t see them very clearly, she thought. Perhaps she could find some way to use the darkness to their advantage and create an opportunity to escape.
She, Nick, and Susan walked slowly to their left, as instructed by their captor, until they felt the wall. Then they sat down and put their hands behind their heads.
“That’s right, that’s good, now you’re listening to me and doing what I tell you,” the man said.
“We’re all sitting down, with our hands behind our heads,” Kate said calmly, just to reassure him and keep things stable.
“They thought I was a spy. My COs thought I was a spy for them,” he muttered, and Kate was not sure if he was talking to them or himself. It sounded like a blend of both. “They thought I’d infiltrated the plot, but I’d been in on the plot all along, and I was just feeding the bastards false information. They wanted to stop the revolution, they wanted to kill it before it could even hatch … but those stupid motherfuckers didn’t realize that something this big couldn’t be stopped. I led them right into a trap. They thought that Lieutenant Jones was a good, loyal soldier, a little government bootlicker like they all were. But they didn’t know a fucking thing about who I really was. And now we’ve done it … the revolution is here.”
Kate guessed that the firefight outside had something to do with the military; from what their captor was saying, it sounded like this whole thing was some sort of coup by a group of plotters within the United States Army … although how much of what this man was spouting was true was certainly questionable.
She and the other two sat in uncomfortable, nervous silence, not sure whether the man was looking for a response from them or just rambling and ranting.
“I knew you wouldn’t care,” he growled, and this time his words were most definitely directed at them. “That’s why this country is in such a mess, all the riots and looting and protests for months and months, all the job losses and the recession … because people like you, you selfish, self-absorbed, ignorant little civilian sheep, you don’t give a damn about anyone but yourselves. You have no respect for anything. Well, we’re gonna change that. We’re changing all of that now…”
The man sounded angrier and angrier, and Kat grew increasingly worried that he might snap and do something terrible. She had to figure out a plan to get the three of them out of this situation. First, she needed to figure out just how much the man could see in the gloom. His eyes had had more time to adjust than theirs, but he was, after all, only human, and certainly could see in the dark the way a cat could. Moving slowly, she removed her hands from her head to see if he would react.
“What’s the matter?” he suddenly snapped, making her heart jump into her mouth. “Nothing to say? Bah, I didn’t think so. You’re scum, useless, selfish sheep. But we’re gonna cleanse this country of all the scum, yeah, we are…”
His outburst wasn’t connected with what she’d done, though, and she realized that he hadn’t seen her. She knew it would be risky, but she had to confirm this theory. She slowly waved her hands in the direction of his voice. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom, and she could vaguely make out his outline. He didn’t seem to notice her moving hands and certainly didn’t react.
This was it, Kate realized. She had to make a move before he did … and if risking her life to save Susan’s was what was necessary, then that was exactly what she would do.
“You idiots can’t even begin to understand what we’ve set in motion today,” the man growled. “But soon, everyone will know. They’ll all see … all the sheep will see…”
Kate slowly got up to her feet, hardly daring to breathe, and psyched herself up for what had to be done. And then she charged him.
11
There were bulletproof Humvees parked in defensive formations and concrete barricades that had been erected, most of them on the bridge or near it. Army troops huddled behind the barricades with machine guns and RPGs, firing furiously at other troops and police officers, who were returning fire from behind the cover of the many abandoned vehicles littering the broad street. Other police officers and army troops had taken shelter in nearby buildings entrances and were firing from these positions. The thunder of all this mass gunfire was deafening, and it was loud that it felt as if it was drilling right through Jack’s brain and pulverizing his bones from within.
He dropped to the ground just as a spurt of stray machine gun bullets peppered the wall above him, raining broken pieces of concrete and masonry dust down on his back and head. He could hardly believe what he was seeing; it seemed as if the US Army were fighting against itself and the police. The only thing he could think of was that some sort of attempted coup was taking place. That didn’t matter right now, though—what did matter was getting as far as possible fr
om the battle and finding another way to get across the river to his apartment.
A sharp blade of worry stabbed through Jack’s core; were Kate and Susan okay? Had Kate managed to pick up Susan from dance class and get her back over the bridge before all this chaos had broken out? He could only hope so and pray that they weren’t stuck, like he was, on this side of the river, where all the madness was.
Jack was about to scramble back around the corner he’d just come from when one of the troops on the bridge fired an RPG at a group of police officers who were firing at them from behind a large truck around twenty yards from him. The rocket hit the truck, and the resulting explosion blew up the vehicle and sent the remains tumbling in Jack’s direction. The force of the blast ripped one of the wheels off the truck and sent it bouncing straight at Jack, and he had to run forward to avoid being hit by the heavy, fast-moving projectile. To avoid now being caught right out in the open and being hit by the many stray bullets, he had to sprint across a section of the open road and dive down behind the cover of an abandoned sedan.
His short burst of speed inadvertently took him deeper into the battle zone, and there was no easy escape now. With his heart thundering like a jackhammer in his chest, he pressed his body flat on the ground, keeping himself behind one of the vehicle’s wheels. Just when he thought his heart rate couldn’t get any more frantic, a burst of stray bullets riddled the sedan, bursting through its windows and showering him with chunks of shattered glass.
To make matters worse, reinforcement police troops—these ones dressed in full SWAT gear and carrying M-16 rifles—came barreling around the same corner Jack had just come from, deploying into defensive positions behind cars and other makeshift shelters to join the battle. Jack was now pinned down between the two opposing forces, and bullets were flying over his head from both sides.
Doing his best to stay calm and keeping his body pressed as low and flat as possible, he scanned what he could of his surroundings, trying to find some sort of exit. A few alleys and side streets were leading off this main street, but on every street corner, cops and soldiers were shooting at the army troops, and bullets were relentlessly hammering all of the buildings around these streets and alleys. Jack decided that it would be too risky to attempt to run to one of these exits, and not just because he would be running across a few dozen yards of open ground while bullets were flying in all directions. He knew that most of the men who were fighting, and that went for both sides, had likely only seen minor combat before, and certainly nothing like this. Their emotions would be running high, and if he got up and ran, there was a significant chance that one of them would think him to be an enemy and target him.
No, he couldn’t risk attempting to run, or even crawl across open ground to get to an alley or side street. There had to be another way.
He also knew that he couldn’t simply sit and wait this out; there was no telling how long it would last or which way it would swing. The longer Jack stayed there, the greater the odds that a stray bullet would hit him, or even worse, a rocket or grenade, became.
With a growing sense of urgency, he scanned the nearby structures. Tall buildings lined the entire length of this street, all the way from the bridge to as far back as he could see, and while most of them were office complexes, others were apartments, and many had cafés or stores on the ground level. Most of them had locked their doors at the first signs of trouble, but Jack saw that a clothing outlet nearby had had its storefront windows shattered by gunfire.
It was only two buildings ahead of him, around thirty yards away, and there were two more cars between him and the clothing store that he could use for shelter. It would be risky, and he would have to crawl through a sea of shattered glass on the ground, but it was the only logical escape path from this horrendous battle, which seemed to be growing in ferocious intensity with every passing minute.
He listened to the sounds of the firing. It was easy enough to discern between the shots coming from the soldiers on and around the bridge from those of the police, the other soldiers, and the SWAT team, just because of the differences in volume, since the men on the bridge were farther away. As for the SWAT troops right behind him, the sound was deafening whenever one of them opened fire. Jack was sure that the SWAT troops could see him and quite certain that they wouldn’t shoot at him because it was clear to them that he was a non-combatant. When they fired at the troops on the bridge, those troops would temporarily take cover before returning fire. Jack decided that his best shot at getting out of this situation without being gunned down would be to move while the SWAT troops were shooting.
He dropped his pistol into his backpack—he didn’t want anyone to see him holding a firearm now, lest he be mistaken for a combatant—and slipped the pack over his shoulders, and got up onto his hands and knees, ready to make a break for the clothing store. His pulse was racing, and adrenalin was surging through his veins. He was so focused on his target that he almost had tunnel vision.
As soon as a SWAT troop behind him opened fire, Jack darted out from behind the sedan, racing in a low crouch over to the next car, a minivan, behind which he dove as return fire erupted from the troops on the bridge. Machine-gun bullets slammed through the minivan, and Jack stared in horror at around twenty beams of sunlight shining through the vehicle just above his head and back where the bullets had gone through. Someone on the bridge had obviously considered him a target and had tried to cut him down.
He was closer to the clothing store but felt like getting to it would be even more perilous now. Another burst of machine-gun fire riddled the van, and one of the bullets burst the front tire, mere inches from Jack’s head. He couldn’t stay here for much longer. The SWAT troops behind him opened fire again, and a number of them charged forward under their comrades’ cover fire, so Jack used the opportunity to race out from behind the van, cutting in a few terrifying seconds across the completely open ground before diving behind the final car between him and the clothing store.
This time no machine-gun fire peppered the car he was hiding behind, which was parked next to the sidewalk. The return fire coming from the bridge was mostly aimed at the advancing SWAT troops. Nonetheless, Jack knew that he had to get into the store as quickly as possible; it would only be a matter of time before more bullets smashed into his current section of cover.
With bated breath, he waited until the SWAT troops again opened fire and advanced. He didn’t bother to try to crawl across the glass-strewn sidewalk; he simply jumped up and sprinted full tilt across the sidewalk before diving through the smashed-out storefront into the clothing store.
He landed on a mess of glass shards and rolled through them, feeling a hint of sharp pain as a number of them sliced through his flesh and skin, but adrenalin had taken over. He was up on his feet again before he even had time to really register that he’d been injured.
Jack had made it, somehow, but he wasn’t about to celebrate or slow down; all he could think of now was racing through the store to get out via the back entrance and get as far from the horrific battle as possible.
He wasn’t able to get very far, though, for when he was halfway through the store, a burst of gunfire came at him from the rear of the business, and he had to dive to the ground. On the polished floor of the store, he lay panting, fumbling in his backpack for his gun, and that was when he saw it—blood, a lot of it, on the white floor … his own blood.
12
The soldier was so caught up in his ranting that it took a second to register that he was under attack—and that single second made all the difference. He hesitated for a moment, shocked that one of these unarmed civilians would be so bold as to assault him. However, once he’d gotten past this moment of surprise, he swung his rifle in their direction to open fire, but Kate had already launched herself into the air in a desperate flying leap.
In the thick gloom, she could barely see what she was doing and didn’t have much of a target to aim for except for a vague outline of an upper body, a sh
adow darker than the rest. She was a small woman, but she hit him at full speed with all of her weight, and they both went down, with the soldier squeezing the trigger as he fell. Chattering thunder boomed through the space, and in the strobe-light-like flashes of the muzzle flares, Nick and Susan caught glimpses of the two bodies falling to the ground.
There was a thump as Kate and the soldier crashed down, and then the only sounds were the man’s growls and Kate’s gasps and cries as the two of them struggled for control of the weapon. As soon as the shots went off, spraying the ceiling above Nick and raining down dust on him, he sprang up and sprinted over to the two struggling bodies. He dove on top of them, his hands searching the dark, not for the gun but rather the soldier’s face.
“Mom!” Susan screamed, scrambling to her feet, with adrenalin now racing through her veins.
“Run, baby, run!” Kate screamed desperately, knowing all too well that the next burst of fire could easily kill her daughter.
Someone touched the trigger while they were grappling, and the rifle spat out a burst of fire again, and this time the short strobe-light flashes revealed a more frightening scene. The soldier now had a knife in one hand, while in the other, he still doggedly clung to his M-16. Luckily, Nick caught a glimpse of the blade and slammed a hand onto the soldier’s wrist, immobilizing his arm. But, shortly after that, a surge of terrible pain ripped through the side of his face, and a vicious, animalistic growling resounded nightmarishly in his skull. The soldier—in his brutal desperation to survive this life-or-death struggle—had just bitten into Nick’s ear.
Nick screamed as the man’s teeth began severing a chunk of his ear, but he still gripped the soldier’s arm, refusing to let the man start stabbing them. The soldier, snarling like a rabid dog, bit even deeper into the flesh, ripping off half of Nick’s ear. Nick howled in pain but swiveled his head to counterattack and gave the growling soldier a headbutt in his face.
Survive the Day Boxset: EMP Survival in a Powerless World Page 58