by JJ Holden
Looking down at his machete, he knew that it wouldn’t do the trick against the retired police officer. As an avid hunter and firearms specialist, he knew the old man was prepared for such an invasion. Unlike most of the citizens of Seneca Run, Edward Anderson was ready, and so he was a big threat to the Youth Scout cause. And for that reason, he needed to be eliminated.
Looking out at the road, Chad saw a boy by the name of Peter Miller running past the Anderson house. Chad yelled out in the most muted yell he could.
“Pete…it’s me. Get over here.”
Under normal circumstances, Peter, a boy several years Chad’s junior, would be a prime target for bullying. At only four foot nine, he was a lanky boy with acne on his face accompanied by thick-framed glasses and a wry smile. Now, he had the very thing that Chad desired: a shotgun.
“Hey, Chad,” Peter said nonchalantly, a horrible irony considering the blood splatter all over his clothing and the sawed-off shotgun in his bone-thin hands. “What’s happening?”
“We got a goddamn pig inside,” Chad said, pointing at Edward Anderson’s quaint brick house. “And that bastard is packing, I know he is...”
Peter looked at his gun and then back at Chad. “So what are you trying to say?” he asked in the deepest voice he could muster.
Chad knew that Peter still recalled the many rounds of ass-kicking he endured at the hands of neighborhood boys, Chad included. But perhaps his training would override those memories. Chad hoped so.
“I want to borrow it,” Chad said. “We’re in this together, you know.”
Aiming the shotgun at Chad and scowling, Peter said, “I know what you’re up to…you want to kill me…I know you always hated me, even though we both know I never did anything to you.”
“Pete…think about this for a second. We’re on the same side now. We have to put all of that behind us. Now, give me the goddamn gun so I can do my job.”
Peter contemplated Chad’s words for a moment. “How can I put this nicely...go to hell!”
Chad considered arguing with Peter further, perhaps even threatening him, but then he realized he wasn’t holding the loaded shotgun. So he had to think of something…anything.
Then it came to him. “Okay, I can respect that,” he said. “So how about this…how about we do this together, but you gotta make sure you take him down on the first shot, cuz otherwise, he will kill you…the bastard’s evil.”
Nodding, Peter said, “If I do this, do you promise to never mess with me ever again?”
“I promise,” Chad said, stepping closer to the boy he once kicked in the stomach while he was down and vulnerable. The same boy he gave countless wedgies to, who he stuffed in a locker, who he tormented relentlessly. He couldn’t believe the words that came from his mouth, but he nevertheless said them: “I’m on your side now.”
* * *
With aching muscles, Edward rose from the cold concrete floor of his basement and stepped towards the stairs that led to the ground floor of their house. The lack of gunfire and explosions indicated, at least in his mind, that the worst was over and he could venture upstairs where his cell phone was sure to have service.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Dorene asked, her voice meek.
Gripping his rifle and grinding his teeth, he considered the question. In the back of his mind, he knew that the safety they once knew in lovely Seneca Run would be gone forever. Something terrible had transpired while they hid. He thought for a moment of wanting to move into the sticks and be away from it all. If we lived out there in the middle of nowhere, he thought, we’d be away from all of this crime and chaos. But he knew that Dorene enjoyed living where they did. It was home and she wanted to stay. At least before chaos began she did. Now, with the latest calamity, he figured she might agree to relocate. But Edward didn’t know that what was happening in their neighborhood would affect them wherever they went. There, in the basement without contact to the outside world, he had no idea how bad things had become in such a short amount of time.
But he was about to find out.
Looking at Dorene, he gave a warm smile. “I’m sure it’ll be safe enough for me to make a quick phone call.”
“Make it really quick, Ed…”
At the bottom of the steps, he nodded. “I will, dear.”
As he climbed the steps, he reached into his pocket and grabbed his cell phone. It was an old slider model that had lost its hip factor nearly a decade prior. But he didn’t care. A phone to him was for making calls, not checking e-mail, surfing the web, or playing games, though he wished he was capable of at least checking the news. Then he might actually have an idea of what in the world was going on. A phone call will suffice, he thought. Real quick.
Pressing a button on the phone, it lit up and he saw he still had no service. With each step he took during his ascent, he hoped a single bar would emerge in the right hand corner of the screen.
Nothing.
At the top of the steps, standing right up against the steel door, there still was no service. Unlatching the multitude of locks, he pushed the door open slightly. Listening intently, he waited for a minute. When silence continued to loom, he slid the cell phone open again. No service.
“That’s odd,” he said under his breath.
He stepped into the kitchen and checked to make sure he had the basement door key on him. Turning around he shut the door, hearing it click behind him, automatically locking. He used the glow of the cell phone to navigate through the dark kitchen, turning it around every few steps to see if he had obtained service, but each time he looked at the screen he saw the same “no service” text in the left hand corner.
“Damn it,” he muttered.
Then, a few steps from the living room, he saw that he had one bar of service. In haste, he dialed the number for the station.
Busy.
He pressed the redial button.
Busy.
“No way in hell…”
Then, though there was no immediate emergency, he dialed 911.
Busy.
His eyes grew as he listened to the busy tone. “911 can’t be busy!”
All at once, the enormity of the situation presented itself. And during this realization that all hell had broken loose to a magnitude far worse than he had ever imagined, he had no idea that an immediate emergency, one that would threaten his very existence, was only moments away.
* * *
Through the window, Chad Milnes saw him—the old man fidgeting with his cell phone, the glow of its screen illuminating his face as he stood in his dark kitchen. Now’s the time, Chad thought as he waited just a few more seconds.
Behind him, little Peter Miller stood with shotgun in hand, ready to bust through the window and eliminate the threat of the retired police officer. Though Chad hadn’t seen Peter in action, he was sure he would be impressed by the innocent-looking boy’s dedication to the cause. Once a bullied boy who would frighten so easily he would pee his pants, Peter had been transformed into a hardened soldier.
“Ready?” Chad asked, practically salivating from the flood of anticipation.
Chad could feel his warm breath as Peter stepped closer to him and spoke: “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
* * *
Edward heard the gunshot and the subsequent shattering of the window, and before he took a moment to actually think, he lifted his rifle and pulled the trigger. In the next instant, his old muscles and bones propelled him through the darkness to where he knew the basement door was. Having lived in the same house for the past thirty-three years, he knew the layout quite well, but nonetheless, he opened his cell phone once again and by the aid of its dim light, found the door that would lead him to safety. With urgency, he slid the key into the lock, pulled the metal door open, and stepped down a single step before pulling it shut. He latched the several locks before rushing down the stairs where he found Dorene curled up in a ball in the corner.
He heard the intruder’s footfalls above as they
fired one shot after another into the floorboards. With reinforced floors, any weapon less devastating than a bazooka would be unable to penetrate the thick wood and metal beams that he specially designed for such a home invasion.
“Who are they?” Dorene asked, her uneasy voice crackling from the fear that ran through her entire body. “What do they want?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice confident, if only to instill a sense of calmness in her. “But don’t worry, dear…we’ll be safe down here.”
He wasn’t just trying to make her feel better, he was speaking the truth. The basement was more of a fallout shelter than a basement. With a backup battery generator and a cache of shelf-stable food and water reserves, they could theoretically stay down there for a month or two. Though he hadn’t added the final few details he wanted (a landline phone that ran off of battery power that was unable to be cut would have been nice), the shelter and its provisions would be sufficient to keep them alive for quite some time. The downstairs toilet, which would be flushed with whatever undrinkable water they had, would help tremendously. The treadmill. The ventilation system. He took nothing for granted and knowing a catastrophe could happen at any time, he knew the importance of planning ahead.
But if he were asked last week if a catastrophe were on the horizon, he would have most definitely said that it was highly doubtful. And that was Edward Anderson, an eternal optimist, which some would argue was his greatest asset of all.
By the light of the battery-operated lamp, he looked at his wrist watch.
Four o’clock.
Tomorrow would soon come.
What felt like an hour passed, and he looked at his watch a second time.
Quarter after four.
“What are we going to do when morning comes?” Dorene asked.
“I don’t know,” Edward said. “We’ll figure it out. Get some rest, dear.”
“What about Kelly?”
Edward thought for a moment about their daughter. “I’m sure she’s fine…now get some rest.”
Dorene didn’t speak as she considered Edward’s words, her eyes growing heavy. In less than five minutes, he could hear her breathing heavily as the seconds slowly marched on. With each second that elapsed, he anticipated a new day, though he didn’t look forward to the horrors he would have to face.
* * *
Kelly Anderson’s slender hand gripped the water bottle as she took another sip. With each sip, she realized the water was getting warmer and warmer as her shift was reaching its final minutes.
Days like today make me thankful I’m not a cop, she thought as the endless emergency calls she took swirled through her mind.
Though her father had hoped that his only child would follow in his footsteps, she felt she was too timid to be a police officer. Though trained with as many firearms as her father, if not more, she knew law enforcement was not her ideal line of work. So she took whatever job she could in the down economy, and two months prior landed the 911 operator job.
She hated it.
But it was a paying job and that’s just what she needed in order to pay rent and her student loans that gave her the opportunity to study her passion: music. After completing her student teaching and graduating the previous year, she was like most of her graduating class: unemployed, facing the stark reality that there were no job openings in her field.
After the longest shift she ever had at any job, she slowly meandered down the hallway on her way out of the building. As the sun came up, the hallway lights went out automatically to preserve power for the call center. Now running on backup generators, the building was now sipping electricity like a yuppie sipping their last cocktail for the night. But Kelly knew that the lack of electricity was the least of the problems that plagued the area.
Along the way, she thought of the calls she received during her overnight shift. Almost all of the horrible gut-wrenching calls were in regards to some of the youngest perpetrators she had heard of. A call from a frantic old lady who lost her husband at the hands of the eight-year-old boy next door. The poor woman spoke in a hushed tone on the call, saying she was in the closet of her bedroom, listening as the boy came for her. The sound of gunfire ended that call.
Kelly shuttered.
It’s all part of the job, she thought.
No!
Her face grew red as she pieced together all the calls and realized that most were from people who were being attacked by teenagers and children. With each step she took, she became more and more afraid of what she would find outside.
Before reaching the ground floor to exit the building, she stepped towards a window and looked out at Seneca Run. Her brown eyes widened when she saw the smoke-filled sky and the still-burning buildings all around her. She heard footsteps from behind her. Turning around, she saw a coworker named Jill.
“Oh my God,” Jill said, her voice raspy.
Kelly returned her gaze to the devastation and she and Jill stood there, viewing the carnage they only heard about through the night, though Kelly knew that she hadn’t seen anything yet.
In that instant, she knew she couldn’t go home. Though she had a carrier’s permit and wore a concealed firearm at that very moment, she knew she couldn’t return to her apartment…alone. She thought of her father and his bunker. She knew she would be safe there until whatever was happening blew over.
“Be careful out there, Jill,” Kelly said to the brown-haired bespectacled woman she barely knew.
Jill wore a look of dread. “I don’t know if I’ll be going out there anytime soon. Might hunker down here and raid the candy and soda machines.”
Stepping away from Jill on her way to the stairwell, Kelly said, “Good luck.”
* * *
Edward only knew it was morning when he looked at his watch and saw that it was quarter after six. He hadn’t caught a single wink of sleep and spent most of the night quietly rummaging through storage. Among his finds was a high frequency radio. As an amateur radio operator in his abundant spare time post-retirement, he fiddled with the contraption just enough to realize that though it may come in handy during an emergency he would rather spend his time writing crime stories. Now, he wished he had tinkered with the radio a bit more.
Sitting on the concrete floor, he paged through the manual as he scanned the stations, listening for transmissions of any kind. As the minutes passed, all he heard was the static on all of the channels he scanned.
He thought of his daughter again. Though she carried a weapon, was highly trained, and was a 911 operator (who surely knew of all the dangers that erupted overnight), he still worried about her. As a father, it was his job to worry.
When he looked at his watch again, he realized that her shift had ended ten minutes ago. I need to call her, he thought. I need to tell her to come here where it’s safe.
So he rose and checked his cell phone again, as if it would magically have sufficient service to make a call. It didn’t.
He turned the static-filled radio off and grabbed his rifle. Up the steps he went, like a stealth. At the top of the stairs, he waited for a moment before turning the knob. Silence.
He wasn’t sure if whoever broke in was still in the house, waiting for him to emerge, or if they moved on to easier targets. He hoped they had moved on, but wanted to be certain.
Edward gripped the knob and opened the door slightly, hearing its creak echo through the kitchen. The ticking of the grandfather clock in the next room was the only thing he could hear. Peering out, he saw the sunshine illuminate the room. He spotted the bullet holes in the floor and a lot of their belongings strewn about, like the boys decided that if they couldn’t kill, they would at least wreck the place. With his rifle ready, he stepped further into the kitchen and looked at his phone. He had a sliver of service, and decided to use the opportunity to call his daughter.
After three rings, it went to voice mail.
He punched redial.
“C’mon, Kel…pick up…”
&
nbsp; Again to voice mail. He left a brief message before pocketing his cell phone. Unsure of what to do next, he considered his options. If he went to his daughter’s apartment, he may have to leave Dorene in the basement, as it would be highly dangerous for her to tag along. But what if he didn’t return? He knew that though she was independent, she needed him just as much as he needed her. Then he thought of the fate of his daughter if he didn’t find her. The thought of losing either of them sent chills down his spine, and he realized he was now stuck having to choose between his wife and his daughter. So there he stood, in the doorway that led to the safest place he knew as he deliberated himself into a stupor.
* * *
Kelly didn’t really want to leave her workplace, though she knew she had to reach her parents’ house eventually, and better during the day than at night. She stepped hesitantly towards the glass doors at the front of the building and thought that it was odd that perfectly good glass doors like those weren’t smashed in by those lunatic kids at some point through the night. They were fully intact, and still retained their spotlessness from being cleaned only two days prior.
At the door, she scanned the parking lot and saw the dozen or so cars that occupied it. Near her car, she saw something that made her skin crawl: a body that lay motionless on the macadam.
* * *
Tommy Sanders peered between the branches and saw her leave the office building, stepping towards the scattered cars in the parking lot. He smiled when she saw the body. That was the last poor sap that left the same building she was leaving now. And he killed him the same way he planned to kill her.
Though only armed with a baseball bat (the same one he used to knock ‘em out of the park in Little Leagues the previous year) he was able to catch his elders off guard, mashing their skulls in. This twenty-something woman would be an easy kill.