Jakarta Pandemic, The (35 page)

One of the figures slowed down and turned around, but Alex couldn’t tell in the blackness if it was the intruder or the lookout. Both figures merged at the edge of the Walkers’ property, and he lost track as they dodged between evergreens. Either way, one of the burglars had no intention of stopping, and Alex didn’t want to lose either of them. He yelled another warning as he approached the closest figure, who was now at a standstill. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

The runner didn’t slow, and Alex fired the shotgun straight up into the air. The man in front of him took a few panicky steps backward and fell over a railroad tie into the hard dirt of the Andersons’ empty vegetable garden. The runner slowed down considerably, and Alex fired another deafening shot into the air, which stopped the man in his tracks. He pumped the shotgun again, chambering another shell, and started walking toward the downed figure in the Andersons’ garden, his ears ringing from the two blasts.

“Get back here, or I’ll blast your friend all over the yard! Now!” Alex said, aiming the shotgun at the figure on the ground. “Don’t move,” he cautioned the prone intruder.

He drew a deep but quiet breath, straining to regain his wind after the brief sprint. He’d keep drawing quick shallow breaths through his nose until he felt more steady.

“Hey, don’t shoot me, you don’t have to shoot me,” the man said, panicky.

I know that voice.

“You better call that fucker back over here. He looks like he’s going to bolt, and if he does, I’m going to blast one of your legs off, and then hunt him down,” Alex said, pointing the barrel at the man’s right leg.

“Todd! Todd! This guy isn’t messing around. You need to get back here!” Mike Lynch said, twisting his body far enough to face Todd.

Alex heard the distant figure muttering, still considering his options. He then started to walk back across the Andersons’ yard toward Alex, who shifted the shotgun from his right shoulder to his right hip, keeping it trained on Mike.

“Are either of you two armed?” he asked Mike.

“No, just a walkie-talkie. We didn’t…we weren’t trying to hurt anyone. We were looking for…”

“Don’t say another fucking word, Mike!” Todd said, approaching them nonchalantly.

Alex saw what looked like a radio in his hand. “You might want to take this a little more seriously, Todd,” he said, pointing the shotgun towards Todd’s head.

“Don’t point that gun at my head!” Todd protested, waving his hands uselessly in front of him.

Alex could see that he was holding a small radio with a thick, stubby antenna. “I’ll do whatever I want right now. Stop right there. If you take more than two steps in my direction, I’ll fire on you. And keep your hands where I can see them.”

“You’re not gonna fire at anyone,” Todd said.

Alex pointed the shotgun back at Mike. “What do you think, Mike?” he asked.

Mike looked up at Todd and shook his head. “I wouldn’t mess with this guy, Todd. I think he’s a little…off right now.”

“‘Off’ is a good term. Right now I’m looking for any reason to permanently erase the two of you from my list of worries,” Alex said, shifting the gun’s aim back at Todd.

“Quit pointing that thing at me!” Todd said.

“Or what?” Alex asked, shaking his head at Todd.

Mike started to slowly get up, clapping his hands together to clean off the dirt.

“Stay where you are, Mike,” Alex warned, keeping the gun aimed at Todd.

Mike lowered his body back down into the dirt.

I don’t have to worry about Mike. He’s under voice control now.

Alex heard one of the Walkers’ windows open, but didn’t turn to look.

“Alex! Who are they? What’s going on?” Ed yelled in a whisper from above.

I just fired a shotgun twice, and he’s whispering.

“It’s our good friends Todd and Mike! Out for an evening stroll!”

Alex scanned his two neighbors, both of whom were dressed in blue jeans, hiking boots, and dark-colored jackets. Alex guessed that Todd’s was dark blue, and that Mike’s was a natural shade of green, like pine, although he couldn’t be sure. Mike wore a dark blue ball cap with what Alex was pretty sure was a reddish ‘B’ on the front. Todd had a black watch cap pulled tightly over his head, covering his ears. Neither of them appeared to be carrying or hiding anything.

“Didn’t find what you’re looking for?” Alex asked.

“I’m out of here,” Todd said.

Just as he finished his sentence, a woman’s voice emanated from the direction of Todd’s house. Through the darkness, Alex perceived movement in one of the windows above Todd’s garage, and he suddenly felt exposed standing out in the open. He moved to his left, putting Todd between himself and the open window.

No reason to make this an easy shot for anyone.

“You stay right there, or your wife is going to remember this night for the rest of her life,” Alex said, raising the shotgun to his shoulder and aiming directly at Todd’s head.

Todd raised his right hand out in front of his face.

“Don’t bother, you’ll lose the hand and your head.”

“I don’t really give a shit, Alex. My wife probably won’t have the memory of you killing me for very long. I just hope she passes before one of the kids does. That’s a memory I don’t want her to carry for even a minute,” Todd said.

“I’m sorry, Todd,” Alex said, truly meaning it.

“Are you?” Todd asked and shook his head.

Alex lowered the gun barrel, pointing at the ground between Mike and Todd. Todd’s wife was still yelling out of the window, but Alex couldn’t make out what she was saying. Todd looked back at the window, then turned his head slowly around to Alex.

“If you’re planning to shoot us, now would be a good time. Otherwise, I’ll see you later,” he said and started to walk toward his house.

Mike remained on the ground, eyes darting back and forth between Alex and Todd.

“Last warning, Todd. If I find you on either of these two lots again, I will kill you on sight. Same with the McDaniels’ house. Actually, if I find you sneaking around anywhere in the neighborhood, you’re a dead man. Keep to yourself. The same goes for you, Mike. Do you understand me?”

Mike acknowledged him immediately with a vigorous nod and a weak “yes.” Todd muttered “whatever.”

The sudden deafening detonation of the shotgun dropped Todd to his knees. As Alex’s hearing flooded back, he picked up screams from Todd’s master bedroom window. Todd was frozen on his knees and didn’t look back. Alex racked the slide of the shotgun again, although the shotgun’s ammunition cylinder was empty, and he pointed the shotgun at Todd’s back.

“I’ll ask you that question one more time. Do you understand my terms?” he asked quietly over the relentless screams pouring out of Todd’s house.

Todd nodded his head and muttered “yes.”

“Good. Now get out of here. Both of you,” Alex said, lowering the shotgun.

Both of them rose up quickly and sprinted toward the back of Todd’s house. Alex watched them disappear behind Todd’s house, and turned toward the open window on the second floor of the Walkers’. He engaged the safety on the shotgun.

“You need to keep your bulkhead door locked,” he said wryly.

“Yeah, like I haven’t checked my bulkhead thirty times since this started,” Ed replied, suddenly appearing from the bulkhead steps.

“Does it look jimmied?” Alex asked, taking the flashlight out of his back pocket.

“Hold on,” Ed said, descending the stairs.

Light poured out of the basement a few seconds later as he reemerged to examine the locking mechanism. Alex activated his flashlight and pointed it at the locking bolt.

“Jesus, what do you have a million candle power coming out of that thing?” Ed asked, shielding his eyes.

“Sorry.” Alex shut off the light. He leaned down by the mechanism, which consisted of a thick metal bolt, curved on both ends to keep it from falling out of the sliding mechanism. There really wasn’t much to it, and from casual observation, it looked intact and undamaged. Alex glanced over his shoulder toward the Andersons’ yard. “Sure you locked it?” he asked.

“Positive,” Ed replied.

“I’d hate to think it’s that easy to manipulate one of these. I have the same thing at my house.”

“I don’t know. It’s not exactly a complicated system, and the bulkhead itself isn’t exactly airtight. I’m gonna try and jam some wood between the bolt and the door, wedge it in place better.”

“That should do it,” Alex agreed.

“Did you have to fire that thing three times? What was going on with them?”

“I needed to convince Todd that I was serious,” Alex replied.

“What about the last shot? It looked like you were aiming at him,” Ed said.

“I was aiming between them, plenty of room on either side. I was just using bird shot anyway. I needed Todd to escalate his level of care at that moment. He was a little dismissive, which wasn’t the tone I was looking for.”

“Well, I think you got his attention. He was running sort of funny on the way back. Like he’d pissed his pants.”

“I hope so,” Alex said.

“I need to find the three expended shells. I can see Todd’s wife calling the cops. So if you have everything under control here, I need to remove the evidence from your backyard.”

“Have at it. I’ll be down here jamming wood into this stupid door.”

“Maybe there’s a place where you could put a padlock or something and jam the mechanism shut?” Alex asked, backing up out of the light.

“I’ll let you know if I figure something like that out. Happy hunting,” Ed said.

“Yep,” Alex said and turned on his flashlight.

Ten minutes later, he unlocked and opened the door to his garage. He opened the green garbage bin lid, tossed the three expended shells into the bin, and moved one of the trash bags near the top to make sure the shells filtered down a little further so they were out of immediate sight. He planned to reload the speed feeder with three more birdshot shells and made a mental note to find a better way to carry around the double ought shells, just in case he needed more than the bird shot.

When Alex had decided to keep the shotgun in his closet, he’d opted to keep four birdshot shells loaded in the stock’s spring-loaded speed feeders. This made sense to him on several levels. First, in the unlikely case that he was forced to discharge the weapon inside the house, the birdshot would not pass through the walls with enough kinetic energy to kill or significantly hurt someone on the other side. This was an important consideration for Alex with children in the house.

His secondary reason for the selection was lethality, or in the case of birdshot, reduction of lethality. In Alex’s opinion, birdshot in a confined space was more than adequate to instantly and wholly incapacitate an intruder, without annihilating them.

He opened the door to the house and was greeted by a well-lit mudroom. Kate was sitting at the kitchen island, just out of sight of the mudroom door, and poked her head in view briefly. The kitchen was dimly lit by the stove’s under-mounted light.

“Hey, hon,” he called out, slipping out of his shoes.

Rather not get stabbed in a case of mistaken identity.

“What happened out there? I heard some gunshots, so I rushed down here to check on you. By the time I got out into the backyard, I could see you and Ed chatting by his bulkhead. Seemed like everything was under control.”

“Mike and Todd pulled off a little B and E at Ed’s, through the bulkhead, so I put the fear of Mossberg into them…hon, the hammer’s back on that gun,” he said dryly, leaning the shotgun against the kitchen desk. He stepped around Kate to examine the pistol lying on the kitchen island next to her tea cup. “Which means that just about four pounds of pressure on that trigger and…”

He picked up the weapon, keeping it pointed toward the mudroom, and depressed the de-cocking lever with his thumb. The hammer fell lightly. He then pressed the magazine release mechanism at the base of the trigger guard. The magazine slid out into his left hand, and he placed it on the island. He then racked the slide and the chambered .45 caliber round popped out of the weapon, hit the island, and rolled off. Alex heard it hit the seat of a stool, then the floor. Kate looked tense as the bullet rolled off the island onto the floor.

“Don’t worry, hon. You can’t set one of these off by dropping it. You can, however, set one off by keeping the hammer cocked while you traipse around the backyard in the dark. Good way to trip and shoot yourself in the head,” he said, moving to retrieve the bullet from the floor.

“Yeah, well, I got a little worried when I heard gunfire in the backyard. You know, I don’t think it’s such a great idea for you to be charging through the dark either,” she said, nodding at the shotgun. “You’re not the only one around here with guns. You have no idea what might have been waiting for you in Ed’s backyard. You’re lucky it was only those two idiots. What did they want?”

“Food, medicine…both. I’m sure they’re convinced that Ed has a huge stash of drugs, too,” he said and sat on the stool next to Kate.

“Do you think they’d try the same thing here?”

“Not after tonight, although Todd does seem to have some sort of death wish. I don’t think Susan’s doing well at all. He made a comment about how she won’t be around much longer. The more desperate everyone becomes…who knows what’ll happen around here?”

“Not much else we can do at this point,” she said, kissing him on the forehead and standing up from her stool. “That’s it, I’m done. I don’t want to be a zombie all day,” she added, shuffling toward the staircase.

“Big day tomorrow?” he asked.

“You know it,” she said, laughing softly. “What day is it tomorrow? Today, actually.”

“Tuesday. Not that it really matters,” he replied.

“Yeah. No kidding. I love you” she said and started up the stairs.

“Love you too.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Alex walked across the darkened kitchen into the great room and was pleasantly surprised to find everyone quietly reading. The shades had already been pulled shut, and the room was bathed in the soothing glow of a few strategically placed reading lamps. Kate was on the leather sectional couch, staring at the screen of her iPad, which was propped up against her bent knees. Ryan occupied the other side of the couch, holding Alex’s iPad. A few days before, Alex had shown Ryan how to find and download books, and Ryan found several science fiction books that interested him. Alex had encouraged him to keep searching and ordering books. If the power grid failed nationwide, he wasn’t sure how long they would have internet access, and without books, they would all be facing an extremely long winter.