State of Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (14 page)

“Oh yeah, that fucker.”

I stared at him.

“Why did you hesitate back there?” Corey asked.

“He was a friend of mine.”

“Nice friend to have. Do you usually hang out with rapists?”

“No. I didn’t think he would do that.”

Corey took another puff of his cigarette and coughed again.

“You should probably give up before you get started.”

“I agree.” He tossed it out the window and then coughed again. He looked at me. “So what was he like?”

“Maybe he was just recruiting me but I never got that vibe with him. He always said that he didn’t agree with everything they taught. Hell, he was the one that told me it was all hot air. The days of skinheads were long over, according to him.”

“He believed that?”

“Who knows? Like I said, he wasn’t like the others. I don’t know what got into him. Maybe he was told to go do it.”

Corey screwed up his face. “Who the hell would tell another person to go rape someone? And who would even do it? Bullshit. He did it because she was tied up and there was no one around to stop him. Filthy bastard, if you hadn’t been there I would have killed him.”

“Hey. I don’t condone. You asked why I hesitated.”

We returned to looking out the window. Luke came back up the stairs. “Sam. Murphy wants to talk to you.”

I nodded, staying low to the ground as I shuffled towards the door. When I made it downstairs, Shaw was near the front door keeping an eye out while Murphy was near the back with Ally and Sara. Kiera was with Billy and Brett. Every few seconds there would be another series of shots and we would find ourselves prone on the ground or seeking cover behind anything that wasn’t paper-thin.

“You wanted to speak to me?”

“Yeah, look, we are going try and get back to City Hall. My truck is there. I’ve radioed to Dan to update him on our situation. We have got to get out of here. If we can’t get out, Dan will come in with the others.”

“The others?”

“He returned the other guys from camp to their hometown but most of the families were already gone. He dropped off some, but the other five are with him. They have weapons that he had in his truck. If needed they can be here within the hour.”

“I think we are going to need it as it looks like they called for backup.”

I motioned with my head towards the door. At the foot of the gate was a large group of skinheads. Three times the size of the one that was originally there.

“
H
oly shit
,” Billy said. “Murphy. Murphy.” He turned around and Billy had ducked down behind the window near the front of the house. He was motioning with his thumb. Staying low to the ground both of us moved over there. Brett took up position where Murphy was alongside Shaw. Out front, in the street, standing on top of cars and filling any space available were skinheads. Even more were around back. Some of them were carrying guns. Others, Molotov cocktails, baseball bats and chains.

“How much ammo you got?” Murphy said to Billy, not taking his eyes off the crowd that was slowly building in number.

“Five magazines.”

“They are going to set this place on fire, aren’t they?” Billy said.

“You think?” I replied. I didn’t know for sure but that’s what I might have done. Smoke us out. Even if we didn’t come out we would die from smoke inhalation.

“Fuck!” Murphy slammed his fist into the drywall. “Barricade the doors with the furniture.

I shouted up to Luke and Corey to come and help us. They rushed down and we moved what furniture we could to the front and back doors. The back doors were harder to get at as the bodies of Wayne and the two women were blocking up the entryway. We dragged them back and closed the door. I knew it wasn’t going to hold. Meanwhile Murphy was on the radio calling for Dan.

“Dan, that help. We are going to need it.”

I could hear him filling Dan in on the situation. Kiera took the gun from Wayne’s hand. No one said a word. Everyone was going to help if we were to live through this. Brett and Luke shoved a cabinet in front of the main window. It probably wouldn’t hold them off if they rushed the house but it would prevent Molotov cocktails from getting in. Well, that was the hope. My bets were on us dying a horrible death. I rushed upstairs and got in position at a window. Murphy thought our best bet was to take the vantage point above them.

“Maybe we can use these?” Corey had found a box of Snapple bottles under the stairs. Some of the bottles had already been drunk. He then returned from the alcohol cabinet with various bottles of alcohol.

“It will do. Billy, give him a hand.”

From outside we heard someone’s voice over a speaker. I popped open the window to hear what they were saying.

“We’ll make this real easy for you.”

They wanted to avoid further bloodshed. They wanted Jodi and Brett, along with Luke. Of course they used racial slurs to get their point across.

“Do that, and we’ll give you free passage out of here.”

Billy cracked up laughing. “This guy must think we are idiots but, I’m all for giving up Luke.”

“Fuck off,” Luke said.

“They are just toying with us.”

Murphy shouted out. “No deal.”

“Come on now. I am not going to extend this offer for long. You decide. We kill three of you or we kill all of you.”

“I don’t get it. I thought white supremacists wouldn’t attack white people?”

“The Jews were white, numb nuts,” Luke replied.

“Race is the furthest thing from their minds. We’ve killed too many of them.”

Murphy never replied. From the window I could see Bryan Catz talking to the man they called Eli. He muttered something into his ear and the guy nodded. He brought the megaphone back up to his mouth.

“It’s come to my attention, you have a skinhead in the house. Sam Frost, do you hear me?”

None of us said anything.

“Come on now. We know you are in there.”

“What do you want?” I yelled out the window. He grinned and looked up towards the front of the house.

“Are you really going to spit in the face of those who helped you?”

“Helped? You guys tried to kill us.”

“A little death here, a little death there. I’m surprised you are in there and not out here. Now, I know you have had some issues. I know you didn’t choose to be placed with your foster parents.” He made some racial remark. “So I am going to offer you a deal. I will pardon what you have done under the umbrella of a misunderstanding. You send on out those I’ve asked for and no harm will come to you.”

By this point Brett was in the same room as me. I stared at him and he dropped his chin.

“And if I do that? You will let the others go?”

Brett frowned. “Sam.”

I didn’t look at him.

“You have my word,” Eli shouted back. I looked back at Brett.

“I need time to think about it,” I yelled.

“Time isn’t something you have a lot of,” he replied.

“What about if I just come out? Will you let all the others go?”

I heard him laugh. “Oh now you can’t be serious. Now you are pushing your luck. No deal. So what is your answer?”

“Pretty simple really,” I looked at Brett and brought up my AR-15 just below the window. “Fuck you.”

With that I opened fire sending the whole group rushing for cover and returning fire. At the same time, from the other room Billy, Murphy and the others began opening fire. Glass shattered around us as they unleashed a torrent of gunfire. Corey and Luke rushed downstairs when they heard someone trying to break in through one of the windows. I dashed down behind them in time to see them standing over the body of a skinhead.

“Here, help me carry these up.” Corey gave me three of six bottles that he had turned into homemade Molotov cocktails. I raced upstairs and dispersed them out to the group. Within a minute they were lit and tossed out of the windows, creating a wall of fire. It wouldn’t hold them off but it might make it harder to get close. Not every window downstairs could be covered by furniture. The front and back doors were closed, and the front window was blocked but the rear kitchen and living room windows had no glass in the frames.

When I rushed down to get more Molotov cocktails, Billy was holding two and tossing them out the window. As he went to throw a third, a bullet hit him in the shoulder and he collapsed to the floor writhing in agony. I wrapped an arm around him and literally dragged him out of the living room and upstairs. Murphy went down to help Corey and Luke while Sara, the two girls, Shaw and Brett went back and forth exchanging fire with anyone who got close to the house.

“Use your rounds sparingly.”

When I brought up Billy he was yelling in agony. I remembered Murphy when he was hit and this didn’t even come close. Sara immediately began working on him in the bathroom while I took her place by the window. It was working to some degree. By firing at them they couldn’t get close enough to get the Molotov cocktails to hit the house. The closest they could get was about five feet from the perimeter and that was only helping us as it just created a circle of fire that others couldn’t cross

The whole thing felt like something out of
Black Hawk Down
. We were stuck with no way out and our ammo was going down by the second. There had to have been at least a hundred and twenty. They knew we would eventually run out of ammo so they would rush around in the trees trying to get us to fire at them and waste ammo.

“This can all be over, Sam. Last chance,” Eli hollered over the megaphone.

I stared at him. Eli looked exactly like the others but a lot older. He had to have been in his early fifties. He had a tattoo of a dragon that went from his head to his neck and down beneath his green bomber jacket. A bull’s-eye covered one of his eyes and a swastika was on his chest.

“How long do you think it will take until Dan and the others get here?” Luke asked Murphy.

“Less than an hour.”

“I hope they get here soon.”

I
’m not
sure at what point I stopped counting the dead. Bodies lay sprawled out on the ground, their faces captured the last thought that passed through their mind. Was it worth it? This was a war that no one was winning. The walls, homes and streets were painted with the blood of people of all ages. For what?

They would have said that our government was to blame. And they would have been right, to some degree. If fear wasn’t so prevalent in our world, anti-missile systems wouldn’t have been required.

The fact was this was a snowball effect of hatred, racism and division among humanity itself. America was no better than Germany or any country in the world but its constant need to place itself above the shoulders of others had caused all manner of people to react. But it wasn’t even America, as it was humanity itself killing humanity.

As bullets penetrated the walls and faces of agony twisted before me, I wanted to push the noise out. I wanted it to end.

Like any war, there were moments of intense shooting, rushing around and yelling as each side tried to take ground, and kill another. If it hadn’t been for the brick walls of the house, we would have surely all been dead hours ago.

“What are they doing?” Corey said to me. I peered over the edge. The group out front had backed away. Tired of losing men they had retreated behind a line of cars. The fight was not over. They were reassessing the situation. Searching for any way to get in without being set on fire or shot. It was as if our position on the second floor of the home was like a castle on top of a hill. Even though we were outnumbered, we had the advantage. No matter how hard they tried to get close, they couldn’t get inside. Billy, Luke and Murphy held the ground floor with Brett and Jodi while Corey, Ally, Sara, Kiera and myself remained on the second floor.

In a real war the enemy would have bombed the house or rushed it and taken the loss. But that wasn’t the case here. While they called themselves foot soldiers, none of them were stupid enough to run at a live gun. Until recent events, their attacks on society amounted to rallies, hate-filled propaganda and the occasional act of violence.

We used the few moments of quiet to check ammo, and make sure that each of us were okay.

“How you doing, Billy?” Murphy shouted up.

He groaned. “My father used to go on at me about working for the family business. I hated it. Right now I would trade in this pain for back-to-back shifts if it meant not feeling this.”

“Suck it up, Manning, you little bitch,” Corey said smirking at him.

Billy flipped him the bird.

I glanced back out. There was no movement. For the first thirty minutes they had thrown everything they had at us. It was touch and go. I had never felt my heart beat so fast. Molotov cocktails, bullets and even a hammer came flying through the window but they never gained ground.

“What do you think they are doing?” Corey asked.

“Waiting us out,” Ally replied. She held in her hand a Glock.

I couldn’t even begin to think of the psychological damage this had on all of us. In a period of forty-eight hours we had gone from being delinquent teens pushed away from family and community to having no option but to break laws in order to survive.

“Seems almost ironic, doesn’t it,” I said.

“What does?” Ally asked peering out the corner of the window.

“This. Working with your father in order to survive.”

“Shit happens.”

“Don’t let your old man catch you saying that. He’ll make you pick up a rock and carry it a mile or two,” Corey added.

She let out a chuckle. It was the first time I had seen her smile since this had kicked off.

“What are you laughing about?” he asked.

“Would you believe me if I told you that was my idea?” Ally replied.

Corey scowled at her. “Your idea?”

“My father wanted input on the program. He was saying how everyone was swearing all the time. I suggested having people pick up a rock each time they swore and carry it. It would serve as a reminder.”

“Like putting a dollar in a swear jar.”

“Exactly. Let it hit you where it hurt.”

“Thanks, I picked up thirty-seven rocks over the period of that month. My backpack weighed a ton.”

“But it worked, right?’

“It didn’t stop me swearing if that’s what you mean.”

“No, but it got you thinking before you spoke.”

“Are you telling me that was the point of it?”

“Of course,” she replied pulling her gun away from the window. “My father couldn’t care less if you swear. Everything they did at that camp was to get you to think about your actions. To think about what it was you did to get there and the consequences.”

Corey laid his rifle on the window and peered through the scope. “Alright, Ms. Perfect.”

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“Don’t pay attention to him, he’s just pissed off because he thought your old man had it in for him.”

“Whatever,” Corey replied before turning his attention to the ground below.

“Murphy, are you seeing this?” Shaw called out to him. I got up close to the window and looked out. The skinheads were pulling back.

“Same over here,” Sara said.

At the front and back of the home they moved back slowly until within a matter of minutes they were out of sight.

“Think they are trying to lure us out?”

“Possibly.”

Another ten minutes passed. There was no movement and no one was out there.

“Perhaps they got a whiff of your BO, Corey,” Billy said before letting out a laugh only to groan in pain. Luke came up the stairs to get a better look.

“I say we venture out. Might be the only chance we get.”

While we had taken out a large chunk of them, there still had to be at least eighty remaining out of the original group two hundred and forty. They could have been anywhere.

“No, we stay here until dusk or Dan arrives. Whatever comes first.”

Whenever someone came up, one of us went down to take their place. We had no idea what the skinheads planned but it was obvious they weren’t the kind of people to back down.

In the distance we could hear gunfire.

“You think that’s Dan?” I asked Murphy. There was a look of concern on his face. It was possible. We had been here for close to two hours. That would have given Dan plenty of time to arrive. It might have been the reason they pulled back. I could see he was itching to find out while at the same time weighing the risk factor.

“Scot.” Sara tossed him a look and shook her head. “Don’t.”

“And if he’s out there?”

They exchanged glances and it was clear to see the reason why their marriage might have suffered. Murphy didn’t seem like the type of person that avoided danger, he was the type of man that ran towards it if it meant saving a buddy. I admired that about him. Long before I was ordered to attend Camp Zero, I had seen Murphy around town. When he wasn’t working with troubled teens he plowed snow in the winter with his truck and did odd jobs alongside Dan.

“Shaw, you want to come with me?”

“I’ll go with you,” Luke offered.

“No, you need to remain here. For all we know they might be trying to divide and conquer.”

“This isn’t Iraq, Scot,” Sara added.

“Just keep an eye on our daughter.”

Sara chuckled to herself. “Yeah, that’s what I’ve done.”

“What?” He spun around and for a brief second I think he was about to lose his shit.

“Mom,” Ally tried to intervene. That seemed to help as Sara walked into the next room.

“I’m going with you,” I said.

“Didn’t you hear me? Stay here.”

I watched them go downstairs and I heard Brett say he would go. From the window they slowly made their way out the back and then disappeared into the tree line. We were all waiting for the sound of bullets but none came.

Five minutes went by and then I began to get antsy.

“I’m going after them.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?” Ally replied.

“If they get caught out there, they are going to be glad we showed up.”

“And if you get caught out there?” she asked.

“We’ll deal with that as and if it happens.” I checked the ammo on the rifle and slung the gun around my back. On my way downstairs Luke followed me.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“If you can go, so can I.”

I wasn’t going to argue with him. Brett, Murphy and Shaw had left together heading west. Those that remained were Corey, Ally, Kiera, Sara, Jodi and Billy. We stepped over bodies as we navigated our way into the tree line. The dead stared back. I thought I would feel hate or regret but instead I felt nothing except sadness.

I heard Luke’s stomach grumble as we trekked through the forest in the direction of gunfire. All of us had eaten the bare minimum. As we got closer to the edge of the forest, we could now see what was happening.

A group of strangers had taken up position on top of a hunting store. We figured they were using whatever they had scavenged to fend off the group of fifty, maybe eighty skinheads. Some were scaling the side of the wall using the fire escape. To make matters worse, Murphy, Shaw and Brett had obviously been spotted as they had taken cover behind a burnt-out truck further down the street.

Crouched down at the edge of the forest, I was trying to figure out the best course of action. Luke wanted to open fire on them but I was certain that if they caught wind that our group was divided, it was possible they might circle around and overtake the house where the others were.

“Follow me,” Luke said.

“Where are you going?”

“You’ll see.”

I shot the others a quick look, and then reluctantly followed him.

We backed up into the forest and Luke sprinted, jumping over fallen trees and ducking low-hanging branches. At this rate, if we didn’t get shot, we were going to end up with a mean rash from poison ivy. The damn stuff was all over the place.

We must have been running for at least ten minutes straight before Luke burst out of the forest into a parking lot. It was the rear of the lumberyard that Billy’s father owned. A massive place that stored large amounts of timber. Most was piled up in various places around the yard, some of it had been taken, cut and was ready for purchase by construction companies.

“Hurry up,” Luke said waving me on. At the rear entrance, Luke fired a few shots at the door and glass exploded. He reached in, unlocked it and we entered. Glass crunched beneath our boots. I looked around the office space. There were computers; filing cabinets and the place had a rustic, well-used look to it. Luke disappeared into a room and then came out jangling keys.

“What’s that?”

“Keys to a Hayes truck.”

“Doesn’t that have a chip in it?”

He brushed past me and looked at me as though I was some kind of idiot. “No, these beauties aren’t made anymore. They closed up shop back in the early ’70s long before all that computerized shit. I tell you one thing these suckers are solid. Well built. You can’t get a better timber truck.”

“How the hell do you know about this? This is Billy’s old man’s place.”

“Yeah, I did a summer job here.”

“You were planning on getting a job working for the lumberyard?”

He stared back at me. “You really think highly of yourself, don’t you, Frost?”

“No. I just didn’t imagine you would want to work in a place like this.”

We strolled over to a huge, green, twenty-four-wheel truck that was hooked up to a trailer filled with a massive amount of freshly cut tree trunks at least twenty feet long. The only thing that held them in place were six huge steel bars either side. There was no top to it.

“Oh what, because I wear all black? I bet you thought I was going to join a punk rock band or wind up in some crack house with a needle in my arm.”

He hopped up onto the side of the truck and opened the door.

“Get in the other side.”

“Luke, what the hell are you planning?”

“You’ll see.”

“Yeah, I would rather you just tell me.”

I went around and got in. He started up the engine and it roared to life.

“Buckle up.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Your funeral.”

There was something in the way he said it that didn’t sound comforting. The truck hissed as we jerked forward and he circled around heading for a gate that was closed.

“You want me to open the gate?” I asked as we got closer.

He looked over at me and smiled and then hit his foot to the accelerator. The truck smashed through the flimsy mesh wire fence. I looked in the mirror to see it dangling from the hinges. Luke let out a sound as though he was at some football game.

“Always wanted to do that.”

“Seriously, Luke, what are we doing here?” I gripped the door handle regretting that I had stepped inside.

“Ever gate crash a party?”

He slammed his foot against the accelerator and the mammoth truck began picking up speed. I brought down the window, as it was hot and stuffy inside. The wind whistled and whipped at our faces, sending Luke’s long hair into a crazy dance. It was about a five-minute drive before we would turn on to Main Street.

“I heard what happened to your father.”

I don’t know why I came out with it. He cast a glance at me as he kept a tight grip on the large wheel.

“I get it.”

“You get what?”

“Why you hate them.”

He snorted. “What are you trying to be? My buddy or therapist?”

“Neither.”

“Look, just because we are working towards the same goal, that doesn’t mean I like you. We aren’t buddies, and we sure as hell aren’t the same.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No but you were implying.”

I scoffed. “Man, you don’t let up, do you?”

He shook his head and focused on the road. I decided it was best to drop the topic. The guy had issues, but then so did I. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that the trouble between us would be resolved because we had been forced into a situation of fighting alongside each other.

As we got closer to the corner of Main Street I could hear the noise of gunfire.

“When I tell you to jump. You better jump out my side. That’s all I’m saying.”