Grid Attack (Cyber War #1) (11 page)
Closing the door, we both made our way back to the house.
Kat was trying to console Alice as much as she could, but she needed to be able to make some breakfast for everyone.
Carl decided he could help do some consoling and went and sat next to her as they stirred the fire back to life.
The wind from the night before had stopped, but it was still pretty chilly outside. I went out the front to assess the damage.
The tree had been blown over and its roots lifted the pavement from the street and sidewalk. It had landed square across their living room, where they were probably on the couch bundled up trying to keep warm.
I felt a little guilty that I didn’t check on them beforehand. I should have gone over and asked them to come stay with us as well.
It’s times like these that we need to stick together and show compassion.
I decided to check on the rest of the people on our block to make sure everyone was okay.
Most places I got no answer and didn’t hear any movement. A couple of places they didn’t know me and I was met with shotguns.
I made sure to let them know I was only checking up on them to make sure everyone had made it through the storm okay and then made my way off of their property.
No need to get shot just for trying to be nice.
I headed back home to see what was on the agenda today. None of us had gotten much sleep, so I am sure a nap would come in handy.
But with the power out and no lights, we needed to work as much as we could during the daytime.
When I had gotten back to the house, Alice had finally cried herself to sleep. We all decided to head down into the basement so we wouldn’t wake her.
I turned on the faucet and there was still water, and hot water to boot. So I figured it would be a good idea to do a little bathing while I still could.
We rigged up a couple of pieces of plastic around the area of the hot water heater. Since there was gas heating up the water tank still, it was like having a little heater near it.
I had some clean clothes that were still in a laundry basket so I pulled some out and decided to try to get a little bit of a shower.
I found a hose that had the one end still on it to screw onto a faucet. It worked perfectly onto the basement faucet fixture. I got the water just right and it felt good to take a warm shower, even if I was standing on cold concrete.
Making short work of it, I soaped up and rinsed off as quickly as I could. It was cold as heck in there and I didn’t want to stay naked any longer than I needed to.
I dried and dressed, feeling much more alive as Carl and Kat were over in the other corner discussing plans for the chickens.
“If we can at least give them light in the daytime, then they will continue to produce eggs. Those fluorescent lights don’t use a lot of electricity. We should be able to scrounge batteries from cars that have run out of gas.” Carl said.
“That’s a great idea. Except, I doubt people are going to take too lightly to you taking the batteries out of the cars, even if they are out of gas.” Kat said. She had a good point.
“Well, we will have to either get permission or do it at night, stealth-like.” I said.
Katherine glared at me.
“Yeah, then you will wind up like Ernie. I won’t be having anyone else die in my living room.” She said with a whisper.
I rolled my eyes at her. We needed to do some things different now. Things were not the same as before.
Now, it was all about surviving, no matter what we had to do.
Chapter 15 - Katherine
The next couple of days were a nut house. Between consoling Alice and trying to keep the men from getting themselves killed, we wound up with 12 batteries and cables.
They lined them all up and Carl connected them so that they would give us the power needed to light the basement during the day.
We still had natural gas, but I wasn’t sure just how long it would be before that was gone. At least it kept the basement from being so cold. Just the little bit of gas that was used to keep the water hot was enough to keep the chickens from freezing. Not to mention, we were below ground.
The water had finally slowed to a trickle. We opened up the faucets upstairs to release any water from the pipes so they wouldn’t freeze and bust. The one faucet in the basement we left open and tried to catch whatever water we could in the buckets that we would use the water from previously.
I had a gravity fed water filtration system and we made sure to run all the drinking water through that to make sure it was clean.
We had been pretty fortunate so far that we had not been bothered by anyone. I was actually surprised and thinking maybe Tony was right. Maybe I doubted the way people would act during a crisis.
Perhaps the way people were portrayed on TV wasn’t how they would react at all. I couldn’t help thinking about how things were after Katrina.
Alice was helping me feed and tend to the chickens when I heard someone coming down the outside basement steps. Even though we had glass block windows that we had covered to keep anyone from seeing our lights, the basement door had windows on it. It was the least secure place in our house.
I looked over at Alice, who had her hand over her mouth and her eyes wide as saucers. Pulling out my pistol, I carefully pulled the plug on the light so it would go out.
There was an American flag that hung over the door. It was just sheer enough that I could make out a man, but I couldn’t see who it was.
The man reached for the door handle and tried to open it.
“Locked.” I heard him say.
Who was this man and who was he talking to?
I motioned to Alice to go upstairs quietly. We both quickly made our way up to the kitchen and noticed Carl squatted next to the cabinets, pistol drawn.
I mouthed to him, “Tony?”
He pointed to the living room. I decided to wait and see what was happening before trying moving anywhere else. Alice and I stayed on the stairs until the men left, holding our breath.
Another man tried turning the handle on the back door, and tried to see inside, but we were all hidden from his view.
“This one’s locked, too.” I heard a deep voice say.
When the man left the back porch, we could hear them all walking down the driveway to the front. We all carefully and quietly stood up, going into the living room.
Tony was standing next to the window, peeking out through the crack between the shade and the window. As we walked into the living room, he put his finger up to his mouth indicating for us to be quiet.
In his hand, he had out his AR15.
We had not had the chance to take the rifle out and practice with it. I hoped he knew how to use it.
The men went across the street Carl’s house, and then down the block to other people’s houses. At first, they knocked. When there was no answer, they tried the doors.
Now that they had moved far enough away not to hear us, I carefully opened the door to the side porch so I could see what was happening.
Tony stood behind me as we watched in horror. The older couple down the block had opened up their door. There were some words exchanged, and then some yelling. The men pulled them out of their home and shot them right in the front yard.
I put my hand over my mouth as I began to cry. Why were these men shooting people? Those seniors were no threat to them. What in the world was happening?
Tony put his arms around me as I cried softly into his chest. We waited until they were off our block before coming back inside.
I sat down on the couch, not knowing what to say.
“They just killed the Anderson’s.” Tony said to Carl and Alice.
Alice started to cry. Carl just sat down on the couch.
“Who? And why?” Carl asked Tony.
“I don’t know. They didn’t look like military. But they were wearing all black clothes, and what looked like a lot of tactical gear.” Tony said.“Who knows who they are. Maybe they are looking for terrorists or something.”
“Yeah, but the Anderson’s were senior citizens. They could tell by looking they weren’t terrorists. They probably didn’t even know how to use a computer.” I said as I felt the sobs overwhelm me.
“Carl, will you get out your radio please and see if we can figure out what’s going on?” I asked.
Carl pulled out the radio and turned it on, scanning for channels. He heard a familiar Texan on one of the channels and stopped to listen in. He was talking about how Martial Law was declared and they were rounding up people and taking them to FEMA camps. If people didn’t comply, they were being shot on sight.
“What? That isn’t how it's supposed to work…” Carl said.
We continued to listen in as the Texan said that it wasn’t our own military that was shooting people. But there were men who were posing as military who were doing the shooting so they could come back and loot the people’s homes for food and supplies.
He said he’d heard that the houses that were locked up, they would come and break in at night, figuring that if they missed someone, they’d be caught off guard. They had no regard for human life, only for finding supplies, food, and guns.
I sat in horror as I listened. How could it be this bad already? It hadn’t even been two weeks yet, and we had already gotten to the point of people killing each other?
I looked at Tony. He knew what I was thinking. He couldn’t argue anymore.
We needed to escape. And we needed to do it now.
*******************
Pick up book two to see how the story continues!
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