Grid Attack (Cyber War #2) (5 page)

Out of habit, I hopped out and pulled the gate to the back yard closed. Obviously, that wouldn’t stop anyone. Old habits die hard I guess.

I slowly rolled into Evan’s driveway as he bolted out his front door. On his way by, he handed me a walkie-talkie through the open window.

“Keep it on channel 13. If things go south, you can talk to us with this.”

I looked at the walkie-talkie and wished we had them earlier in this collapse, but was glad to have them now.

Carl and Evan both sat at the back tailgate, each with a couple of rifles and shotguns ready. I didn’t have the kind of back-glass that slid open in the truck, so the walkie-talkies were a great idea.

I took a heavy duty flashlight and handed it to Katherine.

“Take this, roll down your window and shine it on the road for me. I don’t want to turn on the truck lights yet.”

She did and it gave me enough light that I could slowly move around the parked cars and downed trees to get to the end of the street we were on.

I had always loved living at the end of the dead end street. Now dead end had a whole new meaning.

At this point, I just wanted to get away from the approaching hoard. As we made it to the main road, we couldn’t see anything. It was amazing just how dark things were when there was no city lighting.

But we could see the glow of houses on fire to the north, where the hoard of looters had already been. I never understood why people who looted also felt that burning places down was a good idea.

I flashed back to Ferguson when the riots had taken down several businesses in that area. It was only a few miles up the road from where we lived and we had a heightened sense of awareness that soon wore off after things calmed down.

Kat and I would discuss things and she worried that it would bleed into our neighborhood. We never had any issues, but I knew she had valid concerns.

We were learning just how quickly things could spiral out of control, and that was when law enforcement was actually trying to keep things under control.

I turned to go south without incident as I looked in my rear view mirror. Most likely, I was saying goodbye forever to my street and my home. I began to feel tears welling up in my eyes as I choked back the feelings of being overwhelmed.

I couldn’t dwell on that now, I had to focus. But I knew I probably would never see our home again.

Chapter 9 - Katherine

There was an eerie silence between us as we moved slowly through the darkened roads of the city.

We all knew the route almost by memory now so it was just a matter of finding the streets to turn on.

When we were on the 4 lane roads, there were no trees shading the moonlight and it allowed us to slowly move between cars without having to use our lights or have me hold the flashlight for Tony to see.

“You doin’ okay over there?” I asked Tony. He had not spoken a word since we had left.

I knew he was concentrating and trying to pay attention to everything.

He inhaled deeply.

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. I just want to get us far enough away that I feel we can take a breath.”

I totally understood where he was coming from. We weren’t going to feel truly safe until we were outside the major part of the city.

We made it almost ten miles before we came upon a blocked road. What made me raise an eyebrow was how it was blocked. Almost as if it was deliberate.

The cars weren’t just stopped on the road. It was almost as if they were placed there, forcing someone to turn around.

“I don’t feel good about this.” I said, hoping Tony would understand what I meant.

“Don’t worry babe. Remember we planned for this. We’ll just backtrack and go around.” Tony said, trying to reassure my paranoid brain that I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was seeing.

We both had been riding with our windows down despite how cold it was. It made it easier to hear things as well as made it better should we need to shoot at something. We didn’t want to have to think about rolling the window down in a gunfight.

Tony grabbed the walkie-talkie and pushed the button to talk.

“Stay low. Not seeing people but feeling something is off.” He said, then put it on the seat.

Just as he was getting ready to put the truck in reverse, we both heard the sound of a shogun being racked.

Out of the road block on Tony’s side was a man that appeared to be in his 50’s. He didn’t look like someone who’d ever carried a gun, much less shot one.

Over on my side, a young boy who couldn’t have been over 13 had another shotgun trained on me.

Great.

“Put it in park, and turn off the engine if you want to live.” The older guy said.

“You don’t want to do this.” Tony pleaded. “I have food I can give you.” He said.

I reached down and flipped the safety on my shotgun. It had been leaning up against my legs so I would have easy access to it if I needed.

But as I looked over at the boy, I could tell he was scared to death.

Shooting someone wasn’t something people wanted to do. Most of the time, people just wanted to live in peace. But when people get hungry, they will do whatever it takes to eat.

If they have children, it’s even worse. No parent wants to see their child starve to death. Those parents can become worse than anyone when it comes to keeping their children alive, and they will do anything and everything necessary to do so.

The boy could barely hold the shotgun level he was so weak. It broke my heart that things had come this far, but I wasn’t about to let them take the truck.

“Get out of the goddamn truck!” the old man roared, startling even his own son.

“Take the keys out of the ignition and give them to me.” Said the old guy.

I looked over and realized that Tony had his work keys hanging on the lighter that never got used. He put the truck in park and turned off the engine.

But instead of taking the keys out of the truck, he grabbed his work keys instead.

“Okay, okay…” Tony said as he opened the door to step out.

“You too little lady.” They guy said to me. I opened the door slowly and stepped out of the truck but stood inside my door, the shotgun in my left hand waiting.

The man walked over to take the keys from Tony, but Tony reared back and threw them in the opposite direction as hard as he could.

As the young boy watched the spectacle he wasn’t watching me and had moved closer to the front of the truck. I grabbed my shotgun and had it cocked and ready and aimed at the boy’s head.

The sound of a woman’s shrill voice called out with a scream.

“Marshall!!” it said, as a woman emerged from behind one of the cars.

The old man stopped and turned to see the predicament he was in.

“Drop the guns.” I said as I pushed the barrel of the gun into the side of the boys skull.

They both looked at each other as if to contemplate whether they had enough time to take us both down.

“Don’t make me ask twice! I already killed one punk this week, it won’t matter to me if I kill another one!” I said with as much crudeness as I could.

The man nodded at his son and they both lay their firearms on the ground. Tony picked them both up and went to take out the cartridges.

“Empty. They are both empty.” He said.

I kept my gun still trained on the boy. I knew better than to assume that just because they had empty shotguns that they may not be packing something else I couldn’t see. Plus, I had no way of knowing if there was someone else hiding behind the cars.

Regardless of our current predicament, I couldn’t help but think these people just ran out of supplies and were trying their best to make it with what they had.

“That was a stupid move.” Tony said to the man. “Putting your son at risk with no ammo is not the way to fix things.”

The man moved over to his son as the wife moved behind them both.

Tony had already back up and turned around as I backed up to it and got inside, keeping my gun still trained on the family.

We were just about to pull away when I saw two little girls run out and hug their mother and father.

I couldn’t just leave them with nothing. We weren’t the enemy here.

“Tony, stop the truck.” I said.

“What?” it was a reasonable question.

“Please, just do it.” I asked.

He did so, but took the shotgun and placed it out the window pointing it towards the family. They saw him and didn’t move as they watched what I was doing.

I hopped out of the truck and pulled back the tarp up behind where I sat. There was a bucket I had been collecting eggs in and it was about half full. I took out five eggs, one for each of them.

I then grabbed one of the small boxes of canned food and went to just the back of the truck, set it on the ground and opened it to put the eggs inside.

“Not everyone is the enemy.” I said, as I made my way back into the truck and we drove away.

I looked back just in time to see the woman wave. I knew it wouldn’t get them far, but knowing that there were still good people might help them try a little harder to survive without having to kill someone first.

Chapter 10 - Anthony

Stress is a funny thing. It can turn someone who is considered normal into something they wouldn’t recognize. And everyone responds to stress differently.

The stress of having that shotgun pointed at me made me realize just how close we came to losing our lives.

I don’t think that really hit me until just now. With all the things that were happening, maybe I just blocked out the real danger that we had all been in.

After we had made enough distance away from the family and got back on our track, I found a place to pull over momentarily. I needed to collect my thoughts, but I felt like I was going to lose my lunch.

I just needed to take a breath. This world was something I never expected to have to live in. And Katherine was right about how people will go bad in no time flat.

I pulled out the walkie. “Just taking a minute guys. All is fine now. You doin’ okay back there?”

“Yeah, we’re good. What happened?” Evan asked.

“Will explain later. Just need to get back on track.” I said, trying to get my head back into driving.

“10-4”

I tried not to think about how bad things were and decided to focus instead on just getting us the hell out of town.

We still had at least another 20 miles until we reached the outside of the suburbs.

It had seemed like we had been on the road for hours now, and I could barely see the sun beginning to lighten up the sky behind me. I knew it would only be a few more minute of having to deal with the darkness and Kat having to use the flashlight off and on to see the roads.

I figured it was risky to use the headlights, but at this point, it may gain us some speed.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled on the lights. Kat looked over at me, but didn’t say anything.

“I want to try to get some speed and get us out of here. If I can see, then we can move faster.” I said.