Then Came War (14 page)

“Guess not. Lead the way.” Harry placed his hand on Tyler’s back and kept the boy between him and the other man, just to be safe.

They were led from the storage area, quickly across the street and through the side door of a Laundromat. The windows were boarded up. A woman folded laundry and waved as if nothing was peculiar about them passing through.

From there they headed out the back door, staying close to the buildings and it was another half a block before they entered into the back of The Tap.

No sooner did they walk in than the young man secured the back door and led them down the hall.

Music playing at a soft level carried to Harry and Tyler, along with voices.

Tyler reached up and grabbed Harry’s hand. He held it tight.

“It’s okay,” Harry said to Tyler. “I promise.”

They then emerged into the back portion of the Tap. The interior lights were on, some red and blue. People played pool; some threw darts. Others filled the tables and there were children running around.

The man behind the bar gave an up motion of his head. “I see you got them, Rick.”

Rick nodded. “Didn’t quite understand about hiding the car, but they’re looking for George.”

“Miller?” the bartender asked.

Harry nodded. “Do you know him? Have you seen him?”

Another nod of his head and the bartender pointed.

Harry turned.

George emerged from the men’s room, a newspaper tucked under his arm. He wasn’t a tall man like Harry, but had a barrel chest and thick gray hair that was neatly combed and styled. “Harry? Well I’ll be a son of a bitch!” The man was a few years younger than Harry. He moved toward him and gave him a hearty embrace with a chuckle.

“George, can’t tell you how happy I am to see you and that you’re alive.”

“Me, too.” George reached out and rubbed Tyler’s head. “This your grandson?”

“No. no. But I’m gonna call him that from here on in. He’s my buddy.” Harry pulled him closer.

George tilted his head. “What brings you here?”

“Didn’t know where else to go. Gave it a shot and hoped things were better up here,” Harry explained. “Tyler and I were on a train. It crashed in New York. We were stuck underground, when we came up …”

George’s single, slow, knowing nod, told Harry he understood.

“George, we made it out of New York, into Connecticut...” Harry said with desperation. “What the hell happened?”

George motioned his hand toward table. “Sit down. Get comfortable. Let me see if I can fill you in.”

***

You are weak.

You’re such a coward.

What is wrong with you?

Those were the thoughts that ran through Abby’s mind as she huddled behind that sofa, holding her ears long after the shots had ceased.

She had run.

In a world gone mad, a boy not even old enough to know love had been kind to her and she had run.

She hid behind the sofa in a townhouse with a clear view of a child.

A dead child.

Her memories flashed to her son, Landon.

The corner said the car impacted the driver’s side at such a high speed that her husband and son never knew what hit them. They were crushed.

Decimated beyond recognition, Abby didn’t even get to see them. She couldn’t bring herself to identify the bodies. A coworker did.

She never got to say good bye to her son, hold him or tell him she loved him.

She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him hurt.

But Landon had felt no pain; he had died instantly.

Unlike that toddler on the dining room floor of the townhouse, he never knew his life was ending.

How much pain that young child must have endured the final moments of his life was incomprehensible to Abby. He suffered, probably crying and screaming for help, and died alone on a cold hardwood floor.

She kept focusing on his little hand and then Abby couldn’t take it anymore.

She scurried out from behind that couch and crawled to the child.

His eyes were open, his skin white and his mouth frozen open as if crying out for help.

Scooping her arms under his body, Abby lifted the child into her arms and cradled him. She held him close, burying her head against the boy and sobbing from the depths of her soul.

For all that she lost, for all that other mothers lost, for every child who died without a pair of arms to comfort them, she cried as she held that child.

“I’m so sorry,” she whimpered and cried as she held him. “I’m so sorry for the pain you went through. I am so sorry.”

She rocked back and forth holding him and crying for the longest time. Then she stood and carried the child to the sofa. She laid him there and covered him with the blanket that was tossed over the back of the couch.

She stared at him and then covered him completely. She swiped her hand under her nose and took a moment to think.

A few days earlier she had stood in her bathroom, a razor to her wrist and wanting to die.

But she couldn’t do it.

The train crashed. Seventy percent of the passengers onboard died. But she lived. Why?

Foreign soldiers had barreled into town, guns blazing, shooting everyone and everything that lived.

Except her.

She still lived.

Why?

It dawned on Abby right there in that living room that for all her losses, all her heartache, for all the seconds she just wanted to die … she didn’t.

She was meant to live.

Somehow, someway, through her pain there was a greater purpose.

Whether it was to just get out of the city or to find others alive, there was a reason she was still alive.

‘The whole world is mourning.’
Foster’s words ran through her mind. Suddenly her pain was not singular, but multiplied by parents everywhere.

She broke down and cried again, thinking about Foster in that recreation center. She thought of the helpless blind that she so heartless disregarded because of her own pain.

An opportunity was given to her, a purpose for her life, and she had turned the other cheek.

With the body of the child on the sofa and Foster racing through her mind, Abby sobbed her last tear.

Her lips were swollen from all the crying and her face was wet with tears.

But she had turned an emotional tide. She vowed right there to turn over a new leaf. Running for her life, hiding, made her realize she truly didn’t want to die.

Abby vowed to make up for her lack of compassion and selfishness.

She would try.

First, she would head down to the recreation center even if it were only to find Foster’s body. Then she would apologize and promise the young man she would pick up where he left off.

If the bus load of people were alive, others were too.

It was quiet outside and Abby felt it safe to leave.

Sniffling and catching her breath, Abby peeked out the window.

She didn’t see anyone on the street.

Quietly she walked to the front door, opening it without a sound.

She pulled it closed behind her without latching it and stepped down the steps.

Shit.

She heard the sound of a weapon loading ammunition bullet in the chamber.

Abby stopped cold on the stairs. Turning slowly to her right, she saw a soldier.

He said something to her as he aimed his weapon.

Abby didn’t understand him. She lifted her hands in surrender, but she was not surrendering. As she reached the bottom step, the soldier neared her. Inwardly she almost felt invincible. She had escaped botched suicides, the train wreck and the paratroopers. She had a purpose.

And that purpose wasn’t to die.

She shifted her eyes. No other soldiers were around.

Arms raised high, she thought about running. The soldier was young; if he was twenty, he was lucky. He also looked scared, as if he didn’t know what to do.

“I’m not armed,” Abby said.

Again he said something.

“I don’t understand you,” Abby told him. “English?”

He motioned his weapon, ordering her to do something.

“I don’t know what you’re saying.”

He moved closer.

Abby thought, ‘Fuck it.’ She was going to run.

Standing there at the bottom of the townhouse stairs, she was aware of her will to survive. It was that same survival instinct that had led her to run into that townhouse and hide. She realized that she didn’t want to die.

But Abby’s revelation of the value of life came too late for her.

For all her failed attempts to end her life, all her near death experiences were just a tease to bring her to the realization that she wanted life not death.

In the midst of reasoning with the young soldier, he fired a single shot from his rife, an action for which she was ill prepared.

And the wish of a day or so earlier, her wish to die, came true when the bullet seared into her forehead and Abby dropped to concrete sidewalk and died instantly.

***

The blood went from warm and thin to cold and thick, turning sticky and sour smelling. But despite the transformation the substance took, Foster stayed still beneath the bodies and didn’t move.

He was prepared to get up earlier but then he heard that lone shot and he stayed still even longer.

He hadn’t a clue how long he was under those bodies; it could have been all day or ten minutes. But enough silence engulfed him and since there hadn’t been any outside noise in a while, Foster deemed it safe to get up.

He was by the door when the soldiers opened fire and was protected by the helpless injured around him.

He sat up, rolling a body away from him. Sitting there, Foster bought the back of his hand to his mouth, raised his knees, laid his head on them and cried.

What had happened? How did he fail these poor people that had depended on him?

Their bodies lay strewn about, riddled with bullet holes.

It had been nothing less than bloodbath.

A merciless bloodbath.

“Is anyone alive?” a female voice whispered.

Foster turned and looked. “Judith?”

“Foster?”

With a sob he looked around. “Say something else.”

“I’m underneath someone.”

He located her voice to his right. Then he saw a hand peeking out from under the body. By the ring on her finger he clearly recognized the hand as Judith’s.

Quickly Foster scurried to her and rolled the body from her.

Judith began to cry.

Her hands covered her face and her body shook. Like him, she was completely covered in blood, someone else’s blood.

“Are you hurt?” Foster asked. “Shot?”

“No. You?”

“No.”

“Oh my God, Foster. What happened?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Soldiers came in here and just shot. They just fired.” He helped her sit up. “But we got to get out of here. We have to go.”

“But where?”

“I don’t know.” Foster peered around as he helped her to stand. He really didn’t have a clue on where they should go, but he knew staying at the recreation center wasn’t an option.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“We were just going about our normal day when the word came,” George explained to Harry in the local tavern. “In fact, we thought it was just a test of the emergency broadcast system, but it wasn’t.”

He went on to tell Harry how the first news bulletin was about a small nuclear warhead detonated in Washington DC. It had been pre-planted, and there was no warning. Same thing had happened in London, a pre-planted Nuclear weapon. Everyone in the country thought it was a terror hit until four low flying planes were spotted in New York City, two in Philadelphia and another in Boston.

All were flying bombs.

They were bombs that set the sky on fire as they ignited the oxygen and burned all those on the ground.

People that were farther out suffered pressure injuries which resulted in blindness or brain damage.

The warnings that something was going to occur on the Eastern cities gave people only a few minutes to seek cover. But it was too late for most of them.

There was no place that was safe from the oxygen burning bombs.

“We huddled around the radio listening to the stories of devastation,” George said. “That was Tuesday morning. By afternoon, people in Connecticut and parts of New Jersey were claiming they heard explosions that sounded like loud pops in the sky. Everyone assumed it was paranoia until everyone got ill. Fast too.”

George went on to explain that people were experiencing cold and flu symptoms by mid day and stores and shops just shut down. Agabarn shut down too, just in case.

“Did anyone come in to help?” Harry asked. “The CDC? FEMA?”

George shook his head. “Not that we know of. Too many, too fast. By that first evening, while America scurried to get on her feet, while she rallied to get help into the affected areas, a first wave airstrike came in shooting anything that moved off the east coast. We heard it and stayed inside.”

“We heard on the radio that we were trying to bring troops home,” Harry said.

“Yeah, we heard that too. But now there are battles going on at sea trying to stop them from returning.”

Harry exhaled heavily. “Are there news broadcasts anymore?”

George shook his head. “A newscaster came on to say that they were not going to report anything because the enemy could intercept. So we are here, just buckled down.”

“The second wave came this morning,” Harry said. “I heard and saw it.”

“No, Harry. That was the third wave. That was the biggest yet.”

“Jesus.” Harry’s hand reached down and stroked Tyler’s head. Tyler had fallen asleep on his lap and he was glad for that. The boy didn’t need to hear anything he didn’t understand. Harry would explain it to him later. “So you’re in the dark now.”

“Not completely,” George said. “We pick up news from Ham operators. They send updates that are coded. We haven’t broken the code completely, but we’re getting the gist of it all. Before the major new hubs went off the air, the general consensus was that this wasn’t a terror hit, but rather a joint attack and invasion by a few small countries.”