Crisis Event: Gray Dawn (5 page)

On the cashier’s counter at the front of the store the register was open and empty.

“Wonder what they spent their wealth on,” she said, examining the cardboard someone had taped over the small smashed window down where the cashier’s feet would be.

It was the only broken window in the place, and she considered trying to drop the cash register down next to the cardboard to make it harder to enter there.

She’d already set her gun down and put her hands on the register when a rustle at the back of the store made her snatch her gun up and spin around to aim at whoever was coming at her.

But no one was coming at her. Instead, as she took a few steps toward the rustling, she heard scurrying feet.

“Hi,” she said to the rats. “Thanks for having me.”

Then she continued onward to the cold cases.

The cold cases’ sealed glass doors had kept the dust and mold and rats out, and since the access door had remained closed and locked with a heavy padlock, the cold case was about as as close to a five star hotel as you were going to get in an apocalypse.

Sadie quickly retrieved her rifle and pack from outside, and sat them beside the open back door. She took a few more seconds to check out the other side of the building and get a look at the burning building.

The flames atop the building had grown, and black smoke was billowing upward to the sky. She could smell the smoke now, which was heavy and bitter. The lightning was still dancing around the rooftops across the city—a fact that further reinforced her decision to seek shelter.

She’d seen lightning clusters like this before—had in fact almost been killed by one in the hills of central New York. The best thing to do when the lightning turned vicious like this was to find a hole in the ground and crawl inside it.

Sadie was just about to run back inside when another flash of lightning struck the burning building again. She threw her arm up to shield her eyes—too late—but in the second that the world turned white she saw fresh blood in the dust out near the edge of the parking lot.

Lots of blood.

And drag marks.

Then she was running, choking down a scream as the thunder exploded behind her. She streaked to the back door, scooping up her rifle and pack and leaping into the building.

She spun quickly and slung the door closed. The thunder was still rolling, so she barely even heard the door slam in its frame. Since the lock was still intact, she shot the deadbolt home and leaned against the door.

She was shaking. Grinding her teeth to stop them from chattering.

It had been a lot of blood, and it had been fairly fresh.

The drag marks had lead in several directions. At least four, as if whatever had been killed had been carved up or ripped apart and carried away.

“Why didn’t I go around?” she moaned, then began to take deep breaths.

The rat turd stench finally got her moving again, and she grabbed her pack and gun and carried them to the front of the store. Without looking around she went straight to the cold cases. She gave one of the doors a jerk and kicked upward at the wire and plastic shelving where soft drinks, bottled water, flavored teas, and beer had once been displayed.

The shelves gave way easily, coming out of the metal posts that held them in place. When she’d kicked out the bottom four shelves, she bent low and stepped over the lip of the cold case, dragging her pack and gun in behind her.

Once inside, she fit the wire shelves back where they’d been. It wasn’t much camouflage for her position, but she was too sick and freaked to do much else.

If she was feeling sane—if she wasn’t shaking with fear and malnutrition—she would crawl back out and toss dust over her foot prints. She’d also set her rat trap out and try to catch some protein.

But she wasn’t feeling sane or healthy.

She was losing it.

She had underestimated what this long trip was going to take.

She had underestimated how horrible the effects of the Crisis would actually be—despite the time she’d spent hiding out on the outskirts of Boston.

All the time she’d spent eating MREs and avoiding human contact and waiting—at first for order to be restored or an evacuation to be mounted, and finally, for everyone dangerous to die off—hadn’t prepared her for what she was going to find on the road.

She moved to a back corner of the cold case and collapsed to the floor, which was still sticky from long ago spills that had never been cleaned.

She didn’t even bother trying to control herself when she pulled out the Rice Krispie treat she’d started nibbling on earlier. Instead she gobbled it down and curled up into a ball on the floor, ignoring the storm in her guts and hoping like hell she was safe.

Chapter 5

A gunshot woke her up. Or at least she thought it was a gunshot. She was in that exhaustion-induced state that leaves you wondering whether you’re awake or asleep or dreaming you’re awake while wishing you were asleep.

She reached into her pack and pulled out her pistol, then scrambled to the front of the cold case.

It was still dark outside for the most part, though when she looked down at where the 7-Eleven’s front doors were, she could detect just a hint of whitening in the sky beyond them. Still, the angle was all wrong for looking out and actually seeing anything. All she could really see were flickering streaks of lightning in the distance, and the usual wall of gray fluff.

She looked at her watch. It was just past 7AM.

“Jesus,” she said, and knocked one of the drink racks out of the way.

She was in no mood to stay in the cold case again today, so she was neither careful nor considerate about kicking the wire and plastic shelves out to clear a path. After emerging into the store, she hurried to the front window and looked out.

Fifty yards away, right out in the parking lot in front of the dust-coated pair of arches that had once been a McDonald’s, two men stood ten feet apart—one of them pointing a gun, the other with his hands in the air. Behind them, six or so blocks away, the building that had been set on fire by lightning was still smoldering, its windows blown out, its sides covered in soot.

Sadie had slept through the entire fire, and was lucky it hadn’t jumped to the buildings around it and torched the entire city. Even now the smoldering building was on the verge of collapse—an event that would surely spread the carnage.

But it looked to her like she’d been saved by rain—if you could call big heavy black drops of sludge falling from the sky rain.

Whatever you called it, she saw signs that the sludge had fallen recently, depositing fresh streaks of gray mud to the ground that would soon dry out and leave more dust behind.

The two men were ignoring the smoldering building. The man with the gun stood listening as the man with his hands up—shorter and with long hair—shouted.

Sadie couldn’t hear what he was shouting, but for some reason she couldn’t fathom, it seemed imperative that she should. So without thinking about it she ran for the back door of the 7-Eleven, pulled the dead bolt back, and shoved the door open.

She wasn’t reckless. She didn’t run directly into the middle of the confrontation. Instead she bent low and ran to the big dust-covered dumpster at the edge of the parking lot. From there she darted over to where an old dusty Ford truck was parked.

When lightning struck on the other side of the river, Sadie crawled out to the street where the lines of abandoned cars stretching out in both directions gave her visual cover. Soon the rumble of thunder boomed across the city, covering the sound she made as she crawled among the cars, toward the McDonald’s.

She crawled through the sludgy mud, advancing blindly, pausing to listen to the man trying to shout over the thunder, then advancing again.

When she reached a dust-coated fire truck twenty yards from the two men, she crawled beneath it, pushing the dry dust beneath the truck’s body in front of her, slowly building small dam of dirt to obscure her presence beneath the long vehicle.

The Tall Man had lowered his gun and the guy on the ground was talking.

“Just like Chernobyl,” he yelled. “But worse. A hundred times worse. That’s why we’ve got to do this. We have no choice! Don’t you see? We’re all in this together! We’re still Americans! We’ve got to try to save America!”

The Tall Man responded.

“You’re wrong,” he said. “All you fuckers are wrong. Get on your knees.”

On the verge of crying, it seemed, the shorter man with the long hair followed the order.

“Please,” the long haired man said as one knee and then the other kicked up little plumes of gray dust. “I’ve got a kid! I don’t want to die!”

But the Tall Man ignored him. Without hesitation he snapped his pistol up and fired.

The bullet hit the kneeling man in the chest. The force knocked him onto his back

“Ahhhhh!” he yelled, and arched his back.

The tall man kicked the dying man in the ribs then, and continued kicking him, his combat boots driving into his chest and shoulders and arms and back and face. He kicked and kicked, each blow driving the dying man a little closer to the end.

Finally, when the man on the ground stopped moving, the Tall Man stopped kicking. His chest heaved up and down. He’d given himself a good workout, Sadie thought, and felt anger explode in her chest.

She wanted to open up on the tall man right then and there, spraying him with bullets until her clip was empty. She’d already cocked the pistol when her grandfather’s voice echoed in her head.

“Best to go slow, Sadie,” he said, and the image of Obi Wan Kenobi popped into her mind as her grandfather continued to talk. “Stay out of others peoples’ business whenever you can.”

“Ridiculous,” she whispered. “That guy needs to die.”

As if to confirm her claim, the Tall Man gave the corpse one more kick to the ribs before he bent down and began searching the man’s pockets.

One after another, the Tall Man turned out each pants pocket, looking up and checking his surroundings after each pocket. Then he moved on to the jacket. Sadie was amazed the guy looked right past the little leather knife holster on his hip.

After checking the rest of the pockets and finding nothing, the Tall Man walked over to where the long haired man had dropped his backpack next to the street curb. He unzipped the main compartment and began searching it, pulling out various items and dropping them immediately.

“Shit!” the Tall Man said after a few minutes of searching. Then he straightened up and turned and walked toward the downtown buildings. He was heading right for the still burning building, heedless that the whole thing could topple and crush him if he was in its vicinity when it collapsed.

As he walked, the Tall Man ejected the magazine from the bottom of his pistol, tucked the frame into his pants, and began reloading the clip.

Sadie felt a physical weight drop through her chest as her rage exploded. She shoved forward through the dam of dust she’d built and emerged covered in the gray gritty mud. As soon as she was up on her feet she ran straight for the man, her feet sinking softly into the sound-muffling mud.

The Tall Man never heard her. Not until she was almost on top of him. Then he spun around, pulling his gun out of waistband and fumbling to get the magazine shoved back in.

Too late.

“Hold it!” she shrieked, her pistol out at arm’s length, aimed at his face.

The Tall Man froze.

“Drop it,” she said, and his pistol and magazine fell and landed softly in the dust. “On your knees.”

The Tall Man’s face registered shock and fear and guilt, all at the same time. His chin dropped, his eyes falling to the street.

“Now!” Sadie shouted.

As the Tall Man’s knees bent and he dropped to the ground just like the man he’d killed, Sadie lowered the gun to point at his chest.

“An eye for an eye, huh?” the Tall Man said with a resigned smile. His hands began to creep down toward the pistol but stopped when Sadie narrowed her eyes at him.

“Goddamn right!” Sadie said, stoking the rage up in order to counter the doubt she suddenly felt.

In spite of the chaos and violence of the last nine months, she’d never killed a human being. She wasn’t sure if a summary execution was how she wanted to become a killer.

But then she remembered the way the dead man had begged, and the way the Tall Man had ignored his begging as he kicked him to death.

She squinted her eyes.