The Long Fall of Night: The Long Fall of Night Book 1 (14 page)

“What now?” Elliot asked, his drowsiness plain.

“Now I keep chipping away at Charlotte to go. And wait for dark to get into the pharmacy.”

“Why’s it have to be dark?” Elliot asked, his eyelids falling closed for longer and longer intervals.

“Do you need your music?” Ash asked, deliberately side-stepping the question. Elliot had to have figured out how he’d acquired such a mass quantity of supplies, but saying it out loud turned his saliva to sand. Best not to speak of it.

“Not if you keep talking to me.”

“What do you want to talk about?” He sat beside the couch near Elliot’s head, crossing his legs as he studied Elliot’s face.

“I don’t know. Anything,” Elliot mumbled.

Sick of talking about the plan, and the danger, and the lengths he’d already gone to for their ragtag group, Ash cast about for a topic. He didn’t want to ask Elliot more about himself, because Elliot needed rest. He decided on a fond memory.

“When Riley was a little kid, we had a ritual. On Wednesdays, Charlotte worked late at the diner. Wednesdays were Dude Night for me and the little man, so I’d take him to the park to wear him out, and we’d get junk food for dinner. This particular Wednesday, I got Chinese food, thinking I was just so sick of chicken nuggets. He was about three, so I gave him a little rice, some cashew chicken, and we drank a gallon of lime Kool-Aid with it. He fell asleep while we watched
Finding Nemo
in Char’s room. My sister wasn’t due until two in the morning, so I usually slept in her room until she woke me when she got home. A little after midnight, Riley rolled over and whimpered. I woke up and asked him what was wrong, and he said, ‘Unca Ash, I hurt.’ But the word hurt turned into a gigantic hurl, and he horked green-tinted cashew chicken and rice all over her bed.”

“Gross,” Elliot said with a half-smile, his eyes staying closed.

“Tell you what, you gain a new appreciation for single parenthood when you’re trying to get vomit-covered pajamas off a crying toddler without smearing him more, put him in the bath, take the sheets off a bed before the nasty can soak into the mattress, and move a load of laundry from washer to dryer to make room for a new mess.”

“Was he okay? Was it the food?”

Ash chuckled. “No, I’d eaten it too, and I was fine. He just picked up a bug somewhere, as kids do, and he shared it with me in spectacular fashion. Charlotte came home as I was getting new sheets on the bed. Riley had fallen asleep on the comforter I’d thrown on the floor. Thankfully, it hadn’t suffered his digestive emissions.”

“He’s like your own kid, isn’t he?”

“Well, I was only fifteen at the time, so I’ve always thought of him more as a little brother.”

Elliot’s brow furrowed. “Fifteen? That’s young to be driving.”

“Oh, I had dinner delivered. Charlotte wouldn’t have let me drive her kid anywhere on a learner’s permit.”

“I promise not to vomit on you in my sleep.”

“Gee, thanks,” Ash said wryly. He was getting uncomfortable on the floor, so he moved to his knees but stopped before standing. Charlotte was in the back room with Russ and Riley was still in bed. Water ran in the bathroom, so Brian was occupied, and Ash and Elliot were alone. Ash smoothed Elliot’s hair off his forehead. Elliot closed his eyes and sighed.

“You should sleep. I’ll wake you if anything happens.”

Elliot didn’t answer, and soon he was snoring. Without thinking, Ash leaned down to kiss his forehead, then stood.

Riley and Brian emerged from the hallway at the same time, and with a quick finger to his lips when the boy got excited about all the new gear, Ash gave him the grand tour. Hell, he was out of options, and if he could get Riley pestering Charlotte to go on a great big camping trip, he wasn’t above it. Not if it meant their safety.

“
Q
uit it
,” Charlotte snapped as Ash checked one more time the front door was locked. “You’re making me nervous.”

“You should be nervous,” he grumbled. Elliot and Riley had made a pallet on the floor and had fallen asleep telling ghost stories. Riley’s were typically hilarious for a ten-year-old, more about bodily functions as creepy noises and discovering trolls were really mischievous uncles trying to scare their nephews. Elliot’s had been kid appropriate, but with a layer of uncertainty to them that left Ash on edge. More than one had ended with “and no one ever saw him again.”

“Why?” Charlotte asked tiredly. “Why do I need to be nervous, when you clearly have enough feet crawling over your grave for us all?”

“Because holing up in your house isn’t going to last much longer. Someone is going to come knocking, be it for help or other reasons, and you’re going to find out real quick how desperate people get when they’re scared.”

“Like you?” she shot back.

“Guys.” Brian tried to tame the umpteenth skirmish between them. “You’re going to tear each other apart long before the neighbors get to.”

“Shut up,” Ash and Charlotte said in unison. Brian held his hands up in exasperated surrender.

They all fell silent, stewing. Ash had managed to get everything he wanted to accomplished, except for the pharmacy run, but he was too on edge to leave his sister for even a little while, though he knew he’d better do it soon. Pharmacies were usually high on the list of looters’ priorities, and he didn’t fancy having to spend time looking through ransacked medicine shelves for the specific drug Elliot needed.

The bang of the kitchen screen door startled them enough to jump. Ash leapt to his feet, his hand instantly going to the gun in his waistband. Russ came into view.

“What’s going on?” he asked, stopping at the mouth of the living room. He frowned as though he could feel the heaviness in the air.

“Did you lock the door behind you?” Charlotte asked, standing as well and shooting Ash a murderous look as he dropped his hand.

“Course.”

“How bad is it out there?” Ash demanded.

Russ rolled his two changes of clothes into a ball. “The natives are getting restless,” he admitted. “But it’s not like they’re rocking cars and setting things on fire. You can hear the occasional gunshot, though, and I definitely wouldn’t take a walk right now.”

“Your time is up.” Ash turned to Charlotte. “We leave tomorrow.” She started to protest, but he cut her off. “No more arguing. If I have to tie you up and throw you in that van, we are leaving.”

“You’ll have to knock me unconscious, too, little brother,” she snarled, words dripping with venom. “Whatever it takes, right? Stealing hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of gear wasn’t enough, huh? Let’s add assault to your list of crimes. Whatever will your rap sheet look like when we get to Marvin’s?”

“Cops are too busy to arrest me,” he shot back.

She glared at him, though he could see the sadness behind her anger, and that, more than her words, sliced off a little piece of his heart and fed every bitter beat to him. “Good night.” She and Russ disappeared into her room. When Ash looked at Brian, the man shrugged.

“You’re doing what you think is right. She’s a fierce, fierce woman.”

Ash huffed a laugh, then decided his pacing wasn’t helping him get calm, so he hunkered down on Riley’s other side, where his nephew and lab partner had made space for him in their “tent” as they’d called it.

“You can have the couch. Or hell, take Riley’s room.”

Brian moved to the sofa with a muttered thanks, and just when Ash was about to drift off, he spoke, “If you need help tying her up, I’ll hold her down.”

In the darkness, Ash smiled ruefully.

E
very man must decide
whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

S
ERGEANT VANESSA “NESS
” MIDDLER stood stoic, staring off into the distance at the beginnings of civilization on the outskirts of Denver, approximately fifteen miles away, in the mostly quiet afternoon. She missed nothing, from the veins of clogged highways that no longer shivered with the movement of cars, to the overall dead atmosphere one would not expect of an area with roughly three million people. To her, it looked like a beast, fat and temperamental and in need of taming.

Gathering herself to be one of its tamers, she turned on a booted heel and hit the stairwell of the air traffic control tower of Denver International Airport, which had been commandeered by the Colorado Army National Guard within thirty-six hours of the power grid failure. Around her, civil engineers were busy constructing the workings of a long-term on-site base for Ness and her comrades, flown in the day before from California and other western states in response to the national emergency. It was controlled chaos, which she ignored as she hoofed it across one of the runways to the hangar milling with soldiers and officers. Nearby Buckley Air Force Base served as HQ and housing for command, but they hadn’t had the room to support all the incoming.

Mustering with the rest of her platoon, Ness took her place in the ranks for their first briefing since arriving in Denver. Lieutenant Daniel O’Neil—who was
not
to be called Lieutenant Dan if a soldier wanted to see the dawn of the next morning—stood at the front, a map of the city pinned to a corkboard beside him with suburbs sectioned off.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, his voice echoing oddly in the cavernous building. There were only a few private planes of the single-engine variety stored here, and the noise bouncing off the metal walls wasn’t ideal. “As you are well aware, more than half the United States has suffered a devastating blow to the power grid from an unprecedented terrorist attack. We have been tasked with the partial evacuation of the citizens of the city of Denver and surrounding suburbs in order to concentrate the population for purposes of supply distribution, medical intervention, and protection. The outage in Denver is not complete, with the western suburbs having electricity and the north and eastern areas dark. Southern parts of the city are sporadic, and crews are working to stabilize their infrastructure.

“President Galloway and the governors of the affected states have declared martial law, and we are here to carry out those orders.” He turned and used his capped pen to point to the areas on the map relevant to their platoon’s assignment, rattling off Teams Charlie, Delta, and Echo’s grids before continuing. “Team leaders have been furnished with more detailed maps of their assigned grid. Your orders are to conduct a block-by-block search for civilians in their homes, in public spaces where they may have taken up with neighbors, family, or friends for purposes of self-protection, or wherever they may have built themselves defensible positions in the sixty-eight hours since the crisis began. They will be scared, possibly in need of water, and while the number of injured goes down the farther away from Washington, D.C. we get, there’s still a chance of wounded needing immediate transport. Medical response teams will be shadowing you as you search, and they are responsible for the sick and injured and all related decisions. Battlefield triage is in place until we get more supplies from the West, so medic teams, conserve your resources where you can. The rest of you, that includes ammo.” He looked pointedly at the sixty or so men and women in precise formation before him. “Remember, these are American citizens, and we are not on foreign soil. Do not fire your weapon unless first fired upon. Each team will have a mirror team from Buckley Air Force Base sweeping your grid with you, so we know more of what to expect from certain areas of the city. Because of the incomplete outage, we’re working from the inside out, trying to get the biggest areas in the black evacuated first. Refugees are mostly being sent to the Pepsi Center in downtown Denver. Smaller shelters will be noted on your map. Local police are handling civilian protection at the Pepsi Center until we can implement a more permanent solution for housing. They will not be on the streets, so any and all civilian interaction will be through us. Any questions?”

The silence indicated two things to Middler. One, they were all still reeling from the news that the country they’d been sworn to protect from every threat had suffered such a devastating attack, and two, they were ready to get down to business. The information was clear, as was their mission: get in, get the people out before chaos overtook the population, and keep everyone safe.

Battlefield triage,
Ness thought, her stomach turning over. That was always the part she was grateful didn’t fall under her orders in disaster deployments such as this or the earthquake in Haiti in 2010: having to decide on the spot if someone could be helped or not. The hard choice had to be made and never second-guessed, and she was thankful someone else did it.

Lieutenant O’Neil said, “Squad leaders, go over the target areas with your teams and stick to the timelines outlined on your maps. Sweeps begin at oh-six-hundred, so tonight, rest up, get some hot chow, and be ready. We are the first eyes on the ground of the aftermath, so anything could happen. Dismissed.”

They waited until the lieutenant took his leave, and then fell out.

“Sarge,” Corporal Chris West called to Ness as the large formation broke into smaller groups in the hangar, low murmurs of the other squads doing better against the reverberation of sound. Behind him, Ness’s Team Echo, nicknamed Shockwave, followed. Corporals Roger Brown, Donovan “Donnie” Scanlon, and Matt Burgess circled her with West once they reached a spot far enough away so as not to be distracted by Charlie and Delta.

Ness planned to brief them and check her equipment first thing, then grab a bite of what could be her last warm meal for a couple days. They’d return to base each night, once the sun had set, relief provided by night sweep teams, according to the instructions she’d already received with her map. She was prepared for any contingency, however. It had served them well in the past.

“Echo’s responsibility is a wedge from downtown, moving east,” she said, pulling from her waistband the map she’d been given, already in its cloth sleeve with the plastic overlay for protection from the elements and multiple handlings. Pointing out their grid, they went over her plan for their section, the timeline they were meant to adhere to in order to get the civilians to safety in as expeditious a manner as possible, and covered what equipment she thought they’d need.

Ness was tall for a woman, at five foot eight, but compared to her team, she was the shortest. She was also the fiercest, and one look at her usually precluded mistaken assumptions about her capabilities. Her arms, sporting a couple tattoos, were easily as muscular as some of the more wiry men in the platoon, and her shoulders were broad. She was solid, not an ounce of fat on her, but nowhere near as dainty as one would expect a woman with her body fat percentage to be. Her shoulder-length brown hair was always tied back in a ponytail, and her intense green eyes were a shade close to sea foam, an unusual color that stood out in her tanned face, giving her an eerie, almost ghostlike stare. She unnerved people but not her boys. They’d been through too much shit in their tour in Afghanistan to be anything but brothers and sisters in arms.

“West,” she said, indicating the man to her left. “We’re sending you and Scanlon on point, with the rest of us at your six, to enter residences. Closer to downtown, there will be high-rise offices and apartment buildings. Even if it means finishing those buildings faster, we do not split up. We’re to gather as many people as we can reasonably protect from each area, and rendezvous with a transport team, who will take them to designated shelters around the city. Our main shelter is the Pepsi Center, but we aren’t the only team funneling there, so each transport drop, we need to check with the truck teams to make sure we’re not at capacity. Once we reach capacity, we’ll be able to tell our refugees where exactly they’re being taken as we conduct the sweeps. Sick and injured go with the medical response teams. Any questions?”

“What sort of weaponry are we facing here, do we know?” Scanlon asked. He was a brute of a man, six four if he was a foot, and bulky, though quick. His black hair and brown eyes gave him a brooding air. He and West were their stealth members, though in comparison, West was more the type one would think of as sneaky. He was wiry, only a couple inches taller than Ness, but he moved with the slick grace of a wildcat and had the air of a man who knew it.

“We’re on the edge of a large wilderness area, so any number of small arms and hunting rifles are possible,” Ness answered. “These people are more used to living off the land than in other places. The prevalence of private gun ownership is larger here than it would be in, say, Pennsylvania. Remember what L.T. said. These are Americans. Refugees. Chances of hostilities are lower than our last deployment, and we’re more likely to run into violence stemming from fear rather than hatred.” She paused. “That does not mean this will be a walk in the park, boys. Intel tells us there’s been an uptick in gang violence and territory wars all over the country. The local law enforcement has been spread too thin, trying to police three million people who are slowly coming to realize the danger they’re in. Buckley Law Enforcement is shoring up the local police. In a riot situation, there are no reinforcements from other cities, because those other cities are facing the same panic. The Guard has been responding with local units, and we are here to supplement those units and evac civilians per our orders. Whatever we have to do to get them out and to the refugee camps. Got it?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” they answered in unison.

She looked at Burgess, the most reserved man on the team. “We’re meeting our mirror team from Buckley at oh-five-thirty, so we need to be ready for whatever local intel they can provide. Today, choppers did a couple flyovers to scout areas of heavy rioting, but there’s nothing. Because Denver is partially dark, the locals seem to be handling it better compared to the news from other cities. Doesn’t mean our zone is exempt, though, so be watchful.” Burgess nodded in acknowledgement, his dark eyes serious in the rich depths of his black face. He was one of the smartest men she’d ever known, and his calm, unflappable presence reassured her and made him a damn good soldier at her back when the shit hit the fan. She’d jump on a grenade for her entire crew, and they’d do the same for her, but there was something more to Burgess’s calm that soothed the entire team’s nerves, and she was grateful for it.

“Burgess has comm on this one, and we all have our assignments, so let’s get to the mess for a full plate of food and ready our equipment for roll out at oh-five-hundred. Full packs on this, guys. I don’t want any surprises.”

They nodded, and she wrapped it up then, shoving the map back in the waistband of her pants. They moved off as one toward their racks, since they bunked in the same large tent with two other teams.

“Too bad the power’s out, ain’t it, Chris?” Scanlon asked, nudging West with his elbow. “Never been to Denver. Would have been fun for us to hit some clubs. I’ve heard Colorado is one of the healthiest, most active states in the country.”

“Not that that helps you any, Donnie.” West replied. “The girls here could probably kick your ass with their mountain-climbing pinky fingers. Classier.”

Donnie grinned. “Hey, everyone looks the same naked, right? Class don’t matter so much when you take away all the ’spensive clothes.”

“Donnie, if everyone looks the same to you without their clothes on, you’re not picking the right people,” Roger Brown chimed in. He was sort of the team mediator when Chris and Donnie butted heads. They may have been best friends, brothers, but they were very similar and often hot-tempered.

Still laughing, Donnie pointed at Roger. “That’s not what that set of twins Chris and I picked up on leave three weeks ago thought. Those girls left walking funny and smiling.”

“Hallelujah,” Chris agreed, fist-bumping Donnie.

“I suppose you’ll be going to the med tent for more penicillin in the next few days?” Burgess asked, brow raised. “I’d like to remind you when the fix-it shots run out, that’s it. Nationwide shortage on drugs, given most of the manufacturers are dark.”

Ness shook her head as they reached their racks, their banter forgotten as they set to checking their gear.

If I didn’t love them all so much, I’d probably have killed them by now,
she thought with a chuckle before her focus trained on the mission they faced.

“
C
lear
!” Roger Brown called as they reached the final apartment in a building in downtown Denver.