The Long Fall of Night: The Long Fall of Night Book 1 (15 page)

“Okay, move out,” Ness said, happy to be leaving the high-rise with too many places to hide and too much opportunity for them to get split up. It wasn’t their last skyscraper by a long shot, but the next block held a series of street-level shops with living quarters above them. Not as many units per building, and not as many blind spots.

The medical and transport trucks idled at the curb, and the mirror sweep team from Buckley AFB led a family of three from the building across the street, the mother carrying a child of no more than four while the father shouldered two large duffel bags. They looked haggard but relieved as they were loaded on the truck ferrying people to the Pepsi Center. The arena had been commandeered as a refugee shelter, and most everyone Ness’s team had evacuated in the ten hours since they’d begun working their grid seemed relieved to know where they were being taken.

The guns they carried seemed to reassure the refugees as well as scare them into cooperation. The children were fascinated and asked a lot of questions, while the adults were mostly just wary.

The leader of the Buckley team had a brief conference with the driver of the transport truck, and the heavy rumble of the diesel engine roared as the truck moved off with its precious cargo. Another truck, idling farther down the road, moved up to take its place. They’d learned early on it took less time if the transports followed them along the street so they had less distance to walk the refugees. Field medical units comprised of both army and civilian doctors and medics remained nearby to handle any injured or sick people for transport to hospitals or temporary centers for the less critical. Truck teams patrolled on foot to ensure safety while the sweep teams walked refugees out of the buildings and got them on-board. In some of the apartment buildings, they’d managed to evacuate whole floors at a time, the residents cooperative if a little skittish in the face of uniformed soldiers knocking on their doors and informing them they couldn’t stay in their homes. So far, neither Echo nor the other street team had faced any resistance.

The hardest part was attempting to answer people’s questions without explaining how extensive the power outage was. No juice to pop on the Internet had cut off most people’s access to the outside world, and the majority of them hadn’t a clue their city wasn’t the only one affected. Ness and her men had taken to reciting the same information over and over.

“The outage is widespread in the city of Denver, so we are moving people as a precaution to a large temporary facility to make access to food and water and medical personnel easier. Power may not be restored as quickly as we’d like, so please come with us and when the crisis is over, you’ll be permitted to return to your homes.”

It was true, and as long as they didn’t say the crisis wouldn’t be over for many months if not years, most everyone let the matter go and followed instructions. The promise of bottles of water in the trucks was decent incentive, too. People’s taps were still running, but many of them knew not to drink it after a while. Water treatment plants had ground to a halt.

On the next block, the first sign of trouble was the shattered glass of a jewelry storefront, the cases within smashed to smithereens and the lined tiers inside them void of any valuables.

“Chris,” Ness said in a low voice as they approached the door leading to the stairs, which climbed into the living area of the building. “Keep an eye out,” she said, her eyes conveying her suspicions more than anything else.

West acknowledged, and while he and Scanlon climbed the stairs, Ness and Roger kept their weapons trained on the street, covering their six. Once the upper landing was secure, Chris and Donnie waited for Ness, Roger, and Matt to join them, firearms pointed at the floor. Sweat trickled down Ness’s back, sticking the cotton of her drab green shirt to her skin. In the dim hallway, she could see this was the only floor above the shops, unless the units in them had stairs to upper floors. There were four apartments, and they moved to the first two and knocked. No one answered.

They tried the other two in the hopes that those who answered their doors rather than having a sweep team kick in would be more cooperative, and they’d rather evac them before barging in on everyone else. But it looked like for this building, either no one was home, or they were going to have to forcibly remove the residents.

Roger and Ness’s eyes met, and she tipped her chin to indicate forcible entry was his responsibility. Using hand motions, she ordered Chris in ahead of her and Matt behind, leaving Donnie to guard the door with Roger in case anyone emerged from the other apartments at the noise.

The slam of the door into the wall behind it reverberated through the hall, and the team moved quickly, guns at the ready as they covered the unit, searching for residents. After a few minutes, it was clear the apartment had been abandoned, picked clean of anything useful, only furniture left behind. Had the tenants already evacuated only for the vandals to come along later like vultures, scavenging for valuables, or had they taken everything with them? Ness wondered. It wasn’t pertinent, but the empty feel of the place gave her the creeps.

The next unit had much the same story, as did the third, but shouts from Roger and Donnie brought Ness, Chris, and Matt before they could clear it.

“Drop your weapons!” Donnie roared over the screams of children and shouts of three men guarding the open door to the fourth apartment, all with pistols aimed at the soldiers.

“Leave or I’ll shoot!” seemed to be the civilians’ favorite threat.

A small child inside the unit the tenants protected screamed “Daddy!” over and over, adding to the confusion. Ness and her team fanned out, weapons trained on the would-be protectors. Her heart pumped and adrenaline dumped into her veins, giving her hyper-focus, which she used to her advantage. Lowering the business end of her M16A4, Ness stayed put but cut through the shouting with as reasonable a voice as she could muster and still be heard.

“Gentlemen, you don’t want to do this,” she warned. “We’re here to help you, take you to shelter, get your families to safety where there’s food and water and a place to sleep.”

The man in the middle, a scrawny black man with a defiant stare, tilted his chin, his eyes wide and darting between all of them. “We got that here, plus freedom to come and go. We don’t need you.”

“What happens when you run out of supplies?” she asked calmly. “Albertsons is closed until further notice.”

The man on the right sneered. “We’ll try King Soopers, then.”

“They’re all dark,” she said, raising a hand and standing up straight to indicate reducing her threat level. Her men stayed on alert. “We’re here to help, not shoot you. Now stand down.”

“I’m not leavin’ my home,” the third man said, quite clearly the most nervous of the three. “Not ’cause of you, or ’cause of the looters, or the gangs. They done killed Robbins, and for what?” His face scrunched up. “For the jewelry downstairs when ain’t no one give a damn about rings and watches right now. Robbins went to protect his store, and he got shot for it.”

“Sir,” Ness tried again, her tone placating. “If those gangs run out of food, where do you think they’re going to look for more supplies? Your building isn’t secure. Let us help you and your families. We don’t want those people to come back any more than you do, but if they do, we want them to find nothing worth taking. Including your lives.”

The man in the middle, clearly the calmest of the three, dipped the muzzle of his gun a couple inches, and as they were trained to do, the man mirroring him, in this case Donnie, lowered his by the same amount.

“We’ll give you plenty of time to pack bags. Take food with you. The more supplies you can carry, the better for everyone. But it’s not safe here.”

“What about being free to come and go?” the middle man asked.

“You’re not a prisoner, sir,” Ness assured. “I wouldn’t recommend leaving the safety of the camp at the Pepsi Center once you get there, but if you wanna take a walk, you assume that risk.” She mentioned nothing about martial law and curfews, and how these men would likely call all those precautions a blight on their freedoms. But that wasn’t her problem. Hers was to get these people to safety in spite of themselves, before more were killed.

They eyed her and her men warily, and the guns lowered more, on both sides. Finally, the middle man nodded, speaking over his shoulder to the family member just inside the door.

“Gather up the kids and get their shit. Food, too. Least if we go with them, someone else can worry about shooting the looters.”

“You’re going to be fine, sir,” Ness said, relaxing her tense shoulders as the danger reduced to a slow simmer. All three men kept their weapons, which the truck team would relieve them of before they’d be transported.

“You promise me that, missy?” Middle Man asked, defiant and untrusting.

“If we can do our jobs, yes,” she answered. “Eventually.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I kinda like you. You got balls.”

She winked at him and gave a curt nod while he turned to oversee the hasty packing inside.

As they escorted the tenants—who had lived in three of the four apartments and banded together when their neighbor had tried and failed to defend his livelihood—down the stairs and to the street, Ness used hand motions to relay orders for Roger and Matt to stay on the door at the ready while Chris and Donnie handled the actual transfer. If the men balked at giving up their handguns or tried to reenter the premises, they would be blocked and overpowered. Luckily, after a token protest, they climbed aboard the truck, grumbling about their second amendment rights.

“Recruiters are looking for men and women to join up, sir, if you really want to get your hands on a gun again,” one of the truck crew quipped, looking over the men. They appeared to be young, their children no more than toddlers and their wives almost girls themselves. Definitely below the age limit to enlist.

“Join the army?” one of them snorted, as if the idea were ludicrous. “What I wanna do that for?”

“So you can put that bravery to good use,” Ness called with a wry twist to her lips. “You just faced down a squad of US soldiers and kept a cool head. We could use you.”

The guy eyed her as if she were putting him on, but she had used up enough time on him, so she offered him one last respectful nod and called her boys to move to the next building. They had a timetable to keep.

T
hey made
it back to camp at the airport well after the sun had set, relieved of duty by the overnight sweep teams. The best way to clear the streets was to keep moving, keep the population of the city ahead of them, keep pushing until they reached the outskirts of their grid. Roger didn’t envy the night squads. They were equipped with night vision goggles but would still be dealing with a population whose movements would be more on edge as well as potentially more offensive. The danger inherently went up as the sun went down. However, after fourteen solid hours of sweeps, Shockwave was on the truck back to base for grub and sleep.

Sergeant Middler dismissed them to relay the team’s observations to their superiors, so Roger herded the guys into the mess tent and mostly kept them in line as they plated fried chicken, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and slices of bread. The drone of the generators outside was so constant, Roger quickly became deaf to them, merely thankful for the full meal and opportunity to get off his tired feet.

Ness came in shortly after and joined their group with a plate of her own, smiling at Roger as she sat.

“Good first day,” she observed, tearing off her chicken skin and holding it up with a questioning eyebrow.

He didn’t hesitate to snatch the best part of a breast out of her hand and shove it in his mouth before one of the other guys noticed, and they had a fight to the death over it. Ness smirked at him, using a fork to pull meat off the bones of her chicken.

“Yeah,” he agreed, swallowing and forking a bite of squash and carrots into his mouth. “No one died.”

“Yet,” Donnie said, pointing at the sky with his fork as if he were about to start pontificating. “You bet your asses, a few days from now, a few more missed meals from now, a few more lootings from now, those people won’t be so quick to lay down their guns.”

“Course not,” Chris agreed, taking a swig of his iced tea. “Would you? If you didn’t get your three squares courtesy of President Galloway every day, would you be inclined to be herded into a big, overcrowded arena where the smell will get rank and the heat will about fry people in a couple months? Forget safety in numbers. You put a crowd that size in accommodations that large, there’re gonna be problems. And once rumors of those problems get out, those who aren’t there already aren’t gonna wanna go. We’ll be pulling them to the truck by their hair before long.”

“And they’ll be screaming about their civil liberties the whole time,” Roger grumbled.

“I swear, we should teach them the real meaning of martial law,” Donnie said, tearing into his bread like a predator into prey.