The Long Fall of Night: The Long Fall of Night Book 1 (24 page)

“That’s fine,” Ash answered. “I’m going to bed.” He didn’t want to admit he was planning on sneaking off after they were all asleep to try and find gas, and scope out the hospitals in nearby Mansfield. He needed space to get his head sorted, he decided as he lay on his side and pillowed his head on his arm.

“Oh, okay.” Elliot’s shadow stayed at the door of the tent for several minutes, but Ash closed his eyes and willed him away.

He knew he was sulking, that it was idiotic, but there was so much on his shoulders.
So much
responsibility, from a guy with seizures, a ten-year-old kid, a demanding sister who expected everything to go exactly the way she wanted, and the logistics of the trip. The only one relieving his burden was Brian. The fact that he still preferred Elliot’s company, despite the fear he’d have another seizure, wasn’t something Ash wanted to think on too hard. It all felt particularly heavy at the moment.

For now, he wanted to daydream and forget the very real possibility he’d never taste steak again.

O
nly the person
who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.

—Stefan Zweig

B
ETWEEN SHOCKWAVE
AND THEIR Buckley Air Force Base mirror team, plus their night shift replacements, the city sweeps for residents had, by late the third afternoon, gotten out of downtown. Corporal Chris West was grateful. He hated those high-rise jobs, where strange sounds echoed in the stairs and they lost the element of surprise after clearing the first floor. It hadn’t been too bad, though, because they’d spent the majority of the prior day at the University of Colorado’s Denver campus, and those college chicks were hot.

Now, they were moving into areas that had small, detached homes, some apartment buildings and duplexes, and quite a bit of commercial real estate, but nowhere near the number of floors. Hopefully, they’d be able to pick up the pace, especially since the commercial buildings were closed down tight.

Chris put his hand on Donnie’s shoulder as they entered the next house, letting his friend know where he was until they had room to fan out, just as Burgess’s hand was on his shoulder. With the muzzle of his M16A4 pointed toward the floor but ready to swing into action should he need it, Chris sidestepped furniture to follow the doorway to the right between the living room and kitchen of a single-story bungalow, scanning for trouble. He found no one but noted a door at the back of the kitchen atop a landing that led to the outside. Beside the door descended steps, darkness swallowing them up after a few feet. If he were holed up in a house like this, he’d be in the basement.

“Clear!” Roger called presumably from the bedrooms, and Donnie relayed another all clear across from the kitchen access. Chris couldn’t call it yet, so he tilted his chin to Donnie for help checking the basement.

With a heads-up to Roger, Donnie followed Chris as they went into the bowels of the house. Chris was grateful the stairwell was entirely walled in so their legs weren’t exposed to the room as they descended, though he cursed the creaky fifth step. So much for his stealthy reputation.

The basement was almost dark, only the late afternoon light cutting in from a single egress window in the furnace room. The light filtered through a doorway, leaving the hulking furniture outlined. They saw no one, though Chris noticed a closed door beside the furnace room. He figured this was a simple laundry room the homeowners didn’t want exposed to guests. There was a well-stocked bar and enough evidence they entertained often. He almost wished he could nick a bottle and take it back to base.

Donnie bumped him in the back, and Chris realized he’d slowed in his progress toward the door. The bigger man made a sound, and his presence reassured Chris as he reached for the doorknob. He opened the door and crouched as Donnie stepped to the side in case anyone in the room was armed and ready to fire.

The smell hit him like a Mack truck and his gag reflex tried to make itself known in spectacular fashion while he fought it back.

“Aw, damn,” Donnie whispered, grimacing. They went into the room, which held another egress window and provided enough light to see the carnage, a man and a woman on a daybed holding hands. They were dead, the woman execution style. The man’s blood splatter pattern was different than that of his wife’s, though; the top of his head was missing, not the back, like hers. The telltale bump of her midsection was exaggerated by her final slump. She’d been pregnant. There was a note on the man’s chest.
To eternity together.

“Guess they didn’t want to risk dealing when the food ran out,” Chris muttered, putting his nose into his elbow and backing out of the room. He bumped into Donnie, but didn’t stop, just kept nudging his teammate out with his body.

“Don’t have to get pushy,” Donnie grumbled, still looking into the room. “Are you sure they’re dead?”

“I’m sure,” Chris said, not wanting to examine them too closely under the pall of sightless eyes. The woman had tear tracks on her cheeks, the hand not held in her husband’s lying protectively on her swollen belly. “We’ll check the bedrooms and family photos upstairs to make sure there’s no one unaccounted for.” He finally dropped his arm as he scurried up the steps and into the main part of the house, Donnie on his heels. “Basement’s clear but not empty,” he called when he reached the kitchen.

Sergeant Middler looked up impassively. “Found someone?”

Donnie nodded. “Looks like murder-suicide, but there’s no evidence of a struggle, so maybe just a suicide pact. Two of them. We need to make sure there aren’t any more family members and then mark the property for the morgue teams.”

After each neighborhood was cleared, a team was assigned to gather up the dead so the chance of disease wouldn’t spread in the poor sanitation conditions. Sweep teams marked the doors of the houses with large black
X’
s to show they’d been searched, and the ones with bodies, they gave a body count beneath the
X
.

Chris was shaking the can of spray paint, the ball inside rattling loudly, when Donnie emerged from the hall.

“Two bedrooms, and one is a nursery. Pictures on the walls are of the people in the basement, so no surprises. Two to be removed from the premises.” His dispassionate voice gave nothing of what he was thinking away, and Chris watched as he walked to the kitchen to check the fridge. They’d been ordered to take any bottled water in order to supplement the Pepsi Center. Transport trucks carried coolers to offer their passengers something, and the more help they could get, the better. But they were to take only water. Anything else wasn’t worth the risk.

Chris marked the front door with a giant
X
, and beneath it, a two. “I feel like a juvenile delinquent,” he said, replacing the cap and slipping the can into his field pack.

Roger snorted. “Not a very creative one, then.” He eyed the
X
critically. “Needs a little flourish or some red to go with it.

Chris flashed on the red, spattered walls in the basement and cringed. “I like black. Goes with everything,” he joked, trying to forget the image of the family downstairs.

“Glitter,” Donnie suggested, coming into the living room with his large hands full of six or so bottles of drinking water. “This was all they had.”

“That’ll do,” Sergeant Middler said curtly.

They turned toward the next dwelling when a furtive movement caught Chris’s eye between houses. He held up a hand in a closed fist, the sign to stop. He usually ran point, so the team was behind him, and they complied. The fading sunlight didn’t reach between the buildings, making it difficult to see, and they listened carefully for movement. All they heard was the breeze through new leaves, a whisper of foreboding despite the golden light through the trees. Shadows cavorted as if dancing on Chris’s grave, and he shivered. After several minutes when the movement wasn’t repeated, they left the cover of the bushes and fanned around the front door of the next house.

Chris tried the knob and found it locked. Announcing themselves made him uncomfortable, but he knocked anyway, a sharp rap that echoed down the road. Across the street, their Buckley mirror closed the door on the house they’d just completed, marking it with a large
X
but no number. Chris noted their position reflected in the large front room window next to him. No one answered his knock, and he prepared to kick the door in, hoping they weren’t barging in on someone sitting in wait with a weapon and a shoot first, ask questions later mentality. Surprisingly, they’d run into little resistance, but the bodies next door unsettled him.

Word had been getting out of the extent of the blackout all over the country. All it took were phone calls from one landline to someone in the western part of the country, or hell, even the western part of the city that hadn’t suffered the power outage, and the rumors were flying, whole neighborhoods getting wind of the crisis. The last several hours, Chris had felt an uptick in tension. What civilians would do with those tensions was unpredictable.

Their mirror team had said, despite the downtown tourist areas trying to clean up, homelessness was an issue, and the sweep teams had noted more resistance getting those people on the transport trucks. They were used to fending for themselves and didn’t want to be herded into a crowded area where their freedom to roam was impeded, nor did they want to rely on someone else for their meals. Many of them were used to moving invisibly, and when Shockwave had come across pockets of homeless people sheltering in an alleyway or abandoned building, they scattered like birds, agile and well-versed in the quickest escape routes.

The upswing in gang activity to the south and east became more of a problem, too. Sporadic gunfire sounded within hearing distance, and more than once, the spray paint on houses in some of the neighborhoods wasn’t the utilitarian
X
but symbols as territory markers. Gangs were taking advantage of the disorganization and fear. Chris was still waiting for the moment they slipped into a disputed block and had to defend their position to clear everyone out. Other teams had returned to base the night before with details of gun fights and subduing kids as young as fourteen who’d been sent to stretch their gang’s borders. They were being taken to lock-up facilities where they could be detained and charged.

The door gave under his foot with a well-placed kick. He scurried into the darkened front room of their umpteenth house, noting the wicker furniture with overstuffed white cushions and very soothing pastel colors on the walls. The interior was stuffy, though, retaining the heat and humidity of the day.

“Hello!” Chris called. “United States Army. We’re here to escort you to your area’s designated shelter for your safety.”

No answer.

The rest of Shockwave split through the house, calling clear the rooms with no occupants. One thing Chris was grateful for, these smaller houses only took a few minutes to search. The pictures on the wall showed a pretty black woman with a little girl of about seven, her gap-toothed smile beaming at the camera, both of them with mirth and love in their eyes. If it was just the two of them, Chris knew they’d have little fight on their hands. Most of the parents were eager to get somewhere their children would be safer and the onus of protection fell on someone else, at least as far as the life and death threats.

He stopped to read a note on the kitchen counter when he went to clear the room.

Reggie,

I’m taking Mara to my mama’s house in San Jose. They said the power is out everywhere east of the mountains, so I don’t want to be here if things get bad like before. I lived through Katrina in New Orleans, and I’m not going through that again. If you get this note, come with me.

There was an address printed on the paper, and it was signed Trinity in a flowing hand, with a phone number beginning with what Chris recognized as the area code for San Jose. With all the hope he could hold in his chest, he wanted Trinity and Mara make it to their destination, though he knew from other sweep teams, there was a border set up in the mountains. They weren’t letting people cross without proof someone in the western states was willing to take them in. Without the ability to electronically transmit information, there weren’t a lot of ways people could obtain proof, unless they could get the soldiers stopping them to make a phone call to a landline on their behalf. Chris wasn’t sure how far people were getting.

“House is clear!” he called, brandishing the note. Ness snatched it from his hand to read.

“We finish anyway. Squatters are all over the place.”

Chris doubted there were any here, since the door had been locked, but orders were orders. They finished clearing the home quickly and moved on to the next after he left his
X
on the door.

Continuing down the block in the same manner, they found only a couple people, one little old woman who offered them a cup of tea before remembering she couldn’t heat the water on her electric stove, and a young couple who’d moved into the neighborhood with plans to renovate one of the larger houses on the street that was run down with age. They were the most difficult to get out, not wanting to put their investment at risk of becoming a homeless person’s haven.

“Lock it up tight, then,” Donnie had growled finally.

When Chris raised the spray paint to put the
X
on the front door, the young woman stepped in front of him. “You’re not painting my house,” she snarled.

“Miss, I don’t care if you’re standing there when I make the mark, but I don’t think black paint will look so good in your pretty blonde hair.” He raised the can high over her head and started spraying the door. She shoved him away with all her strength, which if he was honest, surprised him.

Donnie stepped forward, gun still lowered but at the ready. “Ma’am, you don’t want to do that again. Step away from the door and come with us.”

“No,” she said with a jut of her chin.

“Do you understand what martial law means, ma’am?” Chris asked, keeping his voice even and holding her defiant gaze. Her glare spoke for her. “It means civil law is temporarily suspended. By order of the President of the United States, approved by Congress, and declared by the governors of the affected states, the military has the authority to act as law enforcement for the purposes of relocating, detaining, and trying by court martial anyone who does not follow direct orders deemed reasonable in emergency situations. You’re being ordered to abandon your dwelling and board a transport to the shelter in your area for the duration of a national emergency, and your failure to comply will result in your arrest and trial under the United States Code of Military Justice.” The longer he spoke, the less certain the woman’s expression became and the wider her eyes got. “Assaulting a member of the military is a hostile act and aggression against a person in uniform can be called an act of terrorism. A person detained for an act of terrorism can be held without charges for much longer than in the civilian legal system, and believe me, once you get the terrorist label slapped on you, you’ll
wish
you’d been charged with simple assault. It would be unwise to touch me again. I suggest you take your husband’s hand, climb on that truck, go to the shelter, and when the crisis has passed, you can reclaim your property through channels of authority set up for that express purpose.”