The Salvation Plague | Book 3 | The Replication, page 10
part #3 of The Salvation Plague Series
Anna looked ready to cry and he couldn’t stay gruff with her, with the others maybe, but not with her. He didn’t want the last thing she remembered of him to be some asshole remark.
Actually, he thought it highly likely that his last remark in this life probably would be some kind of asshole comment. He seemed destined for it. He just didn’t want it to be today.
He went around to the back and started unloading the haul they picked up from the cabin. No sense in endangering the food and water supplies too. It would be a bitch carrying this stuff across the bridge, but he’d do it gladly. Better than risking it.
Bradley came around back while he was unloading.
“I took a look at the base of that bridge. Two of the piers on the middle left are cracked, but that’s not what concerns me. The piles underneath aren’t visible. The pile caps on those are too far away for me to see, but they look undamaged from here. I’m worried that a fissure has opened up underneath those left piles, which could be causing the lean.”
“What’s your point?” Jared asked, finally shutting the back door.
Bradley gave him an incredulous look. “What?”
“What is your point?” Jared replied. “I’m driving this thing across regardless of what is wrong with the damned bridge. It is a huge risk, yes, but there is even more of a risk trying to go around the to next bridge. You know as well as I do that this damned lake is connected to the river. We’d have to travel hundreds of miles and every bridge on the way could be in bad shape.”
Bradley nodded. He pressed his lips together as he thought. “There’s the dam. It’s only about twenty miles north of here.”
Now Jared was the one to give him a crazy look. “You’d trust driving over the damned dam?”
Bradley shrugged. “Just an idea.”
“Well, it sucks. So does this one, but we’ve got to get it done. At least if I go over you won’t have to hear my shitty jokes anymore,” Jared said.
“True. Be sure to drive really fast and right near the edge, in that case.”
Jared grinned and slapped him on the back. He went back around the front of the truck to the others.
“Love you, Sweet Corn. Watch your six.”
He gave her a kiss and squeezed her chin lightly between his thumb and fingers. He looked into her eyes for a moment, memorizing. He dragged a hand down the side of her head, brushing her hair back where it had fallen from the ponytail.
He turned to Bradley and nodded once. “Wait until I’m across before you start coming over.”
Chapter Nine
Disappointment
Kate- past
It was hard for Kate to deal with the disappointment of seeing Jared’s empty driveway. Rationally, she knew that if Jared had made it out of town, he would have come by their house first. She checked the garage, but found it just as empty as the driveway had been. The house was dark except for a single light in the kitchen, but with the late afternoon sun she could see perfectly well that nobody was home.
She felt the tears rise again, so close to the surface. Her eyes and nose burned, and she hated the weakness. How long would it take to lose this horrible softness? Was it feminine fragility? Did men feel the need to cry at things too, but they just had an easier time sucking it up? She didn’t know, but she suspected it was different for them, what with hormones and all.
She wanted to linger and wait there in the hopes that Jared’s truck would come roaring down the gravel road, but she knew it was unlikely to happen soon. The longer she waited, the more dangerous it would be to get her mother and Charlsie to the stadium unharmed. The town was small, but not small enough to make it safe.
She roused herself and got back into her car. She reloaded her pistol and magazines from the bag on the passenger seat and made sure she was as ready as she could be for anything. Anything could happen now, and not just with the crazies. People could be just as bad too. Maybe the bad people were already getting set up to do bad things.
She felt time running out and the urgency spurred her on.
The drive back home was uneventful, and as she passed the Rolling Hills community again on the opposite side, she saw a crew of men piling up the bodies she had left lying there earlier. She slowed down and recognized the man keeping watch over the workers. It was the leader she had spoken with before. He stared at her as she drove by, squinting in the sun to see her better. She had the advantage and was able to see him clearly.
He was a good-looking man, older, but he seemed exhausted. She hoped he could rest soon. He deserved it. She waved and he recognized her. She saw the slightest smile tipping up the corner of his mouth. It was too bad she hadn’t met him back before all this happened. She scoffed at her thoughts. A man like him was probably already taken anyway.
She was better off alone. Less chance of losing people you cared about that way. The weight of that love for her mom and Jared was heavy enough without adding a man into the mix. She couldn’t even imagine having a child to worry about in all this. Baby Eva’s happy, grinning, toothless face flashed in her mind, and she felt the sharp edges of grief once again.
She hoped she made it, she desperately hoped she made it.
The turn for her mom’s house came up, and she gazed at it. The atmosphere had changed while she had been gone. She glanced at her watch. An hour had passed, maybe a little more, and she knew her mom was probably frantic.
The entrance was empty. No more cars and trucks lined up to leave. Homes were dark and closed up, some hid empty rooms and some hid cowering families. A few houses had their doors standing wide open, and these alarmed her the most. Those people had either never left or left in a hurry. People wouldn’t leave their doors open like that without good reason.
She drove faster, ignoring the posted limits. They had to hurry. Time was up.
Her mom’s house looked the same and she was relieved to see that Charlsie’s car was still parked in the street. She checked all around and jumped out of the car. She noted idly that the neighbor wasn’t on his porch anymore and was relieved. Anyone sitting outside like that now had some screws loose.
She ran up the sidewalk and knocked on the door rapidly. Her mom opened it at once and she could tell Enid was pissed.
“Where the hell have you been!?” she said. Her face was red, and her eyes blazed with her fury.
Kate knew it was just worry and fear, but they didn’t have time for it now.
“I had to stop and help some people. Jared wasn’t home. Did you leave him a note?” she asked, ignoring her mom’s frustrated huffing.
“Yes. It’s over there. Bob’s waiting on us. He said if we weren’t ready in fifteen minutes then he was leaving without us.” She looked at the clock. “And that was ten minutes ago!”
“You are sure you want to do this?” she asked her mom.
Enid nodded decisively. If she had doubts, Kate didn’t see any evidence of them.
“Let’s go. Do you have everything you need?”
The older women nodded.
“Run in and grab the largest three kitchen knives. Nothing flimsy,” Kate said.
She waited nervously on the porch while her mother did as she had asked. When she came back out, she took two of them, slipping one into her bag and the other into her belt. It wasn’t ideal, but it would serve her purpose. She made her mom keep the third one.
Kate led them out into the yard, keeping alert for anyone around. Bob’s house was down the street, toward the main road, so they’d just swing by there on the way.
“Where did everyone go?” Enid whispered.
She seemed shocked and more than a little fearful about being outside. Kate could have told her where she thought everyone had gone, but something stopped her. Some part of her wanted to protect her mother from the new reality that she had already faced so many times today.
“They probably went to the shelter and other safe places.”
She actually thought most people were dead or dying by now. Most people would hesitate too long when faced with those monsters, and it would be their final mistake. It would get them, and their families, killed. She wouldn’t be that way. She would keep her mom safe. She desperately hoped that Jared was keeping himself safe right now and hadn’t been caught unaware. He had been so tuned in to the issue recently that she figured he would be just fine. He was probably biding his time somewhere until he could get home safely. He was probably helping people. He was that kind of person.
Charlsie followed Kate and her mother in her old, packed Monte Carlo. The sight of it in her rearview mirror was reassuring. They weren’t alone, at least. Bob’s house was still as well, but as they pulled up Kate caught sight of a twitch at the curtain, and she knew he had kept his word and waited for them.
They waited in the cars as Bob brought out his wife and their bags.
Contrary to what her mother had said, Bob was no longer a police officer. He had retired long ago, and so wasn’t the best means of protection they could have, but he seemed to know what was going on at the emergency shelter. That was something, she supposed.
“Follow us. We shouldn’t stop for any reason,” he warned.
Kate nodded. “I know.”
He searched her eyes and seemed to understand the unspoken message she had sent him. She understood. She’d been out there. He turned to go back to his own vehicle when he stopped and turned back around. He nodded to the pistols on her hip and thigh.
“It would be wise to leave those in the vehicle when we get there. The military probably has orders to confiscate weapons from people.”
She nodded again. She had already planned to leave them somewhere safe.
They followed Bob through the neighborhood. Nothing had changed in the last little while, and she had the strangest premonition that she would never live here again. This would never again be home. It was saddening, but not unexpected.
They turned onto the highway toward town. In the distance, she saw a few vehicles moving. Some drove too fast, panic perhaps tinging their good judgement. Other vehicles had wrecked, smashing their front ends into the stoplight poles and storefronts. More than one of these had bloody shattered windshields and broken bodies on the hood or nearby.
Seatbelts. They hadn’t been wearing seatbelts. She wondered if they had done it on purpose.
They swerved gently through the obstacles. The further into town they got, the worse the devastation. Businesses had shattered windows. There were fires randomly polluting the air with acrid smoke. Pileups became more severe, and bodies— and parts of bodies— much more frequent. They passed the café and Kate noticed that the body of the man she had killed outside still lay there, untouched.
It wasn’t until they neared the downtown area that things became a lot more difficult. They caught sight of cars speeding along the various residential streets. A man in coveralls stood outside of a body shop watching the cavalcade of cars, looking defeated and sad. There was blood on his mechanic uniform.
No stopping for any reason.
They went down a one-way side street, off the main road and hopefully less visible to the wandering crowds of freaks that she knew were around somewhere. They were almost there. Another mile and a half and they would be in sight of the stadium.
They passed an old church, the historic courthouse, and an old bar that had shut down. When they gained the top of the hill, they bypassed the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant and turned down the main street again.
There, in the distance, was Collier Stadium.
In spite of her reticence and her knowledge that it wasn’t a good place to be going, her heart still leapt at the sight. The false promise of safety was strong, and people wanted hope.
The road was lined with school buses and vehicles. Several ambulances had joined the lines of the waiting and she hoped these would deliver doctors and nurses to the stadium. Those people would be so important in the days to come.
Most importantly, she saw troops. Military trucks, Humvees, police cars…relief flooded her at the sight. She saw men in unform guarding the fence and the gate. There were other men outside the fence watching for the crazies. Judging by the bodies, some had already found their way there. The commotion of the vehicles was sure to draw more in.
She suddenly felt very exposed sitting in a line of vehicles with the other refugees. If something happened and they needed to get away quickly, they could quickly get jammed up and stuck. There would be no way to drive out and their chances of making it out on foot were not good.
The lines moved slowly as the people in the vehicles were checked by the authorities. While she still had time, Kate quickly unfastened her belt, the thigh holster, and her shoulder holster. She shoved them under the driver’s seat, making sure they were completely concealed. She pulled her t-shirt over the knife on her side. She would have to figure out some way to hide it better before they went in. There was no way she was going anywhere completely unarmed.
As they reached the gate, two men studied them carefully and Kate felt oddly as if she had just hit a sobriety checkpoint. She expected them to ask for license and registration. The pistols under her seat felt like bombs waiting to go off and she thought maybe she understood Poe’s “The Telltale Heart” a little better now.
Kate kept her face as calm as she thought appropriate in a situation like this, but she couldn’t help but keep glancing around in anticipation of an attack. This wasn’t exactly an unoccupied part of the town. There would have been thousands of people here earlier today, just living their ordinary lives. They couldn’t have all gone away.
The stern-faced man in charge finally waved her through and she pulled into the parking lot. They waited for Charlsie to pull in behind before they followed Bob to a place. Kate saw that the main area of the parking lot had been barricaded and reinforced with some kind of concrete walls, the kind she had seen soldiers use overseas and were sometimes used to restrict traffic during roadwork.
A portly older man in a police uniform was directing traffic and she watched Bob stop for a moment to have a chat with the man.
“Good grief! Now’s not the time to catch up on gossip,” Enid said, tapping her fingers on her leg nervously.
Kate thought about honking the horn but refrained. Barely.
They were directed around the side, where another gate opened up into a graveled auxiliary parking area. She didn’t like her car— and weapons— being so far away. She made sure everything was as secure as it could get before she opened her bag and dug out some duct tape.
Enid looked at her like she was crazy when she duct taped her knife to her lower leg.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” she asked, frowning.
“Freaks are running around ripping out people’s throats. The first time I was attacked, I used a chunk of glass to cut a crazy woman’s throat. I think this is necessary.”
Her mom paled, but didn’t say anything else, which she was grateful for.
“Give me your knife,” she told her mom.
She shoved it in her belt where the other had been and her mom just looked at her like she was losing her mind.
She took a deep breath and decided to conceal the revolver as well. It was smaller and less important to her than the larger pistols. She could afford to lose it, if they found it. She ripped the straps from the shoulder rig and tossed them in the back seat. She taped the holster portion to her other leg and frowned at the bulky weight. It would take getting used to, but nobody would notice it unless they were trained to look for things like that. She checked that the kitchen knife in her belt was secure.
“Come on!” Charlsie said from outside her window.
Bob and his wife were further away, but still waiting for her. She dropped the ammo into the center console and hoped nobody decided to loot the car. Or steal it altogether. She pocketed the keys.
They got out and she watched behind their little group as Bob led them to the stadium.
“Why couldn’t we just park in the regular parking lot?” Charlsie asked Bob.
“The soldiers said to keep it clear. They want to see what’s coming, I guess.”
She glanced over at him and saw his hand tighten around his little wife’s waist. Linda was an older woman, close to Bob’s age. She was petite, and fragile-looking, and Kate hoped very much that her looks were deceptive. She didn’t look like she would handle a fight very well. At least her mom had some weight on her, and Charlsie was as tough as nails beneath the polished exterior.
They passed to the side of the large structure, and she saw a set of doors nearer the back. They didn’t have handles on the outside, which is probably why nobody guarded them. The back of the building made her uneasy. The shadows were deep back there, and there was less activity.
They rounded the front and Kate took stock of the façade of the building. It was a two- or three-story high portico and the front windows were all glass. She saw that they had been covered with something at the bottom, plywood maybe.
The roof was stair stepped, and each section had a slightly shorter banner hanging down. They were her college colors. There was supposed to be a big game here next week. She wasn’t a sports fan, but a co-worker had invited her, and she had intended to go.
As they reached the front door, the details of the shelter setup became cleared. Outside, there were sandbags stacked haphazardly to the sides, restricting the flow of movement. To the front were more of those concrete barriers. Men manned machine guns here and several groups wandered around near the fence, carrying assorted rifles and pistols.
The fence and the gate were high, but they looked flimsy to her. They weren’t meant to keep out large crowds. From the faces of some of the younger cops, they must have realized that as well. The soldiers were better at concealing their fear, but she was really good at reading people, and she saw the little signs of it there as well. The wide darting eyes, the clenching hands…the way they eyed each person carefully— the younger soldiers were especially revealing.
They were all in the same boat, and these people were just as lost as the rest of them. She hoped some of them had experience with combat, at least. She studied the uniforms as she passed, and it wasn’t very reassuring. She knew people couldn’t be judged by their uniforms, but she would have felt more reassured if she saw some combat badges.
Actually, he thought it highly likely that his last remark in this life probably would be some kind of asshole comment. He seemed destined for it. He just didn’t want it to be today.
He went around to the back and started unloading the haul they picked up from the cabin. No sense in endangering the food and water supplies too. It would be a bitch carrying this stuff across the bridge, but he’d do it gladly. Better than risking it.
Bradley came around back while he was unloading.
“I took a look at the base of that bridge. Two of the piers on the middle left are cracked, but that’s not what concerns me. The piles underneath aren’t visible. The pile caps on those are too far away for me to see, but they look undamaged from here. I’m worried that a fissure has opened up underneath those left piles, which could be causing the lean.”
“What’s your point?” Jared asked, finally shutting the back door.
Bradley gave him an incredulous look. “What?”
“What is your point?” Jared replied. “I’m driving this thing across regardless of what is wrong with the damned bridge. It is a huge risk, yes, but there is even more of a risk trying to go around the to next bridge. You know as well as I do that this damned lake is connected to the river. We’d have to travel hundreds of miles and every bridge on the way could be in bad shape.”
Bradley nodded. He pressed his lips together as he thought. “There’s the dam. It’s only about twenty miles north of here.”
Now Jared was the one to give him a crazy look. “You’d trust driving over the damned dam?”
Bradley shrugged. “Just an idea.”
“Well, it sucks. So does this one, but we’ve got to get it done. At least if I go over you won’t have to hear my shitty jokes anymore,” Jared said.
“True. Be sure to drive really fast and right near the edge, in that case.”
Jared grinned and slapped him on the back. He went back around the front of the truck to the others.
“Love you, Sweet Corn. Watch your six.”
He gave her a kiss and squeezed her chin lightly between his thumb and fingers. He looked into her eyes for a moment, memorizing. He dragged a hand down the side of her head, brushing her hair back where it had fallen from the ponytail.
He turned to Bradley and nodded once. “Wait until I’m across before you start coming over.”
Chapter Nine
Disappointment
Kate- past
It was hard for Kate to deal with the disappointment of seeing Jared’s empty driveway. Rationally, she knew that if Jared had made it out of town, he would have come by their house first. She checked the garage, but found it just as empty as the driveway had been. The house was dark except for a single light in the kitchen, but with the late afternoon sun she could see perfectly well that nobody was home.
She felt the tears rise again, so close to the surface. Her eyes and nose burned, and she hated the weakness. How long would it take to lose this horrible softness? Was it feminine fragility? Did men feel the need to cry at things too, but they just had an easier time sucking it up? She didn’t know, but she suspected it was different for them, what with hormones and all.
She wanted to linger and wait there in the hopes that Jared’s truck would come roaring down the gravel road, but she knew it was unlikely to happen soon. The longer she waited, the more dangerous it would be to get her mother and Charlsie to the stadium unharmed. The town was small, but not small enough to make it safe.
She roused herself and got back into her car. She reloaded her pistol and magazines from the bag on the passenger seat and made sure she was as ready as she could be for anything. Anything could happen now, and not just with the crazies. People could be just as bad too. Maybe the bad people were already getting set up to do bad things.
She felt time running out and the urgency spurred her on.
The drive back home was uneventful, and as she passed the Rolling Hills community again on the opposite side, she saw a crew of men piling up the bodies she had left lying there earlier. She slowed down and recognized the man keeping watch over the workers. It was the leader she had spoken with before. He stared at her as she drove by, squinting in the sun to see her better. She had the advantage and was able to see him clearly.
He was a good-looking man, older, but he seemed exhausted. She hoped he could rest soon. He deserved it. She waved and he recognized her. She saw the slightest smile tipping up the corner of his mouth. It was too bad she hadn’t met him back before all this happened. She scoffed at her thoughts. A man like him was probably already taken anyway.
She was better off alone. Less chance of losing people you cared about that way. The weight of that love for her mom and Jared was heavy enough without adding a man into the mix. She couldn’t even imagine having a child to worry about in all this. Baby Eva’s happy, grinning, toothless face flashed in her mind, and she felt the sharp edges of grief once again.
She hoped she made it, she desperately hoped she made it.
The turn for her mom’s house came up, and she gazed at it. The atmosphere had changed while she had been gone. She glanced at her watch. An hour had passed, maybe a little more, and she knew her mom was probably frantic.
The entrance was empty. No more cars and trucks lined up to leave. Homes were dark and closed up, some hid empty rooms and some hid cowering families. A few houses had their doors standing wide open, and these alarmed her the most. Those people had either never left or left in a hurry. People wouldn’t leave their doors open like that without good reason.
She drove faster, ignoring the posted limits. They had to hurry. Time was up.
Her mom’s house looked the same and she was relieved to see that Charlsie’s car was still parked in the street. She checked all around and jumped out of the car. She noted idly that the neighbor wasn’t on his porch anymore and was relieved. Anyone sitting outside like that now had some screws loose.
She ran up the sidewalk and knocked on the door rapidly. Her mom opened it at once and she could tell Enid was pissed.
“Where the hell have you been!?” she said. Her face was red, and her eyes blazed with her fury.
Kate knew it was just worry and fear, but they didn’t have time for it now.
“I had to stop and help some people. Jared wasn’t home. Did you leave him a note?” she asked, ignoring her mom’s frustrated huffing.
“Yes. It’s over there. Bob’s waiting on us. He said if we weren’t ready in fifteen minutes then he was leaving without us.” She looked at the clock. “And that was ten minutes ago!”
“You are sure you want to do this?” she asked her mom.
Enid nodded decisively. If she had doubts, Kate didn’t see any evidence of them.
“Let’s go. Do you have everything you need?”
The older women nodded.
“Run in and grab the largest three kitchen knives. Nothing flimsy,” Kate said.
She waited nervously on the porch while her mother did as she had asked. When she came back out, she took two of them, slipping one into her bag and the other into her belt. It wasn’t ideal, but it would serve her purpose. She made her mom keep the third one.
Kate led them out into the yard, keeping alert for anyone around. Bob’s house was down the street, toward the main road, so they’d just swing by there on the way.
“Where did everyone go?” Enid whispered.
She seemed shocked and more than a little fearful about being outside. Kate could have told her where she thought everyone had gone, but something stopped her. Some part of her wanted to protect her mother from the new reality that she had already faced so many times today.
“They probably went to the shelter and other safe places.”
She actually thought most people were dead or dying by now. Most people would hesitate too long when faced with those monsters, and it would be their final mistake. It would get them, and their families, killed. She wouldn’t be that way. She would keep her mom safe. She desperately hoped that Jared was keeping himself safe right now and hadn’t been caught unaware. He had been so tuned in to the issue recently that she figured he would be just fine. He was probably biding his time somewhere until he could get home safely. He was probably helping people. He was that kind of person.
Charlsie followed Kate and her mother in her old, packed Monte Carlo. The sight of it in her rearview mirror was reassuring. They weren’t alone, at least. Bob’s house was still as well, but as they pulled up Kate caught sight of a twitch at the curtain, and she knew he had kept his word and waited for them.
They waited in the cars as Bob brought out his wife and their bags.
Contrary to what her mother had said, Bob was no longer a police officer. He had retired long ago, and so wasn’t the best means of protection they could have, but he seemed to know what was going on at the emergency shelter. That was something, she supposed.
“Follow us. We shouldn’t stop for any reason,” he warned.
Kate nodded. “I know.”
He searched her eyes and seemed to understand the unspoken message she had sent him. She understood. She’d been out there. He turned to go back to his own vehicle when he stopped and turned back around. He nodded to the pistols on her hip and thigh.
“It would be wise to leave those in the vehicle when we get there. The military probably has orders to confiscate weapons from people.”
She nodded again. She had already planned to leave them somewhere safe.
They followed Bob through the neighborhood. Nothing had changed in the last little while, and she had the strangest premonition that she would never live here again. This would never again be home. It was saddening, but not unexpected.
They turned onto the highway toward town. In the distance, she saw a few vehicles moving. Some drove too fast, panic perhaps tinging their good judgement. Other vehicles had wrecked, smashing their front ends into the stoplight poles and storefronts. More than one of these had bloody shattered windshields and broken bodies on the hood or nearby.
Seatbelts. They hadn’t been wearing seatbelts. She wondered if they had done it on purpose.
They swerved gently through the obstacles. The further into town they got, the worse the devastation. Businesses had shattered windows. There were fires randomly polluting the air with acrid smoke. Pileups became more severe, and bodies— and parts of bodies— much more frequent. They passed the café and Kate noticed that the body of the man she had killed outside still lay there, untouched.
It wasn’t until they neared the downtown area that things became a lot more difficult. They caught sight of cars speeding along the various residential streets. A man in coveralls stood outside of a body shop watching the cavalcade of cars, looking defeated and sad. There was blood on his mechanic uniform.
No stopping for any reason.
They went down a one-way side street, off the main road and hopefully less visible to the wandering crowds of freaks that she knew were around somewhere. They were almost there. Another mile and a half and they would be in sight of the stadium.
They passed an old church, the historic courthouse, and an old bar that had shut down. When they gained the top of the hill, they bypassed the parking lot of the Chinese restaurant and turned down the main street again.
There, in the distance, was Collier Stadium.
In spite of her reticence and her knowledge that it wasn’t a good place to be going, her heart still leapt at the sight. The false promise of safety was strong, and people wanted hope.
The road was lined with school buses and vehicles. Several ambulances had joined the lines of the waiting and she hoped these would deliver doctors and nurses to the stadium. Those people would be so important in the days to come.
Most importantly, she saw troops. Military trucks, Humvees, police cars…relief flooded her at the sight. She saw men in unform guarding the fence and the gate. There were other men outside the fence watching for the crazies. Judging by the bodies, some had already found their way there. The commotion of the vehicles was sure to draw more in.
She suddenly felt very exposed sitting in a line of vehicles with the other refugees. If something happened and they needed to get away quickly, they could quickly get jammed up and stuck. There would be no way to drive out and their chances of making it out on foot were not good.
The lines moved slowly as the people in the vehicles were checked by the authorities. While she still had time, Kate quickly unfastened her belt, the thigh holster, and her shoulder holster. She shoved them under the driver’s seat, making sure they were completely concealed. She pulled her t-shirt over the knife on her side. She would have to figure out some way to hide it better before they went in. There was no way she was going anywhere completely unarmed.
As they reached the gate, two men studied them carefully and Kate felt oddly as if she had just hit a sobriety checkpoint. She expected them to ask for license and registration. The pistols under her seat felt like bombs waiting to go off and she thought maybe she understood Poe’s “The Telltale Heart” a little better now.
Kate kept her face as calm as she thought appropriate in a situation like this, but she couldn’t help but keep glancing around in anticipation of an attack. This wasn’t exactly an unoccupied part of the town. There would have been thousands of people here earlier today, just living their ordinary lives. They couldn’t have all gone away.
The stern-faced man in charge finally waved her through and she pulled into the parking lot. They waited for Charlsie to pull in behind before they followed Bob to a place. Kate saw that the main area of the parking lot had been barricaded and reinforced with some kind of concrete walls, the kind she had seen soldiers use overseas and were sometimes used to restrict traffic during roadwork.
A portly older man in a police uniform was directing traffic and she watched Bob stop for a moment to have a chat with the man.
“Good grief! Now’s not the time to catch up on gossip,” Enid said, tapping her fingers on her leg nervously.
Kate thought about honking the horn but refrained. Barely.
They were directed around the side, where another gate opened up into a graveled auxiliary parking area. She didn’t like her car— and weapons— being so far away. She made sure everything was as secure as it could get before she opened her bag and dug out some duct tape.
Enid looked at her like she was crazy when she duct taped her knife to her lower leg.
“Do you really think that’s necessary?” she asked, frowning.
“Freaks are running around ripping out people’s throats. The first time I was attacked, I used a chunk of glass to cut a crazy woman’s throat. I think this is necessary.”
Her mom paled, but didn’t say anything else, which she was grateful for.
“Give me your knife,” she told her mom.
She shoved it in her belt where the other had been and her mom just looked at her like she was losing her mind.
She took a deep breath and decided to conceal the revolver as well. It was smaller and less important to her than the larger pistols. She could afford to lose it, if they found it. She ripped the straps from the shoulder rig and tossed them in the back seat. She taped the holster portion to her other leg and frowned at the bulky weight. It would take getting used to, but nobody would notice it unless they were trained to look for things like that. She checked that the kitchen knife in her belt was secure.
“Come on!” Charlsie said from outside her window.
Bob and his wife were further away, but still waiting for her. She dropped the ammo into the center console and hoped nobody decided to loot the car. Or steal it altogether. She pocketed the keys.
They got out and she watched behind their little group as Bob led them to the stadium.
“Why couldn’t we just park in the regular parking lot?” Charlsie asked Bob.
“The soldiers said to keep it clear. They want to see what’s coming, I guess.”
She glanced over at him and saw his hand tighten around his little wife’s waist. Linda was an older woman, close to Bob’s age. She was petite, and fragile-looking, and Kate hoped very much that her looks were deceptive. She didn’t look like she would handle a fight very well. At least her mom had some weight on her, and Charlsie was as tough as nails beneath the polished exterior.
They passed to the side of the large structure, and she saw a set of doors nearer the back. They didn’t have handles on the outside, which is probably why nobody guarded them. The back of the building made her uneasy. The shadows were deep back there, and there was less activity.
They rounded the front and Kate took stock of the façade of the building. It was a two- or three-story high portico and the front windows were all glass. She saw that they had been covered with something at the bottom, plywood maybe.
The roof was stair stepped, and each section had a slightly shorter banner hanging down. They were her college colors. There was supposed to be a big game here next week. She wasn’t a sports fan, but a co-worker had invited her, and she had intended to go.
As they reached the front door, the details of the shelter setup became cleared. Outside, there were sandbags stacked haphazardly to the sides, restricting the flow of movement. To the front were more of those concrete barriers. Men manned machine guns here and several groups wandered around near the fence, carrying assorted rifles and pistols.
The fence and the gate were high, but they looked flimsy to her. They weren’t meant to keep out large crowds. From the faces of some of the younger cops, they must have realized that as well. The soldiers were better at concealing their fear, but she was really good at reading people, and she saw the little signs of it there as well. The wide darting eyes, the clenching hands…the way they eyed each person carefully— the younger soldiers were especially revealing.
They were all in the same boat, and these people were just as lost as the rest of them. She hoped some of them had experience with combat, at least. She studied the uniforms as she passed, and it wasn’t very reassuring. She knew people couldn’t be judged by their uniforms, but she would have felt more reassured if she saw some combat badges.
