Breakdown: Season One (12 page)

Chapter 5 – Loot, Scoot, and Hope They Don’t Shoot

Matt, Sephi, and Anna piled into the truck and headed out into the neighborhood. Night had finally started to fall, but Matt insisted on driving with the headlights off.

“The noise will give us enough unwanted attention without the lights. Trust me, it’s better this way. We’ll just drive slowly.”

The girls nodded. It made sense.

Anna made a mental map as they drove. If something happened, she wanted to be able to get them home. She knew how to drive well enough but had never driven a stick shift. The only car they’d had that had a manual transmission was the one her parents were driving when the accident happened. Even if his commuter car had been a stick, she didn’t think her dad would have wanted to spend the time teaching her. She knew driving still freaked him out, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

It took a couple of minutes, but when they stopped, Anna noted that they were at the elementary school they’d passed earlier in the day.

Matt parked at the side entrance of the school, against a loading dock, and it was no surprise to Anna that a mischievous grin painted his face.

He rummaged through the toolbox in the back of his truck and came out with a tire iron/crowbar combo. Seeing that the girls were watching him, he placed a finger to his lips, signaling quiet, and popped the lock on the cargo door.

Sephi rolled the door open, and Matt lifted his shirt to retrieve a pistol he’d holstered in his waistband. The girls looked at him strangely, and then Sephi spoke up.

“Why do you have that, Matt? It’s an elementary school!”

“Matt, what in the heck are we doing breaking in to an elementary school? You need to stock up on pencils and paper or something?” Anna asked, obviously uncomfortable.

“We need food, Anna. We’ve got maybe a week’s worth. What happens then?”

Sephi frowned.

“He’s right, Anna. I don’t like it either, but it’s not like the three or four hundred kids are going to show up tomorrow for class and eat it. It would just sit here until someone else came for it.”

Anna shook her head. “You’re right. I don’t like it, but you’re right.”

Matt grinned. “My mom used to be a lunch lady at the middle school I went to back home.”

Sephi laughed. “Bet that made life easy.”

“Don’t get me started,” Matt warned. “Anyway, they typically get deliveries at the beginning of the week. It’s enough food to feed 400 or so kids for a week. Half of that’s typically canned food and dry goods, depending on how ritzy the neighborhood is. The rest is fresh produce and frozen stuff. Some of the produce will still be all right for a couple more days. Frozen stuff we should just forget about. Not worth getting sick over.”

Anna nodded and did some quick math. “If they just got the shipment, we’ve got about six months of food here for the seven of us.” She couldn’t help but smile. In this scary new world, they now had one less problem to worry about.

Matt nodded in agreement. “Between that and the small game I hope to catch, we should be good until our first harvest comes in.”

“Harvest?” Sephi asked. “You really think this will go on that long?”

Matt shrugged. “Better that we’re ready if it does.”

The girls nodded in unison.

“Now, careful in there. Be quick. I’m giving us 20 minutes here to grab as much as we can before we need to get out,” Matt said.

“You’re not coming in with us?” Anna asked.

“Someone needs to watch the truck. Unless one of you would rather stay out here?”

They shook their heads in response. “We’ll get things loaded. Just cover us,” Anna added.

“Anna, are you sure we can do this?” Sephi asked tentatively.

“No other choice right now, Sephi. We do this, or we come back in a week after we’ve run out of food and hope that no one’s looted it before then.”

They heard something then that sound like distant fireworks.

“Gunfire,” Matt confirmed. “Tonight’s going to be a doozy. Best we get this show on the road, pretty ladies.”

The girls harrumphed and headed into the school, leaving Matt oblivious and confused.

“All I did was call ’em pretty,” he thought to himself. “I’ll never understand women.”

…

Anna and Sephi stepped into the darkness of the elementary school kitchen. The first thing they noticed was the now-familiar smell of rotting food. The smell grew even stronger when Sephi decided it was a good idea to open the walk-in freezer to see if anything was salvageable. The wave of rot hit them and doubled them over. Anna retched into a nearby trashcan.

“Close the door!” she cried.

Sephi promptly complied, resting her back against the door, as if to hold the smell at bay. She slid down to sit on the floor.

“That was nasty.”

“Beyond nasty,” Anna agreed.

The girls shared a laugh and grinned before getting up again. There was a freezer unit at the front of the kitchen, the kind used to hold little half-pint milks and juices. Anna decided to take a chance and open it up. A wave of cool air met her, and she smiled once more. She reached in, grabbing a chocolate milk that was still cool to the touch, and popped it open, drinking deeply. After a few frantic gulps, the little cardboard container was empty. She burped loudly, and then put both hands over her mouth in surprise. Sephi laughed uproariously.

“Chocolate! I want some!”

Anna tossed her new friend a chocolate milk and opened another one for herself.

“To surviving the end of the world,” Anna said.

“To never taking finals again,” Sephi beamed as they clinked cardboard cartons and drank.

“Last chance we’ll get to have one of these for a while, I’m guessing,” Anna said.

Sephi nodded. “Should we bring a couple to Matt?”

“Nah,” Anna grinned. “Maybe on the way out.”

Anna walked over to lend Sephi a hand in standing up. “Come on,” she said, pulling her friend to her feet, “we need to get started.” She nodded her head toward the last closed door. “Guessing that’s the dry goods storage room where they keep the pasta, rice, flour, and canned goods. You ready?”

Sephi nodded, opened the door, and screamed.

Chapter 6 – The Second Night

Gunshots. John Willis snapped out of a deep sleep and bolted for the door, eager to help. At least, he tried to bolt for the door. In reality, John swung his feet off of the couch to the floor, and a jolt of sharp, electric pain cut through his hip. He fell to the ground, and there was a soft tinkling sound of metal on the hardwood floors. He grit his teeth in an effort not to cry out.

“Damn,” he said. “Hurts.”

Sprawling his hands out, he searched for whatever it was that had fallen with him, and after a few minutes of blindly searching, his hand brushed against the cold hard surface of his police badge. He gripped it tightly, for a moment, unable to do much else.

“I’m still a cop. This is still our city,” he said, voice full of determination.

“That’s why you’ll do your exercises and get better, John.” It was his wife, Talia. She must have woken up and come downstairs. “Until then, the world can wait. It has to. The others will keep an eye on the neighborhood until you’ve recovered.”

Talia helped her husband back onto the bed and sat beside him for a long moment before placing her hands gently on his shoulders. She rubbed the tension from his muscles, gently massaging until he finally started to relax. He leaned over and kissed her neck.

“Mommy?”

John groaned.

It was Juliana.

“Some other night, tiger,” Talia promised.

Juliana walked down the stairs, stuffed bear thumping unceremoniously behind her. She wrapped her arms around her father.

“I love you, Daddy.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the knee. “All better,” she said.

John laughed. “Not yet, sweet pea. But that sure helped my heart feel better.”

The little girl beamed with pride. “When I get big, I’m going to be a nurse, just like Momma.”

John smiled and wrapped his daughter in a bear hug. “You can do whatever you put your mind to. Just do it with all of your heart and work hard at it.” He gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek. “Now get back to bed, sweetie. Mommy will be up in a minute to tuck you back in.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“Love you more, baby girl.”

Juliana marched back upstairs, pausing halfway up.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweet pea?”

“Nathan wants a cookie.” She grinned, knowing it was a longshot.

John laughed. “Nathan told you that, did he? Well, Nathan will have to wait until the morning. Your momma will decide if you can have a cookie at breakfast.”

Juliana grinned, heading upstairs, and Talia gave John a kiss on the forehead, easing him back onto the sofa bed in their living room. It was too hard on him to go up the stairs, so for the time being, the couch this is where he slept.

He didn’t mind.

“I need to go see what’s going on, Talia. Those were gunshots.”

“I know, John. Be careful, and don’t hurt yourself. We need you.”

John stood, carefully, slowly testing his weight on his injured hip. It held, with only a slight throb when he stepped. Talia had spared some of their prescription pain medication for his injury, and it took the edge off, at the expense of making his reaction time a little slower.

“Take the cane, John,” Talia said, a warning clear in her voice. It was the tone he’d heard her use with unruly patients, and he wasn’t used to hearing it directed at him. All the same, he knew she was right, so he grabbed a black lacquered cane from a basket near the door that was usually reserved for holding umbrellas. He liked the cane. It had belonged to Talia’s father before he’d passed. The handle was carved into the shape of a dachshund, which always gave John a chuckle.

He took a moment to buckle on his service holster, and then he headed out into the night.

The difference between the feeling inside his home and the feeling on the streets was disturbingly clear. The air quality changed. His neighborhood had a plan in place for sewage and garbage, but most of the city didn’t. The smell of soot, sewage, and other refuse wasn’t subtle, but it wasn’t overpowering, thankfully, and after a few minutes of it, John hardly noticed anymore.

He limped to the nearest guard post, about half a block away, and greeted the watchmen on duty.

“Bill. Jeff.”

Jeff, a tall, well-muscled man in his mid-twenties, answered back.

“John. Come here and take cover. There’s a couple of guys out there at least taking potshots at us.”

“What’s their game?”

“Not sure,” Bill said. “Thinking they’re just feeling us out. Could be some looters who just wandered into the wrong part of town. Didn’t expect resistance.”

“How’d it start?”

“Well,” Jeff said, “Bill and I were just doing our job. Watching. A guy came up, and we asked him to stop and identify himself. We closed the gate about an hour before sundown, just like you asked, so he couldn’t come in.”

John nodded. “Uh-huh. Then what?”

“Well, he just stands there for a minute. We’re yelling at him, telling him to identify himself or turn around and head the other direction. All of the sudden a shot zips by so close the hairs on my neck were standing on end. Must have gone right over my shoulder. Anyway, the guy lifts his shirt at that point, he pulls a gun and starts firing on the run. I’m lucky Bill pulled me down. I was a sitting duck.”

Bill popped up and fired off a handful of rounds in the direction of the attackers from his AR-15.

“No problem, kid. Happens a lot the first time you get shot at. If you live, you get faster.”

“You got numbers?” John asked

“Thinking just two of them,” Bill said.

John stopped to think. He could easily muster enough guns to take these guys out. He needed a plan, though. The last thing he wanted was to get someone killed by rushing into this.

“Bill, have you got the radio we kept in that homemade faraday cage?”

Bill laughed. “Faraday cage? You mean the trashcan?” he grinned. “Yeah, got my radio right here.”

“Does it work?”

Bill keyed the mic in response. Static greeted them.

“Good. Who’s on watch on the south side?”

“Pritchett and Leon.”

“Call Leon over. Tell him to go back behind the Shipleys’ house. They’ve got a treehouse back there. Tell him to climb up and let us know what he sees.”

Bill complied, and a few minutes later, Leon radioed.

“I’ve got eyes on two. One in my crosshair. Go ahead to fire?”

John sighed. He hated this. After a moment of hesitation, he nodded.

“Go ahead, granted. Cleared to fire.”

A single shot reverberated through the neighborhood.

“Overwatch, this is Outpost 1 requesting a sitrep,” Bill radioed.

“A what?”

“Just tell us what happened, Leon.”

“Oh. One bad guy down. Bad guy number two is running away now. Looks like there’s a third we’d missed. Running into an alley just up the street.”

They heard the roar of a diesel engine a moment later, then the sound of squealing tires fading into the distance.

“They hopped into a red pickup. Couldn’t judge the model. Too dark,” Leon reported.

The two men at the gate looked over to John for leadership.

“Well, boss?” Jeff asked.

“Wait five minutes. We’re going to search the area to make sure there aren’t any more out there before we approach. We bring him in alive if we can.”

“John, you know if he’s alive, Talia’s going to want to keep him that way.”

John nodded. “I’m counting on it.”

Chapter 7 – Miles and Miles of Sloppy Joe

Sephi and Anna weren’t prepared for what they saw when they opened the door to the dry goods storage room in the elementary school kitchen. Sephi quickly closed the door just in time for a large, number ten-sized can of peaches to slam against it.

“Stay away from us! I’m warning you!” shouted a woman from inside.

Anna looked at Sephi, and the two shared a quizzical glance. Anna shrugged but gave it her best shot.

“Uhh…we aren’t going to hurt you, lady. We just need to get that food some place safe before worse folks than us come and take it. Does that make sense?”

Silence.

Sephi rolled her eyes, whether at Anna’s attempt at negotiation or at the situation in general, Anna couldn’t be sure.

A long moment later, the door cracked open, and the woman peeked out.

“You’re not here to hurt us?”

The girls laughed. “Listen, lady, we’re just a couple of stranded college kids trying to plan a couple of steps ahead. You doing all right?”

“Yeah, we’re doing all right. I’m going to come out now. Do me a favor and take a few steps back. Don’t try anything funny, okay?” the woman said.

Anna mouthed the word
We?
questioningly to Sephi, who shrugged her shoulders. They both took a handful of steps backwards.

The door slowly creaked open, and a beautiful but exhausted-looking middle-aged woman crept out. Her hair was a mess, and a furrow creased the brow of her otherwise smooth face. Her stare was intense, and after a moment, Anna had to smile.

“What are you laughing at?” the woman wondered.

“My mother was a teacher. I know that look. You’re giving us your ‘teacher look,’ aren’t you?”

The woman smiled, and the furrowed brow disappeared.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been at this job long enough that it just happens,” she said, running her fingers through her thick, auburn hair. “When you’re young you learn to ‘turn it on’ when you need it. When you get to be my age, it just happens.” She extended a filthy hand toward Anna. “My name’s Ms. Grimes. Carla. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Anna took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Carla. I’m Anna Monroe, and this is Josephina Lee.”

“People call me Sephi,” she said with a soft smile.

“It’s good to meet both of you. I was worried you were looters.”

The girls laughed. “About that…” Anna started.

Carla chuckled. “Of course,” she said, dismissing the thought with a wave of her hand. “You’re just not the sort of looters I imagined. Thankfully.”

“Carla, what are you still doing here? It’s been over 24 hours since whatever happened happened. Can’t you just…go home?”

“I came down here when I heard the shooting earlier. Anna, I’m sure you remember how seriously your own mother took her teaching position. We really love our kids. I’m sure she did too, right?”

Anna nodded. “Yeah, when I was little I’d get jealous sometimes. She’d bring in granola bars, toothbrushes…all sorts of things. It wasn’t until I got older that I realized that the kids she was helping didn’t have a home environment like mine. I got it then.”

Carla nodded. “Girls, you can come out now. It’s safe.”

A moment later, twin girls stepped out of the storage room holding hands. They looked to be about six or seven years old, and their dirty faces were streaked with tear stains.

“This is Emily,” she said, pointing to the girl with the blue ribbon tying back her hair. “And this is her sister, Molly. Girls, these ladies are Anna and Sephi. Say hello.”

They mumbled their hushed greetings and ducked back behind Carla.

Carla took a moment to explain that these were two of her first grade students and that they were waiting on their mom and dad to come and pick them up from school.

“Ladies, what in the world is going on out there? The power is out, and the phones aren’t working. Most of the parents live in the neighborhood and were able to walk their children home. The other teachers left last night; most of them had families to get home to. This morning we went to get a drink from the bathroom faucets, and nothing came out.”

Anna frowned. “It’s like this all over town. Cars are toast, too. Only the really old ones are working for some reason. I’m not sure how far spread it is, or how long it’s going to last, but I think we might have been hit with a really severe solar storm. I’m really not an expert, so I can’t give you exact details on how it works, but that’s what I think has happened.”

Carla nodded but still looked confused. “When will help get here?” she asked.

“Listen, I want to help you guys, but we really need to start loading up the truck. Can we talk as we load?”

Carla nodded.

Anna walked Carla and the girls outside to meet Matt. His jaw hit the floor, but after some introductions he quickly recovered and began to play with the girls. He seemed to have a way with kids, and there was a lot of laughter within a very short time.

“Girls,” Carla said, “go start grabbing cans of food. Just carry the big ones one at a time. Be very careful not to drop them.”

The six of them started loading flour, pasta, rice, beans, and canned food into the truck. Fresh produce was loaded in last, along with some boxes of single ply toilet paper Ms. Grimes liberated from the janitor supply closet.

“It won’t last forever, but it’ll make things a little more polite in the short term,” she said.

Eventually the truck was loaded, and it was time for a big decision to be made.

“Carla. You know you and the girls are welcome to come and stay with us while we wait for all of this to blow over. The girls seem like a lot of fun, and it would be nice to have an actual adult around.” Anna took a moment and looked from Matt to Sephi, and then back to Carla. “It would make us all feel a lot safer.”

Carla smiled and turned to the twins. “What do you think, girls? Would it be all right if we stayed with these people for a little while? It’ll be more comfortable than sleeping in the classroom.”

Emily and Molly looked at one another, smiles on their faces, and nodded. After a moment, though, Molly’s smile faded, and she asked, “Ms. Grimes, what if our Mom or Dad come to pick us up?”

Carla knelt down and put her hand on Molly’s shoulder. “That’s a really smart thing to think about, Molly. What do you think we should do?”

Molly turned to Emily and there were some hushed whispers between the sisters.

While they talked, Carla spoke to Anna and the others.

“Their parents were on a business trip together in Chicago. They were scheduled to land an hour or so after the power went out.”

Anna’s heart sank for the girls, knowing their parents probably wouldn’t be coming back.

Finally, after a long, heated discussion, Molly turned back to her teacher, her blue eyes filled with earnestness as she spoke. 

“Emily and I think that we should leave them a note. That way they know where to find us when they get here.”

“I think that’s an excellent idea, girls.”

The six of them went down the hall to the kitchen manager’s office and grabbed a notebook and pen, and, with Matt’s help, the twins wrote a letter to their parents and taped it to the classroom door.

The whole ordeal took longer than the twenty minutes Matt had initially allotted, but they did end up filling the bed of the truck, leaving just enough room for one of the adults to ride in the bed while everyone else squeezed into the tightly-packed truck cab. Emily and Molly sat on the laps of Sephi and Anna. The tight quarters made shifting a bit tricky for Matt, but eventually they arrived back at the house and pulled safely into the garage.

Red, Trinity, and Bruce were waiting for them, smiles on their faces.

“When you say you’ve got a surprise, Matt, you really do it up right!” Red said.

Brian was awake. He likely had a concussion, and he was suffering from dizziness and some nausea, but he was awake. Trinity said he needed someone to keep him awake through the night to monitor him for at least the next 24 hours, but that didn’t seem like much of a problem for the group. Between that bit of good news and their newfound stockpile of food, things were looking up.

Everyone was exhausted by the time the truck was unloaded, and the group decided to wait until the morning to start organizing things. For now, they’d sleep. Anna would sit with Brian for a while to keep him awake, and Matt would keep first watch while the others slept. It had been a good day. It was time for some rest.