Radioactive and The Decay Dystopian Super Boxset- A Dirty Bomb and Nuclear Blast Prepper Tale of Survival (23 page)

“You got something to say to me?” he asked with heated breath against Greg’s face.

“I told you to go fuck yourself,” Greg replied.

The man was slightly shorter, but stocky and well built. Beads of sweat dripped down from his fresh crew cut. He pushed Greg, taking him off balance and causing him to fall against the side of the Lincoln. Greg quickly recovered and pushed the man back. Edwin vaulted over to the skirmish and separated Greg away from the man.

“Get your dumbass back in the car,” Edwin demanded.

Greg was about to charge back, but regained his composure.

“I’m sorry,” Greg said as he opened the car door.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Edwin asked.

Greg looked at the ground, somewhat ashamed, and climbed back inside. 

“Just move your fucking car,” the SUV man said as if trying to get the last word.

Edwin rubbed his forehead and turned to the man. “Take a hike, okay?”

“Excuse me?” the SUV man asked.

Edwin looked up and laughed. “Does everyone around here suffer from some type of mental deficiency? Don’t worry about it. Just get back in your car.”

In the passenger seat, Paul sat up, holding his stomach. He looked back to observe the confrontation between Edwin and the SUV man. Greg was distracted as well, but he didn’t dare get out of the car. For him, Edwin had a reputation. He didn’t work very well with others. However, their employer, Mr. Bennett, insisted that their assignment was a two-man job. Paul glided his hand to the latch on the car door and pulled on it slowly. The door creaked open. Greg didn’t take notice. His eyes were plastered to the rearview mirror, watching Edwin and the SUV man. He couldn’t hear what they were saying, but placed a hand on his pistol just in case.

“You think you can come here with your out-of-town plates and push us around? You’re nothing but the usual Jersey trash.”

“Aw. You’re hurting my feelings,” Edwin said sarcastically as he opened the door to the Lincoln on Greg’s side.

The man then spit on their car, nearly hitting Edwin. Edwin stopped and held his forehead trying to resist his creeping tendencies towards violence.

“Trash,” the man repeated.

Edwin couldn’t resist. He walked right at the man with building rage.

“You’re lucky I don’t kill you and your entire family right here and now,” he said.

Without response, the SUV man punched Edwin squarely in his face. The blow caused Edwin to drop Paul’s phone as he stumbled backwards. The cell phone struck the hard pavement. His fedora floated in the air and landed on the ground. Edwin felt his face while blood dripped from his nose. Every conceivable line Edwin could remember had just been crossed.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” the SUV man said with his fist raised in the air like a boxer.

Edwin pulled his Beretta from its side holster and fired three quick successive shots into the SUV man. The loud gun blasts startled everyone within range, including Paul and Greg. Paul quickly jumped out of the car and ran to the side of a nearby jeep, heavily disoriented. Onlookers dispersed immediately, frantically running in all directions as far away as possible. Drivers ducked under their steering wheels. The woman in the SUV let out a high-pitched scream. Her husband had collapsed to the ground on his back like a bag immediately after taking fire.

Greg jumped out of the car and, while scratching his head, looked at Edwin. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

Edwin didn’t answer. He stared down at the SUV man and watched him convulse. As he gasped for air, the SUV man spit up so much blood that it was causing him to choke. He soon stopped breathing. His pupils dilated and he went motionless. Edwin’s nose sniffled from the blood flow. He looked to the SUV with the smoking Beretta still in hand. The woman ducked down out of sight. All he could hear were her cries and screams. Her boys took cover as well.

Edwin walked towards the SUV as the woman’s screams grew louder. Everything else was quiet. The horns from the other cars had ceased. Greg ran after Edwin and grabbed him.

“Let’s go!” Greg demanded. Edwin stopped as Greg handed him his hat. “We need to get out of here before anyone else sees us,” he added.

“Where’s our man?” Edwin asked.

“He should be in the car still,” Greg said.

They both looked to the Lincoln and noticed the passenger door hanging open. Edwin clutched Greg by his collar and pulled him closer.

“You let him get away. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Greg had never seen Edwin so angry. Veins bulged from his forehead. His sunglasses were crooked and cracked. Greg removed his hands from Edwin’s arms and held them up.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he said. He didn’t know if Edwin was going to shoot him or not. Edwin loosened his grip on Greg’s collar enough to notice several curious people watching them from afar. Edwin pushed Greg away.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Get in the car.”

Greg nodded and stumbled back to the car. Edwin ran to the passenger side and searched briefly for any signs of Paul. He placed the Beretta in its holster, jumped into the car and slammed the door. The Lincoln roared down the parking lot, nearly striking a group of teenagers who had to jump out of the way.

Paul crept out from the side of another nearby vehicle. The woman fell out of her SUV and ran over to the man on the ground.

“Help us!” she screamed.

Paul walked over to them. “I’ll-I’ll call the police,” he said, kneeling down to retrieve his cell phone. The Lincoln tore out of the parking lot, screeching. It vanished in no time. Paul dialed the police. The line was busy.

“Busy?” Paul thought. “No, no, this isn’t right.”

              He dialed again. He was met with another busy tone. Suddenly he heard the faint sound of vehicle emergency sirens. “They’re probably just a little overburdened right now,” Paul said to the woman.

“He’s dead!” she cried. “No. This can’t be happening. No. Jim, come back. Please come back.”

Her hysterical outpour was heart wrenching for Paul. She held her dead husband and rocked him back and forth, crying uncontrollably. His lifeless eyes stared at Paul.

“I’m sorry,” Paul said.

The two young boys exited the SUV and approached their mother.

“Don’t come any closer,” she yelled. “Go back to the car.”

They stopped in their tracks with uncertain looks. The younger of the two started sobbing.

“I…” Paul began.

The mother glared at Paul with bulging hurt and anger beneath her tear-soaked eyes. “You,” she said.

Paul backed away sensing the woman’s contempt. The sirens were getting closer.

“It’s your fault,” she said. “It’s all your fault!”

Cars slowly passed them as men, women, and children alike stared out of their windows as if there had been a traffic accident. A Mustang stopped beside them and two tanned and toned young men jumped out to assist. “You need any help?” the blond one asked the woman.

She said nothing. Her state of shock was too great.

“That man,” Paul said, “the one who shot your husband. He was trying to kill me too.”

The woman looked up into the sky and screamed at the top of her lungs. Her cries startled the two young men and they looked at Paul suspiciously. More people began to approach the scene. The emergency vehicles were close. There were fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances rapidly approaching, right down the street, but just as they neared the parking lot, they passed the entrance without so much as a notice. Then they were gone and their sirens became distant again. 

Chapter Five

Julie paced check-out lines trying to decide what to do. Many frustrated people had already left. Some lines thinned out momentarily, but filled back up. Many people decided to wait until they thought the power would come back on.

“I’m not worried, it’s got to be temporary,” one perky woman in her fifties told another.

Julie had cash, despite what she had told Paul, but couldn’t decide if anything she had was worth the endless lines. She had also grown uncomfortable with the presence of the suspicious-looking boys who had been wandering the aisles in circles. As the crowd received mass emergency text alerts, a heightened sense of panic came over them, but there was little information to put them at ease. Several people attempted to make calls, but nothing was getting through. Internet connectivity on their phones wasn’t working either. The only thing that seemed to be working, intermittently, was text messaging. This was strange, but nonetheless comforting. Every person in the store--young and old--was heavily in their own text-frenzy world. They peered down at their screens, typing frantically. From several concealed positions, the flash mob of boys was typing as well through mass text. They got the word from their leader. It was time to spring into action.

The two store security guards had their hands full. They moved from register to register trying to usher the customers outside the store.

“If you cannot purchase your goods by cash, please leave the store,” one mustached guard repeated to virtually no response.

“People, people, you have to leave the store,” the other clean-shaven one said.

Julie looked at the exit. She thought of slipping out the doors with everything. She heard a faint alarm from outside. The echoing tone rose and fell while growing louder by the minute. The ominous siren reminded her of something out of an old movie. Its repetitive rhythm sent chills down her spine. Suddenly, a large, sweaty man ran into the store, pushing a group of people out of the way.

“We’re under attack!” he yelled. “It’s World War Three out there!”

People were more annoyed by his loud, boisterous behavior than anything else. Others just ignored him. Julie heard an elderly man next to her call him a “raving lunatic” under his breath. Soon his outburst had the attention of nearly every patron in the store. In response, the mustached security guards pushed the man out of the store with haste.

“We have to find cover! Take cover!”

It was the last Julie heard of the man before he was thrown out.

After the screaming man left, talking among the patrons resumed. Then a noise more distressing than the outside siren came. Julie listened closely as she heard the battle cry of the flash mob from the back of the store, followed by the startling sounds of glass shattering and general pandemonium. As planned, the flash mob pushed their way to the front of the store, terrorizing anyone in their path. They pushed, pulled, and grabbed their way through unsuspecting customers. Julie saw three hoodlums storm the aisles nearby and rush towards her. She dropped her basket and ran away to a corner aisle.

A sense of disorder permeated in the air and the customers didn’t know what to do. Several of them stood and watched the chaos unfold in awe. It looked like several fights were happening at once. The sort of thing one would imagine a prison riot looking like. The two store security guards ran towards the action to put a stop to the vandalism. They were immediately overwhelmed. Gasps and shouts from swarmed customers filled the store with terror. No one knew what was happening. The young vandals randomly grabbed purses, wallets, electronics, and other goods. They pushed people to the ground and punched their heads. The store manager ran out of his office trying to find out what was going on. He looked at the damage the looters had caused, and their sizable numbers. He ran back into his office and locked the door.

People abandoned their shopping carts, grabbed their children, and fled the store. The fear of the customers emboldened the mob even more. They showed no mercy on any remaining customers.

“Sucker punch that dude,” the long-haired leader, Remy, yelled to three of his compatriots.

One of the hoods quickly socked the back of an elderly Vietnam Vet, dropping him to the ground like a rag doll as the others laughed. Their destructive journey took them to the electronics department where they smashed glass displays, grabbed jewelry, and inflicted as much damage on the store as possible. They were on a four minute time limit.

“Two minutes,” Remy shouted.

Everyone took notice and made their way to the front of the store. A fire had started in the back, though no one knew exactly how. A few members of Remy’s group had started it by piling some goods in one of the aisles and lighting them on fire. Its flames spread down the grocery aisle quickly.

The rampage seemed to have no end, even in its brief last minutes. The two security guards--who had earlier tried to stop them--were unconscious and face-down in the middle of aisle five, bloodied and beaten. The store was deserted as nearly everyone had fled. Julie faced no such prospects. She had been hiding on the bottom shelf of the pet aisle behind several bags of dog food. She watched as one disoriented customer, a jumpy family man, pulled a small revolver from his back pocket and walked by.

“Stop right there,” he shouted to one of the looters.

The boy turned around and held his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot, dude,” he said.

Another looter snuck up from behind the family man and hit him on the head with an aluminum baseball bat, stolen from the sporting goods section. They laughed as he fell to the ground. His revolver coasted across the floor, into the hands of one of the looters. He aimed it at a woman running by. She covered her face and screamed. Remy, peering beyond his long black hair that fell from under a bandana, smiled.

“One minute left,” he announced holding one finger in the air. The flames in the back of the store were growing higher, producing a thick blanket of smoke. 

Julie looked to the middle of the aisle and noticed a cell phone. It had fallen from the family man’s back pocket. His unconscious body lay nearby. To Julie, it looked just like her cell phone. She crept out from behind bags of dog food and looked down both sides of the aisle. It felt very hot. The potent smell of smoke and fire stung her nose. She had to get out. She ran and retrieved the cell phone on the ground.  It was the same Samsung model as hers. She reached in the pocket of her soccer shorts and pulled out her phone. She yanked the back of the man’s phone open and took out its battery. She turned on her phone just as black smoke was barreling over the aisle, making it hard to breathe.

Paul approached the store entrance and was met with a flood of people running out. He searched the crowd for Julie, but couldn’t find her.

“Julie!” he yelled.

The emergency alert sirens were unending. He had nearly forgotten about Edwin’s shooting of the innocent man in cold blood. Maybe the man’s wife was right. Maybe it had been his fault. In trying to rescue Julie he had now pushed the incident as far from his mind as possible. A crowd had formed around the SUV man and his wife, but Paul could think about it no more. His gut told him that to walk into the store was a mistake. As Paul struggled with his decision, frightened customers pushed past him with little regard. His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled the phone out and read the screen. It was a message from Julie.

Julie: I’m trapped in the store. There’s a fire. People are               looting
 

Paul backed against the outside wall to the store. He rapidly pressed the touch screen in response.

Paul: Where in the store are you? Any police in there?

Julie: No. Most people left. The security guys were beat up.

Paul: Can you get out of the store?

Julie: I just said I’m trapped.

Paul: How many in there?

Julie: Idk. 10? 20?

Paul: Tell me where you’re at and I’ll come get you.

Paul took a moment to observe the parking lot. Cars sat, bumper-to-bumper trying to get out. The alert siren wailed in the distance. The fire alarm to the store then went off. Its high-pitched buzzing felt like knives in Paul’s ears. He had been standing a little too close to one of the red flashing speaker boxes.   

Julie: Aisle 12. Pet food aisle.

Paul: Stay where you’re at. And don’t move unless you have to.

Julie: Hurry!

Paul peeked through the tinted glass of the front of the store and couldn’t see anything. The automatic doors had been pried open. Paul ran in and was met with thick dense smoke blocking his vision. The overhead fire sprinklers went off, spraying water down below. In a brief moment, Paul was drenched.

“Hey you,” Remy said to Paul.

He had been spotted immediately. Remy was small, but held a revolver in his eager hands

“Gimme’ your wallet,” he said.

Paul dug into his pocket. His wallet was in the car, somewhat to his relief, but it gave him no leverage. He reached into his pocket and slowly pulled out his phone.

“This is all I have,” Paul said, holding his phone up.

Remy’s eyes narrowed. He was not impressed.

“Man, I already got a phone. What else you got?” he asked.

Paul thought for a moment, surveying the massive damage around him. He could hear several of the other looters’ voices from a few aisles down. The sprinklers continued to rain overhead.

“To be honest with you, I came into the store to loot, just like you,” Paul said.

“Huh?” Remy asked still aiming the revolver.

“That’s right. I came here to uh, to break shit and steal stuff.”

Remy lowered the gun. “Man, you’re a weird dude,” he said.

He took his eyes off Paul for a moment to look at his watch. He then looked back up. “You better get out of here in thirty seconds. That’s all the time we have left.”

“But I—”

“Just get the hell out,” Remy demanded.

The footsteps and hollering of the other looters got closer. Paul examined the overhead aisle sign, searching for the pet food. Just barely through the smoke he saw the sign for the pet food aisle towards the back.

“Hey, let me go the back way okay? The cops are chasing me. They’ll catch me if I go out the front.”

Remy became visibly nervous. “There’re cops out there?” he asked.

“Yeah, but they’re scared to come in here right now,” Paul said.

Remy smiled. “Yeah. They better be.”

Paul stepped away from Remy and kept his eyes on the revolver. “I’ll let you know if I see anyone out back,” he said.

Remy watched Paul suspiciously and then ran off in the opposite direction. Paul sprinted to aisle twelve. The aisle was empty. It looked safe. He walked down the tile floor scanning every shelf and item.

“Julie,” he said with a forceful whisper. “Julie, where are you?”

He coughed from the smoke. He heard Julie coughing and ran down the aisle to find her. 

“You should have just sent me a text,” she said as they met.

Paul grabbed her hand. “I’m so glad to see you,” he whispered. Julie nodded. Paul pulled her along with him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” she answered. They both coughed profusely.

“We have to get out of here, right away,” he said.

Julie attempted to go back the way Paul had come. He yanked her in the other direction. “What?” she asked, angered.

“We have to go out the back of the store. Trust me,” he said.

“There’s a fire over there, genius,” she said.

“I don’t mean the back, back, I mean the floral department. The side of the store. Let’s move.”

Paul held onto Julie’s hand and they ran as the sprinklers continued to rain down on them.

They ran out of the back of the store, near the outside floral department. They were met by patio chairs, tables, and large plants. The scene was inviting, almost comforting. There was no one else around. From these surroundings, the world looked normal again. They could find a nice chair, prop their feet up, and relax among the artificial nature that surrounded them. However, Paul knew better.