State of Panic: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller (15 page)

I turned my head towards him but then was thrust back into my seat as we came onto Main Street and he hit the gas. Main Street was the long vein within our town. Unless you were at the furthest tip of the east side, you couldn’t see all the way down to the end of the west side because there was a rise halfway up. It wasn’t much but enough that it would block the vision of those that were heading east.

“Luke.”

He gripped the wheel and the truck began to roar. I cast a glance over my shoulder and out through the window. The huge round logs that were anywhere from twenty to thirty feet long were jam-packed together like matches in a box. I kind of figured what he was about to do and now I really wished I hadn’t got in. The truck was still sporting some decades-old cassette player. There was a tape partially sticking out.

Luke tapped it in and hit the power on.

“Let’s see what this guy was listening to.”

I’m pretty certain that both of us thought that rock music was going to blare out the speakers, country even, instead some organ music came on.

“What the fuck is that?” Luke slapped the eject button and tossed the tape out the window. I might have laughed if I found anything about our situation amusing but I didn’t. A shot of fear ran through me as we came over the rise going faster than any timber truck should have been going. The look on their faces as we barreled down upon them was pure panic. The skinheads had grouped together behind three vehicles and by the way they were backing up slowly, I had to wonder if they thought they were safe. Seconds before Luke yanked the wheel he pushed his door open. That was all I needed to see. I didn’t have my seat belt on or need to hear him yell to get out. I thrust my body sideways after him just as he turned the wheel. Everything happened in an instant. Metal screeched, sparks flew and the trailer crunched against the asphalt as it turned. When the mammoth tree trunks unloaded, the noise was deafening.

I plowed into Luke, and both of us hit the ground. Still clinging to my rifle I smashed my shoulder so hard in the fall I was certain it broke. Tumbling head over heels I came to rest not far from Luke. Both of us looked up instinctively and watched the truck careen sideways, slicing up everything in its path. An explosion like a clap of thunder and the collision of fifty vehicles shook the ground itself. That truck took out lampposts, phone lines, storefront windows and obliterated any vehicle that was in its path.

A plume of smoke filled the narrow street carrying with it dust and tiny particles of tree bark. All gunfire had ceased. For a few seconds after the truck came to a halt, I thought it was over. Then, in an instant gasoline erupted in a fireball engulfing the truck and what remained at the back of the trailer. An explosion and a huge chunk of metal shot into the air, then returned to the ground with a clatter.

T
he sound
of screaming filled the air. Two skinheads came rushing forward, their bodies engulfed in fire. They dropped and rolled in an attempt to put out the flames but it was useless. Their bodies were covered in gasoline. Within seconds they stopped moving, and there was silence.

Luke and I were still laid out on the ground. I spat out some grit and slowly clambered to my feet, bringing my rifle up in preparation for an attack. But it never came. There were a few shots fired from above but that was it. A quick, sudden burst of gunfire and then nothing. From behind us, off to the right, Murphy, Brett and Shaw came around the burnt-out wreckage that we had seen them taking cover behind.

“Didn’t I tell you guys to stay put?”

“You told us a lot of things,” I said.

“No, I specifically told you not to follow.”

“Where are the others?” Brett asked.

“Back at the house.”

He nodded and gripped my shoulder. “I’m going back to make sure they are okay.”

He patted Murphy on the back before he rushed off down an alley that would lead to the residential area.

“Whose idea was this?”

I pointed to Luke. “Who else.”

Murphy shook his head. “Should have figured.”

Luke shook his head. Murphy whistled to the folks who were on the roof. They made some gesture as if to say they couldn’t see if there were any alive. Slowly we made our way past the overturned truck and were finally able to get a better look at the devastation. Not only had it taken out multiple stores, lampposts and cars but the logs had crushed many of the skinheads. Occasionally we’d see an arm or leg sticking out. It was a bloody mess.

I heard a groan and in among the smoke and debris there was a guy still alive. His calves and feet were pinned beneath a log. As I approached him he reached up muttering something. Before I could get close to make out what he said, a gun went off. I shot a glance to my side to see Luke. He’d shot him in the head.

“Fuck, dude, do you not have an off switch?”

“You think they would have extended you any mercy?”

“He was pinned, he couldn’t have done anything,” I said.

“I put him out of his misery.”

Murphy came rushing over as he had gone with Shaw towards the building where the other survivors were.

“What’s going on?”

I pointed at Luke, then the dead guy. “That’s what.”

He shook his head. “Luke, head back to the house, make sure everything is okay.”

“But I was—”

“Just do it.”

Luke muttered to himself as he broke into a jog and headed back to the house. Over the next ten minutes I took in the sight of carnage. As crazy as it might have seemed, it had worked. Of course not all of them had died. Some must have escaped, but the largest number of the skinheads were crushed, burnt up by gasoline or shot by the survivors on the roof as they tried to escape.

Tom Barrington’s father was among the survivors. His son climbed down the side of the fire escape. There were six other men with him, all were armed and gazing at the aftermath that filled the street from one side to the next. Among the dead was Eli Pope.

As I stood over his lifeless corpse, he didn’t look as threatening as he once had. To think that at one time he had been a kid unaffected by hate. I shook my head. What had changed to send him down this path?

“That was the craziest shit I have ever seen,” Tom said walking over. “Now I understand why the court sent you two to a wilderness camp for troubled youth.”

Tom stared on with wide eyes and a Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder. As we soaked in the sight, others from the town began to appear. They were gathered together in groups. All of them were carrying a handgun or rifle.

Among them were Dan and five of the guys from the camp. I came to learn that Dan had arrived and upon seeing how many there were, realized that it would have been suicide to attempt to take them on alone. While they were distracted in their attempts to breach the house we were in, he had gone to homes of key people in the community to get them to help. That’s what all the gunfire was. From the forest we had only seen a few of them on the roof firing down on skinheads, but out of view were others in windows, doorways and alleys.

The community had joined together to fight back.

I had to admit it was something else to see. I don’t know how many survived the initial onslaught. That would be determined after. But what I did know was there were at least fifty courageous people from the town who were willing to risk their lives.

As folks continued to remain alert, going through the wreckage and checking for anyone who was alive, Luke came bursting out onto the street. He was out of breath and didn’t have his gun with him.

“They’ve taken the house.”

“What?” Murphy yelled and immediately broke into a sprint. I chased after him, looking back to see another twenty from the fifty coming to help. Along the way Luke was trying to explain but he could barely get a clear word out.

“A group of them must have seen us leave and doubled back to the house.”

“How many are there?”

“Maybe six, eight at the most? If I hadn’t seen one through the window, I would have walked right in there.”

“What about Brett?”

“I think he’s inside.”

My thighs protested as I ran towards the house thinking the worst. When we arrived, we didn’t even get twenty feet from the door when they opened fire on us. In a hail of bullets, we dived for cover behind the same vehicles that they had used. Murphy directed the twenty to go around to the back while we approached the front. As we came into view, they were already waiting for us.

“How’s it feel to have the tables turned, Frost?” Bryan Catz shouted down.

“Let them go,” Murphy shouted. Behind Bryan, Markus stood with Sara and Ally. His men had their weapons on them and on the occupants of the house.

Markus pushed Brett near the front of the window almost sending him out. “You don’t tell us what to do, soldier boy.” He gestured to his men to bring the others to the window. They shoved forward Sara, Ally, Kiera and Billy. Beside them were Brett and Jodi. It was almost like they wanted to use them like a shield in the event that we had ideas to fire at them. Markus moved from side to side behind them with a handgun pointed at the back of their heads, taunting us.

“Don’t do this,” Murphy shouted up while slowly moving forward. “Let’s talk.”

Markus scoffed at the idea. “Talking ended a long time ago, old man. I would have thought the bombings made that clear.”

“Just tell us what you want.”

He let out a laugh. “Guy wants to know what we want. I’ll show you what we want.” Markus pushed Jodi forward, raised his gun and shot her in the back of the head before anyone could even react. My eyes widened. A fight ensued inside as Brett turned on his captors, and the others did the same. Several gunshots were fired.

“Go. Go!” Murphy shouted.

What occurred next was pure anarchy. From the front and back of the house we pressed in. We all knew that if we didn’t get in there fast this wasn’t going to end well for anyone. A skinhead came into view at a lower window, and I fired at him while launching in the air. One by one we piled into the house. I saw three of the survivors who had chosen to come with us get shot. One had been blasted in the face.

Like a team of military clearing a home, our crew moved together as one unit. By the time we made it to the second floor, Bryan Catz was gone, and so were three others. They had jumped from the window. Markus Wainwright was on the floor strangling Brett when we came in. Murphy slammed the butt of his gun into the back of his head. Four other skinheads holding Sara, Kiera, Ally and Billy released them and backed up, realizing that it was over.

They stood there with their hands up. When Brett got up off the floor, in one smooth motion he took the gun from my hand, turned and fired a round into the head of Markus Wainright. The boom of the gun going off echoed and startled everyone in the room.

Murphy collapsed to his knees beside Sara. She had been shot in the stomach in a struggle for control. She was clinging to her gut as Ally loomed over her crying uncontrollably. What had begun as threats had turned into chaos and blood.

“Shaw,” Murphy shouted out. She was on the ground floor. When she came up Murphy had his hands over Sara’s stomach. Blood seeped through his fingers. She didn’t last long. Within a minute or two her eyes closed and the room was filled with the wails of Ally.

I looked down at Jodi’s lifeless body. Brett clung to her hand, rocking back and forth.

Anger and rage overcame me as my eyes drifted around the room for Bryan Catz. I rushed out of the room and took the steps two at a time, jumping the last four.

“Where are you going?” Luke asked.

I didn’t even reply and I certainly wasn’t aware that Corey and Luke had followed me until I came into the street. I looked up and down for Bryan but he was nowhere to be seen. Corey and Luke caught up with me.

“He’s gone, Sam.”

I began jogging down the road.

“Where are you going? He’s probably long gone by now.”

Though I searched that town for the remainder of the day with Luke and Corey beside me, I never did find Bryan. Though it wasn’t him who had fired the shot that killed Jodi, he was in my mind equally responsible.

N
ot all of
the two hundred and forty skinheads died in the forty-eight hours after our town was thrown into darkness. It was only in the days after that we discovered that some had deserted the group when the chaos had erupted. When asked why they walked away, they all gave the same answer. They didn’t sign up to kill others. Much like myself, they had been drawn into the group through friends, family and acquaintances. They had stayed because they wanted to belong.

Once the threat was gone we could clearly see what remained.

Mount Pleasant was in ruins. It had become a graffiti-soaked, fire-charred and bullet-ridden wasteland. It would take months to rebuild what they had destroyed in those few short days. Even then, the future didn’t look bright. The real nightmare had only begun. There was no power and as far as we knew other cities and towns were in the same state. Overrun by skinheads, and swallowed up by darkness and panic.

Back at the gym, Dan had come across a map of the United States detailing where the bombs had been detonated. Along with this was a detailed plan of how the white supremacist group that operated through every state in the country would target military installations, the power grid and satellite defenses in some of the largest cities. Most of the major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Chicago, Seattle, Vegas, Kansas, Atlanta, New Orleans, Laredo and so forth had been targeted. Eighty-four nukes housed in suitcases left over from the Cold War had been used to bring the country to its knees.

“It’s hard to imagine that they managed to smuggle that kind of power into the country.”

“There were a lot of Russian spies back in the Cold War,” Dan said browsing through paperwork that he’d found inside one of the cabinets in the office.

“I always imagined that nuclear bombs going off meant the end of mankind.”

Dan chuckled as he looked through paperwork. “That’s one of the many false beliefs that Americans have. If that were the case, preppers like me wouldn’t try to make preparations to survive the unsurvivable. Remember these were one kiloton. We aren’t talking about the A-bomb blast in Hiroshima.”

“But it’s still dangerous, right?”

“Of course. Millions will be dead from what they detonated, the radiation in those areas will kill even more, but there will be survivors like us in small isolated towns. And there will be preppers who have entered fallout shelters and are using air pumps to ventilate, and using all manner of devices like fallout meters and removing radioactive iodine from water using settling and filtering.”

“You really know your shit,” Luke said.

Dan chuckled. “Give it a while and so will you.”

“So how long?” I asked.

“The first few weeks after fallout are the most dangerous for those near the blast sites. Thankfully we aren’t anywhere near them and any particles from the fallout decay rapidly.”

“Yeah, but wouldn’t the wind carry some of the fallout further afield?”

“You are right but it depends on the location of the blast, and the nuclear device used. Remember these were one kiloton not like the Tsar Bomba, which was 50 megatons. The initial radiation radius on these may be up to two and half kilometers roughly.”

“But radiation can still spread further than that, right?”

I continued looking through files for any information that might give us even more insight into those involved and the enormity of what we were facing.

“Of course, there’s nothing to stop it spreading around the word once it hits the jet stream. Close to 1,000 atomic bombs were tested at the Nevada site between the fifties and nineties. And without a doubt it will affect the weather and all manner of things but again it all comes back down to where and what kind of nuclear power we are talking about. One kiloton is peanuts compared to Hiroshima, but it’s still enough to obliterate a lot and leave the country in darkness for a long time.”

“Do you think they detonated all eighty-four of them?”

“Maybe, but we have to approach this as if they have.”

“So are we still going to your shelter?”

“The offer is on the table. At least it will provide some protection for the next month or two until we can determine the true level of danger that is facing us here. We are going to gather up supplies first and then head out.”

“What about the others in the town?”

“We can’t take everyone, Sam. And while I think they won’t be affected by the fallout from the one that was detonated in Boise, Idaho, I can’t be certain. Neither can I fit them all in the shelter. Some people are just going to have to take a chance.”

“But you’ll help them, right?” Luke asked.

“Of course. We’ll make sure they know what not to do and from there they are on their own, I’m afraid. In many ways we all are.”

“I wonder if they detonated some these in other countries?” Corey asked.

We used our flashlights to look around. Even though it was day, very little light was flooding the office.

“Who knows?”

In light of the bad news that Dan gave the town, no one initially chose to leave. The few that did, had underground shelters. They had already made plans to take their family and a few close friends. But again, not everyone could or would leave.

A small funeral was held for Jodi and Sara in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Brett and Murphy bonded over the death of their partners and in many ways the community itself became close as it worked together to clean up the streets, bury the dead and prepare for the next couple of months in isolation.

Ally said very little in the days after. She stayed close to her father as though he was the last sure thing remaining in her life. Kiera would remain in a state of devastation for months to come. Everyone dealt with trauma in different ways. I was just glad she had her mother beside her.

As for Luke, well, I can’t say that Luke and I resolved our differences. I knew time itself might change that, though I wasn’t holding my breath. His family was found among the dead and though he tried to hold in his emotion, I saw his eyes well up before he wiped them with the back of his sleeve.

After collecting a sleeping bag from his home, and changing into a different set of clothes, he gave us the sign that he was ready to leave.

Billy squeezed out as much sympathy as he could from everyone after his close brush with death. I had a strong feeling we would be hearing about that bullet wound a year from now. It would become the stuff of legend, and knowing Billy if we encountered any females along the way, he would most likely work in his survivor story as a pickup line.

Corey’s mother and sister survived and chose to come with us to Dan’s shelter in northern Idaho. She clung to her son as we loaded up the back of the two trucks with supplies and more ammo.

Seventeen of us left that day.

As we drove away, leaving the small town of Mount Pleasant in the rearview mirror, we had no idea when help would come or if it would. We were unsure about the stability of the country and what the long-term consequences of the damage were.

We were living on shaky ground among a nation that was in a state of panic. And though Dan and Murphy believed we could ride this out and survive, perhaps even thrive, we were all unsure of what to believe.

But two things we clung to for now.

We were in this together.

This wasn’t the end, only the beginning.

* * *