The day after: An apocalyptic morning (59 page)

              "I don't want that," Paul was saying. "I want every person in this town to be equally represented in voting, just like it should be, but goddammit, these women are proving themselves unworthy of that right. They're allowing themselves to have their opinions molded by an egocentric bitch who's not just locked up in pre-comet attitudes, but pre-twentieth century attitudes as well."

              "It's a drastic step," Mick, the historian, said. "We have to ask ourselves if we're willing to set such a precedent for this one person. What we do here will have ramifications that stretch far into the future. Now I like Stacy a lot and I like Jack too, but there is more than just their fates at risk here. Do we really want to set up a society where the men have the power to disregard the majority's rule just because we're men?"

              While that point lingered in the air, Skip's walkie-talkie, which he carried with him everywhere, night and day, suddenly came to life.

              "Skip," came Paula's excited voice from the speaker. "This is position 2. We're under attack!"

              "Did she say attack?" Paul asked as Skip frantically pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt.

              "Paula, this is Skip," he said into it. "Repeat your message. Confirming you're under attack?"

              By now several people around them had heard her voice and Skip's reply. They all stopped what they were doing to stare.

              "Paula!" Skip said into the radio when he didn't receive an answer. "Paula, are you there? Give me an update!"

              Still there was nothing. "Shit," Skip muttered. He looked up at Paul. "Get the armory open right now and start loading guns."

              "Right," Paul said, leaping to his feet.

              "Mick, go help him," Skip said. "Grab a few people on your way out and have them help too. This is the big one until proven otherwise. Start preparing for a full-scale invasion for now. I'll start sending people in to you in a moment. Get a good sized squad ready and then get outside with a radio and take up defensive positions around the building."

              "Right," Mick said, jumping to his feet and rushing over to several people he knew to be reliable enough to help. He grabbed them and followed Paul out the door.

              By now an excited murmur was racing around the room as the word was passed. Skip tried to get Paula on the radio again and again she didn't answer. He began to get a sinking feeling in his gut. He keyed the radio again. "Positions 1,3,4, and 5, check in right now and in order," he barked.

              Christine's voice immediately answered back at him. "Position 1 here," she said. "We're okay, nothing happening."

              "Copy, Christine," he said, "keep a sharp eye out and stand by. Something's going on. Position 3, are you there?"

              Nothing.

              "Position 3," he repeated. "Jeff, Lenny, answer the fucking radio if you're there. This is an emergency!"

              Still nothing. Were they just screwing around in another room, as those two were known to do, or were they dead? He had to assume the worst.

              Before he could check with position 4 or 5, Paula's voice returned. "Skip, this is Paula, are you there?"

              With a silent sigh of relief, he keyed the microphone. "I'm here, Paula. What's going on?"

              "My position had been attacked by at least six people, maybe a lot more. They're inside the wall, Skip and they have rifles and pistols. They tried to throw some sort of nerve gas canisters in through the window!"

              "Nerve gas?" several people who were listening in said in fear. "Oh my God."

              "I dropped two of them outside the window of the post and their canisters exploded outside. Then they opened fire on us from the west side of the house, shooting through the wall. Brenda is down and probably dead. I repeat, Brenda is down and probably dead. I dropped two more in the doorway when they tried to storm the house. I haven't seen or heard anything since then."

              "Your status now?" he asked her. "Are you injured?"

              "I have a wound on my arm from shrapnel and I'm very sick to my stomach, probably from inhaling some of the gas that drifted up. But I can hold on."

              "Are you sure?"

              "Affirmative," she said confidently. "I'm at the top of the stairs covering the entrance to the house."

              "Okay," he told her. "Hold in place. We're assembling people right now and we'll be out to you as soon as we can. Keep in contact."

              "Copy," she said.

              Now that he had some hard information, he tried once again to get hold of position 3, again without response. He found their failure to answer a particularly ominous sign now. He checked with 4 and 5 and both of these positions answered right away. He repeated the order for them to hold in place and then put the walkie-talkie back in his pocket. He looked around the gym at all the anxious faces staring at him.

              "Listen up!" he shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Everyone who can shoot a gun, move to the armory and get one. We're under attack, people and we need to fight them off."

              An excited babble began although no one made any move to leave the room.

              "This is not the time to talk!" Skip yelled. "Get to the fucking armory now! People are dead and there is going to be a lot more if we don't do something about it. Now move!"

              They moved, responding to the tone of command in his voice. While they were doing that, Skip rushed out of the room through another door and pounded up the stairway to the office. He rushed through the door and found Jessica and Dale, who preferred not to eat with the common folk, sitting at their desks with food trays before them. They looked up at him curiously as he rushed to his desk and began pulling out his maps.

              "Why are you in such a tizzy?" Jessica asked him.

              "We're under attack," he told them. "Someone tried to take out position 2 with nerve gas canisters. Brenda is dead but Paula is still holding the position."

              "Attack?" Jessica said, looking at him as if he were mad.

              "Nerve gas?" asked Dale, giving the same look.

              "Did you say Brenda was dead?" Jessica put in. "You mean... dead?"

              "I mean dead," he told her viciously. "And there's still an unknown number of people inside the wall with guns. Position 3 is not answering hails on the radio and I think they might be dead there too."

              Now they looked completely bewildered, unable to process what he was telling them. He gave a very brief summary of what he knew as he stuffed his maps into his pocket and pulled on his rain slicker.

              "How could something like this happen?" Jessica, who was quite pale, demanded of him.

              "I don't know right now," he said, "and finding out isn't the issue at the moment. Surviving is the issue. We have no idea how many of these people there are. Why don't you two get downstairs and get armed up. We're gonna have to fight, I think."

              Like the people in the cafeteria, Jessica and Dale responded to the commanding tone in his voice. Without giving their customary arguments, they got up and headed out the door.

              "What the hell happened?" Bill demanded of the remnants of John's squad when he found them. He had a pretty good idea of course. He had seen the two bodies and the debris from the exploded Raid-bomb in the driveway. He and his men had in fact stepped over it in order to take up position along the house next door.

              One of the men explained the sequence of events that had led up to them cowering there without a leader. He started with the guard shooting from the window, passed through their attempt to silence the post by shooting through the walls, and ended with John's ill-fated attempt to clear the building.

              "He thought we got 'em when we shot into the bedroom," the man, who was near tears, explained. "He was just checking to make sure."

              Bill shook his head a little, wondering if fatigue had made the former hunting guide make such a stupid error. Everyone had been awake for more than twenty-four hours now.

              "What do we do now?" Bill was asked. "There's still someone with a gun in that house. Should we go in through the back?"

              "Maybe we should just leave," another suggested. "Try again another day."

              "No," Bill said in answer to both questions. "We can't leave. This place is our only hope for food. We need to move on to the community center and try to take it down. We don't have to worry about this guard post anymore because they've probably already radioed that we're here."

              "Won't they be getting ready for us if they know we're here?" someone asked.

              "As much as they can," Bill said. "But I don't think that will be enough to stop us. This was a snooty-ass town before the comet. How many guns could they possibly have? Probably most of their firepower is at the guard posts. We need to get to that community center before they think to move the guards in to protect it."

              "Are you sure they won't have guns?" he was asked.

              "They'll probably have a few," he said confidently. "So we'll have to move a little more carefully once we get close. The important thing is that we get there before the guards are pulled in. We can still do this if we act now. So let's go! Follow me!"

              He began to lead them around the front of the single-story house, avoiding crossing into the line of fire from the guard house itself. They went to the end of the street they were on and then turned left down Sycamore Avenue, one of the main roads of the subdivision that led south to the park and the community center. As they made the turn and formed up into a loose diamond shape, no one happened to look towards a row of dying bushes in front of the porch on a corner house. Since no one happened to look there, no one saw Jack crouched behind this row, watching their every move.

              Though the community center itself was too far away for the sounds of gunfire during the battle for position 2 to reach, Stacy's house, where Jack was now living, was not. Located out as far as anyone had been settled so far, the pops and crackles of the various weapons had been audible enough to bring him out of the restless, worried half-sleep he had been engaged in. Thoughts of the impending showdown tonight had been driven out of his mind in an instant as he realized that a much more important issue was now taking place. Though he couldn't be completely sure, the shooting had sounded like it was coming from the guard post, which could only mean that the town was under attack.

              He had jumped up and donned his clothing as quickly as possible, threading his pistol through his belt and putting his boots on without bothering to tie them. He had no radio so he did not know exactly what was going on and he had no rifle since they were all in the armory or at the guard posts. His first thought was to get to the community center where Skip was and where the defenses would be assembling. But the community center was much further away then the guardhouse was. Shouldn't he get over there first and see what was going on? Maybe somebody was injured there and needed help. If nothing else, there was a radio there and he could use it to get hold of Skip for instructions.

              He exited the house, not bothering to lock it, and began heading north, staying off the main streets and sticking to the less traveled routes, which tended to wind back and forth. He knew exactly where to turn and where to go straight. A big part of Skip's training had been map reading and memorization skills. He knew every one of the sixty plus streets and avenues in Garden Hill and could tell you where they went.

              He reached the corner of Sycamore and Blossom, which was about two hundred yards from position 2, just as Bill and his men had come trotting up from their attack on position 3. Luckily he spotted them before they spotted him and he took refuge in the row of bushes he was passing, his pistol in his sweaty hand, his mind wishing desperately for a pair of binoculars. From where he was sequestered he was able to see a few lumps on the driveway that looked like they might be bodies on the ground but he couldn't be sure. The eight men that had prompted his refuge here all disappeared between position 2 and the house next to it on the west. They stayed in there for nearly five minutes.

              When they finally emerged, Jack saw there were now more of them. Eight had gone in, but twelve came out. Every one of them had a rifle held at port arms position. They crept around until they were out of the sight line of position 2 and then they began jogging right towards him. His grip tightened on his pistol as they approached and he wondered just how many of them he could shoot before they gunned him down like a rabid dog. He was putting his money on three, but thought that four was maybe possible. When they passed him without even a glance in his direction, he breathed a quiet sigh of relief and wished to have an M-16 in his hands. With the automatic rifle he thought that maybe he would be able to take all of them out. Well, if wishes were horses, etc, etc...