There weren’t any. By this time, Ron was up against Grant’s car door for cover. Ron didn’t have his shotgun, but he had his pistol in his hand.
“Stay here!” Grant yelled. Then he yelled, “Moving!” like he had with the Team. Ron looked at him funny. Grant suddenly remembered that Ron didn’t know those commands. Ron looked at Grant as if to say, “OK, move if you want.”
Grant ran to the rear of the car, around the back from the driver’s side to the passenger side, and—now he was scared—popped up and fired toward the crowd. He didn’t have a target; he was just shooting to keep their heads down.
There was no one there. They seemed to be gone. Grant fired fast until his pistol magazine was empty. Without even thinking, he yelled “check” ejected the magazine, and slammed in a new one. He racked his pistol and started scanning the area for additional bad guys, but he didn’t see any.
“Get in the car and let’s go!” Grant yelled to Ron. Ron got in the driver’s seat and threw the car into reverse once Grant was in the passenger seat.
Ron had moved Grant’s AR out of the passenger seat so Grant wouldn’t smash into it. They backed out of the area quickly; Ron tried not to hit his own car in the process.
Ron quickly backed the car into the intersection of two streets about 150 yards from the entrance and turned around so he was now driving forward. He was driving toward his house when Grant said, “We have to go back to make sure they don’t come back.” Ron abruptly turned the car around, and they flew back to Ron’s car stopped in the middle of the street. They stopped and jumped out of Grant’s car. Grant saw his AR in the back seat. He grabbed it and used the roof of his car as a rest to aim the rifle, which was pointed toward the entrance to the subdivision. Grant wondered why he hadn’t used his rifle in the first place. Why had he engaged targets with this pistol instead of his rifle, which would have been better? Because this is my first gunfight, Grant thought to himself.
A car came flying down the street from their left, and Grant swung around. That red dot and circle of his rifle sight was perfectly clear. He aimed at the driver and clicked off the safety.
It was Len’s car. Grant went back to pointing his AR at the entrance toward where the men had been. Grant was more afraid of Len hitting him with his car than getting shot.
He was fully alive right now. Every sense—hearing, sight, touch, even smell—was on overdrive. He felt like Superman. Not that he was enjoying this; he just felt invincible.
There were no bad guys around and Grant had Ron and Len covering him. He started to relax. Then he remembered a story Ted told him about guys getting shot when they relaxed after what seemed to be the end of a gunfight. God, Grant was thinking so clearly. He couldn’t believe it.
Once Grant knew where Ron and Len were, and that they had cover, Grant started scanning 360 degrees with his AR. He didn’t want some piece of shit to run up behind him or to his side. He was determined not to get jumped. That would be embarrassing. I could never face the Team if I got jumped instead of searching and assessing like I knew I should be doing, he thought.
Grant started moving to various cover points on his car and then Len’s as he made his sweeps. He was in a zone. He was acting out the training, only this was for real.
Grant saw some things in the street ahead of him. He couldn’t tell what they were. There were about five of them, and some of them were moving. He didn’t know what they were, but they weren’t trying to hurt him.
Ron and Len were talking to him, but Grant couldn’t hear them. His ears were ringing, and his hands were starting to hurt from gripping the AR so tightly.
Grant had to block the entrance. They would be back, and quickly.
“Move the cars across the street so no one can come back at us!” Grant yelled. Ron and Len looked at each other.
“Damn it!” Grant yelled. “Go! Now! Block this entrance. Go!”
They jumped into their cars and moved them so one car blocked each side of the street. No car could get through. Grant used Len’s hood as a rest for his AR and he kept scanning the entrance area with the red dot and circle. He could start to hear people talking to him.
“Hurt. They’re hurt,” Grant heard Len say. What? Who was hurt?
Len pointed to the slow moving things at the entrance.
Oh, God, Grant had shot people. Oh, God. He had hurt people. For the first time, Grant realized that he had shot people, instead of just hitting targets.
Now it made sense. The things in the street were dead and the things moving were—now that his hearing was coming back—screaming… those were people. Oh, God.
Grant just stared at the entrance. The screaming. He did that. He hurt them.
He went into his trunk and got his first aid kit. He thought it was odd that he was compelled to try to save the lives of people who, just a few seconds ago, were trying to kill him. But he was a sheepdog, and this is what sheepdogs do.
He grabbed his first aid kit, threw it to Ron, and said, “I’ll go up to them and cover you while you go see if any need first aid.” Grant didn’t want to walk up to the people he’d shot. He didn’t want to see their faces. Not that he felt guilty; they were trying to kill him and Ron. He just didn’t want to look at their faces. He was terrified of their faces.
Grant went first, sweeping the entrance with his AR. Ron was behind him with the first aid kit. The first guy wasn’t moving. It was obvious he was dead. Ted had a story about that too, where a guy thought a Taliban was dead only to find he wasn’t. Grant kicked the body. Nothing. Grant kicked him a second time. Hard. Nothing. OK. That one wasn’t a threat.
They did the same with two others. Same thing.
Two moving blobs were heading into the woods outside the entrance. In the street light, Grant could see a wide blood trail from where they went to the woods. It was the weirdest shade of crimson he had ever seen. It was horrifying. There was some screaming in the woods. It sounded like two different screams. Grant didn’t want to go into the woods, but he wanted the screams to stop. He didn’t know what to do.
“We can’t help them,” Ron said. He motioned for them to go back. Grant covered Ron while Ron went back. The farther away they were from the gun fight, the more and more silly it seemed to be keep sweeping for bad guys. It was pretty obvious they had left, or were dead.
Grant didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want anyone to see him with an AR, so he put it back in his car.
He had to leave. He just had to leave.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Grant said.
“What? You can’t just leave,” Len said.
“I have to go,” was all Grant could say. He got in his car and drove the two blocks home. He got one block before he had to stop, open his door, and throw up. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and went home.
Grant hit the garage door opener. How many times had he hit that garage door opener and come home to pretend with Lisa that things were alright when they weren’t.
Well, that was over. He was a killer.
Killer.
That word kept running through his head.
How could he explain this to Lisa?
Chapter 49
The Easter Bunny
(May 5)
Grant was in a daze. Everything was cloudy and exaggerated. He had a raging headache. He got in the door and Lisa was there, looking concerned. She had heard the shots.
“We have to go right now!” Grant yelled to Lisa.
“What?” She looked at his pistol on his belt. “Where did you get that?”
“I had to shoot some guys,” Grant said. “Some bad guys. Trying to attack Ron.” He realized he was yelling even though she was just a few feet away.
“What?” she asked for a second time. It was starting to sink in. She heard gun shots, her husband was on a crime patrol, and now he was saying he shot some guys.
Grant wanted to change out of his clothes. He was sure they were soaked with blood. He looked at them and they didn’t seem to have any on them. But he was convinced they were soaked with blood and were… dirty. Dirty. Dirty. He realized he was freaking out. He needed to calm down. Suddenly, a really terrifying thought crossed his mind.
The police. Grant had just killed three people and apparently wounded some more. Maybe Ron hit some of them, but Grant had shot most of them. His mind was replaying the shooting over and over. He could see each one of the targets—people—as he shot them.
Police? What police? Well, for a multiple shooting, they might send someone over. But then again, they were battling some huge protests at the capitol right then. There probably were not any police available in a fifty-mile radius. That thought comforted Grant.
Grant’s mind started racing. Would he be arrested in a few days when the police could come by? Would that gang, or punks, or whoever they were, come back? Would his guns get seized? He was only protecting Ron and the neighborhood.
“We have to go now,” Grant yelled. “We have to go out to the cabin. These guys might come back or the police could show up and they won’t understand.” It was like an emotional dam broke in him. All his fears, all his frustration at no one listening to him, all his begging to go out to safety at the cabin. It was all coming out at once. Right now.
“What?” Lisa asked, obviously terrified by her bizarrely acting husband. “No, you need to talk to the police,” she said and picked up the phone like she was going to dial 911.
“What police?” Grant said, at a normal volume now, instead of yelling. “They’re busy now. We have to go.”
“We can’t just leave,” Lisa said. “Cole needs his things. I need my things. Manda has ballet rehearsals,” Lisa said.
Ballet rehearsals? Ballet?
Was this really happening?
Lisa kept listing all the reasons why they couldn’t leave. “Cole needs his routine…all our things are here…we can’t go. This will be over soon when the police can come out here.” She didn’t seem to believe that last part, but was saying it anyway.
Grant snapped back. “No, Lisa! Damn it! The police won’t be out here. Things will not be back to normal soon, if ever.” He was yelling again and couldn’t stop. “No, Lisa, everything is different. You need to adapt to the situation or we’ll all be dead.” He felt a lecture on normalcy bias coming on and thought he’d save that for another time. It was time for the Easter Bunny speech he had rehearsed in this head for months.
The Easter Bunny speech was for when the shit had hit the fan and it was time to go. Grant would tell her that he had enough supplies at the cabin for months. He would tell her that the Easter Bunny had put them out there. That way he wouldn’t have to get into a debate about him having foreseen this. Saying the “Easter Bunny” took care of all this would remove the “I told you so” sting from it.
“Honey,” Grant started to explain in his calmest voice possible, “I have at least nine months of food out there. The Easter Bunny left it out there. And we have neighbors out there who will work with us. I have guns and ammunition there. It’s extremely safe out there.”
What? Lisa thought as she heard this. Some kind of stockpile out at the cabin? Why would someone do that? The Easter Bunny? Maybe Grant was delusional after the shooting. She saw that often in the ER. Lisa was thoroughly confused.
She thought Grant misspoke about “nine months” of food. He was excited and must have meant nine “days” of groceries, she thought. It never occurred to her that he actually had nine months of food out there. Where would he get it? How would he pay for it without her knowing? Where would he store it? Lisa could not believe that he really had all that food out there.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. She was living in the “normal” world, where husbands don’t shoot people, where the neighborhood is safe, and where there would be no reason to have nine months of food at some cabin in the country.
Grant could tell that Lisa simply couldn’t process what was happening. She was extremely intelligent, but simply didn’t know the things he knew. He thought he’d try to live in her world for a few moments right then to see if that would work to convince her. He lowered his voice and spoke as calmly as possible.
“Let’s say this is all over in a few days and everything goes back to normal,” he said with a shrug. “Ron saw everything and he can talk to the police so I don’t need to be around to do that. After a few days, when everything is fine, you can tell your friends that you went out to your cabin because it was quieter. Call it a vacation. Tell them that I was freaked out after what I had to do with the looters.”
Lisa wasn’t listening to that last part where Grant was talking at a lower voice. He had yelled at her and she didn’t like that. All she was thinking about was that he was yelling at her, had just shot some people, and wanted to go to the cabin, which was weird. She just stared at him.
“We’re not going out to some country cabin,” she said as she crossed her arms. “This is our home. You need to go to police and tell them what happened. I mean, why do we need to leave here?”
The reasons were so obvious to Grant but he was aware that Lisa didn’t know all the things he knew. She hadn’t known about the armed evacuation of the gun store a few hours earlier. She hadn’t studied the LA Riots and the looting after Katrina. She hadn’t studied the Russian collapse in the 1990s or the Argentine collapse of the early 2000s. She didn’t know about the bankruptcy of the state and federal governments and what happens when tens of millions of totally dependent people are cut off from welfare. She didn’t know about how much the government hated people like Grant and what they would try to do to people like him. She hadn’t had conversations with a Green Beret about how to fight a guerilla war against a totalitarian government. He had been right about everything so far, about how the Collapse would proceed. He had the outside thoughts telling him things that always came true. She hadn’t heard, seen, or thought of any of this.
Because she had made it clear that she didn’t want to hear, see, or think about any of this. The more troubling things got, her response was to gravitate even more toward the “normal.” Toward insisting on the “normal” and trying to force the square peg of current events into the round hole of “normal.” Grant couldn’t talk to her about this. When he did, she put her hands up to her ears and yelled at him.