Breakdown: Season One (6 page)

Chapter 6 — Kill it with Fire

The bowling pin lamp came crashing down, catching the attacker squarely on the wrist, blowing through the little resistance offered by his upraised arm. A sharp crack reverberated through the room, and the scream of Anna’s attacker married with the sound of Anna’s battle cry in the air.

Her momentum carried Anna into the corner of the dresser that she had stacked in front of the door, catching her right in the solar plexus and causing the wind to leave her in a hurry.

The girl gasped, trying to recover her breath. Finally willing herself to her feet, Anna raised the pin once again in a desperate effort to strike out, and her attacker screamed, “The building’s on fire, you crazy bitch! We need to get the hell out of here!”

Moments later, she smelled the smoke, and adrenaline flooded her weary veins.

Taking a moment, she really looked at her “attacker.” He was a good-looking guy, about her age, wearing a dark hoodie with a yellow tiger’s paw on it. His steel grey eyes had a look of mischief to them, but right now they were filled with pain. Stubble marred his face, and he held his left wrist with his right hand.

“Name’s Anna…sorry, I thought you were here to rape and kill me.”

“Rape and…? No! I’m in charge of floor safety for emergency drills! The sirens weren’t going off, so I had to go door to door. I knew someone was in here, and when you didn’t answer, I was worried you’d passed out or something!”

She eyed him skeptically. “You…live here?”

“Haven’t you been to any of the floor meetings? Yes, I live here. My name is Brian. I live right around the corner from you. You’re Anna, right?”

She nodded, still a bit on guard. “Yes…how do you know that?”

He pointed to the paper tiger paw on her door that had “ANNA” printed in a cheery, bubbly script.

She hung her head and started to laugh, her defense mechanism whenever she felt embarrassed.

“Get your head in the game, Anna. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I didn’t survive whatever the heck just happened just to die in a fire. That would make too many Internet trolls way too happy,” she muttered under her breath.

Thankfully, she’d already packed her backpack full of clothes and personal hygiene items to use during break. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she wasn’t sure when, or where, she’d have food again so readily at her disposal. Opening the mini-fridge, she tore through it with abandon, scooping boxes of protein bars, a couple of cans of soda, and some day-old pizza that she’d kept from the pizza place up the street. Turning to her nightstand, she spotted a white bottle of caffeine pills, something she only rarely used as a study aid when she needed to pull an all-nighter, and she opted to dump them into her bag as well.

“What the heck are you doing? We need to leave, now! This building is on fire, and no emergency crews are coming to help. We get hurt, or stuck, and we’re going to die here.”

She nodded, satisfied, and hefted her bag onto her shoulders. Looking down, she noted she was still wearing her flip-flops from earlier in the day. She took a minute to swap out to some more comfortable shoes and a thick pair of socks, then she headed into the hallway.

The smoke started to get thicker as she neared the elevator, and out of habit she pressed the button. Immediately, she realized how foolish that was and began to head to the stairwell. Her hand reached out, gingerly hovering over the doorknob, feeling for heat. It was warm, but not hot, so she went ahead and opened it.

When she did, thick, black smoke poured out, blocking her vision completely. Brian quickly pulled the door closed with his good hand and ran to the opposite end of the hall to try the door there.

Feet pounding against the floor, Anna ran like the wind to follow him, knowing that their time was running short.

Brian yanked open the door, and smoke poured out, breaking her heart. She was close enough to feel the heat from the flames in the stairwell below them.

Yanking the door closed, Brian blitzed back into Anna’s room.

“Hey! What’re you doing!” she snarled, chasing him back into her room.

He was tearing the sheets and blankets from her bed. “Making a rope! We’ve got to get out of here, Anna. Help me tie these together!”

Brian frantically worked at tying the sheets together, frustrated when he was unable to get the knots tight enough.

Anna reached into her backpack and pulled out a length of thick nylon rope.

“Hope this’ll do,” she said, glad that she and her father were about to go hiking.

He just stared at her like she was some sort of alien creature.

“Who has rope in their backpack?”

“People who like to rappel, that’s who.”

“You rappel?” he asked incredulously.

She tucked her hands into her hips. “Now’s not the time to get macho and question my prowess, mister manly-man.”

He nodded, and the two ran to the common room and out onto the balcony. Six floors was a long way up, and Anna realized that she’d need to lower her new friend, and he’d need to repel one handed. This would be fun.

“One level at a time, Brian. We do this slowly, and we get back to the ground. Before we celebrate.”

He nodded at her, his face ashen.

After a few moments working with the rope and some carabiners, she nodded to herself, apparently satisfied.

“I’m going to use a climbing technique called lowering. You use it sometimes when someone you’re climbing with becomes injured. Basically, I’m going to tie you into this rope and help lower you, and then I’ll follow you down, and we’ll repeat. Do you follow?”

Brian nodded again, sweating profusely, his eyes a bit glassy.

“Are you okay, Brian? First time with ropes?”

His Adam’s apple bobbled up and down as he gulped. “Heights. Don’t like heights.”

Anna smiled sweetly and rested a hand on his shoulder. Her brown eyes met his, and she held his gaze for a moment, stepping close.

“I’ll be gentle,” she teased, gently leading him to the edge.

“Anna?”

“Yeah, Brian?”

“Sorry for calling you a bitch.”

She grinned.

“I’d say I was sorry for breaking your wrist, but it serves you right for coming into a girl’s room uninvited.”

He laughed weakly and tested his hand.

“Don’t think it’s broken, thankfully. Probably just a nasty bruise.”

Dutifully, he hoisted himself over to the outside of the railing and stepped back, allowing her to lower him down. When he was just even with the 5th floor railing, he used his momentum to swing him over onto the balcony.

“Clear!”

“On my way.”

Moments later, Anna’s feet touched down. Flipping the rope like some sort of magical Tolkien elf, she pulled the remainder down from the 6th floor, and the duo repeated the process.

When both of their feet were finally firmly on the ground, they let out a cheer, and Anna wrapped Brian in a hug that lasted a split second longer than it needed to. The firelight bathed them in its glow, working its magic, gleaming off of the sweat on their faces.

Anna stretched out her hand. Brian took it in his, and they watched their world burn, happy to be alive.

Chapter 7 — Tin Foil Theories

“Wait, wait, back this up. You’re telling me that we were attacked and that someone is ballsy enough to just come in and take over?”

Herbie shrugged noncommittally. “Could be that it plays out that way.”

“Unbelievable. We go from being the number one military power in the world, and then one sucker punch and someone can just step in and take over. That’s one heckuva glass jaw, Herbie.”

“You’re right about that. Folks have been trying to warn the government about it for years. Partisanship wrecked any attempt to harden the grid.”

“So how long until you think whoever it is goes all
Red Dawn
on us?”

Herbie chuckled, “Now
there’s
a reference I understand. To answer your question, I doubt it’ll be like that.”

“Don’t think it was the Russians this time?”

“Oh, I think it’s the Russians, all right. There were articles all over the place last month about a series of satellite launches they’d done. There was some suspicious space debris that was moving on its own toward other satellites over the U.S. Guessing that’s where they hid the nuke that did this.”

He waved a hand. “Getting me side tracked. Won’t be like any movie. I think they learned their lesson in Ukraine. They’ll need to be more subtle. They need to come in the saviors instead of the conquerors. They’ll seal a deal with China to rebuild our transformers. Of course, it’ll be months until they get here. Most likely, the U.S. will default on at least some of its loans by that point in time. Bad guys will do their best to rescue whoever’s left from the government, create a puppet regime. Loans get called in and we can’t pay, so those new ‘leaders’ of our country annex us off a chunk at a time to pay the bills to our saviors.”

Thom thought about it for a minute and nodded slowly. It made a scary amount of sense.

“You’ve given this a lot of thought, it sounds like.”

“Let’s just say that if I’d had any money, I’d be a heavy investor in tinfoil hats.”

Unable to help it, Thom forgot himself and let out just about the biggest belly laugh he’d had since before he’d lost his wife.

Yesterday he had felt that pain so keenly, but now, with the events of the last 24 hours, it seemed like a different life altogether. In a strange way, the end of the world had jump-started his healing process.

It gave him a mission. An honest-to-goodness, urgent, incredibly important mission: to find his daughter and keep her alive until order in the world was rebuilt or restored.

They walked in silence for a while then.

“Herbie?” Thom ventured. “What’ll you do when that happens?”

“Thom, I swore an oath to this country when I was drafted. I meant every word of it.”

A smile met Thom’s lips and stretched to greet the corners of his eyes. “Thought you’d say that, Herbie.”

“Did ya now?” he asked, a twinkle in his jaundiced eye.

“Sure did. But Herbie, I know a bit about that oath. Doesn’t it require you to serve the President and any officers above you?”

He nodded. “There’s the rub.”

“So if what you’re thinking is true—if the folks that did this to us set up a puppet government—what then?”

“Duty is to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign
and
domestic, Thomas Monroe. But let’s not worry about that just now. No sense in worrying over what hasn’t happened yet. Plenty we should be thinking about. We’ll be lucky to live to that point in history unless we’re smart and start to think things through.”

Thom laughed again, then, and Herbie eyed him wearily.

“Sorry…something struck me as funny. Was thinking about that movie again and imagined paratrooping Commies landing in Columbia, where my daughter goes to school.”

“I fail to see what had you so tickled about that possibility, Thom.”

“Well, Herbie, you know how the kids in that movie name their little guerilla band after their high school mascot?”

He nodded.

“The mascot for the high school in Columbia is the Kewpie Doll.”

Without missing a beat, Herbie thrust his arms into the air and bellowed, “KEWPIE DOOOOOLLLLS!”

Thom laughed until he cried, and then they found themselves at the bridge.

The bridge was wide enough to allow for some foot traffic to the left of the rails, and with a lot of effort, Herbie was able to push his cart along.

Thom had finally had enough.

“So, Herbie…what’s with the cart? I mean…I know you’re…umm…”

“Homeless?”

“Yeah. Is that the P.C. way to say that?”

Herbie just laughed.

“Nothing P.C. about being homeless in a country as great as this one, Thom. To answer your question; it’s got my stuff in it, so it comes with me.”

Thom smiled and tried to peek under the tarp hiding the contents of the shopping trolley.

“What kind of stuff are we talking about, here? My guess would be a shopping cart full of mint-condition Ferbies. Am I right?”

“Nope.”

“Am I even warm?”

“Not even a little.”

The two men continued to pass boxcar after boxcar, most of them empty from what they could tell.

“So not Ferbies, then. Tell you what, you tell me one item in your cart, I’ll tell you one from mine. Deal?”

“Sure, Thom. KY Jelly.”

“Game over. You win. No more questions,” Thom said, holding his hands up in mock defeat.

Herbie simply cackled.

“Kidding. I’ve got a sleeping bag, pad, some food, things like that. Guessing a lot of the same things you might have in that bag of yours. Things that make a life on the streets possible, and a bit more comfortable.”

Thom nodded. It made perfect sense. “Gotcha.”

“After crossing, we’ll need to head over to the I-35 branch. We can stay off of the main road as much as we can, but it shouldn’t be too bad today. Still early, so I’m guessing a lot of the rougher elements are sleepin’. Need to cut through the train yard here. You good?”

Thom nodded.

“Good. We meet up with any of my folk, you let me do the talking. Got it?”

“Got it.”

The bridge passed quickly, and they were on the north bank of the river in just a few short minutes. The two men cut right, leaving the road to head northeast through the rail yard.

Chapter 8 – Rescued

Linus’ mouth was dry, and his body hurt badly. He opened his eyes for a moment and saw a beautiful woman cutting away his suit. She was gorgeous. Caramel skin, thick rosebud lips, light brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a white short-sleeve button-up with a pale yellow camisole underneath and a tight pair of jeans.

His eyes fluttered open again and rested on his nurse’s nicely developed…personality.

Nearby, a large man cleared his throat. Busted.

“You’re a lucky man, Linus, to cheat death the way you did. Not everyone gets to survive a plane crash.” The large man took a step so that he was right next to the makeshift gurney.

“My name’s John, and this beautiful nurse is my wife, Talia. Don’t get any ideas.” Despite the kindness in his voice, there was a flash of warning in his eyes, and he certainly wasn’t smiling.

Talia continued removing the suit fibers and noted that Linus was wearing one of those fanny packs designed to be worn under your clothing to hide valuables while traveling.

“Linus, I’m going to help remove this pack so I can get a better assessment of your injuries. It’s important we clean them properly. With our current situation, an infection could be very, very bad. Do you understand?”

She scooped her hand down and unclasped the pack, and Linus began to protest, “No, don’t, I’ve got it!” and slapped her hands away.

John was there in an instant, pinning Linus’ arms to the table with an iron grip. Linus let out a shriek of pain, his hands being one of the areas that were burned worse than others.

Arching his back, Linus tried to knock John’s hands away, and during the scuffle the fanny pack was knocked to the ground.

“
John
!” shouted Talia. “Thank you, John, but I could have handled that. Can’t you see you’ve hurt this man?”

John looked crestfallen as he let go of the man’s arms. “He was attacking you, Talia. We have to be careful with strangers now.
Especially
now.”

Talia bent down to retrieve the pack, and Linus’ eyes couldn’t help but use the opportunity to try and peek down the nurse’s shirt. John noticed, and he growled.

Talia picked up the pack from the ground and lifted it. She gasped as the contents spilled across the concrete floor: stacks of neatly bundled twenty-dollar bills.

John’s eyes flicked from the money to the man on the table, his police instincts quickly drawing conclusions between the man’s behavior and the contents of the pack.

“Why so much cash, Linus?”

Sweat beaded on the man’s brow.

“I…I was moving to another country. I didn’t know what the infrastructure would be like, so I thought I’d bring cash to pay for a home.”

John eyed him skeptically.

“How’d you manage to earn that kind of money? You can’t be a day older than 30.”

“Professional poker player,” he lied. He was a good player. Good enough to win at the casino most times he played, but not good enough for the big boys in Vegas.

“Not a great bluff there, Linus.”

John was big. He was scary. Linus smiled weakly, trying to disarm the situation, and, thankfully, Talia stepped in.

“How’re you feeling, Linus?”

“I’m doing alright, all things considered. Hurts like the devil, though.”

Talia nodded, jotting something down on the clipboard.

“Level the pain one to ten?”

“Twelve.”

More writing.

“John, would you please go to the medicine cabinet and get two fingers of our finest painkiller for our patient?”

“Awww. We’re wasting the good hooch on the new guy?”

Talia’s eyes told her husband that she wasn’t in the mood.

John nodded dutifully, heading out of the infirmary, presumably to fulfill his wife’s request. Talia trusted him and trusted that he was an excellent judge of character, but when she was in the infirmary, she was the boss.

Linus followed John out of the room with his eyes, breathing a sign of relief, but the liquor must have been nearby, because he was back in less than a minute with a glass of cheap whiskey.

He handed it to Linus and stood by the bed, crossing his arms over his well-muscled chest.

“Now, Linus, what do you remember from before you woke up here?”

“I was on a plane. Headed somewhere warm.  Mini-retirement. We were just taking off, and the plane lost power. There were screams… we touched down hard. Landing gear must have given way, because the next thing I knew, there sparks showering the windows of the plane.”

He paused to catch his breath, and Talia dabbed the sweat from his brow.

“Thank you. Our plane ran out of runway. Unable to slow itself down enough with the engines out, we ran headlong into a grassy field. The plane flipped when it hit the grass. Then there was fire. That’s all I remember.”

Talia nodded and began to wrap the man’s hands with clean bandages.

John stepped in and asked, “Linus, do you have any relevant skills?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what can you contribute to our community?”

“Contribute? I have money. You see that. Plenty of money.”

John sighed.

“Things are different now, Linus. That money doesn’t mean anything until order is reestablished. Maybe not even then, depending on who does the establishing. The power grid won’t be coming back online for quite a long while. Months, perhaps years, for reliable infrastructure to be established. These supplies my wife is using to help you heal are finite. There isn’t a semi-truck heading down the highway to restock the local Costco. The community we’ve established here was planned for. These people have skills that we’ll need in order to survive, thrive, and affect change. If you can’t contribute to that in a way that is meaningful, we’ll need to send you on your way.”

John caught another warning glance from his wife but held his ground.

Linus squirmed, trying to think of what he could offer these people that they didn’t already have. He knew his desk job didn’t offer any transferable skills. They wouldn’t need a mid-level manager.

John felt a bit of pity for the wounded man and began going over a list of skills they might need.

Linus had never fired a weapon, couldn’t fix a car, and was rubbish with a hammer and nails. He couldn’t weld. No medical training. He couldn’t garden, cook, or can food. No animal husbandry skills.

Linus could sense that John was nearing the end of the list, and he reached out in one desperate attempt to stay.

“I worked in HR for a while. I’m a shrewd negotiator, and my poker skills give me an insight into when folks are bluffing. Surely that’s something you can use?”

John thought for a moment and ran through the list of skills present in the community. They did need someone on the outreach team with this skillset, but he just didn’t like the man.

John’s eyes met Talia’s, and he nodded ever so slightly.

“You can stay until you heal. In the meantime, you’ll be going out with our outreach teams. You’ll be the lead negotiator. Each day, I’ll give you a list of supplies we’re willing to barter, what we need, and how much. I must emphasize that we cannot simply expect a resupply. You must make each bean count. Understood?”

Linus nodded, obviously thankful.

“I understand.”

“Well then, once Talia gets you taken care of and the painkillers take hold, we can get you out of here to meet the rest of your team. If that’s all rright with your nurse.”

Talia nodded. “Just keep your hands clean and report back this evening so we can change your bandages.”

Linus nodded, already plotting to use the end of the world for his own profit and gain.