From Across Their Walls (Behind Our Walls Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  "I don't get why you want our money, anyway," Dad was saying. "What good is any of it going to do when the entire country is shutting down? Besides, all I have is a few hundred bucks."

  "What about a cash card?" the kid responded. "Got to be an ATM around here somewhere. There's always an ATM around somewhere."

  "The ATM machines aren't working!" That made Heidi take more notice. She hadn't been aware of that. "We've tried three different machines today and all of them say the network is down."

  "Bullshit," the kid snapped back. Dad was starting to look around at the cars parked near them, an expression that Heidi had seen far too many times. Why aren't any of you helping me? "Look, you've got the money. All I got to do is look at your clothes and your car and I can see you got the money. You telling me it's all worthless? Maybe it's just worthless to you. Why don't you hand it over then, if it doesn't mean anything anymore?"

  The kid looked like a moron but Heidi had to admit that there was a hole in Dad's logic.

  "So I'll tell you what," the kid said. "How about I give you a better reason to give me what I'm asking for?"

  Heidi looked over in time to see the kid's hand snaking around to his back, grabbing at something he had tucked under his shirt.

  "Hey!" she yelled, now striding to them. Tiny particles of sweat flicked out of the kid's stringy hair as he spun to face her, jaw hanging open. The shock of the interruption gave her enough time to reach them and step in between the kid and Dad. He sneered down at her, his hand still behind his back.

  "Who the hell are you? This isn't any of your—"

  "Maybe you don't hear so well. These people can't help you so why don't you just move along and save yourself some bruises?"

  He was laughing before she even finished her sentence. "What's any of this to you? What, this guy a friend of yours or something?"

  "No, I just don't like assholes."

  The kid shook his head and Heidi glanced down at his hand, still obscured behind his back. He took in a breath, as if to speak but before he could do so, she drew back and punched him, just below the eye. He staggered back, clearly unprepared as he lost focus. As he wobbled from side to side, Heidi gripped him by the shoulders and spun him around. From behind, she saw a retractable baton sticking out from his pants. She pulled it free, spinning him around to face her again. His eyes were starting to draw in on her as she pressed the button on the handle, extending the baton to full length. He lunged for her, now snarling viciously as she brought the shaft down onto the center of his forehead.

  The sound was like a melon hitting the ground. He staggered back three steps, looking even more confused, as if he had been dreaming. His legs went first as he dropped to his knees. Heidi planted a foot against his chest and shoved. He folded over like a piece of furniture, a single trickle of blood now rolling past his nose and he limply rolled down the slope until he reached the dry creek-bed, fifty feet down and away from them.

  Heidi turned her attention to Dad, who was opening and closing his mouth like some kind of damn fish.

  "You all should try and get clear of here if you can. I wouldn't want to be around when he wakes up." She turned to leave.

  "Wait!"

  Son of a bitch.

  It was never simple.

  "What?" Heidi asked, pausing enough to half turn back to him.

  "Look...thank you...I can't—"

  "Forget it." She cut him off, turning back in the direction of her bike before she again went against her better judgment, stopping to call back to him. "Probably want to be a little more careful with people out here anymore, yeah?"

  The comment was like opening a door to him. "Wait! Don't..."

  He paused as Heidi glared at him, trying to stop him with her clear impatience. She knew what he wanted to ask but didn't want to hear it.

  "Look, I know you don't know us, but is there any way you might be willing to—"

  "No." The answer was simple and clear, despite how harshly she may have delivered it.

  "But you didn't...I mean, I didn't even—"

  "I think I got the gist of what you were going to ask. You want to buy yourselves a little escort, right? A babysitter? A guardian angel? That about cover it? Maybe even your little fantasy girl at night when your wife and daughter are asleep?"

  His face flushed in embarrassment and anger but Heidi was actually impressed that he seemed to nod somewhat, although to how much of it he was admitting was impossible to know. She tried again. "I can't do this, all right? It's nothing personal. I understand that you're scared but I can't be responsible for you."

  "But we wouldn't ask you to do that."

  "I can't do what you're asking. I appreciate the stress you're under. I get that you're trying to look after your family. I wasn't serious about that sex remark. But I can't afford to divert in order to help you."

  For a short moment, she thought that she might have gotten through to him. His head began to sag but just that quickly, it was back up again. Turns out, he was just regrouping.

  "I know this isn't fair but please. Please just look at my daughter. My wife. I need—"

  "NO! Why can't you listen—" She had taken a full step towards him before seeing the panic in his eyes as he shrank against the side of their car. Glancing down, she saw that the baton was still gripped in her clenched fist. She hadn't even been aware of raising it. The world seemed to freeze around her as all movement ceased to exist. She heard sound but saw nothing except the baton, held in her hand, fingers going white from the exertion of gripping it. She heard the wind around her, swirling as the cries of birds joined in, sending down to her their disapproval. Or maybe they were acknowledging her as finally becoming one of them. A carrion of the dead, who flitted from disaster to disaster, staying long enough to dip her hands in the blood shed by other people.

  She couldn't be this monster.

  Looking up, the world began to return as she saw Dad putting a hand out to pacify her as he backed away, his wife slapping her palm against the glass, yelling at him to get in the car.

  Heidi felt hot tears as she spun on her heels, flinging the baton off across the road. She made her way back to the bike, walking as abruptly and as quickly as dignity would allow.

  This was what the world had become.

  As had she.

  -6-

  She didn't know how much time had passed. She wasn't even sure what day it was as it seemed progressively more pointless to keep track. The roads had proved to be so worthless that she pulled off to the side and retreated to the treeline to make camp. Eventually, these people would have to get wherever they were going or give up and turn back. It couldn't stay like this forever.

  That had been her thinking, right up until the bombs started going off on U.S. soil. There had been three or four, all along the coastlines. Now it wasn't just people vainly trying to be mobile but rather the entire populous trying to push to the middle of the country, driven by a wave of nuclear fallout.

  Heidi still thought about the family she had left behind on the side of the road in what now felt like so long ago. Where had they ended up? Had they managed to steer clear of anyone who would seek to do them harm? Had she put them in a better or worse position with how she had treated them? Was it her face they saw in their dreams as the embodiment of everything that was wrong in this world?

  It was pointless speculation.

  They were probably fine.

  The word probably rang in her head for a long time, like a differing note in an otherwise perfect concert. By all practicalities, they should be fine but she had seen the weakness under the surface of that father, desperately seeking to keep his family safe. If they ran out of supplies, would they even know where to go? Her concern for the wife and child was also bathed in anger at the man for risking taking his family out into this kind of environment. She felt angry despite knowing that there was no better choice left available to them.

  It wasn't her problem. How many families like that were out here
, wandering and trying to stay alive? She had actually spoken to these people, though. Did that make her feelings change because of that connection she now felt? She had knocked one threat out of their road, they would have to be responsible for the rest. Or they would end up worm food. Either way, she had no control over the outcome.

  Sitting in a small clearing, she looked up to the road and at the long parade of cars that were still immobile. The bike was getting down to the last few gasps of fuel, and soon she would be down to her last option, pounding pavement underneath her cheap sneakers.

  From her periphery, she caught movement and turned to look, seeing too late as one man lifted a gun, pointing it into the face of a fellow traveler. Heidi dropped down and scrambled behind some thick bushes as the shot rang out, echoing off the hills around them. She still saw more than she wanted, the spray of blood as the bullet passed through the other one's outstretched hand, moving through and to his throat. He clutched at the wound as blood pooled up and around his fingers, dropping to his knees as it continued to pump.

  Engines revved as the drivers surrounding the shooter went through the panicked motions of trying to get away. Heidi heard collisions as some of them tried to get onto the shoulder. The shooter made his way to the next car in line, a convertible, where the driver was already scrambling for the passenger side. The gun raised and fired. Heidi saw a tuft of blond hair flitting up into the air, followed by a spray of blood and matter. Turning, the shooter fired into a truck, taking the driver who was trying to bring a hunting rifle up to bear.

  All throughout, Heidi sat fixed in place and watched.

  As the man continued to fire, his lips were moving and as she strained to tell what he was saying, she realized that he was counting. What, or why, she had no idea. It seemed pretty irrelevant as he made his way down the line of cars, firing as he went.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the echo of the shots faded away into silence. Heidi rose from her crouch, only to realize that the man now stood on the side of the road, staring right at her. She started to put her hands up and back away but quickly realized that there would be no need, at the same time figuring out why he had been counting.

  He had been keeping track of how many rounds were left.

  He actually had a content smile on his face as he lifted the barrel. Heidi looked away as he pulled the trigger, but couldn't stop from looking back in time to see the hand wielding the gun drop limply, followed soon by the body collapsing, one last shower of bright blood on the ground around it.

  And in a scene that would normally be followed by flashing lights and crime scene tape, people merely returned to their cars, filing back into the traffic jam as the collective transit along the road resumed. The murderer that everyone had fled from was now just another dead body, piled in a heap on the ground.

  Life went on without him.

  Heidi stared at the body, watching traffic flow around it, as well as the cars of those he had executed. The only sign of consideration or respect seemed to be in the averted eyes. Thirty minutes passed like this, with Heidi staying on her knees and still no sign of police.

  "Hey?"

  She looked up, and even with the sunlight streaming over his shoulder and obscuring him in shadow, she knew that he was going to be trouble. She could smell him, even from ten feet away. His dark shirt was stained around his armpits, off-colored where the salt had been left behind by his own dried sweat. He was wobbling on his feet as if on a boat that he hadn't gotten accustomed to.

  "That your bike?" he asked, nodding in its direction.

  "Yeah. So?"

  A quirk of a grin crept up on his face. "Thought maybe you'd sell it."

  Sell. She knew exactly what he meant. The guy held an aluminum baseball bat, something she knew she could take from him with barely any effort. She could put this guy on his ass as easy as it would be to knock down a cardboard cutout, but was it worth the effort? Especially since the bike couldn't have more than a few more miles in it?

  The guy began to move towards her but she shook her head. "Key's in the ignition. Just take it." He responded with a toothy grin that stretched the skin of his face, nearly to the point of tearing. Mostly, she was glad that she had thought to take her pack with her instead of leaving it on the bike. She wasn't losing anything she really cared about. She wondered why he hadn't tried to take it as well as the bike but she could also imagine that people were more likely to fight for their trinkets than their vehicles.

  The bike fishtailed as it made its way down the shoulder. Part of her hoped that he would simply wipe out, maybe breaking his neck in the fall. Or maybe another driver would see him trying to sneak past the crowds and throw open a door, catching him at just the right time and taking him out. No such justice transpired though and she had to settle for watching the bike diminish off into the distance.

  Standing, she hefted the pack and began walking for the woods. There was no way to know how long the bike would last with what gas there was left. It could crap out after a few hundred yards or it could go on for ten miles. Whatever it ended up being, she didn't want to hang around for some pissed off crackhead to come staggering back looking for her. She could no longer ignore the reality that the road held no hope for her anymore. All it represented was a symbol of things gone, a path into memories of times now extinct.

  She had anticipated this moment and was now put to it, where making the rest of the way on foot had become reality. The bunker was still a long way off but there was no point dwelling on that fact. If she wanted to get there, this would have to be the way.

  Tightening the straps around her shoulder, she took in a deep breath. Aiming herself in the direction of where she needed to go, she began to move her feet in the only manner she had left.

  Slowly.

  -7-

  It was more than a day and less than a week later when Heidi woke in the middle of the night to the sound of artillery fire. It came from the other side of a nearby ridge and just under the sound of the gunfire, she could also hear horns blaring as well as engines of what sounded like mechanized infantry. The smell of the lake nearby was gradually edged out by the acrid whiff of smoke and gunpowder.

  Whatever had started, it was clearly a spectacular battle that was raging on. Given the area she was in, it was safe to assume that there had been a fair amount of militia activity, even before things started falling apart. Possibly some overinflated locals had banded together and come out to meet the regular army forces on the road. It was the kind of thing that would be a bad idea even if general conditions were good. Now they were dealing with an increasingly stressed military with little or no presence of central command.

  It was a recipe for disaster.

  The gun-play carried on longer than she would have expected, suggesting that whoever was behind the attack actually knew somewhat what they were doing. Still, she was surprised she hadn't heard any of the heavy guns that the army would almost certainly have. Whatever weapons they had were flashing against the darkened sky like a pyrotechnic show.

  All she could do was sit and wait.

  She faded out, and when she woke, the sound of the guns were diminishing into silence. Sporadic pops of single shots still rang out around her, and as she watched, a small group of men topped the hill, sprinting off in different directions. They didn't seem to be together, sharing no specific commonality, save for their desire to get as far away as possible. By the light of the moon, some of the men looked to be dressed in army fatigues.

  As she watched the scene unfold, she began to feel a tugging on her eyes as sleep once again threatened. She put up as good a fight as she could but ended up passing out anyway.

  The first thing she saw upon waking was the bright light streaming down around her. There was still an odor of gunfire in the air. She was sitting up, resettling into her day when she picked up the sound of flies buzzing over a newly made feast.

  All she wanted to do was stay away. Move on in her journey and leave this
place far behind. There was no point, nothing she could accomplish, save for reigniting her own spiraling dread. Still, her feet moved her in the direction of where the fighting had taken place. As she reached the hilltop she forced herself to look down, immediately bringing a hand to her open mouth as she did so.

  Bodies littered the road in both directions. It was impossible to tell for sure how many there were or how large the groups had been that faced off, other than to say that a lot of people had died here. The bodies were inner-mixed, with soldiers laid out next to civilians in a tumbling sprawl of humanity fallen.

  Whoever had lived to walk away from this place hadn't bothered themselves with any of the weapons or equipment. There seemed to be almost as many rifles as people, with spent magazines and satchels tossed about. She allowed herself a few minutes to scrounge through the piles, looking for practical supplies, magazines and rounds, a few extra guns and knives. She grabbed another backpack on the ground and filled it, hefting it up on top of her own pack as she turned to leave, wincing at the extra weight.

  Striking off on foot, she left the carnage behind, trying to focus on what lay ahead, instead of the reality of what she was walking through. The world would rot around her, any remaining strands of humanity burning away with each passing day. Maybe this would become the new normal. She tried to tell herself that this was merely a temporary setback, a moment of transitional discomfort. But what if this was now the best she could ever hope for? Would the planet become just a competition to see who could form the largest group and take whatever they wanted?

  All of it for money that no longer meant anything. For things that wouldn't function. For symbols of status that no longer held sway. It was the unconscious need to possess, to have. It was a generation's worth of bullshit that she was watching laid to rest and there was nothing she could do to change it. The world was tearing itself apart on the expansive fields of bounty that only existed in their mind.