Authors: Eric Walters
“That assault was easily repelled—so easily, in fact,
that I know that none of you were even aware of it,” Donahue said. “And subsequent to that, a bounty was placed on all of your lives.”
“But why would they want to kill us?” somebody asked. “We’re just scientists.”
“As far as they’re concerned, you are disciples of the Devil, and they are doing God’s work in trying to kill you,” Hay answered.
“But nobody could possibly believe that we’re working for the Devil,” Sheppard said.
“Never underestimate what people will believe, or the lengths they’ll go to in order to follow those beliefs, especially when motivated by a distorted religion and the promise of Heaven,” Hay said. “Most religious people simply follow their faith, but there are always others, the extremists, who will use religion as a justification for almost anything … up to and including your assassination.”
“From this point on,” Donahue said, “everything has changed. We will be working under the assumption that attempts will be made on the lives of the people in this room and on the facilities in which we work. You will all be given a full-time security officer who will be responsible for coordinating all aspects of your personal safety and leading that team.”
Sheppard didn’t like the sound of this. He wanted to be safe, but the institute’s security people made him anxious, and their sudden and silent appearance was often startling—not to mention that they still brought back memories of his abduction.
“Maybe Fitchett has even done us all a favour,” Dr. Hay said.
“Having people trying to kill us is a favour?” Markell asked.
“No, but now that the forthcoming event has been brought to the attention of the world, we can draw on the full resources of the planet to help us achieve our goal. Rather than wasting time and energy in doing things secretly, we can now devote ourselves completely to the task at hand. Perhaps we should mark this as the beginning of the beginning, rather than the announcement of the end.”
The police car moved slowly along the street, trying to avoid the potholes, piles of garbage, and abandoned vehicles, mostly metal skeletons stripped of tires, seats, and engines and undoubtedly drained of any precious fuel that might have been in the tank.
The only other movement in the street was the occasional skittering of a rat among the garbage or a cat leaping on a rat small enough to kill. The cats always looked emaciated and the rats large and plump. Neither cat nor rat registered as a concern for Officer Gordon, but his eyes and ears were always searching for the presence of dogs. Abandoned pets formed feral packs roaming the streets. The largest packs with the largest dogs were a danger to anyone careless or desperate enough to be out on the streets unarmed or unaccompanied.
Before bullets had become so scarce the police had been under orders to shoot dogs on sight. That order had never sat
right with Gordon, an animal lover, until he’d seen the grisly results—human remains being consumed by a pack of dogs. Not only were they biting the hand that fed them, but they were devouring it. Gordon had thought how a poet or a writer might have captured that moment. He was neither. He shot a couple of the dogs and the others ran away.
In the beginning, the packs had been a cross-section of dogs of different breeds and sizes. It had struck him as almost cute—like a Disney movie about abandoned pets finding a new family. That wasn’t the case anymore. The smaller dogs had all been eaten by the bigger breeds. Even the dogs had descended into cannibalism. In a dog-eat-dog world it was better to be a pit bull than a tiny poodle. The only remaining qualification for pack membership was size.
“I don’t even know why we’re out here,” Gordon said.
“We’re here because we’re following orders,” his partner, Sergeant Ramsey, replied. Ramsey was older—much older—and one of the officers who still tried to do the job “by the book,” even though the book was being rewritten every day. “At least it’s still light.”
“Night would be crazy. It wasn’t even that safe here years ago. You know … before.”
“Before” was the term most people used to describe the time prior to the world knowing about the asteroid. For most people this was shorthand for a romantic memory, almost a fantasy, of how perfect things had been. Ramsey was old enough to remember that it was far from perfect, but … relative to today, it
was
perfect.
“I feel like we’re being watched,” Gordon said. He
gestured up to the thousands of open windows and doors in the abandoned buildings that hemmed them in on both sides.
“It’s not just a feeling,” Ramsey replied. “We
are
being watched.”
“I never thought I’d say it, but I liked it a lot better when all the windows were boarded up.”
“That was when there was wood to spare, and before people started using it for firewood. Can you pick out any addresses?” Ramsey asked.
“These places have addresses?” Gordon laughed. “Let’s just go by the GPS coordinates.”
“I would if that still worked … or the radio, or the siren. By the way, how many bullets do you have?”
“Five. At least I think I have five.”
“You
think?”
Ramsey asked. “You think maybe four instead of five might make the difference between you getting back to the station alive, or more important,
me
getting back alive?”
“I’ll check.”
“You better.”
Gordon un-holstered his revolver and removed the clip. “Yeah, five rounds. You?”
“Full clip in the revolver and shells for the shotgun.”
“Pretty impressive,” Gordon said.
“Being a sergeant comes with some privileges.”
What Ramsey knew but Gordon didn’t was that there was still enough ammunition that every officer on duty could have gone out with a full clip and a spare. What they’d
found, though, was that the more bullets they gave them, the more targets they found to shoot—and not just dogs.
Ramsey missed the old days, when police officers made arrests and sometimes handed out a little “street justice”—a slap to the face, a punch to the gut, or an occasional beat-down on some deserving punk. Now things had evolved—devolved, maybe—to the point where they were acting as judge, jury, and executioner. For some of the officers it was harder to kill a dog than it was a person. After all, the dogs didn’t know about the future. For the people, death would just be happening twelve months earlier than scheduled.
“Suicide by cop” had become an easy and quick way out for some. So far, Ramsey hadn’t had to use his weapon that way. He was one of the lucky ones.
“You got your backups?” Ramsey asked.
“I don’t leave home without them.” Instinctively Gordon put one hand on the big baton on his belt; the other tapped the knife strapped to his leg.
“Looks like this is the place,” Ramsey said.
Gordon looked out the windshield and saw there were six police cars already ringing the building. A shiver went up his spine. It should have been reassuring to see so many officers, but it wasn’t. What had they gotten themselves into that would require this much firepower? He had to figure this was most of the cars and officers available across the whole precinct.
Ramsey, on the other hand, was pleased to see so many officers. There was never a guarantee that enough men or units would respond to any call. His precinct, like all the
others, was operating on less than 30 percent of its regular complement of officers. Some officers had just quit, formally or informally. Others came and went as they wanted, preferring to spend time with family or friends, spouses or kids, girlfriends or mistresses.
In some ways he couldn’t blame them. Why should police work be different from any other job that people had abandoned? What was the point? Maybe if he’d had a wife or kids he was connected to he wouldn’t have been here either. But he’d failed as a father and a husband—three times. He didn’t care where his ex-wives were but he still thought about his two kids, long lost to him years before any of this was even imagined.
The only thing he’d ever been good at was what he was doing. He was a cop. He figured his last moment would be sitting on the roof at the station, his gun in one hand, a good bottle of scotch—already half empty—in the other. He wasn’t planning on running or hiding. He knew there was no point. He’d die the way he’d lived: in uniform, on duty, looking the end right in the eye.
They pulled up, and Ramsey quickly got out and took charge. Gordon and all the other officers climbed out of their cars.
“What’s the deal, Sarge?” one of the officers asked.
“We’re looking for somebody,” Ramsey replied. “I have a picture, although it’s a year or two out of date.” He pulled out the picture and held it up.
“More like ten years out of date,” one of the men remarked.
“No, two years, maybe three, like I said,” Ramsey insisted.
“You’re joking, right?” Gordon asked.
“Do you think I came out here for a joke?”
“But he’s just a kid,” Gordon said. “He can’t be any older than thirteen or fourteen in that picture.”
“He was around fourteen and now he’s sixteen,” Ramsey replied. “Any of you think a kid can’t be dangerous, even a killer?”
There was a murmur of agreement. They knew. The gangs of kids who roamed the streets like the dogs were notoriously vicious. Deprived of food, bereft of caring, subjected to all manner of abuse, not knowing anything better but knowing that there was no future, they could be merciless.
“Does he have a name?” Gordon asked.
“William Phillips. He goes by the street name Billy the Kid.”
“Like the Old West outlaw,” Gordon said. “Cute.”
“Who’d he kill?” one of the officers asked.
“Must have been somebody pretty important,” another noted.
“Do we have to try to bring him in or just shoot him?” a third asked.
“We’re to
capture
him,” Ramsey said. “Uninjured, if possible. We’re being promised a bounty, a big bounty, if we can bring him in alive and unharmed. Dead or badly wounded and there’s no payoff.”
Everybody thought of what the bounty might be. They all knew it had to be something that was scarce or completely
unavailable. In these last days money meant little, but scarce merchandise meant everything.
“Any ideas what we might get out of this?” another officer asked.
“This is a high-priority operation, so expect the best,” Ramsey replied. “Okay, two go in through the side doors to the left, two others through the right. Five come with me through the lobby, and four stay out with the cars.”
Even a police car couldn’t be left unattended for more than a few minutes before it became a carcass stripped down to the metal bone.
“We’re going to do a floor-by-floor sweep. Any adults, or kids with adults, we let them through. All other kids who definitely don’t fit the picture, let ‘em go too. Others get pushed up to the top of the building.”
“Is he part of a street gang?”
“That’s my guess. I can’t see how he or anybody else could live out here without being part of a gang.”
“Any ideas about the size of the gang, how many there could be?” Gordon asked. There was anxiety in his voice that he was trying unsuccessfully to hide.
“Not many,” Ramsey said reassuringly.
Ramsey was lying. He’d been briefed and knew there could be two hundred of them. Thank goodness he was a good liar, because if they all had known the truth he might have lost a few officers—easy enough to double back and drive off as soon as they were out of his sight. Even though the police had guns they were still badly outnumbered, and there was no telling what manner of makeshift weapons they’d be faced with.
“We can shoot other kids if we need to, right?” one of the officers asked.
“You can shoot anybody who threatens you,” Ramsey replied. “Standard procedure. Just remember how many bullets you have.”
“Good point,” Gordon said.
“Let’s move out.”
The young boy ran into the room. “They’re here, the police are here!” he screamed. “The cops are—”
He was knocked to the ground, and two sets of boots crushed his chest and legs. He looked shocked and terrified.
“Let him up,” a voice called out.
There was no reaction from the two older boys pinning him to the ground.
“Now!” the voice yelled, and the feet were moved and the boy was pulled up, although he was now held so firmly by two sets of strong arms that his feet barely touched the ground. He still looked afraid. He was so much smaller and younger than the other two. He couldn’t have been any older than ten or eleven to their seventeen or eighteen. Of course it was hard to tell. Lack of food had stunted the growth of so many of the children that a lot of them seemed younger than they were.
A man—no, it was a boy as well, the boy from the photo—came out of the shadows. He was obviously older but still recognizable; there would be no escaping the resemblance.
“Let him go,” Billy said.
“We’re just doing our job,” one of the other two replied. “We’re just protecting you.”
Billy laughed. “Do you think I need protection from
him?”
“He could have been carrying a gun,” the larger of the two protested.
“He could still be carrying a gun. Frisk him and then let him go.”
They did as they were told. “He’s clean,” one of them said. “Well, maybe not clean, but at least he’s not carrying a weapon.”
They both laughed at the joke. Billy didn’t. Of course the boy wasn’t “clean.” His face was smudged and his hands were filthy. Water was too scarce and precious to use for anything except drinking.
“You’re okay, son,” Billy said.
“Son”—he couldn’t have been more than six or seven years older than the boy. He just felt so much older. Regardless, it seemed to calm the boy down.
“You were saying something about police,” Billy prompted him.
“Yes, yes, they’re downstairs, in front of the building!” the boy exclaimed.
“Do you know how many there are?”
“A bunch! Maybe thirty or forty, even!”
Billy nodded his head thoughtfully. He knew there weren’t that many—there were fourteen. He’d been aware of them since the first car had appeared two blocks away; their movement and numbers had been constantly monitored and relayed to Billy. There wasn’t anything that happened around these buildings that Billy wasn’t fully aware of. Being aware kept you alive.