The City Burns: A Prepper's Struggle for The Truth (4 page)

Jim and Brett waited another ten minutes before heading out. They tossed their trays in the wash line. As Jim turned the corner, he was met by Hult staring him in the face with his rifle over his shoulder. “Locke told me about you, Farr,” Hult said. “He said that with your record in the service that you could have been a general yourself, but instead you threw it all away when you were discharged.” Hult didn’t flinch, or move as he spoke. He was a rock. A robot. The perfect order-taking, no-nonsense, shoot-first-ask-questions-later reactionary.

“A file doesn’t tell you everything,” Jim said as he walked past Hult with Brett at his side. “Your father’s file seemed to say everything that needed to be said,” Hult shouted.

Jim stopped dead in his tracks. Brett started to go back after Hult, but Jim stopped him.

Jim approached Hulk slowly and with calculation. He looked Hult dead in the eye until they were nose to nose. Hult gave the first smile Jim had ever seen him have.

“Brian Farr was a deserter, coward, and all around piece of shit marine who didn’t have the balls to save the men in his unit.” Hult glanced down and thought for a second. “How many men died that day? Twenty?”

Jim’s whole body tensed up. His teeth grinded as he drew in a deep breath, trying to keep the rage from breaking and rushing over him. He’d heard the stories of his father since he was a boy. When he first joined the Navy, his superior officers always looked down on him with a sense of pity and disgust. Everyone thought that Jim would be like his father. He looked like him. He spoke like him. But Jim wasn’t him. Jim told himself he would never be him. “Come on, pussy.” Hult was egging him on now. “Let’s go.”

Jim stopped. The girls. If he did something stupid now he wouldn’t be able to keep them safe. He had to stay the course. He had to finish this mission. Jim stepped back slightly. The distance between him and Hult grew. Each step back the smile from Hult’s face fell downward until Jim couldn’t see it anymore. Brett kept his eyes on Jim. He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything. Like Jim he knew that you have to push aside what you felt and wanted. The mission took priority.

When the two of them got back to the truck he saw Coyle in his fatigues looking incredibly awkward. Coyle kept fumbling with sleeves that were too long. “I look like a camouflaged bed comforter.”

The only thing that didn’t look awkward on Coyle was the rifle. As much as he went to the range, he was probably a better shot than Jim. Jim peaked in the bed of the truck and flipped the cargo lid up. Samantha and Annie were crammed in. Annie looked up at Jim with big pouty eyes. “Can I get out yet?”

Jim leaned in and whispered, “Not yet.” Samantha looked pissed as he closed the lid. Coyle walked up behind him. “Just so you know, I don’t want to be the one that lets mamma bear out of that box.” Brett threw Jim a pair of fatigues. He dressed, checked the weapon for ammo, and jumped in the back. Twink finished the dinner that Brett brought him and started up the truck. They bobbled along the dirt road to the front of the gate. Coyle’s grip on the rifle tightened as they got closer.

Jim noticed how Coyle’s knuckles were turning white. “Hey,” Coyle said, “start telling one of your dirty jokes when we go through.”

“What?” Coyle asked.

“Do it. It’ll make you less conspicuous,” Jim replied.

Twink slowed the truck as it crawled up to the front gate. An MP came to the driver side and Brett handed him the orders.

Jim nodded to Coyle who reluctantly started to tell a joke about a guy who walks into a bar and sees this little man playing a piano. Jim’s eyes wandered over to the MP who was looking over the orders. He looked up and glanced into the back of the truck at Jim and Coyle.

“Stay right there.” Another MP said approaching them. He kept his rifle in the crook of his arm, while the first MP looked over the orders and spoke into a phone in the guard booth. Jim tried to make out what he was saying, but couldn’t. The MP put the phone back down, walked out and handed the papers back to Twink. “Okay, looks like you guys are good,” replied the MP.

The gate lifted and they rolled out onto the highway. The base behind them got smaller and smaller until Jim couldn’t see it anymore. He lifted up the lid to the cargo trunk and Annie climbed out, followed by Samantha. “Next time you can ride in the box,” she said with an air of bitter resentment. Annie hopped on the bench next to Coyle as the truck rumbled along towards downtown Phoenix.

Back at the camp Hult sat in a tent re-watching the footage of them leaving the front gate. He turned to one of his men at a small control panel. “Is the honing beacon on?” he asked. “Yes, Sergeant,” the soldier replied. Hult cracked a smile as the sound of magazines clicking into rifles filled the tent around him.

Jim had only visited Phoenix once before last Christmas. Up until then Matt, Samantha, and Annie had lived in San Diego. Last year Matt had got a job offer that he couldn’t refuse and relocated the family, although Jim assumed he now regretted the decision.

Jim didn’t remember too much of the city, but he did remember that it wasn’t as rundown when he visited, and from the look on Samantha’s face she wasn’t thrilled about what the current residents had done with the place either. Trash littered the streets as trash can fires burned down alleyways and street corners. Windows were smashed and stores were looted. Cars were flipped onto their sides or roofs. The people they came across just scattered at the sight of the military truck. Jim wasn’t sure if this was because of something they’d encountered with military, or because they were the ones looting.

Brett slid the rear window open so Samantha could help with directions. She pointed further downtown where the skyscrapers were. “It’s about three more miles on the left. You’ll see the PamTech sign,” she said. Coyle jumped in the conversation. “How do we even know that the drive is still there? I mean what if it got looted with the rest of the city?”

Jim shook his head. “From what Matt told me you wouldn’t be able to find it unless you knew where to look.” Although Jim started to doubt that as they rode further into downtown. The conditions just kept getting worse, and the number of people they saw started to increase. These people, however, didn’t scatter when they saw the military truck.

“Get down.” Jim motioned for Annie and Samantha to stay low below the truck bed’s walls. He scanned the people on the sides of the street as the truck wove in and out of random parked cars that were abandoned during the evacuation. Then he started to see them. Hidden at their sides or around their backs. Guns. His eyes scanned up towards the buildings above them. He flipped the safety off the AR-15 and slowly brought the butt of the gun up to his shoulder.

Jim shouted over to Brett and Coyle, “Keep an eye out for the top floors.”

Annie started to whimper down below. “I thought it was safe,” she said. “I thought we could come out now.”  Samantha stroked her hair and whispered to her, “We’ll be fine, sweetheart. We’ll be fine.”

Twink pointed ahead. “There it is.” Brett turned around and shouted, “Thirty seconds, Jim.” The people alongside the street were growing in numbers. Bats, crowbars, rifles, guns, knives; most everyone that was outside was armed with something. Jim kept his finger just over the trigger and looked into the scope. He must have counted at least sixty people on his side alone.

“Coyle!” Jim shouted. “How many you have on your side?” Coyle held the rifle’s sites up to his eyes as he surveyed the make shift militia. “At least forty,” he shouted.

The truck was moving slower now that the thickened cars were piling up. The truck finally came to a stop. Brett turned around and saw Jim and Coyle with their rifles at the ready. “We’ll have to hoof it from here, boys,” Brett said. Jim jumped out of the truck and helped Annie down.  He told her to stay behind him. Samantha piled out next and grabbed one of the ARs.

Jim looked at her with his brows raised. “You remember how to use that?” Samantha racked the chamber and checked the scope. “I was always a better marksman than you growing up,” she said.

Twink jumped out of the driver side and kept his rifle on the circling crowds and they all met up at the front of the truck. Brett motioned up ahead. “There it is,” he said. Jim felt it all coming back. The adrenaline coursing through his veins as his heart pumped faster. The heightened sense of awareness that allowed him to see and feel everything around him; it was like riding a bicycle.

“Samantha. Coyle. You two keep Annie between you. Annie,” Jim glanced down from his weapon and saw the fear in the girls’ eyes. “You don’t leave their sides got it?” She nodded her head as tears started to roll down her cheeks. Jim nodded over to Coyle and Samantha. They shot him a nod back.

“Let’s move,” Jim ordered. The group moved as a unit with Jim covering the back left, Annie sandwiched between Coyle and Samantha on the back right, and Twink and Brett plowing ahead up the concrete steps to PamTech’s entrance.

The crowd started to move towards the truck and once they were safely inside PamTech’s lobby the crowd started tearing the truck apart. They took whatever they could find and swarmed it like ants piling on crumbs left on the ground. Coyle looked through the glass doors as the truck rocked back and forth in the street. “Well, there goes our ride,” he said.

Jim jumped over the security and dug into the bottom left drawer of the desk and pulled out a guard key. He walked over to the door and entered the code: 4-2-8-5 and slid the card key through the reader. Jim yanked the door open and Samantha, Annie, and Coyle followed him. Twink and Brett stood watch at the door. Jim pulled back the red filing cabinet to a solid, concrete wall. Jim ran his hands along the cold grey, but couldn’t find any creases.

“He said there was a panel,” Jim blurted out.

Coyle glanced down and pointed. “There’s a panel.”

The other three looked down along floor at the baseboard that wrapped around the bottom of the small office. Jim dropped down to get a better look and ran his hands along the baseboard and found a small groove. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel it.

He dug his nail into it and pried a section of the paneling off the wall. The piece of wood concealed a small safe no larger than a book. Jim typed in the code and it sprang open. He was met with the sight of a small hard drive the size of his pinkie. Jim examined it between his fingers and Coyle rushed up beside him.

“Well, that was quite anti-climactic,” said Coyle.

Machine gun fire sounded outside as the group turned to look at the lobby’s entrance. Jim looked at Samantha and Annie. “Stay here,” he ordered.

Jim rushed out to meet Brett and Twink at the door where they were watching the scene take place outside. Brett motioned over for Jim to come see. “Looks like we’ve got company,” he said.

The looters from the street were scattering and firing shots further down the street where two armored trucks were ramming cars out of the way as they plowed towards the building. The trucks came to a stop just outside the building steps where six soldiers from each truck poured out and began firing back into the looters. Two looters with assault rifles ducked behind the engines of a flipped car and began spraying bullets towards the soldiers. Other looters took position and shelter in shops along the street.

One of the soldiers heaved a grenade at the car where the two looters with assault rifles were huddled behind. The younger looter heard the thud of the grenade hitting the other side of the car as he was putting another magazine into his rifle. He looked up at his friend and before he could get up to run the grenade blasted through the side of the car as pieces of them flew in the air.

Five of the looters that had retreated to the shops had run upstairs and smashed through the windows above. They opened fire on the soldiers below who were caught off guard. One of them took bullet in the shoulder and while another soldier took one right through the eye and dropped to the ground lifeless.

Jim stood inside the lobby watching the fight take place. Gunshots, grenade blasts, and blood. This wasn’t Phoenix anymore.

“What do you wanna do, Jim?” Brett was getting anxious.

Twink looked back at the two of them. “We gotta go help them,” he said.

Jim shook him off. “We don’t know who started firing first.”

Brett cut in. “Yeah, we do. It was our guys. They started shooting at the truck the moment they were in eyeshot of it.”

Then Jim saw Hult run around the front end of the truck to reload his magazine. Sweat dripped off his chin as bullets rained down on him and his men. He only looked up for a split second, but he saw them.

Jim immediately ducked down. “We’ve got to get out of here, now!”

Outside Hult screamed for his men. “They’re inside! They’re inside! Move back to the building!”

The group took off around the hallway and right before they turned the corner they heard the crash of glass and concrete behind them. The armored truck rammed into the lobby and Hult rushed out with the rest of his men.

Jim and Brett kept back while Coyle and Twink took the front. Annie stayed clutched to Samantha as she held her tight. They kept running through doors towards the back of the building. They ran past offices. Jim looked back and saw Hult a few hundred feet back.

“Stop!” Hult screamed. Jim fired a spray of bullets at their pursuers who ducked behind a group of walls as they ran through two main doors and into an atrium. Twink saw an exit sign atop a door leading to a stairwell. Samantha told them to head that way. “If we take it to the bottom level it’ll lead us out towards the parking garage on the side of the building.”

“If there are as many cars in there as there were in the street I’ll be able to hotwire one of them,” Twink said. Jim nodded. “Let’s go find our ride.”

Hult burst through the atrium doors, but they were gone. His breath was short as he ran around trying to find them. His men finally caught up with him. He ordered them to break up and hunt them down. They were sent off in pairs in the four corners of the room while a group stayed with Hult who turned around and eyed the exit door that Jim had just gone down.

The parking garage door flew open as Twink came barreling through. He was right. There were cars everywhere. Coyle, Samantha, Annie, Brett, and Jim came through right after. They trotted down the slope of the garage towards the exit where they saw the fading light hit the street outside. The distant sound of screams and gunfire grew louder as they got to the opening of the garage.

Twink found a truck and smashed the window and popped the lock. He dropped under the dash and ripped out the panel underneath, exposing a cluster of wires. Jim walked closer towards the opening. He started to smell something. It was faint and distant.

“Smoke,” he whispered to himself. When he stepped out onto the street he saw plumes of smoke rising into the sky. The black pillars polluted the orange and reds of the fading sunset colored backdrop.

Looters were tossing lit torches and Molotov cocktails into stores along Main Street. Men with bandanas around their faces were tearing down stop signs and anything else they could with sheer muscle. The fires were spreading. There was a spark underneath the dash as the engine turned over and came to life. “Got it!” Twink shouted.

They started to pile into the car when Hult and three of his men came barreling into the garage from the stairway door. “Jim!” Brett screamed.

Jim whipped around and dropped behind a yellow parking pillar. He opened fire on Hult and his men as Twink peeled out of the parking spot towards him. Hult’s men ducked behind cars for cover and started to shoot back. Twink slowed down enough for Jim to hop in the truck bed and they drove off. Twink took a right out of the garage away from the looters and headed for the highway. Samantha opened the small, sliding window of the truck.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Jim nodded as he rubbed his knee. “I’m alright.”

Brett searched the glove compartment for a map, but didn’t find one. “Anyone know where we’re going now?” he asked, “cuz we sure as hell can’t go back to the camp. Hult will have radioed what have happened by now.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Jim. Brett turned around and Twink slowed down.

“What are you talking about, Jim? You just shot at a Sergeant in the United States Military. That’s a federal offense.” Brett looked around the truck cabin. “We’re all fugitives now.”

Jim shook his head. “I think Hult is in on what’s been happening. I think he want this,” Jim said as he pulled the drive out of his pocket. “He wants this so they can finish whatever it was they were planning.” Brett’s mouth hung open. Coyle was the first to speak. “What did Matt tell you?” Jim told them about the hole in the firewall and the messages that were being sent encrypted from unknown sources leading up to the attacks in San Diego and across the country.

“Holy shit,” Twink murmured to himself. Annie smacked him on the shoulder. “Sorry,” he blurted out. “So how do we know?” Brett asked.

“We check in on the base and we wait. If there isn’t a commotion then we know he didn’t report it. If there is, then we turn ourselves in and get the drive to Matt, so he can do whatever it is that needs to be done to find out who did this.”