He went out the door with Pow, shining his weapon light right on the back of Tom’s head. The safety was on.
“Moving! Staircase,” Pow yelled down the stairwell to Scotty and Bobby downstairs.
Tom took Pow down the staircase to the third floor and pointed to his pocket. “Here’s the key. Can I take it out?”
Pow nodded and Tom slowly took out a key ring. He needed some of the light from Pow’s weapon light to find the correct one.
Tom put the key in the door, appearing very calm, which Pow took note of. If Tom acted like a hail of bullets would be coming through that door, Pow would have… well, Pow didn’t have a plan for that.
Tom opened the door and motioned for Pow to look inside. Pow shined his light in there. Sure enough, it appeared to be essentially empty. It contained clothes and sleeping bags and even a crude kitchen. Otherwise, it was empty.
“Lights don’t work,” Tom said, motioning toward the light switch. The power had probably been cut off long ago when the plant closed.
“Second floor,” Pow said. Tom closed the door and started to lock it.
“No,” Pow said. “It stays unlocked.” This would allow the Team to properly and thoroughly clear the room later.
“Moving! Staircase,” Pow yelled down the staircase. He motioned for Tom to go down.
They walked down another floor. The whole time, Pow swept in every direction to see any threats. So far, there were none.
Tom opened the second floor door just as calmly as the third floor one. Pow looked in and saw another sleeping floor. There was no one in there.
Pow motioned for Tom to go back up to the fourth floor and followed him. He continued to sweep the staircase. It was a habit.
They got up to almost the fourth floor. “Moving!” Pow yelled to Ryan and Wes.
“Move!” Ryan yelled out, signaling that he heard Pow and Pow had permission to move.
Pow followed behind Tom up the stairs. They entered the fourth floor again.
“Okay,” Pow said, struggling to remember Tom’s name. “What the hell was your name?”
“Tom,” Tom said. “Tom VanDykstra.”
“Okay, Tom,” Pow said. “Get all the kids downstairs to the first floor. We need them in one place where we can watch them. We need to clear this building and we don’t need any kids running around.”
“Are you the police?” a little girl asked from the corner of the room.
“Kind of,” Grant said. “We’re good police. We’re here to put the bad people in jail.” Grant started to tear up as he remembered Cole saying that Grant’s “army men” were going to put the bad people in jail.
“Okay,” the little girl said. “My daddy was a police officer.” Grant wanted to talk to her, but this was no place for a conversation.
“Great,” Grant said, a little abruptly. “Now listen to Tom and do what we say. We need to make sure you’re all safe, so listen to us. We don’t know if there are any bad people in here and we need to find out, okay?”
Many of the kids nodded their heads slowly, understanding the gravity of the situation.
Chapter 294
Tom’s Kids
“Moving!” Pow yelled down the staircase. A faint “Move!” from Scotty could be heard from down on the first floor.
Tom and two older teenagers started to lead the kids down the stairs and back to the first floor.
“You expectin’ anybody?” Wes asked.
“What do you mean?” Tom asked.
“Are any of your people outside and coming back here?” Wes asked. “If they come into the first floor, our men down there will be…” Wes realized kids were listening, so instead of saying “killing” he said, “encountering them.”
“Oh,” Tom said. “No, we’re all here. Trying to wait out the…” Tom didn’t want to say “shooting” in front of the kids, so he said “activity out there.”
Tom still wasn’t sure who these armed men were. They seemed nice. Rough, but nice.
Wes couldn’t help but ask, “Who are all these kids?”
“Orphans,” Tom said. “Not all of their parents are dead. Most of the kids have been separated from their parents. Some were refugees and got split up, others had their parents taken to jail, and a few of them were just abandoned.” As food started to disappear, some parents — the really crappy ones that mistreated their kids before the Collapse — were doing the unthinkable and just leaving their kids to fend on their own.
Wes was trying to fathom how these kids could survive on the streets, during a war, on their own. But he didn’t want to get in a long conversation with Tom, who might be trying to kill him.
“Who are you guys?” Tom asked Wes. The Team didn’t remind Tom of the cops and soldiers in town, who were decent to the kids in the beginning, but, as things became harsh and mean, they started treating the kids like a problem. “Get those damned kids out of here,” was usually what they said instead of, “how can we help?” By now, several months into the Collapse, the authorities didn’t treat the kids like human beings, but like rats or some other nuisance.
As it became more obvious that there was no law of any kind, Tom saw that a few of the cops and soldiers started to prey on the kids. They’d beat, or do worse things to the stray kids they found out on the street. The FCorps were the worst. They had some serious psychos wearing those yellow helmets. The pretty girls would be “sampled” and then sold to the gangs. Tom could see, in his mind’s eye, the faces of some of the girls he’d tried to help, only to see them disappear. Maybe they were okay now, maybe they weren’t.
Tom thought about what he would say to Wes when they could talk and he could explain why he was there and how the kids got there. He would tell Wes that he was a youth pastor at a local church. He was twenty-five and loved working with troubled youths. He understood them and could talk to them. He protected them. He even got a few of them to believe in God, which was his ultimate goal, but theology took a backseat to survival nowadays.
He started taking kids into his church before the Collapse. The economy was in shambles and people who used to live comfortably were suddenly poor, which destroyed a lot of families.
One of the most common reasons kids came to the church was that their families needed to move to live with extended family in one house. The older kids didn’t want to go because all their friends were in Olympia, so their parents would let them live at the church “until things got back to normal.” Or some kids ran away and stayed in Olympia.
There were plenty of orphans, too. The number of deaths from crimes and from people going to jail, usually for political reasons or because the police and prosecutors were so corrupt, went way up.
Once Tom had a bunch of kids at the church, the word went out that he would take in kids. The kids who arrived started getting younger and younger. Tom remembered one crying mother who came to the church, handed him a baby and then turned around and drove away in her car stuffed full of all of her possessions.
Pretty soon, the kids were taking up too much space in the church. Tom gave a mini sermon one Sunday about how the government was supposed to be caring for people but wasn’t doing a thing for all these kids. The sermon was met with scowls from the majority of the church members who, by and large, worked for government and didn’t appreciate hearing that. Tom was asked to leave and take his kids with him.
“Not very Christian,” was all Tom could say to the church elders when he was told to leave. “We just want our normal church back,” one of them replied. “No kids running around and no political speeches. Things are hard enough without all that,” he said to Tom. At that point, they wanted normalcy more than to help people.