Clever. Clever.
He cut the paracord with his knife and pushed the tree toward the side of the driveway, letting the weight and leverage of the spruce snap the two by four. Soaked and fuming with anger, he kicked at the shard of wood sticking up from the faux forest floor until he was satisfied that the splinters couldn’t possibly penetrate the cruiser’s tire.
“Up to the house,” he said, slamming the door shut and wiping his face.
Brown didn’t say a word, which was one of several reasons Eli felt the young man had a promising future in the Maine Liberty Militia. His usual driver would have made some inane comment about the rain or whatever trivial detail suited his need to run his piehole in overdrive. Eli had extended that hole all the way through the back of his head when he kept bringing up the “coincidence” of two of Eli’s men being killed in the same day. “Ain’t that an unbelievable coincidence?” “You’d swear this was Friday the 13th, if you didn’t know it was Tuesday,” and on and on, until he’d told the idiot to pull over so he could take a piss. One bullet later, he had his peace and quiet back. The car halted, shoving Eli forward in his seat.
“What is this place, Fort fucking Knox?” he said, staring at a sturdy metal gate. “Any way around that?”
“Doesn’t look like it, sir. Are we sure this is the right place? This seems more like one of those setups on that Armageddon Preppers show,” said Brown.
Even Brown’s choice of words didn’t piss him off. He used ‘we,’ instead of ‘you’ to avoid sounding like he was raining an accusation of incompetence down on Eli. He’d caught the innuendo, but it didn’t bother him. And he had to admit, this didn’t seem to fit the mold. Whoever lived here had a nice setup for waiting out “the big one.”
“I agree, but our only witness swears that he recognized one of the kids in my nephew’s silver BMW SUV. Seen them in town at the diner and pizza joint over the past couple summers. Every other house on the pond is a long-standing resident of Limerick. This has to be it. Son of a bitch, I don’t want to walk it in. I can’t even see the damn place.”
Brown lowered his window and pressed a button on the keypad, illuminating the numbers.
“They even have power. Press the intercom button and smile. I’m willing to bet we’re on camera,” said Eli.
An electronic chime echoed from the house. Kate dropped the grilled cheese sandwich on her plate and stood up. She pushed her chair back and rushed through the sliding glass door connecting the house to the covered porch, beating Samantha, who sat on the other side of the table.
They made it!
“Is that Dad?” said Emily, as Kate flashed by the teenagers huddled around the kitchen table.
“I think so,” she whispered, creating a discordance of squealing chairs.
Everyone followed her to the digital intercom panel built into the kitchen wall, just outside of the hallway leading to the foyer and stairs. She reached her hand forward to press the green, blinking “Intercom” button. A surprisingly strong hand seized her wrist and yanked it back.
“What the f—”
“Alex knows the code,” hissed her father-in-law, releasing her hand.
She seethed with anger for a moment before the full ramifications of answering the intercom without checking the camera sank in.
“Let’s check the camera feed. Sorry to grab you,” said Tim.
“No. That was my fault,” Kate said, following him to the dining room.
Tim swiped his finger over the track pad on the laptop, conjuring a quad-screen digital feed. The top left image displayed the gate. The EMP had damaged the front gate security system, leaving them without a built-in camera feed or the ability to open the gate remotely. With the voice intercom still functional, they rigged one of the wireless cameras to the gate’s power source and hid it in one of the trees beyond the keypad.
“It’s the cops,” announced one of Linda’s daughters.
“Everyone upstairs. Right now!” said Linda. “Let’s go!”
“Why do you always have to yell, Mom? Jesus,” said Alyssa, her brown-haired, hazel-eyed daughter.
“Watch it, missy! Get moving.”
“We could ignore it and see what they do. If they walk in, we can always say that the system got fried in the house,” said Kate.
“I don’t think that’s a great idea,” said Samantha. “We need to answer and see what’s up. They might have news about our husbands.”
“I hope not,” said Amy Fletcher.
“Something’s off with these guys. No uniforms and—”
“They have badges,” Samantha cut in.
“Those could be from a gumball machine, for all I can tell,” said Tim.
“A gumball machine? How old are you exactly?” said Kate.
“You know what I mean. I think they’d have uniforms no matter what the situation. Take a look at the passenger. That guy doesn’t look like a sheriff’s deputy. His hair is too long and—look right there! Guy has a tattoo on his neck. You can barely see it above the collar. No way we should buzz them through.”
“It seems like we’re asking for more trouble by not talking to them,” said Samantha.
“Are those bullet holes?” said Kate.
Tim pointed at the image. “Looks like the back window was shot out. Why else would they have it down in the rain? The back seat is empty. I don’t like what I’m seeing.”
“Neither do I,” Kate agreed. “The two crazies that stopped us kept saying they were the law. Who the hell knows what’s going on out there? I say let them sweat it out. If they’re real, and they want to talk to us badly enough, they can walk in.”
“I agree,” said Linda. “We should watch the eastern tree line and keep everyone upstairs for now.”
Samantha nodded, but she didn’t look convinced. “Will the motion sensors pick them up in the rain?”
“They should. It’s a passive IR system. We created overlap zones by placing two sensors facing each other at about a hundred and twenty feet apart. Even if they pass through the middle, we should pick them up. Four of these zones cover the eastern approach from the road, placed in a line from one side of the property boundary to the other—maybe three hundred paces into the forest. That should give us enough of a buffer to react,” said Linda.
“And the rest of the property?” asked Samantha.
Linda winced. “We only found thirty-two sensors. The north and south boundaries are roughly two thousand feet each according to Alex’s diagram, four times the length of the eastern approach. The water frontage is…”
“Five hundred forty-two feet,” said Tim.
“We installed five overlap zones on each side, about three hundred paces into the forest, focusing on the areas Alex highlighted. Mainly game trails and natural openings. It’s pretty thick in there, with some ledge, so we’ll get some natural channeling effect. We have two zones covering the center of the pond approach. The perimeter isn’t airtight, but the odds are stacked in our favor. Anyone heading to the house should trigger one of the sensors. We didn’t mess with the trip flares. They looked like World War One relics. I can’t believe Alex stored those in the house.”