The fewer police that patrolled, the more crime increased. It’s just a fact, as anyone who has lived through a hurricane or natural disaster can attest. When there is nobody to stand up to a certain class of people, criminal tendencies rise. They roam the streets in gangs, killing, robbing, and looting at leisure.
A few days earlier, many of these same people had been carpenters, mechanics, or worked at the supermarket. Others sold stocks or worked in banks. By my estimation, it took about four days for it all to change—along with the thin veneer of civilization to peel away. Everyone was out for themselves. Including me.
We moved on to another house a few hundred yards away. From our vantage on a small hill, we waited and observed. Empty houses have a different look about them, but a few minutes of additional observation could mean all the difference. We searched for things less obvious than lights in windows, men ordering their dogs to be quiet, and loud music playing.
Sue said, “No footprints anywhere.”
No lights. Undisturbed snow remained on the shaded porch of the doublewide, and a hundred other clues said nobody was home. Make that, probably nobody home. Inside were most likely two or three dead people, victims of the blight. It would smell. Enough to gag a person.
There was a garage, detached from the house by fifty feet. Beside it was a neat stack of cut and split firewood, probably harvested late last summer. Normally, there would be a path from the house to the wood. I said, “I’m going to sneak into the garage.”
“No.” She placed her hand on my arm to delay me. “You are a better shot, have two guns, and I’ve never even fired this little popgun and don’t know if I can shoot anyone if it comes to that. You stand guard and I’ll go.”
Before I could protest, even if I wanted to, she slipped away. There was a side door to the garage. It was locked and she moved around to the front and I heard the cold springs protesting the lifting the big garage door. Then, the side door suddenly swung open from the inside. Sue darted away and ran to where a large cedar hid and protected her from sight.
I guessed she had opened the large garage door enough to roll under it and let it close again. Then she unlocked the side door, ran and hid. Now she waited to find out if someone came to investigate the noise or sighting. She was laying where I could protect her. Smart. There was no other word to describe her.
No dogs. No people. No shots. She gave me a curt nod, stood, and ran toward the open side door where the front fender of a green pickup was clearly visible. I saw the increase of light inside when she opened the truck’s door and the interior light came on. A moment later, she was racing in my direction, a fistful of papers in her left hand.
Oddly, she didn’t appear happy. She glanced over her shoulder and kept running. I slipped the twenty-two inside my waistband and pulled the nine-millimeter in response. I racked a shell into the chamber and waited. Something had spooked her.
Sue ran past me, into the forest well off to one side. Her footprints were clear in the snow and anyone could follow them. I dropped to one knee and then went down to the ground on my chest, ignoring the cold and wet. The pistol was held in front of me, aiming at the corner of the garage when two men simultaneously rushed into sight. Both carried handguns and wore black leather. Bikers.
One called out, “Halt or we’ll come get you and that won’t be pretty.”
The other didn’t waste his breath. He looked at the footprints she had left, pulled up and aimed somewhere to my left, nowhere near where Sue was and pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. The sharp sounds split the quiet air. The other man was also pointing his gun at the same location, and I assumed they had seen an animal, maybe a deer. Sue was behind me, to my right.
They were only forty or fifty steps away and were intent on watching for her as they slowly advanced in my general direction. Another dozen steps and they would almost step on me. Both held pistols in front of them, ready to fire at the slightest provocation. I’d stand no chance when one of them spotted me. They would both fire and I’d be dead.
They kept walking at a slow pace. Neither saw me before I fired twice at the head of the leading man. From that distance, I couldn’t miss. Without waiting for him to fall, my barrel shifted slightly, and I fired twice more, then shut my eyes.
Both were on the ground when I opened them.
I managed to get my feet under me as Sue reached my side. She asked, “Are you wounded?”
“No.” My eyes were locked on the motionless bodies. My mind was on the seven shots that had been fired. The first three were much louder than mine, thus larger caliber guns. Anyone within a couple of miles would have heard them and they would know the difference, if not the specific calibers. Then people, probably more bikers would arrive. They would follow our footprints.
I didn’t move. Sure, I was scared, but it was more than that. My mind was spinning with information and what to do with it. The house had been empty. I was sure of it. So, where had they come from?
Sue tugged my coat, trying to get me to run, and said, fear in her voice, “Come on!”
Turning, I almost followed her back into the forest. In a flash of inspiration, I hissed, “No, you come with me.”
My thoughts had caught up with the circumstances, sorted things out, and devised a plan. Running to the mine would get us killed. They would follow and hunt us down. My mind also dredged up assorted facts and provided inspiration.
My cousin Harry had self-named himself Harry the Hog when he had bought a used motorcycle a few years earlier. At first, he had ridden with friends on the weekends. They wore leather jackets with mean-looking patches of devils and death-heads and acted the part of bikers. During the week, he sold mattresses at one of the discount stores in the mall. He wore a suit and tie at work, leathers on the weekends.
Our family had laughed at him. He’d been the butt of endless jokes. Eventually, he was fired from his job and rode off one day, never to be seen or heard from again. Those two dead men lying in the snow hadn’t known how to shoot. The one that shouted at Sue to stop had said halt. Neither had shouted a swear-word. None of their words began with the letter F. What kind of badass biker uses words like halt? And shouts a warning before shooting? My cousin, Harry the Hog, would do that. That’s because he was a pretender. A wanna-be biker.
Not that I thought either of them was him. But Harry never got more than a few steps from his bike until the day he rode off. He was so proud of it. The bike turned him into something special. Even while eating with us at a picnic, he’d placed himself where his bike was right in front of our table. A worker in the park had made a big deal about moving the motorcycle off the lawn to the parking lot instead of the picnic area and they had almost come to blows.
The two men who chased after Sue were pretenders. I was convinced of it.
I remembered that and more. So, instead of running away to hide in our tunnel, I went the other way. Sure enough, a pair of large motorcycles sat at the edge of the blacktop, hidden from us by the house. One was rakish, pinkish-purple around the edges, like it glowed, what I’d call a crotch-rocket. Low and overpowered. The other was huge, painted glossy black and trimmed in chrome. It had a windshield and saddlebags with a leather fringe. The muffler was as big around as my upper arm. Behind the seat for the driver was a higher one for a passenger.