She slipped through two buildings and then darted to the next street over. Carefully she peeked around the corner, but pulled back when she saw more soldiers.
It was hard to determine by looking at them where they were from. They appeared to have dark complexions, but it was hard to tell through their battle gear.
Battle gear, she thought.
They’re invading New York City like Normandy Beach.
Abby waited until she saw they all had passed and then she ran out from between the two buildings.
She saw the front door of a townhouse. It was standing wide open and Abby made her way in that direction.
Someone could have been in there, but she didn’t think of that. She needed to hide and stay hidden, at least until the wave of paratroopers had passed her by.
Abby made it up the stairs, paused in the doorway, looked back and ran into the house.
She wasn’t thinking about anything but hiding. Hide and wait it out. She stopped at the first room she came to, the living room. She saw the couch which was angled out from the wall and raced behind it for cover, huddling with her knees brought up close to her chest.
“We have to move! Everyone! Move now!” Foster yelled. He didn’t want to yell and knew it wasn’t the smart thing to do, but it was his only choice if he wanted to be heard by those who could barely hear.
He grabbed their hands, joining them to each other in an attempt to create a human train. Jumping in the lead, he grabbed Judith’s hand.
“Jimmy, what’s happening?” she asked.
“We have to hurry. We have to hide or something.” He pulled her and then noticed others were dropping off the chain and not moving with him. Frustrated he grabbed for them.
“Jimmy. Tell me what is happening.”
“Soldiers are everywhere and I don’t know where they came from. I think they are just dropping from the sky. Judith… there are thousands of them and they are all over.”
Judith gasped.
Foster and the group were almost there, almost across the gym. Holding on to Judith, he pushed on the door. “Come on. Open.” He had a dozen maybe more grouped at that door. The rest of the injured were scattered about, aimlessly moving.
“¡Manteno-o!” a male voice called out loud and strong.
Foster turned to look. Six soldiers had entered the building.
“Todo o mundo deixar!” another ordered, waving his rifle.
Then a third stepped forward and grabbed hold of one of the injured.
Foster was in the back behind everyone with Judith. He kept pushing on the door.
The soldier looked at the injured man he had dragged toward him. “El é cego” He stared intently at the man, then looked around. “¿Son to-dos ceros?”
Foster hadn’t a clue what language they spoke, or what they were saying. But by the look on the soldier’s face as he examined the injured man, he guessed it had to do with the blindness. The poor injured man was confused, turning left to right.
Then Foster saw it. Another just shook his head and he raised his rifle. “Mate-los todos.”
The meaning of those foreign words was abundantly clear to Foster when all the soldiers, raised their weapons at the same time and opened fire.
Abby felt safe even though her insides trembled out of control. She was behind that couch for a second, trying her hardest not to even breathe. Her eyes skimmed outward to the dining room and that was when she did she saw the little hand.
It wasn’t what she expected to see. Nor was it something she needed or wanted to see. It horrified her beyond belief.
The little hand belonged to the body of a boy no older than two years old. His other hand clutched a Sippy cup as he lay on the hardwood floor by the dining room table.
Abby wanted to scream. What built inside of her was agony and pain overseeing the child. It wanted to erupt from her vocally and it brewed within her gut. Both of her hands cupped over her own mouth to keep it in, She sobbed into her palms as silently as she could.
Tears streaming down her face, she had to get out of there. She had to run. Overcome with the horror of seeing the child, she closed her eyes tightly and jumped when rapid gunfire rang out close to her. Gunfire followed by screams of pain and terror.
Her hands tightened on her mouth as she fought not to cry out. Every part of her body shook. Her feet kicked forward, pushing and scooting her back until her trembling body hit the wall.
She knew what the shots were and she was pretty certain, she knew where they came from.
Whimpering out a whispered ‘Foster,’ she bowed her head to her knees and covered her ears to try to block out the shots and screams.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When they were young, in love and in college, they were pretty carefree. Lana and Ben believed they were going to school just to appease their parents and eventually planned to drop out, live off the land, be artistic people and change the world.
Then student loans and responsibilities kicked in. Lana got pregnant so they married because it was the “right” thing to do, but then she lost the baby at five months.
It devastated them both and zapped them out of their fantasy world. They stayed in reality for a long time, growing bored, working long hours and fighting all the time.
They aged but they remembered those times of biking for days, getting high in the woods and making love under the stars.
It was their past that made them believe they could have a future… alive.
They weren’t able to find backpacks in the beach house, but the general store had them along with the supplies they needed. They also were able to find bikes. Bikes would be a quiet means of transportation and easy to manipulate on and off road so they could stay hidden.
South was out of the question, since that would take them to New Jersey and surely if New York was hit, Jersey probably was, too.
They had to go north.
It was about eighty miles Massachusetts and they hoped that the virus or whatever biological weapon that was used hadn’t hit there.
Ben and Lana used common sense before taking off.
They tried to figure out what had happened.
It was big, and yet neither Ben nor Lana felt the attack wasn’t from a big country. Russia and China had the means to hit them, but no reason. Plus, they would have used nuclear weapons. Then again, nuclear weapons might have been used; they just did not know.
Whoever had done, it had to have been either a small country or at least one that was underestimated. The internet news source was still up and running so that told them a good part of the country was too.
If it was just the east coast that was hit, then New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC would have been the focal points of attack.
Connecticut and New Hampshire as well as parts of Massachusetts were entry points for invasion and hence the reason for chemical weapons.
Had it been a bigger country that attacked, then Connecticut would probably have been hit like New York. Instead they used biological weapons there.
They blew their explosive loads on the bigger cities.
Hit the United States, hit them big, cause confusion, chaos and while the United States scurried to pick itself up, hit with an invasion.
Hit them when they’re down.
Arriving at those theories, Ben and Lana realized they were smack dab in the middle of the point of entry. The first wave arrived; it would not be long before the second came.
Not that they believed Massachusetts was any better to be, but the small towns on the western side of the state were heavily forested and may have been spared by the grace of nature’s foliage. If not, if they ran into more of the same, they would just keep going,