The blood went from warm and thin to cold and thick, turning sticky and sour smelling. But despite the transformation the substance took, Foster stayed still beneath the bodies and didn’t move.
He was prepared to get up earlier but then he heard that lone shot and he stayed still even longer.
He hadn’t a clue how long he was under those bodies; it could have been all day or ten minutes. But enough silence engulfed him and since there hadn’t been any outside noise in a while, Foster deemed it safe to get up.
He was by the door when the soldiers opened fire and was protected by the helpless injured around him.
He sat up, rolling a body away from him. Sitting there, Foster bought the back of his hand to his mouth, raised his knees, laid his head on them and cried.
What had happened? How did he fail these poor people that had depended on him?
Their bodies lay strewn about, riddled with bullet holes.
It had been nothing less than bloodbath.
A merciless bloodbath.
“Is anyone alive?” a female voice whispered.
Foster turned and looked. “Judith?”
“Foster?”
With a sob he looked around. “Say something else.”
“I’m underneath someone.”
He located her voice to his right. Then he saw a hand peeking out from under the body. By the ring on her finger he clearly recognized the hand as Judith’s.
Quickly Foster scurried to her and rolled the body from her.
Judith began to cry.
Her hands covered her face and her body shook. Like him, she was completely covered in blood, someone else’s blood.
“Are you hurt?” Foster asked. “Shot?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
“Oh my God, Foster. What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Soldiers came in here and just shot. They just fired.” He helped her sit up. “But we got to get out of here. We have to go.”
“But where?”
“I don’t know.” Foster peered around as he helped her to stand. He really didn’t have a clue on where they should go, but he knew staying at the recreation center wasn’t an option.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“We were just going about our normal day when the word came,” George explained to Harry in the local tavern. “In fact, we thought it was just a test of the emergency broadcast system, but it wasn’t.”
He went on to tell Harry how the first news bulletin was about a small nuclear warhead detonated in Washington DC. It had been pre-planted, and there was no warning. Same thing had happened in London, a pre-planted Nuclear weapon. Everyone in the country thought it was a terror hit until four low flying planes were spotted in New York City, two in Philadelphia and another in Boston.
All were flying bombs.
They were bombs that set the sky on fire as they ignited the oxygen and burned all those on the ground.
People that were farther out suffered pressure injuries which resulted in blindness or brain damage.
The warnings that something was going to occur on the Eastern cities gave people only a few minutes to seek cover. But it was too late for most of them.
There was no place that was safe from the oxygen burning bombs.
“We huddled around the radio listening to the stories of devastation,” George said. “That was Tuesday morning. By afternoon, people in Connecticut and parts of New Jersey were claiming they heard explosions that sounded like loud pops in the sky. Everyone assumed it was paranoia until everyone got ill. Fast too.”
George went on to explain that people were experiencing cold and flu symptoms by mid day and stores and shops just shut down. Agabarn shut down too, just in case.
“Did anyone come in to help?” Harry asked. “The CDC? FEMA?”
George shook his head. “Not that we know of. Too many, too fast. By that first evening, while America scurried to get on her feet, while she rallied to get help into the affected areas, a first wave airstrike came in shooting anything that moved off the east coast. We heard it and stayed inside.”
“We heard on the radio that we were trying to bring troops home,” Harry said.
“Yeah, we heard that too. But now there are battles going on at sea trying to stop them from returning.”
Harry exhaled heavily. “Are there news broadcasts anymore?”
George shook his head. “A newscaster came on to say that they were not going to report anything because the enemy could intercept. So we are here, just buckled down.”
“The second wave came this morning,” Harry said. “I heard and saw it.”
“No, Harry. That was the third wave. That was the biggest yet.”
“Jesus.” Harry’s hand reached down and stroked Tyler’s head. Tyler had fallen asleep on his lap and he was glad for that. The boy didn’t need to hear anything he didn’t understand. Harry would explain it to him later. “So you’re in the dark now.”
“Not completely,” George said. “We pick up news from Ham operators. They send updates that are coded. We haven’t broken the code completely, but we’re getting the gist of it all. Before the major new hubs went off the air, the general consensus was that this wasn’t a terror hit, but rather a joint attack and invasion by a few small countries.”
“How did they have the resources?”
“Well, think about it,” George said. “Two nukes, pre-planted. Flying bombs, the most sophisticated they used were the bio weapons. We think they blew their wad on those. If they hadn’t, they would have dropped more and not had to resort to firing on anything that moved.”
“So you guys are just hunkered down?” Harry asked.
George nodded. “We survived three airstrikes, not one hit here, by boarding up and staying in the dark. They flew right over. We’re so close to Connecticut, they probably think we were hit with the bio weapons. We have men on roof tops.. They’ll sound alarms in case an attack is coming and we’ll all get below. That’s all we can do for now.”
Harry nodded his understanding. “Because you can’t pack up and move a town.”
“One town?” George asked. “Try three. We have refugees left and right; people are coming here because word got out we’re safe.”
“For how long?”
“Don’t know.”
“Any word whatsoever on what we are doing?’
“What do you mean?” George asked. “We, as in Agabarn?”
“No, we as in the United States. Have we started retaliating? Fighting back?”
“Nothing yet. Not that we heard but only we get bits and pieces,” George said. “But I’ll tell ya, Harry, if I don’t hear anything soon, I’m gonna have to assume, that we, The United States of America… laid down our weapons and quit.”
They made it to a house one block up and two streets over. It seemed pretty safe, at least to Foster. The blinds were old and wooden and he was able to draw them closed.
There were two things that Foster didn’t tell Judith.
One was that there were the bodies of a man and woman in the house, although he was pretty certain that she could smell them. And the other thing was that he had seen Abby lying dead in the street.
Judith, led by Foster, sensed something was up and conveyed as much.
Foster stopped when he saw Abby. She was lying on the sidewalk and had been shot in the head. A pool of her own blood surrounded her head. She actually looked peaceful to Foster. He didn’t stay long to look at her. He did pause long enough to say to himself, ‘May God have mercy on your soul. You are at rest,’ before he moved on.
Judith had asked if something was wrong. Foster had said no.
He did think about Abby and what went through her mind, aside from the bullet. Abby, when last Foster had talked to her, didn’t want to live.