Brushfire Plague Page 16

  He turned toward the hand drawn map and began explaining what it all meant: the symbols, what the angles of fire were, basic protocols of guard duty, and the most rudimentary fundamentals of combat. He took questions as he went, but a few remained at the end.

  “What vehicles do we use for the roadblocks? They could get destroyed, I can guess some people won’t want to put their car in harm’s way,” asked John.

  “The older and more metal, the better,” Dranko answered.

  “Raise your hand if you’ll agree to share in the cost of replacement for anyone’s car or truck that is destroyed or damaged during this crisis,” Cooper asked the group. Every hand went up. Except one. John’s. He gave him a hard look and John slowly, meekly raised his arm halfway up. “Dranko, take down the names of those with their hand up. John, we have your answer—we’ll replace them, if need be.”

  “We can start with any cars that are no longer…er…needed,” Freddie added. As he realized what he was saying, his lips curled back in disgust.

  “That’s a good idea. But, let’s get the oldest, most solid cars first. Think old Detroit Rolling Steel! They will stop bullets better than anything else.”

  Mark piped up, “What do we call this fallback position, in case we need to use it?”

  “The Alamo!” Peter shouted excitedly. There were spattering calls of approval.

  “Everyone died at the Alamo,” Dranko remarked.

  The room fell silent.

  Calvin shot Dranko a wink, “How about Fort Prudence? We should only retreat if it’s prudent to do so and not out of panic. This will help us all remember it.”

  “I like it,” Cooper said, “All in favor, say aye!” The room erupted in easy agreement.

  “What is our password and response?” asked Marilyn Chambers, a forty-something lesbian whose partner had died two days ago. She was an electrician with an athletic build, and wore dun colored overalls over a flannel shirt. When out of her work clothes, she would don stylish clothing, expensive jewelry, and painted nails. Her now deceased partner, Sherry Timmons, would joke that her “Mari” was the only woman she’d ever known who could dress any way she liked and look drop-dead gorgeous doing so.

  Everyone thought for several seconds.

  Suddenly, Lisa leapt to her feet, “I got it! This keeps it easy, but won’t be obvious either. The call is ‘Mount’ and the response is ‘Prudence’! None of us will forget this under pressure and outsiders might easily guess ‘Tabor’ and we can get ‘em.” Cooper noted the venom that accompanied the words ‘get ‘em’. Doesn’t take long, does it? Put up a wall and, just like instant coffee, you get ‘outsiders’ who you naturally hate.

  The room liked her suggestion immediately and shouts of affirmation followed. Cooper held up his hands for silence, “OK. Your call is ‘Mount’ and the right response is ‘Prudence’. Repeat it.” They did so.

  Lisa sat back down with a self-satisfied look on her face.

  “Anything else?”

  There was silence. “I have one last thing. Everyone should fortify their homes as best as they can. Board up your first floor windows to prevent anyone from busting them out and climbing in too easily. Add a board to bar your doors. Park your car in your lawn if you can; to create another firing position. Move some furniture up against any walls that face the street.”

  “What will that do?” someone asked from the back of the room.

  “It will stop a bullet that is already tumbling from hitting the wall of your house,” Cooper answered.

  “Huh? In English, please,” Mark said.

  “Let me start with the basics. I could walk through the neighborhood with a rifle and shoot into everyone’s houses. Your walls are too thin to stop a bullet.” The looks of surprise on their faces told him he had their attention. “But, when a bullet hits something solid it will become destabilized. A second barrier that is solid and separated from the first by about a foot of air will usually be able to stop the bullet then.”

  “How thick does the second barrier need to be?”

  “Thicker is better, but a bookshelf filled with books should do the trick. A good wood table overturned could work too. Hell, a stack of phonebooks might even work. Don’t worry about covering your whole house. Think about creating positions you can fire out of. If all you’re doing is taking cover, get to your basement, or flat on the floor, and wait for the shooting to stop.”

  After the meeting broke up, Dranko gave Cooper a report on the dead, the dying, and the buried. Most of the dead had been buried and the numbers of dead and dying had leveled off. Cooper felt a little sick at being happy no one he knew very well had died today. He didn’t like the way desensitization felt.

  Chapter 15

  The next morning, Cooper was on the barricade facing 60th Avenue. He mused that the term “barricade” may be overblown. What they had were two hulking vehicles, a panel van and a station wagon parked nose to nose blocking the street. A jumble of old furniture tried in vain to fill in the gaps. Cooper’s favorite was the matching washer and dryer that had been stood end to end. He doubted they would stop more than a pistol round. Peter and Freddie were both on the line with him. Jake was with Lisa helping her collect and prepare medical supplies. Cooper knew he was in good, capable hands.

  Despite the light rain that was falling, he could see fires rising from parts of the city. When the wind shifted to the right direction, he could smell them, too. Subtle shifts in the wind brought dramatic changes in the smell. The sickly sweet of the dead burning turned to the acrid smell of smoldering rubber and plastic which became the nostalgic smell of wood smoke.

  Cooper heard squealing tires before he could see anything. He brought his rifle swiftly into his hands, his finger clenching the grips. All three of them instinctively ducked behind the beat-up, but hulking, 1972 Dodge station wagon that made up one-half of their makeshift blockade. Cooper rapped his fist against the side of the Dodge. It gave back a dull, reassuring, thud.

  “Thank God for old steel cars that got two miles to the gallon,” Freddie joked.

  A car came careening around the corner, three blocks away, and crashed into a telephone pole. Thankfully, the pole held. The car, however, was smashed up good. Three figures, most likely all women, darted from the car. The driver was noticeably absent from the bail-out. Cooper focused and saw the windshield awash in red.

  The three scrambled in different directions. An open-topped Jeep came to a screeching halt behind the crashed car and four men went chasing after the women. The men were armed with a mixture of pistols and rifles.

  Freddie and Peter immediately jumped up and began to scramble over the Dodge’s hood. Cooper yanked them both back to the ground by grabbing their belts. They both thudded to the ground and looked at him like they were ready to kill.

  “What the hell! We have to help them!” Peter screamed in Cooper’s face, spittle flying from his lips.

  Cooper pushed him back onto the ground, wiped his sleeve across his face, and responded in a calm, measured voice, “Listen, charging across open ground will just get you killed. Lay down covering fire. Shoot OVER their heads unless you can get a clean shot. Give them a chance to get away. A fight you don’t have to fight is the best kind, boy!”

  The other two men hesitated, so Cooper yelled, “Do it now!”

  Cooper raised himself back up and readied his rifle, using his left hand to rack the charging handle to chamber a round. It made a reassuring “sha-schink” as he did so. Already, one of the men had a red haired woman in his grip and was dragging her back to the Jeep. Her legs struggled and her feet scratched the ground to and fro, trying to find purchase on the asphalt and keep herself from the Jeep. Her frantic efforts yielded little success.

  Cooper intentionally fired a round a foot to the man’s right. Startled, the man dropped the woman abruptly onto the pavement. She hit the ground with a thud that Cooper could only imagine, as far away as he was. The man’s head swung side to side looking for the sou
rce of the shot, his right hand swinging toward the holstered pistol on his hip. Cooper quickly pivoted the rifle and lined up the sights on the man’s midsection. He was wearing a faded yellow t-shirt underneath a black and white checkered thick, cotton flannel shirt. The front post of Cooper’s rifle rested on the man’s sternum. Cooper took a breath, released half of it, and then slowly squeezed the trigger. The chambered round exploded towards its target.

  The flannel-clad man was lifted up onto his tiptoes, clutching fruitlessly at his chest, which had disappeared in a splash of red. At this range, he could not discern the expression on the man’s face, but he could guess the look of surprise and shock. He stumbled backward several feet. His arms dropped limp and lifeless to his side. Then, he collapsed to the ground.

  Two loud pops from either side of him, in near succession, told him that Freddie and Peter had begun firing.

  Cooper took a deep breath and refocused from the pinpoint he needed for effective rifle fire to a broader view, so he could take in the full situation. Another woman had been wrestled to the ground by an attacker, who was now trying to use her as a human shield. She was dark-haired and of average height and build. One of the attackers wore a bright red hoodie, blue jeans, and white sneakers. He had dark hair tied back in a ponytail. The other had tight, close-cropped black hair and a black baseball cap that said “POLICE” across its front. He wore a dark blue windbreaker that was also emblazoned with the word “POLICE,” black shirt underneath, black police-style pants, and black service boots. The fourth attacker had been hit in the leg by either Peter or Freddie and was sitting on the ground, clutching his right leg, and bellowing in pain. His intended victim, a woman with black hair, gray pants and blouse, and a long black coat, was running in a zigzag pattern. She was running away from the Jeep but not toward Cooper’s position either. Instinctively, she was staying out of the line of fire, moving down Division Street. Smart. The red haired woman who Cooper had freed had collapsed to the ground and sat with hands clutched to her face, wailing in panic and fear.

  Without warning, the man wearing the bright red hooded sweatshirt raised his pistol, pointed it straight at the red-headed woman and fired two rounds. Both hit her in the head. Cooper could see a red cloud erupt around her head as each round impacted. She slumped over like a rag doll; the kind that has been abused so badly that its head is nearly ripped off and the stuffing is oozing out from all sides.

  He then tried burrowing deeper behind the woman he was using as his human shield.

  “I’ve got him,” Cooper hissed to the others. He breathed deeply to squelch the anger bubbling up from his stomach. He knew angry men made bad marksmen.

  He pivoted his rifle and sighted in on the shoulder that was exposed. The hoodie stood out in stark contrast to the woman’s olive-colored Columbia jacket. Thanks for wearing a bright red shirt, dumbass. Only a few square inches of red were exposed where the top part of his shoulder could not get low enough behind her. Cooper knew this would be a close shot. The FAL was not a sniper-grade rifle and he lacked a scope. Thankfully, they were only about one hundred and fifty yards away. He knew he had no choice, this guy was already mentally unstable and there was no predicting what he might do next.

  Cooper took two more measured breaths, stopped halfway on the second, and squeezed. In the bang, flash, and smoke that followed, he couldn’t see what had happened. He shifted his body to the right to get a better view, just as Peter yelled.

  “You got him. Jesus Christ, you got him!”

  Cooper could see that he had rolled onto his back, his right hand clutching his left shoulder. The woman was already rapidly crawling away from him. Without waiting, Cooper stood halfway up, took precise aim at the man’s mid-section and fired two more rounds in quick succession. With each impact, the man’s body bounced up a few inches off the ground before settling back to the asphalt. Then, he lay motionless.

  The other man, dressed in police-style gear, tossed his pistol several yards in front of where he lay and raised his hands in surrender. The one with the wounded leg mimicked him.

  Peter raised his rifle to draw a bead on him. Cooper lowered the rifle barrel with his left hand.

  “No, we don’t kill in cold blood.”

  “We can’t just let these animals go. They’ll do it again.”

  “Maybe. We’ll have to take that chance. But, we can’t become them. Besides, they’re going home with two dead and the third wounded. Hopefully, they’ll learn a lesson. Besides, we aren’t done with them yet.” A sly grin spread across his face.

  “Whatdya mean?” Freddie asked.

  Just then, Mark came running up, bolt-action hunting rifle in hand. He was panting, out of breath. Sweat covered his face, which was red from exertion.

  Cooper nodded to him, “You’re just in time. You two go down there. First, make sure they are disarmed. Do a full pat down as the other covers. Then, make the guy with the police clothes strip down. We’ll take that tactic away from them. Take their shoes and make them march until they are out of your sight. Then, bring the Jeep back to Fort Prudence. By then, others will have come and you put them on the barricade. Help the two women if they want it, but don’t force it. They’ve just been through a major trauma. Mark can cover you from here with the scoped rifle.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Peter asked.

  “Try to round up the woman who ran away and make sure she’s OK. You guys got it?”

  They both nodded. The trio moved out in two different directions. Cooper wanted to catch up with the woman who had moved down Division Street. He didn’t want her wandering through the city after such a violent attack.

  Cooper sprinted down the side street that led to Division. He chose the speed that was just below sprinting, a pace he could keep up for a while. He carried his rifle in his arms, swinging it slightly to each side for balance, as he ran. His lungs churned like bellows as sweat began beading down his face.

  When he reached Division, he turned toward his right. Without much trouble, he saw her thirty yards up the road, walking with a stumbling gait. From this vantage point, she looked as if she were drunk, pitching from one edge of the sidewalk to the other. Cooper silently and quickly walked until he was within about ten yards and then stopped. He knew if he approached too closely, she might take off in a blind run.

  “Ma’am, you forgot something,” he called. He’d read somewhere that when dealing with those in panic, a familiar, habitual phrase could often work in breaking them out of it.

  She stopped, unsteady on her feet. Then, she turned back around to face him, “What did you say?”

  Despite the dirt streaks on her face, her disheveled hair, and her wrinkled business attire, she was a strikingly beautiful woman. He noticed her eyes first. They were large, dark, deep pools of brown. Her lips were full and she had a round, friendly, open face. Her hair was shoulder length and as black as night. It almost glowed, the sheen was so high. She was short, a few inches over five feet. Underneath her clothing, he could see her thin, athletic build. In various places, her toned muscles tone pushed up against her clothing. Her breasts were medium in size. A long black coat was unbuttoned and flapped lazily behind her in the stiff breeze. For a moment, he was sure he had met her before, but couldn’t place where.

  “I said you forgot something back there,” Cooper responded.

  Her eyes were alert now, sizing him up. The daze had faded. “What’s that?”

  “You forgot to say thank you,” he said, hoping she would get the joke.

  A smile spread across her face, revealing ivory, gleaming white teeth. “Oh, did I? Well, thank you, Mr. Sheriff, and hats off to your fine deputies.”

  He shouldered his rifle, took a few steps closer, and extended his hand, “Name’s Cooper. Cooper Adams. I just wanted to make sure you were OK.”

  She took several steps to meet him halfway and extended her hand, “Julianne Wheeler.”

  He took it and shook her hand lightly, a quizzical look on her
face, “Do we know each other?” He was sure he recognized her name, but couldn’t place it.

  She smiled coyly, “I don’t think so. I live in the Northeast part of town. But, I’m certainly glad I met you today!” Cooper smiled at that. Her voice turned serious, “Thank you for your help back there. I don’t want to think what might have happened.”

  “What did happen?”

  Her eyes misted over and her voice choked with emotion, “It was crazy. I was at the grocery store, which was completely chaotic, but I made it through. I was on my way back to my car when that Jeep pulled into the parking lot. I was the first one they tried to grab. It was like a damned rodeo. They just drove through going after a group of us until they had us cornered. No one did a damned thing to help us, including some worthless armed security guard at the store’s entrance.” She spat the last words, bitterness dripping from them. “Finally, a woman saved us,” she said, crying. Cooper waited for her to go on.

  “She pulled up next to us and yelled at us to jump in. We did and barely got away. Then, they kept chasing us, halfway across town, until she crashed back there.”

  Cooper put his hand on her shoulder, “I’m sorry. Some people are going crazy with the rule of law breaking down. Why don’t you come back into our neighborhood? As you can see, we have organized security. It’s getting late for you to try to walk home, unless you’re nearby.”

  Her eyes met his once again. Up this close, they were stunning. He could feel her sizing him up, as her eyes bored into him. “OK. Yes, thank you. No, I’m not close. Neither is my car.”

  “Great. It’s just a block up. You’re safe now.”

  His last words had a dramatic effect on her. Her eyes filled with tears and she clutched her hand to cover her mouth. Sobbing quickly wracked her body and she began shaking. She grew unsteady on her feet and Cooper quickly stepped in to support her, throwing an arm around her waist. He guessed it was post-traumatic release. She pulled him in close to her and buried her face into his chest. Her grip was fierce, causing him to wince as she squeezed hard on his ribs. Yes, she’s athletic alright. Cooper had comforted other soldiers in Iraq after firefights or ambushes, but this was very, very different.