Grid Attack (Cyber War #2) (8 page)

She began to sob into my shoulder as I put my arms around her and held her until she let out all her anxiety.

Whatever had happened, it must have been bad.

“Where are the hoosiers?” I asked.

“Dead!” Evan said, almost with a sense of pride.

“All of them?” I asked, astonished but thankful.

“Yeah, it was crazy. Kat made it easy for us.” Carl said.

Katherine was finally calming down as she pulled away and wiped her face on her sleeve.

“Not exactly, but I helped.” She said, trying to catch her breath.

“Guys, I know we’re glad we are all safe and stuff, but we really should get out of here. Who knows who these guys kin folks are and if they see us here, they will hunt us down, no doubt.” Evan said.

He was right, we needed to get the hell out of here.

I tried to stand but was too wobbly. Carl and Evan helped me get into the passenger side.

“Do you think we should take their truck? Sure would be handy to have a four-wheel drive out here.” Kat asked.

“No,” Evan said. “They see one of us driving around with that truck it’s like riding into town with a target on our backs. Lets take any supplies and guns, move the truck over there on the side of the road and toss the keys.”

“Good plan.” Carl said.

Carl and Evan pulled everything they could from the truck that might be useful but not identifiable. Evan backed up the truck several hundred yards and put it halfway in the ditch as well.

As he hopped out, he locked the doors and tossed the keys as hard as he could into the open field.

“Why did you park it so far back there?” Kat asked as Evan passed her and hopped back in the bed of the truck.

“Because if they see the truck, they may not find the bodies if they don’t look far enough. If they don’t find the bodies right away, maybe wolves, or other animals will take care of them and they won’t know there was a gunfight so they won’t be on the warpath to find out whoever did it.” Evan explained.

Kat nodded. It made sense. I know neither one of us would have probably thought about that. We would have probably left things and just got the hell out of dodge.

But Evan was thinking ahead. And it was a good idea.

Kat was still shaking when she started the truck and slowly began to take off down the road.

It was only 4 miles into town. We just hoped that there wasn’t some kind of road block or anything else to keep us from getting to her mother’s house.

Right now, I really just wanted an ice pack and an aspirin and a nap. I kept feeling really sleepy and just wanted to sleep.

“Stay awake, Tony.” Kat pleaded. “You most likely have a concussion. You can’t sleep, or you may not wake up.”

Isn’t it funny how our bodies seem to know what it needs. I remembered a few years back after I had been in a car accident that I learned it was a myth not to fall asleep if you had a concussion.

“Babe, that was a myth. The body knows what to do and sleeping allows it to repair any damage. I’ll be fine. A nap won’t hurt me and will actually most likely help heal me faster.” I said, hoping she wouldn’t get defiant and pissed because I knew something she didn’t.

She didn’t say anything, but instead just focused now on the road.

The sun was out and it was actually a beautiful fall day. The only thing I didn’t appreciate today was the curvy road made me feel like I was on a roller coaster. It wasn’t a bad road, but the head injury made it seem more pronounced than I remembered.

As we made our way into town, there were only a few cars on the road. We stopped at the first light to make sure no one was coming before heading down and turning at the second and then into the subdivision where her mom lived.

I was glad it was daytime. I didn’t want to startle her parents, if they were even there.

We had had no communications with anyone since the outage so we had no way of knowing if they were even alive.

It would have been horrible to have come all this way, only to find they had died or something bad had happened to them.

Either way, we would know in a few minutes.

Chapter 15 - Katherine

As much as I tried to focus on the road, I was having a hard time driving. I didn’t realize how much stress can paralyze a person.

The anxiety of what had just happened hadn’t really hit me just yet. I knew it would soon. But I couldn’t think about that. Right now, I had one goal in mind, and that was to get to mom’s.

I kept praying as we got closer into town that we wouldn’t run into anything else that was bad. As I pulled around the corner and saw my mom’s house, I felt like a weight had been lifted.

It had been such a hard month, not knowing if they were okay, dealing with all the stuff in the city, too much violence and way too many deaths were pushing me past my limits.

I understood more than ever why the boys that served in our military had PTSD trying to deal with death and violence.

I knew this was nothing like living in war, but it was enough for me. I had already had enough, and it gave me a new respect for those that helped to protect our country.

I pulled around to the back of the house and backed into the driveway. Turning off the engine, I listened carefully to see if I could hear anything moving around.

All I could hear was the clicking of the engine cooling down.

Reaching over, I patted Tony’s arm.

“Stay here until I know it’s safe. They won’t be expecting us so I don’t want anyone else to get shot.” I said.

Carl and Evan were still sitting in the back of the truck.

“You guys stay here and let me evaluate the situation.” I said.

They both nodded as they got out of the truck and went up to talk to Tony, as I am sure they both wanted to give their versions of what happened while he was taking a blacktop nap.

I went up the stairs to the main floor deck. The house was three levels but you couldn’t tell that from the front.

From the back, there was the basement door, but you couldn’t see anything from there. I had asked them to put in a peephole years before but they thought I was being overly protective.

After all, it was a small town and not much happened there. It was one of those places that people left the keys in their car when they went into the store and didn’t think about anyone driving off with their car.

I lightly tapped on the glass patio door. I put my hand over my head to shade the glass so I could see inside. I didn’t see any movement, so I tried the handle. Locked.

I hesitated to call out because I didn’t want the whole neighborhood to know we were there. I tapped a little louder on the glass and waited, putting my ear to the glass to see if I could hear anything. It was silent. Almost too quiet.

“Maybe they’re in the basement. I know they had a little heating system set up for emergencies. Maybe they were living down there.” I said to myself.

I went back down to the basement door and carefully opened the screen. I knocked with one of those knocks that you’d do if you were expected. Knock, knock…pause…knock, knock, knock.

I stood back away from the door as I finally heard some movement behind it.

Holding my breath, I had my hand on my pistol just in case it was someone other than them.

“Who is it?” I heard a voice say.

“Mom, it’s me, Katherine.” I said.

There was a bunch of rustling and what sounded like furniture being moved. The door flew open and my mother came running out and into my arms.

I hugged her so tight and she hugged me back, both of us bursting into tears at the sight of each other.

She reached up and kissed all over my face.

“Oh, dear God, thank you for bringing my baby home!” she praised.

I looked over at all the guys and they all had to try to act like they didn’t have tears in their eyes. I felt bad that they had not been reunited with their own families.

Maybe we could find a way to get them home.

Someday.

Chapter 16 - Anthony

I slowly made my way out of the truck and went over to Kat’s mom, Carol and step-dad, Albert. They looked pretty good considering they were seniors and looked as though they hadn’t lost much weight, which was a good sign.

Katherine’s mom was a hard core prepper. She had been storing food for years and had always told Kat that she was storing extra for us if we ever needed to come down.

Kat knew that, but always felt like it was important to store our own food. She didn’t want to rely on her mother to take care of all of it for us.

We hadn’t stored the kind of foods that her mother had, but between the stuff we did manage to bring, plus the chickens we figured we could do pretty good.

Kat introduced Evan and Carl to them and insisted that I go inside and take a rest on the recliner in the basement. I wanted to help, but she was afraid that doing so would make my head injury worse.

“Mom, can you take a look at his head and doctor him up? He got hit pretty hard.” She said.

“What? What the heck happened?” Carol asked.

“It’s a long story. I will tell you everything, but first, we need to get this stuff inside and set up the chickens in the garage.” Kat explained.

I followed her mom inside as she pulled out the first aid kit and began to clean the gash on my head. I didn’t realize I was bleeding that much, but apparently I was.

“Wow, whatever happened, they really gave you a good blow.” She said.

“Yeah, I’m not even sure what happened out there. They knocked me out cold.” I said, hoping she wouldn’t push me for details just yet.

I wasn’t ready to deal with everything yet and really just needed a little time to relax, but I also wanted to help get everything situated.

Her mother was putting some butterfly bandages on my gash to pull it together, when I heard Kat let out a scream.

I bolted out of the chair and out to the back yard, ready to grab my pistol out from my waistband.

What I saw made my heart break.

One of the stray bullets from the gun fight had hit the truck and hit one of the cats. HER cat. She was on her knees on the driveway holding her bloody body and rocking back and forth.

Kat had finally been broken. She was crying so hard that I was worried she wouldn’t be able to stop.

She kept softly saying ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ as she petted Lady's fur and sobbed hard into her little lifeless body.

I went over and looked at her holding the cat. She was hit in the head. At least she didn’t suffer, but that wasn’t going to help Kat right now.

I leaned over and hugged Kat as she buried her head in my neck. I had had enough of this cruel world as well, and I felt myself release some of the pain and anxiety that I had been holding back as well.

“I’m so sorry, babe. This is so unfair.” I said to her, feeling her pain as I let the tears fall.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and just waited until we were able to regain our composure.

Kat finally stopped sobbing as she tried to catch her breath. She looked over at Albert.

“Shovel?” she asked.

Without a word, he went out to the garage and came back with a shovel.

Kat took the body and shovel and went to the back corner of the property behind the garage. I followed her out to see if I could help.