Elizabeth screamed “Bo!” through
the viewport grill.
Bo turned and looked her direction,
and then bounded toward her, barking as he went. With his large body in the way
Elizabeth could not see the man on the ground, but as Bo neared the door she
could see that he was gone.
She threw up the crossbar and opened
the door, letting Bo skitter inside, and then quickly dropped the bar back in
place.
“Elizabeth, what’s wrong?” called her
father’s voice from upstairs. She could hear the metallic click of a gun being
put into operation.
“There’s someone out there dad, I
saw him.”
“Are the doors locked?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Get up here and watch after your
sister. I’m coming down.”
Elizabeth ran up the stairs with Bo
right behind her. She slipped past the gate and into her bedroom, peeking out
the window from behind a heavy iron plate and a row of sandbags. Her father had
built heavy structures like it around all the windows, making them bulletproof.
This kept raiders from shooting into the homes and killing them while they all
slept, and it meant that each room had a protected area from which to fire
back. This required heavy reinforcement – posts, timbers, crossties – all around
the house, and since most of it had been thrown up quickly during the Emergency,
it was ad-hoc and hasty work at best. It gave the home interior a very utilitarian
look.
As Elizabeth squinted through a sandbag
firing port near the bottom of the window she could see nothing moving on the
lawn, in the wire fence, or in the garden beyond.
“Liz!” her father whispered from
behind.
She turned to see him standing far
back in the hall, looking over her head out the window with a pair of night
vision goggles.
“Get down,” he hissed. “There are
five or six men hunkered down in the wood line. Brazen, SOBs.” He kept watching
with the goggles. “Definitely raiders, too. They are armed and pointing our
way. Get Jim and Heath on the phone. Tell them they are on our north, between
the two of us.”
Elizabeth crawled over to the hall
and took an antique army field phone from a desk and cranked it a few times. Jim
and Heath Sowell were family friends and neighbors just to the north. Back
during the Emergency Jim Sowell had given the family the phone so they could
coordinate at nights. For months they had seen a few refugees, and the occasional
skulker, but raiders had been less common.
In a few seconds she heard Jim
Sowell’s distinctive answer, “Yello?”
“Mr. Sowell, Dad says to tell you
they are between us, on the wood line.”
“Hey there Liz, yeah, we seen ‘em
come up, but we haven’t done nothing yet. He want us to shoot?”
Elizabeth looked up. “Dad, do they
shoot?”
“No, not yet. They’ll be hard to
hit in those trees, even for the Sowell boys. Just tell ‘em to keep a watch on.
I’m going to get my rifle.”
“Mr. Sowell, Dad said not to shoot.
He’s gettin’ his gun.”
Sowell didn’t respond for a second,
and then came back with a hurried, “I see ten to twenty on our north. It’s
pincer movement!” At that moment she could hear the sound of gunfire echoing
through the night from the Sowell place a half-mile away.
“Dad!”
“I know, honey. I’ll see what I can
do,” he said as he rushed past her and into the hall. She heard his frantic
steps as he went onto the shooting position on the roof. That was usually where
he spent a part of his nights, watching for trouble.
Elizabeth did her job, getting her
sisters Julie and Sarah into the sandbag bunker in her parents’ room. She left
her mother in bed, as she was too difficult to move and the bed was well
protected with sandbags anyway.
Elizabeth could not remember the
last time her mother had moved out of the bed under her own power. She simply
lied there most days, half conscious, slowly dying. The whole family tried to
carry on without her, but the work load was getting to be unbearable. The two
younger girls weren’t old enough to be much help, and so the major effort to
raise and provide for the family fell to Elizabeth and her father. The strain
was getting to everyone.
Her father, strong and patient as
he was, was beginning to snap. He was losing his temper more often, and
sometimes he just quit working midday and locked himself in his room. What was
worse, the potatoes were running out. Elizabeth tried to fight back the
gripping fear that her family, which had made it through so much, was now
falling apart.
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Five
Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter at @liamkfisher. Please leave comments below and tell me what you think. I'd love to hear from you!
GREAT STUFF!!!! More Please.
ReplyDeleteThank you. We are writing more.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteGreat story
ReplyDeleteThanks!
DeleteExcellent story. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks Stephen. We are continuing to write on it. Appreciate your comments so much. It encourages me to keep at it.
DeleteWaiting!!!!!!! :)
ReplyDeleteEnjoying this story!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely looking forward to more. You're painting an interesting world, pulling the reader in pretty well IMO. I like the descriptions, the flow, the dialog. Nice work. Do you have any plans to make a full novel? It's a lot of work, but we could always use more good SF. :-)
ReplyDelete-Andrew
I'm testing the waters, Andrew. Not sure if I'm ready to fully commit to a novel or two, but the reception has been nice. Maybe I should do it.
DeleteYes, you should make the leap for the novels. I for one, would be first in line.
ReplyDeleteLove love love your stories...please give us more. Do think seriously of making the leap to novel length, you've got the stuff for it!
ReplyDeleteOK. I pretty much devoured that. Bookmarked & waiting for more. Thank you very much for a page-turner, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteGreat story so far! The terrorist attack was well thought out and I'm enjoying reading about the reactions of the different people. I'm looking forward to more.
ReplyDeleteI've added you to my site. Thanks for letting me know about it.
Online Post Apocalyptic Fiction
http://www.squidoo.com/online-post-apocalyptic-fiction
How was I to know that you were suckering me in with a great read that just . . stops!
ReplyDelete'Shameless.
I'll be checking back once or twice a day to see if you've added anything.
'Great reading . . bordering on feverish at times.
Thanks.
Again, great story, absolutely pulls one into the action. You have a gift to tell a story and be totally believable. You absolutely need to continue, and yes a novel would be where you should be headed to.
ReplyDeleteJust caught a link to the stories.
ReplyDeleteGreat work.
But........definitely need MOAR!!
Bob
III
Just caught the link here to your stories.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff!
But now.........need MOAR!!
Bob
III
Love the writing. Great story. I need more please.
ReplyDeletePapa Mike
III
great stuff i got on from a link will book mark and come back for more thanks again mike
ReplyDelete