R. Ruggiero - Brushfire Plague

“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.

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 source 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.