William Weber - Zero Day

“Won’t matter whether or not the snow lets up,” Renegade went on. “The inner cities are already a powder keg on the best of days. Won’t be long before the refugees start fleeing the chaos of the city and heading for the country. Arm yourself, my brother. Once the God-fearing, law-abiding folks are dead and gone, the desperate and the depraved will be all that’s left.”

The light was fading when Nate returned home, his progress slow not only because of the high winds and whipping snow. He couldn’t shake Renegade’s warning that it wouldn’t be long before the cities emptied out, bringing with them more than starving and half-frozen refugees. Mixed in with the desperate masses would be another group, this one far less worried about breaking laws, much less commandments. Nate’s only hope was that the Siberian conditions would act as something of a wall. An image came to him of the ice wall in Game of Thrones , holding back hordes of White Walkers. It wasn’t a pretty thought. And maybe Nate was even a little ashamed the visual had come to him at all. But if anyone arrived planning to harm him or his family, there would be no hesitation. And above all, there would be no mercy.

Nate scoffed a cold hot dog before commissioning Hunter and Emmitt to help take some of the wood stacked by the front door and bring it inside. For the pieces on top, that meant knocking the snow off them. It also meant twenty percent of his stock would be kept dry.

While he felt the food and water could be managed, Nate wasn’t as confident about his wood supplies. Depending on how long things lasted, he might need to chop down one or two of the small ash trees in his backyard. Trees lined most of the roads here as well, so finding them wouldn’t be hard. But knocking them down and sawing them up, well, that was another story. Especially in weather like this.

The sun had already set by the time they sat for dinner. The flame from two candles made shadows dance across their faces, tired and fearful.

“I wish Dad was here,” Emmitt moaned, stirring his food listlessly.

Lauren patted his back. “We all miss your dad,” she assured him. “But he’s busy at the plant, making sure we’re safe.”

“And trying to get the power back on,” Hunter added, a tinge of hope in his voice. “Maybe then I’ll be able to make the Deathmatch tournament.”

“Don’t count on it, bud,” Nate told him. “If there’s a problem, he’ll call.” He turned to his wife, who had already finished her meal. She was probably the fastest eater he knew. “At least you kept your appetite.”

She smiled. “I’m eating for two, don’t forget.”

“How could I forget? Speaking of which, how are you feeling?” He didn’t want to worry about a baby scheduled to appear in two weeks’ time. At least not now with everything else on his mind. The look in Amy’s eyes made it clear she was feeling the same way.

“I feel like I have someone else living inside of me.”

He laughed and kissed her. “Good answer.”

An hour later, Nate and Amy were getting ready for bed. He’d added some wood in the fire beforehand so that in the morning there would still be embers.

Amy, dressed in jogging pants, a hoody and slippers, slid into bed and lay on her side.

“Slippers in bed, really?” Nate couldn’t help but laugh.

She giggled. “I hate it when my feet touch a cold floor.”

“I thought you hated too much heat now.” He was confused.

“From the neck up, I do. As far as I’m concerned, everything else is fair game. I thought you knew this already.”

He leaned over and kissed the side of her head. “That’s what I love about you. Every day I learn something new.” He paused briefly. “The Colt I gave you earlier. Where did you put it? I don’t want either of those boys stumbling onto it and…”

“It’s okay,” Amy said, trying to reassure him. She knew Nate’s past had turned him into something of a stickler. “I have it in the drawer next to my bed. In the morning I’ll return it to the safe.”

He nodded, even though she had her back to him and couldn’t see the gesture. “That’s fine. I have mine here as well. This is pretty much how we’ll need to do things from here on out.”

Amy rolled over and eyed him as he rested on one elbow. “You don’t think we’re in that kind of danger, do you? Byron’s one of the safest towns in the country.”

“Under normal circumstances, I would agree with you,” he conceded. “But this situation is far from normal and may be worse than we originally thought.”

“What do you mean? You’re scaring me.”

Nate drew in a deep breath. The last thing he wanted to do was to freak her out, freak anyone out, for that matter. But his conversation with those two men over the shortwave earlier—Renegade in particular—had shattered any illusion of safety he’d been clinging to. It had also shattered any sense that this was a flash-in-the-pan sort of event. It was one thing when part of Illinois lost power and something else entirely when all of North America went dark. He told her what he’d learned over at Carl’s.

“Oh, my God, why didn’t you tell us sooner?” She was now sitting up in bed, any hint of sleepiness long gone.

“Because I knew all it would do is scare the crap out of everyone for no good reason. Besides, I was going to fill everyone in tomorrow. When we were fresh and rested.”

Amy went quiet, biting her lower lip. “That means everyone we know is…”

“In the same boat as us, yes. It also means we may get visitors from the city as things become inhospitable there. They’ll be a trickle at first, but as the weather gets warmer, who knows how many will come.”

“If this lasts until spring,” Amy said, a quiver in her voice, “who knows how many will even survive?”

Her question was rhetorical, but Nate had already run the numbers in his head. And the conclusion he came to was just as frightening every time. “Whoever hit us did so at the worst possible moment,” he acknowledged, his voice low with anger and wrath. “Come spring, some might survive—the industrious, the prepared and those willing to do whatever it takes. The real question is, when and if the dust settles, what, if anything, will be left of our great nation?”

Day 3

The sound of clomping had invaded Nate’s dream. A group of lumberjacks were swinging at a giant oak with the wrong end of their axes, swearing and jabbering at one another in muffled tones.

Nate opened his eyes and sat up in bed only to realize although his dream had faded away, the lumberjacks hadn’t. There were people outside. Nate woke Amy from a sound sleep.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.

Nate was already at the bedroom door when he fed the magazine into his pistol and pulled back the slide. He paused only long enough to instruct Amy to get hold of the gun in her bedside table and stay put.

She nodded and did as he said.

Moving down the hall, Nate noticed the voices had grown fainter. He moved into the living room and peered out the window. There he saw an SUV in the driveway, parked right behind Lauren’s truck. Then a pair of engines started—first the SUV, followed by another vehicle. Nate rushed for the front door. By the time he got it open, the SUV was leaving the driveway followed by Lauren’s pickup, the latter going in reverse. The thieves must have broken in and hotwired it.

The pickup was about thirty yards out when Nate removed the safety and opened fire. He was aiming for the vague outline of a figure in the driver’s side window. Of that first volley, one went high, the second struck the back window, forming a small hole, and the third landed about the middle of the driver’s side door. The pickup swerved and then gained speed. Nate ran out into the deep snow. He wasn’t going to let someone come onto his property and take his stuff without a fight. The next four rounds went for the driver with limited success. Two shots hit the front windshield, spiderwebbing it. He aimed the remaining rounds at the tires, hoping he might pop one and disable the vehicle. Nate kept firing until the pistol ran empty, but the truck just sped off. He could have sworn he’d hit the driver, but outnumbered and probably outgunned, he knew it would have been foolish to give chase.