All through the night the community had been on edge. John had slept little more an hour and even then he’d only tossed and turned on the living-room couch.
Cain had told them yesterday to hang a white bedsheet over the barricade if they intended to accept his offer. No sheet was hung. That part wasn’t a surprise. The unknown part was what would happen after. Would Cain and his men storm the barricades and slaughter them all as they had done to the refugees, or would he sit back and wait for the residents of Willow Creek to become complacent and make a mistake?
John spent that morning moving between each of the barricades. He’d also sent spotters onto the roofs of a handful of houses on both sides of the street. The idea was to ensure that intruders—Cain’s men or otherwise—didn’t cut through a neighbor’s fence and breach the perimeter. Tactically, using the roofs had presented its own set of problems, since the men and women up there were prone on the side facing Willow Creek Drive. That meant they were less visible to anyone approaching through the backyards, but were vulnerable to sniper fire from Pine Grove. For that reason, John selected houses with chimneys on the west side of the structure—the side facing Pine Grove—in order to provide them with a degree of cover and protection.
This wasn’t your typical urban environment where a soldier was encouraged to blast holes in walls and roofs or knock them down entirely so he could create loopholes to shoot from. Damaging these homes would mean letting rainwater in which led to mold and rot.
Arnold’s food management team, although diminished numerically, was out tearing up more grass to make way for crops. Once that part was done, they would gather as much topsoil as they could from the flower gardens of every house on the block. In that department, Al’s love of gardening had proven particularly useful since he had a number of unused bags of soil sitting in his garage. Given that his services as liaison officer weren’t in high demand at the moment, he was happy to make himself useful.
John had just finished instructing some of the new recruits on gun safety when Diane came up to him. Like everyone else she seemed nervous and spoke in a low voice, as though Cain or one of his men might be eavesdropping.
“How you holding up?” he asked.
“Not nearly as well as I thought I’d be. Any sign of Cain?”
John shook his head. “No, and I don’t expect there to be. He’s likely set up a spotter in a house within sight of the barricade. He knows perfectly well that if we’ve refused his offer, we’re liable to shoot him if he shows his face.”
Diane was wringing her hands and John could see red marks on her palms and fingers from where she’d been kneading out her frayed nerves. “I can’t tell you how much I hate this, John. You remember our conversation in the kitchen—if things got out of hand we’d head to our bug-out location. I think maybe it’s time we do that now.”
“Honey, you were the one who suggested we stay. The pod in the basement was only really intended for short-term emergencies. Ice storms, tornadoes, blackouts. That sorta thing. It was never intended to get us through an EMP attack.”
“But at the start,” Diane said, “we still weren’t certain what we were up against. It made sense to give it a few days. John, you’re so close to it all that you may not be able to see clearly, but things are starting to escalate. The situation was dangerous enough staying in a city without power, now we have a gang of thugs who’ve demonstrated a willingness to kill indiscriminately.”
“So what are you saying, Diane? That we just up and leave the people around us at the very moment when they need us the most?”
Her eyes lowered. “I’m frightened, John, and so are the kids.”
He took her in his arms, her body quivering as he squeezed her tight. When John looked up, Patty Long came toward him. She was in charge of Willow Creek’s health needs and the look on her face wasn’t a good omen.
Diane saw Patty and wiped the tears from her eyes. Diane was on her team and she was surely feeling self-conscious breaking down in public.
“I’m guessing the news you have isn’t very good,” John said.
“Dorothy Klein died last night.”
Diane covered her mouth. “Oh, no.”
“She was eighty-two years old,” Patty said. “But it wasn’t her age which did it. She’d run out of Danaparoid for her heart and we didn’t have anymore to give her.”
“We sent a team out a few days ago,” John said. “And they came back empty-handed. Whatever the pharmacies once had, it was long gone by the time we arrived.”
“Rose Myers’ daughter Summer is diabetic and dangerously low on insulin. We’ve also got a dozen others with heart and other medical problems, a pregnant woman and lots of cases of what seems to be PTSD, not to mention a child with a fever we haven’t been able to break. We need to get some medicine, one way or another.”
“Okay,” John said. “I’ll talk to Peter and see what we can do.”
A fresh bout of anxiety washed over Diane’s face. She’d been married to John long enough to know he was about to do something dangerous.
Chapter 28
John found Peter near the western barricade, drilling the rest of the new recruits. Before Cain showed up, they would have done so in the park, but now leaving the perimeter defenses was too risky.
To fill the ranks, the security team had had to choose from a pool of slightly older residents. They’d made a special point of not taking anyone younger than seventeen. The last thing they wanted was to employ the same tactics as the rebels in Sierra Leone who filled their ranks with children as young as ten.
“How’s it going?” John asked. Peter was teaching them how to leapfrog. The eight recruits were divided into teams of four and given a signal, in this case ‘tango’. Team one would provide suppressing fire on the designated target while team two would reposition. When the signal was given, they would switch roles, enabling the troops to advance under relative cover. But it was clear the concept wasn’t working very well. When team two repositioned they gave the signal without providing any covering fire.
Peter slapped his forehead. “Stop and get back to your starting positions.” He turned to John. “I feel like if it hits the fan, one of these people is gonna shoot me in the back by mistake.”
John smiled. “Or they may just save your life.”
Peter ordered the recruits to take a knee. John then told him about his conversation with Patty and the need for insulin, heart meds which included Danaparoid, Benazepril and Betaxolol, as well as valium and a long list of others.
“Didn’t you tell her we already sent people to a handful of pharmacies and they were cleaned out?”
“I did, but we’re gonna start losing people fast, including Rose Myers’ ten-year-old daughter, if we don’t do something soon.”
“You have a place in mind?”
John nodded. “There’s a small, family-run pharmacy over on Lakeview. Real itty-bitty thing. My guess is that most of the large chain stores have been hit, but the smaller ones may still be intact.”
“You’ll have to go on foot,” Peter said, concerned. “Otherwise you risk drawing too much attention from those raiders who are trying to extort us.”
“I know. My plan is to take four others, including Frank, and be back within an hour or two.”