Prepper

Chapter Nineteen

Terra Firma, I love you!

I jump from the scaffold and hit the ground running with Hartt at my heels. We have not mapped out a route, right now we just want distance between us and that building. We aren't a hundred meters away when shots ring out behind us. I don't even try to see who is shooting.

"Alley on your left!" Hartt calls out. We run through the alley across a street and down a treacherous stretch of brightly lit sidewalk before we cut across a small parking lot, hop a fence and collapse next to an empty dog house in someone's backyard.

I find a hose coiled on the side of the apartment and turn it on. We alternate gulping down water in between breaths.

"Now what? We can't head for command." Hartt says.

"Kate's office is the next best thing. I hasn't been overrun, I think. Should be full of cops with guns, maybe your people fell back to that position?"

"It's possible."

I cross the yard and look down the driveway toward the front of the house.

"Looks clear."

We both move slowly, quietly down toward the sidewalk. To the right I see the street stretching away from us. It's still lit in parts and is not the direction we need to move. To my left, the street disappears in an enveloping darkness which is both beneficial and frightening. The dark will provide us cover, but will also make it difficult to spot any danger.

There is no choice to be made here, safety lies beyond that darkness, we just need to work up the courage.

"Stay off the sidewalk - and don't bunch up." Hartt advises.

We split up, taking opposite sides of the street. I try to mimic Hartt's stealthy movements. He moves from cover to cover, tree to shrub to garbage pile, crouched low. I do the same. Periodically he pauses, I think to listen. So I listen too. There is still plenty of gunfire, and unfortunately it seems to lie between us and our destination. Then we are on the move again.

I come across a retaining wall that is then topped with a wrought iron fence, in the darkness I'm not certain if it surrounds a park, a home or something else, but it forces me onto the sidewalk. There is no cover, so I speed up, hoping to get back to anything I can hide behind.

Far up the street, I notice pin points of light bouncing, swinging this way and that, thin shafts of white light lancing the dark. I turn back to find Hartt,  he's frozen still near a Holly bush. He blends in so well, I can barely make him out, but I do see that he is waving his hand wildly.

"Get down!" He hisses.

I go prone, right there on the sidewalk. "They can't see us from there can they?"

"I don't think so."

I count six beams of light, sweeping in every direction. I hold my hand up near my face to see if the light illuminates it at all and I am relieved when it appears that no light reaches me. However, I grow nervous, sprawled out on the sidewalk, my instinct to seek cover propels me into an army crawl across the narrow street.

Halfway across, Hartt says, "Freeze!"

I stop and turn my head, one by one all six lights cease their haphazard sweeping motions and turn directly toward me.

"What are they doing?"

"I don't know. Don't move. Maybe they heard something." Hartt advises.

The urge to stand up and run is overpowering, as is the urge to urinate. All I see are the six points of light piercing the darkness. They remain motionless, as do I. Then one by one, they all go out and just as I sigh in relief, I am blinded by the brightest light I have ever seen. It lights up the night like a small Sun and is focused straight down the road to where I lay.