Chapter 12
As the sun dipped out of view and the pinpoint lights of stars began to fill the sky, Deb shivered. It wasn’t especially cold, but her current predicament filled her with a pricking dread that felt colder and darker than the space between galaxies.
She held Jimmy close as he fussed, trying to keep him calm. A crying baby was the last thing anyone around her needed to deal with right now. There were dozens of people surrounding her in the holding pen where prisoners of the government remnant were kept.
The camp was outdoors, and the pen was exposed to the open air.
It was a huge rectangle of chain-link fence with razor wire wrapped around the top.
The only door in or out of the cell was held shut by a thick chain and a massive lock.
While the space was large, there was very little room.
The remnant had been busy rounding up curfew violators.
And all of them were stuck together in a horrifying animal cage, pushing against one another, tripping over each other, and spreading to every corner of the fence.
Deb was lucky enough to find herself on the outskirts of the pen, bracing her back against the fencing as she looked out at the sea of humanity that she shared this living space with.
There were people of all ages, races, and genders spread throughout.
Some were instantly recognizable as members of the criminal biker group the Chain Gang, and Deb was thankful they were far from her.
But while there were some unsavory characters penned in there with her, there were also many normal men and women. There were even children who had been arrested, some alongside their parents, some alone and terrified.
The terror wasn’t exclusive to the children within the cell. There was a wave of dread and fear that seemed to spread out among the people who found themselves on the wrong side of the remnant and its declaration of martial law.
She had lost track of the man she had protected on the street outside the safehouse. He had been taken here with her and Jimmy, but he was somewhere in the moving mass of human life that spread out in front of Deb.
The soldiers had questioned her when they first had arrived.
They wanted to know everything about the supply cache.
That included who had put it together and how she had come to be there.
However, Deb stuck to a lie, stating that she had simply stumbled upon the place and had been as shocked as the soldiers when she realized what was going on within the former automotive repair shop.
They hadn’t believed her, of course, and assured her the questions weren’t over yet. That was when she had been ushered into this pen and seemingly forgotten about for the time being.
She worried about Sean, out there somewhere in all of this, wondering what happened to her and Jimmy. She was certain the soldiers had ransacked the safehouse, taking all of Sean’s carefully acquired supplies for themselves.
The idea of these people stealing from her husband was enough to make Deb’s teeth grind together. They had been so cruel to that man on the street, and following her arrest, she had seen and experienced several instances of abuse from these men and women who were supposed to serve their country.
She was glad her father had not been here to see this. He had always harbored a deep respect for the troops. He had even attempted to enlist once when the Vietnam War had broken out but was denied due to a medical issue.
Still, he had always instilled in his daughter that soldiers were the good guys, fighting for freedom and democracy along all corners of the planet.
But here she was seeing the ugly truth that would have broken her dear father’s view of the world.
These people were simply people. And while many of them were good, many of them were also bad.
The soldiers she had encountered on this day were violent, cruel, and drunk on their own power and perceived superiority. It was enough to turn Deb’s stomach.
Jimmy’s fussing had gone from whimpers to full-on crying, and Deb tried to bop him up and down, rocking him and speaking softly in an attempt to calm him down.
But nothing seemed to be working for the child.
It was almost as though he understood the situation they now found themselves in and couldn’t contain his fear and sadness.
It was how Deb felt inside. But she also knew it was exactly how many of her fellow prisoners were feeling, and the sound of a wailing baby was likely going to stir their anxieties even further. She didn’t want that.
Her heart broke for these people, and it horrified her to think that her inability to quiet her child might in some way take an already horrifying situation and make it worse for everyone around her.
“It’s okay, baby,” she said, kissing Jimmy on the forehead as he continued to cry.
Nothing she was doing was working. Deb felt helpless and frustrated at the moment.
It was the same feeling she had experienced since the moment the EMP went off.
It hadn’t even been an entire day yet, and she was already starting to forget what life had been like when the world still made sense.
Had the world ever truly made sense? That was a thought she had been mulling over for the last several hours while experiencing the inherent cruelty man enacted upon man.
She had been raised to look at life a certain way, with optimism and trust in the goodness of the human race.
But it was easy to be a good person, to care when everything was going right.
When the chips were down, people started to show their true colors.
In the past, when Vin or Sean would talk about the potential of an EMP apocalypse, Deb hadn’t worried too much about it.
Sure, it would be difficult to lose modern conveniences and adapt to a new standard of living.
However, she had been certain that humanity would band together in its hour of need, working together to lift one another up and create a new society that centered around cooperation and mutual respect.
She had been so wrong that it was almost laughable. Since the EMP had gone off, all she had seen was cruelty, malice, and cold indifference from her fellow human beings. It was a shattering and horrifying realization, but one that she was starting to come to terms with.
Her father had been wrong about people. There was no cooperation, no empathy, or desire to help one another.
When the world had fallen, the terrified populace had shown shocking and depressing malice toward one another.
Selfishness and self-preservation had won the day, and she had witnessed people literally stepping on one another to get ahead in this new world.
The only moment of kindness she had seen up to this point had come from herself when she had attempted to save that poor man from the soldiers just outside the safehouse. And look where that had gotten her.
Perhaps Sean had been right. Had she simply ignored the man’s cries for help, his frenzied and desperate plight, she wouldn’t be here right now. She’d be back at the safehouse with Sean, or the three of them would be making their way out of the city and back to the relative safety of her ranch.
The sound of Jimmy’s wailing was drawing stares of contempt from the prisoners around her.
She gave them apologetic looks, but they did not seem to be in a forgiving mood.
Deb was certain they were all scared, angry, and likely hungry, and the grating sound of a child screaming was irritating enough on a plane, let alone when your very rights were being stripped away.
Still, their reactions troubled her. No one looked sympathetic in the least. In fact, they all were starting to look increasingly hostile as she tried and failed to get the baby under control.
“Hey!” a voice called out from the other side of the gate, and Deb looked up to see a female soldier approaching, rifle in hand and a look of irritation on her face. “Shut that thing up!”
“Thing?” Deb questioned aloud, feeling a swell of protective motherly rage come over her.
“Do you have a problem with what I said, prisoner?” the soldier asked, almost daring Deb to try something, to give her a reason to exert her power.
There it was again, that maddening cruelty. Martial law gave these men and women in uniform near unlimited power to bring the city under control. Vin had always said that absolute power corrupted absolutely, but Deb had dismissed that as a cliché with no basis in reality.
But here she was now, once more being confronted with her naivety.
She wanted to admonish this soldier, make her see how unnecessarily cruel she was.
Another part of her also wanted to reach through the gating and punch her in the face.
Deb wasn’t proud of that side of her, but she found it getting stronger and stronger as the hours ticked by.
But then she looked down at the baby in her arms. Jimmy was still crying, still uncontrollable, and she worried that if she were to challenge this soldier, then something might happen to her baby. Jimmy was under her protection. He was helpless in this dangerous world and relied on her fully.
She couldn’t betray that unconditional trust. “No,” she replied, looking down. “No, we’re fine.”
“I thought so,” the woman said, with a smug smile of satisfaction on her face. “Now shut that thing up before I do it for you.”
Deb simply nodded and turned her back to the woman, trying and failing once again to calm her inconsolable son.
However, a new noise drew the attention of Deb and everyone around her.
There was yelling and commotion coming from outside the gate, and even the soldier who had been admonishing her turned her attention toward the source of the noise.
Two soldiers were dragging an elderly man through the camp toward the prison pen.
The stress of the situation seemed to be too much for the old man, and he crumpled in a heap between them.
The soldiers were screaming at the man, demanding he get up.
However, the man was unable to do so. He tried and failed several times, and now many more soldiers were starting to gather around, watching and screaming down at him.
Finally, a few of the soldiers tried to pick up the man and put him back on his feet, but his knees buckled under him once more, and he crumpled to the ground again. When that happened, there was some laughter from the soldiers, but mostly the screaming and demands began again.
When it became clear that the man wasn’t going to be able to stand under his own power, one of the soldiers had seemingly seen enough.
He walked behind the man as two of his comrades pulled him up onto his knees.
The soldier drew a side-arm weapon and fired a shot into the back of the old man’s skull.
Deb screamed in horror, as did many of her fellow prisoners.
The commotion the execution caused drowned out the sound of Jimmy’s screaming.
The soldiers instantly dashed toward the pen and started brandishing their weapons, crying out for order and threatening the prisoners should they not calm down.
Deb wanted to scream at them, to decry them and curse them with everything she had. However, no sound would come from her mouth. She looked at the old man’s body as blood pooled out from the wound in his head. She then looked down at Jimmy, who gripped her arms furiously as he cried.
This was a deadly serious situation, and Deb needed to do everything in her power to keep her baby safe.