Death of Innocence (Surviving the Fall 4)

“False alarm. Just the snow falling.”

Mark lowered his rifle and nodded. “That’s good.”

“You think you can try to tweak the settings again? This is the… what, fifth false alarm? Between the trees shaking, the snow falling and the random animals coming in and out I’m amazed this thing isn’t going off all the time.”

Mark shrugged. “I can try, but if I turn down the detection much more then it probably won’t trigger on somebody walking by.”

“Ugh.” Dianne pinched the bridge of her no

se before pulling her hand back with a look of disgust. She realized that she was still covered in dust and dirt from being down in the passageway beneath the house and stood up quickly to step off of the carpet in the living room. “See what you can do and I’ll help you test it later. I don’t want it reduced too much, though. I hate all the false alarms but I’d rather have a few of those than miss out on something legitimate.”

Dianne went to the kitchen and looked out the window. The snow was still thick on the ground, having received an extra layer thanks to another storm that blew through a few days after the first. She and the kids had spent no small amount of time distracting themselves from the state of the world by playing in the snow and building snowmen for the first couple of days of the original storm. Once the second storm blew in, though, Dianne had slowly transitioned them back into work mode.

With the passageway beneath the house turned into a makeshift root cellar and all-purpose storage area, there was plenty of room in the basement for the aquaponics setup. All of the materials were in the basement and waiting to be assembled and she figured that would be a task for the next day or two. After spending a couple of days organizing and packing the cellar, though, she thought that she and the kids would enjoy taking some time off. If you can call shoveling the driveway ‘time off.’ Though I’m sure they’ll be doing more snowball throwing than actual shoveling.

At some point she knew that they would need to go out and check on the neighbors again so she wanted to have a bit of the driveway in front of the house cleared out. It’d be nice to try and drag that burned-out piece of garbage out of the way, too.

Dianne sighed and turned back to watch her oldest staring out the window while Jacob and Josie tapped away at the tablet. Mark had changed significantly since that day at the grocery store. He was still only thirteen but he seemed so much older as he stood near the door and watched out back, still holding his rifle.

“Hey kiddos, I’m going to get a shower. Mark, you keep a close lookout, okay?”

Mark turned to look at his mother and nodded. “Will do.”

Dianne smiled, gave Mark a thumbs up and headed towards the front door. She pulled off her sneakers and threw them in a pile of shoes before heading upstairs. As she waited for the hot water to arrive, she looked herself over in the mirror. The bags under her eyes were deepening, her hair was frizzled and her skin looked—to her own critical eye, at least—like it was sagging. She turned away and got into the shower, washing out the day’s dirt and grime from her hair and skin, trying to empty her mind and avoid thinking about her husband being gone, her son growing up far too fast for his own good and any other depressing thoughts that happened to float past.

Chapter 4

Outside Nellis AFB

Rick drove along Interstate 15 for close to an hour before stopping near the outskirts of the Valley of Fire State Park. Not wanting the heavily armed vehicle to draw attention he pulled off to the side of the road and behind a stand of trees before stopping and getting out.

“Time to see what’s in here.” Rick hadn’t wanted to stop anywhere near Nellis or Las Vegas in general for fear of having people from the city show up and surprise him. Out in the middle of nowhere, though, he felt slightly safer.

Rick opened the rear hatch on the Humvee first and grinned at the dozen or so green cans filled with ammunition ranging from 9 millimeter to three boxes of fifty-caliber for the mounted machine gun. Four M4 carbines were stacked next to the ammo containers along with two pistols and a shotgun. All of the weapons had scratches and dents on them but appeared to be thoroughly cleaned and oiled. A satchel of filled magazines for the pistols and rifles sat behind them and Rick grabbed it, one of the rifles, a pistol, the shotgun and a can of ammunition for the shotgun and carried them all around to the front passenger seat.

He loaded and chambered a round into the P320 before sticking it into his waistband at the small of his back. The M4 was loaded next and Rick pulled off the rubber cover from the ACOG scope before pulling the rifle up to his shoulder. The balance felt natural to him and the scope was pristine so he re-covered it and laid the rifle across the seat. Finally Rick picked up the shotgun and studied it, trying to conjure the name of the curious-looking weapon in his hands.

“Oh. M26.” Rick snorted in amusement and hefted the weapon. Designed to be attached to the underside of a combat rifle, the M26 was also capable of being mated to a stock and operating independently. The M26 in his hands was in such a configuration complete with a basic sight and a thin strap attached to the base of the short barrel and the rear of the stock. “This thing’s gonna hurt like hell with a barrel like that.” Rick murmured to himself as he loaded a short magazine with shells and slapped it into the gun. He leaned the rifle up against the passenger seat and looped the strap around a post sticking out of the floor before nodding in satisfaction. “Good. I’m armed again. About time.”

After closing the rear hatch to the Humvee, Rick climbed into the backseat again, unlocked the hatch to the top and stood up. Bits of broken razor wire greeted him as he stood behind the M2, stuck into the thick padding that someone had installed around the edge of the hatch and gun to help stabilize it. He gingerly picked at the wire and razors, pulling a few of them out of the padding and tossing them as far from the vehicle as he could.

There was no ammunition loaded into the gun and Rick thought about figuring out how to load it himself but decided against it for the time being. Operating the gun would take some time to master and with the other weapons at his disposal he was hard-pressed to think of a situation that would require the fifty. Better to have it and not need it, though. The old saying flashed through Rick’s head and he groaned.

A few minutes later, after retrieving a can of ammo from the back of the Humvee, Rick slid the can into the retaining arm attached to the gun. He fiddled with the gun until he figured out how to open the receiver cover, then placed the first few rounds from the belt into the receiver, wiggled them around until they set in place and then closed the cover with a slap. While he had no intention of firing it without hearing protection unless it was an emergency he at least had the gun loaded and—hopefully—nearly ready to fire.

“Hm.” The thought of hearing protection reminded Rick that there was more to the supplies in the vehicle than just the guns and ammo. He slid back down into the back seat, locked the top hatch and began digging through the backpacks and bags between the rear seats and back storage section. Canteens and bottles full of water, MREs and packaged candies and snacks greeted him though there was no sign of any spare clothing, grooming supplies or anything else. His incarceration at Nellis had been accompanied by two cold showers and one washing of his clothes but he hadn’t felt clean since the last shower he took before leaving on his trip to Los Angeles.

“At least I’ve got food for a few days. That’s a start.” Rick put a candy bar, an MRE and a bottle of water in the front passenger seat before sealing the bags back up and hopping out. He went around the vehicle once again to do a last check before taking off and noticed that what he had previously thought were just bumps on the sides were actually fuel cans. Ten gallons of diesel were strapped to each side of the vehicle, but not knowing how far it could get on a tank or how large of a tank the Humvee had made it impossible to know how far he could go.

“Guess I’ll keep an eye on the gauge and play it by ear. I doubt I’ll get more than ten miles to the gallon, though.” Rick hopped back in the Humvee and shivered involuntarily as he closed the door. In the hour he had driven since leaving Las Vegas the temperature had dropped by several degrees and he was reminded that, despite the unusually warm weather he had experienced, it was still Autumn and things would be getting cold quite rapidly.

Clothing, fuel, water and food were Rick’s new priorities. He wasn’t sure how he would procure them, but knowing what he needed made it easier to focus on the task at hand. He started up the growling engine and threw the Humvee into reverse, taking it slow over the grass as he wound his way back onto the road. Headed east again, Rick pushed all other thoughts from his mind as he concentrated on thinking of ways to secure his four needed items. If he wanted to get back home, survival was the only thing that he could be concerned with for the time being.

Chapter 5

Three days after the Event

With Damocles uncontained and infecting systems across the globe, disastrous effects are felt everywhere. Communication between individuals—let alone countries—is nigh-on impossible. Branches of the military use older equipment without data connections to communicate via voice in an encrypted format, but every time they communicate over long distances they risk broadcasting to a system that is infected with Damocles. If this occurs, Damocles attempts to infiltrate their communication system and destroy it. While this is difficult for the weapon to do to older systems, newer systems that weren’t originally infected by the virus are prime targets.