Hannah and Monica had heard the gunfire too, and Hannah was keeping watch with the 20-gauge, making me very proud that she’d found it and was prepared. Anthem was more than a little nervous too. Ciera pulled me aside once we got everything and everyone inside. “You can’t do what you did back there.”
“What do you mean?” I was pretty sure I knew what she was talking about though.
“You froze up when those trucks went by. I couldn’t tell if you were nervous and scared, or wanted to go help them, or what. But we don’t have that luxury anymore. Two weeks ago, I’d have been able to get on the radio and have a crapload of help there in minutes. They’d have been outnumbered and outgunned, and we could have proned them all out and figured out who was the good guys and who was the bad guys.”
I tried to answer, but she was on a roll.
“We don’t have any backup out here except us. No way to call anyone else to help us. No way to detain them, or make them do what we say. We don’t know why the guys in the SUV were running. Did the guys in the truck attack them? Or did they steal something from the guys in the truck? Maybe they kidnapped someone. Don’t know, and we can’t care anymore.” She tapped the badge I still had on my belt. “That doesn’t mean anything anymore. We can use it to bluff people maybe for a few more weeks, but probably not much after that. Eventually, all we’re going to have left is looking tough.”
I held my hand up. “I know. I know. And I get it. I wanted to help, yeah. And I was trying to figure out how to decide which group to help. Objectively, yeah, I know we can’t help everyone. New world, and all that. But emotionally, it’s still hard to wrap my mind around, you know?”
She nodded, a sad slight smile crossing her face. “I know. I’m the same way. I think it’s a little easier for me though because cops already have that emotional disconnect in place, especially if we’ve been on the job for any length of time. It’s a survival skill you have to develop early on if you’re going to do this work very long.” She started into the building, then turned back. “And I hope I didn’t come off as an asshole just now. I’m not trying to take charge or anything. I was an FTO for a while though, and some of that just comes naturally.”
I offered a fist-bump that she returned after a second. “We’re good, kiddo. I didn’t take it personally, and even if I did, everyone’s got some adjustments to make. Whole new world, remember?”
Inside, Karen had everyone storing the food and clothes in the crates we’d picked up. It was an efficient little operation so I just stayed out of the way. Renee, the youngest of the bunch, took the canned food and Jada handled dry goods. Meriah and Samantha sorted clothes.
“You always were pretty good at organizing people. Maybe you should be in charge instead of me?”
She smiled. “I thought you didn’t want to be in charge.”
“I don’t. But that probably won’t stop y’all from putting me there.” I couldn’t stop myself from winking at her. She beamed, almost making me regret it. We’re definitely going to have to sit down and talk things out. We’d never addressed her cheating in any discussion, either before or after the divorce, at least not in any constructive sense. I confronted her about it, she admitted to it, refused to apologize for it, so I divorced her. But we never tried to talk about it. Maybe when we’re traveling.
After we had things sorted, we sent the kids back over to Monica’s place then sat down to see where things stood. Hannah and Monica had planned out a route for us based on what I’d reported about my trip, and they had a list of who and what would ride in each vehicle. Hannah said they thought we’d need at least a large van to get everyone down there, if not another truck in addition to the van. “Plus a horse trailer, if we can find one. Otherwise, Mom will have to ride him back, and that’ll screw everything up.”
“We also came up with a list of other stuff we might want to pick up. Maybe not right now, but definitely watch for it.” Monica passed the sheet around. They’d put some thought into it, and I was almost embarrassed at not thinking of some of the items myself. Board games, cooking utensils, toilet paper, candles, pads and tampons in different sizes and strengths—all things that would eventually come in handy or necessary. Guns and ammo wrapped up the list. “You brought some, and Ciera’s got some too. But it may not be enough, and we didn’t know exactly what we’d need, so we just left it like that.”
We all looked to Ciera, who gave an obvious flinch. “What? Why me?”
I grinned. “Knowledge, skills, and abilities, right? You’re the most knowledgeable about this kind of stuff, I think. I know which end the bullets come out, but you’re probably smarter about this as a whole. Take some time to think about what we might need, and we’ll go from there.”
It was almost time for dinner, so we tabled everything for the night and declared a movie night. The kids all chose a favorite adult—it was a little disconcerting to see how quickly Paige laid a claim to me, though she had to argue with Minion about the idea—and we settled in for some quality Disney time.
The next day, Hannah, Ciera, and I went out to find our horse trailer and another vehicle for the trip. Ciera had a list of guns to watch for, too. She’d put a lot of thought into it, even planning on finding .22 rifles for basic marksmanship training. By noon, we’d found the truck, taking it from a Chevy dealership south of town. The trailer was a lot harder to find because we didn’t know the area well enough to know where the horse farms were. When we called Karen to let her know, she told us to sit tight for a bit, so we hung out at the Wawa for twenty minutes until she called us back with a couple of addresses. “I’m not sure either of these will have the trailers, or what you’re going to find when you get there. But it’s a start, and I’ll keep looking.”
“Looking where?”
“Would you believe Facebook Marketplace? I figured it couldn’t hurt to skim the listings and see what turned up.”
It made a lot of sense, actually. The first four places were dry holes, although the folks at the third farm were still alive. They just wanted to trade something for the trailer, and we didn’t have anything we wanted to part with. The next place had a trailer and no living owners, but it was a gooseneck hitch, and neither of our trucks were set up that way. The next farm, we hit paydirt: a two-horse trailer with a storage compartment forward. Karen was happy when we got back.
We’d taken the time to search the farmhouses for guns and ammunition as well, and had scored the small-caliber guns Ciera wanted. “I think for the rest we’re going to have to either hit a sporting goods store or the sheriff’s office, or both,” she’d said on the way back. Once we dropped the trailer off at the apartment, we went back out to do just that. We’d seen a couple of police cruisers crashed out during our previous excursions but hadn’t bothered to strip them at the time because we weren’t thinking that far ahead. Revisiting those cars got us a shotgun, two Glock 17s, and two more rifles, plus a nice load of ammo for everything.
I asked Ciera if it was worth it to go back to the Sheriff’s Office or the PD for more.
“Kinda yeah, kinda no. I mean, yeah, we’ve got a nice armory at this point, where we’ve got enough rifles and pistols for all of the adults. More ammo is always good, though, and it wouldn’t hurt to have some extra guns around, to trade, or arm up any strays we pick up along the way.” She shrugged, then winked at me. “Your call.”
Hannah snickered.
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, let’s head back over to the SO and see what we can find there. What’s one more felony today, right?”
The lobby doors were still unlocked, which I assumed was a good thing. But as soon as we got inside, Ciera drew her weapon, dropped to a crouch, and motioned us to do the same. Hannah squatted beside her, facing in. I got down as quickly as my knees would let me, but faced outward, towards the unknown. Face out, towards the threat. Some of my Army training was coming back to me.
“You guys smell that? Someone’s been shooting in here, and recently. There’s a body over there that wasn’t here the other day, too. Wait here a second.”

I took a cautious deep whiff and just caught the scent under the smell of death, as Ciera headed behind a counter. When she got back entirely too quickly, I asked, “You still want to go in here? Can we afford to care?” bringing up our conversation from yesterday.
She cursed quietly. “Yes, and sort-of. There’s hardware in here we could use. That deputy wasn’t here the last time I was. For that matter, there wasn’t anyone alive in here the other day, so I don’t know why anyone would be shooting. Unless it’s zombies. And zombies wouldn’t shoot cops.”
Hannah scoffed and shook her head. “Be kinda late for the zombies to start. This has been going on for over a week now.”
“Okay. Crap. Okay. Adam, look here. We go in a line. Me, then Hannah, then Adam. Hannah, you keep your off hand on my left shoulder, and watch right. Adam, your off hand on Hannah’s left shoulder, and you watch our backs. I’m looking left and ahead. I’ll call out everything I see, and Hannah passes it on quietly. ‘Door left. Body right.’ That kind of thing. Walk quietly, rolling heel-to-toe on the outside of your feet. If we go through a door into a room, we peel off the same way we’re walking. I go left, Hannah goes right, and Adam moves opposite the door, watching the doorway and the hall.” She took a deep breath and looked at each of us for a second. “That’s eight hours of tactical training in thirty seconds. You guys got it?”
I nodded. The big difference for me was doing this with a handgun and two people, instead of M-4 carbines and a full squad of soldiers. We had hand grenades back then, too.
We crept down the hallway on our left, rolling our feet like she’d said. At least I was. I was sure my pounding heart was going to give us away.
“Open door left,” Ciera whispered. Hannah repeated it, and I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze to let her know I’d heard, then stole a glance behind us. Ciera had us stack up behind her, then we peeled around the doorway into an empty conference room.
We reformed at the door, then continued down the hallway. We passed two other doors but didn’t open them. Forty silent steps later, we came to a set of stairs. “One more quick lesson,” she whispered. “I’ll be looking up for threats. Hannah, you look at where we’re going. Adam watches behind and below. Okay?”
Hannah’s nod was jerky and nervous-looking at first, then more confident.
I’d like to tell you how carefully and confidently we slipped up the stairs like a well-oiled machine. But that would involve me leaving out how I tripped on the second step, landing hard enough on my left knee to have me seeing stars. I’m still not sure how I kept from screaming. I stood, painfully, after a moment, flexed my knee twice, then nodded. Ibuprofen later. Lots of it.
Right as we made it to the second floor, a burst of gunfire exploded, too many shots to count. We couldn’t tell where it was or how many people were shooting. Were they above us? Below us? How many people were shooting? Who were the good guys? I thought of Desilva and knew in the back of my mind that we couldn’t depend on the guys with badges being the good guys. For that matter, the good guys had no way of knowing we were good guys.
I was beginning to think this whole excursion wasn’t such a great idea. I caught Ciera’s eye, then jerked my head toward the stairs. “We need to clear out. Too many unknowns.”
She stared at me, eyes narrowing, then looked down the second-floor hallway. Then upstairs, then downstairs, then back at me. She finally nodded, but it was clear she didn’t like the idea. “You lead.”
I nodded, then scooted to the stairs and started back the way we’d come, my pistol pointed down the stairs. Five shots boomed from above us as we turned the corner on the landing. I froze for a second, trying to listen for movement. Heard nothing. Continued down the stairs, my heart racing, my mind screaming at me to hurry up. I paused at the bottom of the stairs to listen for movement again, half-expecting to turn the corner and run face-first into someone. All I heard was incredibly unnerving silence.
We’d come in from the lobby to our left, but there was a fire exit just to our right. That made more sense to me, so that’s where I took us. Five minutes later we were back at the truck, panting and the nervous energy we’d just expended.
“Get in the truck, guys. We’re not in the clear yet,” Ciera reminded us. She kept her pistol out until we pulled back into the parking lot at the apartment, where we sat quietly for a couple of minutes. “Okay, that maybe wasn’t my best moment.”
Hannah leaned against her, then kissed her cheek. “Nobody’s perfect, love.”
Ciera shook her head and stared out the window.
“Hey. We all came home, and nobody has any extra holes. That’s a win in my book.”
“His name was Gibson,” she said after a moment. “The guy on the ground back there. I worked with him a couple of times on the fugitive task force. Tommy Gibson. We called him Tom-Tom because of the way he’d hit the door with the battering ram. Always twice, like he was beating a drum.”
I had no clue what to say to her.
She told us later he’d been shot twice in the head, and that she wanted to bail out right then, because anyone who’d shoot a cop in the head wasn’t someone she should try to confront with two untrained civilians. But she worried that there were other deputies in the building who needed help, and felt a duty to try to help them, even if she wasn’t a Bucks County deputy. “Thin blue line and the blue brotherhood, and all that crap, you know?”
They’d drilled the same basic concept into our heads in Basic: never leave a soldier behind, which was a nice theory. I told her though in this new world, the reality was she had more of a responsibility to us than to anyone else in that building, or anyone who wore a badge. She didn’t like that idea at first, but told me that evening she understood what I was saying. “It’s the first time I’ve had to deal with that idea, I guess. Not really a fan.”
Copyright © 2019 Bob Mueller
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