HOMELAND: Falling Down (Part 1 of the HOMELAND Series) Read online

  “You heard the man!” Cole echoed.

  Amber ran to Cole and grabbed his arm.

  “You can’t leave.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Damn you.” She slapped him, then disappeared into the crowd of sick and wounded.

  The ride back to Campbell was cold and quiet. The hiss of dead air on the radio and the drone of tires on asphalt were the only sounds.

  Cole reached back to Crowe’s body and touched the dead man’s face. The flesh was still warm.

  Two days ago Cole and his men were enjoying hot wings and beer, glad to be back in the U.S.A, and thankful to be alive after seeing so much death. They didn’t realize as they celebrated that death had followed them home.

  Cole stared into the darkness beyond the headlights, wondering how so much could go so wrong so fast.

  3

  HANK

  Freeport, Tennessee

  7:45 PM

  It felt good to be home, even if only for a few hours. Hank kicked off his shoes and eased onto his favorite chair. Rest was a luxury these days for anyone tasked with preserving the peace. He sank into the well-worn cushions, suddenly realizing how tired he was.

  “How was work?” asked his wife, Betty, from the kitchen.

  “Tough. We’re stretched too thin. Everybody’s working doubles and triples. We had to post deputies at all the gas stations and grocery stores. You wouldn’t believe the lines. Reminds me of the oil crunch back in the seventies, but now it’s food, too. We arrested two people today for fighting over a loaf bread. A damn loaf of bread.” He sighed. “I’ll be glad when this blows over and life gets back to normal.”

  Hank found the T.V. remote and turned on the news. The riots were spreading. It wasn’t just the big cities anymore. It was happening in Knoxville now, a mere fifty miles west on Interstate Forty.

  “I’m just glad we have you to keep law and order,” Betty said.

  “These twenty hour days hurt more than they used to.” He yawned. “I’m gettin’ too old for the sheriff business.”

  “You’re not old. You’re just out of shape.”

  Hank laughed. He’d put on a few pounds, but was still in better shape than deputies half his age. “I’ll be sixty next year. That, my dear, officially makes me an old man.”

  “Papaw!” Hank’s granddaughter ran into the room and jumped in his lap.

  Hank quickly turned off the television. Maggie didn’t need to see what it had to offer.

  “Hi, sweetheart. How was your day?”

  “Good. We went to church then we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. It was really good, but we missed you.”

  He hugged her and kissed her forehead. “I missed you too, Maggie.” He rubbed his chin, pretending to be confused. “Somebody has a birthday next week. I think she’s gonna be eleven, but I just can’t remember who.”

  “Oh, Papaw. You know it’s me.”

  He laughed. “You got me.”

  The girl had her father’s eyes. His son’s eyes. He wondered how much she remembered about him, gone these five years.

  Betty called from the kitchen, “Supper’s ready.”

  Maggie hopped down. “You stay there. I’ll get yours, Papaw.”

  His cell phone rang. Hank fished it from his pocket with a weary sigh.

  What now?

  He answered. “Yeah.”

  “I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone.

  Betty asked from the kitchen, “What happened?”

  “Somebody just robbed the CVS. It’s bad.”

  Betty came into the living room. “Dear Lord.”

  He got up with a grunt. “Looks like supper will have to wait.”

  “Hank, you can’t keep pushing yourself like this.”

  “I’ll rest when this blows over. Good thing I’m not an old man.”

  Betty went to the kitchen and returned with a paper sack full of hot food. “Take this. Even the sheriff needs to eat.”

  He kissed her cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

  “Be careful, Hank.”

  “Always.” He added, “I’ll be back in time to take you to dialysis in the morning.” He picked Maggie up and hugged her. “Then you and I will go to breakfast before I take you to school. How’s that sound?”

  “Yay!” She hugged his neck. “I love you, Papaw.”

  “I love you too.”

  Hank arrived at the pharmacy minutes later.

  A squat, grizzled deputy with a round belly was already there directing four younger officers.

  It was Arvine Burchette, Hank’s chief deputy. He was a seventy-year-old retired marine with two combat tours in Vietnam under his belt. He was also quick to remind anyone that there was no such thing as an ex-marine. Everybody called him Gunny.

  Gunny met his sheriff at the door. “It’s bad, Hank.” He was the only one on the force with the stones to call him Hank. “I checked the security footage. A male and female, came in just before closing time an’ started shootin’ the place up.”

  The scene was the bloodiest Hank had seen in all his years on the force. Two customers, a middle-aged man and an old woman, lay dead in the aisles. Another victim was sprawled behind the cash register. She was young and pretty, her beauty marred by a bullet hole above her left eye. The nametag on her smock read, ‘April.’

  Hank said to Gunny, “She was Jeff and Sharron Baxter’s girl.”

  “Yeah. Nineteen years old. Worked here to save money for college.”

  “Do they know?”

  “Not yet. I’ll tell ‘em. They live down the road from me.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. They’re my friends. It should come from me.”

  “Okay.” Hank walked to the pharmacy counter. The pharmacist lay on the tile floor amid scattered pills and prescription bottles. Four bullet wounds pierced his chest and face.

  “What did they take?” Hank asked.

  “Oxys and Hydros mostly. Cleaned out the register too.”

  “They didn’t have to shoot him. They didn’t have to hurt anybody. He would’ve given them anything they wanted. Bill was a good man. Never met a stranger. Loved his grandkids. He ran the food drive at our church every Thanksgiving and took food and blankets to shut-ins every Christmas morning.” He sighed, finding it odd what random thoughts run through a person’s mind in a moment like this.

  “Hank.” Gunny’s tone carried the promise of more bad news.

  “What?”

  “One of the suspects. The female. It was Chloe.”

  “Oh, God.” Chloe had a brief and rocky relationship with Hank’s youngest son, Johnny twelve years before. She was Maggie’s mother. “I thought she was still in rehab.”

  Gunny put a hand on Hank’s shoulder. “You go on home. We got this. I already put an A.P.B. out. We’ll catch ‘em.”

  “I have to tell Bill’s wife what happened. Then maybe I’ll go home.”

  The drive to Bill’s house felt like an eternity. His wife was devastated. Hank stayed with her until the couple’s daughter made it there. Thankfully, she lived only a few miles away.

  He pointed his police cruiser toward home, but turned around when the radio came alive.

  “Officer down! Officer down!” The voice blared through Hank’s squad car radio as he sped in the darkness toward the town’s Walmart. “There’s too damn many of ‘em!”

  Hank keyed his handset. “Backup is en route! Pull back! Seal off the store!”

  “We’ll try!” the deputy responded.

  Moments later, Hank’s car squealed into the parking lot with three more behind it. They slid to a halt in front of the store. Fleeing shoppers scattered as deputies returned fire into the front entrance and shepherded the customers out of harm’s way. Muzzle flashes and police strobes gleamed like lightning across the building’s facade.

  Hank spotted Gunny behind a nearby cruiser
. He popped the trunk, grabbed his AR-15 and tactical gear, and rushed to the veteran’s side as more civilians scurried by. “What’s the situation?”

  “They came in off the interstate in six pickup trucks. Shot the deputy on duty.” Gunny said as he reloaded.

  “What are they after?”

  “Food and drugs. Smash and grab on a soft target. The trucks bugged out when I got here. I emptied my pistol on ‘em as they passed me. I think I hit one of the drivers. They left these guys stranded inside. Five of ‘em best I can tell.”

  “Who’s down?”

  “Tommy. He was guarding the store. He radioed us before they got him.”

  “How bad is he hit?”

  Gunny pointed to a prone uniformed figure with a jacket laid over his face. “They got him in the head.”

  “Anybody else hit?”

  “Multiple civilians. The place was packed with customers when they hit.”

  A woman dashed from the store, her face a picture of terror.

  “Over here!” An officer waved her behind a police car.

  She ran for cover, but was cut down by a burst of bullets from inside the building.

  An officer in full tactical gear crouched by Hank and Gunny. “Assault team’s ready.”

  Gunny said, “I know that’s supposed to be your call, Hank, but there wasn’t time.”

  “You did good, Gunny.” Hank strapped on his body armor and slung his tactical bag across his shoulder. “Let’s go.” He put a hand on Gunny’s shoulder. “You stay here.”

  The sheriff followed his team into the store. Gunfire erupted anew the instant they crossed the threshold.

  Hank darted for cover but lost his footing and fell in something wet. He scrambled behind a cash register as muzzles barked and shell casings jingled on the tile floor.

  He was covered in whatever it was he’d slipped in. It was sticky and slick as dish soap. He looked down at his hands. They dripped with blood.

  He checked himself. He wasn’t hit. Hank followed the red trail around the register to an old man lying in a pool of smeared gore a few feet away. Two more civilians lay wounded in the aisle beyond. One of them was still moving.

  Two bandits made a break for the door and were eliminated in short order. Three more retreated behind the pharmacy counter.

  “Mask up!” the team leader yelled. Hank grabbed the gas mask from his tactical bag as the assault squad took cover and donned their masks as well.

  “Gas out!” A tear gas grenade landed behind the counter.

  Two robbers came out choking and shooting. A hail of return fire killed them instantly.

  The shooting stopped. One bandit remained behind the counter.

  Hank heard the hiss of the grenade, the huffing of his own breath in the mask, the pounding of his heart throbbing in his ears.

  Then the coughing started, violent, wheezing, gagging.

  “I give up!” a voice gasped from behind the counter. Two hands appeared.

  “Come out! Keep your hands up!” the team leader ordered.

  A young man, no more than seventeen, in jeans and a dirty t-shirt stumbled into view and was immediately tackled and bound by two of Hank’s men.

  Hank said to the team leader, “Clear and secure the building so the medics can evacuate the wounded.”

  “Yes, Sheriff.”

  He walked to where the two bandits lay, watching his step on the blood-slicked tile. This was the second time in one night innocent blood was shed in his county.

  He found Gunny nursing a leg wound.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Just a scratch. I’m good.”

  “I told you to stay outside.”

  “A marine always marches to the sound of the guns.”

  “I need you, Gunny. I’ll be damned if you go down because of your ‘gung ho’ shit.”

  “I’ll try to behave.”

  “You better. I’m taking the surviving suspect in myself. Get a doc to look at that leg.”

  Hank shoved the young man into the back of his vehicle and tossed the bloodstained body armor and tactical bag into the trunk. He found a dirty towel and tried to wipe the tacky blood from his skin and clothes, but it was no good. He laid the dingy cloth across the driver’s seat and got in.

  The prisoner didn’t say a word as Hank drove him to the jail. He remained silent as Hank cuffed him to a chair and began the interrogation.

  “Who are you?”

  The prisoner stared at Hank, silent as a mute.

  “I know you’re not local. Where did you come from?”

  More silence.

  He picked up a wallet from the table between them and pulled out a driver’s license.

  “Brandon, right? Your I.D. says Knoxville. What are you doing here?”

  More staring.

  “You killed five people tonight. One of them was my deputy.”

  The prisoner’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “They had families. They didn’t do anything to you. You murdered them!” Hank shoved the table aside and grabbed the criminal’s collar, their faces now inches apart. “You killed them just so you and your buddies could get high on goddamn pain pills!”

  “I was just supposed to grab the meds! That’s all! I didn’t shoot nobody!”

  Hank shoved the prisoner’s chair back against a cinderblock wall. “I’ll see you fry for this.”

  “I told you, man. I didn’t shoot nobody!”

  Hank resumed his composure. “I don’t give a shit. The D.A. won’t give a shit either, but he might if you tell us where your buddies in the trucks are.”

  “They’re not my buddies.”

  “Tell it to the judge.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. They have my parents.” He sobbed. “We tried to get away, but they caught us.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know who they are. They just took us. They have my mom and dad. My dad’s a doctor. They made him write a list of meds they wanted. They kept my parents at the hotel and I was supposed to get the stuff on the list. They promised to let us go if I came back with the stuff on the list.”

  “The people that have your parents are in a hotel?”

  “Yeah. They took it over. It’s outside Knoxville.”

  “What kind of medicines are on the list?”

  “Antibiotics, pain meds, heart pills. You name it.” The teenager nodded to his jacket. “Look for yourself. The list is in my pocket.”

  Hank carefully reached in and pulled a crumpled paper from the youth’s jacket pocket. On it was a list of medicines, most of which he couldn’t pronounce.

  The boy said, “We were all scared after the President got killed and the Capitol burned. Everything was so quiet. Then the banks shut down. Everything changed. The Food Stamp riots. The Looting. The killing. It was all over the news. My parents told me not to leave the house, but I sneaked out to the convenience store down the street for some chips and soda. I’d eaten all we had and didn’t know how long the stores would stay open. It was weird. People were everywhere. Yelling and fighting. I hid in the shadows. They were robbing anybody they saw, especially anybody dumb enough to go out alone. They were like animals. It was like another country.”

  His eyes glazed as his vision turned inward, reliving the events he described. “When I got close to the store, a car pulled up. Some guys got out and threw a chunk of concrete through the window. They went in. I hid in some bushes when the gunshots started. They lit the inside of the store up like a strobe light. The guys came out with their arms full of stuff and sped off. Then more people came. On foot, in cars. More and more of them. They just walked in and took stuff. They picked the place clean, then they turned on each other. I saw a woman shot in the street over a can of beans and left there to die. I just laid there in the bushes. Watching. Shivering. It was so cold.”

  The boy took a deep breath before speaking again. “That’s when I noticed the fires. Must have been a hundred of the
m. I could see the glow for miles in every direction. I ran home after that.”

  Hank asked, “What about the police?”

  “The cops tried to stop it at first, but then gave up and went home. They got families of their own to worry about.”

  “How did you end up in my town?”

  “Somebody broke into our neighbors’ house. We heard screams. Then shots. No more screams after that. We grabbed food and clothes and got in the car. Mom and Dad have a cabin in Gatlinburg. We were trying to get there, but the road was blocked outside of town. They pretended to be cops. Dad didn’t fall for it. He hit the gas. They started shooting. We went into a ditch. Dad broke his leg.”

  The boy’s lip began to quiver. “They pulled us out of the car and took everything we had. They were about to shoot us when one of them found Dad’s hospital I.D. card in his wallet. It saved our lives.”

  “Why?”

  “Dad is a doctor. They thought it might be good to have one around. Mom and I were the leverage they needed to keep him in line.”

  “How did you end up in my town?”

  “The list. We came east from the base, hitting every pharmacy and grocery store within a mile of the interstate. Your town was the last stop.”

  “You said the others are in hotel west of here. How many of them are there?”

  “Twenty. Thirty. Maybe more.”

  “Can you show me where it is on a map?”

  “Why? What are you gonna do? Arrest ‘em all? You really don’t get it, do you? It’s gone, man. It’s all gone.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “Knoxville. Everything. It’s survival of the fittest now. There ain’t no law no more. Hell, one of the guys you just shot at the Walmart was a cop. This is the apocalypse, man. The smart people are collecting all the stuff they can. Guns, drugs, gas, food.” He looked at the badge on Hank’s chest. “That thing don’t mean shit no more. They are the law now. You and your town are gone too. You just don’t know it yet.”

  Hank gave the room’s only door a knock and said to the deputy on duty, “Put him in a cell.”

  “Yes, Sheriff.” The deputy entered and dragged Brandon out of the room.

  Hank walked across the street to the courthouse. His office occupied the top floor of the old brick building. Three stories high, it was built in the nineteen-thirties. Hank wondered how the old folks could afford to build such a thing the middle of the Great Depression. Four generations later, the county couldn’t even afford to put new windows in it.