As his body contacted the cold cement sidewalk, Jared saw the cause of John’s sudden change from vertical to horizontal. It was a lone figure, who appeared to be a man armed with a rifle. Jared, feeling his old friend, Fear, grab his guts, fought off the urge to call out to John, who remained silent up to this point. The armed man was about a hundred yards up the street and seemed to be searching the ground and bushes for something. Barry, who lay behind Jared, grabbed Jared’s foot and tugged. Jared kicked his foot loose and turned to glare back in the darkness.
Barry must have seen the approaching figure, because he relented on Jared’s foot and became as still as a fallen statue. As the man came within fifty yards of the three prostrate figures, they could see him frequently bring his rifle scope up and scan different areas through the rifle’s optics. The strange thing was the lone stranger wasn’t scanning the road ahead or the rooftops, as Jared would have expected. He was checking in bushes and mostly down on the ground ahead of himself.
The three men remained motionless on the sidewalk, no one moving a muscle as the stranger closed in on their position. The approaching stranger never had the slightest inclination he wasn’t alone until he was ten yards from the group and John got to a knee, his night-vision goggles flipped in the up position, and his rifle leveled in the business position.
“Take it easy, friend,” John soothed in a voice that was barely above a whisper.
The stranger stopped dead in his tracks. He didn’t move a muscle; it was as though he’d been frozen in place.
“We ain’t here to hurt you, my man,” John continued. “Just don’t point that damn rifle at me and we’ll get along just fine. Why don’t you let it hang from that sling you got there, and we can talk.”
Jared rose to a knee, his rifle pointed at the stranger, who actually looked more like a teen. The teen stared at Jared and his friends for a few very long seconds before letting the rifle slip from his hands, where it hung loosely from a makeshift sling, pointing toward the ground. Jared automatically went to low ready with his rifle as John did the same.
“You alone, son?” John inquired.
The teen blinked twice, then bobbed his head in the affirmative, his lips pursed tightly together. “I ain’t taking nothing from anyone out here. I’m just popping some rats so I can eat,” the teen rasped.
“No one’s sweating you,” John said. “Just a lot of shit has happened, and people aren’t as nice as they used to be, so we have to be careful.”
The teen nodded, and for the first time Jared noticed he had a bag or satchel hanging from his shoulders. Jared could only assume it was his rat bag. The thought sickened him, but he also wondered how bad it had to be where some millennial was out in the middle of the night foraging for rats to eat with what appeared to be a .22-caliber rifle. The teen caught Jared staring at the bag.
“Got three so far. Usually I kill squirrels, but I didn’t get any today, and I have to eat, so rats are the only other thing left in the city I can kill with this .22,” the kid stated dejectedly as he looked down at the little rifle.
Jared made eye contact with him and smiled grimly. “Where is everyone?”
The teen glanced around, then shook his head. “They’re here—some of them at least.” The teen looked up the street nervously. “We shouldn’t be standing out here too long. You guys aren’t from around here, are you?”
“Not anymore,” Barry said, inserting himself into the conversation and trying to forget how frightened he’d been a few seconds before.
“I have a safe place we can go if you guys have some normal food. You can stay the night. We can trade,” the teen suggested in a hesitant voice as he stared at the ground, fidgeting with his rifle sling.
The trio looked at each other for a moment; then John spoke up. “We do have a little food, and I am willing to trade a tiny bit for some information but, if you try anything stupid, people are going to get hurt.”
The teen looked confused. “People?”
“Yeah, if you try to lead us into some sort of ambush or anything hinky, your people are going to pay with loss of life, if you know what I mean,” John elucidated with a raised brow.
The teen shook his head adamantly. “No, I have no people. My parents never came home after the power went out. I’m a minor, man. I don’t do those things to people.” The teen looked genuinely troubled that John would think he was capable of foul play.
“You’re alone out here, no parents, no friends, no nobody?” John pushed.
“Just me,” the teen reiterated.
“Let’s go,” John urged. “Remember what I said though. There are three of us, and we aren’t carrying .22 rifles.”
Chapter 9
The teen led the men down several streets, through some yards and into a more industrial neighborhood before cutting to the rear of a building and skirting along the back side of three more businesses along the sound wall that separated Highway 680 from the neighborhood. Coming to the fourth business, the teen stopped and grabbed a board that was covered in dirt and hid a small depression in the earth directly under the fence that encircled the business.
All three men tossed their packs over the fence before crawling one at a time through the small depression and under the fence. After they were all through to the inside, the teen replaced the board and reapplied dirt, effectively camouflaging the depression from unsuspecting eyes of the outside world. Without a word, he turned and marched across the twenty-yard distance to the back
