This lockdown wasn’t so bad.
“Alright, you fucks!” Shannon shouted. “I sink this, and you’re both taking shots off my tits.”
All in one motion, Shannon spun around, downed the last of her beer, and tossed the ping-pong ball over her shoulder. She didn’t need to hear the splash to know that she’d sunk it. And they say you have to go to college to become a beer pong pro.
Ricardo laughed. “No fucking way.”
“Oh my God,” Lucy slurred. “We lost again?”
Ricardo shook his head. “Nuh uh, nuh uh. This isn’t fair. Leah’s not drinking. We’re handicapped here.”
She shrugged. “Don’t look at me. Shannon’s the one landing them all.”
He nodded to Lucy. “A deal’s a deal.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re good. Take an extra one for me though.”
Shannon had already gotten the whiskey flowing. “Fuck that. I said I wanted you both.” She poured some onto her breasts.
Greg waved a hand. “Alright, easy with that.”
“What’s wrong, Greggy? You want in on the action?”
He smiled. “Nah, just be careful. That’s the good stuff we’re pouring now.”
“If you say so.” She took a swig straight from the bottle and planted a shot glass into her cleave. “Come on, you two. Don’t pussy out now.”
Lucy went first. Like a deer walking out of the brush, she came in slow and timid, uptight with everyone watching. But then she bent low and made eye contact with Shannon, and the animal inside her burst out. Lucy buried her face into Shannon’s chest, swallowed the shot, and licked the extra whiskey right off her breasts.
The others roared in applause.
“Holy shit,” Lucy cringed. “I can’t believe I just did that.”
“Save some for your husband next time.” She blew him a kiss and poured the next shot.
Now this was Shannon in her element. After days locked up with nothing to do, she’d talked them into not stressing about social media or the outside world and only having a good time instead. It was uphill from there. Between the stash she’d brought and the booze Greg kept downstairs, it felt like the party would never end.
That’s what Shannon was best at, too. Partying her fucking ass off. Unlike all those losers out there, she loved to push her limits. Who cared about some stupid fucking job or degree or all that other bullshit? It was just the shit people did because they were afraid to go too far.
Not Shannon though. She was always the most fucked up, and always the first to do something stupid. Everyone else might’ve been too big of pussies to go near the edge, but she’d jump right off. It didn’t matter what came next. She’d rather die high than live into her fifties.
“How much blow you got left?” Ricardo asked after they did another round.
She went for her backpack. “I got you, boo.”
All in all, they weren’t the worst group to be stuck with. Lucy and Ricardo had been the first to fold. Shannon thought they wouldn’t be able to keep up, but the two must’ve been pretty fun back in their college days because they were right there with her when the beer was flowing and weed got rolled. It was nice. At the rate things were going, she might just earn herself a three-way. The house was big enough, and Ricardo was definitely hoping for one. She’d have to remember to jump him before this was over, with or without Lucy’s approval.
Greg had gotten over himself after the first few days too. It turned out that it was tough to stay mad at her when the fucking Army was telling them all what to do. People could still go out and get groceries, but the curfew started before five, no one could be outside without medical masks and rubber gloves, and military trucks drove by twice a day. Suddenly, Shannon crashing with them was no longer the biggest problem in the universe.
That still left Leah though. Sometimes it felt like the two were living it large again, especially when a song came on that they used to rage to, or Shannon took a hit from her bong with her besides. But then she’d always look over and see Leah chilling with a glass of club soda, and nothing else. Like a completely different person was sitting where her best friend used to be.
Leah had gone full sober. No booze. No drugs. Nothing. And yet, here Shannon was, blowing smoke right into her face, bringing her down. Oh sure, Leah kept insisting that she was “good”, but Shannon could see that hunger that she knew all too well, even if she was alone in that.
It sucked. Shannon kept telling herself that she’d take a night off. Play more stupid board games with Leah, and do it sober like her. But every fucking day when the sun went down, she’d start to get that itch like clockwork, and then she couldn’t help herself. The more this dragged on, the worse it was getting.
Enough thinking for one night. Shannon excused herself to the bathroom with a stumble. Once locked inside, she dug through her backpack for her real survival kit. The old spoon she kept on hand, the rubber hose, her lighter, a syringe, and of course, her meth. It pained her to see how little was left. She’d be out after tonight. No way around it. But it couldn’t be helped. She needed this to keep herself going.
Shannon lit the spoon and watched the crystals melt down. This was the one thing she’d made sure not to tell anyone else she’d brought. Shooting up was a bridge too far in their world, and she was certain that Leah wouldn’t want that around her either.
No, those were just excuses. Shannon hadn’t told them because she had to have it all to herself.
She plunged the syringe into her arm. Fuck it all. Life was nothing but one bullshit problem after another anyway. At least this gave her peace. At least it let her stop thinking for a while. And maybe, just maybe, one day she wouldn’t have to open her eyes after doing this. It could all just disappear for good. Who cared? It didn’t matter. None of it mattered…
Shannon closed her eyes and drifted into emptiness…
Sounds intruded. Knocks. Right on the door. She blinked through the high and groaned. “Just a second.”
More knocks came. With a sigh, she packed up her shit and went for the door.
But there was no one else there. It took her another second and another batch of knocks to realize that this was coming from the front of the house, and had nothing to do with her.
Greg went for the front door and opened.
There was a guy waiting outside. He was big and fat, with a white goatee and NRA cap. He shifted nervously in place, a bunch of fliers in hand.
“Hey, Henry,” Greg said. “Everything alright?”
“You hear about what’s happening Friday?”
Greg looked over his shoulder, and Shannon realized that everyone else had come to watch from the living room too. “Can’t say that I have.”
Henry handed over one of his fliers. “There’s gonna be a big protest downtown. We got a lot of people planning to show up about this lockdown.”
Greg frowned. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
He nodded. “Got no choice. The government’s lying about what’s happening. My cousin’s got a friend who works for the DOD, and he swears that this whole thing’s a scam. Hell, there was all sorts of proof on social media before they took it done.”
“Pretty sure that’s just server issues because IT’s gone remote.”
Henry shook his head. “No, it’s all part of their plan. Get us stuck indoors while they run around and arrest their enemies. Hell, we wouldn’t have been able to organize at all if someone hadn’t gotten on the ham and formed a meet.”
Greg stared at the flier. “I’m sorry, what is this again?”
“A nation-wide protest. We’re calling it the ‘March for Liberty or Death’.”
Shannon smirked. “I like half of that.”
Henry grimaced, then turned back to Greg. “Look, I know we haven’t always seen eye-to-eye when it comes to politics, but you two are honest folks, and I’m telling you, this is the real deal. We gotta stand up now, or there won’t be a country to stand up for.”
Greg said nothing for a second, then smiled meekly. “Thanks for the advice, Henry.”
“So you’ll be going then?”
His fake smile widened. “We might be a little late.”
“I can give you folks a ride…” but poor Henry was powerless to watch as the door slowly inched shut. Greg made his way back to the living room, with Shannon following behind.
“Sorry about that, everyone,” he said.
“Who was that?” Ricardo asked. “Your uncle?”
“Our neighbor,” Leah explained.
Greg sighed. “Henry’s a good guy, but he can be a little much sometimes.”
“You really going to his stupid walk then?” Shannon asked.
He tossed the flier away. “Kidding me? I ain’t about to get arrested. That’s your thing.”
Touché. “So what now?”
Greg raised his beer. “Now we have ourselves another drink.”
Shannon smiled and raised hers. For once, the two were on the same page.
* * *
“Stop worrying, I’ll just be a bit,” Leah said, digging through the closet to get her uniform and some gloves.
“I don’t see why you have to do this now,” Greg said. “At least wait until morning. You’re cutting this too close to curfew.”
I can’t sit here that long, she thought. “You heard what Eric said. There could be a fire.”
“You could be arrested, honey. You’re not an emergency worker.”
She shook her head. “Someone at work definitely left the stove on for the utility company to contact us. That was over a week ago. A week of gas running through the line. This is an emergency.” She sighed. “Look, if I get stopped, I’ll explain the situation. I’m sure they’ll understand.”
He frowned. “I’m just worried about you. That’s all. Please, let it go one more night.”
Leah rubbed the headache from her eyes. She wasn’t exactly lying about the urgency, but she didn’t want to hash out the real reason either. One more night like this was one too many. She had to get out.
“I’ll be fine,” she repeated.
With a toss of her uniform over her undershirt and a wrap of her burgundy scarf above, she grabbed her keys and went for the garage. She had to practically hold her nose as she passed the living room, where Shannon had already started lighting up for the day.
When Leah got into her car, it couldn’t have been soon enough.
Greg leaned against the door with those sad puppy eyes. It was clear he was waiting for her to do something else.
She scoffed. “What now?”
“You forgot a mask.”
Great. Just great. Figured that Leah would leave something behind. Well, she wasn’t about to crawl back up there and weather another round of Greg telling her to stay. She quickly pulled her scarf up, covering her face from nose to neck.
“There. Happy?” Any face covering would do.
Greg nodded in silence, and Leah used the chance to drive out.
Her car rolled down the street as the sun started its descent. It had only been a week since the lockdown began, and yet, it felt like decades had come and gone. The daily patrols and house checks by men in uniform were one thing, but it was the break from normal that was really doing it for her. How long did they expect people to sit around and wait without answers?
A humvee drove by, and she turned a corner. Maybe Leah was just getting cabin fever. She’d been working fifty hour weeks since she’d been promoted to assistant manager, and this might have been the first time she’d had more than a day off in over a year. To go from that stress to this stagnation was more than she could bear. Fresh air was a godsend right now.
If only it was just that. The truth was that Leah had to get out of there because the company was becoming too much. Greg was having a good time reliving his college days with Ricardo and Lucy. With nowhere to go and only a couple hours of remote work to do a day, the three had decided that there’d be no better time than now. They were all getting older after all, and it’d been too long. Why not take something positive from this crisis and kick back a few?
That left Leah as the old stick in the mud though. This might have been fun and games for them, but she’d failed out of college before her first year ended, and gone down a dark path soon after. Some people could handle partying in moderation, but she was not one of them. One beer was all that kept her from becoming that girl who’d once sucked off a guy behind a Denny’s dumpster for a hit of PCP. One fucking beer, and Leah knew that she’d be gone again. Three years of rehab and another two of therapy meant squat against that one fucking beer. Couldn’t Greg and his friends give her a break?
It isn’t them, Leah was forced to admit. This wasn’t the first time she’d been around drinking with them, and it wouldn’t be the last. That stress barely bothered her anymore.
Shannon was the problem. If it wasn’t for her, they’d still be doing rounds of Catan and binging whatever series came up next in the queue. But Shannon had a way of getting under people’s skins and making them act out their worst selves. She’d been the one to suggest that they have a college night, and she’d been the one to egg them all on ever since. Now, she was practically hot-boxing their living room whenever night hit.
It was awful. Leah had really, truly hoped that she’d rub off on Shannon, and not the other way around. With her living in their home, she’d have the chance to see how great things could be if she just detoxed for a while. Did she really want to keep stumbling from couch to couch looking for her next high? There was so much more of life to see, if only she was willing to open her mind a little.
But Shannon was who Shannon was. Just as stubborn as always. Just as willing to live the way she wanted, regardless of the consequences. She was the free spirit who wrote her own rules.
And it was that spirit that made Leah first fall in…
She turned on the radio and enjoyed some white noise for a while. This lockdown was making her crazy.
Another roadblock rose in front, only a few miles from the restaurant. Leah did what was all too familiar and slowed her drive into a stop as a soldier with a gas mask raised a hand and marched over. She prepped her scarf again and rolled down the window.
“Sorry, ma’am,” he said. “This road’s closed.”
Leah sighed. “I’m trying to get to Mae Anne. Please, I need to get through.”
“Go back the direction you came and take the listed detours.”
She looked over her shoulder, back up the hill and miles of open road. “But there is no other way.”
“Then you’ll have to return to your home.”
“Can’t you make an exception? This is an emergency.”
“No one is permitted beyond this point.” His tone was the kind that only happened when you had to say the same thing a thousand times in a row.
Leah’s eyes watered. There was no way she could double-back and go through downtown, not without running into the same conversation a dozen more times, and that assumed she’d get anywhere at all before curfew hit.
“I just…” Leah tried to say. “I can’t…”
The tears started to flow as Leah began venting. About how she needed to fix this oven issue. And how she knew that being an assistant manager at a restaurant wasn’t the same thing as a paramedic, or a soldier, or a firefighter, but she’d worked hard to get it and couldn’t afford to lose it. She told him that she couldn’t spend another second locked inside, and that she’d been doing everything they’d told her without question, but no one was giving them answers and it kept getting harder and harder and harder to pretend that this was all normal. She tried to explain that she needed this normal, more than anything else. She couldn’t spend another second locked inside. Not without doing something!
The guy shook his head when she was finished. “Look, ma’am. I wish I had something else to tell you, but once the Alphas get called, it’s out of our hands. We can’t even go down there.”
Leah blinked through more sobs. “I just don’t understand why nobody ever has any answers!”
He sighed. It was deep and heavy, as though he was just as sick of this as her. “Tell ya’ what. There’s an unmarked service road about a mile back. It should take you straight to where you want, though you’ll have to go slow. Nothing but dirt the whole way through.”
“I don’t know if I’d make it back before curfew.”
The soldier pulled out a piece of paper and started scribbling. “Show this to anyone who stops you.”
“What is that?”
“It is a ‘Curfew Extension for Extenuating Circumstances’. Given what you’ve told me, I have more than enough grounds to authorize it.”
She wiped her eyes through her scarf and studied the document. “Are you serious?”
He nodded. “Yes. Go take care of yourself during these trying times.”
Leah gleamed. “Oh my God, thank you!” Maybe there was hope yet. She would’ve jumped out and kissed this guy on the lips if his face wasn’t buried beneath a gas mask, and her own wasn’t wrapped in a scarf. This was the break she’d been looking for!
“Oh, and one more thing,” the soldier said before she’d rolled her window back up. “Whatever you do, stay away from downtown.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“There’s this big protest happening. A lot of people are planning to stay out past curfew. I can tell you right now that this won’t end well for anyone who’s stuck down there, with or without papers.”
That was right. Henry had told them about the march. Leah would have to remember to keep a low profile coming home.
“Thank you,” she said again. “I won’t go near.”
Whatever happened next was their problem, and not hers.
* * *
What a shitshow.
Wes took a drag from his cigarette and rounded the bend, veering past the growing crowd. He should’ve braved the checkpoints and stuck with ‘80 until after Reno. Now he was getting deeper into this crowd with an armored truck filled with contraband. Where the hell were all these people coming from? If this kept up and he was forced to stop, one of the feds would definitely catch the fake VIN that’d gotten him this far. God damn, getting off here was a bad idea.
One last job. That’s what Wes had told himself. Get from point A to point B with his cargo, then blitz it straight to Tijuana while the rest of the country burned. Nothing more than that.
Wes wiped the sweat from his brow, cigarette still in hand. He still couldn’t believe they’d really done it. If I’d just been one hour slower… He’d heard that they were planning to drop a bomb. Right into Boston before the Army lost complete control. Wes had thought it was all talk. He’d figured they just needed an excuse to fall back and rally against the riots. And when the client told him there wasn’t any time to wait, all he’d done was nod along and get rolling.
It wasn’t until Wes saw the mushroom cloud glowing behind that he knew America was done for.
Wes swerved by a group of guys dressed as Uncle Sams and swallowed another handful of uppers. How long had it been, fifty hours since he’d slept? Sixty? Couldn’t stop now. Not until he reached Cali and dropped these people off.
He glanced into the rear-view mirror and studied the door to the back. Those fuckers better pay up. Breaking quarantine for his client was shaping up to be more than a Class A felony at this rate.
Luckily, him and his people had quieted down. One of them must’ve caught news of the nuke because they’d started screaming and crying a couple hours into the trip. It was getting to be so much that Wes almost pulled over and left them on their own, but then the shouting stopped, and the crying went away.
And they’d been dead quiet ever since.
“Motherfucker.” Wes inhaled the last of his cigarette and buried the ash into the dashboard. Downtown was overrun with people, practically filling the street. He glanced behind. More were still coming. His drive slowed into a crawl as a mob closed in.
“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” one of the signs read. “Death to Fascists!” another said.
If only these idiots knew. Sure, this armored truck might’ve looked like it belonged to the feds, but Wes had lifted it from a police station before heading out, and “transporting federal assets” was just the lie he told to fly under the radar. He sure as shit wasn’t one of them.
He turned the corner, and his heart skipped a beat. There was another blockade only a hundred yards away, with a pair of humvees sporting Brownings, and grunts in full riot gear. His truck lurched to a stop, and floodlights flicked his way.
“Attention, unidentified vehicle!” a soldier shouted through a megaphone. “Pull over and step out of the truck.”
But no sooner had Wes stopped that the rioters enveloped his truck. Fists started pounding the sides.
Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Wes wiped more sweat from his eyes. No room to turn. No way to get through the blockade without questions.
He needed a distraction.
Wes pulled up his radio and turned to the main channel. “Hey, you guys at the blockade, let me through first!”
The radio whirred. “State your identification.”
“You seeing this!? We don’t got time for that. These people are gonna kill me!”
“Step away from the vehicle!” the soldier shouted through the megaphone.
Wes pulled the radio closer. “That ain’t gonna work. You guys gotta clear ‘em out!”
One of the soldiers nodded to the others, and a group started marching his way. That might just do the trick. If enough of them left the blockade and got into a fight, Wes could use the chaos to slip through.
Glass shattered in front as a bottle struck the hood, and Wes fingered his glock. He wasn’t worried about the crowd. The plating on this rig could tilt a .50 from point blank, but those soldiers were gonna have questions if they managed to get inside, and this gun was his only answer. Wes had spent eight years behind bars before this. Eight years too many. He wasn’t going back.
Suddenly, knocks came from behind. They were close. They were inside.
His throat tightened. Were these people out of their minds? Of all the times to get his attention, this had to be the fucking worst. The truck rocked as the crowd shook it, but still, the stupid fucks in the back kept beating against the door.
Wes knocked behind. “Ay! Shut the fuck up back there or you’ll get us all killed!”
The pounding continued, and one of them started moaning.
They did not have time for this shit. Wes drew his glock and went for the backdoor. Maybe these people would smarten up with a gun in their faces.
He froze as soon as the door opened. His client was right on the other side, with clothes torn to shit, and cheeks caked in blood. Whitened pupils narrowed into his own.
Wes screamed as the fucker bit a chunk of flesh straight from his arm. Before he could shove back, more of his passengers pushed their way through, teeth clattering.
No time to think. Wes undid the lock on the driver’s side and floundered into the street. The crowd parted a beat. He used the chance to get further away before falling down again.
Smoke bombs were exploding everywhere, rioters were shouting to high heaven, and his arm was gushing blood, but that wasn’t what stole his attention. The door to the truck was still open.
Wes watched in horror as the people he’d been smuggling stumbled into the crowd, attacking everyone in sight…
