Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [77]
Luckily, in each case the civilians had looked at the odds and the firepower facing them and done the sensible thing. They were ordinary people, not misguided, suicidal zealots like that bunch in Waco a couple of decades earlier. In the end, they had come out and surrendered their guns, and Colonel Grady had surprised Alex by not arresting them.
Maybe he just didn’t have the facilities available to arrest an entire town.
But even though killing had been avoided so far, Alex had had to be on hand every time something happened, had to be there to talk sense to the citizens who wanted to defy the government. In truth, she wanted to be just as defiant as they were and tell Colonel Grady, the FPS, and the President to go climb a stick because what they were doing was illegal, and she said as much to the steadily circling buzzards of the news media.
She was sworn to protect the people who lived here, though, and right now, keeping them alive meant getting them to swallow the bitter pill of government oppression.
She had been either at the police station or out on call ever since the FPS had rolled into town, except for a few brief moments when she had stretched out on the cot in the station’s back room. She hadn’t slept, though. Things hadn’t stayed quiet enough, long enough, for that.
That meant she hadn’t seen Jack for forty-eight hours, either, and the thought that she was a terrible mother gnawed insistently at the back of her brain. She knew that wasn’t true—he was a senior in high school, after all, a smart, responsible kid despite the occasional lapse in judgment or outbreak of rebelliousness—and she trusted him to take care of himself. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to be there for him.
As she drove around the streets now, she saw the black SUVs of the Federal Protective Service everywhere. Heavily armed men and women in black uniforms moved along the sidewalks. The citizens who encountered them looked the other way and tried to stay out of their path, at least for the most part. A few bolder ones gave the troopers hostile stares.
Home looked like an occupied town in a defeated enemy country, Alex thought.
And that was pretty much what it amounted to. The ruling elite in Washington regarded everyone outside the Beltway as an enemy, except for a few privileged enclaves of sycophants here and there, in New York, Boston, Hollywood…. For years they had been waging a not-so-secret war against the beliefs and values of average, everyday Americans, and now it appeared they had won.
Static crackled from the radio. Jimmy said, “Chief, you there?”
Alex picked up the mike. “I’m here.”
“Report of shots fired at … Pearson’s Feed Store.”
Oh, no, Alex thought. She had been waiting for this to happen, even though she hoped it wouldn’t.
“I’m on my way,” she told Jimmy. She hung up the mike, hit the lights and siren, and tromped down on the gas.
As fast as she got to the feed store, the FPS was faster. Alex saw a couple of the sinister-looking SUVs careen around a corner ahead of her. She knew they were on their way to the feed store, which was on a side street not far from the high school.
Black smoke suddenly plumed into the sky. Even though she hadn’t heard an explosion over the howling siren and the roar of the car’s engine, she knew that was what had just taken place. Something had blown up, and she was afraid it was the feed store.
She hoped there hadn’t been any civilians inside it.
The car slewed around the corner. She spotted the old building with tin siding up ahead