He wouldn’t shoot the woman unless she attacked him, and of course he couldn’t shoot the kids. But the men were a serious problem, and were unlikely to respond politely when confronted in the act of their looting. One, he could keep at gunpoint and possibly control. But two, with a woman off to the side, he couldn’t control all at once.

  But to shoot the men down was to ensure the death of the woman and the children, no question. They wouldn’t last a week. He might as well shoot them now too; it would be quicker and kinder in every way. His training told him to take the kill shot on the men; warning shots and attempts to frighten them away would result in an unpredictable situation that could quickly turn south on him.

  Carson sighted again on the two little urchins. A stray breeze caught the sandy bangs on the girl, stirred them. She stroked the little boy’s head, and he leaned his face into her shoulder. Neither of them took their eyes off of the adults.

  No way.

  No freaking way. It wasn’t even something he could consider.

  He wasn’t that guy. Maybe somebody, somewhere, who possessed the willpower, the mission fidelity, and the complete lack of conscience, but not him.

  Carson felt a moment of red rage at the woman and whichever of the men was the kids’ father. He hated them fiercely for allowing themselves to reach a point where they were so helpless, so without options, that they would put innocent little children in this kind of situation. No kid deserved to die because his or her parents were idiots. It wasn’t their fault.

  He stood. Stepped forward, weapon held ready. Time to take his chances.

  The woman saw him first. She gave a strangled cry that alerted the man outside the vehicle, who froze in the act of reaching for a bag of supplies. His eyes widened and he pointed at Carson so the man inside the SUV saw him as well.

  Carson walked over, keeping the AR-15 muzzle on the men at the vehicle but also carefully watching the woman in his peripheral vision. When he was close enough for conversation, he stopped.

  The wind idly whipped up some dust, and the junipers rustled. Somewhere a scrub jay called, harsh and demanding. Or maybe it was a pinyon jay. Carson never could tell the difference. Annoying creatures.

  “You in the truck,” said Carson. “Out. Now.”

  He waited while the man climbed out.

  “That’s my truck,” said Carson. “That’s my stuff. What do you think you’re doing?”

  The man who had been standing outside, tall and somehow still overweight despite the regional catastrophe, licked his lips and swallowed. “Um, yeah, we thought it was abandoned.”

  “I don’t care what you thought.” Carson spoke softly, just enough to be heard. “It’s mine. And you people are stealing.”

  “Please don’t hurt us,” the woman said, voice shaking. “Please. We didn’t know. We were hungry. That’s all.”

  “Don’t apologize!” The man who’d been in the vehicle glared at Carson. He was shorter and had a shifty look on his gaunt face. “So what? We’re starving, and you have food. There’s three of us. There’s only one of you. Are you going to shoot us all, or are you going to do the right thing and share what you’ve got?”

  Carson was silent, dumbstruck at the irony of a thief browbeating him to do the “right” thing.

  “Yeah. You gonna shoot us?” said the taller man, catching his comrade’s spirit of defiance. They could see from Carson’s bearing that he was no desperate thug, and might have a conscience to appeal to. “Murder us in cold blood so you can keep all the food for yourself? What kind of man are you?”

  “The only reason I didn’t shoot you where you stand,” Carson said coldly, “is because of the kids. You’re lucky I saw them.”

  The woman darted a look sideways, towards the children. The shorter man stepped forward, holding out his hands. “Okay, look. We’re sorry. We can put everything back, all right? Just don’t hurt anybody. You can’t blame us for being hungry. And what do you expect, leaving your car alone like that?”

  Carson was incredulous. Somehow it was his fault? He knew the man was an idiot, with almost zero understanding of the situation. But the comment touched on a theme that he’d noticed becoming altogether too prevalent in the culture of late. It was the complete denial of personal responsibility, the outrage that anyone would question one’s motives. Don’t judge me, who are you to judge me had become a refrain, a mantra, it seemed. People had become slithery; it was hard to pin anything to them and make it stick. If there was no objective standard for human behavior, it was only wrong if you got caught. Even then, if you could make enough counter-accusations, you could twist things around and make yourself the victim in almost any situation. It had first puzzled, then irritated Carson. Now, it enraged him.

  He fired a three-round burst into the sky. The sudden rippling crack drove the three adults into a quivering pile on the ground. The taller man burst into tears, blubbering like a fool. The woman went to her knees; then, hearing the children scream in fear at the gunshots, she crawled, white-faced, towards them. Carson let her crawl. The men flinched, flattening themselves desperately against the grass, expecting bullets to rip into them any second.

  Carson let the echoes of the shot ripple away into the hills. He waited for the mother to get the kids somewhat quieted. Then he spoke.

  ”For all you know, I have kids starving at home too. But you didn’t care. You’re desperate, you’re hungry, so you decided to take what you wanted and screw everybody else, right? Is that how it goes after a few weeks without your frozen pizzas and your Taco Bell? IS THAT HOW IT GOES NOW?” He screamed the last part, angry and disgusted, but also deliberately signaling that he might not show as much restraint as the men had tried to demand. He wanted them on the defensive.

  “Look, we’re sorry, okay?” The tall man spoke, voice shaking. “You have every right to be upset. We’ll leave, right now, we’ll leave you alone and you can have all this stuff. Please. We’re so, so sorry.” He stood and began backing away. Once he got a few yards past the vehicle, he turned and bolted into the trees, belly heaving up and down as he ran.

  The shorter man followed at a sprint, soon overtaking him. Neither of them looked back once at the woman and her kids.

  “Your husband isn’t much of a provider or a protector, is he?” Carson said to the woman, letting his rifle dangle from its sling and moving toward the vehicle.

  “I don’t even know them,” the woman said. “Just some men we ran into that offered to help.” Her blonde hair and clothing showed that she had once been wealthy and probably a trendy, attractive woman. Now she was a picture of desperation and loss.

  “Offered to help you knock over my car? Seriously?”

  “All I had to do was look out for anybody coming,” the woman said, unable to look Carson in the eye. “I wasn’t the one grabbing the stuff. We’re sorry, okay? It’s been hard, and those guys weren’t as kind to me as they said they’d be anyway. I wasn’t gonna stay with them long.” Arms around her children, she began to shepherd them off through the brush.

  “No, wait,” said Carson. He beckoned to the woman and her kids. “You have hungry kids. You don’t just walk away and let them starve.”

  The woman glanced at him, confused. Her pale blue eyes were dull and creased with fear and weariness.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me?” said Carson. “Are the only two options you considered either stealing or letting your kids starve?”

  “Um… I didn’t think--”

  “You didn’t think. Of course not. Why would anything think, or stay true to their moral compass, or any of those silly, old-fashioned things? Why would anyone ask for help instead of taking?”

  The woman approached. Her children lingered behind. “We’ve asked a lot. Nobody cares. Nobody helps.”

  “Maybe not, lady. But if you go ahead and steal, you’ve crossed the line and now even someone who would’ve said ‘yes’ is going to shut you down after that. You don’t drop your morality like a used rag just because you get hungry.”

  “What would you have done?” Some color came into the woman’s face now, and she waved her arm angrily. “If you’re such a shining knight, tell me what you would do if your kids were hungry and no one was going to give you anything? You’d steal, too. You’d do whatever it took, whatever those guys asked for, or whatever you had to offer.” She lowered her voice again, embarrassed and miserable. “Any good parent would steal to keep her kids fed,” she muttered to herself.

  “Any good parent,” said Carson, gritting his teeth as he sorted through his equipment and supplies, “would have taken steps. Any good parent would have seen the writing on the wall and started preparing. Any good parent wouldn’t ever have to put their kids in harm’s way through sheer stupidity, because they would have had the food and the water and guns and the supplies to keep their family safe no matter what! Good parents get ready. Good parents don’t have to steal.”

  The woman began to cry, and Carson knew he wasn’t being entirely fair. But he didn’t care. He wanted this woman to understand the world as it had become; not for the woman’s sake, but for the little ones who would suffer if she made any more mistakes.

  It was an ugly way to raise children, to teach them theft instead of self-reliance. Carson knew that such lessons were meaningless right now, when all that mattered was surviving to the next day, but someday, if it all came back, then these kids would need a parent who taught them to be producers, not scavengers. Not parasites.

  Carson glanced at the kids. They watched him with open mouths. He made eye contact with the mother, and she stared back blankly. He felt sick. There was no point in lecturing her.

  He hefted his backpack and his gun. “Take the stuff, lady. Take the food, the water. Merry Christmas. Take the vehicle, the engine runs fine and you’ve got a quarter tank to get you on your way.” He tossed her the key. “And take my advice: avoid men like that. Those guys are not going to help you, not for long.”

  The woman held the key and stared at the vehicle, its rear hatch still open, a wealth of food and water inside. The kids clustered around it, squealing with delight. Carson began to walk away.

  “Wait!” the woman said. “Will you leave me a gun? So I can defend myself?”

  “No gun,” Carson called back without turning around. “You don’t get a gun, because you might use it to steal again. You take those kids, you take the supplies, you get out of here. Drive west. Find somewhere to hunker down. Ask for things. Cooperate with others, earn the trust of decent people. Never steal again.”

  “Thank you!” the woman cried out as he left, wiping at her tears.

  “Not doing it for you,” Carson replied from the edge of the trees. He nodded at the two kids, already going through the trove of supplies like it was a treasure chest filled with gold. “I’m doing it for them. Keep them safe. Teach them to be better prepared than you were.”

  He backed away until the trees covered him, then hurried ahead. As he marched, he wondered what his handlers would think. He wasn’t much of an agent, after all. But he couldn’t see any other way and still retain his humanity. He knew there were some who would argue that in these cases you had to shed your humanity, to let your heart ice over. But he couldn’t.

  He couldn’t.

  Chapter 6: The Lone Survivor of Hemingway Circle

  Hemingway Circle was deserted.

  Or at least it appeared deserted. The lawns had not been mowed; that was the first obvious sign of abandonment. There were others. The dumpsters were filled to overflowing, but many had been tipped over, and their contents ransacked. Carson could see trash bags torn apart here and there. The wind had scattered garbage everywhere, but he noticed that all food trash, wrappers, containers, leftovers, was conspicuously absent.

  One house had several windows broken; another across the street contained the blackened skeleton of a car in the driveway. There were scorch marks on the garage door where the inferno had spread, but apparently the owners had managed to put out the blaze before it could torch the house.

  Mainly, it was the silence. Gone were the normal neighborhood sounds, the sprinklers, dogs barking, radios and televisions from inside the houses, the normal rumble and hum of suburbia. The air smelled faintly of smoke, and there was a vague grittiness to the whole area, a dirtiness.

  In the late afternoon light, Carson observed his cul-de-sac for several minutes before venturing forward, rifle ready in his arms, but lowered enough that anyone watching would not assume he intended violence. As he walked, a shredded plastic shopping bag blew fitfully across the asphalt, tangled briefly with his legs, then drifted onward. Carson grimaced. He hated litter with a passion, and now his tidy cul-de-sac was a dump, his whole city a trash heap.

  A minute later and he was at his own front door. It was a small place, but reasonably new and well-kept, or at least it had been. The lawn was now overgrown like all the other lawns, and there was a faded bag of dry dog food wrapped around the little juniper in the front yard. Carson almost walked over to remove it, before shaking his head. Pointless.

  He unlocked his front door and stepped inside. The interior of his townhouse smelled musty and smoky; not surprising, since the front window, next to the front door, had been broken and shards of glass were strewn across the living room carpet. His feet crunched as he walked.

  The inspection was brief. The kitchen, as he had expected, had been ransacked. All his food was gone; the fridge door was propped open by an empty milk carton and could not close. There was nothing to be scavenged there. Someone had spilled a bag of dried noodles across the floor. Carson knew within another week even those would be gathered up, by people if the feathered scavengers or rodents didn’t get them first. He left them where they lay, wishing good fortune to whichever found them.

  He spent a minute checking the other rooms. The bedroom was reasonably straight, as was the spare bedroom/office. Someone had taken his computer, but without a power supply it was a hollow theft.

  He satisfied himself that the house was clear and semi-secure for the moment. He had just re-entered his bedroom and dumped his backpack when he heard someone knock at the front door.

  Immediately, his rifle was up. He slipped to the hallway, where he had an open field of fire to the front door, and then crouched. He could approach the door no closer without being seen from the broken front window.

  The knock came again. That was incongruous, given the circumstances. If it was looters, they wouldn’t knock. If it was aggressors out for blood, they would either kick the door in or enter through the window, guns blazing. Who would knock?

  A civilian. Someone had seen him enter the house. That presented a problem. Not only did he want to avoid contact with civilians for security reasons, but the inevitable requests for information, supplies, or help would slow him down. Carson had a momentary vision of a small child, ragged, gaunt, and beseeching, holding up an empty tin cup, like something out of Dickens. He sighed.

  “Carson? Carson?” The voice was familiar.

  The image of the forlorn street waif evaporated. Carson swore. Dana Ryan.

  The last person he could afford to see right now. But there would be no turning her away if she’d seen him enter.

  “Carson, it’s me, Dana. I know you’re in there.”

  Carson kept quiet, desperate for a way out. After all his daydreaming, now that it came to it he was not at all ready for an encounter with his outgoing neighbor, no matter how good-looking she might be.

  “Carson, can we talk? Please.”

  He cleared his throat. “Hi, Dana. Are you alone?

  The relief in Dana’s voice was palpable. “Oh, yeah. Totally alone. Gosh, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “That’s good.” Carson slipped down the hallway to the entrance to the living room. He covered the window with his rifle. “Are you armed?”

  “Um, yeah. I have a rifle.”

  “Okay. Is anyone watching you?”

  “No, we’re alone, Carson. Can’t I come in?”

  He stood behind the front door. “Yes. But I need you to raise your hands over your head. Hold your rifle by the stock, and don’t make any sudden movements. Do you understand, Dana?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was bewildered and a little hurt.

  Carson unlocked and opened the door in a smooth movement, keeping his trigger hand on his weapon. He was prepared to take sudden violent action if there were more than one person outside.

  Dana stood there alone, peering in at him. Carson did a double-take, scanning the neighborhood for threats and then snapping his eyes back to the girl in surprise. She looked a far cry from the young woman who had flirted with him incessantly just a couple of months earlier.

  Her curvy, slightly plump figure was slimmed down and her perky face was hardened. She had beautiful dark brown hair, but it was now chopped short and tangled. And the usual twinkle in her blue eyes had dimmed into a cautious stare. She was wearing faded jeans, a heavy sweater, and stylish leather boots that were beginning to crack and wear through in places.

  She clutched a big-caliber Remington over her head, walnut stock and bolt action. A fine weapon, whether you were hunting big game or human beings.

  “Come in quickly, please. Keep that rifle held up high.”

  Dana did as he instructed, looking Carson over with just as much interest as he had shown her. “Wow, Carson, you—that’s a scary-looking gun. Have you been fighting with the soldiers?”

  “Dana, does anyone else know you’re here?” Carson asked, ignoring her question and quickly shutting the door behind her and locking it again.

  “Nobody. Carson, I swear. I told you, I’m all alone.”

  “Okay.” Carson gestured. “Leave the rifle by the door, please.”

  She put the rifle down, eyeing Carson and his AR-15.