Founders by James Wesley Rawles Page A

now, he was shouting, “I got the power! I got the power!” Ken waited until he had several other targets close to the bonfire. Then he whispered: “One, two, three !”
    They each fired a full magazine. The man with the riotgun went down hard. They killed or wounded at least five others.
    After there were no more distinct targets standing, they expendedthe rest of their magazines shooting at likely places where the looters might have taken cover. They rose to their feet and ran around the corner, reloading their guns as they ran.
    Halfway down the block they stopped to check each other for injuries and to talk. They decided that to get around the riffraff that ambushed them, they would walk another two blocks south, and then turn to resume traveling west.
    They moved in tactical bounds for seven blocks, constantly watching for threats. The sound of gunfire and sirens was almost continuous in all directions. Some of it sounded as if it was within a couple of blocks, but most of it had to be farther off. With their movement in buddy rushes, they were soon feeling exhausted.
    Ken trotted up to Terry and whispered, “There’s got to be a better way. We’ll never get out of town by dawn doing it this way.” They crawled behind the concealment of some large bushes next to a Lutheran church, and draped a poncho over themselves to consult a street map with a subdued flashlight.
    Terry pointed out their location on the map. “It’s ten-plus miles to even get out of Chicago itself, and then there’s suburbs,” she whispered.
    “So, shall I call for a cab?” Ken joked.
    Then, more seriously, he added, “Our chances of walking out of this without getting ventilated are about one percent.”
    He gazed down at the map again, and prayed silently. The map showed no parks or other breaks in successive city blocks for miles ahead.
    Terry said, still in a whisper, “Why not go underground, down in the storm drains, just like we talked about for nuke scenarios?”
    Ken beamed. “Oh, I love you! That sure beats staying up here in the free-fire zone.”
    Terry looked up at Ken and asked, “How are we going to get down there?”
    “Remember that illustration in T.K.’s book Life After Doomsday ,where you take two big bolts and join them with a piece of wire? Then you stick one of them down into the pry hole on a manhole cover, and pull up.”
    Terry nodded.
    He opened the top flap of his backpack and started to dig though its contents. He soon found a coil of wire. After some more searching, he pulled out a 1970s-vintage Boy Scout knife-fork-spoon kit that had belonged to his father. He twisted two thicknesses of the wire around the spoon and then the same for the knife, with one foot of wire between them.
    The knife ended up working well as a toggle, because it had a bottle-opening notch in the middle. That held the wire in place perfectly.
    Ken reassembled the contents of his pack and reshouldered it. He then began searching the block, looking for a manhole cover. It took a few minutes to find one marked “Storm Sewer,” visible by the dim light of Terry’s tiny single-LED flashlight.
    Ken handed his rifle to his wife. After inserting the knife into the manhole cover’s one-inch aperture, he pulled up on the spoon connected by the wire. The knife had toggled over and held firm. Ken squatted, beefed the manhole cover up, and slid it aside with a clank that sounded uncomfortably loud. He then retrieved his utensils and wire and stuffed them into one of his pants cargo pockets.
    Terry descended first. She said quietly, “Okay, it looks doable. There’s just a trickle in the bottom. Hand me my gear.”
    Ken handed down her carbine, then her pack, then his pack, and then his rifle. He lingered at the uppermost ladder rungs to slide the lid back in place over his head. It closed with a reverberating thud.

5
Trogs
    “‘It has never happened!’ cannot be construed to mean, ‘It can never happen!’—might as well say,