Free End of Days by Eric Walters Page B

ever know anything. Okay?”
    She hesitated, but then she said, “He’s a good kid.”
    “That’s what I heard,” he said.
Yeah, right, such a good kid that they sent half the police station to capture him
. “We just want to talk. Where can I find him?”
    “Top floor … that’s where they all live.”
    “All? How many of them are there?” Ramsey asked.
    She shook her head. “I don’t know. A lot. Maybe a hundred or two hundred or more. They don’t bother us … none of them … he makes sure everybody is okay.”
    “That’s what we want to talk to him about,” Ramsey said.
    He cleaned out his pocket, pulling out the last package of jerky he had. That was supposed to be his supper. “You take this, and make sure that you eat some of it too. Your kids need you to keep your strength up.”
    “Thank you. And thanks for not letting him hurt me.”
    As he got up to leave she gathered the children, and all of them retreated back into the safety of the closet.
    Ramsey ducked out into the hall to the waiting officers.
    “Forget the next eleven floors. We go straight up to the top and seal it off. He’s up there.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
    The officers filed up both stairwells, their big boots on the concrete steps foiling their attempt to move silently. They’d have to rely more on speed than stealth.
    Ramsey and Gordon led the group of seven. Three other officers, asked to seal off the other stairwell but not assault the floor, rushed up the opposite end of the building. With each floor the noise level increased and the officers’ speed decreased in direct proportion.
    “Two more floors,” Ramsey puffed, “and then—”
    His words were cut off by a hail of rocks that rained down on them from above, bouncing off walls, steps, and shins. A shot rang out with a deafening crack and the bullet ricocheted as it hit concrete. Ramsey had felt the bullet whiz by his ear! It had just missed him. He smelled the gunpowder and looked around to see the smoking gun of one of the officers who was right behind him. He had to fight theurge to turn around and slug the guy. Instead, he realized that the shower of rocks had stopped. The shot had had the desired effect.
    “Come on, and be careful that we don’t shoot each other!” he hissed.
    They crept up to the next landing, Ramsey leading, all of them with their guns drawn as if they could hide behind them. There were rocks and hunks of brick littering the stairs and landings. Judging by the quantity of rocks that had been hurled, there were a whole lot of people waiting at the top.
    Ramsey approached the apex of the final flight of stairs. Carefully he peeked over the last step, bobbing his head up and down until he had a complete picture. Where there should have been a door there were boards nailed in place with only a small opening—almost like a doggy door—at the bottom, and that was blocked by a piece of heavy cloth. There was no way to see, or know, what was on the other side of the passage.
    “You, to the left,” he said to one of the officers. “You, to the right,” he told another.
    Reluctantly, the two officers scaled the stairs to the landing and took up positions on opposite sides of the boarded-up doorway.
    In the olden days this would have been easy, Ramsey thought. In the olden days, he would have had the use of tear gas, bullhorns, SWAT teams with tactical equipment, trained negotiators, radios, and even a helicopter. He doubted there was now any tear gas left anywhere. There had been so manyriots, so many out-of-control crowds over the past few years. Police had tried to subdue the outbursts … then they’d given up even trying to do that. Things had calmed down only when the crowds had begun to thin out. People had abandoned the cities in droves, and those who had remained … well, so many had died.
    “What now, Sarge?” Gordon asked. “Should we put a few rounds through the wood?”
    “Let’s try talk first,” he said. He edged