Free HOMELAND: Falling Down (Part 1 of the HOMELAND Series) by R.A. Mathis

you?”
    The prisoner stared at Hank, silent as a mute.
    “I know you’re not local. Where did you come from?”
    More silence.
    He picked up a wallet from the table between them and pulled out a driver’s license.
    “Brandon, right? Your I.D. says Knoxville. What are you doing here?”
    More staring.
    “You killed five people tonight. One of them was my deputy.”
    The prisoner’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
    “They had families. They didn’t do anything to you. You murdered them!” Hank shoved the table aside and grabbed the criminal’s collar, their faces now inches apart. “You killed them just so you and your buddies could get high on goddamn pain pills!”
    “I was just supposed to grab the meds! That’s all! I didn’t shoot nobody!”
    Hank shoved the prisoner’s chair back against a cinderblock wall. “I’ll see you fry for this.”
    “I told you, man. I didn’t shoot nobody!”
    Hank resumed his composure. “I don’t give a shit. The D.A. won’t give a shit either, but he might if you tell us where your buddies in the trucks are.”
    “They’re not my buddies.”
    “Tell it to the judge.”
     “I didn’t have a choice. They have my parents.” He sobbed. “We tried to get away, but they caught us.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know who they are. They just took us. They have my mom and dad. My dad’s a doctor. They made him write a list of meds they wanted. They kept my parents at the hotel and I was supposed to get the stuff on the list. They promised to let us go if I came back with the stuff on the list.”
    “The people that have your parents are in a hotel?”
    “Yeah. They took it over. It’s outside Knoxville.”
    “What kind of medicines are on the list?”
    “Antibiotics, pain meds, heart pills. You name it.” The teenager nodded to his jacket. “Look for yourself. The list is in my pocket.”
    Hank carefully reached in and pulled a crumpled paper from the youth’s jacket pocket. On it was a list of medicines, most of which he couldn’t pronounce.
    The boy said, “We were all scared after the President got killed and the Capitol burned. Everything was so quiet. Then the banks shut down. Everything changed. The Food Stamp riots. The Looting. The killing. It was all over the news. My parents told me not to leave the house, but I sneaked out to the convenience store down the street for some chips and soda. I’d eaten all we had and didn’t know how long the stores would stay open.  It was weird. People were everywhere.  Yelling and fighting. I hid in the shadows. They were robbing anybody they saw, especially anybody dumb enough to go out alone. They were like animals. It was like another country.”
    His eyes glazed as his vision turned inward, reliving the events he described. “When I got close to the store, a car pulled up. Some guys got out and threw a chunk of concrete through the window. They went in. I hid in some bushes when the gunshots started. They lit the inside of the store up like a strobe light. The guys came out with their arms full of stuff and sped off. Then more people came. On foot, in cars. More and more of them. They just walked in and took stuff. They picked the place clean, then they turned on each other. I saw a woman shot in the street over a can of beans and left there to die. I just laid there in the bushes. Watching. Shivering. It was so cold.”
    The boy took a deep breath before speaking again.  “That’s when I noticed the fires.  Must have been a hundred of them. I could see the glow for miles in every direction. I ran home after that.”
    Hank asked, “What about the police?”
    “The cops tried to stop it at first, but then gave up and went home. They got families of their own to worry about.”
    “How did you end up in my town?”
    “Somebody broke into our neighbors’ house. We heard screams. Then shots. No more screams after that. We grabbed food and clothes and got in the car. Mom and Dad