Wipeout | Book 4 | Overdrawn Read online

  OVERDRAWN

  Wipeout Series

  Book 4

  By

  E.S. Richards

  Mike Kraus

  © 2020 Muonic Press Inc

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

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  Special Thanks

  Special thanks to my awesome beta team, without whom this book wouldn’t be nearly as great.

  Thank you!

  Wipeout Book 5

  Available Here

  Chapter 1

  Parker leant back in his chair and smiled, pleased with the work they had done that day. The guard tower overlooking Route 9 – the main road into the city from the south – was starting to take shape. Jeff had entrusted him to oversee the build and Parker knew it was an opportunity for him to rise through the ranks quickly, if he did a good job. The day had been long and arduous though, he could be forgiven for a couple of beers and a few games of cards at the end of it all.

  “How many more have we got in the cooler?” Parker asked Danny, one of the other three who had stayed behind at the end of the day’s work to kick back. They were both part of Jeff’s closest team, but both also enjoyed having time away from the man where they could speak freely about what was happening in Poughkeepsie and the rest of the world. Jeff was a great leader and they both respected him, but that respect was rooted in fear. They had no doubts of the lengths Jeff would go to in order to get what he wanted.

  “Uhh, three,” Danny replied, pulling out a bottle of ale and passing it to Parker. “Sorry cuz,” he dangled another bottle in front of his younger cousin, Hank, before handing it with a laugh instead to the fourth man around the table, Dean. “None left for you again.”

  “Aw, get lost, Danny,” Hank argued back, irritated by always being left out of things just because he was the youngest one in the group. He was twenty-three and an adult in all other sense of the word, except playing cards with his cousin and his friends. Poughkeepsie was being remolded into their image and Hank desperately didn’t want to be seen as the youngster when it came time to put people in charge again. He was slowly getting in with Jeff’s group through his cousin, now he just had to start standing up for himself a bit more.

  “I’ll fight you for it.”

  Danny leant back in his chair and laughed, twisting the cap off the last remaining bottle of beer and taking a swig whilst holding eye contact with Hank. “Alright then,” he replied with a burp, only two thirds of the drink now left as he put it down and planted his elbow on the table. “If you can get my arm down, you can have it, cuz.”

  “Arm wrestling?” Hank raised his eyebrows. “Really? And you think I’m the kid here?”

  “Hey, we can fight if you want,” Danny grinned. “I just don’t think your mother would be too happy if I sent you home with two black eyes.”

  Hank was losing interest in both the fight and what it was worth. He knew he shouldn’t have to prove himself to these guys, but it had to be done to keep his place in their inner circle. He growled under his breath and started to stand up from his chair.

  “Sit down.” Parker held an arm out across Hank’s chest. “I’m not having you two brawling around here. Who knows what sort of damage you’d cause?”

  “Lay off Parker,” Hank replied with a huff. “I’m not a kid.”

  “Yeah,” Dean piped up, “I want to see them fight.”

  “Arm wrestling will do,” Parker decided for all of them. “If you’re not happy with that Hank, then you know the way back to town.”

  Hank growled again before rolling up his sleeve and adjusting his chair so he could plant his elbow on the table opposite Danny’s. The two men squared up to each other confidently, Danny trying to put his younger cousin off with his gaze while Hank focused on the challenge, determined to prove himself.

  “My money’s on Danny,” Dean smiled as the two men clasped hands.

  “Mine too,” Parker laughed. “Come on kid, prove us all wrong.”

  To Hank’s disappointment, the challenge didn’t last long. He tried his best but his cousin had the back of his hand slammed into the table in under twenty seconds. Danny roared in victory and rose to his feet, downing the rest of the bottle of beer and holding it aloft like a trophy. Parker and Dean both burst out laughing as Hank nursed his hand, leaning back in his chair and sighing loudly.

  “Well that was fun,” Danny grinned. “But now I’m out of beer too.”

  Turning around so he faced the barricade they had constructed out of abandoned vehicles and random pieces of scrap metal, Danny held the neck of his bottle and threw it onto the rubble, the glass shattering everywhere. It was what they did with all of their empties—an extra deterrent if anyone tried to get through the roadblocks. They doubted whether anyone would be stupid enough to try, but kept their eyes peeled anyway.

  Danny sat back down, burping once again and then laughing as he saw the look on Hank’s face. “Oh, give it a rest, cuz. Why don’t you come back in with me? We’ll load up, take second watch, and have a rematch later.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair,” Dean argued. “You can’t finish the beer off and then ditch the watch to get more.”

  “It’s my victory reward,” Danny grinned, tossing his cards into the middle of the table. “Come on cuz, let’s get out of here.”

  “Ugh, whatever,” Dean sneered. “Hope you enjoy the dead shift later.”

  “We will!” Danny replied in a sing-song voice, nudging his cousin to get up from the table and waving goodbye to Dean and Parker as the two of them started the long walk back into the city.

  “Jerks,” Dean said.

  “Ah, don’t let him get to you.” Parker laughed as he looked across the table at Dean. “He’s just bored.”

  Dean snorted. “We’re all bored. He’s just a selfish jerk.”

  “Yeah,” Parker laughed again, “that too, probably. But you’re right—at least we’re not going to be stuck with the dead shift now.”

  Tugging up the collar of his coat, Parker nestled into it closer. It had been agreed for days now that someone needed to be watching the road blocks at night. in case somet
hing happened. But before they had the watch tower built, that meant sitting out in the freezing cold. The dead shift was by far the worst. The wind howled in off the river and the sky was so pitch black you couldn’t even see your hands in front of your face. The only way to get through that shift was to drink yourself warm, which Danny often did, hence his indifference about sitting out during those hours. What Danny didn’t know however, was that they were rapidly running out of his most savored resource. He was going to get a nasty shock when he got back into town. Parker wished he could be there to see it.

  As a city, Poughkeepsie was doing alright by itself. Aside from one incident with people trying to get in over the river, they hadn’t encountered any intruders testing their luck for refuge. Jeff kept telling them every night that people from New York and other neighboring cities would come eventually, but Parker and the others had yet to witness it. He was still happy to sit out and guard the road, though. It was a lot more fun than the work being done deeper in the city.

  In a way, the residents of the mountain-side city had been preparing for an incident like this their entire lives. A large number of them had cabins or lodges in the Catskills they could retreat to if things got really bad, but for now the defenses and fortifications they’d made to Poughkeepsie were doing their job. They had to be one of the only cities in America which still had power – their ample supply of backup generators keeping the city lit and warm at night. They used it sparingly though, everyone that lived in Poughkeepsie was more than equipped to handle a few cold nights.

  Food was also dealt with in a carefully thought out manner. There was no shortage of crops growing in the fields and the livestock that lived in the nearby forests was hunted efficiently and only when in need. People looked after themselves for the most part, but there was a central collection area that people could go to if they were in need.

  Parker was teaching his daughter how to hunt, kill, skin and cook rabbit. She struggled with it at first, growing up seeing the animals as adorable little creatures that hopped around nearby, but she was learning. Parker was instilling the same survival instincts in her that his father had in him. His family had lived in Poughkeepsie for generations and helped to mold it into the survival-driven community that it was today.

  “How’re your kids doing?” Parker asked Dean as he thought of his daughter, missing her innocent smile and the embrace of his wife on cold evenings by the barricade. “Are they walking and talking yet?”

  “Just about,” Dean replied with a smile, much like Parker wishing he could be at home instead. “Maggie’s getting a fair bit of help from her friends for supplies and other things we need. But they’re off baby food and onto the solid stuff now, which helps.”

  “Jeez yeah,” Parker exhaled, remembering how difficult it was dealing with a young child and appreciating that it must be even harder in the middle of an apocalypse. “Took a bit of persuading to get your wife on board with all of this, if I remember correctly?”

  Dean paused for a moment, deciding what Parker was asking him. Unlike Danny, Dean wasn’t really part of Jeff’s group just yet, because of the rumors which circulated around his wife shortly after the collapse. People said she didn’t want Poughkeepsie to be locked down so that she could continue getting things she needed for the babies from elsewhere. Dean had done his best to quash them all, aware how dangerous it could be in this city to argue with with the new status quo, but there was still some suspicion around his family. A suspicion that he was certain Jeff had ordered Parker to investigate.

  Dean shook his head. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Parker. Maggie’s lived here with me for long enough now, you know she’s one of us.”

  “I know she was before the babies came along,” Parker replied. “But with those two kiddies to think about, it’s understandable that she might want to be somewhere else.”

  “Where? We all know Poughkeepsie is about the safest place any of us can be right now. Lay off, Parker. I didn’t sign up to be interrogated like this tonight.”

  Parker held up his hands in surrender, though as Dean suspected, he was only doing as Jeff had asked of him. There were a number of people still within the city walls that they were suspicious about. Parker knew Jeff could go over the top about these sorts of things, but the man thought it all through and was only making decisions which would help him—and ultimately Poughkeepsie—survive. He’d even clamped down on people leaving to hunt for his own nephews. The two boys had snuck out shortly before the bridge was blown and hadn’t found their way back. Jeff had shut down his sister’s pleas to go out and search for them almost instantly, sticking by his number one rule throughout the collapse: no one came in or out of Poughkeepsie.

  “You know it doesn’t come from me,” Parker chided Dean. “Like Jeff says, we’ve got to look out for ourselves at times like this.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dean shrugged him off. “I just wish you’d get it through your heads that I’m on your side. Hell – the fact that I’ve got a wife and two kids in here should make that even clearer. I want to protect them and I know that means keeping everything we’ve got to ourselves. If I’d seen those men trying to cross the river the other day, I might’ve shot a little closer to the skin than Jeff says he did.”

  Parker looked at him and narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out if Dean was saying what he wanted to hear. At the end of the day, Parker didn’t have a problem with Dean. Their wives were friends and he knew their energy was better spent protecting Poughkeepsie rather than fighting amongst themselves.

  “Alright,” Parker replied, “I’m sorry, man. Forget I said anything. Is your family okay though? Really?”

  “They’re fine,” Dean nodded. “I think Maggie will be happier once this tower is done so I can help out a bit more around the house. Other than that, it’s all good.”

  “She might be waiting a while,” Parker grinned. “We’ve done a decent job the last few days but there’s still a ways to go. We need to get it up to a decent height so we can see people approaching. Then there’s the others to build as well.”

  “True.”

  Both men were aware that one tower wasn’t going to make much difference to the city. There were a number of ways into Poughkeepsie and they had to defend all of them. That meant building a number of watch towers. Once they were up, their lives would be a lot easier having someone on lookout with a gun. Until then, every able-bodied man was on the outskirts of the city every day, working hard to finish the construction. Poughkeepsie was quickly becoming a fortress where they could live out the months of the apocalypse in peace.

  “How long do you think it’ll be like this for?” Dean asked. He wanted his children to have a normal life again eventually and be able to visit other places outside of the city – not that he would ever dare say that now. “The lockdown I mean,” he added, using the phrase those in Poughkeepsie had coined. “We talking months, or longer?”

  “Hard to say,” Parker shrugged in response, leaning down and throwing a few logs into an old trash can they were using as a firepit as he lit it for the night ahead. “We’re not picking up as much radio chatter these days. It sounds like all the major stations have stopped streaming other than the blanket emergency broadcasts. You know the ones – stay inside, help is on its way, yada, yada, yada. I can’t believe people actually buy into them; makes you realize how stupid some guys are.”

  “Desperate people believe anything don’t they?”

  “They really do,” Parker let out a chuckle. “I don’t know though,” he continued, “It depends what you mean by going back to normal. I think we’ll be in lockdown for months definitely, but then things might start to ease up a bit. If you want to know how long until everything is back to how it was a month ago? Years I’d say. We might be prepared for this, but the rest of the world certainly wasn’t. I don’t think anyone can say for sure how long it’ll last, but one thing’s for sure: our kids will be growing up in an entirely different world to t
he one we’re in now.”

  Chapter 2

  “Okay boys, do you remember the plan? You know what to do?”

  Mason and Noah both nodded silently in response to Austin’s question, the sense of dread and fear over what they were about to do growing in all four of them with each passing second. Austin and Samuel had discussed their plan at great length and they knew they had to try and get into Poughkeepsie – they’d spent one night watching the barricade and learned that only two men stayed behind, often drunk and paying little attention to the blockade. If they stood a chance at reuniting with their families again, they had to go for it. Waiting any longer didn’t change a thing.

  Samuel stood behind Austin, ready to leave with his backpack strapped tightly to his back and the binoculars pressed up against his eyes. He’d been watching the walls for a number of hours now, monitoring the construction of the watch tower – still very much in its infancy – and the proceedings afterwards. Most men returned to the city, with just four of them staying behind to play cards and sit around. For a while, Samuel and Austin had worried that the number of men on watch that night was going to be increased, but eventually two of them left and the scene matched how it had on the evening they’d arrived.

  Darkness was falling fast around them, giving their group the cover they needed to navigate around the barricades. Austin had mapped out a route as best he could from what could be seen, but both he and Samuel knew it wasn’t a guaranteed path. They would have to cut through the chain link fences and scramble over the abandoned vehicles, all the while being careful not to make a sound or alert the two watchmen to their presence. With two young kids it was not going to be easy, but as they had all said to one another a number of times already, what other choice did they have?