The Raid
I checked the neighborhood chat and it was going crazy. Hundreds of messages were pouring in — some people were sharing information, others were in various states of distress.
I’m on Diviz and Haight. And the convoy just got here. It’s passing by.
How many are there?
I can count…7 so far.
Okay, the last one just passed. I think about 15 or maybe 18 cars.
They passed me already. They’re headed west on Haight.
They are fucking heavily armed man. The cars look like they’ve all been armored plated.
Yeah haven’t seen this level before
they’re not they’re not just on haight. i’m on page and there’s a long line of them here. a dozen, maybe more.”
I see them now. DAMN! You all weren’t lying.
“I’m seeing them too. I’m all Waller and there are a bunch of cars — trucks and vans mostly — crawling by right now.
“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK
The people freaking out were not wrong to freak out. I could feel my heart racing, too. My neighborhood only got raided once before and it wasn’t very close to my house. It was up farther in the hills where the rich people lived, not near me where it’s mostly apartments. And raiders don’t like apartments — apartments have more people they’d need to fight and less valuables for them to steal. Still…I’ve known people who got raided and I’ve seen plenty of videos of different raids. Usually, the crews doing it are smaller — five or ten cars at the most. They hit a house, grab whatever they can find, and take off — sometimes killing and/or raping those inside while they do it and sometimes not harming anyone at all. It all depended on the crew. But this raid was different. It looked less like a raiding party and more like an invading force. I’ve never seen anything like it, not even during the early months right after the war when looting and murder went practically unchecked. The question on my mind — and I’m sure everyone else’s, too — was whether they were gonna hit our neighborhood or were just passing through on their way to some other target.
“You seeing this?” texted Alex, one of my upstairs neighbors. He multiple generations of his family living with him — his wife, her parents, his two kids, and a couple of nephews orphaned by the radiation.
“Yeah,” I wrote back.
“We r fucked, buddy. Lol. You ready?”
“Was about to get ready before you texted,” I wrote with one hand while walking to my bedroom and reaching under the bed to grab my 357 magnum. Then I went to the bedroom closet and removed the false wall I had installed to hide my emergency arsenal. A Glock and a 1922 I had inherited from my dad, and a .22 rifle with a scope attached that I had bought in my twenties when I briefly got into sharp shooting. I grabbed my bag of ammo, too. It was on the limited side — about 100 rounds between all these guns together. But it would be enough for whatever was coming. I guess I’d either scare them off or I’d die trying.
I went back to the front door and checked the cam again. The street was clear. Then I sat down on the floor, pulled on my rubber suit and my leaded rubber boots, and then started to load the guns. I was full of adrenaline — my heart was racing and my hands were shaking and I kept dropping bullets on the ground.
“Ok, I’m loaded and in position,” I wrote to my street’s group chat.
“Got it,” Alex wrote back. “Can we get a shooter check in, everyone?”
Nine of my neighbors from my block texted back — they were all ready.
“How about a spotter check in? Who’s on duty?” Alex wrote.
“I am,” wrote Tom Yee. He was a neighbor from across the street, an English teacher I think and a real San Francisco native…proud that his great-great-great-grandpa was one of the original Chinese laborers imported to build the railroads. He liked to say that he was more American than 99% of the white people he saw…that his family had been in American longer. But still, on account of his asiatic features, people referred to him as a Chinese-American. “I’ll never be America to you people,” he’d say. Tom had the top apartment in a corner building at the end of the block and had a clear view of the street below. So the camera system he set up was our eyes.
“I don’t see anything so far. Will ping as soon as I see something,” he wrote.
“Ok. Keep the chat open and turn your sound on,” Alex replied. “Tom will keep us updated. Keep unnecessary chatter off this channel!!! This for operations only!!!!!!”
The police had always been useless during lockdowns. They’d never come out even for a basic thing, let alone a massive raid like this. So no one even bothers to dial them. Everyone knows they are on their own. Those with money, like Misha’s family, had built various types of bunkers and safe rooms and defensive perimeters — not just to escape the rad when bad storms barreled through, but to survive the raids. Some had elaborate defensive systems — with remote-controlled machine gun systems and various booby traps…like spikes that would spring out of walls and impale intruders or flame throwers that would torch anyone trying to get in. Others had had live-in security guards and even a nurse or doctor on staff — because with these lockdowns basic medical emergencies became mortality events.
I’ll keep publishing bits of RADIANCE as the novel progresses.
Read previous chapter here and all the other chapters here.
Most people couldn’t do all that, and so a lot of blocks banded together to do basic mutual defense. Ours had about ten apartments signed up. Those like me, who had a gun or two, agreed to shoot at any intruder that attacked our street — even if our house was not being targeted. Others agreed to act as spotters and organizers. One guy had worked as a lifeguard and knew basic first aid techniques, so he was our medic.