Cody gave the truck an “A-OK” signal then looked around. Even when the world was humming along in its ordinary way, this place wouldn’t have been much. Just the kind of family-owned joint that was becoming an endangered species, thanks to all the huge gas station chains and the kind of oil price volatility that would send any businessman insane. But it wouldn’t have been a bad place to live, Cody reasoned, surrounded by woods, next to an uncongested road which led to all the places you’d need to go. Flannigan was only a dozen miles away, and…
“How’s it going, there?” came an unfamiliar voice.
Cody turned to see two unkempt young men. One was approaching him with a pistol leveled at Cody’s chest; the other had grabbed the old man and was pointing his gun at the owner’s head.
“Um, we were all good, I guess,” Cody said, “until a second ago. You guys, um, need something?” he asked redundantly.
“Go ahead and guess,” the younger of the two said, pressing the pistol against the old man’s temple.
“Well,” Cody began, “you see, it’s not that simple. My family is in there. So…”
“Get ‘em out by the side of the road,” he said. “Right now.”
“But… Listen, man, things are crazy right now. I mean, where are we supposed to…”
“You can hike north or hike south, but believe me, you’ll be hiking,” said the older man. Cody noted that his partner had watched too many movies and was holding his automatic at ninety degrees.
“Look, we can give you a ride, but I can’t let you take the truck,” Cody said.
“You’re not letting us do anything,” the older man said. “We’re taking it. Screw your ride.” Apart from their different coloring, the two could have been brothers, perhaps five years apart.
“Look, there must be something we can do…” Cody offered.
“You can get your people out and give us the key. Or they can watch us shoot you. Those are the options.”
“Kinda crappy options,” said Cody. “But I get it. No one needs to get hurt here. Let me talk to them and explain what’s going on. Okay?”
“Do it quickly. You’re gonna start hiking in sixty seconds.”
“Okay.” Cody had his hands up as he walked back to the truck. He made to open the driver’s door, but one of the robbers screamed at him. “Just the window! And tell them to get out, now.”
“Come on, man, there’s two kids in here…”
The older men marched on Cody, his automatic raised. “Last chance, asshole. I don’t care if you’ve got the president and first lady in the back. They’re gone in a minute, and so are you, or I start shooting.”
“No need for that,” Cody said and spoke quietly through the window to his family. Three doors opened, and they stepped warily out into the gathering dusk. “There. If you’ll let us get our gear out, you can be on your way.”
“Looks like a lot,” observed the younger assailant. “Got a tent in there, or what?”
“Tent, sleeping bags, cooking gear,” Cody said. “Only basic supplies. You wouldn’t leave us without those things, right, man? I’m thinking about the kids, and it’s gonna get cold tonight.”
Oblivious to these pleas, the two began ordering the Russell family around with a mix of shouts and gestures with their weapons. The old-timer watched, helpless, staying still in case the idiot holding the gun decided he was a threat.
“There you go,” the older man said as Mary, Emma, and Jacob reached the curb. “Now, the key.”
“It’s in the ignition,” said Cody. “You can tell,” he added, “because the engine’s running. That’s the rumbling sound you can hear from under the hood.”
“Yeah, thanks, Mister Mechanic. Now, step aside.”
“I gotta warn you, man, this thing is a beast to drive. No power steering, and it’s a stick shift. You guys ever driven a stick before?”
The two looked at each other for a confirmation, just a momentary glance, but Cody’s movements were slick and decisive. His 9mm appeared from under his jacket even before they could turn back to face him, and by that time, the first round was on its way. Half a second later, shifting slightly to the right, Cody fired again. Red spurted into the air, and both men toppled to the dusty ground.
Before the younger of the two wounded men could gather himself, the old timer’s boot became a heavy, relentless presence on his wrist. “Oh, boy, you really went and fucked up, didn’t ya?” Cody had to wrestle with the other guy, whose resistance collapsed when Cody punched the raw, red wound in the man’s shoulder. “Shut up, stay still, and let go of the goddamned gun, you idiot.”
“Motherfuckin’ shot me…”
“You noticed? Well done. Look, nothing else needs to happen here, but I won’t lose any sleep if you decide it’s a good day to die. You with me?”
“Gonna kill your ass…”
“No, you’re gonna be tied to this gas pump with your friend. And that’s where you’ll both bleed to death unless the esteemed owner of this establishment decides to dress your wounds.”
The old man wavered his hands—fifty-fifty. “I ain’t a fan of hoodlums,” he said darkly. “These two’ll need to on their best behavior from now on, or else I’ll leave ‘em out tonight and let the coyotes get ‘em.”
“I’ll leave that up to you,” said Cody. “Your land, your prisoners. In the meantime,” he added, handing the unperturbable old-timer two crisp hundreds, “mind if we do some shopping?”
“Be my guest,” he said, motioning to the empty store. “These assholes were getting fit to rob the place, just the very second after all the power went off. I picked up the phone, said there was no answer, and all of a sudden, there’s a goddamned gun in my face.”
“Opportunists, huh?” said Cody, disgusted with the pair. “Coyotes’ll be too good for you.” He waved at the three bug-eyed people by the truck. “You guys feel like playing Supermarket Sweep?”
“Sure,” said Jacob uncertainly. “Are… um, are they gonna die?” he asked of the two men.
“Probably not.” Their supply situation was far more vital than concerns for the health of their two would-be assailants. “Don’t forget a siphon hose, a funnel, and some gas cans. And bring the rest of the two hundred bucks in food. Whatever they’ve got.”
Jacob virtually danced into the store, energized by what nearly two hundred dollars of junk food might look like. As the three began grabbing supplies, Cody helped the owner tie up the two wounded men. “This ever happen before?” asked Cody.
“Oh, sure. But they’re usually a better quality of criminal than these two,” he said, as though they were inspecting the two runts of a litter. “Bringing out a gun only when they knew I couldn’t call for help, and when my back was turned… It’s a sorry state of affairs.”
Cody found keys and began the process of siphoning fuel. By the time he was finishing up, Mary, Emma, and Jacob were returning from the store, burdened by enough pretzels, muffins, and chips to last a college dorm through to half-time at the Superbowl. “Fit for a king,” said Jacob, thrilled with their acquisitions.
As he screwed the cap on the fuel can, disappointed that he’d only gathered three more gallons, Cody asked the old-timer, “You gonna be okay with these two?” The man was still eyeing the pair as if deciding what kind of further punishment might be appropriate.
“That depends on them. Gonna get chilly out here pretty soon. And there’s the coyotes, like I said.”
“Fuck you, old man,” the younger one managed to say; his partner was either keeping his cards close or had already passed out.
“Yeah,” the owner decided. “I’ll be okay with these two. Might even teach them some manners, while they’re here. Same way my dad taught me,” he said with a disconcerting glint in his eye.
“Right.” Without further delay, Cody shook the old man’s hand and headed back to the truck, where the children were busily stowing the last of their new provisions.
As they pulled away, Jacob asked again
, “You sure those two guys are going to be okay? I mean, you shot them both.”
“Did anyone see that I had any choice, there?” Cody asked his family, who clearly did not. “Then, let’s worry about what’s in front of us, not what’s behind.” With that, he shoved the truck forward, back onto the main road, and headed north.
13
Route 26, east of Colebrook H-hour + 8 (9:12 pm EDT)
The vehicle’s lights made them all the more conspicuous, but as the sun set, Cody decided it was worth the risk. “We’re doing forty-five in an army truck,” he explained, feeling a little safer than before, cocooned in heavy-duty military metal. “I mean, it’s not as though another carjacker could jump in his vehicle and chase us down. Much more danger of us hitting something and losing an axle or bursting a tire.”
The kids had more immediate concerns. “You mean, we can eat anything we like?” Jacob asked in disbelief.
“Just this once,” his mother said. She’d spent years trying to help her family become a low-carb, non-GMO household, but now that pretzels, chips, and salted peanuts were the mainstays of their diet, all that had to be forgotten. “Don’t feel like you’ve got a license to pig out.”
“And there’ll be absolutely no throwing up in my nice, newly-refitted truck,” said Cody.
“Promise,” said Jacob, eyeing the pretzels like some hungry, teenaged Goldfinger approaching Fort Knox.
“Emma, you okay back there?” asked Cody.
She hadn’t said much since her “announcement” at the workshop. While she seemed to have weathered the bloody incident at the gas station fairly well, without hearing from her, it was hard to say. She was normally only this silent when engaging with her phone, but that, like so much else, now belonged to the past.
“Yeah, I was dozing,” she said, stretching as tall as the truck’s ceiling allowed. “Where are we?”
“About two miles east of Colebrook. We need to get on Route 3 and head north,” said Mary, whose main focus was ensuring she always knew where they were.
Jacob was the one who noticed the little things, those strange phenomena which had become part of their lives only since the disaster, eight hours before. “I haven’t seen,” he said in wonder, “a single light in a house or a farm. Not anywhere.”
“It’d have to be candles, or a log fire, something like that,” Cody said.
“What about generators?” asked Mary. “Oh, no, they’d be fried, too, right?”
“Probably. It’s a matter of which component failed and how important it is. I don’t know the technical side, but I’m pretty sure anything with a…”
“Lights!” Jacob called out. “No, they’re… flares. By the intersection.”
“He’s right,” said Cody, slowing the truck. “Could be more stranded drivers, needing help.”
“At least the EMP, or whatever it was, didn’t happen at rush hour,” observed Emma. “Otherwise, there’d be, like, fifty million people stuck on the roads.”
“However many millions it really is, that’s too many,” Mary said. “You think we should stop, honey?”
“Nope,” Cody answered. But as they came closer, and the number of people increased, it was clear this was something new. “Uniforms,” he said. “Oh, man, it’s the National Guard.” He hadn’t planned on this; the military and government response to the crisis would depend on transportation and logistics, and now Cody was in danger of presenting them with the only working vehicle for miles around, and a military one, at that.
“No shooting,” said Emma simply. “Or I’m gonna get out and walk.”
“This’ll be fine,” said Cody, without any inner confidence whatsoever.
Groups of people gathered around stopped cars, which were mostly pulled onto the hard shoulder, although Cody had to maneuver around other vehicles that hadn’t moved since the EMP. The darkness brought confusion; only a handful of flashlights seemed to be working, and the flares being regularly replenished by the guardsmen cast an eerie glow, as though Cody were viewing events in infrared.
“Oh, man, we gotta stop. Okay.” Six guardsmen spanned the lane, with their leader holding up his hand in the universal gesture for “stop.” The automatic weapons they carried added, “right now.”
The leader, a corporal in his twenties, came to the truck’s window. “Are you the owner of this vehicle?”
“Yes,” Cody lied.
“License and registration.”
“Sure. Give me a second.” He reached for his wallet under the man’s watchful eyes.
“Say, um, sir? Could you ask your men to step back a little?” Mary requested. “We’ve had a difficult day, and your guns are kinda scaring the kids.”
He ignored her but took Cody’s license, shining an ancient-looking flashlight at the plastic card. “Registration, too,” he said.
“We left in a hurry, you won’t be surprised to hear,” said Cody. “I don’t know if I have it.”
The corporal gave him a deeply skeptical look. “Where you headed?”
None of your damned business. “We’ve got a place up in Clearwater by the lake. Better up there than in Flannigan, with all the looting and…”
“Turn off the ignition and step out of the vehicle,” the guard corporal ordered.
“Well, I gotta ask,” Cody said, “and I’m not trying to be difficult, but on whose authority?”
Nonplussed, the corporal said, “We’re a National Guard unit, as you can see, and we need transport.”
“So does my family.”
“Step out of the vehicle now.”
“Once I see proof that you’ve got the authority, I will. If you were a cop, it would be different.” Except, it wouldn’t.
Coming closer to the driver’s door, the corporal quietly drew his sidearm and held it up to his chest; only Cody and he could see the gesture. “We were dispatched here to secure the approaches to the border with Canada. There’s a lot of firepower here, and some very nervous people. You sure you wanna argue with me right now?”
“I’ve dealt with hijackers already today.”
“Yeah, what happened?”
“Same thing that’s gonna happen here. I continued on my way with my family.”
“Well, this is the end of your journey. Hop on out, before someone gets hurt.”
“First, let me speak to your commanding officer,” Cody tried.
“That’s not possible.”
“Then, let’s do some paperwork so I know who took the truck and can get it back later.”
“My patience is running out,” the corporal said, showing the others the sidearm for the first time. Emma stiffened instantly. “The situation is whacked, which means the governor probably already announced a state of emergency. That gives the National Guard powers of arrest. You following me?”
Cody quietly let his blood boil. In the final analysis, this corporal was no better than the other hijackers; they all intended to deny him the basic necessity of a working vehicle, which he saw as essential to keeping his family safe. He hadn’t chosen to be put in this position but would fight for what was right, as three men had already found to their cost.
“I said, ‘powers of arrest,’ buddy. You do understand what that means?”
“Sure,” he smiled. “It means you’re getting bored playing soldier, and you feel like playing cop instead.”
The corporal stepped back and raised the weapon. Before Cody could say anything else, Emma screamed at the man. “Don’t you dare threaten him!”
“Miss, I need you to…”
“Lower your weapon, now!” she yelled. “What the hell is going on today with guys and their goddamned guns?”
“Your father is being uncooperative,” he explained.
“He’s trying to cooperate, but he’s not letting you steal our truck,” Mary told him. “That’s being reasonable and defensive, not criminal or aggressive. You need to holster your gun and tell your men to let us pass.”
“You’re gonna make me
count to three, aren’t you?” the corporal said and gave a whistle to his troopers. All six made ready, their assault weapons pointing—for now—at the truck’s front grille.
“Count as high as you want, son,” said Cody. “If your guys fire at the engine block, this will just be another permanently immobilized vehicle. We can work something out, just…”
Shooting started. Cody grabbed Mary’s blouse and nearly tore it off her shoulder in his haste to bring her into cover. Behind him, Jacob was virtually sitting on Emma, shielding her from this latest violence. Braced for the windshield glass to shatter all over them, Cody reached for his sidearm and had drawn it before he realized the truck was undamaged. Glancing up quickly, he saw the corporal was gone and that his men were busy elsewhere, shouting at each other and running in different directions.
“The hell?”
“I see ‘em, Dad!” called Jacob.
“Keep your head down!” he roared back.
“But they aren’t shooting at us.”
Cody apparently hadn’t heard him. “I said…”
“Look! It’s a group of dudes over there in the field, running across.”
Cody found it was true; a dozen men were advancing on the checkpoint, firing as they went. “They’re not National Guards,” he decided out loud.
“No, their gear is all different, like they had to go shopping for it,” Jacob informed them. “Ouch… that guy just got hit.” He watched the disorganized paramilitary assault peter out, almost as soon as it had begun.
“Militia?” wondered Mary, stunned that she and her family were not yet shot to pieces.
“Who the hell would take on a guards unit?” he asked himself but decided it didn’t matter. “Hold on, everybody,” he said, throwing the truck into reverse. “We’re leaving.” Cody stomped on the gas, and the Dodge lurched backward, its gears whining, sweeping aside orange cones as it gathered pace. “Grab something!” He turned the wheel hard left, and the rear of the truck veered off the road and into a shallow ditch. “Okay, you big ol’ bastard, let’s see what you got.” He found first gear, mashed the accelerator again, and the machine responded like an angered beast chasing down a quarry. “Farewell, Colebrook and Canada, and points west. We’re heading east, and you won’t catch us,” he managed to laugh despite the insanity, “‘cause you ain’t got no wheels!”
Protecting Our Home Page 7