by Rod Rayborne
Who should play him, he mused, in his one-man show? It had to be someone dynamic, someone with character. Someone with dignity. Someone unafraid.
No cameo performance then, he grunted. He'd never been more afraid than he'd been in the last two days. He shook his head sadly.
Some hours later Gordon found himself outside a Walmart, crouching behind an abandoned truck, looking through the shattered store windows for any sign of movement. He knelt silently, remaining as still as he could manage, watching carefully. Discretion, he remembered, thinking of the dogs, was the better part of valor. No point in pressing his luck.
He looked around the parking lot. What had happen here, he wondered, staring at what might have been a huge company picnic gathered around the burned out vehicles, the parking lot filled with their melted takings. Clearly there had been a run at the store, however brief, the entrance looking like a gaping maw, vomiting food stuffs, cartons and bodies onto the parking lot outside.
Clearly at least some people must have had some kind of advanced warning that something big was going down because they'd nearly made it out of the parking lot, carts loaded to overflowing with goods, before the event had occurred. Maybe some of the prepper types had been tipped off by some military compatriot in the know or a conspiracy website with connections.
Not fast enough, Gordon thought, shaking his head. He glanced around the lot, making sure nothing was sneaking up on him and then looked back at the store entrance once again. No movement or sound reached his ears and after a few more minutes he began a cautious trek into the darkened interior.
Inside the store sat a gloom unlike anything he ever experienced before. The smell was horrifying. The building was so uncommonly dark, it was only with difficulty that he could see the furthest reaches of the interior. In the dim light near the entrance it looked like the store had been flipped over and shaken for good measure. He stumbled towards the registers hoping to find among the usual Point of Sale merchandise, the inevitable cheap flashlights all discount stores were known to hawk. The hair along the back of his neck stood up as he went, stumbling over the bodies of countless shoppers, bumping into carts and kicking goods out of his way. Of those who had been unaware of what was about to befall them, their final moments bargain shopping might have been happy ones, Gordon supposed.
Rounding a self-service island, Gordon felt about in the gloom for some minutes before he found the familiar shapes of cheap plastic merchandise. He looked closely until he found a few small flashlights hanging from Daisy chains. Taking one, he pressed the tiny button on the bottom. Nothing happened. He took another but it was dead as well. Then he pulled them all from the holder. None of them worked. One or two he could understand, but all of them? He stopped to consider his options. He could wait for the full light of day to cast its feeble glow through the store entrance, but he didn't know when that might be. At least for the time being, this was as bright as it was going to get. He would have to make a torch.
Finding the usual plastic cigarette lighters, he took one. Being familiar with Walmart, Gordon supposed that the clothing section might be close to the checkout area. He stumbled over mounds of store goods, reaching around a barrier until his hand touched something solid, a metal rod. He pulled it and it slipped out of the sleeve that had held it to a shelving unit. Feeling around once again, his hand brushed something soft, a shirt or a jacket. He rolled it between his fingers. No good, it was polyester. Dropping it, he continued moving around the merchandise, feeling for something else. After three tries, he found what he was looking for. Cotton. A shirt of some kind. It's burning wouldn't poison him like the polyester would. He pulled it from the hanger and wrapped the sleeves around the rod several times, tying them into a knot and pushing the mass into a ball at the rod's end. Flicking the lighter, he held the flame to the material.
The garment flared into life, sending out a brilliant flash of illumination. Suddenly the area outside the light appeared darker as Gordon's eyes adjusted to the light. Outside the bright circle, he imagined he could see eyes watching him, waiting for him to come their way. He could make out slavering jaws, dripping with anticipation, teeth glistening, legs preparing for the chase. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to look away. He grabbed more of the cotton shirts to add to the torch if need be and pushed his way through the fallen aisles back through the store.
His first stop was the sporting goods section, his footfalls echoing hauntingly among the otherwise emptied tomb like aisles. Along the way, he found a cart and pushed it before him, the sound of rolling wheels adding to the overall weirdness. Using the torch to light his way, he found sporting goods a few minutes later.
He was looking for a backpack. He walked up and down the aisles but found nothing resembling one. Then in a glass case he saw a few hanging, leather daypacks. That explained why they were locked away. In an adjoining aisle he had passed a man wearing a Walmart vest festooned with a variety of bling. Likely the sporting goods manager, he decided, the only one dedicated enough to cover his blue vest with so many ridiculous slogans. Having no desire to search through the dead man's pockets for the keys, he decided to break the glass instead. Had he realized how loud the noise would be in the sepulcher like store, he would have gone for the keys instead.
Grabbing a nearby broom and standing back, he swung it at the case. Then, glass broken and heart racing, he reached in and pulled out a heavy pack. He lifted it a few times, returned it to its place and took another. He continued this until he found one that wasn't too heavy. Satisfied, he moved down the aisle looking for anything else he thought he might need. Near the cash register, he spotted another glass case. This one held rifles. Gordon looked at them soberly. He felt a small wobble in his knees, a tightening behind his eyes. That's what he was trying to remember when he had run from the dogs. Guns. Protection. Swallowing hard, he turned away.
His torch flickered. He threw another shirt over it and tied the sleeves together before it had a chance to flare up once again. Holding out the torch, he continued on.
The aisles were littered with the dead, their sunken eyes seeming to follow him as he walked past. The flickering torch cast moving shadows, giving the corpses a savage new life. Their smell certainly did. Some were already in the advanced stages of decay, covered in vomit, their enormous bellies bursting open like giant pustules spilling the contents of their final meals across their swollen abdomens. Others, seemingly in better condition when the bombs fell, looked almost as though they might suddenly stand up, brush themselves off and walk away.
The hair along the back of Gordon's neck tingled as he moved down a larger aisle negotiating his way through the fallen debris. Bodies lay everywhere. Faces looking up at him, features seeming to move as the torch light rolled past. Sad eyes imploring, beseeching, begging his help. His understanding at their foul appearances. Rolling the cart past these specters, sometimes pushing them gently out of his way, he continually fought down the urge to run for the nearest exit. His legs quivered as he went.
Finding the grocery section of the store, he tossed canned and boxed items into the cart. Filling it, he rolled it to the store entrance. He looked out at the parking lot, an idea forming in his mind. He turned back and grabbed another cart. Walking back into the store, he filled it as well. He continued doing this until he had five carts full, mostly with food and water.
Turning for a final look back into the store, he stood there a moment, shrugged and pushed each cart in turn into the parking lot. Then began his search for a truck large enough to carry his ill-gotten gains. The parking lot was full, but most of the vehicles were empty of bodies. Gordon had no interest in trying to match what keys he might find on the bodies in the store with the hundreds of cars and trucks in the parking lot, so he looked instead for occupied vehicles. He needed a truck but a small one, a four-wheel drive narrow enough to negotiate the rubble that lay heaped along the streets.
He spotted a Jeep still sitting on rubber, a large man lying behind
it in the road with an overturned cart nearby. When Gordon got close, he could see that there had been an altercation, the man's body being riddled with bullet holes. He frowned. Things must have gotten hot sooner than he had thought. He stopped to look at the man for a moment and then walked to the driver's side of the open Jeep. There were no keys in the ignition. Frowning, he walked back to the man, looking down at his still body.
Squatting, Gordon patted the man down, but aside from his wallet and a knife attached to his belt, he found no keys. He walked around the man and spotted a set of keys just beneath the rear of the car, probably where they had fallen during the skirmish. He picked them up and then, as he started to climb into the driver's seat, spotted a handgun resting on the hood. He got out of the jeep and threw the gun far out into the lot. Then he climbed back into the car and looking at the keys in his right hand, pushed the longest one into the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. Groaning, he tried again but it was dead.
"Damn!" he growled. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he climbed from the Jeep and walked to another car, a man slumped against the steering wheel. Carefully, Gordon pushed the body over and looked at the ignition. The keys were there. He slid onto the seat and turned them. The car didn't respond. Gordon sat for a moment looking blankly at the dash, then climbed from the car, glancing around in wonder. "What the..." he said half out loud.
It came to him then, something he had heard somewhere years before. An explosion of sufficient magnitude discharged at such and such height in the atmosphere could burn out electronic components and chips within a particular radius, at least those with delicate components. Exploded high enough above the country, it could take out the entire North American grid.
"Damn," he repeated less forcefully. He looked back at his supply carts sitting near the exit, piled high with goods. Shaking his head, he climbed out of the car and walked back to them, pulled out the backpack and filled it with what he thought most indispensable. Feeling a jab, he realized that he had absently pushed the keys of the car into the front pocket of his jeans. Flinging them away, he turned and slumped out of the lot.
Chapter Eleven
N yles staggered down the dirt road hoping he was going in the right direction to reach Lincoln. He didn't have a compass but suspected that the bright orange glow on the horizon to the south was it. If Lincoln had indeed been hit, it was probably a mistake. An error. Either the missile had malfunctioned or some flunky tech made a miscalculation. Input the wrong coordinates. Omaha was probably was the real target. If it was Lincoln that was on fire, that was the last place he should want to go.
Certainly the opposite direction would have presented the better long-term prospect had he been thinking clearly. But though clear thinking was something he was noted and promoted for in scientific circles pre-event, his thoughts now ran towards the obscure. Tumbling thirty-five thousand feet in a jet aircraft that had simply exploded mid air to crash belly first, breaking up and skipping along the countryside, leaving small fires in its wake for something like a mile before coming to rest deep in Nebraska farmland will do that every time.
Why the plane had exploded was another question he might have pondered under better conditions. There had been nothing externally that had been mentioned by either of the pilots that should have led to such an outcome. Not that they had seen, at least. The closest atomic blast had taken place some sixty miles to the east, that orange glow, almost an hour before and the plane had been operating flawlessly up until the moment it erupted in a fireball to soar shooting star like through the warm July sky.
Both of these were things that might have been of interest to Nyles under other circumstances but remained unexplored as he wandered down the dirt road towards the fiery horizon. That he was able to walk at all considering the three ruptured discs in his back and ample internal bleeding was itself something of a wonder, but shock was merciful to him. Like some of the others who had died on the plane, he felt no pain.
He continued apace throughout the remainder of the day and into the night and the following morning. The sky had not yet turned black here, being so far from any target, so that he hoped someone might find him on the road and take him to the nearest town. He was well on his way to a burned out Lincoln when he collapsed on the side of the road and rolled into a ditch, there to pass away due to internal injuries.
Chapter Twelve
P rivate First Class John Bennett stood with his back to the cracked concrete of UCLA's Royce Hall, idly smoking a cigarette, while heavier smoke from the fires of the burning city drifted past him. He coughed twice and then took another pull, forcing the soothing nicotine deep into his lungs.
He glanced at Private First Class Diego Rodriguez, also leaning against the wall not ten feet away. Unlike Rodriguez, who's respirator dangled from his belt, Bennett was wearing his, though, pushed aside to smoke, standing in a city aflame, the extra protection seemed rather superfluous.
"Just saying is all," he repeated for the second time in as many minutes. His accent was strongly southern, Virginian. He had acquired the nickname of 'hillbilly' amongst his company, a label he resented. Though the men had used it good naturedly, Rodriguez shortening it to just Billy, to him it felt less like ribbing and more like a label.
"You 'just said' yesterday. And the day before. Heard you the first time," Rodriguez grumbled. His skinny frame matched Bennett's own right down to the gawky pineapple in his throat. "If they caught us, they'd shoot us as deserters. You fancy a firing squad? AWOL don't mean detention."
He turned and looked behind him into the darkened building. Seeing no movement, he stared back at Bennett and said in a low voice, "And there is no place else to go anyway. California's toast. Least this way we get three hots and a cot. Something to do. Safety in numbers. Pulling guard duty's the least of our worries. We wouldn't last one week out there on our own." He paused and then continued. "Besides, we're doing a good thing here. We're making the country strong again. Don't be a fool." He pulled his rifle tighter against his shoulder.
"Not getting any younger hanging around here. Come to that, probably not gonna get much older either. Los Angeles is hot! And I don't just mean the fires neither. Danged radiation is gonna be dropping our teeth in our soup bowls before too long. Think my teeth are loosening up," he said, pressing his tongue against his front teeth, feeling movement. "And then there's Owen."
He paused and looked at Rodriguez for confirmation. Rodriguez didn't look back, his mouth pulled in a tight line.
"C'mon man, that guy ain't right. Messed up. Like, what was all that stuff about foreigners? What foreigners? We're all Americans. What he really means is people who ain't white. I'm white, good as far as he's concerned, but you ain't. You good with that?"
"Nothing to say." Rodriguez answered. "He has no problem with me. He's struggling best he can with what he's got, and that's not much, man. I'm a soldier. I believe in the cause. It's a good thing we're doing here. And I'm safe as long as I stay put. I go running off AWOL, well, I'm not going to do it. We're friends Billy, but don't ask me to turn traitor."
"Easy for you to say. You volunteered. Me, I was drafted. I was a radio guy. Satellites. Worked with my father. Family business. It's what I wanted to do. But he had other ideas. Thought I needed toughening up. Little did he know." Bennett looked around at the destroyed street.
"But yeah, the Army put me in communications when they found out what I could do and Owen had me transferred here just to maintain his radio. His radio! That was a month ago. The good old days."
"What are you talking about, man? You're all over the place."
"Yeah? Look, I think you should be more concerned with the direction things are going than I am. Could be after Owen cleans out the rest of the riff raff in LA, he has a change of heart about who he wants in his army. He's a racist. Uniform ain't gonna change that. And the people out there, those that survived, they're nervous. Some of them shooting at us. Shot Evers yesterday, Miller this morning." He stopped fo
r a moment, looking hard at his cigarette.
"There's a guy out there saying shootings got to stop. On both sides. Heard him on the Ham yesterday. Someone called Colonel Beckman. Sounds like a good guy. Says we got to make a new beginning, war and all. Use this as our chance to find a better way. For everyone. Work together. Work for the good of all Americans. Not just the power players. Not like it used to be. He says Owen is a rouge. Wants to split the country into us and them. Man, that's what I was thinking too when he gave that speech. Us and them.
"Now Owen says they're enemy combatants. People out there. If they're not with us, they're against us. Man, they're just scared. We go taking pot shots at them, it'll be a free for all. Someone else take control from Owen, they'll line us up for treason."
Bennett shook his head. "Everyone over Major has gone power happy. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. At least if we walked, got us outta LA, we'd stand a chance. Blue sky on the other side of the San Bernardino's. I'm sure of it!"
"We're all rogue," Rodriguez growled. "Like you said, could turn into a shooting gallery out there. And you don't know nothing about no blue skies either. You run, Owen might say I was in on it. Stand me up just for watching you go. This is my life, Billy. Run while I'm around and I'll shoot you myself. Do what you have to but not on my watch. I'm not taking the fall for no one, especially your skinny ass. Remember that." Rodriguez shot him a warning glance.
PFC Bennett took one more pull on his cigarette, watching it flare bright orange against the dark street and then dropped it at his feet. Grinding it angrily under his boot, he fell back against the building and sighed.
Chapter Thirteen
T he quiet was deafening. Gordon crossed the street at Ocean, crossed again at Westmont and entered the heart of Our Town. The residential district of the not so poor but less than well off working stiffs who almost single-handedly made the country what it was through sheer hard work, unflagging initiative and unrelenting determination.