by Vince Byrd
“I will. I’ll get you out.” She left them, creating a lot of noise as she climbed over debris, making her way to the truck, and then it was quiet.
They waited, hoping Ava could free them from the silver tomb they were stuck in. “Why is it not raining? We had hail, but it’s not raining,” Kat questioned.
“It could be. We’re inside of a restaurant cooler, how do you know if it is raining or not?” Larry pointed out.
“The tree’s not wet, and there’s no water coming in from the massive hole in the roof from it falling on us,” Kat declared.
“Why were there twisters in December?” Ginger asked. “I’ve never heard of tornados at Christmas time. Isn’t tornado season in the spring or is it the fall?”
“Actually, it’s both. It has to be the solar storm. The weather patterns must have changed with all the destruction to the west. We don’t know what kind of weather we’ll get. The land mass has decreased, and the sea levels have risen due to the meteors. It will be unpredictable to us. We don’t know how many meteors fell, or how big they were,” Henry theorized.
“Do you hear anything?” Jesse asked.
“No, I don’t hear anything,” Kat answered. “Come on, Ava, you can do this.”
“I think I hear the truck? The truck just cranked up,” Jesse had his ear against the opening.
They heard the truck rev its motor several times, but the door didn’t open. Then, the sound of screeching tires echoed in their box. “It’s not moving. The tree is too big. She needs to go get some help,” Ginger fretted.
“Give her some time. She’ll figure it out,” Jesse reasoned. The truck revved again and with a solid jerk the door opened a little bit more. Then, with another jerk, it opened enough for everyone to squeeze out. Jesse stepped out and beheld the damage to the restaurant. The huge tree that had been uprooted by the fury of the wind had fallen across the building, caving in the roof. Henry’s Volkswagen was crushed by an extended branch, and part of the Mamma’s Home Cooking sign was now a permanent hood ornament.
Ava was standing in front of the truck, and the bumper was bent into a point where the rope was tied to it. “You did it, Ava,” Jesse applauded.
“I told you I’d get you out,” she answered.
“Thanks, Ava!” Kat hugged her tight.
Henry walked up and high fived Ava. “Good job!”
“Yes, thank you. I thought Larry was going to lose it in there,” Ginger teased.
“Whatever,” Larry muttered.
“Larry, why didn’t you bring out the boxes? You were the last one out,” Jesse questioned.
“Are you serious, Doc?”
“Yeah, Lar, where’s the boxes?” Ginger prodded, smiling at him, elated that she’d been freed.
Larry pointed his finger at her and said, “You…you’re coming with.”
Jesse assessed the damage to his truck while Henry, Ava, Larry, and Ginger retrieved their supplies. Kat followed Jesse around the truck. “Is it going to work?” she asked.
“The radiator’s not leaking, but it’s a little bunged up from flying debris. The windshield took a hit and so did the hood.” He pointed to a large crack on the passenger’s side and the dents in the metal.
“All loaded up and ready for travel, Doc, Sir, Boss,” Larry reported with a salute.
Jesse took a step toward Larry with a serious look on his face, and Larry held up his hands in surrender, “Okay, okay, Doc it is,” he turned and ran from Jesse.
Jesse turned around and smiled at Kat, and then he called out, “Load up, let’s roll!”
Twenty-five
Paige Day 1
David popped the hood on the 1968 Ford Mustang Coupe that Savannah had left sitting in the middle of the road. He looked the engine over like he knew what he was doing. He checked the dipstick for the level and color of the oil to see if there was any internal damage. He felt the top radiator hose and cap for overheating. Ethan stood beside him and watched as his dad thumb over the motor to diagnose the issue. Though David only had life experience from being a car dealer, he had never really repaired an engine, other than swapping out some spark plugs, performing an oil change, and minor issues.
Emily sat in the driver’s seat waiting for her husband to give the okay to turn the key. Paige sat down in the passenger’s side, leaving the door open. “This thing needs some work. Look at the dirt in here and all the fast food bags. It looks like my first car,” Paige admitted.
“Really?” Emily asked.
“I mean, when we bought it. It was a Honda Civic, and the guy who owned it was one of those paparazzi photographers. He basically lived in the car,” she explained. “When we went to look at it, the back seat was piled with clothes and papers. It smelled like an old hamburger and the food bags and containers were piled on the floor. You couldn’t even tell what color the carpet was.”
“Why did you buy it?” Emily wondered.
“My dad. He saw something in the car that I certainly did not at the time. But, it turned out to be a really nice car when we got it all cleaned up. I even called it “The Paparazzi”. It was a really great first car,” she admitted.
“There!” David said with excitement.
“What?” Ethan questioned.
“The coil wire. The rubber on it has dry-rotted, and the spark is being lost, causing it to heat up and then fail. I had an old clunker when I was a teenager that did the same thing to me,” David pointed out.
“Back in the stone age?” Ethan teased.
“You’re funny, Little Man.” David gave a thumbs-up to Emily after pressing the ignition wire firmly into the coil.
Emily turned the key and the car cranked up and idled. David and Ethan high-fived each other. “Way to go, Dad!” Ethan praised.
Paige moved some of the food bags around with her feet. A little mouse ran up her leg and jumped across her arm, then into the back of the car. She let out a screeching yelp and launched out of the seat like it was on fire. She ran down the road several yards, stopped and looked back, shaking her body like she was trying to remove something from herself. “It touched my arm!” she shouted.
Emily got out of the car, looking at her and wondering what had happened. Ethan ran toward Paige, shouting, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“It touched my arm! It touched my arm!” Paige shouted.
“What touched your arm?” Ethan asked.
“The rat in the car!” she shouted. “It ran up my leg like I was a tree and jumped on my arm.”
Ethan relaxed. “A mouse? You’re running from a mouse?”
“It was a big mouse, and it touched me,” she cried.
“I’ve seen you shoot a man and deliver a baby today, and you’re running scared from a little mouse?”
“They give me the creeps,” she answered, shaking her body again.
Ethan shook his head at her, “It’s just a rodent. It won’t hurt you.”
“They carry diseases, and their little beady eyes freak me out, and that one touched my arm. I have to wash my arm now,” Paige declared. She noticed Makayla was in the Duster behind the wheel, and it was moving toward her. Is she coming to get me? she thought.
David and Emily watched Makayla drive by and thought the same thing, but she didn’t stop. She drove by Paige and Ethan and shouted through the glass, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
“Hey! Where are you going?” Paige yelled. The tail lights of the Duster faded around the bend. She turned to Ethan, “What the heck? Did she just steal my car?”
“I think she did. You think you know someone…” he said.
“We don’t know her. We don’t know anything about her.”
“I didn’t think she would steal our car. She seemed like a nice person,” he defended.
“You can’t judge a book by its cover, I guess.”
“At least we got the Mustang running.”
“Oh, I’m not getting it that thing until you kill that mouse,” Paige objected. They walked back to the Mustang, but Paige stopped several feet away.
“How did she get the key?” David asked.
“I must have left it in the trunk lock. We were having a baby crisis,” Emily admitted.
“It’s not your fault; its Makayla’s,” Paige marveled. “I can’t believe she would do that to us after giving her a ride and all.”
“Well, we’re about to steal Cheyenne’s husband’s ride,” Ethan admitted.
“Yeah, but more like borrowing it, son. I’ll make it right with him after we get home. Cory gave me his address,” David corrected.
“Oh, you told Cory you would take the Mustang to back to Cheyenne’s?” Ethan asked.
“I did, but I didn’t tell him about the long detour we are going to take to our house.”
Ethan and David picked out every bag and piece of trash in the floor of the Mustang searching for the mouse, but they never saw it. They slapped the seats with their hands to drive the little critter out, but still, they had no luck. “That’s all we can do, Paige. I’m sure it’s long gone by now,” David convinced.
“Come on, sweetie, let’s go. Will you please get in the car?” Ethan coaxed.
“But Ethan, sweetie, it touched my arm. It’s still in there; I know it. Emily, you saw it, right?”
“No honey, I didn’t. I was looking at Ethan and David when you screamed,” Emily reported.
“It’s as afraid of you as you are of it. Now come on, let’s go. I’m getting tired,” Ethan grumbled.
“Well if you’re tired then…maybe I was tired when I shot that man for you, before he snapped your neck like a twig. Or, maybe I was too tired to buy the Duster for us. Or, maybe I’m just tired of you,” she blurted, then turned and started walking up the road into the darkness.
“Go get her, son. You won’t find another like her,” David nudged Ethan.
Ethan walked up to her and said, “Okay, thank you for your awesomeness, bravery, and generosity. I am spoiled. I blame that on my mother. I recognize that your fear of these tiny, little animals is real.” She gave him a mean look, but she let him continue. “And, I will do whatever you want me to do. We can take as long as we need to get you to feel comfortable about getting in the car. I’m sorry, about everything. I know we all have our fears. I love you, and I will help you face or overcome this one.”
She made a pouty face and whimpered, “Thank you, can you clean out the trunk? It might have slipped in under the back seat.”
Ethan gave her a hug, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll clean out the trunk and even remove the back seat, and let you inspect it.”
“I’ll get into the car after all that. I will still have to go to a happy place in my head or something,” she agreed.
“It will be alright. You’re going to be fine. I’ll be right there with you,” he reassured.
She squeezed him tighter, “You know, sometimes that’s all a girl wants to hear.”
“I get that. I understood it when you were coaching Savannah. You were really amazing back there.”
“Thanks,” she relaxed in his arms.
“But this…this is a whole different Paige.”
She broke the embrace and smacked him on his shoulder, “And here you were doing so good. I think you have a trunk to get to, Little Man.”
“I deserve that. I’m on it.”
They walked back to the car, and Ethan and David did just as Ethan had promised. They took out everything from the trunk and removed the bottom portion of the back seat. Once Paige was fully satisfied that the mouse had moved on or was tossed out with the trash, they re-installed the seat. She climbed into the back with great hesitation but settled in from the comfort of Ethan. They were back on the road with David at the wheel once again, this time, in a stolen car.
Twenty-six
Jesse Day 7
Kat rode in the middle between Jesse and Henry of their old Chevy Truck. Ava decided to ride in the back with Ginger and Larry. Putting the destruction of the tornados behind them, Jesse wondered what was ahead. With weather patterns changing, terrorists trying to take over the world, and the general population deep in survival mode, the trip home seemed a bit challenging. He pretended to beep his horn twice as they crossed into North Carolina on Hwy 29 toward Greensboro. He didn’t want to attract unwanted attention to themselves. “I thought we’d never get out of Virginia,” he remarked.
“I had some doubts also,” Henry admitted.
“That makes three of us,” Kat agreed. “Let’s hope that North Carolina is not as eventful as Virginia.”
“Hey, do you think we should take I-85 or try the back roads?” Jesse asked.
“Well, the interstate will be full of dead vehicles. It’s been a while now since they all died, so there shouldn’t be many people on the interstate,” Kat pointed out. “But there are stretches of miles without anything if we needed something.”
“Henry?” Jesse called, leaning forward to look at him.
“I think Kat is right on, but which one do we want to try? I think the interstate will be the safest route, less people trying to take what we have. There are still good people that will help us if we want to take the back roads. I believe that,” Henry replied. “I think it’s a coin toss, really. They each have their pros and cons.”
“I guess we’ll try I-85. We can always get off, right?” Jesse decided.
They traveled through the outskirts of Reidsville without incident. For the next thirty miles, they weaved between and around cars, but they were spread out well. They made good time through the country to Greensboro.
Ginger, Larry, and Ava were lying between the food and ammo boxes in the bed of the truck, looking up at the sky and calling out shapes in the white clouds moving by. “A puppy dog,” Ava pointed.
“I see it too,” Ginger reported, holding up a pointed finger as well.
“I don’t see a puppy. I see a mean-looking leprechaun squinting his eyes. It could be Santa sleeping,” Larry said.
Ava laughed, “It’s definitely a puppy. Don’t you see its floppy ears?”
“If you say so, but I thought it to be Santa-chaun’s mustache.
“Now, there’s a scary movie for you, ‘Santa-chaun, Have You Been Naughty or Nice’? “I always wanted to be a movie star,” Ginger revealed. “I wanted to be that girl that screams in a horror flick, but not the dumb one that always gets it first.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Hey, you can be my star. What about ‘Leprechaun-ta, The Christmas Cloud Shape Shifter’,” Larry growled, trying to use a movie narrator’s voice.
“No, silly, it’s’ Luppy, The Larry Licking Puppy’. He goes around finding and licking anyone named Larry,” Ava laughed.
“I’ll go see that one,” Ginger agreed.
Jesse tapped on the back glass and signaled with two fingers pointing to his eyes. He circled his index finger around for them to look alert. Ginger sat up, picked up her shotgun and looked around.
“What is it?” Larry asked, sitting up and reaching for his AK.
“Not sure. Jesse must have seen something up ahead,” Ginger guessed.
Jesse turned onto the I-85 on ramp after passing two burned-out City of Greensboro police cars. They appeared to have been attacked and were strewn with a myriad of bullet holes, then set on fire. He eased the truck down the access ramp with caution, pulling around several cars sitting idle in the way. Ginger got a bad feeling after seeing the destroyed patrol cars. The fine hairs on the back of her neck stood up, telling her to beware of danger. Thoughts of Jack came flooding into her mind, how she had gotten the same feeling just before he grabbed her in the dark. “Larry, something doesn’t feel right here,” she said.
They both
stood up and placed their weapons on the roof of the truck. They scanned the cars close to them looking for threats, but all was clear. The rows of cars stretched as far as the eye could see and then disappeared into a distant curve. There were no people around; just a river of now forgotten metal hoopties that were left behind by their owners. Doors and trunks were left open on many from pilferers and possible thieves looking for something of value.
Jesse merged onto the highway, drifting into the emergency lane to avoid weaving in and out of vehicles. He drove into the grass to move around any cars that were in the way if he could. Ginger spotted a man way off, standing in the middle of the road. She leaned down to the back-sliding window and warned, “We’ve got company up ahead.”
The man came into Jesse’s view as he pulled into the highway’s center lane and then moved left to the next lane. The highway became clear all the way to where the man was. The cars had been pushed to the sides in a line, causing a funnel right to him and into one lane. There was no way around him. They were led right into his trap. He was blocking the only lane with an old 1966 Ford F600 wrecker. It had a large square-style bumper with a heavy-duty push cage on the front. He was leaning against the cage with his arms folded like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was wearing faded jeans, pointed-toed boots, and an old straw cowboy hat.
“They’ve got us blocked in. I should’ve seen this coming. They’ve got the cars positioned so you don’t notice until it’s too late,” Jesse acknowledged.
“You can’t help that the crazies come out in a crisis. Maybe they’re just trying to protect their community. I hope so,” Kat reckoned optimistically.
“Do you want to talk him together?” Henry asked.
Jesse stopped the truck about twenty yards away. “No, there’s no sense in both of us getting shot, if this goes poorly.”
The man motioned for Jesse to pull his truck closer. “I don’t like this,” Henry admitted. “I didn’t even want to go to that retreat. I told them last year I wasn’t going to go. If only I’d stayed home.”
Kat and Jesse looked at one another and then back at Henry. “Henry, what are you saying?” Jesse asked.