Black Autumn Travelers

by Jeff Kirkham

  He had stuck to the plan he and Tommy had laid out: drive north along the 57 Freeway until San Dimas, pass through the mountains near the Firestone Scout Camp, and drop into the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. Then run straight east, skirting the base of the San Bernardino Mountains, taking the 210 Freeway all the way to the mouth of Cajon Pass and the I-15 Interstate—hopefully pulling off an escape from the snapping jaws of Los Angeles—if this turned out to be the real deal.

  A holiday, roadwork, or even a big Las Vegas weekend could turn the I-15 into a 250-mile chain of humanity, crated in their climate-controlled metal boxes, every one of them fuming with desire to get past the masses standing between them and their ambitions. This time, it felt very different. Today was just another Tuesday—except the instincts of tens of thousands of people had obviously shouted down normalcy.

  Get out, their subconscious minds had screamed.

  His eyes plastered open, forgetting to blink, and drying out while he inventoried his personal failures, like gravel in his soul.

  He looked into his rearview mirror at the two boys sleeping in their car seats, and his hands tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. This time, Vegas wasn’t about copious alcohol and grab-ass with his softball buddies. This time, he needed to get there to safeguard his family. His brain cooked with a feverish desire to get them clear of whatever bad thing might come next. The fact that it would be happening to everyone at the same time, if his fears turned out to be real this time, didn’t factor into his equation.

  “We’re going to be okay,” his wife said, working to draw down the anger coming off him in waves. She had a knack for sensing his worry, even though Cameron doubted she grasped its ferocity. “Let’s just keep moving. The freeway will open up in a bit.”

  The ground shook with a deep baritone and Julie stifled a scream. “It’s just an earthquake,” she said. A lot of times Julie did that: blurted out what she hoped was true in an effort to fill emotional space.

  But Cameron knew that earthquakes couldn’t usually be felt in a moving vehicle. He had lived in California his whole life and had ample experience. This was something different.

  He stared intently at the radio, his brain scrambling to place the tune, as though it might help him understand his sudden sense of dread.

  “…No reason to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke. There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke…”

  Cameron pawed at the controls, punching buttons until he managed to sever Julie’s Bluetooth link with her phone and change over to regular radio.

  The emergency alert tone screeched, waking the boys in the backseat.

  “Why’d you do that?” Julie’s protest trailed off. Cameron raced through radio stations, using the presets that he almost never used anymore, each station braying with the same emergency broadcast alert. Finally he found someone talking.

  “A nuclear bomb has been detonated off the coast of Los Angeles. Please remain in your homes and stay calm. The governor will provide more details and advise citizens how to proceed. Until then, please stay calm and remain in your homes. If you are at work, please return to your homes in an orderly fashion. I repeat. A nuclear bomb has been detonated off the coast of Los Angeles…”

  What had started as a precaution, leaving Los Angeles because of some incomprehensible chain of events in the world, had now side-slipped into a parallel reality. A real nuke had gone off, and his family had been close enough to feel the earth groan.

  The other events—a dirty bomb in the Middle East, some scary news about stock prices, and some blackouts in southern California—had been enough to get Cameron and Julie moving east in their SUV, just as a precaution. Those three pieces of news together had sounded bad, so he and his family had left their home in Los Angeles the night before.

  The traffic choking the 57 hit Cameron as another in a long line of personal failures; another reminder of his inability to make the right decisions for his family.

  Getting busted while high on ‘shrooms in his twenties.

  Being rejected from police academy because of his record.

  Quitting his good job at the hotel to start his own business.

  Failing at the business and stiffing his father-in-law for the eight grand he invested.

  He should’ve paid more attention to the news and bailed out of SoCal the moment the dirty bomb torched off in the Middle East. Add that one to the list.

  The weather in his head reminded him of the jerky, swirling video they show of a hurricane as it spins its way toward landfall. Every waking moment of every day, Cameron had to position his ass in the clear center spot—the eye in the midst of fury. Instead, more often than he cared to admit, he subjected his family to the lashing rains instead.

  Thirty-five years old and he still didn’t know when to be Johnny-Be-Good and when to let the wolf off its fucking leash.

  But all those bits of internal recrimination could’ve been written off the account against him as a husband and father if only this had been another false alarm. With a bass rumble coming from the earth’s core and the high-pitched squeal coming from the radio, he knew he had screwed the pooch for real this time.

  Cameron pounded on the dashboard as Julie leaned away, backing against the passenger door. A chunk of plastic from one of the air vents popped off and disappeared between the driver’s seat and the center console.

  The rumbling ceased. A blank silence fell over the idling cars of the 57 Freeway blockade. The quiet felt like God putting Cameron on notice.

  Last chance, asshole.

  Rickerson Home, Port Angeles, Washington

  “What do you want, Dad?” Sage Ross seethed into the kitchen phone, the long spiral cord snaking from the handset back to the wall. His grandparents had retreated into the family room to give him some privacy while he spoke to his father.

  The week prior, one of the cleaning ladies had found a bag of weed in the bottom of Sage’s underwear drawer. His dad had sent him to stay with his grandparents in Port Angeles, Washington to give Sage “some time away from his questionable friends” in Utah.

  Before sending him, Jason took away Sage’s smartphone, cutting him off from the digital world. The teenager was madder than a cat in a clothes dryer.

  “You and I need to talk,” Jason said over the landline.

  “Whatever. You’re going to lecture me about college and adult life and blah, blah, blah. I already told you; I’m not going to college. Not everyone cares about money as much as you do.”

  After a pause, Jason continued. “I wasn’t going to talk to you about college. I wanted to talk about what’s going on with the stock market and with California…”

  Sage interrupted, “I don’t care about the stock market. I told you; I’m not about money like you are.” Sage was on a roll, tapping into the kind of self-righteous passion known only to Italians, rock stars, and teenagers.

  “Hold up, son. I’m not talking about money. Do you know the stock market crashed? Have you heard that a nuclear bomb went off near Los Angeles?”

  There was a long pause as Sage tried to fit the new information into his diatribe.

  “No. What does that even mean? Does that mean you lost all your money, because I honestly don’t care.”

  Sage was Teenager Number Four in the Ross family, and he hated how Jason played out his phony parenting strategies rather than joining him in an honest argument. With Sage’s older brother, now a United States Marine, Jason hadn’t been quite so metered, and Sage got a front row seat to many hurly-burly arguments about his brother’s teenage mess-ups. For Sage, talking to Jason was like talking to a professional father. It pissed him off.

  “Did you hear the part about a nuclear bomb going off in Los Angeles?” Jason asked Sage. “I’m worried about you getting home.”

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t have sent me off to butt-fucking Egypt to punish me.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Jason agreed without addressing
the disrespect. “This turned out to be a bad time to send you to Grandma and Grandpa’s. We need you home as soon as possible. I’m afraid bad things are happening in the world, and I need you back in Utah.”

  “You don’t get to control me. If things go bad, I’m staying here to help Grandma and Grandpa.” Sage had Jason on the ropes, an opportunity he wasn’t going to waste. Taking away Sage’s phone was an attempt to control him, and sooner or later his dad would have to learn that he didn’t get to control his kids. Sage had become a man, and he would be making his own decisions about what to smoke and what not to smoke, when to go and when to stay.

  “Think about it, son. If things do go totally bad, Grandma and Grandpa will sacrifice their own safety and their own resources to keep you alive. I agree with you; you are an asset, but they’ll put your life ahead of their own, and that could be the end of them. Come home where you can contribute like a man—protect your family here. Grandpa knows the Olympic Peninsula like the back of his hand. They’ll be okay. With you there, it might compromise them.”

  The piss and vinegar went out of Sage. With Jason apologizing and admitting that it had been a bad idea to send him to Port Angeles, Sage could move on. Jason had admitted that Sage was a man—a man with a bona fide contribution to make to the family. That was all he really wanted to hear.

  “How do I get home?”

  “You need to move fast. You’ll be racing the clock. I FedExed Grandpa your iPhone the same day you left. He has it now. You’re going to need it to travel. Let me talk to Grandpa, okay?”

  Sage called out to the living room and Grandpa Bob picked up the living room extension while Sage listened quietly to the conversation from the kitchen phone.

  “Hey, Bob, how’re you doing?” Jason asked his father-in-law.

  “We’re going to be okay. We’re packing up the fifth wheel trailer and we’re moving up the coast to our campground. We can take Sage with us, if that’s what you want.”

  Grandpa Bob was in his seventies and Sage knew he had already suffered one heart attack. A former fireman, he was otherwise physically fit and a skilled outdoorsman, but the unstated truth was that Bob couldn’t count on his fitness like the fireman he once was.

  “I’m thinking we should get him on the road to Salt Lake City,” Jason said.

  “I can gear him up and send him in Glenda’s Taurus in an hour or two. The Taurus is at three-quarters of a tank and it’s just been tuned up. But the engine has over a hundred fifty thousand miles on it. Do you think it’s worth the risk?”

  Jason went quiet for a moment. “I think the risks of sending him home are less than the risks of him staying in Washington,” he said finally.

  “Okay,” Bob agreed. “I can see that it’s a close call either way. We have a little cash we can give him for gas. Are credit cards still working?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason answered. “You sure you don’t want to come to Utah with him?”

  “No,” Bob said in a slow drawl, “we’re best off here. This is our home and we’ve been preparing, little by little, for a long time. We’ll be pretty safe on the Olympic Peninsula. I think we’ll be all right.”

  Sage guessed that Bob and Glenda probably thought they would be a hindrance in Salt Lake City, and they weren’t the kind of people who tolerated that. Port Angeles was Bob’s hometown in the old-fashioned sense of the word. He knew the woods and the waters, and there was a fair chance they would be safe once the four million people of Seattle couldn’t cross Puget Sound on a ferry. In any case, if Jason couldn’t talk Bob into going to Utah, Sage probably couldn’t either.

  “We’ll miss you. I think we’re going to need men like you in the days to come. Would you get Sage set up and give me a call before he heads out?”

  “Yep. Let me get to work. I’ll call you soon.” Bob hung up and so did Sage.

  Over the next hour, Sage and his grandpa filled the Taurus with as much camping gear as they could fit into the trunk and the backseat. When everything else had been loaded, Grandpa Bob took Sage back to the bedroom and opened a gun safe inside the closet. He pulled out a perfectly maintained Winchester 30-30 with a scope and three boxes of bullets.

  “This is my best rifle,” Bob said. “I’ve killed a lot of deer and one elk with this Winchester.” He handed Sage one of the boxes of bullets with his free hand and Sage put it in his back pocket.

  Bob ran a finger down the barrel of the Winchester. “I planned on leaving this rifle to you when I passed.”

  “Why don’t you keep it until then? I’ll be okay without a gun. It’s not like I’m going to have to shoot anything,” Sage argued, not comfortable with the gift and not comfortable thinking about his Grandpa Bob passing away someday.

  “I hope that’s true. I hope this is all one big misunderstanding and that nobody will need guns. But sometimes we don’t get what we hope.” Bob looked at the rifle, sadness in his eyes and the wisdom of years pulling at the corners of his mouth. “It wouldn’t be the first time a seventeen-year-old boy had to carry a gun to survive.”

  Sage shrugged off his Grandpa’s heaviness. “That’s never going to happen now, though. Right? That was back in old times. There’s no way I will ever point a gun at another person.”

  Grandpa Bob had apparently run out of words. He looked up from the rifle into Sage’s eyes and slowly handed the gleaming steel weapon from grandfather to grandson, along with the other two boxes of bullets.

  “Thanks, Grandpa,” Sage said reflexively, knowing it was the wrong thing to say, but nothing else came to mind. His grandpa’s expression brought out that old, boyish bubbling in his chest and he turned away before Bob could see the upwelling of tears building in the corners of Sage’s eyes.

  When the Taurus was loaded, Bob called Jason. Sage joined the call from the kitchen extension.

  “He’s ready,” Bob said.

  “What’s he carrying?” Jason asked.

  Bob rattled off the list. He had raided his own camping supplies, gun safe and food pantry, no doubt cutting into Glenda’s and his own survival plan: freeze-dried food, water, camping supplies, and the Winchester. Sage thought it was enough food to get him through three months, which was major overkill, considering he would likely be home in a day. He felt guilty that Bob had decimated his survival supplies.

  Most important, Bob had given Sage their car.

  “Are you sure you can spare the car?” Jason asked.

  “We have our truck and our fifth wheel trailer. That’s all we need. If things recover, you can bring the car back… So what do you think? Will things recover?”

  “You probably already know what I think,” Jason answered. “I’d be surprised if we ever speak again, Bob.”

  Sage’s eyes went wide, and a bolt of fear shot up his back. No matter his teenage angst, some part of him still took anything his dad said as gospel truth.

  “Yeah…” Bob reluctantly agreed.

  “So let me thank you now for putting my son’s life ahead of your own,” Jason said. “That’s way more food and supplies than he will probably need. You and Glenda are cutting it close to give him a better chance in a worse-case scenario. He’ll probably be home by this time tomorrow. But you packed what I would’ve packed, and I know you went deep into your supplies to set Sage up.”

  “Of course. That’s what family does,” Bob answered, getting ready to hang up. “I love you, son-in-law. I’ll have Glenda call Jenna a little later. You can talk to Sage alone now. Goodbye.”

  Bob hung up the living room phone with a click and Sage spoke for the first time. “Grandpa’s giving me way too much stuff, Dad. I should give some of it back.”

  “Keep it,” Jason said. “Your grandma and grandpa know their own hearts.”

  Sage went silent for a moment, struggling to pull himself together. The old Sage cracked through the crust of pissed-off teenager.

  “Okay, Dad… What’s the best route for me to get home?”

  Jason talked Sage through the rou
te, outlining the most direct path from Seattle to Utah. Bob had given Sage a hard copy map of the western U.S.—a rarity in the days of GPS and cell phones.

  “Make a run for eastern Washington. Anything on the coastal side of the mountain range will probably get dangerous. There’ll be millions of urbanites and technology workers, all wondering where to get their next meal. Don’t head south to Portland. It might implode just like Seattle. Drive straight east on the 410 to Yakima. Hopefully you can fuel up there. How much cash do you have?”

  “Grandpa gave me almost eight-hundred dollars.”

  “Tuck half of that cash under a dish on their kitchen table before you leave,” Jason told his son.

  “Okay. Where do I go after Highway 410?”

  “Head for Boise, then cut over to the 15 Freeway. It runs straight south to Salt Lake City.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “If nothing goes wrong, it’ll take you about twelve hours to get home. But, son, everything’s going wrong… I wish I had more time to teach you things…”

  “You taught me lots of things, Dad. I’m going to be fine.”

  There was a long pause. Then Jason said, “I love you, son.”

  “I love you, too, Dad. Sorry I swore at you before.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I want you to promise me something: promise me that you will do whatever it takes to survive and to make it home. No matter what happens. Give me your word on it.”

  “I promise, Dad,” Sage said.

  “You promise what? Please say the words.”

  Sage straightened his back. “I promise I will do whatever I have to do to survive and make it home. It’s only twelve hours away, though, right?”

  “Yes, but I have a bad feeling about this. Do I have your word as a gentleman?” A bleakness rang in the question, even over the phone line, the true terror of their predicament starting to take hold.