Yep, all this is exactly what Mom warned me about.
Suddenly, she wasn’t in such a hurry to get inside to check on the other officers.
Cape Girardeau, MO
It was about twenty miles from their starting point to the edge of the small city of Cape Girardeau. The town sat on a hillside on the left bank of the river, though much of the lower portion had been washed away in the rush of water that had shot through the day before. He realized immediately what it meant for their effort to fuel up. “If there was ever a marina here in town, it’s long gone, now.”
“How much fuel do we have?” Butch asked.
“A little less than half a tank. Say a safe twenty miles. Forty on the high side. But we should really gas up here while we have a town in our sights.” He pointed toward the buildings and homes along the bank. The Illinois side of the river was a broad floodplain, with maybe three or four miles to a distant hill, but the flat land had been scoured clean of every living shrub, tree, or blade of grass.
A giant suspension bridge remained intact over the Mississippi, though there were no cars on it. The white suspension cables were held up by two structures that looked like the letter H crossing the highway on each end of the bridge. The clean lines of the structure contrasted harshly with the wrecked frontage of the town and the desolation where the bridge came ashore on the far bank.
“We’ll have to park the boat and walk into town. I’m sure there will be a gas station where we can get five gallons, though if we’re going to make this a habit, we should find more cans and a golf cart for land transport.”
Butch brightened. “We could make ramps and put it on your boat. It would make our lives a whole lot easier.”
He laughed. “Yeah, so would a couple of bikes. Remember how that turned out? I think for right now I’ll only deal with what legitimately belongs to me.” He patted Susan’s Grace to hammer home the point.
The cowboy raised his hands like it was a stick-up. “I leave it to you, though how would you prove she’s your boat? You know, if someone really presses the issue.”
Ezra hadn’t thought about it. He once owned the paperwork, of course, but it went up in the burning pile of his belongings back at the house. Claiming ownership of anything while out on the road was going to be impossible. “I’ll deal with that if the time comes.” He hoped it wouldn’t.
It was easy to find a place to come ashore. The remains of a floodwall ran along the foot of the hill, but it had been mostly scoured away with the rest of the missing town. Ezra parked near a reinforced post remaining from the wall, which made the perfect anchor point to wrap a rope around.
Later, walking into town with their rifles, the scene almost seemed normal. It only took about ten minutes before they came across a Tikkanen Fuels gas station. It didn’t surprise him to see Pay Before Fueling signs posted on each pump. They walked into the bright blue storefront ready to pay for the gas.
“Sorry, we’ve got no gas,” a nervous man said from behind the counter.
“You’re totally out?” Ezra lamented, wondering how a company as large as the one run by the world’s richest man could possibly run out of fuel. “We’re on a boat. We only need five gallons.”
The fifty-ish-year-old gentleman gave him all his attention. “Sorry, guy. The boss shut down the pumps when the mayor issued his order saying we couldn’t raise our prices above what it was three days ago. He doesn’t want to give away the gas when there are so many people trying to get it.”
He and Butch shared a bemused look, then he glanced back to the man. “Isn’t that a merchant’s dream? Having an audience ready to buy up his whole inventory?”
The man shook his head. “I, uh, I mean my boss, wants to sell the gas for what the market demands. If the mayor had let him sell it at an extreme profit, it would offset the loss we’ll undoubtedly take once all the gas runs out. Who knows how long it will be before we get another shipment from Indiana? The town is beat up. The bridge is out. It might take a while.”
“So you have the gas in the tanks but it’s on lockdown?” he asked, certain it couldn’t be true.
“Yessir,” he replied with haste. “Sorry I can’t sell it to you.”
“Why are you still open, then?” Butch asked.
The man pointed to the aisles and the refrigerated sections along the back wall of the store. “I’m having a sale on beer and all the beverages. Half off.”
It had been a long time since he’d eaten, but he needed gas more. “I don’t suppose you’d sell me a few gallons if I were willing to pay you whatever you wanted, would you?”
The clerk shook his head and spoke under his breath. “I would if I could, but I’d lose my license. The mayor said he was going to keep a close eye on all the stations who turned off their pumps. You two might be working with him already, and I want to be a good boy.” Despite where he was, the man spat across the counter onto the floor in a nearby aisle.
“We aren’t with your mayor, but I know why you’d think that. We’ll take however many sports drinks we can buy for twenty bucks, along with a can of nuts and whatever he wants.” He pointed to Butch.
“Yeah, I’ll have what he’s having. Nuts should be nutritious.”
When they placed it all on the counter, the man inspected their goodies. “I can give you the drinks for half price, like I said, but everything else is twice face value, now.”
Ezra gave the man a pleasant smile, though he wanted to punch the guy for gouging them. Still, he was so hungry he didn’t care. He grabbed a big bag of chips from a nearby rack to add to his pile. “I thought you said the mayor ordered you to keep your prices low?”
The clerk took his cash and put everything in plastic bags. “The mayor said I couldn’t sell gas for a jacked-up profit, but he said nothing about everything else. I’m sure it was an oversight, but until he corrects it, I’m going to sell things for what the market tells me they’re worth. You two look desperate, like you haven’t eaten for a long time. I figure we’re both coming out of this as happy campers. Am I right?”
He couldn’t deny it. He was starving.
“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you,” Ezra lied, grabbing his stuff. “I hope your town gets put back together soon.”
When he and Butch were at the door, the clerk yelled. “Hey, I’d be willing to unlock one of the pumps and give you as much as you can carry if you trade me one of those rifles. Barter wasn’t mentioned by the mayor…”
Ezra concluded he was talking to the store owner, not some random clerk. It was the only explanation for his ever-changing limits of capitalism. “We’re not that desperate, but thanks anyway.”
As he walked out, he swore the man added, “I bet you will be, soon.”
CHAPTER 4
Billings, MT
After seeing the two boys run by, she spent several minutes driving along the outside edge of the parking lot. From that vantage point, it appeared as if the whole town was rioting at the outer doors of the mall. It made sense why the officer had instructed her and Asher to go to the retail outlet; the defenders obviously needed the assistance. However, the scale and hopelessness of the situation turned her stomach. Asher’s uncertain tone suggested he felt the same.
“Is the big city always like this?” she asked with a hint of mirth.
“No, except on Black Friday. It starts a lot like this, only the people drive their cars through the doors of the mall, rather than fighting their way inside on foot.”
She tilted her head, unsure if he was being serious. It was a bit like what Mom would say about how bad it was in the city, but it couldn’t possibly be true. It took her a few seconds to reason it out. “All right, so the chaos is unusual.”
“Very,” Asher agreed. “Maybe we should drive around to the other side,” he continued. “We couldn’t enter the mall from this side even if we wanted to.”
She laughed nervously. “Do we want to?”
Dark shapes ran on the roof of the mall,
hunched over to present the smallest targets. Were the police snipers waiting for backup? Could she use their support to get inside? She came right back to the central question of the moment: did she even want to go in there?
She drove to the opposite side of the mall, hoping to see some evidence of calm. What she got, instead, was an even more chaotic situation. A big yellow school bus had been rammed into the glass doors of the entryway; its rear end stuck out of the building. A gaggle of citizens struggled to climb into the emergency exit door of the vehicle, which would presumably give them access to the inside of the mall.
“I was just joking about driving through the doors,” Asher volunteered. “I couldn’t have known it would happen.”
“Which means things are worse than Black Friday,” she said dryly.
“Oh yeah,” he replied.
“Well, we can’t go through that way, either,” she remarked, nervous about what they were in for if they tried.
Asher tapped his watch. “I hate to say it, but this isn’t really in my skillset. Those people at the doors would probably eat me for lunch.” He looked over to her with eyes full of worry. “And I don’t want to shoot anyone before lunchtime.”
It became clear with every turn on the parking lot there was no safe way inside. She parked in a spot as far from the mall as possible, near a few abandoned cars, then picked up the radio mic. “Officer McCracken, this is Park Ranger Grace Anderson. We’re unable to—”
Before she could finish, a young man hopped in through the missing back door. He was winded and hoarse as he spoke. “Please help me! Drive!”
Grace whipped her head toward the hitchhiker. It was one of the young men who’d run by earlier. It took her a second to regain her composure and speak with a voice of authority. “We saw you with those games in your arms. Were you stealing them?”
“Yeah, bust me or whatever. Just get me out of this place!” He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, he was concerned with some men she hadn’t noticed earlier. They stood among parked cars about fifty yards to the rear.
She connected the dots. “Are those men with the police? Were they trying to stop you from taking those games?”
The kid was probably fourteen or fifteen. Old enough to know better. However, he wiped sweat from his brow and glanced toward her with watery eyes. “I don’t want to die for no games. Those men are stopping anyone they see carrying stuff from the mall. They take it…or worse.” He fought a sob. “They hit my bud with a baseball bat. I think he’s dead.”
“No way,” Asher replied. “We saw you not ten minutes ago. How did they even catch you? You two were pretty fast.”
The kid puffed up his chest, willing to accept the compliment, but then he deflated again. “They have cars, you know?”
Asher met her gaze. His eyes said, “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The radio chirped, startling her back into the moment. “This is Officer McCracken. Go ahead, Ms. Anderson. Did you make it to the mall?”
She let out a fatalistic laugh. “Yeah, we made it. You didn’t tell us it was a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Crowds are fighting to break down the doors. People are, uh, dying in the streets, too.”
“I’m sorry,” the officer replied, sounding unapologetic. “We’ve lost contact with the force inside. They have orders to get out if things get too bad.”
She looked up. The people on the roof were gone, perhaps backing up the officer’s statement. If so, it meant she didn’t have to explain why they would not be going inside.
The voice on the CB continued. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I’ve got a new assignment for you two federal officers. I need you to rescue one of your own. Stand by a second and I’ll get you the address.”
“Thank God,” she said under her breath.
“Who are you people?” the kid asked from the back seat. He leaned forward and seemed to check out their uniforms. The pair of hats sat on the center console. “National Park Service?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “We’re here to back up the Billings police.”
The kid traded glances back and forth between them and the men out in the parking lot. She noticed in her rearview mirror they were moving as a group toward her truck, probably ten or fifteen of them. There was no doubt in her mind the men had more than a few guns on them.
“Crap,” she exhaled. “We’re out of time.”
Cape Girardeau, MO
Butch and Ezra took turns carrying the empty gas container, so the other could suck down his sports drinks. It was about a ten-minute walk back to the boat, but when he wasn’t drinking or eating from his bag of chips, Ezra was thinking about where to go next. If the mayor of the local town had put the hammer down on price gouging, it might mean none of the gas stations in the area would sell him fuel. Plus, knowing how the world worked, he guessed any station selling gas at artificially low prices would already be sold out, since consumers would buy as much as they could physically carry. It presented a major barrier to their journey.
“What do we do now?” Butch asked, his mouth full of Fritos.
“Maybe a boat isn’t the best means of transport these days. The flood washed away the marina here in town, but even if it were there, we might have been refused service. Are we going to have to deal with this every sixty miles for our thousand-mile trip?” He thought back to the 250cc dirt bikes. They didn’t have long range, either, but it had to be easier to find gas on land than it was on the water. Shifting gears in his mind, he added, “I sure hope Mary and her friends made it where they were going.”
“Me, too,” Butch added in a pleasant voice. “I was looking forward to seeing if any of those ladies had friends they could set me up with when we got back. Murray, right? I’ll have to go there sometime.”
“Oh,” Ezra drawled, inserting humor in his voice. “I didn’t know we were on a singles cruise.”
“Well, I…” Butch hesitated. “I don’t want to talk about the ladies around you. I know you’re mourning your wife.”
Ezra winced involuntarily, though he immediately fought the urge to turn negative. “I appreciate that, but I’ve come to terms with her passing, at least on the surface. She wouldn’t tolerate me being a wet blanket this whole trip, and I guarantee if she were here with us, she’d be doing everything in her power to set you up with any pretty girl who came along. It’s just the way she was.”
Butch stopped. “I really am sorry, E-Z. I can’t say it enough.”
The big man was close to bringing him to tears, though Butch probably had no clue. “Thank you.” Ezra forced a smile as he looked back to him. “So, tell me what type of women you like, and I can keep an eye out for you.”
Butch’s face went slack. He was looking past Ezra, toward the waterfront.
“What?” he asked with concern.
Butch motioned toward the boat. “There’s some guys messing with our stuff.”
Ezra spun around, not sure what to expect. He set the gas container on the ground, and also dropped the bag with his food and drinks. There were three men, two on the boat, and one standing on the shore watching his friends pick over Susan’s Grace.
He gestured for Butch to jog over to a broken slab of the flood wall, near a green car that had washed in with the floodwaters. Both of them pulled off their rifles while on the move. On paper, the approach looked professional and scripted, but all his organs felt like they’d broken free inside his chest and sloshed together into a messy pile under his stomach. Fear constricted his windpipe as he arrived at the rock.
“What are we going to do?” he croaked. It wasn’t worth three men’s lives to protect the boat. Other than the machine itself, there was nothing of real value left aboard. They’d taken what little they owned in the two small backpacks. He also had the keys; they couldn’t steal it unless they wanted to float away with an oar.
“You tell me, boss. We talkin’ or shootin’?”
They were fifty yards from the men, who were still oblivious to their approach.
It would be child’s play to shoot them. There was nowhere to hide, save perhaps diving into the water. But he wasn’t a murderer. Other than a wild what-if-I-had-no-choice fantasy, blasting the men away wasn’t even in his vocabulary. “No. We have everything of value on our backs. We’ll see what they do.”
A few seconds later, Ezra caught sight of a big speedboat motor. A second boat was parked behind his, but it sat low to the water, making it hard to see from his position. The driver of that boat let it drift in the water, so it briefly came into full view, then he goosed the engine to put himself next to Susan’s Grace again. A man on the boat yelled to his friends, “Come on, this one’s a bust!”
The man on the shore half-turned toward Ezra. He carried a compact rifle close to his chest. It hadn’t been visible while he faced his buddies. As the men on his boat gathered their own rifles, Ezra appreciated how close he’d come to grossly misreading the situation. They weren’t bumbling idiots; they were professionals.
As he watched, the men climbed back to their speedboat, then the loaded vessel shot off. It went north, toward the main part of Cape Girardeau.
“Phew,” Ezra said aloud. “We almost walked into a chipper shredder.”
“You called it right. I was ready to shoot those bastards for threatening our ride.” Butch grabbed his stuff. “I might have gotten us killed.”
Ezra tried to maintain his positive attitude. “I told you, today is our lucky day.”
Please, Susan, get some of your angel pals to watch over us.
Denver, CO
“Welcome to LoDo, or lower downtown,” Howard said as Petteri stepped out of the TKM pickup truck.
They shook hands with the backdrop of Coors Field behind them. The rolling piece of asteroid had sliced the baseball stadium. The fifty-foot tall rock had come to rest next to a four-story red brick building in the old business district of Denver. It made the building look small by comparison, though the bottom third of the asteroid piece later collapsed into the street and whatever pipes and sewers were underneath. It vaguely reminded him of a scoop of ice cream that had fallen to the ground.
Impact (Book 3): Adrift Page 3