by Dave Bowman
The journalist dropped his investigation.
Dan laughed about it now as he drove.
They’ll never beat you, Dan. They can try their hardest, but you’ll always come out ahead.
These days, he was handling a couple of cases for the local school district. The litigation was so easy he could do it with his hands tied behind his back. To be honest, he missed the thrill of the corporate cases.
But now with the city turning itself inside out, he felt a little of that old thrill again.
The city collapsing gave him a chance to do what he did best – look out for himself.
His thoughts turned to the events of the past few hours.
When all the electronics in the office had stopped working that afternoon, everyone in the law firm stayed in the office another two or three hours, waiting for the power to be restored. Dan spent the time going over his paper files, preparing for his court day next week.
When it looked like the power wasn’t going to return, they’d been given the day off. Dan had walked alone to the parking garage. His classic Porsche started without a hitch.
He drove toward the exit, passing by all his coworkers standing around flabbergasted. He loved it.
None of their vehicles would start. A few of them even had the nerve to ask him for a ride: Davis and Williamson from down the hall. He just laughed. They had never been friends of his. They had nothing to offer him. Nothing he wanted. So why would he want to waste time doing them a favor?
But farther down the row of cars, he had seen Julia, the tall, blonde accountant who worked on the first floor. He had asked her out before, but she’d always had some excuse not to go.
She was trying to start her Jeep Grand Cherokee, but her vehicle wouldn’t turn over.
“You need a ride?” he asked with a big grin on his face as he drew to a stop nearby.
And then, it happened. She got that look on her face.
That same look so many people had when they gazed at him. A cruel, twisted up, bitter look. His insides coiled up when he saw that look.
“No thanks,” Julia had said flatly.
And she gave him that look another moment, then turned back to the key in the ignition.
“I didn’t really want to give you a ride anyway,” Dan muttered under his breath.
Julia hadn’t quite heard. She looked back at him, that screwed-up sour face replaced by confusion, and asked, “What was that?”
“Nothing,” he said. He sped off through the parking garage.
That look haunted him as he pulled out into the city street, gleaming in the bright afternoon. He was so thrown off by it that it took him a few moments to realize something.
His Porsche was the only vehicle on the road.
It gave him a thrill. The road belonged to him.
For a while, he forgot about Julia and that look. He raced down the first couple of blocks.
When he left the quiet neighborhood of the law firm, he started to see more and more pedestrians on the streets and sidewalks. It somehow seemed fitting that everyone else was walking around in frustration, stranded, while he was king of the road.
Just as it should be.
He had ridden with the windows down at first, the breeze blowing his closely cropped brown hair. A grin spread over his face.
As he drove west, the streets had become more and more crowded. People seemed angry that he had a car that ran. Some of them begged him for a ride. Some of them asked desperate questions or shouted insults at him.
None of it fazed him in the slightest.
He passed by some people looting a store. There was a big crowd of people on the street. A mob.
“Get out of the way!” he shouted at the people blocking his path. “Move before I run you over!”
He expected the people to follow his orders, but he was surprised when they turned toward him. All at once, people were trying to open his doors and crawl in the windows. He scrambled to roll the windows up.
“Give me a ride!” a man screamed at him.
The guy tried to reach in the window as Dan was rolling it up. When the guy’s efforts were thwarted, he started pounding on the body of the vehicle.
Dan gritted his teeth.
“Keep your grubby hands off my car!” he shouted at the man through the glass.
But the man didn’t stop. He kept pounding on the window. Soon, other people joined in. A mob was surrounding his car, pounding on it and rocking it.
“Let’s break the windows!” a laughing girl yelled.
When they started looking for something to smash through the Porsche’s windows, Dan reached his breaking point.
Oh, no, you don’t. Not this car. Not my car.
He slammed on the accelerator.
The forward motion of the vehicle knocked down at least one or two people.
The teenage girl went flying. His front right tire ran over something, but he didn’t know what. Maybe it was a body, or maybe it was some of the stuff the looters were stealing.
Either way, it wasn’t his fault.
They were attacking him. And they damn sure weren’t going to get their hands on his vehicle.
He was just trying to get home. It wasn’t his fault that all these people didn’t have a ride. He didn’t care a bit about their families or their problems.
Dan Hamilton was all that mattered.
Now, he dared anyone to get in his way again. This time, he wouldn’t hesitate to run them over.
Dan drove at breakneck speed down the road. People were startled by a vehicle on the road when it seemed like none worked anymore. They rushed to get out of the way.
“Yeah, that’s right! Get out of my way!”
That sour look on Julia’s face still haunted him as he drove.
Maybe if he drove faster, he could outrun it.
As he careened wildly through an intersection, a blinding light flashed through the city.
He slammed on the brakes.
Dan squeezed his eyes closed, trying to shut out that intense light. It was brighter than anything he’d ever seen.
As he tried to shield himself from whatever was happening, he had one thought.
This can’t be the end.
12
Darkness had always seemed a little scary. The light of day was what Annie loved.
But this light – this light was terrifying. Monstrous.
The flash of light was followed by a horrific sound.
A sound of crashing, shaking, exploding. Like nothing Annie had ever heard.
The pharmacy building shook. The ground seemed to be shaking underneath her feet.
Annie dove down beside Charlotte against the wall inside the building. Annie protected Charlotte’s head and her own with her arms.
Above them, windows were being broken out. Shelves were falling down, and objects flew around the room.
Annie grabbed a cardboard sign that fell nearby. She used it to shield herself and Charlotte from the falling glass.
Annie braced herself as she waited for the building to collapse over their heads.
Everyone screamed and ducked for cover during the blast. Even more people from the street tried to push their way into the packed store. They fell on top of the people already huddled on the floor.
It was utter chaos.
But finally, the shaking stopped.
The building’s still standing. And I’m still alive.
When the noise of the explosion stopped, Annie looked at Charlotte.
Her friend was still unconscious. Somehow, Annie was going to have to fight through the crowd to get to the medicine.
While everyone was still on the floor and just starting to look around, Annie made a run for it. She stepped wherever there was a small patch of empty floor, moving as quickly as possible.
When she came to the two women near the entrance to the medication room, she quickly stepped around them. The movement caught the eye of the larger woman.
“Oh, no, you do
n’t!” the woman hissed. She reached out from her spot on the floor and grabbed Annie’s foot.
Annie stumbled and fell, her hands breaking her fall against the tiled floor.
The woman started pulling on Annie’s leg, trying to get ahead of her. Annie kicked her shoulder. When the woman flinched, Annie broke free and ran into the medication room.
Stepping over people sprawled on the floor, she looked for the drugs beginning with the letter P.
She moved her hand over the labels on the shelf.
M, N, O, P.
Prednisone.
She grabbed the bottle triumphantly. Finally!
But as she took it in her hands, she frowned. She shook it up and down.
Empty.
Annie racked her brain, trying to remember the name of a similar medication that would work like prednisone.
Hydro something.
Annie stamped her feet in frustration. Think!
She heard a noise behind her, then turned to see a man lunge at her. She stepped out of the way just in time to watch him stumble and fall to the ground.
She stepped around him and ran to the end of the aisle.
Hydrocortisone!
She turned down the next aisle and found a large bottle of the drug. She shook it – there were pills inside.
She looked up to see the large woman from the entrance headed her way. Annie turned around, looking for an escape.
Finally, she lunged at the pharmacy consultant window, heaving her body over the counter and pulling herself through the window before the woman could grab her. She had escaped.
Annie moved through the maze of people in the pharmacy. She grabbed a couple of unopened juice bottles from the floor and fought her way through the crowds, finally arriving at Charlotte’s side.
Annie pried Charlotte’s mouth open and pushed one of the pills down her throat. Tilting Charlotte’s head back, she poured some juice down her throat as well, hoping that her friend wouldn’t choke on her rather unskilled treatment.
I hope this works.
Meanwhile, the people who had taken shelter in the pharmacy had begun to wake from the daze that had set in after the explosion. And the people who were after drugs began their search once more.
“Who’s got the Oxy?” a middle-aged man roared.
“I’d settle for Valium,” a woman nearby quipped.
Charlotte’s eyes moved a little.
“That’s it,” Annie said. “Wake up, wake up.”
As more people flooded into the store, Annie and Charlotte began to get crushed. A teenage girl, pushed forward by the crowd, fell on top of the two women, then crawled off without a word.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Annie said as she nervously glanced around at the mayhem in the pharmacy. “Can you drink some more juice?”
Charlotte’s head nodded a tiny bit. Annie held the bottle to her lips as Charlotte drank.
“Come on, we need to stand up,” Annie said. “We’re going to get trampled down here.”
Annie helped Charlotte to her feet.
Charlotte was slowly becoming more alert. As her eyes began to focus, she realized that everything had changed. Now people were even more frantic than before.
“What happened?” Charlotte asked.
Annie took a breath. She didn’t know how to answer that to herself, much less to her friend.
“I think a bomb went off.”
Charlotte opened her eyes wider. “A bomb?”
Annie nodded. “Yeah. And we have to get out of here now.”
It was all starting to make sense.
First, the EMP to disable communications and incapacitate the nation’s defense.
Then, a nuclear bomb to take the city out.
They had survived the detonation of a nuclear weapon, Annie realized with wonder.
But it wasn’t just the initial impact they had to worry about.
It was the radioactive fallout that was yet to come.
Annie’s mind raced. She thought back to the previous year, when her students had been working on their big assignment of the year, a research paper.
One of her students had written about nuclear bombs. His paper has been informative and well researched. But could she really trust a fourteen-year-old’s English project to guide her in making life-and-death decisions now?
Annie sighed.
What other choice do I have?
From her student, Annie had learned that nuclear weapons could destroy every living thing within a certain radius. Outside that radius, it was possible to survive the initial blast.
But the problem was the nuclear fallout.
The massive force from the nuclear bomb would push radioactive material high up into the atmosphere.
But eventually, the radioactive material – dust and ash from the exploded weapon – would fall down to earth. It would be poisonous radioactive contamination, capable of killing them.
And that was what she and Charlotte would have to worry about now.
Once the fallout began, it would not be safe to go outside for at least forty-eight hours.
That meant Annie and Charlotte would have to find a place they could stay for two days and two nights before venturing out again. It would have to be a place they could close up tight – no open windows or doors. It would preferably be concrete, or maybe brick.
They only had a limited time before the fallout would begin. Annie’s student reported that the fallout fell to Nagasaki and Hiroshima only half an hour after the bombs were dropped. But the time would vary based on the size of the weapon and the wind patterns.
Annie felt her throat dry up suddenly. She took a swig of the juice, and gave the bottle to Charlotte.
“Drink up.”
Charlotte up-ended the bottle.
“Can you walk?” Annie asked, the fear and tension rising around her.
Charlotte nodded. She was almost back to her old self. Annie was relieved about that.
Annie turned and led the way through the pharmacy with Charlotte close behind. Near the door, there was a wall of bodies.
“How will we ever get through that?” Charlotte asked.
Annie got a running start and slammed into the crowd. With her shoulder leading the way, she pushed apart the crowd, making a small opening for Charlotte to slip in behind her.
Annie became ruthless.
Once inside the mass of people, Annie started to panic. She could feel her heart pounding at her temples, chattering her teeth. A wave of nausea rose through her belly as she breathed in the scents of dozens of people pressed against her. The air was knocked from her body as someone was shoved against her stomach.
She had no room to move, and hardly any room to breathe. She had to be ruthless if she wanted to get out of there.
Annie had to push and shove her way through the people, fighting against them and making sure Charlotte was keeping up. She was elbowed and punched in the stomach and throat, but she pressed forward.
Finally, she pushed her way through the door. Turning around, she grabbed Charlotte and helped pull her through as well.
Annie gasped for air, struggling to catch her breath as they made their way through the people on the sidewalk. It wasn’t as crowded as the pharmacy, but it was difficult to move as well.
Annie blinked as she looked around. Most of the windows had been blown out of the buildings on the block. People lay injured and bleeding on the sidewalk. She could see the tall buildings far away in downtown had been destroyed.
How could this have happened here?
Her city was unrecognizable.
And where would they go? They had to find a place to hide out for two days.
If they had to find a place in the next half hour, they would never make it to Annie’s house or Charlotte’s house in time.
Where could they stay that was safe?
One thing was sure. They couldn’t waste any more time standing on the street.
Annie started walking west wit
h Charlotte close behind. They headed southwest, the opposite direction of the blast.
They would have to find a building with its windows intact, Annie realized with a sinking feeling. Invisible radiation from the fallout would simply enter the building through the missing windows. And the radiation would kill them.
The bomb had been detonated downtown – the other side of the river. Annie figured the blast had been far enough away to not kill them. But still, the impact had been strong enough to shatter glass where she now stood.
In fact, the blast from the bomb had shattered every window Annie could see. All the buildings had gaping holes. There was no safe place on the street they were traveling on.
Annie held onto the hope that if they could make it a few blocks farther away from the bomb impact, they could find a safe place.
She picked up the pace, weaving her way through the crowds. She glanced back to make sure Charlotte was keeping up. She was. Thankfully, the medicine had kicked in quickly and revived her.
The injured lined the street. The impact of the bomb had thrown people who hadn’t taken cover behind a building or wall. Everywhere around them, people cried out in pain. Some hadn’t survived the impact.
Annie’s instinct was to try to help the hurt people on the street. But she knew being outside when the fallout began would just result in her own death. She couldn’t save them.
“There’s a public library about a mile from here,” Annie said over her shoulder to Charlotte as they hurried through the sidewalk. “I think we can make it in time. If we’re lucky, the windows will have survived the bomb.”
“In time?” Charlotte asked, frowning. “You don’t think there’s going to be another bomb, do you?”
Annie shook her head. “I hope not. But if that was a nuclear bomb, we have about thirty minutes before radioactive dust starts to fall to the earth.”
Charlotte groaned. “Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.”
“Yeah, and we’ll have to find a safe place to wait for the fallout to settle for at least a couple of days.”
Charlotte looked around at all the destruction. There was broken glass and debris everywhere. She continued behind Annie in silence.
They crossed the intersection and turned down a new street. This one was even more chaotic than the area around the pharmacy. The crowds were thicker. Their progress slowed down as people milled out everywhere, blocking their way.