Their leaders had not allowed any of them to bring pictures of their families with them, but Yi remembered every inch of their features. And while he missed them, he reminded himself that he was protecting them from a future of capitalistic imperialism that would lead the world to its doom.
At least, that’s what the leaders had impressed upon Yi since he was recruited into the New Block as a young man. They’d seen his exceptional athleticism and keen eye for strategy and detail in school competitions, and once brought into the fold of the New Block, his life, and the lives of his family, had changed forever.
The signal-secured radio in his lap squelched once. Yi picked it up, lifted it to his lips, and pressed the talk button. “This is Yi. Go ahead.”
“Have you had any luck?” Katrya’s thick accent bent his ears, and her grating tone sent a spike of aggravation into his skull.
“Not yet,” Yi admitted with some shame, then he glanced into the back seat. “But we are covering a lot of ground.”
In the back, the big Russian, Ivan, sat hunched over a map spread open on his lap. The wide-shouldered man had been tasked with marking their route to show what areas they had covered. His face was flush with frustration as he held a tiny pencil in his huge hand and placed another X on the map.
Yi’s three remaining warriors sat in the very back seat, patiently waiting for another fight. Their eyes were focused ahead, and their rifles rested across their laps. Yi knew they would follow his commands and fight to the very last bullet.
Yi continued. “How about you, Katrya? Have you found anything of use?”
“We have gloriously shed much blood of our enemies,” the Ukrainian agent replied proudly.
“We are not out here to shed blood unless it is for the cause,” Yi stated with rising frustration, aware that the rest of her team might be listening in on their conversation. “We are to find the women driving the maroon Subaru and retrieve the Box. Without it, we cannot know our next orders or where to attack. Our enemy remains free to ship supplies out of Knoxville without anyone to stop them. If this continues to happen, they will be able to supply their comrades in the east and possibly turn the fight in their favor.”
“I’m well aware of our priorities,” Katrya responded with a sharp, incredulous note. “We will get the Box back and return to our mission. The enemy is on the brink of collapse, I can assure you of that, comrade.”
Yi shook his head, unable to come up with a suitable response.
“We will meet in one hour at the rendezvous and compare notes,” Katrya said, her voice settling back to that of a professional soldier. “We are narrowing down the possibilities quickly, and I will soon be able to use the information to map out small plots of area in our tactical helmets.”
Yi didn’t press the talk button, mumbling under his breath, “This is a fool’s errand. We would be better off hitting the shipping center at White Pine again.” Then he pressed the button and spoke into the radio. “Understood, Katrya. We will meet at the new location in one hour.”
He dropped the radio into his lap and rested his head against the passenger side window. “Ivan, how far are we from the rendezvous point?”
“I estimate thirty or forty minutes,” said the Russian in his deep, husky voice.
“We will go to the end of this road first and then go to meet Katrya,” Yi instructed Chen, who nodded and kept driving.
Yi was slowly getting more aggravated by the cat and mouse game they were playing, and he wondered if Katrya’s motives were true to the cause. He might need to take drastic measures soon to put their mission back on course.
Chapter 15
Rita, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
After driving seven hours from St. Louis to Oklahoma City with constantly fighting kids in the car, and frequent bathroom breaks, Rita was skating on her last nerve.
She’d distracted the kids easily enough with games and music CDs, and I-44 had seemed safe with a few dozen cars on the road and military patrols passing her every now and again. There were even some moments when the kids quieted down and things seemed perfectly normal, almost like the country wasn’t in the midst of an economic catastrophe while fighting a terrorist war on their own soil.
It was those moments of peace that Rita knew she’d made the right decision to try and reunite with her family in Albuquerque despite barely remembering how to get there, except that she needed to stay on I-40 west.
Her cell phone had a full row of connection bars, however, every time she tried to call someone, it would ring once and then break into a high, droning tone. She didn’t know if it was the government keeping things shut down or if the terrorists were jamming the signals.
Rita only knew what was right in front of her. She knew that she had to remain on guard just in case they ran into another person like the knife man. Or someone like Max, who would have no problems taking advantage of a single mother and her kids.
That’s what made the kids’ restroom breaks such a harrowing adventure. The first time little Lacy complained that she needed to pee, Rita had pulled off at a rest stop that was nearly deserted except for a few cars. Rita had told the kids to stay in the car while she got out the gun and loaded it with the bullets. Rita had never used a gun before, but it seemed easy enough to flip out the cylinder, fill it with the bullets, and then snap the cylinder back in firmly, just like she’d seen people do in the movies.
Then Rita had searched for the gun’s safety switch but couldn’t find it. She’d almost left the weapon right there in the parking lot, thoughts of sweet Lacy getting a hold of the weapon and pointing it around blaring alarms in her head.
She’d ultimately decided to keep it. It was a big, heavy weapon that looked intimidating tucked into the waist of her jeans, and she’d made sure to always have it with her and her hand close to it in case anyone wanted to try her. She’d kept in mind that every stranger was out to rob them, or worse.
The strategy had worked. Of the two or three dozen people they’d come in proximity to on their way to Oklahoma City, none had given her a second glance once they saw the big revolver.
Coming up on the intersection of I-44 and I-35, Rita peered at the Oklahoma City skyline. It wasn’t as expansive and dense as St. Louis, but there were two or three buildings that might pass as high-rises, their tops reaching up toward the streaky white clouds.
There were signs indicating she should slow down for the military checkpoint up ahead. Rita briefly considered turning around and finding another way around the city, then decided she might be able to find some information about what was happening farther south.
She gently slowed to thirty-five miles per hour as she spotted the big military vehicles blocking the expressway. Looking across to the oncoming lanes, Rita noticed more cars leaving the area than entering, and she wondered if there was something to that.
Rita finally brought the SUV to a stop behind a line of vehicles waiting for inspection by a group of soldiers with MP armbands on. The line moved quickly, and soon one of the soldiers waved her forward between two dusty-looking Humvees.
She rolled down her window and brought the Honda to a stop. “Hi, sir,” she said, squinting into the bright daylight.
“Ma’am.” The soldier nodded to her as his eyes roamed to the back seat, over the kids, and then off to the rear of the vehicle with all her supplies. “Where are you going?”
“I’m coming from St. Louis, on my way to Albuquerque to meet up with my sister and family.”
“St. Louis is secure,” the MP said with an emotionless expression. “Can you tell me why you’d want to leave a secure area to enter a combat zone?”
“It’s not as secure as you think,” Rita challenged, pushing her face up so he could see the fresh bandages she’d put on her cheeks an hour ago. “I was robbed and beat up, all my groceries stolen.”
“As bad as that might seem, ma’am, Texas and New Mexico are much worse. We’re slowly securing the major cities and small towns, but it will
be awhile until it’s open for travel.”
“So, I can’t go see my sister?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am.” The soldier shook his head, and Rita saw a faint hint of sympathy behind his eyes.
Rita’s heart dropped into her stomach, and her face grew hot with worry. She had three aggravated kids in the car, and she was aggravated herself. They had plenty of food and water to get them the rest of the way to Albuquerque, although now they were directionless.
“What are we going to do, Mom?” Bobby Junior said, his grown-out bangs hanging over his eyes.
“I don’t know, son,” Rita said, looking out the windows at her surroundings to see if she could find an exit ramp.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the MP said as he stared directly into her wandering eyes. “You think you can bypass Oklahoma City and continue on to Albuquerque.”
“Guilty as charged,” Rita smiled and then frowned.
“I’d advise against that. There are military checkpoints all along the expressways, so unless you’re very familiar with the back roads, or you have a vehicle suited for off-roading, which you do not, then you will have a very bad time of it.”
Rita slapped her hands angrily into her lap, emotions welling inside her that nearly pushed her to the point of tears. “All we have in the world, all of our possessions, are in the back of this car, sir. What am I supposed to do?”
The MP straightened briefly, his head swiveling so he could see up and down the highway. He was a young man, probably in his twenties. Like everyone else in the world, he had a sort of strung-out look about him. Tired beyond tired. Probably working long shifts and dealing with unhappy people, always with the threat of terrorists looming. She couldn’t be mad at him, but she needed to get where she needed to go.
“My advice to you would be to go back to St. Louis.”
“That’s not going to happen, sir.” Rita put some emphasis on sir, and the first hint of impatience flashed in the MP’s eyes.
“Then you can turn east down I-40 toward Kentucky and Tennessee. Those areas are not one hundred percent safe, but they’re still much better than Texas and New Mexico.
“I have a relative in Tennessee,” Rita realized with widening eyes before she narrowed her gaze. “An uncle. But I haven’t seen him in two years.”
“Do you know where he lives?” The MP seemed to sense an end to the conversation.
“As long as he hasn’t moved, yeah.” Rita wondered at the possibilities of staying with Uncle Tex for a while. He’d always been her favorite uncle.
“Your only other option is to stay in Oklahoma City, in the FEMA camp just south of town.”
“That’s not for me.” Rita envisioned having all of her things taken away from her and then forced to stay in some camp that wasn’t as safe as they said it would be. “I’ll take my chances in the east.”
“All right, ma’am,” the MP said. Then he stood straighter and pointed to an off-ramp past the Humvees. “Just take that ramp there. It will put you on I-40 East. Take that all the way to Tennessee.”
“All right.” Rita started to put the Honda into drive again, but then hesitated. “When do you think they’ll have cell phone service restored? If I could just call my sister—”
“We’re keeping things dark,” the MP responded. “Making it harder for the terrorists to communicate with one another. As soon as the threats are eliminated, we’ll—”
A huge explosion blossomed on the opposite side of the city, its fiery center streaking upward before petering off into a dark streak of smoke that rose far higher into the sky than Rita would have expected possible. The aftershock followed, the elevated ramp shaking beneath the Honda’s tires and rattling her teeth before tapering off. It wasn’t like anything she’d seen on television, but something out of a dystopian horror movie.
“Was that a—”
The MP took off running, joining other soldiers at their Humvees, jumping in, and then tearing off in the direction of the cloud.
Sitting there with no one to tell her what do, Rita considered taking I-40 west to Amarillo, skirting the explosion radius somehow and driving a few more short hours to get to Albuquerque.
She thought about seeing her mother, father, and sister, a long overdue reunion. She saw herself pulling up to her father’s property outside the city where they had a small ranch. She pictured her parents coming out onto the porch, welcoming Rita and the kids with open arms. Her sister and that big smile of hers had always wanted Rita to stay in Albuquerque, and she thought it was a big mistake for Rita to ever have left.
Rita couldn’t agree more. Yet, she couldn’t disregard the MP’s warning that they’d have a bad time of it if they tried to press through.
As if reading her mind, Bobby Junior asked, “Are you going to sneak through, Mom?”
Rita’s eyes were focused on the big cloud that was just now starting to dissipate into the sky. It wasn’t a nuclear bomb, or they’d already be dead, but it wasn’t a normal bomb either.
Rita swallowed and put the Honda into drive. She angled it toward the ramp the soldier had indicated. I-40 East. “I don’t think so, Bobby. I think we’re going to go spend a few days with your Uncle Tex in Tennessee.
“I like Tex,” Lacy, her oldest daughter said.
“Me too,” Rita responded, glancing into her rearview mirror as she increased her speed and took the long, sweeping ramp to join I-40. “It’s been a couple of years. Do you even remember what he looks like?”
“He’s got a big, bushy mustache,” Lacy said, giggling. The six-year-old had a good memory.
“That’s right,” Rita said, smiling back at her kids.
“He’s got a lot of guns,” Bobby Junior said. “Maybe I can shoot some with him this time.”
Rita had been against it the last time they’d visited Tex, but now she was pretty sure it was a good idea to have someone like Tex teach the boy how to do it right. To teach her, too.
“We’ll see,” Rita said, and Bobby Junior smiled at her positive tone.
Rita just hoped Tex still lived in the same place he did the last time they’d come for a visit, and she hoped she could remember how to get there.
Chapter 16
Jake, White Pine, Tennessee | 10:17 a.m., Sunday
Jake woke to utter darkness, his face buried in his coveralls where his breath was hot against his chest. He was vaguely aware of a rifle resting between his raised knees and chest, and its presence gave him immediate comfort.
Still, he was alarmed that there wasn’t even a sliver of light to see by. At first, he thought he might have gone blind, but he couldn’t remember how. His brain registered a sudden flashback of the tornado in Boston. He was once again standing in the Westin hallway, when half the building got ripped out as cleanly as a scoop of ice cream. The older woman and her husband shuffling down the hall ahead of Jake and Marcy suddenly sucked up into the whirling, debris-infested funnel like some god slurping them up through a straw.
More flashbacks came. X-Gang. Being chased through dark streets flooded with water. Jake and his traveling companions riding bicycles down an endless road with hellfire burning at their heels. Hawk and Raven’s sneers. The jade eyes of a tiger glaring at Jake with an unfathomable hunger.
He drew his head up and gasped, sucking in a lungful of fetid air that made him gag even more. Bile rose from his stomach and stung his throat, causing him to cough and hack. But nothing cleared it. The stench kept coming. It burned and assaulted his nose, eyes, and ears like a sweet, heavy pepper spray.
He remembered where he was.
The bathroom supply closet in Lowe’s.
Roanoke, Virginia.
The corpse of janitor Tom Robbins rested just three feet away from him. The smell was so acute and offensive that it ignited a whirlwind of possibilities in Jake’s mind. He imagined Tom’s bloated, blasted head turned in his direction, staring at him with eyeless sockets, waiting for Jake to wake up so he could reach out and throttle
him. Or perhaps the zombie would put its fingers through Jake’s eye sockets and pop them like grapes.
Shifting the barrel of his gun forward, Jake fumbled for his flashlight with his free hand, simultaneously twisting his body so that his feet were closer to the corpse and his back was firmly against the wall.
In wide-eyed terror, he flipped the flashlight on, half-expecting to see Tom Robbins’s leering face. Instead, Tom Robbins was right where Jake remembered the night before, leaning back against the wall with a shotgun in his lap, head missing from the top up.
Disoriented, but certain that he wanted to get out of this cramped, hellish supply closet, Jake stood on stiff and shaky legs and stumbled out of the corner, being careful not to step on the dead janitor’s legs. He opened the door and stepped into the stall, then he kept walking until he came to the restroom door, threw it opened, and stepped into the Lowe’s. Jake gasped a huge gulp of chilly morning air that was possibly the greatest breath of air he’d ever taken in his life aside from his very first one some thirty-four years ago.
Morning light streamed in through the front of the store, and Jake’s warm breath came out in puffs of steam as he gratefully sucked more fresh air. And then, remembering Bradley and Jasper from the night before, he froze, listening for any signs of movement around him.
Jake had wanted to exit the supply closet the night before, but every time he started to get up, he heard a clatter out in the store, so he’d forced himself to hunker down with Tom Robbins until the coast was clear. He must have been so exhausted from the day’s events that he had eventually fallen asleep waiting.
When Jake heard no movement inside the store, he quickly walked up and down the aisles to make doubly sure none of the other guys were camped inside, too. Passing a rack of industrial gas masks, Jake grabbed one, tore it from its packaging, and then went back to the men’s restroom on a hunch. Donning the mask, he went inside and propped open the door to the supply closet. No longer afraid of ghosts and zombies, Jake knelt down before Tom Robbin’s corpse and felt around in his pockets, eventually coming up with a key fob. He held it up in the light of his flashlight, noting that it had a Chevrolet emblem on it.
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