“Am I gonna have to ride in that little trailer thing again?” she asked.
“For a while,” Olivia said. “That’s okay, right? I thought you liked it.”
“I do. It’s just…” She shrugged, as if the comment wasn’t worth finishing.
“Well, we need to get out there first,” Paul said, looking to the automatic sliding doors. With no power, they remained closed as Paul approached. He followed the instructions in the corners of the glass, pushing against the powerless doors. They opened up easier than Olivia had expected. She was even able to finish pushing back the one on the right when they separated too far apart for Paul to manage both of them.
They pushed their bikes back outside and saddled up. Once Joyce was coerced into the little pull-behind trailer, she seemed to be fine with the idea. By the time they were out of the parking lot and back out on the highway, she was humming and looking at one of the five picture books Olivia had thought to pack upon leaving Little Learners.
For the first few hours, as they put the Princeton city limits behind them and continued in a westward direction, it was more of the same as the days before: stalled traffic, bodies on the roads and on sidewalks, the occasional car accident. On a few occasions, it occurred to Paul that they could try their luck in finding an unlocked car with a working radio and hopefully find another AM station that would update them on the current state of the country. He was starting to get quite worried that there was no mobile military presence—not on the roads or in the sky. And while he wanted to be informed, he also did not want to force it upon Olivia. She’d mentioned that the thought had crossed her mind during her early morning wandering through the hotel, but had not mentioned it since. He assumed it was because now that they were on the road and on the move, her primary concern was Joyce. For now, he was fine with that because with the lack of movement and activity all around them, he was assuming the only news they would find was probably going to be bad.
About an hour and a half into their morning ride, they passed a peculiar scene along the side of the road on Route 518. The rather wide grassy strip along the road had been oddly untouched for most of their ride along it, but that came to an end when they came upon what looked to be the result of some bizarre gunfight between the police and the drivers of at least two different vehicles.
One of the civilian vehicles had been turned on its side and had apparently caught fire at some point. It was still smoldering, sending a single thin plume of smoke in the air. Its underside had been scorched and the right side of the windshield was shattered. A dead woman sat inside, her charred remains barely visible from the angle they passed. A man lay dead by the car; Paul counted at least four visible gunshot wounds.
The cop car was a few feet away from the burned out car and had apparently struck a pickup truck as it had pulled to the side. The cop was pinned between the back end of the truck and the front of the police car, bent at an impossible angle. Three other bodies lay on the ground, one mostly burned. Paul’s analytical mind tried to piece the chain of events together but after about ten seconds, he stopped. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.
Besides that, there was another sight ahead of them that grabbed his attention. Olivia had apparently noticed it, too, because she had brought her bike to a stop. She stared ahead down the two lane road, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
Several yards ahead of them, there was a significant break in the traffic. Beyond that break, there were others. It was the most blank space they’d seen on the road since making their way through the inner streets back at Union Township. It still wasn’t clear by any means, but it was passable. All they needed was a car or truck—a nice, simple truck, if Paul had his way—and the hope of roads just as open farther ahead.
“I think our trip just got a little easier,” Paul said. Then, trying to inject what passed for humor into the situation, he added: “As long as you don’t mind a little grand theft auto.”
“Maybe I’ll just look the other way,” Olivia commented.
When they started forward again, it wasn’t just to advance their trek, but to find a suitable truck that would require the least amount of effort in removing the dead and making it suitable for a four year-old girl. It took less than ten minutes and it came in the form of a Ford F-150 that looked to be at least ten years old and had seen some time at worksites based on the few dings and scratches Paul saw along the body. There was only one person inside, an older gentleman that was leaning to the left, his legs caught beneath the steering wheel. When Paul opened the door to check the interior, he couldn’t believe his luck. The engine battery was still functioning, meaning the man had likely killed the engine while stalled in traffic. There was also no vomit in the floorboard or on the seats; there was plenty of putrid evidence along the outside of the driver’s side door and the road beneath the truck to show that the man had chosen to lean out of the window when he got sick.
Sensing what Paul was about to do, Olivia deftly made sure that she and Joyce were on the passenger side when Paul removed the body. As he tugged at the old man, he noticed a slip of folded paper tucked between the man’s legs. There were just a few lines scrawled on it, in shaky handwriting with a blue pen: Deborah, I tried to get back to you, but I don’t think I’m going to make it. I’m burning up and dizzy. I think
It ended there. Seeing it brought a swell of emotion across Paul. He was doing his best not to cry as he gently set the man down on the pavement. Then, after some thought, he clasped the man beneath the arms and hauled him over to the grass on the side of the road. The old man’s dead, glassy eyes stared up at Paul, so he used his thumbs to bring each lid down.
When he came back to the truck, he felt like a thief. Before getting inside, he opened the tailgate and put their bikes in, laying them down on their sides. He had to pin the triangle-shaped trailer between them to hold it down. As he secured them, he noted the small Igloo cooler in the rear right corner of the back of the truck, bundled in place with bungee straps so it would not slide. He opened the lid and found several bottled waters and three cans of beer floating in cold water that had likely been ice yesterday.
“You girls ready to go?” Paul asked as he finally climbed into the truck. When he did, he saw the unfinished letter to a woman named Deborah. He couldn’t bear the thought of throwing it out, so he folded it up and stuck it in his pocket.
Olivia helped Joyce up into the truck, where she slid to the center of the front seat. Olivia came in beside her and closed the door. Paul turned the key, fully expecting nothing to happen. But the engine roared to life right away. It was joined with the sound of a blowing air conditioner and the static-laced sound of the radio.
He reached out to turn the radio down but realized what he was hearing just as his fingers touched the volume button. The old man on his way to see Deborah had been listening to the news when he’d cut the truck off. It was on a relatively clear AM station, and the man that was talking sounded as if he’d been reporting non-stop since this nightmare all began.
“…because there’s just no way to keep count,” the reporter was saying. “The numbers out of New York are all just guess work because no one will dare go in to get a good look. We do know that military officials have attempted to make it through the Lincoln Tunnel, but with no success. Discussions are being had about sending teams in via helicopter, but that’s being widely panned as a terrible idea until we know more about this virus. Moving on, though,…the news of the day is this new explosion reported in Texas early last night, in a little town not too far away from Fort Worth. We know it was likely a bomb thanks to police band radio chatter that occurred moments before the blast. It is being estimated that the blast was about the same size as the one out of New York just before the Blood Fire virus took over. And now we can officially confirm that the virus is present and being widely spread in Fort Worth. Following the blast, every effort was made to shut the city down but the virus is spreading too fast. Estimated death tolls out of Fort W
orth and surrounding areas are hovering around one million. It is now quite clear that we are under attack, but no one has come forward to claim responsibility. We can only hope and pray that—”
Olivia reached out and shut the radio off. She was shaking her head as she clasped her hands to her mouth. Tears were pooling in her eyes and then coursed down her cheeks, collecting at her hands.
“Now Texas? What’s happening?” she croaked beneath her hands. “This can’t be real, can it?”
“You’d think not,” Paul said. “But it is. And I think we have to go ahead and accept that if we want to make it through this…if we want to make sure we deliver our package.” He felt cheesy saying this, but he also did not want to call out their mission in front of Joyce. She had somehow absorbed the fact that her mother was dead with the nonchalance and non-understanding of a four year-old child. To suggest that she may very well never see her father again, too, was just too much.
“I know, I know,” Olivia said, shuddering. “So let’s go. Let’s get it done and…let’s just go.” She looked out of the window, refusing to look at Paul or Joyce.
“You okay, ‘Livia?” Joyce asked. She put her little hand on Olivia’s leg, but Olivia was only able to nod.
Paul put the truck into drive and started forward. He had to weave in and out of a few cars immediately but after a while, found mostly uninterrupted road. He looked straight ahead, thinking of the virus now in Texas, and realized that he was likely driving through a country that had only a few numbered days remaining.
Chapter 27
Why a small town in Texas? Why not right in the heart of Fort Worth? Is this how Chaos Dawn was supposed to work?
Terrence looked at the words he’d typed and realized he had no intention of leaving it in the draft email for Kettle to see. If anything, he was typing them to himself, trying to make sense of what was happening—trying to understand the ins and outs of it so he could hopefully talk some sense into the only man that could likely put an end to it all.
He looked to his other laptops with something akin to dread. Out of the three feeds he’d had up and running when he went to sleep around one in the morning, only one was remaining. Most of the worthwhile broadcasts delivering the news had gone online only, as New York was dead and the virus was slowly but surely making its way to Washington DC. This meant that any traditional means of watching the news was becoming much harder to come by. Local stations had essentially all gone off the air and the national ones were best viewed from the limited reception of his bunker through the internet. The question, of course, was how much longer the internet would be up. The last he’d heard, there were multiple blackouts crawling slowly through the eastern portion of the nation.
That alone, was a staggering fact. Not quite three days after the virus had been sent airborne in New York City, it had killed more than twelve million and had made it almost halfway along the East Coast. Having the slightest bit of insider information about what was going on, even Terrence had never imagined it would be so fast.
And now there was Texas. A little town called Destiny Ridge had been hit by an explosion, but nothing too big. From what he was seeing on the news, the blast had been large enough to knock down a few acres of trees and demolish a few houses. The primary concern was that the virus had appeared in the town within about half an hour of the blast and had spread quickly.
It was terrifying, not only in scope but in range. When the virus had started spreading in New York, Terrence had at least thought there might be some way to convince Kettle to reach out to those responsible and try to reason with them. But with the speed at which the virus was spreading and now this new explosion in Destiny Ridge, Terrence feared there was no going back. It was quite clear Chaos Dawn was officially underway and it might be too late to stop it.
He deleted the words he’d typed and tried again. As he did, he thought of Trevor, his son. He felt the little seashell against the base of his neck and imagined he was filtering his words to Kettle through that little shell.
Did you know Texas was going to happen?
He left the message there, staring at the words. He tried to envision George Kettle sitting behind a laptop somewhere in the country—somewhere isolated and in the middle of nowhere. Terrence had thought he had a pretty good idea where Kettle was hiding out, but then the bomb had gone off in Texas, and it had changed things a bit. He actually found it hard to see Kettle in such a situation. Ever since they’d parted ways for the last time nearly eight years ago, the man had become almost mythical in his mind. Picturing a man that had known far in advance about recent events doing something as mundane as sitting behind a laptop, hidden away from the rest of the world seemed surreal.
Almost habitually, Terrence refreshed the page and he saw the draft email change as Kettle’s response showed up. Apparently, he was currently sitting behind a laptop.
I knew it was going to eventually happen, but I did not know the order. I did not know Texas was coming next.
Terrence muttered a curse as he wasted no time responding. What did you think was coming next? How many more will there be?
As he waited for a response, Terrence closed his eyes and conjured up one of the many interrogations he’d had with George Kettle. It was one that stuck out the most in his mind because it was the conversation that had made Terrence finally realize that Kettle was not some crackpot conspiracy nut with a death wish against America—the very country he’d been born and raised in. It was the meeting that had started to pull Terrence down the rabbit hole towards the apocalyptic event that, even back then, Kettle had referred to as Chaos Dawn.
“It will start very close to land, but not on land,” Kettle had said back then, eight years ago. “Probably on water.” Terrence saw the memory, fresh in his head, as Kettle sat across the table from him. Terrence could recall the way Kettle looked on that day more than he could recall the person he himself has been. When he tried to remember himself in those days, it was next to impossible to do so. He was simply not that man anymore. But Kettle had been confident and somehow very self-aware. It was hard to see beyond the paranoid ramblings and promises of an end-of-the-world scenario in the future, but those features were much more prominent in Terrence’s recollections. Kettle’s hair had been sweaty and pushed all to one side in a flop of greasy black on that day, his black eyes wide and gleaming with what Terrence had then thought was some sort of madness.
“Why on water?” Terrence had asked.
“Because it will be a sign that it’s time to start. There are several reasons why other explosions may accidentally happen—faulty devices, inadvertent tampering by passersby and so on. But the first detonation…it has to be clear that it was intentional. So it will come in the form of something new…something out of the ordinary, and not on land. Maybe even in motion.”
“Like a rocket?” Terrence had asked.
“No. That’s too obvious. It will be something much more subtle. Something almost ordinary but just odd enough to give pause.”
Something like a boat off the coast of New York, for example, Terrence thought as he refreshed the screen again, shoving aside the premonitory memory from his mind.
Once again, Kettle’s comment came right away. It was the first time in a very long time their communications had been so in sync. It made Terrence think that Kettle was keeping a very close eye on the news, constantly behind a series of screens just like he was.
You’re not trying to get me to spill the order of it all, are you? Kettle responded. Besides, I couldn’t give you an order or timetable if I wanted. Once the virus took down NY, it was out of my hands. I’m nothing more than a spectator now, just like you. Best to just sit back, stay safe, and enjoy the show.
Terrence wasn’t aware of the desperation coming out of him until his fingers were spilling it out through the keys. With each word he typed, the more his anger for Kettle grew. The more he typed, the more he realized how Kettle could have probably stopped all of this long b
efore it even started.
When his message was done, Terrence stood up from his little workstation and went to his stash of food. He distracted himself with a softened banana and a little bottle of water. He kept looking to the laptop, making himself wait before he refreshed it, re-reading the message he’d written.
I don’t buy that. You’ve always been a working cog and I don’t know why that changes now. Enough people have died and whatever skewed point you and your friends are trying to make has been proven. You can stop this, and I ask that you do that. Please, put a stop to this.
Terrence finished his snack and even tried to make himself read a chapter or two of one of the books he’d packed. But his mind would not separate from the weight of the conversation he and Kettle were having—what seemed like the nexus of a conversation that had been going on in some form or another for roughly eight years.
He made it about one whole page through the current chapter he was on before he couldn’t ignore it any longer. He went back to the laptop and refreshed the page. When there was no reply from Kettle, he stared for a bit longer and then refreshed again. Still, nothing.
Terrence folded his arms across his chest, looking blankly at the screen in front of him. His last message remained there, unanswered, and the bunker suddenly started to feel much smaller. After a while, Terrence’s right hand went to the little seashell on the end of his necklace. He rubbed at it softly, almost lovingly, doing everything he could not to relentlessly refresh the page in front of him.
Chapter 28
Just as they crossed over into West Virginia, having been rolling along in the truck for about three hours mostly unobstructed, they saw where there had been some sort of attempt to keep people from crossing state lines. All that was left was a series of fallen barricades, three vacated Army Humvees, and roughly twenty dead bodies. Upon passing it, Paul had to veer off into the ditch to avoid striking one of the barricades, wrestling the truck off of the road and then back up out of the ditch and onto the pavement. He considered pulling over to scour the scene for weapons but decided against it. He already had his own two guns and besides that, the idea of kicking around more dead bodies with a scavenger mindset did not sit well with him.
It Falls Apart Series | Book 1 | It Falls Apart Page 23