Larkin kept accelerating. The man just a few inches away on the other side of his window was screaming now. Larkin pushed the button again, and as the window lowered, the man’s arm came free and he fell and rolled on the asphalt, out of control from his momentum. Something banged off the back of the SUV, and when Larkin checked the rearview mirror he saw a shovel lying in the road. One of the men had flung it after them in fear and rage.
The man who had tried to grab Larkin through the window was still on the ground. One of his friends ran up to him and started trying to haul him to his feet. Both of them had to scramble to get out of the way of an accelerating car.
Larkin couldn’t see any of them after that and turned his attention ahead again.
Susan was breathing hard. Her eyes were wide. “They were going to hurt us,” she said. “They were going to hurt us and take the SUV.”
“Yeah,” Larkin said. “They would have tried.”
He glanced down at the Colt 1911 .45 lying on the seat between them. He hadn’t reached for the gun back there . . . but he would have if he’d needed to in order to shed themselves of the would-be thieves.
What was troubling was that a few hours earlier, those guys probably weren’t thieves at all and wouldn’t have been so quick to grab tools and try to turn them into weapons. They were just guys who’d gone to work that morning not worrying about anything other than getting through the day and then going home to their families, if they had them, or spending their evening however they usually did. Nobody got up thinking, Well, the world’s going to end today and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
After the brief stop, Larkin had caught up to the traffic in front of him. Now the vehicles ground to a halt in the road. Susan, recovered a little from her fear, leaned forward and asked, “What is it?”
“Don’t know,” Larkin said. “I can’t see.” As he watched, though, peering up the line of cars, he spotted figures reeling back and forth between some of the vehicles. Men flailed at each other with fists. “Oh, crap! It’s a fight. Somebody else must have tried to take somebody’s car.”
“There’s no way around this, is there?” Susan asked, her voice tight with anxiety.
“No, this is really the only road in. Moultrie probably didn’t think about that, since everything else about the site is perfect.”
“I didn’t mean that, necessarily. I meant . . . there’s no way to keep people’s worst nature from coming out in a crisis, is there?”
Larkin grimaced. He had thought the same thing, but he said, “That’s not always true. It depends on the person. Think about all the disasters, natural or man-made, where people rise above what they usually are and perform great acts of heroism. Sometimes they save a lot of lives, even at the cost of their own.”
“But even in a hurricane or something like that, people know it’s not the end of the world.”
“If you don’t make it, it’s the end of your world. That doesn’t stop most people from pitching in to help.”
“But some don’t. I mean, look at all the looters every time there’s a riot. Some people are always out just for themselves, and that just gets worse when there’s an emergency.”
Larkin couldn’t argue with that. He just said, “That’s why we’re prepared . . . and why we’ll do whatever it takes to save our family.”
Susan sighed. “I wish they were all with us right now.”
“So do I, babe. So do I.”
A few minutes of tense silence went by while Larkin watched the brawl up ahead. If the violence spilled in their direction, he wouldn’t take any chances this time. He would grab the 1911 and be ready for trouble.
More men got out of their vehicles and shoved a stalled car out of the way as the battle moved onto a grassy hillside next to the road. Larkin wondered if the stalled car was what had started the fight. The traffic began to move forward again. Overall, the clog was getting worse, though. They measured their progress now in feet. At this rate, it might soon be inches.
And it might take too long to reach the Hercules Project. Larkin glanced up at the sky, wondered what was up there. What might be speeding toward them at this very second ...and the news on the local radio stations was scrambling to stay on top of the different scenarios, some accurate, some fake . . . but it was impossible to know the difference.
“The hell with this,” he muttered. “There’s gotta be another way.”
“Can you get around on the shoulder?”
He shook his head. “Too many stalled cars. The ground drops off too much on this side, and there are too many culverts. We’d get stuck if we got too far off the road.”
“Maybe the other shoulder?”
The lack of traffic inbound toward Fort Worth made that a possibility, Larkin thought. There was a double line of outbound traffic now, but as far as Larkin could see, the far shoulder was at least partially clear. If he took off over there, other people were bound to follow him, and that would just create three lines of traffic. It wouldn’t be long before that third line stalled for some reason, too.
But it wouldn’t matter if he and Susan could get close enough to the project before that happened. They could get out and carry the bags and guns if they had to. He’d been stashing extra food and supplies in their apartment for the past few weeks, ever since the place was close enough to completion for him to do so, so they hadn’t had to bring too much with them on this last mad dash for safely . . .
This mad dash that had turned into a crawl.
Larkin checked his side mirror, saw an opening, hauled the wheel over. Somebody honked as he veered left, but nobody ran into him, so he didn’t care. Let ’em get mad. It didn’t matter anymore. When he got over in the second lane, he could see the other shoulder even better. It was empty.
He hit the gas and popped out, still only moving about ten miles an hour, but it seemed faster as he passed the other vehicles. In the rearview mirror, he saw others following his example, as he had known they would.
“We’re on the wrong side of the road now,” Susan said. “I guess we should have thought of that. We’ll never be able to get back over and turn into the gate.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Larkin said. “We’ll ditch the SUV and go in on foot. We can take everything with us that we really need. If things get as bad as it looks like they might, we won’t be driving anywhere for a long time anyway.”
“You’re right.” Susan took a deep, shuddery breath. “Oh, Patrick, I’m so scared. I keep thinking that at any second there’s going to be a bright, blinding light, and then . . . and then . . .”
“Try not to think about it,” he told her. “I know that’s hard, but we’re alive, the kids are alive, and nothing’s really happened yet—”
The windshield exploded inward, shattering and spraying glass at them.
Chapter 17
It wasn’t a bomb, because he was still alive. Some small part of Larkin’s brain knew that. The blast wave from a nuclear explosion would have killed them, possibly even vaporized them. But other than shock and some stinging pain on his face and hands where flying slivers of glass had cut them, he seemed to be all right. Instinct and reflexes had closed his eyes in time to protect them.
Susan was screaming, though, either in shock or pain or both. He forced his eyes open and reached over to grab her, fear making his heart pound as he saw the blood on her face.
Before he could get his hands on her, something else crashed into the driver’s side window and sprayed him with more glass. Larkin flinched away from it, but something made his hand drop to the seat and scoop up the Colt.
He twisted toward the window, bringing the gun around and shoving down the safety with his thumb as he did so. A man stood there, a long tire iron gripped in both hands as he swung it back to strike again. The window was already broken out, so this time that blow would be aimed at Larkin.
Larkin shoved the Colt at the man and fired twice. The shots were deafening inside the SUV.
The two rounds struck the man in the body and knocked him away from the vehicle. He landed on his back and slid down into the ditch. Larkin jerked his head around to look for any other threats but saw none. He turned back to Susan.
“I’m all right!” she cried before he could ask if she was hurt. “Just drive! Go!”
Larkin punched the gas and lurched ahead before any of the other vehicles could pull out in front of him. He gripped the wheel with his left hand and kept the pistol in his right.
“The blood—” he said without taking his eyes off what was in front of him.
“The glass cut me in a few places, that’s all. You have blood all over your face, too, Patrick.”
He did? A glance in the mirror told him she was right. He looked pretty gruesome, too. He lifted his right arm and sleeved some of the gore from his face. Susan found some tissues and wiped at her face, but he didn’t care about getting his shirt blood-stained.
“Why did that awful man do that?”
“I guess he wanted a ride,” Larkin said. “Or to kill us both and steal the SUV.”
“You . . . you killed him.”
“We don’t know that.”
But the chances of anybody surviving two rounds from a 1911 at close range in the midsection like that were pretty damned small, Larkin realized. It was almost a certainty that he had killed the guy with the tire iron. He knew that he’d been acting in self-defense, and in defense of his wife, too, and he had killed the enemy during wartime . . .
But this wasn’t a war, and that guy hadn’t been an enemy, at least not when the day started. He’d just been another Texan until terror had driven him to lash out.
Dear God, was this what they were all doomed to become? Animals rending and clawing at each other?
Larkin shoved that thought out of his head. This was no time to debate morality, even with himself. The only thing that really counted was survival. His survival, and that of his loved ones.
Everything else could be hashed out later . . . if there was a later.
* * *
A couple of times he was forced to swing far enough out that his left-hand wheels were off the shoulder and coming dangerously close to either a drop-off or a culvert. But they had covered at least half a mile this way before people ahead of him saw him coming in their mirrors and began to pull out, following his example even though they were in front of him. Larkin glared futilely.
“You can’t blame them,” Susan said. “They just want to get to somewhere safer, too.”
“I know, I know.”
She had slipped off a shoe and used it to brush broken glass off the seat between them. Little trails of drying blood gave her face a striped look. She leaned over and reached toward him. “You’ve got a little piece of glass stuck in your cheek . . . hold still . . .”
She plucked it free. He said, “Ouch.”
“Don’t be a big baby.”
“Yes, ma’am. You’re a trained medical professional, though. It shouldn’t have hurt.”
“Just be thankful I’m not picking broken glass out of your butt. I’ve had to do that at work, you know.”
“Could be interesting, depending on whose butt it was.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t the least bit interesting.”
Larkin grinned tightly. It said something for the human spirit that they could banter like this when they’d been under attack just a few minutes earlier—and when the ultimate doom could fall on their heads at any second, with no warning. But what good would it do to curl up in a ball and cry? Wasn’t it better to keep fighting?
One of the cars up ahead got too close to a culvert. Its left front wheel fell in with what must have been a bone-jarring thump, and the car came to a dead stop, tilted so its right rear tire was off the ground.
“Oh, hell!” Larkin said as he smacked his left hand against the steering wheel in frustration. Enough of the car was still on the shoulder that no other vehicles would be able to get by.
“Can’t they back out of there?” Susan asked.
Larkin shook his head. “Not with that wheel off the ground. If somebody could get a jack under the front .. . or maybe enough guys lifting . . .” He looked around, then turned the .45 and extended it butt-first toward his wife. “Here, take this.”
“What?” Susan stared at the gun. “I don’t shoot.”
“The safety’s off. All you have to do is point it and pull the trigger. Hold it with both hands if you have to fire it. It’s got a kick to it. And don’t fire it unless you’re absolutely sure you need to.” “Patrick, what are you going to do?”
He opened the door. “See if I can get the way cleared so we can go on. And I’m counting on you to stand guard while I’m doing it.”
Susan looked like she wanted to argue, but Larkin was already out of the SUV. There was a woman behind the wheel of the car that had gone into the culvert, and she had several children in there with her. Larkin turned to the vehicles in line behind him and waved, then pointed to the stuck car and shouted, “Come on! We’ve got to get it out of there!”
For a couple of seconds, nothing happened. Then a few doors swung open and several men climbed out of their vehicles. “Come on!” Larkin called again, and they trotted forward.
Larkin led half a dozen men to the culvert and pointed to where they needed to stand. As they positioned himself, he gestured to the driver for her to roll down the window. She looked like she didn’t want to because she was so shaken and frightened, but after a moment she complied.
“We’re gonna lift on the front end,” Larkin told her. “Watch me, and when I nod, you put it in reverse and give it some gas. Not too much, though. There’s not a lot of room between you and the car behind you. When you’re out of this hole, you can cut your wheels back to the right and ease around it. Understand?”
“I . . . I think so,” the woman said. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble—”
“It’s okay. Just keep an eye on me. You’ll get out of here.”
Whether that would be enough to save her life and the lives of the kids in the car with her, Larkin had no idea. Like everybody else out here, all the woman could do was hope.
Larkin took his place among the other men, reaching under the car’s bumper and finding a place to grab hold. “Ready?” he asked, and got nods and grunts of acknowledgment. “Lift!”
More grunting as they put their backs into it. Larkin felt his muscles straining and creaking. But the car’s front end came up, and he could tell that both rear wheels were on the ground again. He nodded to the driver.
She was too nervous to follow his advice about taking it easy. She tromped the gas hard, and the car lurched backward, banging heavily into the sedan behind it. The driver of that car, an older guy who hadn’t gotten out to help, opened his door and leaned out to yell, “Hey!”
One of his headlights was broken, but Larkin didn’t figure that was going to matter. He and the other men let go of the car and Larkin checked to make sure the bumpers hadn’t locked. They hadn’t, so he thumped the top of the car a couple of times and told the woman through the open driver’s window, “You’re good to go, lady. Just be careful.”
“Thank you!” she called. She eased forward, missing the edge of the culvert this time.
“What about the damage to my car?” the older man said.
“If that’s all that happens to it,” Larkin said, “consider yourself one lucky bastard.”
Larkin ignored the glare the man gave him and walked back to the SUV while the other men who had pitched in returned to their vehicles. He brushed more glass off the seat and then got in.
Susan heaved a sigh of relief and said, “I was afraid someone would try to jump you while you were out there, Patrick. I . . . I don’t know if I could have shot anybody.”
“Not even to protect me?” he asked with a grin.
“Well . . . even if I tried, I don’t know if I could have hit them. I might have shot you instead.”
“Don’t think
I didn’t worry about it,” he said as he took the Colt back from her. His smile took any sting out of the words, but there was some truth to what he said. He really should have insisted that she go to the range with him more often.
The slow procession rolled on.
* * *
There was plenty of news on the radio, of course, but at the same time, there was no news. Nobody seemed to know anything about what was going to happen. The South Korean army and air force had tried to strike back against the North, resulting in an all-out war between the two countries, but from what Larkin could gather, the nuclear strike had been such a crippling blow that South Korea wouldn’t be able to muster much of a fight. It was likely the “war” would be over in a day or two.
What worried Larkin was the tone of everything the Russians said. The statements had a threatening stridency to them, as if the U.S. had already declared that it was going to attack North Korea and the Russians were foaming at the mouth to jump in. Washington’s official stance was that the “incident” was “still under investigation.” As with any crisis, the administration wanted to pretend to investigate until the problem went away on its own. With the attitude coming from the Russians, though, Larkin had his doubts about this one going away.
As they started slowly down a hill, Susan pointed and said, “I can see the gate up ahead!”
So could Larkin. The entrance to the Hercules Project was about a quarter of a mile away now, close enough that they could walk the rest of the way if they had to. Part of him wanted to climb out now and start in that direction, figuring they could move faster on foot.
But they had quite a few bags, including the gun bags, and he didn’t want to load Susan down with any more of a burden, for any farther, than necessary. So they stayed where they were for the moment, with the SUV rolling forward a foot or two at a time.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they were just about even with the gate. Larkin could see Graham Moultrie’s Jeep parked on the other side but no sign of Moultrie himself. The man had to be somewhere close by, though. Larkin couldn’t imagine that Moultrie would be anywhere else under these circumstances. The project was the man’s baby. He would want to protect it and see that everything functioned the way it was supposed to.
The Doomsday Bunker Page 10