by Frank Tayell
His mind stayed blank until the sound of an engine drowned out the now-hoarse screaming from the guard. The approaching vehicle was getting nearer, though it was currently hidden by the slope of the rutted track.
He turned away from the cloud, looking at the truck, the track, and tried to process what he had to do. Get away. It was that simple. The bomb had fallen too far away for the blast to kill him, but the radiation might. The shockwave had caused the crash. Either that or it had been caused by the flash, though the bomb had fallen behind, and was too far away to cause anything or than very temporary sight loss.
The truck’s door opened. The driver had a hand against his head, but either his concussion was clearing or his sight was returning. His hand dropped to his belt. Tom raised the rifle and fired a three-shot burst, cutting the man down. The engine noise was getting nearer. He needed to get away, and escape the radiation. He wouldn’t do it on foot, or in this truck. Smoke and steam billowed from the engine. He was on a track, not a road, that was barely ten feet wide. The truck had crashed into a thicket of trees on the left-hand side. He ducked down, moving behind the thicket, waiting for the vehicle to get nearer. Nearer. The truck came into view. It stopped the moment that the driver saw the crashed vehicle. Tom judged the distance as close to thirty yards. He could make out the driver and one passenger, but there wasn’t time to waste confirming whether there was was anyone else on board. There wasn’t time for anything, not anymore. He raised the rifle. The passenger door opened. A uniformed guard stepped out, weapon raised. Tom aimed.
The ground shook. He was thrown from his feet. His first thought was shockwave. His second, that it was another bomb. His third was attack. He picked himself up and ran toward the second truck. He fired from the hip, aiming at the guard on the ground. One burst. Another. A third. The man was still. The driver’s door was opening. The man stumbled onto the track, a pistol in his hand. Tom shifted his aim, cutting him down. Not bothering to check they were dead, he jumped into the truck. He tried the ignition. For a moment he thought it wouldn’t start. It did. He slammed a foot on the gas. The truck jerked forward, butting into the crashed vehicle. Metal screeched as it was pushed aside. With the left-hand wheels on the muddy slope, he drove past the stalled vehicle, and onto the clear track. He didn’t ease off the gas until the crash was no longer in sight. When the road curved, the mushroom cloud was still visible.
“Think. Think. Think.”
But saying it didn’t help. Mushroom cloud, fallout, radiation, blast radius, flash, the words lined up in his brain, but without meaning.
“Two shockwaves. Two.” So there had been two bombs. He looked for a second cloud, but couldn’t see one, and now that first was lost from view. Without it filling the rearview mirror, his mind began to clear. Maybe the second time the ground shook wasn’t due to a shockwave but an earthquake caused by the first detonation. Or it was conventional explosives. Or it could have been a missile taking off from an underground silo. Or—
“No. Think. What do you know?”
That he’d seen a mushroom cloud. He’d felt the shockwave. There had been a flash.
“And what does that mean?” He knew, in theory, a one-megaton bomb could cause temporary flash blindness for up to thirteen miles. Had it even been a flash? Had the driver been blinded, or had his hand been raised to his head due to a concussion or something else? He had no idea. Certainly the two who’d been in the vehicle he was now driving had been able to see. Did that mean it was more than thirteen miles away? Now he tried to remember, he couldn’t recall whether it was thirteen miles or thirty. Of course, as he didn’t know the size of the warhead, it didn’t matter. Of course it didn’t. If you could see the mushroom cloud, you were far too close.
He glanced in the mirror again, a reflexive instinct to see if the cloud was still there. What he saw was worse. One of the deuce-and-a-halfs was on his tail. Barely a hundred feet behind, it was closing fast. He pushed the gas pedal down until it touched the floor, and almost lost control as the track abruptly kinked hard left, then just as hard right. By the time he’d regained control, the six-wheeler was twenty feet closer. He could see the outline of a driver and passenger.
The track had to lead somewhere. Of course it did. It led to wherever the guards had been taking him. The place to which they were going that would be secure from the fallout. They’d said something about a mine. It could be around the next bend. He had to get off the track, onto a road, and far upwind of the irradiated particles drawn up into that malignant cloud. That was easy to say, and impossible to do. Trees surrounded him on each side. The six-wheeler was closing.
He spared a glance around the cab. There was a bag in the foot well. Waiting for the next relatively straight section of track, he grabbed it. He had to wait another minute before he could check the contents. There was a chrome-plated .45, a few spare magazines, a book and… and he glanced back at the track just in time to avoid a tree stump.
“Personal possessions.” That’s what the bag contained. No grenades, no explosives, nothing that might rid him of his pursuers.
Perhaps they weren’t pursing him. Perhaps they were just trying to get away as fast as he. That hope lasted until they reached another straight section of track. With the six-wheeler only sixty feet behind, the passenger pushed a rifle through the window and opened fire. Tom didn’t hear the sound of an impact, but it told him they weren’t going to give up.
“All right, so think. What do you know? Fallout. Got to get away from it. But what goes up doesn’t come down immediately.” He had time. Not long, but he was in a vehicle that was easily managing forty-five miles an hour on rough terrain. Assuming that he wasn’t driving straight into the blast-area of another bomb. No, he couldn’t think like that. He was alive. If he wanted to stay that way, he had to deal with his pursuers.
He slammed his foot on the gas pedal, almost losing control as the vehicle took a steep turn. The moment the six-wheeler was out of sight, he stamped on the brakes. Pocketing the .45 and grabbing the rifle, he was out of the vehicle barely before it had stopped. Leaving the driver’s door open, he ran around to the passenger side. He’d chosen the spot poorly. There was little cover, and no time to find anything more concealing than a rhododendron.
The six-wheeler rounded the curve. The driver braked, but not in time. The vehicle crunched into the back of Tom’s truck. He winced, praying that it was still drivable as he took aim. The driver jumped out, a rifle raised, aiming toward the woodland on the driver’s side of the vehicle. More slowly, the passenger got out. Tom breathed out and fired. One burst at the driver, and the man flew backward. Tom shifted aim; the passenger had dived to the ground. Tom fired, emptying the rifle into the man.
A third person jumped out from the cab on the driver’s side. Addison, an automatic rifle in his hands. Tom’s finger curled around the trigger, but the magazine was empty. Addison fired. Bullets smacked into the ground a few feet in front of Tom. He rolled into the sparse undergrowth as leaves and bark rained down upon him. He grabbed the .45 from his pocket, and crawled through mud and dirt for a dozen feet. He stopped. There wasn’t time for subterfuge and misdirection. This had to end.
With a roar, he pushed himself to his feet and charged. Addison was half in, half out of the vehicle, reaching for something inside. Tom fired. One of his bullets hit the man in the thigh. Addison screamed, fell to his knees, clutching his leg. Tom slowed his run to a walk and stopped five feet from the man. He glanced around. The two guards were dead. No one else appeared from the truck.
“Tom. Please,” Addison said. “We have to get away.”
Tom raised the gun.
“Please, Tom. It doesn’t have to end like this. I can tell you everything. I can tell you how this all began, who was really behind the outbreak.”
Tom backed away a step, his eyes darting between Addison and the back of the truck, until he reached the rear. He looked inside. It was empty.
“Who?” he called to Addison.
“Who was behind it?”
Addison had curled up, almost into a ball. “I’ll tell you, Tom. I’ll tell you.”
“Who?” Tom yelled, even though he knew the man was talking just to stay alive.
Addison straightened. Tom saw the gun in his hand. He fired. The first bullet took the man in the arm, the second in the chest, the third in the head. Addison collapsed in an inelegant heap.
“I can truly say that the world is better off with you dead,” Tom murmured. A wave of regret washed over him, mingling with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He leaned against the vehicle and heaved.
“Escape. You have to get out of here,” he told himself. Pausing only to grab the rifle from the dead guard and take the ammunition from his webbing, he ran back to the truck. It started, though with a rattle. He drove away.
Chapter 14 - Outrunning Death
Location Unknown
He had to get away. The speedometer hit twenty. Thirty. He had to get away. The truck bounced over ruts, slewed through puddles, and churned up mud. Forty. Fifty. He had no destination in mind, just a need to outrun the lethal particles that, even now, were settling back to ground around the impact site. Fifty-five miles an hour, and the track widened, the trees thinned. He could see the edge of a pasture ahead, and beyond it the silent chimneys of something industrial. Was it the place where he’d been held prisoner? No. There were twelve stacks clustered in two groups, each with red and blue stripes painted near the top. Sixty, but no speed could be fast enough. Sixty-five. The wheels hit mud. The vehicle spun, tipped, and he thought it was going to roll. It didn’t, but he eased off on the gas.
Addison. He should have searched his corpse. There might have been a clue as to the location of the mine. Perhaps an explanation as to how the outbreak began. He doubted that. The man knew nothing. What Tom really wanted was an explanation as to why Addison, a man he’d thought of as brusque but decent, opinionated but well-meaning, arrogant but dutiful, had turned on his friend and his nation.
“You’re not going to find it. Not now, not ever. Some questions don’t get answered.” But as he said the words, he realized the truth lay in the man’s actions. It was power, pure and simple. The same force that had driven Farley until fear of imminent death had made him recant. No more explanation than that was needed. And he realized how true that was. A smile formed on his lips. It wasn’t an expression of joy, but of satisfaction. The cabal was dead. The conspiracy was destroyed. From the moment Farley had washed his hands of it, they’d acted in desperation and haste. Addison had been recruited to take the blame. When he’d realized that he was destined to be the fall guy, he’d hatched his own plans. It was over.
“Addison’s dead.” He hunched over the wheel, focusing on the track, turning his head this way and that as he tried to dispel the image of the man’s corpse. The conspiracy was far from the most important thing in his world. The shockwave that had knocked him from his feet hadn’t accompanied a flash, and he’d seen no other mushroom cloud. Perhaps it was an earthquake, or a secondary explosion, or the result of conventional ordnance.
“Or it could have been an asteroid. You don’t know. You can’t guess.” The real question, then, was what the target was. The facility where he’d been held captive? He wasn’t sure. That mushroom cloud might have been squatting over it. Without knowing how fast they’d been driving, he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t even be sure how long it was after they’d left the prison before the bomb fell. What other target could there be? And then, that second explosion could have been the mine being destroyed. It had to be. His smile grew, but only until he remembered that Max was dead, and though the cabal hadn’t won, the mushroom cloud meant the whole world had lost.
A deer ran across the track. Blood ran down its flanks from an arrow protruding out of its haunch. He swerved and stopped, watching it bound away into the trees. An arrow meant a hunter. He opened the door.
“Hello!” he called. Someone was in the woods. Someone trying to fill the pot for a desperate family.
“Hello!” he called again. There was no answer. He wanted to search for them, but knew he couldn’t. There wasn’t time. “No. No time for sorrow. No time for regret.”
Yet it took a real effort to drive away. He kept his eyes open, hoping against hope he might see a figure run out onto the track. When it met a two-lane road, and he’d seen no one, he abandoned that hope.
A mile after he joined the road, he finally saw people. A group stood by a stalled car. One of them raised her arms in a wave.
“No uniforms,” he said, slowing. After all he’d been through, he knew it could still be dangerous, but he didn’t care. Another was waving now. People. It was like cold water on a hot day. Then the others raised their arms, and he realized they weren’t waving. They were undead. The zombies lurched out into the road, staggering toward him. Frustrated anger bubbled over as he slammed his foot on the gas, driving straight at the creatures. At the last minute, he swerved, clipping the grasping hand of the nearest zombie. It went spinning, but he didn’t look back to see it fall. Eyes fixed on the road ahead, he drove.
Zombies. Nuclear war. A conspiracy that had destroyed any chance of a recovery. It was all too much to take in.
“So break it down,” he said, speaking out loud to push despair away. “There was one cloud. There might be more, there might not. It might just have been the cabal that was targeted. No. Forget the guesses. Focus on what you know.”
What did he know? He’d tried to stop the world tearing itself apart and had given little thought to what would happen next. The mushroom cloud was formed of radioactive debris dragged up from the impact site. The length of time it took for it to settle depended on weather and wind, but if you couldn’t escape the fallout, you should shelter for at least three days.
“Fallout.” He brought the truck to a screeching halt. He had to get upwind of the cloud. He’d been driving away from it, but had he been traveling in the wrong direction?
He looked for trees, but the only ones he could see were bare of leaves. He stepped outside, turning his face this way and that, trying to feel the wind. He ran to the roadside and tugged out a handful of grass. When he threw it in the air, it scattered in every direction. He grabbed another clod, a third, a fourth, ripping the grass from the ground until his hands were covered in dirt. A sob escaped his lips, echoed by a rasping sigh from the other side of the road. A zombie limped across the asphalt. One foot still wore an expensive hiking boot, the other trailed a sodden sock. He pulled the .45 from his pocket. Aimed. Fired. The zombie crumpled.
“Stop. Think. Smoke. Wind. Fire, that’s it. Matches. I need matches.”
The vehicle had been stripped of almost anything of use, but in a half-empty toolbox he found two road flares. He sparked one, threw it out into the middle of the road, and watched the smoke billow up and then toward him. The bottom dropped out of his world. The smoke changed direction, drifting back the way he’d come. He watched it, not even daring to breathe, expecting it to change direction again. It didn’t.
Minutes passed.
“Take it,” he finally said. “It’s the only reassurance you’re going to get.” What he needed was a Geiger counter. What he needed was to get somewhere safe. He didn’t know where that was, except it wasn’t here on this lonely road. He got back in the truck and started the engine.
“Three quarters of a tank,” he said. “Okay. Good. So where to?” He stopped himself from answering the question, at least aloud. Talking to himself was one thing, questioning himself was something else.
“Start with where you are.”
It took five miles before he was sure he was heading north.
“And in an electronics-free truck retrofitted to survive an EMP.” He found he was laughing again, and knew it was hysteria, but he didn’t try to stop. He’d survived. He’d been barely twelve hours ahead of Powell in New York, but he’d escaped. He’d been captured by Addison and escaped again. He’d escaped being framed f
or murder, being trapped by the undead, and now he’d escaped a nuclear bomb. If there was a winner in this horrific apocalypse, it was him. The laughter abruptly died as he realized that there wouldn’t be just one bomb. There could be another just a few miles ahead. There could be thousands, and nowhere on the planet would be safe.
“And there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re alive. Alive and free. Free.” He repeated the word. It was true. Ever since he’d watched his family home burn to the ground, he’d been on the run, living in the shadows. Now his life, however much of it was left, was finally his own.
Chapter 15 - Unlucky Survivor
New York & Vermont
After five more miles, he saw a sign for the interstate, and it was wrong. It was for the I-87. He was in northern New York, not far from the border with Vermont. He’d thought he’d been held captive somewhere near Dr Ayers’s home and the motel where he’d confronted Powell.
“The sign’s right. You’re wrong. Live with it.” Certainly there was no mistaking the next sign pointing to Plattsburgh and the Canadian border. That brought him to the question of where he was heading. There was only one answer to that. East to his cottage. There were no military installations near the village of Crossfields Landing, and no other obvious targets. Get to the cottage, get to the boat, get out to sea. Could he get to Maine? The fuel gauge read three-quarters full. He let himself breathe out with relief. He might make it.
Avoiding the interstate, he stayed on the smaller county road. He wasn’t the only one. Cars, trucks, vans, even a limo, were parked, abandoned, or had crashed. As he passed, he kept the speed low, his eyes watching for movement, for people stranded by an EMP, or simply lack of fuel. He was more than willing to give someone a ride. He was eager, not just for company, but to know that he wasn’t the last person alive. But the few shambling figures he saw wore the ravaged features of the undead.