Wandering Highway: A Desperate Journey Home

by Ike Warren

  They walked to a small grove of trees in the grassy median on the side of the road and Jennifer knelt down in the shade. She reached into her purse and took out the medicated mist and squeezed off a squirt into her mouth. As they rested under the shade the medicine slowly worked its way down into her lungs and her breathing became easier. They rested under the trees for longer than they wanted, both of them feeling like they were delaying too much, but it was just too hot outside to force their bodies to get up and walk again. They drank the water from the bottle that Allan had placed in Jennifer’s backpack from back at the fight-crime scene but it was not enough water to quench their thirst. Finally when Allan felt that they could linger no longer he stood up and helped Jennifer to her feet and they pressed on.

  Everywhere there were mangled cars blocking their path. Every few steps they had to side step around them, slowing them down, and making what would be a twenty minute mile walk into forty minutes or more. Allan remembered Walter’s words back at the mall, “I could cut my walk down to 20 miles if I walked in a straight line as the birds fly” and he wondered if it would have been better to follow Walter’s advice and try to walk in a straight line through residential neighborhoods and open pastures instead of following the highways but Allan feared what dangers lied in walking along the side streets where a would-be attacker could easily hide in the shadows. The biggest obstacles were the 18 wheelers, not only because of their enormous size but because every one that they encountered on the highway in Dallas had been looted with their trailer cargos spread out along the roadway for hundreds of feet as the multitudes of people picked over the items that they wanted and discarded all the rest.

  A man approached them from behind and yelled, “Hey man can you help me?”

  Deep down Allan did not want to turn around and acknowledge the call for help. He remembered going on a business trip with his boss to downtown Saint Louis a couple of years back and as he walked along the cobblestone streets there were dozens of homeless people who would occasionally approach them and ask for handouts.

  “Don’t acknowledge them. Don’t even make eye contact. Just keep walking like you don’t even hear them. Do that and they’ll leave you alone.” Allan’s boss had advised him but for some reason the beggars always approached Allan and asked him for money despite his best effort to not look their way.

  The man who had called out to Allan just now on the highway ran up to him. Another beggar. How can I avoid this one? Doesn’t he see that I have nothing to give him. Why do they always approach me? Allan thought.

  “Sir, there’s a man trapped under a car nearby. Been there two days. I’m trying to get some men together to try and lift the car off of him. Can you help? We only need a couple more strong arms.” The man pleaded.

  Allan remembered the people that he had already refused to help. The woman who was impaled in her car, the man with the concussion who he refused to seek help for, and the man in the fight who looked right at him with eyes that asked him to make it stop just before he was killed. Those people were not my concern. My concern is getting my wife and unborn child home and reuniting with Samantha and I won’t let anyone stand in my way.

  The man looked at Allan with pleading eyes. “We just need a couple more men. That’s all we need to save a guy’s life.”

  Suddenly Allan felt a wave of guilt run over him. How will I live with myself if I reunite my family yet sacrifice everyone in need of help that I encounter along the way?

  “Where’s the car at?” Allan asked.

  The man’s face lit up and he began to run back in the direction that he had come from. “It’s just over here.”

  Allan jogged behind the man and Jennifer did her best to keep up. They stepped off the highway near an overpass and stopped in a place where a few people had gathered around a red Ford Fusion car that was parked in the middle of a red light interchange. The man who had stopped to ask Allan for help knelt down to one knee beside the car and Allan did the same and he looked down beneath the car and saw the body of a young man lying on the pavement.

  “He’s been under here since the lights went out. He said he was walking across the crosswalk when this car slammed right into him. He said the lady who was driving the car didn’t even try to help him despite his screaming.” The man who had stopped Allan explained. Allan looked on at the young man who blinked at him as he lay helpless under the car. “I actually think we got enough dudes here now that we can do this.” The man continued. “Everyone get ahold of the rear of the car. We’re gonna lift it up and I want you two to slide the man out from under the car.” He said pointing to two female bystanders.

  There were five men in the crowd and each grabbed a spot at the back of the car and waited for the signal to begin lifting. Jennifer stood alongside, afraid of straining herself and she watched the scene unfold. Someone counted to three and then everyone who was gripping the car heaved upwards with every muscle in their bodies. The car lifted a few inches off the ground and a terrible scream erupted from beneath the car. The two women who had been instructed to pull the man out from underneath, dove down and grabbed the man and pulled him to safety. When the man was clear of the car the group lowered the rear end back down to the ground and they let out a collective gasp in exhaustion. Everyone huddled around the young man who had been pulled to safety while the two women examined his body.

  The young man was still screaming in agony and clutching one of his legs and one of the women looked up. “Looks like only a broken leg. He’ll live.”

  The group let out a sigh of relief and the man who had ran up to Allan to seek his help began to walk around the crowd shaking everyone’s hands. “Thank you so much for stopping and helping. You saved this man’s life. You’re a hero today.”

  When the man got to Allan and thanked him Allan asked. “Is the man who was trapped someone you know?”

  “Nah man. I just saw him trapped under the car and I knew I had to do something to get him out.”

  Allan was amazed at the man’s will to help a total stranger. “You’re the hero.” He said and everyone around them agreed and thanked the man for his kindness.

  It was mid-day and hot when they reached the double bridges of the Dallas North Tollway. On each side of the interchange there were circular on and off ramps. Allan had seen many of these types of ramps as they appeared as little clover leaf shapes on a map, but there at ground level it was hard to imagine the clovers with the long arching ramps and grassy medians so littered with stalled cars and so many people aimlessly walking around. When they passed under the second bridge of the tollway they saw a large white structure in the middle of the Valley View Mall. Before the disaster they would often take Samantha to that mall to ride the carousel but most of the time that was just an excuse for Jennifer to get out of the house and go shopping. The part about the carousal was just a means to get little Samantha excited enough to convince Allan to take them all there. As they walked closer they could see that a crowd had gathered around the big structure spread across the parking lot which now looked like a large white tent. Allan’s initial thought was that the scene reminded him of the circus that would come to town every year when he was a little kid. A part of him actually hoped that it was a circus, as absurd as the idea seemed, if only to have a semblance of normalcy in everything terrible that was happening around them.

  “Do you think we should go over there?” Jennifer asked as she stopped walking in the middle of the road. “I bet that’s a makeshift hospital that they have setup. Maybe they have some food and water and they can look at your feet?”

  Allan nodded in agreement and as they stepped off the paved highway he could see that Jennifer was right, it was a make shift hospital. There were hundreds of people milling around the white canvas tent and inside Allan could see that it was bustling with more activity. Rows of hospital beds, most with patients lying on them, filled the interior of the tent and here and there were dozens of what Allan guessed were doctors and nurses w
ho were recruited after the disaster who paced back and forth between the bed rows. Allan wondered how such an operation could have been setup and organized so quickly after the disaster with all the supplies and beds and even the big white tent. It was quite an impressive sight but the realization that it was in fact not a circus made Allan feel disappointed in a ridiculous sort of way.

  As they approached the tent they could see a woman standing on a podium near the middle of the big structure and she was speaking into a plastic bull horn, yet they could not make out what she was saying. It wasn’t until they were within 50 yards of her that Allan and Jennifer could hear the speaker’s muffled instructions to the crowd. “If you have a medical emergency and you need immediate medical assistance please go to the trauma center at the rear of the tent. For all other medical needs please form two lines here.” The woman repeated her instructions over and over and Allan noted a strain in her voice that seemed to increase with each repetition of the phrase. Allan thought that if only she had an electronic megaphone she could be so much more efficient with her message, yet he knew that if one was around it surely wouldn't be functional.

  “Do you want to get in line to see if they can help you with your feet?” Jennifer asked. Allan nodded, hoping for treatment of his feet and he also hoped that they could do something to help Jennifer’s asthma and if they were lucky they might score some food and water. They quickened their pace to get in line before more people could get in front of them but the line swelled around them as they approached and before they could secure their place in the line it grew by nearly forty feet. It reminded Allan of a few years back when he was at Six Flags waiting excitedly in the line to ride the Texas Giant roller coaster and as he stepped in what he thought was the back of the line he heard people shouting, “Hey, no cutting in line!” at which point he looked back and saw that the line for the roller coaster extended for several hundred more feet behind him. Disappointed he stepped out of the line for the ride and went to ride other, less popular rides that day and he never once got a chance to ride the Texas Giant.

  As Allan and Jennifer started to make their way to the newly formed back of the line a man who was wearing a dark grey business suit caught Allan’s eye. He had a matching suit jacket slung over his shoulder and he was wearing a tan colored felt fedora hat and he looked like he could have come right out of a 1940’s Dick Tracy cartoon.

  The man stepped back to give the two of them some room and said, “You folks can stand in front of me.”

  Perhaps the man saw the way that Allan was limping because of the blisters on his feet, or maybe he saw Jenifer’s bulging stomach and the way that she waddled when she walked, or perhaps it was his way of adding some semblance of kindness to a day in which he had seen his own fair share of horrible events. As Allan and Jennifer stepped into the line, bemoans called out from some people standing behind them just like Allan had experienced years ago in the line to ride the Texas Giant. “No cutting in line.” Yelled a booming voice in the back. The man with the fedora had did not acknowledge the heckler. “Hey asshole with the goofy hat, I said no cutting in line.”

  Allan expected the man who let them cut in line to turn and confront the protestor but instead he just smiled at Allan and Jennifer and said, “I guess what they say is true. No good deed goes unpunished.”

  Allan was surprised at the man’s kindness and he turned and said, “I actually like your hat.”

  “Found it behind the back seat of a stalled out Lincoln Town Car this morning. Helps keep the sun out of my face.” He smiled.

  For some reason the revelation surprised Allan. Somehow he had imagined the man having always worn the fedora hat as if it was his way of defining his eccentric personality or something. Allan almost wanted the man to be like a character in a Dick Tracy cartoon, someone different and unique from everything else going on around them, but as it were he was just another product of the disaster, a businessman who had become a scavenger and now he was just standing in line waiting for a hand out like everyone else. It was those first impressions, the first moments of an encounter that Allan was always so good at reading people and understanding who they were and what they were all about but now all that seemed to have been lost in the disaster like all the stalled cars that had lost their ability to run. The truth was he couldn’t get a good take on anyone now. The man in the business slacks who became a fighter earlier in the day may not have been a businessman at all. He may have very well stolen those dress slacks out of a department store after the disaster. Even the man who let them cut in line just now might not be the gentleman that he so seemed to be. He might very well have had ulterior motives for letting them cut in line in front of him. It’s so easy for people to put on any kind of facade that they want in this kind of situation. Allan’s thoughts made him feel uneasy. They stood in the line for over an hour but the mass of people in front of them barley moved and all the while Allan nervously checked over his shoulder at the man behind him who always returned his glances with a smile and each time it made Allan feel even more uneasy.

  “Have you heard any news? Is this event isolated to just Dallas or is it all over?” Allan inquired to the man behind them.

  “I’m hearing that it’s just a localized event. The emergency personnel are just getting held up because of all the stalled cars on the road. I’m sure the authorities will be organizing things soon, just as they have starting doing here at this location.” The man smiled.

  Allan looked at the man curiously and wondered if the stalled cars were all that was keeping the authorities held up then what was keeping the airplanes and helicopters from flying in the sky. There hasn’t been anything other than birds in the skies since the blast. Why doesn’t this man realize this and why does he keep smiling like that?

  Allan thought back to a few weeks earlier when he was waiting in his truck in front of the Brookshire’s grocery store back in Greenville while Jennifer ran inside to grab a few items. As he sat in the truck waiting for her he saw a heavy set young man come walking from behind the store and Allan figured that the man had walked over from the apartments behind the Brookshire’s building. The man looked kind of ragged, his hair was long and oily, and he was smoking a cigarette and he walked in a sluggish kind of way. Allan watched the young man as he entered the grocery store, and he sat there thinking about him. Allan don't know the man, but he could guess probably fairly accurately that he was quite poor, living in the run down apartments behind the grocery store, and it reminded Allan of his younger self when he didn't have very much money or many things to call his own. He wondered what kept people like himself when he was younger or the man that he saw pass by, from just giving up hope. With the world outside racing by and people driving their expensive cars and buying nice things and all the while there were so many people out there struggling just to make ends meet. Allan remembered that what drove him on back when he was younger was his quest to attain a better standard of living for himself and for those around him. But he wondered about those who found themselves trapped under a mountain of credit card debt, jobless and out of options for attaining that better life. He figured that the police and court systems were doing a decent job at keeping most people honest, but he wondered what would happen if that system were to fall apart completely. What would happen if people suddenly found themselves with no hope left? Allan sat there in front of the Brookshire’s grocery store that day thinking that under such circumstances, people like the ragged man that he saw walk by might be ready and willing to take from others without a second thought. Little did Allan know that so soon a disaster would happen that would put his thoughts to the test.

  As Allan stood in the line beside big white tent he hoped that there was more goodness in people beyond what a police force and society could instill into people, but he feared that if he was wrong and if that was all that made people good, then they were all doomed since the police were nowhere around anymore and the remains of a civilized society were now wanderi
ng around on the highways.

  Allan turned to check behind his shoulder and the man grinned at him again.

  Creepy grins.

  The woman with the bull horn from earlier stood up again on the podium. Her voice was even more tired this time as she put the orange plastic bull horn to her face and said, “We have just ran out of our food and water provisions. We are getting low on medical supplies too. Those of you in the far back of the line should probably move on and seek assistance elsewhere.”

  “Well I guess that’s that.” Said the man with the fedora hat behind them.

  “I never thought I’d see the day where a hospital, even a makeshift one at that, would have to turn so many people away.” Jennifer said.

  “I hope you folks make it safe to wherever you are going.” The man said and he tipped the brim of his hat to them and then he slung his suit coat over his shoulder and walked back towards the highway in a casual kind of stroll. “The authorities should be along soon, and if not, do your best to keep yourself and those around you calm.” He said and gave them one last smile.

  “What a gentleman.” Jennifer said.

  “That he was.” Allan agreed and he felt awful for having ever questioned the man’s motives for Allan realized that the man was simply following his own advice by smiling the entire time in an effort to keep those around him as calm as possible.

  It was terribly hot by mid-afternoon and the sun was relentless and Allan cherished the few puffy white clouds in the sky that provided them the occasional shelter from the burning heat. Allan noticed that Jennifer was walking with much more of a waddle than before and he asked her what was wrong.

  “My legs are chaffing between my thighs and it hurts.”

  “You need some petroleum jelly to prevent the friction.” Allan said.

  “Some petroleum jelly and a change out of these sweaty black pants and an air conditioner. In fact, I’d take an air conditioner above anything else.” Jennifer replied with a sigh.