Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series)

by Mark Edward Hall

  Up ahead a tall thin man stood on the back of a hopelessly mired flatbed truck surrounded by a large crowd of people. He was animated, his arms flailing, his mouth working angrily, spittle flying from it. As Jason passed by he rolled the window slightly down and heard the man ranting on about evil and the devil winning over God and that it was the end of humanity. Jason knew that at times like these, people were vulnerable and would listen to any nut job with a soap box as long as they could offer even a modicum of hope. “We must find and destroy all the infidels, all the non-believers,” the preacher railed. “The homosexuals, the prostitutes the heroin addicts. They’re the ones responsible for this. But not just them. Our decadent and blasphemous society has fueled the very seeds of our destruction. Our only salvation is to find and destroy all those who have forsaken God.” The preacher man pointed at Jason’s truck as it passed by and said, “There goes one now. He carries the symbol of Satan around his neck. I can feel it burning in my heart like a lance. We must not allow him to take it from this place. It must be destroyed. He must be destroyed. Don’t let him get away. I can feel the sin coming off him. He is Satan’s spawn, I tell you.”

  A group of hysterical believers broke free of the crowd and began chasing after Jason’s truck on foot. The ground was higher here and a little more solid. Jason eased down on the accelerator hoping not to spin the wheels and mire the truck and his speed picked up slightly, but not before a small group of fleet footed believers reached them. They were pounding on the truck’s side panels and smashing out tail light lenses. In a suddenness and swiftness that startled Jason, a man leapt onto the running board and began hammering something metallic against Jason’s side window. Jason turned his head and saw a gun. The man’s left hand gripped the truck’s side mirror for balance as he brought the gun around to aiming position.

  The window shattered with a deafening roar that nearly destroyed Jason’s hearing. The man’s head exploded like a bomb blast and he fell free. Jason felt him bumping beneath the truck’s undercarriage. Jason was having trouble understanding what had happened until he turned and saw Charlee shakily holding the Glock he’d given her when they started out back in Kardell. Her face was as white as a sheet.

  He reached out and gently took the Glock from the girl’s trembling hand. “Thanks for saving my life.” he said. “But I think you killed my eardrums.”

  Charlee burst into tears.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You did the right thing.”

  They were skidding up out of the median now toward higher ground. A larger crowd of people had broken away from the preacher and were sprinting after the truck. Without a side window Jason could hear their hysterical shouts. And even above them he could hear preacher man screaming for them to catch the truck. In a final skidding effort that caused Jason’s heart to beat wildly, he propelled the truck through the fence and onto the opposite lane hitting the concrete bumper with nearly enough force to rip the undercarriage from the vehicle. The truck bounced once, twice, skidded dangerously, finally righting itself as Jason hit the gas pedal. In his rear view mirror he saw the crowd of people stop, while some of them ran toward abandoned vehicles.

  The girl was still crying, sobbing now, and Jason knew that she was probably going into shock. She’d seen more horrific things in the past twenty-four hours than most kids saw in a lifetime.

  “Charlee?” Jason’s voice was level, soothing.

  “What?”

  “I need you to focus. I need you to take a couple of deep breaths and get yourself back in control. It’s important that you do so.” Jason could not remember how many times he’d said essentially the same thing to some shell shocked soldier young in the heat of battle. This was no different, he knew. This was war of a different color, but war nevertheless. “I want you to do something for me. You think you can help me out?”

  Charlee sniffed. “What.”

  “We need to get off the main highway and back onto secondary roads. It’s possible that some of those people back there will be coming after us.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That preacher said you had something around your neck. He called it a symbol of Satan, that it was burning his heart. Was he talking about that medal you showed me?”

  “I can’t see how.”

  “It was hot. It burned me.”

  “No, Charlee!”

  “What did he mean, then?”

  In truth Jason had been wondering the same thing. Had it just been the standard preacher-speak practice of throwing shit at a wall until something stuck, or had the preacher actually known something? But how could he have possibly known? It was insane to think that he could have, but then nothing about the past day and a half had been even close to sane.

  “He didn’t know, Charlee,” Jason replied. “There’s no way he could have.” It was the only sane answer he could give the girl. “Now please listen carefully to me. I need your help.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Grab the maps. Find the one with the state of Mississippi on it. Find where we are and find which exit takes us onto a secondary road and not through a city. You think you can do that?”

  Charlee just stared at him.

  Jason was maneuvering in and around moving and stalled traffic. “I have to drive, kiddo, and I can’t read a roadmap too.”

  Slowly Charlee picked the maps up off the front seat, chose the right one and opened it. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “According to the GPS we’re just east of Jackson on Interstate 20 driving east in the westbound lanes,” Jason replied. “I need the names of some secondary routes that will take us in an easterly direction.”

  Charlee studied the map. Jason glanced over at her and saw that color was returning to her cheeks and her hands weren’t shaking quite as badly.

  “According to this we should be coming to 501 which will take us to 503 and eventually to 274 which will take us in the general direction of Atlanta. It’ll route us midway between Birmingham and Montgomery and we should be able to avoid the big metropolitan areas that way. Some small towns but no big cities.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Jason said. “We’ll decide what to do when we reach Georgia. Within five miles Jason saw the exit sign for 501. He glanced in his rearview but did not see any speeding traffic. At least nothing that would make him think they were being pursued. There was traffic going both ways on both the north and the southbound lanes. Some of it moving erratically, most going too fast for the conditions. Jason had to be extra diligent to avoid collisions. There were accidents everywhere; injured and dead people hung from vehicles, groups of shell shocked citizens wandered. Others lay dead along the roadside, some with missing heads. The good news was Jason didn’t see any of the red-eyed swollen-head variety. He wondered if the contagion was really over or if he was kidding himself.

  There were not nearly enough emergency vehicles to handle the extent of carnage. Jason understood then that it was going to be a long time before things were right again in the world, if ever. Humanity’s worst fears had finally been realized.

  Without using his directional signal he took the upcoming exit, which was actually an entrance. Didn’t matter. Jason needed to get off this freeway. The entrance ramp eased onto a two-lane with motels and gas stations along its strip. Jason saw the sign pointing to 501 east toward Birmingham and took it. They encountered some traffic, not heavy, just normal. Jason wondered what the new normal actually was. Scattered pedestrians walked along the sides of the road. There was almost a feeling of resignation in the survivor’s attitudes as though they had accepted their fate and were moving on to whatever came next. Again Jason wondered if it was really over.

  There were vehicles lined up at all the gas pumps along the way, even as Jason noted that no lights burned, which meant no electricity to run the pumps. As vehicles ran dry more and more people would be walking. A few of the more creative would figure out how to get the lids off the und
erground tanks and siphon out what remained within. When that was gone, well, there’d be a lot more folks walking.

  Jason kept driving until traffic on 501 began to thin out. The further into the southern countryside they got the fewer people they saw. Which was fine by him. The fewer people the better the odds of unwanted confrontation. Rural people, unlike urbanites, were more self-sufficient. Jason knew this because he’d grown up in the country. For the most part rural folks knew how to hunt for meat. Most—at least the smart ones—grew their own vegetables. Urban dwellers depended on markets where they could go and buy food. He was pretty sure that money had ceased to have any value, and that looting had taken its place. Civilization was a fragile thing and in times like these animal instinct almost always replaced rational thought. The last scraps of food would be fought over like wolves fighting over carrion. Pleasant thought.

  They passed by tobacco and cotton fields, endless miles of them, old dark wooden barns, trailer houses and small shacks set on posts. The sun was going down behind them and darkness would soon claim the land. The clock on the dash said it was almost nine o’clock. This was July 4th and this far south complete darkness happened late. Jason was yawning, having trouble keeping his eyes open.

  “I have to sleep,” he told Charlee. “It’s been more than twenty-four hours and I’m starting to crash.”

  “You think we’re far enough away from all that stuff back there?” Charlee said.

  “I don’t know, kiddo. We’ll just have to take that chance.”

  Charlee gave her head a nod. She’d been yawning too and Jason knew that they both had been running on pure adrenaline. No way could they keep going like this. A good night’s sleep and a fresh start in the morning would add new perspective to their situation. At least this was the hope.

  A pair of headlights suddenly appeared in Jason’s rear view mirror, followed closely by a second set. They were both moving up fast. The first set was a car. No doubt about it. The second set bounced erratically and seemed to move independently of each another. This made Jason think the second set was a pair of motorcycles.

  Jason’s adrenalin spiked. He could not forget what had happened back in Jackson, and although he could not imagine how they might have tracked him, he was still wondering how the preacher man had known what he was wearing around his neck. Was it just a good guess, or was there something at work here that Jason had no understanding of?

  He stepped down a little harder on the accelerator, hoping he could outdistance himself from the three vehicles. To no vail. They were flying, gaining rapidly, and there was enough light left in the day that he could now see that the first vehicle was a late-model red BMW. Close behind the BMW and gaining rapidly rode a pair of mean looking Harley hogs. Two men dressed in black leather riding gear and eye goggles rode the Harleys determinedly, closing in on the BMW’s rear bumper. Jason’s speed was now at 75 and if he didn’t do something soon the Beamer would crawl up his ass.

  The BMW began flashing its lights rapidly from high to low beam, in some sort of signal to Jason. Either it wanted him to get the hell out of the way or it was looking for assistance. Gunfire flashed suddenly behind the Beamer. The two Harley guys had produced pistols and were firing directly into the Beamer’s rear window. Jason saw the window explode in a shower of glass as it swerved to avoid the gunfire.

  Without thinking Jason pulled the truck to the side of the road, skidding in the soft shoulder and sending up a cloud of dust. It happened with such swiftness that the beamer zipped past but not before Jason saw that the driver was a young white woman and the single passenger was an older black man. As the two Harleys roared past they fired several rounds into the side of Jason’s truck. Jason hit the gas and roared back onto the blacktop hoping he could catch them in time. He pulled his Glock from beneath his seat as the truck gained on the two bikes.

  “What are you doing?” Charlee screamed.

  “Those two guys are trying to kill the two people in that car. I can’t let that happen. Now I know you know how to use this weapon,” he said, handing Charlee back the Glock he’d taken out of her trembling hand back in Jackson. “Don’t fire unless you absolutely have to. I don’t want to hit the two people in that car.”

  “What makes you think those two are good guys?” Charlee said.

  “I don’t, but it seems to me if they were bad guys they’d be the ones doing the chasing and the shooting. Now hold on.” Jason gave the loaded down Ford Truck all she had and was gaining on the bikes. His speedometer was hovering right at about 90 MPH. The truck had obviously sustained some damage back in Jackson and at these speeds it was shuddering dangerously.

  Jason wasn’t as good a shot with his left hand as his right but he’d practiced plenty in the army and he was all right. He put the gun out the window, aimed at the back of the left biker and squeezed. The Glock recoiled and he saw the round strike the man’s back sending off a small cloud of dust. The bike began fishtailing. The biker was still alive, this was obvious, because he was trying desperately to right the Harley. His efforts didn’t work. At 90 miles an hour the bike left the road and plowed through a barbed wire fence, cartwheeling end over end across a field. As Jason and Charlee sped past they saw the biker’s body nearly cut in two from the impact. One down, one to go.

  Jason saw the gun come around first. “Get down!” he screamed. Charlee ducked just as half a dozen quickly-fired rounds slammed into the windshield just over her head. Thank God for safety glass, for other than six small starred holes, the windshield remained intact. The biker had twisted around in his seat in order to fire the rounds, but now he had to turn back around and drive the bike. When Jason saw the biker turn in his seat, he stepped down hard on the gas hitting the Harley on its rear fender. The bike had nowhere to go, for the BMW was directly in front of it. It fishtailed wildly then went down as Jason’s truck rolled over it like the world’s biggest speed bump. The truck went airborne and crashed back down hard, bumping and grinding, fishtailing, and for a moment Jason didn’t think he would be able to hold it on the road. Finally it straightened out and he began to apply brake pressure. Up ahead he saw the BMWs brake lights come on as the car pulled to the side of the road. Jason pulled the truck up behind the beamer. His heart was beating wildly. Charlee had come up from her position on the floor and was gazing fearfully at the car in front of them.

  “You sure they’re all right?” Charlee asked.

  “No. Never sure. But I’ve got a feeling about them.”

  She looked at him oddly. “What?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason said. “It’s this thing around my neck. I can’t explain it, but it’s telling me to go ahead. It’s telling me everything’s okay.”

  Charlee continued to stare at Jason. “Is it the little girl we both saw? Is she the one talking to you?”

  “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  Still holding his weapon, Jason exited the truck. He saw a petite young blond-haired woman get out of the driver’s side as a very tall thin black man unfolded himself from the passenger side. The man held a shotgun.

  “She says you’re okay,” the black man said, “but I don’t trust nobody.”

  “It’s okay, Slim,” the young woman said. “He just saved our lives. You’ll put the gun down, won’t you?” she said to Jason.

  “Long as he does the same,” Jason replied.

  By now Charlee had gotten out of the truck and was standing beside Jason glaring at the woman with suspicion.

  “Hell, ain’t no bullets in it anyway,” the old man said throwing the shotgun in the dirt. “If there had been I’d a blasted those bike-ridin dirt bags to hell and back a long time ago.”

  “Why were they chasing you,” Jason asked the woman.

  “I don’t know, really. We tried to come through Jackson and there was just too much violence. They picked us up on the outskirts and followed us out here, and well, you saw what happened.”

  “Something very similar happened to us,” Jason sai
d.

  “I think we were meant to meet up,” said the woman, coming over and offering Jason her hand. “Danielle Peterson,” she said introducing herself. Jason took her hand and felt a slight electric shock.

  “Jason La Chance,” he said. He could not take his eyes off her. “What do you mean by that?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Maybe if we could talk awhile I might be able to.” She was staring straight into Jason’s eyes with a small enraptured look on her face. Her hand was still in his. “By the way, thanks for saving our lives.”

  “No problem.”

  Charlee was glancing back and forth between Jason and Danielle, a look of incredulity on her face. “This is just great!” she said, turned around and stomped back to the truck, got in and slammed the door.

  “She’s been through a lot,” Jason said in way of explanation. “She saved my life back there. She’ll be okay. We both desperately need rest. Listen, why don’t we find a safe place to camp. We’ve got food and tents and bedding and everything else we need. Well talk, and then get some sleep.”

  “Sounds mighty fine to me,” said Slim.

  Danielle introduced Slim to Jason. Slim graciously accepted Jason’s hand, pumping it vigorously, and said, “Appreciate you takin care of those biker Nazis for us.”

  “Happy to do it,” Jason said, but by now Slim was on his way to the truck.

  “Where are you going? Danielle asked.

  “Gonna talk to the little girl. Seems she needs a friend right now.”

  Both vehicles moved several more miles down the road until they found what appeared to be an abandoned tobacco barn in a field surrounded by a grove of trees. Jason signaled and pulled in, parking behind the barn. Charlee had not spoken to Jason since her little temper tantrum back on the road. Now she turned to him and said, “Slim was real nice.”