Highway: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival

by John Q. Prepper

  Shields remained at ease waiting for the window of the lead truck to be rolled down.

  “Damn good to see you gentlemen,” he said while standing his position for a copy of their orders. But the driver was busy talking to his passenger in the cab. Shields couldn’t help himself, forgetting all protocol, and blurted, “What can you tell me about what’s going on out there?”

  The driver turned to Shields, a little perplexed and then spun his head back to his passenger. The passenger leaned forward so that Shields could see him. He had a giant nose, red like raw meat, and an unshaven face, which was not common for an officer. “Sorry Private, but my driver has laryngitis and can’t speak. We’re here with some troop reinforcements from Ft. Benning. What’s your status?”

  “Oh, we’re pretty much dead here, Sir. Our power is out but for a couple of gennies we have running right now. One of them powers the radio room, which is how we knew you were coming. I heard they got us pretty good.” Private Shields finished his stream of consciousness and then fell silent, realizing he was doing all the talking. But he felt uncomfortable just standing there staring at the man’s honker, and worse hating that he was going to have to remind his superior that he needed orders.

  “I’m afraid so, Private. Please let us pass, so we can give you the reinforcements you need,” said the giant-nosed man.

  Shields glanced over to the other side of the gate; PFC Johnson was waiting impatiently for the sign to open it up. Shields turned back and found himself staring at the business end of a rifle pointed right at his face. At first, he thought it was a mistake or a joke, so he just gaped at the large-nosed man, dumbfounded.

  “Sorry, Private, but if you don’t signal your man to open the gate, we’ll shoot you and your man in four seconds … three … two …”

  Shields gave an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up to Johnson, who nodded and unlatched the electric gate. Johnson grunted, putting his whole body into the heavy section of fence that no longer opened except by human exertion. Thankfully, this was the first time he’d had to open it up.

  Shields looked back up to the cab of the truck, and didn’t even register the silenced round that entered his forehead.

  Johnson made the opening wide enough for the convoy of trucks, and then looked to the lead vehicle which had already started its move forward. He was looking forward to some information from Shields via this convoy, and relief at the gate would be nice, too. The base had a minimal deployment—their whole base had been on the chopping block because of cutbacks, and would have been dead by now were it not for the drone program—of only a hundred men and women, mostly pilots and support staff.

  Johnson noticed something strange. There was a form on the road, like someone’s discarded garbage, and he no longer saw Shields. Then it hit him that he was looking at Shields’s body. As he glanced up at the convoy’s lead vehicle, which had already passed, a man hopped out from behind a flap of canvas at the back, smoothly trained a rifle at him, and fired twice. Only the birds fluttering in a tree nearby noticed.

  The man who had exited the truck ran over to Shields’s body and dragged it past the fence line, before doing the same to Johnson’s. He removed Shields’s shirt, hat, and gun and closed the gate. The three trucks drove down the road, headed to Ft. Rucker’s command center.

  The Shields stand-in took his position at the gate.

  ~~~

  July 5th

  Frank

  It was a six-hundred-mile drive, and Frank spent most of this in a staticy silence; his mind, like his radio, crackled with a flurry of disparate thoughts, which struggled to connect amid the noise.

  His truck radio had been switched off long ago. Finding an operating AM/FM station proved fruitless. His HF rig—set up by Grimes so they could communicate the longer distances—resonated a gurgling constant hiss the whole journey, only a few times bellowing out a familiar voice. He mentally moved the clock forward, anxious for the next update from Grimes, on their predesignated frequency. Until then, it droned on, adding to a headache that started yesterday.

  This long wait to get there and the lack of information were making him nuts.

  They were witnesses to the third world war, started on American soil, and yet they really knew so little. Grimes’s last report had been less than an hour ago—it felt so much longer—and the news so far was not good.

  There had been almost no radio or television broadcasts inside the US. He could only find two local stations which broadcast that annoying tone along with the emergency broadcast message that hadn’t changed since yesterday. None of them expected the Emergency Alert System to be silent. It was as if FEMA’s NARS on Mount Weather was taken out as well.

  What they learned was broadcast from outside the US.

  The BBC was their only source for updates about their country, although it provided no more than what they knew already: the US had been attacked by multiple nuclear warheads and no one knew who was responsible. Fingers were being pointed everywhere. The few new details Frank picked up were about what was going on outside the US, and none of that was good either.

  All the world’s stock markets had collapsed; all exchanges had halted trading indefinitely. There were runs on every bank, and riots in most major cities. Around the world, countries were terrified that the same would happen to them. But in fact it had, without the bombs. This was a breakdown of the world’s economic machinery, and America was the monkey wrench thrown in to cause its collapse.

  And just like the bullies Frank expected to fill the power vacuum within America’s cities, already there were opportunistic nations that used America’s current weakness to their advantage: Russia was making incursions into Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Czech Republic; China had just invaded Taiwan; and there were reports of a million soldiers marching into Seoul, South Korea, from the North.

  Meanwhile America was silent, as if hibernating because of its wounds. There was one report that American naval ships were being recalled from all over the globe, but that may have been just speculation. If American forces were planning a response, there was no evidence of it.

  Grimes said that he had tried several of the known US Army and US Coast Guard radio frequencies, including Ft. Rucker’s, and found no communications. It was like they were purposely under radio blackout. Ft. Rucker’s silence was most puzzling, because they had a special system hardened against EMPs. Furthermore, Grimes’s son, Porter, was stationed there as a technician. Because of Porter’s friendship with the radio operations officer, they had worked out a system of radio checks that allowed father and son to converse regularly via Ft. Rucker’s radio. But Grimes had heard nothing since the attacks.

  The only actual on-the-ground reports from within the US came from a scattering of ham radio operators. Most repeated the same assumptions and non-news they had heard from others or the BBC. Very few, other than those close to the blast zones, knew anything. As far as Grimes could tell, no one had electricity in North America, with power grids all down from Canada through Mexico.

  Ironically, only Grimes, Aimes, and Cartwright seemed to know they were under attack from jihadists, and that the enemy was already on US soil. It was because of this that they all agreed that it was time to bring the US Army directly into the fight, if they weren’t already.

  With actionable intelligence about Farook’s base in Florida and the known terrorist cell in Texas, Frank was headed to Ft. Rucker to personally deliver the physical and testimonial evidence they had to the brass there. Frank’s plan was to hand over the intelligence and hope they’d take it from that point. Between the cases of guns—one of them in his truck—and the papers they’d found, many of which Frank had brought along, they had an irrefutable case. Frank would then come home and focus with Aimes on recruiting others in Stowell to protect it from what they feared was the next phase of the invasion, coming in a few days.

  They disagreed initially over reporting this intel to an Army base that was closer to them. But they feared that n
othing would be done immediately, until that base was able reestablish communications and kick it up the command chain. That would take too long. Because Ft. Rucker was located directly north of the main terrorist cell led by enemy number one, Abdul Farook, Frank thought they might be more prone to quick action if they received the intel by hand. He didn’t have to convince Grimes, who wanted Frank to go to Ft. Rucker, Alabama for another reason: he’d use the opportunity to try and collect Grimes’s son, Porter, and bring him back home.

  If, however, Frank was not able to convince the US Army to act, he would take the case of guns and recruit individuals locally to join a militia of fellow countrymen and take the fight directly to Farook. This was Frank’s last choice, and he would do everything in his power to convince the Army to take this burden themselves.

  While Frank was on the road, Grimes was also attempting to do forensics on Hassan’s laptop, although he had so far been unsuccessful. Only Hassan’s notes gave them any details, and even that was not clear: the first phase was nuclear, phase two they didn’t know, but it was to occur on or after July 8th, and phase three appeared to be the invasion. Finally, Grimes monitored all the noted radio frequencies, listening for any enemy chatter. So far, he had heard nothing.

  Aimes’s work was no less difficult. He was trying to recruit a militia for Stowell. It helped that everybody knew him, having tasted his wife’s incredible cookies. So, he worked on every able-bodied man and woman, with plans to prepare them for the invasion they thought would happen on or after July 8th. So far, Aimes had over a dozen recruits, although they had hoped for a lot more. Each would be given one of the captured AKs and Aimes had started training on how to use them.

  Jihadi invaders and preparing for the next invasion weren’t the only oddities of this war.

  Frank had witnessed many sights he didn’t think he would see at any point in America, even after all his years preparing for the end of his world. He’d only seen a half-dozen moving vehicles on the road, and thousands of dead ones. Some were burning or had been burned. In fact, there were smoke plumes everywhere, like the land had been reborn into a pyromaniac’s utopia.

  Then there were the walkers. Hundreds of people, mass migrations of folks: individuals, couples, and whole families, all walking along the highway, probably all trying to get home.

  At least they had a home.

  At the 231 turnoff, north to Fort Rucker, he couldn’t help but feel that he was driving the wrong way. He was no longer going toward the action; he was driving away from it. The distance between him and Farook’s base—perhaps the nucleus of this virulent malignancy taking over his country—was growing with each mile closer to Ft. Rucker.

  On highway 85, leading directly into the base, he had to hit his brakes hard.

  Right in the middle of the intersection with another major road, there laid a cluster of debris blocking passage from all sides. In the middle of the wreckage was the rudder of an F-16, blackened by a fire that had since gone out. From its direction, it looked like it had just fallen right out of the sky, short of its runway maybe a mile away.

  He spun his steering wheel hard left and navigated into an open field, following a large set of tire tracks made by someone who had the same idea, and then turned back and drove over the connecting road, circumventing the whole mess. After another field and a back road, he was once again back on I-85.

  After passing Daleville High School, only a dozen car lengths from the public entrance to the base, a sign stood vigil in the middle of the road. Its hastily written message warned: “Because of the recent attack, this base is closed to public traffic. Turn back or face arrest.”

  Frank slipped his truck around this, ignoring it completely.

  Even before he saw the sign, or the dead cars lining the road to the fence line making exit impossible, alarm bells were going off inside his head.

  But still he drew up to and stopped before the gate. Almost immediately two men in Army uniforms dashed toward his vehicle with guns drawn. His window was already open, so the sounds of their approaching boots poured in with the humid Alabama air while he waited.

  For a moment, Frank considered driving away, but abandoned that idea knowing his truck couldn’t outrun their bullets. His mission had just gotten more complicated.

  Thankful that the case of weapons and ammo were secured unseen in his locked truck bed, Frank quickly slid his weapons and a folder containing Hassan’s papers—their evidence—under his seat. He slowly raised his hands in surrender.

  The lead guard, wearing the rank of Private First Class, hollered at him to get out of the truck. The top unbuttoned portion of his shirt fluttered with his agitated demands. The second guard ran around his truck, loosely inspecting it. Both were tense and looked—as his ex-wife would have said—as out of place as ugly curtains in a pretty home.

  “Come with us,” the first guard bellowed and then motioned toward the gate with his rifle.

  “What about my truck?” Frank pleaded, more to hear their reply than out of worry for his truck’s safety.

  “We will bring it in. Now move.”

  Again Frank obliged without protest, although as part of his performance, he exaggerated his limp for full effect to give himself time to be aware of everything going on around him. They marched him half a mile from the gate to what looked like the base’s largest public building, an Army museum.

  Frank had been quiet the whole time, even though he had many questions and everything he had experienced was completely unorthodox for a US Army base. Although he suspected these two held similar ranks to the insignias they were wearing and therefore wouldn’t provide the answers he wanted, he was sure of two things, without asking questions: this base was no longer under the control of the US Army, and he was their prisoner.

  “Can you tell me where you’re taking me?” he finally asked.

  “You are being placed under arrest until our commander can interrogate you.”

  Chapter 18

  Lexi

  Plans are always executed much more smoothly in one’s mind then they are in real life.

  And so it was with Lexi’s escape plan. It felt solid and complete and she was ready, until Clyde slammed the door. Then the plan just unraveled like an old knit sweater when you pull on its threads.

  Still, she tried to remain motionless, to make him think she was unconscious, as he watched her. Her eyelids were frozen, her fascial muscles relaxed, even though her busted nose still pulsated pain. Even her breaths were controlled. All the while she listened and waited for him to make his move.

  “I know yah awake—I saw yah jump when I slammed the door. Besides, my brother doesn’t hit dat hard, even when he’s pissed.”

  Shit!

  He dropped two heavy objects on the floor and shuffled toward her, his steps purposeful.

  Yet, she kept her eyes cemented closed, her free hand ready to plunge the pen she found on the floor into his jugular. That was her plan. But then doubts instantly scuttled the whole thing: what if she missed? If he didn’t die, would she ever get the chance again? What if she succeeded—how would she get out? The complicated weave of her little plan just unraveled completely until, she let go of it altogether.

  His hand cupped her jaw and roughly squeezed her cheeks, while yanking her head up, “Come on honey. Open those pretty blues,” he said just inches from her. His breath reeked of cigarettes.

  She flicked her eyes open, glaring her scorn at him.

  “There we go. Yep, Zach was right, you have some good-looking peepers.”

  He had been stooped over, his face in hers. Then he released her, stood up, and sauntered over to the kitchen area, opened the refrigerator and grabbed a Budweiser, like he was a normal working man coming home after a long grinding day. He twisted off the cap, carefully placing it in the trash below the sink, and swigged down a large gulp. She watched him as he swept up her father’s bag by the door and he and the bag plopped down in a dining room chair facing her on the tile, a
s if he were waiting for her to serve him his well-earned feast.

  After taking another gulp, he placed the bottle down on the table, its savory taste almost within reach. Drops of condensation slid down the bottle’s surface. It was pure torture to watch and he knew it.

  Her eyes shot up to the ceiling to a light, only just now realizing he had power, even though she had seen and felt the moving fan when she first arrived.

  “Yep, I got solar power,” he said with an annoying little snicker.

  Modified plan: plunge the pen into his eye. She smiled at this thought.

  Another swig and he slammed down the bottle on the table, making her jump. “Don’t suppose you want to tell me your story, do yah?”

  She just glared at him, not willing to give anything away that he could use against her.

  “Let’s see what da cat drug in.” He unclasped the top of her father’s bag, turned it upside down and emptied its contents out on the table. A small roll of black duct tape escaped the pile, bounced twice on the table, and once on one of her outstretched legs, before rolling off onto the floor and under the living room couch a few feet away.

  At least it had the sense to run away.

  “We have ourselves a prepper chick.” He held up an MRE. “You ever eat this shit? I prefer to make my own and vacuum seal em.”

  She said nothing.

  He rustled through the pile and picked through its contents with his dirty mitts, fondling each to show her he had the control: the tarp; the first aid kit; the tin full of string, needle, fishhooks and other items; then the book her father gave her. Her heart sank when he rifled through its pages, fearful he would read his personal note to her. “This is a good ‘en,” he said, holding up the Prepper Brothers guide, “although I like the one bout nuclear war prepping better. Certainly more useful now.”