by Sweet, Dell
Scott glanced over at the group of people, who were still huddled by the front doors, as he picked up several maps and headed back to the rear of the store. They were all huddled together to one side of the front doors, talking in low whispers, and more than a few of them had turned his way as he picked up the maps.
Glenn and John were sitting on the rail of a long meat counter, talking, and drinking a couple of beers when Scott returned.
“They're still cold if you get 'em from the back,” Glenn said as Scott approached.
Scott reached into the cooler and snagged one of the beers from the back of the cooler, where ice had formed on the condenser unit. It hadn't completely melted in the cool interior of the store. He took a long drink of the cool liquid. Probably won't be drinking too many cold beers anymore, he thought. He reached into the cooler fished out a six pack from the back, and carried it over to the two men who were still talking. Glenn and John both helped themselves to another beer as Scott spoke.
“Group up front is still there, and they eyeballed me pretty good when I went up to get the maps.”
“It's probably a good thing we're leaving,” John said. John had been in the crowd at the front of the store earlier and hadn't liked the way the conversation had been going. “There's a couple of loony's in that crowd, and I'm just as glad they're not with us.”
“I feel about the same,” Glenn said.
Scott opened one of the maps, and spread it over the glass top of the meat case.
“John thinks the best way is probably Route 3,” Glenn said.
“It cuts around the lake,” John explained, picking up the conversation. “If it's true, what Glenn suspects about the fault line, it may be a tough way to go. But you've got to consider the other route, and I don't think that's a good choice at all. If we don't go 3, we're stuck with Route 81 to Syracuse and the Thruway west from there. I think we all made up our minds to avoid Syracuse, so that leaves Route 3. That will take us into Route 104, and if we take that west it will bring us into Rochester. Of course there's still the lake to contend with.”
“I don't think the lake is a problem,” Glenn said, “the fault line runs across the basin of the Great lakes. If it did shift, it would be a problem we might have to face down the line, but that would only be if we try to go farther west.”
“If it shifted, let’s say it did for the sake of argument, there's no real way to know at this point anyway, we could have one hell of a big river splitting the whole eastern end of the continent, from Canada, all the way down to the Gulf coast somewhere. I know, I already been beatin' on that horse, but I think it's the most likely explanation. I read about it, what could happen if the fault were somehow triggered, in an article in the paper a few years back. It may seem a bit far-fetched, but there's a lot of fact to back it up. The lakes would drop at first, and then they would level out as the new river fills up, and begin to rise again. That's a basic way of putting it I guess, but that's the gist of it. Right now though, if that lake really is dropping, we shouldn't have too much trouble getting into Rochester.”
“You don't think the road will be busted up, or flooded?” Scott asked.
“I doubt it'll be flooded,” John replied, “if the lake is dropping, that should keep the road dry. I'm not so sure it won't be broken up some though, and we may run into some stalled traffic I suppose, but being as it was night time, the traffic shouldn't be too awful bad, and Four Wheel Drive should get us around the worst of it anyhow.”
“I'd say it's a much better bet than Route 81 and the Thruway,” Glenn said. “The traffic is pretty damn heavy there all the time.”
“Tell me about it.” Scott said, “I came down eighty-one on my way here the day I met you guys. I was out in Adams working that day, just happened to come in to the city. Nothing but Army trucks and traffic bumper to bumper.”
“Well then,” Glenn said, “that decides that. John, what do you think our chances are, when we get there, of finding it still standing?”
John shrugged his shoulders as he replied. “Good as any, I guess, there's no real way to tell. I don't think the damage here was caused by the meteor, I think we all agree it was most likely an earthquake, but that doesn't mean Rochester's still standing. And it says nothing about what's beyond Rochester.”
The other two men nodded in agreement. He was right, Scott realized, as he pulled another beer from the plastic collar that held it. They would simply have to get there before they knew. He sat beside them on the small rail drinking the semi-cold beer.
A short time later a loud commotion at the front of the store, caught their attention.
“Shit,” Scott said as the three of them hurried in the direction of the front of the store, “What the hell's up now?”
Haley was standing over the young man with the long greasy hair who had caused the earlier argument, with her fists clenched. Joel and Jan were standing in front of her trying to hold back the small group of people.
“What the hell's going on here?” Glenn shouted as he came up the aisle with Scott and John.
“This ass-hole,” Haley said, waving her hand to indicate the young man on the floor, “and his buddy over there,” she pointed towards Brad Saser, who was standing in the crowd. “Tried to jump us when we walked in the front door.”
Dave and Lilly emerged from one of the other aisles and stood next to Haley and Terry, as the kid picked himself up off the floor, and retreated to the safety of the other group. The two groups stared at each other across the small space for a few seconds, and then Brad Saser stepped out of the small group with a pistol gripped in one hand.
“Don't have to be nobody killed,” he said, as he waved the pistol in their direction. “We want them Jeep's, that's all.”
Joel returned the man’s icy stare. “If you want one, why don't you go get one? If I recall correctly, you didn't want to come along in the first place, and if you want to leave now there are plenty more cars just lying around waiting to be taken. Take one and go for Christ's sake.”
“Oh, I want to go. In fact we all do,” he replied, as he waved the gun around to include the group behind him. “We will too, but since you already got three good Four-Bys all gassed up and ready, it'll save us the trouble of bothering, and this gun says we'll be takin' em. Now give me the keys, Bitch,” he snarled, glaring at Haley.
“You want them?” she asked sweetly, “You come and get them.”
“I swear I'll blow your brains right out the back of your fuckin' head,” he said as he started towards her.
Joel took two steps, and placed himself between them.
“Buddy, I don't give a fuck about you at all,” Brad said, and pointed the gun at Joel's head, “I'd just as soon...”
Before Brad Saser could finish what he had been about to say, a voice from the front of the store broke in.
“You got two seconds to drop that gun, Brad, or I swear I'll put a bullet right through you.”
Ed was standing in the doorway with Gina, and both of them had high powered deer rifles pointed at Brad.
“I shit you not, Brad, I'll shoot you like a woodchuck and leave you laying there, Man,” Ed said, as Brad turned around.
Brad looked back at the group of people behind him for help, but no one moved. Joel reached out quickly and grabbed the gun from his grip, and with one meaty hand shoved the man to the floor.
“I believe we'll be leaving,” he said, first to Brad, and then lifting his eyes to include the group of people behind him. “And if you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell out of our way.”
Dave retreated down one aisle, and returned within a few minutes pushing a large steel stocking cart.
“I'd watch them kind of close,” Glenn whispered, as he moved up to Joel's side, “that may not have been the only gun they had.”
Joel held the pistol in his hand, pointed towards the silent group of people as the others left the store through the wide front doors. Glenn waited with him.
“I'd like to say it's
been nice, but it hasn't,” Joel said to the crowd of people.
“You really should give some thought to coming with us,” Glenn said, “I ain't so sure you picked yourselves a very good horse if you're counting on him,” Glenn finished, pointing at Brad, who was still on the floor. The small group of people remained silent.
“Suit yourselves,” Glenn finished. He followed Joel out the front doors and into the parking lot.
The two men paused outside; waiting in the drizzle falling from the rapidly darkening skies, as Dave and a couple of the others loaded the Jeeps. “You think,” Joel asked, “that there will be others like them?”
“I hate to say it, but yes.” Glenn replied as they slowly walked across the lot towards the three Cherokee's that sat idling, “I'd like to think a little better of the human race, but we are what we are. I expect we'll run in to a whole shit load of those types.”
“It's a good thing Ed and Gina picked up guns then,” Joel replied thoughtfully. “No telling what kind of animals we'll run into and I don't necessarily mean the furry kind.”
Once the vehicles were loaded, Joel and Glenn climbed into the open rear door of one of the Jeep's with John.
Haley was in the front driver’s seat with Amber beside her. The second Jeep, with Scott driving and Jan in the passenger seat, Lilly in the back, pulled in behind them. Ed drove the last Jeep, with Dave riding beside him; A shotgun was resting between his knees. Gina in the back seat with her own rifle, a wire stock model that looked wildly military to Joel when he had seen it. Terry on the other back window, a heavy shotgun resting between his legs, and two 45 caliber pistols on a wide belt at his waist. There were a few more of guns scattered among them, Joel knew: He, Haley, Scott, Amber, a few others, but a few had stuck to rifles or shotguns.
The rain that had been threatening began to fall hard as the small caravan pulled out of the parking lot, turned right on the crowded street, and began to weave through the stalled traffic heading out Route 3.
Mexico NY: Joel and Haley
Late Afternoon
“So, what do you think?” Joel asked Glenn.
Joel, as well as Haley, stood facing the road along with Glenn and John: They both shrugged.
The group had stopped just ten minutes before, when they had come to the turn off for Route 104 in the tiny town of Mexico, New York. The road was so bad in places that the Jeep vehicles bounced roughly over them no matter how slow they drove.
For nearly ten miles they had been reduced to a crawl as they crept slowly forward down the broken road, passing over the thick chunks of asphalt that tilted crazily into the air. In some places the drops from surface to surface was more than six inches. Nothing the vehicles couldn't handle, but the driving had turned into a slow crawl for long stretches.
They had spent the last two days bogged down just a few miles outside of Watertown. Torrential rains thunder and lightning. They had spent two miserable nights in the Jeeps trying to get some sleep. They had started out early this morning with high hopes. In the last three days combined they had moved no more than forty miles tops. The rain had finally stopped. They were hopeful.
They had maps, but the roads and small villages were so torn up that it was hard to find landmarks that could tell them where they were. The occasional highway marker, Village Limits sign, even business signs that listed the name of the town or village, was nearly all they had to go by. By mid morning the rain was back and their spirits had plummeted.
The trees had been winter brown three days ago when they left Watertown, but as they drove through the steady rain more and more green came into view. To the small group of people trying to negotiate the road it had sometimes felt like driving through a jungle. The road steamed where the asphalt had been warmed by the sun earlier in the morning before the rain had come back. The trees seemingly bent on shedding their winter grays and browns and covering the landscape in green. They had finally stopped to move a fallen tree out of the roadway and then Glenn had wondered aloud if the road would get any worse. They had all stared at the overgrown landscape for a few moments longer, but there was no way to see what may lay ahead, and backtracking now was out of the question. After a short discussion they had returned to the Jeeps and once again set out on the cracked pavement toward the west.
Noon, or what they judged to be noon, found them parked under the tilted remains of a gas pump island: The rain was back, beating on the steel panels above them. The convenience store that had anchored the gas pumps was gone. Churned up earth marked the most likely spot. The air reeked of raw gasoline despite the rain.
Glenn was bent over a map which was spread across the hood of one of the Cherokees. The other two Jeeps were parked beside it, tailgates down as the rest of the group sat eating a lunch of cold, canned-meat sandwiches they had made. Joel and the others stood talking and studying the map. They sipped at warm sodas and ate, talking between mouthfuls.
“This,” Glenn said, “leads straight into Rochester.” He pointed with one finger down the roadway as he spoke. “Of course...” he said, pausing to swallow, “there's no real way to know what shape it's in, or how much traffic we'll run into.”
They had decided farther back not to take either of the turnoffs that could have shortened their trip, because of the traffic they contained. They seemed to have been more popular, and therefore much more heavily traveled.
Both of the turnoffs had been built after the main route, and had been designed to bypass the small towns, offering a more direct route, and both had been blocked with large tractor-trailers, several of which had been involved in accidents.
They had stopped momentarily to gaze at the scene, walking quietly through the twisted and blackened steel shells. They had expected to find bodies, but none of the trucks had any passengers, dead or alive. They seemed to have been driven by no one at all, wrecked, and then abandoned.
As far as they could see down the road they were now on, there was no traffic at all. The road on the other hand was buckled and twisted for as far as they could see so there would be little time that could be made up. A trip that would take three hours at the outside just a few days before looked as though it would now take three or four days.
In fact the entire small town seemed to be completely deserted. They had met no one as yet, and had begun to wonder aloud to one another whether they were completely alone.
It felt that way. It seemed as though everyone had simply decided to leave at the same time. Perhaps a mass exodus of some sort had occurred. Even so the feeling of being watched was pervasive. Creeping up on nearly everyone one, making them stop what they were doing, quickly lift their heads and look around, only to find no one there.
“It can't be any worse than the alternate routes we've stopped at,” Joel said, staring down the empty road.
“No,” Glenn said, and then continued after taking a deep drink from the warm can of soda he held. “This tastes horrible,” he said, making a grimace. “Anyway, I would bet that we're going to hit some of that truck traffic again before we get to Oswego. The last alternate we passed, 104 B, comes back into 104 just before we get there, at...” he paused as one finger traced the route on the map, “...New Haven. Have you been there, John?”
“It's the gas fumes,” Joel said. “Messes your taste buds up.”
Glenn nodded.
“Wide place in the road is all it is,” John replied, looking at the map as well. “Problem I'm concerned about is Oswego. Mighty damn close to the lake.”
“True,” Glenn said, “but I don't think we have too much to worry about. It's a good twenty-seven feet above lake level, according to the map. I guess the big worry would be damage from the quake though. Road might be all busted to hell, maybe some buildings down, no way to tell 'till we get there, for sure anyway, but I think we ought to count on a tough time getting through there...”
“...All that truck traffic will be back, and they do a lot of container shipments from the Oswego docks, mostly by train, b
ut a good portion by truck, so that'll add even more traffic. It's also a college town, and even though most of the kids there would've been gone on break, they do run classes’ year around.”
“There's another problem too,” John said. “Although the map doesn't show it, there are two bridges that we have to cross... dead downtown too. I think one's a canal of some sort, and the other spans the Oswego River. You think the quake took them out?” he finished, looking at Glenn.
“It's possible I suppose, but like I said, there's no real way to know till we get there,” Glenn replied, frowning.
“What about a boat?” Haley asked.
“No good,” John replied, “good idea, but the banks are too high. It might be something to keep in mind though. If we have to we can take to the lake and skim around the roads. There are quite a few marinas all along 104, so if we had to go a ways before we could get back in, it would at least get us back somewhere down the line, even if the water's still down.”
“You think it is?” Joel asked, looking at Glenn.
“Well, it was farther back. A lot depends on whether the locks in the Sea Way held or not...”
“Hey!” Amber shouted. “Hey don't run off!”
Joel looked over to see what she had yelled about, but she was standing on the edge of the protected pump area staring back down the road. He caught Haley's eye, but she only shrugged as she walked over to her.
“Something?” Glenn asked.
“Don't think so,” Joel said... “Maybe a mutt or something... Go on, Glenn.”
“Okay, So... Oh yeah, the Locks, I don't imagine they could have all been down. I'm not positive, but I think it drops somewhere around twenty-two feet from the Atlantic to Ontario, and the levels of all the lakes are different too. Most people don't know that, unless you live up here of course. I'd bet though that they held, at least so far, or at least the ones that were closed: If not I think the lake level might have already started to rise again, unless... Well, could be like I said before. There could be a whole new river cutting through the middle of the country, and if so I wouldn't want to bet on anything.” Glenn drew a short breath and then continued after looking over to where Haley and Amber were talking.