by Sweet, Dell
Sammy Black's eyes shot up to the mirror and he saw the dark spray of oil behind him on the highway, the trail of smoke coming away from that, following the now coasting truck. His eyes came down and the rear tires on the truck suddenly locked up and he had to fight for control as the pickup skated across the wreck dotted interstate and plowed into the side of a burned out SUV. The airbag was in his face before he could even react, and a second later the truck slammed back down to the ground from the bounce the rear end had taken at impact: The quiet began to creep back in to the roar in his ears.
He pushed himself slowly away from the steering wheel, flexed his jaw experimentally and felt blood go trickling away, running across his chin and then down his throat as he lay his head back against the headrest and waited for his blood pressure to drop and the roaring in his ears to taper off.
The silence of the desert came back a few moments later. How long he didn't know, but he had flexed his left leg and the pain had made him scream. The next thing he knew his eyes were opening to the late afternoon sun and the desert quiet.
His fingers scrambled across the seat top and he found the bottle of water he had been working on. The whole back of the pickup was full of water and packaged food. Camping stuff, the things that hikers ate. Freeze dried this and that. Jerky: Protein cakes. It was the first thing he had done after he had set off the last canister in Houston. He had driven south and then began southwest. He found the bottle, lifted it to his lips and drained it. He had not realized how thirsty he had been.
He had started in North Carolina, worked his way into Georgia, then Alabama before the shit had really hit the fan, and he had barely managed to keep the truck on the road when the first quake had hit.
He had just left the tunnel that passed under the Mobile Bay when the quake had hit with such force that he had bounced off the road, skipped over the concrete rail and found himself rolling slowly down a grassy median toward the highway below. He had managed to get the brakes on and get turned around, pointing back up toward I10 above, but he couldn't get the truck back over the concrete rail, so he had left the truck to see if there was some other way to get back up onto I10. When he stepped through a break in the concrete rail, and back up onto the highway a few seconds later, he turned his eyes back to the tunnel he had just come through. Water lapped at the roadway. The tunnels swept down into that water. The whole bay had seemed to be boiling, agitated, but as he had watched the water had suddenly dropped, receding, leaving the bay a muddied mess. All around him there were screams of panic calls for help, and he was torn: If the water went out that fast it was a… He couldn't make it come, but it was bad. A hurricane could suck the water out like that, he had seen it once, but so could a tidal wave, a tsunami... His breath caught in his throat as he realized it could very well be a tsunami. He ran back down to the truck and got it moving. A few miles down the road he had managed to work his way through a field and back onto I10, running in the night for the Louisiana border.
The trip had been harder from there on. He'd had one vial left and he had decided on Houston as the best possible place to use it. Getting there had been tough, but he had made it late noon four days back: Far too late to do much good in his opinion. The city was devastated. Gunfire sounded everywhere, fires burned out of control. He had triggered the canister and dropped it into Galveston Bay a few hours later.
From there he had headed North West. Interstates when he could find them, desert when he could not. He had found route 40 and he was now somewhere in between New Mexico and Arizona. He looked down at his leg after a few moments. He looked quickly away.
The leg was a mess, and he was not going to be able to get it out from under the dash, and even if he did he would probably bleed out once the pressure came off the leg. He sighed. His hand searched along the top of the passenger seat, not finding what he wanted. Movement was painful, but the sun was sinking, albeit slowly, and he did not want to be in this truck flinching at every movement or sound in the night. He did his best to lean forward and keep his leg from moving. His gun was wedged between the very edge of the seat top and the pushed in dash. He closed one hand around the grip and pulled. It was wedged tight, but it did pull back a few inches. Something on the gun was catching on something under or on the edge of the metal lip of the dash. He pushed the gun forward and then pulled back again. Almost, but a grating sound reached his ears, and he could feel the vibration in the weapon as it ground to a halt, once again hung up.
He pushed it back and forth lightly, realizing it was the seat cushion that was forcing the gun up into the dashboard. If he could get his fingers wedged in there, over the gun, push it downward, and then pull back, maybe... He jammed his fingers into the tight space, ignoring the skin that scraped off on the sharp edge of the dash. A second later he was forcing them past the edge of the barrel and taking a deep breath. In his hurry to pull the gun free he forgot about his leg and pressed down with it as he suddenly yanked back.
The pain was like fire, a live wire straight to a circuit in his brain. The circuit overloaded and he slipped instantly into darkness.
March 8th, morning
Route 40: The Southwestern Desert
Sammy Black
The sweat trickled across his eyelid and then slipped into the eye as it opened, stinging. He squeezed his eyes shut and felt the pain flare slightly in his leg as he moved it in his reaction. He kept his eyes closed, trying to remember. It came to him after a brief second. He was in the truck. Wrecked... Night was coming... He opened his eyes slowly, ignoring the stinging from the salty sweat.
No... The sun was low, in the wrong place... Morning, he decided. Somehow... Somehow he had slept the night through. It was gone. Morning was here. He remembered why he had slipped away, moving the leg. He looked down at it now. It was much worse. Swollen, pushed hard against the dashboard, black and purple where he could see the skin through the shredded and ripped cloth of the pants. He could feel the metal lip of the dash embedded into the long bone of his thigh; like a hatchet, he thought.
His leg stank, he stank, like urine and spoiled meat. Maybe he had been out for days. He had no way to know, just laying here rotting in the heat. It was morbid, but he couldn't get the mental picture out of his head once he had thought it into being.
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. It did seem to help clear his head, but a low buzz came right back, if it had ever been there. He wasn't sure. Maybe it had, but it settled in as though it belonged there. He remembered the gun. The gun he had reached for that had started it all and he felt the cool metal under his right hand. He curled his fingers around it, they were stiff, unwilling. He looked down at his hand. Scraped skin, dead and black clung to his fingers. The bone showed through in places. Black blood flaked off the fingers as he forced them to close around the grip.
~
The wolf was fifty yards away, hidden in a slight dip in the desert, an arroyo that cut through the hard pan, dry now, but it could change in an instant out here. The bare rock that lay against his belly, cool, an escape from the heat. Nevertheless, he panted. Already his body was overheated in the desert morning.
He had smelled the man a few hours before light and followed the scent. He knew the scent of man. It had always meant fear, flight, but lately it often meant food, sustenance. He wondered as he lay quietly which one this would be.
It was quiet in those hours before sunrise; still he had been afraid to follow it to its source. He had heard it breathing... Whatever this man was he was not dead yet. The wolf could wait. Waiting was something he understood.
The roar took him by surprise and he whined deeply in his throat, flattening himself against the cool stone. Crying in his fear, but time slipped by and the noise did not come again. He waited, listening, watching the sun lift further into the pale blue of the sky, but he heard nothing more. He lifted his head from the ground, stood on gaunt legs, and howled into the quiet of the morning. He sank back to the cool rock and waited. Nothin
g answered him. A few minutes later he rose from the rock and made his way up onto the highway.
NYS Route 104: Joel and Haley
Late Afternoon
By the time they reached the outskirts of Oswego the next day, they were ready to stop and rest. John pointed out a large shopping center on their left, and Joel pulled into the mostly empty parking lot and rolled up to the front doors of a large department store. "Thrifty Deal?" he asked John.
“Chain store,” John replied. “You can find a little of everything.”
The other two Jeeps pulled in behind them as they were getting out. Joel walked up to the front doors and tried to open them. “Locked,” he said.
“That's okay,” Glenn smiled, reaching back into the Jeep. “I've got the key.” He handed the jack handle in his hand to Joel as he walked up to the glass doors.
“Well,” Joel said, “I guess here goes.” He swung the jack handle at the door and the glass shattered into millions of green-tinted crystals that skittered across the pavement.
“It's my first real crime,” Joel said, turning around with a large grin on his face.
Just then a loud alarm began to whoop from within the store, and a split second later an even louder alarm, mounted in a steel box above the doors, began to bray into the quiet afternoon air. Joel, along with almost everyone else, had turned and began to run back towards the Jeep when it went off. The jack handle clattered to the pavement.
“Holy shit,” he sputtered.
Haley was doubled over laughing, leaning up against the Jeep for support. Joel looked at her stupidly for a few seconds and then smiled. Most of the others began to laugh as well, breaking the tension the alarm had caused.
“Y-Y-You,” she tried to say, but couldn't stop laughing. “I thought you were going to have a heart attack, Joel,” she said, once she had gained some control. She held her stomach and began to laugh again. Joel began to laugh himself, along with everyone else.
“Well... it scared me at first,” he protested. He hadn't been the only one, he knew. Glenn's eyes had looked as though they were going to pop right out of his head, he recalled. He seemed to be all right now though.
Glenn walked forward and picked up the tire iron from the pavement. Standing on tip toe he pried the metal box open. He hit the large siren inside with the jack handle, until it finally screeched and then quit. The other alarm inside was still going off. He disappeared into the store, and a few seconds later that one stopped too. Glenn came back outside and peered sheepishly at the small crowd, most of whom had finally stopped laughing.
“If we're gonna do this on a regular basis,” he said, “we better pick up some real burglar tools while we're here.” Everyone laughed again, but the laughter died down quickly, and once it had they all crunched across the glass and into the store.
The power was off, it turned out. The alarm had been backed up by battery, and had apparently switched over automatically when the power went off. The mood changed once they had gotten into the store. Just the fact that no one did come when the alarm had gone off would have been enough, but the empty store had also contributed its share to their somber mood. It served as a reminder that they still had met no other people at all. They had traveled over seventy miles and seen no one, and it reinforced what had happened in all their minds. No cashiers at the empty checkouts, no police cars screaming into the parking lot to see who was breaking in, there was nobody, anywhere it seemed.
Although the power was off, the water was not, and they availed themselves of the employee showers after they had quickly moved through the store and picked out what they needed. They had gone together through the deserted aisles of the store, unwilling, or unable, to split up.
Joel, his hair still wet from the cold shower; dressed in a faded pair of jeans and a blue chambray work shirt, leaned up against the wall outside the rest room with the other men, and waited for the women to come back out. They talked quietly among themselves as they waited.
“You think Rochester will be the same as here?” Dave asked. He had seemed especially shaken by the alarm in the parking lot, and still seemed shook up over it.
Terry stood silently next to Glenn, tapping the heel of one work boot against the cinder block wall. “It does sort of seem like everyone is gone,” he said, as he stopped tapping the boot heel and straightened up.
“Could be,” Glenn said, solemnly. “It really could be, but I don't think so. I think there are probably people right here in Oswego. They're scared, is all. I can't say as I blame them either, they don't know any more about what's going on than we do. Even if they saw us come in, I don't think they're about to come running up to say howdy. I wouldn't,” he paused, before continuing. “If I saw a bunch of people come driving in, I'd probably want to stay away. No police means there is no protection, and they don't know who we are, or even where we came from, or what we want for that matter. I think though, that there are people. Maybe it's just going to take some time before we all get back together. I just can't believe we're it, I guess.”
“I have to agree with you, Glenn,” John said. “If we were to stay here a while, I would bet we would probably see someone. The curiosity would bring them out, I think.”
“I agree,” Joel said. “I was none too keen on approaching you guy's back in Watertown either. I thought about avoiding you, as a matter of fact, just going in the other direction.”
“Glad you didn't, Joel,” Glenn said. The other men nodded agreement as he spoke. "I can see though where a body wouldn't want to. Especially since there was more than a few of us carrying guns, or rifles, at that point. I am glad you did though. I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to end up with that Brad Saser trying to take charge. He was already pushing it pretty hard. Probably would have shot him myself if he had tried, who in hell knows what a guy like him would do."
“You don't think they'll follow us do you?” Terry asked.
“No telling,” Glenn said, “but I wouldn't doubt it. Guy's like him are all over though, and I suppose we'll run into a few just like him eventually. Not much we can do except to be careful, I guess.”
“Think we'll make Rochester tomorrow?” Dave, asked, as Gina and Jan came walking out of the rest room.
“It's not far, only about another sixty, maybe seventy miles,” John answered, “but I doubt it. We will probably get there tomorrow or the next day sometime, depending on the stalled traffic of course.” He seemed to consider for a second. “Maybe longer. The stalled traffic is even heavier and it might be ten times worse than this once we get closer. I mean they may have also taken to the secondary roads, so there may not be any real way to get there in one straight shot anymore.”
“That's about what I figure,” Glenn chipped in, “at least a few days.”
Haley and Lilly opened the door and walked out, and the small group prepared to make a meal and settle down for the night.
Everyone, at Glenn's suggestion, had changed into sneakers or boots in case they ended up walking. They had taken the time to pick up extra clothes, as well as some more canned goods to replace what they had eaten, and Joel had found some Quick Cold in one of the side aisles.
Quick Cold had only become popular in the last couple of years as a retail item. Before that it had only been used by the medical profession, to transport anything that needed to stay cold, or frozen. Organs for transplant, fresh blood, and countless other things. The plastic bags contained a small stick shaped tube. Joel had filled three large coolers with soda and beer, and tossed in several of the bags after snapping the small cylinder within, to activate the chemical the bags contained. They had instantly frosted up and began to cool the warm cans. A few minutes later they rolled the trucks inside the store and built a fire for the night. Joel took the first shift of guard duty with Scott. Just inside the main entrance.
FOUR
Oswego NY: Joel and Haley
Late Morning
They spent the morning scouring the store for useful items. After the
y had loaded the Jeeps, they had left the abandoned shopping center and began to work their way through the seemingly empty city, when they reached the first bridge they were forced to stop.
The bridge was still standing, that was not the problem. The problem was that it was packed bumper to bumper with wrecked and burned out cars and trucks. A large city bus also sat within the wreckage. Dave and Joel scrambled over the cars to see what had caused the huge accident.
At first it seemed that the wreckage went on forever. But as they neared the second bridge the problem became apparent.
The bridge, or more properly put, the twisted steel girders and huge chunks of concrete that had been the bridge, lay at the bottom of a deep gorge, partially submerged in the water. Reluctantly they scrambled back over the cars to tell the others that were waiting.
“Think we could move them?” John asked, as Joel and Dave returned. “I saw a wrecker back up the highway a bit; we could go back and get it.”
“Wouldn't do any good,” Joel said his voice somber. “The second bridge is nearly gone. Even if it weren't, I don't see this one standing much longer either. We took a look at the underside from the other bridge, and a couple of the pilings are cracked pretty badly. I wouldn't trust it. There is another bridge though, looks like only a couple of blocks over. It's still up, but I can't tell from here whether it has traffic on it, the sides are enclosed.”
“Which way, Joel?” Glenn asked.
“Looked like down a little way,” Joel said, pointing back the way they had come. “Take the next right, and it should be only a couple of blocks away.”
“Well,” Haley said, trying to sound positive, “let’s go find out.”
They piled back into the Jeeps, and after some careful maneuvering, managed to turn them around and head back the way they had come. Joel made the next right and started down the street, while Glenn and John, as well as Haley, watched for a bridge on the side Streets that bisected the one they were on. Joel had just slowed to cross a set of rail road tracks, when Haley suddenly yelled out.