(Wrath-06)-Smoke & Dust (2012)

by Chris Stewart

  “HEY!” Ammon shouted through the darkness. “HEY THERE! THAT’S MY CAR! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

  Heavy silence for a moment.

  They waited and listened.

  “HEY!” Ammon shouted again.

  Another crashing sound. Another broken window. “Look at all this!” they heard a man say. “Come on. I need some help!”

  Sara groaned. All of their work and preparations. Everything might be lost!

  Ammon shook, his hands balled into fists. Luke ran toward their car. “Come on, Ammon,” he cried.

  “No.” Ammon ran to catch up and pull him back.

  Luke pushed his arm away. “We can’t just let them take it. We need it to survive!”

  “What are you thinking, Luke?” Sara hissed as she ran toward her sons, fearful the thieves might hear them talking in the dark. “What are you going to do?” She grabbed her son. “Go attack them? Get into a fight? No, we’ll let them take it! You understand me, Luke? Ammon? It’s not worth getting killed for.”

  Ammon shook his head in anger. “Yes, Mom, it is. Everything we need to survive is in that car. We live or die over the next few weeks depending on what we do right now.” He stopped, dropping a shoulder toward the sleeping child. “And that little girl,” he whispered, leaning toward his mom, “look at her, Mom. She’s freezing. She’s sick, we can all see that, but I don’t think Mary realizes how really sick she is. We need our blankets, our water, some of the food. If we’re going to help her, we’ve got to have something to take care of her with.”

  Luke was glaring toward their car. No more crashing glass and no more laughing. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll rush them together from the darkness. They’ll never see it coming. We can take them, Ammon.”

  “No!” Sara cried softly. “What if they have a gun?”

  “It’s OK, Mom,” Luke whispered, trying to reassure her. “They’re just a couple goons whose car stopped and they had to walk, just like us. They saw our stuff and decided they’d take it. We can take them, I’m sure.”

  “I don’t know,” Ammon countered. “We don’t know that for certain, Luke. Like I said before, things have changed now, and we’ve got to be smart.”

  “So?” Luke asked his brother.

  Ammon turned to the women. “This is what we’re going to do,” he said.

  FIVE

  Washington, D.C.

  A quarter mile before the station, the Metro tracks began to slope gently upward. Soon they emerged from the tunnel to ground level.

  It was dark. Very dark. Not a light could be found anywhere in the city. Sam instinctively glanced up, looking for the North Star. The sky was clear and bright with a hundred million stars. For a moment he thought he was back in the desert, miles from the nearest city, there was so little light around. Then he stopped, his mind racing as a knot of fear began to form inside his gut.

  Bono stopped beside him. Sam moved his flashlight left and right. A ten-foot, razor-topped fence ran parallel to the tracks. Beyond the fence, on both sides, there was a freeway. They were in the median. The train station was ahead.

  They heard voices all around them. From the station. From the road. But there were no lights, no moving cars, no streetlights, no headlights, no lights in the windows of the buildings that rose up on either side.

  “Oh no . . . oh no . . . ,” Bono muttered.

  Sam shot him a look of confusion. “It can’t be,” he answered. “There’s no way it’s what you’re thinking!”

  Bono stopped and swore. His face was crunched with frustration, his lips tight. “No, no, no!” he repeated, his voice weak. “Do you understand what this means Sam? Do you know what this is?”

  Sam thought only a moment. “EMP,” he answered, his voice sick with dread.

  Bono turned a slow circle, concentrating on the utter darkness all around him. He checked his cell phone. No signal. He looked down the freeway. Not a single car moved. The moon was a bright red, and his eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Through the fence he saw a stalled ambulance on the eastbound lane. The back door was open and there was movement around it, men in scrubs, and a wheeled gurney on the ground. “Welcome to 1850,” he said.

  Sam looked at him. “Can it really be that bad?”

  “Look around you.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “You have no idea,” Bono cut him off tartly. “You have absolutely no idea. None of us do.”

  The two men stood in silence. Bono reached into a side pocket on his backpack and pulled out a narrow flashlight.

  “Save it,” Sam told him. “Getting batteries is about to become a huge issue. We’ll need to save the light.” He flipped off his own flashlight, letting his eyes get used to the dark.

  “I thought the EMP would fry the circuits.”

  “We were underground,” Sam explained. “Our gear was protected.”

  “So our cell phones will work.”

  “Yeah, but all of the cell towers and circuits above ground will be fried. They’ll make good paperweights, but that’s about all they’re worth right now.” He pulled his cell from his pocket and attempted to toss it away, but Bono caught his arm.

  “Keep it,” he told him. “For one thing, you’ve got a good battery and good circuits. Who knows what that’s worth? More importantly, they most likely positioned the nuclear detonations to hit the east coast. The interior of the country, the south, out west maybe, it might not be so bad.”

  Sam grunted, turned off his phone to save the battery, and shoved it away.

  A woman came toward them from the freeway on their right. “Who is that?” she called out desperately. “Where did you get that light? What’s going on here?” She pulled herself over the cement guardrail and moved toward them. “I’ve got my babies in the car with me—we’re trying to make our way up to Philly to my mom’s place.” She got close enough to see their uniforms. “Russian soldiers!” she cried and stepped back, her face tight with fear.

  Sam ignored her. What did she think this was, a Hollywood script? “Come on, Bono, let’s go,” he said.

  Turning, they ran parallel to the fence, heading toward the station a little more than a thousand feet ahead.

  The platforms rose on each side. It was crowded, a hundred people mulling here and there. The two soldiers emerged from the darkness, Sam’s flashlight illuminating the way. They stopped at the cement barricade and climbed onto the platform. Sam stood and looked around. “What do we do?” he asked.

  Bono didn’t hesitate. “Your mom’s house,” he said. “That’s why we came here, and that mission hasn’t changed. We go there, see what’s up, and then form a plan.”

  Sam didn’t move, his mind racing. EMP. No electrical grid. Every car with electronic ignition, basically everything made after 1978 or so, would be inoperable. No jets. No transportation. No phones. No mail. No gas. No food. Soon no water. No medical equipment that couldn’t be operated by hand. No television, radio, newspapers, internet. Nothing. It was as if the entire nation had been transported back in time. Then he thought of Bono’s wife and little girl, the two of them waiting for him a little more than seven hundred miles to the west.

  But now, with all this, how was he going to get to Memphis? Sam shook his head sadly.

  Bono wasn’t going to get there. He wasn’t going home.

  He swallowed hard, feeling responsible again for keeping Bono away from his family. “Bono, I’m so, so sorry, man.”

  Bono knew what Sam was thinking. His mind was on the same thing.

  “This is better anyway,” Bono struggled to say. “I would have been out there on my own. Who knows where, who knows under what circumstances? The last place I’d like to be after an EMP is out on the road. It’s better that I’m here.”

  Sam shook his head. He didn’t buy it. Every mile, any mile, toward his wife would have been preferable to this. “There’s got to be a way,” he stammered. “There’s got to be a way to get you down to Memphis, Bono. We’re going to get y
ou there. I swear to you, dude, we’re going to get you home.”

  Bono shook his head. “It isn’t going to happen.”

  “Yes it is, man. There’s got to be a way.”

  “I could walk there. That would only take a month.”

  “No, Bono, we’re going to get you home.”

  “Come on,” Bono said. “We’ll think about that later. Right now, let’s get to your parents’ place.”

  He glanced around the platform, the hair rising on his neck. Something about it, something evil, made him shiver as he stood in the middle of the anxious crowd. Living under constant threat to his life had developed his sense of danger, and his senses were screaming now. There was no reason or explanation, but he had learned to trust the quiet voice inside his head. He had felt it and listened to it many times over the previous years, and he knew he was alive now because of it. “It’s a dangerous time right now,” he said, his survival instincts kicking into gear. “None of these people have any idea what is going on, but they’ll expect the worst case and they’ll act accordingly. Everyone goes bonkers when the lights go out, you know what I’m saying, especially after what happened in D.C. It’s every man for himself right now. We’d better get off the streets.”

  Sam turned and started walking. “This way,” he said.

  Forty feet down the platform, a group of men began moving toward them. The four men approached together, their shoulders touching, their eyes looking straight ahead, dull and lifeless. Two wore shaved heads. Lots of homemade tattoos were scattered over their flesh. One of them was a meth head: his lips were dry and cracked, his front teeth rotting, his face thin and taut, his eye sockets sunk deeply into his skull. His skin, wrinkled as an old man’s, made him look like walking death.

  Sam stepped aside to avoid them but the four men adjusted their path, moving to confront the two soldiers. They bumped into Sam with great force, almost knocking him over. He stumbled and caught himself. “Watch it!” Meth Man said.

  Sam ignored him and turned to let them pass. Bono quickly moved to stand beside him.

  “I said watch it!” Meth Man cried again. His eyes were wild now, burning bright and crazy. Whatever demons were inside him were screaming in his head.

  “Take it easy,” Sam replied, his voice soft. “I don’t want any trouble here, OK? It’s cool, man, it’s all good. You guys have a great night.”

  One of the skinheads reached into his pocket. “Who the bloody hell are you talking to?” he cried.

  “Great,” Sam muttered sarcastically but loudly enough to be heard. “We stinking lose our electricity and all the freaks spill out into the streets.”

  “Come on,” Bono answered carefully. Tugging on Sam’s shoulders, he took a wary step back. Sam felt the pressure of Bono’s grip and almost grimaced at the pain. Bono was scared; Sam could feel it in the force of his steely grip.

  Meth Man reached under his jacket, apparently for a weapon, but Bono didn’t give him a chance. Half a second later, the soldier’s pearl-handled pistol was in his hand. He took a lightning step forward and shoved it into Meth Man’s face, nudging the cold steel into the fleshy skin between his eyes. One of the skinheads moved and Sam lurched forward, grabbed his arm, twisted, and bent it while jerking his knee up into the attacker’s elbow. The bone snapped with a sickening crunch and the man fell back, screaming in pain. The other men backed up ten steps, removing themselves from the fight. Meth Man screamed while dropping to his knees. “Don’t hurt us, don’t hurt us,” he cried in pretended pain. “U.S. soldiers like to kill us. Please don’t hurt us. We are sorry. Please, do you have to be so mean?”

  Sam listened, completely disgusted, as Bono shoved the gun again, forcing the tiny barrel into the man’s skin.

  “Stand up. Turn around. Walk away!” Bono commanded in a powerful voice. Something about the way he said it caught Sam’s attention—it was as if another man were speaking—and he shot a glance toward his friend. Bono’s eyes were clear and burning, his face bathed in burnished moonlight. “If you turn around, I will kill you. Do you understand!” he said.

  Meth Man nodded, his eyes dull and empty as death.

  Bono slowly lowered his weapon, moved it to his left hand, and lifted his right. “I command you now to leave us!” he said in the same powerful voice.

  “Bono, what are you doing?” Sam whispered as Bono dropped the handgun to his side. “Keep that weapon on him or he’ll jump you.”

  “I command you to leave us!” Bono said again. “Go back now to your hellhole. Go back and grovel with your own.”

  The man stood, hesitated, sneered at Bono, then turned and walked away, followed by his friends.

  Frightened now, Sam reached for Bono’s left hand, took the handgun, and kept it pointed at the back of the attackers’ heads. “Come on,” he whispered urgently. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Bono didn’t move. Sam held the tiny handgun at the ready position, waving it slowly back and forth, aiming at the four men, then turned toward his friend. Bono’s face was ashen. He looked exhausted. Completely drained. Sam glanced down and saw that Bono’s hands were shaking like winter leaves in the wind. He couldn’t have hit anything with those quivering hands.

  Something had happened here. Something he didn’t understand. “Are you OK, man?” he whispered slowly.

  Bono shook his head, his eyes wide with terror. “That was him,” he whispered back in a fear-choked voice. “I saw it in his eyes. I saw him in his face. That wasn’t just a man there. That was something . . . someone else . . . .”

  A terrible shiver ran down the center of Sam’s back. A deep cold seeped inside him—empty, lonely, and terribly sad. The blackness was dark and utterly complete. He swallowed hard, his throat dry, his chest clenched.

  He felt it. He knew it. And for the first time in his life he was truly afraid.

  Bono took his gun back from Sam and shoved it under his jacket again. “Drugs did that to them,” he whispered. “They have so surrendered their bodies over to the power of the evil one that they don’t control themselves any longer.”

  The four men had reached the end of the platform where it met the tracks, their images illuminated by the moon and stars. At the edge of the cement barricade three of them dropped and kept on walking, but the fourth one stopped and turned around.

  “My name is Balaam!” he cried. “I remember you, my brothers, and I will see you again.”

  The coldness deepened, sinking into Bono’s soul. He lifted his right hand and was about to reply, but the man dropped onto the train tracks and walked into the dark.

  The two men stood in silence, unable to speak. The crowd continued to mull around them as if they hadn’t seen anything.

  “Come on,” Bono said. “Let’s get to your home.”

  The two men began to run.

  And they did not look back.

  * * *

  Behind Sam and Bono, Balaam stood and watched them from the edge of the tracks. He considered what had just happened. Although he was housed inside the mortal’s body, he hadn’t been afraid of being shot. It was only a body, after all, a human form he had taken possession of for a short while. And because the mortal body wasn’t his, he didn’t feel any of its pain or have any fear of having it be destroyed. But it stunned him that Bono had recognized his presence burning from within the mortal’s eyes. It bothered him that the soldier recognized that he didn’t fear his gun. There was only one thing that could control him, and the mortal had called upon that power.

  He stood alone and pondered how quickly things had changed.

  The veil between the two worlds was already very thin. That was good. But it was also dangerous, for it allowed the good ones to see through their tactics and lies, to see the real danger and what his master had in store.

  As he watched the mortal soldiers had merged into the darkness, he turned and ran into the distance as troubled thoughts grew within his mind.

  Then he looked at the dark streets and the helpl
ess mortals all around and laughed, taking in the hopelessness and devastation that his master had already caused. The hunger and pain were just beginning. Tens of millions were going to die!

  So, despite the lingering doubts inside, he couldn’t help but laugh.

  SIX

  Interstate 65, Fourteen Miles Southeast of Chicago

  Mary Shaye Dupree and Sara Brighton approached Sara’s automobile slowly, calling from the darkness as they walked. “Hey there, that’s my car, what are you doing?” Sara cried.

  Walking side by side, the two women emerged from the dark. The moon had risen enough to illuminate the outline of their frames, but the darkness and open country made them seem so very small.

  Two men were talking near the back of their car, rummaging through the trunk. Sleeping bags and clothes had been scattered up and down the road. Both of the back passenger windows had been broken, and shattered pieces of glass reflected in the yellow-reddish light. The air was cool now and Sara felt a damp breeze against her neck. She shivered as she placed her hands defiantly on her hips. “What have you done to my car?” she demanded.

  The two men froze a moment, then slowly turned, taking the two women in. Sara returned their cold stares, her eyes flashing in the dim light. Cold and hard, she stood her ground, her shoulders firm. Mary glanced in her direction, then turned and squared her small shoulders too.

  Inside her stomach, Sara was as taut as piano wire. She forced herself to breathe without screaming, swallowed the enormous knot inside her throat, and fought to keep the panic down. She knew it was ridiculous. She didn’t care how tall she stood, how much she scowled, or how loudly she raised her voice—she and Mary were two small, middle-aged women standing in the dark. No way were they going to intimidate these men.

  The strangers glared. They were young, somewhere in their twenties, and dressed in work clothes and boots. One of them laughed, a lusty, ugly sound. “I’m sorry,” he mocked, “is this stuff yours?”