I ran across the lane. They followed.
Around a 2020 Honda Civic.
A Minivan.
Across another lane.
We kept moving. Zig-zagging our way through the parking lot.
There was a loud crack of gunfire. Everyone jumped. I put my hand up to tell everyone to stop. I looked around the edge of a Toyota truck toward the camp. I saw tents, but no people. I motioned everyone on. To my right, as we crossed another lane of cars, we reached light twenty four, or at least I hoped it was.
“Okay, I’m going to head out and find Zero’s truck. It’s somewhere in this vicinity. Stay here. Stay quiet.” They all nodded. Sitting in the dirt, they all kept their gaze low, not looking at me.
I took off across the lane and began winding my way north through the static automobiles. The further north the less light from the camp. Scanned left, then right, until I spotted the truck and seated in the driver’s seat, head on a swivel, was Zero. I smiled and ran back to the group.
“This way. Hurry, we are almost there,” I said and, again, they followed without resistance.
When we reached Zero’s truck from behind, I knocked on the back of the truck, and Zero nearly jumped out of his seat. He looked at me from the rear-view mirror.
“Fuck yeah!” he said. I knocked out the brake lights in the back of the truck with my rifle, sending shards of broken taillight into the dirt. “Hey!” Zero said. But, I ignored him.
Drew opened the passenger door, and I kept a lookout. First in was Alicia with Jane, followed by Natalie and Kaitlyn. Jenna crawled in, eyes wide, catatonic, as she sat in the front passenger seat.
“Drew, back here with me,” I said.
“Wait, where’s Ethan?” Zero asked.
“Not coming,” Drew said, quietly.
“Why? What happened?”
“He’s dead,” Jenna said, with an eerie drone.
Zero looked back at me as I was getting into the truck and I just nodded. His face turned down ever so slightly, then turned back around to the job at hand.
Drew hopped into the back of the truck bed. I opened the window at the back of the cab. “Go left around the back of the parking lot. Keep the lights off and go slowly.”
“Yes sir,” Zero said.
Zero pulled out, and I sat down. I kept an eye toward the camp as Zero crept the truck down the lane, headed north into the desert. I looked over at Drew who was reaching through the small window to pet Natalie’s head, where the kids sat between Kaitlyn and Alicia.
“I may need your help,” I said.
“With what?” Drew replied.
I held the second automatic rifle at him. His face balked. “Look. We may not need them, but just in case.” He took it like it was made of fragile glass. “Just keep it down for now,” I said, and Drew nodded.
“Blake were almost to the end of the parking lot,” Zero said. “I think. It’s getting harder to see.”
“Okay once we do, make a right and skirt along the last cars as close as you can.”
“Right,” Zero replied. His face reflected in the rear-view mirror was concentrating deeply, biting his right lower lip as he drove. He slowed, almost to a stop, and turned right. A bump lifted the car on its left side, and we kept going, slow. Agonizingly slow. Ten minutes had passed before we came to the east end of the parking lot.
“Now what?” Zero asked. I looked toward the front of the camp. I saw multiple cars trying to pass through the front gate. People excited to leave and ignorant enough to follow the road would be caught. The road that leads out of the parking lot and onto the main street that brought us here and would take us back to the 15 freeway. That lone road went inside the camp and through the main entrance, and that was closed by a large gate that now was surrounded by multiple Army transport trucks and theoretically a hundred Army soldiers.
“This a four-wheel drive, right?” I asked.
“You want me to drive into the desert.”
“Yep. That’s the only way out. Not long, maybe a hundred yards.”
“With the lights, off?”
“Yep.”
“Alrighty then,” Zero said with a terrible Texas accent, “Buckle up everyone, it’s gonna get a mighty bumpy out in them there desert.”
Drew and I looked at each other. I grabbed, with my left hand, the side of the truck. Drew did the same and grabbed the right.
“We all set?” Zero asked.
“I guess so,” Alicia said. I gave thumbs up and off we went into the desert.
Dirt flew into the air as Zero picked up speed. At the first big bump, I had to grab the side of the truck with both hands.
“You alright back there,” Zero asked.
“Don’t worry about us,” I said.
Another significant bump and Drew almost flew out. Zero was picking up more speed.
“Slow down,” Alicia yelled.
“I can’t we have to keep our momentum, or we can get stuck in the sand,” Zero said.
Another bump, a loud scraping sound that emanated underneath the truck and a quick right turn, which almost sent Drew into my lap. But he held on.
“Fuck,” Zero said.
Drew trying to right himself stopped and pointed back toward the camp. I saw two pairs of headlights heading down the main road to the south of us. I nodded. The transport vehicles sped by on the road, headed back to the Army compound and over the crest at the top of the valley.
“Zero, turn right and head toward the road,” I said.
“Where’s the road?”
“Just turn right and if we hit the ridge. Turn right some more.”
After more dips and turns and Drew telling me he was going to be sick, we reached the edge of the desert beside the road. My eyesight had adjusted to the darkness, and I could hear everyone breathing heavy.
Zero crept the truck onto the road and made a left.
“Stay slow,” I said. “Only if you see another car behind us, do you take off.”
“Gotcha,” he said.
The road felt smooth as silk after the last half hour.
“Okay I need you to keep an eye on the back,” I said to Drew.
“And you?” he asked.
“I got the front,” I said, and I stood up with my assault rifle and laid it on the top of the cab, getting an unobstructed view of all that was in front of us.
We drove on, Zero kept the speed at twenty miles per hour, and I kept watch.
We ran into no one. I saw no more military vehicles. Nothing, but the desert road. We all took turns trying to remember which way to the 15, and hopefully not traveling in circles as the roads weaved every which way.
After a right turn and as the road curved to the right the 15 freeway appeared before us on our left. It looked like a black river, still and reflective in the evening light. We were on the side road that ran parallel to the freeway. I could not remember if this was the same path we arrived on, but it didn’t matter.
Huge lights suddenly came into focus a half mile down on the freeway underneath an overpass. Ten portable mobile light tower’s scattered across the freeway five each on the north and southbound lanes casting their light to the north.
“Zero stop,” I said, and he slammed on his brakes. “You see that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What now?”
I looked to my right and saw an industrial building. There was a sign out front that was twenty feet in the air, towering next to the idling truck. It was a dark mass and made me think of the Welles tripods, in War Of The Worlds. It read: Solar Energy High Desert, Inc.
“Blake?” Drew asked. He was still sitting in the back looking up at me. I looked down.
I wished we were fighting Martians.
“Just keep moving, slowly,” I said. “Until we can find a way around.”
We pulled forward. Crawling. We passed a turn off on the right. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. The only sound was that of wheels on the pavement. The children were awake but in shock. Thei
r worst nightmare roller-coaster had been brought to life.
As we got closer to the lights, I could see they were the same style of lights at the camp.
“Stop,” I said. Zero again slammed on the breaks. “It’s a barricade. Stopping all southbound traffic.”
“What does that mean?” Alicia asked.
“Nothing if there are no soldiers at the barricade or around the off-ramps. This is where we got off to go to the camp. The Summit Inn is a mile up here on the left.”
“I don’t see anything,” Zero said. This was true. I could just make out the barricades from where I stood. I could also see that the road we were on would be lit brightly the further we traveled toward the on-ramp.
“What do we do?” Zero asked as I remained quiet, weighing the options. We had two. North or South. North to Utah or South to Rancho Cucamonga, again. If we could get by the southbound barricades. It would take a while for another vehicle to remove the roadblocks. Then again, they could just follow the path we were about to take. Either way, South was the correct answer. North would be asking for trouble on the 15. South should be empty. Evacuated.
“Okay, I think I got it,” I said. “Let’s head home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
12/10/2024
Zero pulled the truck forward.
Twenty-five miles per hour.
Light flooded the road around us.
Zero slammed his foot on the accelerator, and I could hear the engine roar its excitement.
Thirty-five.
Fifty.
Fifty-five.
The truck sped up the side road. We passed the abandoned RV camp. It flashed by in a blink. The road weaved to the right, but Zero had no problem at that speed thanks to the lights on the freeway. A light curve to the left, as we approach the overpass. Then darkness as we pass beyond the freeway lights and we arrive at the overpass. The on-ramp to the southbound lanes is blocked by a concrete barricade. As expected. What was not expected? The Army truck on top of the overpass. Lights from the truck flash on, as we drive by.
“Go Zero!” I yelled. He stayed on the side road and kept the pace. The Army truck turned left to follow. I pulled Drew down flat in the truck bed.
“I am going to aim for the tires, you aim for the hood!” I said. Drew shook his head. “We have to stop that truck from following!”
I struggled to get up on my knees at the back of the truck. The lights from the trailing vehicle, which had already gained ground, blinded me. But, that was okay, because the lights told me where to aim. I squeezed the trigger and unloaded a shower of bullets on the truck. Hitting where? I did not see. Drew scrambled up next to me and fired. The sound of the rifles, the tires screeching and the engines roaring created an out of body experience like you were watching yourself in a Stallone movie in surround sound.
“Now!” Zero yelled, barely audible to Drew and I. I grabbed Drew by the shoulder, his rifle swung my direction, his face blank and wide-eyed as if in a hypnotic state, and pulled him back down, face first, into the bed of the truck. Zero turned a sharp left into a ditch, ten yards before the side road ended. Drew and I flew three feet into the air, and we grabbed onto each other, hoping not to be thrown into the trench on the side of the freeway. The luggage did the same, and one bag did not make it back, it landed somewhere on the edge of the 15 freeway.
There was a loud crash as Zero struck the chain-link fence that separated the freeway from the road. The fence gave way. I could feel Zero’s truck begin to fishtail. So much dirt in the air that I could taste it. A piece of a chain-link fence flew over the truck, scraping the top edge of the truck bed, barely missing me and Drew. Another bump and then a quick right turn. Pavement that caused the tires to screech. We had made it on the 15 freeway.
I crawled to the back of the truck bed and peered over the tailgate. The Army vehicle sat still on the side road. In the beam of its headlights, I could see smoke.
“We’re good!” I yelled. “Zero slow down.”
We began to descend the Cajon Pass. Zero stayed in the middle lane riding the brake the entire way. I saw a spider crack in Zero’s windshield on the passenger’s side.
“You guys okay?” I asked. No verbal answers. A few heads nodded. I slumped down with my back to the cab and exhaled. Drew was sitting now to my left, his body still, eyes opposite of me. The gun, the one I took from Jensen, was at his feet as if he left it there and now was trying to squirm as far away from it as possible.
For the first time since the alarms sounded back at the Army compound, just over an hour ago, I had time to think. Oh, I thought, quite a bit, over the past hour. But, not as Blake. I was thinking and acting as Sergeant Anderson. Was there a difference? I’d like to believe that there was. Who is to say? I acted on my training so we could escape the camp. But, at what cost? At first, everything went so well. I analyzed each situation with clarity and acted accordingly. But, it did not work entirely. Ethan and Aaron were dead. I had made one tragic error. The gun. I offered the gun to Ethan. Why did I? To keep them safe? I analyzed the situation and made a bad calculation. Alicia carrying Jane was slowing the group down. Removed that problem by having Drew carry Jane, and I take Natalie. Why didn’t we stay together? I sent them on. Why? We should have stayed together. I don’t know. A mistake was made and now, my first friend, the kid who knocked on my door the day after his family moved into the trailer park, the kid who let me come over to his house to play his new XBOX, eat his variety of Hostess snacks, who told me he had his first crush, at age eight, it was a girl in the sixth grade, and I said I had the same feelings for her and we made a pinky swear that we would accept whoever she liked and let the best man win, neither of us did, this kid, this grown man, who as an adult I never truly got to know, because I spent the last six months wanting to be alone, dealing with my own PTSD, now was dead.
It was my fault.
Why did I kill Jensen so cruelly? I saw him staring at me. Confused. Why had his sergeant shot him in the throat? Ethan had a gun. No guns were allowed in the camp. Was I angry? I didn’t feel angry. I felt...nothing.
“You okay?” Drew asked me.
I looked around. We just passed the off-ramp for Highway 138. I could see the outline of a gas station on the north side, surrounded by the San Gabriel Mountains. “I suppose,” I said.
Drew nodded and looked away.
“Blake,” Zero said, from the front seat.
“What’s up?” I said, not turning around.
“Which way?”
“I guess we should get off the freeway before we enter town.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
“Get on the 215 and get off at Glen Helen, I believe that we can wind our way into town that way.”
“Where are we going?” Alicia asked.
“I guess to my place to pick up some fresh supplies.”
“Won’t they be looking for you?” Drew asked.
“Yes, they will, and they will be looking for all of us. So we won’t stay long. I suppose everyone gave them their correct address when we arrived?” I asked. No answer.
“I didn’t,” Zero said.
“That’s my Zero,” I said. “We can hole up at Zero’s apartment after we make brief stops at my place, then Drew’s.”
“Why go back to your place?” Alicia asked.
“I need some tools and supplies. We need to get the GPS devices out of these guns,” I said, and Kaitlyn, Alicia, and Zero all turned to look at me.
“What? They are tracking us!” Alicia said.
“You? No. The guns and me? Yes,” I said. “Speaking of.” I took off my Army supplied uniform jacket. Too bad. It was a good jacket. Infrared reduction. Fire resistance. Then my Army provided boots. Threw off my military tactical helmet, which in all the chaos, I forgot I had on. Stripped off my desert camo pants and pulled the dirty pair of pants from my backpack.
“You taking everything off?” Drew asked.
“No. That’s it,” I said as I th
rew the Army pants onto the freeway. All four items, my uniform, littered the road between Highway 138, and the 215 and 15 interchange. I didn’t have time to find the GPS signal. Now, I was just in my Army t-shirt and dirty pants. My socks have holes in them.
“What about the guns? Can’t we throw them off as well and then they couldn’t track us?” Alicia said.
“True, but then we would be unarmed. We spend some time and try to find the GPS devices. If not, then we will ditch them.”
Zero pulled off the freeway.
“What’s that?” Drew said, his hand pointed toward the southern sky. I followed his raised index finger and saw blinking lights in the night sky. They didn’t appear much smaller in size than the stars in the background. It looked like two pairs of eyes hovering in the air slowly moving east. Two pairs of eyes?
“Police drones,” I said. “Zero. That overpass up ahead...”
“Yes,” Zero replied.
“Park underneath it.”
“Okay.”
Glen Helen Parkway wound back under the 15 freeway and as it did Zero pulled the truck under the overpass and put the truck in park.
“What’s going on?” Alicia asked.
“Police drones,” I said.
The police drones, I explained, were equipped with infrared and would be able to spot our heat signatures in the dark. Whether that was true? I had no idea. Like most of my actions the past month. I acted on instinct. On some sliver of knowledge obtained during my twenty-four years of existence. I presented these insights as facts to my friends.
We spent the night under the overpass.
We pulled out as much extra clothing as we could from the suitcases and bags. I put on an extra pair of dirty socks and my heavy-duty brown jacket, which I had stuffed in the bag. Others put on layers as well. Most fell asleep instantly.
I kept watch.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The Ending is Everything Page 22