Darkness.
The smell of gasoline.
A cough.
Warm liquid rolled into his nostrils and eyes. Congressman Goodwin returned to reality. The world was flipped. The blood running down his face originated from his mouth. I’m upside down.
In all-around agony, he turned his craning neck to Grey. The bookish body hung limply beside him. His glasses had fallen to the ceiling, and his bulging eyes peeped lifelessly through his cracked eyelids. No one in the front seats moved either. The pistol holstered on Craton’s ribs caught Goodwin’s eye.
He grunted, tried to move his arms, but found that his body had betrayed him… Laced boots appeared on the other side of the window, followed by voices of a foreign tongue. Goodwin tried for the gun again. No dice. The taste of copper lingered between and around his loose teeth and on his numb, bleeding tongue.
A masked man squatted down and cocked his head next to the window as he peered inside. His eyes were dark as coal, and the mouth of his pistol opened to Goodwin’s face.
Rage and fear twisted inside Goodwin. He struggled to fight, wishing to thrash and grab the man’s weapon, turning the tool of death against his adversary. Alas, nothing happened. His voice was all he had, and even that faded.
“You won’t win,” Henry said spitefully. “You can’t.”
In broken English, the man replied, “We already have.”
The gun went off.
Congressman Goodwin was reunited with his wife.
Chapter Two
Endless Road
Blood caked between Harper Murphy’s bruised fingers and smeared the steering wheel with streaks of dark maroon. Crimson lingered in the crevices of her fingernails and crusted the cuffs of her camo jacket. With a sticky click, she freed her hands from the grip and squeezed them shut to get the circulation going. The simple motion incited pain. Her bloodshot eyes returned to the road. A single headlight was her guide. A bullet had shattered the other.
Distorted by spiderweb cracks and nickel-sized bullet holes, the windshield proved more a hazard to her than the fatigue that crippled her athletic body. Jets of wind whistled through the damage, pelting her green eyes and tousling her short auburn hair. She wanted to kick out the glass but couldn’t bring herself to stop moving.
Just like the road around her, the day’s events melded together in a mess of disasters, deaths, and damage from which she may not recover. Washington, DC, was miles behind her now, but her duty still remained. It tugged at her every second, nagging her constantly. Had she done enough? Her troop had been ambushed, gunned down, and crushed beneath droves of vintage trucks that had been stashed safely away for months, waiting for this day. Waiting for the attack that killed DC.
Harper set her jaw and footed the gas pedal. The Humvee thundered as the RPM needle climbed.
Arlington was black, too. Not yet in full-tilt chaos, but there was enough clutter that Harper avoided it. She set her trajectory southeast, or maybe it was northwest. The long day had disrupted her sense of direction. Either way, her goal was to escape the blast zone. It didn’t matter how.
“Pull over,” a sick-sounding voice came from the seat behind her. Her mind wanted her to keep driving. Her foot, however, wasn’t as obedient. The clunking Humvee slowed to a stop on the edge of a tree-lined road. Amidst the night sounds and critters, the military vehicle boomed and clunked with the pumping of the massive engine’s cylinders. The back door opened, and her teenage son scrambled out into the darkness. The sound of retching was followed by a vomit splat.
Harper could feel James’s sleepless eyes on her from the front seat. She couldn’t bring herself to look at him. Her eyes stayed on the road and her only sliver of light. Had she kissed him this night? Had he saved her life, or had she saved his? Everything was a blur. She glanced at the rearview mirror, expecting the insurgents to be on her tail. Another gag and dense splatter from outside.
Warm pressure soothed her aching hand. She followed the hand touching her to her estranged husband’s long face and square, stubbled jaw. Purple tiredness circled his glassy hazel eyes. An expression of pity radiated from them.
“He’ll be okay,” he whispered with a forced smile. Her husband was normally handsome, but this night, he was smeared with dirt and gore. Come to think of it, they all were. So much so that Harper’s active combat unit jacket was stiff with blood. Most of the human spillage was not her own.
“We all will be.” His brash voice had become smooth and silky.
Harper kept her tongue for a moment. “I’ll drop you and Eli off at a hospital.”
“No.” His touch was light, but his voice was firm.
“My unit needs me,” said Harper defiantly.
Outside, her son vomited weakly.
James let go of her hand. He quickly scanned over the army gadgets and gizmos bolted to the dash. From the footwell, he fished out some loose napkins. A patterned boot print covered the first one. He opened the door and swiveled his body to the outer world. “We are a family, Harper.”
He left the door open as he met his hunched-over son, offering him a napkin for the bile trickling from his thin, chapped lips.
Harper’s mind traveled back to the theater of war. Where the massacre of friends and strangers had erupted across the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The same bridge that had paved her way for escape against a tide of stonehearted opponents. Like her, the privates in her supply regiment were trained for war but not yet bloodied. That had changed over the course of the last fourteen hours.
Harper chewed her lip and winced, not realizing that it had been busted. Her rib throbbed, her muscles up and down her arms and legs felt knotted, and a gash stung above her cheekbone. She touched it gently. One inch over, and the bullet would’ve taken more than her flesh. What other parts of her were broken? she wondered.
Eli shooed away his father and shuffled into the backseat. He swept a number of M60 shell casings from the hard cushions, causing the metal casings to clink softly next to a few duffels of unloaded supplies. Harper had yet to check them. Guns, ammo, and hopefully medical supplies lay within the zipped bags. Eli sprawled himself out, caressing his cast-covered forearm. Dirt, grime, and a stench of char lingered in his thick brown mop. He groaned while shutting his eyes.
Harper felt a tightening in her heart when looking at him. A dense fear latched on to her like a fat tick as she thought of what trauma he’d endured. She’d thought violent video games had tainted her teenage son. How much more harmful was witnessing dismembered bodies and the deaths of children before his eye? A shiver scurried up her spine.
He’ll be safe soon, she told herself, attempting to soothe her heavy maternal grief. Switching the gear into drive, Harper continued down the flat and wooded road.
James stiffened in his seat when he saw it. Leaning over the thin, dusty dashboard, he let out a single long-winded curse. Harper slowed to a crawl. Her fingers constricted around the ridged grip of the steering wheel until they were snowy white. Eli sat up. His yawn met a swift end when he looked through the cracked windshield.
Harper’s daylong migraine throbbed to life as she looked out at the long highway. Miles and miles of abandoned cars, trucks, and motorcycles cluttered the interstate she had just merged with. Endless blackness and disabled vehicles met with slammed bumpers as far as the eye could see.
“Are you kidding me?” James hammered his fist on the dash. Red faced, he swore harshly with every violent jab to the dashboard.
“This is the blast zone.” Eli bit his lip. “We have to be close to the edge, right?”
James let out a quick bout of frustrated laughter.
“Right, Mom?”
Harper bounced her eyes from car to car, scanning for movement. “I was led to believe that the pulse which hit the District of Columbia was a centralized ground attack. To be this far out…”
“How big are we talking?” Eli leaned forward between the two seats.
Harper hated herself for saying it. Every f
iber of her being wanted to dispute the facts. “No doubt the whole eastern half of the States. Depending on the detonation altitude, say three hundred miles up, it could be country wide.”
James opened and closed his swelling fist. Defeat covered his face. “What the hell do we do now?”
“We endure.”
The Murphys let it soak in and then started down the endless road. Eventually, their sliver of light vanished within the metal graveyard.
The next two days were hell.
The first night, they decided to “rest” on the side of the street. Locked in complete darkness, pain and worry kept them from getting more than three hours sleep. Uncomfortable seats, cramping joints, and Eli’s gasping night terrors disturbed what little rest they had. Eli claimed that he always had nightmares. Harper was too tired to contest his lie. In the morning, they all popped some light pain medication discovered in one of the army duffels. Against Harper’s request, James kept his burgundy-stained bandage around his thigh. She believed that her husband thought of himself as resourceful, when in reality, his wound could be festering.
They had three supply bags total. One was full of semiautomatic assault rifles and a tactical shotgun. Harper checked the ammo magazines and found them to be empty. The second duffel contained half a dozen first-aid kits with a few extra bandage rolls used to stuff the bag. This was probably their best find and helped Harper patch up her own wounds and those of her family. The final bag consisted of hand-cranked lanterns, compasses, and fresh blankets fit for gurneys. When Harper had arrived at the bridge checkpoint the night before, she was able to unload most of the supplies before the attack started. Because of this, she only had a box of .45 caliber pistol ammo, useless with their current arsenal, and however much ammo still remained in the gunner turret up top.
Harper did a quick check of the large M60. Bullets dented the metal guard that bowed around the cannon’s bottom. The large ammo box attached to the side was half empty. As she realigned the sight, humanoid phantoms enveloped the vehicle and shot their ghostly guns at her. She remembered the harsh recoil that had punched her shoulder with every bullet slung from the M60’s barrel and the way her adversaries’ appendages had gone pop in puffs of red. She wanted to dehumanize her enemies by the way they indiscriminately mowed down hordes of innocent people. Still, tiny voices told her that they had families and sons of their own. Regardless of these thoughts, Harper felt no remorse for putting them down. All monsters must die, she told herself. And man is the most vicious of them all.
The pain from yesterday made her body feel like it had been crushed with falling bricks. Moreover, her stomach hungered for substance while her throat was as dry as a desert. Her voice cracked when she spoke. Luckily, no one talked much. They drove on, rolling by the yellow farm fields and green-tree-swarmed mountains of Virginia. They passed civilians backpacking to their homes. Out on the road, most of the bystanders stuck together. There was no sign of insurgent activity yet, but nonviolent tribal communities sprouted up around truck stops and lonely gas stations. By the way the people gawked at her vehicle, Harper kept the Humvee rolling whenever she saw others. A creeping fear birthed during her time in DC awoke anytime she saw strangers.
After stopping in the nearest town, Harper learned quickly that the hospital was out of the question. Most had been either filled up or barred up. The vast majority of the pedestrians living there hoarded their nonperishables and families indoors. The ones on the streets were either law keepers or lawbreakers.
Harper came to terms with the fact that professional medical help was out of the question, especially with most doctors and nurses treating their own kin. Even if she could find a friendly physician, he’d still be tending to those injured in car accidents after the initial blast.
Stopping at a vacant gas station, Harper equipped James and Eli with unloaded assault rifles to frighten away any unexpected rabble while she went inside and grabbed a shirt-full of snacks and drinks. Holding her shirt-knapsack closed with her clenched teeth, Harper returned to her seat. She drove some ways away from the gas station and handed the food out.
“We have food and water. Now we need shelter.” Harper twisted the cap off a lukewarm water bottle.
“The gas station,” James said with a full mouth.
“Too much attention. We need to stay away from other people or any place they may go. At least until we’re sure help is on the way.” Harper took a swig of water. It was manna to her lips.
“How will we know?” Eli asked, starting on his second protein bar.
“We’ll know.”
They spent the next night in the Humvee covered by a camo net. Late-spring bugs munched at the Murphys’ sweaty flesh, and nothing killed their collective body odor. At least Harper’s ACU jacket hindered the stench slightly. The same could not be said for James or Eli.
When they tried to start the car the next morning, nothing happened. Worse, a downpour began as soon as they started walking. With mostly Virginian fields around them, it took them a while to find blanketing trees, and much to their dismay, the branches didn’t fare well in terms of cover. Around their feet, blood and dirt swirled in dark puddles. Harper turned her face to the leaking clouds and let the rain be her shower. The thick drops massaged her skin and stung her cuts. More blood drained from her hair and down her clothed back, sneaking into her boots and socks. She was tempted to strip down and dance in the late-spring storm. Before she could explore the thought further, the rain died into a calm sprinkle. Eli shook his head, sending dirty water spraying across his mother and father. After James called him Dog Boy, he stopped.
Wet, fatigued, but surprisingly relaxed, they returned to the road, tin gas canister in hand.
James put his hands on his hips and looked up at the semi-truck abandoned on the street. “Diesel?”
“Uh-huh,” Harper replied on her way to the truck’s tank.
“All right. Guess I best get started,” said James when Harper popped open the hatch.
Harper gave him a rubber tube she had procured from the gas station, and room to waddle over. James slid the tube into the gas tank and put his mouth on the end. Harper popped the lid off the portable metal gas canister she had grabbed from the Humvee and got ready. With a strong inhale, James sucked in his cheeks. After a moment, green liquid shot up the tube and into his mouth. With a disgusted expression, he spat the jade mess out across the concrete and yelled, “Go!”
Harper placed the overflowing tube inside the canister. The diesel sloshed at the bottom and started to fill it up. James moved a few paces away, spitting the remnants of the liquid on the road.
Eli grinned with surprise. “Where’d you learn that?”
James smiled back, the tight gaps between his teeth outlined in black. “Your mother and I used to be quite the hell-raisers. Isn’t that right, babe?”
“Well, I married you, didn’t I?”
All three of them smiled at that. Harper sealed the canister. Its weight caused her to slump to one side.
We might be starving and half-dead, but at least we’re family, Harper thought. She looked at James and was soon reminded of his adultery and the way he’d looked into that blonde’s sultry eyes with lusty hunger until he noticed Harper in the doorway. Despite everything, that six-month-old wound felt fresher than all the unhealed cuts on her bruised and bloody body.
Upon returning to the Humvee, Harper filled up the tank, and they were back on the road. She kept her eyes out for any uninhabited shelter. It was not long before they spotted a small farmhouse hidden at the end of a windy driveway. It was a quaint two-story old-style Virginia home with a barn and fenced-in horse field. Harper parked in front of the house and started for the door. On the other side of the fence, the horses followed her. Harper knocked on the door. No response. She turned the knob. Locked.
“What are you thinking?” James shouted from the vehicle.
Harper peeked into the window. Above the fireplace was a picture of a mother, father
, and two infants. Rubbing her hand through her damp hair, Harper turned back.
“What’s wrong?” James shouted.
“We’ll find somewhere else.” Harper climbed back into the front seat and ignited the engine.
“But--”
“James. Please.”
Her husband opened his mouth to speak but then stopped himself. In silence, they followed the curvy driveway back to the two-lane road.
Again, they spent the next night in the car. This time, they crashed a lot faster. Harper dreamed of her old Pennsylvania farmhouse. When she was a child, she used to jump into the fresh creek that snaked through their backyard. But, in her dream, the fall leaves that slowly drifted across the glassy surface as she waded waist deep were replaced with dead bodies. The current carried pale and open-eyed men, women, and children all around her. Their rotting gazes followed her as they vanished down the way. At first, they were strangers. Then it was her platoon. Private Walker, Corporal Bennett, Commander McCulloch, all of them bobbing on the surface and violating the water with their blood.
Her dream warped, and she was hunting with her father in the woods. When the buck came into view, it twisted its antlered head to her. Its face was of a man. She pleaded with her father, but in the end, she still pulled the trigger. The animal screamed and died, thrashing before her eyes. They tacked the buck to the truck's hood and skinned it when they arrived at the house.
“Survival, Harper,” her father told her while holding the buck’s heart in his bloody hands. “It’s a necessary and nasty business.” The deer’s heart transformed into a human’s heart and started beating rapidly, pumping blood down her father’s meaty hands and spilling across the wooden floor.
Harper’s eyes shot open. Around her, night crickets chirped and owls hooted. From under the camo net, Harper gazed up at the starry sky. The galaxy had never looked so big and foreboding. She let her father’s words sink in and had never felt more terrified.
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