Joel glanced at his wife and then back at Patrick. “Abney sounds like a good idea, but our car broke down a few miles south—just my luck. Made it through the flare, but then the engine light came on and the thing just died. We walked to here, and when we saw the place was deserted…well, it made sense to stay.”
“Then you walk to Abney,” Max said. “You could probably do it in a day if you leave at daylight.”
“All right. That makes sense. When Zack’s well—”
“Don’t wait.” Patrick warned them. “Leave tomorrow. Carry him if you have to, or find a wagon or something to pull him in. But don’t wait. You’re sitting ducks here.”
Joel looked at Danielle, reached for her hand, and said, “All right. We’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Good deal.” Max stood and walked to the window, peering out.
“How can we ever thank you?” Danielle asked.
Shelby pulled her chair up closer to the table. “Tell us about Austin.”
EIGHT
Joel unfolded a state map onto the table. Shelby wanted to hurry him along. She wanted to tell him to just spit it out! But it was obvious that any discussion of what they’d been through in Austin was still painful. Joel stared at the map, blinking rapidly, and Danielle had walked away to wash dishes.
“Our condo was here, in Jolleyville. Danielle was a fifth grade teacher.”
“Who did you work for?” Shelby asked.
“Software engineer.” Joel glanced up, stared at her for a moment. “I was a software engineer. We…we knew that something like this might happen.”
“Something like a flare?” Patrick asked.
“Nah. We didn’t have a single protocol for that, but we knew the grid was vulnerable. Our biggest fear was cyber attacks. There was a specific process for shutting everything down, quickly, and saving what we could.”
“Where exactly did you work?” Max pointed at the map. “Was the company also in Jolleyville?”
“Yeah. A place called IDS. Integrated Distribution Software. We wrote the code for everything from the scanners at your grocery store to how much fuel was shipped to your gas station. If an item isn’t scanned, the computer doesn’t know to reorder it.”
“A person can’t do that?”
“Only with an override code. Every aspect of distribution is automated now. When all of the systems went down—when they all went down at once, we knew it wasn’t a cyber attack, which has more of a cascade effect.”
“And then we saw the aurora.” Danielle turned from the sink, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
“We were lucky to be home when it happened. Things were okay for a day or two. But when people realized the lights weren’t coming back on, that the shelves at the grocery store weren’t going to magically fill up again—then things turned nasty.”
“Looting?” Bianca asked.
“Sure, there was some lawlessness. Some of the fires were probably set—out of anger or arrogance or maybe just stupidity. But there was also panic. Folks not knowing how to adjust. More fires broke out because people didn’t know how to use a Coleman lantern, or had a lit candle too close to curtains, and when no one came to put the fires out? Then the panic accelerated. Our place—it burned on the third day.”
“I’m so sorry.” Shelby peered more closely at the map. “Why did you decide to go to Dallas?”
“No reason to stay where we were,” Danielle said.
Joel stared at his wife for a moment, and to Shelby it seemed his emotions played across his face like a motion picture on a screen—love, regret, determination.
“We had no place to live, and we have friends and family in the Dallas area. Both of us went to college there.”
“Why didn’t you go straight up I-35?” Max asked.
“Because we’d heard of the traffic jams. The mayor of Austin supposedly was getting the Texas National Guard in to clear those up. At that point we were living in our car. I drove toward I-35 one afternoon, left Danielle and Zack at a friend’s house. Couldn’t even make it up the on-ramp. Abandoned cars as far as I could see.”
“So you went back, picked up your family, and decided to come up Highway 281.” Max traced his route until he landed in Briggs, Texas.
“Right. Our car broke down…” He leaned forward and pointed to a spot on the map. “Here. But before that we had to come through Cedar Park.”
Joel glanced up from the map, looked at each of them until his gaze landed on Shelby. “I understand you need medicine for your boy, and I know I would do anything to get whatever Zack needed. But going through Cedar Park? It’s not an option.”
“Tell me why.” Shelby kept the fear out of her voice. She forced herself to remain calm, to not give in to despair.
“The towns like Cedar Park couldn’t patrol the entire area under their jurisdiction, so they pulled back.”
“This happened in the first week?” Patrick shook his head in disgust.
“Pretty much.” Joel ran his finger along Highway 183 until he reached a spot only a few miles north of Austin. “This area of the highway is lined with shopping centers, but they’d all been looted. When there was nothing left to loot, they were burned. When there was nothing left to burn, they began robbing people who attempted to drive through.”
“So how did you get through?”
“Ran over one man.” Joel’s hand began to shake, and he clenched it into a fist. “I’m not proud of that. He stepped out in front of my car with a shotgun, and I just…I ran him over. I suppose I will still hear that sound—the sound of him under my car, until the day I die.”
“There’s no need to dwell on that,” Danielle said. “You did what you had to do.”
She turned back to Shelby. “If you insist on going south, take the back roads.”
Patrick pushed in between Shelby and Max. Scowling at the map, he said, “It’s too slow, and there are too many places where we could get into trouble. It’s been almost three weeks since the flare. People have mostly stopped travelling. Thieves have probably turned their focus to secondary roads.”
“And the National Guard could have moved some of the vehicles.” Max traced Highway 281 to just south of Cedar Park, where SH 45 crossed. “We get up here, maybe we can see what’s happening.”
Bianca stood, pushing back the crate she had been sitting on. “We can hope that the local governments have had a chance to pull their resources together.”
Dr. Bhatti looked as if he might refute that, but instead he shook his head and began repacking his medical bag.
“It’s settled then.” Shelby’s resolve strengthened. They would find a way through. Together—they could do it. “We head south, straight through the center.”
NINE
From Briggs to Cedar Park was exactly thirty miles, but it took them another hour and a half. They drove slowly and carefully. Abandoned cars became more frequent.
“Commuters, caught on the way home,” Shelby murmured.
“At eight in the evening?” Bhatti’s tone was doubtful.
“Maybe. People work late, or they did.” Max waved at an abandoned van. “Then there are those leaving on vacation or going into town for a concert. We’re a mobile society. At least we were.”
The gas stations they passed were deserted. Max had been worried about the section of the road where Highway 29 crossed, but their only problem had been a giant crater in the middle of the intersection. They’d driven over the grassy shoulder to the service road and followed it for a mile before pulling back up on the highway.
“What could have caused that?” Shelby asked.
“A tanker explosion…possibly.”
“But I didn’t see any tankers.”
“Could have been an IED,” Bhatti suggested. “Wouldn’t have been much left.”
“What do you know about those?” Shelby turned to frown at him, but Bhatti offered no further comment.
More than once they pulled over to scope out the road before them.
No movement.
No sign of people anywhere.
“Where did everyone go?” Bianca asked as they stood in the hot Texas sun, Max and Patrick leaning against the hood of the Dodge and studying the road before them through the scope of their rifles. To the west, clouds were building. Each day Max realized something else that they’d lost. At the moment, he’d give a week’s worth of provisions for an accurate weather forecast.
“Everyone’s hunkered down, using the supplies they have.” Patrick pulled a bottle of water from his pack and drank half of it. “That will work until they run out.”
Max placed his rifle in the car, resting it upright between his seat and Shelby’s. “If we find an untouched camping store, remind me to get a good pair of binoculars.”
Shelby didn’t even smile. She was in full-alert mode. They all were.
Half a mile before the SH 45 interchange, they again pulled to the side of the road.
“Looks blocked,” Max said.
“We might be able to push a few out of the way.” Patrick nodded toward the line of cars blocking every lane. “There are places near the median where we could squeeze through.”
Bianca had put on a sun visor to ward off the sun. She yanked it off and waved it toward the mass of vehicles in front of them. “The question is, how many cars would we have to move? How far does this stretch? A quarter mile, half mile, or ten?”
“I know one way to find out.” Max pointed up, to the SH 45 overpass.
“I’m going with you.” Shelby was already pulling out her backpack, shrugging it over her shoulder, and covering her black curls with the battered Texas Rangers cap.
“We’ll stay here,” Patrick said. “Guard the vehicles.”
“The range on these radios should stretch from here to the top of there.” Max slipped one of the receivers into a side pocket of Shelby’s pack. “You see anything, radio us. And if you have to, get out of here.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Bianca said.
Even Bhatti looked alarmed.
“I didn’t say leave us.” Max turned in a full circle. Like Joel had warned them, the shopping centers to the left and the right were burned-out shells. “If anyone comes after you, take the cars and head back north.”
Bianca crossed her arms and scowled at the flyover bridge. “Maybe it’s not worth it. We should stay together.”
“We could waste an entire day trying to get through on this road. On the other hand, we have no way to know what problems we’ll confront on the secondary roads.” Max glanced at his watch—three fifty in the afternoon. Four, maybe five more hours of light. The heat was beastly, but the long days might work to their advantage. “If we know what we’re dealing with, we can make a better decision.”
Shelby nodded.
Max threw one last look north, the direction they had come from. “If we are separated, everyone meet at the barn we passed on the west side of the road, just before Wheatstone Blvd.”
“How do we know that’s safe?” Bhatti asked.
Max retrieved his rifle as well as a backpack full of ammunition and emergency supplies. “We don’t, but I doubt bandits will want to waste their fuel chasing you that far. They’ll expect you to freeze, to be intimidated. Drive as fast as you can, lay low, and we’ll meet you there.”
They’d started to turn away, when Patrick said, “That’s five miles, maybe six.”
“Wait for us. Wait until daylight, and if we’re not back, leave us.”
“Not going to happen.” Patrick actually grinned. “If you’re not there by daybreak, we will find you. Check your radio at fifteen minutes after every hour.”
“We’re not going to be separated.” Bianca wrapped her arms around Shelby before reaching up and tugging down on the old ball cap. “It’s a good look on you.”
Shelby rolled her eyes and nodded to Max that she was ready.
The flyover rose eighty feet above them. Max remembered when they’d put it in, when Shelby had been afraid to drive over it.
“Why are you grinning?”
“No reason.”
“Out with it, Berkman.”
“Remembering the good old days.”
That seemed to be explanation enough. They kept to a good pace, though the ramp was steeper than he’d expected.
He stopped her with a hand signal, unzipped her pack, and retrieved her pistol. Handing it to her, he whispered “Be ready,” and shifted his rifle to his right hand.
But they needn’t have worried. The abandoned cars they passed were deserted. The first few, they checked to see if there were any supplies, but someone had already taken care of that.
Glove compartments were open.
Center consoles ransacked.
Even the trunk areas had been cleaned out. He found an L-shaped lug wrench in one. It felt heavy and solid in his hand. Felt like something he might need if he were to run out of ammunition. Handing it to Shelby, he motioned for her to slip it in his pack.
The heat intensified. The concrete ramp seemed to absorb the sun, or perhaps it was that they were completely in the open now. They were vulnerable, an easy target if anyone were close enough to take a shot.
But they encountered no one as they ascended to the top of the ramp—a bypass that politicians had been quite proud of, claiming it would ease the gridlock of traffic that ensnared their capital. As if by mutual agreement, both had kept their eyes on the ground, the area directly in front of them, the vehicles they skirted.
It wasn’t until they reached the apex that they stopped, set their packs on the ground, and turned to study the devastation to the south.
TEN
Shelby wasn’t prepared. She’d thought she was, but who could prepare their mind or their heart for the length and width of destruction that lay out before them? Her world tilted, began to spin, and she grasped the side of the bridge.
Max pulled her back—his arms on her shoulders, his voice soft and steady in her ear.
“Not so close, Sparks. Wouldn’t want you to blow over.”
The wind had picked up, or perhaps it was just that they were standing eight stories up. She glanced west, saw the darkening clouds moving ever closer, and then she turned back toward Austin.
“I’m okay.” She shrugged away from him but remained a good three feet from the edge. No sense in surviving the flare, the fires, the gas explosions, and the carjackings, just to fall off a bridge. She’d never forgive herself. The thought struck her as funny, hilarious actually, and she nearly broke out laughing.
Or maybe she was hysterical.
Slapping both hands over her mouth, she continued to stare south.
“Worse than we thought,” Max admitted.
“The road is—”
“Impassable, as far as we can see.” Cars filled every lane. Some had their hoods up but most were simply abandoned. Had they stopped the moment the flare hit? Even the older model cars, which still worked, had had no way to drive through the gridlock.
Even more disturbing than the massive, desolate traffic jam was the widespread destruction.
“How could there be so many fires? And why didn’t we notice it earlier?”
“I suppose we’ve grown used to the smell. I never would have guessed.”
Spirals of smoke rose from every direction—Austin was burning.
Max squinted at something, grabbed his rifle, and stared through the scope. Finally, he handed it to her. “Look to the southeast.”
As she stared through the rifle, she at first only saw car after car—burned out or simply abandoned, and every one an impediment to her mission. But then Max turned her slightly, and she felt hope beat like the light, steady motion of a butterfly’s wings.
“Who is that?”
“Texas Army National Guard, I suppose.”
“So is it state or national? I should know the answer to that question, but I don’t.”
“Made up of the US Army, the US National Guard, and the Texas Military Forces. Tr
ained and equipped by the army.”
“And that’s who we’re seeing?”
“I suppose. I can see tanks, transports, even all-terrain vehicles. Can’t make out any insignia from here, but who else would it be?”
“Foreign invaders? Terrorists who have taken over a military supply depot? Bandits who needed bigger trucks to continue taking over our cities?”
“Hey. Look at me.” Max practically snatched the rifle from her hands. “Look at me, Shelby. We are not giving up. I don’t know who that is or what they’re doing, but it could be someone who will help us. One way or another, we’re going to find out.”
She closed her eyes, tried to quiet the war between hope and despair that threatened to push her over the edge, and nodded slightly.
“You’re right. I just…I didn’t expect this.” Her hand took in the entire vista, southeast to southwest.
“I know you didn’t.”
Max turned to look back the way they had come. Shelby followed him to the opposite side of the road. She could just make out their two vehicles below.
“Patrick must have moved them,” Max said.
“Across the lanes? Why?”
“In case there’s trouble. By putting them across the road, he can go north—”
“Back the way we came.”
“Or south.”
“Not far though. Thousands of cars blocking the way south.”
Patrick waved something at them, and Max pulled the radio out of her pack.
Shelby felt a wave of relief wash over her at the sound of Patrick’s voice.
“You two going to have a picnic up there or tell us what’s going on?”
“The destruction is widespread.” Max hesitated, glancing behind him and then forward again. “There is some military movement to the southeast. If we can reach them—”
Shelby was watching Patrick and listening to Max, and her eyes picked up on what was happening a fraction of a second before her ears did.
Patrick jerked his head to the left, and then she heard the roar of an approaching vehicle, followed by the tat-a-tat-tat of a semiautomatic rifle.
Raging Storm Page 5