by Mike Kraus
After both Linda and Jacob were refreshed and had their backpacks on, they headed outside. The morning was foggy and overcast with more warmth than they had felt for the last few days. The fire in the pit had died down over the night, though it was still being fed wood as the small group tending to it started to set up equipment for cooking breakfast. Jacob was nearby talking to his wife, Liz, and he smiled at Frank and Linda as they approached.
“There are our guests! How did you two sleep last night?”
“Very well, thanks.” Frank shook hands with Jacob and Liz and Linda nodded in agreement.
“Excellent. I’ll leave you two for a few minutes while I get your promised provisions. Liz has some information that you’ll no doubt find useful for your trip.”
“Oh you don’t need to give us anything—you’ve been generous enough already.” Frank protested but Jacob waved him off.
“Nonsense. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” Jacob jogged off leaving Frank and Linda to talk with Liz who pulled a manila folder out of a small bag she kept on her shoulder.
“You two are heading to Tennessee, right?”
“Yeah, Tennessee for me and then Frank’s going on to Texas from there.”
“Right. Well. I don’t have much in the way on information between Tennessee and Texas. All I can do is advise you to stick to back roads near cities and take highways in between, and only when you have to. As far as getting from here to Tennessee, though…” Liz opened the folder and pulled out a colorful map of the northeastern portion of the country with several colorful lines drawn between New York and Tennessee. She ran her finger down each of the lines as she spoke.
“Here are the routes you could take. I advise staying away from Washington as much as possible. It’s a hellhole right there, as is the rest of the northern Virginia area. I’d say to get down through Pennsylvania and West Virginia using the back roads as much as possible, then crossing through the western tip of Virginia before you hit Tennessee. Where is it in Tennessee that you’re going?”
“Pigeon Forge.” Linda studied the map as she answered, not seeing the look of shock going across Liz’s face.
“Pigeon Forge you said?” Liz asked the question hesitantly.
“Yeah… why, what’s wrong?” Linda picked up on Liz’s concern and was suddenly worried herself.
“That whole area of Tennessee was hit by a nasty storm two nights ago. Three or four feet of snow with more expected tonight, if the forecast from a few days ago still holds true. You’re in for a rough time once you get there.”
Linda’s thoughts immediately flew to her parents and the potential danger they were in. “How long do you think it’ll take us to get there if we use the back roads?”
Liz shrugged. “Hard to say, really. It depends on what’s happening along the way. If you get lucky and avoid running into anyone you could get there in a day. If things continue to deteriorate, though…” Liz trailed off and looked at Linda. “I’m sorry I have so little information for you to go on.”
Linda shook her head. “No, no this is incredible. It’s perfect. Exactly what we need. I’d rather know now before we get there than be surprised.”
“Preparation is everything.” Liz smiled and patted Linda on the shoulder. “I truly hope your parents are safe.” She glanced at Frank. “And yours as well. And I hope the two of you make it safely to your destinations. Here—take this. There’s more information inside. Transcripts of radio transmissions and such. It should help you understand what’s going on right now. Whether it’s of value or not I don’t know, but more information is always better than less.”
Liz held out the manila envelope and Frank accepted it with a nod. “Thanks, Liz. We can’t tell you enough how much all of this means to us.”
“Revisit the kindness on others, Frank.” Liz smiled. “We’ll need a great deal of kindness to see us through all of this before it’s over.”
Liz embraced Linda and Frank before leaving, and the duo stood together for a moment not knowing what to do next. It didn’t take long before Jacob returned carrying a large canvas bag with two other men behind him, each of them toting a small gas can in each hand.
“Sorry for the delay there!” Jacob smiled and held out the bag in his hand. “Enough nonperishables to last you until you get to Tennessee. Plus I put some fresh vegetables and smoked meat in there and we have several gallons of gasoline for you. I’m afraid it won’t be enough to get you all the way there, but it should help. We have an emergency generator and couldn’t afford to take more than this.”
To say that Frank and Linda were shocked by Jacob’s generosity was an understatement. “We can’t accept all of this, Jacob.” Frank shook his head, but Jacob rebuffed him.
“Nonsense. You two have many more miles to travel. The least we can do is help you out. Now come on. You parked down the road a bit, yes?”
Jacob took off with the two men behind him in tow. Frank and Linda watched him for a few seconds before they got their feet into gear and trotted off after him. When they arrived at the truck, Jacob loaded the canvas bag into the back and secured the gas cans next to the two remaining full ones and the several empty ones. “Excellent! Looks like you’ll be able to make it farther than I thought since you have some gas already in there.”
“Jacob—we’re sorry, again. And thank you. Again. You’ve shown unbelievable generosity to two strangers who walked in one night.”
“Nonsense. You’d have done the same thing, I’m sure of it.” Jacob smiled and shook the pair’s hands before stepping away. “Stay safe on your travels, you two. And once all of this mess clears up and you get a chance to travel again, please come back to visit.”
As Frank drove the truck down the road, Linda watched Jacob and the others disappear around a bend through the rearview mirror. She sat back in her seat and shook her head in amazement. “Unbelievable that people like that exist. Especially right now. Simply unbelievable.”
Frank grinned. “Sounds like somebody didn’t exactly believe her little speech about there still being good people left in the world.” He sighed and his smile faded. “Try to hold onto that feeling, though. I have a feeling we’re going to need to remember it here before too long.”
Chapter 17
The journey south through New York was beautiful, though it was not without its downsides. As Frank and Linda wound their way to the south and west, it became increasingly necessary to stop at every intersection and study their map. The roads seemed to have an almost magnetic attraction to taking them towards New York City, and there was no way that either of them wanted to head in that direction.
After a day of driving and a night spent trading off keeping watch and stretching out across the front seats of the truck for a few hours of sleep, they realized that they were getting close to the Pennsylvania border. Unfortunately that realization came with a price.
“See that?” Linda put her hand over her eyes and squinted as she looked east.
“I see it and smell it. That’s got to be one hell of a fire. Think somebody started it on purpose?”
Linda shrugged. “Who knows. We need to get off these back roads though. If that thing’s spreading very fast then it’ll be easy for us to get trapped by the blaze.” She looked up at the canopy of trees that spread across the road. “And these little roads don’t exactly work as good firebreaks.
“What are you thinking? Go west towards a highway?” Frank opened the map and spread it out across the hood of the car. “We’re not that far from interstate 81. We could head there, take that down through Binghamton, maybe see if we can get some fuel there.”
“Ugh.” Linda looked in the back of the truck at the two small cans of gas they had left. “I hate the idea of heading into a city to look for gas. We might as well, though.”
“Think we can make it there?”
Linda walked back and looked at the map, tracing out their route with her finger. She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah I think so. It’ll be close but if we
run out then we’ll have to find some other solution.”
Frank folded up the map and looked back to the east. The sky was blue and clear for the most part, except for in the east, when it turned into a roiling black mass of smoke and ash. The hills and mountains of the area made it difficult to tell how close the fire was or how large it actually was, but the amount of smoke made it seem far larger than what Frank or Linda wanted to tangle with.
“Good.” Frank walked to the driver’s side door and hopped in. “Let’s get going, then.”
As Linda got into the passenger’s side of the truck, Frank noted with satisfaction that she didn’t give him a look. She had initially been uncomfortable with him driving and though she hadn’t said anything he could tell by her body language that she preferred being in control of the vehicle. After their visit to the “techno-commune” (as they were now calling it) she seemed to no longer mind him driving, and didn’t seem as nervous or worried about it.
Linda took the map from Frank and navigated as he drove, and the truck was quiet except for those moments. Frank began thinking about some of the previous conversations that he and Linda had and remembered something she had said.
“Did you say you were in Ahvaz? Was that during the invasion?” Linda was staring out the window but Frank could see her entire body tense up at the question and he immediately apologized. “You know what, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
Linda didn’t reply for another few minutes and Frank shifted uncomfortably in his seat, wishing he could take the question back. When she finally did speak, her voice was quiet enough that Frank had to slow down the truck to reduce the engine noise enough to hear her.
“Yeah, I was part of the first wave that rolled into Ahvaz. We were tasked with taking over the governmental and administrative buildings on the left bank of the river, to the west. We were supposed to leave the residential buildings on the opposite side of the river intact and not cross over, but we started taking heavy mortar fire from emplacements they had set up on the tops of people’s homes.”
Linda sighed and shook her head. “We weren’t expecting them to have the capabilities they had. I’d still like to know who supplied their weapons, because those weren’t dumb mortars. Those were new, state-of-the-art smart mortars. The ones that can adjust themselves in flight and target vehicles and people. We were unprepared.” Linda stopped talking and Frank glanced over at her.
“I’m sorry. For asking, and for what you went through.”
Linda turned back to look out the windshield, wearing a mask of determination on her face. “Yeah, well, that’s what I get for joining the Marines. Mom said I was crazy and Dad called me an idiot. I guess they were right after all.”
“Well I’m sorry, again. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Nah.” Linda shrugged. “It’s been long enough I should be able to talk about it.”
“Not necessarily. My dad went through some pretty crazy stuff during his time in the sand. I remember waking up to him screaming in the middle of the night because somebody drove a loud motorcycle by the house.”
“Shit.” Linda nodded. “I knew guys like that.”
“All I’m trying to say is that if you don’t want to talk about it, don’t. If you do… well, I listened to my dad enough that I’m decent at listening.”
Linda nodded and patted Frank on the shoulder. “Thanks, Frank. I appreciate it.”
The pair lapsed back into silence for the next half hour until they saw the first sign for the interstate. As the major north/south corridor for the eastern seaboard, interstate 81 had seen several upgrades over the years, including an expansion to 4 lanes per side in the entirety of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York. The expansion was necessary due to the amount of traffic seen on the road, though that turned out to be a not-so-good thing for Frank and Linda.
When they arrived at the first onramp to the interstate, they were forced to continue on a service road for three more ramps until they found one that wasn’t clogged with abandoned or destroyed vehicles. The amount of traffic on the interstate was much greater than on the highways in Maine and they were finally starting to get a sense for just how much of an impact the attacks had caused.
Driving on the interstate was incredibly difficult—much more so than they had thought—due to the sheer amount of obstacles they encountered. Remnants of destroyed tractor-trailers sat every few hundred feet, though they were not alone. Damaged cars, vans, trucks and SUVs clustered around the trucks, giving evidence of how tight traffic had been in some areas when the bombs went off. Frank tried to keep his eyes forward and not look inside the vehicles for fear of what he might see, though Linda studied them closely, squaring her jaw and gritting her teeth at the sight of more than a few blackened skeletons.
At more than a few points Frank had to take the truck off of the road entirely, going through the median or onto the grassy shoulders to get around portions of the road that were completely blocked. Deep scars in the soft earth testified to how many other people had been forced to go the same way, and in a few places Frank almost couldn’t make it since more than one person had gotten their vehicle stuck and had to abandon it.
As they drove along, Linda and Frank salvaged a length of garden hose from an abandoned car and siphoned gas from several vehicles into their gas cans and the tank of the truck. Contrary to what they expected, though, most of the vehicles were out of gas or so low that they weren’t able to get much. In the end they managed to pull twenty gallons out, which Linda estimated would help make up for how much extra they were burning as they were going so slowly.
“If we make it to this city,” she said, “we need to fill up somehow. Beg, borrow, steal. I don’t care which.”
Frank looked at where she had pointed. “You ever been there before?”
“Binghamton?” Linda shook her head. “No. Why?”
“Decades ago it used to be quite the place. Good schools, booming economy and a technology center thanks to IBM and some other companies. When they moved away the place started to dry up. Last time I went through was probably five years ago, on a business trip.” Frank shook his head. “It wasn’t the worst of places, but it wasn’t the best either. I remember seeing a news bulletin about a rise in drug and gang activity the area. Meth dealers and stuff like that. I’m not sure I want to see what it’s like now after all of this.”
Linda folded the map up and tossed it onto the dashboard before leaning up against the window and closing her eyes. “Well, whatever’s there we’ll be fine. We just need to get fuel and go. I’m going to take fifteen to rest up before we get there.”
“Sounds good.” Frank drove on in silence, weaving his way down the interstate as he thought about what might be waiting for them in the city ahead.
Chapter 18
The Port of Oakland is in shambles. Fires spread from Molotov cocktails consume buildings in and around the port while dozens of people sift through the containers, opening them with bolt cutters and rifling through the contents. Anything useful or valuable is loaded into one of the many vans parked nearby and is driven away to be stashed in the city.
The thieves work their way through the shipping containers quickly, and after two hours they’ve finished combing through all of the ones that are on the dock. Several container ships are still loaded down with goods leaving and arriving, though, and they are the next targets.
As the thieves climb onto the first ship and fan out among the shipping containers, one of them opens one to find a curious sight. The container is empty save for a single crate the length and half the width of a small car strapped down in the center. The man cuts through the straps holding the crate down and cracks it open to reveal a block of metal with a silvery finish and a small display on the top. The display appears damaged and flickers on and off so quickly that it’s impossible to tell what it says.
The object looks valuable and the man calls over his cohorts to help him move it out of the crate and towards t
he ramp leading down to the port. While carrying the heavy object, one of the men loses his grip and drops his corner of the object onto the hard metal of the container ship. The clang of metal on metal is loud and reverberates across the length of the ship.
The jolt from the drop forces back together the two circuits inside the object that came loose during a storm while the container ship was at sea. When the circuits align, the object’s internal computer reboots and immediately performs a time check. The deadline was a week ago and the trigger is past due.
The object explodes instantly. The fireball vaporizes the men standing around and carrying the object and launches the shipping containers on the ship into the air. The fury of the explosion is so great that the thieves standing too close to the ship on the dock are killed by the force of the blast. Those standing farther away clutch their ears in agony as the compression wave washes over them. Every window in the port is blown out and the container ship itself lists to the side and begins to sink.
Several security officers and half a dozen CPB officers lie dead near the entrance to the port, having been overwhelmed by gunfire from the group ransacking the port. More officers and workers hide inside, tending to wounded and desperately calling for backup that will never arrive. The city behind them is on fire, and emergency services are overwhelmed. As the detonation rips apart the container ship and a large portion of the port, the surviving officers and workers gasp in shock, wondering what could have happened to cause such a terrifying explosion.
Chapter 19
When Linda and Frank arrived in Binghamton, the city was not at all what they expected. Contrary to Frank’s assumptions, the area had seen a remarkable boom in the last two years as the city enacted tax breaks that drew several large technology companies back. The area had grown immensely, adding new roads, shopping centers and several new neighborhoods as well.