Thom stuttered, trying to come up with a witty retort, but the old man had him beat. Thom smiled after a moment. It was sort of nice to be the “young pup” of the group. He was always a good ten or fifteen years older than his peers at the cube-farm, some of them fresh out of college. He could have been their dad. Thom hoped those kids were doing all right in this.
Their eyes finally adjusted, and the two of them headed out into the alleyway.
Scanning left and then right, and then left again, like a child getting ready to cross the street, Herbie finally motioned for Thom to follow him.
The city smelled of fire and brimstone. Thom’s best guess was that the sewers had begun to back up. To make it worse, the smell of stringent smoke hung thick in the air. From the smell of things, he guessed the fires were still going strong in other parts of the metro.
Between the sewage, decomposing bodies, and lack of clean water, Thom thought, this place was outbreak ground zero waiting to happen. They needed to get far away before that happened. Making a mental note, Thom gave himself 48 hours to be out of town and somewhere a bit more rural. It was an aggressive schedule and likely meant they wouldn’t get any sleep tonight.
Walking farther into the alley, Herbie grabbed a piece of cardboard that had been resting against the wall and yanked it out of the way to reveal…a shopping cart.
“Still here. Good deal. Let’s go.”
Thom stood there, a bit confused, but followed behind as he pushed the cart into the street.
“We’re headed north. Broadway Bridge gonna be clogged with cars…not to mention it runs right by the downtown airport. Your friend was right about the rail line. That’s our best bet at this point. No train gonna be running just yet. Too many computers on those things these days. Diesel engines, though. Might be they can get some replacement parts somewhere that managed to avoid the magnetic pulse. Would do this country a lot of good to get a train up and running.”
“How do you figure, Herbie?”
“Well, we get a train running from the wheat fields of Kansas to the granaries downtown, we save a lot of lives and keep good wheat from rotting in the fields. If we can get enough folks to harvest it. Gonna take whole communities to keep one another alive. Lone wolf stuff ain’t gonna cut it for too long. Those folks may have a year or two of supplies stocked up, but what happens when they get sick? No one to take care of ’em. What happens when they need to start growing their own food? Ain’t enough hours in the day to trap, hunt, garden, harvest, preserve the food, cook the food, eat the food.”
“I gotcha. So, trains are important. I’ll keep that in mind if we run into any engineers.” Thom grinned, thinking he’d made a joke, but Herbie just nodded.
“That’s the most sensible thing you said all day.”
Thom just couldn’t win.
The streets were nearly deserted; not even the birds were chirping. The two men continued on, passing through a couple of blocks of completely burnt-out houses, where the rubble was still too hot to even get close. It was like someone had dropped a bomb on the city, which was true, in a way.
“Herbie, I gotta ask. When do we need to start worrying about radiation? Fallout, all that stuff?”
He laughed. “Thom, there won’t be any fallout from this. Maybe some political fallout. No radiation, though.”
Thom was confused. Again. Obviously.
“The EMP was set off by a nuke exploding over us, though, right? Isn’t that what happens? I’m young, but I remember seeing those old duck-and-cover videos from the tail end of the Cold War.”
“Thom, you’re going about it wrong. Fallout is what you get when a nuke detonates at ground level. Basically, it irradiates all of the debris and dust and dirt, and the superheated air lifts it up into the lower atmosphere where it can mix with water droplets and be carried hundreds of miles away to rain down on the land, causing all sorts of horrible things.”
Thomas nodded, understanding.
“So no ground level explosion, no fallout?”
Herbie smiled and clapped Thom on the back.
“Now you’re following. So, thankfully, that’s not what our attacker intended to happen, or you and I would have never seen it coming. We’d have been vaporized, or burned to a crisp, or just suffered lethal radiation poisoning and died a relatively slow and painful death.”
“Cheery. Thanks, Herbie.”
“No problem, Thom. But you’re missing the big picture.”
“Big picture?”
“Someone goes to all this trouble to nuke the United States to cause as much havoc and loss of life as possible. Those opening minutes probably killed more than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined, but they left our land radiation-free.”
It dawned on Thom then. “You’re saying there’s going to be an invasion.”
Herbie nodded.
“Afraid so, son. Afraid so.”
Chapter 6 — Kill it with Fire
The bowling pin lamp came crashing down, catching the attacker squarely on the wrist, blowing through the little resistance offered by his upraised arm. A sharp crack reverberated through the room, and the scream of Anna’s attacker married with the sound of Anna’s battle cry in the air.
Her momentum carried Anna into the corner of the dresser that she had stacked in front of the door, catching her right in the solar plexus and causing the wind to leave her in a hurry.
The girl gasped, trying to recover her breath. Finally willing herself to her feet, Anna raised the pin once again in a desperate effort to strike out, and her attacker screamed, “The building’s on fire, you crazy bitch! We need to get the hell out of here!”
Moments later, she smelled the smoke, and adrenaline flooded her weary veins.
Taking a moment, she really looked at her “attacker.” He was a good-looking guy, about her age, wearing a dark hoodie with a yellow tiger’s paw on it. His steel grey eyes had a look of mischief to them, but right now they were filled with pain. Stubble marred his face, and he held his left wrist with his right hand.
“Name’s Anna…sorry, I thought you were here to rape and kill me.”
“Rape and…? No! I’m in charge of floor safety for emergency drills! The sirens weren’t going off, so I had to go door to door. I knew someone was in here, and when you didn’t answer, I was worried you’d passed out or something!”
She eyed him skeptically. “You…live here?”
“Haven’t you been to any of the floor meetings? Yes, I live here. My name is Brian. I live right around the corner from you. You’re Anna, right?”
She nodded, still a bit on guard. “Yes…how do you know that?”
He pointed to the paper tiger paw on her door that had “ANNA” printed in a cheery, bubbly script.
She hung her head and started to laugh, her defense mechanism whenever she felt embarrassed.
“Get your head in the game, Anna. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“I didn’t survive whatever the heck just happened just to die in a fire. That would make too many Internet trolls way too happy,” she muttered under her breath.
Thankfully, she’d already packed her backpack full of clothes and personal hygiene items to use during break. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she wasn’t sure when, or where, she’d have food again so readily at her disposal. Opening the mini-fridge, she tore through it with abandon, scooping boxes of protein bars, a couple of cans of soda, and some day-old pizza that she’d kept from the pizza place up the street. Turning to her nightstand, she spotted a white bottle of caffeine pills, something she only rarely used as a study aid when she needed to pull an all-nighter, and she opted to dump them into her bag as well.
“What the heck are you doing? We need to leave, now! This building is on fire, and no emergency crews are coming to help. We get hurt, or stuck
, and we’re going to die here.”
She nodded, satisfied, and hefted her bag onto her shoulders. Looking down, she noted she was still wearing her flip-flops from earlier in the day. She took a minute to swap out to some more comfortable shoes and a thick pair of socks, then she headed into the hallway.
The smoke started to get thicker as she neared the elevator, and out of habit she pressed the button. Immediately, she realized how foolish that was and began to head to the stairwell. Her hand reached out, gingerly hovering over the doorknob, feeling for heat. It was warm, but not hot, so she went ahead and opened it.
When she did, thick, black smoke poured out, blocking her vision completely. Brian quickly pulled the door closed with his good hand and ran to the opposite end of the hall to try the door there.
Feet pounding against the floor, Anna ran like the wind to follow him, knowing that their time was running short.
Brian yanked open the door, and smoke poured out, breaking her heart. She was close enough to feel the heat from the flames in the stairwell below them.
Yanking the door closed, Brian blitzed back into Anna’s room.
“Hey! What’re you doing!” she snarled, chasing him back into her room.
He was tearing the sheets and blankets from her bed. “Making a rope! We’ve got to get out of here, Anna. Help me tie these together!”
Brian frantically worked at tying the sheets together, frustrated when he was unable to get the knots tight enough.
Anna reached into her backpack and pulled out a length of thick nylon rope.
“Hope this’ll do,” she said, glad that she and her father were about to go hiking.
He just stared at her like she was some sort of alien creature.
“Who has rope in their backpack?”
“People who like to rappel, that’s who.”
“You rappel?” he asked incredulously.
She tucked her hands into her hips. “Now’s not the time to get macho and question my prowess, mister manly-man.”
He nodded, and the two ran to the common room and out onto the balcony. Six floors was a long way up, and Anna realized that she’d need to lower her new friend, and he’d need to repel one handed. This would be fun.
“One level at a time, Brian. We do this slowly, and we get back to the ground. Before we celebrate.”
He nodded at her, his face ashen.
After a few moments working with the rope and some carabiners, she nodded to herself, apparently satisfied.
“I’m going to use a climbing technique called lowering. You use it sometimes when someone you’re climbing with becomes injured. Basically, I’m going to tie you into this rope and help lower you, and then I’ll follow you down, and we’ll repeat. Do you follow?”
Brian nodded again, sweating profusely, his eyes a bit glassy.
“Are you okay, Brian? First time with ropes?”
His Adam’s apple bobbled up and down as he gulped. “Heights. Don’t like heights.”
Anna smiled sweetly and rested a hand on his shoulder. Her brown eyes met his, and she held his gaze for a moment, stepping close.
“I’ll be gentle,” she teased, gently leading him to the edge.
“Anna?”
“Yeah, Brian?”
“Sorry for calling you a bitch.”
She grinned.
“I’d say I was sorry for breaking your wrist, but it serves you right for coming into a girl’s room uninvited.”
He laughed weakly and tested his hand.
“Don’t think it’s broken, thankfully. Probably just a nasty bruise.”
Dutifully, he hoisted himself over to the outside of the railing and stepped back, allowing her to lower him down. When he was just even with the 5th floor railing, he used his momentum to swing him over onto the balcony.
“Clear!”
“On my way.”
Moments later, Anna’s feet touched down. Flipping the rope like some sort of magical Tolkien elf, she pulled the remainder down from the 6th floor, and the duo repeated the process.
When both of their feet were finally firmly on the ground, they let out a cheer, and Anna wrapped Brian in a hug that lasted a split second longer than it needed to. The firelight bathed them in its glow, working its magic, gleaming off of the sweat on their faces.
Anna stretched out her hand. Brian took it in his, and they watched their world burn, happy to be alive.
Chapter 7 — Tin Foil Theories
“Wait, wait, back this up. You’re telling me that we were attacked and that someone is ballsy enough to just come in and take over?”
Herbie shrugged noncommittally. “Could be that it plays out that way.”
“Unbelievable. We go from being the number one military power in the world, and then one sucker punch and someone can just step in and take over. That’s one heckuva glass jaw, Herbie.”
“You’re right about that. Folks have been trying to warn the government about it for years. Partisanship wrecked any attempt to harden the grid.”
“So how long until you think whoever it is goes all Red Dawn on us?”
Herbie chuckled, “Now there’s a reference I understand. To answer your question, I doubt it’ll be like that.”
“Don’t think it was the Russians this time?”
“Oh, I think it’s the Russians, all right. There were articles all over the place last month about a series of satellite launches they’d done. There was some suspicious space debris that was moving on its own toward other satellites over the U.S. Guessing that’s where they hid the nuke that did this.”
He waved a hand. “Getting me side tracked. Won’t be like any movie. I think they learned their lesson in Ukraine. They’ll need to be more subtle. They need to come in the saviors instead of the conquerors. They’ll seal a deal with China to rebuild our transformers. Of course, it’ll be months until they get here. Most likely, the U.S. will default on at least some of its loans by that point in time. Bad guys will do their best to rescue whoever’s left from the government, create a puppet regime. Loans get called in and we can’t pay, so those new ‘leaders’ of our country annex us off a chunk at a time to pay the bills to our saviors.”
Thom thought about it for a minute and nodded slowly. It made a scary amount of sense.
“You’ve given this a lot of thought, it sounds like.”
“Let’s just say that if I’d had any money, I’d be a heavy investor in tinfoil hats.”
Unable to help it, Thom forgot himself and let out just about the biggest belly laugh he’d had since before he’d lost his wife.
Yesterday he had felt that pain so keenly, but now, with the events of the last 24 hours, it seemed like a different life altogether. In a strange way, the end of the world had jump-started his healing process.
It gave him a mission. An honest-to-goodness, urgent, incredibly important mission: to find his daughter and keep her alive until order in the world was rebuilt or restored.
They walked in silence for a while then.
“Herbie?” Thom ventured. “What’ll you do when that happens?”
“Thom, I swore an oath to this country when I was drafted. I meant every word of it.”
A smile met Thom’s lips and stretched to greet the corners of his eyes. “Thought you’d say that, Herbie.”
“Did ya now?” he asked, a twinkle in his jaundiced eye.
“Sure did. But Herbie, I know a bit about that oath. Doesn’t it require you to serve the President and any officers above you?”
He nodded. “There’s the rub.”
“So if what you’re thinking is true—if the folks that did this to us set up a puppet government—what then?”
“Duty is to defend the Constitution against enemies foreign a
nd domestic, Thomas Monroe. But let’s not worry about that just now. No sense in worrying over what hasn’t happened yet. Plenty we should be thinking about. We’ll be lucky to live to that point in history unless we’re smart and start to think things through.”
Thom laughed again, then, and Herbie eyed him wearily.
“Sorry…something struck me as funny. Was thinking about that movie again and imagined paratrooping Commies landing in Columbia, where my daughter goes to school.”
“I fail to see what had you so tickled about that possibility, Thom.”
“Well, Herbie, you know how the kids in that movie name their little guerilla band after their high school mascot?”
He nodded.
“The mascot for the high school in Columbia is the Kewpie Doll.”
Without missing a beat, Herbie thrust his arms into the air and bellowed, “KEWPIE DOOOOOLLLLS!”
Thom laughed until he cried, and then they found themselves at the bridge.
The bridge was wide enough to allow for some foot traffic to the left of the rails, and with a lot of effort, Herbie was able to push his cart along.
Thom had finally had enough.
“So, Herbie…what’s with the cart? I mean…I know you’re…umm…”
“Homeless?”
“Yeah. Is that the P.C. way to say that?”
Herbie just laughed.
“Nothing P.C. about being homeless in a country as great as this one, Thom. To answer your question; it’s got my stuff in it, so it comes with me.”
Thom smiled and tried to peek under the tarp hiding the contents of the shopping trolley.
“What kind of stuff are we talking about, here? My guess would be a shopping cart full of mint-condition Ferbies. Am I right?”
Breakdown: Season One Page 6