“We had to get away from the entrance to the tunnels before anymore of the men came looking for Marco. Walt and I have been stocking fallback points throughout the park for emergencies. This is one of them. Hopefully he and his group made it to theirs. This is a maintenance building on the far northeast corner of the park. We picked it because it has an exit door out of the park. We won’t need to go to any of the gates to get out.” The teacher reached up and adjusted the bandage wrapped around April’s arm before continuing, “When Marco shot your Mother, the bullet grazed your arm. It’s not deep enough to need stitches but I’m sure it’ll hurt and bruise. You must keep it clean and dry to avoid any chance of infection. We have a small stock of antibiotics but you shouldn’t need them. Here are a couple of painkillers.” Mrs. Moore handed her two over the counter pain pills and April swallowed them gratefully before the older woman continued,
“Do you have another sweater you can put on? I know it’s warm up here but you need to keep the bandage covered.”
April looked around as she nodded.
“I packed an extra one in my pack but I think I must have dropped it.”
Jessica stepped forward and lifted April’s pack onto her lap.
“I snagged it when we started to run.”
April gave her friend a small smile of gratitude before opening it and rummaging through it. As they helped her get her sweater on over her wounded arm Mrs. Moore explained what they planned to do next.
“One of the first things we had the scouts bring back was bicycles and carriers. We all knew we’d need them eventually when we decided to leave the city. Thankfully, they managed to find many in those first weeks and Walter and I, with the help of Ben and Liam, stored enough for both our groups in the two fallback buildings. We have also been slowly stocking supplies. It won’t be enough to see us all the way home but with rationing it should last all of us for at least a week. My hope is once we get away from the city we’ll find communities along the way that will be willing to help us. It’s now the end of August, almost five months since the event that trapped us here. I believe that there has been enough time for the survivors to have grown crops and they may be more willing to help strangers. It’ll be a challenge but everyone in our group is in good health and can ride a bicycle so we have transportation. I don’t know what we’ll face in the coming journey but I believe in all of my students and if we stay and work together we WILL get home!”
The three students gave her uncertain nods before she pulled a small watch face attached to a chain from inside her sweater and checked the time.
“Alright, we still have around six hours of daylight left and we can move many miles in that time so, April, if you feel alright, you and the others should help the rest of the students and pick a bike to ride. Liam, Mrs. Hardsky and I will all be pulling carriers but the rest of you need to be sure your backpacks are filled with as much as you can carry.”
April frowned at her teacher. Even though the older woman seemed strong she wasn’t sure she should have the extra weight a carrier would be. She decided not to argue but reminded herself to talk to the others about taking turns pulling it. April looked around the dim building and saw her fellow students packing backpacks and the three carriers. The only other adult was moving from group to group giving advice and testing pack weights. She felt a flare of panic at only two adults to help and guide eleven teenagers through the dangers ahead. An image of her mom barking out commands with flapping hands came to mind and her eyes immediately filled with tears. April would give anything to have her here trying to control and micromanage every part of the journey. With a hard swallow, April ruthlessly pushed her grief to the side. Jessica’s words from earlier in the day came back to her. If she wanted to survive, she’d have to push her feelings aside and focus on the future. Once they were safe she could grieve.
By the time everyone was ready and lined up at the exit door, the pain pills had taken effect and the pain in April’s arm was a dull throb. She watched Liam slip out the door and held her breath until he came back and waved the all clear. He held the door as Mrs. Moore exited first, helping her guide her bike and the bulky carrier through the doorway. The teacher would be leading the group with Mrs. Hardsky in the middle and Liam bringing up the rear. Mrs. Moore had told them the route they would try to take and had given them all locations to try to reach if for any reason they got separated. They would be using the freeways as much as possible and first heading northeast before swinging northwest once they cleared most of the urban sprawl. Mrs. Moore wanted them to travel north through California’s central valley. She had explained that it was a four hundred mile stretch of farmland that had used to supply the United States with most of its fruit and vegetables. She was confident that they would find surviving communities along that stretch that would help them. None of them knew that the first part of their journey through the city was the exact same route that other students from their school had taken all those months ago.
As the line of bikes moved through the door April took a deep breath. This would be the first time she and the others would leave the safety of the park since the day it all began. She just hoped they were ready for what they would find.
Chapter 11
The first thing April noticed about the streets they were traveling on was the silence. The day this all began when the group had left the park and walked to their hotel, there had been many human-made noises from screaming and crying to gunfire. Now the only sound was their tires humming on pavement and the occasion piece of garbage blown by the light wind. The street was still filled with abandoned and crashed vehicles but there were no people in sight. April felt a cold chill creep down her back at the emptiness all around her. When they biked past an apartment building the blank windows felt like eyes condemning them for violating the silence. When the overhead sign announcing the freeway they would take north came into view she breathed a sigh of relief. April knew she’d feel better on the concrete walled road than here on the wide open surface streets. She felt like they were being watched and was afraid that they would be attacked at every building they had to pass. Once they were on the freeway she hoped there’d be some protection from the sound barrier walls that lined it.
Her arm throbbed in time with her pedaling and her bottom had gone numb but she was grateful for the bikes and the distance they ate up with every revolution of the tires. In less than an hour they had covered more miles than they ever could have while walking and the speed gave her a small sense of safety. The freeway was just as covered with vehicles but there was a clear path along the side that they traveled along and except for a few tight spots they made good time. She had stopped watching the others in their group and just concentrated on the bike in front of her. Her mind constantly flashed back to her mother and the memories of before the fateful school trip as well as the past few months in the tunnels. April had no idea that a steady trail of tears flowed from her eyes.
Murmurs and gasps ahead of her made her look up and slow her bike down. Looking ahead, April saw some of the girls looking off the freeway to the west. When she looked that way a gasp of her own escaped her mouth. A huge burned-out mall was destroyed but what was so amazing was the clear outline of a large airplane that jutted out of the wreckage. Looking the area over, she could see that the fire had spread and a major swath of homes and businesses had been burned. Shaking her head and getting up to speed again, April tried to imagine the chaos and terror of that first few days when people and families had been forced to flee. With no emergency services and no news outlets to inform them, so many people would’ve stayed in their homes until the fire consumed them. With a jolt of realization, she understood that this had happened all over the country, and millions would’ve died. It had been so easy not to think about the huge scope of the disaster while being safe underground. The anger and bitterness in Marco’s eyes started to make more sense. He’d been on the streets and watched life as they knew it die along with many people w
hile the Disney tunnel survivors had enjoyed electricity and safety.
During those first few hours, April kept her head down and didn’t look at the passing scenery until Mrs. Moore called for a break. Lost in her own dark thoughts, she’d ignored her body and it wasn’t until she tried to dismount from her bike that she realized how dry her mouth and throat were. Even worse was the first step she took that had her staggering painfully to her knees. After months of inactivity and hardly any exercise her legs felt like wet noodles that wouldn’t hold her up. She let herself fall back onto her butt and struggled to get the heavy pack off of her back. When the strap scraped along her wounded arm she could only groan. It was just one more ache and pain to join the many others in her body. Finally locating a bottle of water, the first drink dropped into her empty belly and made it cramp. April had burned many calories and hadn’t eaten anything since early that morning. She tore the wrapper off a granola bar with her teeth and took tiny bites in between sips of water. Once her head stopped being dizzy and her belly settled she looked around at the others in her group.
Only Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Hardsky were still on their feet. All the other students were sprawled out on the hot pavement like she was. Everyone was feeling the effects of biking for the last few hours. The pain and misery on the faces around her matched her own and with a pang of guilt, April saw how isolated she’d made herself. She had gone to school with most of these girls since grade one and she knew each of their names but in the last five months she’d hardly spoken to any of them except Liam and Jessica. At first it was the shock of leaving her mom and then when she had shown up, it was embarrassment at her condition. This group of people were her only connection to home and she’d ignored them and not given any thought to how they were feeling just as lost and alone as she was. Mrs. Moore had said that they needed to stick together and help each other if they wanted to make it home. April finally understood that just traveling together wouldn’t be enough. She’d have to make more of an effort if they were going to be a team.
A distant scream shattered the silence and almost everyone flinched. It was the first human-made sound they had heard since they had left the park. Everyone, including April, scrambled to their feet and looked around trying to locate where it had come from. Molly and Kara yelled out and pointed to the east in confusion. The two girls were best friends and April couldn’t remember ever seeing them apart since this all started.
Mrs. Moore had stopped them on the top of a rise for their break and they had a wide open view of the neighbourhoods all around them. Everyone rushed to the side of road and leaned against the guardrail to see what the girls had pointed to. The freeway was high enough that it didn’t have a concrete sound barrier wall, only a chain-link fence. April scanned the streets below them looking for the source of the scream. Movement caught her eye as two people dashed out of the parking lot of what looked like a major grocery store. From this distance it was impossible to tell if they were male or female. As the two figures moved quickly down the street April wondered what had caused them to scream with such terror.
“Oh my God! What is that?” came from Molly and had April looking around to see what had caused the girl’s outburst.
At first, she thought it was leaves blowing across the grocery store’s parking lot in the direction the two people had run but the rolling carpet of brown soon revealed itself as something living. The harsh whispered gasp from Mrs. Moore had April’s eyes widening in shocked disbelief.
“RATS!”
April couldn’t take her eyes off of the sea of moving brown that spilled out of the parking lot and erased the black of the roadway. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the thousands of rodents it would have to be to cover such an area and more and more were still filling the parking lot.
Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Hardsky started to pull students away from the guardrail. Once they had all the shell-shocked teens back at their bikes, the teacher addressed them.
“That was one of the dangers we’ll have to be on guard for. With so many people dying and no intervention, the rat population would’ve exploded. We’ll also have to watch for roaches and other insect swarms. We were very lucky at the park because they had control poison in storage that Walter and the scouts made sure to lay out often. It kept the rat population from venturing in to the park and overwhelming us.
“I know everyone is tired and sore from the bikes but the sooner we get out of the urban area the less chance we’ll have of running into this problem. When we find shelter for the night we’ll be careful to select somewhere that didn’t house any food source and that will help a lot.
“We have at least three more hours of good light and at the rate we have been traveling I believe we’ll make it to the junction where we’ll change freeways and start heading northwest. I would like us to get at least that far before finding shelter for the night so if everyone has rested enough and tended to their needs we should get going.”
April wasn’t the only one groaning as she swung her leg over the seat of her bike. She had high hopes that after a few more hours of pedaling her whole body would be numb, not just her behind.
For the first hour after their rest, April marveled at the scenery. In some areas they biked past, there were huge swaths of burnt-out destruction. It was jolting to pass from such areas into neighbourhoods that looked completely normal and untouched except for brown overgrown lawns. With no water flowing and no one to tend to once lush green spaces, the grass had baked in the hot California sun. April knew that the urban area around Los Angeles was huge but the scale of it really hit home as they rode mile after mile through the urban wasteland. There were stretches of the road that passed through industrial areas with silent factories. What bothered April the most was the lack of people. With a population in the millions, she just couldn’t figure out where everyone had gone. Where they all dead inside their homes or had the entire population just walked away from the area? She just couldn’t understand how that many people could disappear.
They came to a stretch of roadway that had been under construction when the EMP hit and a billboard on the side of the road caught her eye. Someone had climbed up to it and painted over the ad with spray paint. There was an arrow pointing down towards a huge paving machine with the words “World’s Biggest Paperweight!” in bright red paint. Without thinking, she let out a snort of laughter that crashed through the silence and had her fellow students turning to look at her in concern.
With both of her hands needed to steer her bike, she nodded towards the sign ahead. No one else laughed out loud like she had though. The small smile on her face felt weird and she tried to remember the last time she’d laughed. They may have been safe in the tunnels before Marco came but there hadn’t been a lot of happiness. The last time she’d had fun and felt like a teenager was when she and Liam had jumped from balcony to balcony to open hotel doors. The smile left her lips. She felt old and weary. Her birthday had passed while they were in the tunnels with no one knowing and her mom too lost to remember. She was seventeen now but she didn’t think she’d ever feel like a kid again.
One of the riders on a bike ahead of her started to wobble and in the few seconds April took to recognize it as Molly’s the bike swerved and crashed into an abandoned car. The girl went down in a tangle of wheels. By the time the others skidded to a stop and the fallen girl’s best friend, Kara, and Mrs. Hardsky rushed towards her, she’d shoved the bike off of her and sat sobbing on the hot dirty pavement.
Mrs. Hardsky checked the crying girl over and used some water and a spare shirt from her pack to clean the scrapes on her knees and elbows. Kara talked quietly to her friend until the sobbing changed to small hiccupping cries. After a pat on the shoulder to comfort the girl, Mrs. Hardsky stood up and moved back over to the main group. She scanned all of the student’s faces and with a frown turned to Mrs. Moore.
“She’s okay. Nothing broken that I can see but I think we should find somewhere to stop for the day. She’s ex
hausted, they all are. If we push too hard today no one will make it far tomorrow. I know we need to get out of the city as quick as we can but none of us are physically in the condition to push this hard. We have to work up to such a long day or someone is going to get seriously hurt and then we’ll all be stuck until they heal.”
Mrs. Moore looked at the faces of her weary students and nodded.
“I agree. Let’s walk our bikes to the next exit and we’ll look for a suitable place to spend the night.”
There were groans of relief from many of the students. They were all hurting from the long ride. Liam went to Molly and Kara and helped them up. He checked over Molly’s bike for damage from her crash and to make sure it would make it to the rest stop. He and Walter had pulled apart a few bikes for parts and they had strapped extra wheels to two of the carriers. He hoped they wouldn’t have too much damage to the bikes as they went farther. Liam was good at repairing the basics but if they ran out of spare parts they would have to search for extra bikes. He didn’t think they would have much luck finding any after so long a time had passed since the EMP. They had been really lucky the scouts had found as many bikes as they had in the beginning.
The group moved at a much slower pace as they walked their bikes towards the next exit off the freeway. April was happy that they were stopping and the numbness in her butt was slowly going away as she walked. She was nervous about where they would spend the night. After seeing the sea of rats and Mrs. Moore’s warning about roaches, April’s skin crawled in revulsion at the thought of being anywhere near the vermin.
Once they finally made it to the exit, they found that the incline made it even more difficult to control the speed of the bikes, and April’s arms burned with the strain of trying to hold the bike back. It was sweet relief to make it down to the fairly level roadway. The students stayed silent and many heads swiveled around looking for any threat that might be lurking in the businesses that lined the street. They had gone a couple hundred meters when Mrs. Moore pointed to a car dealership. They all followed her off the street into the parking lot where lines of once shiny new vehicles sat in dusty rows. They came to a stop in front of the showroom. Its walls were glass but the grime and dust made it impossible to see in to the sales floor.
Stranded (Book 4): City Escape Page 8