Everything was clear as Michael carried Brian’s two empty gasoline cans to a pair of parked cars on the other side of the street. Sandy followed him and sniffed one of the tree trunks with interest. Shoving the siphon into the first car’s gas tank, Michael cranked the rotary wheel. No gasoline appeared in the hose. He looked up and down the street where several other cars were parked. Not all the vehicles could be empty.
Spotting Jeffrey standing back in front of his home, he could see that he was keeping vigilant watch on the street with the rifle.
Giving up on finding any gas in the first car, Michael moved to the second car. After cranking the wheel, he felt a little resistance as clear liquid started filling up the tube. He placed the other end of the siphon hose into the empty gasoline can and then continued to crank. With satisfaction, he heard the gasoline pouring into the can. Being careful not to overfill the gas can, he crimped the hose with his hand as it got near the top. He then transferred the hose to the second can and filled that one up as well.
He carried the two full cans back to the house and placed them in the truck bed. His hands smelled of gasoline, so he tried using an old rag he found in the garage to wipe the smell off. The remaining smell would go away as it evaporated, he hoped.
They went back inside the house.
Later, they all sat down at the kitchen table to share another meal made from the canned food. Michael had already packed his things into the truck, and Lorie had excused herself to put her suitcase together.
“Jeffrey, would you help Lorie with her suitcase while I draw a map for Michael?” Liz asked. “I want to show them the best way to get back to the interstate.”
“Sure,” Jeffrey said and then left them to help Lorie.
Sandy stayed in her place strategically underneath the kitchen table, waiting for scraps to come floating down.
Liz then proceeded to give Michael directions on how to use minor streets to bypass most of downtown Dayton and get back on the interstate. “You do know that she likes you, right?” Liz suddenly asked, looking up from the map.
“You mean Lorie? Sure,” Michael said. “We’ve been good friends for a while now.”
“No, I mean that she really likes you. Not just as friends.”
Surprised by her revelation, Michael just shook his head. “No, I don’t think she does.”
“You should hear the way she talks about you. Trust me, a woman knows what another woman is thinking and feeling. Haven’t you seen the way she looks at you?”
“No,” Michael answered honestly. He was perplexed. He didn’t know if Liz was just joking with him or not.
Liz giggled softly at Michael’s response. “It is true that most guys are not only blind but dumb to the ways of women. Trust me,” she said, patting his arm. “She likes you.”
“I…” Michael stammered, not knowing what to say.
“Michael, she’s a great girl. She’s a keeper. And from what little I know about you, you’re a good guy too. You picked up two strangers that you’d never met before and got them safely home. You protected both me and my brother. Without you, we would never have made it.”
“But I can’t think about Lorie that way while the world is so messed up,” Michael protested, even though, in his heart, he was hoping that what Liz was telling him was true.
“Michael,” Liz said taking his hand. “Because the world is spinning around the big toilet bowl is the biggest reason why you two should get together. You deserve each other. You both need to make the best of whatever time remains.” She released his hand and stood up from the table.
Handing him the paper with the hand-drawn map, she bent forward and touched her lips to his cheek. “Thank you for helping me and my brother,” she whispered in his ear.
A little while later, after Lorie and Liz hugged and Michael and Jeffrey shook hands, Michael started the truck and backed out of the garage. Still waving from the passenger’s seat as Jeffrey shut the garage door, Lorie turned to look at Michael. Catching something in each other’s eyes, they looked quickly away. Sandy yawned audibly in her sitting position in the backseat. Michael put the truck into gear and started down the street. They rode in silence for a while. Michael periodically checked Liz’s map and turned where she had indicated.
“Do you think they’re going to make it?” Lorie asked him out of the blue.
He knew instinctively that she was talking about Liz and Jeffrey. “Honestly, I don’t know,” Michael said. “To be completely truthful with you, I don’t even know if we’re going to make it.”
“Things are very bad out here,” she said, looking out the side window. “I’m surprised at how quickly everything fell apart and came crashing down.”
“I’m just as surprised as you are. I thought it would take months or years for things to fail. Maybe I had too much confidence in the human race. Or maybe I didn’t have any idea that the system was as fragile as it was. I can’t believe the power grid failed so soon.” After checking Liz’s map, he took a right at the next intersection.
“I guess I should have watched more of those end-of-the-world zombie movies.”
Michael chuckled. “I’m glad we don’t have hundreds of thousands of reanimated corpses shambling toward us.” He took the next left, and they could see the interstate ramp ahead.
“As long as you can walk faster than the zombies, you’ll be fine,” Lorie smiled.
“You mean, as long as I can walk faster than you…”
Changing the subject, Lorie said, “I’m glad you were brought up by parents who taught you survival skills.”
“Even though I know some survival skills, I feel totally unprepared for this,” he said, indicating the world beyond the front windshield. “I don’t think anything could prepare us for what is happening. Right now, I’m just flying by the seat of my pants and praying that I make the right choices. Even something as small as turning left instead of right could get us killed. Or letting two people wearing red bandanas get away so they could gather more friends…”
“I have faith in you,” she said, and then she reached over and patted his hand with her own.
Michael pulled around some cars and then drove up the ramp to I-75. Once back on the interstate, he began weaving in and out between the stopped vehicles.
“I had no idea that we were so dependent on electricity,” she commented.
“I knew losing electricity would be bad, but I had no clue it would be this bad. I think the biggest impact that I didn’t think of was not being able to get gasoline from the pumps at the stations.”
“I thought the worst thing that could happen was we wouldn’t have lights. And I thought we could easily overcome that problem with flashlights and candles. I didn’t even consider the disaster that my hairdryer wouldn’t run.”
“The horror,” Michael said. “Don’t forget the curling iron either.”
“Seriously though, without electricity, people can’t cook, they can’t use their phones, and they can’t even heat their homes in the winter. As a society, we are completely dependent on electricity. I know that I am…or was.”
“Unless people know how to work around those problems, they don’t have much of a chance.”
“Just think about something as simple as bread. Instead of going to the neighborhood grocery store and picking out a loaf from shelves full of different brands, we’ll have to make it. And just think about the process of making bread, all of the steps required. We’ll have to have access to, or grow, wheat. We’ll have to grind the wheat by hand. Somehow we’ll have to add yeast and other ingredients. Then, finally, we have to bake it without the use of an oven.”
“Looks like I won’t be eating any sandwiches for a while.”
She looked at an empty car as Michael drove by. “It’s like we’ve been teleported back in time before electricity. This is like the Wild West again. No law. No army. Nothing. We are back in the 1800s.”
“I think you just hit the nail on the head.”
Chapter 20
Thus far, the traffic on the roads had been light. But that was because they were traveling through farm country. South of Dayton and all the way to Cincinnati, the area became more densely populated. Minor cities and towns appeared every couple of miles.
They saw their first running car as they got close to Cincinnati. It was driving in the opposite direction. The car didn’t slow down as they passed each other. Michael kept driving and watched the car’s taillights disappear from view in his mirror. They had to be trying to escape the city.
Michael asked the question he had been avoiding this entire trip. He didn’t want to ask it because he didn’t want to know the answer. “What are you going to do when I finally get you home?”
She turned her head to look at him. He forced himself to look straight ahead as she answered. “I really don’t know. I guess I’ll do whatever my parents want me to do. I never really thought about it. I mean, I need to stay with my parents, right?”
“Yes, family is very important. I was just thinking that maybe you and your parents might decide to come with me to my parents’ retreat. You’ll be safer in a remote area than trapped in the city.”
She looked out her side window. “I really don’t know, Michael. We’ll just have to wait and see. I haven’t given much thought to the future yet.”
“Just think about it.”
Michael didn’t want to say goodbye to Lorie yet. He had recently said goodbye to Brian and Scott knowing that he would probably never see them again. Then, he had just today said farewell to Jeffrey and Liz. He didn’t want to part paths with Lorie. He wanted her to stay with him. The thought of never seeing her again made his insides twist up.
But when it came down to it, if he were the one who had to choose between staying with Lorie or meeting up with his parents, he would have to choose his parents. He really didn’t want to think about it. Maybe Lorie was in the same predicament…if what Liz told him had any truth to it.
As they drove closer to I-275, the interstate bypass that circumvented metropolitan Cincinnati, the freeway became very congested. Even though I-75 opened up to four lanes of traffic, it was still jammed full of useless metal. Michael brought the truck to a stop as they approached a barricade of cars that completely blocked their path.
Wary that this would be an ideal place to set up an ambush, he had Lorie move over to his seat and get behind the wheel of the truck as he got out to scout ahead. He ran up to the nearest car and jumped up on the hood for a better view. He could see the I-275 interchange ahead as I-75 went over the bypass. But between here and there was a carnage of vehicles.
From his elevated position, he looked at the mess ahead, trying to mentally trace a path. It was like one of those maze games for kids where you had to draw a path for Johnny to follow to get through the hedgerows to the treasure. He jumped down to the pavement and got back in the truck.
He pulled the truck as far to the left as he could until he reached the breakdown lane. There was a car ahead that was wedged between the concrete wall and another vehicle. Michael got out of the truck once again and wiggled his way around the stuck car. He had to climb over the hood to get completely around the car. Facing it, Michael realized that this car was not completely empty. Looking back at him was the decaying corpse of the male driver. Michael prayed that the car was in neutral as he bent down and tried to push the car backward. It didn’t budge.
Unfortunately, the car was in gear, which meant that he had to manually put the car into neutral in order to roll it. That meant he had to get close to the grisly remains. Bracing himself, Michael went over to the passenger’s door and opened it. A putrid smell buffeted his senses, making him reel backward and gag. Eyes watering, he put his left arm over his nose and approached the car door again. He reached in slowly with his right arm, trying not to touch the body. Leaning in farther than he wanted to, he finally reached the gear lever and popped it into neutral.
He closed the car door quickly and sucked in the cool, fresh air. He stood there recovering for a moment and looked back at his truck. Sitting in the driver’s seat with the rifle, Lorie waved at him encouragingly and smiled. She had to have seen what Michael had done. Sandy had climbed into the passenger’s seat and was also watching him.
Michael waved back and smiled to show them everything was all right. He climbed over to the front of the car again and pushed. This time it started to roll backward—a little at first, but as Michael continued to push, the wheels started moving faster. When he managed to get enough clearance for the truck, he stopped pushing and let the car roll to a stop.
He got back into the truck and took a deep drink from his water bottle. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, Michael drove the truck down the left breakdown lane. After a few hundred feet, they came across one more car that was blocking their path. Instead of getting out this time, Michael slowly moved the truck forward until the front bumper guard connected with the rear of the car ahead. He put the truck in the lowest gear and then used the truck’s eight-cylinder engine to forcibly push the car out of the way. The parked car protested at first, but the tiny compact model was no match for Michael’s big truck.
In the clear, Michael drove on. Just ahead, the freeway started to rise as it passed over I-275. To get to his home, he would have to go west on the bypass. However, he had to go east to get to Lorie’s house. He could see from here that all the ramps off of and onto I-275 were choked full of cars. It was an impossible mess to get through. It would take them forever to try to move all those cars.
He drove off the freeway onto the grass. The ground sloped down steeply as it approached I-275, but Michael thought the truck could handle it. Making sure they were going straight down, he kept his foot on the brake as they slowly descended. The truck rolled over some uneven patches, and they bounced up and down. At one point, the tires hit something, and the truck wanted to veer to the right. Michael thought he was going to lose control, but he wrestled with the steering wheel and forced the truck back to where he wanted it to go. He both heard and felt the cargo in the back of the truck shift as they rolled down the slope.
When they reached the bottom, Michael sighed with relief and started going east on I-275. He noticed that Lorie was still gripping her seat belt tightly. In the backseat, Sandy had her ears down and appeared to be nauseous.
After driving for another thirty minutes (which under normal circumstances should only have taken ten), Michael turned off the interstate into a more affluent section of town. After another twenty minutes, having encountered no major obstacles, they finally turned the corner leading to Lorie’s community. Driving up the pristinely groomed entryway, Michael’s heart was heavy, and he felt a twinge of depression. He knew that he would only be with Lorie for a little while longer. Then she would be gone, out of his life, forever.
“We made it!” Lorie exclaimed with glee. Her joyful countenance was infectious, and Michael felt happy for her.
Going up the cobbled brick entrance to Candlestick Estates, Michael marveled once again at the grandeur of the subdivision. Black, wrought-iron gates towering sixteen feet tall guarded both the entrance and exit lanes. Stone pillars on the far side of the massive gates reached up toward the sky and then arched over toward each other, meeting in the middle. There, the guardhouse stood with a window for watching approaching traffic and a door where the security officer should be checking them in.
On previous trips, the guard would come out of the house with a clipboard and pen. Security cameras strategically placed on the arch would be recording the vehicle and license plate. After checking Lorie’s and Michael’s names against the list of current homeowners and approved visitors, the guard would smile and wish them a good day. He would then reach inside the door and push some unseen button, and the massive, motorized gates would slowly swing open.
But today, Michael could see that the guardhouse was empty. As he pulled to a stop in front of the gates, he could see they were chained shut.
“And there doesn’t appear to be anyone in the security office. I wonder how we’re going to get in…”
Michael looked to both his right and his left. The community was well secured with a stone wall that surrounded the property. Not only decorative, the large, eight-foot wall also kept the traffic noise from the nearby street from penetrating the community and annoying the residents. On the top of the wall was another six feet of black, wrought-iron fence that matched the gates. With Gothic spikes on top, the fence was meant to deter potential intruders.
As Michael was looking at the fence, wondering how they would get in, Lorie touched his arm. Breaking his gaze, he looked to where Lorie was pointing. There, on the other side of the black, metal gate, a policeman appeared wielding a shotgun in both hands.
The policeman waved the shotgun at them, and Michael didn’t understand whether he meant for them to turn around and leave or to get out of the truck. Hoping that he meant the latter, Michael got out of the truck.
Pointing the shotgun at Michael, the policeman shouted, “Stop!”
Michael froze and lifted his hands.
“Turn around slowly,” the policeman commanded.
Michael did as he asked, and when he was facing the gate again, he stopped turning. He was wondering if they had made a mistake coming here.
“What are you doing here?” the man in the uniform demanded.
“I’m bringing my friend home,” Michael answered, indicating Lorie, who was still sitting in the truck.
“What is her name?” he asked.
“Lorie Silverstein,” Michael answered back.
The policeman glanced at Michael’s passenger, referred to a list, and said, “Have her exit the vehicle too. Slowly.”
Lorie did as he asked and made the slow circle like Michael had done.
Influenza: Viral Virulence Page 20