Far down the street, Jim spotted something.
He couldn’t make out what it was.
But it was moving.
And getting closer.
It wasn’t a vehicle.
It was larger than a person.
“Everyone set?” said Jim, throwing himself into the driver’s seat, depressing the clutch, and cranking the engine.
He didn’t wait for them to respond before he had it in reverse and the engine was whining as he sped out of the driveway.
Jim sprung the wheel, swinging the car around.
In the rearview mirror, the moving thing was close enough that Jim could make it out.
It was a horse.
And a cop.
A mounted police officer.
“Looks like they got ahold of the police somehow,” said Jim, throwing the Subaru into first.
As far as he knew, only the Rochester city police had mounted cops. There’d likely be plenty to deal with within the city limits. Very soon, if not already. It was too bad they were wasting their energy sending a cop over here to Pittsford.
Who knew what the communication system looked like. Maybe they’d gotten hold of some radios that worked.
Who knew.
Jim wasn’t going to wait around to find out.
Aly’s sobs filled the car as Jim sped down the road. The engine was pulling a little harder than normal with all the extra weight. The interior was packed full of trash bags that stuck out at awkward angles, since they were packed full of all manner of household things.
Jim hoped that Rob and Jessica, who’d done the majority of the packing, had had the sense to gather things that really would be useful.
They’d be OK once they got to the lake house, as long as they had food.
At least that was what he was telling himself.
They’d wait it out for a month or so. Until things calmed down. Doing some quick mental calculations, he figured they might have food in the car for four people for a month. Light rations, of course. Difficult, but entirely doable. Especially with fish from the lake.
16
Aly
Aly sat in the back of the crowded Subaru, completely wracked with guilt. Guilt like she’d never felt before, guilt that she hoped, somewhere deep down inside of herself, that she’d never feel again. Ever.
She’d stopped sobbing. Her throat felt dry and almost as if she was choking, as if it was partially constricted. Her face felt flushed and tingly, and her hands felt like claws, as if she couldn’t properly move her fingers. She’d felt those effects before, during an especially bad anxiety attack in which she’d hyperventilated. There was some physiology term for what had happened, but she couldn’t remember what it was.
Her mind was nothing but a fog. There were still tears in her eyes, and her heart was pounding.
How could she do this? How could they do this? Leaving her mother like that, lying on the floor in her own home. What would happen to her body? Would it just rot? Would someone open the house again in a few weeks to be met by a horrendous stench? The bugs would swarm and start to devour the corpse.
Her death was a shock, but it really shouldn’t have been. She took heart medication, and had taken it for years. Maybe she’d forgotten it that morning, given what had happened. Or maybe the disease had finally progressed to the point that the medication wasn’t any good.
Aly couldn’t focus on the conversation in the car. Jim, Jessica, and Rob were talking about possible routes to the cabin.
It was good Jim knew how to get there, because Aly felt as if she wouldn’t have been able to talk coherently. If she’d been the only one who knew the way, she doubted she’d have been able to get them all there.
“But the highway’s faster,” Rob was saying. “And look, we don’t have that much gas. And from what you’re saying, it doesn’t sound like the gas pumps are going to work.”
“Can’t we siphon gas from them?” said Jessica. “The gas is still there after all. It’s just that the pumps don’t work.”
“I don’t know how we’d get at the gas,” said Jim. “It’s in underground tanks. It’s not like we can just stick a tube in there and start sucking away. Plus, the tanks are below ground. It’s not like the gas is going to just magically flow up into our own tank.”
“Gravity,” muttered Rob. “Damn gravity.”
“I’m doing the best I can with the gas,” said Jim. “We’ll get better gas mileage at about 50 MPH. I think we can get there on what’s left in the tank, even if we take the back way.”
“You really think the highway’s going to be packed full of cars?”
“Think about it,” said Jim. “Everyone who was driving on the highway, well, they’ll still be there, for the most part. And people who’ve figured out something is wrong, they’ll be on the highway, too. The ones with working cars, that is. It’ll be a mess.”
“Can’t we just drive by and check it out?” said Rob.
“You mean go through the on ramp and then get stuck there, with no way out for miles until the next exit?”
Rob didn’t answer.
Aly found herself slipping back into her memories. Her eyes felt impossibly heavy, and they closed slowly. She drifted off into something resembling sleep. But she was still awake.
It’d happened to her before, towards the end of an anxiety attack. Her body had been so exhausted by the hyperventilation, the intensity of the thoughts, that she’d closed her eyes and sunk into a trance-like state.
Memories of her mother flashed before her eyes. Memories from when Aly’d been a little kid. They hadn’t grown up in Pittsford. In fact, she’d grown up in one of the roughest, poorest neighborhoods of Rochester.
When Aly’d been a kid was around the time that Rochester had gone through its most severe economic crisis. The big tech companies in the area, which had supported the economy for so long, had started their huge layoffs. Suddenly, huge swaths of the local, loyal workforce were sitting around with nothing to do, with no hope and no prospects.
Aly’s parents had been hit as hard as anyone. Her father hadn’t been the type to just sit around and do nothing. He’d had his pride, but it hadn’t kept him from getting the first job he could find, which was bagging groceries. He’d said it was a fine job, that there was nothing wrong with it. And that was true, but when Aly’d gotten older she’d realized how hard it had been for him to make the transition from engineer to grocery bagger.
Her mother had gone back to school, gotten her teaching certification, and become a kindergarten teacher.
It was only when Aly’s grandparents had died and her parents had inherited quite a bit of money that they’d moved to Pittsford.
Her father had kept bagging groceries, saying that he needed something to keep busy, until he’d died.
With the memories flooding through her, Aly was only vaguely aware of something going on in the car around her. Fragments of conversation reached her, and she recognized her husband’s voice, but she didn’t really register on the meaning of the words. They were just that, words.
At some point, Aly drifted off to an exhausted sleep. It was her body trying to protect her, trying its best to protect her from the horror of what had happened, of what was happening.
Strange dreams filled her head. A man without eyes was walking near her on the road, speaking to her in a strange, robotic voice, saying “I wear this veil because I know I must protect you.”
Then the man vanished, and her dreams shifted to the city. To Rochester. Aly was walking down the normally deserted street near the bar she used to go to when she was younger.
In her dream, the normally empty street was now full of people. And they were chanting and screaming. There was an excitement in the area, but it was a terrifying kind of excitement. It was anger, intense and amplified by the huge crowd of people. There was something that they wanted, and they were going to do anything they could for the chance to have it again. Their demands weren’t clear, but their
intensity was. And Aly knew intuitively, in that dreamlike way, that the crowd would destroy anything just to get a glimpse of what they wanted.
And what did they want? She thought it might be the life that had been taken from them, the life of apparent comfort and ease, the life where bad thing only happened to people on television and in the newspapers, where safety reigned and life and death were subjects for books and movies.
In her dream, Aly was fleeing the crowd. On foot. Barefoot, for some reason. She ran down the street, away from the crowd, away from the towering empty skyscrapers. Her bare feet slapped against the pavement and soon her feet were bleeding. When she turned behind her to look, there was a trail of the blood that had flowed from her feet.
Somehow, she’d run so far that the crowd was nothing but a pinprick off in the distance. She wasn’t tired in her dream, and she wasn’t in pain, despite her bleeding feet. But when she turned around to look, she could see the skyscrapers as clear as a day.
And they were burning. Billows of blackened smoke surged upwards and around the buildings. Intense orange flames lapped at the sky as the buildings were engulfed in fire.
“Aly,” came Jim’s voice. “Aly, wake up.”
His hands were on her, shaking her awake.
“What?” said Aly, waking up suddenly. “What’s going on?”
Adrenaline pumped through her.
Her heart was beating fast. Pounding.
Her eyes were wide, as she looked around frantically.
She was looking for the threat.
Her body was in survival mode.
And they all were.
The reality of the situation had finally hit home for Aly. It might have happened before, but this time it was for real.
17
Jim
“Aly, it’s OK,” said Jim. “It’s OK.” He was holding onto her, trying to be gentle. He spoke in a gentle voice. “Everything’s OK.”
Of course, everything wasn’t OK. Society was likely breaking down around them. Or it was about to.
But, for the moment, things were OK for their little group.
“We’re at the lake house,” said Rob.
“We made it?” said Aly. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yeah,” said Jim. “We thought it was the best thing for you, considering what you’ve been through.”
It looked like Aly was fighting back tears, but she didn’t start to cry.
And Jim was glad. Because there was a lot to do.
“But how did we make it?”
“We got lucky,” said Jim. “There wasn’t much happening on the back roads. A few stationary cars. A few people, like us, heading out of town, with their cars loaded down. A few, but not many. Most people don’t seem to realize what’s happening.”
They’d gotten to the lake house, but that didn’t mean they were completely safe yet. There was work to be done. Supplies to be unpacked. Preparations to be made. They needed to work on securing the lake house against any potential attacks.
It would be their fortress, partially removed from the world. But not quite removed enough.
There’d be struggles in their future, and instead of just waiting until the threats found them, they’d do all they could in the meantime to prepare.
“You OK, Aly?” said Jim.
Her eyes were wide, but she looked right at him and she nodded.
“Good. Now you wouldn’t know where your uncle keeps a spare key, would you?”
“Did you already knock?”
“Yeah. He’s not here.”
Aly breathed a sigh of relief.
“My thoughts exactly,” said Jim. “I was remembering that time he got drunk and…”
Aly waved a hand at him. “No need to continue the story,” she said.
“But that’s how they all start. You don’t know which story I was going to tell.”
“Exactly,” said Aly. “They all start the same, and they all end the same, too. He screwed something up. Badly. I hope he’s OK wherever he is, but I’m glad he’s not here. There’s a key hidden in a tree.”
“A tree?”
“Yeah, I’ll go get it. You remember Jordan. He’s anything but conventional.”
“You need me to come with you?”
Aly shook her head. “I’ll be right back.”
Jim nodded, grabbed a plastic trash bag full of gear, and started hauling it towards the front door.
Aly’s Uncle Jordan’s house was nothing fancy. It was a single story home. Small, just two bedrooms, a small kitchen, and a living room.
It had once been a quaint vacation home, but its appearance and function had changed dramatically ever since Jordan had moved in. He’d winterized it, since he lived in it year round in the freezing lake-effect winters of the north.
But aside from installing plenty of insulation, new windows, and everything else, Jordan hadn’t done a lick of work on the house in years.
In fact, he’d let the house really start to decay. When Jim and Aly had last visited, the roof had leaked in three separate places. It would have been a simple fix to replace a couple shingles. Jim had actually offered to do it, but for one reason or another, Jordan had refused, using his drunken logic to justify his nonsensical position. There wasn’t any use arguing with him. He’d just keep going and going, exhausting you with words without meaning.
The house needed new siding and plenty of other repairs.
None of that really mattered now.
Jim was happy they had somewhere to stay. Somewhere that was hopefully far away from the madness that surely would engulf Rochester and the surrounding metropolitan areas.
Pine trees surrounded the house in all directions. That was good. They’d provide some cover and camouflage during the winter months.
A narrow path through the trees led to the lake, which was only about fifty feet away.
On the other side of the gravel driveway, there was a large shed. Its roof had partially collapsed, and Jim didn’t know what was inside. Maybe an alcohol still, for all he knew.
“Got it,” said Aly, rushing back to the Subaru in the driveway, holding the key triumphantly.
Jim took it from her. “I’d better go in first,” he said. “Just in case.”
Most of the gear, in trash bags, had been deposited by the squalid front door with chipped and peeling paint.
Jessica, Rob, and Aly stood behind Jim as he put the key into the lock.
He opened the door slowly, Ruger in hand, just in case.
Jim nodded his head at them, indicating to follow him. Jessica had her gun out, and Rob held the handgun that they’d taken from the men in the truck, although Jim was sure that Rob didn’t have the slightest idea how to use it.
He supposed it was better than nothing. Possibly. Either that, or a liability.
The interior of the house was dark, and there was a stale smell that hung in the air.
But there was no one inside.
Together, they checked all the rooms, including the mud room, which Jim had forgotten about.
“This place is filthy,” said Rob.
“It’ll work,” said Jim. “We’ll have plenty of time to clean it up.”
Rob was right. There were empty bottles of alcohol everywhere, mostly big bottles of vodka, which Jordan must have switched to sometime in the last few years.
There were also cans of beer, and plenty of empty wrappers of fast food.
“It’s a good thing we brought the food we did,” said Jessica, opening up some of the cabinets. “There’s hardly anything in here.”
“Looks like he was eating most of his meals out,” said Jim, thinking of the fast food wrappers. “Come on. Let’s bring everything inside.”
Jessica and Rob disappeared out the front door, and Aly hung back for a moment with Jim, tugging on his arm in a sweet, intimate kind of way. She hadn’t done anything like that in a long time, and Jim suddenly felt the pain again of the separation.
“What happens if my uncle
comes back?” she said. “Don’t you think he will?”
“You don’t think he’ll want us here?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say with him.”
“Well,” said Jim. “If everything collapses, he wouldn’t survive here on his own. We’re bringing the food. He’ll just have to consider it a trade. Services and food for shelter. It is his house, after all, and we can’t kick him out if he shows up. But something tells me he won’t.”
“You think something will happen to him?” She spoke in a soft, worried voice.
Jim just looked at her and didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say.
Aly said something else, but Jim wasn’t listening. Her words ran over him like water. He was lost in thought for a moment.
“Listen,” said Jim. “I’m sorry about your mom. But there’s going to be plenty of time to process it. We need to get to work now. And we need all hands on deck. You think you’re going to be able to help?”
“Yeah,” said Aly, simply, adding nothing more.
“I know we’ve had our issues over the last few weeks,” said Jim. “But this is way more important than any of that. So we’re going to have to get along. We can’t let our arguments put our lives in danger. Agreed?”
Aly nodded.
The front door swung open and Rob appeared, carrying the duffel bag and one of the loaded down trash bags.
“Coming through,” he said. “A lot of food here. Open up the freezer, would you, Jim?”
“Not sure it’s going to do much good,” said Jim, looking down to see that the refrigerator had been unplugged. “Looks like Uncle Jordan was planning on being away for a while. I bet he emptied it all.”
Sure enough, the fridge and freezer were empty.
“We’ll just plug it back in,” said Rob. “What’s the problem? And hurry up, this shit is heavy.”
It only took a moment before Rob realized just how dumb what he’d said was.
“Oh yeah,” he muttered, his face flushing still visible in the low light. “Well then, what are we going to do with all this food?”
Final Chaos_A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survival Thriller Page 10