by Harley Tate
“How much to fill her up?”
Billy closed one eye as he thought it over. “For you, free of charge.”
Grant waved him off. “I’ll pay for it.”
“I don’t think I’ll have a lot of customers eager for gas today. It’s free, I mean it. But if you want to buy some food or drinks, that’ll cost you.”
Grant thought it over and nodded. “Fair enough.” As the owner headed back inside the store, Grant waited by the Cutlass. A few minutes later, he heard a generator gurgle and roar to life. The hum of the motor drowned out everything else. He wouldn’t be able to hear a car, a band of thugs, or anything.
He checked the shotgun over, confirming it was operational and surveyed the street. The sound of a generator could attract a crowd.
A minute later, Billy huffed over and motioned for Grant to open the gas cover on the Cutlass. He did and waited as Billy turned the pump on and used his key to override the payment option. Grant pumped a full tank of gas and Billy reversed the process, shutting down the pump before turning off the generator.
The silence hit Grant like a slap. He hurried back inside the store and grabbed a bottle of warm Gatorade, a stack of Power Bars, and a map of North Carolina. He set it all on the counter.
Billy rang him up. “Fourteen eighty-two.”
Grant handed over his twenty and Billy handed him the change. “Thanks.”
“Thank you. If you’re ever back in Charlotte and you need to fill that beauty up, just swing on by. I’ll take care of you.”
Grant nodded and walked out the door. He checked his watch. Eleven thirty already. He hurried to the Cutlass and started it up. Even if he could get up to highway speeds, a full tank would only get him two hundred miles, maybe a bit more.
Grant pulled out the map. Taking I-85 would get him to the hospital in two hundred and fifty miles give or take, but he’d never be able to navigate it. With all the cars stalled out on the highway, he’d be lucky to make it a mile.
Back roads would be even longer. Grant frowned. He’d have to find gas and another map somewhere in South Carolina. He put the car in drive and eased onto the road. He’d be lucky if he reached the Atlanta city limits before dark.
Chapter Fourteen
LEAH
Midtown Atlanta
Saturday, 1:00 p.m.
Leah followed Andy as he searched for the source of the noise. She couldn’t shake the words of the dying man loose from her head. “The more I think about it, the more I think he’s right.”
“Who?” Andy stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to listen before altering course.
“The fire bug.”
“You must be suffering from smoke inhalation.”
Leah cut him a glance. “That’s you with all those cigarettes you’ve been smoking.”
Andy smirked. “If it’s the end of the world like you say, then what does it matter?”
“What he said makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t.” Andy held up his hand. “Hush! I hear it again.” He closed his eyes and listened. “It’s that way.” He took off toward the east, darting down a side street with his head tilted toward the noise.
Leah rushed to follow. “Why are you even searching for whatever it is? We need to be headed north.”
Andy waved her off. “If there’s a TV, that means someone has power. We can check the news, maybe make a call.”
“It’s probably some guy with a generator like the one that just blew up. We don’t even know if any news channels are broadcasting.”
“Someone is, somewhere. They have to be.” Andy kept hunting, stopping every ten steps to listen. As they approached the park, more and more people appeared. Some walked dogs, others stood in little groups, chatting and shaking heads. On the stoop of the closest building, four or five people sat with beers in their hands and confusion on their faces.
It was a cold day to be standing around outside, but what else could they do? Without power or working cars or calls going through, talking was all people had left.
Cars clogged the main street up ahead and Leah’s frown deepened. She hurried to catch up to Andy. “We’re wasting time.”
“No, we’re not.” He pointed with a grin. “There it is! See!” His finger jabbed up toward the second story of an old apartment building at the intersection of the side street they had walked down and the clogged street fronting the park. Through the window, Leah could make out a faint blue glow.
While she stayed on the sidewalk, Andy scurried into the alley between the building and the one beside it, darting around potholes and a dumpster to stop below the iron balcony.
He cupped his hands and shouted toward the open window. “Hello!”
Leah rushed forward. “You shouldn’t be shouting!”
“Why not? I want to watch that TV.” He tried again. “Hey, guy up there!” Andy spun around beneath the window before grabbing the balcony post and giving it a shake.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find a way up.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Leah grabbed his arm. “We need to go. Someone’s going to come down here and ask what’s going on. Come on.” She yanked harder, but Andy shoved her off.
“Hey, guy with the TV!”
A head poked out the window. “What the hell is it?”
“Is that a TV you’ve got running?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Can you get the news?”
The guy glanced back inside. “Maybe.”
Andy reached into his pocket and pulled out a ten dollar bill. “Ten dollars for ten minutes.”
“Five minutes.”
“Seven.”
“Deal. Unit 201.”
Andy’s face glowed. Leah fought the urge to throw up.
She followed Andy back to the front of the building with unease percolating in her gut. They eased through the antique gate separating the building’s courtyard from the street and walked up to the front door. Someone had propped it open with a brick.
“Guess I should have tried this first.” Andy shrugged and pulled the door open before ushering Leah inside.
She stood on the faded lavender carpet and looked around. The building had seen better days. Paint peeled off the trim. Dirt and grime coated the brass mailboxes, turning them brown. Foot traffic had worn a threadbare strip down the center of the stairs.
Andy didn’t seem to notice. He took the stairs two at a time and bopped up and down at the top, barely able to wait for Leah to catch up. He banged on Unit 201’s door.
It unlocked and a grizzled old man approaching eighty stuck out a shriveled hand. “Ten bucks.”
Andy deposited the money in the man’s palm and he stepped back. The smell of dust and old man hit Leah and she brought her sleeve up to her face.
“It’s crowded. Watch your step.” The man turned around and left the two of them standing in his open door.
They eased inside and Andy shut it behind him. Crowded was an understatement. Stacks of newspapers lined the narrow hall, some taller than Leah herself. They scooted by single file, passing a kitchen that Leah refused to look at. The smell alone would give her nightmares.
Andy stopped on the threshold to the living room and Leah squeaked by to stand beside him. Oh, my. The man took hoarding to a whole new level. Every surface was full of… stuff.
What must have been the dining room table was covered with three feet of magazines. All along the wall cardboard boxes overflowed with everything from baseball mitts to broken lamps to a… Is that a cat carrier?
Leah shook her head. One glimpse of an emaciated cat and she was leaving. She focused on the old man. “You live here?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“It’s a little messy.”
“Maid quit.” The man fumbled with a rabbit-ear antenna attached to an ancient tube TV.
Andy stepped into the room, avoiding the largest piles of debris. “How are you running that?”
The man snorte
d like it was obvious. “Marine battery and a 400-watt inverter.”
Leah drummed her fingers on her arm as she waited for the old man to change the channel. Pixels distorted the picture. Leah squinted.
A reporter stood outside what looked like a Spanish-style mansion. The man fiddled some more. The picture came in along with the sound.
“Like I said earlier, Chip, we’re on hour twenty of the largest blackout in history. The entire eastern half of the United States is without power.”
Leah shuddered.
A man’s voice answered on the TV. “For those just tuning in, we’re speaking with our reporter on the street, Lainey Sinclair. Where are you, Lainey?”
“I’m standing outside the British Consulate-General here in Los Angeles. According to British intelligence, there is credible evidence that the blackout was caused by a nuclear weapon.”
“Do they know any details?”
“According to my sources, they claim a high-altitude missile carrying a nuclear bomb detonated at two o’clock Pacific Standard Time yesterday somewhere above Washington, DC.”
“What does that mean?”
“The bomb set off what’s called an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, that has knocked out power across the eastern half of the United States, from Ohio to the coast and from New York City all the way to Orlando. We’re getting reports that Miami and portions of upstate New York and into New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine are online and fully operational.”
“When will the power be restored?”
“We don’t know, Chip.”
The man’s voice boomed out of the speakers. “You’ve heard it folks. British intelligence is confirming what our sources on the ground have seen. Combine the grid failure with what appears to be a mass disruption to late-model cars, and we’ve got a disaster on our hands.”
Leah sucked in a breath and wrapped her arms around her middle. It was as bad as she feared. Andy stood beside her, frozen to the spot, his mouth working back and forth as he processed the reporter’s news.
It wasn’t just a blackout. It was a terrorist attack or an act of war. Why wasn’t the news station talking about who was responsible? Where was the United States government in all of this?
The woman on TV appeared exhausted, with blonde hair pulled back off her face with a headband and a dress that held more wrinkles than Leah’s scrubs. Had she been reporting since the power went out?
She cleared her throat and stepped closer to the camera. “What’s more important, Chip, are the latest reports from intelligence gathering around the world.”
The reporter glanced behind her before continuing. “We’ve heard from credible sources that the EMP is only the first strike. More assaults to our country are coming. Some may even hit right here in Los Angeles.”
Andy took a step forward, the tan draining from this face.
“W-What Lainey? What sources?” The camera cut away to a man fumbling on a news desk with his hand up to his ear. The elusive Chip. He frowned at what must have been a video feed of the other reporter. “Where are you getting this information?”
The view cut back to Lainey. She pulled an earpiece from her ear like it was a distraction and addressed the camera. “Sources are reporting that the EMP was intended to cause panic and confusion as a cover to buy time. The real attack will be devastating. Everyone needs to listen.”
She stepped closer. “Sources report up to twenty-five nuclear bombs are now en route to major cities across the United States. They could already be here. We don’t know when they will detonate or if the government will stop them in time. We—”
The station cut back to the man at the news desk. He plastered on a panicked smile. “We’re sorry folks, we’re experiencing technical difficulties with Lainey Sinclair’s news feed. As soon as we troubleshoot the problem, we will head back out to the Consulate.”
He smiled as the station switched camera angles. “Until then, let’s go to the lifestyle desk for the recipe of the day.”
As Leah stared in shock at the television, the old man pushed out of his chair. He turned the knob and wobbled the rabbit ears and Kramer on Seinfeld skittered into view.
“What? No!” Leah stepped forward. “We need to find another news station.”
“Your seven minutes are up.” The man hobbled back to his worn recliner and flopped into the seat.
“But didn’t you hear her? She said more attacks were coming! Nuclear bombs for goodness’ sake!”
“I’ll believe it when I see it. Now scram.”
Leah turned to Andy. He didn’t move. She yanked on his arm. “We need to get somewhere safe.”
He nodded like his head was floating above his body, disconnected from reality.
Leah stepped toward the old man. “You shouldn’t stay here. It’s not safe on the top floor with the windows open.”
He waved her off. “I’m safe enough.”
“You should go to the basement and hide. Take some food and some books. Stay there for a while.”
“I’m too old to hide. I’m fine right where I am.”
“What if a bomb goes off?”
He rubbed his grimy neck. “If it happens, it happens.”
Leah turned to Andy, who still stood there, unable to process what he’d seen and heard. “We need to go.”
He nodded again, this time a bit more focused.
Leah spun around, looking at the piles of all the junk. Everything in the place had to be forty years old. Her eyes paused on a key rack above the phone. She turned back to the old man. “Please tell me you have a car.”
Chapter Fifteen
LEAH
Midtown Atlanta
Saturday, 2:30 p.m.
The garage hid in the back corner of the apartment building, half-basement, half-forgotten concrete hideaway. Tandem parking spaces eked out their existence between support pillars and storage lockers.
Leah held up the old man’s keys. When she’d asked if he had a car, he’d waved at the keys like he was pointing down the hall to the bathroom and told her to take them. Leah had stood there, dumbfounded for a minute, until he shouted at her to take the keys and get out. He’d charged ten dollars for seven minutes of television, but then gave them a car?
It made no sense, but neither did his apartment or the fact that he used a battery to watch reruns of a show twenty years off the air. She shook it off. Whatever the reason, she was filled with gratitude. The faded and cracked leather keychain with a Buick logo on top gave her hope. If the car was half as old as the man, they might have a means out of the city.
Leah replayed the reporter’s words. A nuclear attack on American soil. Twenty-five bombs. If Atlanta was a target, where would it strike? The Capitol most likely. Downtown.
She glanced up at the single window in the garage. It gave a view of the alley and the dumpster outside, but beyond the dented metal container, midtown and downtown cuddled beside each other. If the bomb was as big as the one Andy spoke about, they would be incinerated where they stood or flattened by the collapsing building. They needed to get out of the city.
Leah turned to Andy. He stood by the oversized garage door, staring at the mechanism. He hadn’t been in his right mind since watching the TV. She’d dragged him out of that man’s apartment and down the stairs to the basement. The whole time, his lips moved with words, but no sound came out.
At some point, he would have to come to grips with reality for his sake. Leah pulled out her phone and checked the battery. Twenty percent. Not great. She turned on the flashlight and held it up to inspect the garage.
She found the old man’s car in parking space eighteen. An ancient Buick station wagon with wood paneling and more chrome than Leah’s bathroom outside the city limits. She stuck the key in the lock and turned. The door barely cleared the nearest pillar.
Brown pleather and the stench of fifty-year-old cigarettes and fast food assaulted her nose. She eased into the driver’s seat. A pair of tree air fresheners hung from the r
ear view and Leah adjusted it for her height.
Here goes nothing.
She stuck the key in the ignition, found the brake pedal, and turned. It cranked and sputtered. No! Come on. She pumped the gas like she used to do on her mom’s Mercury Sable when she was first learning to drive and tried again.
The engine groaned, teasing her with promise. She waited a minute and tried again. On the fifth turn over the car struggled to life. Yes!
Leah leaned forward and rested her head on the enormous steering wheel. They would get out of the city after all. She let the car idle for a few minutes before backing out of the parking space.
As she cranked the wheel harder and harder to the right, she looked around in a panic. What was going on? Her little Chevy back home would be doing wheelies with as much as she’d cranked the wheel. Leah swallowed and tried again, cranking it farther and farther to the right as she managed to turn the car enough to clear the pillar.
She remembered a friend’s car years ago when she had just gotten her license. A real beater of a hatchback, it had the same massive wheel and Leah could barely keep it on the road. Her hands had bobbled up and down the wheel like a little old lady in a cartoon. She looked down at the wheel and it clicked. No power steering.
Pressing her hand over her mouth, she thought about the clogged streets and traffic jams all over the city. Would she be able to make it? Could she drive this boat on wheels to Hampton without crashing? Leah cranked the wheel and straightened out. I don’t have a choice. I have to try.
She put the car in drive and eased up to Andy. As she cranked the window down, Leah stuck her head out. “Figure out how to get the garage door open?”
He still stood in front of the mechanical box bolted to the garage floor. The Buick’s headlights broadcast his shadow ten feet tall across the shut metal door. He didn’t answer.
“Andy!”
He jumped. “What?”
“The garage door. Can you get it open?”
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out his crumpled box of cigarettes. He tapped it on his palm. Nothing came out. He peered into the opening.