Apocalypse Weird: Genesis (The White Dragon Book 1)

by Bolz, Stefan

  In front of her, a green fireball shot up into the sky. A millisecond later, an explosion rattled the car. She heard windows break in the nearby houses and people scream for help in utter panic.

  She thought about stopping the car to see if the people inside needed help. But she didn’t want to leave the Jeep and possibly risk not finding her way back to it. She decided that she needed to try to get to Jack first. So she drove on, fully aware that in doing so, she abandoned people who might be in dire need of help.

  “Drive,” she whispered. “Just drive.”

  She saw the flames ahead as light green tongues against a dark background. It helped her see the shapes in front of her better, like dark shadows of things before the sun. She found Little East Neck Road and turned right, leaving the fire to her left. She passed what she thought was Silver Gym. She recognized it by the row of parked cars.

  Dunkin’ Donuts was next on her right where Farmingdale Road intersected. If she missed that, she would’ve gone too far west and would have to backtrack later on. She drove into the intersection, keeping to the right and steering the Jeep into what she thought was the continuation of the same road she was on. She passed a few streets on the right until she hit Sawyer again — the road her apartment was on.

  “Drive!” she told herself, even though this couldn’t stop the image of her mother from appearing in her mind. For a moment, she thought about going back to the apartment to see if there was anything she could use. She was getting thirsty, and even though she wasn’t hungry at the moment, she hadn’t eaten since last night and low blood sugar always made her nauseated. She decided against it and drove on.

  That was the moment when she made the mistake. There were two ways to get to Bay shore. One was via Sunrise Highway and 231, which turned into Deer Park Avenue. From there, she could have turned onto Grand Boulevard which was a straight shot that ended one block from the industrial complex and Corbin Avenue. But Kasey decided to cross Sunrise Highway and drive up to Southern State Parkway. It was only one exit from there to get to Deer Park Avenue and Grand Boulevard. She had only ridden on those roads as a passenger, never as a driver. Like all teenagers, she’d rarely paid attention to where she was and most of the time was texting with her friends or checking up on her Instagram account.

  Were she a more experienced driver, she would have known that Southern State Parkway was a heavily travelled highway and major east west connector. When she got onto the ramp, two hours and twenty minutes after she had passed Sawyer Avenue, she didn’t know it yet. But less than a minute later, she almost crashed into the car in front of her. It stood thirty feet from the on ramp to the parkway, toward the right side of the lane. The driver had probably gotten onto the ramp when the blindness hit.

  Kasey couldn’t see that, for the next seven miles, the Parkway — from her location all the way to Islip Terrace — was packed with stopped cars, piled up cars, turned-over tractor trailers and the dead and wounded bodies of those who crashed when the blindness hit. She saw none of it. What she did see were several green shapes in front of her.

  By now, she knew they were car roofs. Her sight was limited, not only in how much she could see but also how far. After about fifty feet, everything was completely dark.

  But when she drove around the car and onto the Parkway, she realized that she had made a mistake. It dawned on her the moment she saw the green shapes ahead. There were fifty, maybe a hundred of them. Some stood by themselves, others must have crashed into each other. She thought of how terrifying it must have been for the drivers to suddenly go blind while going sixty miles an hour. And once they got out of their cars — if they got out of their cars — and walked a few steps, they might not have found their way back.

  Kasey stopped the Jeep and turned it off. For a moment, she sat there listening. It didn’t register at first that all she heard were birds and a few chirping crickets. Nobody screamed for help. By her estimation, it was around two in the afternoon. That meant it had been approximately four hours since the blindness hit. Where did everyone go? She decided to find out. The Jeep had a unique enough roof line that she thought she could find it again. And she thought that leaving both doors open might help.

  She grabbed the belt and holster from the passenger seat but decided not to take it with her and put it back down. She had no idea how to use the gun and trying to figure it out in the dark didn’t seem like a good idea. She took her baseball bat instead. It was aluminum, and her dad had insisted that she keep it in the car when he had given her the keys yesterday morning. A lifetime ago. At least she knew how to handle a bat.

  Kasey opened the door and got out. She walked around the other side and opened the passenger door as well. Strange. It looked from here as if most of the doors on the other cars were left open, too. She could make out the contours fairly well.

  She walked to the first car and slowly put her hand and arm through the open door. She touched the back of the passenger seat, the middle console and the driver seat. Empty. She did the same with the back row. Nothing. She went to the next car. The front doors were closed but the back doors were open. She felt the back seat. There was a backpack. A water bottle on the floor. She took it. She became aware of the flies while she drank from the bottle. It was the sound mostly. There were probably half a dozen in here.

  When she opened the passenger door, something fell against her. She let out a scream and jumped a few steps backward. When she moved forward again, she could smell it. It was slightly sweet. Her foot hit something hard and she went down on one knee. The first thing she touched was hair. It was short. Thin. When she moved her hand, she felt glasses and the stubble of a beginning beard.

  When she felt the crust of hardened blood around the man’s throat, she pulled her hand away and stepped back. Sweat was building in her right palm where she held the bat. She stood absolutely still, trying to listen for any sounds close or far. Her free hand moved over the door to the windshield. It was intact. This wound didn’t stem from an accident. The man was dead.

  Her neck hair pricked up. Part of her was utterly terrified to follow the previous thought all the way to its conclusion. But she had to. There was no choice. She assumed this had been done after the blindness occurred.

  “Check the next car,” she said quietly to herself. “Go.”

  She moved past the hood and toward the next shape. It was bigger. An SUV perhaps. For a moment she thought of the black SUV from before. This one had a bike rack on top. Thank God. Slowly, she put her arm through the open passenger door. The leather felt hot under her hands but there was nobody there. Same with the back seat. Next one.

  She took a few steps and stumbled over something on the ground. She caught herself but landed half on someone’s leg. It was a woman. She was dressed in a skirt. One shoe was missing. She lay half on her side. When Kasey reached for the woman’s head, she felt the dried blood on the woman’s blouse. She didn’t want to touch her neck and throat but she did it anyway. She found the same crust of dried blood there.

  Her stomach revolted for the second time today. Most of the water she just drank she puked back out.

  I have to get out of here, she thought. She caught a movement far ahead. From left to right moving across the highway to her side about twenty cars ahead. She only saw it because it moved and the very movement created some kind of green glare in her field of vision. If whatever this is can move as fast as it just did, it must be able to see. If it can see, it can see me. Her thoughts came in fragments. Short pieces strung together. She wished she had taken the gun. The baseball bat felt like a silly stick, not at all a real weapon, especially in pitch black.

  She moved backwards, toward the Jeep. She recognized its shape and ran the last ten feet, got in, and shut the doors and windows. Now what? That part of the Parkway had no emergency lanes. There were a few feet of grass and then bushes, trees and once in a while a guardrail. She drove the Jeep onto the grass, hoping that she wouldn’t roll over any bodies. The green s
hadow ahead moved again. And now that it came toward her it was harder for her to see it. She opened the driver’s window and stuck her head out.

  “Identify yourself!” she shouted.

  The shape moved from one car to the next, coming closer. Five cars ahead.

  “Identify yourself!” her voice cracked.

  Kasey saw that the figure held something in its hand. Something bowed, short. The green hue lay on it like a shimmer. A blade. She pushed the gas pedal down. The shadow jumped toward her car, probably trying to get over to the driver’s side. Kasey let out a scream when the Jeep hit the figure. The impact smashed the windshield. At least Kasey identified the sound as such. It was still in place but she knew it must be in a thousand pieces. The body slid off to the side. Kasey didn’t stop. In fact, she pushed the pedal down until the Jeep screeched alongside another car and she slammed on the brakes to come to a standstill.

  It took her a while to put Officer Carpenter’s belt around her waist. All she wanted to do was cry. There was a bridge between her current location and the exit. It had a guardrail and no emergency lane. If she got stuck there, it would be impossible to continue unless she wanted to backtrack and find a way down the steep incline to another road. To try to do that in the dark would be suicide. When she looked through the shattered windshield, the green shapes of the car roofs were now fractured and even less recognizable.

  She thought about kicking the windshield out of its frame but decided against it. It would be too loud and possibly alert whoever else was out there. So she stuck her head out the open side window and continued to drive. After about three hundred feet, she came to a straight, washed-out, green line to her right. The bridge. Five car lengths ahead, she reached a dead-end.

  She sat there for a moment, listening to the low gurgle of the engine.

  “You sure you want this car?” her dad had said a few weeks back when they stood at the car dealership in Lindenhurst.

  “Yes!” she’d replied. “That’s the one, dad!”

  “You know the gas mileage on this thing is gonna stink. And you’re gonna have to pay for the gas yourself.”

  “I don’t care. I can babysit some more.”

  “Well… if you’re sure, I’ll get it for you.”

  I might die. The thought cut into her memory. She had thought about dying before. But it had never occurred to her that her life would end in complete darkness, killed by some thugs in the middle of a highway on Long Island.

  It was as if her hands acted on their own when she put the Jeep in reverse and backed up. There had been a gap in the row of cars just when she’d entered the bridge. She’d noticed that most of the cars were left standing in the direction of the non-existent emergency lane. As if the drivers, the moment the blindness hit them, instinctively steered their cars to the right. Maybe the left lane was relatively clear.

  She found the opening and drove into the center lane and from there to the left. For a moment, she wished her dad had given her a Mini Cooper for her birthday. The Jeep was hard to maneuver around the other cars and much wider. But she had liked the fact that her seat was higher up than that of most cars, even large SUV’s.

  A few car lengths ahead, on the other side of the bridge, it looked as if a car had smashed into one of the concrete dividers that was so common for the highways around here. Even the largest highways on the island didn’t have a median, except some that were close to the water. In its place, there was only a low concrete divider wall separating the two directions. When Casey got to the car, she could make out that all four doors were open and its left front wheel was on top of the divider. The driver must have slammed into the wall with great speed. There was a car to its right, three, maybe four feet away. No way she would fit through there.

  She thought that if she could push the car to the side with the Jeep, she might be able to get past it. But there was another concern she had not even thought about until just now. She had no way of knowing when the gas tank would be empty. She had a full tank yesterday morning. Since then, she had driven to school, home, to the beach, home, and now here. Forty miles maybe? She had no idea how long a tank of gas would last. She felt safe in the Jeep and leaving it was not an option.

  They didn’t make a noise when they approached the car. At least, Kasey didn’t hear anything. She was thinking about what to do next and wasn’t aware of the men approaching on the other side of the divider. Her window was open but the engine noise canceled out anything from the outside.

  She let out a scream when the hand grabbed her upper arm and pulled her toward the side window. Panicked, she held on to the baseball bat that leaned against her thighs when one of the men pulled her through the window. She landed hard on her hands and knees. The pain in her left side, where her ribs had scraped along the window frame of the Jeep, hit her full force at the same time.

  One of the men yelled something at her. She didn’t understand what he said but was sure he spoke French. Another, to her right, pulled her up. For a moment, she felt his breath on her face. They can see, she thought. He pushed her toward the French guy who caught her, screamed something at her and pushed her back toward the other one.

  Kasey swung the bat out of sheer reflex. She hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t even felt it still in her right hand. But she swung it nevertheless. She recognized the impact through the bat into her shoulder, similar to when she hit the baseball on the field. She had never given much thought to the fact that she was one of the best batters at her school. Her coach had assured her that she could get a softball scholarship, should she want to. But what she had really wanted to do was surf. She had won some local competitions over the years but decided a few months ago that she wanted to travel for a year or so, to surf the big beaches in Hawaii and Australia and go to college after.

  She didn’t hold back when she swung the bat. The smacking sound, the impact she felt and the sensation of warm blood on her face, all happened at once. She swung it again, this time in the opposite direction, but only hit empty space. Someone hit her in the face and she fell, the back of her head slamming into the asphalt. Her right hand found the holster. She didn’t think, didn’t feel anything. Just moved backwards in the dark, hopefully away from her attacker. Small rocks that littered the side of the highway cut into her elbows. She didn’t feel that either.

  The gun was in her hand. She slid backwards and hit the divider. “Putain d’amateur!” someone said. It came from straight ahead. There was a sound on her right. Body movement, maybe. She registered a third guy. She felt the trigger below her finger and pulled it. The deafening sound made her ears ring. The recoil pushed her arm upward. She brought it back down and shot again, then moved her arm to the side. Another shot. A body fell to the ground. She couldn’t tell if it was the French guy or the third one. She pulled the trigger again. And again. She realized that she still held the bat in her left hand. She scrambled to her feet, half fell over the divider, found the Jeep and climbed in.

  She aimed for the barely visible gap between the two cars and pushed the pedal down. The Jeep hit the car to her right and pushed it to the side in a screeching noise. She found another gap twenty feet ahead and drove into the middle lane. The guardrail stopped. She was past the bridge. From there, she pulled to the right and onto the grass. The ringing in her ears blotted out all the other noises, including the engine. She rolled up the window on the driver’s side hoping that would protect her from another attack, realizing at the same time that this wouldn’t do.

  She didn’t remember if she had heard two or three bodies fall. She doubted that the first guy, the one she hit with the bat, was dead. Unconscious maybe, and possibly waking up in a little while. If she was still here then, he might spot her. She wasn’t sure of the other two either, and could only hope that they were injured enough not to follow her.

  She vaguely remembered the road parallel to the parkway. When she was young and sitting in the back of the car, her parents in the front seat arguing about somet
hing, she’d always imagine riding a horse next to the car. She’d follow the landscape in her imagination, jump over streams and bushes and ride, fast as the wind, holding the same speed as the car she was in.

  There was a steep drop from the highway down to the other road. Sylvan Road, she believed it was called. She saw a few cars down there — not more than mere shapes approximately forty feet below. She doubted that someone could drive up that steep incline and onto the highway. And although she had thought before that it was suicide to drive down, she was so desperate that she thought it possible now. Better than to stay here and be attacked again.

  She turned the steering wheel and drove onto the slope. All she could see was the fragmented outline of a single car all the way down. She fixed her eyes on it and let go of the brakes. The weight of the Jeep pulled it downward and after a few seconds she was going too fast and hit the brakes again. The tires locked and the car began to slide sideways. It now moved at an angle, no longer straight down. She tried to adjust the steering wheel but the Jeep slid too fast for her to do anything. She knew she had to let go of the brakes if she didn’t want to turn over.

  When she was halfway down the incline, she took her foot off the brake. The Jeep rattled and shook as it flew through the underbrush and down the hill. The windshield broke out of its frame and slid off. When she reached the road and hit the brakes, the car slid to a stop in the front lawn of one of the houses that lined Sylvan Road on the other side.

  Whenever something had been too stressful for her in the past, she’d tried to concentrate on one single thing, like a word or an image. Right now, the storm of raw emotions that washed over her made it impossible to blot anything out. All she could do was try to stop her hands from shaking.

  She let the tears come. She knew she shouldn’t stay here. She had no idea how many of the men she had shot at were actually dead. She wasn’t even sure if the one she hit with the car was alive or not. The thought of possibly having killed someone sat at the threshold of her mind. It had no emotion attached to it yet, it was simply part of the mosaic of insanity that had been her day.