by D. Gideon
It irritated me.
“I don’t agree with this at all. It’s a violation of my Constitutional rights,” I said. “But I don’t suppose that makes any difference, does it?”
Officer Decker’s expression went flat. “The Governor has declared a State of Emergency, ma’am,” she said. “It’s my understanding that a National State of Emergency has also been declared by the President. If you feel that the safety and security of myself and my fellow officers, your fellow travelers, and the bridge itself are less important than your rights, you are free to use the exit ahead to turn around and continue on your way.”
I mentally bit my tongue and tried to put on a warm smile. “I understand, Officer. I just wanted to voice my displeasure.”
“There’s a lot of that going around,” she said.
“Climb up here and look,” I said, shrugging. “We’ve got more than enough to get across.”
She looked up at me for a moment, then shook her head. “Please exit the vehicle—for my safety.” When I didn’t immediately respond, she dropped the official tone. “Look, I don’t want to climb into your lap, and it would be too easy for you to physically hurt me in that position. Just get down for a minute and let’s get this over with, okay?”
“Sure,” I said, and climbed down. She pointed towards the front of the truck—I assumed so she could still see me—and waited until I had moved about ten feet from the truck, then climbed up. I heard Marco talking in a low voice and her return laughter.
Mel’s head appeared around the back of the truck. “What’s going on?”
“They’re checking fuel levels,” I said. “Making sure people don’t run out of gas on the bridge.”
“They can’t do that,” Mel said. “Did you ask to see the law letting them do that?”
I shook my head. “We need to get home, Mel.”
“If they do this what are they going to do next?” she said. “Body cavity searches to make sure you don’t have to stop and take a shit on the bridge?”
“It’s a National State of Emergency, with special powers from Congress,” I said. “Take it up with your mother.”
Her head disappeared, replaced by a single middle finger. A moment later, I saw a cloud of cigarette smoke flow out of the back of the truck, and grinned. Score one point for me.
Officer Decker climbed down, and when she turned around, her entire demeanor had changed.
“Okay, this is the part where I tell you that the security checkpoint up ahead is going to consist of a full bag search, vehicle search, and pat-downs,” she said. “Again, if you disagree-”
“We get to turn around,” I said, crossing my arms. “Why not say that before checking the fuel level?”
“Gives me a chance to see how you’ll react,” she said, shrugging. “I get to weed out the crazies before they can get up to my guys and blow up a bomb or something.”
“So you’re the bait,” I said, and she nodded. “You really think someone’s going to try that? During all of this?”
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “A few hours ago I sent two cars of possibles down the exit ramp. Beards, full body covers on the women, the whole thing. They’re probably sitting over in that plaza right now.”
“It looks pretty bad over there,” I said. “There’s people looting in broad daylight.”
“Not my problem,” she said. “I’m not private security. My immediate concern is the bridge, and only the bridge. So you agree to going through a full security checkpoint?”
“Yep,” I said. “I don’t agree with it, but we need to get home, and to do that, we have to cross this bridge.”
“That you do,” she said, and moved away from the truck. “You’re free to proceed. Thank you for your cooperation and drive safe.”
I climbed back into the truck and she waited for me to pull forward so she could talk to the next car. I gave Marco a look.
“You were flirting, weren’t you?”
Chapter 5
Tuesday, September 4th
Annapolis, Maryland
Marco feigned an innocent look.
“You’re supposed to be my fiancé, and you’re flirting with the first woman we come across,” I said. “That doesn’t make our engagement look very convincing.”
Marco’s brows furrowed, and he cocked his head. “Are you angry that I could have blown our story, or are you angry that I was flirting with another woman?”
“I just think it was a dumb move,” I said.
Marco watched me for a moment, then turned back forward with a little smirk.
Just after the bend in the highway, adjacent to the exit, the single line of cars was split into two and stopped. Maryland Transportation Authority officers were going over each car, even walking a German Shepherd around them. Whether they were sniffing for drugs or bombs, I couldn’t tell. A large group of people sat in the grass between the highway and the exit, where three more officers were doing pat-downs and going through any bags they were carrying. As we sat waiting for our turn to be searched, the crowd sitting there grew by at least ten people. The officers weren’t keeping up, and soon the mass of foot traffic would overwhelm them.
We were waved into one of the spots and I pulled forward. The officer told me to shut off the engine and exit the vehicle, and told Marco to stay inside. I got out, and he walked me to the guardrail separating the eastbound and westbound lanes, where he instructed me to stand with my back to the truck.
“Ma’am, my name is Officer Green. I’m going to take your information and that of your passengers while my fellow officers search the vehicle,” he said. “But I pulled you out alone to ask if you are under any duress.”
“Duress?” I said. “No, why would you think that?”
Officer Green watched me carefully, his eyes glancing down to my hands and back up. “Because you’re a young lady traveling with a man who appears to be foreign,” he said.
“That’s Marco, my fiancé,” I said. “I’m not under any duress.”
His eyes went straight to the ring on my finger and one eyebrow went up.
“Do you have anyone else traveling with you?”
“Yes. I’ve got my friends Corey and Leandra in the back. And my dog, King,” I said, almost stumbling on Mel’s fake name. “He doesn’t like men, just so you know.”
Now both of Officer Green’s eyebrows were up. “Do you have means to secure the dog?”
“I don’t have a leash right now, but he’ll listen to me,” I said. “Please let me get him.”
“Call him,” the officer said. “And your female friend…Leah?”
“Leandra,” I said, then whistled as loud as I could. I yelled for King and Leandra, and the big dog immediately hopped down out of the back of the truck and ran over to me. He sat down right next to my leg and gave the officer a little growl. The officer backed up. Mel was slower coming over. She’d pulled her hair, except for the braids, up into a tight bun. I could barely see any purple—Corey must have helped her. She asked Officer Green if there was any trouble and he instructed her to stand with her back to me, then gave her the same drill about being under duress. When he was satisfied, he nodded to another officer, who waved a partner over and started walking around the truck, banging on it and telling the guys to join us at the guard rail.
“Has anyone actually answered yes?” Mel asked.
“I’ve pulled sixteen women and four men out of forced situations since we’ve been doing this,” Officer Green said. “Everyone’s pulled someone out. I think overall, we’re past a hundred now.”
“I did have a guy try to hop in the back of the truck while we were sitting up by the shopping plaza,” I said. Officer Green nodded.
“We’ve seen that, too. They’re sliding into pickup truck beds, hanging off the ladders on the back of campers…even had one guy trying to hold on to the undercarriage of a tractor trailer. Officers on the Kent Island side tell me it’s even worse over there.”
The guys walked up t
o us, and Officer Green separated them from us and questioned them quietly. After a moment, Officer Green let out a belly laugh. Marco walked over to me and put his arms around me, kissing me on the forehead.
“He wanted to know if you were forcing me to ride with you,” Marco said, his voice nearly a whisper. “I told him yes.”
“You what?” I said, pulling back and glaring at him.
“I said my driving scares you so badly, you threatened to withhold sex until the wedding if I didn’t let you drive,” Marco said, smirking.
“I’m going to pay you back for that,” I said, but couldn’t help chuckling. Marco pulled my back to his chest, and when I resisted, he squeezed the top of my arm.
“Fiancé,” he whispered into my ear. I tried to relax and look comforted.
“Try anything and I’ll let King eat you,” I murmured back.
“You should just let her go, Romeo,” Mel said from the side of her mouth. “She looks constipated.”
That got us all giggling, and Corey soon joined us, looking curious. I just waved off his questioning look.
The security check took about ten minutes. The officers were efficient at looking the truck over and going through our bags; even the pat downs were quick and almost cursory. They found all of our knives, except for Marco—I was pretty sure he had two more on him somewhere. While all that was going on, Officer Green was checking over our IDs and writing down our names and the truck information on his clipboard. Mel complained about the violation to our privacy, and Officer Green snorted.
“Miss Jones, if it were up to me, I’d be at home cleaning my weapons while the National Guard was out here doing this. Trust me—you’d rather have me here,” he said. He put his clipboard across the guard rail and motioned for Corey to spread his arms and legs.
“Why aren’t they here?” I asked. “You’d think with a State of Emergency, they’d be guarding the bridge.”
“You’d think that, I’d think that, but apparently our esteemed Governor doesn’t agree,” Officer Green said, patting down the length of Corey’s leg. “He’s got the Guard all hunkered down in Annapolis and told us keeping the Bridge safe is the job of the MDTA.”
“I don’t see how you can keep it safe with all of these people walking,” Corey said. “It doesn’t look like you have the manpower.”
“Yeah, that’s becoming a problem,” Green said. “We cut off the walkers at 3pm and send them back about a mile so they’re not crossing in the dark, and we cut the cars off at dusk. Without proper lighting here at the checkpoint, at the toll plaza, and out on the bridge there’s a lot of people slipping by us at night, though.”
I leaned on the guard rail and watched the sporadic traffic heading west. Cars were coming through about once a minute. The foot traffic in the median was here, too. They quieted as they walked by us, watching Officer Green with nervous eyes.
The two officers checking the truck gave Officer Green some kind of signal, and he nodded.
“Okay ladies and gentlemen, you’re good to go. Stop at the toll plaza…there will be an officer there directing foot and vehicle traffic, and she’ll tell you when you can proceed. You all don’t let any strangers into your truck, and be safe,” he said.
We piled back into the truck and drove the mile or so up to the toll plaza. All of the booths were blocked off except the one closest to the median. As promised, an officer there was letting groups of people cross in front of us to hug the jersey wall, and then she finally stopped them and let us go.
More cones directed me to drive onto the northern span of the bridge, usually reserved for westbound traffic. Today, though, the southern span of the bridge was closed completely to vehicle traffic and was dedicated solely to walkers. This is how the Bridge authority handled traffic once a year when a charity run was done across the Bay; and when that happened there’d be porta-potties and water stations set up every half mile or so across the span.
There were no water and bathroom stations today. Just a mass of people. Some of them were walking, others were leaning against the rails looking out over the Bay as if they were sight-seeing. Still more sat in groups or alone along the rails, resting. I saw one motorcycle officer weaving his way through them, moving slowly. I couldn’t see anyone in my side mirrors, so I took my time going across. It was rare that you could go across the bridge at a leisurely pace without traffic crawling up your tailpipe and blocking your view.
“This is beautiful,” Marco said. “Look—there are sailboats down in the water.”
“There’s usually a few cargo ships, too,” I said. “I don’t see any today.”
“I wonder what it would have been like to walk it,” he said, watching the people.
“It’s pretty cool. I’ve done it,” I told him. “They used to do a Bay Bridge Walk every year and had to stop for a long time because of funding. Then a couple of years ago some big event promoter made a deal with them and started doing it again. Got all kinds of sponsors, turned it into a 5k run. Most of the people still walk, though.”
A police car was approaching from the other direction, lights flashing. I slowed a bit, and gawked as it went by.
“That was one of my county sheriff’s cars! What are they doing out here?”
“Maybe the Bridge police have reached out for extra manpower?” Marco guessed.
I shook my head, watching the car getting smaller in my side mirror. It had definitely been a man, but he’d whizzed by so fast I hadn’t been able to see if I could recognize him. “Worcester County is way too far away to send help up here. They’d pull from Queen Anne’s County for sure, but not Worcester.”
“His lights were on. Perhaps it was an emergency,” Marco said, shrugging.
“Maybe we’ll find out once we get home,” I said.
At the end of the bridge, we were routed back over to the east-bound lane of Route 50, and I grumbled when I saw that the exit I wanted to take was blocked off. Rather than having foot traffic cross the highway, here they were directing walkers over the Route 8 overpass and funneling them down the off-ramp so they’d be on the right side of the highway to walk across the bridge. I saw more officers at the top of the ramp with a crowd of people; that must have been where they were doing the pat-downs and bag checks. The ramp to get onto Route 50 from Route 8 appeared to be blocked, and up ahead, past the overpass, I could see another vehicle checkpoint like the one we’d went through. It looked like they were moving the people who disagreed with the security check up onto Route 8 and turning them around. It was a lot of trouble, and a lot of manpower, to stop all of those cars; especially when on a normal day the traffic just flowed right through at sixty miles per hour.
I slowed down at the exit for Thompson Creek Road and Marco went tense.
“Why are you pulling off of the highway?”
“I’ve got something to get,” I said. “Corey and I left a cache out on Route 8, and I want it.”
“But do you need it?” Marco asked. “Were you looking at those stores at all, Ripley? This isn’t safe.”
Honestly, I’d been too busy looking at how bridge police were handling things on this side to glance over at the stores at all. When I pulled onto Thompson Creek and started driving back towards Route 8, my jaw dropped.
The large power lines that ran on huge poles between the highway and the local road were sagging and drooping; that had become a common sight. The parking lots were stuffed with cars and again, people milled around or sat on their vehicles, watching the traffic go by. The stores, though, were a different story.
Nearly all of them were burned out. Roofs had collapsed, brick facings were covered in soot and scorch-marks. All of the landscaping and foliage close to the stores was gone, nothing more than black piles of ash. I could make out a few letters here and there on a sign, but most of them were plastic panels covering long bulbs, and those panels had melted off to leave empty light cages sitting naked. There was no looting going on here…there was nothing left to loot.
> We passed from one large plaza to a small tree break, and then the road opened up again to another large parking lot housing what used to be a giant K-Mart. It was gone, too. Burned to the ground. The air here still stank of char and burned plastic, strong enough that it overpowered the usual wetlands smell that was prevalent on the little island.
Groups of people were gathered at the side of the road, drifting out to block the lane whenever a car came by.
Seeing our box truck coming, a mass of them rose up from where they’d been sitting on the shoulder and flowed into the road, blocking the road and waving their arms.
Chapter 6
Tuesday, September 4th
Annapolis, Maryland
Marco leaned out of the window and yelled towards the back. “Corey, lock the door! Shut and lock the door now!”
I slowed to a stop about fifty feet in front of the crowd, and looked for a way to turn around. There were bushes and trees blocking me from getting over onto the highway, but the big truck could probably handle the curb separating the little road from the K-Mart parking lot. I could turn as tight as I could and take it on an angle-
“Put the damn window up, Ripley!” Marco said, hitting the button to lock the doors. I looked back ahead to see the crowd coming towards us. My hands scrabbled at the door panel, finally hitting the right button to roll up my window.
“Hit the gas and drive through them,” Marco said.
“What? Drive through them? No! I can try turning around-”
“If you get caught on the curb, or if the ground is too soft to hold the weight of the truck and we get stuck, they’ll have us, love,” Marco said, strangely calm. “Hit the gas. They’ll move.”
“And what if they don’t?”
“Then they’ll get knocked out of the way and get a few bruises,” he said. “That’s all. Hit the gas.”
I slammed my hand onto the horn, instead. A few people in the crowd jerked at the sound, but kept coming. When I let off of the horn, I could hear them yelling.