Pilgrimage: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Story

by Abrahams, Tom

  This was very different.

  He pulled off the sheets and walked to the window. The clock on Leigh’s side of the bed glowed 5:01 a.m. Too early for sunrise, James thought.

  At the window, his concerns were amplified by the throbbing, reddish glow emanating from the southwestern sky just above the horizon. As he tried to wrap his head around what he was seeing, the color morphed into a deeper red and purple hue. It changed shape and pulsed. He’d never seen anything like this before. But knowing a little bit about science, he had his suspicions.

  “Leigh.” He turned to his wife. “Leigh, get up.” The clock next to her flickered and went black.

  She groaned from under the pillow. “It’s too early, Rock. Give me five more minutes.”

  “Leigh.” His voice was stern. “Get up.”

  “What is it?” She shot up, tossing the pillow from the bed. “Are you okay? Wait. What is that light?” Leigh shielded her eyes with her hand as her feet found the floor.

  “I don’t know,” answered James. “I mean, I’m not sure. But it’s not good.”

  Leigh blinked against the hellish shimmer on the bay. “It looks like an explosion or something.”

  “I think that’s exactly what it is,” answered James. He put his hand on the small of his wife’s back. “We need to move.”

  “What?” Leigh crinkled her nose, her brow arched with confusion. “Why?”

  “If there was a big explosion of any kind”—James put his hands on his wife’s shoulders and turned her toward him so he could look squarely into her eyes—“I mean of any kind, and it was in the water, we’re in trouble.”

  “I don’t under—” She shook her head, her eyes beginning to well.

  “That explosion would be an impulsive disturbance, displacing the water column—” explained the physics teacher.

  “In English, Rock!” Her lip was trembling.

  “Tsunami.”

  “What do we do, Rock?” Her voice trembled with panic. “We’re on an island.”

  “We find the highest possible structure and ride out the wave,” he offered. “The car is packed. We need to go now.”

  “But I’m still in my—” Leigh was wearing thin cotton lounge pants and a loose-fitting tank top.

  “Now!” He squeezed his wife’s shoulder, pulled her in for a brief but loving hug, and then took her hand, leading her quickly down the narrow stairs to the first floor of the cottage.

  “I’ll carry Sloane,” instructed James as they bounded through the kitchen to the bedroom. “You guide Max to the car. He’ll be out of it, but he can walk.”

  “Got it,” Leigh sputtered past the lump in her throat. She shook awake her son and pulled him from groggy sleep, through the kitchen, and out the open front door of the cottage.

  James was buckling Sloane into the rear driver’s side. It was still dark aside from the fading glow to the southwest.

  Max found his way into the backseat behind his mother, and James jumped behind the wheel of their Jeep Cherokee. He cranked the ignition, the headlights illuminating the front of the cabin, and he slammed the Jeep into reverse.

  “Wait!” cried Sloane. “What about Noodle? I don’t have Noodle!!”

  James cursed and slammed on the brake. Without even looking at Leigh for approval, he knew he couldn’t leave behind the guardian angel of a bear. It was too important to his daughter. He ripped the gearshift into park and left the Jeep at the end of the driveway.

  Guided by the headlights, he ran back toward the cottage. As he reached the front stoop, a strong gust of wind pushed him off balance. He recovered, bracing himself against the door frame, and lumbered inside the house.

  James navigated the small kitchen back to the children’s dark first-floor bedroom, banging his bare foot into the corner of the island. Biting his lip, he limped into the bedroom and fumbled around for a light switch. He found it, flipped it, and it did nothing. So he dove onto the bed to dig amongst the sheets and blankets, blindly feeling around for the kinked wool plush.

  As he tore through the sheets, he heard a loud wail outside the home. It shook the house and was immediately followed by the whoosh and bang of the front door slamming shut and a loud crash.

  James found Noodle at the same moment he heard his wife scream and call out his name.

  CHAPTER 4

  EVENT +00:05 Hours

  Peaks Island, Maine

  James threw open the door to find what looked like the aftermath of a tornado.

  The blast wind.

  From the glare of the headlights, he couldn’t make out clearly why his wife had screamed. But as he darted to the car, he dodged fallen limbs and debris in the driveway. He slid to a stop at the passenger’s side of the Jeep.

  Leigh had the door open, one leg on the ground. Her chest heaving, James knew she was trying to keep from hyperventilating.

  “What happened?” he asked and his wife pointed.

  Then he saw it. So focused on her as he ran to the Jeep he’d missed the obvious. A two by six was lodged in the front windshield, its splintered edges just inches from his wife’s headrest. It had punctured the bench seat back between their children. Both of them were crying.

  James pulled his wife from the car and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay.” Leigh sobbed into his chest before pulling away.

  “It was just,” she said between deep breaths, “a big wind. We—I—it shook the car. Like a tornado. Or hurricane. I—it was so strong. I—”

  “Shhh.” James rubbed his wife’s back, pulling her toward him again. “You’re okay. It was a blast from the explosion. There won’t be another one until the wave hits.” He pulled away. “We have to move now. Quickly.”

  “But the wood—”

  “I’ll get it. Just get the kids out of the car for a second.”

  James let go of his wife and, as she and the children backed away from the Jeep, climbed onto the hood. He sat with his feet pressed against the windshield and grabbed the back end of the two by six. He made sure he had a tight grip with both hands and yanked on the board as he lay back on the hood. The board gave easily and released from the seat, pulling pieces of shattered glass with it as James pulled it onto his chest and past his head.

  Leigh moved to the side of the Jeep and helped James finish the job, tossing the would-be spear onto the driveway. He rolled off the hood and told his family to get back into the vehicle.

  “Be careful of the glass,” he suggested. “We won’t be in the car long.”

  “Where are we going?” asked Leigh, pulling her seatbelt across her lap.

  “Battery Steele,” said James, maneuvering the Jeep around obstacles littering the narrow road that ran along the western side of the island.

  “How far is it?” asked Max.

  “Less than two miles,” answered his dad.

  “How long do we have to get there?” Leigh had her hand on his thigh. “Will we make it?”

  “Honestly?” James yanked the wheel to the right to avoid the remains of a charcoal grill. “I don’t know the answer to either of those questions.”

  “Guess,” insisted Max, using his mother’s headrest to pull himself forward.

  “Sit back, Max,” ordered James. “It’s not safe to sit up like that. Are you buckled?”

  “Yes.” Max slinked back to his seat. “Guess, Dad.”

  “Maybe an hour.” James slowed and swung the wheel to the right. A chaise lounge was blocking half the road. “Maybe less. And yes, as long as the roads aren’t impassable, we can make it.”

  James jinxed himself.

  “Rock!” Leigh cautioned, pointing at the shattered windshield. “Watch out!”

  James slammed on the brakes and swerved, fishtailing the Jeep around the marquis for a gas station. He took his foot off the accelerator and regained control in time to miss another large branch and a small wild turkey wandering around aimlessly on the edge of the road.

  Leigh tugged
on the shoulder strap of her seatbelt, adjusting it against her chest. She watched the locals as they drove past. Many of them stood in front of their properties, hands on hips, assessing the instantaneous damage to their homes and businesses. Some of them had their eyes on the horizon, pointing or waving their hands at the odd mixture of the civil twilight at the edge of sunrise and the fading purple and red aura to the southwest. Others still were scurrying about, picking up debris. Everybody was dressed in pajamas or shorts and T-shirts. They looked like ants emerging from a sneaker-kicked mound.

  James was driving south along Island Avenue. Casco Bay and the mainland were to the right.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” asked Leigh. She pulled her cell phone from the center console to check navigation. The phone illuminated, but the satellite-driven maps wouldn’t work. She had no signal, regardless.

  “I think so,” James said, leaning forward to better see through the spider web spreading across the windshield, obstructing his view. “I remember it’s to the left of Island Avenue and on a main road. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Why Battery Steele?” she asked.

  “When the wave hits,” James answered, “there’s no telling how high it’s going to be. Whatever detonated out there was big. You felt its blast. We need to be as high off the ground as possible.”

  “Detonated?” asked Sloane. “What’s that?”

  “It means explosion,” answered Max. “Dad, what exploded? There was an explosion?”

  James didn’t answer him.

  “Is this your turn?” Leigh referenced an upcoming intersection with a left turn into the heart of the island.

  “I think you’re right.” James slowed and spun the wheel. “Yeah, this is it.” He accelerated out of the turn and for the first time noticed the small black compass mounted on the dash.

  James knew they were headed due east. He was sure of it. But the compass was drifting. It couldn’t fix on a direction. The explosion, whatever it was, had set off an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse.

  “I can’t believe the car is working,” said James. “It’s a miracle, really,” he mumbled.

  “What?” asked Max. “What did you say, Dad?”

  “Nothing.” James caught himself.

  “You said the car shouldn’t be working?” Max pressed. “Why? You didn’t answer me about the explosion.”

  He glanced in the rearview mirror at his son and then over at Leigh. They shared the same puzzled looks on their faces, their brows pulled tight as they bit their lower lips.

  “Are we going to die?” asked Sloane.

  “Dad”—Max sat forward in his seat, pulling himself between his parents—“what explosion? Why aren’t you answering me?”

  “We’ll be fine,” answered Leigh, turning to reassure her baby. “Daddy’s going to take care of us. He’s very smart.”

  “Dad.” Max huffed impatiently. “Answer me, please.”

  James hesitated before he answered, unsure how truthful he should be with his children or his wife. He took a deep breath, and with the sun rising in his face, he did his best to obscure the reality of their situation.

  “So, Max,” he began, pulling down the visor to help his vision of the road, “during certain kinds of explosions, gamma rays are emitted from the fission fragments. Those gamma rays transfer their energy into air molecules. It’s called the Compton Scattering Process, and when that—”

  “C’mon, Dad.” Max wasn’t fooled by the tech-speak. “I’m not one of your physics students.”

  “I’m not sure they’d understand him either, Max,” Leigh added, looking over at her son. “Don’t try to candy coat it, Rock. What’s going on?”

  James used to be a big believer in blissful ignorance. He was one of those lemmings who agreed, based on nothing more than a stupid colloquialism, that what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Until it did. The worldwide flu outbreak commonly called the Jakarta Pandemic changed everything.

  That’s why he was blunt with his wife and his young children as they drove for their lives.

  “I’m pretty sure that somebody, some country, exploded some form of nuclear weapon off the coast of the United States.” Nobody interrupted him this time. “That detonation triggered what’s called an electromagnetic pulse. That pulse, in turn, is capable of rendering just about every electrically powered device practically useless.”

  “Like our Jeep?” asked Sloane. The eight-year-old got it.

  “Yes.” James nodded. “Like our car, our phones, the alarm clock, satellite communication, televisions, you name it.”

  “Then why is our car working?” asked Max, gripping his small hand on his father’s shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” admitted James. “I’ve read studies that contend only one percent of vehicles are operable after an EMP. There are others that calculate the number much higher than that.”

  The Rockwells drove in silence for the next minute. Nobody knew what to say, where to begin, what questions to ask or how to answer them.

  “How do we get off of the island?” asked Max. “If boats don’t work, what do we do?”

  “I don’t have the answer to that yet, Max,” James admitted. “But that’s not my primary concern right now. My first priority is getting us as high off the ground as possible. There’s going to be a lot of water on the island very soon. I mean, there will be water everywhere, and we don’t want to be swimming in it.”

  “Like a flood?” asked Sloane “Like Noah from the bible?”

  “Something like that.” James sighed, reconsidering whether or not honesty was, in fact, the best policy, or if it was just another useless saying made up by the blissfully ignorant.

  “I think we’re there,” said Leigh, covering her eyes from the sun. “That’s Battery Steele over there!”

  “Where?” James couldn’t see through the bright light refracted in the spider web of cracks in the shattered windshield. He squinted and tried to score a quick glance out the passenger’s side window. He took his eyes off of the road for just a moment.

  That was all it took.

  CHAPTER 5

  EVENT +00:20 Hours

  Peaks Island, Maine

  The door frame lying in the road acted as the perfect ramp. The blast wind had ripped it like a Frisbee, a light pole pressing it in half en route to its landing spot. James tried, at the last instant, to avoid it, but he couldn’t react quickly enough. The collision jacked the left side of the Jeep onto two wheels before launching it into the air. James tried to surf the two wheels but couldn’t overcorrect enough before the family was flipped upside down, careening in a metal box that tumbled and slid for what seemed like forever.

  As the steering wheel airbag exploded into his face, James instinctively swung his right arm across the space between his seat and Leigh’s, catching Max in the chest just enough to knock the boy back into his seat and engage the seatbelt’s automatic locking mechanism.

  Leigh raised her hands above her, bracing herself against the roof. Her fingers dug into the fabric-covered foam headliner. She screamed out for Sloan and Max, praying aloud as she felt the shoulder strap dig into her shoulder, the lap belt press against her pelvis.

  The children were remarkably quiet, stunned into silence as the Jeep tumbled, crunching with each ear-grinding maneuver against the asphalt. Sloane never lost her grip on Noodle as the Jeep came to a rest on its roof, teetering on the edge of the road’s narrow shoulder and just inches from the thick trunk of an eastern white pine.

  James pushed the deflating airbag from his face, wincing against the percussive burn on his cheek. “Everyone okay? Can everyone hear me?”

  Still suspended by their belts, his family answered him. They were okay. Sloane was whimpering, explaining she was stuck upside down and scared. Max complained the shoulder belt was digging into his neck. Leigh revealed a pain in her left wrist, wondering aloud if it was sprained or worse.

  James loosened himself from his belt first, dr
opping onto the headliner with a thud. He crawled to his wife, bracing her as she unlatched her belt and sank next to him.

  “Get out of the car,” he instructed. “I’ll get the kids.”

  Without argument, Leigh tried pushing open her door. It wouldn’t budge. She pressed her shoulder into it without any luck. “It’s stuck,” she explained. “I need to get out your side.”

  James slid into the backseat, between the kids, then turned around to pop open the driver’s door. It was undamaged in the wreck and swung out without any problem. Leigh crawled past her husband and out onto the road. James helped Sloane first, laying his body underneath her as he unlatched her. The back of her head landed safely on his chest and she rolled over to face him.

  “Thank you, Daddy.” She blinked past tears and kissed him on the cheek before Leigh helped her out through the rear driver’s side door. She told him her neck was sore but she was okay.

  “Okay, Max.” James turned to his son. “Your turn.”

  “It’s about time,” he replied. “This thing is killing me.”

  “Be thankful there aren’t any rear airbags,” countered James. “Then you’d really be hurting.”

  “I thought those were supposed to save lives.” Max dropped on his hands and flipped over as his dad unlatched him.

  “Yes,” James answered, sliding feet first out of the Jeep. “But they can be painful. Mine singed my cheek a little bit. It’s like a solid rocket booster, you know?” James found himself on the pavement, his arms extended to guide his son out of the Jeep.

  “Really?” Max asked, distracted from reality by the science of an airbag. His neck was bleeding along the spot where the belt cut him, but it wasn’t concerning to James given the seriousness of the wreck.

  “Yep,” said James as his son emerged from the vehicle. “When there’s a collision, a sensor ignites an instantaneous chemical reaction. That reaction—”

  “Are you kidding me, Rock?” Leigh, barefoot and still in her pajamas, stood with her arms folded across her chest.