The consensus seemed to be that the National Guard was implementing a federal ban on interstate travel. Until the government could get back on its feet, the White House issued an executive order that, while not declaring outright martial law, basically did the same thing.
So travel across state lines was prohibited until the situation was in hand—or at least understood. Rumors flew back and forth down the line of cars, and there was more than a little debate over whether or not the earth would get hit with a second round of CME blasts or if the worst was over.
Others figured the governor had called out the National Guard to protect the state from a horde of people trying to flee St. Louis. They talked about all kinds of damage and chaos radiating out from the state's biggest city as the people trapped inside fought and struggled to escape.
At any rate, it boiled down to the same thing—Kate found herself unable to reach Illinois. At least not legally.
She looked down at Maggie’s borrowed map and blinked, grateful beyond words to not need the bandana anymore.
Most everyone around her was heading north, and the National Guard seemed determined to keep people from heading east to St. Louis. That meant she should go south. It would avoid most of the traffic and it might offer a less-guarded route across the Mississippi. Her mind made up, Kate got off I-44 at the 270 interchange after several minutes of horn honking and hand waving, and took her place in another long line of cars—this one heading east toward Mehlville.
Here too, the cars slowly crept forward over the course of the afternoon. Where Maggie and Jonathan had covered hundreds of miles while she slept, it took Kate almost three hours to travel a single mile in such congested traffic. Biding her time until she found a possible exit, Kate sat calmly behind the wheel, adjusting herself to the tiny cockpit of her little car.
As the sun headed toward the western horizon behind her, Kate crested an overpass crossing a local road in Concord and realized the embankments might be slight enough for her to drive the Smart Car down onto the surface road without flipping. Maybe.
She checked her mirrors about a hundred times making sure there were no law enforcement personnel or military people lurking behind her. In the gathering twilight, she could just make out a flashing blue light that had to be the National Guard outpost.
Kate knew the Mississippi lay only about five miles east of her position. She leaned over the passenger seat and peered out the window, wondering if she’d get another chance like this before she reached the checkpoint outside Mehlville. She didn't want to get caught up in the mess, but I-55 ran south out of Mehlville and that's what she wanted—she needed to get south of the chaos surrounding St. Louis and find a way across the Mississippi.
Screw this.
Kate shifted into low gear, turned tires, and goosed the little car. It rolled off the highway, across the shoulder, and right down the slight embankment. She realized she might have gotten in over her head when the front bumper dug into a clump of grass and the wheels locked. Kate twisted hard on the steering wheel in a vain attempt to free the bumper from the grass and soft dirt the tires had sunk into.
The right front corner of her car dipped down and then the world spun around her. Green then blue then green again flashed in front of the windshield, revolving in a sickening roll. Kate screamed as the little smart car lurched and bumped, cartwheeling itself down the hill.
The vehicle slid on some loose gravel and came to a shuddering stop on its side, just above the shallow ditch along the surface road. Kate took a deep breath, and moved trembling hands to unbuckle her seatbelt.
Hanging sideways, she was glad at least the little car was light. She actually had a chance of flipping it over herself. Before she could fully unfasten her seatbelt, rocks and gravel underneath the right side gave way and the car rolled one more time, finding its own way off the grassy embankment. In a shower of dirt and grass, the little crumpled Smart Car lurched to a stop on the surface street.
Kate waited for the dirt and grass to stop landing on the windshield, then took a breath. "Well…" she said, tucking loose hair over her ear. She squinted at the cracked windshield. "That happened."
She exhaled and wiped stray strands of sweaty hair from her forehead then looked up the freshly gouged embankment and saw several people poking their heads out of cars in the right lane, watching and pointing. Without waiting for a big truck that started to follow her over the side, Kate shifted into drive and spun off south down the access road.
She noticed the big 4x4 crashed to a stop on the surface street behind her, turned on its headlights, and headed east toward the river before disappearing from view. Kate ignored several other cars that attempted to do the same and figured the National Guard or local law enforcement would be on the scene soon enough to put a stop to any further escapes from the highway. She left her headlights off in the gathering twilight as she sped down the winding road toward I-55.
Kate slipped into the traffic—moving at a steady pace—heading south on 55 toward Arnold and points further. She squinted at the map in her lap. The town of Imperial, just south-east of Arnold, looked fairly close to the river. A little black line—a railroad bridge—connected Illinois and Missouri south of Imperial but the map didn't list a town name.
Hoping the dot represented a town or village or something other than a scenic overlook, Kate pressed on, passing without incident through Arnold. Smoke obscured most of what she could see. Fires raged in the western half of the little town. Not many cars moved in the beleaguered municipality.
Kate kept her head down and her speed constant. On the other side of Arnold, things loosened up a bit as more and more vehicles left I-55, presumably looking for river crossings.
Kate glanced at the map. Printed only two years before, it listed no bridges across the Mississippi anywhere south of I-55—back at Mehlville—for the next 50-odd miles. She swallowed.
Well, there better be something here at… She squinted at the map again in the fading light. Sulphur Springs. Ugh, that sounds charming.
Kate worked her way east until she ran into Sulphur Springs Road and followed that the last mile toward the river. Most of the power lines that riddled the tiny little community either sagged from their poles or lay sprawled out on the ground.
Must have been a real mess around here when everything went to shit. She could only imagine how the wires would have sparked and set fire to the trees and small houses nearby. Indeed, as she drove through, only a few houses remained standing. Just about everything had been reduced to charred rubble.
As Kate grew closer to the river, she grew more and more nervous—she saw no signs of any railway at all. There ought to at least be some old tracks or something, but she only saw the residential road before her, lined with charred trees and burnt underbrush that hadn’t seen pruning shears in decades.
Kate gripped the wheel and drove through the last intersection, glancing left toward the river. The glitter of moonlight on water caught her eye, but she didn't spot any train tracks, just an old walking path—she hit the brakes and ground her car to a halt.
That's not a path!
She pulled the little car onto the walkway and realized someone had merely filled in the tracks with concrete. The Smart Car's tiny frame easily fit on the path, so she followed it south. An estuary at the extreme southern edge of Sulphur Springs sported a sagging train crossing. Just on the northern side, another track crossed at right angles, stretching into the trees to her right.
But reaching out across the river before her stood a wooden train bridge. She squealed like a girl on Christmas morning and quickly backed the car up. Taking a glance to see if anyone had seen or followed her, she sped down the dirt path toward the river and skidded to a stop in front of a rickety wooden barricade that blocked vehicle access where the train tracks left land. She hopped out of the car and stumbled the last few steps to the barricade in order to examine the bridge.
In the peaceful night air, she heard the river gur
gling softly some 20 feet below along the banks. The cold wind bit her lungs, a far cry from the heat in Death Valley and the initial days of her escape from Los Angeles. Kate rubbed her fingers together as she examined the bridge.
The wooden beams looked ancient and brittle. She wasn't sure it even went all the way across, but the unmarked, forgotten bridge was her best bet to circumvent the blockade. She had to reach the other side. The dark swath of land cutting off the slightly less dark river at the far edge of her vision was Illinois.
Home.
Her mind made up, Kate grabbed the decaying barricade and gave it a shove. The boards, long neglected, almost felt apart in her hands. She got back in the car, said a quick prayer, and gunned it. She only turned on the headlights after she smashed through what remained of the barricade.
The little car was just big enough to fit the wheels on either side of the rusted railway irons. The jarring thump thump thump of the tires as they bounced along jarred her teeth and shook her to her core, but Kate pressed on, not daring to stop for fear she might never get going again.
Please hold together, please hold together, please hold together…
She was about halfway across the bridge when she saw headlights wink on behind her, back on the Missouri shore.
"Shit!" she hissed, putting her eyes back on gleaming lines of metal that stretched to Illinois and freedom.
Blue and red lights flashed in the rearview mirror. The local police must have been watching people as they exited the interstate. She took a quick look out the side window and was immediately sorry she did so.
Kate found herself up some 20 or 30 feet above the Mississippi without guard rails. She doubted whether the tracks had been used in the last fifty years.
Three quarters of the way across the bridge, she spotted lights bouncing up and down behind her. Oh God—they're coming after me!
Kate pushed the Smart Car to its limit, hitting the gas and gripping the wheel with white knuckles as it bounced and bucked along the train tracks, daring her to lose her grip. It was almost like the damn thing wanted to jump off the bridge.
Only a hundred yards to go…
The car bounced and jostled even wilder than before. The bridge on the Illinois side was in much worse shape than the Missouri side. She gritted her teeth and prayed again to make it to shore.
Fifty yards to go and one of her tires went flat with a loud pop. Sparks flared out her window when the bare rim hit the rail. The car now not only bucked up and down but wanted to twist side to side as it balanced precariously on three wheels.
Ten yards out from shore, she no longer cared whether the car made it or not. She could ditch it and swim at this point. Kate glanced down at the water. It was a long way down, but at least she could swim ashore.
Before she knew it, Kate smashed through the barricade on the Illinois side and found dry land once more. She gunned it, taking a quick glance in the mirror to see the cops had traversed perhaps halfway across. She still had a few minutes before they made landfall.
Kate gouged a track in the soft dirt as she clawed her way up the riverbank toward civilization.
Once Kate crested the bluff on the Illinois side and gained purchase on gravel, she came to a stop. Kate got out of the car, figuring she'd be able to go faster on foot and escape. She couldn't be found with the Smart Car—police or National Guard or whoever the hell had chased her across the river would assume she stole it.
Headlights blinked and bounced in the distance. Her pursuit had come about three-quarters of the way across the river.
You guys don't give up easy, do you?
Kate turned around. She stood on a wide flood plain. Without lights—from cars, houses, or anything—she was blind. Her only option lay in walking down the road or hiding in the stunted trees and bushes that dotted the landscape.
If I leave the car, it'll only be a matter of time before they find me.
Kate looked back at the cops, maybe National Guard, who approached the Illinois side. If she stuck to the road, they'd run her down in just a few minutes after making landfall.
Screw it. If you're going to keep chasing me, I'm not going to make this easy. Kate scooped up the last of her meager supplies, turned from the ghostly river, and jogged into the bushes.
CHAPTER 6
LEAH SHIVERED DESPITE THE warm air blasting out of the big SUV's vents. She had moved closer to Thom in the middle seat and leaned forward to look at Hunter in the front passenger seat.
She worried about the gangly pothead. He hadn't spoken since Becca’s death. He'd been the strongest proponent of figuring out a way to bury her with some modicum of decency, but in the end, relented when everyone sided against him.
They’d been forced to leave her behind, wrapped in a blanket in the squad car.
Her dad had said a few words about the gods watching over her soul—stuff she hadn't heard since she was a kid listening to her grandmother's stories—and then they’d left. They grabbed their meager belongings and began the long, cold march along the line of cars stretching toward the horizon.
Now, a few tiring hours later, they all huddled inside a big SUV as Jay kept the engine running, constantly pumping out hot air. They reached what her dad figured to be the middle of the line of backed-up cars, and could go no further.
It was too dark, too windy, and too cold out—they all needed heat and rest. After trying a handful of cars, they found the big black SUV with a little gas left and most importantly, the keys still inside.
Jay and Thom had siphoned enough gas out of the tanks of nearby cars to fill up the tank of their new ride. The downside was that the entire vehicle reeked of gasoline now. It made Leah’s eyes water, but she was grateful for the heat, whatever the price.
"What are we waiting for, Mr. C?" asked Thom.
Leah’s dad sat silent. "We have decisions to make, kids," he said quietly.
Leah didn't like the sound of that. "What do you mean?"
"Where we go from here…" Jay said.
"What do you mean, where do we go from here?" asked Thom. "Your friend on the radio said we were welcome to join him. We're close to the turn off he mentioned, right?"
"Yes…but—"
"But what, Dad? Let's go find Mac!” Leah blurted.
"Yeah, he said it himself—he's got plenty of space and water, lots of food…and no company," added Thom. "Just the neighbor across the lake."
Leah watched her dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror as he focused on Thom.
"That's exactly the problem. I'm not going north.”
There was a moment of silence in the car, broken only by the hissing of the dashboard air vents.
"What do you mean, you're not going north?" whispered Leah.
"I'm going home, priya. I need to get back in case Kate—"
"Daddy, she's not coming back."
"You don't know that. She's not dead."
Leah put a hand on her father’s shoulder and squeezed. "You said she was in the air when the CME hit. The chances of her making it back to land from somewhere out in the middle of the Pacific…Daddy, I'm sorry, but she's gone."
His shoulder muscles tensed under her hand, despite the layers of clothing. "You don't know that," Jay hissed.
"That's the problem," she agreed, "we don't know anything. We don't know if she's alive, we don't know if she's dead."
"All I know is that if she's alive, she's going to come home. That's where I need to be." He nodded, staring out the windshield. “That's where I need to be," he said again. "She’ll come, I know she will.”
"I don't mean to step in here, folks," Hunter said, shocking everyone into silence. "But it seems to me where you need to be is with Leah."
"For once I agree with him," Thom added.
"Hey man, don't think we're gonna be taking any long walks holding hands along the beach…"
"I'm going back to our house,” Jay said. His voice was an emotionless and flat. It was the voice of a man who’d already resigned h
imself to death. "I don't know what I'm going to find there, and I don't know how long I'll stay. But until I decide that there's absolutely no hope, I'm staying there."
“Dad…”
“You're welcome to come with me, of course—all of you—but that's where I'm going."
No one said anything for a long moment until Thom cleared his throat.
Jay spoke again. "So here's my idea. You guys take this car and head north. I can draw you a map or something to make sure you get to Mac's place in Michigan. But I'm going home. If we found one car that still works, we’ll find another. There's thousands of cars out here for the taking."
"As much as I want to get someplace safe and warm, and have a nice hot meal," Hunter began, "I don't think it's a good idea to split up, man."
"Now I know the world is ending," Thom said. "I'm agreeing with you again."
Leah ignored the banter. "Daddy, don't do this," she pleaded. She couldn't tell if her emotions or the stench of gasoline in the car caused her eyes to water. "You came back for me—"
"And now I'm going back for Kate."
Leah looked down at the intertwined hands in her lap. She fiddled with the ragged hem on her coat. "Do you really believe she’s still alive?”
Jay sighed, his shoulders slumping forward as he looked into his own lap. "I have to believe she is. I have to."
Leah sniffed and rubbed her eyes; God, she was tired. "If you're going home, then so am I."
Jay's bloodshot eyes swiveled to find hers in the rearview mirror. "You're sure about this, honey?"
Leah forced a smile. "You came through hell to find me. I'm not gonna let you walk away that easy. Mac can wait."
"Well shit," Thom ranted from the middle seat. "I guess that means I'm going with you too."
Leah felt a rush of heat in her belly when Thom spoke. She wanted to say something further but kept the words bottled up. For now.
"Seriously, guys? We're gonna give up major grubbage and warmth?" Hunter's eyes pleaded with the others as he looked from Jay and Thom to Leah in turn.
Solar Storm: Season 1 [Aftermath Episodes 1-5] Page 35