by Bruno Miller
It was nearly the end of June, but the colors of the trees more closely resembled that of fall. He also noticed patches of forest that had lost their foliage altogether and he wondered if they were dying from a lack of water or if there was something more sinister at work.
Ben checked the fuel gauge, and although they had a little less than half a tank, he wanted to stop soon and top it off. They had enough gas to make it to Baltimore but not enough to get much farther than that, and he wanted to fuel up before they got too close to the city.
By the time they had reached Fredrick, Maryland, the needle on the fuel gauge had fallen close to the quarter-tank mark and it was time to find somewhere to stop. With the mountains behind them and a little luck, the next tank should carry them the rest of the way.
They managed to find an isolated gas station just outside of Mount Airy, Maryland, and pulled over. Everyone got out of the truck to stretch their legs but stayed close.
Even Gunner seemed reluctant to wander too far from the Blazer, and after a quick walk around to mark a few spots, he jumped into the truck on his own and waited patiently there for the rest of them.
Ben and Joel made quick work of pumping gas and they were loaded up and back on the road in no time. Everyone seemed to be equally motivated to keep things moving along now that they were closing in on their destination.
Sandy was feeling a little car sick and swapped places with Joel in the passenger’s seat.
The activity excited Gunner and he wagged his tail wildly, thumping the rear window like a drum. He was clearly pleased to have both Joel and Allie in the back, close to him, and he hung his big head over the back of the rear seat between them and panted loudly.
“How far do you think we are now, Dad?”
“We’re probably about an hour from Baltimore. After that, maybe four hours, depending on the roads.” Ben adjusted the side vent window to force more air into the truck.
The temperature was quickly climbing as the sun beat down through the yellowish haze in the air. The air had cleared a little and seemed almost normal when they passed over the mountains, but now that they were dropping in elevation, it thickened again and returned to the haziness that they had almost grown used to.
It felt thicker this time, though, and Ben wondered if it was due to their proximity to D.C. or Baltimore.
The landscape changed quickly from rolling hills and sprawling farms to apartment buildings and big-box stores. Sandy pointed out a sign for the 695 expressway around Baltimore, and not long after that, Ben saw the exit. He accelerated toward the ramp, but a large accident quickly stopped their progress.
A delivery truck had collided with several other vehicles and blocked the exit ramp between the guardrails.
He was forced to do a three-point turn and head back to the interstate. He drove down to the westbound exit and they made their way onto the expressway from the other direction. They were closing in on the city, and the roads were starting to show it as abandoned cars and accidents became more frequent.
Ben was encouraged, though, in spite of the more congested road. They had finally made it to the end of I-70. The road they had traveled on since Kansas was finally behind them, and although they still had a long day ahead, Ben felt like they had passed a milestone in their journey.
Many times in the past several days he had doubted whether they would ever get this far. But they had, and now it was just a matter of less than a couple hundred miles to Emma and Bradley.
It should have given him some sense of relief or at least satisfaction, but it didn’t. Instead, he was even more apprehensive. The fact that he knew what kind of city Baltimore was didn’t help.
Hopefully, they could get around the city without any incidents. He thought about what a shame it was that they couldn’t use the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. It would shave a couple hours off the trip, but they had come too far to take chances and he quickly dismissed the thought.
Going around the bridge was the right thing to do, and as tempting as it was to try the shorter route, he was going to have to trust his gut on this and leave it at that.
As they made their way around the expressway, it was obvious that Baltimore had suffered catastrophic losses. They were too far outside the city to see any details, but the large plumes of dark smoke still rising over what had been Baltimore was a telltale sign of the destruction. It reminded Ben of the scene outside St. Louis.
He wondered if Baltimore was one of the locations that had been hit. The emergency broadcast they picked up on the radio said 23 detonations, but they lost the signal before they were named. It would have been nice to know where they had hit.
They’d seen a few of the places firsthand and the major had told them about a couple, but there was no telling where the other bombs had gone off.
There were definitely areas they would be sure to avoid on the return trip, but for all they knew, they could just as easily end up somewhere worse off than what they were trying to avoid. They had tried several times since the broadcast to pick up the signal again, but they hadn’t heard a thing.
The expressway was a mess. Cars and trucks were scattered about like Matchbox cars left behind by a messy child. The only saving grace was the width of the road.
In most places, it was six lanes wide on each side, allowing room to navigate around the obstacles. There was no getting around the death and destruction, though.
And even though they had seen their fair share of wrecks and bodies, nothing compared to the carnage laid out before them on the expressway. There seemed to be an endless supply of corpses posed in every gruesome position imaginable.
Silence fell over the truck as they passed through the area at an unfortunately slow rate of speed, forcing them all to take in the spectacle. It was impossible to ignore the scene, and it didn’t matter which direction they looked: now there was death everywhere.
The bodies that hadn’t been reduced to charcoaled remains showed signs of being picked at by animals. The off-white of exposed bones reflected the bright sun through large holes of leathery skin.
Ben went as fast as he could, but there were so many wrecks to drive around that it was impossible to maintain a decent speed. This was going to add some time to their already lengthened route to the kids.
He was relieved to see the congested expressway start to open up as they approached the exit for I-95 north. He steered the Blazer around a pile of mangled cars and took the exit, leaving the expressway behind.
The interstate was heavily littered with wrecks as well, but it was nowhere near as crowded as the expressway had been. The road here was also four lanes wide but had large paved shoulders with a wide strip of grass on either side. This made it easy to get around what obstacles there were and also allowed him to pick up some much-needed speed.
They followed 95 north for about an hour before crossing into northern Delaware and making a right toward the eastern shore of Maryland.
They were less than a couple hours away at this point, and if he could maintain this speed, they would be there before dark.
Chapter Thirty-Five
What should have only taken them a couple of hours under normal circumstances took closer to three and a half. And as they made their final turn onto the road that led to Grandpa Jack’s, the sun was low on the horizon.
The anticipation was almost too much to bear, and the last few miles of road seemed to go on forever.
Even Gunner was unsettled and was somehow aware that they were nearing something of importance. Ben watched the dog in the rearview mirror as he shifted restlessly from one position to the other, occasionally letting out a nervous whine.
“Easy, boy.” Allie stroked Gunner’s head.
“He knows we’re almost there,” Joel said.
“Yes, we are.” Ben recognized the black mailbox with a mallard duck painted on the side.
It marked the entrance of the long gravel lane that led back to Jack’s. The old farmhouse sat back off the road sev
eral hundred yards and was surrounded by 20 acres of open flat fields and a few old chicken houses. Jack leased the land out to a local farmer who rotated his crops from soybeans to corn every other year.
Jack preferred when the farmer grew corn, as it helped block the house from the road. Ben remembered when he and Casey had come out for a visit last time. The corn was taller than their rental car and the house wasn’t visible from the road at all.
But that wasn’t the case now, and they could clearly see the house over the dead rows of small soybean plants. From the looks of things, they hadn’t seen any rain around here in a while, either.
The house was just as Ben remembered it, except for its poor condition on the exterior. It was a small two-story Victorian-style farmhouse with painted yellow wooden siding that always seemed to be peeling in one spot or another, but now the whole house looked like it could use attention.
Jack had refused to pay someone to paint the house in spite of Ben and Casey trying to convince him otherwise. He argued that there was no need to pay someone to do something he could do himself. Jack was a stubborn old guy and usually managed to keep up with it.
But now in his old age, he had apparently fallen behind with the exterior maintenance. The house looked much older than Ben recalled, and it gave him cause for concern.
Maybe things had gotten worse with his health in recent months. Ben was suddenly more worried than he had been during the entire trip. What if there was no one here? He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. They’re here. They have to be.
“Are we here?” Allie leaned forward and looked out the front window as Ben steered the Blazer onto the gravel road that led up to Jack’s house.
“This is it!” Ben nodded, but he had a hard time believing it himself.
“The house looks really run down. I don’t remember it looking like this.” Joel joined Allie as he leaned forward to get a better look.
“It doesn’t look like anybody lives here,” Sandy added.
She was right. There was no car in the driveway and the place felt abandoned.
“He parks everything in the outbuilding usually.” Ben motioned toward a large metal outbuilding behind the house. He knew Jack kept his boat in there, as well as the old Jeep he used for hunting.
It was a large building and there was plenty of room in there for the Ford pickup he drove on a regular basis as well. Besides, knowing Jack, he was sure he would have moved everything out of sight when things got bad.
The gravel crunched and popped under the tires as the Blazer came to a stop in front of the brick walkway that led to the front door. Ben turned the truck off and looked back at Joel.
“Listen. Hear that?” Ben heard a dog barking inside the house.
“Is that Sam?” Joel asked. “Sam is my grandpa’s dog,” he added.
Ben nodded. It was definitely Sam, Jack’s yellow Lab and long-time hunting partner. Jack and Sam went everywhere together, and there was no way he would leave Sam behind if they had gone somewhere.
Ben got out of the truck and was followed by Gunner, who had pushed his way between Joel and Allie impatiently. The dog hit the ground and bounded straight up the walkway toward the house, sniffing the ground loudly as he went. Joel climbed out after his dad, and Allie got out behind her mother on the passenger’s side.
“Oh my, what is that?” Allie winced as the smell of death wafted over them on a warm breeze. Fortunately, the wind shifted directions and the intensity of the smell diminished substantially.
“Dead chickens. We passed a lot of commercial chicken houses on the way in,” Ben answered.
More than a few of the surrounding farms were home to row after row of the long red buildings used for raising chickens. Each house held thousands of birds, and without power to keep the cooling fans running and the feeders working, they would have all died days ago.
Ben thought back to a few phone conversations he’d had with Jack when he had mentioned that “the smell is the price I pay for living in the country.” Jack said it was always the worst during the hot months of summer, when the mortality rate of the chickens was high.
But Ben wasn’t concerned about chickens or the smell right now, and his heart began to race as he approached the front door.
“Jack? Hello?” Ben called out as he peered cautiously through the small half-round window in the top of the door. He followed it up with a few quick knocks and then stepped to the side.
Jack was liable to have a gun at the ready for any unwanted visitors, and Ben didn’t want to risk being shot. Sam erupted into another volley of barks, and as Ben peeked in the window again, he could see the large yellow Lab standing guard in the foyer. Gunner answered with a couple sharp barks of his own and whined at Ben nervously.
Ben pulled away from the window again and turned to see Joel coming up the steps to join him on the porch.
“See anybody?” Joel asked.
“Just Sam in there going crazy. They have to be around somewhere. Jack doesn’t go anywhere without that dog.”
Ben leapt down the three brick steps and backpedaled away from the covered porch so he could see the second floor of the house.
“Hello? Jack, it’s me, Ben. Is anybody in there?” He cupped his hands around his mouth in an effort to direct his voice toward the large window that led to the master bedroom.
“Somebody’s in there! I just saw a curtain move over there!” Allie pointed to a second-floor window at the corner of the house.
Ben looked but was too late to see anything. As he scanned the other windows for any signs of life, Sam suddenly stopped barking and it was very quiet.
What if it wasn’t Jack and Casey or the kids? What if someone had broken in and was living there? Sam had a mean bark, but Ben knew the dog was a big pushover and, unlike Gunner, would cozy up to anyone that would scratch him.
He cleared his T-shirt away from the holstered pistol and prepared for the worst.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“I hear somebody moving around inside,” Joel reported from the porch.
“Get away from the door,” Ben ordered.
Joel stepped to the side and backed away as the front door creaked open. Ben felt his muscles tense up as he moved his hand closer to the pistol, but he quickly stopped when he saw a weak and frail-looking Jack stagger out onto the porch.
“Grandpa!” Joel exclaimed.
“Joel, Ben… I don’t believe it!” Jack set the shotgun he was carrying butt-end down and leaned it against the doorframe.
“Well, get over here!” Jack reached out to Joel and pulled him in for a hug. Ben felt immediate relief at the sight of Jack and took a few long strides to get back up on the porch quickly.
“Hey there, old man!” Jack reached out to shake Ben’s hand while he continued to use Joel for support.
Ben hated to admit it, but Jack looked really old, a lot older than he should have. The fact that he’d also lost a lot of weight since they’d last seen him didn’t help any.
“It’s good to see you, Jack!” Ben took his hand and felt the frailness of his grip, a big change from the hardy handshakes he’d come to expect from the man over the years.
Jack shifted his weight onto Ben now as he stepped away from Joel and looked him over.
“My goodness, I barely recognize you, Joel! You look like a full-grown man.” Jack chuckled.
Joel blushed at the comment and looked down at the ground just as Sam forced the door open and sauntered out onto the porch. The two dogs took cautious positions with tails in the air as they met for the first time and proceeded to sniff each other from head to tail. Sam turned her attention to Ben and Joel briefly to receive a few scratches before resuming her inspection of Gunner.
Allie and her mother made their way up onto the porch, pausing briefly to make way for the dogs, who had begun a playful game of chase down the steps and out into the yard. Ben would make introductions soon enough, but right now, he had to have an answer to the question that ha
d been on his mind for the last 2000 miles.
“Are the kids okay?”
But before Jack could answer the question, Bradley and Emma appeared in the doorway behind him.
“Dad,” they cried in unison.
Ben dropped to his knees and caught both of them as they ran into his arms. Joel joined in and wrapped his arms around his brother and sister from the back. The four of them remained locked together for a few moments before Ben pulled back to get a good look at his two youngest children.
He was pleasantly surprised to see they looked remarkably healthy and happy. Other than the fact that he was sure they had grown since he last saw them in person over Christmas break, they looked the same. He wasn’t sure what he expected, but certainly not this. With the kids still hanging on to him, Ben looked up at Jack.
“Casey?”
Jack’s smile faded and he looked away for a moment before making eye contact with Ben again.
“I don’t know.” Jack shook his head.
“What do you mean? Where’s Mom?” Joel pulled away from the group hug and stood up to face Jack.
“I mean I don’t know. I’m sorry.” Jack shifted his gaze to Ben. “She was away on a cruise with the boyfriend. Brad and Emma were staying with me while they were out of town. Dan had some type of convention to go to in Orlando, and then they were doing a cruise out of Cape Canaveral when it was over. They were supposed to come back the Sunday after it happened. They must have still been on the boat when…” Jack stopped when he looked down and noticed Bradley and Emma listening.
Joel’s eyes were red and beginning to tear up.
“So she’s probably stuck on a boat somewhere?” Joel cleared his throat and swallowed hard as he fought to maintain a steady tone.
Ben looked at Joel and then at the younger two. “It’s better than being stuck at an airport or, worse yet, in mid-flight. It means there’s a good chance she’s alive. Your mom is smart and she’s tougher than you think.”
Bradley spoke up. “You really think Mom is okay?”