"Sorry I haven't heard anything better than that, but not much official is getting handed out to us. And please try to stay safe out here. People seem way more on edge these days and aren't paying much attention to their driving. Make sure you're paying attention for them."
"Thank you again."
He shrugged it off and as he stepped around to the other side of his car, he looked up at her and touched a finger to his forehead as he opened the door. "Thank you for your service, ma'am."
Heidi nodded and watched as he pulled away. She strapped on the bag and picked her helmet up off the ground, moving back to the bike and heading out into traffic. Maybe she could stop off in the town he mentioned and get some food in her system.
The trooper's information proved to be correct as it was only five minutes later when she was passing the outer limits and moving into the small town of Madrigal.
-3-
"Hi! You had a chance to look over the menu, yet?"
Heidi looked into the face of the server. She was young, no more than nineteen or twenty and it had to be her young age that was contributing to the chipper demeanor. Heidi hadn't seen anyone this upbeat since the crisis in the capital. As much as she wanted to send her off with a sarcastic remark, it was nice to have a little taste of normalcy.
The Madrigal Diner was clearly the epicenter of this tiny town. From the outside she had nearly taken the area for abandoned but the din of conversation and chatter as soon as she opened the door provided all the explanation she needed.
"You aren't a local, are you?" the girl asked.
"Is it that obvious?"
She started to shrug before her nose crinkled up into a guilty grin and giggle. "Well, kind of. Sorry, I don't mean to put you on the spot like that. I'm Nairi."
"Okay then. Nairi, what do you recommend?"
She lowered her order pad to start tapping the menu in a few places. "These are the standby choices. Pretty much everyone likes them. But I'll tell you what." She leaned in and her voice took on a conspiratorial tone. "We got a new cook working for a little while. You can see her there through the pass-through. Name's Fiona. Don't know her that well, but she makes a pretty amazing patty melt."
Heidi nodded, not having realized how hungry she was. "Add a lemonade to that and we can call it an order."
Nairi's grin widened as Heidi tucked the menu back into the box mounted to the wall. After a minute, she came back with the drink.
"What's the mood of the town right now?" Heidi asked. "What with the drama in the capital? Seems to be a lot of conversation going on in here, is this normal?"
Nairi shrugged. "Not much makes its way here in terms of news. We get the national reports of course, but no one really knows anything. You'll get some old timers all over that'll bore your ear off with their theories, but I can't bring myself to take any of them seriously, you know?"
"I'm guessing you've always lived here?"
"My whole life. It's a good town but we've been seeing our fair share of travelers like yourself. I don't know what's going on with the President but it sure seems to have gotten a lot of people worked up and worried. Anyway, I've got other tables. I'll get your food to you as soon as it's ready."
"Thanks," Heidi said. She watched as Nairi retreated to the kitchen, the squeak from the doors somehow reaching her more clearly than anything that was being said in the dozen or so conversations around her. They swung back and forth, past each other, and she caught herself staring, feeling more out of place than ever. It was like living inside the still image of a painting, a living depiction of something long passed.
She shook her head, trying to clear away the pointless mental wandering. The crowd chattered on, oblivious to her and in a strange way, the diner did make her pine somewhat for a life that could have been more simple, a community that stayed within itself and looked after each other. The room sported several televisions, but only the one by the counter was showing the news. All the rest were playing baseball games and farm reports.
Heidi took out her phone. She had no one to call but thought it was something that could occupy her attention at least. She scrolled through the few pictures she had, stopping on the most recent she had taken of her father. Those blue eyes again shot straight through to her, and she noticed her hand trembling. It immediately sucked her into that moment days earlier, standing next to him, smelling the gunpowder in the air and seeing blood dripping onto the table. So absorbed she was in the memory, she didn't even register Nairi placing the plate of food in front of her until she smelled it.
She was midway through the sandwich and was looking for Nairi to refill her drink when the sound of the bell over the door grabbed her attention. A heavy-set, middle-aged man walked into the diner, moving straight to the counter to talk to a man who had to be the owner. Heidi couldn't hear what was being said but from the wild gesturing, it seemed important. Shaking his head, the man at the counter lifted the remote and changed the channel to one of the cable news networks.
The image Heidi saw on the screen didn't register at first and it took a minute before her mind caught up. The footage was running on a loop, playing through about forty seconds before stuttering and restarting. At first, all she saw was a flash of light in the center of the frame, growing in intensity before fading and restarting. Before she saw the byline, she realized she was looking out over some kind of city skyline.
After several more loops, her focus shifted to the sky behind the flash, taking in the roiling clouds and the formation blowing up into them. There were only a few seconds for her to see through the diminishing light and realize what it was before the feed started over again. The remains of her sandwich slipped out of her hand, landing not quite squarely. Her plate lifted up slightly before landing and cracking loudly in the sudden, brief silence. No one gave any sign that they had heard or cared. She stared at the screen, trying to reconcile with the sight she had never thought she would actually see in the real world.
In the heartbeat of a moment before the footage clipped out, the darkened outline of a mushroom cloud rose up over the city of Berlin.
-4-
The moment felt like the length of a heartbeat, quick but somehow drawn out as well. The silence was swollen, a bubble in which sound ceased to exist. Then, a sharp exhalation of breath shattered it all and it was like a brick had been tossed through the window. Everyone began chattering, shouting over companions and family members. Silverware and glasses slammed down on tabletops as everyone tried to talk over the person next to them.
Heidi couldn't take her eyes off of the grainy, saturated footage as it cycled. The owner of the place screamed at the crowd, veins popping out in his neck. He had the remote control and was swinging it wildly in front of everyone, as if it had the power to silence them as well. He clearly wanted to hear the commentators but his efforts were futile.
What frightened her was the notion that there were likely scenes like this going on, all around the country. People would see the footage, over and over, hand-wringing and grappling with the fundamental fear that only comes from a total loss of control. The inevitable destination for all of them would be uncontrolled panic. There were no distinguishable words from the crowd around her, just a wall of sound as people expressed their outrage, their fear and despair. People rose to their feet, as if mere protestation would be enough to solve this travesty. Hands rose to gaping mouths as people tried to keep steady under the weight of what they had just seen. And through it all, Heidi zeroed in on one face in particular.
The woman who had been working the grill in the kitchen, the one Nairi had identified as Fiona. At first, Heidi had taken her as someone who just didn't give a shit about anyone. Each day was an exercise of going through the motions. Still, even she looked speechless as she slowly backed away from the dining area, shaking her head as she went.
Heidi wasn't going to hang around until it was too late. Tragedies were built on the backs of people who waited just a little too long to act. She dr
opped a ten-dollar bill on the table, despite harboring the suspicion that the day would soon come when money wasn't going to mean much. She elbowed her way through the crowd and out onto the street. She hopped on the bike and started it, not bothering with her helmet as the engine roared and filled the open space of the town square. Gravel and debris kicked out behind her as she sped out of town.
Glancing in the mirror, she saw people tumbling out of the diner in some kind of accelerated Keystone Cops routine. No one seemed to be going for vehicles though. They looked to be content with milling about the small city park, continuing their collective tirades and monologues at each other. She sped up and made to get clear of town before the roads would be too crowded.
Returning her attention to where she was driving, she just caught sight of a police cruiser as she zipped past it. There was no time to slow down but no one seemed to take notice of her and there was no indication of the car making pursuit. She needed to get away from this cluster of towns and start making faster progress towards the bunker. She realized that there was little chance now of finding her father's friend before whatever was happening ran its course. In the end, she would have to hope that he would be able to survive whatever they were on the precipice of.
After twenty minutes, she pulled off onto a small rest area and took out her phone to see if there was any news coverage. The population of cars had increased steadily, although the road was still passable. And now, she was starting to hear the sound of car horns and brakes locking, something she normally only associated with being in the city.
The news was still reporting the same blank speculation. She opened up another browser window and began reaching out to friends, anyone who might be able to share information. She was on the verge of even trying some of her father's military friends. No one responded to direct messages or emails. Phone numbers yielded no response. She was about to give up when she finally got an answer from a private server she had set up with a dozen or so of her fellow military brats.
D_Ralston : What do you want?
H_Silverton : You seeing what's going on?
D_Ralston : What do you think? You know anything?
H_Silverton : I was kind of hoping you had something for me.
D_Ralston : Not too many people answering their phones right now. Only reason you caught me is because I forgot I had the browser window open. Even my old man is off the radar.
H_Silverton : No theories? Ideas?
D_Ralston : Sure, I've got ideas. Plenty of them. But none of them are good enough to be real.
H_Silverton : Tell me. It's not like I've got anything else.
D_Ralston : What's the point? I don't have anything to support it.
H_Silverton : Come on. Don't give me that shit. Just spill it. What's going on? What was with that bomb going off?
D_Ralston : Where are you?
H_Silverton : Why does that matter?
D_Ralston : Considering everything, I don't think it's the smartest idea to broadcast stuff like this over the net.
Heidi looked up from the phone and at the surrounding trees before responding. Something was wrong but she couldn't say for sure what was bothering her. He had never asked to meet in person before and had never acted like he cared if anyone saw what he was doing online.
D_Ralston : Hello?
H_Silverton : Why do you want to meet? You know as well as I do that anyone who might be looking in is going to have other things to do right now.
There was no response from the other end of the connection, so long that she thought she had lost him. Just as she was about to give up, he was back.
D_Ralston : Something is going on with the military. Personally, I think there might have been some kind of takeover or coup. A ton of people have been dropping off the grid without warning. I don't know for sure what's going on, just that it has to be big.
She was about to reply when she got another notification for a message, this one coming in through Facebook of all places.
Lydian : HAVE YOU SEEN THIS?
Heidi followed the link to an image, a screen capture from someone's laptop camera. It was an office and she immediately recognized the vintage Star Wars posters in the background, the blood splattered across them and she saw the poster with the original title, Revenge Of The Jedi with what looked like signatures of the entire cast. She only knew one person who had something like that.
Heidi : Is that Ralston's office?
Lydian : I got a notification for a live broadcast from him but when I switched over, it was just this. Like he had hit it by mistake or something. Whatever, I need to get the hell out of here. I just saw you were online and wanted to make sure you saw it. Someone is going around killing people and it's got to do with what's going on right now.
Heidi : Thank you. Be safe.
Closing her Facebook app, she switched back to the original conversation.
H_Silverton : Sorry. Had to step away for a second.
D_ Ralston : Okay. So where do you want to meet?
H_Silverton : I still think it's a bad idea. Maybe in a day or two. Listen, I need to get in touch with your dad's cousin. The one in JAG corps? Can you get me her info?
Whoever it was on the other end pretending to be Ralston paused before responding.
D_ Ralston : Sure. I'll have to get back to you though. I don't have it in front of me. Later this afternoon?
H_Silverton : Thanks
She killed the connection and tossed the phone over her shoulder. There was no cousin. Someone had killed Ralston and was now pretending to be him, probably fishing through his contacts for intel.
It was clumsy. Ham-fisted. Everything she had come to expect from the Armed Forces. It was the surgical precision of a wrecking ball. People and sources were being shut down, the faster the better, regardless of how obvious it was. And if the military was being this blatant, Heidi could no longer ignore the clear conclusion she had so far been denying.
The President wasn't being kept in the bunker for his protection.
The President was dead.
-5-
In the days following Berlin, the roads became a cluster of vehicles. Heidi could never recall a time when so many people were pushing as hard as this to get somewhere, anywhere other than where they were at the moment. In the natural evolutionary struggle, flight was definitely winning out the day.
As time crawled past her, the Internet was also becoming less reliable. Occasionally, she would pick up a random wi-fi signal and could ride it out for a while but it never lasted. And even when she was on-line with the clean cell phone, her contacts were becoming more scarce as people seemed to be dropping out of sight.
From behind her, several car lengths away, she heard the sound of a horn, followed quickly by metal crumpling under an impact. She turned to look, snapping out of her stream of thought for a scene that was becoming more common. Car doors opened and soon the air was filled with screaming, one driver in the other's face with fingers extended and fists raised. Through beet red faces and distended veins on their necks, each seemed ready to strangle the entire world for its perceived offenses.
The only variance in situations like this seemed to be how long it would take for one guy to grab the other's lower lip and stretch it down before putting him on his ass. And almost as if her thought had prompted the action, one man reached out and with a flat palm pressed it against the other's mouth, as if he was trying to physically contain whatever was being said. A shove was followed by a cross to the jaw and soon the two of them had dropped out of sight, although she could hear the grunts and impacts from them rolling around.
No one made a move to stop them. And she knew that at no point would anyone from law enforcement show up to clean up the mess. Society had been left to tend to itself. Police and state troopers had all but vanished as of late, the only existence of authority being the military transport vehicles speeding through the area.
Just the previous night, a second bomb had gone off and it wa
s now clear that it was nuclear weapons being deployed and detonated. There was no way of knowing who was responsible or how it was being accomplished, but the odds of a bomb like that going off in two different parts of the world so close together didn't even seem possible. And while everyone was likely trying to laugh off their own internal notions of a bomb going off here in the U.S., she knew that she would have to start mentally preparing for that.
The cars hadn't moved in nearly a half hour but there was nowhere else to go. Even the side roads were too snarled and crowded to make any use of, and even if they were, the routes went too far out of her way to be practical. The more she sat there on the bike, the more she was convinced it was inevitable that she would have to leave the thing behind and resort to walking to the bunker.
If she was more able to drive straight through, she could be there in a few hours. But if the gridlock like this kept up or even got worse, she might not be able to get there at all.
Finally, worried about running her gas down, she walked the bike to the side and killed the engine. She looked back over her shoulder to see her space already being absorbed as the car behind her inched forward. Propping the bike up, she began walking, just to get the feeling back in her legs. It was just thirty yards or so since she had passed the bend in the road behind her, where it veered off to the left. She strolled in that direction, wanting to see how far back the traffic jam was going but her attention was instead distracted by a small group, arguing along the side.
There were four people in all, three of them clearly a family. The father stood next to their car while his wife and daughter looked out from the inside. He had been confronted by a younger biker-type who was doing his best to be intimidating. The father was standing his ground but Heidi could tell that wasn't going to last. She inched forward to try and hear what was being said.
From Across Their Walls (Behind Our Walls Trilogy Book 2) Page 2