Anna fought to get the tape off of her. She was crying uncontrollably as she ripped the tape off of them and rolled off of Grace. Grace rolled away from Mr. Miller and up to all fours. She gasped, sucking in air as her chest heaved up and down. Anna pulled her pants back up grabbed Grace by the shoulders to help her stand up. She wanted to get away from the spot in the kitchen.
Grace stood, raising the gun at Mr. Miller as she did.
“You okay?” Grace asked Anna.
Anna nodded.
She then locked eyes with Mr. Miller. She had shot him in the chest.
“You shot me!” he said, struggling to catch his breath as his lungs filled with bodily fluids. His pants were down around his ankles and he looked pathetic. “You dumb,” but he never finished the sentence as he gurgled and gasped one more time before his body relaxed with death.
There was a long pause in the room. Grace still pointed the gun at the lifeless body of Mr. Miller, and Anna sobbed. The light of the moon spilled in one of the windows and across Anna’s face. She had blood splattered across her face. It looked like chocolate in the colorless light. She was looking from Grace and the gun to Mr. Miller’s lifeless body on her kitchen floor.
“Get your stuff,” Grace ordered, but didn’t remember controlling her speech.
“What?”
“What ever else you need. Get it, we’re leaving and not coming back. Get your stuff,” she repeated.
“What about him?” Anna asked, shocking herself with the question.
“Don’t worry about him. Get your stuff, Anna. Okay?”
Anna looked at her friend and at the dead body in her kitchen and she took off for her room. She returned a few minutes later. She had changed clothes, carried a stuffed backpack on her shoulder and held a picture frame. She also held a towel out for Grace to clean the blood off of her own face.
“Are you good?” Grace asked after wiping the blood away. She still pointed the gun at Mr. Miller with one hand.
“No. He didn’t get a chance…you know,” she said quietly. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Grace finally lowered the gun and turned on the two-way radio. She was shaking from head to toe and the green light of the LED screen made her skin look sickly.
“Momma B, we’ve had a freaker. I had to…” she released the microphone and fought to keep her breathing under control. She took a deep breath and keyed the mike again. “We’re leaving now for base. Over.”
Both girls walked out of the house. Grace kept walking to the Jeep and Anna slowed down, apprehensive about leaving the house, her parents and her life behind. She was in shock.
“Get in the car, Anna,” Grace said, her tone firm and her resolve solid.
Anna looked back one more time at the house and then crawled into the passenger seat.
Grace started the Jeep and pulled out of the driveway without turning on the headlights. “This day sucks,” she said.
CHAPTER 10
“Isn’t it awesome?”
Leah watched her husband back the old Jeep off of the trailer and onto the driveway. She wasn’t impressed. Grace didn’t look overly joyous at her future ride either.
“It’s a 1984 Jeep CJ7 Laredo, he said proudly. It was brown with a giant brown and gold eagle painted on the hood.
“It’s a piece of junk, hon,” Leah responded.
“Dad, we only have a year before I’m 16 to fix it up. It looks like we need like ten years! And,” Grace’s voice rose. “It’s brown. No one has a brown car! Everyone else at school is getting something from like this century, like a Beetle or a BMW or heaven forbid a Toyota! And they aren’t brown!”
Ian was ready for the criticism. He explained that the Jeep would serve several purposes besides being Grace’s ride. “It can be our first bug our vehicle and it would still work incase of an electromagnetic pulse.”
“Why does everything have to be about prepping for something that’s never going to happen?” Grace asked in disgust, and turned to go inside.
Leah watched her husband work to unhook the vehicle and pick a few pieces of pine straw out of from under the windshield wipers. She could see that he was taking this one personally.
“Once you two start working on it she will own it,” Leah said, picking a few leaves from the front bumper. “She will grow to love this car and the time that she spent with you to make it hers.”
Ian looked up at her, smiled and nodded that she was right. “I know. I know. I just wonder sometimes when I see that kind of reaction if we’re a little crazy with all of this stuff?”
Leah moved to stand beside her husband. “You mean with the prepping?”
“Yeah. It’s not what other parents do, Leah. Other parents don’t train their daughter on how to field strip an AR-15 or how to find drinkable water when the taps don’t work. We’re freaks, Leah.”
Leah put her hand on his shoulder and then climbed into the passenger seat of the Jeep. “Does this thing drive?”
Ian smiled at his wife. “Yeah, why?”
“I want a ride,” she said coyly.
“Where do you want to go?”
“Where ever you want to take me,” she said, knowing that this was the actual pickup line he had used on her twenty years earlier.
Ian jumped into the driver seat and stuck the key into the ignition. “Are you sure you want to go there?”
“Where else would I want to go?” she asked, while putting one leg up on the dash.
Ian started the Jeep and it roared to life. He looked at his wife and she smiled at him. He reached to put the transmission in reverse and caught the vision of his daughter walking back out of the garage. Before she could walk up to the driver side, Leah put a gentle hand on Ian’s as it rest on the knob of the manual transmission. He knew that meant to hold tight.
“It sounds pretty good,” Grace said, referring to the sound of the engine. She leaned through the window and looked at the interior for the first time. “Can we at least add a decent radio and some speakers?” she asked. “And, oh, lose the eagle?”
Both Ian and Leah exploded with laughter.
“Of course, Sweetie. This is our project, but it will be your car,” Ian said while containing his smile.
“Good, then hop in the back Dad, I want to drive,” she said, opening the door.
< >
That happened just over two years ago. She loved the year that she and her dad had worked on the Jeep. He taught her about most of the moving parts and how to take care of the 4x4 herself. She ended up falling in love with the vehicle, and eagerly worked with her father to make it her own.
After stripping the eagle off of the hood, they repainted the Jeep a rich metallic copper color, blacked out the wheels and added oversized tires. It looked sharp in a retro cool kind of way, and was the envy of most of the boys at her school.
Who needs a BMW? Or, school anymore for that matter? Grace thought to herself.
Once they had pulled out of Anna’s driveway, Grace reached under the dash to flip a number of switches. Each switch killed a series of lights on the car; brake lights, interior lights, back up lights and dash lights. They were driving in the dark, and the copper paint hid nicely in the shadows. Good thinking, Dad.
Grace also tried calling her mother again on the two-way radio, but didn’t hear back from her. We’re coming, Mom! She turned the radio off and threw it on the dash.
“Where are we going?” Anna finally asked. She hadn’t spoken since leaving her house. She kept staring at the picture of her family.
“We’re going to my house.”
“This isn’t the way to your house.”
“Yeah, it’s the long way,” Grace told her friend. She needed Anna to stop her spiral downward into freekdom. She thought it might be good to give her a task. “Can you look on the map and find where we are, I think I’m on the right road, but I need help?”
Anna didn’t move she simply stared out the window.
“Anna!”
&n
bsp; “What?”
“I need your help. Snap out of it!”
“My parents are dead, and that dude almost raped me! I don’t want to snap out of it, Grace!”
Grace half thought about stopping the Jeep, which would have been something her father would do, but she decided not to stop.
“Anna, get a grip! Shit is going down, and I need your help!” Grace said as firmly as she could without loosing her temper.
“I can’t Grace. It’s too hard.”
“Damn it, Anna, I get that your parents might be dead. Did you ever think that my Dad might be dead too?” Grace was tired and pissed.
Anna sniffed and shuffled a little in her seat. “Yeah.”
“Good, so, let’s get through this together! The last think I need is you turning into a freaker!”
Grace took another turn at a road she thought was familiar. They were avoiding the main roads and as many neighborhoods as possible. They had come across a number of stalled cars on the road, but since they were on back roads, Grace was able to drive around them without any problems. They did see one person pop their head up while still in their car.
“What’s a freaker?” Anna finally asked.
“Freakers,” Grace said, with some apprehension, “are people like Mr. Miller.”
“Damn Grace, you think I’m like him?”
“No, I just know that ordinary people can turn into them after some major event. My parents did a lot of research about what happens after natural disasters, wars and stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. They found patterns in how the people reacted. It didn’t matter what the disaster was or when it happened in history, there were always freakers. They’re the people that break apart and panic right after something happens. They’re the ones that smash storefront windows, burn cars and loot everything. Societal norms just evaporate from their ability to be humans.”
“People just flip out, huh?”
“Obviously,” Grace said, referring to Mr. Miller. “I don’t really get it. It’s like a hurricane hits or a terrorist attack and bam, you get riots and social order goes right out the window!”
“What about humanity? With Miller, it’s like a switch just went off in his head! That was crazy.”
“That’s why we call them freakers. Miller saw the plane go down, he knew the power was out, I’m suspecting that he thought your parents weren’t coming back and he had this ‘thing’ for you.” She looked over at her friend, knowing that this was hard to hear. “He saw his chance, and once he learned that we were leaving, he had just enough info to launch a rocket filled with paranoia and he flipped…he freaked ”
Anna looked over at her and nodded. A tear streaked down her cheek, but she wasn’t sobbing like she had been earlier.
Grace felt that her friend was slowly coming back to reality. She pulled the Jeep to a stop sign and turned right. There were only a few more miles…at least she thought there were, but again, she wasn’t entirely familiar with this way home.
“So, how do you think he knew about Atlanta?” Anna asked.
Grace had been asking herself the same question. “I don’t know. He might have been lurking around your house and heard me talking to my Mom, or maybe he had some radio or something that still worked. I don’t think he saw it on cable TV!”
“What’s that?” Anna pointed ahead.
There was a small green light swinging back and forth about 200 yards down the road. They had not seen any lights since leaving. It was nearly 1:00 AM; there shouldn’t be anyone out.
Grace leaned forward and squinted. “I think it’s a glow stick,” she said, her mind raced through what options they had. They needed to go this way. If they turned around, they would have to go onto the main road, or double all the way back to Anna’s house and circle back around a different way.
“Let’s slow down and see what we can see,” Grace said more to herself.
The Jeep coasted to a stop. They were still about 100 yards from the light. She put the Jeep in 1st gear and kept her foot on the clutch, ready to go.
“What do you want to do?” Anna asked.
Grace thumbed the safety on the pistol still sitting in her lap. A second light moved into view down the road.
“Let’s go back,” Grace said.
Anna watched her friend put the Jeep in reverse and pivot the car around. The green lights started moving towards them. She started getting nervous.
“Go faster,” Anna said, her calm state over.
“I’m trying but,” she was fighting the steering wheel. The Jeep didn’t have power steering and it was hard to turn.
“They’re running towards us!” Anna looked back, and then she saw something out of the corner of her eye. It was a man shaped shadow next to the Jeep. She yelped out of fear, and shouted, “GO! GO! GO!”
Grace stood on the gas, spinning the tires and cutting the wheel. The pistol flew off of Grace’s lap as she accelerated in the circle to turn around. The man on Anna’s side jumped on to the running board of the Jeep and reached through the open passenger window, grabbing Anna by the arm.
Grace fought to keep the Jeep from flipping over as she over steered the vehicle and flung them from side to side. She was not letting off the gas and had not yet put the Jeep in second gear. She was also frantically searching the floor with her hand, trying to find the gun.
Anna swung at the man, hitting him repeatedly in the head. “Let go! Let go!” she yelled, and then bit into his arm.
The man yelled and backhanded her face with tremendous force. Her head flung back and blood exploded from her nose. Grace fingers found the familiar metal of the pistol.
Grace yelled something and flung the gearshift into 2nd gear; the gun now in her hand. “Get off!” she yelled to the man, but he reached across Anna and lunged for her keys. She backhanded his head with the butt of the gun.
He let out a tremendous yell in reaction to the pain.
The Jeep was beginning to redline and Grace didn’t have it under control; she thought they were about to flip.
“You, bitch!” he yelled, and took a swing at Grace from across the Jeep.
Grace leaned back and away from the massive fist as it hit the top of her seat. She let off the gas long enough to steady herself. “Get down!” she yelled to Anna, bringing the handgun up and pushing Anna down with her forearm.
The man leaned back, while still holding on and tried to bring his own shotgun around his body and into the Jeep.
The boom of Grace’s pistol exploded across the front seat and struck the man squarely in the chest before he could pull his own trigger. He fell away from the Jeep, and Grace found 3rd gear.
Anna screamed at the boom and sat up, blood gushed from her nose.
“Stay down!” Grace pushed her head back towards her knees. She could see the muzzle flashes of the people that had the light sticks down the road. Pellets struck the Jeep, and the driver’s side mirror shattered.
Anna started crying. She gripped her knees with her arms and rocked back and forth. Grace found 4th gear and kept the pedal down.
CHAPTER 11
Dukes, Penny, Ian and Mary walked down the red dirt driveway of Dukes’ home in the woods. Ian noticed several areas along the driveway that had been fortified with sandbags or berms of dirt and bricks. He was walking into a fortress and he was okay with that.
“So, what are we going to do?” Mary asked.
“I’ll tell you that once you tell me why you came with me? In case you didn’t notice Mary, half of the east coast is probably gone. Like up in smoke!” Ian’s temper was short with the entire experience and the worry about his family.
She sniffed and looked away.
Ian rolled his eyes. “Where was your family, anyway?”
Mary kept walking to the cabin. She opened her mouth to say something, but pursed her lips instead.
Ian let that be a warning sign that she was dealing with all of this and would get back to him on her own t
ime. He stopped talking.
Dukes stopped short of opening his door and looked at the two. He was really going out on a limb by bringing people to his cabin. “Don’t do anything that you two will regret because I’ll make you pay.” His eyes traveled sharply between Ian and Mary.
Mary looked to the ground and Ian held his gaze.
“You’ve got my word,” Ian offered quietly but firmly.
They walked in and Penny and Dukes stowed their shotguns in a safe. Penny headed to the kitchen and Dukes went to another room down the hall. Ian noticed that Dukes never removed his side arm.
The cabin was simple. The wood walls were rich with red and brown colors and reflected the light of the fire that was burning in the stone fireplace.
“Someone else is here,” Ian said quietly to Mary.
“How do you know these things?”
Dukes walked back down the hallway. He was wiping his hands with a towel and there was a lady following him. She was mid forties, tall and slender and had the same hair as Penny. It had to be her mother.
“This is June, my wife,” Dukes said, and then stammered for an instant realizing that he didn’t know their names.
“I’m Ian,” he said, saving Dukes the extra embarrassment.
“And I’m Mary.”
They both shook her hand.
“Dukes told me you were in a plane crash? I thought he and Penny were just going out turkey hunting. Plane crash? How’s that possible?”
No one said anything because it meant verbalizing the reality of what was really happening in the world.
“You don’t know, do you?” Mary offered gently.
“Know what?” June asked, looking over at Dukes.
He swallowed hard, taking the second to formulate his answer. “It’s started, June; the end of the world. It’s started,” he repeated.
“They nuked Atlanta,” Penny said, her head stuck in the still working refrigerator.
Ian looked over at her and noted that the refrigerator was one from the 1950’s, and for that matter, all of the lights were on in the cabin. They had been unaffected by the EMP effects. How’d he do that?
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