A short series of beeps filled the air, but the playlist went into the next song.
“It sounded like a computer is running the DJ booth,” Emily suggested.
“Yeah. Weird. I guess it really is on a digital loop. Nothing too exciting about it.”
Absently, he thought the owner deserved an award.
‘Last station on the air.’
St. Louis, MO
“This is the most confusing place I’ve ever been!” Tabby threw her hands in the air, despite being behind the wheel. “None of these streets go to the Arch. They go everywhere but there.”
She’d parked in the middle of a wide avenue with wrecked cars all around her. The Gateway Arch gleamed bright in the morning sunshine from only a few blocks away, but it was seemingly impossible to find the road that went underneath it.
“Maybe we can try going on the highway again?” Donovan drawled from the navigator’s seat.
The highway went into a channel below ground, cutting off the city from the park-like grounds of the monument next to the river. Being on the highway got them closer, but they wouldn’t get close enough.
“Why don’t you drive on the grass?” Audrey said as an offhand remark.
Tabby slowly turned to see her and Peter in the backseat. They’d each moved closer to their respective windows to try to help her navigate the confusing downtown streets. “You’re a genius. Why am I trying to find roads and parking lots when I can drive into the park the old-fashioned way.”
She got the car moving again and found the first cross street. It was one-way in the opposite direction, but she didn’t pay attention to that. After going a couple of blocks, the roadway ended at a large church at the edge of the park. She drove onto a small parking lot, then continued onto a paved walking path lined with young trees.
“This is so much easier,” Tabby crowed. “We don’t have to follow the rules, because there are no police around to give us a ticket.”
“We could give the Arch a lawn job,” Peter giggled.
Audrey reached over and slapped him.
“Thank you,” Tabby said to the girl.
As their tour guide, she couldn’t lay a hand on them, but there was no stopping Audrey. She seemed to enjoy the role of riding herd on the unruly Peter. He seemed to like it, too. He laughed after she slapped him.
“I’m kidding!” he protested.
Tabby drove the path for about fifty yards, guiding the car to the top of a small rise. The Arch towered above like a sixty-story steel skyscraper. The other leg of the monument came down across a wide, flat field of grass. The open space was several football fields wide and long.
“What are those?” Donovan pointed ahead.
The field looked like it was being used as a staging area for a huge science fair. A long row of yellow bulldozers had been parked on the far side. Two more trundled along the tree-lined footpath on the other side of the most distant Arch leg.
Tabby stopped the car while still in the trees.
The middle of the field was dedicated to multiple models of flying drones. Those, she recognized right away. There were two rows of the smaller type her dad used for the mine, perhaps fifty in a line. Another row contained larger four-propeller drones, and they looked like they could carry cargo under their raised middles.
The closest row was a line of dozens of small, horse-like robots. Those were painted in camouflage colors, like kids had come by and glued fall leaves all over them.
“This doesn’t feel right,” Tabby said to herself. “Where are the survivors? The police? The fire department?”
“It’s probably just the police.” Donovan pointed into the air over the Mississippi River to their right. A normal helicopter flew above the mud-colored channel, then veered toward the far side.
“I don’t know. This isn’t what I expected.” She still experienced unease about the floating drone she believed had been hiding behind that school bus. If it was being flown by the police, why hide at all? But what else could it be?
Tabby happened to turn to the left, toward the grass. A large bedspread had been tossed on the ground, and two sets of clothes, a man and woman’s, were spread upon it. She looked away as soon as she figured out what it was.
“Go talk to them,” Peter suggested. “We have guns, right? No matter who they are, they have to know something.”
“I’ll do it,” Audrey added. Both kids in the back seat leaned forward, so they were almost between her and Donovan. Everyone but her seemed excited to see signs of people.
The two tractors weren’t moving by themselves; living, breathing drivers were inside of each one. Still, the whole area didn’t feel right. “Can we wait a second? I need to think this through, okay?” She smiled at the kids; hopeful she could suppress her own panic.
Donovan opened his door. “Don’t worry, Audrey. I’ll go check it out.”
“No!” Tabby said at almost a scream.
Donovan flinched in fright.
“Please, don’t go. We should all stick together.” That was good tour guide protocol; something she re-learned when she got separated from her Dad and the main tour group before the disaster. “Stay in the car, please.”
He’d managed to get one foot out the door, but he didn’t hop all the way out. He looked ahead to the activity a hundred yards away, and she noticed her tummy roll back into a knot, as it had done down in the mine.
She had to try to keep them together. “I’ll tell you what. I’m going to reverse back to the parking lot, then we can walk over to this hill and watch them for a while. If we see other survivors show up, we’ll know we can safely enter, right? It will give us a chance to approach on our terms.”
The sight of so many drones made her think of scientists lining up their equipment to survey damage after a disaster. If there’d been a huge gas leak or other calamity, it made sense they’d send in drones to make sure everything was all right before they’d send in more people.
Donovan closed his door. “We’ve got all day. Sure. Why not.”
She put the car in reverse and backed away as fast as she dared.
The two tractors arrived under the Arch. She imagined them seeing her and sending over one of those drones to investigate what she was doing. Why was she here? How did she survive? Going even further into the world of panic, she imagined they might even kill them. Those horse-like machines didn’t look friendly at all.
She’d nearly backed them all the way to the empty church parking lot.
“I think we’re safe,” she said. It took all her energy to keep from smashing the pedal to get away. It was good she kept a hold of that, however, because she probably would have crashed into the trees lining the walkway.
They were almost back at the lot when she saw movement in her rearview mirror.
“Uh oh,” she gasped.
“What is—” Peter didn’t finish.
A truck hit them from behind.
CHAPTER 8
Poor Sisters Convent, Oakville, MO
Sister Rose checked the kitchen of the house, hoping to find food for the black lab, but the container of kibble only had five or six crumbs. The owners had let their supply dwindle to nothing. Now it was her problem.
“I guess people disappeared on dog-food restocking day.”
She was able to fill the water dish labeled ‘Biscuit.’
As soon as the black lab did her business, Sister Rose encouraged her to go inside again, but all she wanted to do was play with Deogee. The pair rolled around on the front lawn, growling and barking, making her worry they were going to kill each other. However, each time it looked like blood was about to spurt out from a neck, the dogs got up and started it all again.
She finally took a seat on the front porch, content to watch the dogs play. It gave her a chance to think about what had been going through her head since she’d let the lab outside.
“What am I going to do with you, Miss Biscuit?”
She wanted to get the dog bac
k inside her house. That would restore things to the status quo, and it would give her time to think and pray on it.
While she contemplated the fate of one dog, she realized other dogs were further up the block. The faint echo of barking resonated from that direction, probably because they heard the playful barks of the two in front of her. How many of those were hungry? How many owners would have left food for their pets?
Rose figured she could buy food in bulk at the pet store, then bring all the dogs into one big yard to feed them. She could get the communal van, leave an IOU at the store register, then load the bags and bring them back. As she worked through the logistics, it seemed insane.
“God, is this my burden to carry? I now have to care for every dog I find?” Her terms of acceptance into the convent never said anything about animals. She’d fallen into taking care of Deogee, and she wouldn’t turn a blind eye to this lab, but she believed her calling was to take care of people, not animals.
Rose looked down the residential street toward the main road. Tabby and the young children were now somewhere out there.
“I shouldn’t have let them out of my sight.”
Was it another failure of hers? Was God telling her to go with them, but she’d refused to listen? She exhaled in frustration. Nothing made a bit of sense anymore.
Deogee surprised her with a lick on her cheek.
“Oh, are you done playing?” The lab sprawled out on the grass, panting like a little engine. “You wore the other one out completely.”
Her gray-furred wolf-dog sat next to her, as if to silently answer her question.
She humanized the dog by talking for her. “Yeah, mom, Biscuit couldn’t keep up with me. Can we find some more friends?”
She laughed at imagining her speak, but the word “mom” surprised her. It was a word she’d given up when she’d put on the nun’s habit. It hadn’t even crossed her mind the entire time she’d been among the other sisters, because she’d found the life for her. Total devotion to God. However, just saying the word, and being responsible for the gray wolf-dog, made her see life a bit differently.
Rose still wasn’t sure what it meant, but as she continued to think about it, a buzzing sound came from somewhere over the houses. Deogee got excited when it grew louder, probably because Rose did as well.
“We might finally have some help,” she suggested.
The sound was hard to pin down, but it was definitely not natural. She likened it to a small airplane propeller.
“Here, puppy. Come here.” She patted her knees at the front door to get the black lab to come in the house again.
Rose popped inside the elegant front living room. A patch of dried yellow stained the carpet, suggesting the canine did her business on the floor while unsupervised. Her owner had been there yesterday; the familiar tangle of clothing was on the carpet. It looked like the dog had been nosing through them…
“Inside!” she ordered, hopeful she could figure out a command it would recognize.
Deogee paced back and forth, as if trying to interpret her words.
She stepped further inside. “Biscuit! Come!”
Deogee came right in, but the black lab was still lying on her side in the grass.
The wolf watched her intently for a few moments, then ran outside again. Its long claws ticked off the hardwood floor of the McMansion-style home.
“Come!” she repeated.
Deogee got the other hound to its feet and led her through the doorway.
“Good pups!” she cheered. Her dog was smart.
She closed the door as soon as they were in, but then cracked it open again. The whiny engine sound seemed to come from down the street, nearer to her convent. Perhaps someone was looking over the place to confirm there was no one left alive.
If she’d been down there …
She glanced over to the dogs; they were roughhousing again. This time, they did it on the family room’s wooden floors. They got tangled in more clothing, kicked over a plant stand, and jumped on and off the fancy couch.
“What do I do?”
Harrisburg, PA
It was hard to know the name of the last radio station on the air because neither of them was familiar with radio in Harrisburg’s listening area. It was made worse because the music channel never gave out its call sign. It never ran a commercial or other break.
“Just like when we heard it in the Jeep. It looks like it is right at 100.0 megahertz on the FM band, though I don’t know how the FCC let them license that. All civilian radio stations are supposed to end in odd numbers. 99.9 and 100.1 were probably taken over by this superstation. In DC, they call it Super One Hundred, or something like that. No idea what they call it here.”
“I should probably know how they licensed it,” she suggested, “but I think they started up before I came to office.”
“Don’t worry about it, let’s just find the local station. I suppose we could look in the phone book for Harrisburg and track it down that way. Then we could go pay them a visit to see if someone’s there.”
“I’ll look for the book,” she replied.
Ted scanned other stations for about ten minutes while she searched. He didn’t have a frequency guide in front of him, but he did know some shortwave aviation frequency bands. That let him listen in to air traffic flying over Iceland and Great Britain, but he couldn’t hear anything over the Atlantic closer to America, which should have been bustling with traffic for planes coming back to the mainland. “I’m at a loss,” he admitted.
Emily heard him from across the room. “About what?”
“I can hear traffic out there, but it’s all far away. I thought for sure we’d hear some flights coming across today.”
He scanned more frequencies until a voice came through loud and clear.
“Bingo,” he said to himself.
“What’s that?”
“This is an old Navy HF high command frequency. I didn’t think it was used anymore, but they’re broadcasting.”
“A what and a what?” she chuckled, moving back over to him.
“Listen,” he advised.
‘…repeating: By order of General Preston Worthington, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, and acting leader of all armed forces and civilians of the United States. All United States military units in Europe have been placed on hold until damage assessment from terrorist attack are complete. All US Naval vessels, aircraft, and personnel are to avoid continental US airspace at this time. Threat of second attack deemed likely. Repeating…’
“Ted?” Emily said with worry steeped in her voice.
“That explains why there is no allied forces here, even after a day,” he remarked. If there were no US military units coming to their rescue, it changed this whole game plan, especially regarding the nuclear briefcase. Maybe it would be worth finding the JFK. It was the only friendly unit he could be sure was still nearby. That was how they could get a message up the chain of command.
“Ted!” Emily shouted.
“Yes?” he said, giving her his full attention.
“There’s something coming across the bridge.” She pointed out the window, across the airfield and toward the bridge where he’d parked his Jeep.
He ran over to get a better view. They were a couple of miles down the river from the bridge, but the large military wrecker was easy to see as it shoved cars aside with its giant blade.
“My Jeep!” he said with despair as he realized it was part of that clearance project. All his precious supplies fell, with the Jeep, into the river below.
She tapped his arm. “What do we do?”
He looked back and forth between the arriving convoy and the radio. It was too large to take with them, and there wasn’t enough time to trawl through the long list of frequencies where he might learn more information about the worldwide situation. Could he get a call out to someone? Should he?
“We can’t stay here,” he said matter-of-factly. “We can’t worry about the radio station, ei
ther. Help might not be coming like we thought.”
The VP pointed to the microphone. “But we should call out for help, right? Tell them we’re alive. Americans are alive here on the mainland.”
He clicked his tongue on his teeth to think. “I don’t think we should, Emily. The general just said US forces are not anywhere close. If we give ourselves away, the bad guys might come looking for you. For us.”
She seemed like she wanted to dispute him, but her face softened in resignation. “We should go, then. Right?”
He looked at the airfield. A couple of large C-130s sat on a remote part of the tarmac. Those were laden with antennas as part of the mission of the 193d squadron. But there was also another, smaller, plane on the field.
“Ted? We should be leaving…”
“I know. I’m thinking of doing something risky.” The safe play was to run off through the giant parking lot. They could find an abandoned car and blend back into the countryside. The problem with that plan was that there was nowhere to go out there. He wanted to get further to the east—closer to friendly forces who would eventually get the clearance to come in from England—before the enemy secured the area in and around DC. If they were already here in Harrisburg, they were spreading out faster than he’d given them credit. He pointed where he wanted her to go.
She turned to look. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Amarillo, TX
Brent had barely made it twelve hours before he was faced with a life-or-death choice. Trish’s emergency call reminded him of his journey yesterday to the nearby towns. There wasn’t just no one there, but there was no law there either. Trish and the other guards had gone out into an apocalyptic version of America where police officers wouldn’t respond to any 911 calls.
Her cry for help fell squarely on his shoulders, unless he could come up with a miracle.
He’d called everyone he could, yesterday, but he figured he might have better luck today. After all, if he’d come back to work, maybe others did, too. Brent scrambled for the phone book and leafed through to the number for the Amarillo PD.
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 28