Day of Reckoning

by Isaiah Lee

  It seemed so usual, in fact, that blue lights appeared in the rearview. Under normal circumstances, Karen would have freaked her shit. Now, though, Karen was determined. By the time Jason noticed the pursuer in the distance, their speed had topped 140 miles per hour. The blue lights quickly vanished as she depressed the accelerator harder.

  “Damn, Karen. What is this car?”

  “2003 Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG.”

  “Jesus, this thing is fast!” he exclaimed. “I thought it was just a pretty, silver car. I had no idea that it was this fast.” Truthfully, he had never been this fast before. It was exhilarating.

  “469 horsepower. It has a supercharger. Oh, and the restrictor has been taken off. The guy I bought it from said these cars have been up to 208 miles per hour.”

  Jason was speechless. He didn’t want to go that fast, but it might come in handy. “How do you know so much about it? Are you a car nut?”

  “Not quite,” she laughed. She whipped right, avoiding a slower car in the left lane. As she passed it, she swerved back left to avoid another driver in the slow lane. “I’ve been known to bust the occasional street racer here and there. Everybody kept asking me questions, so I memorized the specs. Honestly, I don’t know what most of that means. I just know it’s fun to drive.”

  “I bet.” Jason made a mental note that he would have to take the Mercedes for a spin before he was unable to.

  The peaceful drive, after the police chase anyway, was short lived. An alien space ship flew across the sky in front of the car. There was no exhaust trail, no noise. Nothing.

  A fighter jet blasted through the air behind the craft. The alien ship turned upward so quickly that the jet was unable to follow the movement. It slowed and pitched upward, but it was futile. The alien ship looped back behind the fighter plane and loosed two small dots of light. Almost instantly, they struck the fighter.

  The explosion in the sky above the interstate was unbelievable. Chunks of molten shrapnel rained down onto the speeding cars. Jason and Karen watched as a car swerved in an oncoming lane. The driver steered right into a tractor trailer which careened into the center concrete divider. Karen switched lanes just in time to avoid the truck as it crashed through the barrier and into the car that had been following Karen.

  Karen swerved again as the cockpit of the plane crashed onto the interstate. “Shit!” She silently thanked God that her car was sporty enough to handle the abuse.

  The opposite side of the interstate came to a full stop as the pile up grew. Cars just kept slamming into each other until finally drivers began to notice the commotion up ahead. The alien craft came back into view as a volley of green bursts launched toward the cars below. Explosions lit the night sky as cars were obliterated.

  Karen spotted an exit coming up and whipped the car onto the ramp.

  “Where are you going?” Jason asked.

  “The hell off the interstate!” she exclaimed. “At least we won’t be trapped if we’re off the interstate.”

  Green flashes and explosions lit the horizon to the left of the exit. Karen headed right. She sighed. “We can’t just keep driving forever. We have to find safety and shelter.”

  Jason nodded. He was alright with driving with Karen forever. He swiped his phone open and began typing. Soon, he had an idea. “So, obviously these bastards can blast right through concrete and steel. It seems we need to hide somewhere… underground.”

  “Where exactly could we hide underground? I don’t think a basement is going to keep us safe.”

  “Not a basement. I heard something about a nuclear fallout shelter about fifty miles south of Syracuse. We’re really not that far away if we could just get there.” He began searching again.

  “A nuclear fallout shelter? Where did you hear about that?”

  Jason looked up and faced Karen. She looked scared. Jason wished he knew what but be safest, but with potentially three thousands of those flying discs, the odds weren’t in their favor. “An online forum I’ve been a member of for years. I was researching for a video game I used to play and found the forum. The main discussion at the time was what would happen to our country in case of another terrorist attack like what happened on September 11th, 2001.

  “A group of members suggested that there was an entire network of underground bomb shelters around the country built for the purpose of surviving a potential nuclear war. The only problem is that the forum has since been shut down. There used to be posted locations around the country that were supposed shelters.”

  Karen shrank a little in her seat. “Well that’s discouraging. If they even were real, how would we go about finding hidden bomb shelters?”

  Jason continued his online query. “That’s what I’m trying to find. I remember there was a code of some sort. Every single leaked location corresponded to a business of some sort.” He scratched the scruff on his chin. “What was the code?” He remembered the letter Y and an ampersand. What was the correct orientation and what were the missing letters? & Y… No. Y &… Seemed closer, but still he couldn’t make sense of them.

  “You’d better be remembering quickly.” Three of the flying ships flew over the Mercedes in tight formation. They couldn’t have been more than thirty or forty feet above the ground. Karen had driven into a residential district. It was sparsely populated and would prove extremely difficult to hide. “Jason!” Karen nearly screamed.

  As he looked up from his phone, Jason was shaken. A blast exploded the pavement a few feet outside of his window. “Fuck! They’re shooting at us!”

  Karen whipped right as another blast barreled toward them. The house, a fifty’s era ranch-style that had been remodeled in the last five to ten years – and taken years to remodel – was shredded apart in less than a second.

  As Karen pushed the engine to its limits, and narrowly avoided running into cars parked on the sides of the street, Jason had an epiphany. The retail chain Young & Buck’s was established in the mid-2000s. Originally designed as a camping store, the chain began selling firearms, fishing gear, clothing, and other items found in a hunter’s wet-dream.

  “Young & Buck’s!” Jason nearly screamed. How he had landed at that recollection, he knew not.

  The sudden outburst startled Karen who had been entirely focused on the road. She had somehow managed to lose the three pursuers but was still on edge. “Yeah, what about them?”

  “That is where the bomb shelters are. Each Young & Buck’s location has a full-size bomb shelter hidden under the building.”

  “You’re shittin’ me.”

  “No shit. The entire thing was a government-funded project to provide bomb shelters for important people: government leaders, school teachers. Rich fuckers.”

  Karen made a face. “What do you mean?”

  “Rumor was that a certain percentage of seats were saved for the general public and were already auctioned off in case of a nuclear attack. The government would have a source for funding and the lucky few who could afford it would be safe from nuclear fallout. Win, win.”

  “So where’s the nearest Young & Buck’s?”

  “Ithaca.”

  “Lead the way.”

  Jason spoke into his phone. “Show me directions to Young & Buck’s, Ithaca, New York.” His phone chimed and pulled up a map with directions to the hunting goods store. “We’d better pray we get there in one piece.”

  Chapter 19

  Once they found a way back onto I-81, traffic was moving slower than usual. At least it was moving. Emergency vehicles filled the lanes on the other side. Jason heard a military helicopter somewhere in the distance but he couldn’t pinpoint it in the darkness. The sound traveled past them toward Syracuse.

  “Sounds like they’ve called in the military,” Jason said. “It’s a good thing we’re going to a bunker. It’s going to be all-out war.”

  Karen was speechless. What could she say? Aliens were invading and she was afraid World War Three was about to begin. She could only imagine what the r
est of the world looked like. They pulled in the parking lot of Young & Buck’s at a little past three in the morning. There was only a handful of cars near the front. Karen left her car near the road and turned the lights off.

  Jason expected the store to be empty and the lights off. Instead the place was lit up like a Christmas tree. Several of the front windows were shattered, glass littering the parking lot. He spotted a man standing on one of the hunting displays. He wielded either a shotgun or rifle of some sort. It was impossible to tell at this distance.

  They heard the report of a gun – definitely a shotgun – as another man fell from the second floor balcony near the elevator. A red splatter marked the wall behind where the man had been standing.

  Gunshots echoed inside the building as the man on the display took a shot to the head. The back half of his skull exploded in a grey and red spray of matter. Several people were screaming back and forth inside the store. It sounded as if they had claimed territories.

  “Follow me,” Karen whispered. Karen stepped out of the car and eased her way in the darkness to the trunk, thankful nobody seemed to notice their arrival. She opened the lid and spotted her purse. She found the 9mm semiautomatic pistol she always carried. She pushed it into Jason’s hand. “Know how to use this?” she asked incredulously.

  Jason grinned wide. “Sure do.”

  “Good. Looks like we’re going to have to fight our way in. How sure are you about the bomb shelter built under this place?” She reached in her purse and produced the .32 caliber handgun the always kept in her nightstand drawer. She placed her purse behind the driver’s seat – a habitual move that seemed pointless now – and chambered the first round. She stuffed an extra magazine in her jeans pocket.

  Jason believed he may be in love. She seemed so sweet and elegant until she had a reason to break out her inner badass. And she was a total badass.

  Jason had to admit: this new, take-charge attitude was pretty hot.

  Why had he not asked her out sooner? The end of the world seemed like such a shitty time to grow a set. He calculated his odds. Aliens invading the planet, World War III, and he was a pussy… The results were less than great. On the off chance that humanity somehow survived the onslaught, and that he and Karen managed to not get killed themselves, Jason knew he couldn’t let Karen go. She already meant too much to him.

  “Jason?” Karen spat the word as if she had been waiting for an answer for a while. Impatience lingered even after her voice had trailed off.

  Jason jerked to attention, nearly letting the 9mm slip from his grip. He tightened his fingers on the handle and answered. “What? Oh yeah, the bomb shelter. Until recently, I never would have believed that aliens existed, especially not that they would be trying to annihilate the human race. I think the bomb shelter hidden underneath of a government-funded, cover-up business is just as plausible as aliens.”

  Karen thought for a moment before nodding her head. She appreciated his attempt at consoling her nerves, even if the idea seemed totally crazy. “Ok. Let’s do this.”

  Jason didn’t budge as Karen began to slip from the shadow behind her car. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “What’s the plan?” There it was, a touch of nervousness. Pull it together, man!

  “Well, we can go in, guns blazing, and pray to a higher power that they don’t immediately kill us. Please keep in mind that we are outnumbered. Severely. Or, and let me just say that my vote is for this one, we sneak inside and pick them off one at a time until we know it is safe enough to search for this bunker.”

  She saw Jason’s disbelief and mistook it for fear. “Look at them.” She pointed a finger toward the store. “Everyone in there – at my last count was eleven now – is armed to the teeth. See?” she gestured toward a man on the top level who literally had a bowie knife held between his teeth while he dug through some unseen treasure. “They’ll definitely be hostile. I’m sort of amazed that they’ve not already begun shooting at as, given that we weren’t exactly quiet pulling in.”

  Jason took in the scene and had to agree. “I guess they didn’t notice us since those two were bickering.”

  “So, which plan do you approve of?”

  This was no contest. “Plan number two. We don’t outgun them by a long shot, and our range is going to be limited since we both have pistols and they have access to hunting rifles.”

  “On my count…” she began to crawl in a crouched position. “One.”

  The sound was barely a whisper. Jason wasn’t sure he had even heard anything. He inched up toward her.

  “Two.”

  The man with the bowie knife had begun his rounds and stopped when he got to the large windows overlooking the parking lot. He cocked his head slightly and leaned forward as if it would help his vision. He said something to himself and began his pacing. He raised a bottle from his mouth and took a long draft before stuffing it back into his jacket pocket. He stumbled slightly. Drunk already.

  Karen grinned. “Go.” She hurried silently across the parking lot, stopping only once to check Jason’s progress behind her.

  Jason kept up with Karen’s pace, but he didn’t move as gracefully as she did. Ballet, maybe? He knew there was some reason that she moved like a cat on the prowl. He filed this, along with why she carried a handgun with her all the time, away in the ‘ask again later’ file in his brain.

  They stopped just shy of the front entrance. Karen noticed the red wink of a security camera’s night vision infrared as it panned away from their location. How likely was it that this group of people were watching cameras? Still, they had to be careful. “Move,” she commanded almost inaudibly.

  Jason couldn’t help but wonder if the screaming vocals and earth-shattering explosions earlier that night hadn’t, at least temporarily, damaged his hearing.

  Karen slipped around the corner like an assassin and dove right. Jason followed the movement – his roll wasn’t exactly a roll, more like a face-plant with quick recovery – and fell in place beside her. There was a dark spot beside the front offices and restrooms, which Karen silently thanked the dip-shits for their oversight in skipping a breaker or two when they flipped on the lights.

  Karen leaned over right in Jason’s ear to whisper to him. He caught a whiff of her perfume. God, help him focus on the task at hand! “Once the shooting begins, there is no going back.” Jason nodded his understanding. “You want upstairs or down?”

  Jason’s eyes grew. “Is it smart for us to separate?”

  “Would you prefer we remain together and present a larger target?”

  Who was this girl? Jason nodded upward. “I’ll take upstairs. There’s less cover.”

  Karen agreed. “I’ll remain down here. Good luck.” She kissed him on the lips, a long and passionate embrace, and was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Jason sat frozen for a split second as his head spun. Had that really happened? His dream girl kissed him and he was totally spaced out and didn’t return the gesture. Fuck! What a first impression to make!

  Karen had already moved in place in the back right corner next to the fishing gear. It wasn’t the most hidden spot, but Jason thought that it provided the most places to hide.

  He knew the elevator would be a horrible idea. There was no way the exposed elevator wouldn’t catch the attention of every single person in the establishment. No, he had to find another way upstairs. There was a staircase, but it was nearly in the center of the building. Unless Karen began blasting wildly, Jason didn’t know how to draw attention away from the stairs. Unless…

  When they pulled up, there had definitely been two separate groups of people. He wasn’t sure if they were split between upstairs and downstairs, sections, or what, but there had to be a way to get the two groups fighting again.

  Jason spotted his opportunity. He eased his way to the front registers and pulled a price gun down. He waited until one of the men on the bottom floor passed by before he hurled it into a giant flat-screen televi
sion in the sporting goods section. The days-old golf tournament came to an abrupt end as the screen spider webbed and turned black.

  “What the fuck?” a man’s voice boomed. It was the man who had just walked past Jason. “Who broke the TV? I was watching that!”

  The other trespassers began to move where they could see what the screaming was about. One of them called back, “What are you bitchin’ about Tim?”

  Tim answered. “One of those cocksuckers broke the TV.” He walked over to the wall where the set hung and found the price gun, which had fallen to pieces upon striking the tile floor. He glanced over to the registers, but Jason had hurried into the shadows the minute the projectile left his hand. Tim held up the price gun. “See?” A piece of the plastic price gun fell to the floor as if to reiterate his point.

  Someone else spoke up. “You saw what happened to Terry for runnin’ his mouth. They shot him dead,” the large, burly man said. He cocked his shotgun with one hand then pointed it straight at Tim. “Don’t you go pointin’ fingers at us!”

  Tim’s face twisted into an expression that could only be described as half fear and half anger. “Look, the guilty one already spoke up.”

  A woman’s voice called out over the din. “Would you two shut the fuck up? The whole reason we came here was to beat those damn aliens. Not to make friends with fucking morons. Let the damned TV go. When they come here, we’ll be prepared and can fight back. It won’t do us a bit o’ good to kill each other first.” She pointed an authoritative finger at the man arguing with Tim. “Burt, don’t go getting’ yourself killed. Not over the likes o’ this Yankee bastard.”

  Burt, or so the woman had called him, slowly pointed the shotgun at the floor. He turned around to walk away from his accuser but stopped dead in his tracks. “The fuck was that?”