Empty Cities

by E. E. Isherwood

  “Well, the airport is right there. Maybe we walk across, get down to those railroad tracks, and sneak into the place? When we’re done, we’ll come back.” She tapped the black Jeep on the door.

  “I’m up for it if you are,” he said, happy to know he didn’t have to permanently abandon his rig.

  “Tell me what I need, and let’s get started.”

  He hustled to get what he believed was appropriate for a walk through hostile country.

  “AR-15.” He handed the gun over.

  “Weapon’s pouch.” He gave her a small pouch she could sling around her waist. Inside, she’d have two hundred rounds of 5.56 caliber ammo. It was enough to be useful, but not so much she’d be uncomfortable.

  “I’ll carry the supply pack. I’ve got the water purifier, a water container, a little food, and some medical supplies. We should have enough stuff to stay overnight, too.”

  “You don’t mess around,” she said as if impressed.

  They stepped off from the Jeep, but he turned around before he got more than twenty feet.

  “What did you forget?” she asked.

  “Nothing. It just feels like I won’t see her again. Me and her go way back. I bought her the day my divorce papers went through.”

  She laughed. “You’ve been dating a car?”

  He didn’t know how to respond. Only a person who had escaped a bad marriage could understand what it meant to finally have something that was yours and only yours, though he wasn’t holding it against her.

  He chuckled, content to let things play out. “Yeah, I guess I have. You have no idea what kind of street cred this rock crawler got with me and my niece in the canyons of New York City. She’d make her mom sit in the back seat so she could wave at her friends from the front.”

  They started walking through the wreckage on the bridge.

  “You were close with your sister?”

  “Yeah. And Kyla was like a— Wait, shit. She is like a daughter to me. Becca was the mom who never had her shit together. I was the uncle who always came to straighten her out. Kyla was the good kid who somehow survived living with a single mother in that crazy city.”

  “Sounds like you had something to do with it.”

  “Yeah, a little.”

  “I’ll be sure to find out where the JFK is located if we do make contact with anyone in the chain of command, okay?” Emily scooted around a large tractor trailer that had jackknifed on the bridge. It might have been there before the disappearances, because a couple of expired police flares were in front of it.

  “It’s clear beyond this truck,” he noted. “We’re going to have to jog.”

  “Boy, you really want to make me sweat, don’t you?” Emily laughed while simultaneously wiping sweat from her brow. It was morning in mid-June and the humidity over the river was probably at one hundred percent.

  “That’s my job,” he said matter-of-factly. “But seriously, we’ll be easy to spot in the open. I want to cross over as fast as possible.” He considered going all the way back to the beginning of the bridge, then walking down the other span. It had cars from one end to the other. However, like most of his military calculations, that would take too much time with not enough benefit.

  Emily searched the skies. “You think someone is watching us?”

  He clicked his tongue against his teeth while thinking about it. “We have to assume someone is looking for stragglers like us. I’d rather be over there in solid tree cover.” The shore upstream from the airport was dense with trees.

  She pointed to the low concrete barrier alongside the edge of the bridge. “We could crouch down and crawl to the end. That would make us impossible to spot unless they were looking at the bridge from above.”

  He nodded. “Good thinking, but that will take ten times longer than running. Getting over and off the span will reduce our chance of a drone or other pair of eyes coming over us.”

  She shrugged. “That’s why you’re here: to tell me the correct way to do things.”

  “Ha! This is all-new terrain. I don’t even know who the enemy is. It makes it really hard to know the correct way to do anything.”

  “Whatever. I jumped out of that plane knowing precisely what I was doing. Once I found you, and learned about the president, I lost my bearings. You and I are both doing this on a wing and a prayer.”

  He appreciated the reference to their shared love of aviation.

  “Amen,” he replied.

  They ran across the bridge, mindful the air was no longer friendly.

  Saint Louis, MO

  The car ride was quiet as Tabby drove them through the suburbs of south St. Louis, looking for anyone who might be able to help them. She’d found Sister Rose by chance, so there had to be others. One of them would know where to find the cordon blocking the rest of the people from the affected area of the disaster.

  Naturally, it was Peter who broke the silence. “My grandma used to live up this way. I think her street might even be one of these around here.”

  He and Audrey sat in the back.

  Donovan sat in the front, next to Tabby. He turned around. “Sorry she’s dead, Peter.”

  “It’s cool. She actually died before all this.” Peter tapped his window, calling her attention to all the abandoned cars on the highway around them. “I only brought her up because she used to have a kick-ass house. I think they had a lot of money or something. She had the best televisions and audio equipment. I used to love going over there because I could watch whatever I wanted.”

  “Do you want to go there now?” Audrey asked with concern.

  “No. Grandpa died before her. All her stuff is gone.”

  “It does bring up a good point,” Donovan replied. “We should stop somewhere for food. Maybe a fast food restaurant was in the middle of cooking some burgers yesterday, and they’re free for the taking now.”

  The city was a looter’s dream, she realized. All of the grandmas could lose their big televisions if anyone came by with a big enough truck. And if she and the kids broke in somewhere and stole food, they’d be looters, too.

  They already were, with the guns, but she tried to justify that as necessary for their security. She’d seen too many movies where the people died because they were unarmed. Not on her watch.

  “Whoa!” she said. Up ahead, a pileup blocked a small bridge over a roadway.

  “Go on the other side,” Peter said from the back seat.

  “No duh,” Audrey laughed. “I think she can figure that out.”

  “I’m just trying to help,” he replied.

  It wasn’t a simple thing because there was a concrete barrier in place of a median.

  “We have to backtrack,” she said as she slowed and prepared to turn around. “It’s going to—”

  A feeling came over her that she was being watched. It might have been someone in a nearby home next to the highway, or from inside one of the cars stacked up in the crash up ahead.

  She hit the gas as soon as the car was pointed the wrong way on the highway.

  “Whoa! Did anyone else feel ooky, like we’re on camera?”

  “No, but I wouldn’t worry about it if they are. We’ve got these babies.” Peter patted his shotgun like it was a dog. He and Audrey had theirs stacked together between them. The butts were on the floorboard.

  Tabby drove back a mile, or two, until she was able to go down a ramp, go under the highway, then go back up into the wrong lane of traffic. Her tension built as she drove back to where the accident had taken place.

  “Now I feel ooky,” Donovan admitted. “From driving the wrong way like this.”

  He seemed frightened another car was going to come from the other way and strike them.

  She slowed to about forty miles an hour, partly to make Donovan feel better, but also so she could get a good look at the accident location. As she drove by, she searched for evidence someone was nearby with a camera.

  The wreck had been caused when the cars spun out in al
l directions. The little cars had shifted lanes, but they also brought down a school bus and a little moving van. She kept her eyes on the other side of the interstate as best she could but rolled on without seeing anything that looked like it didn’t belong.

  “You’re really freaked out, aren’t you?” Audrey leaned forward and tapped Tabby on the shoulder.

  Tabby responded by turning halfway around. As she was about to address Audrey, motion caught her eye over by the wrecked bus.

  “Holy—” She cut herself off.

  “What?” Peter said, looking back.

  “Did he see it?” she thought to herself.

  What was it? It could have been a tree blowing in the wind. Or it could have been someone’s clothes blowing up against the far windows of the bus. Or …

  Dad had used a four-prop drone to record footage from inside the mine during one of his publicity efforts. He’d hired a guy to drive the drone out over the lake and around the columns of rock. It was supposed to entice people to want to come to the mine and spend money to take a boat tour. She only remembered it as the time he had a helicopter underground.

  The thing on the far side of the bus appeared to have the same general shape and white color as dad’s camera drone.

  She didn’t look back. Whatever it was, she wanted to leave it far behind.

  “The cordon has to be before downtown,” she said with rising panic in her voice. It wouldn’t be right to tell the kids about the drone because it would only make them nervous. And her even more nervous.

  “Unless it wasn’t a drone, you scaredy cat,” she thought.

  “The Arch! Let’s check it out.” Peter cut through the tension with a verbal axe.

  She rolled her eyes. “We aren’t tourists. We’re not stopping there.”

  Peter huffed. “We have to stop sometime, and I’m getting hungry. There are always people eating picnics out there. I bet we’d find something tender to eat, like Yogi Bear scoring a basket.”

  The Arch gleamed silver in the distance. The highway seemed to take them right for it and the downtown. If she stayed on the highway, which she planned to do, it would take them right by the monument.

  “Well, actually, that might be a good idea,” Tabby allowed. “If this town was under some sort of alert, they would almost certainly evacuate people to the most famous monument in the city. We might find people there.”

  Audrey clapped, then launched into a violent cough.

  “Gas?” Tabby immediately thought.

  She drove the car and waited for several tense moments as the young girl seemed unable to catch her breath.

  “Does she need meds for her diabetes?” Tabby asked Peter. She kept her foot on the gas pedal but glanced over her shoulder to the struggling girl.

  Audrey shook her head and held up a finger signifying ‘just a second.’

  Tabby was worried sick something was wrong with the girl, and she’d begun to think about pulling over, even if there was someone watching. However, before she got too far down that path, Audrey cleared her throat.

  “Sorry,” she croaked. “I swallowed my gum.”

  “Well, shit,” Tabby let out.

  “I’m sorry,” the girl replied. “I’m excited! I’ve never been to the Arch.”

  She and Peter hugged and quickly kissed each other. Donovan stomped his feet on the floorboards to celebrate.

  Tabby rolled her eyes, though the kids couldn’t see her do it. The world had come apart, but the kids were still thinking about tourism. But maybe that was for the best right now. If they thought too much about their lost friends and family, or their parents, they might never stop crying.

  “Yay!” Tabby gushed to join in. “We’re going to the Arch.”

  CHAPTER 6

  USS John F. Kennedy

  After the drone escaped, the Marines went to the bridge to talk things over with Captain Van Nuys. Kyla followed but stood outside the hatch to listen. As a civilian, she didn’t expect to be able to contribute and was content to stay out of the way.

  The captain didn’t even need to be told why they were there.

  “The radar system went offline an hour ago. We’re driving blind right now. That’s why that bird penetrated our airspace. I’m trying to find someone who can troubleshoot the software. Not long ago, we finally got the hangar lifts working, so I’ve sent my XO to get at least one F18 in the air to provide cover. But we have to do everything with a threadbare crew, so prepping the plane takes a lot of time. Assuming we can even find a qualified pilot to fly it.”

  Carthager replied with a salute. “Understood, sir. Where do you want us?”

  “I want binoculars on every corner of the boat, plus up top.” He pointed to the decks above the bridge. “Radio me if you see so much as a plastic bag floating on the wind. We can’t let the enemy get that close again. They probably already figured out our weapons systems are offline, because they escaped.”

  “We’re on it, sir.”

  “Good. Dismissed.” He paused for a second. “Miss Kyla, you can come in.”

  Her name startled her. How did he know she was listening in? Was she breaking the rules?

  Carthager stormed out like he’d been ordered to eat barbed wire. He barely looked at her as she waited outside the hatch. A few others followed their leader.

  When it was her turn, she went inside. The Navy man seemed to turn up his nose at Meechum’s uniform shirt, but he didn’t make a further issue of it.

  “How did you know I was there?” she asked.

  “I saw you on the security cameras. At least those haven’t been sabotaged.”

  “Sabotaged, sir?” She wanted to get beyond the fact she was loitering outside.

  “You’re a programmer, aren’t you? Maybe you can figure out what’s going on with the radar, sonar, phalanx canons, and everything else on this boat.” He seemed frustrated and had likely been up all night.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I only work on the nuclear containment routines. I wouldn’t know the first thing about guns or radars.”

  “Damn. That’s what the Navy gets for isolating each department in data silos. No one can cross over. Still, will you take a look at it?”

  She strode over to a terminal and took a seat. The computer had already been logged in. “These are your credentials, sir.”

  “Didn’t I tell you this is why they wanted me? I have access to all the subsystems. This is the only way you can access other parts of the ship. I need you to look at radar. Tell me why it isn’t online.”

  She tapped the keys tentatively as she tried to find some similarities to her own code. At first, there was no baseline; it was as if the code was written by someone from a foreign country. Eventually, she did find a few common terms.

  “I’m going to need a little time,” she distractedly, forgetting for a moment her boss was the captain.

  “Take whatever you need but make it quick.”

  She glanced over, wondering if that was a mistake, or the way a captain normally spoke.

  For the next hour or so, she plunged into the code for the radar array. She tried various avenues of approach to dig into the system, using her own experience in nuclear containment as a blueprint, but each time she thought progress was being made, she hit a dead end. Simple things had been complicated; on and off switches were now running with an ‘if/then’ loop, which was tied to other loops. There was no way to figure out the tangle without spending a lot more time.

  Marines came in and out during her coding session. They reported possible sightings of aircraft and kept talking about Longbow 3 as if it was missing. She didn’t dare ask about it, even though she was supremely curious.

  “I’ve got it!” she blurted. The reason she couldn’t make sense of the coding was obvious now that she knew how it was structured. All the back-end lines had been redone recently, and the comments denoting the most important changes were encrypted and written in a different language. She found the answer by accident, because the script wri
ter had forgotten to encrypt one of them.

  The captain rushed over. “You’ve figured it out? Do we have radar again?”

  “No. Sorry. There’s no radar, yet.”

  “Well?” He leaned in to see her screen. “Why not?”

  “Sir, I can’t fix this code because I don’t speak Chinese.”

  Harrisburg, PA

  The run across the interstate bridge left Ted and Emily winded. They’d hopped off, run down the embankment, and now caught their breath under a huge sycamore tree next to the river.

  “This thing should keep us out of sight of any drones,” Ted remarked.

  “Is there something you’re not telling me?” Emily taunted.

  He took one huge breath, finally catching it. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean… Are you protecting me from the truth about those drones? I’ve seen footage from overseas in the situation room. Drone operators can see in infrared, right? We’re no safer under this tree than if we were walking around in the open.”

  “That’s true of our drones. I have no idea of the capabilities of the people running the show out there. But I guess you’re right. We need to assume they have at least what we do.”

  “And?” she needled.

  He rubbed his sweaty neck in embarrassment. “And I guess I was protecting you. The truth is nowhere is safe from electronic surveillance technology. They can sense body heat, electronic signals, and they can tap into a smoke signal dialogue.”

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “I’m halfway kidding, but you get the point. That’s why I wanted to run across the bridge. That’s why I wanted to stay off the main highways. Our best and only defense is to stay away from high-traffic areas, and if we must use them, get in and out as fast as possible.”

  She shrugged. “Well, maybe it was nicer when I thought this tree could save us.”

  “Let’s go,” he suggested. “We’ve got a short run along this railway track, then we’ll be at the Air National Guard facility.”

  They walked for fifteen minutes, stopping once for a brief drink of bottled water. As they continued down the tracks, the double set of rails was joined by a third.