“Are there boats on the river?” the child asked. “I like the boats.”
The mother smiled at him, almost like she was embarrassed. “We take the ferry to Staten Island. He’s telling the truth; he loves all the interesting boats.”
“So do we!” Garth agreed. Sam’s family also lived on the island, so he was familiar with the ferry boats, barges of trash, and all the pleasure craft jetting about within view of the Statue of Liberty.
The computer woman making the announcements came on to indicate they were approaching the next station, but he ignored that so he could talk to the mother and her kid some more.
“Look alive, G-man. This is our stop.”
“Right,” he said in a distracted way.
The subway train slowed gently for a few seconds like it always did as it came into a station.
“So, where are you two—” he tried to say.
The car jerked to a hard stop. The boy and his mother were turned around on their seat, so they fell off and tumbled to the front of the carriage. Garth and Sam were veteran riders and held on to the safety bars. They’d taken the same tumble several times over the years, because people sometimes fell off the platforms at the stations, and the driver had to hit the brakes.
He jumped out of his seat once the train stopped.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked the mother. Others ended up in heaps on the floor, too, but no one appeared to be seriously hurt.
The boy laughed like it was a game. “Can we do that again, Mommy?”
Garth helped the woman to her feet as the announcer came on the speakers.
“This is Lexington Avenue 59th Street. Transfers available for 4, 5, and 6 lines.”
“We stopped short, I guess.” It happened every so often, so he tried to stay calm for the sake of the kid.
Sam came to the front. “I think we hit a cow.”
The little boy looked at him like he was Superman. “Really?”
Sam snickered. “I don’t know. Maybe!”
“No,” Garth said in a reasonable voice that reminded him of his father’s. “There are no cows in New York City.”
“What about at the circus?” Sam challenged.
“Have you been to a circus lately? There are no cows there.”
“Mommy, I want to see the cow!”
Sam seemed proud of the confusion he’d caused.
Garth shook his head but inwardly laughed at how easily his buddy came up with that nonsense. “We’ll have to go to the front,” he suggested in a relaxed voice.
The two guys in suits heard his advice and were the first ones to go through the passageway to the next car. Garth gave the mom some room so she could get out next.
“Thank you,” she said. The boy followed his mom but peered around her legs as if searching for the cow.
Garth laughed as he waved Sam toward the inter-car doorway. “After you.”
When his friend got close to the door, Garth nodded graciously like he was going to let him go first, but then he jumped into the gap next to him. As planned, neither of them could fit through the narrow frame.
Both cracked up, even though they’d each pulled that gag a hundred times.
“After you,” they said in unison while fruitlessly trying to wave each other through.
Garth laughed as he watched the boy and his mother get to a small crowd of people standing at the far end of the next car. However, his mood shifted when he caught sight of Lexington Station. Overhead lights illuminated the platform, but they cut off in a sharp line, leaving most of the station in the dark. He was familiar with the large size of the popular subway stop. He estimated ninety percent of the platform was lost to an impenetrable blackness.
Sam pushed ahead because Garth lost his focus on their competition. “Eat it, sucker!”
He ignored his friend and started walking after the boy.
“Come on, man,” Sam replied. “You can’t let me win that easy.”
“Sam, look,” he said dryly.
He tried to square what he saw as he moved forward. The lighting was all messed up outside, but the car ahead was dark as well. Garth ignored the handful of people hovering around and pushed through to the next one.
There were only a few people standing inside the darkened third-to-last car, including the boy and his mom.
“Mommy, what happened? Where are the people?”
One of the finance guys touched a solid block of rock in front of them. “It looks like something fell and cut the train and Lex Station in half.”
Garth experienced insta-guilt because his selfishness might have saved his life. He’d been happy to let riders go to the front cars, so he and Sam had the rear one mostly to themselves. How many cars did the collapsed wall of bedrock smash?
Garth whistled the equivalent of “wow.”
“What the hell happened?” Sam asked, ignorant of the small ears nearby.
Garth didn’t know, but something caught his eye where the train’s outer body met the fallen rock face. In the odd light of the dim carriage, it was hard to see unless you looked right at it.
Garth felt the bile rise in his stomach. Sam was a terrible cook, and his pancakes were awful. He was aware they would taste almost as bad coming back up.
He tried to speak, but the combination of fluttering stomach and disbelief made it impossible to open his mouth. All he could do was slap Sam on the back and point to the object.
“What is it, Garth?”
Garth pointed emphatically at the dark shape.
A man’s hand held one of the metal supports as if the rider was still sitting on a chair waiting for the train to stop. It gripped the pole, but everything above the elbow was somewhere inside the rock. Garth couldn’t figure out how the block could have fallen fast enough to sever the arm like that without moving it an inch. The longer he looked at the connection, the harder it was to understand. It was like looking at a funhouse mirror that refused to yield the truth.
Garth only wanted his friend to confirm it was real, so he pointed over and over.
The young boy saw it first.
“Whose hand is that, Mommy?”
Twelve
I-5 at City Limits of Sacramento, CA
“Just drive, Buck,” he ordered himself.
He turned his rig to the left, painfully crushing the clutch over and over as he hammered on the gearbox. His intention was to cross the 4-lane bridge to the far side of I-5. From there, he’d merge right onto the cloverleaf ramp, which would take him back down to the southbound lanes of the interstate.
The wall cloud loomed close as if daring him to try to make it.
“Just drive,” he gulped.
As soon as his truck touched the bridge, the cabin became charged with energy. He only needed to look out his windows to see why. Blueish lightning bounced between several light poles at the interchange as if trying to drive life into Frankenstein’s monster. The nonstop claps of deafening thunder suggested the beast was close to re-animation.
“Sit tight back there,” he said to Big Mac in a voice that betrayed his fear. There was something sinister about the endless razor cuts of lightning, and he desperately wanted to sneak around the curved ramp before they tagged him. “We have to get through this cloverleaf and we’ll be in the clear.”
When he missed a gear, the pucker factor went to twelve.
Steady, Buck, he thought. Git ‘er done.
He was most of the way across the bridge when a nudge in his steering caught him by surprise. Endless days on the road helped him identify the strong wind pushing against his truck, and he was prepared to hold the wheel steady, but the direction was unexpected.
“Shit,” he exclaimed. “How is it blowing toward the storm?”
The gusts came in from the left, and the rear tandem tires swerved from side to side like a shadow boxer trying to avoid an opponent, but the boxy trailer absorbed every blow square on the face. A tip-over knockout was a real possibility.
; Mac whimpered in his crate.
“It’s going to be—” He couldn’t hear himself finish the sentence because a clap of thunder shook the entire vehicle.
“Fuck! It’s going to be close!”
Buck guided the fast-moving truck off the bridge despite the high winds, and he entered the cloverleaf loop at a speed that would have made his commercial driver’s license instructor lose his lunch. At the beginning of the curve, he drove straight at the storm, which did help with wind shear from behind him, but as soon as he rounded the turn a bit more, the agitated gusts jabbed at the trailer from the right.
Leaves and debris flew sideways toward the storm as surely as if it were trying to vacuum that stretch of California. His giant truck offered little safety. Brown dust came out of the interior vents, but he didn’t have time to adjust them. He leaned into the turn, hung onto the wheel, and sucked in the dirt. There was nothing to do except drive the eighteen-wheeler like he stole it.
Years of trash tossed in the highway median now flew sideways at him.
“This is it!” he shouted.
He was scared beyond words, but he had a job to do. If it wasn’t to save himself, it was to save Mac. The little pup counted on him to get out of the maw of the storm.
And I have to get home to Garth.
The rear van took the full brunt of the wind as he neared the exit of the cloverleaf circle. The dust and debris made it difficult to see it happen, but the right tires of the van seemed to come off the pavement. When it slammed back down, it shook the kingpin inside the fifth wheel, and thus it shook the cab.
“Whoa, Nellie!”
The turbulence diminished as he returned to I-5 and put the nose into the wind. Little particles of junk struck the front windshield as he went under the overpass he’d just crossed. The dust streaking toward him evoked memories of the big haboob sandstorms in the Iraqi desert, but he forgot all that when he came up to another car parked under the bridge.
“Idiot! Drive!” He encouraged the motorist with a blast on his air horn.
He was tempted to stop and see if the person needed any help, but the dust-covered sedan had all the windows up and it was impossible to see if anyone was inside. Risking his life for someone in need was one thing but doing it for a potentially empty vehicle had the makings of suicide.
Electricity arced between his Peterbilt and the parked car as he accelerated past it.
“This is insane!”
On the northbound side of the highway, the cars and motorcycle were still parked beneath the overpass where he’d last seen them. Several more cars joined them, cramming under cover as best they could. He caught glimpses of clothing up where the bridge met the embankment. Was that a safe spot to hide from the storm? He was already out from under the span and speeding away before he had time to wonder if he should have hid under the strong bridge, too.
A few stragglers still drove up the 506 exit ramp, but he wasn’t sure where they’d go to get safe. The tide of clouds now lapped over the road across the bridge. The vehicles’ only real option was to turn around and drive the wrong way on the highway. He didn’t want to see what happened to them.
“Come on, baby,” he said to his truck, “just a little more.”
He drove out of the leading edge of the storm. A final swirl of plastic bottles and Styrofoam cups bounced off his windshield and front grille, and then the wind seemed to turn off. It didn’t make him feel much safer.
He checked the side mirror a dozen times to make sure the storm wasn’t speeding up to get him. It was a huge weight off his shoulders to see it fall behind. He couldn’t help but think of those under the bridge. Fight or flight? Shelter or run? He grew more comfortable with his decision to turn around. The other drivers had their chance.
He wondered if this was it. Every man for himself. He needed to get to Garth. Buck gave that his singular focus, and it helped him shove the guilt from his mind.
He exhaled every ounce of air in his lungs and felt a little of his tension release. “What the hell was that?” he pondered quietly.
The Peterbilt gave him 85 miles per hour.
There was less traffic in the northbound lanes than a few minutes earlier. The storm had grown so large that many drivers turned around well before it was too late. Dozens of vehicles crossed the flat, rocky median and put the hammer down in the southbound lanes.
“They’re the smart ones,” he said to Mac.
For a couple minutes, his brain picked through every detail of his windy escape; it was angry it had allowed Buck to get so close to major bodily harm. He almost reveled in the introspection until he glanced at the far lanes and saw a few trucks and cars that weren’t turning around. He could at least help the truckers.
“Break, break, Channel 19. All northbound traffic on the 5 needs to turn around before Sacramento. There’s a—” Buck didn’t know what to call it. What was a cross between a haboob and a nuclear bomb? “There’s an evil storm the size of Montana heading south down the Central Valley along Interstate 5. I say again—”
Helping others also helped Buck calm down and regain his composure. He filed away all the details of how close he’d come to losing his load, and potentially his life. They were lessons that might save his life the next time. The wisdom of experience.
“I told you we’d make it,” he said matter-of-factly. “Piece of cake.”
Mac didn’t come out of his kennel.
Behind him, in the side mirror, the storm continued its relentless march.
Manhattan, New York
Garth ran out of the smashed subway car to make a deposit of pancakes and orange juice in the gap next to the station platform. His stomach betrayed him after seeing that unnatural hand still gripping the support.
Sam came out a few moments later. “Did you SEE that?”
“What do you think? I’m throwing up for shits and gigs?”
“It had to be some kind of gag, right? Whoever was sitting there before must have slung that hand on the pipe because it looked funny. I mean, he got you pretty good.”
A teen girl about their age came out of the car behind Sam. She was pretty, with golden-blonde hair down to the middle of her back, but her gaze was rigid like she’d seen something horrible. His heart skipped a beat as she neared, but he wasn’t sure if it was her or his embarrassment at tossing his fear.
“Hey,” Garth said to her. Belatedly, he used his sleeve to wipe his mouth.
“What is the number for 999?” she asked in a British accent with her phone in hand.
“You mean the emergency number?” Garth asked. “Shit. Of course, we should call for help.”
“It’s 9-1-1,” Sam said. “Lots of people are calling.” He pointed into the subway car. “If their phones work. Ours don’t.”
She breathed out in relief. “Oh, that’s cracking.”
Sam kept the conversation alive. “Don’t mind us. We’re trying to solve the riddle about what happened.”
The girl looked back to the second-to-last car. “I was on that one. We slowed way down and almost reached the station when the wall fell and cut off everyone up front. All the other cars got smushed to bits.” Her accent was mild, and the young men found it intriguing. “I’ve heard about these problems on the telly. Does this happen a lot in your country?”
A lot?
Sam ignored the slight because he was blinded by her beauty. Garth recognized the look immediately. “Hi. I’m Sam. This is Garth. We were in the last car, but we didn’t see it happen. Do you want to talk about it?”
Garth was impressed how easily his buddy directed the conversation where he wanted it to go, but he was also a little ticked he was talking to the girl at all. He didn’t just throw up for nothing. There was something weird going on.
He purposely stood in a way that blocked her view of where he had gotten sick, but he was certain her eyes avoided it, too.
“Sam, old chum, we don’t need to bother her.”
“It’s okay,” she d
roned. “I’m Pippi. Me and my family are here on holiday. We’re from London.”
Garth re-evaluated everything that had happened in the last two minutes. After the train stopped, he must have walked past Pippi and her family without even noticing them. He hated to think he’d overlook a blonde as attractive as her, but he was following the kid and his mom. The most important thing on his mind, he hated to admit, was whether she saw him puke.
“I’m sorry we missed you inside. We came out here to get a little air, and so others could see the weird collapsed wall.”
She smiled for the first time. “I saw you dropping pavement pizza. I wanted to do the same thing. Are all those people dead? Or are there survivors on the other side of the wall?”
Sam chose that moment to jump in. He acted like they were about to embark on an adventure. “Garth and I are going up the exit stairs to find out. Want to come with?”
“No thanks,” she said. “I have to stay with my parents. They’re right here. Where is the stairwell?”
Sam visibly deflated as he pointed to the red exit sign at the end of what was once a very long loading platform.
“Right. When they get here, we’ll follow you two to the top. We have similar exits on our tube, so we’ll be fine, thanks.”
Garth and Sam stood there for a few moments as if unsure of what to say.
“Great. Thank you so much for your help.” Pippi’s tone was friendly, but Garth picked up she was done talking.
Sam pulled out his phone. As sure as the sun rises, Sam intended to get her digits, but Garth cut him off before he could make the departure even more awkward.
“Sam, could you help me with something?”
Sam appeared like he was going to refuse, but then he shrugged. They moved across the platform and stood next to the fallen block of concrete.
Garth got right to it. “Dude, this isn’t the time to be hitting on girls. There was a hand in there. A freaking hand!” His stomach fluttered at the recall.
Sam stood close and spoke quietly. “I saw it, G, but there’s no way it could have been real. What was that about? Where did this wall even come from? This station is fucked up beyond all regulations.”
End Days Series Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 10