by Lopez, Rob
Rick wondered at the significance. Unlike Chuck, Packy hadn’t made a last visit to his parents’ graves behind the clubhouse. Instead, he was here, honoring a car.
“Nascar wasn’t the same after he died,” continued Packy. “My uncle Jess used to tell me about the rivalry between him and Geoff Bodine. Knights of the track, they were. The way Jess told it, I wish I’d been there. The sound of the thunder on the circuit, the smell of gas and burned rubber. He used to tell me so many stories. He lived and breathed automobiles. Wanted to take me to the track one day, but my dad wouldn’t allow it. He and Jess didn’t get along. Kind of miss him now.”
It was the most heartfelt thing Rick had ever heard Packy say, and he looked at him in a new light.
“Do you know where he is?” asked Rick.
“He’s dead. I like to think he died on the road, but the truth is, I don’t know.” Packy turned to Rick. “I was young and Dad thought he was a bad influence on me, so he cut off all contact with his brother. Wouldn’t let me go to the funeral or nothing. So I came here. This is how I remember him.” Packy paused for a moment. “I don’t even have a photo of him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too. He would have been useful, right now. He could get anything running. Do you know, he nearly got his hands on the Bullitt Mustang? Found the cop in New Jersey who owned it, but he was a day late. It got sold to some guy who refused all Jess’s offers, and the car disappeared into the midwest. Can you imagine if he managed to get that car? I’d have run away from home for just one ride in that Mustang. It’d still be running now.”
“Wait, you mean Steve McQueen’s Mustang from the movie?”
“That’s right. You know it?”
“I loved that movie.”
It was Packy’s turn to see Rick in a new light. “You mean you actually enjoyed something?”
Rick gave him a narrow-eyed look. “I’m not as miserable as people think.”
Packy gazed back at the black Monte Carlo. “And Nascar racing?”
“Never got into that.”
Packy sighed. “For just a brief moment, there was a spark there. Dude, you’re about as miserable as it’s possible to be. Nascar? Really? Look at it. Look at that glory.”
“Steve McQueen wasn’t into Nascar either. He preferred Le Mans.”
Packy rolled his eyes. “If my ears could weep, I’d be, like, the weirdest looking fountain you ever saw.”
“You’re weird enough. Let’s go.”
Packy followed Rick out, muttering, “McQueen was into bike racing. Can you trust that man’s judgment? And the Le Mans movie sucked.”
Rick muttered back, “Not as much as Tom Cruise’s Days of Thunder.”
Packy tutted. “Philistine.”
5
Leaving Charlotte, the convoy passed by the airport. The white tail fins of the grounded jetliners looked pristine in the sunlight, although one plane on the taxiway was a blackened hulk. The airport parking lots were full of vehicles, their owners never coming back. Except for Lauren. She knew her car was still in there. She was tempted to pay it one more visit, but she’d lost the keys since, and as far as she could recall, she only had some tissues in the glovebox. She still remembered the day she’d driven in haste to catch her flight to Newark and wished again that some sixth sense had caused her to pause and reconsider whether to go or not. Had she done so, her parents might still be alive.
But she had reconsidered. Something had nagged at her on the way to that flight and she’d still gone anyway. That recollection had come to her when she’d said her last goodbye by her parents’ graves in the back yard of their home. Her childhood home. She’d drifted through the rooms, trying not to think of the violence that occurred there. The familiarity of the furniture, the pictures on the walls, and the chair on the porch all triggered her heart more than the graves had. She even thought she caught the smell of cookies in the kitchen. The real memories were there, not at the graveside, and she wept at the power of them. It was a different world now, yet the old world lingered in the shadows, exerting a terrible grip and threatening to suck her down into a vortex of despair.
It was dangerous to think like that now, and Lauren returned her attention to the slow moving landscape, her M16 poking through the open passenger window. In spite of her determination to quit daydreaming, however, she couldn’t help but wonder about one other thing: the man she had shot dead yesterday.
She’d warned the guy explicitly that she was about to shoot, but he kept reaching for his back pocket with that gloating smile on his face, like it was him that had the real power. He was so certain she had no choice but to surrender that he appeared shocked when she opened fire. Shock turned to outrage as he dropped to the ground, then he was dead.
That gloating look troubled her, like he knew something she didn’t. She took it for condescension, which only made it easier to pull the trigger, but she wondered afterwards whether he was simply insane. He argued with her the way he might have argued with a city hall official. She doubted he was regressing to old structures of power, however, as he didn’t look the civic type. No, he really thought he had something on her.
Maybe it was just that he’d always been an arrogant dick.
He certainly assumed he was entitled to something. She thought that the privations of the previous winter had driven that attitude out of everyone, but then she assumed that people were rational, which maybe wasn’t the case. Perhaps he was one of those people who reveled in the leveling of class structures, in which case the current state of affairs would be viewed as utopia. His absolute certainty, though, was downright creepy. It was almost like he’d been pumped with expectation.
And what, or who, had given him that expectation?
Lauren’s thoughts turned to the strange Major Connors, and Rick’s equally strange reaction to him. It was as if Rick was genuinely afraid of him, and she’d never seen her husband afraid of anyone.
Well, maybe afraid was too strong a word, but Lauren could definitely sense an unease, and she wasn’t quite sure why. She’d quizzed Scott, exactly as she’d threatened to, but it was like he was bound by a code of silence, and he remained offhand and vague, leaving the assumption that there was nothing really to worry about. And Lauren wasn’t sure how worried she should be. Apart from the rumors – and the army was full of rumors – there wasn’t much to indicate Connors was any kind of real threat to them, even with his henchmen. After fighting off a large band of raiders, it didn’t make sense to worry about four guys, no matter how well trained they were. Clearly there was something beyond the martial aspect that led her husband to seek a retreat.
Because they were retreating, there was no doubt about that, running into unknown territory without proper reconnaissance. They had no idea how the rest of the country had fared, nor what they would find.
She made a mental note to one day press her husband on the issue when he was in a better mood. If ever.
Beyond the airport they came to the first obstacle in their path: the Catawba River. Flowing as it did out of Lake Norman, where the nuclear power plant had been, its waters were now highly radioactive, and were likely to remain so for the rest of their lifetimes, and then some. The nearest crossing was a railroad bridge. As Lauren knew from her own experience, it was a likely ambush point for any bandits seeking to rob them.
Bandits. That was a strange term to comprehend in this day and age. At least in America. It conjured up images of outlaws holding up stagecoaches. Right now, this convoy was the wagon train, and the weapons available to modern day bandits would make short work of it. Rick halted the convoy while it was still in the shade of the trees that flanked the railroad track and got out, preparing to walk the bridge alone. Lauren got out too, propping her rifle on the door to cover her husband. Across the brown river were some factory buildings that marked the edge of the town of Belmont. Lauren scanned the site for movement, but there was nothing and Rick made it across to the other side without incident. He disappeared
for a few minutes, checking the place out, then reappeared to wave them across.
They followed the line through the center of town, the tires seeking purchase on the gravel by the tracks, until they reached the railroad crossing on Main Street. The sidewalks and stores looked much the same as they had on the other side of the river, and the silence was broken only by their idling engines. Apart from the looted buildings, there was no indication that anyone had stayed here over the winter. Once the power plant blew – and they would have seen the ominous cloud in the distance quite clearly from here – the town would have been evacuated quickly. The only question was: where to?
They stayed on the tracks, passing over I-85. Here they found the first sign of where all those people had gone. Trucks and trailers lay stranded on the highway, caught on their early-morning deliveries to the stores, and the pavement was littered with torn tarps and ripped-open packaging as people had looted these vehicular resources. Amid all the junk, however, paths had been cleared by the tramping feet of refugees. Bags that turned out to be too heavy to carry had been discarded. Empty bottles glinted in the sun. Shopping carts whose wheels had broken sat askew. Heavy coats that would have been useful in the winter were cast aside in the heat of the fall. Bleached bones and grinning skulls remained of those who could go no farther.
The rail line wound its way onward into Gastonia. Passing a half-mile long goods train loaded with molten sulfur and gravel, they pulled into the station. Here, under the shadow of a water tower, they found the first evidence of attempted organization. Large tents lay collapsed on a construction site by the station. Rusted barbecue grills filled with rainwater were lined up. Whiteboards from offices and schools were nailed to posts, though whatever had been written on them had long since washed off. Police tape cordoned off the side streets. This was where the authorities had tried to control the masses of refugees entering their town. Bullet marks on walls showed how this might not have gone according to plan, or they might have been from battles later on. It was impossible to tell. Whatever regulation was attempted here was long gone, the station being completely empty. There was life in the town, however. Lauren caught sight of a face in a factory window, and a furtive figure moved across an alleyway. Slipping the safety off her rifle, she wondered if anyone else had noticed. Up ahead, the Humvee suddenly accelerated and turned sharply right. The Blazer and Suburban followed suit, and the convoy left the station and broke through the police tape, pulling in behind a row of houses and halting. Rick jumped out of the lead vehicle and ran to the back of the convoy, peering around the corner at the station, rifle aimed. Lauren made to get out, but Rick waved her back in. After another look, he passed back up the convoy.
“Did you see the people there?” said Lauren as he came by.
“Yes,” he said simply, his face grim.
Getting back into the Humvee, he waved them on, and the convoy switched direction, heading north.
*
Rick had seen more than just a couple of people. There was someone hidden behind a dumpster, waving a signal to others farther up the street. It was possible they simply wanted a polite chat, but Rick doubted it. Even running on low revs, they’d been heard ahead of time, and it would have been too easy to set up an ambush as they headed deeper into the town, especially if they’d stuck to the restrictive corridor of the rail line. Rick had seen enough of Gastonia to know he didn’t want to explore it further. Not without a platoon at his disposal.
They headed north out of the city. The road climbed gently up through wooded country, the occasional mailbox at the roadside pointing to unpretentious bungalows and small homes that nestled in the trees. With a greater chance of getting snowed in during the winter, such homes might have carried more supplies and maybe a generator for the blackouts. They were still too close to town, however, and too far from a reliable water source, since they’d never been built with that in mind, so they probably wouldn’t have fared much better than their urban neighbors. Modern SUVs and pickups sat uselessly at the end of gravel tracks, and the houses looked empty, their doors and windows open or broken, ragged flags hanging limp from porches. Expansive lawns were overgrown and wasted. This wasn’t farming country, and the only available crop was grass, without so much as a single cow to munch on it. Survival here wouldn’t have been much different than in the suburbs. Nobody seemed to have planted vegetable gardens, and the woods were devoid of any large game. Rick didn’t see anything worth stopping for.
Until they reached the first roadblock.
Scott stamped on the brakes as soon as it came into view. Rick hopped out of the cab to flag the other vehicles and get them to back up, in case they needed to turn around fast.
The obstacle was a mixture of oil drums, logs and furniture. Beyond it were some houses in a large clearing. A figure with a rifle manned the roadblock.
Rick took out his binoculars. The solitary guard was a bearded guy with a ball cap and a plaid shirt that looked three sizes too big. In the distance, somebody clanged on a can, and more armed figures rushed toward the barricade.
“Get everyone out of the vehicles and into cover,” Rick told Scott as he laid his rifle on the seat. “I’m going to go see how things are.”
“I can see from here,” said Scott. “Doesn’t look good.”
“Anyone ever tell you appearances can be deceptive?”
“Yeah, whenever they’re trying to sell me something.”
Tucking his Glock in behind his body armor, Rick walked slowly toward the barricade, his hands stretched out in a conciliatory gesture. All the while, his eyes tracked every detail, assessing the risk. On the other side of the clearing, he caught glimpses of other houses behind the trees, making it a reasonable sized settlement, albeit one with no name. Nor with any real defenses that he could see, apart from the roadblock. He counted eight people armed with guns. They looked out of shape by the time they reached the barricade. Among the buildings and far trees he spotted other figures, half of them children, gawking from afar. Facial expressions ranged from anxious to grim.
“Hey there,” he called, halting about twenty yards from the roadblock.
“You can’t come here,” said the guard with the ball cap.
From a distance, he looked like an older guy, but up close Rick could see he was barely an adult. His skin was pasty, and his beard barely covered the sores on his face. He’d either lost a lot of weight since he’d first bought the shirt, or it was someone else’s.
A middle-aged woman in dirty jeans leaned out to peer at Rick’s fatigues and the Humvee behind him. “Are you army?” she asked.
“Not anymore, ma’am,” said Rick.
He detected more fear than malice, and everyone appeared to suffer from darkened lips and crooked teeth, a sure sign of scurvy. His first impression of a group of rednecks changed to ordinary middle class people, reduced to cartoon caricatures after months of malnutrition. It was likely they’d all once commuted to jobs in the city. There were certainly no retirees in the group.
Probably all dead.
“We’re not taking anybody in,” said a guy whose front teeth wobbled when he spoke. “We barely have enough food for ourselves.”
“Not asking to be taken in,” said Rick. “We just want to pass through. This isn’t a good place to be. You’re still within the radiation zone.”
“What radiation?” said another.
“The nuclear power station at Lake Norman blew. Didn’t you hear?”
Eight perplexed faces looked back at him.
“How were we supposed to hear? Our TVs stopped working,” said one.
“I heard about a nuclear bomb,” said another. “Are we at war?”
“What’s the President doing about this?” said a third.
“We’re not at war,” said Rick, “and I don’t know what the President’s doing. I don’t see it matters a whole lot now. We just want to pass through.”
Hunger sapped their reaction times, and they took a while to process t
his.
“I’m not dismantling this barricade,” said the guy with the ball cap, gazing at it as if contemplating the amount of work needed. “You’ll have to find another road.”
“Where have you come from?” asked the woman.
“Charlotte,” said Rick.
“Is it any better there?” asked another.
“Wouldn’t be leaving it if it was,” answered Rick. “It’s pretty much the same everywhere.”
“Have you got any food?” said a previously silent person, and Rick caught his first whiff of menace.
“No,” he said. He’d been letting his arms drop while they were speaking, and he was ready to draw the Glock if needed.
“If you’re army, you should be bringing us some food,” said the woman. “We’ve been waiting.”
Rick watched them carefully. “You been catching your own food?”
“Yeah,” said someone slowly, like it was a dim memory. “Just raccoons and stuff.”
“When you catch your next one, don’t cook it. Eat it raw. You need the Vitamin C.”
“Raw?”
Rick was already backing away. “Yeah, raw. Or cook it light. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
Rick left them to mull that over, his hand now on the butt of the pistol. He knew Scott would be covering him, and one wrong move from the barricade would leave at least one of them dead. Judging by how soporific they were, it wouldn’t take much to suppress them. Then again, it might just make them dumb enough to try something. Reaching the Humvee, he waved everyone back into the idling vehicles.
“Any joy?” asked Scott, his eyes glued to his sights.
Rick glanced back to the pale faces at the barricade. They stared back like ghosts.
“Not a lot,” said Rick.
6
“See, he was stood right here. And she was stood right there, up by the pool. And he says, ‘I ain’t armed’ and she says, ‘I don’t care’ and she shoots him down dead, just like that. He didn’t stand a chance. Not one.”