by Ryan Husk
“We’re just one more car of people backing up the roads,” Gordon noted.
“Yeah, no shit. But what other choice do we have, Gord-O? That plume is already on the move.”
Janet tried calling her parents again. She got only a strange beeping, then a dial tone.
Edward looked at her in the rearview mirror. “No service?”
“It’s weird. I got a text from my boyf…my friend Jesse, but I can’t get service to my parents.”
“It’s not that weird. The second DHS gets a credible bomb threat, or sees one go off, they start jamming cell service and RF in the area.”
“Why do they do that?” she asked.
“To prevent remote detonation of another bomb by cellphone,” Edward said. “So your parents may be inside the blanketed zone. Maybe your friend Jesse is just outside of it. We may be inside of it very soon. Speaking of which, Janet, start cranking that radio.”
She looked down at her knee. It was scraped and bloody. She touched it. Sucked in her breath. “Sssssssssssss.”
Edward looked back at her. “Look behind my seat,” he said. “There are some bandages in my go-ready bag.”
Janet had never heard that term before. She leaned over to the driver’s side, removed a blanket on the floor that was concealing a large bump. The “go-ready bag” was a backpack, about the same size as her own, which she now realized she’d left in Gordon’s car. She picked it up, examined it. The jeep took a hard right turn down a dirt road, taking a few bumps, shifting and sliding until they came out on Hilton Road. “What’s a go-ready bag?” she said.
“Something of my own design,” he said. “Much smaller than a full bug-out bag. Bug-out bag’s got gallons of water inside, plenty o’ food, lasts you weeks. The go-ready bag is for mobility. In case you have to leave the vehicle, you can take a couple bottles of water with you, along with a good amount of medicine, bandages, survival knife, mini crowbar, a flathead screwdriver and some wires for hotwiring cars as needed. It’s also got a lock pick set, scissors, flashlight, cigarette lighter, a change of clothes, and couple o’ fake IDs just in case you don’t wanna be tracked.”
At this point, Gordon opened his eyes again, and looked over at Edward. “Jesus Christ, where do people like you come from?”
“We’re your next-door neighbors,” Edward said.
Janet asked, “Are you, like, a wilderness survival instructor or something?”
“I’m a bill collector.”
“A what?” Janet had rummaged through the go-ready bag, going through the various pockets and pushing aside bottles of NyQuil and ibuprofen to get to the bandages.
“I’m the guy that calls you up when you’re not paying your credit card bill.”
“So how do you know so much about what’s goin’ on?” She found some cotton balls to help soak up some of the blood, then used the scissors to cut a length of bandage for her knee.
Edward checked his sideview mirrors, then went into the other lane to pass an old, rusted Ford pickup that looked like a bunch of garbage bags and luggage had been thrown into the back, then pulled back onto the right lane. “It’s kinda my thing,” he said. “I write a blog. Apocalypze How. Ever heard of it? Maybe from your dad?” Janet shook her head. “I do a lotta research, look into things nobody else talks about. Been writing a book on what people can do to save themselves if something like this happens.”
“What makes you an expert?” Gordon said.
“I make lots o’ phone calls to my congressmen and congresswomen, ask a lot of annoying questions, and they usually get back with their constituents, even the ‘crackpots’ like me,” Edward chuckled. “Also, I was in the Army. It was part of my job.”
“You a real Army guy or one of those Stolen Valor assholes?”
Janet looked at Gordon, unsure of whether or not what she was seeing was guys testing each other like she’d seen in the hallways of her high school, or if it was just the way men got along in tense situations. She was wise enough to know that she didn’t have enough world experience to tell the difference.
“No, Gramps. One-five-five BCT. First Battalion, Ninety-eighth Cavalry,” Edward said. “Went in as part of the teams that scanned for radioactive emissions or traces of chemical agents when we thought Assad buried some throughout the Middle East.” Janet could see Edward’s eyes in the rearview mirror. His eyes smiled. “We were the ones looking for WMDs. Came up nil, of course. Big ol’ goose chase.”
Janet’s phone buzzed. She looked down at it. Reply from Jesse: Where are you?!?
Janet’s heart was racing again. She sent back: OMG are you all right? I’m on the road with some guys. She waited patiently, and while she did she listened to the two men in the front seats.
“—about three hundred thousand people are gonna be asked to shelter in place, which will be the best bet for a lot of ’em,” Edward was saying. He’d turned them onto a street that cut through a neighborhood. Janet looked out her window, saw a pristine mown lawn with a man out front, piling a station wagon high while his wife raced out with a little girl and a baby in her arms. “But there’s about eighty thousand school children that need picking up by their parents—another reason the terrorists or an enemy nation would choose morning or midday on a weekday. They know it’ll wreak all kinds of havoc on the highways. Parents will rush to the schools to get their children, ignoring the warnings to stay away, and that’s where they’ll all fuck up. They’re not thinking of themselves, and so expose themselves to more radiation.”
“Parents have to get to their kids,” Gordon replied. “You can’t blame them for—”
“I can and I do. In situations like this, it’s best if you think of only yourself. Forget everybody else. They’ll only drag you down, to the detriment of you both.”
Gordon said, “That’s a pretty sorry way to think about it.”
“No. It’s exactly what every emergency evacuation plan tells you to do.”
Janet’s phone vibrated. Reply from Jesse: What guys?
She sent back: Some guys picked me up on the road. Taking me away from the explosion. WHERE R U? She was getting very upset with him for not answering her question, and having to wait again just made her even more unreasonably angry at him. Just give me a straight answer! Are you all right and where are you? Jesus, boy, it’s not that hard!
Her hands were shaking more.
Up ahead were verdant green fields. The roads weren’t dirt anymore, but old cracked pavement. Wherever it had split, grass and even small trees had started growing up through them. The grass on either side of the road was tall and wild. Moss and especially kudzu hung from almost every tree. The kudzu wrapped around an old set of rusted railroad tracks that looked like they hadn’t been used since maybe the Civil War. They passed a large sign that advertised “Historical Indian Mounds” 2.7 miles ahead, but most of it was choked by kudzu as well.
The jeep trundled on down one back road after another. While Edward and Gordon traded theories on why this was happening, Janet looked between the panicked people outside in their yards and the phone that stubbornly wouldn’t yield Jesse’s reply. Stupid boy! Call me! She tried calling her dad again. Nothing. Mom, too. Still nothing. She sent another text to both her mom and dad.
She looked outside again. For a second…for just one second…she thought she saw something…weird. There was a woman running from a house, suitcases in hand, her white sundress flapping in the breeze as she went to her car. She got only halfway there when something lifted her off her feet. Some dark gray tendril, like an octopus tentacle…she started spinning in the air…
An instant later, they had driven beyond the scene, and the woman’s fate was lost behind a row of pine trees.
Janet’s blood ran cold. “Did you guys just fuckin’ see that?” she asked. But the men didn’t hear her. They were too busy discussing the wherefores and maybes. The dog, though…the dog saw it. He stepped over her and moved towards the window, growling. Janet pet him, as much for her own
comfort as his.
“But why Atlanta?” Gordon was asking Edward.
“You’re kidding, right?” the younger man chuckled, shooting around a car at a four-way intersection that had stopped so the driver could secure luggage on his roof. “Atlanta’s the headquarters for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You bomb the CDC, not only do you wipe out all the best minds and technology in the country for handling future biological attacks, but you also just might release any number of deadly strains as an extra added bonus. We also have the busiest airport in the entire world! Did you know that? Obliterate that, and there goes America’s most valuable port for trade and travel with the rest of the world.”
“And the explosion we saw in the north?”
“They’re cutting us off, Gord-O. It’s the best use of resources if you’ve got two bombs—assuming they only have two. They’ve boxed us in, got all the survivors trapped between the state lines. If we can’t get outta here in a few days, we and everybody you see around us will probably have some measure of radiation poisoning.” He glanced in his rearview mirror at Janet again. “Speaking of which, Janet, check inside the bug-out bag again. Look for a black device, looks a bit bigger than a cellphone, little smaller than an iPad. It’s got a yellow border around its screen.”
The bug-out bag was a large, neon orange waterproof bag. It had various smaller bags inside, each of them transparent and also waterproof. Janet rummaged through a few maps and a first-aid kit, three shirts and cargo pants, a fixed-blade and folding knife, duct tape and rope, a plastic tarp for shelter, a hunting rifle and a Beretta pistol, a compass and foldout camping tent, even a copy of Edward Jason Garner’s medical records. Shit, it’s more complete than Dad’s down in the basement. Then she came across an AA-12 fully-automatic shotgun—
“Do you see it?” Edward said.
“Gimme a sec,” she said.
“It should be beside the MREs—shit!” The jeep suddenly swerved. Janet and Atlas were slammed against the front seats. Horns were honking. She glanced outside, saw a veritable caravan of rednecks that, admittedly, looked like they could be from her own family of hillbillies, at least on her dad’s side. The hillbillies were in loaded trucks, one following the other, no doubt headed for I-75. They had strayed too far into Edward’s lane, almost colliding. “I could warn them that 75 is stacked up, but fuck ’em.”
“I don’t see it,” Janet said. “I just see some pouches of…sand or somethin’—”
“Don’t touch those!” he said sharply.
“What are they?”
“Don’t worry about that, just find the—”
“Oh, wait, I think I found it!” Janet said. She’d gone back to the bag, pushed aside the MREs and discovered the device Edward had asked for. She handed it to him and he set it on his lap. “What is it?” she asked.
“Geiger counter,” he said. “We’re gonna need it.” Edward said to Janet, “Look where you found this. There should be a handheld, rod-shaped object. It’ll look kinda like a lightsaber handle—”
“Got it,” she said, plucking it from the bug-out bag and handing it to him.
“What’s that one for?” Gordon asked.
“It’s a radiation dosimeter,” Edward said. “The Geiger counter will tell us how much radiation is around us. The dosimeter will tell us how much we’ve been exposed to.” He looked at his window in frustration. “We might have to abandon this jeep soon, find a new vehicle, so we’ll need to know the level o’ radiation around—”
“What? Wait, why do we need to find a new car?”
“Before you rammed into me, this jeep would’ve done just fine. We need something else now.”
“Why?”
“Because you fucking shattered my window, Gord-O! Any radiation floating towards us will drift right in!” Edward shouted.
Gordon sighed. “That was an accident.”
“Be that as it fuckin’ may, we still need alternate transport.”
“The fallout cloud will travel that fast?”
“No, but even I-20 will get full once the people on I-75 realize it ain’t happening that way and get the same idea we did,” Edward said. “We could be sitting in a traffic jam somewhere a long time.”
“Well, what’re you going to do? You have another vehicle somewhere?”
“Yeah, Gordon! I’ve got the Batmobile stashed in my Batcave! Get real, man!”
“Well, you seemed to have planned for so much, and we can’t just carjack somebody.”
“Why not?” Janet asked him. “You did.”
Edward whickered his amusement. “Thank you, sweetie.”
“That was different,” Gordon argued.
“Different because it was you, you mean,” Edward replied. Gordon started to say something, but held his tongue.
They stopped at another four-way intersection. A quick check of his GPS, and Edward took a right. They cut across a field where three lonely goats stood grazing. The goats didn’t even move out of the way as the jeep trundled past. They came to a dirt road at the far end, cut across it, went through a short patch of woods and wound up on what appeared to be a well-paved and sensible road. Eerily, there were no cars here. None at all. Janet looked all around, saw no one in the front yards of the few houses she spotted, though she did spot a Siberian Husky still chained up in the front yard, barking and going crazy. Probably heard the boom, feels the tremors. Atlas barked back at the dog.
There were no cars in these lawns, either, none except a beat-up Ford F-150 missing all four wheels and sitting on cinderblocks.
Briefly, the trees that stood sentry on either side of the road petered off, and all three of them got another gander at the mushroom cloud in the north. It’s beautiful, Janet thought. It looked to have three levels, because it had three rings of clouds at different intervals, giving it a fragmented look.
“Look,” Gordon said. He was pointing to the left.
Janet shifted around Atlas and looked out the driver’s side window. The clouds had abruptly parted, and that enormous grinning face, miles long, was suddenly in full view. Janet gave an unconscious whimper. Started trembling.
“This…this can’t be happening,” Gordon said.
“It is happening,” Edward told him. He wouldn’t look out his window, Janet noticed. He doesn’t want to see the face.
Janet’s phone buzzed. Finally! Immediately, though, she realized why it had taken Jesse so long to reply. The message was long, and she had to scroll several times to read it all: Trying 2 make it home. Thy put us on a bus & tried to get us out of the school but then changed their minds. Everyone is in panic mode. They r puttin all of us in the gym but now they r sayin its not going 2 be big enough. I don’t know what’s about to happen. I called my parents but I can’t reach them. The school is thinking about getting us back on the buses but Tommy Jenkins dad called him & they said the roads r piled up. All kinds of accidents. We can’t go anywhere. I can see the Face from a window. Everbody is pretty scared. Casandra Miller said she saw Amy Watkins get snatched off the ground by some kind of whip or tentacle. Don’t know what to do. People are crying. It’s fucking INSANE here. I was looking for you but I guess I’m glad you’re not here. Take care. Luv u.
Love me? she thought. Janet’s heart might have raced for that only thirty minutes ago. It had seemed so important. But now? Now suddenly romantic love seemed almost like an antiquated notion. Her parents, they mattered. Mom…Dad…
Janet tried texting them again, then another call. Still nothing. Tears started again, then she had control, then a few spilled out, then she had control again. It happened like that, back and forth. I don’t even know these men, she realized suddenly, looking between the two of them. I need my parents. Then, right in behind that thought, No, I don’t. They’ll survive, and I can find them later…but they’ll be worried about me.
Janet looked back at Jesse’s text. The Face. He called it the “Face.” And he said Amy Watkins got snatched up…like what I just saw
…
“Yo, Earth to Janet!” Edward hollered.
She blinked. “Huh? Whuh?”
“Check inside the bug-out bag again, see if there’s a big, white bottle in there. It’ll look like a pill bottle, only about as big as a mayonnaise jar.”
Janet sniffed, wiped her nose, and checked in the back. After a few seconds, she had it. It was heavy, and rattled like it was full of pills or small pebbles. “Yeah, it’s here.”
Edward sighed. “Good. I was worried I might’ve forgotten it last time I re-sorted the bag.”
“What is it?” Gordon asked.
“Something for later. If we need it.”
Janet looked down at her phone, and felt the tears coming back. Nausea came out of nowhere. Shock. It wasn’t just something Gordon was suffering from anymore, Janet was catching it. I’ve just been going on instinct. I’m in denial. My parents…
She started to ask if they could possibly pull over to let her vomit, when Edward slowed down anyway. “Hello,” he said. “What the fuck is this?”
Janet leaned forward, sniffling, and looked out the front windshield. She didn’t know why—call it female intuition?—but what she saw made her even more nauseous.
* * *
Looks like a classic set-up, Edward thought, his mind going back nearly a decade to a little town called Tikrit, about 140 miles northwest of Baghdad on the Tigris River. It was there that he and his unit had been moving along an open avenue filled with discarded trash bags and a few kids playing kickball with what looked like a dog’s head wrapped in bundles of cloth. There had been a car accident at the far end of that avenue, one that required their jeep to come to a full stop. Edward and Atlas had been about to step out of the jeep to sniff the terrain, but the lieutenant had a funny feeling, and decided they ought to beat a retreat. When they tried to back out, they discovered a small van had broken down behind them. About twenty seconds later, the two enemy snipers had started firing from mid-level windows.