“It’s like something out of our worst fears back in the Cold War days,” he said. “I always suspected something like this would happen. Young people, who never lived through those days, they got way too complacent about stuff like this. Way too, complacent.”
“Are you prepared for something like this, though?” Mary asked him.
“You bet!” he said grinning. “I’ve got a lil’ bunker in my backyard, filled with cans of beans. Built it way back when nuclear war was a real threat, although, in the last few decades, I been using it to get some peace and quiet from my wife when she gets in one of her moods. Don’t worry; I do change out the canned food regularly! They ain’t the same beans from the 1970s. The only thing is, I never counted on cars not working. Now I’m stuck here, and I don’t know how I’ll get outta the city. Lord knows my knees can’t handle a walk of ten miles…”
“We can take you with us and drop you at your place,” Mary said. “It’s not too far outta the way from the direction we’re heading. The only thing is, this AMC is running on empty, and your gas pumps aren’t going to be pumping anything but air for … well, maybe ever. I’ve got plenty of good vehicles in my workshop, but we can’t get any of ‘em out because of the eighteen-wheeler blocking the gate. Ugh, I can’t believe we’re so close to getting out of this damn city, but this little thing is holding us back.”
“Don’t you worry about gas, young lady!” Bill said, grinning mischievously. “We’ll get this hotrod’s tank filled right up. It’ll take a while, but we can do it.”
“How?”
“Come on into the store; I’ve got plenty of hand pumps, hoses, and plastic gas cans. Crowbars too. Look at all the abandoned cars all over the place; we can suck enough fuel outta their tanks with the hand pumps to fill up the AMC eventually. And we can bring a whole bunch of gas cans with us.”
A smile of relief broke across Mary’s face. “Of course! Hand pumps! All right, everyone, let’s get pumping.”
Everyone got a hand pump, a hose, and a fuel can, and they went around sucking fuel out of the abandoned cars. Soon enough, they got enough to fill up the AMC and a few gas cans. Now, charged with a fresh sense of hope and cautious optimism, the four of them piled into the car. Mary started it up again, gave the motor a few quick revs, and then drove off, heading into the unknown chaos that lay ahead.
15
It didn’t take long for Mary to realize that she had greatly underestimated how much attention a working vehicle would draw. While they’d managed to avoid drawing much attention on foot, now that they were in a moving, functional car, people’s heads were turning wherever they went. It wasn’t only pedestrians who stopped walking to stare at the car; while Mary kept her eyes on the road, the passengers in the car saw windows and doors opening, with people who were shuttered in their houses staring out at them.
It didn’t take too long for them to run into trouble, either. The first incident happened a mere mile from the gas station. Mary had taken a long, meandering route, intending to drive through the suburbs, skirting around the city that way instead of taking the more direct course through the city center. She knew that the streets in the suburbs would be more open and less clogged with abandoned vehicles, but she was also hoping that they would be free of police or army roadblocks, or traps set by the sinister men in black.
Although these groups seemed to be absent from the eerily quiet suburbs, Mary and her group quickly discovered that the suburbs were also highly dangerous. The first hint of trouble came when two men, upon hearing the sound of a vehicle, ran out of their house with guns in their hands, yelling at Mary to pull over. From their aggressive stances and the wild looks in their eyes, she knew that they weren’t asking her to stop for help; they probably wanted to carjack her and take the vehicle at gunpoint. She dropped down a gear and floored the accelerator, spinning the tires and sending the AMC hurtling forward at speed. She aimed it straight at the men, who, as she’d hoped, chickened out, dropping their guns and diving out of the way of the speeding car.
As she sped away, though, her heart was hammering, and her pulse was racing, and her fingers wrapped around the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip. She had escaped without being shot at this time, but she knew that she would likely encounter predators with more resolve and a more vicious, ruthless temperament before the end of this perilous ride.
She had Ann up front with her in the passenger seat. “If anyone tries anything like that again,” Mary said to Ann, “lean out the window and give ‘em a warning shot. We can’t afford to lose this car.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll keep us protected,” Ann said grimly, gripping her pistol tight.
They traveled along in terse silence. Mary tried turning on the car radio, but it was the one thing in the vehicle that had been damaged by the EMP, and it was completely dead. The only sound was the deep droning of the V8 motor.
The suburbs weren’t as quiet as Mary had hoped. They saw more groups of people out on the streets whichever way they went, and every time they passed a group, the people would shout at them and run after the car. Mostly they were pleading with Mary to stop, with looks of fear and confusion on their face, no doubt wanting to ask to hitch a ride somewhere. But almost as often, they were met with aggression, with people screaming at them with wild looks in their eyes and fierce expressions on their faces, and these people would throw rocks and other projectiles at the car when Mary sped past them. After twenty minutes of driving, the formerly pristine bodywork was riddled with dents, and two of the windows were cracked.
Still, for all the damage and trauma these incidents caused, Mary, drove on with grim determination, thankful that it was rocks and cans being hurled at the car instead of bullets being fired at it, and that it was angry civilians screaming insults at them rather than soldiers or terrorists threatening their lives.
She knew that she would have to swing back onto the city roads eventually; there was no other way to get onto the main highway that led out of the city and into the mountain districts. That was the part of the journey she was dreading most, for she was sure that roadblocks would be up, and the car would attract the attention of the police or army, or whoever it was who was manning the barriers. As worrying as the thought of having to deal with this was, there was little she could do but continue onward and figure out how to handle these barricades when she got to them.
“Get ready for trouble,” she said grimly to the others. “I have to head back into the city to get to the highway, and I know we’re probably gonna run into some trouble.”
It didn’t take long for them to find trouble either. Before they were even out of the suburbs, they ran into a large gang of hostile men on bicycles. The men weren’t terrorists, but they were dressed like inner-city gangsters and wore bandannas that covered their faces. They were all armed, and they must have heard the car coming from a long way off. Mary saw them following the vehicle on their bicycles for some distance, and more and more of them seemed to join the pursuit. They would ride along behind her for a while, then break off and scoot down side streets, while different men on bikes would zip out of nowhere. They would sometimes flash their pistols and submachine guns at Mary, but Ann and James pointed their firearms at the men, which seemed to get them to back off. However, they did not give up their pursuit of the car. Because of all the abandoned vehicles cluttering the streets, Mary couldn’t find any stretch of road clear enough to outrun them, and as more and more of them seemed to appear out of every street and alley, she became increasingly afraid.
Finally, when she turned onto one of the main streets, a large group of them formed up their bicycles into a large mass between two abandoned vehicles, completely blocking off the only way through the road. Mary saw what they were doing and slammed on the brakes, intending to do a U-turn and head around a different way, making a detour of a few blocks down, but the bicycle gang must have heard her coming from a long way off and prepared this trap well in advance, for in the rearview mi
rror, she saw more of them on their bikes blocking off the rear of the street, dragging a bunch of dumpsters out of some side alleys to form a blockade and hem her in.
There were no side streets, no alleys, and tall buildings, all hunched tightly together, lined the streets. There was no escape now, and even though Mary and everyone in her party was armed, they were outgunned by the bicycle gang by a significant margin; in front of them were at least a dozen or more men, and behind her were almost as many. Every one of them had a handgun, and more than a few had submachine guns.
The men said nothing; they simply waited behind their blockade, silently daring Mary to either abandon her car or get into this deadly game of chicken with them. In many ways, their silence made for a far more menacing and ominous atmosphere than a situation in which they’d all been shouting and screaming at her.
“Wh-, what are we gonna do?” James stammered. “They’ve uh they’ve got us locked in here.”
“Sons of bitches,” Bill growled, grimacing. “Disgusting sons of bitches. Who knew that people would descend to this level of savagery within hours?”
There were fifty yards of open street separating Mary from the bunched-up group of cyclists in front of her. She knew that with the raw power of the V8 and the brutal acceleration the AMC was capable of, she could cover that distance in seconds, and be traveling at a good speed when she hit them … a murderous speed, for sure.
She stared coolly at the masked men and slowly revved the motor a few times, the deep growl barking out a challenge to them. In response, they said nothing, but raised their firearms and pointed them at the car.
The AMC was fast, powerful, and beautiful, but it was not bulletproof. Could Mary accelerate hard enough to avoid getting killed in a hail of bullets? Would the men have the nerve to face down a muscle car hurtling toward them at high speed and aim their shots effectively, or would they scatter in panic when she charged them?
The alternative was to give up now and get out of the vehicle, handing it, and, no doubt, their guns too, over to the gangsters.
Mary knew that she had to make a choice and that whether she and her party lived or died in the next few seconds would depend entirely on the option she chose.
So, with her heart in her mouth, she did it. She made her choice.
16
“Everyone, get your heads down and keep ‘em down until we’re clear!” Mary said. “I’m ramming the bastards.”
“Mom, do you—” Ann began, but Mary shut her down right away; there was no time to argue or debate, and she’d made her choice. If she allowed these men to take the car and their guns—and possibly Ann—she would be signing everyone’s death warrants. She had decided that she would rather go down fighting than a prisoner.
“Down now!” Mary snapped, throwing the car into first gear, stomping on the accelerator and dumping the clutch.
The tires screamed, spinning frantically and throwing up clouds of smoke, and the car hurtled forward as if shot out of a cannon. The G-force of the acceleration pressed the passengers’ bodies into the seats, and Mary gripped the steering wheel tight, aiming the vehicle squarely at the clump of men on their bikes. They opened fire, and she ducked her head down below the dash as bullets peppered the hood and punched holes through the windscreen. Inside the car, the passengers’ screams of terror were drowned out by the throaty roar of the motor.
The men hadn’t expected Mary to do this, and while a few of them stood their ground and started shooting, many dumped their bikes and sprinted out of the way as the car came careening toward them. In the space of a mere two seconds, it became obvious that Mary wasn’t bluffing, and that she fully intended to run over the men who were blocking her path. Those who had stayed had no time to react, and the heavy steel projectile slammed into them at incredible speed.
Bodies and bicycles were both flung violently up into the air and crushed under the wheels and body of the AMC. The car was launched into the air, ramping over a mangled body, and for one or two terrifying seconds, it was completely airborne. It came down hard in a shower of sparks, with the body bottoming out and dragging for a second on the asphalt. The car swerved and fishtailed, and Mary almost lost control, but she managed to wrangle it back into a straight line.
She didn’t slow down; she kept the accelerator floored, paying attention only to what was in front of her. From behind, she heard gunshots, and a bullet punched through the rear windscreen in an eruption of broken glass, but she didn’t take her foot off the pedal. She slalomed between a trio of abandoned vehicles, sliding the wheels and throwing the passengers in the back seat around, and then braked hard for an upcoming corner and swung through it with the tires smoking and screaming.
The street Mary turned onto was clogged up with abandoned cars, but she didn’t let that stop her; she drove onto the sidewalk and floored it, smashing over trash cans and other small obstacles. Only when she’d raced past another three or floor blocks, blasting through the intersections with their dead traffic lights, did she finally slow down and check in the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was following them. She was relieved to see that there were no longer any men on bicycles pursuing her.
“Is everyone okay?” she asked.
“Shaken and most definitely stirred,” Bill said, dusting chunks of broken glass off his shoulders, “but otherwise okay.”
“I’m okay, Mom,” Anna said, “I think.” She was also covered with chunks of broken glass and was checking herself to make sure she was indeed fine.
James had squeezed himself so far down into the footwell he was pretty much stuck, and Bill had to help pull him out. “I’m uh, I’m okay, I think, Aunt Mary,” he said. “Just a couple bruises and I feel a bit dizzy from getting my head slammed against the side of the car when you took that one corner like an F1 driver, but uh, yeah … I’m okay.”
Mary kept driving; she wanted to stop and check the car for damage, but people on the streets were coming out from behind their hiding places and looking out of windows at the sound of the car’s passing, and many of them had sinister rather than curious expressions on their faces, and she didn’t want to risk it.
The damage she could already see was extensive; the hood of the car was riddled with bullet holes, and it had crumpled in from where one of the gangsters’ bodies had smashed into it. There was grisly evidence of the damage the speeding vehicle had done to the men; blood was splattered all over the one half of the hood and drops of it were smeared all over the broken windshield. That wasn’t the only damage to the glass; there were also five bullet holes in it, one of which had punched another hole straight through the passenger seat. Mary shuddered when she saw that one; if Ann hadn’t crouched down, the bullet would have taken her straight in the chest, and she could have been killed. Another of the bullets that had gone through the windshield had slammed into the back seat and missed James by a mere inch. Mary couldn’t believe how close to death both of the teenagers had come, and she whispered a silent prayer of thanks to whatever guardian angels had been watching over them.
“I know you know your way around an engine,” Bill said, clearly impressed, “but I had no idea you could handle a vehicle like a race car driver too!”
“Yeah, Mom, that was the fastest I’ve ever seen you drive,” Ann said. “That was awesome!”
You wouldn’t be thinking it was so awesome if you knew how close you’d come to being killed, Mary thought, but she didn’t say that out loud. She also didn’t want to tell her daughter where she’d learned to drive like that. In her time as a teenage runaway, one of her boyfriends had been a car thief and Mary and he had taken many stolen cars for reckless joyrides. She had ended up doing a stint in prison because of it and had learned her lesson and been on the straight and narrow path ever since then.
“I was just doing what I had to do,” Mary eventually said, with all these memories swirling around her mind. “It was adrenalin that helped me drive like that. I hope I don’t have to do it again.”
A crunching thump on the roof of the car made everyone yelp with fright, and to the rear left of the vehicle, Mary saw a group of men running toward them, throwing things at the car and yelling aggressively. She stomped on the gas pedal and accelerated away before they could get close enough to become any more of a threat.
Throbbing anxiety was growing increasingly dire within Mary as she drove, for she was getting close to the huge bridge over the river that was the only route out of town into the northern mountains. She knew that there would likely be a roadblock here. She whispered a prayer as she turned the final corner before the onramp that would take her onto the bridge, hoping against all the odds that it would be clear.
She drove up the onramp, weaving around the many abandoned vehicles on it, and turned onto the bridge … and immediately, her heart sank. A crushing feeling of tightness constricted her chest, for the entire bridge was blocked off by US Army troops, who had set up concrete barriers and a massive gate. She stopped the car and stared at the soldiers, who were around a hundred yards down the road, right in the middle of the bridge. They had seen the car and were observing it with binoculars and talking among themselves. Most of them were aiming their guns at the vehicle. Behind the barricade were a few vehicles—Humvees and old Jeeps—so Mary knew that the army had at least a handful of working vehicles. However, she suspected that due to the rarity of any working vehicles, they would be very interested in the AMC, and not in a nice way.
“What are we gonna do now?” Ann asked worriedly.
“I don’t know,” Mary murmured, staring with dismay at the Army barricade. “They’re not gangsters, at least, so maybe we have a chance of reasoning with them and getting them to allow us through.” She said this, but she wasn’t sure how many of these words she believed.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day Page 10