Days of Anarchy

by J. D. Martens

  Jeremy looked outside at the speeding landscape, which was very flat, and watched the setting Sun fill the sky with a dazzling array of warm oranges, reds, and purples. They had seen a few hotels and motels along the way but unfortunately the lit “No Vacancy” signs shone through the dusk. They also saw there were no cars in their parking lots—another sign that travelers weren’t welcome.

  “Maybe we should just camp on the side of the road,” Anna mused, seeing a rest stop exit. Dustin snored in the backseat.

  Suddenly Karina spoke up. “We should go to a church!”

  “A church?” Jeremy said curiously.

  “They would take us,” Karina replied.

  “Karina has a point,” Jeremy replied, half joking. “They won’t want to do anything immoral like refuse stranded travelers so close to Judgment Day.”

  Karina shot Jeremy a grimace, annoyed by his flippant response, but it was decided. They agreed to stop by a church. Anna drove on a little longer until Jeremy spotted a big white cross beside the freeway. She slowly pulled off, using her turn signal. Jeremy noticed that Karina had taken the cross she wore from deep down inside her shirt so that it displayed conspicuously on her chest.

  The church parking lot was huge, but there were almost no cars. It was eerie driving up to the church, and Jeremy slowly woke up Dustin. When Dustin did finally wake up, he looked at the tall white cross towering over their car and groaned.

  “Oh, God, not a church.”

  Dustin said he would clean up the car and watch it while the three others went to speak to the workers at the church.

  “No,” Jeremy said. “We have to go by the buddy system. Always have someone with you in Anarch-Merica.”

  “I’ll stay with Dustin, then,” Anna offered. “Karina, will you and Jeremy go see if there’s anything there?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  Together, Jeremy and Karina walked toward the Amarillo Baptist church. Jeremy went to Europe with his family the summer of his freshman year, and he saw a lot of old Catholic and Protestant churches with beautiful stained glass and gargoyles and big statues of famous Christians. He thought they were so magnificent and showed a lot of history. Even though he had never been very religious, he loved the stories in the Bible, and being in those cathedrals had made him feel so small and humbled. The echoed footsteps of silent churchgoers always mesmerized him as he looked at the stained glass, trying to read the story in the pictures.

  The Amarillo Baptist church, by contrast, was essentially a great big conference hall. The walls were white, and even though the ceiling was high, there weren’t any ornate designs, organs, or stained glass windows, just rows and rows of fluorescent lights. The room was completely empty. Jeremy had noticed a car or two in the gargantuan parking lot, so he figured there had to be at least one person inside.

  “Hello?” Jeremy said to the empty room.

  His voice echoed back, giving the already creepy room a feeling like someone was watching them, but they were alone. Far away, past the rows of empty pews, the Crucifixion stood, staring at the ground. Jeremy looked away. It always made him somewhat uncomfortable, especially since he wasn’t raised as a Christian. His father took him to church once when he was about eight because, “this is something that people do, Jer. They go here, and listen to stories together. Some of them are better people because of it, too, and some go for other reasons.”

  “Is that guy nailed to a cross?” Jeremy had asked his father innocently when they’d gone.

  He’d said it too loud, though, and some people had heard him, glaring at both him and his father. It had made him perpetually uneasy around people who were very religious. He felt like people in church looked at him as if they were trying to read his mind. It was very unsettling.

  “Anybody home?” he asked again.

  Again, only his own echo answered him. Jeremy looked over at Karina, who was praying silently with her eyes closed. She opened them then and looked at him, then looked away.

  “Karina, are you okay?” Jeremy asked gently.

  “If this is it, then why am I so sad?” Karina choked, as if in mid-thought, and tried her hardest not to cry. “As a Christian we believe that this is supposed to be a good day. Judgment Day. This is when Jesus is supposed to come back and take us all into Heaven. Well, why am I so sad?”

  Jeremy thought for a moment, putting his arm around his friend—the friend that had been a stranger only weeks ago. “Maybe because that means that a lot of people are going to die?”

  That sounded a lot more comforting in my mind, Jeremy thought. He’d tried to say it as gently as possible too, but it didn’t work. Karina started sobbing.

  Darn it, he thought. I wish I knew what to say to women.

  Jeremy and Karina walked by the rows of pews and down toward the podium where the pastor gave his sermons, stopping by doors to check if any were unlocked. No such luck. They checked behind the podium, but all the doors were sealed shut, and dejectedly they walked back to the front door of the Amarillo Baptist Church. They spotted Dustin and Anna in the backseat of the car, playing a game of cards.

  “Gin!” Dustin yelled happily, so loudly that Jeremy could hear it even though the windows were closed.

  Anna opened the car door when she saw they were close.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “No one was there,” Jeremy said. “What should we do?”

  They sat there together, eating some beans from a tin can—their second makeshift dinner—and discussed for the next hour whether they should open up their tents. Jeremy asserted they should find a place where three sides of their campsite would be blocked, and the other three thought he should stop being paranoid. Dustin argued they should camp inside the church.

  Jeremy looked around. Night had almost supplanted dusk, and he swiped at some mosquitoes hovering by his ear. Then he saw a Subaru on the frontage road decelerate as it neared the church. The car turned into the parking lot, slowing so it wouldn’t bottom out, and then continued at a slow pace directly toward their own car. Jeremy watched nervously as he fingered the pocketknife in his pocket, and Karina put down her can of beans.

  An old man with a big straw hat waved at them through his open car window. They all braced, remembering what had happened to them at the gas station. Jeremy could also see an elderly woman sitting in the passenger seat. The man put the car in park. He stiffly got out and walked toward them with a pronounced limp.

  “Howdy there, son,” the man said once he got to Jeremy.

  They all stood up and faced the man, who looked to be in his early sixties. The old woman in the passenger seat, with long blonde-but-greying hair, sat peering outside. Jeremy could see she was knitting.

  When neither Jeremy nor his friends responded to the man, he continued. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Pastor Jack Westridge. I preside over this here church, and as I was driving home from the grocery, I noticed y’all in the lot.”

  Pastor Jack stopped talking then and waited, thinking that he would get some sort of response, which he did not get. When Jeremy and his friends said nothing, waiting for Pastor Jack to continue, the pastor looked down at his feet.

  Jack was wearing a white collared shirt with a bolo tie, cowboy boots, dirty jeans, and a gun. Jeremy stared at the gun and Jack noticed.

  “Ah, yes. Well, I’m going to go very slowly and move that, all right? That way we can have a more civil discourse. That does mean y’all might need to speak up though.”

  Jeremy tensed, and so did his friends, but Pastor Jack was true to his word. He slowly removed the gun and placed it on the ground. Then, to their surprise, he carefully kicked it toward them. It stopped, still slightly spinning on its handle, directly in between Jeremy and the Pastor.

  “What’s your name, son?” Jack asked.

  “Jeremy Genser.”

  “Well, Jeremy, I know these are unusual times we have caught ourselves in, but God has taught me to take in a stranger instead of treating him strang
ely. If you’d like, you and your friends are welcome to spend the night at my house. My wife, Noreen, is a fantastic cook.”

  Pastor Jack motioned back with his arm toward the elderly woman. Karina looked elated, and was already nodding her head, making Jack smile.

  “Could you excuse us briefly, Pastor?” Jeremy asked.

  “Certainly. I’ll give you folks a minute.”

  They leaned in together as Jack stepped away, and began to whisper, while Jeremy kept an eye on the gun and its owner.

  “We should do it; they are good Christians,” Karina said, almost immediately.

  “Remember we only trust each other . . . ” Anna countered.

  “Do you think we can trust them?” Dustin asked.

  “I think we should go,” Jeremy said, and the others looked at him in surprise.

  “You think we should trust them?” Anna asked.

  “I’m not sure yet,” Jeremy began, “but I think he does want to help us. And plus, they both look like they’re in their seventies, what could they do? He couldn’t shoot us all.”

  They all looked up at Jack and his wife, who was continuing to knit obliviously in the passenger seat. Then they turned their heads back down.

  “Vote?” Anna proffered.

  They agreed by nodding their heads.

  “Those in favor of going with Jack?” Anna proffered.

  Anna, Karina, and Jeremy nodded, with Dustin saying nothing.

  “I guess that means we go,” Dustin said.

  “Jack?” Jeremy called, “we would love to take you up on your offer.”

  “Excellent! Ah, that is excellent. Noreen dear! Did you hear that? These wonderful youngsters are going to stay with us tonight.”

  Noreen still made no motion proving she could hear, but when she finally looked up from her knitting, she smiled warmly at the group.

  Jeremy gulped nervously, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake. Jack told them to follow him in his car. They got in and drove through the huge church parking lot, and there was an old house adjoining the far end of the church. The drive only took about two minutes.

  Jeremy walked in and noticed a big difference between the church and Pastor Jack’s house. While the church had no defining religious artwork—aside from the Crucifixion—the home was filled with religious artwork. Most noticeably, above a fireplace in the living room hung a haunting painting of the Virgin Mary.

  “Y’all are welcome to sleep on the couch, and there is a small bedroom over here if you want to take a look. Perhaps you two girls can take the room, and the boys can have the couches?”

  The small bedroom was painted bright green. Stuffed animals were piled on each of the twin beds, which took up most of the room.

  “Of course!” Anna responded. “This is amazing, thank you so much.”

  “Great,” Pastor Jack exclaimed. “Well, if you want to get freshened up before dinner there is a bathroom over there.”

  After a quick trip to the bathroom for the four of them, they all sat down to dinner, which Jeremy looked at disdainfully. It looked better than the cold black beans they ate, but barely. Noreen, Pastor Jack’s wife, roughly plopped down a big bowl of murky liquid filled with meat, potatoes, soggy carrots, and peas. Despite this the group munched it down eagerly.

  “Thank you, Noreen!” Anna gurgled in between mouthfuls.

  “No problem, my pleasure, sweetheart,” Noreen replied, before asking, “So, where y’all headed?”

  “Up to Colorado,” Jeremy answered. “We are visiting some family.”

  “Oh, y’all are siblings then?”

  “Um, cousins,” Karina cut in. “We are cousins.”

  They continued to eat in relative silence, until suddenly the phone rang. It wasn’t a cell phone ring, and it startled Jeremy, who hadn’t heard a landline phone since he was around four years old. It was a pervasive ringing, loud and obnoxious, and there was no ignore button or “reply with text” option to stop the ring. A landline telephone ringing was a social event; everyone’s heads whirled in the direction of the phone.

  “I wonder who could be calling during dinner . . . ” Pastor Jack mused, getting up slowly. Everyone stopped eating while he answered the phone on the second ring. “Hello? Ah, hi honey. How are you? Say, we are in the middle of—” Then Pastor Jack’s expression darkened. “What? What? Are you serious? Oh my God . . . channel two?”

  “Honey?” Noreen said.

  Pastor Jack gave his wife a look which Jeremy could not decipher, and walked to the adjoining living room to turn on the television. He was still holding onto the phone, speaking.

  “I’m just happy you are okay . . . I love you too.”

  When Jeremy peered around Pastor Jack and toward the TV, his heart sank, like it does when you’re on a roller coaster and the click-click of the gears forces you high away from the Earth, and there’s only one way out—straight down.

  One of the IMPs—the nuclear missiles he had been hearing about—had had a faulty first-stage engine. As it tried to make its ascent to Shiva, it began to fall back to Earth. Jeremy could hear a CNN reporter saying something about the primary engine. How could this have happened? Jeremy thought.

  Instead of falling harmlessly into the Atlantic Ocean—which was meant to occur—the nuclear weapon was making its way toward the city of Miami. Jeremy knew that rockets were purposefully sent into the atmosphere in such a way that if something happens, they fall harmlessly into the ocean. They could view the Miami skyline from a news helicopter. The falling nuke was just a small blip in the sky, but it was descending fast.

  Jeremy watched the CNN video of the nuclear weapon slowly losing altitude. He was vaguely aware of Pastor Jack turning up the volume on the TV.

  “ . . . Residents of South Florida and Miami have begun evacuating, but as you can see, the highways are all bumper to bumper. People are getting out of their cars and running now . . . ”

  There were large gaps in the reporter’s speech, and Karina looked away from the TV as the bomb inched down the screen. Then, as they watched the nuclear weapon fall slowly down to Earth, two separate missiles came from the north and sped toward the falling nuke. The first one approached the nuke. Then there was a collision—missile on missile—and then the entire screen went white.

  Everyone watching the screen gasped, and then Noreen began to cry.

  “Dear Lord . . . ” Pastor Jack murmured sadly.

  Jeremy could say nothing as the connection to the news helicopter cut out, and CNN switched to their newsroom where four stunned reporters sat, unsure of what to tell the public. Finally one spoke.

  “A nuclear bomb has just exploded a quarter of a mile above Miami, Florida.”

  Jeremy woke up groggily on the couch. It was a very deep and comfortable couch, and even though he’d had a full night’s sleep he felt like he’d only slept an hour or two. His eyes were puffy. He looked over at the TV, which was still on. A reporter explained that Martial Law had been declared in the non-revolting areas of the United States. Then Jeremy fell back asleep.

  When he woke up again, a reporter spoke about the disaster in Miami. The death count from the IMP impact was still unknown. So many people, Jeremy thought. It was difficult for him—for anyone—to imagine. Jeremy looked around and saw Dustin snoring in the small loveseat.

  “Evacuation of around ten thousand citizens was successful,” the reporter said, “through NASA’s early warning system. The military also fired two missiles which successfully intercepted the nuclear device and detonated it in the air. This greatly lessened the nuclear fallout from the explosion, and saved an untold number of lives. Still, we are projecting that the nuclear explosion has taken the lives of tens of thousands. Preliminary reports are estimating the casualties in the hundreds of thousands.

  “I’m here with Arnold Jackson, one of the evacuees in the Miami disaster, who thankfully made it out alive. Arnold, can you tell us what happened?”

  A quavering voice sounded over the incom
ing video feed of a decimated Miami. “It was horrible, just horrible. I was just driving home from work, listening to the radio. I heard the evacuation message and I drove straight north. I saw a missile hit something just above Miami, and then everything lit up. I had to look away—it was brighter than the Sun. It’s just horrible. I saw people who were outside when the bomb hit, and it looked like their skin was falling off. When I looked up I saw the mushroom cloud starting to grow above Miami. It’s just horrible, and it was a mistake by our own government? What does NASA have to say for themselves? How could our government allow this to happen? I can’t believe it, it was just awful.”

  The reporter spoke again, replying to the man, “It certainly is awful, and there are a lot of questions that need to be answered about this terrible event. For those of you just joining us, the United States has accepted responsibility for the Miami disaster.”

  Jeremy turned off the television, and walked into the kitchen. Noreen was wearing a frock that looked like it was from the 1950s. She had puffy eyes, too.

  “Care for some coffee, honey?”

  Jeremy nodded and sipped at the burning liquid without cream or sugar. It was bitter.

  “The TV said there is to be a curfew now,” Noreen said.

  Jeremy tried to respond but the coffee had burned his tongue and the top of his mouth.

  “Do you think you’ll still go to Denver?” Noreen asked.

  “Yes,” Jeremy managed, thinking it was more important than ever to get to Vail as soon as possible.

  “I wanted to give you something, but don’t tell my husband, please.”

  Noreen pulled a metallic object from a fold of her long frock. It was a gun—a nine millimeter caliber Smith & Wesson handgun. Out of a small pocket in her dress she pulled a small grey box, which held around one hundred extra rounds of ammunition.

  Jeremy stood in shock as the little old lady held the weapon, thrusting it into his hands.

  “I don’t know if this is such a good idea,” Jeremy began. “I don’t really want this.”

  “Trust me, honey. This is the end of the world we are talking about here. You need to be careful.”