Alien Invasion (Book 1): Invasion (17 page)

“For now. We can cut south in a bit, on one of the big expressways; I’d have to check to see which. We can cut down to 80. If that’s not clear, we can get off then. It should be safer, assuming the shit will keep from hitting the fan for just a little longer.”
 

Trevor felt another note of respect radiating from his father. First he’d given him the second-heaviest pack, and now he was casually swearing. He sometimes swore around his children, but it was rare that he’d swear when talking directly to them — the way he might talk to an adult. Or a colleague.
 

“You’re not worried about getting off the road then, assuming the sh …” But he couldn’t echo the word to his father, not yet. “… assuming that doesn’t happen quite yet?”
 

“There will be less of a crowd. There should be more people who aren’t desperate.”
 

“But they could still be … you know … going crazy?”
 

“Yes, but more numbers means more problems, all other things being equal. Not just because there are more hands to hold weapons, say, but because people are stupid when they’re in crowds, Trevor. They stop thinking for themselves and just ease into whatever everyone else is thinking. We need to stay where people aren’t thinking too crazy yet, or where there are fewer people.”
 

Trevor looked at the never-ending line of cars. He knew Lila and Raj had already raised this objection, but it sure seemed like the expressway was the wrong place to be if they were looking for smaller numbers.

“It’ll be fine.” Dad wrapped his arm around Trevor’s shoulders. “Nothing bad will happen to us up here. Not with all these out-of-towners with full cars, in broad daylight.”
 

But he was wrong.

Fifteen minutes later, the riot started.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Day Three, Afternoon

Outside Chicago

The riot began with a crash, then blazed like wildfire.
 

Meyer was walking the berm, Piper in front of him and Trevor far off to the side as if avoiding her, sullen as usual. Lila and Raj were twenty or thirty steps ahead, still quiet and radiating defiance. Raj had been beaten down about the exit, so he was pretending to lead the group to reclaim what little he could of his dignity. He had Lila beside him. Right now he’d be warring for her attention, trying to establish himself as the superior male. But Meyer was mature and patient enough to see it for what it was: pomp and chest-pounding. Let Raj fluff feathers for his girl. What Meyer said went, and would continue to go. Raj wasn’t supposed to be here. He could stay and enjoy Meyer’s supplies … but only if he kept his head down and obeyed when it mattered.
 

Without warning, an engine flared to violent life somewhere in the middle of the jammed traffic ahead. A high-pitched squeal of rubber on pavement was followed almost immediately by a muted crash. A grinding noise, then another squeal of tires — this one slightly less piercing — and another crash.
 

Heads were turning all around, peering toward the commotion like fans in a stadium. Profiles become the backs of heads. To the edges, he could see faces: dumb, vacant, vaguely frightened yet somehow intrigued. He looked back toward the commotion, where those closer were beginning to swarm like insects. Someone shouted. There were a few smaller banging sounds — many metallic, like striking sheet metal with a sledge. Many were more muted: a wooden bat striking wood. Or dirt. Or meat.
 

There was a high-pitched scream. Pain or desperation.
 

They skirted the watching crowd. Meyer had one arm around Piper’s shoulders within seconds. He put his other around Trevor once he’d dragged Piper over to reach him.
 

They had to stay back. The something was none of their business.
 

The crowd shifted, and Meyer saw what had happened. Someone in one of the middle lanes seemed to have reached his breaking point. He’d revved his engine and plowed into the vehicle in front of him. Then he’d reversed and struck the car behind. Meyer watched the car lurch again, striking the red sedan from the rear and making it jolt forward, butting into a white SUV two cars up. The sheer momentum of the kamikaze was opening a hole in traffic.
 

Now the car seemed to be jockeying around, trying to edge sideways. As if he could barrel his way through four rows of cars and escape to the berm, where he’d have to off road for his life.
 

Again, someone screamed.
 

Under it all, Meyer thought he could hear a low, furious, animal growl: the car’s driver, screaming, out of his mind.
 

Most of the people around the hole in the crowd had backed up, but some had been bold and moved forward, striking the car with whatever they could find, even if it was only their fists. One man in jeans and a light jacket jumped on the car’s hood, then held on while it attempted to shift around. But it was stuck somewhere; the engine roared, and the wheels spun in place, now raising a thin line of black smoke.
 

The man on the windshield pounded the glass, which was already webbed and starting to shatter. For a few moments, he was alone — the lone man out of all the spectators willing to act. Then his will seemed to spread, and others climbed on the car, like ants on a lollipop.
 

Whatever had been pinning the car broke free with a clang. It skidded forward, this time canting sideways. It struck a small car to one side. The impact’s force threw the vehicle sideways.
 

There was a woman’s scream. Meyer could see activity different from the rest: flailing arms, a head whipping dark hair around in pain. She’d been pinned.
 

“That woman is hurt!” said Raj.
 

But Meyer was watching the crowd shift. More people were moving forward. They weren’t precisely coming to help. They were coming forward because others had, and because it was what the group mind was telling them to do.

“We have to go,” said Meyer, now looking toward the berm: a gap in the freeway sound barrier.
 

“That woman is pinned!” said Raj.
 

A cold switch flipped inside Meyer. “Not our business,” he said.
 

Someone had retrieved a tire iron from his trunk. Meyer watched the man run forward and smash the window of the battering ram vehicle. The people near the inner circle watched it happen, then began to move. Other trunks. Other tire irons. Meyer saw baseball bats, possibly fetched from children’s luggage.
 

Individuality in flight, the previously separate minds in the crowd were becoming a hive.
 

“But she’s hurt!” Raj was already moving forward.
 

“Come on.” Meyer was up on the berm, holding onto Piper and Trevor as if he might drop them. He made his hand, around Piper’s upper arm, into a beckoning wave. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”
 

Raj threw a venomous look back at Meyer. “We have to help her. If we don’t, nobody will.”
 

It was true. The woman was still screaming, but she was already mostly forgotten. The surging crowd’s attention had focused on the car, which had now stopped, engine running, windows smashed in one by one. Hands reached into the cab. Dragged the driver out and down to the concrete. In circles around the commotion, others began to move.
 

Someone else started their engine, apparently inspired. Another crash. Another surge of angry retribution.
 

They had minutes. Seconds, maybe.
 

It was going to erupt. Very, very soon.
 

“Raj!” Meyer shouted. “You can’t do anything!”
 

And that was true, too. The woman had stopped screaming, and could very well be dead. She might have been nearly cut in half by the collision, or stomped to death by the hands converging on the troublemaker. But the freeway’s motion wasn’t all altruistic. More engines were starting. More people were now trying to smash their way out, hoping to break clear and outrun the crowd’s ire by storming down the berm. Each time they did, people turned toward them, now instructed by the group mind as to a defector’s appropriate fate. And while some tried to run and others taught them bloody lessons, a third group began to creep around abandoned vehicles, toward trunks left open after weapons had been grabbed.
 

Looters. Opportunists. Apparently, not everyone felt they had enough after all.
 

Raj threw Meyer a final angry look, then sprinted into the crowd, headed for the epicenter. Meyer’s eyes met Lila’s. He dragged his two prisoners forward. He could see brainwashing taking hold in Lila’s brown eyes. She watched Raj depart. She watched her father.
 

Then she ran after Raj.
 

“Shit!
Lila, get back here!”
 

But she couldn’t hear. A gun fired. It must have been to the right, because Meyer watched a bubble form as people scooted backward. But the bubble lasted only a moment before the bubble became a huddle. There was another shot before the pile formed, but then the crowd piled on, and if Meyer had to guess, he’d assume the shooter no longer held his weapon.
 

 
New movement in the line of cars had compressed the gaps to nothing in places, opening wide spots elsewhere. Lila was climbing over hoods, chasing Raj, who was far more nimble. She seemed to be shouting his name, but Raj either couldn’t hear or wouldn’t listen.
 

Meyer rushed forward, leaped over a hood, and nearly managed to get Lila by the back of the shirt. If he could grab her, he’d treat her like cargo, drag her back, kicking and screaming. He’d force them all away, and Raj could fend for his motherfucking self.
 

But he missed. She squirmed past.
 

Trevor was yelling from behind. Piper was behind him, her hands on his shoulders. Both had flinched to follow, but Meyer shouted and gestured for them to stay back, to stay far back.
 

The crowd surged like a monster. Meyer could feel its ebb and flow, its collective lack of intelligence like a swarm waiting for something to sting. Ripples had spread as far as he could see, and now nobody was really just standing around.
 

Some were stealing what they could.

Some were defending what they had.
 

Some were just desperate for escape.

And some — perhaps obeying some deep-seated instinct of forced conformity — were chasing down the runners, taking them to the ground.
 

Nobody was just a mom or a dad anymore.
 

Nobody was just an office drone or an employee of the gas company.
 

Now they were just fingers under the control of some collective beast.
 

“Lila!”
 

Her head twitched, but she surged forward. Ahead, Meyer saw Raj trip as he tried to cross a stopped car and fall. He’d be trampled. If he was, he was. But for Meyer, it was good news in a twisted way. It meant that when she reached Raj, she’d stop.
 

Another gunshot.
 

Another broken window.
 

A small woman, perhaps in her late fifties, ran past with a flat of bottled water. She tripped. A moment later, two other women were over her, kicking and grabbing for the bottles.
 

“Lila! Goddammit, forget him! We have to get out of here!”
 

Meyer had studied riot behavior, and knew that he was doing exactly the wrong thing. You didn’t run toward the center. You didn’t go against the flow. You didn’t move more quickly than you had to. You were supposed to keep your head down, keep your emotions under control, and move steadily toward the surge until you could slip away. But he wouldn’t leave without Lila.
 

Something grabbed Meyer’s shoulder. He turned to see a man with three days’ stubble, a duffel over his shoulder. In one hand, he had Meyer. In the other, he had a knife. It looked like a kitchen knife, nothing meant for fighting.
 

Meyer didn’t hesitate. In a situation like this, both logic and emotion were terrible ideas. He didn’t look into the man’s soul and wonder if he was a good man who always donated generously to the local orphanage. He didn’t try to reason. The man was holding the knife as he probably always had: in preparation for cutting a steak. Meyer, however, had trained.
 

He grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted hard, then used his free hand to punch the man hard in the gut — the place that would incapacitate him most completely but do the least damage to Meyer’s hands, which he anticipated needing in the days ahead.
 

The man fell, and Meyer plucked the knife from his hand. He planted it in the side of a man approaching from the other side, a pipe raised in his hand.
 

He climbed over the last car between him and where Raj had fallen. But he didn’t have to leap the last vehicle; a brown streak was racing toward him. Meyer raised the knife again, its tip red, but the streak was Raj.