CyberStorm (37 page)

Tony grunted and tried to get out of the way, collapsing in front of me. I reached for his hand and pulled him toward me, but it was too late. His body convulsed. Looking into my eyes, he blinked back tears and then went still.

“Tony!” I grunted, trying to pull him towards me. His eyes stared back at me blankly, unseeing.
My God, you can’t be dead, Tony, wake up, come on...

“Goddamn it, boy, you blew Cousin Henry’s ear right off!” said the whiney voice from outside. “Either you send out your woman and those kids, or we’ll burn the whole goddamn place down!”

Tears streaming down my face, I yanked my leg again, shredding flesh, but I couldn’t get free. Lauren was sobbing in fear, Luke staring at me with wide eyes beside her.

“So what’ll it be, boy?”

Clenching my jaw, I released Tony’s hand and leaned down to the woodpile.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening
—

A gunshot boomed outside, the shot thudding into the earth on the other side of the cellar doors.

“What the hell?” screamed the whiny voice.

I could hear people running into the woods, confusion and yelling.

“There’s someone in the house!”

More shooting, and glass began shattering. And then a sharp crack echoed through the trees, a different gun, further away, and there was more shouting and gunfire. After a short silence, I heard a car’s engine fire up and then the throaty rumble of our truck’s engine.

With a final effort, I pulled my leg free of the woodpile and jumped up, limping up the cellar stairs. The growl of the truck’s engine grew louder, and through the cellar door I could see it roar past. With a terrific crash it smashed into our deck, destroying it and the hot tub. The house shuddered above us, and then gradually the noises began to fade.

Tentatively, I peered out from the doors and then threw one, and then the other, open. I poked my head out. Susie was standing there, gun in hand, looking down the driveway. She glanced back at me.

“It’s okay. They’re gone,” she called out, but someone was ambling up our driveway.

He was holding a shotgun.

“He’s got a gun!” I yelled at Susie, ducking my head back down. “Get out of there!”

Silence.

“It’s me, you idiot,” called out Chuck in a hoarse voice.

Relief at hearing Chuck’s voice washed over me, but I was already back down at Tony’s side, ripping open his shirt.
Should I do mouth to mouth?
His body was a bloody mess. Lauren was still in the corner of the cellar, gripping the children and staring at me and then at Tony.

Did he have a pulse?

My hands shaking, I held two fingers, sticky with blood, gently to his neck and leaned in to see if he was breathing.

No pulse. No breathing.

“Get down here!” I yelled.

Day 32 – January 23

LAUREN PICKED OUT a beautiful spot to bury Tony. It was in a clearing of woods, to the north of the cabin, just beside a stand of dogwood trees. They were bare now, but soon, in the spring, Susie said, the dogwoods would flower and bloom.

It would be a beautiful place to rest.

Maybe a beautiful spot, but beyond the first few inches of decomposed leaves the earth was thick with knotted roots and rocks. Digging a deep hole required hacking away at the roots and leveraging out the rocks. It was hard work, made harder still by the realization of the task itself.

We were burying Tony.

He’d volunteered to stay at the building when he could have left for Brooklyn. I was sure he’d stayed for us, for Luke. If he hadn’t stayed for us, he’d probably be down in Florida in the sunshine with his mother. Instead, we were digging his grave.

There was nothing we’d been able to do for Tony. He’d been killed almost instantly. I’d tried to clean him up, but eventually I’d resigned myself to simply covering him with a blanket.

I’d sat and cried on the cellar steps, talking to Tony’s inert corpse, thanking him for trying to protect us. In the evening I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him alone down there, so I’d brought a cot and slept with him.

Birds chirped cheerfully in the trees as Susie and I pulled Tony’s corpse through the leaves. He was heavy, well over two hundred pounds, so we’d dragged him in the blanket I’d wrapped him in.

Finally reaching the clearing, a few hundred feet from the cabin, we pulled him over to the edge of the pit. The sun was out in a blue sky, and I was sweating, doubled over and panting from the effort. Nodding at Susie, we both reached down and grabbed an end and then did our best to gently lower him into the ground. He slid in awkwardly, falling crumpled with his legs to one side.

“I’ll fix him,” volunteered Susie.

Gingerly, she climbed down into the hole, reaching down to set Tony in a comfortable position. I sat down in the leaves, staring up at the sky while I regained my breath.

“Is everything okay?” called out Lauren in the distance. She was staying with the kids while we did a little ceremony for Tony.

Susie was back out of the grave, rubbing dirt onto the sides of her jeans. She nodded at me.

“We’re good!” I yelled back, thinking exactly the opposite.

Gathering myself, I stood up. Through the bare trees, I saw Lauren holding Ellarose, and Chuck was limping towards us. Then I saw Luke, running around in his jerky hop-step motion. He’d been asking for Tony all morning, and I didn’t know what to say.

I pulled a grubby hand across the stubble on the top of my head and looked up toward the sky, feeling the sun’s warmth on my face. My mind was still numb, not sure what to feel except still scared.

But we were alive.

§

Night was falling, and a crescent moon was rising. I was sitting on the front porch, back in the swing chair, standing guard with the shotgun. A fire was roaring in the wood-burning stove in the living room.

At least we were warm.

Chuck had been wearing a bulletproof vest that Sergeant Williams gave him when he’d dropped off the hazmat suits. He wasn’t sure why he’d put it on, just being careful, he said, but maybe it was why he’d been so bold, facing down those people, whoever they were, on the back deck of that house. Even wearing the vest, he’d been badly injured, with stray shotgun pellets in his arm and shoulder.

My own leg injury hadn’t been too bad, just a deep gash where a nail had stuck into me. Susie had bandaged it, and I hardly limped.

What the hell are we going to do now?

We had no car, nearly no food—half of our supplies had been in the truck. Where this place had seemed magical just days ago, now it felt evil, threatening. I’d thought that maybe the madness had just been in New York, that the world was still sane on the outside, but it seemed it was the same out here.

Maybe the whole world is falling apart? How would we know?
Sighing, I looked up into the night sky at the stars.
Where are the gods now?

And then one of the stars moved. And blinked. Following the tiny light, I watched it begin to descend while my brain tried to comprehend what it was seeing.

It’s an airplane!
It had to be.

Spellbound, I watched as it gently settled into a glowing patch on the horizon, and then the second thunderclap exploded in my mind. Jumping off the swing, I ran to the front door, threw it open, and ran upstairs.

“Are they back?” yelled Chuck as I hammered up the stairs.

“No, no,” I whispered back urgently. Lauren and the kids were sleeping. “Everything is fine.”

I opened the door to their bedroom to find Chuck lying on the bed, covered in bloody cloths. Susie was leaning over him, tweezers in one hand and a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the other.

“What is it?”

“What can you see, right on the horizon from here?”

Chuck looked at Susie and then back at me.

“At night you can just see Washington—it’s about sixty miles away. At least, you could see the lights of the city when they were on. Why?”

“Because I can see Washington.”

Day 33 – January 24

“WHAT HAPPENS IF you don’t come back?”

Lauren was pleading with me.

“I will come back, that’s the whole point. I’ll only be gone for one day, and I won’t speak to anyone.”

Sitting on a fallen tree stump, she gripped Luke tightly in her arms.

“I’ll make straight for the Capitol building,” I added, “and if anyone stops me, I’ll just show them this, right?”

I held up her driver’s license. She was a Seymour, the niece of Congressman Seymour, and her identification should be enough to bring the cavalry back no matter how bad the situation was. Her family must be almost beside themselves.

Still she said nothing.

“We can’t just stay here and do nothing,” I argued. “Those bastards will be back after they get a chance to lick their wounds, and then what?”

“I don’t know. We hide?”

“We can’t hide here forever, Lauren.”

Using some tarps, we’d constructed a makeshift camp further up in the woods, far away from the cabin. We had a view down the road and onto the driveway. It was only a temporary solution, running away. We needed to take action, so I’d decided to walk into Washington.

It was desperate, but then so were the alternates.

To begin with, Chuck had argued with me, telling me it was too risky. He thought we should wait, but I was more scared of waiting. We’d go through what little food we had in a few days, and then what? He wasn’t going to be on his feet any time soon, so I would be fishing and trapping for us? And maybe he wouldn’t get on his feet at all. He needed some serious medical attention, and so did Ellarose—she was wasting away before our eyes.

Time had become our enemy, and I was tired of waiting, of not knowing what was going on.

“One day, that’s all. I will walk there in one day, and I won’t take any chances, won’t speak to anyone.”

Lauren gripped Luke tighter in her arms. “You make sure you come back to us. You just make sure.”

Day
34 – January 25

I LEFT BEFORE dawn.

In my whole life, I couldn’t remember ever walking more than a few miles at a time, maybe an afternoon hike here and there, but I was sure I could walk sixty miles—four miles an hour, fifteen hours, sixty miles.

I could walk sixty miles in one day.

One day.

In one day, I could finally find out what was happening to the world, why this had happened to us. Last we heard, the president had left Washington, but the lights in Washington were on, and Lauren’s uncle was a congressman. All I had to do was get to the Capitol building, explain who I was, who my wife’s family was. Just one day and I would bring back help.

There was still a sliver of moon out when I left the cabin. I’d scrambled down the dirt road in the semidarkness with my headlamp off. I passed the Baylors’ house, my heart in my throat, but there were no lights on there, no movement. By the time I reached the main road, coming down off the mountain, twilight had begun to spread.

I set a brisk pace, limping slightly from my leg wound.

At ground level, the snow was completely gone. Hills and fields and forests spread out before me. Gradually, the monotone of twilight gave way to a burst of color as the sun broke the horizon ahead of me. Drops of dew clung to blades of grass bordering the road, and I felt energized, invigorated.

After all we’d been through, I just had to endure one more day.

There was no way for me to get lost. Down out of the mountains and then due east, straight along I-66 until I hit the middle of Washington, until I saw the Washington Monument. Then right along the Mall and up to the Capitol building.

I had my cell phone with me, and the GPS worked, but without a data feed I didn’t have the maps to go along with it, only the ones for New York that Chuck had loaded manually. I didn’t need it, but I brought it with me, just in case—maybe the cell networks were working.

I walked, and I walked, and I walked.

The sun rose in the sky, washing me with its heat. By midmorning I began to see the first car traffic along the road. I was following a side road that paralleled I-66, trying to stay out of view.

Keep your head down, don’t attract attention, just keep walking.

Every now and then a car would hum in the distance, slowly grow in size, and then flash past me on the main road. A part of me wanted to wave, to stop them to talk, but a bigger part of me was afraid. Luke and Lauren were counting on me.

I couldn’t take any chances.

Walking, walking, walking.
How many miles have I walked already?

I would fix on a hill, somewhere toward the horizon, and then watch it. For what seemed forever, it would stay the same size, but then it would slowly grow, and then I’d be walking past it, picking a new hill to watch. In one pocket I had Irena’s mezuzah, and from time to time I would hold it, imagining some secret power contained within that was protecting us.

Pain was aching in my feet, and the injury burned in my leg.

By lunchtime, the sun was beating down on me and I was soaked in sweat. I had a small backpack on, mostly filled with bottles of water. The backpack made me so hot that I would take it off from time to time to cool off the river of sweat flowing down my back.

After five weeks of freezing cold, I hadn’t imagined it could get so hot, so quickly.

I’ll walk in my boxers. Why not?

I stopped to remove my jeans.

Awkwardly, I stripped them off and inspected the bloody bandage wrapped around my right calf. I tenderly poked at the edges of the wound. It was sore. Putting my sneakers back on, I stared at my pale, skinny legs and soiled, mismatched socks. My legs had purple and black welts on them, but I couldn’t remember knocking into anything that would have bruised them.

Without the belt in my jeans, my boxer shorts fell down. I’d lost so much weight that I’d cut yet another notch in my belt to keep my pants up—five notches total.
I must have lost six inches around my waist.
I had to roll my boxers up twice to keep them from falling, but the cool air on my legs made it all worthwhile.