End Days Super Boxset (119 page)

“Try to keep up,” Paul said to Julie as she trailed behind.

“I’m trying,” she said. “I just want to go home.”

“That’s why we have to keep moving,” Paul said. “We have to get home.”

Traffic on the main road had ground to a halt. Nothing but bumper-to-bumper traffic for as far as the eye could see. The fire at the True Save caused unneeded panic among drivers and pedestrians alike. Several fender-benders occurred as a result.

“I don’t know how in the hell we’re going to get out of here,” Paul said, taking Julie’s hand.

“We could walk home,” Julie suggested.

“Don’t be stupid,” Paul said. Normally his words would have hurt her, but Julie was too dazed to take notice.

“We’re almost there, I can see the car,” Paul said. As they approached the lane, he noticed the SUV woman still cradling her dead husband. He halted and, as a result, Julie stopped.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We can’t go this way. We can’t go straight down the aisle. Let’s go around.”

“But—”

“Just listen to me.”

He tightened his grip on Julie’s hand and pulled her along with him. As they did their best to avoid the woman and the crowd that had gathered around her, Paul took notice of their activities. Several people had wrapped her husband in some type of blanket. They carried his body to the back of the SUV and placed it inside. An old lady had her arms around the crying woman, trying to console her. The SUV had become a roadblock of sorts as cars veered past it in both directions. It would make leaving the parking lot especially difficult for Paul unless he could find some other way out.

“I want to know what is going on. You’re the adult, so tell me. Are we under attack? What are those sirens?”

“I’m not sure yet, Julie.”

“I want to talk to mom.”

Julie searched her pockets for the phone but had no luck.

“Great, I lost my phone.” She stopped and looked around in a panic. “I need to find it,” she said as she turned back to the store.

“Please, let’s just get in the car—”

“There’s no way out of here. We’re as good as dead!” Julie said.

Paul stopped and knelt down in front of Julie.

“Don’t ever say that. Everything is going to be okay. We need our car. We can’t just leave it here, we’ll be stranded.”

Tears welled up in Julie’s eyes. The alert siren continued. Horn after horn blared from the cars. The noise alone was enough to drive a person to insanity.

“There she is,” Paul said, pointing to his Passat. They approached the opposite sides of Paul’s car and got in. Much to his relief, the SUV woman had finally left the scene with her dead husband in tow. There was a line of cars directly behind him, leaving him no room to back out. It was as frustrating as it was hopeless, but there was no reason to give up hope, at least not yet.

Heavy Congestion Ahead: Expect Major Delays

“So what are we going to do now?” Greg asked with his hands wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. “There’s a traffic jam for the next four fuckin’ miles.”

Edwin stared ahead, unresponsive. Greg shook his head from side to side in frustration.

“You shouldn’t have shot that guy. It was the wrong move. Mr. Bennett is gonna be pissed.”

Edwin turned to Greg and stared him down from behind his new thick shades. He always carried an extra set for emergencies.

“You’re going to give me advice now?” he asked. “Who’s the fuckin’ understudy here? I liked you when you didn’t say much. Now you’re a regular pain in my ass.”

Greg looked down at the dashboard. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. What do you want to do next?”

“We find our man and get the information we need,” Edwin said.

He carefully felt along the ridges of his own nose. The blood had dried, but he was still sore. “Lucky for us, he’s a family man. So now we got a little bit of leverage.”

Greg looked around in distraction. The Lincoln crept along at a stop-and-go pace. The other three lanes were just as packed and slow moving. Greg had the air conditioner blasting but still felt constricted and uncomfortable.

“There’s something wrong with this town. I mean something serious is going on. I can’t get nothing on the radio. I can’t get nothing on my phone—”

“It’s a terrorist attack, you dumbass,” Edwin said.

Greg rolled down the driver’s side window with a push of a button on his armrest. He scrambled through his front jacket pocket and pulled a crooked Marlboro from its crumbled pack. He nervously lit the cigarette with the car lighter.

“Would you just chill out?” Edwin said.

“What do you mean?” Greg asked.

“I mean you’re freaking out, and you’re freaking me out, so stop it.”

“But you said yourself that it’s a terrorist attack.”

“So what?”

Greg took a long drag from his cigarette. “How do you know that’s what it is?”

“Shit. Don’t you listen to the news? They hit Wall Street this morning. Government raised the terror alert and now everyone is going crazy. You hear that siren? They want everyone to panic and to get all riled up. But we got nothing to worry about. Terrorists want nothing to do with this shithole town.”

“Yeah, but--I saw an explosion. Looked like someone dropped a nuclear bomb,” Greg said, blowing smoke from his nostrils.

Edwin laughed. “Well, then we better start working on that bucket list.”

“I’m not joking. I don’t think it’s safe here. We should head back to Jersey—”

“And then what? Just give up?” Edwin asked.

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

Edwin put his arm around the back of Greg’s seat and leaned in, as if in confidence. “Greg, listen to me. I know you’re concerned about what’s going on out there, and I am too. But we’ve got to stay focused. Think about it, we’re safer in Beech Creek than anywhere else right now. This terrorist thing will blow over by the time we finish the job.”

“Forget about that guy. I’ve got family in Jersey. I mean the ex-wife is a bitch, but I got two kids.”

Edwin smacked Greg across the face. It was a quick and no-nonsense slap that shut him up immediately. Edwin removed his arm from behind Greg’s and tilted his own seat back.

“Just get us out of the traffic jam. I don’t want to hear anything else.”

Greg sat emotionless for a moment. He wanted to feel his face to soothe the sting but didn’t want to give Edwin any satisfaction. Edwin leaned back in his seat and tipped his hat over his eyes.

“Wake me up when you’ve made some progress,” he said.

Greg looked over to Edwin in veiled disgust.

“I’ll tell you something, Eddie. You must really have it in for this guy.”

“Who?”

“The one we’re looking for. The family man.”

“Yeah, I don’t like him.”

Greg looked back at the road. They inched forward every couple of minutes, but it seemed to not make much difference. Greg felt the growing urge to walk.

Paul and Julie had problems of their own. After ten minutes of haggling, they managed to budge their way into a line leading out into the main road with more traffic in both directions. Leaving Beech Creek was the goal. Several cars had attempted to bypass traffic by driving across the dividing median and getting into the wrong lane. There were many collisions as a result, which further blocked traffic on the opposite side.

Paul tensed at the wheel. His body ached and his back hurt. The adrenaline from earlier was wearing off. The True Save was still on fire, despite the sprinklers that had turned most flames into ash. Curiously, no fire truck ever arrived. There were no police or fire trucks around anywhere for that matter. Paul wondered what possible failure could have led to such oversight and mismanagement. It was unconscionable. Were they expected to act on their own now?

Julie grasped Paul’s phone, repeatedly calling Samantha over and over again. She had left three messages but heard nothing back. She had also sent a flurry of text messages to no response.

“Why doesn’t she call back?” she asked in frustration.

“Just calm down,” Paul said, placing his hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll hear from her soon enough.”

Julie recoiled from his touch. “How would you know?”

Paul perked up at the sound of helicopters in the air.

“Listen,” he said. “Do you hear that?”

Julie rolled down her window and reared her head outside, looking into the sky. Two police helicopters were in sight.

“Are they going to help us?” Julie asked.

“I don’t know,” Paul said.

Suddenly Paul’s phone vibrated in Julie’s hand. Her eyes lit up with excitement, then shifted to disappointment upon reading the text.

“I was hoping it was my mom,” she said.

“Who is it?” Paul asked, trying to follow the helicopters with his eyes.

They hovered over True Save for a while. Perhaps their absence had just been a delay. Paul believed that a cavalry of first responders was just around the corner, even though he watched as fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars passed earlier without a care.

“It’s just another alert message,” Julie said.

“What does it say?” Paul asked.

“It says something about radiation levels.”

Paul grabbed the phone from Julie. She was right. His phone vibrated again, and another alert message followed. Paul read the words but thought it to be an elaborate hoax.

Dangerous Radiation Levels in the Air: Seek Immediate Cover in Fallout Shelter or Enclosed Structure

“Fallout shelter?” Paul asked himself.

In a misguided attempt at being proactive, Paul shut the car windows.

“Hey,” Julie said, moving her elbow from out of the way.

“Just keep your window up and stay in the car,” Paul said, tossing the phone back to her. “It’s not safe out there.”

The helicopters hovered overhead. The never-ending alert sirens wailed endlessly. Everything was noise. Car horns, sirens, helicopters, there was no escape. He saw movement from behind them. Fire trucks acted as battering rams, pushing traffic out of the way and clearing a path for the police vehicles that followed. Several cars veered into the grass to get out of the way. The fire truck sirens were at their maximum level, startling anyone in their path. Paul covered his ears. He couldn’t concentrate. He pushed his hands tightly over his ears, minimizing the headache-inducing cluster of chaos outside.

“Do you hear that?” Julie said. Her words were barely audible.

He slowly removed his hands from his ear.

“What?” he asked.

“The police are saying something,” Julie said.

Paul cracked his window an inch and listened. A county police car passed them on the far side of the road. His words were orderly and instructive, coming through an intercom PA system on his vehicle.

“
Do not attempt to return to your houses. This town is undergoing an immediate evacuation. All residents are strongly advised to leave Beech Creek immediately.”

“What are they talking about?” Julie asked.

“They’re evacuating the town,” Paul said.

What had earlier felt like a figment of his imagination in the hypnotizing mushroom cloud soon turned into something very real and concerning. He had never been told to “evacuate” a town before, even when he lived in Florida during hurricane season. He struggled to make sense of what they were saying.

“
All residents are advised to evacuate the city and travel south to the nearest government facility or enclosed structure.”

The voice on the police intercom faded the further the vehicle got from them. Soon it was gone. The fire trucks and police cars were far up the road, leaving Paul and Julie to ponder their next move.

“We have to listen to them, Julie.”

“Where are we supposed to go?” she asked.

“We’ll take the nearest exit out of town.”

“You said that we were going home. Aren’t we safe enough there?”

“I don’t think we should take any chances.”

“We need to get clothes. Food. All those things. Where are we supposed to go?” Julie protested.

“Somewhere away from the radiation,” Paul said.

“What radiation?” Julie asked.

“We just have to take precautions,” Paul said.

Julie sat up on her seat and looked behind them. A line of traffic trailed each lane. All four lanes were full and at a near stop. The road going into town was packed with cars trying to leave. It was a situation beyond any control. They moved a few more feet and Julie saw a large semi-trailer truck lying on its side in a ditch.

“We’re never going to get out of here,” she said with a deep sigh.

“I’ll find a way,” Paul said. “Check the GPS on my phone.”

Julie ran her fingers across the touch screen, activating the GPS. The phone didn’t respond no matter how many times she tried.

“I’m not getting anything,” Julie said.

Paul grabbed the phone from her. Julie frowned but said nothing. He looked at the screen. A message box appeared saying that the internal server had failed. It was a common message he had got whenever Internet signals weren’t in range. This time, however, it seemed permanent. The GPS didn’t work; he couldn’t make calls or go on the Internet. The only source of communication was text messaging, and even that was only intermittent.

“Open the glove compartment,” Paul said.

Julie leaned forward and turned the knob on the glove compartment. An owner’s manual and some maps fell out.

“Grab those maps, please.” Paul said.

Julie felt around the floor and picked up two maps. There was a map of Pennsylvania and one for Beech Creek.

“Get the one for Beech Creek.” Paul said. “We’re going to find a way around this mess.”

“You want me to read a map?” Julie asked, still stunned at the thought.

She couldn’t understand how Paul still didn’t know his way around when they had lived in the same town for two years. Though she knew little herself, aside from her daily bus route, the fact that Paul was relying on her limited map reading abilities was irritating at the least. As a result, she couldn’t resist downplaying her abilities and making the task seem harder than it was.

“We’re going to have to work together on this,” Paul said. “I can’t take my eyes off the road and read a map at the same time. We need back roads. We need shortcuts. I need you to tell me where to go.”

“I don’t even remember the last time I looked at a map,” Julie said.

“It was when we went camping, remember? That was only a year ago.”

Julie thought of the camping trip. It was one of Paul’s most obvious attempts to bring them together as a family. He tried to teach her land navigation. She remembered, but didn’t want to admit it.

“Not really,” she said.

“Come on, Julie, I need you to focus here. I know you know how to read a map.”

Julie groaned.

“I’ll try, but don’t count on it,” she said.

“Just do your best,” Paul said.

She swung around to address him.

“How do you not know…” then she paused.

“Know what?” Paul asked.

“Nothing,” Julie said as she unfolded the map.

Paul persisted no more. She wanted to ask him how he didn’t know the town like the back of his hand. How he could possibly ask her to read a map for him. She wanted to know if--as a team--they were doomed from the start, but instead, she said nothing. Traffic started moving again at a slow and methodical pace, only a few miles from the True Save. Every lane suffered the slinky effects of anxious drivers speeding up then slamming on their brakes when traffic stopped. They were almost past the flipped semi-trailer. Julie couldn’t take her eyes off of it. It was a red eighteen-wheeler and its box trailer indicated frozen meats. Though the truck had been abandoned, the cargo was a precious commodity in the wait, to which no one gave any mind. Police helicopters continued to hover above.