by Chris Pike
Three armed men stood guard at the bridge, shooting the breeze and laughing at times. Two of them were smoking cigarettes. Joe figured they were either demanding a toll to cross the bridge or they were keeping people out of the area.
His limited options of either trying to cross the bayou downstream, cemented in on both sides, or paying whatever toll the guards required wasn’t looking too good at the moment. Crossing the bayou and taking a chance with the currents didn’t seem like a good idea either. If his clothes became soaked it could lead to hypothermia, or he could drown by getting caught in debris or a submerged car, not to mention diseases he could catch from the filthy water. The bayous in and around Houston were notorious for stolen cars getting dumped in them, or a drunk driver taking a sharp curve near the bayou, overcompensating, then ending up in the dark water, only for the skeletal remains to be found years later.
Joe decided his best option was to meet the men head on.
“Hello!” he yelled. Getting their attention was better than getting a bullet by accident from a trigger-happy guard.
The men turned their attention on Joe. The older one flicked his cigarette to the ground and rubbed it out with his boot. Another one flicked his cigarette over the guardrails and into the bayou.
“Whoa there.” The man who spoke first was the oldest of the three, had a bedraggled beard, and wore camo. “That’s far enough. What’dya want?”
“Only need to cross!” Joe yelled back. Sizing up the three, he figured they were probably father and sons.
“What for?”
“I need to get to the zoo.”
“The zoo?” The man chuckled. “Boys,” he said, addressing his companions, “this fine young man wants to go to the zoo.”
“What for?” the youngest one asked. “You want to take a spin on the kiddie rides or maybe the choo-choo train?”
A chorus of laughter erupted.
Joe wasn’t amused. “All I need is to cross the bridge, get to the zoo, come back this way, and you’ll never see me again.” Joe stepped closer.
The head man turned serious. “Why do you want to go to the zoo so bad?”
“Supplies. I’ve got a friend at the stadium who’s been injured. She needs medical supplies.”
“Then go to the hospital. You’ve got your choice of hospitals at the med center. It’s not too far up the road.”
“Already crossed my mind,” Joe said. “By now, those places will be under siege by drug lords looking for opioids and anything else they can sell on the street.”
“It’s not our problem. This area is cordoned off from trespassers, and of now, you’re trespassing. Go back from where you came from.”
“Did you watch any of the Super Bowl?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“Did you see Lexi Carter sing the National Anthem?”
“We did, just before the electricity went out. What does she have to do with any of this?”
“She’s the one who needs help,” Joe explained. “If you don’t let me through, her death will be on your hands.”
The man gauged his son’s reactions. “What’dya say, boys? Should we believe him?”
The two brothers, both in the late teens, exchanged glances. The youngest one nodded to the older one he agreed to let the man cross.
“Dad, it’s okay. One of my friends saw Lexi at a restaurant once, and she even let him take a selfie of them together. He said she’s nice.”
“Hmm. I suppose it’ll be alright. What time you coming back this way?” the man asked.
“Hopefully before nightfall.”
“We’ll still be here. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you,” Joe said. “I won’t forgot how you helped me out. I’m Joe Buck.”
“Frank Salinas. These are my boys Owen and Kenny.”
“Nice to meet you.” Joe shook hands with each one.
As Joe walked away, Kenny yelled, “Bring me back some cotton candy!”
“I’ll try,” Joe chuckled. “No promises.”
~ ~ ~
Joe hadn’t planned on being stopped and questioned, and the walk was taking longer than expected. He had two choices—either walk straight down Main Street or cut through the medical complex and take a backroad to the zoo to save time. He decided on the latter.
When he came to Holcombe, he took a right, leading to the hospitals. The world-renowned medical center housed a variety of hospitals catering to patients from all over the world stricken with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
Normally bustling with activity with cars whizzing by, buses spouting exhaust, and people walking from building to building, the area was uncharacteristically quiet. Joe wove his way around deserted cars and buses rendered inoperable due to the EMP. Anything dependent upon electricity or electrical components ceased working. Joe occasionally witnessed an old car puttering down the street, weaving around stalled cars.
He strolled past the massive parking garages then came to the emergency room entrance. An ambulance had its doors open so Joe peeked in.
A crow pecked at the face of a corpse strapped into the gurney, and when it saw Joe, the bird squawked, flapped its wings, and flew out of the cramped space. Joe ducked. The horror show didn’t end there because the valet parking area was littered with abandoned bodies, some in hospital gowns. Joe didn’t dare step foot in the hospital for fear he’d get shanghaied and forced to work. If there were any living patients left in the hospital, they’d die soon. They just didn’t know it yet.
Joe emerged from the tree-lined street and as he rounded the corner into the open, he stopped. Across the side street was the entrance to a ten-story parking garage, and waltzing down the ramp were four thugs.
Each carried a pillowcase, busting at the seams and loaded down with their haul. From the shattered glass near the cars, it was obvious the thugs had been breaking into cars and stealing valuables.
Outnumbered and unarmed, Joe’s options didn’t leave him much leeway.
The four spread out, surrounding him at twelve, three, six and nine o’clock. Six o’clock worried him the most, taking a position behind Joe.
Twelve o’clock asked, “What’s in your backpack?”
“Nothing of value. I don’t want any trouble,” Joe said. “Had enough already for one day.”
“I’m taking a shining to your backpack. Always wanted one,” three o’clock said. “Empty it out, or I’ll empty this into you.” The thug whipped out a Glock and pointed it directly at Joe’s head.
“There ain’t nothing in it. It’s empty ‘cause I’m looking for supplies.”
“Don’t waste your ammo on him,” nine o’clock said.
Without any more haranguing, nine o’clock charged Joe and swung a freshly stolen Astros souvenir bat like the police baton it resembled. Joe sidestepped at the perfect moment, the bat missing him by inches. Nine o’clock’s momentum caused him to lose his balance and fall flat on his back against the sidewalk. Helpless from having the wind knocked out of him, nine o’clock struggled to re-inflate his lungs while he tried to stand.
Still dangerously outnumbered, Joe gave nine o’clock’s jaw a front kick that put him flat on the ground. Joe slid off his backpack and tightly gripped one of the straps to give him a flail with some reach. The normally harmless Cordura backpack had been made exponentially more useful by the four full cans of soda Joe added when he left the stadium. He continued to build up momentum by swinging the pack in a continuous circle while changing his footing as he searched for his next target.
Six o’clock drew a two-foot military style machete out of its green canvas scabbard and began a long overhead swing to bring it down on the back of Joe’s vulnerable neck. The blackened blade had descended almost halfway along its deadly path when Joe turned by violently pulling his left foot back while descending the fast-moving backpack against six o’clock’s waiting right temple. Six had no time to alter his stroke, so the machete’s blade skated along Joe’s left triceps, d
oing only surface damage. The thug fell with a bleeding nose, a crushed eye socket, and a hemorrhaging brain that could no longer instruct his lungs to breathe or his heart to beat.
Three o’clock had seen enough and decided it was time to go. He helped the still dazed nine to his feet and took him around the corner as fast as possible. Three o’clock figured he would use saving nine’s life as his excuse if twelve o’clock survived his encounter.
Twelve o’clock slammed his pillowcase to the ground. Realizing his souvenir bat was not enough, he reached to the small of his back where he kept a seven-inch military Bowie knife. Drawing the knife like an expert, twelve thrust the blade toward Joe using a continuous figure 8 to confuse his opponent about his specific target. Twelve’s speed was impressive and the knife appeared to be at multiple places at one time.
Joe knew he was in real trouble as he did his best to keep track of the Parkerized blade. An act of desperation was called for, so Joe took his still circling backpack and threw it underhanded toward the knife to break the rhythm.
Twelve had not expected the thrown backpack and it was all he could do to hold onto the knife as the backpack’s friction tried to tear the blade out of his hand.
Joe had only a moment to lunge at the knife with both hands. Twelve o’clock struggled mightily, but Joe used both his arms to twist twelve o’clock’s wrist back towards twelve’s body with an upward push of his shoulders.
Joe had control of the knife, but to his horror saw a shadow coming toward the side of his head. He had ignored the other hand! He felt a sudden bone-cracking blow to his head and heard a sound like a wooden board being broken against a tree.
Joe’s eyes rolled up into his head, and as he crumpled to the sidewalk, and before blackness took over, he had one last fleeting thought. He had failed Lexi. Hitting the sidewalk with an uncontrolled thud, he exhaled involuntarily and laid still, helpless to protect himself and at the mercy of whatever befell him.
~ ~ ~
The throbbing in Joe’s head woke him. He moaned, fighting the overwhelming sense of exhaustion as his fuzzy mind slowly came to the realization that he was alive. He looked on the ground directly ahead of him and saw a broken souvenir bat in his opponent’s left hand. His opponent’s face was filled with surprise, and the thug’s right eye socket was filled with a Bowie knife, blade buried up to the hilt. Apparently, Joe had only been a fraction of a second faster than his opponent.
Joe put his hand to his forehead, massaging his temples to provide a smidgen of relief from the incessant pounding. That part was good. What wasn’t good was the nausea creeping up from his stomach, through his gut, and to his mouth. His stomach muscles contracted, his breathing came in ragged spurts, and instinctively he turned his head to the side and spewed vomit onto the grass.
Exhausted, he rolled onto his back. The cold grass tickled his neck. Somewhere a bird chirped. He willed his eyes open to a blurry dull sky and hazy tall buildings. Trees loomed above him, leaves rustling in the chilly breeze.
He shivered.
He closed his eyes again, sleep tempting him to unconsciousness where he could forget about his pain, his troubles.
No!
Willing his eyes open, he slapped his cheek several times.
Get up!
Joe did not know how long he had been out. The two men who escaped could be on their way with reinforcements. Pushing himself to a sitting position, he waited until the lightheadedness faded. He estimated he had been out for several hours based upon the available light. He stood and did a quick check for any weapons left behind. He didn’t see any, although he did spot his backpack a few yards away from him. He stumbled over to it, picked it up, and looped it over his shoulders.
It was too light. Swinging it off his shoulders, he looked inside. His soda was gone. He dropped his head to his chest as an overwhelming feeling of defeat hit him all at once. He chastised himself, then straightened and slapped his cheeks to snap himself from the hopelessness of the situation.
Looking in the direction of the zoo, he once again set out on his mission to get antibiotics and supplies for Lexi.
He was thirsty, so thirsty, his mouth parched, his tongue dry. Recalling a water fountain on the ground level in the parking garage, he kept his fingers crossed it worked. He found it and drank greedily from it.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Joe stumbled along the back roads of the medical center until the front entrance of the zoo came into focus.
This was it.
Now or never.
Chapter 19
Joe Buck was hungry, dirty, tired, thirsty, his head hurt, and his next decisions would mean life or death, not only for himself, but also for the woman whose life depended on him.
His heart beat at breakneck speed and his lungs greedily sucked in air, his adrenaline propelling him in a run for his life.
His legs silently gobbled ground on the grassy esplanade leading to the entrance of the Houston Zoo, the earth and grass damp from the chilly air, heavy with thick fog. Sweat stained his blue work shirt, trickling down his back. With each step, he left the imprint of his work boots on the muddy mixture of what had been a perfectly manicured swath of Bermuda and St. Augustine grass three days earlier.
Society had imploded quicker than any expert had forecasted.
He was in the middle of Houston, reduced to an urban jungle of stalled cars, looted stores, shuttered hospitals, and roaming gangs, where he became the hunted instead of the hunter.
There would be no moon illuminating the tall pines or stately oaks, no lights from downtown, twinkling as if Christmas had never ended, no steady hum of people talking, nor footsteps padding on the sidewalk. There was only an unnerving silence.
Too quiet.
No movement.
Nothing to indicate life.
Joe Buck knew better.
Reaching the end of the esplanade, he stopped and crouched, aware of the dangers of outlining himself among the graveyard of cars and trucks, an alien landscape in the fourth largest city in the United States. His mouth was dry, his chest rose and sank with each breath, and the stink of a dying city and its occupants hung in the silence.
Stepping off the curb, he hunched over and crept along the sides of abandoned vehicles in the parking lot nearest the zoo. If the vehicle had already been broken into, Joe went to the next one. No need to waste time searching vandalized cars. Breaking into a locked car would have been easy, then again, the noise made smashing a window would have garnered unwanted attention.
As a seasoned woodsman accustomed to the cover the trees and brush allowed, the city landscape and its challenges proved daunting.
He sidestepped to the next car, the sound of his soles on gravel and broken glass magnified on this quiet evening.
He relied on the heavy fog to absorb the unnatural noises he was making, scattering sound vibrations among the moist particles floating in the air. If he was heard, it would be difficult to discern which direction the sound had come from.
He approached another vehicle, hoping the dusty, dented van might have what he was searching for. The driver’s side window was rolled down a few inches, an observation he noted and nothing else. The shiny new-model cars, trucks, and SUVs with all the latest bells and whistles had been looted already, hubcaps and wheels stolen, and anything of value would have been taken.
He carefully pulled on the door handle. No luck. It was locked, like the other cars he had tried to open.
Joe pivoted, eyeing the next car when he got an idea. His gaze drifted from the window opening to his arm then back again. It was worth a try.
Stretching, he squeezed his muscled arm between the window and the door frame as much as the small opening would allow. Reaching his fingertips in as far as he could, he fumbled around feeling for the mechanism to unlock the door, pushing various buttons meant to swivel the mirror, or roll the windows up and down, until he found the right button.
He unlocked the door.
Joe sweated
bullets, partly from physical exertion, partly from his jacked-up adrenaline. If the noise he was making didn’t give away his location, the salty smell of sweat trickling down his face and back would.
Wild animals, regardless of whether they were caged or reared in captivity, smelled fear.
His dry mouth made him aware of how desperately thirsty he was.
He opened the door and as he tried to slide into the seat, he cursed. Whoever last drove the car couldn’t have been any taller than 5’2”, and probably tipped the scales at a hundred pounds. Joe Buck’s six foot plus, one hundred and eighty-pound frame couldn’t squeeze sideways into the cramped space.
Taking a chance regarding his next movement, aware more clicking would bring unwanted attention, he lifted the manual lever to slide the seat back. Holding the seat in one hand so it wouldn’t uncontrollably slam backwards, the lever in the other, he carefully slid the seat all the way back.
He climbed in and silently shut the door. He rested a moment and let out a breath he had been holding, savoring the moment of success, regardless how insignificant it was. He needed to relish these moments to continue his quest.
The stale, damp air in the closed space magnified the odor of a car used for carting a bunch of kids around. Spilled juice, sweaty feet, dirty hands, a stale sandwich, a missing athletic sock, a used diaper, odors mixing into a cornucopia of suburban life.
He picked up a flyer on the passenger seat, read it, and tossed it aside. He couldn’t be bothered with an animal rights group picketing the zoo trying to sign up members.
A guttural roar in the distance sent shivers up his spine.
He froze.
Another animal of the same species answered back in an equally spine-chilling roar.
The Houston Zoo, with all its state-of-the-art technology to keep wild animals locked behind thick glass windows, had obviously been compromised, allowing animals to roam freely and escape. But how? The mechanical locks didn’t rely on electricity. And that roar was nearby.
