“Down!” Cody yelled, and his family hit the floor in unison. “Emma, you all right?” He looked over, and she was still, with her hands over her head. “Jacob, is she hurt?” he asked, desperate for information.
“She’s… covered in paint and stuff,” he said. “But none of it’s red.”
“Emma, can you hear me?” Cody said, allowing that the twin impacts might have momentarily deafened her. “You’re safe now, honey. It was just that cop on the roof, getting trigger happy.”
“He’d better reload,” Mary growled, “because I’m going to go up there and throw him off his roof.”
Cody crawled over, eyeing the windows, and found that Emma was conscious and immobile, hands still covering her head. There was lime green paint splashed all over, streaking her hair and the scarlet hoodie she’d been wearing when she left for an ordinary day at school. “Emma, love, can you say something, so I know you’re okay?” She shook her head. “You’re not okay?” She raised a thumb weakly. “You’re okay, but you need a minute?” A brief nod.
Jacob was catching his breath, looking back every few moments at the two bullet holes in the door. “This is what I’m talking about,” he said, mostly to himself. “Dying in a gun battle, that’s one thing, but getting hit by some idiot cop who can’t shoot straight? Just unfair…”
With one parent on either side of her, Emma managed to sit up against the cans of paint. “No damage that I can see,” Mary said, relieved. “But, we need to get out of the town right now.”
“Yeah,” Cody agreed. “I got a plan, but confidence is only running at about seventy percent right now. I’ll know more once we get to the workshop.”
“Then, let’s go. Honey, can you walk?” A faint nod. “We’ll help you. Come on.”
A year earlier, the first time Jacob had been allowed to watch a full-on war movie, he’d chosen to watch Saving Private Ryan with his parents. Nearing the finale in the French village, right after stabbing one of the Rangers to death, he remembered that the experienced German trooper had checked left and right, up and down, before leaving the building. Jacob copied him now, checking every corner and rooftop. “Clear,” he said quietly, and ushered his family out into the melee once more.
11
Nearing Russell Welding and Design Inc., Flannigan, NH
H-Hour + 6h 35mins (7:35 pm EDT)
They kept to the side of the road, despite the complete absence of traffic, the better to camouflage themselves against the trees and to provide a place to retreat if need be. “Two hundred yards more,” Cody said, encouraging a flagging, emotionally exhausted Jacob, and hoping that Emma would soon find her inner reserves and snap out of it. She was keeping up but still hadn’t said anything since the near-miss at the paint store. Both her parents were battling a list of worries, and right now, Emma’s mental health was at the top.
“What’s your plan, Dad?” asked Jacob. Like most young boys who idolized their fathers, once Cody had announced a “plan” was in the works, he’d assumed their future was settled and he’d be safe. “You got a secret helicopter you’ve been building?”
Cody allowed himself a short laugh. “Wouldn’t do us much good now, would it?” he explained. “Too many electrical components. We’d need something that had none or very few.”
“Like… a skateboard?” the boy speculated with a livewire spark in his eye.
“Sure,” he laughed, “but we’d need a skateboard that fit four people and lots of gear.”
“A cargo skateboard,” Jacob began to imagine. “With a trailer behind it.”
“I’d prefer something a little more generous,” Cody smiled, “with better off-road capability.”
His son’s next suggestion was, “A bicycle made for four?”
Cody found the workshop locked up, but Darius had left Sally’s key in its usual hiding place, under a loose brick behind some ivy that crept up the workshop’s brick flanks. “I don’t mind a workout, but we might be going a really long way. You feel like peddling for five days straight?”
“Nope,” said Jacob. He could have kept quiet and just followed along, but banter like this kept his spirits up, and today’s chaos and death had brought them as low as he thought they could go. “But if it were solar-powered…”
“Fried,” Cody said simply, beckoning him over to one of the three tarp-covered hulks which might have been vehicles.
“Then what’s not fried?” asked Jacob. By way of an answer, his father asked him to grab one corner of an old, greasy tarpaulin and help him draw it back. “Woah…”
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Cody announced, “comrades, friends and fellow Americans, I give you the 1943 three-quarter-ton Dodge WC-56 command and reconnaissance truck. Recently and lovingly restored by yours truly and the Milsom brothers. Technically, they own it, and I haven’t asked permission, so…”
“So, we’re stealing it,” Mary summed up.
“Under the circumstances,” said Cody, “I’m pretty certain they wouldn’t mind.”
It was a squat, functional, rather unlovely vehicle, painted in a drab olive-green, and built with rugged functionality as a primary design feature. The classic Dodge front grill, with small, circular headlights either side, gave way to a chunky, slightly sloping hood, and then an almost laughably quaint driver’s position with manual transmission and old-fashioned dials which immediately dated the vehicle to the Second World War.
“Honey… This thing? You’re serious?” said Mary.
“I kinda hoped you’d be more impressed,” said Cody, rather crestfallen. “I put hours into this hunk o’ junk. It was almost ready to be scrapped, but the Milsom brothers had ten grand to spend and reckoned they had a buyer lined up, some rich Russian enthusiast.”
“What I mean is… no other vehicle in the whole town will even start, let alone run for hours. This is somehow different?” she asked.
“Completely different! Those modern cars are all full of highfalutin, fancy-pants electronics that got charbroiled earlier today. But this sucker has the bare minimum of those, and we’ve got plenty of cannibalized parts from another of these trucks, one that was never going to make it,” he said, gesturing to the back of the workshop.
“This is our ticket out of here?” Jacob said, already fascinated. “It even smells like it’s old.”
“It smelled a lot worse when it first arrived here. Been sitting in someone’s barn for about thirty years, getting crapped on by chickens. But we did it up nice, didn’t we?”
Mary was giving the truck a walk-around as though preparing to rent it for a day’s off-roading. “It does look great, honey, but… that’s not really top of our list of priorities.”
“Agreed.” Cody grabbed the key from on top of the dash and asked for his family’s help. “Everyone cross your fingers.” Then he took a deep breath, slotted the key into place, and turned it hard.
The noise was loud, strangled, and high-pitched, but only for a moment. The engine seemed to stutter a few times but then rumbled into life with the fulsome richness of an operatic bass-baritone. “Oh, baby!” cried Cody over the sudden noise. “Look what we got!”
“It works?” said Jacob, staring at the thrumming machine. “It works! Way to go, Dad!”
Given his first reason to celebrate the whole day, Cody picked up Jacob and slotted him into the passenger’s seat. “Comfortable?”
Patting the leather of the seat and wiggling his legs, Jacob replied, “It’s not a limo, but it’s pretty neat.”
Watching all of this, her mother’s arm around her shoulders, was the paint-streaked, silent Emma. She’d jumped, startled when the engine turned over, but after that, seemed calmed by its steady, old-school mechanical rhythm.
“Want to try the driver’s seat, honey?” She gave a noncommittal shrug. “Once Dad gets us going and we’re out on the roads, maybe you could drive us part of the way? What do you think?”
Cody left the engine running. “Sure you can, Emma. It’ll be a road trip with
a difference. We might even let Jacob have a try if he promises to go super slow.”
“Really?” the boy cried, bouncing up and down in the passenger seat.
“Let’s…” Emma began, then pushed matted, green hair out of her face. “Let’s get a couple of things straight.” She disengaged from her mother and walked to the center of the workshop, right by where Darius had been working when the incident happened.
Cody sensed the tenor of the moment and switched off the engine to give her the stage.
“To answer your questions: Yes, I’m okay,” she said. “I was completely shit-scared there for a moment, and yes, I am going to swear right now if I want to,” she said in reply to her mother’s slight frown. “I was almost killed by an idiot with a gun. Did everyone see that? I didn’t make that up, right?”
“That was pretty real for us, too,” said Cody. “Real as it gets.”
“Then I have an announcement for the world,” she said, and took a deep breath. “Don’t fucking shoot at me!” she screamed, literally as loud as she could. “Not today, not ever! I’m fifteen and scared, and I didn’t sign up to walk through a goddamned war zone.”
All three reacted differently. Cody covered his ears but nodded sympathetically throughout the “announcement.” Mary made three attempts to approach the incensed girl but halted each one in case the torrent continued. And when it was over, Jacob pulled out his defunct cellphone, held it to his ear, nodded a few times as though listening, and said, “I’m hearing from the world, and they’re giving you a unanimous ‘roger that.’”
“Good!” she shrieked, finally, and then took some breaths to let the intense anger recede. “Mom, you did perfect, I love you, and you’re awesome,” she said. “Dad, I can’t believe you’ve got us a working vehicle. Good job, seriously.”
“No problem,” he said modestly.
“And Jacob, you grew up by about three years in three hours, and I would never normally say this,” she said, her eyes tearing up now, “but you’re a trooper and a brave soul, and I love you, and I’m so glad neither of us is dead.”
“I second the motion,” her sibling said, jumping from the seat and running to throw his arms around her.
The family united in quiet moments, which lay between the chaos and gunfire of earlier and the new prospect of escape, giving thanks together and praising each other’s steel and grit.
“Okay,” said Mary, drying her eyes while Cody hid that he was doing the same. “This looks like a plan. So, what’s next?”
“Next, we load cargo and passengers,” said Cody, “and we hit the road.”
12
Route 26, outside Flannigan, NH
H-hour + 7 (8.10 pm EDT, 15 minutes before sunset)
Cody knew that they’d be immediately, unavoidably conspicuous. There’s was the only engine in Flannigan that would actually turn over, and even when it wasn’t the singular functioning vehicle around, the truck was hard to miss. “We’re gonna get some attention,” Cody warned them. “I want you to button down the top cover, and just generally keep your heads down until we’re well away from town.”
With a fifteen-year-old Rand McNally map on her knees, Mary was tracing their route. “There’s nowhere closer that we could hole up for a while?” she asked for the third time. “Your dad’s place… well, it’s at least a hundred and sixty miles, if all the roads stay open.”
“We’re sticking with the plan,” said Cody. “I’ll explain on the way. But we’ll need gas before much longer,” he said, tapping the fuel gauge. The three gallons he’d siphoned into the tank was all the workshop could provide, and the big 3.7-liter engine was hardly designed with fuel efficiency in mind.
“So… what kind of, um, museum piece have we got here?” asked Mary.
“Same chassis and design was used for a dozen different trucks, back in World War Two,” Cody explained. “They were designed to pull artillery pieces, or for an anti-tank unit to mount a recoilless rifle on the back.”
Jacob looked around. “I don’t see any heavy weapons back here. Did we forget something at the workshop?” He feigned severe concern. “We should go back.”
“You still feel like blowing up things after today?” said his mother soberly.
Jacob’s shoulders slumped, his joke defused. “No, not really.”
“Well, if you like the sound of that, there was even a version,” Cody laughed, “where they gave the crew—just two guys—a missile called the Davy Crockett. Believe it or not, the thing had a teeny-tiny nuclear warhead…” He trailed off. “Ah, shit, sorry guys. It’s way too soon for nuke jokes.”
“Let’s try Crystal Peak for gas. There’s a general store there, too, about twelve miles up,” said Mary, keen to stay focused on the plan. With gas, they could at least keep moving; without it, the truck would be just another stranded vehicle, beloved antique or not.
“Okeydokey,” said Cody, who didn’t mind showing that he was feeling quite a lot better about life in general. His kids had survived brushes with disaster, his wife was unfailingly loyal and a sharp problem-solver, and his right foot gave him control of the only operating combustion engine, as far as they knew, in the whole country.
They began to pass vehicles that remained marooned by the incident, some abandoned and others with their occupants still milling around. More than one refugee waved at them, hoping for help or news. When they didn’t stop, Cody received some angry gestures, but that was all. “If we stop and yammer with every yokel out here, we’ll never get where we’re going. Besides,” he admitted, “I don’t love the idea of stopping on the road. Moving targets are trickier.”
“Meaning, we’re a target right now?” asked Emma with a shudder of concern.
“We’re conspicuous,” said Cody. “But this thing screams ‘Army.’ No one would be dumb enough to take us on.” It was a white lie, he knew; a good portion of his mind was worrying whether some less fortunate refugees might try to get out of one “Dodge” by stealing another—their precious, singular truck—at gunpoint.
“Two miles, on the right,” said Mary, tracing their approximate position with a fingertip. “After that, we turn left and head into the woods.” Much, much farther north-west, at a place where the local roads met and diverged like spider webs in the forest, she’d circled the spot where Cody claimed they’d find shelter.
The problem was that the place still had a semi-mythical quality. He’d mentioned it, on and off, down the years, but the last time was long enough ago that she’d assumed the land would have passed out of Cody’s family, bought by a developer or handed over to the parks service. “Gonna be dark in an hour,” she pointed out.
It was already growing gloomy when they arrived at Crystal Peak to find the pumps unattended, and two pickup trucks parked outside the white-painted general store. “Everyone, stay here,” said Cody. “Anything weird happens, honk the horn, or just shout like blazes.”
“I should come with you,” offered Jacob. “You need someone to watch your six.”
He could have laughed, but the kid was serious. “My six is gonna be fine. Stay here and keep a lookout. I’ll see if there are any snacks in the store.”
Reflexively, Cody patted the holster containing his automatic as he closed the truck’s sturdy driver’s door and headed toward the pumps. He’d already unhooked the rusted-looking dispenser when the realization hit him: Gas station pumps need electricity, you dumbass. He stopped, replaced the dispenser, and glanced back sheepishly at the truck. Damn it.
Before he could pull together a plan, an old-timer appeared from inside the store. “We’re closed!” he called over. “Didn’t ya hear? The world’s coming to an end!”
“I just need a little gas,” Cody explained.
“And I need the power switched on and my customers to come back,” he said, spitting into the dirt. “And, like everyone else, I need an explanation of what in the hell happened today.”
Cody approached him, seeing no danger in speaking with the
old man. “I got my theories, but I don’t know for sure. You heard anything from farther afield?”
“You mean, Colebrook?” he asked.
“I was thinking farther still, like the Cabot House.”
Giving a disgusted snort, the old man threw up his hands. “Those crooks don’t even know we exist! Goddammed government couldn’t give two shits about people up here, ‘cept when it’s time for us to vote.”
With the truck engine still running and the sun setting quickly, Cody felt the pressure of time. “Like I say, is there any way we could get some gas? I’ll pay over the odds.”
“The pumps are out,” he shrugged.
“What about those cars, there?” he said. “Who owns them?”
Another shrug. “The white one’s mine, and it’s near empty. The other one, I’d be guessing.”
“A customer?”
“Maybe,” said the old-timer, picking something out of his teeth. “Probably just took off walking, hoping they’d be safer in Flannigan.”
“They won’t,” Cody said plainly. “Reckon they’ll mind if I siphon some of their gas?”
“What happens when my back is turned,” said the old man, “ain’t my business. Just remember to tip your attendant.”
“Sure thing,” Cody smiled. “You got a funnel and hose in the store?”
“Yup, but I’ll have to charge you retail price.”
“You got it,” he said, relieved to have met someone prepared to help.
“Wait there just a second. I’ll grab what you’ll need.” He sauntered back inside as though this were the most regular of days.
Protecting Our Home Page 6
