The Killing Days

by Ronald Williams

  “Excuse me, do you guys have a phone, or some jumper cables? I think our battery clunked out.”

  Harrison waved his own dead phone at them with an apologetic shrug. “Everything's down in here. I can pull around and give you a jump, though. Hang tight.”

  Chapter 3

  While Harrison jogged around the side of the store to fetch his battered Ford crew cab pickup and a set of jumper cables from the back of the narrow side parking lot, Jason crossed the street to talk to the young man. He figured at the very least he could take a quick look under the hood. Not like anything was happening in the store right now, with the power out.

  Up and down the block, the sidewalk was attracting small groups of people, forced out of their businesses by the power outage. He waved at Sarah Milligan, who owned the mortgage company directly beside Double Donuts. She waved back, then returned her attention to her phone. Jason was close enough to see that the screen was blank. Just like his. Just like Harrison's.

  His face grew troubled for a second, then brightened as he reached the opposite curb.

  “Hey,” he greeted the man. “I could take a look at it, if you want. The car, I mean”

  “Oh, man. That'd be great. Could you?” the man said. He was young, early twenties, with hazel brown skin and an easy smile. “I'm Diego. That's Jessica.” He indicated the young brunette in the passenger seat of the Mazda.

  “Jason. So what happened when you tried to start it? Is the starter just clicking?”

  “Not even that, man. It's just...well, nothing happened. Is that bad? It's just the battery, eh bro?”

  “Maybe,” Jason mused. He didn't like the way some things were adding up. First the store, then the generator, then the phones...now this? If the battery was dead, the starter would at least try to crank the engine. From that the man said, it sounded like the car didn't have a battery at all. Jason looked up towards Main Street and studied the white Chevrolet that had crashed just past the intersection.

  “You want me to pop the hood, man?” The young man – Diego – broke into his thoughts.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah. Listen, you asked for a phone earlier. I'm guessing yours died and won't turn on?”

  “Direct hit. Must be the battery or something. Jess's phone died too. Should'a charged them on the way here I guess.”

  “Yeah...I don't know if that would have helped.” Jason was still trying to think. Up and down the street, nobody seemed to be getting anything from their phones. “Diego, do you live close by?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your house. Is your house near here?”

  “Naw, man. I'm way across town. Just visiting my girl, you know. She stays down that way a ways.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the suburbs that overtook Burke Street about a mile from where they were.

  “Alright, this is going to sound strange, Diego, but listen – get Jessica, get everything you need out of your car, and head back to Jessica's house.”

  “What's up, man?” Diego suddenly sounded guarded. “Your friend said he'd give us a jump. You tryin' to pull something on me?”

  “I have a feeling my brother will be back any second. And I hope I'm wrong, but I also have a feeling he won't be able to jump your battery.”

  As if he'd summoned him just by saying the words, Jason heard Harrison's footsteps slapping against the asphalt street behind him.

  “Jason!” Harrison called as he ran up. “Jason you won't believe this. The truck won't start either.”

  “This some kind of scam?” Diego was looking back and forth between them. He looked angry. “What are you trying to play? You got a con game going, get people to leave their vehicles unattended so you can steal them? I don't care how big you are, man. I'll kick your ass.”

  “Look around Diego. It's not a scam. Nothing works.”

  But Diego wasn't looking at him at him anymore, and he wasn't looking around, either. His eyes were fixed in the air over Jason's head, and they were wide with terror.

  Jason turned to follow his line of sight, and what he saw knocked the wind out of him as surely as if he'd been socked in the gut by a five-foot length of rebar.

  Over the city skyline that rose up behind Craft General, cocked at a crazy angle with wings tilted almost perpendicular to the horizon, glinting brightly in the setting sun, a commercial airliner was plummeting toward the ground. And not just plummeting – it seemed to be getting bigger by the second, soaring on its flight momentum right in their direction.

  Chapter 4

  “Mother of God,” Harrison breathed, right at Jason's shoulder. Jason whirled and gripped Diego by the collar.

  “Get Jessica. Get to her house. Go!”

  He let the young man go and grabbed Harrison's arm, but his brother didn't need any prodding. They made it across the street in less than three seconds and burst through the door into the darkened store. Jason continued sprinting toward the rear storage bay, but Harrison put a claw grip on his shoulder and swung him to the left, toward the cash register.

  Of course, he realized. The counter.

  It had been built of solid stone by their grandfather just after the Second World War. When they'd remodeled the store four years earlier in an attempt to opitimize the layout, they'd had to adjust everything around the register counter. It was just too heavy, too damn solid, to be worth moving. It may have been the sturdiest structure in the whole building.

  Jason wheeled around the far end of the counter while Harrison vaulted straight over, spilling pieces of radio as he went over. They both dove into the empty knee-space directly under the cash register and crammed in beside one another. It was too small for both of them, but neither particularly cared at the moment.

  Then, they waited.

  And waited.

  It was starting to get suffocatingly hot, wedged side by side as they were, but Jason wasn't keen to venture out, and he was pretty sure Harrison wasn't either.

  Jason's right leg began to cramp, and his heart fluttered gently, sending a streak of pain down his right side. He gently reached inside his breast pocket and pulled out a small orange bottle, shook two tablets into his sweaty palm, and dry swallowed them. His drumming heart settled to a slower tempo; the slicing pain in his side eased to a dull throb.

  “How's the ticker?” Harrison asked. It was the first time either of them had spoken. Nothing had happened outside. No plane had crashed; the store hadn't blown up.

  Jason grunted. “Ticker's fine.” In fact, he was breathing shallowly, afraid that a deep inhale would excite the pain in his abdomen again.

  “What the hell is going on, Jason?” Harrison's voice was low, but Jason felt like he was shouting in his ear, they were so close.

  “It was an EMP,” Jason responded, voice small, focusing on his breathing.

  “Bull. No. Like hell it was,” Harrison hissed.

  “Think about it. The phones. The cars. The generator. It all fits.”

  “There's no way–”

  The earth convulsed beneath them, and a terrifying, booming roar sucked all other sound from the air. Jason put his hand on Harrison's knee for support, and felt a small measure of comfort when Harrison laid a hand on his shoulder. The ground continued to shake. Jason squeezed his eyes shut, expecting the entire store to collapse on them. But just as abruptly as it had started, it ended.

  Somewhere in the store, a shelf fell over with an almost comic clatter. Harrison was digging his nails into Jason's shoulder. Gently, Jason shook off his brother's death grip. They both remained crouching under the counter, breathing heavily, for at least another minute.

  Harrison was the first to squirm out of the tight space. Jason followed right after, stretching his legs with perverse relief as he looked around at the chaos in the store.

  The shelf they'd heard fall had apparently been the last of dozens. The entire stretch of shopping space from the toiletries in Aisle 3 back to the auto supplies in Aisle 8 was a maze of scattered goods, toppled shelves, and displ
ay cases leaning at crooked angles.

  In the front, the massive display window that covered nearly the entire wall from the corner to the door had imploded, covering the ground with shards of glittering glass. By some strange, incomprehensible miracle, the shelves in the first two aisles in front of the window had remained standing, even though the shelves behind them had been blown over by the blast.

  “Where do you think the plane hit?” Jason asked, awestruck at the sudden destruction. Just thirty minutes ago, he'd been taking inventory. Just another day at the store. It was hard to wrap his head around.

  “Anywhere but here, and that's all that matters,” Harrison replied. He looked out the shattered window. Beyond Double Donuts, a black plume of smoke rose lazily into the golden evening sky. “That was close, Jace,” Harrison added, turning back into the store. His thin face was pale. “That was real close. You sure your ticker's fine? 'Cause my heart's fixing to burst through my chest.” He laughed shakily.

  Jason tried to smile with him, and found that he couldn't. He turned and began to rummage through the remains of Aisle 6. Harrison saw what he was doing and went straight for Aisle 14, way at the back.

  “They won't work,” Jason called out.

  “Right, because of the EMP.” Even though he was clearly flustered, Harrison still managed a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  Jason shook his head and kept digging, finally unearthing a pack of tea candles and a box of matches. Harrison met him back at the counter, arms loaded with flashlights and batteries. The sun was dipping behind Double Donuts, turning the plume of smoke into a pillar of flame and casting long, graceful orange rays into the interior of Craft General.

  One by one, Harrison tore the plastic sheath off each flashlight, flicked it, inserted new batteries, flicked it again, and moved onto the next one. Finally, he'd tried them all. He shrugged.

  “So what?”

  Jason struck a match and touched it to one of the small round candles, then blew out the match. He turned his bulk to face Harrison head-on.

  “Okay, give me your explanation.”

  Harrison sighed. “It was a power surge in the main lines. One transformer blew, and that small electromagnetic pulse – not the big thing you're talking about – was close enough to burn through the store, including these dinky plastic flashlights.” He chucked one across the store. “Didn't I tell you to buy the maglights?”

  “You're not that dumb, Harr. What about the plane?”

  “Coincidence.”

  “Oh come on,” Jason buried his face in his hands, then began pacing in front of the counter. He accidentally kicked a can of creamed corn and sent it skittering off into the growing darkness. He didn't even notice. “Someone hit us with an electromagnetic pulse, something big enough to knock out our city. Maybe the whole Eastern seaboard. Maybe even the country. Face the facts, Harrison. Listen again. Do you hear any emergency vehicles? A god damn plane just crashed in our city. Where's the fire truck, huh? For that matter, where's anyone?”

  “Okay, okay. Jason, you're ranting. Calm down. It's...possible. Okay? I'll give you that. It's possible. But why? Why would anyone do that?”

  “China, Russia, Korea...anyone could have done it.”

  “That's not what I'm saying,” Harrison said. “Why? Why, when a direct nuke would immediately level a city this size, not to mention a place like D.C.? Why use an unproven weapon and wait it out, when you could utilize your first-strike capability – because that's what this would be anyway – and cut off the head of the snake with one swipe? You crush the snake, Jason. You don't wait for it to rot.”

  “Unless it's an invasion,” Jason said softly.

  “An invasion?” Harrison scoffed. “Here?”

  “Sure. Maybe it's just been a matter of time until something like this happens. Cripple the populace, but leave the buildings standing, leave the land arable and unpolluted by radiation. Then you move in, kill anyone still resisting, and take up residence for yourself. People have been doing that for millenia. Why should now be any different, just because the weapons are more sophisticated?”

  “It's crazy,” Harrison said.

  “Maybe there's someone out there crazy enough to like it that way” Jason replied.

  Chapter 5

  The sun had dropped steadily while they'd talked, and now it finally dipped beneath the roof of the Double Donuts across the street. With almost purposeful swiftness, the interior of Craft General (still in disarray) fell into shadow except for the lone candle burning on the counter.

  Harrison lit three more candles, then grabbed a broom and began sweeping at the glass from the shattered window. Jason took a candle and went back to picking at the rubble that had been their store just that afternoon. Harrison hated to admit it, but everything Jason said made sense. Physically, at least. But logically...emotionally...he couldn't bring himself to believe it. He knew it was possible; he'd read the government reports years ago. A 100-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above the atmosphere somewhere over, say, Nebraska, would generate an electromagnetic pulse large enough to crash the electronics of the entire country. Everything would go belly up, from cheap plastic flashlights to public water control systems to food distribution to the entire defensive structure of the country.

  But...what he couldn't mentally grasp was why. Maybe Jason was right. Maybe someone just wanted what America had so much they'd kill tens of millions to get it. Because that's what would happen. With no public water, no food supply, no hospitals, people would starve. It'd plunge the country back two hundred years in time. You had what you had, and unless you could work out a trade, you weren't getting anything more.

  You had what you had....

  He dropped the broom abruptly and shouted: “Jason!”

  “What?” his brother called from the back of the store.

  “Get up here.”

  By now, all he could see of his brother was the light of the candle winding through the collapsed aisles. Jason kicked something heavy, swore, and finally maneuvered his way up to the front with Harrison.

  “What?” Jason repeated, irritated.

  “Look out there, out the window.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I see...the street? I don't know. A donut shop? What are you getting at, Harrison?. I don't...the window!” It finally clicked.

  “So let's say you're right, and it was an EMP. Which I'm not agreeing to, by the way,” Harrison added.

  Jason ignored him. He was staring at the empty space where the window had been. “Then we have the only stock of food, water, and supplies for something like six miles...”

  “...and a wide open door,” Harrison finished.

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah, something like that. I think we still have time, but I don't know how much.”

  They both considered the window. Harrison had never really thought about just how huge it was. At least six feet high and fifteen feet wide, it covered the majority of the street-facing wall of the store. It had been old glass, thicker at the bottom, a single massive pane on which they'd often plastered stencils to advertise upcoming sales. And now it was completely gone.

  The glass swinging door just to the right of the window was still intact. But it wasn't as old – they're replaced that eight months ago after an attempted break-in. Harrison felt a little proud that it was still there, in fact. He'd been the one pushing for the full shatterproof, bullet-proof option. Top of the line.

  “Okay!” Jason walked over the the first tumbled shelf in Aisle 3 and began dragging it back to the window. “So we block it up. We board the whole place up, in fact.”

  “Hold on,” said Harrison. “There's a better option.”

  “The sign,” Jason said immediately, dropping the shelf with a thump.

  “The sign,” Harrison said, smiling.

  Chapter 6

  Not for the first time in his life, Jason cursed his heart. He'd been born with sickle cell anemia, a
genetic present from his mom's side of the family. He might be big now, but as a child he'd been slight, sickly. Always the first to catch whatever bug was going around school and the last to get over it. Harrison was two years younger, but Jason had too many memories of him acting the big brother. Helping him into bed. Fixing him breakfast on those Saturdays when their dad had to work at the store. Secretly doing Jason's pre-algebra homework, even though Harrison was only in third grade and shouldn't have known what inequalities were, let alone how to solve them.

  But that was Harrison. Always too smart. Always too willing to give everything for his brother. And then he'd saved Jason's life, and everything had changed. When Jason was eleven and Harrison was nine, Harrison had volunteered to give Jason a bone marrow transplant to cure his sickle cell once and for all.

  The operation had gone wrong. Harrison had a reaction to the anesthesia and stopped breathing for a minute and a half. Jason didn't know this until later – he was under anesthesia himself when it happened.

  After the transplant, Jason sprouted like a weed. He gained weight and was finally able to try out for the school sports teams. By eighth grade, he was playing every sport the middle school offered, and excelling. By his junior year, he was a starting fullback on the high school football team. By the following year, he had a dozen scholarship offers to colleges around the country to play on their football teams.

  Then it all came crashing down. In the third quarter of the championship game in his senior year, Jason collapsed in the middle of the field like a stalk of dry corn. He was rushed to the hospital, and the next day a doctor he'd never seen before sat on his bed and told him that because he'd gotten the bone marrow transpant so late in life – the geriatric age of eleven, Jason remembered thinking wryly – the disease had already touched his heart and caused some damage. That damage had grown into pulmonary hypertension. It would stick with him for the rest of his life.

  They had medication to manage it, the doctor said, but because Jason had such a unique case, it would only get worse as the years progressed.