Black Autumn Travelers

by Jeff Kirkham

  As the morning sun covered the dirt fields in light, Sage felt only hopelessness. He had the means to eat, the means to drink, and even the means to defend himself. Yet he lacked the one thing he hungered for most: the means to move toward home.

  He hadn’t a clue how far it was from this place to his home in Utah, but measured in footfalls, it felt like a million miles.

  Cajon Pass, San Bernardino, California

  Cameron awoke to the early morning sun, feeling like someone had chucked a handful of sand in his eyes.

  “Where are we?” he asked Julie, looking around, not recognizing a thing.

  “We’re almost into Cajon Pass.”

  “That’s it? Motherfucker!” Cameron shouted.

  “Cameron, you’re waking up the boys.”

  “Why haven’t we made more distance? You’ve only covered like thirty miles,” Cameron said accusingly. “How long was I asleep?”

  Julie defended herself. “Well, I can’t very well drive over the top of other cars, can I? It’s been bumper to bumper this entire time. You slept about three hours.”

  “Sonofabitch!” Cameron’s worry kicked into overdrive. They were barely out of Los Angeles, and there was a ton of desert to cover between El Cajon and Las Vegas. If it was gridlock all the way to Vegas, the trip would take days.

  Jason and Jenna Ross, his sister and brother-in-law, owned a second home in Las Vegas. Cameron, Julie and the kids could hang out there if they made it that far. But what good would that do them? Las Vegas might be as bad as Los Angeles, maybe worse.

  The thought made Cameron worry about his friends and family back in L.A. Guilt rose in his throat, making that not-enough-sleep nausea in his stomach even worse. Could he have done more to help them? When he gathered his family and ran, he had left many friends and co-workers behind, maybe not taking the situation as seriously as he should’ve. Another boner committed in a life with more than its fair share of boners.

  The day before, Cameron Stewart had been sorting and stacking torch accessories at the WeldMore Store #36 in Anaheim, California when the shit-ball first began to roll.

  He enjoyed the menial tasks in the welding supply store. Though he had been promoted to store manager two years back, he needed the guys to see him as labor instead of management. There was something about admitting to being “management” that made Cameron think of all the things he thought he should’ve accomplished at thirty-five years old. Better to keep thinking he was preparing to launch his career than to think it had already launched and had landed him as a manager of a welding store.

  He found peace in doing simple jobs that didn’t require leadership. Being the nice guy exhausted him. There were days when he would much rather have punched people in the face.

  His looks belied the heat he carried inside. A tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed all-American man with an athletic build had bought Cameron easy access to minor positions of leadership. It had also bought him a smokin’ hot California Girl as his wife. Looking in the mirror, Cameron didn’t see himself as handsome. He saw a fraud playing up his good looks for all they were worth.

  A little over a day ago he had reached down to grab another bundle of gas diffusers and something happened in the store that he hadn’t seen in ages. The lights went out. It was only for ten seconds, but even that would be enough to crash the piece of shit computer in the place. It would take him an hour to reenter the inventory he had just logged.

  “Son of a bitch.” After ten thousand humiliating repetitions, Cameron had learned to keep his temper to himself. At work, he was the model manager, but nobody understood what that cost him in terms of self-control. He had seen an article on the internet about how parents who controlled their tempers around their kids experienced a heightened inflammatory response. Refusing to yell at your kids dumped a shit-ton of cortisol into the brain. Being a good parent, it turned out, shortened one’s lifespan.

  That made perfect sense to Cameron. He spent a big chunk of his life reining himself in, and nobody gave him credit for the effort. It was assumed that an adult should control himself and keep face-punching to a minimum.

  With two little ones and a wife at home, plus finishing his degree at the local college, Cameron lived a life practically drowning in cortisol. For him, the mundane work of restocking the shelves felt like a mini-vacation.

  The lights flickered again, then went dark.

  Cameron walked to the stockroom and popped open the breaker box. All the breakers looked good, but he flipped a couple just to make sure.

  He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and called the regional office. The secretary answered and told him that power was off all over the county. Cameron pocketed the phone and called his guys together.

  “Take a smoke break,” he told them. “Hang close, though. This should pass quickly. It’s just too many people running their air conditioners at the same time.” It was still summer in California—September could be one of the hottest months of the year—and power outages due to air conditioning had happened a lot back when Cameron was a kid.

  Two hours later, the store was still dark and Cameron began to worry. Most men would chalk it up to a day off, but Cameron was a champion worrier. His mind wandered, and he recalled conversations with his brother Tommy.

  They both loved to shoot guns. Their trips to the desert to shoot at milk jugs and pumpkins often dipped into conversations about what they would do if the world went to hell in a handbasket. There was something about the idea of society failing that worried and fascinated them.

  Tommy lived in Arizona. He had started as an Anaheim street punk, just like Cameron, hanging around the small-time street gangs that sprouted up in metropolitan Orange County as it began its slide into urban squalor. But, like many street-smart guys, Tommy had eventually grown up and worked the lessons of street life into a career in business. After fifteen years and a passel of promotions, Tommy lived in Phoenix and was knocking back six figures in senior management.

  Cameron preferred to stay close to their Anaheim home, where he felt more comfortable. He lived in the same house where his parents raised two brothers and a sister.

  His sister, Jenna, left Anaheim at her first opportunity. She attended the Mormon university in Utah and eventually married a guy they knew growing up.

  Jason Ross, her husband, was an Anaheim kid, too. He had done the dot-com business thing, made a pile of money, and now did whatever he wanted. He and Jenna visited Disneyland a couple times a year with their seven kids, catching up with Cameron and his wife Julie whenever they came into town to see Mickey Mouse.

  Last Christmas, Jason and Jenna had sent them the weirdest Christmas present ever: six buckets of freeze-dried food. It was enough food storage for Cameron’s family to eat for a month. The odds of the bucketed food turning into slightly edible cardboard in the next thirty years were almost one hundred percent. But, with the power still off that morning in Orange County, Cameron couldn’t help thinking about those buckets.

  Just then, the lights popped back on and the computer began to whir through its long restart sequence. Cameron breathed a sigh of relief.

  Two hours later, the lights in the store had gone out again and Cameron’s worry returned with a vengeance. He did what he always did when he felt things slipping; he called his brother Tommy.

  “Hey, Tee, how’s it hanging?” Based on the background noise, Tommy was driving.

  “Hey, big brother! What’s up? How you doing?”

  Cameron did a quick calculation, converting Phoenix time to Anaheim time. Tommy should be heading to lunch. Hopefully he could talk.

  “I’m good, bro. Just here at the store, living like the other half. How’s the promotion treating you?” Cameron really wanted to talk about the power outage, but it wasn’t in his character to put his own needs first. He felt more comfortable letting Tommy talk for a bit about his kick-ass corporate life.

  “It’s all good, bro. Just like on the streets but wearing a tie, you know?�
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  Their family culture emphasized several cardinal rules. On the top ten: listen to the other person first. So the call played out like a wrestling match of consideration. Cameron felt bad for interrupting Tommy’s day, so he let Tommy talk. Tommy, on the other hand, knew that Cameron wouldn’t have called him for nothing.

  “What’s up, brother? You okay?” Tommy pushed.

  “Yeah, I’m good. It’s just that the power is off. Actually, it’s been off for most the morning.”

  “No kidding?” Tommy sounded sincerely concerned.

  Cameron continued. “The news said it was just a glitch with the power company computers but, along with the problems in the stock market… I’m a little rattled.”

  “Have you talked to Jason or Jenna about it?”

  “No, I didn’t want to bother them.”

  Tommy went quiet for a second. “I think you should call Jason. He likes to hear about stuff like this. He’s one of those Doomsday Preppers, right?”

  “You’re probably right,” Cameron replied. “I’ll call him when we’re done talking. I got nothing else to do. I can’t sell welding supplies with the computers down.”

  “All right, brother. Will you call me later and let me know what happens with the power?”

  “No problem. I’ll talk to you tonight.” Cameron hung up.

  Cameron’s brother-in-law, Jason Ross, hadn’t heard anything about problems with the electrical grid. Even so, they both knew something big was happening in the stock market because of the dirty bomb that had gone off in the Middle East. Someone, maybe the Iranians, had detonated a dirty nuke over a big Saudi oil processing terminal. The power going out in California might have nothing to do with the bomb, but Jason told Cameron to get ready in case he had to bail out of SoCal in a hurry.

  Jason and Jenna were prepped for social unrest. They had a killer spread in the mountains outside of Salt Lake City, and they had set the place up for their family and a couple hundred of their closest friends. They even had a bunch of Special Forces guys in charge of security.

  Jason gave Cameron a list of things to do. “Buy water bottles. Fill the cars and every available gas can with fuel. Get as much cash out of the bank as possible. Buy all the ammo you can find. Make sure your wife and kids were ready for a road trip in less than an hour’s notice. Maybe go shopping and fill the pantry and buy canned food, not frozen.”

  Some of that might be hard to do without power in Orange County, Cameron thought, but he typed the list into his phone just the same.

  On his lunch break, Cameron ran over to the gun store on Beach Boulevard. The place was a madhouse. The display cabinets were empty except for a few expensive target handguns.

  He managed to pick up some ammo for his Beretta 92 handgun—some sort of expanding ammunition. It ran thirty bucks a box, cash only, but it was all the store had.

  At 5:30 p.m., the lights were still out at the welding supply store. Cameron sent the guys home and decided to hang out so he could turn customers away, but no one came by.

  His local gas station was running on generator power, so Cameron filled up his Toyota 4Runner after sitting in line for almost an hour. Everyone was saying the same thing: “Just a power outage. They’ll have it handled in a few hours.”

  Over the years, Cameron, Tommy, and Jason had talked a lot about the dangers of living in southern California. They all agreed that SoCal would be a death trap if things turned bad. The quickest way out of town was Interstate 15. It started in Long Beach, California as the 91 Freeway and passed through Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, heading straight north into the heart of Nevada, Utah, and Idaho. All the areas bordering the I-15 in southern California had become densely populated, and making headway on the freeway was tough enough even during regular times. If the shit hit the fan, the boys figured the I-15 would become a two-hundred-mile-long parking lot.

  Cameron and Tommy had pored over maps, trying to figure a better way out. Even though southern California looked like a spider web of freeways, everything heading east passed through one choke point in the San Bernardino Mountains before opening onto the high desert. Caltrans had tried to correct the problem by creating an alternate route for trucks, but the choke point still existed. There was virtually no easy way around Cajon Pass if you were trying to get out of Orange County.

  Cameron, Tommy, and Jason agreed that the survival of Cameron’s family might depend on escaping before the other eighteen million people panicked. If even one percent of the population of the greater Los Angeles area got the urge to leave, the roads would be totally impassable, maybe forever.

  Cameron decided right then, leaving the gas station, that this would be a great time for an impromptu vacation. He might lose his job over the decision, but that would be a problem for another day. He called his wife. She argued a bit, but Cameron was steadfast.

  “We leave as soon as we pack.”

  Despite the early hour, Cameron checked his cell and found it was miraculously still working. He placed a call to his closest friend, Beto.

  “Hey, Beto, how’s it going down there?” Beto lived in Buena Park, just a few miles from Cameron and Julie’s house in Anaheim.

  “Yo, hermano. It’s pretty bad. The lights are still out and we’re hearing gun shots every few minutes out toward Stanton. It smells like some shit is burning. We haven’t had any rain, but the mist this morning smelled funky. Maybe it’s from the ocean. Maybe it’s radioactive, ’mano.”

  “Oh, shit. Do you have your Kimber? You have rounds for it?” Cameron asked, not knowing what else to say.

  “You bet your ass. Anyone comes down our street trying some shit, I’m going to pop a cap in their ass. I’ll be honest, ’mano, I’m pretty freaked right now. I’m glad you got Julie and the kids out when you did.”

  “We’re not out yet,” Cameron said, worry coming through. “We’re stuck at the mouth of El Cajon and traffic is totally screwed. Have you taped around your windows?”

  “I ran out of duct tape, but I got most of ’em. I gotta go. You take care, brother. Be strong,” Beto ended the call, sounding eager to get off the phone and back to scanning the street for danger.

  “Vaya con Dios.” Cameron spoke to a dead phone, unable to hold back a lonely tear of frustration.

  Overhearing the call and frantic with worry for her family in L.A., Julie pleaded for more information. “What’s going on?”

  “It sounds bad. Really bad.”

  Julie began to cry, probably imagining her mom and dad in Downey, on the edge of the scary part of Los Angeles. Her parents were in their sixties, and they had been in the same house during the L.A. riots. They often talked about how terrifying the riots had been.

  “Why, Cameron? Why is this happening?” Julie cried.

  “I have no idea, baby. Sometimes bad things happen to good people.”

  Mount Saint Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, Maryland

  For some reason that hovered just out of reach in his mind, Mat Best didn’t drive home after he dropped the girl off at her dorm. He sat outside the residence hall, his Ford Raptor idling, the radio crackling with the scariest news he’d heard this side of Iraq.

  The banks had taken a “bank holiday” and the stock markets had closed in the middle of the week for no good reason. Not only had rioting enveloped several of the large cities in California, but rolling blackouts had begun to hit the eastern seaboard as well. To Mat, this didn’t sound like a disaster. It sounded like an attack.

  He grabbed his phone out of the cup holder and stared at it, trying to make a decision. On his home screen, he had uploaded a picture of a recent tattoo on his back—one of the fancied-up Army Ranger logos with crossed M4 rifles and a skull with wings. He felt a bit self-conscious, uploading a picture of his own tattoo as his home screen. It probably couldn’t be seen as anything but self-absorbed. Mat smiled, wrestling with the twin desires that had plagued him as he transitioned from being a punk Army Ranger to someone maybe with something to o
ffer the world beyond killing bad guys.

  The tattoos covering his arms and torso had a purpose. While they told the story of his military career, they also covered the scars he had inherited from a poorly treated skin affliction he picked up overseas. Any way you cut it, Mat admitted to himself, the tats were a vanity. Not only was Mat movie-star good looking, but he had never slowed down at the gym. If a woman couldn’t be pulled into bed by Mat’s perfect brown hair, dazzling smile, and rock-hard physique, she probably was a lesbian. He had even managed to pull a couple of those into the sack.

  Again, Mat smiled at his blatant narcissism, still looking at his home screen. He had earned the narcissism honestly and he could still laugh at himself. But the words on the tattoo, Rangers Lead The Way, put a finer point on his self-examination. Mat knew good looks and charm would run dry in the end. He suspected life had more on deck for him than idling his jets at his grandmother’s home, banging female conquests, sometimes several in a day.

  The Ranger Creed, campy though it may be, haunted him. Words like honor, gallantry and moral rectitude had left their mark on his soul and no amount of whiskey and women would erase those values, dug in deep like the ticks that had burrowed into his crotch and armpits during Ranger School.

  He swiped up on his phone and clicked over to “Recent Calls.” He didn’t even have the girl’s name in his contact list. He clicked on the 502 area code call from yesterday, assuming it was a Louisville, Kentucky number, and would be hers. He punched Call Back, committing himself.

  “Hey, Caroline. Mat here.” A shock of fear inched up his spine as he worried he might have gotten her name wrong. No part of him wanted to be that guy—the clichéd poon-hound who forgot girls’ names.

  “Hey, Mat. What’s up?” she asked, a little confusion in her voice. He had just left her at her dorm fifteen minutes ago.

  “I’m listening to the news here in my truck, and I’m worried about you. I hope that doesn’t sound like a stalker. We just met and I’m already talking like a protective big brother. I guess I don’t blame you if that makes me sound like a creeper…” Mat realized he was rambling.