by Keith Taylor
“Yeah, I know,” Emily agreed, nodding, her face fixed with a somber expression. “You should see her when I don’t eat my broccoli.”
Karen turned the key and gunned the engine, the throaty roar echoing against the concrete walls of the parking lot. “Broccoli’s good for you, young lady,” she said, pulling out of the bay. She gave the gas the lightest touch, and the acceleration pressed her back into her seat. “It’s got lots of – Jesus, this thing’s quick – lots of iron.”
“That’s what you say about everything I don’t like,” Emily complained, then turned to Ramos. “Doctor Ramos, isn’t there anything tasty with lots of iron?”
Ramos shook his head. “Sorry, no. It’s all gross, but you have to eat it. Like your mom says, it’s—”
His voice was drowned out by the roar of the engine. The Corvette raced down the aisle like it was on rails, and a few seconds and a hundred yards later it came rocketing out from the lot in a fog of tire smoke and a shower of sparks, squealing across the street until Karen wrestled back control and pointed it east towards the Oakland Bay Bridge.
“Hey, you might want to slow down a little!” Ramos yelled over the roar, clinging onto the door frame as the car sped down the middle of the road. “Last thing you want to do is run somebody down!”
Karen reluctantly raised her foot from the gas and brought the Corvette back within the speed limit. Ramos was right. She’d expected to find the city empty. The evacuation had started at least ninety minutes ago, but even now there were plenty of people slowly trudging along the sidewalk in the direction of the bridge. A few were on bikes, but most were on foot. She could see dozens on this street alone, many of them loaded down with what looked like everything but the kitchen sink strapped to their backs and hanging from their arms.
“Why are they still here?” she asked. “You’d have thought everyone would have gotten out at the first sign of trouble.”
Ramos shook his head. “Lots of people don’t have cars any more. What is it here, like, one in three families? And the city has about eight hundred thousand people, so I guess there are at least a couple hundred thousand without a vehicle. You can’t get them all out on buses in a couple of hours. You’re talking days for an evacuation like that, unless they walk out themselves. Besides,” he said, pointing out the windshield, “some of them aren’t even trying to get out. Look at these idiots.”
Karen followed Ramos’ finger to Union Square a couple of blocks ahead. The square was always busy at the best of times, but now it was thronged with people, hundreds of them, pushing against each other like a crowd at the door of a Black Friday sale. Even from two blocks away it wasn’t hard to figure out what they were doing.
The streets around Union Square were home to some of the most exclusive stores in the city. This was where Karen came to window shop and fantasize about a lottery win every couple of weeks. It was Candyland for San Francisco’s wealthier residents and a source of envy for everyone else, and Karen could see that at least a couple hundred people had taken the opportunity to redress the balance now that the cops have gone.
“Seriously?” Karen looked on in shock as they drew closer. “They hear there could be a nuclear attack on the way, and this is where they decide to go?”
A mailbox had been torn from the sidewalk and tossed through the plate glass window of the Tiffany store on the north side of the square. Next door a few people were kicking at the front door of Williams Sonoma, and the Apple Store on the corner looked like it had already been nuked. An enormous pane of glass at the front of the store was shattered, and inside the brightly lit white walled showroom the tables had been overturned as people fought over electronic gadgets. Shrill alarms rang through the streets, but nobody seemed concerned.
“Mommy, what are they doing?” Emily lifted herself from the seat to peer curiously out the window. “Why aren’t the police stopping them?”
“They’re just stupid, stupid people, pumpkin,” Karen replied, “and all the cops are smart. They’re all waiting for us on the other side of the bridge where they can keep us safe.” She pushed down the lock on her door and maneuvered around a couple of guys fighting over an armful of iPads in the middle of the street.
At the eastern end of the square Karen took a right onto Stockton Street, and if anything the crowds were even thicker there. The storefronts of Bulgari and Louis Vuitton were almost invisible behind the mob, and the Gucci store looked like it had already been stripped down to the fittings. The narrow street was thronged with looters fighting to get out of the stores, fighting to get in, or simply fighting over the merchandise they’d stolen.
Karen slowed the Corvette to a crawl, edging through the frantic mass, and as the crowds surrounded the car she began to feel a little worried about the attention a few of the looters were starting to give it. She turned to Ramos, and right away she could see he was thinking the same thing.
“Yeah, we should probably have picked something a little more low key,” he said, a contrite tone sneaking through the fear. “Hey, Emily, can you duck down by my feet for just a minute?”
Emily looked to her mother, who nodded. “Go on, honey, just for a little while. It’s OK, you don’t have to be scared. I'm just a little worried someone might do something silly. I want to make sure you’re safe, OK?”
Emily looked mortified but she did as she was told, and a moment later the warning was justified. Karen flinched at a loud bang, and in the rear view she caught sight of a man slapping the spoiler. He was staring at her wide eyed through the rear window, and in his free hand he gripped a baseball bat. As she watched he tapped the spoiler a couple of times with the bat, and then he vanished from view.
Now a few more people in the crowd started to pay attention to the car. A few moments ago nobody had given the Corvette a second glance. Everyone was too focused on getting into the stores, but now… now they started to realize that the car was an attractive target. It was as if the crowd of looters were a school of sharks, and they’d just sensed a drop of blood in the water. It would only take the slightest wrong move to send them into a frenzy.
Karen whispered a prayer. If she just kept moving slowly forward they’d be clear of the mob in another few dozen yards, and she could bury her foot in the gas and put some clear air between the Corvette and the looters. For now, though… for now she just hoped that nobody was really serious about—
She flinched as someone made a grab at her door handle, and she thanked God she’d had the good sense to lock it.
“Don’t make eye contact,” Ramos warned, staring straight ahead. “Just keep moving forward and they might lose interest.”
Something tapped against the driver’s side window, and in the corner of her eye Karen could see it was the end of a baseball bat.
“Get out of the car, lady.” She refused to look at the man. “Come on, don’t make me break the window.”
She gripped the steering wheel tight and turned to Ramos. “What should we do?”
The doctor gave a slight shrug, nodding to the road ahead. “I guess if it comes down to it you could just…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. Karen took his meaning.
“Drive into the crowd? I can’t do that! I’d hit at least a dozen people if I just floored it.”
Ramos nodded. “Yeah, but if it comes to them or your daughter… I’m just saying it’s an option, OK?”
The baseball bat came down hard on the hood, and the man yelled over the crowd. “Hey, Steve, get in front of this ‘vette, will ya? Don’t let ‘em get away.” A young man walked into the street and planted his hands on the hood, staring straight at Karen as if he was daring her to run him down.
Karen blinked first. She pulled the car to a stop, and the man with the bat crouched down to the window, his face just inches from the glass.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, lady.” Flecks of spittle hit the glass, and suddenly the man grinned. He’d noticed Emily hiding by Ramos’ legs. “Trust me, you
don’t want your little girl to see the hard way.”
Karen’s hand was half way to the door handle when Ramos grabbed her shoulder. “Karen, stop. We can’t afford to lose this car,” he warned in a frantic whisper. “Whatever’s coming could be minutes away. We may not have time to find another one.”
Karen could feel the tears pricking at her eyes. “So you’re saying I should just run people down? Kill them?”
“I’m just saying…” He paused for a moment, his hands bunching into fists. “Yes, damn it, I’m saying you should run them down. It’s us or them, Karen. They made their choice. Do it.”
The world seemed to slow to a crawl as Karen stared out at the crowd ahead. Between the car and the edge of the crowd there were at least ten people directly in her path. If she hit the gas now there was no way they could jump out of the way in time. They’d be injured, or worse. The man standing right in front of the car would definitely go beneath the wheels.
But Ramos was right. Of course he was right. If she gave up the car now they’d be helpless. They’d have more than a mile to cover on foot before they even reached the bridge, another four miles before they reached Oakland on the other side, and God knows how far until they were safe from whatever was coming. If she gave up the car now she could be signing her daughter’s death warrant.
The man with the bat tapped the window once more. “What’s it gonna be? You got five seconds before I start swinging.” He brought the bat up to his shoulder and prepared to take a whack at the window.
Karen looked down at her daughter crouching in the footwell, eyes wide with terror. “Close your eyes, pumpkin.” Emily squeezed her eyes closed tight and began to weep in fear as Karen revved the engine. She planted her palm on the horn, hoping the crowd in front would clear a path, but nobody moved. Nobody could move. The crowd was too tightly packed, and people were being shoved out in front of the car against their will.
Now or never. The man beside the window drew back his bat and shifted his footing. He was about to swing. Karen held her foot over the gas pedal, and—
And a scream burst from the crowd. On the second floor of the Vera Wang store ahead a plate glass window shattered outwards, showering the sidewalk below with glittering shards. Through the window an entire rack of bridal gowns came tumbling out, three people still clinging to it as it fell. The rack plunged into the crowd, vanishing in the mass, and the looters ran for cover as more people began to fall through the broken window.
Karen watched in horror, frozen by the sight. The store was just too crowded. There must be hundreds of looters up there trying to grab at whatever they could, and more were joining them every second. They’d been pushed up against the window until it broke, and now… Now they were being pushed and shoved out through the opening by the heaving human tide blindly pressing them from behind.
They fell one by one to the sidewalk, some landing on the crowd and others hitting the paving stones with a sickening crunch. She could hear the screams from above, the people begging for help even as they were inched closer to the edge by the crowd.
“Go! Go!” Ramos slapped the dash and pointed ahead. As the looters scattered a path opened up, just wide enough for the car, and Karen didn’t waste a second. She buried the gas pedal to the floor and the Corvette screeched forward, the tires spinning before they gripped the road and rocketed them forward to the clear asphalt ahead.
“Oh, those poor people,” Ramos cried, turning back to stare through the rear window. Even now more looters were falling from the second floor, but now there were no people below to cushion their fall. Bodies littered the sidewalk.
He turned away from the chaos and crossed himself. “It’s OK, Karen,” he said, pulling Emily back to her seat as Karen turned the wrong way onto Geary Street and picked up speed. “You can slow down now. We’re safe.”
Karen didn’t respond. She kept her foot to the floor, screaming towards the bridge as fast as the car would take her, because she’d noticed something that Ramos hadn’t.
On both sides of the street a handful of people were still heading in the direction of the bridge, but they were no longer walking. Now they were running, sprinting, their heavy bags dropped far behind.
Over the roar of the engine she could hear the wail of an air raid siren.
΅
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GOD DAMN METH
JACK AWOKE SLOWLY, his face pressed flat against the cold window, looking down far below at a world of patchwork greens, gray lines and wispy clouds.
It took a moment for him to remember where he was, and why, though this feeling was nothing new. Confusion was his usual morning companion, along with the customary headache. The first few minutes after waking were almost always full of questions he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. Is this my bed? What am I doing here? Why does my mouth taste like bourbon and shame? Some of the worst mornings began with Who is this woman next to me? In the grand scheme of things waking up on a plane was no big deal.
“Hey, I was wondering when you might come back to the land of the living.” In the seat beside him Warren peered at his instruments. “How you feeling?”
Jack pulled himself up in his chair and rubbed his eyes. Boomer shifted in his lap. “Yeah, a little better,” he replied, though he wasn’t sure it was true. He looked out the window. “Where are we? How long did I sleep?”
“Couple of hours. Didn’t want to wake you. We just passed Eugene, Oregon a few minutes back.” He nodded out the window to the left. “That’s Willamette National Forest down there. Lake and waterfall country. Beautiful place.” He smiled. “I used to take the family there in the summers back when the kids were little. You can land this thing right on the water and have yourself a picnic.”
For a moment he lapsed into silence, his smile fading as he turned back to Jack. “Hey, I don’t mean to embarrass you, but did you know you, umm...” he gave an awkward cough. “Did you know you yell in your sleep?”
Damn. Jack had forgotten about that. It had been so long since anyone had seen him sleep. He nodded, his cheeks glowing red. “Yeah, I know. Happens when I’m stressed.”
“Uh huh, that’ll do it.” Warren nodded knowingly. “You served?”
Jack turned the question over in his head a few times, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what it meant. “Served what?”
“In the military. My son – not the one in Ashland, my youngest – he did a couple tours in Afghanistan. Went through hell and back out there. Came home with so much baggage he should have gone through the red line at the airport. Night terrors, flashbacks, mood swings… always on edge, y’know? It took a few years before everything stopped turning up to eleven whenever he heard a car backfire. You’ve got the same kind of look in your eye he had. I just figured maybe you served.”
Jack picked at a loose thread on his sleeve, avoiding eye contact. “No, never. I went straight from med school to the hospital.”
“Oh, you’re a doctor?” Warren fell silent for a moment, studying instruments he’d checked only a moment ago. Eventually he awkwardly cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind me asking—”
“What’s wrong with me?” Jack recognized the sharp edge to his voice, and he saw Warren shrink back.
“Sorry, I don’t mean to pry. None of my beeswax. Forget I asked.”
Jack slumped back in his seat, staring out the window towards the sinking sun. He hated talking about what happened. He’d spent a year in therapy talking about that night, hashing it out over and over again, reliving every detail as if he’d be magically healed if he could just remember the texture of the rug they’d found him laying on. If he could just remember the warmth of the blood pulsing between his fingers, or the sound of that last breath. His therapist thought it might be cathartic, that if he played it out enough times he might finally begin to accept that there was nothing he could have done to stop it. She was wrong.
“I had a son.”
He hadn’t planned to say i
t. The last thing he wanted to do was talk about it with this stranger, but the words just tumbled out before he could stop them, and once they were out there was no putting them back in.
For a moment Warren remained silent, picking his next words carefully. “He… umm, he’s no longer with us?”
Jack shook his head. “Three years ago in June.” He wanted to shut up now, but the toothpaste was out of the tube. He’d already raised too many questions to change the subject. Might as well just get it all out.
“Karen – that’s my ex-wife, Karen – was out in Texas visiting her folks with our daughter. We were all supposed to go, but Robbie wasn’t feeling too well. I decided I should keep him at home.” He sighed, stroking Boomer’s ear. “Apparently there was this guy, this scrawny little nineteen year old punk with a meth habit, and he saw Karen packing her luggage into the car. Just by chance, you know? He wasn’t casing the house or anything. He just happened to be walking by, and he saw her toss a Samsonite in the trunk and drive away with Emily. I guess he figured the place must be empty.”
“God damn meth.” Warren shook his head.
“Yeah… Anyway, he came back that night. I guess he was expecting to find an empty house. Probably thought it’d be a quick smash and grab job, you know, take a little jewelry, maybe snatch a laptop or a tablet. Turns out this was his first burglary. Kid didn’t know what he was doing. Almost severed an artery breaking through the window in the back door, and he had no idea about the silent alarm. Complete amateur.” Boomer shifted in Jack’s lap, gazing up at him with sad, droopy eyes.
“Robbie was always a light sleeper, even when he was a baby. Ears like a bat.” He smiled at the memory. “We used to have to sleep on the couch if we wanted him to sleep through. Even from two rooms away my snoring would wake him. I guess he must have heard the window break, and you know what kids are like. Any excuse to get out of bed and see what’s going on.” Jack looked out the window and sighed. It was a long time before he spoke again.
