Gray Skies

by Justin Bell

  Looking out into the wide, sparse central area of the mall where the food court expanded out towards the right, Bruce saw Karl Green standing there, arms clasped behind his back, looking intently into the fountain. He wore a black trench coat, which swung low to his calves, his shaven head glistening under the low, ambient light of the generator-supplied emergency bulbs.

  “Mr. Cavendish,” he said in a loud, echoing voice, his Texas accent thick as it rebounded off bare walls and glass.

  “Yeah, Karl,” Bruce replied. He’d met Karl Green just a couple of days prior, but the two groups had not interacted much in the time since, each one going their own way with their own part to play. Karl was middle management, Bruce knew that, but still a step above him in the strange power structure that had evolved within the past month.

  In truth, Cavendish still wasn’t entirely sure where his place was in the vast new food chain; all he knew was that they gave him guns, they gave him ammo, and they sent him off into the world to use them, and for that he was thankful enough. The hot food and shelter didn’t hurt, either.

  Karl turned towards him, the trench coat swaying just over the smooth polish of the floor. From this angle, Bruce could see he was wearing a dark-patterned, armor plate Kevlar vest and urban digital camouflage military pants. A pistol was holstered to his thigh, and a sheath was tucked tight to his left boot.

  “Was your team successful?”

  “We intercepted the RV, yeah. Everyone seemed to have…slipped away.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We wrecked the RV, but weren’t able to grab anyone.”

  Karl stood there silent, looking curiously at him, as if he was speaking a different language.

  “How many were there? Six? Seven? You caught no one?”

  “What do you want me to say?” Bruce asked. “They were armed, somehow they survived the initial crash, we thought we could—”

  “Weren’t two of them like…twelve years old?”

  Bruce’s cheeks flushed, and he eased his eyes closed, mentally slowing his breathing. He’d been treated pretty well to this point, a good sight better than most of America was doing right now, and if he wanted to keep his place in this hierarchy, he knew he had to swallow some pride.

  “The van is still in pursuit,” he said. “We’ll get them.”

  “Be sure you do,” Karl hissed. “Especially Agent Liu. I want him in front of me by sun rise, do you understand?”

  “What’s so important about Agent Liu?” Cavendish asked.

  “He’s a little too curious for my liking. Or for our benefactor’s liking. He likes digging in the dirt, and we want to be sure he digs his own grave while he’s at it.”

  Cavendish nodded. “What about the others? The Frasers?”

  Karl shrugged. “I don’t care what happens to them.”

  “I owe them for my brother.”

  “Seems like a fair exchange,” Karl replied.

  Bruce looked out across the wide expanse of the shopping mall, and noticed, not for the first time, just how many others were scattered throughout, all of them with shaved heads and dark clothing. Many of them had biker jackets, a few others with turtle neck “commando” type sweaters, while others just wore simple t-shirts or tank tops. Most of them wore some variation of hiking or combat boots, and the majority of them had rifles slung over their shoulders—a few bolt-action single shot rifles and a few semi-automatics. He only counted one fully automatic among them, from what he could see. Quietly he did some mental math, wondering if things totally fell apart, just how outmatched he and his team would be. He didn’t especially like his odds, and for that reason, if no other, he’d play nice.

  At least for now.

  Chapter 7

  While it looked somewhat the worse for wear, the red sports car rounded the bend and coasted towards the site of the wrecked RV. The camper was reduced to a scattered pile of tangled metal and twisted plastic. A single headlight roamed over the dark street, passing by the heap, shining a pale light over the road and what covered it. Up above the approaching car, the sky had begun to lighten as the night pressed on towards dawn, the monotonous passage of time refusing to be slowed even by the worst of man-made Armageddon. The sleek, red show car riddled with bullet holes and scratches cruised past the wreck, drove a short way down the road, then executed a lumbering three-point turn and came back around, illuminating the opposite side of the smashed RV. Broken metal trailed from the heap and dragged across the road as if it were the trail of some scrap metal snail leaving traces of it in its wake.

  The red car jolted to a screeching stop as the light fell upon the trail of metal, the driver of the car not wanting to ride through it, and it pulled off to the shoulder, the engine winding down to nothing.

  “Looks empty,” Liu reported, stepping out of the driver’s seat of the vehicle. As he slammed the door behind him, the rear door opened and Max stepped out, followed by Brad. All three of them had pistols clenched in fingers, two hands pressed together as if they were experts, taking cautious, even steps around the wreckage.

  Liu lifted his weapon as he approached the main wreckage and used the barrel of the pistol to push aside some debris, sending it clattering down to the pavement. Max veered off left, searching the rear of the vehicle, where he and Brad had pulled Liu from, and found nothing unusual there either.

  “So far, nothing,” Liu said. “On the plus side, no bodies, no blood, nothing like that, either, so it certainly looks like everyone made it out okay.”

  “Then where did they go?” asked Max.

  “They probably scattered like we did. Went looking for shelter.”

  “Then maybe they’ll be coming back?”

  Liu glanced at his watch. “I don’t know. It’s been a while. The sun will be up shortly.”

  “Over here, guys,” Brad said from several yards away, gesturing towards another tangled mess of metal, crumpled panels and shattered glass, twinkling under the emerging sun, breaking through the clouds.

  Liu moved away towards Brad, and Max came around the other side of the wreckage, and they both came together on where Brad was standing.

  “Yikes,” whispered Max. “That’s the front of the RV. Where mom and dad were.”

  “Yeah, it’s trashed,” said Brad. “But it’s also empty.”

  Max came around and crouched down, looking through the peeled away windshield into the empty space beyond. “It looks like they kicked out the windshield here.”

  Liu walked the perimeter of the crash site. “We’ve got a bullet hole over here,” he said, looking at a chunk of the camper’s roof that had peeled away and been tossed. He moved away and walked along the road, pulling out a flashlight and shining the ground over by where Route 29 took over. “Looks like some footprints over here,” he continued. “Heading north.”

  “So we head north,” Max said.

  Liu led the way from the RV back towards the sports car, walking around the pile of metal shards on the road. Max and Brad swung around and went into the backseat while Brandon slipped into the driver’s seat again, started the car, and gunned the engine. Angling the sloped car over into the grass and swerving around the debris, he shifted into gear and lurched forward, back onto the main road, and headed north.

  “So where do we go? Lakeview?” Max asked.

  “Makes the most sense to me,” Liu replied. “Let’s hope everyone else has the same idea.”

  ***

  It hadn’t felt like they were that far from the crash site, but as Phil and Rhonda walked along the edge of the two-lane highway, their breath started coming in ragged, uneven gasps. Their steps slowed as they progressed, each one coming more carefully and calculated than the last. They walked along the shoulder to avoid being too visible in the road.

  “How are you holding up?” Phil asked.

  “Shoulder’s killing me,” Rhonda replied.

  “What did Vicky say about it, anyway? Bone broken?”

  “She didn’t seem to
think so. Just some serious muscle damage. She called it ‘very lucky’.”

  “Karma has been on our side lately.”

  “It won’t be forever. That’s kind of the way karma works.”

  Phil looked over at her. “Well at least the end of the world hasn’t dampened your optimism.”

  “Is that where we’re going here?” Rhonda asked. “Kicking me while I’m down?”

  Phil put an arm around her. “Relax, hon. I’m just joking.”

  “I’m glad you can find humor in all of this, Phillip. I don’t know if I’m capable.”

  “I know you better than that.” Phil took his arm back off her shoulder as they walked. “It takes more than nuclear holocaust to break you.”

  Rhonda scoffed and shook her head. “The way you say it, I’m some sort of heartless beast.”

  “That’s why we love you.”

  She stopped walking and looked at him. “Don’t give me that. I know you think you’re being funny, but I swear sometimes Winnie does think that way.”

  “Winnie’s a different kind of kid,” Phil said.

  “She’s a daddy’s girl.”

  Phil nodded. “Nobody’s questioning that. Lydia was yours, Winnie’s mine.”

  Rhonda nodded. “She certainly was.”

  “You okay?”

  Rhonda nodded.“Just thinking about Christmas. Not last Christmas, I think it was the one before.”

  “That wasn’t the dreaded UCLA argument was it?” Phil asked.

  Rhonda shook her head, but she didn’t chuckle as Phil had hoped she would. “No. That was the year she didn’t buy anyone any presents. She didn’t want to support the ‘capitalist agenda’. She made that speech about the founding fathers or whatever at Christmas dinner. Do you remember that?”

  Phil stopped walking. “I’d forgotten all about that,” Phil said, chuckling. “Where did she get all that from?”

  Rhonda shrugged.

  “She was ahead of her years,” Phil said, smirking.

  “I miss her, Phil. I want her back.”

  “I know, Rhonda. She’s a big girl. She can handle herself.”

  “I know…but I’m not sure I can handle myself without her.”

  Phil moved close to her and placed a hand around her shoulder, squeezing, and Rhonda leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “What about Max?” She asked as she walked alongside him.

  Phil rolled his eyes. “Heaven help whoever wants to claim him.”

  They both laughed under the lightening purple sky, the clouds peeling away and the stars fading as the sun crawled its way up from the horizon. The flashing blue lights of the barricade were visible under the lightening sky as they walked, the gravel of the shoulder crunching under feet.

  “What’s that?” Phil asked, looking up ahead, down Route 29. “Do you see that?”

  Rhonda followed where he was looking and she saw it, too. “Headlights?”

  “A headlight,” Phil corrected. “Just looks like one.”

  They both looked at each other.

  “What are the chances the driver is friendly?” asked Rhonda.

  “I don’t like those chances,” Phil replied.

  The headlight careened towards them, moving at a high rate of speed.

  “Down, Rhonda, down!” Phil said, wrapping his arms around his wife and pushing her towards the side of the road, sending them both crashing onto where the gravel met the grass, rolling down the gentle slope. Up above them a red car screamed along the road, roaring above them and vanishing past, heading north up route 29.

  “You okay?” Phil asked as Rhonda tried to push herself up on her elbows.

  “I think so,” she mumbled. “Didn’t do my shoulder any favors, but I think it’ll be okay.”

  “Did you see who was driving?” Phil asked, but Rhonda shook her head.

  “I was too busy being judo thrown to the ground by my abusive husband.”

  “I'm pretty sure if I ever really tried to abuse you, you'd wreck me.”

  “No doubt about it.”

  Phil helped her towards the side of the road, and as they watched the red car vanish down the road, they started making their way back towards the RV.

  ***

  “Did you see that?” Brad asked as the sports car sped north along route 29. “I thought I saw someone on the side of the road.”

  “Probably no one we want to run into,” said Max. Still, he crawled over Brad and checked out the window but didn’t see anyone.

  “Get back in your seat and buckle up, kid,” Liu barked from the driver’s seat.

  “Whatever you say, mom,” Max replied, rolling his eyes and getting back in his seat, buckling his belt.

  Liu shifted into fourth gear in the Subaru WRX, the sleek red car grinding, then bolting forward, picking up speed. Through the windshield he could see the shifting color of the horizon, the dark just starting to scantly lighten, though much of the sky was still cloaked in black. As he squinted through the front window, he swung open the center console, remembering that his phone had been on its way to critical battery life not too long ago. To his immense joy there was a charging port in the center console, and a USB cable dangled out of it, the bare end hanging there like a single nugget of gold inside a sluice box filled with grit. Liu steered with an elbow while he plugged the phone into the cable, then rested it on the seat next to him, shifting back into third as he slowed.

  Almost immediately, the phone thrummed a single, jerking vibration. A new message. Brandon scooped up the phone from the seat, reading the message while steering.

  “Hey, don’t text and drive. You want to kill us?” Max barked.

  “Chill, kid, the street’s empty!” Still, he managed to shift down again and slowed the speed, easing close to the shoulder of route 29. The message on the screen didn’t fill him with much comfort.

  Digging up dirt. Militias deployed to strategic locations to support rogue federal agencies. Chicago a hot spot.

  Liu shook his head as the WRX continued its steady trek forward, and he balanced the phone in his right hand, thumbing his acknowledged response. He let Orosco know where they were and where they were heading, then sent the message and powered down the phone to conserve battery, dropping it back in the seat.

  Shifting back into fourth, he accelerated, watching the sun continue its crawl up the eastern horizon.

  “You think any stores are open in the mall?” Max asked.

  Brad shrugged.

  “Man, I haven’t been to a GameStop in forever.”

  “Me neither,” replied Brad. “Mom didn’t really like video games, though. Especially not the shooters.”

  Max shook his head. “You ain’t lived until you played Halo, man.”

  Brad chuckled. “Halo is so old school. Before I came to Vernon, everyone was all about Titanfall and Call of Duty. All those games.”

  “Yeah, I guess. You know the best game I played this year? Horizon: Zero Dawn, man. That thing was crazy!”

  “I heard of that,” Brad said. “Fantasy and stuff, right?”

  “Kind of. Takes place after the apocalypse—” Max started to say but drifted off. Suddenly, that term didn’t seem quite as interesting as it had been a month ago. It had gone from some esoteric genre to a brutal, violent reality. The idea of playing a game that somehow celebrated the end of the world was almost offensive.

  Brad looked at Max and sensed his discomfort. “Shoot, maybe we’ll see some elves or archers or some crap.”

  Max chuckled. “Yeah, maybe. Rather see some archers than more guys with guns.”

  “I hear that.”

  Liu looked out of the passenger’s side window at the sprawling lake to their right as they traveled north. It was a long and rippling body of water stretching out alongside route 29, looking calm and almost normal as they passed, a small pocket of consistency among the shifting landscape of a violent world. He turned his head back towards the windshield, his eyes darting to the rear view mirror.r />
  Even in the rising light of near dawn, the two headlights brought him to full attention. They faded into the reflection in his mirror, then grew closer and larger, coming in at a high rate of speed.

  “Boys? Hold on to something.”

  Max turned to look out the back window. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got company coming,” Liu said.

  This time Brad twisted in his seat. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know, but they’re coming fast. And we were seen taking off with this car from the dealership.” Liu glanced left, eyeing the rows of strip malls and convenience stores across the two lanes of traffic, then he looked back again, the headlights growing even closer. Without warning, he slammed down on the clutch and down shifted, his tires grabbing pavement and screaming, leaving black marks in a tight arc, the back end sweeping suddenly around before the car leaped forward, tearing across two lanes of road. As the WRX charged forward, a dark panel van hurtled behind them, slamming on its brakes to compensate for the new direction of the sports car.

  Liu swerved onto a narrow side street to the left of a convenience store as the van managed a clumsy sideways skid, then followed the car across the road. The Subaru torqued right, whipping around the store and squeezing down a narrow lane behind as the van came up around on its rear, moving at a full, lumbering speed. Liu realized he’d made a mistake right away, the single lane passage cutting down behind a full strip mall with no opportunities to veer off from the straight away. As he looked in the mirror, he saw someone lean out of the passenger window, a rifle clutched in two hands, then open fire, light blasting from the weapon, sending it jerking. Gunfire chattered all throughout the enclosed passage, reverberating from the walls.

  “Heads down!” Liu screamed and both Max and Brad ducked low to the back seat as bullets clanged off the rear of the slanted roof of the Subaru. Inside the car it sounded like a dozen sudden hammer strikes and the car jerked left, smashing through three trash cans that stood resting against a building to the left. Liu compensated, hauling the wheel to the right and shifting up, then he punched the accelerator. Behind him, the broad body of the van simply barreled through boxes and trash cans, knocking them aside, throwing debris over its blunt hood, picking up speed with no fear of being stopped by an errant container. Three more shots echoed out, slamming the rear trunk and one shot thunked into the rear windshield though it didn’t shatter.