The Quell

by E S Richards

  Chapter 14

  “Come on, everybody in! There’s space at the back for all of you; grab a bottle of water on your way as well.”

  Calling out the encouraging words, Dixon waited by the entrance to the transport truck as three young children and their father rushed over to the vehicle. This was the second group they’d picked up, and while it meant slowing their progress down on the journey out towards Pittsburgh, Dixon was glad they were doing it. They had driven through such horrible scenes already; no one in the truck had the heart to turn anyone who truly needed help away.

  Making it out of Washington had been nearly impossible. That was the only time when they’d all agreed they couldn’t stop. With fires burning in almost every corner, Jared, the chief engineer, had been forced to drive with extreme caution. They were all too aware of how easily something could catch fire, and after Mary told them all the horror story of the vehicle she’d seen explode, no one wanted to take any risks.

  That hadn’t stopped people trying to get on their truck though. It had to have been hundreds of people who had ran up to them, banging on the windows and desperately trying to tug the door of the moving vehicle open. On two occasions, Dixon had been worried that the mass of people was going to topple the truck. He, Kyle, and Mathers had been forced to point their guns at the people outside, threatening to shoot if they didn’t leave them alone. Thankfully they hadn’t needed to follow through on the threat, although a few menacing shots had been fired into nearby walls and buildings. It wasn’t something Dixon was proud of doing, but he understood it was necessary for them to get away. The safety of the people in the truck—and more specifically Mary—was his top priority.

  Once they had left the confines of the city though, the journey became more pleasant. Destruction was still blatant everywhere they looked, but it was definitely less intense and they could pass by without fearing for the lives of thousands. The one thing that could never be overlooked was the panic in people’s eyes. Even if the area they lived in seemed fine, you could tell right away that people were scared of what was to come. Dixon couldn’t blame them, after everything he had witnessed in Washington; he knew how terrifying the world could quickly become.

  After about five hours of driving, the roads forcing them to travel at a much slower pace than normal, they were finally nearing an area that they all regarded as a good place to set up camp. That was when they’d encountered the first pair they’d decided to stop and pick up. Two young children—no more than eight or nine years old—were wandering along the side of the road, their bags packed and slung over their shoulders like they were simply making the journey home from school.

  ***

  “Hey,” Mary exclaimed, “look at them!”

  Glancing out of the window to where Mary was pointing, Dixon noticed the two children she’d seen trudging along by the side of the road just ahead of them. They looked completely disheveled, their clothing torn and dirty, their hair matted with what Dixon hoped was only dirt, and their body language was depressed and frightened. When they heard the sound of the truck behind them, both glanced back over their shoulders, looking then to each other with startled expressions as they started running away from the road into an adjacent field.

  “Stop the truck!” Mary shouted forward, pushing herself out of her seat and staggering forward to where Jared was driving. “Pull over!”

  “Mary, what are you doing?”

  “We can’t just leave them, Dixon,” Mary argued back. “They’re children.”

  After shooting a quick glance to Dixon and receiving a nod in response, Jared slowly pulled the truck over to the side of the road. As soon as the doors were opened, Mary was outside, calling out to the children in an attempt to get them to stop. Naturally the shouting didn’t help and they started running faster, heading towards what looked like an abandoned farmhouse. Their path worried Dixon slightly—the farmhouse might look abandoned, but after everything they’d witnessed, he was concerned there could be people hiding out there.

  “Kyle,” Dixon nodded to his fellow soldier, “let’s get out there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, we need to make sure they’re safe. Come on.”

  Joining Mary outside the truck, Dixon and Kyle started walking in the direction of the farmhouse, the two children now out of sight. Both the men did their best to conceal their weapons, neither wanting to frighten the children any further but aware they needed to be armed in case something happened. Those who remained behind closed the doors of the transport truck, the four of them mindful that they needed to protect the vehicle at all costs. There wasn’t anyone else around, but that didn’t mean the situation couldn’t change at the drop of a hat.

  “Did you see them go inside?” Dixon spoke in a low voice to Mary as the three of them got closer to the house, the appearance of the building deteriorating the closer they got.

  “No,” Mary shook her head. “They disappeared around here though. Maybe let me go first.”

  Dixon and Kyle both nodded, agreeing that Mary looked the least intimidating of the three by far. Edging around the corner of one of the barns, Mary poked her head into what must have been an old stable. There wasn’t any sign of any people or animals on the farm anymore, whoever had lived there seeming to have deserted it long before the solar crash took place. The two children, though, were both present. Mary spotted them immediately, cowering in one another’s arms behind a bale of old hay. They looked so tiny and shaken, like a pair of lost lambs the farmer had forgotten about.

  “Hey,” Mary spoke softly, “hey, it’s okay. Are you guys all right?”

  Neither of the children spoke, both letting out low whimpers instead and shuffling farther back to the wall of the stable. It was obvious they didn’t understand what was happening, and where their parents had gone was a complete mystery—based on their appearance, Mary sadly believed it was a strong possibility they had died, the children now left to fend for themselves alone, unless she had anything to do with it.

  “You guys must be really tired and hungry. Do you want to come with us and get something to eat?”

  The young boy looked up at this point, the promise of food piquing his interest. Mary took this as a good sign and took a small step forward, leaving Dixon and Kyle both still just out of sight. She knew the presence of them would probably startle the kids further, and wanted to at least get them talking before they appeared.

  “My name is Mary; I was on that truck you saw earlier. There’s a group of us driving out to a safe place. We’d love for you both to join us. What are your names?”

  “T-Toby,” the little boy stuttered, earning himself a sharp elbow in the ribs from the girl, which Mary forced herself not to giggle at.

  “Hi, Toby,” she smiled instead. “And is this your sister?”

  “Yes,” Toby nodded, shuffling slightly away from her and growing in confidence. “Izzy.”

  “Hello, Izzy,” Mary extended her greeting to the young girl as well. “Would you both like to join me on the truck you saw?”

  “Is there food?” Toby asked, now climbing to his feet and encouraging his sister to do the same.

  “There is,” Mary smiled, “and several of my friends as well. But we’ll all protect you.”

  Following a few more sentences of coaxing, Mary managed to convince Toby and Izzy to walk out of the stable, introducing them to Dixon and Kyle first which they dealt with very well. As the five of them headed back to the transport truck, Mary held on to Izzy’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Jared met them by the door to the truck, welcoming both children inside with a bottle of water each.

  “Everything okay?” Jared questioned as he closed the door again, sealing them all back inside the truck.

  “All good,” Mary confirmed. “Everyone, this is Toby and Izzy—they’re going to be joining us from now on.”

  Smiles and welcomes were passed around, most of the original group not really certain how to act around
the two young children. Thankfully, Imogen stepped forward, the middle-aged nurse who’d joined their team from the makeshift medical area that had been set up in the White House. She didn’t have any children of her own, but was very close to her three young nephews so she knew exactly how to act around Toby and Izzy. Both of the children warmed to her immediately and within five minutes Dixon felt comfortable giving Jared the nod to start driving again. Before they knew it, the group was back on the road and steaming towards their destination of Pittsburgh.

  ***

  As Dixon remembered how complicated it had been persuading Toby and Izzy to join their group, he was pleasantly surprised by how willingly the second rescue mission had gone. The father, Grant, and his three children they had just welcomed into the truck sat at the back happily, Grant explaining what had happened to his family since the power went out. Dixon wondered whether they would have crossed paths with Grant and his family eventually anyway; the four of them had been walking in the same direction they continued to travel now, the spot they had chosen to set up the relief camp less than an hour’s drive away.

  The time passed before he knew it, and pretty soon their group was all unloading the transport truck into a large field, the area around it checked out and free of any potential dangers. Kyle and Mathers had gone off to do a perimeter sweep anyway, leaving the rest of them to get started with setting up the camp. There was a lot to do, but Dixon was confident they could get most of it squared away before nightfall. The thing he was most concerned about was their protection; he didn’t want the camp to be raided before it was even established.

  Jared, Grant, Mary, and the other engineer, Jessica, did the majority of the set up while Imogen kept the children entertained and Dixon kept watch and tried to plan for all possibilities. He had taken charge of the group wholeheartedly, but the responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders, especially now there were five young children to look after as well. If Imogen hadn’t been a part of their group, he didn’t know what they would have done; the nurse had been incredibly valuable to them in that respect.

  As darkness quickly began to settle in, Kyle and Mathers returned and confirmed to Dixon that the area seemed secure. Of course, they all knew that that could change at any moment, but Kyle volunteered to take the first watch overnight, protecting everyone else while they slept. With shift patterns agreed upon, there was little left for anyone to do except eat a quick meal and retire to the communal tent they’d set up as sleeping quarters.

  Dixon made sure he kept Mary by his side, though she seemed fine, because he knew this was a big change for everyone and wanted to keep a close eye on her. It couldn’t have been easy for her to make the decision to leave her father behind, especially when the whereabouts of her mother were still unknown. He was incredibly proud of her for everything she had done, each of her actions reminding him of one of the countless reasons why he loved her so much.

  Finding a makeshift bed next to her, Dixon lay down and couldn’t help but think about the sacrifices everyone had made to be there. They all had families back in Washington and yet, when the need arose, they were all willing to leave them behind to do what was needed of them to save their country. There had been countless examples that Dixon had experienced of how the solar crash had torn the country and the people within it apart, but when he looked around, he saw the opposite.

  The people he was with had been brought together by disaster. They were fighting against it to try and do what was right and to save as many others as possible in the process. Five children and Grant had already joined their cause, six people who very likely might have never found somewhere safe if it hadn’t been for them. That was all Dixon had wanted to do when he volunteered for the relief mission. He had spent so much of his life as a soldier, causing violence or inflicting pain. For once he wanted to be a bringer of peace when it was most needed, and finally he was getting that chance. It may make months or even years for the world to return to how it had been before the solar crash, but he would be there every step of the way, helping to pick up the pieces. As long as there was breath in his lungs and blood in his veins, Dixon Daniels wasn’t going to stop until his world returned to normal.

  Chapter 15

  Looking down at the fuel gauge on his bike, Harrison prayed that by some magical explanation, what he knew was about to happen wouldn’t happen. The arrow had been flickering over the red empty zone ever since they left earlier that morning, his bike running seriously low on gas. Now was the worst possible time for it to run out though, they were as close as they were ever going to get to Detroit and with it being daylight, he knew things would be dangerous inside the city. In hindsight, Harrison knew they should’ve stopped earlier than they did the night before. Getting sleep in during the early evening and then traveling before sunrise would’ve been wiser—for once he was ready to admit to himself that he’d made the wrong decision.

  He wasn’t sure about the state of the fuel gauge on Len’s bike, but he suspected it would be nearing empty as well. They’d been very lucky to pick up the bikes with full tanks of gas, but riding them flat-out for a couple of days quickly burned through the fuel, even with the large tanks the bikes carried. Harrison thought about trying to find somewhere to siphon gas, but the memories of what happened the last time they did stopped him from considering it seriously. If they’d run into such disaster already, stopping around Detroit for any length of time would certainly be worse.

  As a result, there wasn’t any other option but for Harrison to keep his head down and keep pressing forward. He’d planned the route very carefully so that they remained as far away from the center of the city as possible, without adding on too much time. Hopefully they could make it to the river border between America and Canada before the bikes gave out. If they needed to walk to Toronto, he was okay with that—it was still only Detroit that worried him.

  Pushing his bike a little faster, Harrison heard James let out a small yelp in front of him. The young boy’s head bounced against Harrison’s chest as they rode, James securely fastened at the front of the bike so Harrison could still wear his rucksack as he rode. Still, the acceleration clearly hadn’t gone amiss, James clutching tightly to the handlebars in front of him as Harrison zoomed through the streets.

  Taking a corner much faster than he should have, Harrison heard another small yelp, except this time it didn’t come from James. In reality, it was more like a clunk, and it happened again even when Harrison slowed down. Gritting his teeth and cursing himself silently, Harrison knew right away what had happened. By him speeding the bike up in an attempt to get away from Detroit before the tank ran out, he had made exactly that happen. The burst of speed had eaten through the last drops of fuel and now the bike was slowing, stumbling to a halt.

  “What happened?” Len called out as he pulled his bike up next to Harrison, the engine still going while Harrison had switched his off.

  “No gas,” Harrison blew out with a frustrated exhalation of air. He knew it was his own fault this had happened; the day already seemed to be one mistake after another.

  “Right,” Len said uncertainly. “Are you completely out?”

  “Yeah, I wasted the last bit speeding up back there. Stupid move on my part, I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Len was quick to respond, noticing how Harrison’s demeanor was changing. “We’re almost out, too. We might as well walk from here.”

  “We still haven’t properly cleared Detroit,” Harrison replied as first Amy and then James climbed down from their passenger positions on the bikes, Amy handing her son a canteen of water from her rucksack.

  “How much farther do we have to go?”

  “Only about ten miles,” Harrison sighed. “Short work on the bike, be a couple hours by foot though.” Harrison cursed himself internally again, knowing he should’ve been more responsible. It wasn’t traveling alone like he normally did— this time he had others to look after as well. “How much fuel do you
have left?” He then asked as an afterthought, an idea springing into his head.

  “It’s in the red zone,” Len said after consulting his fuel gauge. “Can’t be very much.”

  Pushing his kickstand out with his foot, Harrison propped up his bike properly before dismounting and walking over to Len’s. Looking down at the gauge, he did some quick calculations in his head, estimating how far they had come since his own tank had as much left it in as Len’s did.

  “I think you could make it to the border. One of you should take James.”

  Len didn’t know what to say; the idea swam around in his head temptingly for a second, mulling over the pros and cons while Harrison waited patiently for a response. It made sense for Amy to take James on the bike if they had enough fuel to do it; Harrison had been whispering about the dangers of Detroit for days now and no part of him wanted to expose his family to that. But what if the bike didn’t have enough fuel? What if they were forced to stop in an even more dangerous area? It wasn’t worth the risk. Len needed to keep his family safe and the best way to do that was for them all to stay together.