The Perseid Collapse (The Perseid Collapse Series 1)

by Konkoly, Steven

  “Morning, gentlemen. May I ask where you came from and where you’re headed?”

  As agreed earlier, Ed led the conversation for the group. Alex thought it would appear strange if one of the passengers was the primary spokesperson. Possibly suspicious. If Ed faltered in any way, Alex would interject, but otherwise he’d leave the talking to the driver.

  “Good morning, Officer. We’re headed to Boston to pick up our kids. My daughter is at Boston College, and his son is at Boston University. We left Scarborough about an hour ago and saw that the York tollbooth was blocked in both directions. We’re looking to take the back roads down into the city,” said Ed.

  “Can I see your license and registration? If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I’d like to take a look at your licenses as well,” said the officer, nodding at Alex and Charlie.

  The officer examined the Jeep’s registration and their licenses, handing everything back to Ed for redistribution.

  “Not a great time to be out on the roads,” said the officer.

  “We don’t have much of a choice,” said Ed.

  “I suppose not. You should be good to go until you reach the border,” said the officer. “Rumor has it that the locals have shut down all of the crossings. Not sure if that means both ways. Nobody wants a repeat of what happened during the crisis a few years ago.”

  Alex didn’t want to drag out their time at the checkpoint, but he needed more information about the general situation.

  “Officer, what’s happening at the York tollbooth? It looked like a parking lot,” he asked.

  “Maine Guard units have secured the far end of the Piscataqua River Bridge. They’re letting Maine residents or family of residents through for further processing at the tollbooth. They’re being thorough, from what I hear. The governor ordered it,” said the officer.

  “I’m surprised they can get past Kittery. We drove through nearly a foot of mud between here and York.”

  “Plows cleared a path from York to the bridge for the guard units mobilized out of Sanford. From what we heard, it took them forever.”

  Ed asked the officer, “Has anyone heard anything from Boston?”

  “Coastal areas from Boston on up were hit hard by tsunami and wind damage. A windblast hit us here, but the damage was mostly superficial. Broken windows and branches on the ground. The tsunami did the real damage. Wiped out everything east of Route 1 in Wells and Ogunquit,” he said and paused before continuing. “People are saying it was a lot worse in Boston.”

  “I’m sorry to have brought it up, Officer. I hope your family is safe,” said Alex.

  “Thank you. We live west of the turnpike, but a lot of the people we know weren’t so lucky. It’s…uh…I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen anything like this. How was it up in Portland?”

  “The same. We live two miles from Higgins Beach and saw definitive signs of wreckage from the houses in that area. I think anyone living within a half mile of the water is gone,” said Alex.

  Officer Jenkins shook his head, fighting to keep his eyes from overflowing with tears. Alex couldn’t imagine the impact a disaster of this magnitude might have on a police officer who patrolled the streets of a small, coastal town. Jenkins probably knew most of the year-round residents by name.

  “Any official word on what exactly happened?” Alex asked. “I assume we got hit by an EMP.”

  “People report seeing a massive meteorite streak through the sky south of Boston, heading east. They think it hit somewhere out past Cape Cod,” said Jenkins.

  “Did they see it hit?” asked Ed.

  “Reports are sketchy. Keep in mind that I’m getting most of this information third hand from the York and state police. Apparently there was a massive flash to the east, but nobody they’ve talked to from the cars actually saw the explosion. There’s some talk of fires in Boston and people taken to the hospitals with third-degree burns from the flash.”

  “Sounds like the effects of a nuclear detonation. Add the EMP thing—I’m not convinced this is a natural event,” said Alex.

  “They think the meteorites or asteroid fragments might have disrupted the ionosphere and caused an EMP. Something like that. Nobody knows shit, basically,” the officer admitted.

  “That’s the real problem. Everybody is guessing.” They needed to get moving. “Keep your family safe, Officer. This is going to get a lot worse. You probably know that better than anyone.”

  “Yeah. Unfortunately, I know it all too well. I hope you get those kids back,” said the officer.

  The police officer moved his volunteers back and pulled his cruiser forward, clearing a path for their Jeep.

  “Stay frosty!” yelled Alex from his window, earning a few nods from the roadblock crew. “Take a right up here on 109,” he directed.

  “That was easy enough. He barely looked in the car,” said Ed.

  “He didn’t care. Our paperwork backed up our story, so he had no real reason to dig any further,” Alex explained.

  “I’m glad the two of you had fun. I was shitting my pants back here wondering what our plan might be if that little interaction had gone fucking south for the winter,” said Charlie.

  “Our best play is to avoid the police or any kind of checkpoint. If there’s no way around it, like back there, we give them our story, identification, and hope for the best. If the police decide to search the car, we can always flee.”

  “With two AR-15s and a shotgun working us over, I don’t think we would have gotten very far,” said Charlie.

  “I didn’t get the sense that his crew would have pushed the issue if we had put the Jeep in reverse and left the way we came,” said Alex.

  “What about the next crew? What about the group that decides their town needs a four-wheel-drive vehicle more than two dads trying to rescue their Ivy League kids—and I mean nothing by that. Just saying what others might be thinking. We need to come up with a better plan for these checkpoints. This won’t be our last,” said Charlie.

  “I’m not drawing down on the police or National Guard. We either flee or surrender to a search if it comes to that,” said Alex.

  “What if they start shooting?”

  “Then we shoot back. We’re well within our rights to refuse a search and turn around without being shot at,” said Ed.

  “I’m with Ed on that one,” said Charlie.

  Alex agreed, but he needed Ed and Charlie to come to this decision on their own. He’d already reached this verdict when they turned around at the York tollbooth. The last thing he wanted to do was engage the police in a firefight, but they had every right to defend themselves, especially with so much riding on the success of their journey. Avoidance was their best strategy, but eventually they would find themselves facing another checkpoint—and another. They needed more than a general agreement.

  “All right. It sounds like we’re all on the same sheet of music. Let’s game plan more scenarios and establish rules of engagement. We should have done this last night. That’s my bust. I should have known better. I wanted to get a better feel for what we’d be up against out here. We really got lucky back there,” said Alex.

  “I was ready to rock and roll if that went the way of the taco,” said Charlie.

  They both laughed at his reference.

  “There’s more where that came from,” said Charlie.

  “I don’t doubt it. Why don’t you chamber a round in both of the ARs and put them on safe. We’ll need every fraction of a second possible if things…”

  “Rapidly devolve into a clusterfuck?” Charlie said helpfully.

  “Exactly,” said Alex.

  Chapter 24

  EVENT +29:15 Hours

  South Berwick, Maine

  Alex scanned the road ahead for the inevitable roadblock. They quickly approached the Overlook Golf Course, which marked the edge of town and the most logical place to stop cars headed into South Berwick’s downtown area. He risked a glance at the parking lot, seeing several cars parked in
the far corner of the spacious lot. The cars probably belonged to the golfers with the first tee times yesterday morning. He remembered driving through this area during the summer for Biosphere Pharmaceuticals. The Overlook had always teemed with golfers and summer events in the white tent next to the eighteenth green. As they passed the clubhouse and raised barn, Alex saw the tent standing empty next to the green.

  He imagined a massive, outdoor wedding reception on Sunday afternoon and wondered if the newlywed couple was stuck somewhere between here and Logan International Airport, their honeymoon a long-vanished afterthought. Alex envisioned millions of scenarios like this playing out across the nation, each one consuming the focus of those involved, creating a desperate tunnel vision to survive. The sudden introduction of this desperate focus to millions of people would create a dangerous world.

  “Look at those crazy assholes!” said Charlie, pointing out of the left passenger window.

  In the middle of a distant fairway, on a rise past a small pond, two men hopped out of a green golf cart. One of them grabbed a golf club from a bag in the back, while the other opened the red cooler that had been stashed between the two men on the front seat. Alex couldn’t see what he pulled out of the cooler, but given the fact that these two were golfing little more than twenty-four hours after a tsunami wiped out the coast and the power grid was taken down, he imagined they weren’t messing around with cans of soda. He felt surprisingly ambivalent toward two men golfing at ten in the morning. They obviously didn’t have any pressing matters—yet.

  “Ignorance is bliss,” said Alex.

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, “until they come knocking on your door looking for shit.”

  “Fucking idiots,” mumbled Ed, concentrating on the road.

  “The town starts just past that taller tree line. You should slow down a bit,” said Alex.

  Ed had just started to decelerate the jeep when Alex spotted the roadblock outside of South Berwick’s downtown area. The road curved, gently revealing the distinctive shape and style of a police cruiser perpendicular to the road, blocking the inbound lane and most of the asphalt shoulder. A blue minivan blocked the outbound lanes.

  “Slowly stop the car and turn us around. Damn it. I thought we might be able to slip through the outskirts of town. We’ll backtrack to one of the local roads a mile or two behind us. Figure out how to break through to Route 9,” said Alex, fumbling with the map book between the seats.

  “They’re flashing us!” said Ed, slamming on the brakes.

  Alex braced his hands on the dashboard to keep his head from striking the glove box, feeling the binoculars slide from his lap onto the floor. The police car’s red and blue LED strobes ominously pierced the distance between them. He estimated that Ed had stopped the Jeep roughly five hundred feet from the blockade, which put them at a relatively safe distance from immediate gunfire. Ed had unknowingly done them a favor with his panicked stop. Possibly a bigger favor than any of them had counted on.

  Unlike the group at the Wells exit, the South Berwick blocking force had chosen to stand behind their vehicles, making it difficult for him to analyze weapons and personal equipment. Four men and a woman. From what he could tell, they were all armed. A sixth person sat behind the wheel of the police car, wearing a campaign hat. One of the men hunched down behind the police cruiser’s hood, fumbling with something on the hood. He dug around for the binoculars and raised them to his face.

  He shook his head. “Turn left and get us out of here.”

  Ed yanked the wheel left and drove the Jeep forward, exposing Alex to the roadblock.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Charlie.

  “They’re scoping us in with a rifle. Ed, faster, please.”

  “Do you want your HK?” Charlie asked him.

  “No! Keep your hands above the window line. Do not give them any reason to send a bullet in our direction.”

  Alex took one more look at the roadblock through his binoculars and saw that the man behind the cruiser’s hood had stood up, which was a relief. Nobody in the group appeared to be in a hurry to jump in the vehicles. Even better. Ed completed the U-turn and gunned the engine. Alex handed the binoculars to Charlie as they passed the Overlook clubhouse.

  “I think they wanted to scare us away,” said Alex, handing the binoculars to Charlie.

  “It worked,” said Ed.

  “You can slow down. They’re still standing around,” said Charlie.

  “That was different,” said Alex.

  “Very different,” Charlie agreed. “Do you think they scope everyone that approaches?”

  “I didn’t see any binoculars. It might be all they have to make a long-range identification.”

  “Helluva greeting,” said Charlie.

  “Who in their right mind is going to drive up to the roadblock with a gun trained on them?” asked Ed.

  “Maybe that’s the point. They don’t want anybody approaching.”

  Ed glanced at Alex. “Where do we turn for Route 9?”

  “Up here a little bit. You’re looking for Blackberry Hill Road. I might break out the GPS if we get too deep into the back roads.”

  “You want it now?” Charlie asked.

  “Not yet. If Route 9 is a bust, we’ll put it to work.”

  “I say we skip Route 9. We don’t need a trigger-happy local putting a bullet through the engine block or one of our heads,” Ed said nervously. “As much as I want to move this trip along, I think you’re right about finding a less crowded crossing further west.”

  “Then crack out the GPS, Charlie,” Alex said. “We won’t bother trying to get through Berwick. There’s a crossing at East Rochester and—”

  “I wouldn’t bother with that one,” Charlie cut in. “Rochester is a few miles across the border along Route 11. It might be busier than the Route 4 crossing in South Berwick.”

  “We don’t know how busy Route 4 was,” Ed pointed out.

  “If they’re guarding the ass end of town, trust me, it’s crowded. These towns are under a lot of pressure to avoid a replay of the Jakarta Pandemic,” Charlie said. “We need to find a road that’s not connected to a major city in New Hampshire or a town in Maine.”

  Alex studied the map for a minute, while Ed searched for Blackberry Hill Road. He traced the border with his finger, shaking his head every time it stopped. He needed something away from Rochester, but options thinned past Milton, New Hampshire. Route 125 intersected with Milton, making it a less than optimal choice.

  Long lines at the border crossing in Rochester would push refugees north along the border on Route 125. Milton was one of the last crossing points before diverting several miles north. They were guaranteed to run into a strong local presence on the Maine side of the border near Milton. Tactically, Alex would fortify this point, so they would avoid it. Crisscrossing roads, he settled on the last small-town crossing before Route 109. He paged through the map book for a more detailed look at the town, smiling at what he found on the map.

  “Milton Mills, New Hampshire,” he said.

  “Never heard of it,” said Charlie.

  “Good,” Alex replied. “I think we’re looking at about twenty-five miles—probably fifty minutes on back roads—but the town has two crossings, and it’s just far enough north to give us some less crowded options for reaching Route 125.”

  “That far?” said Ed.

  “It’s the last crossing on the map before Route 109. We all know 109 will be guarded. It’s a direct route to Sanford.”

  “At this rate, we’ll be lucky to get to Medford before dark,” said Ed.

  “If it rains as hard as I think it will, we might not get there at all,” said Charlie.

  Alex shook his head. “We’re too far inland for that to be a problem. Plus, a heavy rain will keep people inside. Fewer idiots checking out our ride.”

  “I’m worried about the area around Haverhill,” said Charlie, “it’s right on the Merrimack about ten or so miles to the ocean.”

&n
bsp; “We just need to get over the border, and we’ll have smooth sailing through most of New Hampshire,” said Alex, turning to meet Charlie’s doubtful eyes. “Seriously. We get to 125 and we’re home free until we ditch the Jeep,” he said, purposely avoiding eye contact.

  Alex stared past Ed at the bank of dark clouds swallowing up the remaining patches of blue sky. He doubted they would reach the crossing before the rain, which suited him fine. The rain would mask their approach. One way or the other, this Jeep would negotiate the border at Milton Mills. The choice between a hard or soft negotiation rested with the people guarding the bridges.

  Chapter 25

  EVENT +29:52 Hours

  Sanford, Maine

  Harrison Campbell approached the red-sided barn along a worn dirt path, nodding to his second in command, who stood in the barn’s open bay door. He glanced momentarily at the assembly of vehicles parked on the worn grass in front of the barn, noting the mix. A few economy sedans and an old Subaru Forrester. They’d need full-size SUVs and pickup trucks to handle regular supply delivery and general hauling. He supposed they should be thankful. None of them had put much faith in the latest rendition of the government’s Critical National Infrastructure report. He’d gladly take a few beat-up sedans over nothing.

  When he reached the barn door, his deputy commander rendered a salute, which Campbell returned. Glen Cuskelly was dressed in woodland camouflage fatigues, with the York County Readiness Brigade patch displayed prominently on his right shoulder. A second patch was Velcroed to his left breast pocket, identifying him as the brigade’s deputy commander. Tan combat boots and a black baseball cap imprinted with the brigade’s logo completed the uniform, which Harrison insisted all of the county-level chapter leaders wore in the field or in public.

  He had led the York County Readiness Brigade, formerly known as the York County Militia, through a public perception transformation over the past several years. Long gone were the days of mismatched uniforms, public displays of military-style weaponry and weekend tactical assault training. The word militia had become synonymous with gun-toting, doomsday-fearing, antigovernment revolutionaries, which couldn’t be further from the true purpose of his group.