by Mike Kraus
Rachel desperately wanted to get started north right away, but the sun was starting to set and Sam had flopped down at her feet, worn out from the day. “All right,” she sighed, “Fine. We’ll stay here tonight and get going at first light tomorrow.”
Leonard McComb
9:15 AM, March 31, 2038
After a quick breakfast of energy drinks and chips, Leonard filled the gas tank of the Jeep from the cars parked nearby and started off again. Driving through the city was a different experience than he had gone through so far. While driving on the highways was a challenge, driving through a city that had been destroyed was a unique challenge. Depending on where he was driving, he would have several minutes of clear pavement made by the vaporization and disintegration of entire blocks of buildings. This would be immediately followed by an hour or more of slow crawling through mounds of wreckage, some of which required that he get out and move it himself before taking the Jeep through.
Out in the water, to the left of Leonard as he wound through the city streets, he spied the masts of a ship jutting out. He paused and shut off the Jeep, jumping out to see what it was. After a few moments of staring out into the water, he recognized where he was standing. Years ago, Leonard took a vacation to Baltimore, and one of his stops had been the National Aquarium. In front of and surrounding him, he realized, was the main area of the aquarium. The foundation of the building was still intact, but the building itself had been blown apart, with most of it washing out into the bay.
Along with the sunken ship, there were huge chunks of steel and rounded plastic that formed some of the tanks used to hold the creatures in the aquarium. Sadness rushed over Leonard as he remembered his time at the aquarium. He had wanted to go back and visit, but many other things took priority and it gradually slipped so far down on his list that he forgot about it.
With a shake of his head, Leonard got back in the Jeep and continued on. The area near the bay was clearer than the rest of the city, so he stuck close to it, winding around down towards the south until he linked up with the highway again. It was mid-afternoon and the tank on the Jeep was still full, so Leonard decided not to stop again until he got into Washington.
While the two cities were only forty miles apart, Leonard didn’t make it in until well after dark. Unlike the areas between New York and Baltimore, the entire region between Baltimore and Washington had suffered heavy damage. On more than one occasion, Leonard wished he could have just turned around and tried to go around the city. Based on how far in he was, though, it would have taken an inordinate amount of time to do so, so he pushed on.
In the middle of the night, Leonard finally spied what he was looking for: signs marking exits branching off into different parts of Washington. As he approached the main part of the city, a shadow rose out of the earth, blocking out the small bits of starlight and moonlight that filtered through the cloud cover. Only when Leonard got close to it did he realize what he was seeing. Off in the distance, shattered, leaning to one side and consisting largely of the steel skeleton stood the remains of the Washington Monument.
Once again Leonard parked the Jeep and decided to stop for the night. This time, though, he was happy to see that at least one familiar sight was still standing, despite all of the destruction. Although the monument was barely standing, just seeing the remains brought him relief and the hope that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t quite as bad as they seemed.
Marcus Warden
7:18 PM, March 30, 2038
Dawn hurried the arrival of the next day and the sun was blinding in Marcus’s eyes as he descended the mountain. The descent was much easier than the ascent despite his injured shoulder and still-healing hand. By nightfall Marcus had made it down off of the mountain and found himself next to a small corner store on a highway that crossed the Appalachian Mountains and ran straight through to Richmond.
Marcus squinted in the dying sunlight and long shadows to make out the sign. Haney Corner Market: Smoked Meats & General Goods. It was an old shop, reminiscent of a log cabin, with a rickety staircase leading up to a narrow door set deep into the thick log walls. Marcus pulled his machete out and slowly made his way up the stairs, grimacing at the sound that they made with every step.
He was still running on adrenaline, though he was starting to feel weary after another full day of hard travel with barely any rest. Marcus hadn’t had any other encounters on his way down the mountain, but he kept his machete close and ready just in case. He was feeling exceptionally paranoid as he ascended the stairs and opened the door, the result of an unfortunate blend of extra adrenaline and sleep deprivation. I’ve got to get some sleep. I can’t keep running on fumes like this.
The interior of the small shop was dark. Marcus flicked his flashlight on low, scanning it rapidly across the store, looking for any telltale silver glints. The smell of cured meats, herbs, spices and chocolate filled the air, causing Marcus’s stomach to grumble loudly and involuntarily. With the combination of the fading light and the glow of the flashlight, the interior began to take form. Six wooden shelves, about shoulder height, were in the middle of the shop. There was just enough room between and around them for a person to squeeze through, though that ran the risk of knocking down items on the overloaded shelves.
Knick-knacks of every type hung from every square surface of the shelves, sharing spaces with boxes filled with foods of every kind. Packaged and cured meats, dark chocolates, coffee beans, smoked salmon, smoked sausages and more all filled the shelves. From the low log ceiling hung more food and trinkets, crowding the walkways even more than the shelves. In the back of the store, nestled up against a wall, a faint silver glint caught Marcus’s eye. He froze, expecting the worst, only to breathe a sigh of relief when he realized it was merely a vending machine.
Marcus stepped further into the store, closing the door gently behind him with a soft squeak of the hinges. He walked slowly between the shelves along the narrow aisles, examining various trinkets and sampling the variety of foods. He relaxed his grip on the machete gradually, and then eventually slid it back into its sheath. There was no sign of danger, and he figured he might as well use both hands to eat instead of just one.
Two pepperoni logs, a packet of smoked salmon and two chocolate bars later, Marcus found himself sitting on the floor at the back of the store, sipping on a freshly opened bottle of mineral water. With the vending machine pushed up against the only entrance to the store and the windows all closed and bolted, Marcus felt secure and quickly fell asleep.
Nancy Sims
9:18 PM, March 31, 2038
Nancy whispered to James. “Is she alive?” The labored breathing of the presumably unconscious woman had slowed, growing quieter as the minutes ticked by. After a while, Nancy no longer heard the woman from where she was and feared that she had died from her injury when she was thrown down the stairs.
James replied a moment later. “Yeah, she’s still breathing. It’s really slow, though. I don’t know if she’s going to make it without a doctor. That was a nasty spill she took.”
Both Nancy and James were quiet, then James changed the subject. “Tell me about yourself, Nancy.”
Nancy chuckled quietly, caught off guard by the off-topic question. “What’s to tell?”
“Well, where were you coming from?”
The faint smile left Nancy’s face as she thought about the events leading up to this point. “I have… well, had, a new job. Down in Florida. I was driving there from Denver when… you know.” James nodded silently from across the room.
“Yeah. That was something else, huh?”
“Do you know what it was? I mean, one minute everything was fine and then the next minute everything went dark.”
James replied in a puzzled tone. “Went dark? What do you mean?”
“I was on the highway outside Kansas City when I saw these big flashes of light and fireballs, then everything went black. I woke up… I don’t even know when.”
“Huh. I had n
o idea that anyone blacked out during the event. My experience was a bit different.” James continued before Nancy could question him further. “I was working at an experimental oil field up in Wisconsin. One of those new ‘two-mile’ wells. Have you heard about them?”
“I think so; are they the ones where everyone just lives underground?”
“Yes! Exactly it. I’m a site inspector for the ENCO group and I was there getting the I’s dotted and T’s crossed before the workers came in. There were only five of us there at the time, and we got hit square on by one of the bombs.”
Nancy gasped at this. “You mean those fireballs really were bombs?”
“Oh yes, most definitely. Three of my co-workers were on the surface when the bomb hit. We never heard from them again. My colleague and I who survived were underground at the time. It was quite the experience.”
“That’s a funny way to phrase it. How do you mean?”
James stammered a bit, trying to find the words to describe what happened. “It was… well, it was horrible. Jerry and I – Jerry, he was with me in the complex – didn’t know what was going on at first. The first thing we felt was this terrible tremor that shook the complex. It knocked us around pretty good. I smacked my head on the floor in a fall, but Jerry broke his leg. At first we thought it was an earthquake, but it was far too powerful and didn’t last long enough to be any kind of seismic shift. Once the initial blast wore off we tried to get in touch with Patrick and the others on the surface by radio. They didn’t respond, of course, so then we tried to get out.”
James hesitated as he continued, a note of sadness at the edge of his voice. “For two and a half days we tried to get out of there, only to be stymied at every turn. We tried the elevators, but the shaft had collapsed. We tried every staircase in the complex but they were either destroyed, collapsed or on fire.” Frustration grew in James’ voice as his tone grew sharp. “We tried everything! And we still couldn’t get out! Two and a half days we were stuck down there, Jerry with a broken leg and getting worse with each passing hour. We had survival training, company mandated, but nothing that prepared us for this. It was a nightmare!”
Nancy didn’t respond, keeping quiet and listening to James as he continued.
“Once we realized we weren’t going to get out through the traditional means, we started looking for alternate exits. In each 2 Mile complex there are required emergency exits, but all of the ones we tried were collapsed. Jerry, though, he was an engineer. He worked on the control systems for the 2 Mile complexes. He got us out.”
“How? I thought you said all the exits were blocked.”
“All but one. See, when they were digging the complex in Wisconsin, they found this massive limestone cave network near the building site. By the time the complex was finished, they actually incorporated a lot of the caverns into the design and construction. In particular, they used a large section of the caverns for waste disposal. Not sewage, but chemicals and the like that they use when they’re drilling. The complex wasn’t officially operational yet, but there was still a lot of waste there from the test drilling. Dangerous stuff, too; not the kind of thing you want to be walking in.”
“I guess you had no choice.”
“Yeah, pretty much. We loaded up on some dried food and water from the kitchen in the complex and found a pair of oxygen masks. They weren’t perfect, but they kept us alive.”
“How long did it take you to get out?”
“I don’t even know. A day? A few hours? A week? I can’t remember anymore. We got through the waste area pretty quickly. That was actually the easy part. The hard part came when we had to get out of the caverns. Without a map we had to try to find tracks in the floor from when they explored the caverns during construction. By the time I got out, though, it felt like I’d been down there a year.”
Nancy stopped James. “Just you? What happened to Jerry?”
James hesitated again. “Jerry… well, he didn’t make it. We were getting close to the exit, we could smell the fresh air. Then… I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Something got him. Something took him, ripped him apart and shredded him to nothing. I don’t know how I escaped. I tried to help him but this… thing, this roiling mass of horror just….”
James trailed off and silence filled the basement once again.
Rachel Walsh
7:27 AM, April 2, 2038
Traveling along the railroad was an entirely different experience than Rachel had when she was walking the highways and traveling through cities. Out in the countryside the air was fresher, the skies cleaner and the walk was easy, if not a bit boring. Rachel was grateful for the boredom, for once, and was glad to not have to deal with the extra efforts that walking on destroyed roads and through decimated cities brought to her.
After a few miles of walking, the smell and sight of the last traces of Charlotte disappeared behind her and she was completely enveloped by the natural world around her. In fact, if she didn’t look up and see the black rainless clouds in the sky, Rachel could have sworn that this was just a hike through the country and that nothing abnormal was going on at all.
Passing a particularly thick stand of trees to the side of the track, Sam suddenly stopped and barked, causing Rachel to crouch low and shoulder her rifle. Instead of growling and staying by her side, Sam bounded off into the trees. A flock of birds rocketed into the air at his arrival, chirping angrily at the disturbance. Rachel relaxed, standing up and lowering her rifle as she walked into the trees after Sam. “Get back here, Sam!” she called. A few happy barks came in response to her and she sighed, wading into the thick grasses and weeds to go after him.
Walking through the grass, Rachel nearly tripped, stumbling forward as her foot caught on an unseen obstruction. It was tall, at least 6 inches in height, and it was sturdy, too. Rachel cursed under her breath as she found her footing, momentarily distracted from Sam’s barking. Rachel looked down through the downtrodden grass and saw a rusted piece of railroad track, the source for her close encounter with the ground.
Curious, she walked alongside it, following it deeper into the grove of trees. It had obviously been there for a long time, based on the undergrowth and the small trees that had sprouted next to it. As she followed the rail, she realized that it ran parallel to the main track, through the tall grasses and then into the woods. Rachel stopped and followed the track with her eyes, back into the grove where Sam was still barking at the birds that he had scared up. There, just a few hundred feet back, sat an old handcar, rusted and aged like the tracks that it sat on.
Rachel sped up, exiting the grass into the wooded area, excited at the find. The handcar looked ancient and was straight out of a film. A long lever with two handles at either end sat square on the middle of the handcar on a piece of steel a few feet high. Most of the wooden platform of the handcar had rotted away, but the steel frame – while rusted beyond belief – was still very much intact. Rachel walked around the handcar, eyeing the overgrowth on it and gauging whether or not it would be worth trying to free it. I supposed spending an hour or two here wouldn’t hurt. Worst case, we lose a bit of daylight. Best case, we might have found a way to get there even faster.
In the end, what Rachel had planned to only take a couple of hours ended up eating up the rest of the day. When she stood back and looked at her work in the fading light, though, she smiled. After forcing the handcar several feet down the track, she set to work stripping it of rotten wood and using fallen branches to make a small platform for her and Sam at one end. Once the platform was constructed, she set to work on the hardest part: getting enough rust scraped off of the lever and wheels that the handcar would work with the least amount of effort possible.
Hours of scraping later, the handcar rolled fairly smoothly and she was able to pump the lever, though the whole contraption was still somewhat gummed up thanks to decades of wear and tear. With some hesitation, Rachel opened a portable gun cleaning kit in her backpack and pulled out a small bottle of
lubricating oil. It was normally used for keeping gun mechanisms in working order, but she decided to sacrifice it for use on the handcar. It took nearly the entire bottle, but the joints and mechanisms finally operated smoothly, or as close to smoothly as she could get.
The loss of the entire day on the project didn’t bother Rachel. On the contrary, it invigorated her. Once she got the handcar back on the main rails, she and Sam would be able to travel at least twice as fast as they could while walking, and perhaps even faster if the track was level enough. Exhausted from the day’s exertions, Rachel found a flat spot on the ground and curled up. She fed Sam a few pieces of jerky and granola from her backpack as she lay there, too tired to feed herself as she fell asleep.
