Sudden Chaos

by T. L. Payne

  Marty grabbed Erick’s arm and pulled him back as an orderly pushed a gurney past them. The young child was unconscious and appeared badly burned. Erick shook his head and looked to Marty.

  “I’ll drop you off at the nursing home now,” Erick said.

  “I thought that I might check my mother out and go to the Red Cross shelter with you. I don’t think the nursing home is equipped for this. I would feel much better having her there where I know they will have proper sanitation, food and water,” Marty said.

  “That’s fine. I agree. She will probably be much better off with the Red Cross.”

  Erick and Marty exited the hospital and headed toward their truck. Before they had even reached where they had parked it, Erick could see it was gone. The parking space was empty. He looked over and Marty was turning in a circle looking for the truck.

  “Damn it!” Erick barked, placing both hands to his face.

  He felt sick to his stomach. Although his get-home bag had all his survival gear in it, he was only concerned about Amy and the baby’s bags. Amy had packed and repacked the baby’s things from the hospital. She was going to be so pissed that he had lost that bag.

  He could not believe that, after all his planning and preparation, he had not been there when his child was born. He imagined how frightened Amy must have been giving birth on the bathroom floor at her mother’s house instead of in the sterile delivery room they’d planned.

  Something else occurred to him. The receptionist had said nothing about his mother-in-law being with her when Amy had left the hospital. She’d said Amy and the baby.

  Was not mentioning Sharon an oversight or had something happened to her?

  Marty nudged him, and he looked up. An older model Chevy sped into the parking lot and stretched to a halt. The driver jumped out and ran around to the passenger side door. No more had he exited the vehicle before someone jumped into the driver’s seat. The original driver yanked a child from the passenger seat just before the car took off, tearing out of the parking lot.

  “I’m afraid anyone with a running vehicle will be a target of violence now,” Marty said.

  “How am I supposed to get to the Red Cross shelter in Rockford without a vehicle? That is over sixty miles away.”

  Neither spoke for a moment.

  “My mother’s car may still run. It appears that older model vehicles weren’t as affected,” Marty said. “We can get Mother’s car, then pick her up and head to Rockford.”

  “Sounds good. Let’s go.”

  As luck would have it this time, the two men only had to walk five blocks to get to Marty’s mother’s home. Marty unlocked the detached garage and swung open the set of double doors. Before them sat a pristine black ’68 Cadillac Fleetwood, freshly washed and waxed.

  “Me and the Lord, we have an understanding,” Marty said.

  They looked at each other and Erick said, “We are on a mission from God.”

  “I’ll be Jake. You can be Elwood,” Marty said., tossing Erick the keys

  “We’re going to need dark sunglasses and fedoras if we’re going to be the Blues Brothers,” Erick said.

  Well, at least I’ve got the John Belushi build going on,” Marty said. “Speaking of which, let’s go in and get some snacks for the road—just in case.”

  In the pantry, Marty threw bottles of water and granola bars into a tote bag. Erick pointed to candy bars. Marty looked at him and smiled.

  “I like my sweets. I stay up here on weekends to visit with Mother.”

  “We should take them. The sugar is good for quick energy.”

  After gathering the snacks and water they felt they would need, Erick and Marty headed back out to the garage, climbed into the blues mobile, and backed out of the driveway.

  When they pulled into the nursing home, an elderly man in pajamas and slippers was walking around in the parking lot trying car doors. Erick drove in beside the man and cranked down the window with the handle.

  “Melvin, what are you doing out here?” Marty asked.

  The man looked up with a surprised look on his face. “I need to get home. My wife needs me,” he said, returning to pulling on door handles.

  Erick parked in an empty space and Marty went inside. Erick stayed with the car, his hand on his holster ready to fend off would-be car jackers. Erick watched the old man as he left the parking lot, having given up on his attempt to find an unlocked vehicle.

  Marty opened the driver’s side passenger door, startling Erick, who had reactively tightened his grip on his gun.

  “Just have a seat right here, Mother,” Marty said, helping her into the back seat behind Erick and buckling her seat belt.

  Erick turned in his seat to look at the woman. She was quiet. She twisted a tissue in her hand. Tiny particles of the paper were scattered across her lap. Marty turned in the passenger front seat and spoke softly to her as they backed out and left the parking lot. Erick could tell that Marty and his mother had a close, loving relationship. He knew that type of bond was how it was supposed to be. He was sure that Amy and his daughter would share that as well. A pang of grief struck him before he could push it away. Not everyone was blessed with a mother’s love. That was just how it was.

  The drive down Barrington Road wasn’t bad. There were cars along the road, but most had been able to pull off onto the shoulder leaving a fairly clear path. Erick maintained a steady speed of 55 mph, though he wanted to drive faster. But he didn’t want to upset Marty’s mother, who was already very stressed.

  As they merged onto Interstate 90, they saw a group of people sitting on the grass near the on-ramp. Two men stood as their car approached and one of the men stepped into the roadway and held a hand up in the air for them to stop.

  “Don’t stop,” Marty blurted out.

  Erick said nothing as he swerved to avoid hitting the man. A man, a woman, and a little boy stepped onto the road twenty feet ahead and blocked the lane. Erick cranked the wheel to the right, stepped on the gas, and drove onto the shoulder of the on-ramp to avoid them. Marty was thrown against the passenger door hitting his elbow on the armrest as Erick cranked the wheel back to the left to bring the big car back onto the roadway. Erick noticed Marty’s mother tip right, then back upright as he began to put distance between them and the group of stranded travelers.

  Twenty minutes later, they reached Elgin, Illinois. As they approached the cloverleaf where Interstate 90 and Highway 31 connected, Erick could see a roadblock had been set up before the exit. He slowed the car to twenty miles per hour. Two uniformed officers stood where cars had been pushed across the roadway.

  “Erick, don’t stop,” Marty said.

  “We have to stop, Marty. This time it is the police. We cannot just plow through a roadblock.”

  Erick patted his side and felt the firmness of the gun. If they made them exit the car and searched them, they would find the gun and knife and either arrest him or confiscate the weapons. Neither scenario was an option Erick wanted.

  Marty lifted a cup out of the center console and pulled the tray up to reveal a hidden compartment. He looked up at Erick.

  Erick looked at him wide-eyed. He wanted to ask why Marty’s mother’s car had a secret compartment but didn’t. There wasn’t time. Erick removed the holster from his waistband and placed it in the compartment. He unclipped the knife from his belt and placed it beside the gun. Marty replaced the tray and put the cup back into the holder. Erick slowed the car to five miles per hour as they approached the checkpoint.

  One of the officers held up a hand as Marty brought the car to a stop.

  “We are going to need you to step out of the vehicle, sir,” the officer said as he approached the driver’s door.

  Marty looked over his shoulder at his mother. She was tearing pieces of the tissue and dropping them into her lap.

  “It is going to be all right, Mother. I am just going to step out and talk to the officer and see what is going on,” Marty reassured his mother.

&n
bsp; It did not appear that she understood anything he said. She continued to stare down at her hands.

  The second officer approached the passenger side. Erick noticed that both officers had their hands on their weapons. It left no question whether there was a choice to comply or not. Erick held his hands up as the officer opened his car door. He climbed out and was instructed to place his hands on the hood of the car. Erick looked across, and Marty was doing the same.

  “What is going on officers?” Erick asked.

  “We have been instructed to restrict all vehicle traffic on the roadway. The president has issued a shelter-in-place order restricting travel to emergency personnel only. The two of you are in violation of that order, so we are going to have to confiscate your vehicle at this time,” The tallest of the two officers said.

  Erick turned and looked over his shoulder. He couldn’t believe that they had the authority to seize private property without due process. They had done nothing wrong, at least as far as these officers knew.

  Marty straightened but was pushed back onto the hood by the other officer. The officer looked young—almost too young to be a police officer. He looked scared shitless.

  “I have to get to Rockford. My wife was taken there. What are we supposed to do if you take the car?” Erick asked.

  “The Red Cross is picking up stranded travelers at the toll booth. They have already come through here once today, so it could be tomorrow before they come back around. You will have to stay there in the parking lot at the toll booth. We aren’t letting anyone into town,” The taller officer said.

  He finished patting Erick down and allowed him to straighten up. The young officer led Marty around the front of the car and stopped beside Erick.

  “How am I to get my elderly mother over a mile to the toll booth?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, sir. We are just following orders here,” the young officer replied.

  “Do you have any personal belongings in the car you need to take with you?” the older officer asked.

  “Our food and water,” Marty said, pointing to the back seat. He took a step toward the door, and the young officer grabbed his arm.

  “You two stay here. I’ll get it. Is it in a bag or what?” he asked.

  “It’s in a tote bag,” Marty said.

  The officer retrieved the bag and handed it to Marty.

  “The toll booth is a mile that way,” the older officer said, pointing down the road. “Don’t leave the interstate.”

  The younger officer helped Marty’s mother out of the car. Marty and Erick each took one of her arms and walked slowly around the roadblock of cars toward the toll booth.

  Chapter 4

  It was difficult to walk with Marty’s mother literally dragging her feet. Even though she didn’t weigh much, carrying her was not an option because she was so frail. They were taking their third break in twenty minutes when Erick came up with an idea. He looked around to make sure there were no police officers watching them, then headed off down the embankment toward a warehouse on the side road. A few minutes later, he had the solution to their mobility problem.

  “You, my friend, are a freaking genius,” Marty said as Erick pulled a convertible hand truck and cardboard box up the embankment.

  Erick pushed a lever on the handle, and it converted from a vertical two-wheeled hand truck to a horizontal four-wheel cart. He broke down the box and placed the thick cardboard down on top of it. He and Marty assisted Marty’s mother onto the cart, and they continued their journey down the interstate.

  It took twenty more minutes to reach the toll booth, with a few stops to convince Mrs. Simpson to stay on the cart.

  The weary crowd occupying the parking lot barely looked up as the trio arrived.

  Erick handed Marty a bottle of water and unscrewed the cap on one for himself. A little boy with dirty clothes and a smudged face stared at him as he took a sip from the bottle. Erick looked around and could not tell if the boy was with anyone. His first instinct was to offer the boy the water, but these days, gestures like that could be misconstrued as something sketchy, so Erick turned his back on the boy and watched as Marty assisted his mother in taking a drink.

  Erick removed some granola bars from the bag and tore the wrapper open for Marty. Marty’s mother swatted his hand away as he tried to coax her into taking a bite of the bar. Erick finished his and crumpled the wrapper in his hand. Mrs. Simpson turned and grabbed the wrapper from him and began rubbing it between her frail fingers. The noise seemed to soothe her.

  As dusk approached, Erick became increasingly anxious. It appeared the bus was not coming for them until the next day. They were going to have to spend the night in the parking lot. He wanted to set out on foot instead of waiting on the Red Cross, but there was no way he could walk the fifty miles faster than the bus could get them there, even if he left now.

  Erick lay curled up on the grass staring at the stars. It was a clear night, and with the absence of all man-made light, there seemed to be more stars than he had ever seen in his life. He couldn’t think of a time when he’d been in such a dark place, both physically and mentally. Without the adrenaline of rushing to get to his wife and child, his body crashed as his mind raced to find solutions to all manner of scenarios he may encounter on his way to get to his wife.

  If this event was, indeed, an EMP like Larry described, then he and Amy needed to take the baby and go to Larry’s farm in Marshall County. His mind went through a list of survival items he had planned to buy but had not yet purchased. He realized that he had not properly prepared for the baby’s needs. He had stored cloth diapers and baby food and those sorts of things. He was sure that, as they learned more in their new roles as parents, he would discover many other important things that he’d missed.

  He worried about the lack of supplies he needed for their journey to the farm. He thought maybe the Red Cross might supply them with enough food and water for the trip. He wasn’t sure if Amy would be able to walk after having just given birth. He hoped that he might find another hand truck like the one they’d used for Marty’s mother. It would make traveling with Amy and the baby much faster. He tried to calculate how long the trip to Marshall County from Rockford would take them, but he only knew the mileage from their home in Palatine.

  One thing he knew for sure. He needed to find another gun. He was worried about leaving his family defenseless out on the dangerous road. The violence would only increase as people became more desperate.

  Erick’s exhaustion had finally won over his mind, and he had drifted off to sleep. He awoke to the sound of children playing. The sun was just cresting the horizon. Any other day he would have stopped and admired its beauty, but he was distracted by the ache in his back and the awful sense of urgency to find his family. He wondered if admiring sunrises would become a luxury in this new world.

  In the time spent at the farm with Larry and the other members of the Eden group, as they had elected to call themselves, he’d only gotten a glimpse of what life without modern conveniences would be like. Getting up before the sun would be the norm now, and he feared that simple pleasures like admiring sunrise and sunsets might lose their significance in the struggle to survive.

  Erick watched a young mother use a wet wipe to clean the face of her toddler. The child struggled to get away as his mom scrubbed his face. He was glad that his group had solved the showering issue. The communal bath and shower house, along with the community kitchen, had running water supplied by a windmill-powered water pump. At least they would be spared the assault of body odor. He had been shocked that the group felt the need to make regular hygiene part of the rules of conduct. He had thought that some in the group may have been known to have a fear of soap.

  As the child wiggled itself free from his mother’s grasp and ran off, Erick wondered whether his daughter looked like Amy or him. The thought made him even more anxious to get to the Red Cross shelter. He rolled over and sat up. Erick rubbed his neck and stretched
his back as he watched Marty feed his mother pieces granola bar. Erick was reaching for the tote containing their food and water when the sound of a bus reverberated through the parking lot. The Red Cross bus pulled to a stop as anxious travelers began preparing to board.

  Erick stood and helped Marty get his mother to the bus. As they waited in line, Erick’s heart leapt. The realization that within the hour he would meet his daughter and be reunited with this wife was overwhelming. A man dressed in a white polo shirt wearing a Red Cross vest stood next to the bus with a clipboard in his hand. The man opposite him wore a black polo with a FEMA logo on it. The man from FEMA was checking people’s belongings as the other man took their names and where they were from.

  The line was moving too slow for Erick’s liking. He tapped his fingertip on his legs and shifted from foot to foot. He wanted to rush the line, jump behind the wheel, and speed off down the interstate to his family. As he looked around the parking lot, it struck him that there were a lot of people alone. He thought their families were likely not waiting for them at the shelter. He could not imagine how desperate he would feel in their shoes. He thought of how petrified he had been when he had arrived home and Amy wasn’t there, coupled with all of the stress since learning she had been taken to the shelter after having the baby. For those there in the parking lot who were maybe hundreds of miles from home, with little hope of being reunited with their families anytime soon, he felt great sympathy.

  He gave his name and address to the Red Cross official and handed the nearly empty tote bag to the FEMA guy, who looked inside it and handed it back to Erick. The man pointed to the steps of the bus, but Erick turned and reached for Mrs. Simpson’s arm. After he stepped up into the bus, he held onto her right hand as Marty held her from behind. The trio took a seat in the middle of the bus and waited for the rest of the passengers to board. It felt to Erick as if it took hours, but before long the door to the bus closed, and the driver took his seat behind the wheel. A wave of relief washed over Erick. His insides swirled with emotion as the bus pulled from the parking lot and entered Interstate 90. A broad smile crossed his face. He could not help himself.