by Mike Kraus
Linda nodded and turned back to the truck without saying anything. Frank backed slowly towards the barn, watching as Linda busied herself with something inside the truck, not bothering to even look back in his direction.
“What the hell is going on here?” Frank shook his head as he mumbled to himself. He headed into the barn and into one of the small rooms near the back where he had stacked several inches of hay and laid out a cleanish-looking tarp while he was wandering around before. The room had a door and a bolt on it, both of which sounded incredibly helpful given how odd Linda was behaving.
He sat down on a stool that was in the room, leaning his pack against one leg and the rifle against the wall behind him. He had absolutely no intention of going to sleep in case Linda’s odd behavior was a precursor to her trying to do something to him, but his body had other ideas. The light sleep he had gotten in the truck while they were driving earlier had had nearly no effect on him and he fell fast asleep within seconds.
Chapter 7
The Mississippi River is on fire. Crude oil spills from the Alliance refinery in Belle Chase into the water, spreading the fires from the refinery downstream. With a two hundred and fifty thousand barrel per day refining capacity, the Alliance refinery is the largest in the state. Its pipelines have ruptured, its holding tanks burst and its emergency response capabilities had been crippled by the explosion that occurred three hours earlier.
Massive plumes of thick black smoke billow into the sky and are pulled to the northeast by light winds. The smoke is filled with toxins that slowly drift over residential areas, coating the buildings and people inside and out. To those living near the refinery the smoke is a sight they see on an infrequent basis, but never in such volume or for so long. If they weren’t already dealing with the sounds of explosions from nearby highways and the terrifying announcements being made on the news then they would be more concerned with the smoke than they otherwise are.
Rescue workers triage the wounded that are pulled from the buildings on the refinery grounds that still stand, though the smoke and heat from the flames make each rescue more difficult. There are still dozens of workers unaccounted for, trapped beneath burning rubble or swallowed by mammoth amounts of crude oil.
From the air, a news helicopter circles the scene, broadcasting the footage live to local news stations. If it was the only disaster of the day it would make national headlines, but the headlines are already swamped. Five other refineries have been hit in the last three hours and many more are yet to come. Government officials and law enforcement still do not know the vector of the explosions, and are powerless to stop them from happening.
Refineries and distribution stations that have not been hit are ordering emergency shutdowns, some of which are physically damaging to the processing and transportation equipment. These plants suffer the least of all, but will still require weeks and months of work to return to full operation—assuming that day ever comes.
Local radio stations struggle to make sense of the destruction. They receive conflicting instructions from local, state and federal officials as emergency services, law enforcement and response agencies struggle to cope with a scenario that they never imagined could take place.
Chapter 8
When Frank woke up, it was still dark in the small room inside the barn, with only the moon and starlight peeking through the cracks in the wall and ceiling. He wondered at first why he was awake, where he was and what was going on, until a noise from outside the barn snapped him back to reality.
“Shit!” Frank leapt up and unbolted the door, leaving the rifle and his pack behind as he ran down the length of the barn. The front door to the barn was still partially open and he ran outside, slowing to a stop on the dirt path in front of the building as he saw the source of the noise that he had feared.
“What the hell?” He shouted at the top of his lungs as Linda’s truck bounced and bucked on the bumps in the dirt road, driving away at a high rate of speed. Dust swirled into the air and Frank ran his hands through his hair, trying to make sense of what had just happened. As he turned around and kicked at the ground in frustration, he spotted a red object near the front of the barn and a piece of paper stuck in one of the barn door’s handles.
Frank grabbed the piece of paper from the barn door and stalked back inside, feeling a significant amount of anger rising inside of him. He returned to the room where he had slept and found the flashlight Linda had left for him, turned it on and spread the paper out on the floor.
The paper turned out to be a few pages from an old grocery store sales flyer with a prominent advertisement for half off ground chuck, blackberries and store-brand milk on the front. Over the brightly colored images, though, was scribbled—in bright blue marker and large lettering—a message that spanned several pages.
Frank – Sorry to leave you like this. You’re clearly trustworthy but I prefer to travel alone. Half a mile back up the road is a car with the keys in it. I left you enough gas to get a few hours more south. Good luck. –Linda
“What the hell, lady?” Frank crumpled the flyer into a ball and threw it against the wall in frustration. He paced around the room for a few minutes, trying to think of what to do before he sat back down and sighed. “At least she didn’t shoot me, I guess. You’d think she could be slightly less paranoid though.” Frank picked the paper up and smoothed it out, re-reading it again now that he was feeling less angry.
“A car half a mile back down the road?” Frank thought back to the bumps and swerves he had felt while dozing on and off right before they turned off to the farmhouse. He snorted and shook his head as he realized how far back she had planned to ditch him. “She must have been keeping her eyes open for a car that looked like it was in half-drivable condition.”
Frank sighed again and slipped his pack over his shoulders, then buckled the waist straps. He had already tucked the extra batteries and ammunition into the top of the pack, and he grabbed the rifle that Linda had left for him and checked the small ten-round magazine to make sure it was still loaded. Still can’t believe she trusted me with a gun but not to ride along with her. She’s got some kind of crazy issues.
With there being no real point in lingering at the barn any longer, Frank slung the rifle on his shoulder and headed out of the building. He picked up the gas can with a grunt and set off down the dirt road leading back towards the highway.
The first rays of dawn were just starting to peek over the horizon when Frank made it back to the highway. He cast a longing look to the south in the direction where Linda and he had been driving before she turned off before trudging back to the north. The weather was cold and he was glad he still had a jacket even though it was barely adequate for the early morning temperature. Still tired from the activities of the previous day and the lack of decent sleep, it took Frank a full hour—and several stops—to make it to the vehicle that Linda had pointed out in her note.
While Frank had passed several other cars on the side of the road earlier, all of them had either been involved in a crash, were overturned or didn’t have the keys inside of them. When he reached the small, two-door blue sedan, he pointed his flashlight through the window and couldn’t help but smile at the sight of a set of keys that were still inserted into the dash-mounted ignition.
Both of the car’s doors were locked but the trunk was slightly ajar, and Frank opened it to find it empty. He looked around, seeing nothing of interest aside from the pink and purple hues of the sunrise, and took off his rifle and backpack and put them on the ground right behind the vehicle. He sat the gas can down next to them as well, then began the arduous process of slithering his way through the trunk and into the front of the car.
A few inches above average, Frank’s six-foot two-inch frame was bulky, and he thought more than a few times that he was going to get wedged between the seats as he crawled forward through the sedan. With the upper half of his body twisted around on top of the vehicle’s shifter next to the front seats, Frank r
ealized that there wasn’t enough room for him to actually get into the seats without turning into some sort of circus contortionist.
He reached for the lock on the driver’s side door and slid it up, then started backing out of the car. The amount of grumbling and cursing that came from him doubled during the reverse expedition until, finally, he fell a few feet onto the hard pavement and let out a groan. “Dammit.” Frank stood up slowly and walked around the driver’s side door and pulled on the handle. The door opened freely, and he rolled his eyes with relief.
After adjusting the seat back so that he could fit his legs into the car, Frank got in and turned the key halfway in the ignition. The dashboard lit up and he pushed the starter button next to the ignition, but all he heard was the sputtering of the engine as it tried to draw in fuel that didn’t exist.
“Huh.” Frank pulled the lever to release the gas cap cover before getting out and heading back to the can behind the vehicle. “I wonder how she knew it was out of gas. Or maybe she just assumed it was.” It took a few minutes to drain the can of gas into the sedan. Once he was done, Frank put the empty can into the back of the sedan and loaded his backpack and rifle into the front passenger seat.
“All right, you piece of crap. Don’t make me walk.” Frank turned the key and pressed the start button. At first, the engine coughed and sputtered again, but after a few seconds the lights on the dashboard flickered and the engine hummed to life. “Yes!” Frank shouted in glee and shut his door.
The gas indicator showed that he had about a third of a tank, and as long as he moderated his speed and stayed on the highway, he figured he’d be able to get fairly far. “Oh.” Frank glanced up and saw a set of numbers displayed on the corner of the rearview mirror. “Thirty-five miles to the gallon?” He nodded approvingly. “Not bad. That was, what, a five gallon can? So a bit over a hundred and fifty miles.”
Frank realized then that he had no idea where in Maine he was—if he was even in the state still—but figured that his best bet would be to head south along the highway until he hit a major town. “Hopefully they’ll give me a warmer welcome then in the last place I was at.” Frank mumbled to himself as he put the sedan into gear and slowly took off down the road. It was the first time that he had driven anything smaller than a tractor-trailer in weeks, but he was glad for the fact that it had a manual transmission since it made the transition slightly less jarring.
The first few minutes of the drive went by at a snail’s pace as Frank adjusted to driving the smaller vehicle. As the morning wore on, though, he quickly got used to the differences and even began to enjoy himself. Driving on an empty highway in a vehicle that he could maneuver without worrying about tipping over was something he had forgotten about in the last month.
After the initial fun of driving the small car wore off, Frank’s thoughts drifted back to Linda and the situation that he found himself in. He glanced at the rifle sitting next to him and shook his head in amazement yet again. He was glad that she had left him the gun—and it was one of the reasons he wasn’t all that upset about her leaving him behind—though he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it.
Despite her description of how bad things were, the newscast he had seen and the nearly rabid behavior of the people at the gas station, Frank tried to understand how the country really could have ground to a halt in a matter of hours. “The truckers,” he said, talking aloud to himself, “I get. A few hundred of their trucks explode and nobody’s going to want to hop in one and drive around. I sure as hell wouldn’t touch one again.”
Frank suddenly remembered Linda talking about how she had gotten her information from a radio station before it went dead and he glanced at the large flat panel that was sitting in the middle of the vehicle’s dash. He tapped a large red power button on the display and it instantly flared to life with several large virtual buttons and dials on display. He tapped the one labeled “RADIO” and the car was filled with the sound of static. He cringed and turned down the volume, then began skipping through the AM and FM bands, trying to find a station that was still broadcasting.
Disturbingly though, even after several minutes of carefully picking through each and every frequency, Frank couldn’t find a single channel that gave even the hint of broadcasting more than just static. He switched to the car’s satellite antenna, but although it showed him as receiving a signal, there was only dead air on every station he selected. The realization was slow to come, but as he thought more, it dawned on him what that meant.
“There’s not a single place still broadcasting? How is that even possible?” Not picking anything up on the radio stations made sense, but to not hear anything on the satellite broadcasts—even on foreign-based channels—was extremely odd unless a significant amount of infrastructure had been wiped out. Frank shook his head and switched the radio and center display back off. He gripped the steering wheel tightly and set his jaw as he pressed down on the accelerator. He didn’t know what was happening but he was finally convinced that, whatever it was, it was worse than he could have imagined.
Chapter 9
Frank had been driving for just over half an hour when he saw the first signs of major wreckage and chaos on the highway. The blackened wreckage of several overturned trucks caused him to slow down and he wove between them, looking in the cabs of the vehicles for any signs of survivors. Occupied as he was with paying attention to the road directly around him, Frank didn’t see the line of intact trailers overturned on the road ahead until he was only a few hundred feet away. He jammed on the brakes and the sedan slid to a stop, and he stared through the windshield, wondering what was going on.
Five or six intact trucks and trailers were overturned on both sides of the highway. Between them the median dipped sharply downward, making it impossible to bypass the obstruction. The obstacles were laid out in such a way that they were directly next to an exit off of the highway on both sides, which was the sole path available for Frank to take. “Huh. Guess I’m taking a detour.” Frank turned the center console back on and scrolled through the menu until he found a button that read “NAVIGATION.” He tapped it and an overhead map sprang to life, showing his position and the roads nearby.
The satellite imagery and mapping data showed that the exit ran through a small town nearby, though it eventually looped back around a few miles down the road and went back onto the highway. Frank sighed and drove forward again, angling off to the right to take the required detour. The map data on the screen showed that there was a gas station and two small restaurants in the town—both with mostly two and three-star reviews—and though Frank doubted he’d be able to get more gas, he figured it was worth checking out anyway.
“I just hope these people are nicer than the ones in the last town. Freaking savages.” How ordinary people could allow their behaviors and ways of thinking to degenerate in less than a day was beyond him. “Maybe they’re just scared. But still, no need to act like that just because a few—wait, what the hell?”
Frank stopped his muttering as he noticed a pair of cars that had run off into the ditch by the side of the road. The first vehicle was on its wheels, but the windows were broken out and it had hit a tree hard enough to crumple the hood. The second, larger vehicle was overturned and the taillights were still blinking, indicating that it had flipped very recently. One of the back tires was shredded and what looked like a metal net was wrapped around the wheel. Sharp spikes stuck out of the net, a few of them still holding pieces of rubber from the tire.
The sight was odd, but a car or two on the side of the road wasn’t unusual given what he had seen in the last day. The larger concern was that he recognized the second, overturned vehicle. He eased the sedan to a stop and pulled over to the side of the road, trying to figure out where he had seen it before when he saw several red gas cans scattered in the ditch next to the upside-down vehicle.
“Linda’s truck? What the…” Frank felt his heart pick up speed and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Lind
a had proved to be more than a capable driver, and the odd spiked netting wrapped around the wheel of her truck indicated that something bad had happened when she had taken the same detour as him.
Frank parked the sedan and rolled down both windows before climbing out. It was an old habit he developed years ago when he used to drive. Anytime he had to hop out of the car for a few seconds and didn’t want to take the keys with him he would roll down the windows just to make certain he didn’t lock them in the car. It only took one time of that happening for him to ensure it never did again.
He half-walked, half-slid down into the ditch and knelt down next to the window of the truck and looked inside. No one was inside, but the seatbelt had been cut, the glass to the driver’s side window was shattered and there was a dark red bloodstain on the back of the driver’s side cushion. Linda’s bags and other equipment that he had seen in the back of her truck were nowhere to be seen, and the only contents of the vehicle that appeared to be left were the empty gas cans that had been scattered along the ditch.
Frank stood up and put his hands on his hips as he looked around. He was about to cup his hands and start shouting Linda’s name when a series of gunshots from nearby made him duck back to the ground and press himself up against the truck. It was hard to judge where the shots came from at first, but several more came in rapid succession and Frank realized that they were coming from further down the road where it bent off to the right. The area was thickly wooded and from what he remembered on the map in the sedan the only areas that were clear were the road and the town.
Frank squatted next to the truck for a long moment, debating what to do. He could always go back on the highway and head north to find another route around the entire area, but he doubted he had enough gas in the sedan to get very far. Beyond that, though, was a sense of obligation he felt to try and find the person who had abandoned him and make sure she was still okay.
