The obvious solution came to me, and it didn’t involve mooning any would-be hitchhikers as we drove by.
“Okay guys, here’s the drill. You can drink and eat to your hearts’ content, but—”
“Yay!” Rachel said.
“Finally!” Alex opened the cooler and pulled out a juice box and a sandwich. Rachel hurried to do the same.
“Hang on!” I shouted to be heard over the commotion in the back. “There’s a catch. You’re going to have to pee in cups. And if you have to go number two...” I trailed off, shaking my head. “Best if you can hold it until we have to stop and refuel.” At least we’d thought to bring toilet paper.
I saw my kids’ reactions in the rear-view mirror. Rachel’s eyes widened, and Alex’s lips twisted with disgust.
“Eww,” Rachel said.
“That’s the rule,” I insisted.
“We’ll make it,” Kate whispered, patting my thigh.
“Yeah,” I agreed, my knuckles turning white on the steering wheel as my eyes darted around for threats. We had to make it.
Chapter 43
The situation in Austin and Fort Worth was almost identical to what we’d found in San Antonio. Traffic slowed to a crawl as we drove through. We took advantage of the moments when traffic seized up completely to refuel and empty our bladders. The cup system had worked so far, but there was no point in using it if we didn’t have to. Each time we got out, I took my M16 with me, and Harry took his shotgun. We took turns covering each other as we emptied our bladders. Within a minute of exiting our vehicles, Screecher discs would begin buzzing around us, a warning for us not to delay. Each time we refueled, I took the opportunity to check in on OneZero, but he just stared at me with those black eyes, not moving or trying to communicate. He didn’t seem to mind the long, lonely trip in the back of the truck, and I was glad to have him. He’d already saved Kate’s life, and I had a feeling he had a lot more life-saving in his future.
Thankfully, however, we didn’t run into any more problems with our fellow travelers. I noticed that some of those travelers were with the military and the national guard, and I suspected we had them to thank for the civilian cease-fire.
Our armed forces joined the creeping lanes of traffic with their guns, trucks, Humvees, and even their tanks, but the latter quickly ran out of fuel and joined the cars pushed to the sides of the interstate. Somehow the Screechers paid no special attention to the soldiers. Likewise, I didn’t see any of our guys opening fire on the hovering discs, big or small, that shadowed both sides of the interstate as far as the eye could see.
Now, fourteen hours after we’d set out from San Antonio, all three cities between us and Oklahoma City were far behind us. It was after two AM and pitch black outside but for the river of red tail lights ahead and the white running lights of disc-shaped Screechers to either side.
Warm air blasted me from the vents. I’d been forced to turn the heat on after the sun went down. A few inches of snow piled to either side of the interstate told me that it was below freezing outside.
A green sign shone bright under my headlights—
Oklahoma City
20 Miles
I breathed a sigh and worked some of the kinks out of my shoulders and neck. Fourteen hours of driving practically non-stop had left me tense and beyond exhausted. Kate had offered to trade places with me a few times, but she had a tendency to get sleepy behind the wheel. I didn’t want to risk her veering off the road and getting us shot to pieces by Screechers.
Besides, Kate was already asleep. I glanced in my rear-view mirror to see that the kids were, too. We went over a bump in the road—some piece of rubble or debris that I hadn’t seen. We were lucky it wasn’t the kind that could rip open our tires. Kate flinched and woke up suddenly, covering a yawn with one hand.
“Where are we?” she asked, looking around with big, blinking eyes.
“Close,” I said, nodding to another road sign that listed the exit number for the city of Norman.
“Norman?” Kate asked as we passed the sign.
“It’s just below Oklahoma City.”
“Where do you think we’ll stop?”
“Oklahoma City,” I said. “It’s just above thirty-five degrees North on the map.” That’s where the radio broadcasts had said that the Screechers had set up their border.
Kate nodded agreeably, but her gaze held a world full of doubt and worry.
We passed through the city of Norman, and traffic slowed again. We ended up inching along for another hour. Fifteen hours and counting...
I wondered what the Screechers’ border would look like. Would they have patrols watching it? Would they shoot people trying to cross it from the North?
Next up on the road signs was a city called Moore. Kate checked the maps and found that it was part of the greater metropolitan area around Oklahoma City. Just a little farther, I told myself, blinking the sleep from my eyes and shaking my head to stay awake.
“Logan... what is that?” Kate pointed to one side of the interstate.
I could see a long line of pinprick-sized lights hovering in the sky, all evenly spaced and stretching on as far as we could see.
“I think that’s the border.”
Chapter 44
April 27th
5 DAYS BEFORE THE ROGUE’S ARRIVAL
The lights turned out to be more of the hovering discs that had flanked us all the way from San Antonio. Border guards. I glanced up at them as we drove underneath, wondering if they ever ran out of power, or if they could just hover there indefinitely.
Immediately after we crossed the border, the Screechers flanking us peeled away, leaving us to drive on by ourselves. City lights glowed on the horizon, spreading a blanket of hope and warmth. Lights meant infrastructure. Civilization. Heat. They meant that we hadn’t lost everything. Not yet, anyway.
Even as I thought about that, darkened buildings swept by on both sides. Here, within striking distance of where the Screechers had drawn their line in the sand, everything was abandoned. Had the people fled or had they been killed?
“Look—” Kate said, pointing out her window to a cluster of illuminated multi-story buildings up ahead. A sign identified them as Mission Point Apartments. Right after that came a strip mall. My eyes picked out familiar signs and logos—
Best Buy. JCPenny. Whataburger. Bed Bath and Beyond.
Traffic slowed to a crawl. A green overhead sign appeared with cars peeling off to the right under it.
Exit 116
S. 19th St
I merged right and joined the line of peeling cars.
“Where are we going?” Kate asked. My walkie-talkie crackled to life with the same question from Harry.
I grabbed it and said, “That shopping complex. The parking lot. We can stop there and get some sleep.”
“What about a hotel? Over.”
“Everyone else will be thinking the same thing. We’re not going to find any rooms.”
“Well, you think we should stop so close to the border? Over.”
I saw military vehicles waiting in line for the same exit as us. That made me feel better about it. “I’m falling asleep at the wheel, Harry. The Screechers all left us at the border. We should be safe.”
“All left except for one,” Harry replied.
“Ex-nay. Someone could be listening on our frequency.”
“Right. Over.”
We passed the exit and rolled down a one-lane off-ramp that looped around to an internal street in the city of Moore. Traffic was bumper to bumper. It took about twenty minutes just to reach the end of the exit. The kids woke up, and Rachel began complaining that she needed to pee. I grimaced. “Can you hold it?”
“Maybe,” she replied.
“See if you can wait until we’re parked. I’m sure one of those stores will have a bathroom we can use.”
“I’ll try...”
We turned right onto the internal road and then took the first left into the parking lot of t
he shopping complex. The glowing blue sign for Ross lay dead ahead, and the red one for Office Depot beside it. Whataburger rolled by to my right. I could see that the parking lot was already packed with cars, even though it was the middle of the night and everything was closed. Between Ross and Maurices there was an empty grass lot with at least a hundred cars parked in it. A matching grassy space sat opposite that in the parking lot, also clogged with vehicles. Despite the cold, and the fact that it was the middle of the night, people were standing around and walking all over the parking lot. There were thousands of them.
We rolled by a broad section of sidewalk in front of Five Below and Justice - just for girls! that was double and triple-parked with cars.
“We’re never going to find a space,” Kate said, shaking her head.
I had a bad feeling she was right, but said nothing as I continued to circulate with the snaking lines of traffic. Even the little grassy curbs were filled.
Just as I was about to give up, I caught a break. Red tail lights appeared in a space ahead of us. I stopped to let the car out. A driver on the other side thought the space was for him, and we ended up bumper to bumper, blocking each other’s way. I lowered my window.
“I indicated, you didn’t,” I said.
“I didn’t see anything,” the man replied.
Cars began honking behind us.
“Whether you saw me or not, I did, and you didn’t,” I said reasonably.
“Well, I’m not moving,” the other man said.
“Yes, you are,” I replied, and revved my engine with an impressive roar. He was in a sedan. Pushing him out of the way wouldn’t be hard. He’d be lucky if we didn’t roll right over him.
I saw him reaching for something in his glove box, and I reached over Kate’s lap for my gun.
“Logan!” Kate said in a warning tone. I whipped the rifle up and aimed it at the other driver. “Freeze, or I’ll shoot,” I said.
Not hearing me, or not believing the threat, the other driver whipped out a gun of his own—a revolver. His eyes widened at the sight of my gun.
“If you shoot me, I’ll probably live,” I said, nodding to his gun. “But if I shoot you, there’ll be a hole in your chest the size of my fist.”
“Fuck you!” the driver said, and shook his gun at me. It went off with a bang and I felt something hot whiz by my ear. I pulled the trigger—
Nothing happened.
The safety was on. My heart thumped painfully in my chest as a jolt of adrenaline went lancing through me. The driver of the sedan gripped his gun in both hands this time, and the barrel swept into line with my chest.
BOOM! The car’s windshield exploded and blood spattered the inside. I blinked in horror and shock. Wondering if that was OneZero’s handiwork again, I checked my mirror. Harry was leaning out his window with his shotgun, looking dazed at the result of firing it.
Cars were no longer honking their horns at us. A terrible silence accompanied the ringing in my ears, but for the sound of nearby pedestrians screaming and fleeing for their cars. Kate was shaking me and holding something to my ear. I turned to look at her, blinking in a daze. She had her jacket off and was pressing it to my ear. It was slick with blood. That driver hadn’t entirely missed me. I noticed a corresponding bullet hole in Kate’s window. Thank God she hadn’t been hit. Rachel sobbed in the back, and I could see that she’d wet herself. Alex was saying something about needing a gun of his own.
“I’m okay,” I said slowly.
Kate stopped trying to staunch the blood trickling from my ear and looked at me with scalding eyes. “No, you’re not!”
I eased my foot down on the gas and pushed the dead driver’s car out of the way; then I pulled into the empty space. There was some extra room on the grassy curb behind it, so I pulled all the way up there and motioned for Harry to double park behind me.
People were back to honking their horns, and I noticed that the car I’d pushed out of the way was clogging both sides of the street behind us. One irate driver honked his horn and yelled curses out his window at us.
I shut off the engine and grabbed my M16.
“What are you going to do?” Kate asked.
“Tell him to shut up,” I said as I opened my door.
“Don’t.” Kate grabbed my arm to stop me. “Someone could kill you this time.”
“I have to go check on the other driver. He might not be dead.”
“Forget about him! He tried to kill you!”
“Even so. Lock the doors.” I slammed the door as I left. Harry got out in front of me and we both walked around back of his SUV with our guns at the ready. This time I flicked off the safety, and hefted my rifle to make sure it was highly visible as I approached the screaming driver.
“You can’t just go around killing people! He’s blocking the whole street!” the driver said as I approached.
I walked straight up to his door, not aiming the rifle at him, but making damn sure he could see it. “Hey buddy. It’s been a long day. Calm down. I nodded to the sedan in front of him. “In case you missed it, he shot me first,” I said, and pointed to the rivulets of blood trickling down my neck from my ear. “I’m going to go check on the other driver. One way or another we’ll move his car, okay?”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Harry and I walked over to the sedan. The sight that greeted us turned my stomach—dead eyes staring, chest flayed open. Everything inside the car was glistening blackly with the driver’s blood.
“Shit! I killed him,” Harry said in a shaking voice.
“Yeah. Thanks, by the way. He was aiming lower with the second shot.”
I heard a stampede of footfalls and looked up to see four soldiers running toward us. When they saw me looking, all four of them stopped and swept their rifles up. The leader shouted, “Put your weapons on the ground now!”
I carefully laid my M16 down, and Harry did the same with his shotgun. The soldiers approached us slowly. “Hands where I can see them,” the leader said.
We both raised our hands, but I shook my head. “It was self-defense!”
They stopped within just a few feet of us, close enough that I could read the U.S. ARMY patches sewn into their uniforms.
The leader took one look inside the car and then swept glaring eyes back to me. “Baker,” he said, nodding sideways to one of the others.
“Sir?”
“Collect their weapons.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hey, we need those.” Baker stepped forward and retrieved both my M16 and Harry’s semi-automatic shotgun from the ground.
“For self-defense, right?” the leader said through a sneer. “Fields, move that car! Let’s get traffic flowing again.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Ask the driver behind us,” I said, and turned my head to show off my injured ear. “He shot first.”
The soldier appeared to consider that before shouting to said driver. “Who shot first?”
“The dead guy!”
The soldiers in front of us gradually lowered their rifles. The leader looked to Baker, and spent a moment studying our guns. “Where did y’all get these? They’re military-issue. Do either of you have a Federal Arms License?”
I hesitated before shaking my head. The world was ending and this guy was worried about gun licenses? “They belonged to my brother-in-law.”
“Uh huh. So I guess you didn’t steal them off any dead servicemen.”
That’s why he cares. “No, sir. And even if I had, it wouldn’t be because I killed them. There were a few dead soldiers in our neighborhood the night the Screechers attacked, but I didn’t have time to take their weapons.”
The dead guy’s car started moving, and traffic began flowing around us on both sides again. The lead soldier waved us over to one side, and we went to stand beside Harry’s bumper. Kate and Deborah were there waiting for us, both of them hugging their shoulders for warmth.
“It’s true,” Kate said, blowing out white cloud
of condensing air as she spoke. “The guns belonged to my brother.”
The soldier didn’t look happy, but he gave in with a nod. “All right, but I’m still going to have to keep them. We don’t need any more dead people in this parking lot tonight.”
I was about to argue, but the way the soldier said any more dead people gave me pause. This wasn’t the first casualty they’d seen tonight.
All the more reason we need our guns. “How do you expect us to protect ourselves?” I demanded. “You can’t go around taking people’s guns at a time like this!”
“Watch me,” the soldier replied.
I wasn’t ready to give up yet. We had other guns with us, but none as powerful as the ones that had just been confiscated. “We have children,” I explained, and pointed to our cars. “And we still have a long way to go. Those guns have saved our lives more than once already.”
“Yeah, but how many lives have they taken?”
“Just the one you saw,” I replied. OneZero’s kill didn’t count. “You really want to leave us defenseless on the open road with two women and three children?”
The soldier just shook his head. “You want to stay safe? You can tag along behind one of our vehicles in the morning. I’ll get you set up with an escort if I can. We have convoys heading South, West, and East, so take your pick. Where are you headed?”
“Memphis.”
The man’s eyebrows darted up and beetled together. He reached up to scratch an itch under the brim of his army hat. “Why Memphis?” he asked slowly.
“We have family there,” I lied.
“Well, you’re in luck. What’s left of my platoon is headed there, too.”
The coincidence made me suspicious. “Why Memphis?”
“Because that’s where the president is, and she’s recalled six whole divisions to protect the city.”
I frowned. “The president? I thought DC was wiped out.”
“It was. That doesn’t mean the president was sitting in the White House when it happened.”
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