by Mike Kraus
An SUV cut slowly through a parking lot in front of a strip mall, braving the tidal flow. Their tires left a wake behind them, headlamps reflecting off the murky water that flooded over their fenders as they cruised through it.
“They’re casing the place,” Tom ground his teeth together. “Looking for easy loot.”
Jerry nodded. “I’d put my money on that electronics store right there...”
On cue, the SUV stopped and backed into a spot in front, sending water up to smack against the glass. Seawater rose and swirled around the truck tires, receding and rising dangerously.
“If they get water in their tailpipe,” Tom said, “they’ll be swimming home with wet cell televisions. I wonder how much those will be worth?”
“Idiots.” Jerry shook his head.
Tom looked across at a motorcycle shop and a few beachfront inns as a small motorboat driven by two scrubby-looking men puttered alongside a flooded nightclub, dragging a floating trailer behind them, disappearing around the back corner of the building in a swirl of sea foam.
“They’re up to no good, too,” Jerry said.
“Probably wanting to get at the liquor.” Tom nodded. “It would be easy enough to get in, but if the water rises too high, they’ll be trapped.”
Sam remained in the rear seat behind him, gazing farther inland. “Things are looking a little better that way.”
Tom grunted, shifting his attention back to the left where the flooding had been minimal. Small groups of people gathered outside fast-food restaurants and tourist stops, some with open signs glowing brightly in the windows. They left their vehicles and crossed the lots, stooped over with umbrellas whipping back and forth as if hurricane shopping was a completely normal thing to do.
“The power is still on,” Tom mused, “which makes me even happier we avoided hitting those power lines earlier.”
“Quick thinking,” Jerry agreed. “I would have figured they were dead and ran right over them.”
“I’m surprised they haven’t killed power to the entire city,” Tom said, “though I guess that’ll happen once the repair teams get here.” He nodded toward the road. “Okay, which way now?”
“You’ll want to take the next left,” Jerry pointed vaguely with his good arm. “That'll be 30th Street. It’ll get us to US-58. Then it’s just one more right at First Colonial, and another mile to Sentara-Virginia Hospital.”
“Sounds good.”
Tom pulled up to the 30th Street intersection and slowed. The building on the left-hand corner was a nondescript condo and across the street squatted a strip mall-style structure, partially hidden from the road by four windblown elms set fifteen feet apart.
As wind whistled across the windshield, blowing rain droplets sideways across the glass, he took the left, circling so the trees and stores lay on his right. Glancing over, he saw a hardware store and ABC Liquors between the elms, their windows and glass doors smashed, though not by any obvious flying debris. They cruised past the third elm when Jerry jerked back in his seat.
“Hey!”
Tom shifted his attention slightly left to see three people rushing toward them from the direction of the liquor store, coming out from behind the trees and a parked vehicle that had blocked them from view. They were twenty-somethings, two men and a woman, dressed in jeans and dark jackets that clung wet to their bodies, each with a heavy backpack weighing down their shoulders. They shouted and waved at the Toyota, the men carrying blunt objects in their hands, their voices muffled by the distance and the wind.
“What do they want?” Sam asked, her voice rising in panic as she slouched back in her seat.
“No idea,” Tom replied, studying them warily, pressing down on the gas, accelerating down the lane.
“Who cares?” Jerry pressed himself back in his seat. “They look like trouble.”
Judging by their clothes, they weren’t gang members but their expressions were eager, hungry, and wild with abandon, the backpacks hanging from their shoulders bulging, a few bottles of liquor poking out of the edge of one of them. One of the men raised his bat and shouted for them to pull over, his expression hard and fierce.
Sam leaned forward. “We're not stopping, are we?"
“No!” Jerry pushed away from the door as the trio came within ten yards of them. “Keep going, man! Get us out of here.”
“I’m with Jerry on this one.” Tom growled the words with a pinch of tension.
He kept cruising past and sped up a little, turning his eyes back to the road. Shouts and curses followed them, and Tom glanced in his rearview mirror as the woman hurled a glass bottle at them, spinning end-over-end before it fell short to smash in the street behind them. Tom glanced back at Sam as she straightened in her seat, her expression hung slack, eyes wide with panic while Jerry sighed with relief and sat back in his seat.
“And that’s why you don’t stop for people.” Tom focused back on the road, his hammering heart slowing slightly. “Especially not a group of them. Not in a crisis like this.”
“I won’t argue with that.” Jerry settled back in his seat. “But it makes me wonder why you stopped for me on the beach.”
“Every situation is different,” Tom explained as he drove. “You have to use your head. You were a good guy when we showed up at the showed up at the gas station, you helped us when you didn’t have to, and when we found you, you were injured and in obvious need of aid. Those people back there? We have no idea who they were, they were healthy looking, from what I could tell. And they had their choice of working vehicles. Their bags were heavy with goods, probably stolen. Now, what would a group like that want with us? No one knows for sure, but their actions didn’t exactly spell good intentions. You, on the other hand, were alone and injured on a beach. Big difference, right?”
“I see what you mean.” Jerry nodded his agreement. “Where did you learn how to think like that?”
Tom glanced back where his daughter had pulled herself forward between the seats again. “Sam, tell him.”
She smiled knowingly and turned to Jerry. “It’s all about being prepared. In this particular case, situational awareness. Mom and Dad have drilled it into us since we were little. Paying attention to people’s actions, not just their words. Doing what you have to do to survive. You know, stuff like that.”
Jerry shot a look backward. “I’m glad we didn’t stop for that group.”
“I hate to interrupt Sam’s seminar,” Tom quipped, “but are we getting close to the hospital?”
“Take a right up here on First Colonial.”
Tom did as Jerry directed, swinging them right at the next intersection to put them on another heavily commercialized road. Having gone a half mile inland, the stores and restaurants were brighter with lights, and though the wind and rain damage was still significant, it was still much less than it had been at the outskirts. Less than a quarter mile later, they approached a squat, five-story brick building that took up the entire city block, a parking lot broken by swaths of grass islands separating it from other structures in the surrounding area.
“Is that it?” Tom pointed.
Jerry had taken to staring out his window but raised in his seat, eyes going wide when he saw the building. The grassy areas were a mess, trees lying bent or ripped out of the ground, and mulch covered the lot along with debris carried in from the oceanfront, floating in a half inch of water that sluiced across the lot beneath an ink stain of clouds. He took a right to skirt around the building’s south side where the worst of the hospital’s damage had occurred. Windows were blown out, brick ripped away in huge swaths to reveal the blue insulation beneath. A section of the fourth-floor wall looked punched in, a massive tree trunk lying at the base of the building along with crumbling debris. The emergency entrance was just a shell of its former self, the wind having stripped the awning clean, leaving just the columns and a partial roof while the hospital sign lay a hundred feet away in a contortion of metal and glass.
Tom stopped
at the base of the lot and gaped at the number of cars parked near the emergency and front entrances. Some vehicles appeared beat up, but they fit perfectly in their spots, a sign that people had driven them in after the storm. Around the hospital doors stood a veritable swarm; a woman stood on her toes looking over the taller heads while her friend held an injured person by the arm, one lone man sat in the grass away from the crowd, bandaged head hanging low as he stared at his lap and two women in blue scrubs climbed upon a table near the emergency entrance, gesturing at those assembled and back at the building.
Someone tossed their hands up at the women in scrubs, yelling something while a small group sheltering a limping woman shoved their way through the crowd, many reacting poorly to the intrusion, pushing back with equal aggression, the crowd swaying and boiling like a cauldron. Tom swallowed a lump in his throat at the thought of trying to get Jerry past the gauntlet and into the hospital proper.
“That doesn’t look good.”
“No, it doesn’t,” the young man agreed.
Tom pointed to an elderly couple walking away from the hospital along the entrance lane. “Hey, maybe they can tell us what’s going on.”
The woman wore high-water slacks with a jacket and tennis shoes and she kept to the man’s right, closer to the road, with her arm locked in his as he limped ahead, clutching him in the steadily growing cold. A red-stained bandage was taped to his wispy-haired skull, leaking blood down his temple as he cowered inside his coat against the knife-like winds and temperatures. Tom eased up next to them as Jerry rolled down his window, leaning across his injured companion’s lap to get their attention.
“Hey, folks!” he called, waving. “Hey there!”
The old man kept shuffling along, boots scuffling on the pavement, not seeming to see or hear him, but the old woman’s piercing blue eyes raised, judging the trio in the space of a second, smiling pleasantly when she finished her assessment. She tapped on her husband’s arm so that he stopped and lifted his chin toward the truck.
“Hello there!” she called. “Strange turn of weather, huh?”
“You’re telling us.” Tom grinned. “It feels like God shook the whole Eastern Seaboard.”
“That it does.” The woman’s smile grew. “What can a couple of old folks help you with?”
“Well, we were wondering what’s going on at the hospital.” Tom moved his head in the direction of the entrance. “My friend here has a badly injured arm, and we need to get him seen to.”
“Damn fools turned us away!” the husband blurted in a gruff tone, lifting his chin in indignation
His wife chuckled tiredly and patted his arm. “It’s true. They said his wound wasn’t serious enough to have him admitted. They’re just too swamped right now.”
Tom squinted in confusion. “I don’t understand. Do all those people have injuries from the storm?”
She nodded. “Most of them, yes.”
“Why didn’t folks evacuate when they had the chance?”
“They tried, I think.” The woman’s eyes turned worried. “Most were heading south from Cape Charles. Someone said it had flooded higher than they’d ever seen it, all around the area. But when they tried to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, waves washed a lot of them off. The ones who made it came here.”
Tom shook his head with the tragic news. “Are you two going to be okay?”
“We’ll be fine.” She glanced at her stooped husband. “We live close by, and his injury isn’t bad. But he’s on blood thinners, and I just can’t get the bleeding to stop.”
“Damn fools wouldn’t let me in!” the old man blurted again, flexing his fist and shaking it.
“Can we help?”
“Oh, no,” she smiled. “That’s okay. I’ll get it to stop. You just see to your friend.”
“Thanks,” Tom called, Sam and Jerry echoing the sentiment as the elderly couple continued down the walkway.
Tom eased back in his seat as Jerry rolled up his window. The crowd in front of the hospital was swarming the doors, splinter groups trying to break through to gain access inside, largely failing in their attempts. Two large men stood in a stare-off confrontation on the edge of the circle to their left, looking like they might come to blows, while a handful of new cars pulled into the lot from another entrance, searching for parking spots. A group of eight people rounded the building’s eastern corner, carrying wounded between them, stopping at the sight of the crowd, looking like they were trying to figure out some alternative way of getting through.
“I don’t like the looks of this at all.” Tom breathed a heavy sigh, his hopes of getting Jerry some help dwindling by the second.
“What are we going to do?” Sam asked, leaning forward in her seat.
“I’m not sure.” Tom rested his hands on the steering wheel, gripping the worn plastic, settling back to give it thought. He glanced at Jerry. The young man’s arm hung in the makeshift sling, his eyelids half closed – not on the verge of death, but too fragile to just drop off and leave, especially with the growing angst of the crowd at large.
“We really need to get him inside that hospital.”
Jerry scoffed. “Nah, seriously, Tom. I’m fine. Well, mostly fine.” The young man tried to sound chipper, but his words lost their energy, and his face fell slack again. “I’ll be okay. Just get me close to the entrance and I’ll take care of myself.”
“I don’t think so, son. I can’t drop you off here to deal with that.” Tom gestured at the boiling crowd in front of the hospital entrance. “And I’m hesitant to leave you in the car. You could black out or worse.”
Jerry continued to shake his head, shifting to face Tom. “Look, you two have to get home. You can’t be staying around here babysitting me.”
“It’s not about babysitting you.” Tom bumped his palm lightly on the steering wheel in frustration. “It’s about leaving you in good hands. There’s no way I’m making you deal with that crowd up there.”
“I’m a big boy, Tom. I can handle myself--”
“Guys, wait,” Sam interjected with a hand on both of their seats. “This arguing isn’t going to work. Is there another hospital we can drive to? Somewhere farther inland, maybe?”
“Well yeah. There’s one between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Sentara-Leigh Hospital. But I’ve never been there.”
“We have to give it a try,” Tom agreed. “At the very least, you need a CAT scan on that arm, and maybe your head, too. It’s not much farther out of our way, and hopefully they don’t have a crazy crowd like they have here.”
Jerry looked at them with a grin. “I guess you’re stuck with me for a little longer.”
Tom winked. “We’ll do what it takes to find you help. Plus, you’ve helped us just as much as we’ve helped you.”
“I disagree with that. But thank you.”
Jerry smiled as Tom put the Toyota in reverse, half turning to peer over his shoulder to look behind him, his eyes flying wide.
“Get down, Sam!” he screamed, his voice cracking, shoving her sideways into the backseat, turning and grabbing the gear shift to jam it in drive. Something heavy smacked the back window, shattering the glass, drawing a squeal of surprise from Sam as the truck shook on its springs. Safety glass exploded everywhere, and a cold gust of air whipped through the vehicle’s interior as Tom slammed on the gas pedal, shooting them forward.
Chapter 10
Somewhere in Mexico
The cracked ground bleeds its warmth into the evening sky, the night winds lifting to circulate it across the great body of desert that spreads all around them. A cloudless sky looms above, a scattering of pink, red, and cerulean stars shining on black-clad forms. The seven-soldier SEAL team jogs quietly over the uneven desert floor, weaving between scrub, cacti, and clusters of Mesquite trees with rifles cradled in their arms, visors pulled down to provide a preternatural sense of sight. They pound up a scree-covered rise and pour over the crest to descend into a rock-strewn gully, following the weaving
course west, shoulders brushing against the gully walls that grow shallower with every step. At the end, they climb out and sprint north across the open ground toward a distant, saddleback rise.
Head on a swivel, Lieutenant Scott picks his way up the rocky, scrub-choked hillside, choosing his steps carefully, fleet-footed as his boots carry him to the top where he raises a fist and calls a halt, the team automatically spreading out and taking up defensive positions. He taps some buttons on his helmet’s temple, magnifying his view, seeing wide across the desert floor, blinking at the landscape’s greenish tint that reveals the fenced-in military complex spread out over a quarter mile of parched earth. Guard houses dot the fence line every hundred yards and the complex itself is lit up like a Christmas tree, bright against the dark desert sky.
“Objective Night Wish in sight,” his voice is inaudible as he mouths the words through the secure comms system, the black band around his neck picking up the intentions of his speech and turning them into a transmission.
The lieutenant scans the complex, confirming that the layout is consistent with his briefing maps and training facilities. A command center and a tight cluster of munitions sheds lie to the east, storage structures and a motor pool rest on the west side of the facility and the airfield with a helicopter pad sit directly in front of them on the south side of the encampment. An occasional patrol vehicle cruises the road that encircles the site and there are guards posted and on patrol, but there does not appear to be a readiness level consistent with their presence being detected.
“Prepare to move. Our first priority is to secure the command center and intel,” the lieutenant reminds them, “then extract ourselves no matter what the cost. The admiral would like to keep casualties low.”
“How low, sir?” McCarthy asks.
“Preferably zero.”
A few on the team scoff, two whispering to each other where they squat behind a rock, the desert winds whipping at their backs.
“Are we sure this a good idea?” McCarthy asks.
