by Tosca Lee
“What are you talking about?”
“Jaclyn’s sick. I promised to take care of Truly,” I say, fighting to keep my voice stable.
“Wynter, listen to me. Truly’s safer where she is right now, and you’ll never make it there and back on a single tank of gas! Turn around. We’ll wait for you.”
“No. Don’t. I’m not coming back.”
“Wynter, there’s nowhere to go! Especially with a child! You have no place to take her, protect her—what are you going to do for food, to stay warm, safe?”
“I’m . . .” I search for some lie. “I’m going back to the Enclave,” I say. “I’m going to stay there with her.”
“What? No! Wynter!”
Ambulance lights speed by, sirens off, as though the blackout has stolen all sound.
“Julie, please just trust me. You need to go. Now. Promise me.”
“At least let us know that you made it there safe.”
“I’ll try. Julie?”
“Yeah?” she says, sounding shocked, hurt, and worried out of her mind.
“If things get worse, there’s a place near Sidney, Nebraska. The Peterson farm.”
“Okay, but what—”
“Say it back to me.”
“The Peterson farm.”
“Thank you, Julie. For everything.” I choke out those last words. It hurts to say them. They’re too much like good-bye.
I click off the phone but can’t stand the sudden silence, the sound of Julie’s confused hurt, Jackie’s last words too loud in my head. I turn on the radio, the chatter of which does nothing but add to the undercurrent of anxiety twisting my stomach. Especially considering that my sick sister is somewhere doing everything they’re saying not to:
Don’t travel.
Don’t go outside.
The radio broadcaster says the station is running on backup generators. Reads reports of emergency workers still trying to rescue people stranded in elevators, on the LA Metro, and in the Seattle Space Needle. Rumors of looting. Residents without heat in twenty-degree temperatures. Homes across the country without running water or soon to lose it.
I zoom out on the GPS with one hand, trying to figure how much highway I should cover before refueling somewhere in Iowa. Far enough to have burned some room in the gas tank but still several hours east of the initial blackout, where I assume there’s already been a run on stations with backup generators to operate the pumps.
I count three cars in my rearview mirror. Wonder nervously how long they’ve been there as I pass a truck stop filled with the headlights of semis, the halogen beams of cars. I speed up.
The next radio station I stop on, the DJ has either finished or completely abandoned the standard alert script.
“Look,” she says, and sighs. “It’s been a long few weeks and months for all of us in the news. If you’re tuning in tonight on your portable radio, I know you’re scared. It’s hard to make sense of what’s going on. What’s happening to our good men and women. Our schools. Our workplaces. Our churches. Right now I miss the shows where all I had was celebrity gossip or the latest viral video. The problems that felt like big deals until all of this started happening.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I believe God’s with us. So I’m going to say a prayer for you and for me and for our great nation. And I’ll be back with announcements and updates and the alerts, but for now, we’re going to listen to some music.”
She plays Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and then she’s back with reports of explosions at two interconnection substations in what the White House is calling an act of terrorism in the prolonged attack on the US electrical grid.
“We don’t know how long the blackout will last,” the announcer says. “Stay warm. Stay indoors. Keep the doors locked. Emergency responders are working around the clock to keep order and help those who need it. I know you have questions. I know you may be afraid. Just remember that we’re all going through this. And we’ll get through it together. You are not alone.”
I don’t know that DJ. I don’t know what religion she is—according to Magnus, God doesn’t even hear the prayers of those outside the Enclave. And I know she’s never heard my name and can’t be speaking to me. But I imagine that the voice of God has found me here, in the outside world.
She plays some song about ridin’ the storm out as I speed at eighty miles an hour through Sterling and then Prophetstown.
Which I salute with a single finger on account of its name.
As I pass north of Davenport, I’m surprised once again at the number of cars on the streets.
It’s nearly 5 a.m. Cars line the off-ramp all the way to the giant truck stop and the overpass above. I slow as two forms dart across the highway ahead, ubiquitous red gas cans in both their hands. Just past town, I wonder if I should have stopped, topped off the tank. Wonder how much worse things will get in the next hour and by morning.
• • •
DAWN THREATENS MY rearview mirror as I reach the outskirts of Des Moines. By the time I pass around the city, the sky is already casting a blue tint over a land without light.
I’d hoped to get gas here before the stations run dry; I’m down to a quarter tank with only a couple gallons at most in back. But the first truck stop in West Des Moines is deserted and the second is backed up along the entire right-hand lane leading to the exit. Police lights flash farther up the line; I can just make out an officer, patrol lights flashing, directing cross traffic at the turn.
It occurs to me that I’m only an hour south of the Enclave. From Truly. It’s Friday; Rosella is already in the kitchen. The ovens still work, I’m sure; the Enclave has generators and a stockpile of fuel to last halfway to the afterlife if its members are frugal.
It takes everything in me not to turn north.
Truly’s safe. For now. I chant it over and over in my head.
I click the button on the steering wheel. One hundred forty-five miles left in this tank. Enough to make it to Council Bluffs. I’m cutting it close, but once I get there, my next tank should see me all the way to Fort Collins.
Assuming I can find fuel.
I switch lanes, accelerate past the line of cars. Can see kids huddled in the back seats, pillows shoved against windows, phones glowing near their faces. Even watching an animated movie on the drop-down screen of a four-door pickup.
I scroll through radio stations recycling the same warnings to a heartland just waking up to cold houses, dead electronics, and unresponsive coffee machines. The president is calling the cyberattacks on the grid and the substations an act of war, urging Americans to keep the roads clear for emergency responders, stay indoors, and maintain law and order.
I can’t find the radio show I was listening to earlier; maybe the DJ is done with her shift. I land on a station where the DJ is similarly tired of the same dire warnings and fuels breaks between the news with heavy metal. It’s angry and defiant. And though the radio display says “Classic Metal,” it’s mostly new to me.
I’m delirious from the cocktail of adrenaline and grief, feeling untethered, alone, and a little unhinged.
I remind myself I have just one immediate, clear-cut goal. It keeps my foot near the accelerator, even though I’m back on cruise control—a thing I hate but have resorted to in the name of conserving fuel. For the moment, Truly’s safe. I’ll worry about how to get to her, what to do with her, later. For now, all that matters is the samples.
I think how crazy this is. How crazy it all is. I’d spent so long trying to be safe. Now here I am speeding across the Midwest with the disease turning the world crazy riding shotgun in the front seat. I wonder what Elder Decaro would say if he saw me now—plastic wrappers on the console beside me, “Highway to Hell” on the radio.
No doubt Magnus would think it delicious. Except for the fact that I have his carrier of pig tissue. Which makes me choke back an unhinged laugh. And I wonder if it’s possible I’m crazy after all.
It occurs to me this is the
closest I’ve ever come to acting on the intrusive thought of the hour—screaming during service, tossing an entire stack of plates onto the Enclave kitchen floor, grabbing the newest cute initiate in a lip lock if only for a taste of the world outside (“Welcome to New Earth!”). To breaking out of the obsessive need to check and recheck myself, caught up in the silent cyclone of personal desire and fear.
A black Jeep starts to pass me on the left. The driver is alone, like me, and I wonder where—or who—he’s trying to get to. Unlike me, he’s singing along to the radio. I know it’s the radio, because he’s bouncing his short-haired head to the beat of “Highway to Hell” blasting from my radio . . .
Until he looks over at me and stops, then quirks a grin.
I shove down the accelerator and speed past him.
A mile later I’m sobbing. Wishing I could talk to Jackie, that I could call her, tell her she can’t be sick. That she has to live.
Because I don’t know how I can do this.
An hour later, my back aches. My eyes hurt. I rub my forehead and squeeze my temples as I realize it’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I last slept. I push my shoulders back, adjust the lumbar support on the seat as I pass an upturned vehicle in the ditch. Fumble in the bag of food for a can of green tea as a convoy of military trucks passes across the median, headed in the other direction.
I’ve dubbed most of the cars I’ve passed the last half hour in an effort to keep myself alert: Smoking Guy. The Nosepicker. The Lip Picker. The Clan Van with the four kids in back. Camper Man. I tagged the truck I passed a few miles back Redneck Survival Guy, if only for the coolers, white plastic chairs, grill, and entire mattress in the bed of the truck. He’d been ambling along, but now he’s back in my rearview and closing in fast. I consider speeding ahead—according to the GPS screen, I curve left in half a mile—but the minute I see him swerve onto the shoulder, I rethink that. I’ve passed plenty of evidence of reckless driving since dawn: cars skidded to a halt in the meridian, others stuck after trying to detour off road. I even saw a car driving on the other side—in the wrong direction.
I didn’t watch to see what happened.
Now, as Redneck Survival Guy comes up on me, I slow. But he’s not changing lanes nearly fast enough. I speed up and angle right. My right tire hits the grading, the sound humming up through the SUV in a low whine. Just as I decide to speed ahead, he powers up alongside me, not completely in the left lane so that I have to drive on the shoulder just to avoid him. He’s an older guy in a seed cap, lips tight around his teeth, gaze fixed right ahead as though he’s chasing something. I lay on the horn, but he doesn’t even seem to notice me.
By now he’s practically in the center of the road and there’s no way I’m spending the last few miles to Council Bluffs watching for him over my shoulder. I slow enough to let him pull ahead even as the GPS prompts me to stay left. He does, belatedly drifting into the left lane before abruptly swerving right—and onto the shoulder with a bump that sends the grill toppling out the back. It hits the pavement and bursts into pieces. A thud punches the front of the car, thumps along the undercarriage beneath me as the truck speeds ahead at the fork in the highway.
With shaking hands, I follow I-80 south. Whatever was trapped in the undercarriage seems to be gone, and I’m still moving. Which is good, since I’m surrounded by nothing but open prairie and farmland.
Twenty-two miles to Council Bluffs and my best shot at a working gas pump. I don’t dare stop here to survey the damage—just my luck, I’d be the one to get mowed down by some granny in a Smart car.
Ten minutes ago I was unstoppable. Now I’m nervously watching for each mile marker, listening for rattles in the undercarriage or any hint of a tire going flat.
What I notice instead is a syrupy smell inside the car. A few seconds later the thermometer symbol lights up on the dash.
Now I don’t know what to do. I know how to refuel the car and—thanks to Ken—change a tire. My car emergency plan, however, has always and only consisted of asking whoever was driving with me what to do.
By the time white smoke starts wafting from the front of the hood, I know I’ve got problems. I’m trying not to freak out or entertain visions (too late) of the car erupting in flames and exploding—burning me and the samples in the front seat to high heaven.
I squint at the approaching sign for Underwood, Iowa, listing two gas stations, and a “truck stop”—which I find dubious but am in no position to refute.
By the time I turn from the off-ramp, I’m amazed to find the stop—a convenience store and Subway shop with four double pumps in front—swarming with activity, a large, handwritten Cash only sign at the turn where a man in a reflective vest is directing traffic from the cars lined up on either side of the street.
But right now gas is the least of my problems. I pull into the handicapped parking space in front of the convenience store (because who’s going to fine me?), fumble in the back seat for my purse and a surgical mask. When I come around front of the SUV, I stop cold. The entire base of Redneck Guy’s grill is protruding from the front of the Lexus by a metal leg.
When I tug on it, the thing won’t even budge.
I walk to the front of the shop where handwritten gas prices are taped to the door—at least two dollars above the normal price per gallon. But when I go inside, the place is full; a line stretches the entire length of the shop’s main aisle, one lone guy in a mask and latex gloves manning the register with an old-fashioned calculator. The shelves are practically depleted, the dark coolers empty except for a few random bottles of Muscle Milk and cans of iced coffee. The radio’s on, relaying the national power outage, as though we hadn’t noticed.
I beeline toward the restroom, having had to pee for hours. I find it down a short hallway, an “Out of Service” sign taped to the door. I try the handle anyway.
Locked.
Back in the store, a man at the front of the line is arguing with the guy behind the counter, calling him names even as he forks over his money.
“You know this is price gouging!” he says.
“What I know is this is the only station between here and Council Bluffs with a generator. Which takes money to buy and gas to run,” the man says, as though he’s already repeated the same line twenty times today. He’s thin and balding and doesn’t seem the least bit ecstatic to be selling out of everything—even as more people come through the door. “You’re welcome to buy your gas elsewhere if they have any left by the time you get there or wait for the next supply if and when it comes. Next, please!”
The man curses the guy out and throws the money in his face.
“Pump five,” the man behind the counter says. “Next.”
“Excuse me,” I say to a woman in line. She’s cradling a liter of pop and an entire box of salted nut rolls.
“The line’s back there,” she says.
“I just want to know if there’s a repair shop here or anywhere nearby that’s open?”
“There’s one in the next building over,” the man behind her says. “But I doubt anyone’s working. This here and the church are the only places even open. Though that guy might be able to call a local mechanic for you if his phone’s working. Probably charge you ten bucks, but—” He shrugs.
“Thanks,” I say, and push out the doors to head to the truck repair shop. It isn’t much more than a big garage, the bays closed. The human-sized door, when I try it, is locked.
It isn’t the first time I haven’t been allowed through a narrow gate.
I walk around the corner of the building and, with a quick glance over my shoulder, whip down my jeans and squat behind a dumpster.
Back at the SUV, which is still steaming, if not as badly as before, I unplug my phone, ready to throw myself at the mercy of the counter guy for a mechanic referral. My phone, at least, has a full battery, so he can’t charge me for the call.
Straightening out of the driver’s side, I don’t register the shout at first. I’m preoc
cupied, worried about one thing: getting the SUV fixed so I can get back on the road. I’m also, like the Lexus, running on fumes. So it takes me a minute to notice the man at the pump twelve feet behind the Lexus—until he starts screaming.
All I can think is that the pump isn’t working because he didn’t see the cash sign. That he’s the kind of person who shouts at inanimate objects—like the lady at the mall ATM a few weeks ago who yelled at it for a full two minutes when it wouldn’t give her the option of taking out $30 even though the sticker said it dispensed only in increments of twenty.
Except he’s not screaming at the pump, but about some chick named Jenny.
“You think you can hide what you really are?” he says to no one, waving the nozzle in front of him. “You think I don’t know? That I haven’t seen the scales under your skin?”
I go very still, afraid to slam the door and draw attention to myself.
Too late.
The man spins around, sees me. “You!”
He drops the nozzle and runs right for me. I dive into the driver’s seat, slam the door. Fumble for the lock button. Hit the window one instead. It starts to go down. I punch it again—and the window stops.
“They’re coming!” the man says, grabbing the edge of the window.
I hit the button again, and he grapples with the ledge, gets his fingers out just in time to keep them from getting caught. He pulls on the door, opening it. I grab the inside handle, but he’s got more leverage than me. I let go, all at once. The door flies open and he stumbles back. I lean out, grab the door, and slam it shut. Punch the lock.
He springs back up. Slams a gun flat against the window so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t break.
“Don’t worry,” he says, words muffled through the glass. “I won’t let them get you. You saw them, too, right?”
But the sight of that gun has seized up my diaphragm.
“Say it!” he says, spittle flying from his lips. “I know you saw their scales. Don’t deny it!”
I nod stiffly.
Crazy Man waves the gun around, ranting about illegal aliens. And somehow I don’t think he means the Mexican kind.
