by T I WADE
“We returned to this street just before it got light,” continued Paul. “As we snuck around the corner, we found three of the men who had walked out of here with us. They were all dead. They’ve been shot in the head, execution style. We checked in their pockets for a cell phone to call someone for help, but all their wallets and stuff was gone.”
“The rest of you are all from around this area?” John queried the kids without the blankets around them and they all nodded. “Do any of you know how to get out of here and onto any highway going south?” One 10-year old thought that he could guide them. “Where are we right now?” John asked the boy.
“New Jersey,” he replied.
“New Jersey, or New York?” John asked, now confused.
“No, this is the Marine Terminal in Port Newark, New Jersey. Where did you think you were?”
“Next to the Hudson River,” John answered.
“That’s over towards Manhattan from here. This is Newark Bay,” replied the boy. “Do you have anything to eat? We’re really hungry.”
“He landed in Newark Bay, huh! The captain’s going to like that one when I tell him that. He beat old Sully!” smiled John thinking aloud. “Cheese or chocolate?” he asked the kids.
“Chocolate!” was the unanimous reply.
“Guys, go and see Pam, the flight attendant by the refrigerator, and ask her to get you a box of both,” he instructed, and they moved swiftly in that direction, all hungry except the teenager who just stood there with her face down and her teeth still chattering. He touched the girl on her shoulder and she pulled away immediately. “What’s your name?” he asked. She did not respond. “Can you hear me?” he asked. She nodded.
“We are getting out of this place this morning. It’s not safe here anymore,” he spoke to her soothingly. “The flight attendant can look after you, and keep you warm and safe while we’re getting ready. Come, walk with me and I will introduce you to her.” He walked over to Jamie, one of the flight attendants, who was issuing the kids a box of cheese and chocolate each and cautioning them to eat it slowly because there wasn’t much to go around. The girl followed John, and when Pam Wallace noticed her shivering, she grabbed another blanket without a word, put it around the chattering girl, and took her into the office.
A meeting was held several minutes later, and the Captain spoke. “These kids came in this morning and said that several of the passengers who left yesterday were shot outside last night. This place is getting dangerous. There are large, out-of-control fires coming closer and there is enough ammunition in this warehouse to blow it all to shreds. Is anybody still contemplating staying here and waiting for help?”
Nearly a dozen people put their hands up. Most were older and sitting near the arrogant government official. The captain tried valiantly to convince them to leave.
“We are going to be tight in the five vehicles we have ready and fueled up. Are you sure you want to stay? This government-employed gentleman is operating under a code of justice I don’t believe exists anymore. He hasn’t been outside and hasn’t seen the death and destruction out there.” Captain Mallory waited for a change of heart from the people who were obviously in collusion with the government official. “He is certain that you will all be rescued, and I honestly hope he is right and you will be. This is a democratic country and you can all make your own decisions. When I leave here, however, you are no longer my concern. You will be on your own. Do you understand?”
“This is the United Bloody States of America,” replied the government official. “Help will come, and you will hear from the authorities about the damage you have done to this building, I can promise you that, Captain. We have food here for weeks, and I’m sure the fires are being put out right now. The Army or National Guard will be in these streets very soon and will take us out of here the RIGHT way!”
“I hope for your sake, sir, that you are right. You can ask the airline for my address when the time comes. My crew and I, however, are leaving this place and trying to get to safety on our own. Anyone who wants to leave with us should get aboard one of the vehicles at this time. If I see the authorities on the way out, I will certainly tell them of your whereabouts. People! We are leaving in 15 minutes.” There was a general move for the door to the vehicle room, with many of the people patting the captain on the shoulder as they passed by, all wearing coats, hats, gloves, and “The Mechanic” blankets they had found in the warehouse. The kids and families were put aboard first, with couples second and single people filling in the empty seats that were left.
The locks on the outside of the garage-type door had already been broken with the flashlight by a couple of the passengers, and the door was rolled open. Smoke and cold air swept inside as the five vehicles were started up. Captain Mallory asked for a headcount from each vehicle, and put a member of his crew in command of each one. After the news from the boys, the captain and several of the men had packed a few more M4 carbines and several dozen extra boxes of ammunition and grenades into the front SWAT truck just in case. It would be the lead truck, with the second SWAT truck bringing up the rear of the convoy. Both trucks had a turret-type opening in the roof of the cab, a great firing and sniper position.
Captain Mallory went back and counted the people staying—21 passengers sat there stoned-faced, without making eye contact with him. He waited for a moment to see if any of them would change their minds. Not seeing any change of heart, he got into the driver’s seat of the lead vehicle with the kid who knew where they were going, squashed in between three armed men. One of the men was standing with his upper body through the turret with an M4 in his hands ready to shoot. Without looking at the unhappy people watching them leave, they drove out into the street and then stopped briefly to make sure all five vehicles got through the warehouse door, which was promptly closed behind them.
John was driving the rear vehicle, and together with the drivers, they had at least two men in each cab who had been in the military or had combat experience. One M4 with a rifle grenade was fitted in each cab and the other M4s were ready to fire with dozens of magazines filled and waiting.
The final headcount in the convoy was 86 adults and ten children and there wasn’t much spare room in any of the vehicles with the drum of gas, food, and everything else they had brought along. They had placed 28 adults and four of the ten kids in the back of each SWAT truck. In the ambulance, there were three in the front and 12 in the back, including the young girl with the flight attendant and the last drum of fuel. There were 12 in the fire truck and six in the police car, which was behind the first SWAT truck with another two M4s ready for action.
In all, they had ten M4s ready and their owners weren’t afraid to use them.
Captain Mallory smiled when his co-pilot told him that they had landed in Newark Bay and realized that he had landed the 737 in a much smaller expanse of water than the Hudson. “Like old Sully! I should get a medal for that,” he laughed. “If I’m right, we are right next to Newark Airport, which means that I-95 South is not too far.” He looked over at the 10-year old who knew the area. “Okay kid, which way? You’re my navigator. I want I-95 southbound—we’re heading for Florida!”
“Left, Captain,” the boy proudly told him. “Then we turn left onto Fleet Street, I think. Fleet Street should be the second or third road to the left, then go all the way up Fleet Street and we should see the on-ramp to the highway.” Captain Mallory did as he was told. There were four vehicles behind him, dawn was beginning to break above the smoke, which was getting lighter as they drove away from the fires, and he hoped the vigilantes were still asleep wherever it was that they were sleeping.
The first few blocks were pretty clear since not many cars would have been in this area at midnight on New Year’s Eve, but they still had one turn to the left to make before they would reach the high way.
They ran into a roadblock of bricks a couple of streets earlier than expected due to a burned-out and collapsed warehouse that blocked the road they
were on, and they had to divert south for several blocks before they found an undamaged road that would take them to Fleet Street. They maneuvered slowly through debris as they navigated a route that would get all five vehicles to the highway.
A couple of blocks later, they saw the highway stretching above the streets in front of them, but they could not see the on-ramp. Captain Mallory turned right to go one more block north and then turned left onto Fleet Street, and saw the on-ramp right in front of him.
Suddenly a truck drove across their path and stopped 100 feet in front of them, blocking off the street ahead of them. Captain Mallory stopped and looked at the vehicle. It was an old white delivery truck—a freezer meat truck by the look of it—and it had several men lying on top with guns pointing at them. A man in the cab got out and used a bullhorn shouting at the five trucks in front of him.
“We are not afraid to shoot. All we want is your vehicles. Get out with your hands up and you can all go. We won’t shoot you. Leave the keys in your vehicles and get out now, or we will start shooting. You have ten seconds.”
“What do you think?” the captain asked the kid, who had his nose pressed up against the inner windshield.
“I’ve seen that guy before,” the kid replied. “He was leading the group who shot at us yesterday. The other kids called him ‘The Executioner.’ They saw him shoot people in the head, like you see on television.”
“I’m giving you one last chance,” the ‘Executioner’ ordered into the bullhorn. ”We will kill all of you one-by-one and rape any sluts you got with you. You now have five seconds.”
“I’m going to open the window and take him down,” Captain Mallory stated quietly to the group in the cab. The man who had been standing up had already sat down, his name was Jimmy. “Jimmy, hand me an M4. You take the one with the rifle grenade on it and after I shoot this noisy asshole, you stand up and aim to take out the men on the top of the truck with the grenade, and then you get out of the way and let Mike here stand up. Mike,” he ordered the man next to Jimmy. “You stand up and spray the back area of the truck once we have these suckers with their heads down. I’ll do the same, and young man, you pass us magazines when we need them.”
“Two!” the man with the bullhorn called out as Captain Mallory locked the M4 into three-round bursts, rolled down the window, opened the driver’s door, took aim through the window, and blew the man’s head off. Several shots immediately rang out from the truck in front of them, one dinging the side of the SWAT truck next to the captain’s head.
Jimmy fired the grenade at the truck and it landed and exploded two feet short of the truck’s cab, but sprayed it with shrapnel so hard that the truck literally jumped back an inch and nearly flipped over. The engine area immediately caught fire as bits and pieces of roadway and metal opened the fuel lines. Captain Mallory emptied his first magazine towards the roof of the vehicle as the truck, which must have been gas-powered, blew up with an almighty roar, dinging his SWAT truck with hundreds of pieces of flying debris.
The shock wave hit them as the captain jumped back into the driver’s seat and turned the truck around on the wide road, while Mike gave them covering fire from the turret. He headed back in the direction they had come, closely followed by the other four. The captain then slowly and carefully crossed the low concrete center median and drove back around the corner of the next building to get away from the burning vehicle. He turned left at the next road, a one-way street going the other way, and headed along the side of the highway above him.
“Turn right,” shouted the boy. “The closest entrance is to the right.” Mike looked behind him, saw the four vehicles in their convoy still following, and then knew where he was. The next entrance to the highway was an off-ramp opposite the main entrance into Newark Airport.
He had to turn sharply to get up the off-ramp as there were several vehicles parked at odd angles in his path. He aimed his truck to drive between them, hitting one out of the way so that the vehicles behind could follow. The top of the off-ramp was blocked with a small car on its side, and he slowly pushed it to the side as he went up the wrong way and got onto the northbound side of I-95, driving south.
“That was pretty close back there,” Captain Mallory stated to the others in the cab. “I don’t suppose we are going to have a moving traffic problem coming the opposite way.” He smiled as he saw the four vehicles still following them in his rear-view mirror but his smile quickly faded when he saw the dozens of crashed vehicles blocking their way in front of them on northbound I-95.
It was hard work driving; the convoy could do no more than a few miles a hour, continually having to veer around blackened and crashed vehicles everywhere. The road was icy and slippery and the snow was a foot thick in some places. Some parts of the asphalt or concrete could be seen through the white covering and had only a light dusting as the snow had blown into drifts on the sides of the highway.
For the first mile, they traveled slowly until they had to stop. A tractor trailer had turned over and was on its side with boxes of what looked like frozen chicken products everywhere. Most of the boxes were already just mounds under the snow. The truck had flipped over onto two cars and had crushed them nearly flat. There were dead human and chicken bodies everywhere as the truck had ploughed down the highway for quite a ways, piling up cars in front of it.
There was no easy way to get through, so the captain asked the fire engine to pull up close to the rear of the truck. After pulling a couple of frozen bodies out of the way, the fire engine slowly touched the back of the truck, its bigger bulk helping as it pushed the rear of the truck slowly and opened up a space for them to drive through.
“John, get some help and collect those ropes hanging loosely on the side of the trailer, they look strong and we might need them later on,” Captain Mallory shouted to his co-pilot as he drove up next to him. “We should pick up several cases of frozen chicken as well. Throw some in your vehicle. We can have a BBQ for dinner. I was thinking of siphoning off some fuel from the truck, but it’s diesel, so it is of no use to us. No worry, though. Hey! A light bulb just went off in my head; we have plenty of fuel in all these abandoned vehicles on the highway. We can siphon it out of car tanks, whenever we need it.”
They drove on for another hour without having to stop. The smoke was slowly clearing the further they drove away from the city, and the number of stationary vehicles was getting fewer and fewer. At one point the vehicles managed 100 yards of highway without passing a single vehicle and they felt a bit relieved, until they got over the crest of a hill and observed several cars and two trucks in a heap in front of them. For the second time they had to come to a complete stop.
For the first time that day, and two hours into their trip they saw clear sunlight for the first time. The smoke was gone and there was a slight wind from the south. Everybody was beginning to feel a little more relaxed. The leaders took this time to let everyone out for a quick stretch and to bask in the sunlight—something, it seemed, no one had seen for days.
This crash looked worse than the last one. Again, a tractor-trailer had turned over. The cab had completely ripped off from its trailer and had wedged a smaller truck and a small bus up against the outside crash barrier. The three vehicles were totally black from the fire that must have been out for hours now, and blackened bodies could still be seen sitting in what must have been seats in the bus, the tops of the bodies covered with a dusting of frozen ice from the heat. It was not a pretty site.
On the other side of the trailer was a yellow moving truck—a small Penske Chevy—pinned against three cars, which in turn, were pinned to the rear of the trailer. This area of the accident had not been part of the fire.
“Shall I see what’s in the trailer?” asked John, and the captain nodded. He watched John climb up over a broken car and suddenly stop. He crouched and slowly backed down and ran back to Captain Mallory. “You are not going to believe this, but I just saw a lion and a lioness eating the remains of a human b
ody back there. They are about 100 yards away.”
“What?” asked Captain Mallory, not believing what he was hearing. “Bloody lions, for Christ’s sake!” replied John. They were quiet for a couple of seconds.
“Must have escaped from a zoo or something,” Captain Mallory replied. “Get everybody back in the vehicles. I’ll shoot a few rounds and see if I can scare them off.”
He waited until everybody was loaded back in, and he then climbed up the side of the overturned car, looked past the trailer, and there they were—pulling meat off a bloody body in the middle lane of northbound I-95, as if they were in the middle of Africa. He shouted at them and they immediately looked up, spotting him. He shot three rounds close to where they stood, and they bounded away from him, headed south. He watched them go a couple hundred yards before he looked down and straight into the dead and frozen eyes of the driver of the car he was standing on. He jumped with shock and landed in the snow in front of the car, just managing to stay on his feet.
He pulled the door to the trailer open and it was full of garden supplies; fertilizer and topsoil for some hardware store. He checked to see if the lions were returning, couldn’t see anything, and returned to the SWAT truck. He instructed John and the guys in his truck to get a hose and some of the empty gas containers they had tied to the back of the fire engine’s ladder.
The Chevy’s cab was empty and the back of the truck was filled with somebody’s now broken furniture, but the large fuel tank positioned under the door to the cab was not dripping, and Captain Mallory opened it. It was close to full and they siphoned 30 gallons out of it. This filled the tanks of the fire engine, the Studebaker, and the ambulance. The SWAT trucks were still half full, so they emptied the 44-gallon drum, filled the two remaining tanks up, and threw the large drum out, keeping all the attachments.
