by Dan Henk
“Holy Mother of God…”
I continued my approach as he leveled his rifle and fired, his hands visibly trembling with the effort. The bullet ricocheted off my right pec and buried itself in the wall. Small caliber bullet, probably a .223. It didn’t even move me. I continued my calm stroll toward him. He flung the bolt back, ejecting the cartridge, and franticly fumbled in his flannel pocket for another bullet. Jamming it into place, he slammed the bolt, raised the barrel, and fired.
The bullet rebounded off my chest and into his left thigh, tearing the faded jeans and scraping the flesh beneath. A dark red blotch started to spread around the hole.
“Oh, shit… Oh, shit…”
He stumbled backwards, a look of mounting fear on his face. I kept walking, savoring the intense effects of my presence. As I passed the frame of the kitchen something struck the right side of my head. I swiveled my neck and saw his partner. He had tried to stab me in the head with a large hunting knife. It was still raised in his right hand, the point slightly bent. I zoomed in on the tip for a moment, quickly retracting my vision to focus on the wielder’s hairy face. It was crowned by a greasy mop of brown hair and topped off with a mesh trucker’s cap. He was backing away in shock, jaw slack, knife limply upraised. The one in front would be the first try to escape, so I decided to deal with him immediately.
Leaping forward, I grabbed him by the throat with one hand and rained down on him with the other fist. His head burst like a melon, wispy fragments mushrooming outwards in a splatter of pink and crimson gore, the lifeless body collapsing backwards and carrying me down on top of it.
That was unexpected. Way messier and more revolting than I anticipated.
I heard a slight trickle of water, and turned to find the other intruder had wet his pants, a dark stain blossoming on the crotch of his camouflage BDUs. His grip had loosened on the knife, which he held aloft as if out of some forgotten instinct, his fat, pitted face frozen in disbelief. He probably was the local tough guy, at least 250 pounds, a stained white wife beater covering his fat belly, his ponytail and pork chop sideburns oozing attitude. I wouldn’t put him as a real nice guy, but I still felt a twinge of regret at doing what I had to do. But I couldn’t risk him telling anyone. Not to mention, I had killed far better to get to this point. As I walked slowly toward him, he stumbled backwards until his retreat was abruptly stopped by the kitchen sink. He glanced about frantically, then tried to make a run for it, bolting to the left. I grabbed his ponytail, his neck whipping back and brusquely stopping him in mid step.
Bringing up my right hand, I cradled his head between my palms. He punched at where my ribcage would be located, the ensuing dull, crunching noise immediately followed by his howls of pain, the knuckles having fractured on impact. He shook his right hand limply and tried to jab at my eyes with his left. Had they reached, his jabs would have had no effect, my eyes consisting of sunken black lenses, but they weren’t even close. Drawing him toward me, using my body as a lever, I snapped his neck sideways. The vertebra cracked with a wet crunching sound, and I dropped his lifeless body, the corpse crumbling in a pile at my feet. I couldn’t wait a week. I had to leave now, before anyone came looking for these two.
Walking to the bedroom, I pulled open the top drawer. I had stashed a few clothes there, just in case, but I didn’t need them. I grabbed a roll of black nylon parachute rope and some mountain climbing clips. I pulled a canvas army-issue duffel bag from the closet and tossed them in. At the bottom corner of the bedroom closet I had a large, floor-mounted safe. Spinning through the combination, I popped it open and pulled out two .45 pistols, several boxes of ammo, and an SOG Special Forces knife. I threw these in the duffel bag as well. Finally I grabbed a couple of ironwood kali fighting sticks I had in a cloth case leaning against the back wall. Stepping out of the room, I rounded the corner. The listless form of the first body blocked the hall, its neck glaring at me in a ruined tangle of bone, blood, and brain. I stepped over it and into the kitchen. The other body, its head twisted unnaturally to one side, blocked the drawers under the sink. I kicked the corpse aside, the impact accompanied by a moist cracking sound that no doubt signaled breaking ribs. Stooping, I opened the cabinet doors and grabbed a toolbox full of Craftsman utensils and a nearby Maglite. Throwing them in the duffel bag, I tossed it over my shoulder, stepped over the carcass clogging the doorway, and strolled out the front door.
The sun was sinking, the dying leaves of the treetops glimmering brilliantly in the wind. I glanced around for what probably was the last look I was going to have of North America for quite a while. It was really beautiful, in a sentimental way—the solemn oaks surrounding the open plot of tall, yellow grass the house sat amidst, the crisp breeze tossing about the foliage and throwing aloft the curled remnants of dying leaves. I couldn’t smell the air anymore, but I imagined it carried that burnt wood scent of autumn. I traipsed forward, leaving an open door and swinging screen in my wake. Circling around the Mustang, I dropped the satchel by the rear bumper and tramped back behind the house. The door offered a little resistance, unclenching with a soft thud as it collided with the remains of the headless man. I pushed it fully open and stepped over the body, making a sharp right turn into the bathroom. Washing the gore off my hands, I grabbed the throw towel and further scoured my arms and face. Amazing the amount of detritus I had managed to sully myself with. I had to flush bits of brain and bone out of the towel, wring out the excess water, and continue scrubbing.
I tossed the stained towel into the wastebasket. Under the sink was a roll of gauze and some metal clips. I scooped them up. Wrapping my face from the bottom up, I overlapped each new layer, leaving a narrow slit for the eyes. I patched the ends together behind my head with the clips, pausing for a moment to look at myself in the mirror. The sight was bizarre to say the least. I was naked except for the swaddling of white cloth about my head, a black sheath of musculature descending from below the chin. I looked like the Invisible Man, only with an alien shell instead of pedestrian clothing. Stepping into the bedroom, I opened the dresser and pulled out a long-sleeved gray T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and a pair of leather gloves. Each was folded neatly, sitting side by side in the top drawer. No need for socks, but I grabbed a pair of engineer boots and a tan cowboy hat from the closet. All this had been carefully set aside in case my plan actually worked. I had other clothes stuffed in the lower drawers just in case it didn’t.
I examined myself in the dresser mirror. I looked ridiculous, like some B-movie villain from a Hammer flick. At least the horrendous getup might be a little easier to explain than my actual appearance.
It was the last time I would ever see this house. I had planned it that way, and I knew it was necessary, but it still felt like I was leaving something behind, something I owned but barely knew. I had been through some rough times in life, times when I had nothing to my name, and it was hard to let go. I stopped in the living room, extracted my keys from the pocket of my old pants, and walked out to the car. Climbing in, I paused, eying the house I was about to abandon, then the red Dodge to my left.
The abandoned truck seemed to insinuate a deeply bottled reproval, the taut silence accusing me of its owner’s violent demise. Images of the bloodstained carnage in the house flashed through my mind, making my quick departure seem all the more urgent. I cranked the car, not even waiting for it to warm up, just revving it a few times and spinning out in a cloud of dust toward the main road.
It would be late by the time I was even close to a more populous area. The trail exiting the cabin let out on a small, poorly maintained road that went a good thirty minutes before it hit a major interstate. The Mustang bounced as I sped across the cracked pavement, its pitted surface still in better shape than some cities I’d been in. The late afternoon sunlight bore a dying color, a jaundiced tinge that seemed to signal the approaching end. The hope and positivity of the blue light of morning had aged into something ancient and menacing. The surrounding trees cast long shadows,
slicing the road into dark, jagged lines splotched with lighter patches of pale asphalt. I rolled down the window of the Mustang. The wind tore at the edges of my costume. I really didn’t need the fresh air, or the cool breeze, but it was an old habit and, in its way, reassuring.
A bit more of this road and I’d hit 95, which I would take most of the way down before veering off toward the southwest and heading into Texas. From there I could enter Mexico and disappear in South America for a while. There was a far more direct route. I could start off with Interstate 90, take 271 to 71, and so on. I would have to deal with far less populated areas in Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. Clearly this was the best route, but I had this nagging paranoia. Murphy’s Law is a bitch, and I couldn’t afford for too much to go wrong. I knew NYC and Washington DC. I wouldn’t get lost. Better still, if anyone found out who I was, it was actually easier to hide in a heavily populated area than a provincial one. There was not enough wilderness left in most of this country to escape the sophisticated detection devices commanded by the government. Even if there were a wilderness to escape into, I wouldn’t know what entailed a small wooded area as opposed to the beginnings of a huge forest. It was a sad statement on the course of humanity when it was easier to get lost in a crowd than in the wild.
CHAPTER VIII
A LITTLE SNAG IN THE PLAN
This was really strange. It had been a few hours, and I was off of the small road and onto a highway, yet the traffic had never picked up. At first I chalked it up to the late hour and sparse population. I didn’t really know this area well, but I was on a major interstate now and a car was passing by on the other side every forty minutes or so, with none on my side. I wasn’t speeding—I didn’t want to risk being pulled over—and yet I wasn’t being overtaken by anyone. My fuel reserves were low. Next gas depot I saw a marker for, I pulled off. The interstate sign said I had three stations to choose from, yet as the curving exit led out onto a local road, I saw two, an Exxon and a Mobil, straddling opposite sides of the road, and both were closed. I was surprised they weren’t twenty-four-hour, especially considering their location on the side of a major highway. Looking around I noticed that even the street lamps were off.
The exit suggested another station lie down the road to the west, so I hit the gas and kept going. After a couple of minutes I spotted it, but it was closed as well, its shiny metal and plastic outlines gleaming on the outside, the depths cast in darkness, the ubiquitous Shell sign not even lit. A thick mass of slowly drifting clouds filtered the moonlight, the reflective surfaces quavering in the mottled luminescence. Very strange. I turned back around and headed toward the interstate.
Another couple of miles down 95, I saw another marker for gas. Pulling off again, my immediate view down the ramp was of darkened, lifeless stations to the right and left.
What the fuck is going on?
My fuel reserves were very low by this point. I didn’t want to venture into small towns and risk having to deal with the narrow scrutiny of my clumsy costume, but I wasn’t sure if my vehicle would make it to the next highway exit. And even then, judging from the last few, there might be nothing open. I took an immediate right at the foot of the ramp, heading down the side road in the hopes it would lead to a small town.
Another few miles with only the beams of my headlights burning through the desolation, and the Mustang started to sputter. A few more feet and it was out of gas, the engine coughing and then dying a jerking death. I steered the coasting car onto the thin, rocky shoulder. The weight of the old muscle car, combined with the sudden lack of power steering, made for a stiff glide. It ground to a halt, the tail end jutting out into the lane. I switched off the useless ignition, pulled the emergency brake, and popped the trunk. The shoulder, as it turned out, was more of a drainage ditch, a narrow stretch of dirt falling away into a small, muck-encrusted depression, with the dark trees of a forest towering a few feet beyond. I pulled my two gas containers from the trunk and set them down. Slamming the lid, I lifted the tail end of the car up. Feeling like Superman—in fact, I recalled him doing this in some obscure issue—I dragged the tail end onto the shoulder. Now with any luck it wouldn’t get hit while I went for gas. I picked up the cans and started walking.
CHAPTER IX
TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
An hour later, and I’m trotting up a road, in the middle of the night and the middle of nowhere. The woods on either side sport weed-choked borders spilling over onto the moonlit asphalt. Even the shoulder has disappeared under the encroaching weeds, and still not a single car has passed. Actually, it isn’t the middle of the night any longer; it’s a few hours from daybreak, by my calculations, and I’m in a dicey situation. My plans center on my vehicle and crossing the border, but currently I am days from the border—weeks by foot—and if I am captured it could be disastrous. I trudge onward, a mass of clouds crossing the moon and throwing everything into such a deep black I can barely make out the road.
A few hundred feet more, and in the distance I see a clearing. Hard to tell in the rural dark, but it looks like the trees recede on the right. It could be a deli, or a gas station—I doubt a house would be this close to the roadside. There are no nearby town lights to reflect off the clouds, and the distant space on the side of the road is little more than a pocket of nothingness before the impending tree line.
I make out the edges of something manmade abrading the side of the road. Maybe a driveway. As I approach, the trees fall back and a shadowy form comes into view. It’s a small clearing with a gravel lot and filthy white brick hut. An ancient, heavily worn cylinder gleams in all its chipped and dented glory, the exposed metal casting a small glare in the darkness. The lights are out in the building. A grimy glass door and single window interrupt the flow of whitewashed concrete blocks. I don’t want to risk going farther. Hopefully, in such a rural area, there isn’t an alarm. I step in front of the door and set down the twin gas containers. The clouds have parted overhead and the full moon beams down in a wash of pale blue.
Studying the empty lot, I turn my attention to the tree line beyond the road. Nothing. Turning back, I jab my finger at the glass and it crashes inwards, a single break quickly encircled by spider webs shooting off in all directions. The falling shards ring out noisily in the silence, and I quickly glance around again. Nothing. The lock on the door is a simple deadbolt, and I stick my hand through the window and fumble around for the knob. A flip of the lever, a pull on the doorframe, and the door cracks open. A low-budget mini-market setup greets me, the packages of donuts and pork rinds glistening in their cellophane shells to my left, a small counter straddled by an outdated cash register on the right. The switch for the pump should be right under the counter, beneath the cash register, or on the wall. On the counter is a small black TV. I haven’t seen any news in a week, and I can only hope my little adventure down in the Carolinas didn’t make too big of a splash. Not that I think the government would report it, at least not with the true details. I reach over and turn the little silver knob. The set crackles, taking almost a full minute to come to life. Bands of static crisscross the screen, the speakers pouring out an annoying cacophony of hisses and pops. Assuming the top knob changes the channels, I grip it between my fingers, and with a shallow crack it comes off in my hands. I toss it over my shoulder and tightly grip the protruding metal switch. A slow flip through the stations turns up nothing but white noise. Another turn, and voices dimly emerge from the unintelligible din. I flip back and forth, trying to isolate the signal. The static mutates into a grainy black and white image, but my fingers are rotating a little too fast and I overshoot it. Twisting back, I see features resembling
Lebanon, only the streets look a bit more modern. There are even parking meters. A tank grumbles amidst clouds of dust, the sharp edges of buildings barely visible through the smog. The vague forms of soldiers melt in and out of the haze. Flashes of light erupt suddenly, followed immediately by gunfire. Those look like American troops! Did we invad
e somewhere? A voiceover kicks in, the clamor of warfare slightly muted for the newscaster.
“In the third day of heavy fighting, the US government appears to be falling apart. More states have broken away from the Union, and soldiers are deserting en masse for their home states. Here is a scene from the beleaguered Washington, DC, showing rampant carnage and destruction. The tanks rolling down Connecticut Avenue appear to belong to what we’re now calling the US Central Government, although the reserves fighting for Virginia look much the same. There is massive confusion. Most representatives have left the city, many trying to make it back to their home states.
“We appear to—wait a minute…”
The TV goes blank, and a cold feeling grips my spine. I know it’s only a reflex, like an amputee having sensation in a missing limb, but it feels real enough.
What is going on? I have been so focused on myself that I haven’t kept up with current events. Something big must have occurred, but what? Then another thought crosses my mind, almost a revelation: How will all of this affect my plan? On the one hand, I won’t have a central government hunting me. But on the other hand, there will be local militaries quarreling over territory. Not to mention heightened suspicion and possibly rampant fighting all the way to Mexico. I think luck might be on my side, if only slightly. The high-tech conspiracies of a united Big Brother would be far more of a threat than anything posed by little fiefdoms. The trip back to the car takes about an hour. I should fill up my gas cans. I can plan during the trek back.
Circling the counter, I feel under the register. My hand glides along until it hits a toggle switch. Flipping the lever, I head back outside. At the doorway I pause, debating whether I should turn on the outdoor lights. It would make things easier, but it might draw unwanted attention. I decide to operate in the dark.
