by Max Danzig
Chapter 5
Eddie Cook was on his way home on Interstate 93 north, from his night shift job in Waltham, Massachusetts when it began. He completed the last day of his three twelve hour day shift at a financial data systems technology center. Eddie was looking forward to having the next four days off to sit on his butt and do as little as possible for as long as he could.
He left work just after 8 AM and intended to get home to Manchester, New Hampshire in just over an hour. Halfway home he noticed he was low on gas, but wanted to wait until he crossed the border of New Hampshire to get a less expensive fill-up.
He decided to get off at Exit 4, in Derry. It’s quick and easy to get off and get back on after gassing up. He was just over a mile from the exit on what seemed to be a normal morning that became extraordinary in seconds.
Traffic was moving at a moderate pace when the car in front of Eddie drifted into the breakdown lane, then back into the other lane. ‘Asshole must be texting.’ Eddie thought. He was about to move into the left lane to go around the texting driver. He looked in his side view mirror in time to see an SUV race by so close it clipped his mirror. “Dammit!” Eddie exclaimed jerking his car back into the right lane.
The SUV sped past the texting driver going at least 80. It veered left, bounced off the guardrail, raced across both lanes of the highway and smashed into the opposite guardrail exploding in a jagged cloud of plastic, glass, and bent metal. The texting driver, still weaving, drove straight into the wrecked SUV. Both of the vehicles spun around and came to rest in smoldering hulks blocking both lanes of the interstate, with debris strewn everywhere.
“Holy shit, holy shit!” Eddie shouted as he pulled over toward the breakdown lane stopping several yards from the smashed vehicles. He took off his seatbelt to see if he could help someone.
Eddie fumbled with his phone and tried to calm his shaking hands enough to dial 9-1-1. Just then his car was rocked by an impact as another car crashed through the gap between Eddie’s car and the guardrail sideswiping both. Eddie’s car was pushed back into the right lane as the other car slewed sideways and impacted the already destroyed SUV. “Holy Fuck!” Eddied screamed then caught movement in his rearview mirror. Cars were swerving all over the highway.
Some cars tried slowing down and pulled over like he did. Other cars sped up as if operated by a drunk driver. Cars, trucks and SUV's crashed into each other, and into the guardrail. Where there was no guardrail, the vehicles flew down the embankment into the trees in metal rending impacts. Eddie put his car in drive, but it wouldn’t go, the right front of his car was on the ground as if his wheel had come off.
With the wave of mayhem behind him getting closer, he tore open the door and jumped out of the car. He thought for sure he’d get splattered across the roadway before he could get out of the way. He heard racing engines and tires screeching as he ran. Eddie didn’t look behind or around him; he focused straight ahead at the guardrail and dove over it.
As he rolled down the hill, there was the sound of more vehicles crashing into the growing pileup. He rolled to the bottom of the embankment, and something large hurtled past him in the tall grass a few yards away. It hit the trees with a crushing impact. He sat up to see a minivan on its side the roof of the van crushed against several small pine trees.
Eddie got to his feet and ran a few feet into the woods figuring he’d be safer behind the trees. Remarkably, he still had a death grip on his phone. With pure adrenaline coursing through his veins, he took three tries before he could dial 9-1-1. As pure chaos continued to unfold on the highway above him, he waited for someone to pick up his call.
As the phone rang, he tried to make sense of what was happening. All was confusion. The phone continued to ring, and the highway became quiet. Eddie looked up the embankment and saw plumes of smoke coming from the highway and the unmistakable stench of burning rubber and fuel permeated the air.
No one was picking up his call. Eddie thought they must be taking dozens of calls about the pileup. He scrambled back up the grassy embankment to the highway and saw something resembling a war zone.
Piles of smashed and burning cars were stopped at crazy angles all over the highway. Even worse there were people laying in the road, and others stumbling about. He started towards a woman who was staggering and clawing at her neck. Before he got to her, she dropped to the ground writhing, with blood running from her mouth and nose.
He saw a young man in another stopped car. The car had no damage, but the man was grabbing and clawing at his neck with blood running out of his mouth as he tried to scream. Eddie stopped in his tracks looking wide-eyed all around him as the world fell apart in the space of a few minutes.
There were dozens of cars stopped or crashed on both sides of the interstate. People were out of the cars staggering and stumbling, dropping to the ground, in various stages of writhing and choking to death on their own blood.
Eddie spent the next three hours sitting in his damaged and disabled car with the windows up and the doors locked not sure what to do. His sense of terror mixed with confusion and indecision. With the sudden horror and disorientation of the world outside, his car became a sanctuary.
He tried to call the police, but they never picked up. He tried calling family and friends, he even tried calling his ex-wife, but he only got dead air. The few radio stations still on air only played an endless loop of songs and commercials. There was no commentary of any sort describing what happened on the highway which was no doubt newsworthy.
He was a mile from the Derry exit and twenty miles from home, his car was not drivable and he was alone. He thought about his son and daughter. Eddie never felt so afraid in his thirty-five years of his life, but that would change. What happened was so unexpected and inexplicable he couldn't reconcile the horrors he'd seen, never mind try to comprehend it.
After being cooped up in the car for so long he could no longer stand the stress. Eddie got out of the car and stood on the roadway. The shock of the brisk October air was like a splash of cold water, rousing him from his trance-like state. He made a wide detour around a body on the road and passed the crumpled, burning hulks of wrecked cars in the middle of the highway, and walked the last mile to the Derry exit.
There was no sound or movement anywhere other than clouds of black smoke in the surrounding landscape. As Eddie walked onto the main road off the exit, he was met with more devastation. The remains of wrecked and twisted cars were strewn all around.
The dirty grey pavements were littered with cold, lifeless bodies next to stopped and wrecked cars. Others lay by gas pumps or in front of stores, in parking lots and in doorways. The only sound came from the biting autumn wind as it riffled through the trees.
With all the corpses scattered everywhere, he could see no obvious reason what caused them to die. The closest body to Eddie was that of an elderly woman. She had dropped to the ground where she'd been standing, still clutching her handbag.
Eddie raised his hands up to his mouth to yell out for help or to see if there was anyone else alive nearby but stopped. The world was so cold and silent; he felt exposed and out of place; he didn't dare make a sound.
In the back of his mind there was the fear that, if he shouted for help or call out, his voice might draw attention to his location... attention he didn’t want. Although there didn't seem to be anyone else left to hear him, his paranoia grew.
Eddie convinced himself that making a noise might bring whatever had killed the rest of the population would come back to kill him. Paranoid maybe, but what had happened was so illogical and unexpected that he wasn't prepared to take any chances. Instead, he continued walking into town to try to find anyone else who might be alive.
Chapter 6
As Eddie entered the outer part of downtown Derry, he came to the Grinnell Community Center, named after a forgotten local public figure. It was an old, large, dull white, two-story wooden structure with a long U-shaped driveway and a small parking lot in the back. Eddie wal
ked up to the front of the center, taking cautious steps up to the doorway and peered in through the half-open door. He pushed the tall door open; the creaking made his nerves jump. He took a few tentative steps inside. This time he called out, but there was no reply.
It only took a couple of minutes for Eddie to explore the cold, wood paneled interior of the drafty building. It was comprised of two offices in the front entry hall, which led to a large, open main Community Center space. In the back of the large room were smaller rooms comprising of a kitchen, two storerooms, one at either end of the building, and men and women’s bathrooms along the side of the main hall. At the far end of the main hall was a door that led to another small storeroom. It looked like a newer addition to the original building.
The large main hall was lined with dark wood paneling to the height of the doors. The walls above the paneling were painted white and reached up to the twenty foot ceiling. Other than two bodies in the main hall the building was empty. Eddie found it easy to move the two corpses and dragged them outside.
In the hand of a grey-haired man, who looked to have been in his early sixties, he found a bunch of keys which, he discovered, fit the buildings locks. He thought this must have been the building supervisor. The grey-haired lady who had died next to him most likely worked there as well. One by one, he heaved the stiffening bodies through a back door and placed them carefully in the tall grass under the trees at the back of the property beyond the parking area.
While he was outside he decided to stay in the Community Center until morning. It seemed as safe a place as any to stay. It was solid and warmer than sitting in a car. Eddie decided there didn't seem to be any point in trying to go anywhere else. He needed time to think and decide what to do. The only place he wanted to be was home, but felt he shouldn’t chance it in case he got stuck somewhere he didn’t want to be. He convinced himself that it would be safer to stay put for now and try to find a drivable car in the morning.
As the light faded, he discovered there was no electricity in the Community Center. He left the building and walked out onto to Broadway and found it wasn't just the Community Center without power. The electrical grid in this part of town had gone down. Other than a few flickering fires as far as Eddie could see there was no other light. Not even a single street lamp. As he watched the day fade, the world around him became enshrouded in darkness.
Although he seemed to be the last person alive in the town, shutting the front door of the Community Center made him feel a little safer and less exposed. With the door shut and locked he could at least pretend for a while that nothing had happened.
Eddie sat on a cold plastic chair in the dark kitchen of the Community Center listening to the silence of a dead world. He was unable to reach his ex-wife and his children on the phone and wondered if they were okay.
A sudden crash from outside made him jump to his feet and run to the front door. He waited for a second or two, almost too afraid to see what made the noise. Sensing help might be at hand he took a deep breath, opened the door and ran out into the parking lot.
To his left he could see movement. Someone was walking along the main road. Desperate not to let them go, he sprinted across the parking lot to the street, “Hey! Hey! Over here!” Eddie yelled. The shadowy figure stopped, turned around and ran back to where Eddie stood. Eddie reached out and grabbed hold of the shoulders of Jim Burke, a thirty-six-year-old general contractor.
“You’re the first person I’ve seen since…” Eddie began.
“Me too.” Jim finished.
Eddie and Jim exchanged names. Eddie told him he was staying at the Community Center and invited Jim to follow him. The arrival of a second survivor brought a sudden hope and energy to Eddie.
Between them they could find no answers to what had happened, but for the first time they considered what they should do next. If there were two survivors, it made sense there could be more, maybe dozens, even hundreds.
They had to let other people know where they were. The two men gathered trash from three garbage bins at the side of the Community Center, and a wooden picnic table from the back of the property. They built a bonfire in the middle of the parking lot, well away from the Community Center, and any overhanging trees.
They used gas from the mangled wreck of a pickup truck to fuel the fire. Burke got the fire going by flicking a smoldering cigarette butt through the cold night air into the gas soaked pile. With a whoosh the parking lot filled with welcomed light and warmth.
In the front office of the Community Center, Jim found a handbag, and in it a set of car keys with a remote starter. He went back outside and pressed the starter button. A cream colored Buick in the side parking lot came to life.
“Well Eddie, anywhere you want to go?”
“I live in Manchester, but there’s nobody there. My ex and my kids are in Concord. Plus, I think it’s too risky to drive on the highway at night with all the wrecks on the road. How about you, do you live locally?”
“Yeah I do, but I don’t want to go back there. I can’t.” Jim said in a choked voice and looked away.
Eddie knew not to pursue it further. He suppressed the fear that whatever this was might have reached his kids up in Concord. To avoid thinking about it, he went into the car to look around. He noticed the car had a CD player and hit the eject button and found a disc of classical music by Vivaldi. He popped it back into the player, turned up the volume and opened all the doors on the sedan.
“Let’s see if we can attract other survivors.” Eddie said.
Jim nodded grateful for the distraction.
As the men set to work, classical music filled the cold night air and interrupted the gloomy silence that had been so prevalent all day. Eddie and Jim continued to feed the bonfire while the music played.
After an hour two elderly women arrived at the Community Center, attracted by the signal fire and music. They became the third and fourth survivors at the Community Center. By dawn the next morning the population of the Grinnell Community Center grew to twenty-five dazed and confused individuals.
Rachel Morris spent almost the entire day curled up in her bed. She first heard the music just after ten o'clock but at first convinced herself that she was hearing things. It was only when she got up the courage to get out of bed and opened her bedroom window that it became clear someone was playing music far away.
Desperate to see and to speak to someone else, she threw a few belongings into a backpack, locked her door and left her home. She walked a brisk pace along the silent streets using the feeble illumination from a dying flashlight to guide her through the mass of fallen bodies. She was scared the music might stop and leave her stranded before she could reach its source. Twenty minutes later she arrived at the Community Center.
Steve Marshall was the twenty-fourth survivor to arrive. After leaving the bodies of his family behind, he spent most of the day hiding in the cab of a pickup truck. He found the owner of the truck lying on a driveway beside it; the keys to the truck on the ground alongside him.
After a few hours he decided to find help. He drove around aimlessly in the truck until it ran out of gas. Rather than try to get gas for it he decided to take another vehicle. It was while he was changing cars he heard the music. Steve removed the dead driver of the red Mustang from the driver’s seat and jumped into the sports car. He started it up, rolled down the window and followed the sound of the music. He arrived at the Community Center just before day break.
Peter Crawford had just about given up. Too afraid to go back home or go anywhere he recognized, he sat in the freezing cold on a bench in veteran’s memorial park next to the library. He decided it was easier to be alone in town than face returning to familiar surroundings and risk seeing the bodies of people he'd known and cared about. He sat on a bench huddled in his coat against the cold, listening to the gentle babbling of a nearby brook.
Peter was cold, uncomfortable and scared. The noise of the running water masked the deathly silence of th
e rest of the world, making it easier to forget his predicament for a while. The wind blew across the park where he sat, rustling through the grass and bushes, causing the tops of trees to whip around discarding dead colorful leaves.
Cold and shivering, Peter got to his feet and stretched the stiffness out of his arms, back and legs. With no real plan or direction, he walked away from the stream, towards the edge of the park. As the sound of running water faded into the distance, the unexpected strains of music from the opposite direction drifted towards him on the breeze. Cold and numb, he followed the sound of music.
Peter was the final survivor to reach the Community Center.
Chapter 7
Peter Crawford was the last to arrive at the Community Center, and the first to state out loud that he was hungry. Just before noon, after a long, slow, quiet morning, he decided it was time to eat. In the main storeroom he found tables, chairs and a collection of camping equipment labeled as belonging to the 4th Derry Boy Scout Group 98. In a large metal chest he found two white gas burners and, next to the chest were four full bottles of white gas. He also found several cases of canned food.
Peter set up the burners on a table against a wall in the main hall. He got to work heating a restaurant-sized can of chicken soup on one burner and a similar sized can of baked beans on the other. The food was an unexpected and welcomed discovery and preparing the food was a welcomed distraction.
It was at least something to take his mind off what had happened outside the plaster walls of the Grinnell Community Center. The rest of the survivors sat in silence in the main hall. Some lay flat on the cold white specked and gray linoleum tile floor while others sat on chairs with their heads held in their hands. No one spoke. Other than Peter nobody else moved.
No one even dared to make eye contact with anyone else. There were twenty-five people unable to comprehend what happened to the world around them and didn't know what might happen next. In the last day, each one of them had experienced more pain, confusion and loss than they would normally have expected to suffer in their entire lifetime. What made these emotions even more unbearable today was the complete lack of explanation. A lack of reason coupled with the fact everything happened so suddenly and without warning. Now that it happened, there was no one to look to for answers. Each cold, and frightened person knew as little as the cold, and frightened person next to them.
