Dark Advent

by Brian Hodge

  Jason had kept a constant watch in the rearview mirrors, especially when a long straightaway fell behind them, but no one had yet joined them in the distance. It was getting easy to tell himself that nothing was wrong after all, that they were safe and sound and alone on this highway, and things would stay that way.

  Sure. That’s the kind of thinking that could get us killed.

  He checked the gas gauge: three-eighths of the tank gone.

  Another green sign popped up along the right, which Jason read with idle interest. New Madrid…12. He checked the odometer. They were definitely covering some ground. Not a lot of Missouri left to go. Arkansas was less than an hour away.

  New Madrid…the name nagged at him.

  “That town rings a bell,” he said, mostly to Erika. After all, this was her state. “New Madrid.”

  “You’re probably thinking of the New Madrid Fault,” Erika said. She seemed grateful for a reason to break the brittle silence that had taken over the car. “You know, the earthquake.”

  He nodded, trickles of memory bringing it back.

  “We studied about it when I was in grade school,” she went on. “They even hauled us down for an all-day field trip. It was fun.” She started laughing, any excuse to get rid of nerves. “This twirpy kid stuck an ice cream cone down the back of my dress.”

  Jason, his curiosity sated, was willing to let the topic drop, but not Caleb. He asked for more of an explanation about what had happened here. Ever tied to the land, he was.

  Diane and Caleb reacted with typical outsiders’ surprise to learn that one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded on the North American continent had occurred not in an expected place like California or Alaska. Instead, the epicenter had been in the heart of the country, in Missouri, late in 1811. A total area of somewhere around two million square miles was shaken, and the quake had been felt in places as distant as Canada and Boston and New Orleans. Chimneys shucked their bricks in Georgia and South Carolina. For a time, surface waves on the Mississippi made it appear as if the river were flowing backward, and entire islands had disappeared.

  Erika concluded by saying that the quake wasn’t better known because the area hardest hit was so sparsely populated. Very little actual damage as a result. A few settlers lost their cabins, a few Indians got freaked out, big deal. Not much stacked up against an Armageddon like the San Francisco earthquake.

  Yeah, Jason thought with a sour turn of stomach. Who cares about what the Indians go through, huh?

  And the morning kept unrolling with the road.

  Jason’s ears were caught by the sound of a far-off car horn, blatting long and loud. He flicked another glance into the mirror, peering at the truck behind them. Rich sat grim and long-faced behind the wheel. Not him, then. Which meant that somebody back in the line might have just spotted their pursuers.

  For Erika, the sound registered, though just barely.

  As a child, one of her favorite toys had been a kaleidoscope. She could spend hours peering into its eyehole, twisting the opposite end and watching the swirls of color rearranging themselves. Sometimes she got a sense of a pattern to come before it was actually visible, and was overwhelmed with little-girl delight when she’d slowly twist the end and watch those fragments of stained glass prove her correct.

  Gone was the delight, and gone was the naiveté. But a long-sensed pattern was finally evolving before her eyes. The feeling was familiar enough.

  A couple more miles, and then the road sign…

  Exit 49 New Madrid.

  Erika’s voice: “Jason. Stop the car, Jason.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Do it, Jay. Please? Please stop.” Her eyes were soft and earnest and girded with resolve.

  Jason could have ignored anybody but her. He slowed the car, bringing it to a halt just before the off-ramp, a scrubby patch of trees and underbrush strung along the highway. Across I-55, the exit-ramp’s twin curved down into the northbound lanes. Connecting the two was the overpass, gray concrete against a bright blue sky.

  “What is it?” Jason asked, but she had already opened the Sunbird’s door and had swung one leg out. Erika looked at the rest of them, face to face to face, then lingered on him. He’d never seen her eyes any tougher to read, such a warring mix of love and emotion…but the devotion was to something else, beyond him. Beyond herself even. And she stepped from the car.

  “Shit,” he muttered, slamming the car into park but leaving the engine idling. He got out to stand beside the car, staring at her across the roof. “You want to let me in on this, Erika? Just for laughs?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rich’s truck pulling up beside them.

  She quickly sized up the roadside, from the exit sign to the open fields to the puny trees to the broiling sun. And when she turned at last to face him, her eyes were transported.

  “We’re supposed to be here. Something’s going to happen here.” She smiled. “This is where it ends.”

  “What’s the problem?” Jack called from the truck. Their other vehicles were starting to approach one by one. “You got a breakdown?”

  “I don’t know what the hell’s going on,” Jason called back.

  Jack started to say something else, but Jason turned back to Erika. “Please. Get back in the car before you get your ass shot off.” But don’t I want it to end? Don’t I really want to just get it over with?

  “You don’t understand, Jay,” she said, pleading with her eyes, her hands, her whole body. “Look, you know how it goes with my head sometimes. I’ve told you all about it. Caleb too. Deep down, the two of you, at least, can’t deny there’s something to it. Listen, I dreamed about this place. About that sign and the N on it and those scrawny little trees. I dreamed about you people around me, even before I knew any of you.” She was close to shouting by now. “It’s supposed to end here! I know it is.”

  Her mind appeared set, and Jason feared that even if he were to gear up the car and pull away, she’d still stay here, to see it all through. No way would he leave her behind. Half a year of separation was all he planned on enduring.

  And just like that, it came: a sigh, and a quiet resignation to see it through along with her. The butterflies in his stomach had fled south ahead of him, leaving behind a core of calculation and control that was so cold it might have frightened him, had there been time to contemplate it. It felt as if the unneeded parts of himself were flaking away like rust.

  He leaned into the car to shut off the engine, to grab his shotgun and a box of shells. He then looked at Diane and Caleb. She sat with her hands composed and folded on the nylon bag in her lap.

  “End of the line for this car,” he said. “Catch another ride.”

  Diane leveled an even glance at him. “I’ll stay. I’m through running.”

  “Me too, son,” said Caleb. “I can’t let you folks stand here alone.”

  While they clambered from the back seat, Jason ran over to the pickup, still idling as someone from one of the rear cars ran away from Rich’s window.

  “Looks like some of us have decided to stick around a while,” Jason said. “We got this wild-ass idea about stopping them here.”

  “It’s Erika, isn’t it?” Pam said softly, staring into the dashboard. “She knows something, doesn’t she? Doesn’t she?”

  “She says she does. If I ever trusted her, it’s got to be now.”

  “I hope she’s right, then,” Rich said. “Sean just ran up here. Says they finally started coming into view a bit back up the road.”

  This is it this is it. Jason glanced back and saw nothing. Yet.

  “Why don’t you guys get moving. I’ve showed you the maps, you know the way.” Jason bit his lip, looked into each pair of eyes. Eyes he doubted he would see again. Because in all likelihood, what were the odds of making it through the next half hour? Slim, he thought. Anorexic.
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br />   “Come on, just go!” he shouted, almost pleading.

  Rich slammed his big fist against the steering wheel and swore and jammed the gearshift into park. He fumbled for his rifle, an AR-15 taken from a sporting goods shop months ago.

  “Rich? Rich!” Pam’s voice rose half an octave. “We’re not staying too!”

  “That’s right.” He looked past her to Jack. “Like Jay says. You know the way. Get everybody there.” Rich kissed her hard to smother her objections. “Hon, if you won’t drive this thing, I’ll have Jack do it.”

  Pam looked too stunned for tears. She clung with one hand to the front of Rich’s shirt. Half in and half out the truck, he leaned forward and threw one arm around her in a hurried, clumsy hug and kissed her again. Squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Love you. See you soon.”

  Rich peeled her hand from his shirt and wrapped it around the steering wheel, then backed out of the cab. The waterworks started for Pam then, but she squared herself behind the wheel and dropped the transmission into drive. The truck started to move.

  At the last possible moment Jason saw what was in the bed and reached in to seize a five-gallon gas can in each hand, plucking them up and out as the truck rolled away. A dull ache sliced through his shoulder from the strain. Filled, those cans were anything but light.

  Rich stood at the side of the highway, rifle in hand, and waved the convoy back into motion. When someone passed too slowly, occupants asking for an explanation, he shouted and waved all the more furiously. They were all southbound again in another moment, stirring up dust and clouds of rubber.

  Then the five of them were left alone on the burning, windswept highway, motionless for a moment. Looking at each other. Jason. Erika. Rich. Diane. Caleb. Bound by love, by honor, by commitment to one another and to the ideals they’d found to be as important as breathing. He was proud to know them.

  You’re the reason I live, and if it comes to it, you’ll be the reason I’ll die.

  Good enough.

  They listened to the fading of the rest of their people’s engines. Until, out of the shimmering northern horizon, there came the first glint of sunlight off a windshield.

  7

  And the morning unrolled with the road.

  Peter Solomon could feel every drop of blood racing through his veins, and every fiber of his existence flamed with passion and fury. It was just a matter of time now, they were down to mere moments, for when the road was stretched out just right, they could see glimpses of their prey.

  Sweet victory and slaughter. Theirs for the taking. The world for the taking. He bared his teeth in a grin, eyes bluer than the sky, blazing hotter than the sun.

  “Check it out,” said Travis, pointing far ahead and down the road. “What’s going on?”

  A single car, canary yellow, sat at the roadside. Was there brief movement down there? Too far to tell in this heat, when ripples from the baking earth could play tricks with your perception.

  One car, one car only. The rest? Still moving? Was it even theirs?

  “Maybe it broke down,” Hagar said. “Or blew a tire.”

  “Or maybe not,” Solomon said.

  Perhaps it wouldn’t be the wisest move to charge in with guns blazing just yet. Tactical purposes might be better served by first getting a feel for the lay of the land. The sporting way also meant knowing when to exercise due caution.

  “Hang back,” he said to Travis. “Let somebody else take point through here.”

  Travis grumbled about it, but cut their speed and thrust his arm out his window to wave the others ahead. One truck, two trucks, three, four, until they were bringing up the rear. The yellow car was a scant fifty yards away, and they were closing fast.

  And then Hagar pointed. “Aw shit. Someone’s up there.”

  * *

  They’d spent precious little time dicking around with the Sunbird. No time for that when this latter day Genghis Khan and his horde of cutthroats were two minutes behind.

  Rich Patton crouched behind the wall of the overpass, directly over the southbound lanes. It was probably the safest spot any of them had, though he puffed from getting up here. It had been a long time since he’d had to climb a hill like the grassy slope that led up here from the highway.

  Hope Jason knows what he’s doing.

  Back down by the highway they’d had all of fifteen or twenty seconds to drum up a course of action to even things up a little more. Jason had been the first with an idea. Part of it was planned and the rest they’d have to improvise, depending on how many vehicles were coming down the pike.

  Five, it looked to be, when Rich peeked over the rail.

  The last moments of calm were diffuse with memories close and distant, the flashes of a life that forever remain to be savored like a fine wine. Recollections of the younger, slimmer man he used to be, and the golden shade of blond Pam’s hair once was. He remembered the squalling infant daughter he’d held for the first time, terrified he would break her. He remembered his absurd portrayal of the lecherous Santa Claus a few Christmases past. He remembered how Erika had come to them last summer, fragile enough to shatter into a thousand fragments. She could never take the place of their daughter, but if anyone could come close, Erika was the one.

  Then it came time to cork the wine and put away the past, or there would be no future. He swung the AR-15 up and over the railing and drew his sights on the windshield of the lead truck. And tightened his finger on the trigger.

  * *

  Jason hunched on the far side of the Sunbird, shoulder pressed into the right headlight. He’d pulled his shirt off and ripped it into long, wide strips. He still had one of the gasoline cans remaining; the other he’d already taken care of.

  With the approaching trucks drawing nearer, louder, he unscrewed the can’s metal cap. He stuffed half a strip of cloth into the open mouth, leaving a long swatch hanging out.

  Timing was crucial with this. Timing was everything.

  Jason raised up high enough to peek through the Sunbird and check the distance. Close, they were very close. He flicked his lighter into life, set the dangling strip of cloth aflame.

  One last glance back at Erika and Caleb and Diane, hidden behind the scrubby line of trees and brush. He couldn’t see their eyes, and a moment later was glad of it.

  The lead truck roared past the Sunbird without slowing, and he sprang to his feet as the second truck followed. Rich’s first shots cracked out from the overpass.

  The cloth burning, the fire crawling up the side of the can…

  Jason launched himself toward the road, the third truck barreling in fast, faces within the cab only now registering they’d seen him, men in the beds of the first two concentrating on the sudden eruption of gunfire from Rich. He lugged the gasoline can up with him, spinning like an Olympian athlete ready to hurl a discus. Screaming now, he whirled past the nose of the Sunbird and toward the highway, inches from the path of the third truck.

  As he spun, momentum took the can out to arm’s length and shoulder height. As the flame reached the wad stuffed into its mouth, Jason released the can’s handles and let it fly. It smashed through the right side of the truck’s windshield with an implosion of safety glass that showered the men in the cab, and caved in the chest of the closest passenger. The ruined windshield buckled in after it.

  As the truck careened past, Jason went diving for the grass at the roadside. A moment later, after he’d rolled onto his belly with his arms shielding his head, the truck blasted into an inferno, gushing flames from every portal. Fire spewed out the back window onto the men crouched in the bed. They tumbled screaming from the back, heedless of how cruel asphalt is to unprotected flesh at sixty miles an hour.

  He and Rich couldn’t have timed this any better if they’d had a month to rehearse it.

  The first and third trucks were totally out of co
ntrol, and as the first spun out from the AR-15 fire Rich was pouring into it, the second truck was sandwiched between the other two. A tremendous wrenching of metal ripped through the air, and a tire sailed across the median into the northbound lanes. Men, some burning, spilled from the truckbeds to scatter across the highway like loose cargo. Caroming off the other two, the third truck rolled over once, twice, three times, losing doors and tailgate and trailing all manner of flaming wreckage in its wake.

  Then Jason was up on his feet in a crouch, one hand on the grip of the shotgun and the other on its pump. Blasting into the knot of men straggling up from the highway, he kept glancing north, because trucks four and five still had to be dealt with.

  * *

  At last Caleb was beginning to understand. This was it, the moment for which he and Erika had been brought together so many months ago. To shut down Travis Lane and Peter Solomon and their goon squad, along with whatever evil they’d sought to sow in what remained of the world. Caleb felt it deep inside, a part of the ecological clock that years of farming had instilled within him, and ticked along with the changes of seasons and marked time from planting to harvest. The clock that had signaled the stroke of midnight within him, at once an ending and the beginning of something new.

  As the Bible said, for everything there was a season. Even for dying.

  Whatever his part was in the next few minutes, he’d play it out without hesitation. Despite the hellish devastation erupting on the highway, he felt a peculiar sense of calm seeping throughout. Of meeting destiny head-on, on its own terms, and refusing to blink.

  He would continue to do so for as long as he could, for as long as he was needed. Maybe he couldn’t run and twist and roll like Jason out there, or cover the scene from above like Rich. But he still had his old bolt-action rifle, the bane of hundreds of critters on a long-ago Ohio farm. And he still knew how to use it.

  Shoot, he thought, I ain’t never gonna see Texas.

  Caleb squinted and drew the rifle to his shoulder and sunk a bullet into the heart of a bloodied man coming up on Jason’s blind side, then looked to see what else needed doing.