There was not a single solitary living soul in sight.
Tom entered the office area. He touched a couple of the computer monitors as he made his way to the rear of the office to see if any of them were warm. When he reached one of the doors, he pushed it open and entered what appeared to be an interrogation room. He went through another door, past the restrooms then saw the entrance to the jail. He checked out the cells, which were uninhabited.
He returned to the reception area and stood for a moment, staring blankly at the deserted Worthington Police station.
So this is it, he thought. He was the only living person in town. Everyone was kaput-not just his family and friends, but his neighbors and even the entire police department!
Jesus, he thought. This has to be some kind of bad dream! It simply can’t be real!
He could see his breath in the hazy red light and realized that the police station was absolutely frigid. That was no wonder, seeing as there wasn’t any power to run the furnace. It was surely going to be a cold night no matter where he went, he thought.
Disgruntled and clueless, Tom made his way back out to the Jeep. He fired up the engine and turned the heat up to the max. Then he lowered his head and rested it on the steering wheel, closed his eyes and began to pray:
God, please – you got to help me here. I don’t know where my family and everyone have gone or what is happening. I need to know what to do. I need to know that wherever they are, they are alive and safe. I don’t want to die like this, God, never seeing Peg or my kids ever again. Please God, tell me what to do! Where am I to go?
Where can I find my family?
Tom opened his eyes. He had never been a particularly religious person but he believed that there was a God. And he needed God now more than he ever had before.
Praying helped a little. There was comfort in talking to someone-even if that someone was only a spirit or whatever God was.
But still, it wasn’t quite the same as the real thing.
He had to keep moving. He must not let this thing get the best of him. Somehow he was going to find out where everyone had gone, even if he died in the process.
He shifted into reverse and spun out of the parking lot. He headed west toward High Street and turned left, heading south toward downtown. Within three blocks, he started running through the unlit traffic lights, not even bothering to slow down as he approached them. As he cruised past Morse Road into Beechwald, the next neighborhood south of Worthington, he was not surprised to see that all of the businesses were shrouded in complete darkness. He glanced at the dashboard clock. It was only 7:00 PM. And not a single store was opened to the public.
He approached North Broadway in Clintonville and a thought came to mind. The hospital! Riverside Hospital was just a few blocks to the west. Surely there would be some signs of life there!
Elated at the possibility, he fishtailed onto North Broadway and sped as fast as he could toward the hospital, keeping his fingers crossed.
Tom rounded the curve and a smile came to his face-on top of the hospital he saw the brightly lit blue Riverside Methodist Hospital sign.
It was open!
He ran the light at Olentangy River Road and headed toward the main entrance. It was dark in the parking lot but that didn’t surprise him. He saw relatively weak lights on in the many of windows, suggesting that the huge complex may be running on emergency power.
He left the engine running and entered the huge glass turnstile. Inside, the lobby was dimly lit and there wasn’t anyone at the reception desk. Nor were there any people in the lobby.
Not a good sign.
Perhaps they were operating with a skeleton crew, he thought, due to the power outage.
Tom strode through the lobby until he reached the gift shop, which was also deserted. He went inside and walked over to the counter, aware now that he was totally famished. He grabbed a bag of Fritos off the rack and plunked a dollar bill on the counter. Stuffing a handful into his mouth, he exited the shop and headed down one of the halls toward the emergency room.
He stopped at a bank of elevators and pushed the up button, not expecting the elevator to work. To his surprise, the door whooshed open, startling him. Tom stepped inside and pressed the button for the second floor.
The door shut and the elevator began its ascent. The interior was dimly lit but Tom was just glad it was working. When he reached the second floor, he stepped out into another dim hallway.
He walked toward the nurse’s station. It was uninhabited. He entered the area and poked around, noting that neither the computers nor any of the other devices were on. Picking up a phone, he heard a dead line.
Finally, he got his nerve up and walked over to one of the patient’s rooms. He knocked on the door, waited a moment, turned the doorknob.
The door was locked.
He went over to the next door and tried it. It too was locked.
Tom tried another half dozen doors only to discover that they were all locked.
Apparently, everyone in this place had either been evacuated or vaporized.
Tom took the elevator to the third floor and checked the rooms. They were all locked as well.
Nothing shakin’ but the leaves on the trees.
Heaving a distraught sigh, Tom had to concede that the hospital was a bust. Like the police station, another vital community service center that one would expect to be active in an emergency was DOA.
Screw this.
He wolfed down the rest of his Fritos and washed them down with a slug of the lukewarm bottled water he’d snatched from a fridge in the nurse’s supply room. Then he boarded the elevator back down to the main floor.
Tom exited through the turnstile and turned to his right, then did a double take The Jeep was gone!
CHAPTER 3
Tom quickly glanced around the parking lot and along North Broadway, hoping to catch sight of his Jeep. He saw nothing moving at all. He ran over to where it had been parked and could see the tire tracks clearly in the deep snow where the thief had backed out before moving south toward the exit road from the hospital.
So, he was not alone after all!
His immediate impulse was to find a vehicle he could borrow so he could chase after the driver of his Jeep. There were quite a few cars in the parking lot, every one buried under six or seven inches of snow. He ran over to the first four-wheel drive car he could find, a Subaru Forester, briskly cleared the snow off the door handle and tried it. It was locked. He moved along the row of cars for a few minutes until he finally found a Honda CR-V that was unlocked. He jumped inside and was thrilled to find that the keys were still in the ignition.
The engine was excruciatingly slow in turning over but finally fired up. He jumped out and cleared off the windshield and windows as best as he could then got back in, put it into drive and headed for the exit.
He noticed with relief that the snowstorm had tapered off somewhat as he neared the exit, hoping to ascertain which direction the Jeep tracks led. In the virgin snow, it was clear to see that they headed west toward Upper Arlington. Tom gave the little four cylinder SUV the gas and hung a right in hot pursuit.
As he followed the tracks to Fishinger Road, Tom wondered who had stolen his Jeep and why. The first question was impossible to answer but the second was easy: the guy saw a warm uninhabited vehicle with its engine running in a deserted parking lot so he decided to nab it. Duh…
As angry as he was that someone had brazenly ripped him off, Tom nevertheless found solace in knowing that he was not the only human being left on earth. No matter who had stolen his Jeep, that person was apparently alive and well and in the same predicament as he was. That had to be a good thing.
But another mystery was why that person had not tried to contact him. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that who ever owned the idling Jeep was inside trying to find another living soul in the godforsaken place. Why wouldn’t that person attempt to find the Jeep’s driver, instead of stealing it and dri
ving off into the sunset?
Unless, Tom thought, that person didn’t want to be discovered by him. Which would imply that this person could be a potential foe.
Tom raced as fast as he could along Fishinger, continuing west toward Route 33. He barely took his eyes off the road to glance at the houses that were shrouded in darkness. When he reached the intersection at Route 33, the tracks proceeded west over the bridge toward Hilliard.
Although his adrenalin was pumping now, Tom also felt an overwhelming fatigue coursing throughout his body. This whole situation was so bizarre and surreal that he half expected it to end at any moment. He sure wished it would end, that was a fact.
The tire tracks continued on the same road for a few more miles until they merged onto the southbound entrance ramp to the I-270 outerbelt. Tom slowed down in order to stay on the curve in the road until he was safely on the interstate.
The highway looked like something out of a science fiction movie as he sped south on it, not a single working streetlight illuminating the way. This source of countless traffic backups, headaches and collisions was now nothing more than a pure white, uninhabited landscape. Sort of like Mars Tom suddenly saw a pair of headlights about a mile ahead in the northbound lane, coming toward him fast. He stared over at the car incredulously as it whizzed by in the opposite direction on the other side of the median.
It was his Jeep!
On impulse, he hit the brakes and began fishtailing out of control. He nearly did a three-sixty as the Honda spun around like a top. Tom let off the brake and cut the steering wheel in the same direction as he was spinning until the little SUV was finally under control. He slowed down to a complete stop near the berm heading in the opposite direction.
Tom swore under his breath, turned the car back around and proceeded south-the huge concrete divider preventing him from crossing over to the other side.
He looked out for the next exit and suddenly saw an orange sign that read Road Closed Ahead. Tom slowed down a bit until he came upon a huge construction area that encompassed the entire highway in all six lanes. He followed the detour sign to the next exit and quickly got onto the northbound entrance ramp.
As he strained his eyes to spot his Jeep ahead in the distance, Tom thought it odd that the outerbelt was completely shut down southward from this point on. He couldn’t recall ever reading anything about it.
Tom was driving as fast as he possibly could and still keep the car under control as he continued in pursuit. He hadn’t been able to see the driver when it flew by, but it was clear that whoever it was did not want him to catch up. Which made Tom think that he had best use caution if and when he finally caught up to the thief.
He slowed down at the Hilliard exit where he had first gotten onto the outerbelt and discovered that the Jeep had gone past it. As he sped up again, he noticed that the fuel gauge was near empty. If he didn’t have any luck soon, he was going to have to give up the chase before he ran out of gas. The last thing he needed was to be stranded out here on this lonesome interstate.
Tom had driven another four or five miles when he thought he spotted a pair of red taillights up ahead. He began slowing down and when he got closer, discovered that the lights were not moving at all The Jeep had run off the road!
He pulled up beside the Laredo, which was still running. It was at that moment that he realized his Jeep had run into a utility pole-just hard enough to dent in his bumper a good half inch or so. He saw no sign of the driver and wondered if he had bailed out. Then he thought he spotted the top of a head lying against the driver’s side window.
The head was motionless Tom threw the CR-V into park and jumped out. He ran over and gingerly opened the door, careful not to let the person fall out. He was shocked to discover that the driver was a young woman and apparently unconscious.
He gently lifted the girl upright against the seat. She started to moan softly.
“Hey there, are you all right?” he said.
The girl moaned again and then her eyes fluttered open. When she saw Tom, she let out a scream.
“Don’t hurt me, please!” she cried, terrified.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Tom said. “Are you hurt? It looks like you may have hit your head on the steering wheel.”
“You promise you won’t hurt me?”
Tom patted her lightly on the shoulder. “I won’t, I promise. I just want to make sure that you’re okay. What happened?”
The girl seemed to snap out of it somewhat as she peered into Tom’s eyes.
“I thought you were somebody else,” she began. “Someone has been chasing me for the last couple of hours. He’s very dangerous. I thought I’d lost him a while back and then my car ran out of gas on the north side. I ran on foot until I found this Jeep parked at Riverside Hospital. So I got in and drove out here, trying to find a way out of town.
“Then I ran into the road construction and headed back this way. I saw your car and panicked. I guess I started driving too fast-the next thing I knew I lost control and slid into the berm. I braked until I ran into that pole. Guess I hit my head on the steering wheel and it knocked me out.”
Tom wondered why the air bag hadn’t deployed as he noticed a lump on the girl’s forehead in the dim light. It was bleeding slightly.
“You’ve got quite a bump there,” he said. He leaned over to the dash compartment and pulled out a pack of Kleenex.
“Hold this over it,” he said, gently placing the tissue on her forehead.
“Thanks. How did you know there would be Kleenex in the glove box?”
Tom smiled. “Oh, my wife always makes sure that we keep Kleenex aboard.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “This is your Jeep?”
“Yup, sure is. That’s why I’ve been following you.”
“God, I’m so sorry! I was just so scared that I didn’t give it a second thought when I took it. Of course, I really didn’t expect to see anyone else out tonight.”
Tom said, “Don’t worry about my car-it sounds like you really needed it at the time. Before you tell me who’s been chasing you, I’d like to know what you meant by not expecting to see anyone out tonight.”
The girl shook her head wearily. “That’s going to take some explaining and I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“I know what you mean. Let’s say we get off of this highway and go somewhere warm. I’ll drive.”
“You don’t know how good that sounds, uh-”
“Tom. Tom Grayson,” he said.
The girl smiled. “My name is Erin Myers.” She offered him her hand awkwardly. “Nice to meet you.”
Tom shook her hand. “The pleasure is mine. How does your head feel?”
“Not too bad, but I wouldn’t exactly refuse a couple of Advils, either.”
“We’ll go to my house and get you some. Maybe we can even find some food to eat.”
“Where do you live?”
“Worthington.”
“We can’t go there!” Erin exclaimed defiantly.
“Why not?”
“That’s where he started chasing me-I live in Worthington, too.”
“Whereabouts?” Tom asked.
“Near Wilson Bridge Road.”
“Don’t worry, we’re not going that far. Besides, what makes you think he’ll find us? And if he does, whoever he is, what could he possibly do?”
Erin shook her head. “Kyle is liable to anything when he’s this mad. He would probably kill us both.”
Tom was shocked by this response but tried not to show it. “No, he won’t. I’ll protect you.” Spoken like a true superhero.
“No offense, but you don’t know just how violent he is. He-”
She stopped herself and closed her eyes. It was clear that she didn’t want to go on.
Tom said, “It’s okay, Erin. Let’s get out of here and we’ll make sure that this Kyle character doesn’t spot us. I know some pretty obscure routes to my home.”
Erin managed a weak smi
le. “Okay.”
Tom helped her out and escorted her over to the passenger side. He checked out the damage to the Jeep, which was minimal, and then parked the CR-V closer to the berm. He debated what to do with the keys and wondered if the owner would ever be reunited with his car again. It was that moment that the full brunt of all that had happened resurfaced in his mind.
He got back into the Jeep and backed away from the pole. “Won’t be needing that little Honda anymore-it’s about out of gas anyway,” he quipped. He glanced at his own fuel gauge, which still had about a quarter of a tank left. Good for about another forty or fifty miles, he estimated.
“Thank you,” Erin said.
“For what?”
She looked over at him. “Saving me.”
Tom was a little confused by this, but replied, “You’re welcome.”
They drove a few miles in silence and Tom thought of at least a dozen questions he wanted to ask Erin Myers. He felt it best to wait though-at least until after they reached his house. He caught himself nearly nodding off as he drove through the seemingly endless white vista back to Worthington. He was all but completely spent. The thought of going home, falling asleep, and waking up to find that this had just been an awful nightmare was his greatest wish at the moment.
However, Tom was almost certain that wouldn’t be case.
CHAPTER 4
Erin Myers was fast asleep by the time they reached Worthington. Tom had caught himself checking the rear view mirror frequently throughout the drive, just in case the mysterious Kyle had picked up their trail along the way.
He felt odd as he pulled into his driveway, aware that his family and friends weren’t in the house and that he was about to take a stranger inside. The events leading up to this moment had unfolded so quickly that it nearly overwhelmed him.
Erin stirred when he shut off the engine.
“Is this where you live?” she murmured.
See Tom Run Page 3
