by Sean Patten
Luckily, the crowds had cleared by this point, the broken pieces of the ladder hitting the cement with a hard clang that echoed all the way up to us.
Once in the cool interior of the garage, the two of us slid down onto the floor, sitting back against the concrete barrier.
“That,” said Kelly after a time, “was too freaking close.”
“No kidding,” I said, catching my breath. “We both almost…”
She shook her head.
“I don’t even want to think about it,” she said. “Important thing is that we’re both out of there.”
Kelly was right. It’d been closer than I wanted to admit, but we’d gotten out of the Troika. Of course, that left one important question to address.
“What now?” she asked, seemingly reading my mind.
“We need to get back to Steve,” I said. “He’s been alone for too long, and God knows how he’s doing.”
“Where is he?”
“All the way by the airport,” I said. “If we start now we can…”
I trailed off, realizing what a trek it would be to get back there. It was late, and if we started at that moment we might make it by sunup.
Of course, that assumed we wouldn’t get held up along the way.
Which we most certainly would.
It all felt so hopeless. I’d trekked across the city to find supplies for Steve, and now I had to return empty-handed, hoping that I didn’t get killed on the way back, or that Steve hadn’t died in the meantime.
Nothing to do but get and up and get on with it.
“We need to start walking,” I said, pressing my palms onto the ground and heaving myself up. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. We can rest once we get to Steve.”
But Kelly stayed on the ground, a small smile on her face.
“What if I said we didn’t need to walk?”
I flashed her a confused smile.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Remember when I got into that little tussle with the Elvis impersonator?” she asked, getting up.
“How could I forget?” I asked. “You nearly beat the snot out of the poor bastard.”
“Well, I managed to grab a hold of a little something of his.”
I was confused. But the question was answered when Kelly reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of car keys. They were gold, a lucky rabbit’s foot dangling by a chain.
“You took his car keys?” I asked. “How’d you pull that off?”
“Didn’t really try to do it,” she said. “In the middle of it, when I was swinging at him, my fist sort of slipped into his pocket. Then I grabbed them and shoved them into mine.”
I put my hands on my hip and shook my head in total disbelief.
But then the reality of the situation hit me. It didn’t matter that she had the keys for a car. Every vehicle in the garage was a worthless hunk of junk.
“Keys aren’t going to do us any good,” I said. “The EMP fried everything.”
“But doesn’t that just affect electronics?”
“Sure,” I said.
“And aren’t those only in newer cars?”
“Right.”
“Well, don’t you remember what kind of car Elvis drove?”
“That one car,” I said, trying to scan my memory. “The pink car, right?”
“A 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood,” she said with a smile.
“Wow,” I said. “Someone’s on the ball.”
“Come on,” Kelly said. “This is the private parking for the Troika. VIPs will be on the ground floor, right?”
She started off, her footfalls echoing through the open space of the parking garage.
“Hold up!” I called after her.
The two of us hurried through the parking garage, making our way to the stairs.
“How did you know what kind of car Elvis drove?” I asked as we went down.
“Because I love him,” she said.
“Are you serious?”
“Totally,” she said. “Ever since I was a kid.”
“And how did I not know about this? We were married, after all.”
“A lady always has her secrets,” she said, flashing me a smile.
I let out a dry laugh as we kept on up.
We trudged up the stairs, eventually reaching the bottom floor. The heavy steel door of the entrance opened easily, the electronic lock disabled. I turned on the flashlight that I’d kept in my pocket and cast the beam around.
“Damn,” said Kelly. “Nice rides.”
She wasn’t wrong. The garage was packed full of luxury cars, all of them sleekly designed.
“Some of the most expensive cars in the world,” I said. “And all of them useless.”
“You think they might’ve been safe down here?” she asked. “I bet this place is built as solid as the rest of the casino.”
She had a point there.
“Could be,” I said. “But not like we have the keys for any of them. And good luck trying to hot-wire a car like these. Bet they’ve got little robots that come out and open fire at you if you come close.”
“There!” shouted Kelly, pointing ahead at where my flashlight beam had landed.
“Ho-ly shit,” I said. ‘You were right.”
Sure enough, a bubblegum pink Caddy was before us. It was an old model, but well taken care of. The paint job was flawless, despite the car being well over half a century old.
“Now,” said Kelly, the keys in her hand. “Moment of truth.”
She hurried over to the car and slipped the keys into the driver’s-side lock. With a turn of her wrist, the doors unlocked with a click.
“Yes!” she said. “So far, so good.”
I watched as Kelly opened the door and slid into the seat. A small smile formed on her lips as she placed her hands on the wheel. Then, after getting settled, she placed the key in the ignition. The engine roared to life, Kelly’s face lighting up, the bright beams from the headlights illuminating the garage.
“Hell yes!” she shouted out, her voice carrying over the sound of the engine.
“I’ll get the door!” I shouted.
Fear gripped my belly as I realized this whole plan might be sunk if the door was too heavy-duty. I ran over it and grabbed onto the handles. With a little work it rose, the moonlight from outside brightening up the space.
It could work, I realized. It really could work.
I ran back over to the car, stopping at the driver’s side.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
“No way,” Kelly said right back. “Do you know for how long I’ve been dreaming about driving a pink Caddy? This one’s all me.”
I realized that there was going to be no talking her out of it—I’d long since given up on talking Kelly out of anything.
After hurrying around to the other side of the car I opened the door and climbed in.
My butt sank right into the soft, plush seat. The interior was a combination of the pink color of the body and the cream-white of the top. It was spotless and, as far as I could tell, a faithful recreation. There was even a set of fuzzy pink dice dangling from the rearview mirror.
“Now,” I said to Kelly. “I don’t know what you’ve seen of outside, but it’s like hell on earth out there. And it’s probably gotten worse since we’ve been in the Troika.”
“I know, I know,” she said. “I’ll get us off the main roads as fast as possible.”
“Right,” I said. “And no stopping for anyone.”
She nodded.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready as I’m going to be,” I said.
“All right. Here we go.”
Kelly gunned the engine and shifted gears before slowly pulling us out of the garage, leaving the ultra-modern supercars behind.
The silver of the moon was bright, casting the car in a ghostly sheen. Kelly brought the car out onto the street, the soft roar of a crowd sounding in the distance.
“I know, I know,” she said.
She pulled onto the main road in front of the Troika, flames belching out of the front doors as mobs of people staggered in a daze here and there.
“Looks like paradise is over,” she said.
“Some paradise,” I spat. “If Oleg burns in there, I won’t feel bad about it.”
“Hear, hear,” said Kelly as she turned the car away from the Troika. “Asshole wanted me to flee with him, be his ‘special companion,’ whatever that meant.”
“Glad to see how you responded to the proposition,” I said, thinking back to Kelly standing over him, the paperweight in hand.
“My only regret is that I didn’t get to hit him a second time,” she said, a small smirk on her lips.
I cracked a smile of my own as Kelly turned the car towards the main drag of the Strip.
But the smile faded as I realized that we still had a trek ahead of us.
If the sight before us was anything to go by, the city was more dangerous that it had ever been.
Chapter 16
Machine-gun fire crackled through the air. Kelly let out a shriek at the noise, ducking her head as if the bullets had been aimed at us.
“Holy shit!” she said. “Did that come from the Strip?”
“Sounds like it,” I said. “When Carlos and I made the trip here the Strip was…bad.”
“How bad?” she asked, her eyes ahead on the men and women stumbling across the road, most of them seeming to be in a daze.
“Bad,” I repeated. “I think we got there just in time to watch the last of the Las Vegas Police get taken down.”
“My God,” she said. “I can’t believe this. I still can’t.”
“Believe it,” I said. “Because it’s only going to get worse.”
Kelly pulled slowly around the dead husk of a car in the middle of the road. As the eyes of people all around us latched onto the car, I began to wish that we were driving something a little less conspicuous.
“The Army,” she said. “They have to have been planning for this, right? I mean, if you knew that this was coming then they had to also.”
There was uncertainty to her voice. I didn’t know how to answer her.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “They might’ve been planning on this happening, have some kind of contingency plan ready to go. Maybe any minute now we’ll see planes in the sky that’ve been hidden in secret EMP-proof bunkers. Maybe some tanks will start rolling down the street with troops all around them.”
“And if not?”
More worry, more uncertainty. If it was only else other than Kelly I might’ve lied, said that everything was going to be all right; someone would arrive to take care of us.
“And if not, we’ve got a hard road ahead,” I said. “Men like Oleg are going to be carving out little territories here and there, and they won’t pretend to be civilized about it. We’re going to need to find some like-minded people and then a safe place to wait the rest of this out.”
“Like you’ve been planning,” she said faintly. “All this time.”
“Something like that,” I said. “If we could make it to the house in New Mexico that’d sure as shit be a better place to wait things out than here. Me and you and Steve…we could hold out for a while. There’s food and clean water and weapons. And a hell of a lot fewer people than here.”
I was suggesting we go back to the house we once shared, the home we built together. There were memories there, both good and bad, and I could only hope that our history wouldn’t have her doubting whether to come along.
Before Kelly had a chance to say anything, though, one of the pedestrians whipped something at the car.
My gut tensed, and for a moment I was certain it was a brick or a Molotov cocktail, something that could do some serious damage. But instead, a glass bottle shattered on the windshield. Kelly let out a shriek as she flicked on the wipers and brushed off the shards.
“You sure you want to drive?” I asked. “Not too late to let me take the wheel.”
“Not a chance,” she said.
We continued on, driving down the road parallel to the Strip. I glanced over at the Strip, and through the buildings I could see the insanity unfolding. Hundreds, if not thousands of people were there, all in a massive teeming mass. Some of them carried fire, others shot weapons into the air.
“Jeez,” said Kelly as her eyes flicked towards the scene. “What’s going through their heads? I’m not exactly a survival expert like you, but even I know that’s the last place I’d want to be.”
“You remember how it was at the Troika? All the people drinking and carrying on like nothing was happening outside?”
“Sure do,” she said. “They were all in denial. They knew something was happening, but they wanted to pretend otherwise.”
I gestured to the Strip.
“Same thing with them. They know, deep down, that something’s happening that’s going to change the world forever. But they think that if they can just keep the party going that they won’t have to think about it.”
“But they’ll learn,” said Kelly.
“You’re right about that. Food and water and booze are going to run out, and when they do…”
She nodded.
Kelly got it, and I was glad for that. I couldn’t imagine what this would have been like if she or Steve had been more like those people on the Strip.
“Then we get Steve and then we get the fuck out of Vegas,” I said.
“Good call.”
We kept on driving, making our way out of the downtown area and onto the roads leading to the airport. The further we got from the insanity downtown, the fewer rioters and looters we saw. Instead, we saw dazed men and women—families—some of them with small children. They all wore the same confused looks on their faces.
A few were carrying supplies, others were simply wandering as if looking for help that wasn’t going to show up.
“God, Justin,” said Kelly as we drove on, passing the crowds of people. “This is awful.”
“I know,” I said.
“These are families,” she said. “They have no idea what’s going on, no idea where to go. I wish…I wish…”
She let her words hang in the air, not finishing her sentence.
“We can’t,” I said. “I know what you’re thinking, and we can’t. I don’t mean to sound callous, but the next few weeks are going to be a catastrophe like we’ve never seen before. Some people are going to make it, but a lot aren’t. And we’re not going to be able to save them.”
“Maybe we could pick one of them up,” she said. “One of the families, see if we could drive them somewhere?”
“Not a chance,” I said. “We pull over and this car gets swarmed with people within seconds. And every one of these people are looking out for their families. Those people at the Strip might kill just for fun, but if any of these people think you might have something that could help their family, they’ll kill you just the same.”
“I hate it, Justin,” she said, her eyes shining with tears. “I fucking hate it.”
“Me too,” I said. “And you can bet your ass that if any of these people knew I had a safe place to be in out of the city, they’d do whatever it’d take to get there. And they probably wouldn’t be nice enough to let us stay there with them.”
Kelly simply nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. Over the next few weeks, she was going to be seeing a dark side of human nature that she’d never thought about before. She’d gotten a taste of it at the Troika, but that was nothing compared to what was going to come.
We drove on, passing more and more people. By this point people seemed to be realizing that a working car was a rare sight indeed, and every pair of eyes that we passed flicked onto us and our pink Cadillac. Without thinking, my hand shot out and grabbed the
fuzzy dice and yanked them off.
“What’s that all about?” asked Kelly. “Embarrassed?”
“Not exactly suiting the mood right now,” I said.
I rolled down the window and prepared to throw them out. But Kelly reached over and placed her hand on my wrist, stopping me.
“Don’t,” she said.
“You serious?” I asked. “Why not?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, maybe this sounds a little strange, but we can’t get all bogged down in doom and gloom, you know?”
Kelly pulled onto another side street, this one nearly abandoned. It was just me and her in that ridiculous car, the moon bright overhead.
“We’re going to have to know when to recognize the halfway decent times,” she said. “Or at the very least, the peaceful ones. This might be one of them.”
Kelly reached down to the phone connected to the stereo and flicked it on. The lights illuminated, the strains of “Heartbreak Hotel” coming from the speakers as we drove.
It was totally surreal. But I did as Kelly suggested, trying to enjoy the brief respite. Try as a might, however, my thoughts kept drifting back to Steve. It was impossible for me to relax knowing what he was going through.
We eventually reached the highway and Kelly kept on driving. More cars than I remembered were on the road, broken down and burnt out. A never-ending trickle of people made their way down the lanes. Where they were going, I had no idea. But as we approached they spread out, still having the presence of mind to avoid a car in the road.
It wasn’t too long before I began to see signs for the airport. A few minutes after that, the still smoldering ruins of O’Donnelly-Reeder came into view in the distance.
“Holy shit,” said Kelly as she took in the sight. “What happened to that place?”
“Plane flew right into it,” I said. “Exploded on impact.”
“And you were there for it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “There to see if I could find you.”
Kelly said nothing, instead looking at me for several long seconds before turning her attention back to the road.
