by Hunt, James
“I know Mavis would appreciate it,” James said. “You still keep your meds in the back?”
“Yeah, and good thing our shipment came in yesterday.” Nolan exhaled in relief. “Lord knows it might be a while before we get any more refills.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” James said. “The power isn’t coming back on anytime soon. And anyone looking to score meds who’s lived in this town will know what I know. So make sure you keep your lock on it, and I would hide any of the high-powered painkillers or antibiotics. Those are going to be in high demand.”
Nolan frowned and then stepped forward, and even Doris stepped from around her reception desk. “You really think this is going to last a while?” His voice was hushed.
“I do.” James glanced back out onto the street and then retreated for the door. He’d spent enough time in the town already.
“I’ll move the meds to the safe,” Nolan said.
“Be safe out there, James,” Doris said.
Back at the gas station, Luis was standing near the Humvee when James returned. “Everything all right?”
“For now.” James walked past Luis and met with Mavis. “Doc will come take a look at him. Just make sure that Larry doesn’t give him too much grief.”
“I will,” Mavis said. “Thanks, James.”
James climbed back behind the wheel and started the Humvee, giving one final glance at Ruckins in the rearview mirror before he headed out of town, again sticking to the fields and off the main highway, which was becoming more congested with broken-down vehicles the closer they moved toward the city.
“You all right?” Luis asked.
James peeled his eyes away from the rearview mirror and then glanced ahead. “I don’t know how long things are going to hold together.”
Luis turned and looked at Ruckins, now nothing more than a small mound on the horizon behind them. “Maybe people will surprise you?”
But while Luis maintained his optimism, the rising plumes of black smoke on the horizon only doused more water on James’s remaining flames of hope.
6
It was the ringing in Mary’s ear that woke her, combined with the sound of her son’s voice breaking through the high-pitched whine from the explosions.
On her back, body aching, Mary sat up. At first she thought that something was wrong with her eyes, but the more she blinked, the more she realized that it was the world that had blurred, not her vision.
A cloud of dust cast a hazy filter over the city streets, limiting visibility to only a few feet in front of her face. Once on her feet, Mary grabbed hold of her son’s hand and saw that he was covered from head to toe in dust.
Mary spun in half circles, disoriented from the explosion. Screams penetrated the clouds of dust, and she reached for her revolver, only to realize that she had lost it after the explosion.
Mary scoured the ground, stumbling around, bumping into bodies that emerged from the dust like apparitions and then evaporated a few feet later in the distance as they sprinted in random and chaotic directions.
Gunshots echoed in the distance, and Mary flinched, ducking and bringing Jake down to the ground with her. She leaned them both up against a nearby vehicle, staying low, the gunfire growing louder. Closer.
Mary’s heart pounded wildly, her lungs choked with dust. She scanned the ground for the weapon, not wanting to move forward into the unknown until she had the revolver.
Another gunshot. Another scream. The violence was made more terrible by the cloak of haze that had befallen the city. It sounded like the fighting was right on top of them, and just when Mary thought she was about to run out of time, she saw the revolver camouflaged in the grey dust.
Mary reached for the weapon, but another gunshot echoed and a body fell from the dust, landing on top of the revolver with a heavy thud. Mary recoiled her outstretched hand. The man’s face was tilted toward Mary, his lifeless eyes locking with Mary’s own.
Another gunshot broke Mary from her paralysis. She thrust her hand beneath the dead body, feeling around for the weapon, her fingertips scraping against the handle. She tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge.
The hammer was caught on the body’s shirt. Mary pulled harder, breaking the corpse’s hold on the weapon and ripping a piece of cloth from the shirt.
Not bothering to stay still any longer, Mary grabbed Jake’s hand and pulled him through the cloud of dust that had descended upon the city and then picked a direction she believed was west.
“Just stay close, Jake.” Mary kept the revolver aimed in front of her, finger on the trigger as she moved forward through the haze.
People sprinted past her and in front of her, the scene growing more chaotic.
Finally, at a cross street, Mary confirmed she was still headed in the right direction. She hastened her pace, but Jake tugged at her arm, slowing Mary down, and she turned to find him hunched over and coughing.
“Jake,” Mary said, placing her hands on his shoulders and trying to pull him forward. “We need to move, we can’t stay here.”
“I can’t… breathe.” Jake clutched his chest, his eyes wide, his breaths raspy and painful. He dropped to his knees, and Mary knelt with him, finally lowering the gun.
Mary placed his hand over his chest, trying to calm him. “Jake, we need—”
Gunfire erupted behind her, and Mary turned just in time to watch the flashes from the muzzle of the rifles only a few feet away. The gunmen were aiming to the left of Mary and Jake, their figures nothing more than a hazy outline. There were at least six of them.
Mary lifted her son to his feet, holding him upright. “Jake, I need you to push through and be strong. Or we will die. Do you understand?”
Mary’s tone was harsher than she intended, but she needed to make him see that this was life or death. He nodded, still struggling for air, but started moving forward.
Mary led them away from the figures in the dust, keeping low, using the vehicles in the street as cover. Bullets ricocheted off the vehicles, shattering glass that rained over their heads.
But as she pulled both of them through the lingering haze brought on by the explosions, the further they walked, the quieter it became. The gunfire faded, the screams dissipated and silence shrouded the street, but it wasn’t until Jake yelped that she realized why.
Mary stared at the ground and saw the first body, face down, lifeless and Mary saw the wake of corpses that the terrorists had left behind.
Not wanting to disturb the dead, the pair carefully stepped around the tangle of limbs and torsos that stretched the length of the road.
At the next crossroads, Mary turned west. She glanced back only once to see if anyone had followed her, but she saw nothing but the bodies and cars along the road.
Away from the explosion, the streets were barren, and Mary figured that the gunfire had sent everyone back into the buildings for cover, hoping to wait out the storm.
Seeing the skyscrapers along the street, Mary realized that they were still on the edge of the center of downtown. She’d forgotten how big the city was, and with the streets empty, dust settling on the broken-down cars in the middle of the road, she never thought that she could feel alone in a city this big.
Some of the cars had veered off the road when they’d lost power, crashing into storefronts, trees, benches, and signs. Wind kicked up the trash from overturned waste bins, spreading it across the streets and slapping against her shins.
She kicked an old magazine off of her bare leg, which was wet with some garbage, when she finally noticed the faces in the windows.
Noses and foreheads were pressed up against the dirty glass, staring at Mary and Jake as they walked down the street.
They approached another crossroads, one of the final intersections before the skyscrapers ended and they moved out of the city’s epicenter. But with her attention on the faces staring at her from the first-floor windows, it was Jake who alerted her to the danger ahead.
&n
bsp; “Mom!”
Mary pivoted, aiming the gun in the same motion, poised to shoot, but when she saw what Jake had seen, a breathless whisper escaped her lips. “Oh my god.”
Two dozen gunmen, all of them with their faces concealed with bandanas, carrying AK-47s, marched down the middle of the street like an army of death.
The gunmen turned their weapons at the storefronts, fingers pressed over the triggers, and unleashed hundreds of rounds into glass and flesh.
Mary pulled Jake down behind the nearest car and searched for the closest building. She found a door on the south side of the street in one of the skyscraper’s lobbies, and she turned to Jake, surprised at how steady her voice sounded as she pointed to the door where they would run. “On three. Ready?”
Jake nodded.
“One. Two. Three!”
Mary pushed Jake forward, and she made the conscious effort to keep herself between the gunmen and her son, using herself as a human shield.
Jake reached the door first, Mary exhaling with relief as it opened without incident.
“Get inside! Go! Go! Go—” Mary was still on the run when the sting bit at her lower back, the pain hot and sharp. She only made it one step farther on her right leg before she collapsed, sliding across the hot tile as she passed through the door.
Mary’s vision blurred when she hit the floor, and she watched Jake’s feet skid to a stop as he spun around and returned to his mother’s side.
“Mom?” Jake held her hand, tears squeezing from his eyes as blood stained her shirt.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Mary said, her voice cracking. She became cold and clammy, her complexion piqued. “You need to hide.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
But Mary saw the soldiers moving closer toward the building, killing anyone in their path.
Mary shoved Jake back, twisting her face into a snarl. “Go!” She screamed with what strength remained. “Now, Jacob!” She watched him hesitate, but he finally sprinted deeper into the building.
With Jake gone, Mary used what strength she had left to aim the revolver at the door. She struggled to keep the revolver steady, but despite the concentrated effort, she dropped the weapon.
The pain in her lower back multiplied tenfold, and she laid her head back, finding it hard to breathe. Darkness descended, but before she completely lost consciousness, a pair of silhouettes hovered over her, and then she heard the screams drowned out by gunshots.
7
Once James neared San Antonio’s suburbs, he was forced to use the paved roads, his open fields now blocked by houses. James recognized the street names of the community of Rio Medina.
But the situation in the city looked to be deteriorating. The columns of smoke within the city had grown thicker and multiplied from two to six.
“Hey,” Luis said. “They know how to take care of themselves. You guys have run drills like this before, right? Going in and out of the city?”
James nodded, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel as he mounted the curb to bypass a wreck, taking notice of the people stepping from their homes at the sight of the Humvee.
“How much farther?” Luis asked, anxious from the growing crowd.
James veered back onto the road. “We’re close.” He wanted to slam the accelerator down and plow through the busted vehicles. But he knew that it would cause more damage than good, and he still needed the Humvee to survive the trip home.
A fist smacked against the driver-side window, startling both James and Luis.
“Hey!” The woman’s face had sharp features, the angles so extreme along her cheeks, chin, and nose that it looked like she could carve out her name on the glass. “You with the military?”
“No,” James answered, his voice deep and loud as he made sure to keep the windows up. The doors were locked so there wasn’t any chance of her being able to get inside, but the longer she walked along with the Humvee, the closer other people started to approach, boxing the vehicle in.
“Where are you going? Do you know what’s happening?” The woman stayed close to the window, her face sweaty and red from the sun. She glanced into the back. “You got any water in there?”
“James.” Luis spoke with a sense of foreboding, and James looked over to find another six people walking along the side of the Humvee, all of them peering into the vehicle, searching for what they might have inside.
The woman pounded her fist on the window, this one angrier.
“You think you’re better than us?” the woman shouted, and the growing crowd murmured the same discontent.
With the amount of blockage ahead, James knew that he couldn’t drive his way out of this until the road cleared, but he didn’t want to lead these people to the rendezvous location. Nor did he want any of the residents to be harmed.
“Come out of there, you coward!” The woman spit on the window, and that one simple act triggered the rest of the crowd to break out in a frenzied attack, pounding their fists against the glass, kicking and stomping and rocking the vehicle from side to side as best they could, but it was too heavy to flip, even with the large crowd.
Luis leaned back from the window as rocks were tossed against the glass, along with anything else that the bystanders could pick up and throw with their hands.
“They won’t get through the armor,” James said, his voice remaining steady in the chaos that surrounded him, though he felt his heart rate quicken.
Up ahead James had spied an open lane, and it would give them enough open space to put some distance between themselves and the growing mob. James just hoped that none of them decided to step in front of the vehicle when that happened. It wasn’t a choice he was ready to make. Not yet.
James ignored the angry faces peering into the windows, still screaming, still beating their fists against the glass and doors, though most of them had stopped throwing things at the vehicle once they realized they weren’t going to break through.
It was all about intimidation now. They wanted James to know that they were still there, that they were still a threat. Nearing the end of the road, James sped up, forcing the mob to follow in a jog, and the increased speed caused most of the residents to end their pursuit. All save for the woman who first approached.
The woman landed one last punch on the window before the road opened completely and James pulled away, the engine rumbling with ferocity as he stole one last glance in the rearview mirror of the mob.
James saw the woman’s brazen anger give way to fear, to the cold hard truth of knowing that they wouldn’t be able to survive on their own.
Years from now, James would remember those faces. Not necessarily the individual details of each person, but the collective energy of everyone that chased him. It was heightened by fear and loss and pain and uncertainty. It was the petulant anger of a child who didn’t understand why they were being left behind.
James kept their pace up, the Humvee scraping the sides of a few vehicles as they passed. Luis tensed, slamming his foot into the imaginary brake in the floorboard.
James swerved down side streets and over yards, turning left and right on a serpentine path to ensure that the mob wouldn’t find them, and then finally, when they were out of the neighborhood, James slowed, confident they were out of harm’s way.
“Christ,” Luis said, catching his breath, relaxing once the Humvee slowed down. “I think I saw my life flash before my eyes.”
“There,” James said, pointing to a large abandoned building in the forgotten and bankrupt industrial sector outside of San Antonio. “That’s where we’ll meet them.”
“Place looks like it could use a new coat of paint,” Luis said.
James had bought the building a few years ago, and while the outside looked dilapidated, the barbed wire fence that protected it was brand new, along with the gate’s chain and lock.
James gave Luis the key, who unlocked it, and then James passed through, letting Luis close and relock the gate after he was inside. H
e drove around to the north side of the building where there was a garage door and gestured for Luis to open it.
The inside of the building was an open floor plan, like a warehouse. The windows were high on the walls next to the ceiling, and aside from the garage door, there were only two other entrance points into the rectangular-shaped building.
James shut off the engine and stepped out of the Humvee, Luis shutting the garage door behind them.
“They haven’t gotten here yet?” Luis asked, stating the obvious.
“It’s at least at six-hour hike from the hospital to here,” James answered, still scanning the darkened interior as if his wife and son would be hiding from him. He shook his head and walked back to the Humvee. “It took us three hours to get here, but I’m sure they knew about the EMP blast before we did. Hopefully they’ll be here soon.”
While they waited, James refueled the Humvee, wanting to be able to head out at a moment’s notice and not stop until they made it home. After that, he checked the weapons and his rations, but when the housekeeping was finished, James became restless.
Restlessness had always plagued James Bowers’s life. At times it drove him wild, and most of the time it drove his wife insane, but it was always there, always prodding him to get up and do something, to keep moving, because James Bowers could do anything but sit still.
He paced the inside of the warehouse, checking the pocket watch that was one of the old wind-up devices that belonged to his grandfather. It was given as a present from his great-grandmother to his great-grandfather after he purchased the ranch.
Unable to stand the silence of the warehouse any longer, James walked to the ladder on the west end, taking a set of binoculars with him.
“Where are you going?” Luis asked, his voice echoing in the empty space.
“Stay with the Humvee,” James answered.
James climbed the ladder attached to the inside wall, which led to a small panel at the top of the roof that could be removed.
