The Zero Hour: A Post-Apocalyptic EMP Survivor Thriller

by Ryan Schow

  Can I save them? Should I?

  Kicking open the car door, the smell of propellant wafts into my nose. I’m familiar with the smell from the gun range. I might even like it. But usually I catch this same scent when I’m sighting down a target or emptying out a magazine on the range. Certainly not when I’m looking down at two men writhing in pain and bleeding out on the street.

  God my boobs hurt. And my chin is rattled to all hell. Gun out, cautiously approaching the downed men, still reeling in disbelief, I stare down at the mess I’ve made with abject horror. What have I done? The question reminds me that these guys beat a man to death not a half an hour earlier.

  Kneeling before the first guy, a fortysomething who’s face-down on the asphalt and dying, my eyes zero in on the blood leaking out of his mouth. His breathing is ragged, difficult. With every weak exhale, dust puffs up off the black asphalt road. One eye finally rolls up to look at me. This is the freak who couldn’t stop staring at me.

  “Why did you kill that man?” I ask.

  “You bitch,” he says, his voice grounding out the words in a wash of utter hatred.

  “Why?” I ask. His eye rolls back down to the ground where his breathing is becoming more and more labored. Asking again, I say, “Why did you do that?”

  “He was my neighbor.”

  “And he stole something from you?”

  Nothing. No answer. A bit more panting. A kind of resigned settling of his body around the idea that his life was all but over.

  I tap his head with the Glock’s muzzle; he comes back around, but only barely.

  “Cheated us at poker last year. Thought with…with e’rything going on…payback was in order.”

  “You killed him over a card game and a few bucks?”

  This revelation seems to still the man, but then he barks out a noise, and one bark becomes a raspy chortle and that raspy chortle turns into a riot of dead man’s laughter. Spitting out blood and coughing painfully, he tries to turn his head up to look at me, but he can’t.

  “Yeah,” he finally admits, “I guess we did.”

  I want to end him so badly right now, but I can’t. I’m mentally not tough enough to pull the trigger, so I leave him to his maniacal laughter and his pain. Back at the Cutlass, it takes a few minutes working the ignition and the gas pedal before the engine finally turns over.

  The engine roars to life and I give it some gas. Slapping the beast in reverse, I try to slowly dislodge the right corner of my fender with the other car’s rear bumper.

  I look over at the two men. They aren’t moving. Or breathing.

  With some work, I tear free of the other car, but not without doing considerable damage to the Olds. My front bumper is twisted out on the right side, but not pried loose. At home, maybe I can kick it back in place, or pound it in with a sledgehammer. As for now, I vacate this depressing scene, navigating my way back up Lincoln before seeing one of the concrete lamp posts and getting a bright idea.

  Nudging my car up to the street lamp, I touch the front bumper to the heavy concrete base, then press the gas. The bumper gives a touch, but not enough. Using more gas, the back wheels break loose and start to spin and smoke. The rear end slides the tiniest bit, but the bumper finally snugs up to the frame the way I envisioned it would. I let off the gas, back up, then get out to survey the damage.

  It’s ugly, both front and back, but at least the bumper isn’t looking like a jagged tooth anymore.

  Standing outside, looking around, marveling at what this city has become, my thoughts go back to shooting those guys. I can’t stop seeing it. My stomach starts to turn, and then it comes charging up my throat. Bent over, I wretch all over the ground, getting it all out.

  When it’s over, I don’t feel better. Actually, I feel worse.

  Rather than heading home though, I try my mom on the cell phone. All circuits are down. I try my dad’s phone and it rings through. My hope soars, but then it crashes back down when the call goes to voicemail. The sound of his voice makes me start crying again, which sucks because I’ve already been crying way too much these last twenty-four hours.

  I sob out a message, telling him I’m safe but worried, that he needs to call me on the home phone if he can’t reach the cell phone, and that I love him and miss him and hope everything’s okay.

  When I go to hang up, it seems the call has already been dropped, which leaves me to wonder if my message even got through. This above all else, is so disheartening I can’t even put it into words.

  I find myself driving over to Tad’s and my mom’s house. Tad’s white Tesla is parked on the opposite side of the street in front of his house, but my mom’s car is no where to be found.

  My eyes zoom in on Tad’s new ride.

  He loves his overpriced electric car, specifically his gunmetal gray rims and red brake calipers. He said the wheels gave it a masculine stance. I didn’t say anything when he first uttered such a thing, but my thought was this: if you have to tell me your car looks masculine, then it’s probably not. No one ever looked at Detroit muscle and said, “Boy, that’s a masculine looking machine.” Freaking Tad. If you need to understand anything about this clown, it’s that he’s a tad bit of a pretty boy. A tad bit of a wiener. Already I’m shaking my head at the thought of him. Already I’m holding down what’s left of my breakfast at the thought of seeing him.

  I pull up behind the Tesla, throw the Olds in PARK, then just stare at Tad’s ash covered embarrassment, specifically his stupid license plate: TADSXY.

  As in Tad sexy.

  “What a douchebag,” I mumble as I’m nudging open the door.

  6

  The second I get out of the Cutlass, I hear this rowdy noise coming from up the street. I bump my door shut with my butt and press my body against the car as some idiot in a seventies Camaro comes barreling down the street toward me. I pull out the gun, let it hang at my side, just in case.

  The car makes no move in my direction and I’m all eyes on the driver, ready to dive out of the way if at the last minute he decides to swerve into me.

  As this primer colored rust bucket barrels past me, I find myself staring at a terrified kid in the driver’s seat. He can’t be a day older than fourteen. Down the road, he comes to a cross street, stands on the brakes and spins the wheel, sliding around the corner out of control.

  The second he’s out of view, I hear a huge crash, a sputtering engine, and then the steady rumbling of a car now stopped entirely too fast. Gears are grinding, then the heap is going into reverse, revving up, tearing free of whatever it slammed into. After that it’s a steady grumble, first gear, a heavy rev on the engine and finally the sound of wheels leaving rubber on the road.

  “Wow,” I mutter to myself, barely believing what I’m seeing.

  I look both ways then cross the street, climb the steps onto Tad’s porch, then dreadfully take a breath and ring the bell. Standing there alone, my weapon loaded and in hand, I steady myself and pray my mom is inside.

  The thirty-something Neanderthal answers the door a moment later. He’s looking worried with mussed hair, puffy eyes and two days beard growth. Even looking this ragged, pretty doesn’t define him. Gorgeous is more like it. We’re talking dark hair, athletic build, the kind of GQ face girls my age simply gush over.

  This is why I hate him.

  I hate him for how good he looks, for all the money he has, for the fact that he took my mom from me and my dad. Most of all, I hate that I don’t know what’s happened to my father and that I have to come looking for answers from my mom and this idiot.

  “Indigo,” he says, glancing down at my gun, then over my shoulder at the Olds. “Are you all right?”

  “Where’s my mom, Tad?”

  “Do you want to come in?” he asks. I give him a firm nod, no. If my mom were here, he wouldn’t have invited me in. He would have stepped aside so I could walk in on my own. Looking past me once more, he says, “What the hell happened to your car?”

  “I was a
ttacked by a drone. You know, those things killing people and blowing up most of downtown? Then I hit another car while I was preoccupied with two men dying. I should have been paying better attention, but whatever. It is what it is.”

  “Why do you have the gun?” he says, those dreamy blue eyes leveled on me.

  “Protection.”

  Those same blue eyes dip down and look at my pants.

  I can’t help but roll my eyes. “Yes, Tad,” I say smugly, “I wet myself. It’s a long story I’m not interested in telling you.”

  “I wasn’t saying anything,” he replied, hands up in mock surrender. Then: “Is it that bad out there?”

  He’s clearly not himself. He’s not looking at me like he wants me—I know he doesn’t even like me—but seeing him like this, vulnerable and not talking about all his accomplishments in life, I might understand why my mother was drawn to him.

  Shifting from one foot to the other, zeroing in on him with a pair of no b.s. eyes, I say, “Where’s my mom, Tad?”

  “I—I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her.”

  “Well, have you gone out looking for her?” I ask, my body stiffening with disbelief. “I mean, have you even tried?”

  He looks down. My eyes narrow and I feel my jaw clenching.

  “You absolute pussy,” I mutter. “You haven’t gone out, have you? Because you’re scared. Because big bad Tad’s a tad bit of a wuss.”

  “I watched people get shot,” he says, likes he’s thinking about a bad dream rather than making excuses for himself.

  For a second, he’s no longer mysterious, sexy Tad; he’s making-excuses-for-himself Tad; he’s selfish Tad with a soft spine; he’s delicate-hands-and-hurt-feelings Tad.

  “I see you managed to get that piece of crap electric car home and parked cozily across the street without so much as a scratch on it while people are being murdered out there.”

  “I work at home these days,” he says sheepishly.

  “While homes and cars and buildings are being destroyed, you’re hunkered down in here with no pretense of bravado, safe from the world, worrying.”

  His open mouth becomes a pursed slash.

  “This isn’t about being tough, Indigo, this is about staying alive and hoping your mother makes contact with me.”

  “Justify all you want, but I—”

  “What if she comes home and I’m not here?” he asks (this is please-understand-me Tad). “You know your mother! You know how badly she’d panic!”

  “What if she never comes home and you’re still here waiting, huh Tad? What then? You’ll be alive and your car will be fine and you’ll never have to assert any real masculinity, you beet juice drinking crank. You wouldn’t have even had to try.”

  “Fine, you want to go?” he snaps (defensive Tad). “Then let’s go looking for her!”

  “Not if you’re going to act like a big baby about it,” I say, unmoved by his wide range of manufactured emotions. “I can look for her myself.”

  “I’m not being a baby, he says to the child,” Tad replies, doing that annoying thing he does with his third person point of view. “The adult is simply being responsible in the face of the child’s tantrum. Oh look, the child wet her pants.”

  Would the real Tad please stand up?

  “Did you ever stop to think that she’s alive but doesn’t want to come home to you because you’re like this?” I ask.

  “Like what?” he retorts, clearly ready to argue.

  “Tad, you’re a wet fart.”

  He bursts into some sort of bitter laughter, but I don’t join him because there’s a snide edge to his humor I don’t like.

  When he’s done laughing, I say, “You’re the right brand of useless and we all see it, my mom included. Perhaps she’s not coming home to you because you’re not the kind of person who would ever go looking for her.”

  “You think she thinks that?” he asks, halfway amused, halfway offended. “Because she hasn’t said that to me. In fact, she’s said nothing of the sort.”

  “You’re not worth telling the truth to,” I assert. “At least to her. But to me? Oh, Tad, I’m happy to give you the truth in spades. The truth is you’re nothing but a lifestyle and a pretty face, but when it comes down to being a man, someone like you would never have a family because all you care about is yourself, your hair, and all your expensive toys.”

  “And this is why we don’t get along,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning a shoulder on the door jam.

  “And this is why you’re a wet fart.”

  “You already said that.”

  “Well I hope this time it sinks in,” I say, tapping my temple with the gun, just to let him know it’s still here.

  “If you’re right and your mom doesn’t like me so much, then she won’t want to be found by me. So go find her yourself you flat chested she-boy.”

  I blanch. I can’t help my reaction. He steps back and slams the door in my face. Stunned, wounded by words I fear to be true, I back up and put two rounds through the front door, screaming out the kinds of words and fury that defy description.

  Huffing and puffing, stomping down the stairs, I cross the street to my car, but all I can see is Tad’s bright and shiny Tesla.

  “It’s not even a real car,” I grumble.

  Climbing in the Olds, I fire up the engine, back up ten feet, then pull to a stop. Me and my car sit here, both of us grumbling and at an idle, both of us contemplating my next move.

  What is my next move?

  My molars gnash against each other, my hands flexing into fists around the steering wheel. Eyes locked on the Tesla, nostrils flaring, a quick snort escapes me. NEUTRAL becomes DRIVE and my foot stomps on the gas.

  This big Dee-troit fiend jolts forward, picking up speed in a tire-smoking, rancorous howl. Seconds later my front end smashes into the Tesla’s weak ass trunk, driving it all the way into the back seat in a thunderous, cataclysmic uproar. The Cutlass’s hood is barely tented, its engine sitting at a steady rumble. I roll down the window as Tad comes flying out of his house and down the stairs. I point the gun at him from across the street and say nothing.

  He pulls up short, looking at me like he hasn’t looked at anyone before. He looks…frightened. Whether it was because I shot through his door or wrecked his car, I can’t be sure. One thing’s for sure, he won’t be commenting on my sexuality anymore.

  “Was that necessary?” he barks, breathless with rage.

  “No more necessary than calling me a titless she-boy, Tad.”

  He runs his hand through his hair like he’s all but going to pieces. His eyes are jiggling in their sockets and it’s clear his brain isn’t making sense of what I’ve just done to his car.

  “I think the rims and brake calipers are okay, but the back end is a tad bit damaged, wouldn’t you say?”

  Staring daggers at me, glowering at me like he’d like to eat my soul, like he’d like to gobble it all the way up, he says nothing. I see the gears working, though. He’s looking at the gun and measuring the distance between us and wondering if I’m really going to shoot him.

  Finally he turns and storms inside.

  7

  It’s been three days. The daytime bombing hasn’t stopped, but for some reason everything stops at night. It makes no sense. It’s not like the machines have a hard time seeing in the dark. And they can’t be tired. Maybe there’s no explanation. Maybe there will never be an explanation. Maybe no one will ever tell me anything and I’ll never understand any of this.

  Can I live with that? Do I even have a choice in the matter?

  Guh.

  Making matters worse, I haven’t heard from my mom or my dad or even that daft weakling (Tad), so now I’ve gone from being worried to going numb to existing in that vacuum of fear that seems enormous the way you think of deep space as enormous.

  The phone service has been sporadic at best, but now it seems that all circuits are down, permanently. If I can’t get anywhere near downtown b
ecause of these killer drones, then it makes sense that the phone company won’t risk summary destruction trying to fix failed power lines, or blown transformers, or whatever. That would be ridiculous.

  At night I climb on the flat roof of my garage overlooking Dirt Alley and watch the city with binoculars. I take hot chocolate out there, my pistol and my bow and arrows. It wasn’t like that at first. First it was only the hot chocolate, but then I saw them: the group of loudmouths wandering the streets stirring up trouble. These are the knuckleheads throwing rocks at cars and homes and peeing indiscriminately in the streets. The same social lepers who smoke and cuss and look in people’s backyards and shoot at cats. Of all the things they could do to piss me off, it’s the shooting of innocent animals that has me thinking I’m way too nice to survive in this landscape.

  The fact that they’ve been through our neighborhood a few times now is disturbing at best. It’s now dusk and I hear them walking the neighborhood again. This time they’re coming up Dirt Alley. Grabbing the Glock, I slink off my lawn chair, lower myself to my belly and try not to make a sound.

  As they’re passing by, they don’t look up and they don’t see me. Then again, I’m barely breathing at this point.

  “Whoever’s light’s on, mark that home as occupied. Any lights don’t come on, those are the ones we hit,” the voice says. “Are you writing this down?”

  “Yeah, man,” a second voice says.

  “That one,” he says. “And that one there. It’s gonna be easy-picking in the blue collar neighborhoods. Half these pendejos are probably dead already.”

  They keep walking and talking. All five of them.

  Across the way, a few houses up from where they’re at, an upstairs light flicks on illuminating the window. It’s my neighbor across the way. I’ve seen her a few times since all this went down, but she’s sort of anti-social, so we haven’t introduced ourselves and we haven’t spoken. I think I was born anti-social and just got worse. Perhaps she’s the same as me. But whatever. The point is, I see her moving behind the curtains, and so do they.