The Blaster

by Sandford Parker

  THE BLASTER

  by

  Sandford Parker

  CHAPTER 1

  It was day three in Chattanooga and I was able to contain my restlessness until just after our egg and biscuit breakfast. The group of twenty-five hundred located on tree-shaded property formerly owned by the First Methodist Church had adjusted to Lights Out life very well. They were organized, united, well fed, medically self-sufficient and, most importantly, optimistic. And I was only slightly ashamed in admitting that all of this bored me to tears. It was setting up to be another episode of Robert’s Rules of the Post-Apocalypse. I couldn’t handle another day of trading farming and waste management tips, so Russ and I left the third member of our group, John, and took our SUV and headed into the city to see what the nutty homeowners were up to.

  Russ is on the other side of fifty and spent the better part of the aughts in Afghanistan. He’d joined me in my last two outings into the urban unknown. It’s become something of a routine now. John doesn’t mind being left behind. He thinks we’re nuts, that we’re asking for trouble from highwaymen and gangs and other bogeymen.

  We pointed our Santa Fe at a tall white-with-black-windows twenty-story deal and headed that way. A few minutes later we were maneuvering through a six-lane thoroughfare, past looted strip malls and empty banks. Traffic lights swayed uselessly in the wind, ignored by us and the couple other cars out for a spin on this cloudy morning. Just after the billboard with the words WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS? painted on it in large black letters we saw a supermarket with a cluster of people milling about in front of it. I pulled in.

  The people—a pretty broad swath of races, sexes, sizes and ages—laconically watched us approach. I parked about thirty yards away from the crowd, a respectable “We’re friends!” distance.

  A man stepped out from the group, a burly white dude. He adjusted his baseball cap and walked toward us.

  “Good morning,” Russ said as he and I exited the Santa Fe.

  “Mornin’. Can we help you?”

  There was a predictable, confrontational quality to the big guy’s voice, a quality I’ve encountered a couple times on this trip, both from leaders of small groups, like this guy. They just want us gone as quickly as possible. Russ beamed a smile and stepped away from our ride. “We were going to ask you the same thing. My name is Russ Westfall and this here is Evan Lehman. We’re in town visiting the collective East of town that’s affiliated with First Methodist Church. We’re just driving around town to see if there’s anyone that needs help or anything.”

  The man scratched his beard and nodded, still all business. “Russ, I’m Jim Beverly.”

  They shook hands. Beverly eyed me warily, which was odd, because I’m just about the least threatening person I know. I extended my hand and he took it, briefly making eye contact before his glance skittered away. “Evan,” he said.

  I nodded toward the store. “There’s still food in there?”

  Beverly grunted a chuckle absently, dismissively, all but saying, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” He stood between us and his group and crossed his arms, his mouth closed.

  Russ let the awkward exchange go. He surveyed the motley crowd. “Any health issues that need attention, Jim?”

  “No, we’re in pretty good shape, knock wood.”

  “That’s good to hear. Food supply all right?”

  Beverly chuckled, friendlier than the one I got. “None of us are gaining weight, but we’ve got food, for now.”

  Russ pointed to the store. “Leftover groceries?”

  “Mostly, yessir. We’re former employees, most of us.”

  “What’s the crime situation around here?”

  “Nothing too bad. It’s eased up as time’s gone on. People know not to mess with us.”

  “Government?”

  Beverly shrugged. “Limited.”

  Russ chuckled. Beverly forced air through his nose, which I guess was about as close to an all out laugh as we were going to get. He scratched his beard. “Right after the electricity went out for good, the Sheriff’s and the PD kept everyone in line, and made damned sure the better off got generators and access to the gas to run them. That didn’t last too long, though.”

  After that cryptic statement, Beverly looked back at the group and I followed his glance when something stole my attention: a kid wearing a pair of Goggles. Before I knew what I was doing, I was walking toward him.

  The shirtless kid was Hispanic and sported a pair of red basketball shorts and lime-green Crocs. And the Goggles, which look like souped-up sunglasses. No one said anything as I approached—I guessed since I wasn’t walking toward the entrance of the building Beverly didn’t mind. My mouth was a dumb, open-mouthed smile.

  As soon as I was within earshot of the kid I pointed and said, “Those things work?”

  He nodded.

  “No kidding? What view?”

  “Futuropolis,” the boy said. I imagined I looked like a translucent android from behind the Goggles, or a dashing go-getter in a silver unitard. “That's my son's favorite, too. I like the topographical ones, myself.”

  He wrinkled his nose, “So does my dad. That and blueprint.”

  “I also like using Galaxy view at night,” which was the worst counter I could make to regain any kid-cred.

  A young girl piped up: “That’s my favorite. But it doesn’t work since the GPS went down.”

  “Y’all have any cartoon Views?”

  “Spongebob, Phineas and Ferb—oh, and the Dr. Suess one."

  “Awesome. Would you mind if I took a look?”

  “Sure,” the boy chirped, as he handed his pair to me. I slipped them on carefully. Turning away from the building, our SUV was now a sleek, teardrop-shaped chrome vehicle reflecting rainbow lattices of light from above. Similar vehicles replaced the other cars in the parking lot. The strip mall across the street became a cluster of curved, onyx towers ornamented with pulsing neon and holographic advertisements for CocaCola, Starbucks and McDonalds. Soon—too soon—the kid cleared his throat. I took the Goggles off.

  “Mom only lets us have them for a half hour a day,” he said apologetically.

  “Well, I thank you for sharing them with me.”

  I turned and walked back to the conversation, lightheaded with nostalgia and homesickness.

  “Around here,” Beverly was saying when I came within earshot, "we all keep to ourselves, mostly.” He pointed to the building. “This is our home now. We’re three hundred strong. We realize that we can’t live out of old grocery stores forever, and we’re preparing for that.”

  I heard a noise and turned around. A dozen full school buses were sputtering down the road. “That normal?” I asked.

  “Nope,” Beverly replied. “It is not."

  We watched as curious as children as the road filled with Greyhounds and other charter buses, RVs, panel trucks, and semis. It was a never-ending convoy. I bet that kid was having a ball looking at this scene through his Goggles.

  I turned to Russ. "Want to find out what the deal is?"

  He didn’t take his eyes off the traffic. "Yes."

  I turned to Beverly. "Where do you think they’re heading?"

  He fooled around with his hat. "My guess would be the airport. Could be the fairgrounds. They’re out that way, too."

  "Yeah,” Russ nodded, watching the minivans and shuttle buses bringing up the rear. “Let’s go check that out."

  We merged into the line of vehicles with Georgia tags and drove with them as they slowly snaked through a cluster of burnt vehicles strewn about this section of the road.

  Russ chuckled. "What was the deal with those glasses that kid was wearing?"

  "Those were Goggles."

  Russ looked at me blankly.


  "They started out as a smartphone app, one that translated whatever you're looking at with a certain visual scheme called Views. You look through them and the houses in your neighborhood turn into igloos and the cars become walruses. Another View turns people and objects into moving thermal readouts. But it’s all, you know, real-time. Real-time graphical overlays. The Views became popular enough to support their own piece of hardware called Goggles."

  Russ cut to the chase. "A blast from the past, then."

  "Yeah," I said.

  “Why are you on this trip, Evan?”

  I laughed at the naked audacity of the question. Pure Russ. “Because it was my idea?”

  “Our idea,” Russ corrected. “Every place we stop, after about an hour it seems like you can’t wait to leave.”

  I chuckled. “I’m about the big picture, Russ. You know that. I’m into the overall design of the camps or neighborhoods. The set up. I like to see how people are attacking Lights Out life and learn information about what happened, is happening. And if there’s a chance we can help and link up with others, super. But beyond that, the details bore me to tears. I know I should be terribly interested in gravity-based small community wastewater management, but I just want to see more people like Petty Tyrant Jim Beverly and how they are approaching things.” I turned to him. “I can’t help but notice that you are more than eager to come along with me.”

  “I just want to make sure you don’t get our SUV stolen.”

  “Sure you do.” I turned and looked out the window at all the vehicles filled with people. “Tell me something: when most everyone survives, can you still call it an apocalypse?”

  Thin crowds lined the road looking at this impromptu parade, their expressions equal parts confusion, concern and excitement. Traffic moved slowly and soon came to a stop. Everyone waited it out for about five minutes then decided to get out and stretch their legs. We followed suit. We walked up to a group of black people gathered between a couple of small shuttle buses with church names with Atlanta addresses printed on the sides of them.

  Russ smiled and got to the point. "What happened in Atlanta?"

  They looked at us like we were telling a bad joke for a moment before it dawned on them that we were serious.

  A skeleton-thin, elderly black man stepped toward us and said, "The giants are about to destroy the city."

  I looked at Russ helplessly, making sure he had heard the same set of words that I had.

  Russ said, "'Giants?”

  I looked at a woman standing next to him. I was breathless and disoriented. She nodded and said, “Yeah, no shit.”

  CHAPTER 2

  When the toppled skyscrapers came into view, an uncomfortably large part of me was in a state of awe. The sight of something as massive and stable as a city’s skyline reduced to jagged columns of smoldering concrete and glass brought to mind Yeats’ well-worn but completely apt phrase, “a terrible beauty”.

  We tried to drive to the address of a Baptist student center near the Georgia Tech campus that was on our list. The church and the surrounding neighborhoods had been reduced to collapsed brick walls and rebar-veined rubble.

  John and I hung out near the SUV and watched Russ hike over the jagged piles of concrete. I could hear water trickling but couldn’t see any of it, which unnerved me for some reason. We weren’t alone: there were other sight-seers out here as well. It was like being present at something akin to the Tunguska impact or the crater that killed the dinosaurs—an epic, world-changing catastrophe.

  John’s a beefy black man in his late twenties, the father of three young children. He was taking pictures and must have felt me watching him because he began speaking. “Back in high school one summer, I worked with a demo company. We knocked down an old mall this one time. One day we were shutting down and me and my cousin hopped on the cab of a backhoe and looked over the whole mess. I remember thinking how it looked like something out of a war movie. Thought it was huge at the time.” He laughed to himself and shook his head in amazement. “Man, I’m looking at dozens of those right here.”

  Russ yelled, “Come check this out, guys.”

  We hiked to him and he pointed south, toward downtown. “See that copper building over there? It was the Bank of America building and it was over fifty stories tall.” He pointed over to the west. “There are the top ten stories of it over there.”

  And that was the one image I knew I’d always have of Atlanta: the spire of the former Bank of America building lying atop a parking garage a good half mile from its original location.

  The rain started as we passed Turner Field. It was partly flattened, kind of like it had been melted. As we navigated around an oblong gash that spanned the northbound and southbound lanes of I-75, Russ pointed and said, “Up ahead on the right, Evan.”

  “I see ‘em,” I said. I lifted my foot off the gas.

  They were walking on the side of the road carrying overloaded duffel bags. They heard the engine and turned to us. One was a skinny black guy wearing a set of those awful black-framed military glasses and the other was a pale white girl with a fuchsia bob and a matching loop going through her left nostril. “You guys need a lift?”

  “Sure, thanks,” the girl said.

  We got out of the SUV and introduced ourselves. The boy’s name was Geoff and the girl’s was Rene. We tossed their gear in the trailer and gave them some water bottles and protein bars. I got into the way back, while John took the wheel and Russ climbed into the passenger seat.

  The rain intensified as we pulled onto the Interstate.

  John: Where are y’all heading?

  Rene: To see some friends in Savannah.

  John: Small world, that’s where we’re heading.

  Rene [Observing rain]: Just in time.

  John: How come you two were walking? There are abandoned cars everywhere.

  Rene: Did you happen to see any abandoned keys?

  John: Bikes?

  Rene: You got something against walking, mister? [Laughter] So, what’s you guys’ deal—aside from picking up helpless young hitchhikers.

  John: We’re from a collective outside of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, driving around establishing a network of similar communities.

  Rene: Any luck?

  Russ: Yeah. We’ve found a few places, collectives smaller and bigger than ours.

  Rene: How big is yours?

  Russ: About four thousand people.

  [Rene whistles]

  Me: What happened here?

  Geoff: A Godzilla movie.

  Russ: What did they look like?

  Geoff: They looked like humanoid-shaped balloons.

  Rene: They glowed. One was like a cobalt blue and the other was a bright, Kelly green.

  Geoff: No hair—or representation of hair. No ears. A hint of a nose. Very serene looking…

  no mouth, no eyes.

  Rene: Like Giant Zen Gummi Bears.

  Me: And, poof, one day they just appeared out of nowhere?

  Rene: Exactly that. We were sleeping one morning and we hear people going apeshit outside. I think the sight of them just pushed them over the edge, like that was it, the last straw.

  Geoff: We looked where everyone was looking and there they were, standing on two buildings—one on Spring and the other on Mitchell. They faced one another.

  Rene: The green one was bigger than the blue one. At first we thought it was some forced perspective deal, but it was true.

  Geoff: I think they were gaining corporeality, charging up or something while they were standing there.

  Rene: They changed the weather. At night, clouds would gather over the city, which was creepy as hell. You’ve seen it in movies a bunch, but to see storm clouds gather around a central spot—it would rain and they would draw lightning from the sky. It was spectacular. These huge blue and green glow-in-the-dark giants with the rain obscuring them, the lightning surrounding them. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, no baloney.

  Geoff: Two da
ys ago the green one raised its arms and said, “This city will be destroyed in forty-eight hours from now. Leave.” It repeated itself every so often for a while. Its voice was masculine, booming.

  Rene: I’ve got goosebumps just thinking about it.

  Geoff: There were groups of people on top of all the surrounding buildings aiming all of this equipment at the giants, taking measurements. There were some military dudes up there with them.

  Rene: There were lots of rooftop communities. Some looked like they were worshipping them, praying and shit—that was a sight.

  Geoff: Centennial Park was filled with people.

  Rene: And there were the usual gangs of idiots shooting guns and fireworks at them, hawhaw.

  Geoff: The word went out to head to Turner Field. That’s where all the major interstates intersect. It was a nice hike.

  Rene: Tens of thousands of people headed that way, this river of humanity.

  Geoff: Every kind of vehicle was heading onto the interstate. We were told that buses were ferrying people in every direction to nearby—but not too nearby—cities, dropping them off and picking up more people.

  Rene: It was such a sight. You got to pick your direction, at least.

  Russ: We saw a large group arrive in Chattanooga.

  Rene: We were watching everything from the stadium.

  Geoff: The giants hadn’t moved at all that day.

  Rene: Right at six, the clouds start to gather. The rain starts and then here comes the lightning, it was more incredible from further away. It was still daylight, too. I looked around and there were like fifty people filming it. It was so badass. The rain stopped before the sun set. They were standing around, as usual. Arms at their sides, as usual. Finally, at ten or so, the blue one, the littler one, glowed really brightly then jumped at green. Green glowed in turn and tried to jump out of the way. Blue tackled Green into the next building and they both tumbled down, grappling one another, crashing between two buildings before finally slamming into the street.