Dave and Lilly emerged from one of the other aisles and stood next to Candace and Terry, as the kid picked himself up off the floor, and retreated to the safety of the other group. The two groups stared at each other across the small space for a few seconds, and then Brad Saser stepped out of the small group with a pistol gripped in one hand.
“Don't have to be nobody killed,” he said, as he waved the pistol in their direction. “We want them Jeep's, that's all.”
Mike returned the man’s icy stare. “If you want one, why don't you go get one? If I recall correctly, you didn't want to come along in the first place, and if you want to leave now there are plenty more cars just lying around waiting to be taken. Take one and go for Christ's sake.”
“Oh, I want to go. In fact we all do,” he replied, as he waved the gun around to include the group behind him. “We will too, but since you already got three good Four-Bys all gassed up and ready, it'll save us the trouble of bothering, and this gun says we'll be takin' em. Now give me the keys, Bitch,” he snarled, glaring at Candace.
“You want them?” she asked sweetly, “You come and get them.”
“I swear I'll blow your brains right out the back of your fuckin' head,” he said as he started towards her.
Mike took two steps, and placed himself between them.
“Buddy, I don't give a fuck about you at all,” Brad said, and pointed the gun at Mike's head, “I'd just as soon...”
Before Brad Saser could finish what he had been about to say, a voice from the front of the store broke in.
“You got two seconds to drop that gun, Brad, or I swear I'll put a bullet right through you.”
Ed was standing in the doorway with Gina, and both of them had high powered deer rifles pointed at Brad.
“I shit you not, Brad, I'll shoot you like a woodchuck and leave you laying there, Man,” Ed said, as Brad turned around.
Brad looked back at the group of people behind him for help, but no one moved. Mike reached out quickly and grabbed the gun from his grip, and with one meaty hand shoved the man to the floor.
“I believe we'll be leaving,” he said, first to Brad, and then lifting his eyes to include the group of people behind him. “And if you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell out of our way.”
Dave retreated down one aisle, and returned within a few minutes pushing a large steel stocking cart.
“I'd watch them kind of close,” Bob whispered, as he moved up to Mike's side, “that may not have been the only gun they had.”
Mike held the pistol in his hand, pointed towards the silent group of people as the others left the store through the wide front doors. Bob waited with him.
“I'd like to say it's been nice, but it hasn't,” Mike said to the crowd of people.
“You really should give some thought to coming with us,” Bob said, “I ain't so sure you picked yourselves a very good horse if you're counting on him,” Bob finished, pointing at Brad, who was still on the floor. The small group of people remained silent.
“Suit yourselves,” Bob finished. He followed Mike out the front doors and into the parking lot.
The two men paused outside, waiting in the drizzle falling from the rapidly darkening skies, as Dave and a couple of the others loaded the Jeeps. “You think,” Mike asked, “that there will be others like them?”
“I hate to say it, but yes.” Bob replied as they slowly walked across the lot towards the three Cherokee's that sat idling, “I'd like to think a little better of the human race, but we are what we are. I expect we'll run in to a whole shit load of those types.”
“It's a good thing Ed and Gina picked up guns then,” Mike replied thoughtfully. “No telling what kind of animals we'll run into and I don't necessarily mean the furry kind.”
Once the vehicles were loaded, Mike and Bob climbed into the open rear door of one of the Jeep's with John.
Candace was in the front driver’s seat with Patty beside her. The second Jeep, with Ronnie driving and Jan in the passenger seat, Lilly in the back, pulled in behind them. Ed drove the last Jeep, with Dave riding beside him, A shotgun was resting between his knees. Gina in the back seat with her own rifle, a wire stock model that looked wildly military to Mike when he had seen it. Terry on the other back window, a heavy shotgun resting between his legs, and two 45 caliber pistols on a wide belt at his waist. There were a few more of guns scattered among them, Mike knew: He, Candace, Ronnie, Patty, a few others, but a few had stuck to rifles or shotguns.
The rain that had been threatening began to fall hard as the small caravan pulled out of the parking lot, turned right on the crowded street, and began to weave through the stalled traffic heading out Route 3.
Harlem: Tosh
Tosh sat on a stool in the kitchen writing in her little notebook. Something was going on out in the world. Something, and the news was covering it up. The local news had been canceled. First at noon and now again at five. There had been no strange weather today, but the time was still off. Really off. The days were longer, no doubt about it at all.
There were fires burning out of control in the projects. No firemen had come. No cops. Nobody at all. There had been Earthquakes, or at least the ground had shaken. Explosions somewhere? Was it Earthquakes? It seemed like no one knew.
Tosh didn't know anyone who owned a phone. A real phone. Real phones were a thing of the past, but a real phone would have been good now, because something had happened to all the cell phones. The bars had dropped to nothing. How could that even be, she had asked Adam. There were towers all over the place! Nevertheless, they had ceased to function, and she now found herself wishing for a real phone.
Adam had rigged up a C.B. radio and they had listened to that for a while. Twice a voice bled through claiming to be from somewhere in Jersey, warning everyone to stay away. The voice claimed the city was on fire. Union City? North Bergen? Edgewater? They didn't say, but it looked like all of Jersey was burning, just like parts of New York. There were gangs fighting for control of what was left here, probably the same there.
A few minuets later the C.B. went dead. When it came back a few seconds after that, there was a man identifying himself as Commander Roberts, telling them to keep the channel clear. Tosh looked up at Adam. He pulled her closer and watched the night come down outside the windows.
EIGHT
Old Towne: Conner
March 8th
I debated with myself about how to start this. Isn’t that stupid? Not whether I should start it. I guess that means that I have some hope that I am not the only one.
Actually, I know that I’m not the only one. I’ve heard gunshots more than once. I’ve heard a dog barking as well. And I’ve seen a few dogs, cats, squirrels. I’ve also heard what sounded like a car or a truck, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Everything is so quiet that what sounds there are, are distorted; it could be anywhere.
The sound of the river drowns things out. Even so, I haven’t seen any other people. None. And I’m getting ahead of myself again.
I have no idea what has happened, even here in Old Towne. It doesn’t really matter either, except to tell you, whoever you may end up being, what happened from my point of view, I guess. Maybe it’s the same for you. Maybe writing this out is a waste of time, but it keeps my mind off shit, you know?
So I wondered where to start? Today? Last week? Just start, I guess...
I have heat, food, fire. And I’ve finally gotten myself moved into this old factory so my mind is more at ease, but again, I’m getting ahead of myself. It started for me last week on the 1st of March. Only seven days, but everything here has changed.
I was having a few beers that night, watching the coverage of the world countdown party; hey, it was supposed to be a joke, right? The asteroid was supposed to miss us. And we had a few hours to go before we hit zero, zero. It was supposed to be one long countdown party. It was late and I was about to call it a day myself. One minute everything was fine, and the ne
xt the power was out.
Then the first quake hit...
I made it through that night and… two more quakes? Aftershocks? Who knows? I was just trying to get through to the morning. Phones were out; Internet down; Sirens everywhere; No power, but the closer it got to dawn of the 2nd the less noise there was. The sirens fell off. It began to snow at first, but as dawn started the rain came hard, and then the lightning. A thunder and lightning storm in the middle of winter!
It was spooky, and when morning finally came it didn’t make sense at all. Almost everything I could see in every direction was flattened. The streets had cracked open and had become rivers. The temperature was higher than it should have been too, but that didn’t last.
By noon the rain stopped, and I kept expecting to see someone. Emergency workers… Cops... Power Company… Somebody. Even a neighbor, but I saw no one at all that day.
I guess as serious as it was, I wasn’t taking it seriously. At least not that first day. I was still thinking rescue, help, it’s on the way. This is the most powerful country in the entire world. Help is coming. So I sat on my ass and drank beer and ate bologna sandwiches and chips, staring out at the street from my front porch, which was now perched on the edge of a twenty foot rain gully.
Just before dark the real quake hit. It had to have been stronger than the previous ones. It felt like it anyway.
I barely jumped off the porch before it fell into the gully. Scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t long after that when darkness settled in and I knew I was in trouble. Something in the whole structure of the house was damaged. Every aftershock made it dance and sway around me. It was also now a two foot drop down to the ground since my porch was gone. And I didn’t dare leave because I had no idea what it was like outside. No Streetlights. No Moon. No starlight. No starlight, none! Then the storms came back, and the air turned back to cold.
Every time the lightning flashed I could see the street, or what had been the street. There was no more street, not really. It was a river - wide, and it looked pretty deep too. All the opposite side of the street was gone now. No houses, cars, telephone poles, satellite dishes. Nothing. It seemed like the entire side of the street had washed away right down to the river. The water roared past me - just a few feet from where my porch had been - flattened out, and then turned into rapids breaking away to crash into the Hudson river further down the hill. That was when I realized it wasn’t just the other side of the street that was gone. The other two blocks that had been between me and the river were also gone.
Later on the rain turned back to snow, but the lightning kept up. Lightning in a snow storm. How crazy is that? By the morning of March 4th, the river running past my house was down to a trickle, but the snow was piling up. Down the hill the Hudson was over her banks. There was nothing else to see, a few solitary houses still standing as my own was, but there was no one around anywhere. Even Manhattan, outlined against the gray sky, seemed deserted. No towers with their blinking lights. No noise. Nothing. That’s when I got into the hard stuff.
I drank myself to sleep, and when I woke up I looked at my watch and realized I’d lost several hours: My watch still worked at that point. I walked to the front door, and when I looked out the first thing I noticed were footprints in the snow. Three sets, two small, maybe kids or women, one big, going just past my house, no more than three feet from my house, where once upon a time in some other world my porch had been, and I had slept through it. I yelled and screamed for a half hour hoping that someone would hear me, but no one came. No one yelled back and told me to shut up either. Just absolute silence. No birds, just the roar of the swollen Hudson. Nothing else.
I’ve thought about that day, the fourth, a couple of times. Was it the fourth? The fifth? Did I sleep more than a few hours? I don’t know. And that was the day my watch stopped working so I don’t know. One minute it was working, the next it wasn’t. The face was blank.
There were a couple of more aftershocks that day, and I began to wonder if my house would be standing much longer, after all nearly everything around me was destroyed already. And I thought, what if that was an aftershock? Like I had thought the first quake was the real one and then the one the next day was so much stronger. It made me realize how stupid I was to still be in that house. And I thought, no wonder no one is answering when I yell. They were all smart enough to get away from the buildings. Leave. And if I left also, I reasoned, I’d most likely catch up to them, whoever they were, wherever they had gone. I looked at the buildings still standing in Manhattan. They were still standing. It looked odd to me, but maybe just seeing those buildings silhouetted against the sky when nearly everything around me was flattened. Were there buildings missing from the skyline? Buildings I had always taken for granted? Buildings that my eyes just skipped over? I couldn't tell. If they had skipped over those buildings, taken them for granted, they were still doing it. That was when I had glanced at my watch and noticed that it had stopped working.
I had been in the habit of looking at my watch all day. Just nervous, I guess. I was positive that I had just looked at it and it had been working, but when had that been? What time had it been? And when had it been exactly that I had looked at it? How long ago? All I could remember for sure was that the last aftershock that had started me wondering had been at 2:57 P.M. I wasn’t sure of anything after that. Even when I thought back on it later, wondering what day it was, I wondered why I had never thought to push the little date button to see what the date had been. Or had I? Had I and then forgotten that I had? Had I only remembered subconsciously that it was the fourth? Anyway the watch was dead. And what time was it? And where should I go? And how soon would it be dark? After wasting time wondering about things like that, things that were absolute bullshit in light of everything else, I just jumped down into the snow and headed off toward Old Towne.
There were a few buildings standing in that direction. It was still snowing pretty hard, but I could see the outlines of the buildings through the snow.
Normally it’s no more than a fifteen minute walk to the Square. Old Towne has an old New England style Public Square that is the center of downtown. I figured that if anyone was still alive that was where they would be.
In fact, I told myself, they probably would have some buildings open for shelter. Fire Department passing out blankets, bottled water, hot soup. I could see it so clearly in my head. I was wrong of course, but that’s a story for tomorrow. My fingers are shot. Hey it would be easy to write this on my computer keyboard, but computers are a thing of the past now.
I’m warm. I’m dry. I’m pretty much okay. I survived the day the world ended, but my fingers are sore and I’m tired, so I’ll pick this up tomorrow.
Old Towne: Katie
March 8th
Fresh snow today. The whole world is covered in clean, white snow. It makes it look like nothing ever happened here.
I'm with a man named Jake. He's crazy about me. I just can't feel the same. I could fake it, but I told myself I'm not going to do that, but I can't keep on this way either. It is too hard on him; too hard on me.
James and Jan Adams are also with us. I don't know what I would do without Jan. She is level headed where I am impulsive, a thinker where I tend to just act. A good balance. James has an idea of rebuilding his peoples' lands. He's Native American, and so is Jan. It sounded crazy when he first said it, but after I thought about it, it began to make sense to me.
Lydia is the other member of our party. She hates me. That's because Jake wants me, and she wants Jake. Maybe that will fix itself before I have to fix it by leaving and going out on my own. I had thought that finding people, and being a part of that again would be the answer to my being on my own, but I forgot that it brings troubles of its own.
Today we decided to see if the city was any better on the other side of the river. It isn't. We crossed the river, the Hudson river, on a railroad trestle. There is a traffic bridge, and it looks passable, but it's clogged with cars and some
of those cars look purposely placed to block it off. That creeped me out.
We walked across the trestle carefully, and went up State street. The market where I worked is there, and we found tracks in the snow. One person. A man I would guess from the boot tread.
I can not tell you what that was like. Seeing a footprint left by someone else. Someone else alive in this whole mess. I felt connected to him. I can't say it or explain it any better than that. Like a connection existed forever and I only had to find it. I tried to explain it to Lydia but she just shrugged. We have this thing with Jake between us though. She wants him; he wants me. I don't want him. It could be so goddamn simple, but it isn't.
Except the footprints. Maybe the footprints are the answer. I think they are. I believe they are. We just need to find the person, the man, that goes with those footprints and... And I don't know. I really don't, but I think he'll know.
The only bad thing today, we came across a dead man laying crumpled by the side of the road. I could have sworn he moved, so I hurried to him, but as I got closer, I could see that he was dead. Long dead. We stood for a moment and then walked on. Later when we came back he was gone, and I thought, was he dead? Was he? But I know that he was. I suppose that wild dogs or something got him. We didn't talk about it, but it bothered all of us.
Harlem: Tosh's Notebook:
(Morning): Fresh snow. Made it all look like it never happened... Clean.
Mexico NY: Mike and Candace
Late Afternoon
“So, what do you think?” Mike asked Bob.
Mike, as well as Candace, stood facing the road along with Bob and John: They both shrugged.
The group had stopped just ten minutes before, when they had come to the turn off for Route 104 in the tiny town of Mexico, New York. The road was so bad in places that the Jeep vehicles bounced roughly over them no matter how slow they drove.
Earth's Survivors Box Set [Books 1-7] Page 12
