The two sanitation workers stood behind their truck looking relaxed and unafraid. She gave them credit for that because she was nervous as hell around all the kids’ guns, though she did her best to avoid showing that weakness.
“Looks like you four are taking this Apocalypse-thing seriously. Where’d you get all the firepower?” Gus pulled out a pack of smokes and put one in his mouth.
“A police station,” Donovan replied. “She said we could keep them.” He wore his police belt over his sweatpants, similar to Peter and his get-up.
Tabby let out an uncertain chuckle. “I said they could keep them until we found the cordon.”
Gus used a lighter on his cigarette, took in a long drag, then exhaled smoke. “Cordon? Where’s that?”
“Is that where the people are?” his partner, Vinny, added. He was younger, maybe in his mid-twenties and wasn’t quite as filthy as the older guy. He wore a clean St. Louis Blues hockey team hat, which was blue with a yellow musical note on the front. Underneath the rim, she briefly noted his big blue eyes.
Tabby kept on task. “It’s where the police and fire departments have to be set up to receive people who are escaping this…disaster. I’m not sure if it was a fuel leak, poison gas, or what, but the four of us were in the Bonne Terre Mine when the gas tried to get us.”
Gus lit up. “We were down below, too. Working on a seal job deep under the Met Square building. Goofball, here, let one of the doors close behind us, so we couldn’t get out for half the day yesterday.”
Tabby watched Vinny for his reaction; he seemed upset at himself.
She continued, assuming she knew how the story ended. “And when you came up top, everyone was gone?”
He nodded. “We drove back to the metro sewer shed and found nothing but abandoned vehicles there.”
“And clothes,” Vinny added.
Gus nodded with the interplay between his partner. “Yeah, and clothes. It was like everyone decided to have a little fun before they abandoned this world.”
“They got away,” she corrected.
“Sure, kid. They got away.” Gus puffed out more smoke. “So, after we had our fill of being abandoned down here on the streets, we went up to the top of the nearest hotel to watch the whole city. We spent as much time as we could watching the river for boats, the air for planes, and the ground for any living thing.”
“Boats? Did you see any?”
He looked disappointed. “We saw a few. Barges came shooting down the river like they always did, but these were evidently driverless. They struck the bridges as they came through, cracking up collections of cargo barges. It set them free and they floated downstream, hitting every bridge and dock they passed.”
Vinny silently nodded.
“And you didn’t see anyone since yesterday?”
“We didn’t see anyone…” Gus trailed off, then took a heavy drag on his cigarette.
The younger guy glanced over. “We can tell them.”
Gus seemed to steel himself before continuing. “Until this morning...when they showed up.” He pointed toward the Arch grounds, though they couldn’t see it from the alley. “At first, it was a lone tractor down there. Then a couple of those flying drones swooped in. Vinny and I were amped up to go down there and be glad we found someone, but another MSD truck beat us to it.”
“There are more of you?” Peter asked with surprise. “What are the odds?” He didn’t sound like he believed the story.
Gus took offense to his tone. “We work in some fecal-positive conditions, kid. You’d be surprised how messy it can get with all your generation using baby wipes on your coddled bottoms. Those things clog up the tunnels like giant corks. We can spend days picking those apart.”
Vinny visibly shuddered.
“Anyway, another crew must have been working underground when people disappeared. We watched as they sped across the grass to the guys under the Arch, almost like you did. A pair of MSD workers got down from their truck, then went over to the new people. The men in the tractors hopped out too, but when they met up, they shot our friends.”
“Were they threatening them?” Peter suggested.
Gus held up his hands to show they were empty. “We work in the sewers, kid. Other than smelling like we’ve been stomping toilet wine down below, do we look like threats to you?”
Peter said something in response, but Tabby noticed movement at the end of the alley that made her body lock up like she’d been caught in freeze tag. She tried to speak, but her mouth wouldn’t open.
Gus continued, oblivious to her issue. “They put the two workers back in their truck, then drove it down the cobblestones and right into the Mississippi…”
A white drone hovered along the connecting street about fifty feet away. It went from her right to her left, and though she expected it to turn and look at her every second it was there, it glided silently out of sight.
She pointed at the empty street and eked out a whisper.
“Guys, a drone just went by.”
CHAPTER 12
Poor Sisters Convent, Oakville, MO
Rose left Biscuit the black lab in her house. As soon as she closed the door, the excitable pup ran to the front window and began barking again. This time, she saw her wagging tail, so she didn’t seem threatening. She only wanted someone to play with.
The entire street had dogs anxious to get out and play. And eat.
“We have to go back,” she advised Deogee.
The gray wolf-dog was reluctant to leave her new friend, but once Rose left the lab’s front yard, she followed without a leash.
“You really are a good dog,” she said to her companion.
On the way home, Rose let her friend visit the yellow sneakers of her old master again, but the pup didn’t spend as much time there. Soon enough, she followed her across the yard and up the front walkway.
Rose searched for the source of the earlier noise in the air, but it was nowhere to be seen. She figured she’d missed her chance to see it by being up the street rather than at home. Still, she couldn’t sit inside and wait. She resolved to go to the pet store, if only to buy food for Deogee and the lonely lab, though she knew it wouldn’t end there.
“I’ll only be a minute,” she said to encourage the dog not to be afraid.
Rose went in and found the key chain in Abbess Mary Francis’ belongings. She said a short prayer for her former leader, then walked back out the front door.
Deogee ran laps around the trees in the yard, like she was still playing with the lab. It was an impressive display too, because she was very fast. But Rose also remembered the press of the clock; those dogs hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning.
“Come on, Deogee! Come!”
The wolf ripped around the trunk of the tree and came right at her. She bared her teeth and looked ferocious, making Rose wonder about her intentions, but she slowed down and almost skidded to a stop in the grass. Her tail wagged uncontrollably, like her human pal was about to hand out treats.
“Good dog! Now, get in here.” She opened the sliding side door of the abbess’s minivan.
She jumped up and got on the backseat without complaint. The old Sister Rose would have been mortified at how it could scratch the vinyl seats, but she took it in stride. She ensured the dog was inside, then shut the door.
Rose walked around to the front and opened her door to get in. Deogee waited for her from the passenger seat in the front.
“You want to ride next to me, huh?” She didn’t think it mattered. “Fine.”
As she got in and buckled herself, she lowered the windows to give the dog some air. Deogee pawed at her and licked her face while she worked the controls with her left hand.
“You’re welcome!” she laughed. After enduring as many kisses as she could stand, Rose pushed the pup onto the other seat. “This is for safety, okay?”
When she turned around to face the steering wheel, she was scared out of her wits by a mechanical object hovering outside
the open driver’s window.
“Oh heavens!”
The futuristic-looking contraption hovered with the assistance of four small fans. It looked like a child’s skateboard with circular blades on each corner. It also had a tennis-ball-sized black orb hung underneath, and a tiny speaker.
“Please identify yourself,” a computer voice requested.
Pennsylvania Countryside
Ted and Emily had been flying for about an hour before she noticed their fuel situation.
“When were you going to tell me?” she said matter-of-factly.
“I wasn’t sure until about five minutes ago,” he replied. Their fuel was already below half a tank, which shouldn’t have happened for another hour. That bullet had, in fact, penetrated the plane, even though they couldn’t see the hole from where they were. And, because Murphy’s Law enjoyed flying, the bullet had gone into one of the two fuel tanks inside the wings. “I’ve been thinking how I can tell you without worrying you.”
Her laughter was tense. “I’ve been worried since yesterday. I doubt I could be any more concerned for our safety. I can handle it.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that. You’re a tough cookie. However, I’m protecting the President of the United States. I don’t want to foul this up.”
She reached over and put her hand on his. “You won’t. I won’t let you. Now, you’ve just told me, so what do we do now?”
He’d never stopped worrying, either, but sharing it bled off a tiny fraction of the stress he’d been saving up in his clenched jaw. “We’re going to have to put down and find another aircraft. Every little airport across America will have these Cessna 172s and other small craft.”
She pulled her hand back and looked out the window. “I wish we could take a big plane. That would get us there faster. Maybe even across the ocean. But we can’t…”
“No, we might be able to get a slightly bigger plane in the air, but then it would be harder to fly and easier to spot on radar. If we went out into the Atlantic, we’d have to deal with those missile boats, too. I say we keep going up the coast, like we’d planned.”
“So, what are we going to do about this doomed flight?”
“Do you see an airport?” he joked. “We should probably do this sooner rather than later. New York City is on the horizon. Once we get there, we’ll only have big airports to deal with. Might be harder to find little civilian planes.”
“So, where do we go?” she wondered aloud.
“I think we’ll be fine at Newark. It’s a little short of New York. It will make a nice turning point before we go north again. And the best part is, we should be heading right for it.”
He kept talking as the plane soared at about fifty feet above the fields and trees below.
“Before we land, I want you to cover your face. We don’t know if they’re already on the ground in New Jersey, or not. We might have to land and run. If that happens, it would be better for both of us if the bad guys didn’t know who you were.”
“They won’t chase us if they think I’m Julie Six-Pack?”
He shrugged. “I guarantee if they knew who was on this plane, they’d be covering every airport within our service range.”
“I’ll do like this.” She pulled her arm up to her face, essentially hiding herself like Dracula.
Ted rolled his eyes. “You know, for a vice president, you sure don’t take much seriously, you know that?”
She laughed. “I told you, humor is what keeps me sane. It keeps me from thinking about what could be out there looking for us. It helps me forget all those cars and houses down there are now empty.” She looked at him from behind her mask. “It helps me endure not being told we’re running out of fuel.”
“Yeah, about that—”
“See, I told you,” she interjected. “Humor is what’s going to help me survive being with you.”
“Am I really that bad?”
Her eyes conveyed the smile hidden behind her elbow and she talked in a Dracula voice. “Find me another plane and all will be right again.”
As New York filled the landscape, the comparatively small airport at Newark appeared as a large flat area not far ahead. A great fire burned several miles to the north of the field, inside what looked like a sea of houses. It was probably fueled by the millions of garages, cans of lawnmower gasoline, and flammable home decor inside each structure.
He was about to tell her he had his target, in the spirit of openness, but he caught sight of movement on the airfield, causing him to change his message.
“We have to land right now!”
Ted jammed the nose down and searched for an alternative landing strip.
The airport ahead was already full.
Amarillo, TX
Brent led the charge of four vehicles across the flat grassland north of Amarillo. He was in the lead, his big F-250 belching diesel fumes as he jammed the pedal to the floor on the empty two-lane blacktop.
Paul and Cliff were in the green sedan behind him. Ross and Kevin were in a second pickup truck. Carter was in his friend Greer’s old Volkswagen bug.
And the prisoners were armed to the teeth. Once he opened the armory, he had to accept they would take everything they could. Each man readily accepted a riot shotgun and a Glock 22. They didn’t shoot him in the back when he walked out, nor did they harm him while he found keys for the cars on the lot, so he figured he was in the clear.
“I’m lucky they’re coming with me,” he said to himself. He wanted them in separate vehicles to give the appearance there were more than seven of them. He wanted to storm Trish’s place and scare the attackers away, if he could.
His rig downshifted as he turned into Trish’s dusty gravel street. Her trailer park wasn’t much more than one short road with ten single-wides clinging to the earth inside a protective clump of trees, surrounded by endless grasslands.
Trish’s trailer was obvious because of the three or four trucks parked around it.
“Dammit all,” he drawled. “I should have known some of them would be interested in the one beautiful young woman they knew was still alive.” His ploy to use numbers wasn’t going to work.
He touched a small cross hanging from his rearview mirror. He prayed God would be his co-pilot outside the truck, too.
The other vehicles pulled up behind his, but he was out and running up the front steps before his pals had gathered behind him. There might not be an extra second to waste.
“Trish!” he shouted.
He racked the shotgun as he got onto the top step.
“Open up!”
When the door opened, it wasn’t any prisoner he expected to see.
“Curtis?”
“What do you want, boss man? You let us go.” Curtis watched as Brent’s backup arrived, but he didn’t seem worried.
Curtis wasn’t someone he ever thought of as trouble. He was young and stupid, like most of the guys, but he seemed willing to work hard in the prison so he could get out in a few months and get back to his real life. Now he wore a teal bandana and had a pistol wedged into the front of his pants. One hand sat on the bottom of the grip.
“Trish said there were uninvited guests giving her trouble here. Is she okay?” He tried to look past the guy, but the inside of the place was dark. The curtains were drawn, and the lights were off.
Curtis frowned. “Did you boys come with this law-dog? If so, me and my gang might have something to say about it.”
Brent half-turned to greet them, expecting them to back him up.
“Hell no,” Paul said. “We’ve been chasing him since the prison. He ran out the door to rescue his babe, but he left the armory doors open. We’ve got all the guns!”
Paul held up his shotgun to show it off.
“Traitor,” Brent said under his breath.
That made Curtis laugh. “What’s the matter, boss? You re-thinking letting us all go?”
He tried to keep his cool. “You were a good kid, son. You almost cleared your six mont
hs. You would have been back out in no time, getting life back together.”
They’d spoken often about how the young man wanted to get his GED certificate to finish high school more than anything. He even mentioned wanting to go into the corrections industry to help other inmates.
“Dude. You don’t get it. Life out here is brutal. I’m in a gang, not your fairy tale world where I get a degree and do something lame.” He motioned back in the house. “We’re all in a gang now. Mine.”
“Dammit, you have the whole of Amarillo to take from. Why are you here with Officer Perez?”
Brent didn’t dwell on the fact his crew had hardcore betrayed him. He would die trying to protect his friend. Curtis had surprised him, but he could end his life with a quick flick of his shotgun barrel.
“She’s nice,” Curtis agreed. “Come inside and I’ll show you what we’ve got lined up for her.”
The kid he once thought of as bright now seemed dark and sinister. Someone who deserved to take a blast of buckshot in the teeth.
He was about to do it, too, when he felt the barrel of a gun in the small of his back. Another man grabbed his shotgun and made him lower it.
Paul brushed his wavy hair aside and motioned for him to give up his guns. “Let’s go inside, boss. See what Curtis has in store for you and your lovely friend. I believe I’m interested in the last woman left alive, too.”
Curtis laughed. “Bring him in, guys.”
CHAPTER 13
Newark, NJ
“The Newark airport is already being taken over,” he said dryly, searching out his window for somewhere to land. “If they’re in the tower, we might have showed up on radar as we got close.” It was hard to stay at treetop level as they entered the suburban sprawl. Sometimes they had to go over treeless hills or avoid tangles of high-tension power lines.
She braced herself as Ted descended as far as he dared. “They think we’re going to land there?”
He craned his neck, looking out every window. “Yep. Probably figured they’d grab us when we got there. We have to get on the ground before they realize we’ve had a change of heart. Let me know if you see anything.”
Minus America Box Set | Books 1-5 Page 31
