by Ryan Husk
Even after the boom was gone there was the low rumbling that went to the very marrow of her bones, like some leviathan trying to claw its way out of the ground.
She looked up. The grinning face peeked through the darkening clouds for just a second, then disappeared in a swirl of ink-black tendrils.
“What the fuck?!” someone screamed.
The next few seconds were a panic-filled mess. She staggered to her feet, knees buckling. She was half deaf, dazed, with purple lights dancing at the fringes of her sight. People were screaming. She espied one of the teachers, Mr. Hawthorne, bolting out of the main student building, staggering, shouting to someone, stopping and even jumping back when he looked south at the mushroom cloud.
“Mr. Hawthorne!” she cried. Janet never heard herself, and it seemed no one else had, either. Corey Patterson, wearing his senior jacket with the Hurricanes logo on the back, bolted in front of her, knocked her over. Corey looked back, didn’t seem to notice her, kept running. “Mr. Hawthorne?” Janet said, staggering over to him. Fear began to settle in her stomach and congeal, and she thought she might pee herself.
The world had changed dramatically. The lighting was…all wrong. No daylight had ever looked like this. And a cloud that big, with a boom that loud, with that face in the sky…This isn’t something normal. This wasn’t expected. The adults don’t know what they’re going to do.
Janet was perceptive; she saw it on Mr. Hawthorne’s face, as well as Mrs. Shaw’s. Janet spotted her come running down the steps from the administrations annex about fifty yards away, moving past students, waving her arms willy-nilly, giving no order besides a single-word command. “Inside! Inside! Inside!”
Janet barely heard her. She started to move towards Mrs. Shaw. But something stopped her. A voice, a memory that came out of nowhere, as sudden as the life-altering bomb and with equal force. The force of her father’s determination: “Girl, anything happens like that again anywhere near you, you get your ass walkin’!” He’d been pointing his finger at the TV, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Janet’s daddy was a card-carrying member of the NRA, a veteran of the first Iraq War, a hater of Barack Obama, an avid Sean Hannity supporter and a doubter of climate change. But more than anything else, he anticipated another terror attack, and made plans for it. “You start walkin’. You hear? Stick to the family plan.”
The “family plan” was a plan that none of her other friends’ families had. They all called her dad a kook. His plans to build the bomb shelter next fall only lent credence to their claims. Janet’s daddy had already talked to his friend Bill Dodson about borrowing his bulldozer when it came time to start digging the ditch.
“You come home, girl,” Daddy told her. “Just start walkin’. If ye’re at school when it happens, don’t stay there, I won’t be able to get in there. It’s a straight shot between here and the high school. Just start walking and don’t stop. You can be sure I’m on my way. I’ll meet you halfway on Joe Frank Harris Parkway. Got it?”
Numb, Janet looked down at her cellphone. She sifted through her phonebook. When she found her dad’s number, she hit it, but there was nothing, just a strange, long tone.
“I’ll be on my way,” he’d told her. “The next thing they’ll probably think about are biological attacks. Get away from the school. Everybody else will just be at risk. Get away from them so you don’t get infected. Remember, I’ll be on my way. You hear, girl?”
I hear, Dad, she thought. I hear. Janet turned away from the school, put one foot in front of the other.
The earth shook again. The monster was still trying to get out of its grave. She was trembling. Stress was a major cause of blood-sugar spikes. She knew she ought to stay calm, or else she’d go hyperglycemic. But she couldn’t calm down. She looked up, just in time to see the red eyes peek out from behind the clouds again.
Janet finally peed herself.
II.
The first signs of traffic came when he hit I-75, naturally. The interstates were always going to be the most obvious passages for retreat. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his think tank first envisioned the Interstate Highway System, they had done so with the intent to give as many people as much quick and easy access to other states as humanly possible. It was the largest public works project since the Pyramids, but who could’ve predicted that America’s population would explode so much that the highway system would become just another component of a terrorist’s death trap?
The Wrangler made it a little easier for Edward than for others trying hopelessly to get somewhere. The ones that had been blinded had caused pile-ups so large that fatalities were probably already in the hundreds, and that was just on I-75 heading south. Edward was northbound, but he could see the southbound lanes completely jammed and congested. A RaceTrac gas tanker had jackknifed, causing at least a thirty-car pile-up with two of the vehicles on fire. Since few people were headed away from Atlanta this early in the morning, the northbound lane was relatively light on traffic and the wrecks were circumventable.
An unconscious or dead woman lay on the shoulder straight ahead of him. He tried to avoid her, but ran partially over her. It was either that or go farther off the shoulder and risk going into the ditch. A man stood beside the road next to a Volkswagen, his wife and children pouring out, waving his hands for Edward, for anyone, to slow down. “Sorry, mon ami,” he muttered, swerving around them.
As he drove, he tried not to think about the woman he’d seen snatched up by the tentacle that came down from the sky. The more he thought about it, it hadn’t seemed like a tentacle at all, more like a long, thin cloud of insects, inky-black.
That’s not what you saw. That can’t be what you saw.
Edward checked his watch, then glanced in his sideview mirror. It was 9:44, about nine minutes since detonation, and the mushroom cloud was finally ceasing to rise. The very fringes of it were dropping a little, in fact. Starting to spread.
He slammed on the brakes. Dead ahead, another car pile-up. Ten or twenty. Edward’s seatbelt locked up, he felt squeezed as the Wrangler came to a screeching halt. Behind him, an SUV that had been following him for about a mile slammed into his ass. The SUV backed up, slammed into someone else who had also tried to follow the ones who looked like they knew the way out.
“Fucking assholes!” he shouted, backing up and tearing across the grassy area that was the only buffer between northbound and southbound lanes. Edward drove into what would’ve been oncoming traffic for half a mile (had the traffic been moving), riding the shoulder, before he got back into the northbound lane. A few cars that had been headed south were cutting across the median, as well. Having not suffered enough blindness to be completely helpless, they were making for the north, too.
The Cartersville exit was up ahead on the right, Exit 290.
Between the ages of ten and thirteen, Edward had lived in Cartersville. He and his mother had lived here after Dad left—she was a career Army analyst, stationed at Dobbins Air Force Base. Edward attended the elementary and middle schools, met Bradley back then and had been friends ever since, even though he’d moved around the Deep South after that. Pen pals at first. Then, with the advent of the Internet, much closer pals. Once they could drive, they met up almost every weekend to drive around the plaza, attend ’Canes games, party and generally get into trouble.
Back then, there hadn’t been much to do in Cartersville besides get into trouble. No clubs or bars at all until Patrick’s Pub came along. There were no after-hours programs or arenas for kids or young adults, just a Super K-Mart parking lot and the Taco Bell. Carmike Cinemas had long been a cursed theater, known for the sound suddenly going out or the video melting in the projector. Two demolitions and makeovers somehow hadn’t improved the theater at all.
That was then. Cartersville was a great deal larger now. It was a “micropolitan,” its population around 21,000 (according to the last census Edward had read, and he liked to keep up on those of the cities all around him). The road
s were a nightmare. All Edward could say was thank God Brad lived on the outskirts near Emerson. Nothing but cow pastures, simple neighborhoods and small-town homes turned into secret meth labs. A sheriff’s car was driving straight through one of those pastures, kicking up dust and hell-bent for the horizon. Wonder where the hell he thinks he’s going.
The skies above Emerson were no different than the skies above Kennesaw; dark, sickly yellow and orange around the fringes, with a gray shadow looming in the southeast.
And, as one of the clouds parted, he thought he saw…
“What…the…hell?” It was there and gone. A single eye, and a huge, black face, with a silvery grin. Was it only his imagination? Was it just his mind seeking patterns in clouds?
Edward turned quickly onto Old Alabama Road. Four pickup trucks raced by him, then an old Aerostar van, then another pickup. He spotted three front yards filled with families running from the house to their cars, arms filled with bags and boxes and children, getting ready for the fast retreat north. Nobody knew how to run for the hills like Southerners, nobody could read the writing on the wall better. Georgians, especially. Since General Sherman came through and burned all of Atlanta, it had left an impression, Edward felt, one that had been passed on from generation to generation, a strong mistrust of government and a severe Chicken Little complex.
Five minutes. Maybe ten. After that the highways will be completely inaccessible, jampacked with morons who thought go-ready people like me were crazy, praying to God for deliverance even while they cut one another’s escape off. Have to hurry.
Atlas looked out the window and whined.
“Hang on, pal,” he said, reaching back to give the dog a reassuring petting. “Hang on.”
Old Alabama Road never seemed so long. Edward found Bevil Ridge Road, turned sharply onto it, narrowly avoided a collision with a silver Tacoma that looked almost golden in the world’s new sickly light. He espied men, women and children out in their front yards gawking at the mushroom cloud, gesticulating at the smiling face, which was now more clearly in view, pointing out the obvious to one another. One little girl seemed to be confused, and danced happily, waving her arms and laughing at the funny face in the sky, laughing at her parents’ panic and at the end of the world.
Not even a tenth of a mile down Bevil Ridge, Edward turned onto the gravel driveway of Brad’s father’s home. He’d been living here for two years, ever since the floor-sanding business went under and he’d had to crash in his dad’s basement. Brad had just started bartending school. Gonna have to put a hold on those plans, he thought. Permanently.
Deciduous trees lined both sides of the driveway. Edward could see through the foliage. The wind wasn’t as great up here, but the trees were still stirring, whispering to one another like they knew they had to get the hell out of here as well. Edward suddenly felt cold, remembered he’d left the air conditioning on full blast. Didn’t need that here. Turned it off.
Bradley and his father were out in the front yard, along with a pair of friends, Hector and Juan, the two Mexican guys they’d once used in their floor-sanding business, but were now just a pair of guys who rented a spot on their front yard to park their mobile home.
Edward slammed on his brakes, skidded across the gravel, honked his horn, and rolled down the passenger side window. Bradley and his father came running over. “You ready?” Edward shouted.
“Man, what the fuck?!” Brad said, still wasting time. He put his hands on the door and leaned his head in. “Are you seein’ this shit, man?! Have you actually stopped an’ looked at—”
“Get the fuck in the jeep—”
“Ow!” Bradley jerked his hands away from the window. “Your Jeep, man! It’s fucking hot as shit! How close were you?”
“Almost too close. Talk to me, are you go-ready or not?”
“Patricia, man!”
“What about her?”
“I-I-I’m waiting on her! She hasn’t called me back! She said she’d been here—”
“Where was she when you last spoke with her?” Edward asked hurriedly.
Beside Bradley, his father Tony stuck his head inside the window. “Eddie! What the hell? How close were you when it—”
“Just barely outside of the major blast zone! Everyone else around me was starting to cook alive when I left!” Edward said. Tony breathed, “Jesus,” and Edward looked back at Bradley. “Patricia! Where was she when you last spoke with her?”
“Sh-sh-she’s at the diner, man—”
“Too far! She’ll never make it in time! Get in, she’ll have to catch up to us later—”
“I’m not leavin’ her behind, man—”
“Brad—”
“I’m not leaving her, man. That’s my girl! I’m not leavin’—”
“Bradley, get in the goddamn fucking jeep! You too, Tony. I’ve got room.”
“I’m not leaving her! Fuck you!”
Edward fumed. He stuck his head out the window, looked south. The mushroom cloud was spreading wider, wider, wider. The grinning face in the sky seemed to be looking right at him. Then, the fallout cloud covered the demonic face. He turned to Bradley, revved the engine. “Brad, you know what that is, right?” he said, and pointed. Bradley and his dad looked. Juan and Hector did, too. “That’s the fallout cloud. It’s already moving, that part you see at the top o’ the mushroom cloud is just the visible part. If you don’t leave here with me, right now, your best bet is to hole up in your basement—”
“Just hold on, Eddie—” Tony started in.
“—and duct tape all the windows and doors. You have enough o’ that in your bug-out bag, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “But I can’t stay here. That cloud’s gonna reach its maximum height of fifteen thousand feet and start to expand. The DF Zone is gonna be at least a twenty-mile radius. Probably more. When that happens, anybody stuck in traffic will be forced to breathe in all that fallout dust. It’ll be landing on their cars—”
Bradley screamed, “I can’t just leave Patr—”
“Ten seconds, Brad. You and your dad are in this jeep or you’re not in the next ten seconds. You can come with me to safety or hole up in your basement, waiting for men with radiation suits that are probably never gonna come. You’ll eventually have to come out and breathe it in. Now you know what that shit does!” he added.
And Brad did. He and Edward had certainly talked about it enough through the years. Brad was one of the few people that didn’t call Edward a quack. He had listened to Edward go on about how radiation destroys the cells in the body, stops it from replenishing the blood supply. He had listened to Edward as he pointed out what had happened to those in Chernobyl, or those at the nuclear power plant in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami hit in 2011. Some people would survive for weeks before their bodies finally shut down. White blood cells, which prevent infection, and red blood cells, which carry oxygen, would die off and would never be replaced. The lining in the intestinal tract would be eaten away; severe diarrhea, lethal dehydration, people dying horribly, as painfully as one could imagine.
In the back seat, Atlas growled at the sky.
“What’s it gonna be, Brad?” C’mon, man. You can do this. We talked about this, how many times? You can’t suffer the attachments, because if you concern yourself too much with them then you die, too. You have to be selfish here. You have to forget everybody else and survive. C’mon, Bradley. You can do this, man.
His oldest friend bit his lower lip, looked at his dad, who stared back dumbly. Then, Brad looked back at him, and shook his head. “I’m sorry, man…I can’t just leave her—hey!”
Edward threw the jeep in reverse and rocketed back down the driveway. “Sorry, Brad,” he muttered, rolling up both windows. He made sure he’d turned the air conditioning completely off. As the fallout cloud started to spread, the air all around him would be filled with it. Don’t wanna breathe that shit in. In his mind, he’d already cut his oldest friend loose. No reason to think about him ever
again, it would only slow him down. I’ll think about him later, when everything’s settled and I’m safe.
For a moment, for just the briefest of instants, Edward had a recollection of the day they pinned the Purple Heart to his chest. “As Lieutenant Mallick was removing essential equipment from a downed vehicle hit by an IED, Sergeant Edward Garner enabled the lieutenant to evacuate the area with four seriously injured Marines, keeping with the highest tradition and standards of the United States Army,” the general had said. All these years later, the words echoed in his ears. “These certificates here are to show that the President of the United States of America has awarded the Purple Heart to Sergeant Garner. Your actions exemplify the brotherhood between the Army and Marine branches. Your courage and sacrifice are the cornerstones on which freedom and peace have always been built.”
A concussion suffered, and shrapnel that followed him back across the ocean, shrapnel that had narrowly missed his heart, and nearly killed Atlas. Edward almost lost his life, had helped a few others to survive, and had been given a small purple piece of cloth pinned to his shirt. He’d learned his lesson that day, one he’d said to his assembled friends once he got back home and Bradley asked him how it felt to be a hero. “You mean a dumbass?” he said. Brad had laughed, so had everybody else, but they all stopped when they saw Edward wasn’t smiling. A month later, his mother asked him what he’d learned. “You really wanna know what I learned? After I saw five other soldiers turn and run after a sniper took off the head of their jeep’s driver, after the IED killed two others, and two Marines cut and run? You really wanna know? I learned that if you don’t look out for yourself, no one will.”
“You looked out for your friends,” his mother had reasoned, dismayed at hearing him say this. They were standing in the kitchen, talking late into the night a week after he’d come back from Over There, drinking hot coffee and talking it all out. Once the fanfare and handshakes had died away, and all the neighbors had stopped dropping by to say “attaboy,” it was just him and Mom and Atlas. A bottle of scotch.
