“Got it!” the man shouted back. Then he moved out of the alley and started roaring out the same message as they had earlier about civilians having to get off the streets or risk being shot.
Mary and James waited for a few minutes until it seemed clear that the man had moved on, and then she gingerly opened the dumpster lid and peered up and down the alley. When she was absolutely sure it was safe, she climbed out and then helped James out too. They dusted themselves off, and then Mary checked again that there was nobody nearby before she resumed her journey.
“Who the hell were those guys?” James asked, looking worried.
“I don’t know,” Mary answered, “but I definitely don’t want to run into them again. I have a feeling that they’ve got something to do with that big explosion and possibly the whole EMP attack itself.”
“What are we gonna do? Do you really think they’ll shoot anyone they find on the streets?”
“We have to assume they will, so we need to be very, very careful,” Mary said. “What I said to you before about paying attention is even more important now. Do exactly what I say, don’t ask questions, and when I tell you to do something, don’t hesitate, not even for a second. Just do it right away, okay?”
James nodded, gulping down an empty mouthful of fear. “Okay, I’ll do that,” he said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
They got to the end of the alley, and Mary held up a hand to signal to James to stop. She craned her neck out and checked up and down the street. Aside from the abandoned vehicles clogging up the road, it seemed deserted; the armed men’s threats appeared to have scared people indoors, at least for now.
The city had now taken on an entirely different, almost surreal atmosphere. Mary felt like she was walking through a dream—or a nightmare—as she stepped out onto the street. For a few moments, there was nothing but dead silence, like the kind you’d find in remote mountains or deserts at night, and it was beyond eerie to experience this kind of silence in a city.
“Where are those guys?” James asked.
“I don’t know, but I hope we don’t run into them again. If—”
Her sentence was cut short by a burst of automatic gunfire up ahead, around the corner of the street. The thunderous gunshots were followed by terrified screaming and aggressive shouts, followed by more gunfire, and then an ominous silence.
“Shit,” Mary murmured. Her mouth was dry with fear. Whoever the armed men were, they were moving in the rough direction of her daughter’s school. There was no way she could get to the school without running into them or crossing paths with them, not unless she made a very wide detour that would add miles and hours to her journey.
She racked her brains, trying to figure out a way to get to the school that wouldn’t put her in direct conflict with the armed men. Suddenly, she knew exactly how she could get there, and not only would it shave a mile or two off her journey, it would be about the safest way to get across town she could imagine.
“Come on, James,” she said, turning and taking off at a jog down the street.
“Hey, but Aunt Mary, that’s the wrong way. The school’s this way!” he called out after her.
“We’re not going the usual way!”
He ran after her, panting. “But– but, there’s no other way to get there!”
“Yes, there is! And trust me, nobody will be going this way!”
She ducked down another alley, seemingly leading James even farther away from their goal, and ran down it. He scampered along behind her, stumbling and gasping as the exertion of the run started to get the better of him.
When they exited that alley, Mary came to a stop, for in front of her was the entrance to the shortcut she was planning to take.
“Th–the subway?!” James murmured, staring at the entrance to the subway station with his face scrunched into an expression of worry and uncertainty.
“Yes, the subway,” Mary said. “Follow me, quick!”
She hopped over the railing and then scurried down the stairs, and within seconds she was swallowed up, melting into a well of inky, impenetrable darkness.
5
The museum, built on top of a small hill, was situated across from the city hall. Both were impressive 19th-century buildings, large and ostentatious, with huge rows of concrete stairs leading to their respective entrances. Ann and Sandy were around the side of the museum, where they had emerged from the emergency exit, and they had a clear view of the street and the city hall from where they were.
Both girls were staring in horror and disbelief at the sight that greeted their eyes after the intense darkness of the museum. It wasn’t the jumble of dead, eerily silent cars clogging the main street they were looking at, though, nor was it the hushed crowd of people who were all laying down on the street and sidewalks. It wasn’t even the armed men, dressed all in black, with black balaclavas covering their faces and heads and AK-47 rifles in their hands. It was the mayor and his staff whose eyes were locked on and the group of armed men in black around them.
There were at least thirty men in black spread out around the city hall and in front of the museum and other nearby buildings. They were watching over the pedestrians and the people who had gotten out of their dead cars and had forced everyone to lay on their stomachs with their hands behind their heads. Everyone was also being forced to watch what was happening in front of the city hall: the mayor and his staff had been forced to kneel on the stairs in front of the main doors.
Ann got a feeling that something terrible was about to happen, and she knew that if the men in black saw her and Sandy, they’d never get out of this place. There were a bunch of garbage cans nearby, and Ann ducked her head low, grabbed Sandy’s hand, and pulled her over to the bins. The two of them hid behind the metal, watching the horrifying scene play out before them with bated breath.
“Who the hell are those guys?” Sandy whispered. “What’s going on out here?”
“Shh!” Ann whispered back, peering through a thin gap between the garbage cans. From there, she had a perfect vantage point to observe what was happening on the steps of the city hall.
“You’ve all heard what we said!” one man in black roared to the crowd. In one hand, he was holding a long roll of paper, from which he’d been reading, and in the other, he had an antique bullhorn, which amplified his voice without the use of any electricity. It seemed that prior to Ann and Sandy coming out of the emergency exit, he had read some sort of speech or list of demands to the people. “These are the new laws, and this city is ours now!”
The other men in black raised their AK-47s and cheered raucously. Ann could feel the collective fear radiating from the people lying on the street.
“Take care of the counter-revolutionaries, boys,” the man with the bullhorn said to the armed men who were standing behind the kneeling mayor and his staff.
The men pressed the muzzles of their rifles against the backs of the heads of the mayor and his staff, and a volley of shots rang out. Ann’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets, and she clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling a scream as she watched the brutal executions. The people on the street started screaming and wailing as the limp corpses of the mayor and his staff slithered and tumbled grotesquely down the stairs.
“What was that?” Sandy asked frantically. “Who’s getting shot. What’s going on? Oh my God, oh my God, I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die!”
Ann could hardly believe what she’d just seen; it was like something out of a terrible nightmare, but it was real; it was happening. All she knew now was that if the men in black saw her and Sandy, they’d be in serious trouble. They had to get out of here while the window to do so—which was closing rapidly—was still open.
“We have to get out of here now,” Ann whispered. “Follow me and stay down!” She turned around and got onto her hands and knees; she knew if she stayed low, the men down on the street, at the bottom of the hill, wouldn’t see her.
It was a long crawl to get to the rear of the
museum, and it was concrete all the way, and within a few yards, Ann’s bare knees were already hurting and scratched up, but fear and adrenalin kept her going. She knew that as painful as crawling was, she couldn’t risk standing up.
“Ow, Ann, my knees freakin’ hurt!” Sandy whined.
“Suck it up!” Ann hissed back. “If you stand up, you’re dead!”
As if to emphasize this point, from behind them came another volley of gunshots, followed by another chorus of terrified screams. Sandy didn’t dare to utter another word after that.
They crawled along on their hands and knees, breathing hard, their palms and knees burning with stabs of pain, and their hearts hammering, for almost a hundred yards, until finally, they got to the rear of the museum, where there was a large park-like expanse of grass and trees. Ann scanned the area for any signs of people, but the place seemed to be deserted. She crawled across the lawn to the nearest tree, where she finally stood up, taking cover behind the thick trunk. Sandy came along behind her.
“Oh my God, my knees,” Sandy whimpered. Her knees were torn up and bloody, as were Ann’s.
Another volley of shots and a chorus of screams rang out from the other side of the hill, and these terrible sounds spurred a fresh boost of determination into Ann’s veins. “Be thankful that we got away from that with skinned knees instead of gunshot wounds,” she whispered to Sandy.
In her mind, she kept seeing the nightmarish vision of the mayor and his staff being executed over and over again. She tried to force these disturbing visuals from her brain, but they kept creeping back. She wished she hadn’t seen it, but on the other hand, she was grateful to have escaped the scene without being seen by the sinister black-clad gunmen. She also knew, however, that they were by no means out of danger yet.
“Come on,” she said to Sandy. “It’s not safe here. We need to get moving.”
“Do you know how to like, get back to school from here?” Sandy asked. She was used to being chauffeured around everywhere by her parents and had no sense of direction or distance. The only place Sandy knew how to get was the school from her house, but that was only because she lived a mere two blocks from the school.
Ann, on the other hand, was used to walking reasonably long distances and getting around the city on her own on public transport. Hence, she had an excellent sense of direction and a clear knowledge of where everything was in the city. “Yeah, it’s about two miles from here. Maybe a bit less if we take a few shortcuts along the way.”
“You’re sure we’ll be safe there?” Sandy asked, looking worried.
“My mom will be there; I know she will. And she’s got plans for if something like this happens. She’ll keep us safe.”
“Okay,” Sandy said, looking worried and frightened.
“C’mon, let’s go.”
Ann gave the area another quick visual scan, and when she was sure it was safe, she ran to the next tree. With Sandy following her, she darted from tree to tree until they reached the iron fence at the bottom of the area. Beyond it was a quiet side street and a much larger park. Aside from a few cars parked on the side of the road and a few others abandoned in the middle of the street, the area seemed deserted.
“We’re gonna cut through the park,” Ann said. “It’ll take around half a mile off the journey.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Sandy asked.
“Safer than being on the streets.”
The iron fence was eight feet tall and impossible to climb, but a tree nearby had a bough extending over the fence and the street beyond it. Ann climbed the tree, edged her way along the branch, and then hung off it and dropped onto the sidewalk. Sandy followed her, and soon they were both out of the museum grounds.
They walked through the park, staying off the paths and using trees and shrubs for cover. It was eerily silent, except for the sound of birds and insects, who were carrying on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Occasional gunshots could be heard from all around the city, as well as distant shouts and screams, which chilled the blood in the teenagers’ veins and added to the surreal, nightmarish atmosphere of the deserted park.
They had to walk past the pond in the center of the park, in which ducks were happily paddling. The usual crowds who would picnic on the gentle, grassy slopes here, however, were gone.
“Feels like a freakin’ zombie movie or something,” Sandy murmured.
“I know,” Ann answered. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like being out in the open like this.”
Before Sandy could respond, however, a harsh shout rang out from behind them, icing their blood with abrupt terror. “You two, fuckin’ freeze! Get on your knees and put your hands behind your fuckin’ backs! Do it now, or I’ll put a few bullet holes in your backs!”
6
Mary waited until she was a couple of dozen yards into the subway station before stopping and digging through her backpack.
“Uh, Aunt Mary, where are you? I can’t see a thing, not even my finger when I hold it like an inch from my eye,” James said from a few yards behind her, the clopping of his feet on the tiled floor creating eerie echoes in the underground chamber.
“I’m here, James,” she answered calmly. “Just stay right where you are for a sec.” Her fingers detected the contours of the object she was looking for in her bag, and she pulled it out and squatted down, setting it on the ground. Then she got her Zippo out of one of the pouches on her toolbelt. With a flick of her thumb, a flame appeared, instantly throwing a circle of dim, orange light around Mary. She saw James standing on the edge of the circle of light, looking very nervous. In front of her was the object she’d pulled out of her bag: a small gas camping lamp.
She turned on the gas and lit up the lamp, then put away her Zippo. “Come on, we gotta move,” she said, picking up the lamp.
James didn’t need to be told twice; the sea of utterly impenetrable darkness beyond the small dome of dirty-white light thrown out by the gas lamp was terrifying. He scurried over to Mary, staying a few steps behind her and well within the circle of light as she moved through the station.
“Uh, aren’t the subway trains gonna be broken, like all the cars and stuff?” he asked.
“That’s exactly why we’re heading down here,” she said. “We’ll walk along the subway tracks. There’s zero danger of being hit by a train now, and I don’t think anybody but us will be down here. When all the power died, people’s first instincts would be to get the hell out of the subway stations. Would you feel safe down here in these conditions?”
James shook his head. “No way. I’d have bolted for the exits at the first sign of anything like this.”
“That’s why I think we’ll be safe down here, and I don’t think we’ll run into anyone,” Mary said. Despite saying this, however, she kept her free hand in her pocket, curled around the grip of her pistol, ready to whip it out at a moment’s notice if necessary.
They walked through the station for ten minutes and didn’t hear any signs of anyone else around; it had been well over an hour since the EMP had hit, and Mary suspected that the stations would have been evacuated shortly after the power went out. They walked down a long escalator, going deeper underground. They would have to go down one more level, and then they would reach the train platforms.
“What about the people who got stuck on the trains?” James suddenly said as they continued walking through the creepily silent station. “There had to be a whole bunch of people on the trains when the power died. They’re probably still down here somewhere.”
Mary stopped walking to think about this. It was a good point; the trains were usually quite full around lunch hour—nowhere near as packed as rush hour—there would be a good few hundred, perhaps even over a thousand people trapped on dead trains on the tracks.
“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about them,” she said. “They’ll just be ordinary people, scared and confused. Not like those guys in black. I think they’ll eventually kick out the emergency windows
in the trains and find their way back to the surface. I doubt anyone will be looking for trouble down here; if they’re coming from the trains, they’ll just want to get up to the surface as quickly as possible. We should still be cautious, though, of course…”
“Don’t worry about reminding me to keep my eyes open down here, Aunt Mary,” James said, his eyes darting nervously from left to right. “This place gives me the creeps, and I feel so alert I think I’d notice the sound of a pin dropping across the other side of the station. I can’t wait to get out of this place…”
“Let’s keep moving then.”
They continued their journey through the station, walking down the final long escalator to the platforms. When they got to the platforms, Mary’s sixth sense began to tingle, buzzing a faint warning inside her skull and deep in her gut. It was unwise to ignore the feeling, but they had come too far to turn back now. They only had to walk the length of two subways stops, and then they could leave this dark, unsettling place.
Mary walked across the platform with James following close behind her, and it didn’t take them too long to get to the edge. There was a drop of around five feet to the tracks, and still not a soul in sight.
“Are you uh, are you sure this will be safe?” James asked, peering nervously down at the subway tracks. “You’re sure these trains are dead and we’re not gonna get mowed down by a train coming outta nowhere?”
“I promise there won’t be any speeding trains. We’ll be safe,” Mary said. “You need a hand getting down onto the tracks?”
James shook his head. “I can manage. Here, I’ll hold the light while you get down.”
Mary handed him the light and climbed down onto the tracks and then took it from him while he followed her. James drew in a deep breath, which he held in his lungs for a while, and then he let it all out slowly.
“Okay,” he said, “I’m ready. I’m ready for—ah!” James yelped in fright and jumped back, almost falling flat on his face as a rat scuttled across the tracks.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day Page 4
