Neighborhood Watch: After the EMP

by EE Isherwood

  Out of time, I squeezed.

  I’d lost half my speed, but I was shocked to see an opening.

  “We can make it!” I yelled.

  The dumpsters were spaced so it was hard to judge distance from the rear corner of the building, but once we got on top of them, I found a gap big enough for a car to pass through. However, it was a sharp right turn.

  I decelerated more to make the ninety-degree angle, dropping down to a walking pace on my bicycle. The sprinters were still half the building behind us, but it felt like I’d given away our most valuable advantage, so they weren’t as far back as I wanted.

  The right tire of the trailer clipped the corner.

  “Ow!” Daisy cried out.

  I’d forgotten her trailer was wider than my bike, causing me to misjudge distance, so the tire banged the concrete, then bounced sideways. If I’d been going faster, she might have tipped over.

  “Sorry, kid,” I exhaled, already pumping to recover our speed.

  Penny stayed behind me to weave through the narrow turn.

  “Daisy and I aren’t stopping for anything,” I yelled to my partner.

  The far end of the strip mall opened up to a large side parking lot, giving us room to maneuver, but I’d forgotten there was a little burger place next to the strip mall. A connecting piece of blacktop joined the two lots about a hundred feet away and it was the most obvious escape route for us.

  “We’re almost there!” Penny called back.

  We’d gone maybe three seconds before someone appeared at the front corner of the strip mall. A man halted, oriented on our position, then sprinted to cut off our route. He wore running shoes, shorts, and a torn athletic shirt, as if he’d come from the gym. “I need your bike!”

  Five or six others fanned out behind the leader, though they stuck to the front of the lot, perhaps thinking I’d try to exit from the mall’s main entrance. One of them was another young woman from the nail salon and the sheer determination on her face reminded me of someone out to commit murder.

  The chasers from behind the stores also emerged, coming through the same gap we’d used, but they were at the worst angle to catch us as long as we didn’t stop. My heart rate was out of control, but I ignored it as best as I could. I focused on turning pedals, frantic breathing, and the footfalls of our pursuers.

  I kept veering left, away from the front-side runners. Penny and I stood on our pedals like two kids being chased by bullies. It was going to be close to see who made it to the little patch of road linking the two parking lots.

  “You’ve got this, Penny!” I encouraged her.

  “I’m trying,” she panted.

  As we approached, another man emerged from behind a parked minivan near the side exit. He trotted sideways, as if positioning himself to play goalie in the connecting roadway. A second later, as he held up a fistful of paper money, I recognized him as our old friend in the navy-blue suit.

  “Hey, buddy! I’ve got twelve-hundred cash I’ll give you for that bike!”

  The curbs were all too high to ride my bike over, especially with a trailer, and the running people to our right had blocked off any other exit. The suit man waited near one side of the exit, leaving me most of two car-widths to shoot through.

  “Please! It’s all I’ve got!” He took a step toward the middle, which blocked more of the path.

  I couldn’t stop, since any delay or slowdown would let the sporty guy catch us in a heartbeat, followed closely by the nail technicians from two directions. Unlike the businessman, the others didn’t seem like they were offering anything in exchange for our bikes.

  My math skills went into overdrive as I tried to gauge the intersecting routes of various pursuits, my clearance next to the guy ahead, and the chances of wrecking Daisy’s trailer in any accident. My vision went to a pinpoint as I concentrated on my escape.

  There was about thirty feet to go.

  “Please stop,” the man begged and planted his feet directly in my intended path.

  I’d never expended so much energy to pedal a bike and the motion was foreign to my burning leg muscles. However, after thinking of the scared girl in my trailer, I ignored all the suffering and dug even deeper. The suit man stood at my ten o’clock, holding his cash up for all to see, but I kept cranking the pedals, showing no fear that I was bringing the pain directly to him.

  We locked eyes when I was almost at point-blank range.

  “Move!” I bellowed.

  I was mentally preparing myself to elbow the guy in the face, allowing nothing to stop my forward momentum, but he hopped sideways to avoid my freight train of potential trauma.

  I leaned away, barely missing him.

  In the next instant, Penny raced by, too.

  “I’ve got a meeting I can’t miss!” the guy hollered at our backs.

  My first thought was to tell him to put his money away, but there was no time to be polite. We rolled onto Bayside Road, where a few people were already walking south. They’d turned to watch our escape, and I had no way of knowing which side they’d take. Any one of them could make a run at us.

  I pedaled for my life for another sixty seconds, using every ounce of saved energy. We weaved around the stragglers, went past the North Pointe welcome sign, and made it over the canal marking the edge of town. Once we got beyond those landmarks, I coasted to catch my breath and keep my heart from tearing out of my chest.

  “You did it, Frank,” Penny declared. “We’re clear of all the people.”

  I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, the chasers had given up at the exit of the burger place. The walkers on the road had stayed out of our way, which was what normal people did. Far beyond them all, a black pillar of ash rose high into the sky.

  Penny was about twenty feet behind. I’d outpaced her, even with the trailer.

  “We did it,” I exhaled in relief. “We got your daughter to safety.”

  She soon came alongside me, since I’d stopped pedaling.

  “Are we safe, mommy?” Daisy squeaked.

  “Yes, we are,” Penny replied, and I could hear the smile in her voice, even without turning around. “Mr. Frank sure took you on an adventure, didn’t he?”

  The little girl coughed briefly.

  I turned so the little one could hear me. “Daisy, do you want to go back and do it again?”

  She gasped with high drama. “No! That was scary.”

  “Yeah, Frank,” Penny added with a chuckle, “we have to go home, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah, I guess we do. We can ride bikes another time, okay, Daisy?” Seeing the sunshine without the smoke made it feel as if we’d escaped a collapsing star, not the place where I bought my milk and checked out library books.

  Was the library still there? With everything we’d witnessed, I couldn’t recall if the library was on the same block as the plane wreckage. While I fought to regain my breath, I tried to recall what books I already had checked out. Would any of them provide clues on how to survive, should the EMP be a worst-case scenario?

  Hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

  We went about half a mile before a group of people caught my attention ahead. They stood on the right shoulder of Bayside Road, flagging us down in a non-threatening way.

  “Do we stop?” Penny asked.

  “Heck, no,” I replied. “We’ll slow and be neighborly, though.”

  Unlike the people back at North Pointe, these folks appeared calm. A few pointed back the way we’d come, so I figured they wanted information about the ash-filled sky to the north, not our bicycles.

  “It was a plane crash!” I shouted as we were about twenty yards out.

  An older gentleman took his ball cap off and waved it at me. “Anyone need help up there? Anything we can do for them?”

  I had no doubt there were injuries and worse, but everything I’d seen on my way out suggested there wasn’t much to be done for them at the moment. “You might make it worse, actually. The people back there are des
perate and unpredictable. Some are heading this way, so I guess it wouldn’t hurt to have some guns at the ready.”

  We rolled in silence for a few seconds, save for the annoying clicks coming from the rear wheel of Penny’s bicycle. When we passed the people, I turned to them. “Sorry we can’t stop and talk, but we were almost robbed, so we want to get our little girl back home.”

  The man with the cap nodded gravely, as if he knew the subtext of my message. Looters came out even during a mild Hurricane, so it wasn’t unreasonable to think the chaos of the plane crash would send those opportunists into the subdivisions like a boot kicking over an ant hill. Even beyond the people chasing us, I’d already seen hints of lawlessness with those two men in the mail truck and the fight at the ATM machine.

  “Our little girl?” Penny said with a grin after we’d gotten clear.

  “Oh, sorry. I only meant—”

  “I know what you meant,” she laughed.

  Riding down the rail-straight highway for a couple of minutes, we soon ran into other groups of residents standing around watching the smoke plume. Each time I interacted with them, I hastily reported how a plane had crashed, people were panicked up there, and everyone should make sure they had some guns ready. By the time we reached our own subdivision fifteen minutes later, I’d probably repeated myself ten different times.

  “I need to stop,” Penny said, finally sounding winded. We halted at the corner of Bayside and Poseidon Pier, near the sign with the orange fish, like we did when we’d left.

  She got off Luke’s bike and rolled it beside the trailer so she could open up the rear flap. I was surprised to see the little girl sound asleep.

  “That’s one cute kid,” I whispered.

  “She’s my whole life, Frank. I can’t say enough how grateful I am that you put yourself at risk for us and for treating her, like you said, as our little girl. Also, thank you for going with us at all. It’s not in my nature to ask for help sometimes, but you made it easier by not talking down to me.”

  I glanced at Daisy for a moment, before figuring out Penny wasn’t talking about her daughter anymore. I wondered if she wanted to say more about her husband, since she’d brought him up a few times already, but she held out a hand to shake before I could ask.

  Penny flashed a huge smile as we clenched hands, and I was overcome by all the gratitude in her deep blue eyes, but she broke away after a few seconds.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  She pointed to my bike. “Can I have my water bottle?”

  “Of course.” I handed over the water from her cage.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  In response, she pulled mine from Luke’s bicycle and offered it to me.

  “And thank you,” I mimicked as I took it from her.

  Penny took a long swig, then rested the bottle against her jersey. “I heard what you told all those people about getting their guns ready. My husband and I don’t have any at the house. He had a few when we got married, but I made him put them in storage when Daisy was born because I didn’t want to take any chances, you know?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t necessarily agree with her reasoning. Having spent a lot of time on the unpredictable road over the years, I never wanted to be unarmed, especially in my own home. Having a baby to care for would probably make me want even more guns, not less. If anyone ever threatened my family, they’d need a tank to stop me from defending them to the death.

  “But I can see why you’d say it,” she went on. “Those people in town weren’t acting right, were they?”

  “No. That crash put the fear of God in them. Fear makes people do a few different things. Some, like us, get focused on protecting their loved ones. Others, like those guys who were stealing mail, also get focused, but they see the chaos as their green light to take advantage of others. The rest, like almost every other person we saw running around out there, have no idea what they’re doing. Eventually, everyone in that third group is going to migrate into one of the first two. That’s why I told everyone to arm up. Believe it, or not, guns are what’s going to hold society together.”

  “But won’t the bad guys have guns, too?” she asked.

  “They always did. The key is to make them think twice about using their weapons when they come out this way. In the past, it was the fear of having a police car roll up on them. Now, they’ll think twice if they see an entire street of badasses walking around with heavy artillery.”

  “Oh, my. I understand why you’d say such a thing, but it sounds terrible.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t go that far.” I didn’t want to scare her. “I don’t mind telling you, after seeing the plane go down, I’m probably more paranoid than I should be. It’s only been a couple of hours since the EMP went off, and we don’t really know what happened, so let’s not write off society just yet.”

  “Sounds like great advice,” she answered.

  Since Daisy was sleeping, it seemed like a good time to return to the same bikes we’d started with, so I held out the handlebars as if presenting them to her. “You can pull her home from here.”

  “Did the lack of real pedals finally get to you?” She walked Luke’s bike closer to me.

  “Nah,” I chuckled before turning sarcastic. “Remember what I said about not wanting to wear a tight biker outfit? I’m a pretty vain person, as you can imagine, so I can’t be seen back home riding on a woman’s bike.”

  Penny squinted at me in a mocking way. “You aren’t serious, are you?”

  My real reason leaned more toward letting her have the honor of taking her own daughter home, but there was more to it. I also wanted my neighbors to see us coming back safe and sound, to avoid any panic. I intended to reveal all the details of our trip to town, but I wanted to do it in small doses, not one big shot. They’d know something had gone wrong if I was the one pulling the trailer down our street.

  “Dead serious.” I smiled mischievously. “I have a reputation in our cul-de-sac to uphold.” As I pressed the joke, I realized it did my heart good to use humor again. I figured we both could use a laugh before presenting ourselves to the neighbors.

  “We all just met you, and you don’t have a reputation, yet.”

  “Exactly. Which is why I can’t have people’s first impression of me riding a girl’s bike.”

  “Your vanity is safe with me, Frank,” she said as we made the switch.

  We rode in silence for a couple of minutes, passing Albacore Anchorage and Barracuda Bay. After our moment of witty back-and-forth, I’d begun to come down off my high-alert. Playing Paul Revere and recommending those people go get their guns had only served to remind me how much I wanted to get back and do the same thing, but it would help no one if I rode up screaming, ‘we’re all going to die’ like the man who’d smashed through the plate glass window. I needed to be calm…

  A woman’s scream echoed from one of the nearby streets.

  The sound amped me right back up to maximum threat level.

  Penny and I glanced at each other.

  “Where did it come from?” she gasped.

  It could have come from our street.

  “Hurry!” I insisted.

  Was it already too late to get out the guns?

  CHAPTER 5

  After hearing the piercing scream, I had to get to our cul-de-sac and make sure my people were safe, so I pedaled along Clownfish Cove with all the energy left in my legs. A small group of my neighbors had gathered in the street, but when they saw us coming, they walked a bit in our direction. By the time Penny and I passed the four houses under construction, they’d made it next to the Ferrari parked in front of the frat house. Their frantic waving convinced me I was about to get bad news.

  “I’m taking Daisy straight home,” Penny declared as we approached our neighbors. “Whatever’s going on, I don’t want her around it.”

  “Okay, but stop with me for a second until we know if it’s safe.”

  “Just for a second,
” she agreed.

  “Frank!” As soon as we were close, Luke waved us in. “Thank God!”

  I jammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop a few feet short of Luke, who stood in front of Evelyn and Carmen. I’d gotten a lot more confident on the bicycle compared to when I left the street, and my stop was timed to perfection.

  “Is everything alright?” I panted from the exertion. “We heard screams.”

  Luke and his black Kermit the Frog shirt reached out to retrieve his bike. “Yeah, we heard them, too, which is why we’re all standing out here. We don’t know what happened, but the sounds came from across the canal, not from any of us.”

  I stood there with my heart in my throat for a few seconds, positive there was still something wrong, but I finally let out the breath I’d been holding. “You guys are really okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Luke answered, “but I can’t lie. We thought you guys were in serious trouble. We heard a giant boom. Was it a bomb?”

  “Hell, no. There was a—” I glanced over to Penny’s trailer, wondering if Daisy was still asleep. If not, I didn’t want to scare the child by recounting what we’d been through. Penny and I shared a knowing look, a silent method of communication developed over our short but dangerous bike ride together, then she stepped on her pedals to take her daughter away.

  “I’ll be back when she’s in bed,” Penny declared.

  The four of us watched until she was onto her driveway, and then all eyes returned to me.

  “It was a huge military plane. A cargo carrier, I think. It crashed up in North Pointe, a few blocks inside the town. The trip up there was a piece of cake, and we had no problem getting Penny’s daughter, but once the plane went down… things got a little hairy.” I kept my promise to not dump out all the bad news at once.

  They all hit me with questions, but Carmen’s was first.

  “Were you right about the EMP?”

  I stepped off the bike, glad to be back on firm ground. I wiped my forehead, doing my best not to look as winded as I felt, especially in front of the younger cyclist, Luke. As I often did, I’d used the physical delay to organize my thoughts. I wanted to answer her truthfully, of course, but Evelyn looked even worse than she did before, almost as if she expected me to confirm her worst fears.