by Ryan Schow
Instead of heading toward the inferno, or back to Pennsylvania Avenue, Marley led the boy out to East Executive Avenue toward the Treasury. If they could get off the White House grounds and maybe make it out to 15th Street, they stood half a chance at survival.
Trotting through the smoke, scared but pushing forward, Marley said to the boy, “What’s your name? It’s Adelard, right?”
He said, “How did you know?”
“Your parents were screaming it at you,” Kennicot answered, startling Marley. The woman was now keeping up with them despite the smoke inhalation and a head injury. Before long, they reached the edge of the smoke, some of the street ahead appearing.
“What’s your last name?” Marley asked, dreading his response, but already knowing what it would be.
“Schmidt,” he said, coughing.
Despite knowing the answer, a surge of vertigo shot through her, slowing her down. She pulled to a stop, bent over for a minute, then started hacking and spitting. A light breeze whisked some of the smoke away, which gave her a fighting chance at escape.
“I’m okay,” she said to the scared child, “let’s go.”
But when she looked up, the smoke thinned enough for her to see a man with a weapon pointed directly at her. With a weary grimace, the gunman said, “You’re not even close to okay. Whose blood is all over your face?”
“It’s the blood of a woman one of your colleagues shot,” she told him.
“Why didn’t he shoot you?” he asked with a snicker.
“Because someone shot him first,” Marley said, refusing to tell him she had been the one who shot him.
“Please, just let us go,” Kennicot said, standing beside Marley and Adelard.
The fiend’s reply was curt and to the point. “Back to the bus, ladies and germ. Unless you want my magazine to be three rounds lighter, I suggest you get moving.”
Chapter Four
Marley McDaniel
Marley, Adelard, and Kennicot were ushered through the smoke and chaos back to a functional bus where they were told to choose between getting on said bus, or taking a bullet to the brain.
“Can I think about it?” Marley said before she could catch herself.
“I can make the choice for you if you want,” he said, unamused.
If there was a way to escape the situation, Marley hadn’t found it yet. Even if it meant making a run for it, she didn’t see how she could do that, not after what just happened.
As a stark reminder that running had been a failed exploit for others, there were dozens of people lying face-down on the White House lawn. If a picture was worth a thousand words, then the message in this scene was simple: running equals death.
Besides, she was in no position to run. She had expended the bulk of her energy moments ago, and now she just wanted to steer clear of the fresh hell unfolding on Pennsylvania Avenue. If that meant taking a bus out of there, then so be it.
Adelard sat next to her; Kennicot sat behind them. Marley turned, expecting to see the president in tears, but she wasn’t crying. She was pissed off. The second Marley took a breath to speak, Adelard started hitting her thigh.
“Ouch!” she said, glaring at him.
The nine or ten year old orphan pointed across her, to the window on the other side of the aisle. Marley looked over and saw the black Suburban from earlier. It was about to T-bone them.
“Hang on!” Marley shouted gripping the boy.
At the last minute, the Suburban spun the wheel, aiming for the front of the bus. He clipped it hard, slamming into the bus like a wrecking ball. Marley and Adelard were thrown from their seats. Bodies collided with other bodies, with the seat-backs, with the floor. Those in the front of the bus got the worst of it, she imagined; she and Adelard weren’t far from the front seats.
Rattled but conscious, Marley pulled herself to her feet only to see the bus driver flopped over in his seat.
“Let’s go,” Kennicot said, stepping over them.
Adelard lifted his hand for her to pull him up, but Kennicot didn’t even stop to help him up, let alone pull him to safety.
“Get up,” Marley told him.
Adelard got up and looked at her. His head was scraped and his nose was bleeding, but he took her hand in a death grip.
“I won’t leave you like she just did,” Marley said, disgusted by the woman.
His grip loosened a bit, but the fear and alarm refused to leave his eyes. Behind her, people started yelling for her to hurry up. Someone finally gave them both a push despite the people in front of her being injured and just as slow-moving.
The front of the bus was smashed to all hell and on fire. This spurred her to life. No wonder everyone was yelling for her to get moving. The damn thing could blow up at any moment!
She moved as quickly as she could, but the fire was spreading across the hood and the inner workings of the engine bay. Adelard limped down the stairs leading into the streets, then waited for Marley to follow. She realized the swimming-on-the-edges of her vision was a dizziness from the impact, the smoke, and the bodily trauma. She shouldn’t be moving like this after an accident, but she told herself it was preferable to being blown up.
In the SUV across the street, the Suburban’s back door was open and Kennicot was waving them over.
“Hurry up!” she shouted.
Pennsylvania Avenue had all sorts of abandoned cars on it, but most of the cars had been pushed off the road by the Humvee prior to and upon the arrival of the prisoner transports. She looked back down the road and saw the HR descending upon them. More busses were now stopped behind them as well. The mob had clogged the exit.
Just then the bus blew up, the punch of heat hitting her in the back like a giant fist. She landed face-down a few feet away, skinning her chin and palms. Ahead of her, Adelard was lying on his side, unconscious, the back of his shirt on fire. She crawled forward, rolled him over to smother the flames, then prayed he wasn’t badly burned.
Kennicot hurried out of the SUV, picked up the boy, and said, “Quit acting like you’re hurt.”
“He’s unconscious, you idiot,” Marley grumbled.
Marley pushed herself up off the ground, struggled to her feet, then walked toward the Suburban at a bit of a slant. When she got inside the vehicle, the interior smelled rife with neglect. In the driver’s seat, she saw a familiar face.
“Isaiah!” she all but shouted.
He didn’t smile, but that was because he was bleeding, his face was swollen, and he had that dogged look of determination that meant he was in his own headspace and inaccessible.
“Shut the door,” he said. “Buckle up.”
On the seat beside her, Adelard had come around and was moaning. She tried to calm him as she buckled him in. He was still out of it. When she finished buckling herself in beside him, she said, “We’re okay, Adelard.”
“My mom calls me Adi,” he said.
“Okay, Adi it is.”
Isaiah couldn’t stop looking at the Hayseed Rebellion. They were heading their way. “We have to get back there and find the president.”
“What?” Marley asked.
“We can’t leave her,” Isaiah barked. “She may be an emotionally flaccid old hag, but she’s still the Commander in Chief.”
Marley sat there stunned, but Kennicot started to laugh. The laughter quickly turned to crying.
“Kennicot is sitting next to you,” Marley said.
Isaiah looked over at the woman, startled, then let out an unconvinced huff. “No, that’s not the president.”
“I’m afraid it is, Isaiah,” Kennicot said, wiping her eyes.
Isaiah glanced back at Marley with both anxiety and disbelief in his eyes. Marley nodded, affirming the woman’s identity.
“Boy I hope you’re right,” he said.
“Listen to her voice if you don’t believe me.”
He tried putting the SUV in reverse. It took a moment, but then Marley felt the transmission catch. Isaiah let off
the brake and eased on the gas.
Looking over his shoulder, he started to back up, but then he either ran over something or something in the transmission went very wrong. To make matters worse, the front bumper was dragging on the asphalt, causing horrible grating sounds.
She then felt the vehicle make that same terrible jerking, proving the problem was with the gears and not anything they actually drove over.
“Let me try going forward,” Isaiah said, panic infiltrating his voice.
“They’re coming,” Kennicot said.
Out the window, the mob descended upon them. Isaiah managed to get the SUV in gear. He stepped on the gas, but the grinding sounds were more than just the detached, dragging bumper. The front tire blew, dropping the front end down and startling them all.
Marley saw two Humvees arriving. The mob parted on one side, but the other side was unobstructed with no foreseeable escape route. Both Humvees blocked them in, one who came in and blocked the front of them, the other that pulled up on their six.
Marley’s stomach dropped.
A man with black tactical gear stepped out of the Humvee in front of them and said, “Get out of the vehicle, now!”
“Don’t get out,” Isaiah said.
Men from the Humvees opened fire on the rig. The noise was concerning, but the windshield didn’t break as much as it pocked and splintered.
“The bullet-resistant glass is new technology,” Isaiah said. “Let’s see how much ammo it can eat before the inside is breached and we’re left defenseless or dead.”
The president flipped the shooters off, giving Isaiah pause.
“Very diplomatic,” he said.
Another guy got out of the Humvee, told everyone to hold their fire. Marley sat forward in her seat, frowned, then quietly cursed to herself. The man looking inside saw Isaiah and laughed.
“Unbelievable,” Killian said, his laughter cynical rather than based on any humor.
Now it was Isaiah’s turn to flip the man off. He never liked Killian as a boss. The Irishman looked past the splintered mess of failed shots, peering deeper into the SUV. Marley moved back, then slid sideways, hiding from him.
“I never liked you, you pompous prick,” Killian said to Isaiah. He then pulled out a grenade, slipped it into the engine bay beneath the Suburban’s dented hood, then ran for cover.
Isaiah screamed, “Get in back!”
Marley and Adi unbuckled quickly then jumped in the third-row seat and ducked down on the floor together. Marley pulled Adi close, curling over him in a protective shell. Isaiah and Kennicot undid their seatbelts, both of them scrambling over the seats. They almost made it to the third-row with Marley and Adi when the grenade exploded. The entire front end lifted off the ground then slammed back down.
Marley’s ears were ringing so loud and hurting so badly, she let out an earsplitting scream even she couldn’t hear. Looking up, she saw a huge opening in the windshield. Through the hole, she saw the front end of the SUV on fire.
“Are we still alive?” Kennicot asked, sounded blasted.
“Barely,” Marley said.
Isaiah and Kennicot moved slowly, both of them struggling mightily. A second later, a black fist-sized ball of metal was lobbed in through the hole in the windshield. The grenade landed on the seat right next to Adi, just out of Marley’s reach.
Chapter Five
Marley McDaniel
Adi grabbed the grenade off the seat and threw it back out the front window.
“Grenade!” Marley yelled.
Isaiah and Kennicot dropped down behind the driver’s and front passenger’s seat-backs, which was about as safe as they could get in that second.
The explosion rocked them a second time, the heat and some shrapnel from the blast breaching the SUV. Sluggishly, Isaiah crawled over the seat, to the blown-open hole where there was once a windshield. Through the smoke and fire, he withdrew a gun and shot whatever it was he saw.
“Give me the fire extinguisher,” he called back to Kennicot, his voice betraying his physical state. It seemed as though he was disoriented by the blast, not that she blamed him. They were all just trying to stay among the living at that point.
The president removed the compact fire extinguisher from its fixed position in the second row seating and shoved it Isaiah’s way. She coughed at the gathering smoke, then fell back behind the seat with a weary moan.
Marley wiped her eyes as she watched Isaiah empty the canister’s contents into the engine bay and all across the fenders. He was making a survivors’ path by which they could crawl out of there. Her ears were ringing so badly, though, and the concussion from the blast had done a number on her organs, as well as her equilibrium.
“Let’s go!” Isaiah called out, blood trickling down his face. Turning, he aimed and fired three more shots, then looked back and nodded again, as if to say the coast was clear.
Marley hadn’t been able to hear him very well over the ringing, but she saw his mouth moving and knew what he’d said.
She pushed Adi toward the front of the seat. The boy moved, albeit slowly, like he was still suffering the effects of the blast.
The three of them climbed out the vehicle, all of them slipping here and there as they made their way over the hot metal and the powdery chemical agent coating nearly everything in sight.
From the short escape, Marley burned herself in two or three places, maybe even four.
When she got off the SUV, she saw one of the vehicles blocking her—a Humvee—with a door open and several dead men laying on the ground before her. They moved past the bodies, unsure if more would appear.
The other Humvee, however, was gone.
She hadn’t heard it take off, but then again, Marley couldn’t really hear anything but a sharp ringing over distant layers of sound.
Cautiously, but moving quickly, the group got clear of the chaos, staggering through the streets with a handful of other survivors who managed to flee from the White House. They looked as lost and as troubled as the four of them. Everyone was moving vigilantly, though, trying their best to put distance between themselves and the widespread mob.
Marley and Isaiah continued to check their sixes, making sure they weren’t being followed. Apparently the HR took the grenades and gunshots as a sign that the dissidents (the four of them) had been killed. As such, the mob was already headed back to the White House.
Ahead, Isaiah pointed to a nearby apartment building with a shattered glass door. “There,” he said as he glanced over his shoulder.
The three of them followed him inside. They hid out in the lobby, just in case they were being pursued from farther back. Whoever was there, whoever broke the window, was either gone or it was just a random act of violence, of which there were so many those days.
“Outside, there were dead guys everywhere,” Adi said in a slight German accent.
Marley didn’t expect to hear him, but the ringing in her ears had been lessening by the minute, which was allowing the more natural sounds of life to become more distinct.
“No shit,” Kennicot said. After a moment, she softened her eyes and looked at the boy. “How old are you anyway?”
“Nine,” he said.
“You’re kind of small for your age,” she said matter-of-fact.
“Leave him alone,” Isaiah said.
“Did you see Killian among the dead?” Marley asked Isaiah, not just to diffuse what could be an awkward situation between Isaiah and Kennicot, but because she was truly, deeply afraid of the man she decided to sleep with less than twenty-four hours ago.
Her colleague shook his head, eyes still on the broken front door, finger riding the trigger guard hard.
When he didn’t see anyone outside, and no one followed them inside, Isaiah said, “Let’s get to the stairs, see if we can find somewhere to lay low.”
The four of them headed to the stairwell, trudged up several flights of stairs, then started knocking on doors. They were hoping someone might offer them s
helter, but truthfully, they were looking for a vacant apartment where they could squat.
Several residents told them to go away, but then they knocked on one door and no one even moved inside. Isaiah put his ear to the door, listened. Satisfied, he stepped back a few feet, then turned and said, “Stand back.”
He shot forward and landed a solid first-kick on the door. The door held. He kicked it again, hearing something in the door casing crack. He was about to kick it again when a voice on the other side of the door said, “If you kick my door one more time, I’m going to shoot you!”
Even Marley heard the distinct sounds of a shotgun racking its load. Isaiah apologized and they quickly moved on.
The second door they knocked on without a response proved to be just as difficult to breach. Isaiah drilled it with a solid kick, but like before, the wall shook but the door didn’t budge or break. Isaiah was gearing up for a second kick when a bullet blasted through the heavy wooden door without warning. The slug missed Isaiah by an inch before burying into the wall behind him.
“Next apartment,” he said, ducking out of the line of fire.
They had no luck on that floor, so they went to the next floor up where they were finally able to gain access to an apartment. It was furnished, but messy. Whoever lived there never made it home from work, or from wherever they had been when the EMP hit. He only hoped the person didn’t show up in the middle of the night or the next morning wanting it back.
From the living room window, they looked out over the street below. In the distance, heading their way, were packs of people who looked like they were running for their lives. Behind them, the horde had taken chase.
“This is a freakin’ nightmare,” Marley said.
Marley kept hold of Adi’s hand, not realizing she’d been holding him too tight. Then again, he was holding her hand tight as well, not realizing it might have hurt them both.
The blond-haired, blue-eyed boy had his gaze fixed on the scene below. He and Marley watched as a small group of citizens were finally overrun by what looked like members of the Hayseed Rebellion, or one of their offshoots.
