See Tom Run (4 page)

Where can I find my family?

Tom opened his eyes. He had never been a particularly
religious person but he believed that there was a God. And he
needed God now more than he ever had before.

Praying helped a little. There was comfort in talking
to someone—even if that someone was only a spirit or whatever God
was.

But still, it wasn’t quite the same as the real
thing.

He had to keep moving. He must not let this thing get
the best of him. Somehow he was going to find out where everyone
had gone, even if he died in the process.

He shifted into reverse and spun out of the parking
lot. He headed west toward High Street and turned left, heading
south toward downtown. Within three blocks, he started running
through the unlit traffic lights, not even bothering to slow down
as he approached them. As he cruised past Morse Road into
Beechwald, the next neighborhood south of Worthington, he was not
surprised to see that all of the businesses were shrouded in
complete darkness. He glanced at the dashboard clock. It was only
7:00 PM. And not a single store was opened to the public.

He approached North Broadway in
Clintonville and a thought came to mind.
The hospital!
Riverside Hospital was
just a few blocks to the west. Surely there would be some signs of
life there!

Elated at the possibility, he fishtailed onto North
Broadway and sped as fast as he could toward the hospital, keeping
his fingers crossed.

Tom rounded the curve and a smile came to his face—on
top of the hospital he saw the brightly lit blue Riverside
Methodist Hospital sign.

It was open!

He ran the light at Olentangy River Road and headed
toward the main entrance. It was dark in the parking lot but that
didn’t surprise him. He saw relatively weak lights on in the many
of windows, suggesting that the huge complex may be running on
emergency power.

He left the engine running and entered the huge glass
turnstile. Inside, the lobby was dimly lit and there wasn’t anyone
at the reception desk. Nor were there any people in the lobby.

Not a good sign.

Perhaps they were operating with a skeleton crew, he
thought, due to the power outage.

Tom strode through the lobby until he reached the
gift shop, which was also deserted. He went inside and walked over
to the counter, aware now that he was totally famished. He grabbed
a bag of Fritos off the rack and plunked a dollar bill on the
counter. Stuffing a handful into his mouth, he exited the shop and
headed down one of the halls toward the emergency room.

He stopped at a bank of elevators and pushed the up
button, not expecting the elevator to work. To his surprise, the
door whooshed open, startling him. Tom stepped inside and pressed
the button for the second floor.

The door shut and the elevator began its ascent. The
interior was dimly lit but Tom was just glad it was working. When
he reached the second floor, he stepped out into another dim
hallway.

He walked toward the nurse’s station. It was
uninhabited. He entered the area and poked around, noting that
neither the computers nor any of the other devices were on. Picking
up a phone, he heard a dead line.

Finally, he got his nerve up and walked over to one
of the patient’s rooms. He knocked on the door, waited a moment,
turned the doorknob.

The door was locked.

He went over to the next door and tried it. It too
was locked.

Tom tried another half dozen doors only to discover
that they were all locked.

Apparently, everyone in this place had either been
evacuated or vaporized.

Tom took the elevator to the third floor and checked
the rooms. They were all locked as well.

Nothing shakin’ but the leaves on the trees.

Heaving a distraught sigh, Tom had to concede that
the hospital was a bust. Like the police station, another vital
community service center that one would expect to be active in an
emergency was DOA.

Screw this.

He wolfed down the rest of his Fritos and washed them
down with a slug of the lukewarm bottled water he’d snatched from a
fridge in the nurse’s supply room. Then he boarded the elevator
back down to the main floor.

Tom exited through the turnstile and turned to his
right, then did a double take—

The Jeep was gone!

CHAPTER 3

Tom quickly glanced around the parking lot and along
North Broadway, hoping to catch sight of his Jeep. He saw nothing
moving at all. He ran over to where it had been parked and could
see the tire tracks clearly in the deep snow where the thief had
backed out before moving south toward the exit road from the
hospital.

So, he was not alone after all!

His immediate impulse was to find a vehicle he could
borrow so he could chase after the driver of his Jeep. There were
quite a few cars in the parking lot, every one buried under six or
seven inches of snow. He ran over to the first four-wheel drive car
he could find, a Subaru Forester, briskly cleared the snow off the
door handle and tried it. It was locked. He moved along the row of
cars for a few minutes until he finally found a Honda CR-V that was
unlocked. He jumped inside and was thrilled to find that the keys
were still in the ignition.

The engine was excruciatingly slow in turning over
but finally fired up. He jumped out and cleared off the windshield
and windows as best as he could then got back in, put it into drive
and headed for the exit.

He noticed with relief that the snowstorm had tapered
off somewhat as he neared the exit, hoping to ascertain which
direction the Jeep tracks led. In the virgin snow, it was clear to
see that they headed west toward Upper Arlington. Tom gave the
little four cylinder SUV the gas and hung a right in hot
pursuit.

As he followed the tracks to Fishinger Road, Tom
wondered who had stolen his Jeep and why. The first question was
impossible to answer but the second was easy: the guy saw a warm
uninhabited vehicle with its engine running in a deserted parking
lot so he decided to nab it. Duh …

As angry as he was that someone had brazenly ripped
him off, Tom nevertheless found solace in knowing that he was not
the only human being left on earth. No matter who had stolen his
Jeep, that person was apparently alive and well and in the same
predicament as he was. That had to be a good thing.

But another mystery was why that person had not tried
to contact him. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that who
ever owned the idling Jeep was inside trying to find another living
soul in the godforsaken place. Why wouldn’t that person attempt to
find the Jeep’s driver, instead of stealing it and driving off into
the sunset?

Unless, Tom thought, that person didn’t want to be
discovered by him. Which would imply that this person could be a
potential foe.

Tom raced as fast as he could along Fishinger,
continuing west toward Route 33. He barely took his eyes off the
road to glance at the houses that were shrouded in darkness. When
he reached the intersection at Route 33, the tracks proceeded west
over the bridge toward Hilliard.

Although his adrenalin was pumping
now, Tom also felt an overwhelming fatigue coursing throughout his
body. This whole situation was so bizarre and surreal that he half
expected it to end at any moment. He sure
wished
it would end, that was a
fact.

The tire tracks continued on the same road for a few
more miles until they merged onto the southbound entrance ramp to
the I-270 outerbelt. Tom slowed down in order to stay on the curve
in the road until he was safely on the interstate.

The highway looked like something out of a science
fiction movie as he sped south on it, not a single working
streetlight illuminating the way. This source of countless traffic
backups, headaches and collisions was now nothing more than a pure
white, uninhabited landscape. Sort of like Mars—

Tom suddenly saw a pair of headlights about a mile
ahead in the northbound lane, coming toward him fast. He stared
over at the car incredulously as it whizzed by in the opposite
direction on the other side of the median.

It was his Jeep!

On impulse, he hit the brakes and began fishtailing
out of control. He nearly did a three-sixty as the Honda spun
around like a top. Tom let off the brake and cut the steering wheel
in the same direction as he was spinning until the little SUV was
finally under control. He slowed down to a complete stop near the
berm heading in the opposite direction.

Tom swore under his breath, turned the car back
around and proceeded south—the huge concrete divider preventing him
from crossing over to the other side.

He looked out for the next exit and
suddenly saw an orange sign that read
Road
Closed Ahead
. Tom slowed down a bit until
he came upon a huge construction area that encompassed the entire
highway in all six lanes. He followed the detour sign to the next
exit and quickly got onto the northbound entrance ramp.

As he strained his eyes to spot his Jeep ahead in the
distance, Tom thought it odd that the outerbelt was completely shut
down southward from this point on. He couldn’t recall ever reading
anything about it.

Tom was driving as fast as he possibly could and
still keep the car under control as he continued in pursuit. He
hadn’t been able to see the driver when it flew by, but it was
clear that whoever it was did not want him to catch up. Which made
Tom think that he had best use caution if and when he finally
caught up to the thief.

He slowed down at the Hilliard exit where he had
first gotten onto the outerbelt and discovered that the Jeep had
gone past it. As he sped up again, he noticed that the fuel gauge
was near empty. If he didn’t have any luck soon, he was going to
have to give up the chase before he ran out of gas. The last thing
he needed was to be stranded out here on this lonesome
interstate.

Tom had driven another four or five miles when he
thought he spotted a pair of red taillights up ahead. He began
slowing down and when he got closer, discovered that the lights
were not moving at all—

The Jeep had run off the road!

He pulled up beside the Laredo, which was still
running. It was at that moment that he realized his Jeep had run
into a utility pole—just hard enough to dent in his bumper a good
half inch or so. He saw no sign of the driver and wondered if he
had bailed out. Then he thought he spotted the top of a head lying
against the driver’s side window.

The head was motionless—

Tom threw the CR-V into park and jumped out. He ran
over and gingerly opened the door, careful not to let the person
fall out. He was shocked to discover that the driver was a young
woman and apparently unconscious.

He gently lifted the girl upright against the seat.
She started to moan softly.

“Hey there, are you all right?” he said.

The girl moaned again and then her eyes fluttered
open. When she saw Tom, she let out a scream.

“Don’t hurt me, please!” she cried, terrified.

“Don’t worry, I won’t,” Tom said. “Are you hurt? It
looks like you may have hit your head on the steering wheel.”

“You promise you won’t hurt me?”

Tom patted her lightly on the shoulder. “I won’t, I
promise. I just want to make sure that you’re okay. What
happened?”

The girl seemed to snap out of it somewhat as she
peered into Tom’s eyes.

“I thought you were somebody else,” she began.
“Someone has been chasing me for the last couple of hours. He’s
very dangerous. I thought I’d lost him a while back and then my car
ran out of gas on the north side. I ran on foot until I found this
Jeep parked at Riverside Hospital. So I got in and drove out here,
trying to find a way out of town.

“Then I ran into the road construction and headed
back this way. I saw your car and panicked. I guess I started
driving too fast—the next thing I knew I lost control and slid into
the berm. I braked until I ran into that pole. Guess I hit my head
on the steering wheel and it knocked me out.”

Tom wondered why the air bag hadn’t deployed as he
noticed a lump on the girl’s forehead in the dim light. It was
bleeding slightly.

“You’ve got quite a bump there,” he said. He leaned
over to the dash compartment and pulled out a pack of Kleenex.

“Hold this over it,” he said, gently placing the
tissue on her forehead.

“Thanks. How did you know there would be Kleenex in
the glove box?”

Tom smiled. “Oh, my wife always makes sure that we
keep Kleenex aboard.”

The girl’s eyes widened. “This
is
your
Jeep?”

“Yup, sure is. That’s why I’ve been following
you.”

“God, I’m so sorry! I was just so scared that I
didn’t give it a second thought when I took it. Of course, I really
didn’t expect to see anyone else out tonight.”

Tom said, “Don’t worry about my car—it sounds like
you really needed it at the time. Before you tell me who’s been
chasing you, I’d like to know what you meant by not expecting to
see anyone out tonight.”

The girl shook her head wearily. “That’s going to
take some explaining and I am so tired I can hardly keep my eyes
open.”

“I know what you mean. Let’s say we get off of this
highway and go somewhere warm. I’ll drive.”

“You don’t know how good that sounds, uh—”

“Tom. Tom Grayson,” he said.

The girl smiled. “My name is Erin Myers.” She offered
him her hand awkwardly. “Nice to meet you.”

Tom shook her hand. “The pleasure is mine. How does
your head feel?”

“Not too bad, but I wouldn’t exactly refuse a couple
of Advils, either.”