Worst Case Scenario (4 page)

CHAPTER 8

Ian walked at the back of the line of survivors; his shoulders burned from carrying his portion of the stretcher.  He figured that they had walked about two miles, with half of it on deer paths and fire roads through the woods and uneven terrain.  It was now completely dark and the only light they had was from the near full moon.

Under normal circumstances the light of the moon would have been enough, but with the stretcher in front of him, he found it hard to keep his footing and hoped that he would not turn an ankle.

“Hold up,” Dukes said quietly but with enough sharpness to make the troop stop in their tracks. 

Along with Bill, the other guy carrying the stretcher, Ian set the stretcher down; happy to flex his arms.

“What is it?” Mary asked.  Ian knew what it was, but this wasn’t his rodeo.

“A motor,” Dukes hesitantly responded.

“That’s good right?”  Mary asked, confused as to why a car in the woods would be a bad thing in light of what had happened.

“Well,” Dukes started, but the engine noise was growing closer. 

Ian could tell that Dukes was worried about who this might be.  He watched Dukes look at the group of people with him. He was exposed and Ian sensed the other man’s quandary.

“We should all back away from the fire road,” Ian said quietly.  Not surprisingly, everyone backed up from the road and crouched down.  He then caught Dukes eyes and pointed at him and then put two fingers to his eyes and then pointed to him and then to the noise. 

Dukes realized what the other man was saying to him and he moved closer to the road, without the hindrance of the group, to get a look at who or what coming.

Ian crouched down and fumbled around the brush with his hands; he was looking for anything that might be used as a weapon.  He put his hand on a sizeable stick and slowly edged it closer to him.  He also noticed that Penny, Dukes’ fifteen-year-old daughter had moved away from the pack and into a position just up the road.  It was a good position to give support to her father. 

“Nice.”

“What?” Mary asked.  She was crouched next to him. 

“Nothing.  Shhh,” he said quietly while putting his finger to his lips.

She looked at him, her eyebrows were raised and her head shook slightly. She had no idea what was happening.  Ian suspected that the pilot knew what was happening because he saw the man put his hand on a large rock and shift his position into a better way in which to spring up.

The engine noise was slowly growing louder and they had flipped on a white spot light. “Great,” Ian thought.  He watched Dukes shift his weight to the balls of his feet and slowly released the safety on his shotgun.  Ian thought he might be a former Marine. 
Marines just move like that.

The spotlight swept through the woods like a white laser. 

“Are they looking for us?” Mary asked.  The light swung towards them and her lips snapped shut.

They could see that the vehicle was a truck, an old one with a bad muffler.

“Chief?” Duke yelled, surprising Ian to the point that he lifted the stick ready for whatever came next.

“Dukes?” a voice came back from the truck and the light swung to where Dukes was standing.  It lit the man up like he was standing on a Broadway stage.

“Yeah!  Now get that damn light off of me!  I’ve got some wounded!”

The truck came to a stop next to Dukes, who had shouldered his weapon. 

“C’mon, out.  It’s Clampet; he’s our Fire Chief.  Dukes waved for everyone to come out.

Ian was slow to release the stick and allowed everyone else to precede him.  He noticed that Penny was also slow to emerge from the woods; she still hadn’t shouldered her weapon.

“We saw the A-bomb hit and the plane go down.  We were in a turkey blind a few miles over yonder” the Chief said, waiving behind him.   There was another person with him in the truck.

“1965 three on the tree Chevy S10, right?” Ian asked considerately, as he emerged from the woods.

The Chief turned off the truck and the spotlight.  “That’s right,” he said, looking back at the person that spoke.

“Why’s that important?” Mary asked.  She was exhausted and this war game thing with the boys from Deliverance was about to push her over the edge.

“The truck doesn’t need a microchip to start and run,” Ian offered quietly.  He felt he had already said too much.

“Is that why we crashed?” Mary asked.

“That’s part of the reason,” the pilot added.  “We lost all electronics, including our engine regulating computers.  We were a flying brick and then you add in the shock wave hitting us.  We are actually kind of lucky.”

“Not for the ones still in the lake,” she added somberly.

“Are there more?” the Chief asked, looking over their shoulders.

Ian watched Penny emerge from the other side of the woods; she had crossed over without anyone but Ian seeing her.  She was headed to the passenger side window.  Her shotgun was shouldered and she pushed her hair over her ear.  Ian bent down to see a boy in the passenger seat of the truck, about the same age as Penny; he was watching her as she approached the window.  Ian also noticed the 40-caliber handgun on the dash in front of the boy.

“No, this is all that survived.  Listen Chief,” Dukes said, leaning on the trucks driver window.  “Can you take these people into town.  One lady is in a pretty bad way.  She hasn’t woken up yet and he’s got a gash that is about an inch deep and four inches long.  Also, we have one guy that’s bleeding pretty bad,” Dukes said nodding to Bill.  Bill had yet to stand up and looked very pale.

“Where should I take them Dukes?” The Chief asked.  “There was an A-bomb over Atlanta and airplanes are falling from the sky.  Dukes this is the end times and you want me to go to the hospital?”

“You’re the damn Fire Chief Clampet, it’s your job!” Dukes fired back.

“I don’t know about that anymore,” the Chief responded, confusing several of the survivors.

Mary watched the exchange between the two men, shaking her head in disbelief the entire time.

“Drop them off at the hospital and then get out,” Dukes said, but it came across more as an order.

“The hospital will be a deathtrap,” the Chief said.  The word, ‘deathtrap,’ cementing everyone to the spot.

“What do you mean by deathtrap?” Mary was quick to ask.  Both men looked at her, suddenly aware that they were having this discussion in front of the people that needed their help.

A silence spanned across the group.

“Not yet, it won’t be.” Ian regretting opening his mouth the instant after he did, but the leader in him was sometimes hard to contain.

Everyone turned to look at the man from the plane crash.

Ian checked his watch.  It was 10:58 at home.  “Look,” Ian started, “That thing went off, what, like a few hours ago.  Even if there was an EMP over the northeast, the chaos and fallout of that hasn’t trickled down to us yet,” he paused to gauge their reactions.  He was met with blank gazes, so he pressed on. “I bet most people don’t even know about Atlanta, and think we’ve just had a really bad power outage.  They probably think the worst that will happen is that they’ll be without Facebook tonight and a gallon or two of milk will spoil.”

Everyone stared at him silently, each one mulling over the logic of the argument.

“Then what’re you suggesting?” the pilot asked.

Everyone was waiting on what Ian would say next.

Ian breathed in deeply.  He needed to get home, and having responsibility of these people was not on his punch list of things to do during the apocalypse.

“It’s getting late and there are probably less people out.  If you can take these people into town and make it back to your bug out place in a short amount of time, that would be the human thing to do,” he said, looking at the man in the truck.

Ian watched Dukes and the Chief exchange looks and makes some sort of agreement visually.

“Okay,” the Chief said.  “Put the lady on the stretcher in the back and everyone else jump in.

Ian helped load the woman into the bed of the truck and then stepped back as the others jumped into the bed and found seats.  Everyone, except Mary.

“Aren’t you going?” Ian asked.

“Only after you do,” Mary said stubbornly.

“Why?”

Mary didn’t answer and didn’t move to get in the truck.

“If we’re going?” the Chief insisted. “Then we go now!”

“I’m going with you,” Mary said.  “It’s obvious that you aren’t going on this train, so, I’m going where you go,” she said earnestly.

“That’s crazy, Mary.  You’re wearing a pants suit and heals.  Get in the damn truck.”  Ian saw Dukes step back to take in the discussion.  He could sense that something else was up.

Mary stood with arms crossed.

“People, I’ve got to go,” Clampet said again, as a warning.

“Get in!” Ian raised his voice.  “Mary, get in!  You can’t come with me.”

“I don’t have a place to go,” she simply confessed.  “My family was in Atlanta.”

Ian breathed in deeply; he hadn’t expected the confession from Mary. 
I should have seen that.
  He mentally scolded himself for the decision he was about to make.  He saw that Dukes was staring at Mary, he didn’t look happy with the fact that they were not getting into the truck.

Ian looked at Dukes and motioned for him to sidebar with him out of earshot of the others.  Dukes slowly moved to where Ian stood a few feet behind the truck.

“Why aren’t you going with them?” Dukes asked quietly.

“Because we’re the same,” Ian said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I have a family that’s still alive, like you do, and I need to get back to them.”

“Then get on the truck.”

“I don’t need the truck, I need your help,” he said, gently putting his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Why me?”

“Dukes, we’re both preppers, right?” He took a calculated risk based on his observations.  “I have a daughter that’s two years older than Penny.  She can shoot the wings off a fly at 25 yards.  I bet Penny can beat that,” he offered as a token to the other man’s training.   “My wife and daughter are in Birmingham, I need to get to them, and going downtown with the others is not the way there.  I need your help.”

Dukes looked at the people loaded in the truck and then to Mary who was standing with arms crossed at the back of the truck.

“What about her?”

Ian rolled his eyes and breathed deep.
Damn it!

“I won’t leave her with you,” he said, his eyes catching Mary’s.  Even at the distance of ten feet, he could see that she had real pain in her eyes. “She’ll come with me.”

Dukes thought about the situation and then nodded before speaking. 

“Alright Chief, this is the load,” Dukes yelled towards the truck.  “Take them into town.  Let me know when you get back.”

Ian watched the man in the truck nod.  Penney leaned in and kissed the boy in the passenger seat and Dukes moved to close the tailgate of the truck. The Chief started the engine to the old truck.

“You’re sure?” Dukes looked at Ian one more time before letting the truck go.

“As sure as I can be,” Ian said, putting a gentle hand on Mary’s shoulder.

Dukes patted the back of the truck twice and the Chief put the truck into gear and started towards town.

“Thank you,” Mary said, leaning into the man that had saved her life.

“Yeah,” Ian said softly.  “We’ve got to get you different shoes.”

CHAPTER 9

Grace checked her watch continuously until 12:30 AM.  She actually found it hard to stay awake, which was unusual.

“I’m so tired and I usually don’t go to bed until like one or two,” Anna said, echoing Grace’s feelings.

Both girls had been sitting in the dark for hours.  Every so often they could hear a gun shot or some boom in the distance.  Mr. Miller had really freaked them out by talking about the airplane that he saw crash. Grace had tried to get the man to leave and to shut up, but both were difficult as she tried to hold onto her Southern manners and respect for an adult.  She was now at the end of her rope concerning both.

“I think it’s because we don’t have the stuff,” Grace answered her friend.

“Stuff?”

“Like cell phones, the Internet, Facebook, Snapchat.”

“You mean no more Snapchat?” Anna asked, heart broken.

“Yeah, I think that’s what I mean.  I think everything is going to change from here on out.  She checked her watch. She was one of the only teens that she knew that wore a watch, and the only one that wore an analog watch.  It was a birthday gift from her parents from a few years ago; she liked it, and called it retro if anyone ever gave her lip.

“Why do we keep hearing gun shots?” Anna asked, quietly. 

<  >

Anna had asked the same question earlier, and Grace shrugged in response.  Mr. Miller was still with them at that time and he told them it was because people are panicking.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Grace had challenged the man.  She needed Anna to remain calm, and she needed everything to just be okay until it was time for them to go.

“Look, sweetie,” Mr. Miller said.  “If the power’s out, our phones are dead and airplanes are falling out of the sky.  I think it’s a pretty damn good time to panic!”

Anna had had several run-ins with Mr. Miller over the years since her family had lived on the street.  The man had been in some sort of accident at work years earlier and had won a bunch of money.  He moved onto the upper crust street and never had to work again.  He wasn’t married and rarely left the street.  Anna’s family had asked him to watch their house a few times when they were out of town, and gave him a key.  Anna thought he was a little creepy and caught him watching her several times from his driveway.  She was pretty sure he never gave the key back to her parents.

“Even if that’s true,” Grace countered, she didn’t like being called ‘sweetie,’ “the cops are still around.  It’s not like society is going to fall in on its self because the power went out!”

“And a plane fell out of the sky, girl!  The cops don’t care anymore.” He swung his arms up in the air to make his point.  “This is something big!  Have you even seen a car drive down the street since the plane went down?  No!” he answered for her. “Because they don’t work anymore.  You’re stuck here with us.  That Jeep of yours is deader than a door knob.”  He looked out the window in the hopes of seeing the black smoke on the horizon, but it was already going dark.  He turned back to the girls before walking out of the house. “There’s something big going on I tell ya!”

Obviously! 
Grace didn’t argue.  She actually felt that Mr. Miller was right, but she also knew that she was prepared to handle it, and he wasn’t.  Her parents called people like him, freakers.  Freakers were time bombs, capable of loosing all sense of normalcy at any moment after a traumatic event.  Mr. Miller was stereotypical A#1 poster child for the Freaker movement, and she hoped that they were out of Anna’s house before his trigger flipped.

<  >

“What did you say?” Grace asked, she was getting very sleepy.

“I said, why do we keep hearing gun shots?” Anna asked again, and like clockwork, they heard another one in the distance.

“I…” Grace began to say something and then stopped.  “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

Grace sat quietly.  She leaned forward and tilted her head towards the direction she thought she heard a random noise.  “I thought I heard something in your house.  You locked the doors.  Right?”  But the noise didn’t repeat and Grace sat back.  “I guess it’s nothing.  About the doors?”

“I locked them!  Okay!” she huffed.  “Are we actually going to your house, or should we just stay here?” Anna asked.  She was tired and cranky, and it showed.

“We’re going, the Jeep’s loaded.  We’re just waiting on the signal from my mom, and we are a go,” Grace confirmed.

“Do you think my parents will be pissed about us taking all the food and stuff from the house?”

Anna asked the question when they first started packing up the non-perishable food, but Grace had successfully dodged giving an answer.  Somehow Anna had not put the clues together about the nuclear event, Atlanta and her parents…now, Grace felt the guilt fill her and she wrestled with what to do and what to say. 

Sitting in the quiet darkness of the room, she felt that there was no distraction for her to hide behind.  She needed to tell Anna what she thought had happened to her parents.

“You know that code my Mom was using today on the radio?” Grace already regretted starting the process to provide an answer for her friend.

“Yeah, she said that all of the cars had stopped working, just like Mr. Miller said, and then she asked you if you knew why.  Oh, and what about the nuclear thing and Atlanta?  Is that like a bomb or something?”  Anna looked into Graces eyes.  Even though they were sitting in the dark of their kitchen, Anna could see the tears in her friends eyes reflected by the moonlight that shined through.  Anna got a lump in her throat.  “What does that mean, Grace?” Anna put her hand to her mouth.

“I…” Grace couldn’t say anything that was going to be helpful.

“Something happened in Atlanta today, didn’t it?” Anna asked softly.  “It was a bomb, wasn’t it?”

Grace nodded.  A wet stream of tears ran down her cheek and she sniffed.

“They’re not coming back, are they?”

Grace got up and sat next to her friend.  She put her arm around her shoulders and pulled her close.  “I don’t know for sure Anna Belle, but I don’t think so.”

Anna sniffed and she dug her head into her friends shoulder, the tears flowed freely.

They rocked each other for several minutes.

“I’m so sorry,” Grace said, trying to comfort her friend.

“So, everything is changing?” Anna looked up.  “Just like that?  My parents are really gone?”

Grace nodded and wiped her sleeve across her eyes.  “It will be okay, I promise.  I don’t know how, but it will be,” she said, drawing off of the advice that adults always told her when things seem the darkest.  “Come home with me and we can find out more information.  My Mom’s got a radio, and people are talking about the bomb and everything else that is going off.  You never know.  I could be totally wrong.”

“About what?  The bomb in Atlanta?”

Both girls jumped and screamed at the man’s voice in the kitchen.  He tackled them and was on top of them in seconds before they could react.

“So you two knew!  You both knew and you were going to leave and let me stay here and die!” the man said.  He had a roll of duct tape and was trying to wrap it around them while he penned them to the floor.

“Get off!  Mr. Miller! Get off!  You’re hurting us, get off!”
Anna screamed.  She was on top of Grace and Grace was on the bottom of the pile struggling for breath.

“No, you two bitches aren’t going anywhere!  Now that I know your parents are dead, you can’t go anywhere!”

Grace gasped for air.  The weight of the grown man and Anna pressed against her frame and her frame pressed against something on the floor.  She felt like her back was going to snap in half.  She fought to move her arm from around Anna and to her back.  If she could just reach her back, she could breath.  She gasped and heard the rip of the tape and felt the sticky side press into her arm, ripping hairs away as he tried to go around them.  She twisted her other arm one more time to reach her back.  She gasped for air and could feel panic take hold of her.

“
Get off!”
  Anna screamed.  She was trying to kick at him and he was trying to bind them with the tape. 

Mr. Miller held them down with one arm and taped them with the other.  He was wild with strength and looked at them like they were meat. He tugged at Anna’s pants, trying to pull them down.

“No! Don’t do that!  No!”
Anna was screaming and kicking. 

He had her pants down and was trying to contain them both with the tape.  He was ripping the tape across their bodies and sticking it to the floor.  Anna couldn’t move her arms anymore as the tape banded across her chest.  The tape pinned her to Grace, and Grace to the floor.

Grace felt the last gasps of breath leave her and then Anna somehow rolled which allowed her to free her arm…she could breathe.

He pulled his pants down.

“NOOO…DON’T!”
Anna screamed again.

That is when the room exploded in a flash of light from the muzzle of the pistol.  All three went still.  Anna pushed again and Mr. Miller rolled off of the girls.

Anna fought to get the tape off of her.  She was crying uncontrollably as she ripped the tape off of them and rolled off of Grace. Grace rolled away from Mr. Miller and up to all fours.  She gasped, sucking in air as her chest heaved up and down.  Anna pulled her pants back up grabbed Grace by the shoulders to help her stand up.  She wanted to get away from the spot in the kitchen.

Grace stood, raising the gun at Mr. Miller as she did. 

“You okay?” Grace asked Anna.

Anna nodded.

She then locked eyes with Mr. Miller.  She had shot him in the chest. 

“You shot me!” he said, struggling to catch his breath as his lungs filled with bodily fluids.  His pants were down around his ankles and he looked pathetic.  “You dumb,” but he never finished the sentence as he gurgled and gasped one more time before his body relaxed with death.

There was a long pause in the room. Grace still pointed the gun at the lifeless body of Mr. Miller, and Anna sobbed.  The light of the moon spilled in one of the windows and across Anna’s face.  She had blood splattered across her face.  It looked like chocolate in the colorless light.  She was looking from Grace and the gun to Mr. Miller’s lifeless body on her kitchen floor.

“Get your stuff,” Grace ordered, but didn’t remember controlling her speech.

“What?”

“What ever else you need.  Get it, we’re leaving and not coming back.  Get your stuff,” she repeated.

“What about him?” Anna asked, shocking herself with the question.

“Don’t worry about him.  Get your stuff, Anna.  Okay?”

Anna looked at her friend and at the dead body in her kitchen and she took off for her room.  She returned a few minutes later.  She had changed clothes, carried a stuffed backpack on her shoulder and held a picture frame.  She also held a towel out for Grace to clean the blood off of her own face.

“Are you good?” Grace asked after wiping the blood away.  She still pointed the gun at Mr. Miller with one hand.

“No.  He didn’t get a chance…you know,” she said quietly.  “Let’s just get out of here.”

Grace finally lowered the gun and turned on the two-way radio.  She was shaking from head to toe and the green light of the LED screen made her skin look sickly.

“Momma B, we’ve had a freaker.  I had to…” she released the microphone and fought to keep her breathing under control. She took a deep breath and keyed the mike again. “We’re leaving now for base. Over.”

Both girls walked out of the house.  Grace kept walking to the Jeep and Anna slowed down, apprehensive about leaving the house, her parents and her life behind. She was in shock.

“Get in the car, Anna,” Grace said, her tone firm and her resolve solid.

Anna looked back one more time at the house and then crawled into the passenger seat.

Grace started the Jeep and pulled out of the driveway without turning on the headlights.  “This day sucks,” she said.