Worst Case Scenario (6 page)

CHAPTER 12

“Good girl, Daisy,” Leah said as she put her leg between the barking dog and the door.  She recognized the people and didn’t want to cast off any impressions that they were prepared for what was happening.  She opened the door with a worried smile on her face.

“Have you heard anything?” Leah’s neighbor from across the street asked as she stepped into the foyer.  She was holding a sleeping baby girl, and Toby, her four-year-old boy, was clutching to her knees.  “Toby wouldn’t sleep without knowing his daddy was home so I looked out the window and saw your candle light.

Leah made a mental note. 
Stupid!
  “Heard about what?” She asked innocently as she shut the door behind the other woman.  She also tried pulling the back of her shirt down further.  She felt a little weird talking to her neighbor while packing heat.

“I don’t know, Leah.  I mean, what’s going on?  What’s happening out there?  I haven’t seen a power company truck, or any cars all day.  My cell phone’s dead and Rob should have been home from work hours ago.  I’m like, really scared.” 

“Was he working downtown today?” Leah asked.

“Yeah.  He was taking depositions all day.  He could have walked home, or something.  I have seen a few people walking home.”

“Amy, his office is almost 20 miles from here and if all the cars aren’t working…”

“Why aren’t the cars working?  I haven’t even tried mine!  I didn’t know that!  I…”

“Amy!” Leah stopped her ramp up of worried panic before it got out of control.  “Look,” Leah directed her towards her living room and to the couch.  “I don’t know what’s really going on,” she swallowed the lie as naturally as she could.  “But, I’m sure Rob will be back home as soon as he can. It’s a long walk.  Give him some time.  He might have slept at a friend or colleagues house, and will make his way home in the morning.”

She checked her watch and glanced over at the radio sitting next to the candle in the kitchen. A wave of panic shot through her skin, igniting her sweat glands.  The green LED on the radio, was on.

“Mama, I want to go home,” Toby demanded, pulling at his mother’s pants.

Leah looked down at the child.  He was tired and innocent.  Her heart ached for the children and how naïve her neighbor was to events happening around her. 

“Do you have a cooler and some ice packs?” Leah asked, her protective motherly instincts kicking in.

“Yes, why?”

“Put the kids milk and formula and the stuff you absolutely need in there with as much ice as you have left.

“Okay,” Amy said, gingerly standing up with the baby.  “Don’t you think they’ll turn the power on soon?”

“No, I don’t think they will.”  She didn’t give the young mother time to answer.  “Also, go into the basement and cut off your water.”

“My water!  Why?”

“Amy,” Leah was holding her by both shoulders and looking her right in the eyes.

“The water that’s in your house is safe to drink.  You can drink all of the water from the hot water heater.  It’s okay too.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Honey,” Amy was about 15 years younger than Leah.  “I’m just giving you some advice in case this power outage keeps going.”

“Do you think it’s going to last long?”  Worry was fully in Amy’s voice.

Leah paused at just how childlike her neighbor was to the situation.  Leah feared that she was a synonym for most of society.  “Yeah, honey, I think it’s going to get worse.  I am still waiting on Ian and Grace to get home too, so I’ll be up all night, but,” she looked over at the radio again, thankful that Amy had not seen that it was working.  “I will check on you tomorrow.  I bet Rob will be home by then,” she said, hoping that it would be true. “Okay?”

Amy nodded, a tear streaked down her cheek.  Leah opened the door, every piece of motherly instinct in her body telling her that she was the devil for doing so, and she patted little Toby on the head and smiled at Amy. 

“Everything’s going to be okay,” she lied.

CHAPTER 13

Grace looked under the seat for the third time and then in her backpack one more time as she drove. The two-way radio was no longer in the Jeep.

“I think it probably flew out when that guy attacked us,” Anna said.  She was still shaking from the attack.  Her nose was bleeding lightly and at least one of her eyes was swelling shut and turning black.

“What was that, anyway?” Anna asked, while touching her nose repeatedly.

Grace would never really know for sure what it was, but she had an idea.

“It was some guys taking advantage of everything.  I think it was a roadblock, or something.  They were just looking for easy prey.”

“Why would there be a roadblock?  Why would cops shoot at us?”

“I don’t think it was like the cops or anything.  I think it was a gang of freakers.  You know, like a bunch of Mr. Miller whack job that look for an opportunity for anarchy and a reason to raise hell.”  She looked at Anna, hoping that she wouldn’t turn into one.  “If we had gone all the way down that street, Anna, they might have, like, killed us.”  Grace didn’t think that reasoning helped Anna feel any better.  “It’ll be okay,” she said to her friend, hoping it was true.

Anna didn’t say anything, she just kept pinching her nose; it was most likely broken.  Grace left her alone and concentrated on driving around deserted cars.  She really wasn’t sure where they were, but acted like everything was okay.  She quietly thanked her parents for instilling in her a sense of calm while everyone else panics.

Grace checked her watch, eager to be done with the day.  “Man, it’s like 2:40 AM, we need to stop and get some sleep.”

The girls had been driving in a random direction for just over an hour.  Neither one knew where they were and Grace had a sinking feeling that the map had flown off the dash and out of the window with the two-way radio.  The map was marked where her house was and the routes around Birmingham that would be the easiest to get there.  She hoped it wouldn’t be found by anyone.

“Let’s go down there,” Grace said, pointing at a dirt road on the right.  She reached under the dash and flipped the yellow parking lights on so she could see on the dirt road better. She had been driving by the light of the moon and had nearly hit at least one dear and a random car or two.

“What ever,” Anna responded.  She was about to collapse for the night.

They drove about five minutes on the dirt road and found a field with an open gate to the pasture.  She turned into the pasture and headed to a grove of oak trees at the end of the field.  She pulled under the largest tree and parked the Jeep there for the night.

“I have some blankets, some hot hands and a pup tent that should keep us warm,” Grace offered, after pulling a hidden backpack from under the back seat.  “I’ve also got a first aid kit for your nose.”  She handed the kit to Anna.  “Here,” Grace cracked a rose-colored glow stick and handed it to her to see by.

“Where did all this stuff come from?” Anna asked.  Taking the first aid kit and glow stick.

“It’s my go-pack.  Some people call it a bug-out-bag.  My Dad insisted we all have one in our cars at all times.  It has everything that we might need for the next three days,” she said, silently thanking the paranoia of her parents.

Anna hung the glow stick on the oversized side mirror of the Jeep to doctor her nose while Grace set up tent.  The girls then ate some of the food that they brought from Anna’s house and tried to forget the day; but that was hard to do.

The Spring night was cool and they might have thought that it was even beautiful, except for the fact that half of the United States had been nuked, Anna’s parents were most likely dead, they were attacked twice, Grace had shot two men and now they were camping in a field, eating sliced turkey and soft drinks they had taken from a house where a dead man rotted in the kitchen.

With little energy left, they both fell asleep soon after climbing into the tent.

Several hours later, as the morning light spread across the field, both girls slept heavily.  Neither one hearing the approaching noise before it was too late.

Anna was the first to open her eyes.  Her face was sore, but it was the shadow of a person outside of the tent that made her forget about the pain in her nose. 

The person seemed to be looking through the Jeep, and then the shadow turned towards the tent.

Anna nudged Grace and she didn’t move.  She nudged her again.  Grace opened her eyes and nearly screamed when she saw how close Anna was to her face. She looked terrible. Anna held a finger in front of her lips and then pointed at the shadow with the same finger.

Grace’s eyes followed the finger and she saw the shadow.  It was the shadow of a man, and he looked very large.  Grace put her hand on the pistol under her blanket and her thumb on the safety. 

“Hey!” the shadow man called.  “You in the tent.  What are you doing here?”

Grace and Anna locked eyes and Grace tilted her head back and forth as if to signal that she was thinking this might be okay.

“Hey!” the man said again.

“We’re coming out.  Don’t hurt us,” Grace surprised herself with her own voice.

The shadow man took a few steps back from the tent; his shadow shrinking from the side of the tent and into the ground.

“I don’t plan on hurting you unless you give me reason to,” the man responded.

Grace shrugged at her friend, tucked the pistol in the small of her back and unzipped the tent.  She crawled out to the feel of wet grass on her palms. Anna was right behind her.  They both looked at the man, who was anything but a shadow.

“Ah, wow, there’s two of ya,” the man said, suddenly looking a little nervous.

Anna and Grace sized up the man; he was really just a little older than they were.  But he was holding a ranch rifle.  He wasn’t pointing it at them, but still, he had it.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked.

Both girls looked at each other like this was some joke.

“Ah, camping,” Anna, offered.

“Well, I can see that. I mean, why here?  Why are you camping in our field?” 

Grace looked past the man and saw the horse for the first time.  He had tied it up far enough away so that he could walk up on foot without being heard. 
Smart.

“We got lost,” Grace jumped in.  “We got lost last night and instead of just driving around, we thought we would just get some sleep and try again in the morning.”  When she heard herself say it, it sounded pretty stupid.

The man looked at her and smiled.  It was a smile that was genuine and non-threatening.  Grace smiled back.

“Yeah,” Anna added, seeing the smile-a-thon between the two.

“So, you have a Jeep that still works?” he asked, looking at Grace.

So, he knows something’s going on, or he wouldn’t have asked that question.
  She nodded, and waited to see if he would divulge any more information.

“My mom’s car is dead.  Dad’s old El Camino still works and so does the older tractor, but the new one’s toast.”

“So this is your farm?” Anna asked, and was greeted with a ‘really?’ look from Grace.

He whistled and the horse, that Grace thought was tied up, started trotting towards him.  Both girls were impressed. 

“It’s our families place.  We train horses.”

Both girls watched in awe as the horse trotted up next to him and stopped.  He put the rifle in a saddle holster and grabbed the reins.   

“Your welcome to come up to our place, have some breakfast and then maybe we can figure out which way you need to go.”

Grace was about to decline, but he cut her off.

“Look, I know there’s been a lot of violence closer to town, so, well, just think about it.  I would hate to see something bad happed to two pretty ladies.”

Anna looked at Grace.  Done.

“What’s your name?” Grace asked.

“Joshua.  Everyone calls me Josh.”

“I like Joshua,” Grace said, pulling the corner stake on her pup tent.  “I’m Grace.”

Anna rolled her eyes.  “And, I’m Anna.”

“Did you girls run into any trouble last night?” He asked, looking at Anna’s black and blue face.

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Grace didn’t want to lie.

CHAPTER 14

Ian ate a few handfuls of trail mix and willingly drank the iced tea that June served them as he watched Dukes dial in the frequency for his friend in the Birmingham area.

“He’s a prepper.  I know that, but there’s no telling if he had his equipment in a Faraday cage or not,” Dukes said, as he manipulated the analog dials on the radio.  “But he has an impressive shelter, so…”

Every few turns, Dukes would catch a voice of something and he would try to dial it in to a more precise reception, but there was too much electromagnetic interference in the air because of the EMP and the proximity to the nuclear explosion in Atlanta.

They heard words like, “bomb, gangs, water, riots and killings.”

“That doesn’t sound cheery!” Penny offered.  “Do you think the same thing is happening in town?” she asked her father.  Her tone was somewhere between anger and fear.

Dukes nodded slowly.  “Yeah, honey, I do.”

“What about Clay and his Dad?  They were dropping those people off.  They were going right into it.” She looked over at Ian as if it was his idea and he had sentenced them to death.

“Penny,” Ian responded smoothly and with fatherly kindness.  He had a daughter that was similar in age…he hoped they were similar in the way they processed information.  “Clampet, the Fire Chief, right?”

She nodded.

“Just by his position, he’ll have an advantage.  He will come from a position of authority, and most people in a confused state respect a person in authority.”

“That’s right, hon,” Dukes chimed in, following the logic of an officer and making Ian’s point.

“I saw that his son, Clay, right?” Ian continued.

She nodded again.

“He had a .357 on the dash in front of him.  He’s a good shot, right?”

She nodded again.  A small smile curved at the corner of her mouth.

“I also saw the stock of an AR-15 wedged in between the seats of the Chief’s truck.  They’re well protected in case things go south.”

Dukes sat back and looked at Ian for a minute before turning back to the radio. “I thought I was observant with all my years in Recon, but you’re pretty good,” he said, casing a sidewise glance at Ian.

“Birmingham is out all over,” the radio crackled as Dukes dialed past the voice.

“Wait,” Ian said, “go back.”

Dukes reversed the dial and fine-tuned the broadcast.  “It’s him.  That’s Birmingham Bob.”

“Birmingham Bob?  Really?” Mary tried to reengage.

“We served together.  He was our toon sparky.”

“He was the platoon radio operator,” Ian translated for Mary before she could ask.  She nodded that she got it.

“He’s the one that got me into prepping and into short-wave radio about ten years ago,” Dukes added to validate the man.

“Who is he talking with?” June asked her husband.

“I don’t know.  Give it a minute.  If I hear a silence, I’ll break in.”

“Yeah,” someone said, speaking to Bob on the radio.  “It was really just infrastructure stuff here.  A few big bridges, mostly ones leading to the refineries, I don’t know why.  Over.”

“So, no nukes or EMPs in Texas then?  Over.” Bob asked.

“Not that we’ve heard.  I have heard something about LA thought.”

There was no response from Bob as he waited for the voice from Texas to give an update.

“I have heard that they nuked San Diego and EMPed the rest of the Northwest.  But don’t have a confirmation on that, just a rumor.  Over.”

There was a long pause before Bob responded.  “I wish I knew what their end game was.  Over.”

  “Roger that. So, how bad is it in Southeast?”

Ian sat up a little straighter at that question.

“From what I can tell the Atlanta nuke was a small megaton detonation.  I heard from one guy about 50 miles south of the city and he thinks everything inside of the Atlanta perimeter highway, is toast, but your chances go up the further your get away from the flashpoint.  Over.”

“Damn, Bob.  Over,” was all the voice from Texas could muster.

“I think the Northeast EMP took out the eastern seaboard and probably all the way down to the Gulf.  I bet it also stretched past the Mississippi, too.  Over.”

“Dukes, can you break in and ask him specifically about Birmingham?” Ian asked, clearing his throat and fighting emotion from sheer devastation of the news.

Mary looked at the man that had saved her life.  This is the first that she had seen or heard any emotion out of him.

“Sure.”

“Bob, it’s Dukes.  Good to hear that you’re okay. Sorry to jump your conversation.  Over.”

“Dukes! Glad to hear that you’re alive.  You’re one tough Marine!  Over.”

“Oorah,” Dukes said somberly.  “But we lost a bunch of good ones today. Over.”

“That we did, my friend. Over”

“Hey, I’ve got a former Army officer here with me that has family in B-ham, can you give some more detail about what’s going on up there? Over.”

“Sure,” Bob started.  “From what I can tell, chaos is building.  The news about Atlanta spread over here fast.  Things broke down in a hurry.  My son came back with a report that at least three large planes went down around the city…” he paused and exhaled deeply, his hand still on the active mike.  “At least one of the planes hit the downtown area.  The city is in chaos and probably is a deathtrap…”

“Oh God, already!” Ian said, exhaling heavily while he did.

“They say,” Bob continued, “that the National Guard has a pretty good hold on Montgomery, but everything north of the Montgomery all the way to Nashville, TN is falling into chaos fast. Everything I’m hearing is speculation. Over.”

“Bob, your what, about 25 or 30 miles outside of Birmingham?  Over.”

“Roger that.  I don’t want to give my location away,” the radio garbled his voice, “…but we’re pretty safe on the farm, for now.  Over.”

“Ask him about the corridor south of the city,” Ian asked Dukes.

The radio continued to garble.

“Bob, we’re pretty garbled.  Go to a higher frequency.  Over.” The radio crackled and Dukes twisted the knobs, but he was never able to reestablish contact.  “It’s got to be the EM stuff in the air,” Dukes offered.

Ian nodded.  “Dukes, do you and June mind if we crash here tonight?  We’ll leave first thing in the morning,” Ian offered, never looking at Mary.

Dukes looked at Mary and then back to Ian.  “Sure, all we have is the couch, but I have a bed roll and a sleeping bag.

“That will work, thank you,” Ian offered.  There was a determination in his eyes now that he had heard a voice from his hometown; a town that was on fire, and apparently falling into anarchy.

Dukes flipped off the radio and put it into a metal chest and locked it.  “You might want to get out early in the morning.”

“I plan on it,” Ian offered.  “Also, do you mind if I borrow some things?” Ian hated asking a fellow prepper for anything.  He knew that everything a prepper has was strategic to their survival.

Dukes drew in a deep breath.  He had been expecting a question like this.  For a prepper, having the right tools, the right supplies, the perfect balance of security and readiness was what they strive for.  But, there was something about Ian that allowed him to think differently and actually consider giving away some of his preps.  For some reason, he trusted Ian. “I thought you might ask.  Let’s talk in the morning.”

Dukes watched his family retreat to their rooms and flipped off one of the lights in the main room.  “It’s been a long day for us all.”

“For like all of humanity,” Mary offered.

Dukes nodded.  “I am pretty sure the world is changing around us tonight.  The people we know should be the people we trust.  Get some sleep tonight, and we’ll help you two on your way in the morning.”

Ian shook the man’s hand.  “I will repay you one day for everything.”

“That’s not why I did what I did and why I will do what I will do.  Get some sleep, Ian.”

Ian smiled at the man and rested assure that with people like him, humanity would not perish.

The lights went out and Mary slithered into the sleeping bag on the couch and Ian climbed into a sleeping bag on the floor in front of the fire.

“Do you think we can trust him?” Mary asked quietly.

“I know we can.  Besides, there aren’t many people left that we want to trust.”  A deep silence filled the room, only pierced by the crackling of the fire and the gentle sobs of Mary.  Ian closed his eyes to visualize his family and to say a prayer of thanks.