Highway: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival Read online

  Now it was fun.

  Frank flipped the selector to Semi-Auto and aimed at the running man, squeezing off a couple of shots at a time. But the darkness and the distance assisted the target, making it too hard to get a good site picture. With the magazine emptied in the running man’s direction, Frank knew he had missed as the man leapt without effort into the bed of the third truck, which was already bounding back down the drive, and to safety.

  Frank slid down the staircase’s handrails, having practiced this move several hundred times. But this time he hit the floor hard and icepicks of pain detonated in his unprotected knee—he’d be hobbling for a week or two, for sure.

  Limping to his kitchen counter, where he’d left his damned brace, he cursed with every step. Barely stopping, he latched it over his pants and shuffled to his gunroom, where he switched magazines. He threw open the front door and paused.

  But for a lingering cloud of dust and a ringing in his ears, it seemed quiet. In the distance, the third truck’s engine and bouncing undercarriage were the only sounds. He was sure he had won this battle, yet he couldn’t help but feel this war was just starting.

  He had been prepping for a moment like this for most of his life, especially the last twelve years. He was sure that American society would come crashing down upon itself at some point, and when it did, he was just as sure that bad guys would show up on his doorstep and try to take what he had. But as far as he knew, nothing had happened. Of course, he’d been working outside most of the day. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the TV or glance at his phone for news. So, maybe the world had ended and he was just the last to find out.

  He risked a straight run—or rather stumble—from his front door. Normally he would have gone out the back, enjoying the safety of the diminishing darkness, waiting for movement from anything before striking. But he needed to find out who these men were and what was coming next.

  With his AK leading the way, he slowed his approach to the first truck, an old Chevy from the late 50s. It was classic, but now filled with punctures all exactly 23.9 millimeters around.

  The passenger side creaked open and an unarmed man flopped onto the ground with a grunt, his rapid but shallow breaths his only movement. Frank pulled a Maglite from his vest and illuminated the second truck and then the first to confirm what he saw in his scope; both drivers were dead. Using the bright beam of light, he searched around both trucks, confirming there were no other signs of life.

  He slung the AK to his back and drew his Beretta while focusing the flashlight’s beam on the only living assailant. He was a well-groomed man in his 20s, wearing paramilitary pants and a T-shirt, with several new holes courtesy of Frank. The man was bleeding from his chest, cheek, and mouth. He didn’t have long before he’d be experiencing Hell’s fiery grip.

  “Who are you?” Frank bellowed at the man.

  Gurgle-gurgle was his only reply.

  Frank moved closer, his flashlight inches away from the dying man’s face. He let the barrel of his Beretta ask the question again, pushing it hard into one of the man’s chest wounds.

  The man groaned in pain and then said something in a foreign tongue.

  Was that Arabic?

  “Who are you?” Frank asked once more, thinking the ringing in his ears prevented him from hearing properly. “This is the last time I’ll ask.” He punctuated this statement by clunking his Beretta against the man’s temple, and then shoving it against his forehead.

  The man’s throaty protest was weak. But then he started whispering something.

  Frank put his ear near the man’s mouth. And this time, he heard it very clearly. He just didn’t want to believe it.

  “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar… Allahu Ak …”

  Chapter 3

  Lexi & Travis

  She was numb. What else could she be after watching the man she hated die?

  Lexi focused on the sound of her feet. The clomp-clomp-clomp of her boots on asphalt, heating up under the Florida sun with each passing second. Just above this was the thrumming bray of her brother’s incessant pleas to stop, to talk, to cry, and what else she didn’t know and didn’t care. Then there was her throbbing head from hitting the car’s side window. Rounding out the crescendo of clamorous pain assaulting her temples was a shrieking chorus of a trillion cicadas, clicking their own demands for attention.

  None of this could crowd out that image of her father bleeding to death in front of her.

  So, she focused on her walking. Walking felt like a move in the right direction. She wasn’t really walking to some place, but away from another. She was walking away from the accident, away from their dead father, and most of all, away from the emotional agony. If she stopped, she feared this hellish monster of her emotions would catch up and devour her. So, her feet marched one in front of the other, as if on automatic pilot.

  After a while, Lexi let her mind go, and the memories of her mom and dad washed over her and drowned out the symphony of her pain. But she couldn’t deal with any of it: her brother, her father, what they were supposed to do next. She couldn’t deal with herself.

  How was she expected to live with both her parents dying, and one of them dying in front of her? It was not right. It was so unfair. Why did she and her sniveling brother have to come to Texas and drive all the way to Florida? If they’d stayed at home, their dad, no matter how much she detested him, would still be alive. Now, both their parents were dead.

  And to compound their problems, neither of them had their phones with them. That was the deal: they’d left their phones at home. They’d be together and talk, like real people and not have textus-interruptus—as he called it—every five seconds. It was just one more thing in the long list of things their father had done to them. Of course, his phone was dead. He probably forgot to charge it before they left. So, Lexi couldn’t call their Aunt Sara and Uncle David and let them know they were safe.

  Her boots stumbled one after the other, an unconscious limp growing with each mile they covered. And she focused again on the sound of her steps. Clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop.

  Most of all, she just walked, not thinking about where she was going or what she was doing, letting the haze of her anguished thoughts drown out her conscious mind, trying hard to keep it from spending any time on the issues that hurt too much.

  After a while, a disordered quiet shrouded her. Maybe the adrenaline finally melted off in the heat. Her thoughts were no longer screaming at her and neither was her brother.

  Travis!

  She abruptly halted and spun around expecting her brother to be right on her heels, as he had been the whole time. But he wasn’t. In fact, she couldn’t see him at all. How could she have not noticed her brother had stopped talking? How long ago was that? He was like some dog she was obligated to watch and feed, and she had let go of his leash. The truth was, she realized, she was so into her own heartache, she completely ignored her brother’s.

  Oh God, where is he?

  Her heart banged inside and a tsunami of panic flooded her mind, obscuring her senses. She scanned the highway, back from where they had come, and saw something. She squinted at little dots that could be people by one of the stalled cars in the middle of the road. She didn’t even remember seeing that car, as she had passed more than a few stalled cars since walking away from theirs.

  It was people. She was already hurrying in that direction.

  One dot was smaller than the others. She hoped it was Travis.

  She was running now, her body desperately trying to catch up with and pass her worries. If this dot wasn’t her ten-year-old brother, she didn’t know what she’d do.

  She could see his cowboy hat, a Christmas gift from Daddy that he wore all the time. Travis was talking to an older couple and they were pointing her way.

  Oh, thank you, God. It is him.

  No longer galloping, she paced toward him. The strangers had stopped conversing and scrutinized her approach.

  Only a couple of dozen feet
away from him, she wanted to say something, but she couldn’t catch her breath and her vision swam with little pinpricks of light. Anger coursed through her, pushing aside her panic. If she had the physical lung capacity, she’d yell at her brother for stopping and for not telling her that he did.

  But panic hadn’t fully released its clutches yet.

  Who were these people? She wondered. And how had she not even noticed them or the car when she had clattered by a few minutes ago?

  The woman had her arm around Travis, bringing fits to Lexi’s already unsettled stomach.

  When drawing up to him, she did her best to immediately assess whether or not these old people were creepers, even though her emotions were battling for her sanity and she just wanted to run. If it were just her, she could run, but it was not so easy with the new responsibility of her brother.

  When their mom was dying of cancer, she had drilled into Lexi the stranger-danger stuff, obviously preparing them for a life without her, and it stuck with her even now. She’d always been skeptical of people, no matter their age. And even though she didn’t have much of a relationship with her brother, she felt wholly uncomfortable seeing him with these strangers.

  They were smiling at him and then at her.

  “Hi, young lady,” said the ancient man in a suit and tie, his hand holding back a flop of white hair from blowing onto his face. “Your brother here was just telling us about your father and the horrible accident you were in.”

  “We’re so sorry, dear,” said the equally antique woman beside him in a flowery dress, its edges wanting to rise up, her free hand occupied with holding it down. “That must have been awful for you both.”

  The couple looked down in tandem at their feet, acting uneasy as if they didn’t know what else to say.

  Lexi concluded that they were probably just nice people who broke down, but wanted to help, and Travis noticed.

  Lexi couldn’t think of anything else to say either, and the last thing she wanted to talk about with these strangers was their dead father. Apparently Travis had done enough of that for both of them.

  Her irritation started to bubble up again.

  She grabbed her brother’s hand and pulled at him sternly, intending to drag him away if necessary. Then the man said, “I’m Don and this is my wife, Seti. We were headed to church when our car died.”

  Lexi’s eyes darted from Don to Seti and to their car and back to each. Her nerves were shot and she felt a wave of nausea, like she would puke at any moment.

  “You’re Lexi, right?” said Seti. Her voice was calming and reminded her instantly of her mom, and how she talked to her when she was scared of the dark. The nausea passed.

  “We’ve already met your brother, Travis. We’re walking back to Lloyd, to our home. You’re welcome to come with us. I’m sure you must be hungry.”

  She was hungry. They had been driving all night and hadn’t eaten since a burger from McDonald’s—one more thing their father didn’t do, because he was so anxious to get on the road. Maybe it would be all right to stop for food.

  But then she remembered her father’s dying instructions and the shopping list. “They have a market in this town?”

  “Yes, Lloyd has a market. We can stop on the way,” said Don.

  “Okay, we’ll come with you.”

  Seti hoisted a giant purse onto her shoulder and Don slid his hand into hers and they led. Lexi and Travis followed a safe distance away, while Don shot back smiles and stories about them, their town of Lloyd, and so many other things Lexi didn’t care about, but she happily listened because that meant she didn’t have to think. She learned that Seti got her name from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program, because her mother was a scientist and involved in it. Seti was a big science fan and Don had met her at the university, in an astronomy class. He was a science buff too and he loved to build things. He said he would show them his inventions while Seti was fixing them food.

  It went on this way for about a half hour, until they were standing in front of Simpson’s World Market.

  Lexi found herself scrutinizing the small store as if it were a threat, while they all waited for her approval. There were no other buildings beside it, and it was bounded by two roads, a parking lot, and swampland. As long as it had what her father had told her to get, it would do just fine.

  “Come on and we’ll introduce you to the owner,” Don invited as he pulled Seti through the door with him.

  Inside, Lexi’s senses were flooded all at once. The foreign smells would have been noxious to her in any normal circumstance, but because she was hungry and her stomach was finally settling, any food smells were good at this point. Her eyes, too, were suffering from their own sensory overload, as she tried to take in the tangled mess of paraphernalia covering the walls, or hanging from the ceiling, like an overgrown college kid’s dorm. On the walls, each patch of stuff seemed to be separated by flags identifying their country of origin. A surf board from Australia; a bobby helmet from England; a pair of wooden shoes from the Netherlands; and so on. Likewise, the shelves were crammed with foodstuffs from every place imaginable, as well as the US.

  Don watched with amusement as the kids took in what the store had to offer.

  “Yeah, Simpson picked up all of this junk”—he accentuated the last word loudly for Simpson’s benefit—“himself, during his world travels. Then he brought it back and opened this market about twenty years ago.”

  “G’day mates,” Simpson said in a not too Australian-sounding voice. His face glowed with genuine happiness, as if he loved what he did and didn’t want to be anywhere else.

  “I’m Ron. Welcome to my store,” he said to the two kids. “Sorry, miss; our power’s out, so it’s hard to see everything inside. Ah, and I hope you brought cash, cause the credit card machine isn’t working either.”

  “I've got cash,” Lexi said, flashing a forced smile.

  All watched the young woman with the flirtatious black dress and the blue streaks poking out of short black hair grab a basket and start down the first aisle. Travis hung with the adults.

  “Sounds like a lot of things aren't working,” Don said while scratching his head. “Ron, did your car start today?”

  “No, the damn thing was dead. Hey, how did yah know?”

  Seti looked first at Ron and then her husband anxiously before asking, “The blast at Jacksonville wasn't the cause. Are you thinking a separate blast in the atmosphere?”

  Don’s travel map of facial lines looked more worn from growing detours of concern. “Yes.” He didn't want to voice this in front of their friend Ron and the young people. He had started to suspect it when they had passed all of those other stalled cars on the way to Simpson's.

  “What blast?” Ron asked.

  Lexi slid past the magazines and the car-care stuff, and looked first for the item near the bottom of her father’s list: “Small lighter fluid.” All Simpson’s had was the one-quart size. She tossed that into her basket. The fifth item on the list was bug spray. She found the one with 100% Deet and moved on to the food, first grabbing a bottle of apple cider vinegar, completely unsure what this would be used for. But it was on the list and so she threw it in the basket and moved to the next aisle.

  She had heard it was wrong to shop on an empty stomach and now she remembered why. At this moment, everything looked good to her undiscerning palate. In the snack section, she stared into the windowed package of chips with Japanese writing on it and yearned for its contents. But she had a job to do, and she would finish it. Two shelves down, she snatched the only two packages of beef jerky and one bag of spicy Doritos chips. That last item wasn't on the list, but she liked them.

  “Shelled peanuts?” She emoted out loud, reading the next item on the list. She searched and found two bags of them, and into the basket they went. She was starting to understand the reasons behind the food list he’d dictated to her. The food was easily portable, stored well, had a long shelf life, and was high in calor
ies and protein. When she’d first scribbled it all down, she had thought it was just babbling from her dying father. But this list had purpose and forethought. She wondered what treasures she’d find in his bug-out bag currently resting at Travis’s feet, up front.

  Walking past the candy aisle, her eyes wandered over the fruity candies from all over and came to rest on Starbursts Fruit – Tropical. She tossed a glance back up at Travis. He was listening to Don and Ron argue about nuclear blasts. The packet went into her basket. She thought it was a favorite, at one time. Maybe she could use it as a bargaining chip at some point to make him do what she wanted.

  Back in front of the store, she walked down the next aisle and compared the packaged and canned food options. The list said “dried foods - Just add water.” She snatched the only three packages of dried soups. Beside this were some rice and beef packages. All had instructions indicating “Just add water.” Laying them in the basket, she went to canned foods, where she picked up two cans of chili and crossed that off her list.

  “Packaged fish? Yuck.” This was definitely not her favorite. But she understood what he was doing here: all the major food groups, and ready to eat without a stove. She found some packets of tuna, surprised that they didn't require refrigeration. Equally amazed when turning them over, she found they would be good for sale until four years from this month. She grabbed four of these. She’d hold her nose if necessary.

  On the juice aisle, she grabbed some pineapple and apple juice packets. Lastly, she grabbed two gallon jugs of water, struggling to carry those and the now full basket.

  All four of them watched her return and lay all of her items on the counter.

  “Hope you have cash,” he glanced at all the items.

  Lexi threw down her wad of cash onto the counter, making a slapping sound to accentuate her frustration at his repeated question.