Highway: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival Read online

  Simpson took out a yellow pad, looked at his Timex watch and wrote down the amount and description of each item, before adding up the columns of numbers longhand.

  “You don’t use calculators in this part of the country?” Lexi asked, her sarcasm meant to be as biting as she knew it sounded.

  He wrote the total and then spun the yellow pad around to Lexi. “I doubt adding is something your generation could do without a calculator. Besides, that's what I have a cash register for, which doesn't work without power. $67.58,” he said with a sly smile.

  “Do you have a telephone I can use?” Lexi asked putting the remaining cash back into her father's wallet from where it had come, and then shoved it into his bag. She kept the coins in her hand, jingling them.

  “There's a payphone by the bathroom, that way.” He pointed toward the back of the store.

  The bathroom was clean and the toilet flushed—she wasn’t sure it would with the power out. After changing into an old T-shirt and oversized jeans, for reasons unknown to her at the time, she slipped the rabbit’s foot and keys into her pocket. The pay phone didn't work; it only emitted a sickly sounding crackle rather than a dial tone.

  “Hey, you know your payphone doesn't wo—” Lexi froze when she saw Don and Ron hovering over Seti, who was on the floor. Travis was crying again.

  “What happened?” Lexi shrieked. Her panic back in her throat.

  “I think she's had a heart attack,” Ron said, feeling for a pulse and then starting CPR on the woman. “Does she have a heart condition, Donny?”

  The old man shook his head no, holding her hand.

  Lexi walked around them, grabbed their groceries and then whispered into Travis's ear, “We’re leaving.”

  They slipped out of the front without being noticed.

  It was another quick getaway from death and questions. They had their own problems to deal with.

  The sun was high in a sky that seemed angry.

  They’d return to the highway. They’d find a tree off the road where they’d stop and eat and maybe nap. She felt so tired.

  Travis kept tugging at her hand, each time he’d turn and look back in the direction of the market, which could no longer be seen. He kept mumbling something, but she wasn’t paying attention. She was too busy noticing all the dead cars leading up to the highway, remembering Don’s conversation with Ron.

  When they were back on the highway, the gravity of their situation finally sank in. On both sides of the asphalt, as far as she could see, all the cars were dead and lots of people were walking, although in the opposite direction as them.

  Chapter 4

  Frank

  All his senses knew what his mind argued it couldn’t be.

  It had to be terrorists. But there were the unanswered questions: Why was he a target? Why on his property? Why in the backwater of Stowell, Texas?

  Frank paced through the reasonable possibilities as he plodded back to his house, after making sure his property was clear of any more of the combatants.

  “Combatants?” he chuckled at this. It was the term the Army taught him to use when describing the enemy. “Combatants” was duly descriptive, yet very generic, and it was woeful in describing these men and their intentions. The term was perhaps useful in the theater of war, but not on his ranch in Texas.

  He’d served three tours, and multiple combat missions, where everything was black and white, where everything made sense. So everything about this situation seemed surreal to him.

  He suspected that this was just normalcy bias: an American disease that he now suffered from, that he’d been infected with the moment he retired, and that had incubated through a solitary civilian life for twelve years. He had thought he would be immune to this, and found himself angry that he wasn’t.

  He felt he was not unlike the media and politicians who were always so quick to report that a violent act committed by someone claiming Islam as their religion to be anything other than a terrorist attack. But always, the inconvenience of the truth became unforgiving: it was Islamic jihadists. The dead man’s words were his proof of this. Still, this attack was different.

  Besides the paramilitary outfits, jihadists usually sought to kill as many targets as possible and usually in a very public place. That way the public would be filled with terror. That was their modus operandi.

  Frank's ranch wasn’t public, and he was the only soft target on it, other than a few goats and the coyotes always trying to eat them. And in spite of their noisy and boisterous attack, it wasn't meant for public consumption. No one would have heard about this, especially if they had been successful in killing Frank. So he reasoned there could only be one reason for this attack.

  Despite its sloppy execution, this was an invasion. It was the beginning of a war.

  Both mind and body in sync now, Frank dashed through his already open doorway, ignoring the pain from his aching knee, and bolted to the TV, slapping the remote's on-button as he scooped up his phone. He had this horrible feeling that Stowell, Texas, no matter how dumb it sounded, was the front line of an invasion by Islamic jihadists.

  “Damnit!” he swore, realizing that his aging cell phone was dead. After all the work he'd done on his land yesterday, when he finished last night, he'd forgotten to plug the stupid thing in. He snapped it into the wire snaking from the wall and left it on the living room table, already crowded with books and the mostly empty bottle of Michelob Light, its contents drying on the floor.

  He glared at his flat-panel TV; a static buzz in the background matched the picture on its screen.

  Thinking he must have accidentally knocked it off the satellite, Frank stared at the remote for a long moment, trying to make sense of its multiple buttons before clicking on the one that turned the satellite on. He cursed the damned thing for its complexity. The picture flickered in response, and then displayed static once again.

  He switched channels and received the same result from his TV. Why the hell would the satellite be out?

  Moving more slowly over to a computer perched on a roll-top desk across the room, he stabbed the on-button with his forefinger and watched. His mind begged for the standard annoying Windows emblem. He craved normalcy. The screen splashed the familiar logo and ground through its routine. His mind raced, frustratingly faster than the computer's.

  After an excruciating couple of minutes, the computer was fully booted and the web browser window opened, confirming what he suspected. His connection to the Internet was down as well.

  “My radio!” he blurted out to the unquestioning morning light flittering thru the living room door he'd left open. Ignoring this he trotted over to the short wave, a timeworn Heathkit that still used tubes, and flipped on the toggle. A low hum told him it was warming up. Everything seemed to take an unbearable amount of time, when he needed answers immediately.

  To punctuate his frustration, he walked over and slammed the door for no reason other than it seemed better than just waiting. He dragged a stool across the room and plopped himself in front of the short wave, nestled in his bookshelves. Static blared from the two speakers, spaced on opposite sides of the room. It had last broadcast a church's radio program several weeks ago, a firebrand preacher spouting how Revelations was coming true today. The station, a local one that played mostly Christian music 24/7, which he sometimes liked to have on in the background when he was reading, was noticeably gone. Maybe that preacher wasn't as loony as he had first thought.

  Frank spun the dial to another end of the band; the speakers sang out a whistlelike sound with occasional pulses from live broadcast stations. Each was perhaps broadcasting something and maybe telling him that this was just local. But he didn't stop; he was looking for a specific station.

  “We return to Peter, who we were able to locate in South Carolina, United States,” said a somewhat frantic woman, with an otherwise silky British accent.

  “Thank you, Ashley,” said a staticy male voice. “I can now confirm through multiple reports th
at America has been attacked by several nuclear blasts, including two high in the atmosphere, causing electrical outages everywhere in North America. We're told that New York, Washington, DC, and Chicago have been destroyed by separate nuclear devices—”

  “Fuck me!” Frank yelled, backing up and out of the stool, like he had been punched. He grabbed the mostly empty beer bottle and drank the remaining warm liquid while sinking into his couch.

  “ABC Radio thankfully had backup equipment that we were able to broadcast on—”

  Frank’s phone beeped at him, a tone indicating that it had enough power and had turned itself back on. Then another tone, telling him that he had a text. Then another text-tone.

  He scooped it up into his palm, stretching to match the cord's length from the wall and glared at the phone's messages in shock. Like everything else today, it was surreal.

  There were two texts displayed on the phone, both from Stan, his best friend whom he hadn't heard from in years.

  The first one was dated July 3rd—yesterday. “Terrorists will strike. America will fall any day now. Prepare. Taking kids to Florida.”

  He stared dumbfounded and then gnawed on the next text, “Could happen any time. If don’t make it might send kids your way via highway, or Abe’s. Please watch—”

  There was nothing more.

  He looked at his recent calls and saw the last one was from Grimes, probably calling to find out what he knew. But there was no coverage, no cell service.

  The phones were down too.

  Frank stood up. He had a nagging feeling, like a horrible scratch that wouldn’t go away. What if these men came back and brought more of them? He no longer had the element of surprise, working in his favor. If they returned, any time soon, he might not be able to defend himself.

  He raced out the front door, as Ashley’s tearful voice reported about the millions of American lives lost.

  Chapter 5

  Lexi & Travis

  They woke to a duet of their own screams, Travis reliving today’s nightmare and Lexi experiencing a new horror: a bright orange snake fluttered its mocking tongue at her, while slithering across her bare feet. She kicked and pushed away from the small serpent, driven by sleep’s disorientation and an abject fear of snakes. Travis giggled at his sister’s foolish display, his nightmare already forgotten.

  “It’s not even poisonous,” he said with a chuckle.

  “How the hell would you know?” she quipped, already regretting she’d said this; if anyone would know, it was her genius brother, Travis.

  “There are twenty-four varieties of snakes in Florida, and only six are venomous. That is probably a salt marsh snake.” He looked at her with a wry grin. “They eat insects, so he must have thought you’d be tasty.”

  “Smartass!” It was times like this when she really hated her brother. “Get your stuff together. We’re going in five minutes.”

  “But …” He looked around, as if someone was listening, and whispered, “I have to go number two.”

  Lexi turned her wrist, blindly glancing at her watch—originally her mom’s—and then back to him. “Now you only have four minutes and fifty seconds … forty-nine.” She smirked pleasurably. She knew she was being insensitive, but that little boy pissed her off.

  As Travis retreated quickly into the bushes with their lone roll of TP in hand, Lexi tentatively looked for her shoes. She’d kicked them off her swollen feet after they’d settled on this place for their rest, savoring the relief. But it was only temporary. She couldn’t imagine wearing her Goth boots again. They were ridiculous things with multiple buckles that were designed to be seen in, not to be walked in. She’d only worn them once before, preferring sandals. It was all part of the look she was after, meant to cut at her father for leaving them. It was a dual-edged blade she’d meant to thrust and twist into him: the flimsy dress that accentuated her feminine curves—a reminder that he missed her growing up into an adult; and the Goth style, driven home by the boots and makeup, worn during her turbulent high school years. He hadn’t had the pleasure of experiencing that portion of her life.

  “Guess you got the last laugh on that one, Daddy,” she chided herself.

  A thought struck and she carefully waddled—damaged toes bent upright to avoid ground contact—over to their bags, one black boot clutched in each hand. She straddled her father’s bag and plopped down on a tuft of grass.

  For the first time, she unclasped the main compartment to his pack, or what he called his bug-out bag, and pulled the opening as wide as it would go. It was a hunch and a hope, as she didn’t really know she’d find what she was looking for. But almost immediately she did: a small red canvas satchel, emblazoned with a stark white plus sign. Carefully she unzipped it and snatched up a white roll of gauze tape, a smile announcing her delight.

  Her feet were an angry pink and swollen, but it was the blisters that concerned her: one on each heel, each big toe, and the top-front of each foot. Hopefully the gauze would help.

  She sparingly wrapped the front halves of her feet and placed a small strap on each heel, meticulously cutting each strip with a scary-sharp folding knife sheathed on the outside of the bag.

  After checking out her work and wiggling her toes for confirmation, she was startled to find her brother had crept up and was waiting behind her.

  “You wore those stupid-looking shoes to mess with Dad, didn’t you?”

  She ignored him and instead of answering reached into her Hello Kitty bag, which somehow had become their food storage, and pulled out a package of peppered beef jerky. After ripping it open, she took out a large piece and handed the bag to him. They both tore into their ragged morsels of meat like ravenous animals munching on a fresh kill.

  This gave her some time to search for the next item she needed from his bag, the only article she knew would be there. Her fingers found a folded piece of paper beside a book. It was a printout of a Google map, with navigation on the other side of it. The map side showed two points, one in the panhandle of Florida and the other on the mid-northern Gulf side, with a jagged line connecting both points. Most of that line was their highway, I-10. The lower portion of that line snaked down a couple of unknown roads to the origination point. She suspected the point closer to them was the home of their father's friend, known to her only as Abe. The other location she didn't recognize either, but guessed that was where they had been headed to spend a few days, before the accident.

  She flipped to the navigation side and saw it was from the perspective of the mystery location on the Gulf side of Florida, near the far eastern end of the panhandle, going to Abe's house. Their destination was right off the highway they were on. Best she could figure, it was less than sixty miles away. That was doable on foot. They had enough food and if they covered twenty miles per day, they should be there in three. She sure hoped that this was a good idea, and that Abe was the person who could help them. She folded up the map and slid it back into the pack where she had found it. Although she was eager to explore the rest of the contents, she was more eager to get going. They had a lot of ground to cover.

  “You ready to go?” she asked, carefully slipping on each boot. They still hurt like hell, and they were impossibly tight now, but her new padding would do until they found a shoe store on the way, where she could buy replacements, along with some socks.

  “I’m ready,” he said, handing back the jerky.

  After some gulps of water, they were back on the highway, heading west. And almost immediately Travis hit her with a fusillade of questions: “How bad did Dad suffer?” “Why are we walking?” “Why did we leave that nice lady, Seti?” “Do you think she died?”

  Lexi’s favorite question was “Is Dad in Paradise?” Oh, she wanted to answer this one and tell him no, he was probably roasting away in hell, if there was such a place. But all of these questions were trivial, and Travis, as smart as he was, should have known the answer himself. She was concerned about more important issues, like would she fin
d some decent shoes? Or was their father’s friend Abe a bum like their father? And how in the hell would they travel the thousand-plus miles back to Tucson? She was hoping that Abe would provide the transportation, although she wasn’t sure how that would work since cars no longer seemed to function: another unanswered question.

  Then, perhaps in an effort to tune him out, Lexi considered her greatest concern: radiation. She picked up what she overheard from Don and Ron’s discussion: there were two nuclear blasts, and one of them was in Jacksonville, in the direction they were headed by car. Thank God they didn’t get closer to there when it happened; they might have all been dead, rather than just her father.

  A clear image of her high school project on nuclear nonproliferation popped into her head. She thought of the map she’d examined showing how the wind currents would carry the deadly radiation west to east. So, the blast east of them was not a problem. But if there was another blast somewhere west, say in Dallas, they’d be dead in weeks or months. And then of course there was the second blast, in the atmosphere. Wouldn’t that drop radiation on top of them?

  She felt her skin baking just thinking about it. In response, she picked up her pace and Travis followed in sync, his one-sided questions continuing. “What about Seti? She was sick; shouldn’t we have helped her? She helped us? Don looked really scared. I’m still hungry; can I have something more to eat? Can we stop again?”

  Lexi continued to block him out, thinking about Abe, the man that their father was sending them to. She hoped he wasn’t like their father. This filled her with more dread. How could they trust this guy too, whose friend abandoned his kids years ago? As a friend, wouldn’t you say something?

  And who abandons their children for eight years, sending only an occasional birthday card or present, and then wants to have a family vacation like they were some happy family? She was working herself up again.

  Their rolla-boards skipped and skidded over the highway blacktop, already sweltering from the afternoon heat.